Vulgar Boatman (13 page)

“Tom…”

“Nobody is blaming you. I had to go identify his body.”

“How’s Joanie?”

“The doctor gave her some pills. She’s sleeping. He wanted to give me some, too. I told him I needed to feel it. Joanie, I don’t know what’s going to happen to her. Hell, I don’t know what’s going to happen to me. This is—it’s a nightmare. It’s worse than any nightmare. A nightmare, you know you’re going to wake up.”

“I should’ve brought him in when I had him,” I said. “Tom, he was a good kid. I liked him.”

“Yeah,” he said. “He was a good kid. Some of us, we never gave him credit. He was—we thought of him as a pain in the ass. He screwed things up for us. I mean, you love your kid. But you wish he was different. You wish you could be proud of him, instead of wishing he wasn’t around. Not Joanie, though. She always accepted him. No matter what he did, she was his mother, by Jesus, and she was right there. Behind him. Me, all I ever did was try to fix things up. Fix him. Make him the way I wanted him to be. Make him so I wouldn’t have to think about him.” I heard Tom sigh deeply. “Brady,” he said softly, “you should have seen him.”

“I did, Tom.”

“Christ! I forgot. God, that must have been awful, walking in like that, seeing him there.”

Here was Tom Baron, his son having been murdered, trying to make me feel better. It revealed more sensitivity than I had thought him capable of. “Tom,” I said, “if there’s anything I can do.”

“One thing.”

“Name it.”

“Don’t quit on me now.”

“I don’t intend to.”

“No, listen. I mean, I want whoever did this. To Buddy and to Alice. I’m not talking about the campaign here. Hell, I don’t know what I’m going to do about that. I just don’t want this to get lost in some police file.”

“I already decided that,” I said. “I’m involved. Somebody kills somebody in my house, it’s personal with me. I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I’m in this. All the way.” I hesitated, then added, “Tom, listen. The guys who did this. There were two of them. They used your name. You and Curry. They gave the watchman at my place your names to get into my apartment.”

“That explains something.”

“What’s that?”

“That policeman—Horowitz—he grilled Eddy. Where were we last night. Times, names, corroborating witnesses, all that. Probably would’ve liked to grill me, too. Guess he figured I just might be feeling some emotions, just hearing my son’s been murdered and all. Hell. I was giving the speech in Weymouth last night. About five hundred witnesses. Place was packed. Eddy was with me. Horowitz wouldn’t say what he was after, according to Eddy.”

“Well, that’s what it was. The watchman looked at your pictures. Told him it wasn’t you guys.”

Tom cleared his throat. I waited for him. Finally he said, “Brady, I don’t want you to take this the wrong way.”

“Go ahead.”

“Eddy Curry’s been great. With us all day. Handling things. Making arrangements. But he told me I’d have to be thinking about something.”

“The campaign.”

“Yes. Did I want to quit. I think some of the party boys are getting nervous. All the headlines. Eddy didn’t actually say that. He just asked me. I told him I’d have to think about it. Talk to Joanie, when she’s able to listen. What do you think?”

“Aw, Tom. That’s a tough one for me.”

“It’s a helluva lot tougher for me. I need a rational mind. Someone with perspective. Not Eddy. Not Joanie. Shit, especially not me. I can’t stop thinking. If I wasn’t in this goddamn campaign…”

“I can’t see how the campaign has anything to do with what happened to Buddy.”

I heard him sigh. “That’s what I mean. Perspective. I keep telling myself the same thing. But no matter what I think, it doesn’t change how I feel.”

“You feel guilty.”

“Hell, yeah. I look back. A kid’s whole lifetime. Eighteen years. Where did I fuck up? What did I do, that if I did it differently Buddy’d still be alive? I mean, it’s hard not to blame yourself when your kid gets involved in drugs, right? And if he wasn’t involved in drugs…”

“Cut it out, Tom. This isn’t helping.”

“Actually, it is helping. It makes me hurt. I feel like I ought to hurt. I deserve to hurt. When I hurt, it makes me feel better.”

“Well, Jesus…”

“Life’s got to go on, right? Isn’t that what everyone says? What’s done is done. So you’ve just got to push on.”

“The campaign, you mean.”

“The campaign. Brady. What the hell am I going to do?”

“You already said it. Push on.”

