Tight Lines

by William G. Tapply

  The trailer was a twenty-by-ten-foot rust-stained metal box. The yellow light from the two small windows bathed the pine-needled ground in front. Behind the trailer lay dark forest. A pale blue Ford Escort crouched in the yard. A clothesline drooped between two pine trees. A bird feeder and a gray blanket hung from it.

  I parked my BMW beside the Escort, got out, climbed onto the pair of cinder blocks that served as a step by the door, and knocked. It took Finn several moments to come to the door.

  “Ah, Mr. Coyne,” he said when he opened the door, as if he had been expecting someone else. “Good. Come on in.” He was holding a beer can. A half-smoked cigar was clamped in the corner of his mouth. He was wearing a gray sweatshirt and baggy jeans. There were orange stains on the front of the sweatshirt. A silvery five-day stubble bristled from his face.

  He held the door for me and I stepped past him. I looked around. “Cozy,” I said.

  Finn took the cigar from between his teeth and laughed. Then he tilted up the beer can and took a long drink. “Cozy,” he repeated, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand and grinning. “Yeah, that’s it. That’s good. Cozy.”

  Everything in the place was built in—the bunk across one end, the table that folded down from the wall, the flip-down benches along both sides of the table, and the kitchen on the other end. There was a closet with an accordion door in one corner next to the kitchen sink that I guessed would contain a shower stall and toilet—one of those arrangements where you had to stand in the shower if you wanted to urinate into the toilet.

  “Fifty bucks a week, huh?” said Finn. “I was payin’ nine-fifty a month back in the city. Place not much bigger than this. Not bad, huh?” He grinned lopsidedly, letting me know that he knew the place was a dump.

  A radio on one of the innumerable built-in shelves played country and western music and static. A bare light bulb burned over the sink. Another swayed gently on its cord over the pull-down table. An electric space heater glowed ominously on the floor in front of the sink. The place smelled of perspiration and stale cigars and mildew. Water stains formed a wavy border halfway up the fake paneling on the walls.

  Old newspapers and rumpled clothes and beer cans and whiskey bottles and Pizza Hut boxes were strewn everywhere. Finn swept one of the benches clear and gestured for me to sit. “Beer?” he said.

  “Sure.”

  He bent to the bread-box refrigerator in the kitchen area and came up with two cans of Rolling Rock. He slid one to me and folded himself onto the bench across from me. He popped the top of his can, drank from it, wiped his mouth on his sleeve, and banged the can down onto the top of the table. He fumbled a pack of matches from his pants pocket and relit his dead cigar. It was a cheap one. Then he leaned toward me on his bulky forearms. “I been doing some thinkin’,” he mumbled around the cigar.

  “Some drinkin’?” I said.

  He frowned for a moment, then tilted his head back and laughed. “Yeah, that too, Mr. Coyne. Some thinkin’ and some drinkin’. They sorta go together, you know?”

  I sipped from my beer can. “What have you been thinking and drinking about?”

  His forehead furrowed. “Well, about Mary Ellen, of course. Dammit, I miss that girl. I’ve seen plenty of death in my job, but when it’s the gal you love…” He shook his head quickly. “Only thing I can figure is somebody murdered her.”

  “Me, too,” I said.

  He nodded. “The other two don’t make any sense. Accident or suicide.”

  “Sure,” I said. “But who? Why?”

  He smiled quickly. “Right. Exactly. Who? Why? That’s what I been thinkin’ and drinkin’ about here. I’m circling around it, maybe. Need to try out some of it on somebody.” He arched his eyebrows at me.

  “Good,” I said. “Try me.”

  “Well, don’t get your hopes up, Mr. Coyne. I haven’t got it figured yet. Another beer?”

  “No, thanks.”

  Finn tilted up his own beer can, drained it, and went back to the refrigerator. He returned with another can of Rolling Rock.

  “She was a good kid,” he said. “But she was kinda screwed up, you know? You don’t really think about it at the time. Hey, she was a lot younger than me, you figure she’s just, you know, young. A little wacky. Lovable that way. She had this huge picture of her old man hanging there, with its own little special light for it, you know? Like it was a shrine or something? Like he was some kind of saint? I don’t really understand how stuff like that works, but I can tell you that it was kinda screwy. The old man’s been dead for quite a while. I mean, it’s time she got over it.”

