Vulgar Boatman (8 page)

Frank answered the phone on the first ring. Judging by the static, I figured he was out in his barn. I said hello a couple times, and he yelled back, “Hang on. Gonna change phones.” When he came back on, he sounded better. “This one’s got my own receiver in it,” he said. “The guys who make commercial cordless phones don’t know beans about insulating. This salt air raises hell with ’em.”

“What’s up, Frank?”

“Brady, listen to me. I’m going batshit down here. Outta my mind. Somebody hijacked my boat.”

“Hijacked?”

“Hijacked, whatever. They stole it, for chrissake. Woke up this morning and she’s gone from her mooring.”

“Sounds like she broke loose in the storm.”

“Brady, I got this rig for mooring her—made it myself—”

“Okay, Frank. I believe you. She’s hijacked. Did you tell the cops?”

“Yes I called the cops. And I called the Coast Guard and the insurance guy, too. She’s a sweet little boat, Brady.”

“This is the sailboat, right?”

“No. The
Egg Harbor.”

Frank’s “sweet little boat,” I happened to know, was worth about a quarter of a million dollars. Frank had the teak varnished, the twin diesels overhauled, the brass polished, and the hull caulked and painted every winter. It came equipped with loran and sonar and every other piece of electronic gear imaginable. Frank and I had landed an eight-hundred-pound bluefin tuna off the tip of Provincetown in that boat back in eighty-three, not to mention the tons of bluefish and occasional striped bass we had hauled onto her decks from Casco Bay to Long Island Sound.

A sweet boat.

“I am saddened at your news,” I told him truthfully. “But I don’t know what you want me to do about it.”

“I keep telling you about pirates. Now maybe you’ll believe me.”

“You were talking about guys swiping your ideas, not your property.”

“Same difference.”

“Frank, seriously, what do you want me to do?”

“Hell. Find my boat.”

“I said seriously.”

“Okay. Seriously? Seriously, if she doesn’t turn up, there’ll be insurance adjusters who’ll want to screw me. If she does turn up, her hull all stove in, all that lovely stuff stripped off her, same thing. Mainly, I want her back, and I want to know that the Coast Guard is doing its thing.

“I’ll make a call,” I said. “And try to relax, Frank. It’s only a boat.”

“Like hell it’s only a boat.”

“I know, I know.”

I finally hung up with Frank. I don’t think he felt any better, but I did keep my promise to call the Coast Guard. I was shunted from the commander’s office to the legal office to the search and emergencies group to intelligence and law enforcement before I found someone who would talk with me. He said they had the particulars on Frank’s
Egg Harbor
and would keep an eye out for her. I supposed that was all they could do.

It occurred to me that twice in the same day the Coast Guard had entered into my conversations—first with Harry Cusick, in speculating about cocaine traffic on the North Shore, and then with Frank Paradise.

Maybe I’m unusual, but whole months go by when I don’t even think about the Coast Guard. I suppose that means they’re doing a good job at whatever it is they do. If they didn’t come up with Frank Paradise’s
Egg Harbor,
I suspected I’d be giving the Coast Guard more thought.

I got back to my apartment a little after six. Except for the dishes that had been cleared and stacked in the washer, and my bed, which had been made, it was as if Sylvie had never been there. There are times when living alone is downright lonely, and none more so than coming home to a neatly made bed in an empty apartment.

I climbed into my jeans and sweatshirt and slid a frozen pizza into the oven. I sloshed some Jack Daniel’s into a glass, dropped in three or four ice cubes, and settled down in front of the television to catch the evening news.

The weatherman was cautiously predicting clearing and cooler—he didn’t seem too certain as to when this weather would actually arrive—when the phone rang. I hoisted myself off the sofa and padded in stockinged feet into the kitchen to answer it.

“Mr. Coyne?” said a voice I didn’t recognize.

“Yes?”

“This is Buddy Baron. I heard you wanted to talk to me.”

“B
UDDY,” I SAID. “WHERE
the hell have you been?”

“Around.”

“Where are you now?”

“I’m in town.”

“Here? In Boston?”

“Yes.”

“Well, tell me where and I’ll come and get you. We’ve got to talk.”

“No, I’ll come to your place. Is that okay? Are you busy?”

“I just put a pizza in the oven. I’ll throw together a salad. You can join me.”

“Yum, yum,” he said. “All right. I’ll be right over. And Mr. Coyne?”

