Vulgar Boatman (20 page)

“Just Mr. Curry,” I said. “Not Mr. Baron.”

He glanced over at Mr. Baron’s body. “Right. By ‘they,’ I mean that fat guy who got away plus the others. Bound to be others.”

“I don’t have anything,” I said.

“But they think you do.”

“Look—”

Horowitz held up his hand. “Here’s how I figure it, Mr. Coyne. These bad guys, they think Buddy Baron got ahold of something incriminating. Something to do with the murder of the girl in Windsor Harbor. He came here, then he left to get it, whatever it is, and then he came back here. So they followed him here. Now, maybe all he got was this girl’s school records, and maybe they don’t mean diddly squat as far as her murder was concerned. But they must’ve meant something to the boy, and it’s pretty obvious he wanted to share them with you, since he came back here.” Horowitz looked puzzled. “What I don’t understand is, why would he hide them? He thought it was his own father coming up the stairs.”

“I guess I was the one he trusted.”

“So when he hears these guys at the door, he hides whatever he’s got, if, indeed, it’s these records.”

“I think it is. The way they were asking me for them. They certainly believed that my briefcase might contain what they wanted.”

“Okay,” said Horowitz. He fumbled in his pockets and came out with a fresh chew of Bazooka gum. I took the opportunity to light a cigarette. “These two guys,” he continued, “they may not know what they’re after. But they know they want it. They’re willing to torture the kid to get it. Only he dies before he tells them.”

“Right. That’s what the fat guy said.”

“And they know you’re snooping around, Mr. Coyne. No offense, but that’s how it looks, if you think about it. Maybe they knew you were meeting that girl tonight. And—”

“Damn!” I said, punching my palm.

“What?” said Horowitz.

“Christie. She could be in trouble. Stupid of me.”

Horowitz nodded. “Tell you what. I’ll call Harry Cusick, tell him to keep a quiet eye on her. From what you’ve said, I can’t see as the bad guys would have any reason to harm her. But you’re right. Better to be safe.”

“Thanks,” I said.

Horowitz proved to be a man of his word. He went to my phone and punched out a number. He spoke into it for a couple minutes. I saw him nod and gesture with his hand as he talked. After he hung up he came back and sat beside me.

“All set,” he said. “I talked with Cusick himself. Last thing he needs is another tragedy with a young kid in his town.” He sighed. “Okay. Back to these bad guys. I figure hitting on you is worth a try for them. Nothing to lose. They would have killed you, probably, no skin off their nose. What’s one more murder, more or less? Only now, the way I see it, this fat one, he’s more convinced than ever that you’ve got what he’s after.”

“So?” I said.

“So,” he said, glancing across the room to where Sylvie was talking with the black policeman in the expensive suit. “So you want to catch the bastard?”

I thought of Buddy Baron’s face when I found him tied to my kitchen chair. I thought of the way Mr. Curry had squeezed Sylvie’s nipple and lifted up her dress. “Hell, yes,” I said. “I want to catch the bastard. What do you want me to do?”

At that moment, a policeman came in with Hector. Horowitz excused himself and got up to meet him.

He spoke to Hector for a moment. The young man nodded nervously, licking his lips and looking wide-eyed around the room. Then they went over to where the dead man lay sprawled on my kitchen floor. Hector stared down, looked up at Horowitz, nodded vigorously, and turned his face away. I saw Horowitz jut his jaw at Hector, who shook his head and continued to look away. Horowitz grabbed Hector’s chin and jerked his face sideways, forcing him to look down again. Hector nodded quickly and tried to move his head. Horowitz let go of his chin. Then he strode over to me.

“He says it’s the same guy who was here the other time. Which is what we figured.”

“So,” I repeated, “what do you want me to do?”

“Nothing, really. Just don’t let on that you don’t have this whatever it is. I know you talk to the newspapers, and after this there’ll be more stories, and your boss, there, the real Mr. Tom Baron, he gets a lot of air time. It wouldn’t hurt if you managed to say ‘no comment’ if you get asked what these guys were after, or if you have it.”

“You want me to be a decoy, you mean.”

He rolled his gum back and forth a few times. “A decoy,” he said. “Nah. Not really. All I’m saying, Mr. Coyne, is, if you get some more unusual visitors, or strange phone calls, maybe you ought to let us know. Of course, it would help us if you did get these visitors or calls. And if you can manage to act just a little mysterious whenever somebody asks you what this was all about, so much the better.”

