The Off-Islander
Page 7
“That is true.” He was slowly warming to the idea.
“We know that he is connected to Ruth Silvia, we know she has land out there.”
“It isn’t much.” He liked to throw cold water on my ideas.
“It is a lot more than anyone else has come up with. What if he is connected to her in other ways?” I held my hands up as though offering him something. An idea, a theory, something to take the case to the next step.
“What other ways?” Danny always liked to see the angles of his cases. He liked to see each one like a pool shark likes to know his table. That was part of what made him a great lawyer.
“The dead guy who OD’d might be one. Maybe there is more to it, or maybe Ruth Silvia was involved in some way?”
“Or maybe he just OD’d and she isn’t involved at all.” Danny was cross-examining.
“Or maybe he is a distant cousin of some sort? Or nephew?”
“Or maybe he isn’t.”
“Or maybe we just don’t know what the answer actually is yet, but we will.”
“Maybe.” He sounded skeptical. The woman with honey-colored hair seemed to be bored with the guy with the perm. She was scanning the bar and the mirror. Our eyes met in the mirror, and she paused for a second, looking at me. She moved on. There was a better bet somewhere.
“Also, she’s mixed up in something shady.”
“How do you know?” He was zeroing in on me with his laser-like attention.
“I met her last night.” I told him about the visit, the shotgun, the drinking. Then I told him about the barn, the pot, the alarms, etc.
“You think she’s a big-time drug dealer?”
“Or she’s working for one. She has the room, she has access to the ocean, why not?”
“So, what’s next? A trip to Nantucket?” Danny’s court voice brought me back to the bar, the case, and reality. Great-looking women with honey-colored hair and great calves don’t go in for the likes of me.
“No, I want to look into the OD at the commune. I’ll go and get the police report and see if I can talk to someone who was working as a cop at the time.” It was the next logical step.
“What do you think that will tell you?” He followed his question with a belt of his scotch.
“I don’t know. I just want to see if there is any more to it. I want to see if there was anything that didn’t make it into the police report that might help me.”
“Then Nantucket?” he asked.
“Probably, unless I find something that leads me in a different direction. You never know. Most cases are straightforward. If someone hires me to find out if their husband or wife is cheating, they already know. They are hiring me to confirm it. If an insurance company hires me to find out if someone is trying to defraud them, it is usually as simple as taking pictures of Johnny Chronic Back Pain working off the books as a furniture mover. Most missing persons cases are about finding runaway kids who run off with their boyfriend or girlfriend because Mom and Dad don’t want them together. Most of the work I do is kind of boring. This is different.”
“How is this different?”
“This is a puzzle, almost a mystery. This guy disappears for years and now, after the big shots have failed, we have a shot at figuring it out.” I was feeling fine about myself. The woman with honey-colored hair got up and went to the ladies’ room, and the guy with the perm just looked around, surveying the bar for another prospect.
“All right, I will concede that you might be on to something. Listen to me, Andy. This case could be important to me. This could open doors with the Swifts. It could mean a lot for me and my family.”
“What, you want a new class of clients? Ones that aren’t mobsters?”
“Exactly. That is exactly what I want. I don’t just want to be a guest in the country club, I want a membership. I don’t want to hear people whispering when I walk by their table in nice restaurants. Do you know what they call me? The Counselor of Cosa Nostra. I fucking hate that. Don’t fuck this up for me, Andy!”
With that, Danny excused himself to go home to see his wife and kids. I stayed for another beer at the bar. Somehow, I had missed the woman with the honey-colored hair when she slipped out of the bar. She hadn’t left with the guy with the perm, because he was down the bar from me hitting on a woman with big teeth who seemed responsive. I was slightly sad about the woman with honey-colored hair leaving. I was working up the nerve to ask her on a date. Perhaps dinner at the Café Budapest, Bull’s Blood by the glass, fiddle players, and romance with a Hungarian accent. Maybe she liked detective novels, film noir, Bogart movies, strange cuisine, and lost causes . . . if so, I was probably the man for her. The odds didn’t look good.
I left with my daydreams when I had finished my beer. I reclaimed my trench coat and hat, and stepped out into the chilly night. I stopped in the doorway long enough to light up a Lucky and then stepped out into the inky evening. It isn’t that I thought I was being followed . . . I just wasn’t sure that I wasn’t being followed. It was still windy and wet, a classic nor’easter. I watched the cars drive by as I made my way home, their lights splashing along the buildings and pavement and sometimes on the happy couples walking by, arm in arm under an umbrella.
Someone had put a cardboard jack-o’-lantern and skeleton up on the door to the building. I let myself into the apartment and smelled the old tobacco of too many cigarettes smoked and not enough fresh air. I hung my trench coat by the hissing radiator and changed into an old pair of jeans and my BPD academy sweatshirt. The apartment was empty, and there was nothing good on the Movie Loft so I had no interest with whatever was on the TV. I turned on the radio to the public radio station that plays jazz every night after seven.