“What?”

“I know they want to arrest me. I hope you don’t plan to play games with me.”

“No games, Buddy. We’ll talk. I’ll have to take you to the police.”

“That’s what I figured. Okay. Fifteen minutes.”

“Wait,” I said. “Have you talked to your parents?”

“No. Should I?”

“They’re worried about you.”

“You mean they’re worried about scandal. I don’t want to talk to them.”

“I intend to, then.”

“Go ahead,” he said. “Tell them I’m all right.”

“Is it true?”

“Sure. I’m fine. Never better.”

After I hung up with Buddy, I called Tom Baron’s house. Joanie answered. Her voice was soft and slurry. She had been taking brandy in her morning coffee. I supposed it was martini time, now.

“It’s Brady,” I said. “I just talked to Buddy. He’s okay.”

“He’s not okay,” she said. “They want to arrest him. They think… Brady, it was nice to see you this morning. You should have stayed longer.”

“Listen to me, Joanie. I’m going to bring Buddy to the police, do you understand? Is Tom there?”

“Tom’s on the road. On the road again. Dum dum. Hit the road, Jack. He’s, let’s see. Springfield, I think. Yes. If today’s Thursday Tom’s in Springfield. Whatever today is. Meeting with bigwigs. Plotting and planning. Him and Eddy Curry. They wanna figure out what to do with a son who’s gonna get arrested for murder. What they’re gonna do with the campaign, I mean. Why doesn’t Buddy call his mother, huh?”

“Joanie, take it easy, will you? Just listen to me. When Tom gets in, tell him I’ve found Buddy. Okay?”

“Tom’s getting in late. It’s just me in my big old house, my son and my husband gone, sitting here in the dark in my nightgown waiting to get tired. Lonely, Brady. You ever get lonely?”

“Sometimes, yes. Look. I’m going to hang up now. You understand that Buddy is all right?”

“Yes,” she said softly. “Thank you. I understand.”

“Take it easy on the booze.”

“Sure. Excellent advice. I’ll just sip. Ladylike sips. I’ll be sleepy pretty soon.”

“Good night, Joanie,” I said, and hung up.

I was tearing a head of lettuce into a wooden bowl when the buzzer rang. It was the new night man, a skinny Puerto Rican man in his mid-twenties named Hector, telling me I had a visitor. I told him to send Buddy up, and a few minutes later there was a knock at the door.

Buddy was wearing gray corduroys and a blue sweatshirt, the same outfit he had been wearing the night of Alice Sylvester’s murder. He hadn’t shaved since then, either, I judged. He had his mother’s soft, undefined facial features and his father’s lanky frame.

“Come on in,” I said to him. “Pizza’s about ready. Oil and vinegar on the salad suit you?”

“Great,” he said without enthusiasm.

He went over to the big window and stared at the dots of light out on the ocean. I went to stand beside him. “How you doing?” I said.

He turned to look at me. He shrugged. “I’m doing.”

“About Alice.”

“I’m working on it.”

“We’ve got some problems,” I said.

He nodded. “Sure. I know. You got a beer?”

“I’ve got Pepsi,” I said. I went to the kitchen.

Buddy followed me. “You shitting me?” he said. “I drink beer at home. I drink beer all the time.”

“Good for you. But you’re not legal age, and you’re not my kid, and I’m not going to give you a beer.”

He sat at the table. “I always thought you were fairly cool, Mr. Coyne.”

“Oh, I am. I’m wicked cool. But I don’t give booze to underage kids. I don’t consider that cool.”

I slid a plate and a salad bowl in front of him. I retrieved the pizza from the oven, sliced it, and put it on the table. From the refrigerator I got a beer for myself and a can of Pepsi for him. Then I sat down across from him.

“I didn’t realize you were such a Puritan,” he said.

“You need a beer that bad?”

He shrugged. “It’s the principle.”

“Exactly,” I said.

He took a sip from the can of Pepsi.

“I think,” I said, “we have more important principles to talk about, anyway.”

“Well, yeah. I know. It’s just that I’m old enough to vote against my father, I’m old enough to go to prison, but I’m not old enough to have a beer.”

“That’s right. That’s the law.”

“I get it. You’re a lawyer.”

“Being a lawyer has precious little to do with it, actually,” I said, sliding a wedge of pizza onto my plate. “Anyhow, that’s what we need to discuss. Your being old enough to go to prison. Will you be straight with me?”

