The Day I Died

by Lawrence Lariar

  “Sure you will, Barney.”

  It was light and there was no reason for staying any longer. A sudden weariness assailed Coyle and he knew that he must leave and seek solitude now. He shook Barney’s hand and walked out of there, pausing at the door to look back at the little hotel man at the window. Barney seemed to be praying now, looking up at the gray clouds and through the clouds to some invisible spot high in the sky. His lips, were they moving? The small figure against the window was staged for a final curtain, the end of a sad and sorrowful play. And Coyle reacted to the tableau. In some strange way, he was himself a part of the lonely scene. They were brothers, he and Barney, both fighting the looming menace of Masterson.

  But there was strength in the image of Barney Diaz, a firm and forthright resolve to fight for what was his. He would go down only after a bitter battle. He would struggle hard, and win or lose there would be nobility and dignity in Barney Diaz.

  Coyle closed the door slowly, aware that he would borrow much from the little hotel owner, conscious now of the change in his own perspective.

  Coyle closed the door on Barney Diaz, but at the same moment another door opened and his brain cleared when he looked through to a new horizon, the landscape of peaceful stability where he could see himself against the future, where he could place himself in time.

  Alongside Ellen, tomorrow and next week and next month and next year!

  There was no sleep in him now. He went down to the Carrillon dock and boarded the We Two. He started the motor and backed off into the bay and turned her nose into the deep, headed for open water, beyond the cut of land out there and toward the sea. The sun was a rising ball of crimson, and he sailed directly into it. He needed time and he needed solitude to consider his newfound hope, to think and plan some immediate strategy that would cancel his bargain with Masterson and free him from the specter of a death he no longer wanted …

  CHAPTER 23

  At midday, Coyle awoke to check the time, aware that it was close to noon because the sun was high and hot over the boat. He had been dozing fitfully, half asleep most of the time, his brain alive to its problem and the immediate world around him; a passing boat honking at him and the sound of the gulls and the distant shout of a successful fisherman on a party cruiser. He had dozed off only once, but the fatigue didn’t hold him asleep for long. His body seemed tight and hard and alive, the best state of health he had ever experienced. After a while he got up and went into the galley and made himself a pot of coffee, sipping it slowly, letting the tonic brew alert his brain and sweep him out of his torpor. He sat on deck for the rest of the afternoon, chain-smoking and fighting to correlate his thoughts.

  Money! In the last analysis, the bridge to any hope began and ended with money. He had backtracked into his finances and discovered that all but three thousand dollars was spent. Coyle found himself frowning at his wastefulness in the recent past. Was it possible to promise Masterson repayment of the seven thousand in the near future? Was this the hope? Measured against Coyle’s ambition to write, how long would it take to earn such a staggering sum? Or would a job be better? Coyle asked himself all the questions, yet even when his answers built optimism inside him, no real joy remained for long. Always against the brightening picture, the image of Masterson rose up to veil the future, the inscrutable mask shimmering on the inside of the web, unyielding and cold.

  Night hung over the docks when Coyle brought the We Two back to the Carrillon. He had determined a course of action and would carry it out. He went at once to the desk and asked for Barney Diaz. Barney was out, but he would be back soon. He left a message for Barney. He called Ellen and told her that he would see her before closing time. Then Coyle shaved and dressed and had a late dinner on the terrace outside the Marine Bar. He drank a few brandies.

  And when it was eleven, he left the table and drove over to the Torrington Hotel.

  He knew what he would say to Masterson …

  CHAPTER 24

  Lost in a group of cheap hotels, the Torrington squatted on one of the older streets in Miami Beach, a small hotel designed in a haphazard pattern by some minor architect who could not have believed in the future of the big resort. Compared with the modern décor of the Carrillon, this place was something out of a chamber of horrible examples of architecture. The façade was loaded with rococo embellishments and the canopy sang of an era in hotel design long since dead and gone.