  I nodded.

  “She didn’t like her mother much.”

  “Mary Ellen told you that?”

  “You betcha. Look, I don’t know diddly about psychology. But I’ve seen it. Cops get to see weird family stuff. And, now that I think about it, this was pretty weird. It was like they were both married to him. Mary Ellen and her mom. I mean, even after the old man died it was like her and her mother were still competing for him, like he was some stud lover or something, not a dead father. In her mind, I mean. Wanna know something?”

  I shrugged and smiled. He was going to tell me.

  “When we made love? Afterwards, I mean? She’d kinda snuggle against me, put her pretty head on my chest and sorta pull at the hairs on it, and she’d call me Daddy. ‘My nice daddy,’ she’d say. Or, ‘Tell me a story, Daddy.’” Finn mimicked a little girl’s whine. “And, I don’t wanna get personal here, Mr. Coyne, but even when we were goin’ at it, she’d sometimes call me Daddy. Like, ‘Oh, yes, Daddy.’ Or, ‘Touch me here, Daddy. Give it to me, Daddy.’ At first I thought it was cute. Kind of a turn-on. But after a while it got kinda spooky. Sick, you know? Once she tried to get me to spank her, for chrissake. I mean, it was almost as if she really thought I was her father, like she forgot it was just her old Huckleberry laying there with her. Finally one time I says to her, ‘Don’t call me Daddy, honey. I’m not your daddy.’ And she grabs a big hunk of my chest hair and yanks on it so the tears come to my eyes. And she starts yelling, ‘You are my daddy! You are my daddy, Goddamn it! If I say you’re my daddy, then you’re my Goddamn daddy!’ And after a couple minutes she calms down a little, and she starts kissing me and all, and she says, ‘Please, won’t you be my daddy? I want you to be my daddy.’ And I told her, as soft and gentle as I could, I told her that it was just me and she better get that straight.” He paused and stared up at the ceiling, chewing his dead cigar. “Now that I think of it, Mr. Coyne, that was one of the last times we were together. In bed, I mean.”

  Finn tilted up his beer can. It was empty. He dropped it onto the floor. “Shit,” he said. “I don’t know why I’m telling you all this.”

  I flapped my hands.

  “I mean, makin’ you come all the way out here…”

  I shrugged.

  “I don’t want you to think…”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “It probably has nothing to do with anything.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “We’re all upset.”

  “You want another beer?”

  I shook my head.

  “I do,” he said.

  He got up and went into the kitchen. He seemed none too steady. He came back with another beer. I had lost count of how many he’d had since I arrived. I assumed he’d also had some before I got there.

  He relit his cigar butt, of which only about an inch was left. He closed one eye and squinted and still had some trouble lining up the end of the butt with the flame.

  “So whaddya make out of this, Mr. Coyne? Huh?”

  “I don’t know. Nothing. I don’t know how it relates to her death. Her murder, if that’s what it is. I can’t figure out why anybody’d want to kill her, never mind who. I sort of thought you might have some insights for me here.”

  “Yeah,” he sighed. “Yeah, I wish I did. I don’t know. Maybe she did kill herself. She really was kinda fucked up.”

&nb
sp; “Depressed?”

  He shrugged. “I dunno. No. She never seemed depressed. More like edgy, wound up all the time. You know. Fucked up.”

  “To the point of being suicidal?” I said. “Still mourning her father’s death? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Christ, he’s been dead, what, like ten years?”

  “Eleven,” I said. “Maybe it was some kind of delayed reaction.”

  “Maybe.” Finn shook his head. “I don’t know. She sure talked a lot about her old man. Mostly, how she thought he loved her mother better than her. But I never really got the impression she was depressed about it. Shit, I never really thought she was depressed at all. At least not so bad that she’d do something to herself. But who’d want to kill her? I knew that sweet little girl about as good as anybody, I bet, and there was nothing about her that’d make anybody want to kill her.” He shrugged. “So maybe it was an accident, and they just can’t figure it out.”

