by Jon Loomis
“Liar,” Jamie said. “They’re huge. How could you not notice?” She sipped her drink carefully; it was very full.
“Never really been a boob man, I guess,” Coffin said.
“I don’t understand it,” Jamie said, shuffling out into the living room, martini delicately poised.
“I’m told I was sufficiently breast-fed.” Coffin tasted his drink. The icy vodka had a pleasant, medicinal bite.
“No, I mean why women get boob jobs. It’s so barbaric. No different from foot binding, or that African thing with the plates in the lips.” Jamie collapsed onto a brocaded sofa. “What is it about the beach? All that sunshine and naked flesh.”
“Tired?” Coffin said, sitting next to her.
“Horny,” Jamie said, looking at him over the brim of her glass. “It never fails.”
“That’s good to know,” said Coffin.
Jamie set her glass down on a marble-topped end table. “Know what else is good to know?” she said, gently biting Coffin’s cheek.
“Uh—”
“I’m not wearing any underwear,” Jamie whispered, grabbing Coffin by the ears and slowly pulling him down on top of her.
Later, in the dark bedroom, Jamie lay on her belly, Coffin’s head resting comfortably in the curve of her lower back.
“I think I want a boy,” she said. “Boys are so elemental. They don’t get manipulative until they’re thirty.”
“Ha,” Coffin said.
“Corinne says, if you want to conceive a boy, you’re supposed to do it from behind.” She waggled her hips a little. “Maybe we should practice.”
“In the morning?”
“Poor man. Tired?”
“Yes.”
Jamie lay quiet a while. Then she said, “Have you thought about it, Frank? Having a baby?”
“A little.”
“And?”
“I don’t know. I’m old and weird and solitary.”
“Do you like being old and weird and solitary?”
“Kids avoid me. I don’t know how to talk to them.”
“Your kid won’t avoid you.”
“What if something happened?” Coffin said. “Something bad.”
Jamie reached for a cigarette, lit it, and blew out a slow plume of smoke. “Like what?”
“I don’t know—something. To the child. What if it got terribly sick or hurt in an accident? I don’t think I could handle that.”
Jamie rolled onto her side and ruffled Coffin’s hair. “The boogeyman’s not going to get us, Frank.”
“You’re so rational,” Coffin said.
“Look,” Jamie said. She sat up, pulling the sheet over her breasts. “I’m going to have a baby. I’m not going to be one of these women who waits around for permission till she’s forty and then finds out it’s too late.”
She had once told Coffin that in high school no one thought she was pretty. She was too tall, too lanky, too flat chested to attract much attention; she’d had a bad complexion, worn nothing but black—queen of the geeks, she called herself. Now, candlelight sparking her dark, wide-set eyes, Coffin found her wrenchingly beautiful.
He said nothing. The stuffed seagull on the wardrobe stared at him blankly. Jamie got up and went out into the living room to find her dress. “You’ve got a pretty good deal here, you know—boinking the yoga instructor,” she said. “And I’m not the only one who thinks so.”
“Oh?”
She padded back into the bedroom, tugging the dress down over her hips. “You heard me, sport. Duffy Plotz has been asking me out. He’s cute, in a moderately creepy way. He’s got that socially awkward ostrich thing going on.”
“Duffy? Jesus. You know the only reason he takes yoga is to meet women, right? Where’s he taking you? A romantic evening shooting rats in the dump?”
Jamie laughed, then pointed a long finger at Coffin’s nose. “I’m at my sexual peak, boyo—and I’m extremely flexible. Don’t screw it up.”
The man in the blue pickup truck waited a long time while Jamie did whatever she was doing with the cop; fucking him, no doubt. He did not smoke, though he wanted to; he knew the glow of his cigarette would be visible from across the street, if anyone happened to look out the window.
It was getting very late and he was about to give up, but just as he had made up his mind to leave she stepped out onto the screen porch. “Got to get a shot of this,” he muttered, picking up the big Minolta on the passenger seat. It had a long telephoto lens and was loaded with very slow black-and-white film. He braced the camera on the truck’s window frame. “C’mon, baby,” he said. “Put on a show for Duffy.”
Jamie paused on the front steps and lit a cigarette. Plotz’s stomach fluttered at the sight of her—tall and slim, long hair hanging loose the way he liked it. Backlit for a moment by the yellow porch light, her short white dress turned translucent, revealing the outline of her body. She appeared to be wearing small white panties underneath, but Plotz couldn’t be sure—the pale triangle floating under the sundress might have been the tan line from a bikini bottom. Plotz’s penis stiffened at the thought.