  The lobby carried out the feeling of frippery and decadence. This would be a popular place for the diehards, the old folks who scorned the sparkle and shine of modernity. But there were no old people in the lobby, nobody at all in the overstuffed chairs and archaic couches. An odor of disinfectant swam over the big hall, a dry, sour smell combined with the musty aura that always hangs low in closed and airless rooms. Coyle crossed the long lobby and went directly to the desk.

  “Yes?”

  The man at the desk did not look up from his perusal of a racing sheet, his dirty finger running down the list of entries in a meet at Hialeah. He wore a pinkish shirt and a blue bowtie, a soggy affair. He was bald and unshaven. A thin sheen of sweat rimmed his brow, no matter how often he rubbed it away with his handkerchief.

  Coyle said: “I want to see Mr. Masterson.”

  The moving finger hesitated. “Not tonight, you don’t. He’s not here.”

  “When will he get back?”

  “I didn’t say he ever got here.”

  “You’re wrong,” Coyle said. “Masterson is here, all right. Ring his room and you’ll see.”

  There was a silence. The man did not raise his head. They were alone in the lobby, but behind an abutment in the wall, Coyle could see the metal grill of the elevator, and deep in the shadows, the elevator boy dozed. The big clock ticked loudly over the rim of the desk. It was already 11:27.

  Coyle swept the racing sheet off the desk, and the man clutched and grabbed and swore at him.

  “What the hell’s eating you?” the man asked.

  “Masterson,” said Coyle. “Ring him for me.”

  “In the pig’s valise.”

  Coyle reached across the desk and found the man’s shirt, up high, near the collar. He twisted and pulled hard and the face before him gagged and spluttered. Coyle yanked him forward and dropped him when he began to flail.

  “All I’m asking you is that you call Masterson. It’s important.”

  “Go to hell,” said the man.

  Coyle pulled harder, but in that moment he caught the sound of the elevator, a dull buzz at first and then a grinding and clicking. In the pause, Coyle saw the grill open down the hall and a big man step out. It was Masterson. Coyle let the desk clerk go and stepped forward.

  Masterson had two men with him, behind him in the gloom of the corridor. One of the men was Bruck, who stood flatfooted behind Masterson and grinned emptily at Coyle. Masterson came into the lobby and hesitated, surprised to see Coyle.

  He had on a sportsman’s outfit, a slack and shirt combination that added bulk to his huge frame. He was dressed for fishing, or boating; nothing fancy, but carefully tailored to promote the feeling of abandon and gay spirits and the great outdoors. He wore a rakish cap of a dark blue material, obviously designed to give him him a carefree, youthful look. He had been under the sun in the recent past, and the brown in his face made his blue eyes dance with a fresh and penetrating sharpness.

  “Well now,” Masterson said, “this is a real surprise, Coyle.”

  The man behind him stepped forward suddenly, but Masterson waved him away.

  Coyle said: “I’d like to talk to you.”

  “Can’t it wait? I’m on my way out for a fishing trip.”

  “It can’t wait.”

  The biting eyes measured Coyle, but some of the icy keenness seemed dulled and softened, replaced by a suggestion of humor. Drunk? Had Masterson been drinking? It was impossible to think of him
in a kindly mood, as a man with a heart. Yet, he was beckoning to Bruck and the other one, instructing them to go on ahead, out to the dock to prepare the boat for shoving off in about a half hour. He watched them go out through the lobby and started slowly after them, indicating to Coyle that he should fall in beside him.

  Along the side of the Torrington, a pavement led toward the rear, through a jungle of palms and back to the bay. A public dock lay off beyond a boardwalk, a long gray path into the gloom, the moored boats, bobbing gently on the swells, all of them dark except the big one way out under the last light on the dock. It was a sport cruiser, probably a big Chris-Craft or Owens, Coyle thought. On the bow, a silhouetted figure was feeding water into the tank, taking the line from the other man on the dock. In the quick moment of action under the solitary light, Coyle saw that the man on the dock was Bruck, his thickset frame looking incongruous at the nautical job, still wearing his street clothes on the way out to a day of fishing.