  “Dave,” I said gently, “why did you want to talk to me tonight? What was so urgent?”

  “Urgent?” He frowned. “Did I say something was urgent?”

  “I got the distinct impression…”

  He shook his head. “Yeah, well, I been laying around with nothing to do except miss Mary Ellen and maybe play a little detective in my head. Needed to talk before I went totally batshit, you know?”

  “So you don’t have an idea of who might’ve killed her, then?”

  He shook his head.

  “Or even whether she really was murdered? As well as you knew her, you’re still not sure that it wasn’t an accident or suicide?”

  “Nope.” He shrugged. “I’m not sure. When I first heard it I was sure. But thinkin’ about it, I don’t know. It’s like I don’t know anything anymore. Not yet. But by Jesus, I’m gonna figure this sucker out. I got nothing else to do except drink beer and pick the lint outa my belly button and feel sorry for myself and wait for Internal Affairs to shitcan me.” He burped, then yawned.

  I started to slide out from the table. His hand snaked across the table and grabbed my wrist. “Hey, where you goin’?”

  “Home. I’ve got work tomorrow.”

  “Don’t knock it,” he said. “Wish the hell I had work tomorrow. Don’t know how lucky you are, you got work tomorrow. Siddown, willya?”

  “I think you ought to go to bed and I should leave. You’re kind of drunk.”

  He laughed through his nose. “Kinda drunk. Ha! You don’t know drunk when you see it.” He yanked on my arm. I sat down. He kept his grip on my wrist and leaned across the table toward me. “You wanna know something?”

  “You can let go of me. I’m not going to run away.”

  He looked down to where his hand was holding me. The sight seemed to surprise him. He took his hand from my wrist and picked up his beer can with it. “Twenny-two years, pal. I been a cop twenny-two fuckin’ years. Know what I got?”

  “Probably not much,” I said. I hate humoring drunks. Their jokes aren’t funny, their self-pity is pitiful, their anger is irrational. “Why don’t you go to bed, Dave?”

  He narrowed his eyes. “Don’t fuckin’ try to be nice to me, pal. Nothin’, that’s what I got. I’m out on my ass is what I am. Those fuckers. Know who I feel sorry for?”

  “Who?”

  “Teachers, that’s who. These snot-ass kids drive up in their Porsches and Bee Em fuckin’ Doubleyews, cost more’n the poor bastard tryin’ to teach ’em how to spell makes in a year, and they think they’re so much better than Mr. English teacher. Twenny-two years and what’ve I got? Debts, that’s what. I got a wife somewhere gets sixty percent of my paycheck before I even see it, two kids who don’t even know me anymore. What’m I s’posed to do? Catch guys who’ve figured out how to make a livin’ and turn ’em over to rich lawyers to get ’em off, and maybe if I do a helluva good job the chief says, ‘Nice work, Finn.’ Which don’t exactly buy the groceries. So whaddya do, huh? You figure, I wanna buy me some groceries, and what happens? The chief says, ‘Shitty piece of work, Finn, and you’re fired, baby.’”

  He leaned back and closed his eyes. A gurgling sound rose in his throat. It started out as if he was going to vomit. It ended as a wet belch.

  I slid off the bench and went around to him. I tugged at his arm. “Come on, Dave. Let’s go lie down.”

  “Sure,” he mumbled. “Fuckin’ A.”

  I wrestled him off the bench and half-carried him to the bunk. It was a jumble of damp sour-smelling blankets. He collapsed on the bed. I pulled a blanket over him.

  “The joke’s on her,” he muttered.

  “Who?” I said.

  “Doreen. She don’t get nothin’ anymore. Sixty percent of nothin’s nothin’, right?”

  “Right. I’m leaving now.”

  “Joke’s on me, too, pal.”

  “Yes?”

  “Yeah. They think I got something. I didn’t get dollar one from those douchebags.”

  “Which douchebags?”

  “Those bookies, supposed to be payin’ me off. Shows how dumb I am, huh?”