I poured a drink and stood near the window, looking out at the cars, sipping scotch, and smoking a cigarette. The headlights of the passing cars went by, their lights defying gravity and crawling up walls at impossible angles. The trees on the avenue were swaying back and forth like a couple of drunken dance contestants. Leaves fluttered by and spiraled down to the wet ground. I sipped my scotch and smoked my cigarette and was just as alone as when I had woken up. Charlie Parker was playing his saxophone music on the radio.
After a while, I opened a can of stew and put it on the stove. After another glass of scotch had been poured and drunk slowly, I made some elbow pasta and drained it. The stew went on top, and it helped soak up the whiskey in my stomach. The dishes went in the sink, and I settled on the couch with more scotch, the Philip Marlowe stories, and the music of Chet Baker to keep me company until it was time to go to bed, where I fell asleep to the sounds of cars outside my window.
Chapter 10
Morning came with bright, brittle sunshine in my eyes and the radiator hissing in the corner. The storm had broken from the day before, and now the trees had lost many of their red and orange leaves. There were puddles everywhere reflecting the sun, and a few brave birds were around chirping. It was still windy out, but it wasn’t blowing nearly as hard as it had been the day before. I made a pot of coffee and sat down with my notes and a cigarette. On my second cup of coffee, I switched from my notes to the clippings from the Cape Cod News. It was on my third cup that I reached for the phone and dialed Information. The nice lady at the other end gave me the phone number for the Barnstable Police Department.
I dialed and spoke to a very nice clerk. After assuring her that I was not a tourist looking for an accident report from the summer, I was able to get a word in edgewise. I explained that I was a licensed private investigator and that I was looking for information about an accidental death that had occurred in 1968. She asked the particulars of the case, and I explained about the OD out at the Silvia place. She said that she might be able to get me a copy of the report, and I told her that would be great. I also asked if I could set up an appointment to speak with someone who might have been working then. I was put on hold for five minutes; then she told me to be at the station at noon. I thanked her and hung up.
The Ghia took a few tries to start after all the heavy rain that had beaten its way under the hood over the last few nights. I made my way through the city traffic like a matador in the bull ring but finally broke through onto 3 South mostly unscathed. The trees were reddish orange, but the wind was stripping them slowly but surely of their leaves. In another week or two, they would be bare and sad looking. I followed the road through the hills and down toward the Cape, as I had a few days before. The drive wasn’t any different, but I felt different. Things in the case were taking on a form, substance instead of being the dead-end file from Pinkerton. I actually had a lead to follow. I had, unlike a few days before, a sense of possibility.
Instead of classical music from the public radio station, I was listening to a station that went heavy on music by The Stones, Doors, The Who, and even some Pink Floyd. Now the Ghia and I were charging toward the Cape, buffeted by the wind left over from the nor’easter. I listened to the pounding drums of The Who and pushed the gas pedal closer to the floor. I rolled over the bridge that spanned the canal and made my way around the rotary. I followed the road that ran parallel to the canal and through the dense scrub brush by the air force base.
I imagined what wild country the Cape must have been when the Pilgrims first arrived. I could only picture how desolate and lonely it was. The spare and lean land in the winter was not well-suited to farming at the best of times. Would they have made it without the abundant fishing or the help of the Indians? I could almost picture it. Now it seemed that they were building houses and hotels any place that they could pack them in.
I turned onto Route 6, where the real spare, lean beauty of the Cape is on display. Tight bunches of scrub pine and bayberry lined the road. Here and there a cranberry bog slid into and out of view as the Ghia whizzed by. Gulls turned and wheeled overhead, sometimes lost against the sun or occasional cloud. I could see the tan of sand-covered roads, like Ruth Silvia’s driveway, running off at odd, irregular angles.
I turned off of 6 and headed toward the airport. I went around another rotary and turned into town, all of it taking about ten minutes compared to the hour in traffic it had taken when Leslie and I had been here in the summer. I liked the Cape in the off-season. I liked the lean, windswept beauty of it. I liked it when it wasn’t crowded.
The police station was one of those buildings that was designed by an architect who couldn’t decide what style he wanted to choose from and settled on the worst of both. In this case, it was a mix of redbrick meets Cape Cod clapboard. The brick was too red, and the clapboard had been painted too white. A single blue and white Ford prowl car with its bubble light was parked in front of a sign that specifically forbade parking in front of it. The parking lot had two unremarkable cars in it, and I added the Ghia to the lot and walked into the police station.
I went in through the double doors that looked more like they belonged on a bank than a police station. Across from the doors was a counter with thick glass, behind which sat a woman with curly brown hair, smoking a long, thin cigarette. She was on the phone with someone and motioned me to sit in the blue, hard plastic chairs across from her window. On the wall was a poster that showed an apple with something in it encouraging parents to go through their kids’ Halloween candy.
I sat for five minutes, smoking a cigarette of my own until she hung up and motioned me over. I slid the photostat of my license through the small opening in the glass and told her that I had an appointment. She looked at the photostat and then at me. She slid it back to me and told me to sit down again. I passed the ten minutes by looking at the wanted posters and posters on the walls about drug use and teenage drinking. A door opened to my left, and there was a tall, bald man in a white shirt and gold badge, with major’s oak leaves on his collar. He had a stainless-steel, large-frame revolver, a Magnum of some sort, in a hand-tooled leather holster on his Sam Browne belt.
