Dead Meat

by William G. Tapply

“What do you think he was going to do today? Why do you think I was going with him? Don’t you think he explained it all to me? Come on, Bud. Why else would you try for me if you didn’t know that Gib had spilled it to me. Hey. You’re in way over your head. You’re not the only bad guy here. There’s somebody else, and you know damn well he’s not going to walk in and confess to get you off the hook.”

  He didn’t speak for a long time. He drove slowly, glancing occasionally at the shotgun that I had trained on his liver. Finally he said, “What chance have I got, anyway?”

  “I don’t know if they still execute people in Maine or not,” I said. “Seems to me they’ve got an electric chair. A lot of states are moving over to lethal injections, though. Reasonably painless, they say. Out in Utah they give you your choice. Firing squad, if you want. They hardly ever hang people anymore. I dunno. Maybe they do in Maine.”

  “I mean if I tell you all of it,” said Turner.

  I lit a cigarette and squinted at him out of the corners of my eyes. “I’m a lawyer. I can advise you.”

  He touched the little scabs on his face with his fingers. Then he nodded. “Okay. Okay, then. I’ll tell you. Listen. I was just followin’ orders. You’ve gotta understand that. Just doin’ what I was told. The hired man, see?”

  “I know, Bud.” I sighed. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  Sixteen

  A WEEK LATER I was back at my desk, gingerly flexing my right leg and wondering if it would hold up for an afternoon of wading a trout river. The abrasion along the length of my shin had scabbed over. Julie, in fact, had insisted on examining it when I limped into the office. Her verdict: “It has scabbed over rather nicely, hasn’t it?”

  I had never before thought of scabs as being nice.

  The bruise on my knee had undergone a series of transformations. Now it was a dull, sickly yellow, barely tinged pale green along the edges. Julie had proclaimed it ugly.

  There was a gentle tap at my door. “Come on in,” I called.

  Julie entered, bearing iced coffee.

  “You must be angling for the afternoon off,” I said.

  “I am just ministering to the lame and the halt. I like to care for the infirm and the elderly. I think I have a calling.” She placed the glass on my desk beside me. “Speaking of angling,” she said, “I bet you’re going fishing this afternoon.”

  “Thinking of it,” I admitted.

  “Then, thanks, I will take the afternoon myself. Before we depart, I want to remind you to return Mr. Smith’s call. Also that you have a round-trip airplane reservation to Nantucket tomorrow.”

  I sipped the iced coffee. I am the only person I know who prefers it black. Julie makes it just right, pouring freshly brewed hot coffee over a glass of ice cubes. “I remembered both of those things,” I said primly. “I wrote myself a note.”

  “And you’ve got Mr. McDevitt on Friday.”

  “Right.”

  “And I really think you should see a doctor. That’s the same knee you had operated on.”

  “Entirely different injury, dear heart,” I said.

  “You looked so distinguished on your cane. Don’t you need a cane now?”

  “I do not need a cane. I’m tough.”

  She raised her hands in a gesture of surrender and stood up. “Well, then. Excuse me for caring. I’m leaving.”

  I blew her a kiss, and she grinned at me over her shoulder.

  After Julie left, I called Seelye Smith in Portland, Maine. Kirk answered. When I told him who it was, he put me right through.

  “Mr. Coyne. Thanks for calling back. Had a spot of trouble up at Raven Lake, I hear.”

  “Word gets around.”

  “Airplanes exploding, United States marshals getting themselves killed. I understand they found the one who was missing.”

  “They found his body, yes, what there was of it. Kenneth Sadowski. The scavengers had gotten to it. Crows, coyotes, whatnot. Bud Turner told them where to look. They say he died from massive trauma to the skull.”

  “Ay-yuh,” drawled Smith. “Had his head smashed in. And they’re holding the cook, Turner. And he’s the one who killed the other marshal…”

  “Right. Genetti. Philip Genetti.”

  “Which particular homicide,” said Smith, “they had been holding the Indian for.”

  “Woody. Yes. And Turner sabotaged Bailey Gibbons’s airplane, too. He knew that Gib was planning to spill his guts to the DA. He thought I was going to be on that plane. His idea was to blow up the both of us. It would have finished the job of cleaning things up. I was lucky that Gib took off without me. So Turner made a try for me with a Stilson wrench out there in the woods. I got lucky. It was Turner, all right. Bud Turner did it all.”