“You want them to come after me again?”

Horowitz blew a bubble. “They might just do that, whether I want them to or not.”

“And you’re going to have a policeman or two nearby, right?”

Horowitz nodded. “I think you need protection.”

“Cops at the door.”

“We’ll keep an eye on the place.”

I shrugged. “And Sylvie.”

Horowitz nodded. “Of course.”

“Because she shouldn’t even be involved in this. It’s because of me—”

He put his hand on my arm. “Don’t worry. We’ll take good care of her.”

“You better,” I said.

A
FTER A SHORT TIME,
the black detective brought Sylvie back to the sofa. He steered her politely with his hand just touching her elbow. She walked stiffly. When she sat beside me, I put my arm around her. We drank more Jack Daniel’s and watched the police scurry busily around in my apartment.

The medical examiner arrived. He knelt beside the body of Mr. Baron for a few minutes, then stood up and nodded to a young woman, who proceeded to take some Polaroid flash pictures of it. Then she and the M.E. departed, and two men wearing white jackets rolled Mr. Baron into a black plastic body bag and lugged him away.

Horowitz came back to us and said, “If you don’t mind, Mr. Coyne, we’re going to have to ask you to find someplace else to stay tonight.”

“We can go to Miss Szabo’s place,” I said. Sylvie looked up at me and nodded.

“I’m going to have to take your gun. You’ll get it back. Assuming it’s properly licensed.”

“It is.”

“And we’d appreciate it if you and the lady would come to the station tomorrow and look through the mug book. See if we can figure out who your Mr. Curry is.”

“Sure.”

“You want me to drive you?”

“I can drive,” I said. “No problem.”

He frowned at me. “You ought to get that beak of yours looked at.”

“Not much they can do for a broken nose.”

“Might need a few stitches.”

I touched my nose gingerly. “I’m afraid of needles.”

Sylvie wrapped my flannel bathrobe around herself and we went down the elevator to my car. She leaned against me, and I kept one arm around her shoulders. She scuffed heir feet a little as she walked. She stumbled once. I didn’t know whether it was from the shock of events or the Jack Daniel’s she had consumed.

She huddled against the door of my car, her legs tucked up underneath her and her arms folded tightly across her chest. She stared out the window on her side as I negotiated the largely empty Boston streets that took us from my place on the waterfront to her condo on Beacon Street.

“You okay?” I said.

“I am okay,” she said, her voice just a whisper.

“Do you want to talk about it? It might help to talk about it.”

“I talked with the policeman. He was very nice. Now I do not want to think about it.”

I shrugged. “Okay.”

We were passing by the Common on Boylston Street when Sylvie said, “Stop the car, please.”

“Why…?”

But I heard her gag, so I braked quickly and reached across her to unlatch the door. Just in the nick of time.

I went around to her side and helped her get out. I held her while she purged herself of mussels, monkfish, Jack Daniel’s, and ugly memories, right on the sidewalk. A pair of young men strolled by, arm in arm, and they whispered and giggled and turned around to watch Sylvie puke.

“Go bugger each other,” I yelled at them.

They seemed to think this was an enormously witty thing for me to say. One of them shouted back at me, equally cleverly. “Fuck you, Charlie.”

After a few minutes, Sylvie said, “I am better now.” I gave her my handkerchief and she wiped her face with it. Then we got back into the car.

I found a slot on Beacon Street only two blocks from Sylvie’s place. I parked and we walked up. Sylvie walked better. She said she was feeling fine.

It was about three in the morning. A megadose of adrenaline was zipping through my veins. I felt like a speed freak who had just shot up. I felt as if I would never sleep again. I sat in Sylvie’s living room sucking at a bottle of Molson’s ale and smoking a cigarette while she went into the bathroom. I heard the shower go on. I listened to it run while I finished my Winston. I drained the bottle of ale. The shower was still running. I got up and went to the bathroom. I opened the door and was greeted by a cloud of steam. I shucked off my clothes and tapped lightly on the opaque glass door of the shower stall.

“I need someone to scrub my back,” I said.

“I have done that before.”