“Mr. Roark?” I stood up and he stuck his hand out. “I’m Deputy Chief Phil Blount.” His hand was big and raw-boned and swallowed mine. My hand throbbed, only slightly, after he had released it. “Come this way.”
He led me through the door and through a room with a few desks and typewriters for the patrol officers to do their reports. Past that was a room with a camera and fingerprint station, and a door that probably led to the cell block. Blount led me back into an office with a big metal desk—calling it ugly was an act of charity—and a couple of chairs that didn’t look inviting. One wall had a bookshelf with law books and the criminal codes. The walls had pictures of a younger Blount in an army uniform with a steel pot helmet and an M-14, and pictures of him at various ages and points of his police career. There was a window behind his desk with a view of some buildings. There were framed photos on his desk, family photos of him, a wife, and three normal-looking children. Wholesome. All-American.
“How can we help you today, Mr. Roark? What has brought you all the way down here from Boston?” He smiled at me with a long-practiced smile that all cops have, the type that isn’t friendly or warm or anything. Just teeth and guarded intent, a smile in name only.
“I am looking for information about an OD that happened out here at a hippie commune in 1967 or 1968? The commune belongs to a woman named Ruth Silvia.” His face didn’t darken or change, but it didn’t warm up to me, either. Dark, cold eyes and pale English skin with an old scar on the jaw were looking back at me.
“What is this about?”
“It might have something to do with a case that I am working on. Or it could be nothing, but I have to check it out.” I smiled at him as best I could. He probably didn’t like what he saw. A guy dressed in clothes that were too far from a uniform, with sandy hair that was too long and a beard that wasn’t quite neat enough.
“What is the case?”
“It is a missing person case. Like I said, the OD is probably not related, but I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t look at all of the angles for my client.” His eyes stared at me with the professional flatness that cops have.
“Who is your client?” He smiled almost genuinely, like a little kid with a magnifying glass over an anthill. In the detective movies and books, this is the point where I would tell him that I can’t tell him who my client is. If this were a forties detective novel, he would hit me with a sap or call in one of the boys to work me over before running me out of town. Fortunately, there wasn’t much noir going around in 1982.
“I was hired by a Boston law firm to find a man named Charles Hammond.” I told him the name of Danny’s firm, but that was it. He looked at me, and I expected to be told to hit the bricks.
“The only two guys that I can think of who were working it are retired in Florida or dead. Pretty much the same thing.”
“I was pretty sure it was a long shot. I appreciate your taking the time to meet with me.” I started to get up.
“There was a guy on scene. It wasn’t his call, but he was there helping out.” I sat back down.
“I don’t suppose he is still alive and not living in Timbuktu?”
“He lives here in town. Let me give him a call and see if he will meet with you.” Blount picked up the phone on his desk and pushed some buttons from memory. He listened, looking at me, and then half turned away.
“Web, Phil Blount, how you doing? Good, thanks. Nope, she’s just fine . . . kids too. Good, glad to hear it. Listen, I got a fella in my office who came all the way from Boston to ask about an OD that happened out at the Silvia place in ’67 or ’68. Uh-huh . . . yeah, it was a long time ago. Nope, I wasn’t working here then. Yep. You thin
k you could spare a few minutes to talk to this guy? Nope, used to be, private license now. Seems okay. All right, I’ll send him out your way.” Blount hung up the phone and turned back to me.
“Web will meet with you at his place. I’ll give you directions. Web is kind of old-fashioned, so he might seem a little standoffish at first. Don’t let it throw you.” Blount actually smiled.
“No problem. I am sure the last thing he wants is a long hair on his front steps.” I pointed to the picture of Blount in the army uniform with the rifle and the Airborne patch.
“Yeah, I got out in 1962. I finished out my tour and ended up out here and became a cop.” He smiled again and then said, “Let me write out directions for you to Web’s house.” He picked up a pen and paper and jotted down directions.
I didn’t bother mentioning that I had been in the army, or that if I hadn’t been where I was, I would have ended up in the Airborne. I didn’t mention it because he would have done the math in his head and asked about Vietnam. Nobody wanted to talk about that anymore. Everyone just wanted to act like nothing had happened. No war, no protests, no . . . nothing. America was like a family at a holiday dinner that just got over a big fight and was pretending that it hadn’t happened, that everything was normal.
Blount explained the directions to me, wished me luck, and stuck out his hand. He crushed my bones again and then showed me out. I walked back out into the fall sunshine and the sounds of the gulls wheeling overhead. The Ghia was where I had left her, a princess among paupers.
Chapter 11
The ride through town was short enough, even with my making a couple of wrong turns and having to work around some one-way streets. I ended up on a small, quiet street on the other side of The Steamship Authority. I pulled the Ghia in front of a small white clapboard Cape, with a small front yard and water view. I parked and walked up the steps. The front door was the same shade of blue that the ocean was on a calm day. The door itself was flanked by brass port and starboard running lights. My knock on the unremarkable blue door was met by a tall, stooped man with slicked-back gray hair and watery blue eyes.