  Masterson paused at the edge of the dock. He had been talking of fishing, in the casual, friendly way an experienced nimrod might discuss his adventure with a good companion.

  “Fishing is new to me,” he said. “Haven’t done it in a long, long time. But I suppose it’s old stuff for you now, eh, Coyle?”

  “I’ve fished a bit,” Coyle said.

  “A bit?” Masterson’s laugh was steady and gentle. “From what I hear, you’re a real expert. Hired a boat and all. Bruck tells me you’re out on the thing all hours, day and night.”

  “Bruck is a leech.”

  “But an accurate leech.”

  Behind the looming figure, the two small figures were engaged in other activities, far down on the boardwalk. There was a light on inside the cabin now. The cruiser was docked at an angle, alongside an abutment at the end of the dock. The boat couldn’t have been more than a year old—sleek and modern, with a long unbroken window from the windshield to the first decorative port amidships. In the bright glow of the light inside the cabin, Bruck’s head appeared for a moment, squinting down the pier toward the shadows where Masterson and Coyle stood. The outer man shouted a word and Bruck went astern, on deck, to take a crate aboard. Food? How long would Masterson be out there fishing? A figure appeared on the far side of the docks and came toward Masterson. It was a local cop.

  “Getting an early start?” the cop asked, pausing to share a few moments’ conversation, his arm up in an automatic salute to Masterson. “Oh, it’s you, Mister Masterson.”

  “Hello, Lefarge,” Masterson said pleasantly. “Have a cigar?”

  “I’ll take it and smoke it later, thanks.”

  “How about you, Coyle?” Masterson held a cigar out, his manner apologetic. “I didn’t recall your smoking cigars, or I would have offered you one before.”

  “I don’t smoke them,” Coyle said.

  “You going to catch some big ones?’ The cop was grinning at Masterson in the way a small boy might smile at his personal hero. “They say the boys have been getting some marlin out there.”

  “I hope I’m that lucky, Lefarge,” Masterson chuckled. “I’ve never really caught a big one.”

  “How long will you be out there?” Lefarge asked.

  “At least three days. I need the rest, and they tell me there’s nothing quite like boating for real relaxation.”

  “I’ll see if I can give your boys a hand,” Lefarge said, saluting again. He walked off whistling. He stepped slowly down the boardwalk to the pier and out along the pier to the end. He saluted the two men out there in the same way he had saluted Masterson. Then his voice died as he rounded the bow of the boat, and was lost to Coyle.

  “Three days on a boat,” mused Masterson. “A new experience for me, Coyle. And at my age, a man must look far to find something new and different. I’ve always been a city man, a cliff-dweller type. Things like fishing and hunting are supposed to be bred in the bone, according to the experts. They say that you never really learn to enjoy them unless you’ve sampled them before forty.”

  More than ever, Coyle was coming to feel that Masterson must be liquored up, softening his lines and lightening his tongue with the easy, conversational gambits. Once in a while he would break his mood with laughter, but the humor rose on a high key, almost out of control, as though he might be the zany type of drunk. Yet, there was nothing in what Masterson said to prove the theory. His talk was not alcoholic. But Coyle could not help comparing this dialogue with what had gone before, the hard and frigid words in the brownstone near Central Park, and before that, the talk in the office over Florian’s. And the memory of the Rock was enough, in these moments, to make Coyle stiffen and remain on guard.

  Masterson rambled on and on, and Coyle could not see himself waiting for the appropriate conversational bridge to his purpose. He allowed Masterson to wind himself out. And in the gap, while the big man paused to bite a fresh cigar, Coyle found his chance. He dropped the line nervously, mouthing it as he had rehearsed it, hours ago, on the We Two.

  “I came to talk to you about our deal,” Coyle said.

  Masterson puffed slowly. “I assumed so.” He regarded Coyle with a fresh sobriety, a look compounded of curiosity and inner amusement. “Bruck has been telling me interesting tales about you.”

  “Tales?”

  “Reports. You have a girl, isn’t that it?”