Tom paused for a long time. “I need you, pal.”

“I already told you—”

“No. I mean, I need you to talk to. You’re the only goddamn person I can talk to that I can trust. Listen. Is there any sense in me quitting the campaign? Tell me the truth.”

“I don’t see any sense to it. There’s nothing to be gained.”

“Right. Yeah. Okay. Then how do I handle it?”

“What?”

“You know. Buddy. I mean, if I do decide to keep on with the campaign, there’s going to be questions. Legitimate questions. People are going to want to know. The press, the public. There’ll be stuff in the papers. About Buddy and me and the family. Buddy’s problems.”

“And that,” I said, “is Eddy Curry’s bailiwick. Not mine, if that’s what you’re suggesting. You want to continue your campaign—well, I guess you ought to. I’m your friend. I’ll continue to be your friend. And your attorney. But—”

“I wish the hell you’d come aboard, Brady.”

“I’ve told you a million times—”

“That was then. This is now.”

“I don’t think so, Tom.”

“Will you think about it?”

“Sure. I’ll think about it. What I was going to say was this. I talked with Buddy a lot the other night. I am absolutely convinced he committed no crime. For all I know, he was trying to solve one. I’ve got a feeling that whoever killed him thought he knew something about Alice’s murder. It’s for damn sure that he didn’t kill Alice. All of this will make its way into the papers. Hell, Tom. Buddy was a victim here. I’ll bet he turns out to be a hero. I don’t know much about politics. But if you’re worried about this hurting your campaign I think you can relax.”

“I never said I was worried about that.”

“Fine.”

“I haven’t been able to put my mind to it. But, yeah, okay. That’s good.”

“Curry knows more about it than I do, though.”

“Brady, I need a legal adviser.”

“We’ve been through that.”

“You said you’d think about it.”

“I will. Is that what Curry called me about?”

“I don’t know. Yeah. Probably.”

“Tom, are you okay?”

“I’m hurting. That’s a good sign.”

“Give my love to Joanie.”

“She asked after you a couple times. Be nice, maybe you could come see her.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Tom thanked me several times. He seemed reluctant to disconnect. I couldn’t blame him. Not that I offered him much comfort, but his alternative was sitting in the house where he had raised his son and staring at the memories, with his wife’s hysteria to deal with when she awakened from her drugged sleep.

After we finally hung up, I went over to the cabinet in my office and found my special bottle of Jack Daniel’s. Normally it’s for ceremonial occasions—the generous settlement of a lawsuit, a not-guilty verdict, the reconciliation of an estranged couple.

This time I poured myself a shot and downed it neat, just like a brassy lawman in a hostile saloon. For nerves, for courage. Whatever, it never works for me, but it always seems like a good idea.

I went to the closet. My old briefcase was on the floor in back. I took it out and put it on top of my desk. I brushed the dust off it.

It wasn’t one of those sleek attaché cases that most of my colleagues fancy. This one was the size of a small suitcase. I could have fit a pair of six-packs into the bottom of it comfortably. It had accordion sides and opened from the top. My father had given it to me when I graduated from Yale Law. It hadn’t been new, even then. It had the initials H.F.S. engraved in gold on the side. “Harlan Fiske Stone,” my father told me. “A very great lawyer and Supreme Court Justice. This was his. I think you’re ready at least to carry Stone’s briefcase now.”

Actually, I didn’t carry the briefcase. I valued it the way I would an old classic car. I didn’t want to get it soiled or rained on. It was to own, not to use. Anyway, I didn’t have that many occasions when I needed to lug around big sheaves of legal papers. When I did, carrying them in that big old clunker would constitute some kind of overkill. I had a slender attaché case of my own for that.

This time, though, I decided to use Harlan Fiske Stone’s old briefcase. I stuffed it with the papers that lay on my desk and added two lawbooks that contained precedents for the Fallon case.

Then I went over to my office safe, opened it, and took out my Smith and Wesson .38 revolver. I snapped open the cylinder to confirm that I had left it unloaded. There was a box of cartridges in there, too. I loaded the gun and put it into the briefcase.

Zerk Garrett, when he worked with me, used to shriek and giggle when I carried the weapon with me. He was right—I was uncomfortable with it. In my pocket it bagged noticeably and bumped awkwardly against my hip. Nor did it feel natural in my hand.