  I heard Smith chuckle. “But Turner’s not the real villain here, now, is he?”

  “No,” I said. “It doesn’t look that way. It’ll all come out in due time.”

  “Meaning you can’t talk about it right now. Fair enough. I only called because I have figured out who tendered the offer to buy the Raven Lake Lodge. It’s probably academic now.”

  “No, not really. Who was it?”

  “Last time we talked, I told you that it was some out-of-state party using the Indian law firm.”

  “Boggs and Kell. Same firm that was going to defend Woody. What was the connection?”

  “They’re the biggest Indian firm in the area. They defended Woody Pauley because he asked them to and because it was the kind of case they liked. That’s the only connection.”

  “Oh,” I said. “So do you know who the out-of-state party is?”

  “Yes. I know who the out-of-state party is.”

  “And?”

  “It’s interesting.”

  “I’ll bet,” I said. “Come on, Mr. Smith.”

  “Stanley P. Chalmers.”

  I hesitated. “Stanley P. Chalmers,” I repeated. “No kidding,” I said. I sighed. “This is a disappointment, Mr. Smith.”

  “Never heard of Stanley P. Chalmers, eh?”

  “No. Never.”

  “If I told you he was an assistant regional director for the FBI, would it mean anything to you?”

  “FBI, huh?” I said. “He wasn’t interested in his own little vacation retreat or a source of retirement income, I gather.”

  “No, indeed. This was official Bureau business. And that, Mr. Coyne, is all I know. It cost me a few points to find out that much.”

  “I’ll buy you dinner next time I’m in Portland,” I said.

  “Chalmers’s offer, by the way, has been withdrawn.”

  “Mmm, figures.”

  “I suppose this all makes sense to you, Mr. Coyne.”

  “It’s beginning to. I should know more in a few days.”

  Seelye Smith and I exchanged promises to get together again, and I sat back and swiveled around to stare out my office window. Below me, Copley Square teemed with shoppers and sun worshipers on their lunch hours. The street vendors were there—Franz, the guy with the hot-dog cart, Jennifer, the old black lady who sold hot pretzels, Max on the corner with his magazines, the Puerto Rican lady with her bunches of carnations. A couple of college-age boys were peddling silk-screened T-shirts. Secretaries and young executives lay sprawled on the concrete walls and benches with their brown bags containing yogurt and cottage cheese and celery sticks. And around the edges rose the architecture that monumentally marked the passage of Boston’s centuries—the Old South Church and, diagonally across, dour old Trinity. The Public Library, part new and part old. The old Copley Plaza and the new Westin Hotels. The mirror-faced Hancock building. Bookshops and drugstores. Restaurants—Chinese, Italian, Greek, and fast. Shoe stores and fur merchants.

  I was a helluva long way from Raven Lake. There hadn’t been a loon spotted in Copley Square for ages.

  Meeting with Vern Wheeler proved to be a bit more complicated than usual. Instead of a leisurely stroll down Boylston Street to the Public Garden, I had to take a taxi over to
Logan Airport, board the little commuter plane for a rocky half hour’s flight to Nantucket Island, and then catch a cab to Vern’s imitation Frank Lloyd Wright summer retreat across the road from Cisco Beach.

  I found him sprawled on a chaise longue on the back deck in sunlight that dappled through the lattice roof grown over with flowering vines. He wore red bathing trunks and reflector sunglasses. He held a sheaf of legal-sized documents against his chest.

  I cleared my throat, and he groaned, twitched, and pushed his sunglasses to the top of his head. “Why Brady? What’re you doing here? Nice surprise. I must’ve dozed off. Did Susan let you in?”

  “I just walked around back, Vern. Sorry to barge in on you.”

  “You should’ve called from the airport. I would’ve sent Susan down for you.”

  I waved my hand and sat down on a redwood lawn chair. “No problem.”

  “How was the flight?”

  “Bumpy as usual.”

  He touched the empty tumbler on the table beside him. “Something?”

  “Gin and tonic would be good.”

  “Susan!” he called. “Damn woman. Watching those damnable television stories again. Susan!”