  “Bruck,” said Coyle evenly, “is a professional leech, an accurate leech, as you called him.”

  Masterson laughed again, “When you consider the fact that he’s a neophyte leech, I take great pride in Bruck’s accomplishments. He came to me as an uneducated pug, but I refused to see his former limitations. He always impressed me as a man with a peculiar mentality, a type of mind I could use, if I could only train it the proper way. I’ve converted him into an expert at research, Coyle, a genuine expert. But beyond his exploration of facts, our friend Bruck has an active, brittle intelligence. He reported everything about your friend Ellen Higgins, including the sidelight on your romantic achievements. Would you believe that he actually drank with your competitor, a man named Douglas Folger?” Masterson gave himself up to the enjoyment of Bruck’s genius, roaring his laughter into the night air. It took time for him to regain his former placidity. He laughed himself out.

  And then he said: “Can you imagine Bruck being thorough enough to watch Folger, to wait for Folger in Folger’s favorite bar—and then to engage friend Folger in drunken conversation, until the man revealed what he knew about the lady? Folger is your only competitor. And he seemed quite concerned about your winning the battle, Coyle. Says you’ve got the inside track, visiting the girl every day while poor Folger has his job to do. To say nothing of the nights, every night, sometimes out in your boat, other times in your car. You must be quite fond of that girl, Coyle.”

  Coyle did not have time to answer. Masterson had turned from him and now faced the water. His cigar-end gleamed as he puffed.

  “Whoever she is,” Masterson continued, “this girl has had an effect on you. You’re a changed man, Coyle. I’ve been watching you carefully. You’re much quieter, much calmer than when I last saw you. It comes through.”

  “I feel calmer,” Coyle said. “Calm enough to ask you to cancel our deal.”

  In the ensuing silence, Coyle heard only the distant sound of Bruck and the other man, talking far back on the pier. Then the cop began to stroll down the boardwalk. He saluted Masterson again as he passed by, and disappeared beyond the edge of the Torrington. Masterson seemed concerned about the tour of duty taken by the officer of the law.

  “Well,” he chuckled, “I must say this is all sort of unexpected, Coyle.” And the little laugh again. “So you fell in love, is that it?”

  “That’s exactly it,” Coyle said. It was an effort to modulate his voice, to keep the conversation on an even, unemotional level. The hope that was afire would stay alive if Masterson retained hi
s soft and decent receptivity.

  “Understandable,” said Masterson. “But quite unexpected. A childhood sweetheart. From Camberton, too.”

  “Your research department must have been working hard.”

  “At its usual speed, Coyle. A fine girl, this Ellen Higgins. I suppose you’ll be rushing off to her restaurant after you leave me? You’ll be making your usual call, to have a drink with Ellen and her black manager? What was his name?”

  “His name is Dick Christman.” Coyle barely whispered the line. Out of the past, in some distant scene a long time ago, he had reacted angrily during the interview in the brownstone mansion when Masterson had spoken disparagingly about his old friend Lem Washington. And what was happening now? Masterson could be testing him; taunting him so that he could measure the patient’s growth in the last few months. Coyle managed to fight down his disgust with Masterson. Even now, in the quick moment of his battle with himself, he knew that he was being studied, examined for reflexes.

  “He does a fine job for Ellen.”

  “And you want to join him in his good work, is that it?”

  “That’s part of it.”

  “Commendable.” Masterson smiled. “You hope to become a restaurateur?”

  “It’s as good a business as any.”

  “There’s a lot of profit in food. Is your girl willing to stake you to the partnership?”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Coyle said.

  The laugh. Soft and almost sympathetic now. “I’m a businessman, Coyle. As such, I always think of my own investments, not other people’s. I was concerned, of course, with your method of paying me. You’ve spent the ten thousand?”

  “I have a little over three left.”

  “You have it with you?”

  “I came prepared to give it back to you.” Coyle reached into his jacket for his wallet.

  But Masterson touched his arm. “No need to pay me now. I haven’t yet agreed to the cancellation.”