He looked at me for a moment, then nodded. “Sure. What do you want to know?”

“Did you kill Alice Sylvester?”

He stared at me, open-faced and childlike. “No, Mr. Coyne. Honest to God, I didn’t. I loved Alice.”

“I want to know everything that happened night before last.”

Buddy picked up a triangle of pizza and took a tiny bite from the pointed end. Then he put it back on his plate. “I didn’t kill her,” he said softly. He looked beseechingly up at me. There was a smudged look around his eyes, as if he needed sleep… “I met her after dinner. We didn’t have any particular plans. We usually just drove around, talked, maybe got ice cream or something. But that night, the first thing she told me was that she had plans for later, she could only see me for an hour or so. She was uptight about it. Like she was trying to pick a fight, get a rise out of me. Which, of course, she did. She knew all the buttons and switches on me. Like nobody ever did. I asked her what she had to do that was so important, and she said I didn’t own her. Anyway, we went and got ice cream, and then I let her off downtown. That was it. That was the last time I saw her.”

“That’s all?”

He shrugged. “Sure.”

“Did you make love with her?”

“Why would you say that?”

“Did you?”

“No.”

“Did you use cocaine with her?”

“Of course not. I’m off that stuff.”

“What did you do after you let her off?”

He poked at his slice of pizza with his forefinger. “I was upset. I didn’t feel like going home. It was early. My mother would still be up, and I didn’t want to deal with her. I come home late, she worries about what I’ve been doing. I come home early, it means something’s wrong, that I’m depressed. So I drove around for a while. I
was
depressed, I’ll admit that. Arguing with Alice. I was worried I was losing her.” He smiled crookedly. “Pretty funny, huh? Anyway, after a while I said the hell with it. I drove to Cambridge. Walked around the Square for a while. I met a girl. We went back to her apartment. I ended up staying there for the night.”

“Who was the girl?”

“Bonnie something.”

“You don’t know her last name?”

He cocked his head at me. “To tell you the truth, I don’t know anything about her. She lives in a grungy apartment down near Central Square. She’s old. Twenty-five or something like that.”

I sipped my beer. “Why didn’t you go to work the next day? Yesterday?”

He shrugged. “I would’ve been late. I didn’t care. Bob wouldn’t mind, I knew that. I was still depressed about Alice. Fighting with her, I mean.”

“You didn’t know what happened to her?”

He shook his head. “Not then. Not till later.”

“So what did you do all day?”

“Nothing. Hung around.”

“And last night?”

“I stayed in a hotel room. Had room service. They brought me a beer.”

“What hotel?”

He looked at me and shrugged. I decided not to press the point. “What about today?”

“Nothing.” Buddy got up and went over to the glass doors. He stared out a moment, then bowed his head and leaned his forehead against the glass. Then he turned to face me. “Look, I know this doesn’t sound very good. But it’s the truth. I was depressed about Alice. She was the only thing in my life that was any good. And I was getting the brush-off from her. I saw it clearly. She was seeing some other guy.”

“Do you know that?”

“I could just tell.”

“Who was the other guy?”

He shrugged. “No idea whatsoever. That’s what we argued about. I accused her of seeing someone else. She denied it. I begged her to tell me. She said there was nobody. She tried to be jolly about it. Like I had nothing to worry about. I knew she was lying. I told her that. That’s when she got pissed.”

The pizza tasted like cardboard, but the sour taste in my mouth came from Buddy. I lit a cigarette. It didn’t taste any better. “Listen to me,” I said carefully. “For the time being, I’m your attorney. And you are in serious trouble. You’ve got to tell me the truth. Your story doesn’t hang together. You’re trying to make me believe that an argument with your girl friend caused you to hole up in a hotel for a couple days. You were with some woman named Bonnie who you can’t identify, so she won’t be able to verify what might be an alibi for you. You said you and Alice didn’t make love, and you said you didn’t do any drugs, and I don’t believe you. Look,” I said, as he stared out at the night, “pay attention here. You can tell me the truth. You have to tell me the truth, because right now you need me.”

Buddy didn’t speak, nor did he look at me. I got up and went to where he was standing. I grabbed his shoulder. He tensed and twisted away from me. But he looked at me. “Why don’t you believe me?” he said.

“You left some things out of your story.”

“Like what?”

“How did you know I was looking for you? How did you find out what happened to Alice?”