I stepped in. Sylvie was slick as a seal. Her blond hair was pasted to her head and face. I moved it away from her mouth and kissed her. She held herself rigid. Then she quivered and moved away from me.

“Where’s the soap?” I said.

“Turn around,” she said.

I turned and she lathered my back. Then she put the soap into my hand. “Now do me,” she said.

She turned her back to me. Her shoulders were hunched forward, her head bowed. I moved the soap in circles on her smooth back and down around her hips. She arched backwards toward me. “That feels good,” she murmured.

I moved closer to her. Carefully, slowly, I lathered her throat and shoulders, standing close against her. One of her hands moved behind her and touched my hip, urging me closer. I moved the soap around her breasts. Her nipples hardened, and I heard her murmur something in her throat. I lathered her stomach. Her hand came down to touch mine, to urge it downwards.

She turned to face me, lifting her arms and offering her mouth. “You taste soapy,” I said.

She pressed herself against me and laughed.

“What’s funny?” I said.

“Your nose. And your eyes. They are both black. You look like a raccoon. Or a robber.”

I kissed her again, and somewhere in her throat she said, “Oh,” and she didn’t laugh, and a moment later she said, “Oh, yes,” quite distinctly, and the steamy water cascaded over us, washing away the evil of the evening, and Sylvie and I shuddered together. She clung to me that way for a long time, with her knees locked up around my hips and her mouth against the side of my neck.

Later we dried each other with big towels. We powdered each other’s body and walked hand in hand to Sylvie’s big bed. We held each other and we slept.

The next morning Sylvie and I went to the police station.

“You’re a sight and a half,” observed Horowitz.

I ruefully touched the Band-Aid Sylvie had stuck onto the bridge of my nose. “It’s a bit tender,” I said nasally.

Horowitz gave us big albums full of portraits of criminals. We pored over them for nearly two hours. I didn’t find a single picture that looked like the fat man who called himself Mr. Curry.

Sylvie found eight.

Horowitz thanked us anyway. He said they would have word from the fingerprint computer in Washington within forty-eight hours on the man I had killed. If his prints were on file, perhaps we’d know more.

He said they had searched my apartment thoroughly but did not find a file containing Alice Sylvester’s school records. “Turned the place upside down” was the phrase he used.

He said he’d call to let me know when I could get my gun back. I told him I was in no particular hurry.

Sylvie and I had lunch at the Union Oyster House. She had a green salad and a glass of tomato juice. I had fish stew and a bottle of beer.

She said she wanted to be alone for a while. I told her I understood. I dropped her off at her place, and I went home.

The police may have done a thorough job of scouring my apartment for mysterious school records, latent fingerprints, specks of rare mud, stray pubic hairs, and whatever arcane clues they were looking for. But they did a lousy job of cleaning up.

Of course, most of the mess was there before they arrived.

My Harlan Fiske Stone briefcase was gone. I assumed the cops had taken it for evidence. I hoped I hadn’t ruined it by shooting a bullet through it.

I called the office. When Julie answered, I said, “Before you say anything, I’m home and I’m all right.”

“I wasn’t worried,” she said. “I was pissed off.”

“Well, if you knew what happened to me, you’d have been worried.”

“You’re all right. So I can be pissed if I want. Are you coming to work, or what?”

“Or what, actually,” I said. “Be in tomorrow. Just wanted to let you know. Common courtesy, that sort of thing.”

“You probably have no interest in who’s been calling, or which clients are looking around for new attorneys, or anything, huh?”

“Nope. It’ll keep. Be in tomorrow.”

“Fine. Maybe I won’t.”

“Julie, I’ll need you tomorrow.”

“I’ll keep it in mind.”

After I hung up, I went into the bathroom. I peeled the Band-Aid off my nose. The gash didn’t look so bad, now that it wasn’t bleeding. The rest of my face looked considerably worse. I took two aspirin for the vague throbbing behind my eyes, which I ascribed to the displacement of bone and cartilage, but which may have been an adrenaline hangover. Then I hooked a can of Tuborg from the refrigerator, found the new Thomas Jefferson biography I had just started, and lay on my bed.

The telephone jarred me awake. I fumbled for it, found it, and muttered, “Whozit?”

“Sylvie,” came a small voice.

“You all right?”

“I am very lonely.”

“I’ll be right over.”