  In a moment Susan appeared. She wore the bottom to a flowered bikini bathing suit and a sloppy white T-shirt. I guessed her age at twenty. She had molasses-colored hair, cut short, and a mahogany tan all over. “Sir?” she said. I detected the soft drawl of a mountain girl. West Virginia. Tennessee, maybe.

  “This is Mr. Coyne, dear,” said Vern. “He’ll be our guest for a few days.”

  “Just this afternoon,” I said quickly. “I’m booked on the five-thirty back to Boston.”

  “I’m disappointed,” said Vern.

  Susan dipped her head and bent her knees quickly in a tiny curtsy, which barely managed to fall short of a mockery. I thought I saw the crinkle of an ironic grin in her eyes. “Mr. Coyne, sir,” she murmured.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Couple gin and tonics, please,” said Vern. “Make one for yourself, if you like.”

  “Very well,” she said. She pivoted and took her time leaving.

  I turned to look at Vern. He was grinning at me. “Wellesley girl,” he said. “Going for her doctorate in biochemistry at MIT next year. Keeping house for me down here in the summer. An attractive piece of furniture, wouldn’t you say?”

  “I wouldn’t say, no. She is a beautiful girl.”

  Vern cocked his head and then grinned. “You have an evil mind, friend. Her father is a business acquaintance of mine. I allow her to have parties here when I’m back in Boston, and she has use of the Audi. In return, I know the place is being looked after. And, of course, I have the pleasure of her company when I’m here.”

  “Nice arrangement.”

  “It works well, yes,” said Vern. He hitched himself into a sitting position. “I must ask the obvious question,” he said. “Why are you here?”

  “I want to hear about Raven Lake from your lips. I want you to tell me that you knew nothing about what was going on up there.”

  He smiled. “You are a man of honor, after all, aren’t you, Brady?”

  I shrugged. “Just tell me the truth, Vern.”

  “I should keep no secrets from my attorney. Quite so.”

  Susan appeared with a drink in each hand. Vern and I accepted them. “Mind if I run to town?” she said to him. “Need to pick up some groceries.”

  “You’ll be back in time to drive Mr. Coyne to the airport?”

  “Of course.”

  When she left, Vern turned to me. “I knew,” he said simply.

  “Why? I need to understand.”

  He shrugged. “You couldn’t understand.” Vern tilted his head back and stared up through the vine-covered latticework. Then he leveled his gaze on me. “My good friend,” he said, “you are still my attorney.”

  I nodded.

  “Then,” he said, “I will not lie to you. I knew who Bud Turner was. Bailey Gibbons, too. I knew what they did and why. I was forced to hire them. Of that I am guilty.”

  I put my drink down. “I hoped,” I said, “that you would tell me that you knew nothing of it. That you were as surprised and as shocked as I that the place you loved—the people you loved—were being used this way. Vern, I wanted you to look me in the eye and say, ‘Brady, as God is my judge, I knew nothing of this.’”

  Vern shook his head. “I can’t say that.”

  I stood up. “I’m going to take a walk down to the beach. See if the surf casters are catching any. I’ll be back in time for Susan to drive me to the airport.”

  Vern stood and put his hand on my arm. “I wish you’d try to understand.”

  “I doubt I ever could.” I left him standing there. In his baggy red bathing trunks and his city white skin, he looked very old.

  Charlie McDevitt and I took a cab from his office at Government Center to Fish Pier off Northern Avenue, where Jimmy’s Harborside restaurant is located. The maître d’ greeted Charlie, asked after his wife, and led us across the broad dining room to a small table against a window.

  Charlie is a master at what he calls “power dining.” He knows all the tricks. He cultivates relationships with hostesses, waitresses, owners, and maîtres d’hotel. It didn’t surprise me that they had the best table in the place waiting for us. I knew that somewhere along the line Charlie had slipped the man a ten-spot. I looked for it. But I still didn’t see it happen.

  I ordered an old-fashioned, and Charlie settled for a bottle of Heineken.

  “Okay,” I said, lighting a cigarette. “I think I’ve got most of it figured out now. Those guys on the tape—that Uncle Fish and Ceci—they’re—what?—do you still call them the Mafia? La Cosa Nostra?”