The one time that I had occasion to take it out and aim it at another man, it was taken away from me. It had, in fact, been used to kill a man. Since that time it had left my safe only once, and that was when I was invited by a policeman I knew to shoot with him at the police range. I was impressed, at that time, by the noise it made, and by the way it bucked and leaped in my hand. It felt alive and powerful and I did not shoot it particularly accurately.

I wasn’t sure if I could ever fire it at a human being. But I could point it and threaten with it. And I figured there was no harm having it with me. It was, at least, a minor comfort, when I reflected on the fact that somebody had killed Buddy Baron at my kitchen table.

I wondered if perhaps there was one man I could actually shoot at.

J
ULIE WAS AT HER
desk when I got to the office Monday morning.

“Nice weekend?” she said.

“Don’t ask.” I plunked my battered old briefcase onto her desk, unclasped the top, and reached inside. I fumbled for the sheaf of papers I had worked on all day Sunday. My hand touched the cold metal of the Smith and Wesson. Foolishness, I thought. I removed the papers and quickly snapped shut the briefcase.

I flourished the papers at Julie and set them atop her desk.

“My, my,” she said, picking them up and flipping through them. “No fishing trips? On the outs with all your lady friends?”

“I found a little spare time.”

“It was a bad weekend.”

“You don’t know the half of it.”

“Going to tell me?”

“You bring me a cup of coffee, I’ll tell you.”

“I’ll bring you coffee because it’s my turn.”

I went into my office and she followed a minute later, bearing two mugs of coffee. We sat on the sofa. I told her about finding Buddy’s body in my kitchen Friday evening, and my subsequent conversations with the police and Tom Baron. As I talked, Julie stared solemnly at me. When I was done, I shrugged. “So that’s how it was.”

“How horrible,” she whispered. “Those poor, poor people.”

“I think Tom and Joanie expect some wisdom out of me. I don’t seem to have any.”

She regarded me solemnly. “And you,” she said after a minute. “How are you doing?”

I shrugged. “I’m tough.”

“Oh, right.”

“I’m okay.”

“Bullshit,” said Julie.

“Okay, so I’m not all right. So I can’t get Buddy Baron out of my mind. So I keep thinking about my own boys, and how it must be for Tom.”

“You don’t need to be tough, you know, Counselor. It’s okay to be objective and rational for other people. You can still have your own feelings.”

“Well, you’re right. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. So what are you going to do?”

“Do? Nothing. Nothing different. Life goes on, right?”

“Right.” She stood up and smoothed the front of her skirt against her thighs. “Life goes on. You get to work now.”

“I can’t stop thinking about Buddy.”

“Think about him. That’s okay. But get to work.”

I flipped her a mock salute. “Aye, aye, sir.”

She went out to her desk and I moved wearily to mine. I owed myself a vacation, I decided. I had determined a long time ago to be a one-man office precisely so that I could take vacations whenever I wanted to. Things kept happening to get in the way. I should have been an oral surgeon like Doc Adams. He kept taking lengthy, tax-deductible boondoggles to exotic places, in the guise of medical conferences, where days were spent flycasting for bonefish and tarpon, and evenings were devoted to drinking expensive whiskey and listening to other medical folks discuss the states of their arts.

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts requires these sessions of medical folks licensed here. I made a mental note to see what the state’s bar association might come up with for us barristers.

In the meantime, I didn’t have Doc’s self-righteous explanation for his periodic ten-day abandonments of his practice. “Professional development, old chum,” he liked to say. “Must stay
au courant,
don’t you know.”

When I’d ask him how hearing about new techniques in bowel surgery helped him extract impacted wisdom teeth, he’d waggle an eyebrow at me and give me some double-talk about holistic medicine.

He knew I didn’t buy it. And he always came back with a great tan and photos of the fish he had snagged. Made me sick.

I vowed to get away at least once before the snow flew.

I was enjoying a mental debate between the Florida Keys and Mexico when Julie buzzed me. “Mr. Curry for you,” she said.

“You were supposed to call me,” said Curry when he came on the line.

“Busy as hell,” I lied. “You were on my agenda. What’s up?”

“I want to buy you lunch.”

“You want to buy me lunch, you want something. What is it?”

“Let’s discuss it over lunch, okay? Say at the men’s bar at Locke Ober’s at twelve-thirty?”