  “Maybe you’ll be cleared, then.”

  He opened his eyes. They tried to focus on me, but failed. Finn laughed. “Sure. Justice for all.” He closed his eyes and rolled away from me. “Who’d wanna kill her, anyway, huh?” he mumbled. “Who’d wanna kill my little girl. Tell me that. Who’d kill my sweet baby? Fuckers…”

  I turned the dial on the space heater way down, snapped off the bare light bulbs, and left. The air outside Dave Finn’s trailer smelled awfully sweet.

  28

  I DIDN’T GET BACK to my apartment until nearly midnight. I found the message light on my answering machine winking at me. I pressed the button and heard a soft female voice. “It’s Jill,” she said. “Jill Costello, remember? It’s Thursday night. Um, listen, I was hoping to talk to you. It’s kind of important, I think. Give me a call? I’m home.” She left her phone number.

  “Too late,” I mumbled to the machine. “Not tonight.” I jotted down her number on the notepad beside the phone and proceeded to undress my way to my bedroom. I was tired.

  I was especially tired of slumming around in the history of Mary Ellen Ames’s complex love life. She had died. It was tragic but final, and there was nothing to be done about it. Whom she had chosen to sleep with, and for whatever reasons, were none of my business and apparently irrelevant. Charlie was right. Occam’s razor. I found myself feeling like a Peeping Tom, and I wanted no more of the policemen or the professors or the hippies or shrinks or landladies of Mary Ellen’s X-rated sex life. Susan was my client. She had asked me to find Mary Ellen. After a fashion, I had. My job was done.

  So I went directly to bed, vowing to attend strictly to the boring but necessary business of making a living for a while. There’d be no Gone Fishin’ sign hanging on my door tomorrow, even if it was a Friday. Julie would be happy. My various clients would be happy. Assorted lawyers throughout the Greater Boston area would be happy.

  So what if I wouldn’t be particularly happy.

  And on Friday that’s what I did. I returned all the calls I had accumulated during the week. I read all my letters and jotted notes in the margins. Julie would magically convert those notes into lucid letters of reply. I stoically set aside all the fishing catalogs that arrived in the morning mail without opening them. When Mrs. Arthur Fortin appeared in my office at eleven for her scheduled appointment to complain about Arthur’s obstinacy, I did what I did best: I reminded her that divorce, like everything else in the American legal system, is an adversarial process, which is what keeps lawyers in business, so it’s best to have a competent one.

  This was the same sort of reminder I found myself frequently needing. It sounded fairly convincing when I explained it to Amanda Fortin.

  At noontime Julie went around the corner to the sub shop and came back with a small tuna for herself and a large ham and cheese for me. We ate at my desk while she ticked off my appointments for the following week.


  I thought of returning Jill Costello’s call, but figured she’d be at school. I’d try her in the evening.

  After lunch I huddled with several pages of notes and began to draft a revised will for Steven and Holly Morgan. It was a complex and unpleasant task involving trust funds for the three Morgan progeny and seven grand-progeny, a horse farm in Sherborn, a string of polo ponies, a large house on Nantucket, and a collection of priceless old British and Italian shotguns.

  The Morgans were typical of my clients. They were rich, boring, and elderly. Unlike most of my clients, however, the Morgans were people I didn’t like very much, and it was hard to summon great enthusiasm for my task of keeping all of their wealth safely in the family.

  Hammering out a will for people like the Morgans always made me grouchy.

  So when Julie buzzed me in the middle of the afternoon, I jabbed the button on my console and growled, “What?”

  “Hey,” she said. “Don’t shoot the messenger. You got a call.”

  “I’ve probably had a dozen calls this afternoon, and you haven’t interrupted me so far.”

  “You should take this one.”

  “I’m not here.”

  “Yes you are. It’s Gloria.”

  “I don’t care if it’s Brigitte Bardot. I’m busy.”

  Julie giggled. “You would take it if it was Brigitte Bardot.”

  I sighed. “Okay. But only so I could practice my French. Look. I don’t feel like talking to Gloria right now, okay? Tell her I’ll call her back.”