  Charlie grinned. “Close enough.”

  “Whatever. So Ceci was a professional hit man. Killed people on orders from people like Collucci. When things got hot for him, he called Uncle Fish. He wanted salvation, he said. Meaning he wanted a way out of the country. Fifty angels. What, fifty thousand dollars? Anyway, Collucci was in the business of arranging for bad guys to escape. Have I got it?”

  “You’re doing good. Keep going.”

  “Okay. The way out was Raven Lake. Collucci would sneak people like Ceci Malagudi into Raven Lake, and when the coast was clear, it was a short hop in Bailey Gibbons’s Cessna over the Canadian border to some other remote lake, where forged papers, passports, whatever, and a bundle of foreign currency would be waiting. From there to Brazil or Sicily or someplace.”

  “Right,” said Charlie. “It was a regular pipeline. Collucci had a nice little business going for him. Sort of an underworld travel agency. Over the past several years, a number of major league fugitives have slipped out through the same route. For a price, of course. Ceci Malagudi was the most recent one.”

  “If I’ve got the timing of it right,” I said, “I met him. He called himself Frank Schatz. I should’ve suspected something. The guy didn’t know squat about fishing. He was at Raven Lake when I arrived. He got there practically the day after the first marshal, Kenneth Sadowski, disappeared. That was Turner’s work. Keeping the coast clear. And Malagudi, or Schatz, or whatever his name was, left the day before the next marshal, Philip Genetti, arrived. I didn’t think anything of it at the time.”

  “No reason you should,” said Charlie. Our drinks arrived. The waitress told Charlie it was nice to see him again. He asked after her kids and told her we’d wait for a while before ordering.

  “And the guy who made the whole thing work,” I continued when she left, “was Vern Wheeler.”

  “He let it work,” said Charlie. “A silent partner. Collucci was the one who arranged it all.”

  “He forced Vern to hire Bud Turner and Bailey Gibbons.”

  “Right,” said Charlie. “Turner was one of his killers. Turner wasn’t his real name, of course. Something ending in a vowel. Happened to have a flair for haute cuisine. So Collucci told Vern to hire Turner on as cook, where h
e could keep an eye on things.”

  “Kill people if necessary.”

  “Sure.”

  “And Vern went along.”

  “He probably had no choice.”

  “And Gib?”

  “Bailey Gibbons,” said Charlie, “was his real name. Maine boy, matter of fact. He’d done some small-time drug smuggling out of Mexico, flying small planes over the border under the radar. Finally landed in a jail down there which is like a death sentence. Collucci managed to get him out, and Vern had to hire him, too.”

  “And nobody up there suspected a thing. Vern arranged the bookings for people like Frank Schatz—excuse me, Ceci Malagudi. Tiny went along. Had no idea that anything was out of whack.”

  “Well, of course, the FBI suspected,” said Charlie. “Their method of investigation was to pretend to want to buy the place. A way to cover their investigation and maybe see who might jump in which direction. Like picking up a bag and shaking it vigorously to see what might fall out. Typical Bureau operation. Oblique. Complex. Secretive. Self-serving. The marshals, naturally, knew nothing of what the Bureau was up to. And vice versa. Competition, not cooperation. The operative standard for just about all government agencies. The marshals, typical of them, were more direct. They went right the hell up there. They’d been a couple steps behind a previous fugitive, who was also connected to Uncle Fish Collucci, and they figured Ceci Malagudi just might be headed for Raven Lake. They were right, of course. They didn’t expect Collucci to be one jump ahead of them, so they weren’t ready for Bud Turner.”

  “So Turner murdered both of the marshals. On Collucci’s orders.”

  “So it seems.”

  “And he booby-trapped Gib’s plane when he thought Gib was going to spill the beans,” I mused aloud. “For all I know, he thought I was going to be on that plane, too.”

  “For all you know,” said Charlie, “Collucci told Turner to get rid of you. Hell, Brady. For all you know, your client, Vern Wheeler, knew that Turner was gonna try to kill you. If not on the plane, then later, on the way to Greenville in the truck.”

  I sipped my old-fashioned. “I’d prefer to believe that Vern didn’t know any of those details,” I said.