The Minolta’s shutter clunked. The film advanced automatically, with a slight whir. Clunk, whir. Clunk, whir.
She got into her old Volvo wagon, backed out of the cop’s driveway, and putted away, heading home. When she got to the corner, he started his pickup truck and followed her, staying a safe distance behind.
Chapter 8
Coffin tried to nap after Jamie left but couldn’t—every time he started to doze the old, recurring dreams began. He got up, dressed, and went out to the screen porch to wait for Lola. It was late; the neighborhood was quiet except for the crickets, sharpening their little knives. Then, a block or two away, a dog started barking. It sounded like a small dog at first, yip yip yip. Other dogs joined in, yipping and yapping their various notes, five or six dogs, and then one of them, maybe a big one, let out a long, ghostly howl, and all the other dogs joined in. Not dogs, Coffin realized. Coyotes. In the graveyard.
For years, Provincetown had been home to a good-sized pack of coyotes—wolfish and brushy-tailed, low-slung in the hips—they lived in the dunes across the highway and came into town at night, hunting for possums or cats, congregating now and then in the unlit quiet of the cemetery to sing their feral harmony. It was strange hearing them in the summertime, though; usually it was cold weather that drove them into town, the scarcity of rabbits and whatever other wild game they could find in the scrub pines or the beech forest. Sometimes, driving at night, Coffin would spot one or two of them crossing Bradford Street in the distance ahead of his car, eyes glowing yellow in the headlights. They were shy of humans, but leave your cat out at night and likely as not it would end up coyote chow.
The coyotes made Coffin feel better, the weird anachronism of them, the notion of something wild and skittish and a little dangerous roaming the night streets of Provincetown, with its gingerbread trim and pink shutters. Then he thought of the crab that had climbed out of Ron Merkin’s open mouth, and he didn’t feel better anymore.
On summer nights around one o’clock, a small migration flowed up Commercial Street from the just-closed bars to E Pluribus Pizza; it seemed ritual and prehistoric to Coffin, a kind of pilgrimage, like sea turtles returning to the same lost beach year after year to lay their eggs. They gathered outside, hundreds of men, on the sidewalks and in the street—most with no interest in pizza—a nightly cotillion for those who hadn’t yet gotten lucky and those who liked to watch them try. There were men of all descriptions: muscular men, slender men, and fat men; shirtless, smooth-chested men; big-bellied, hairy men; beautiful men and men who were not so beautiful. They wore runner’s shorts and muscle shirts, or biker gear, or sailor suits, or cowboy hats, or nondescript jeans and polo shirts, or, in one case, a purple G-string and Rollerblades. Two outrageously muscled men with shaved heads and identical goatees wore nothing but engineer boots, leather chaps, and nipple rings the size of door knockers. A clutch of
drag queens tottered on platform heels. There were a few women, too, and a great many dogs, frolicking with one another and barking.
“Last chance to hook up before admitting defeat and going home alone,” Lola said. She was carrying a green backpack. They had parked her black Camaro several blocks away.
“Or heading off to the dick dock,” Coffin said.
“Ah, the romance,” Lola said.
“I don’t know how anyone does it,” Coffin said. “I’d be too uncomfortable. Everybody looking at me. I’d feel like . . . merchandise.”
A car was inching through the crowd while a summer cop tried in vain to clear the street long enough to let it pass.
“Look,” Lola said. “It’s Pinsky.”
“He’s got lipstick on his cheek,” Coffin said.
“Hey, Pinsky,” Lola said to the summer cop. “You going native or what?” She pointed to her cheek.
Pinsky blushed and wiped at the lipstick with his palm. “Aw,” he said. “Naw. One of the girls there was just messin’ around.”
A tall black drag queen turned and blew Pinsky a kiss. She wore a very short chartreuse vinyl miniskirt, a tube top, and a blond beehive wig. “You come home with me, honey,” she said. “I’ll show you a good time.”
Pinsky blushed again.
“Maybe you should take her up on it,” Coffin said.
“If there wasn’t a wiener in those panties, you bet your ass I would,” he said.
Lola grinned. “How many times have I said that?”
Coffin lit a cigarette. Two men dressed in hoopskirts and very large straw hats decorated with plastic fruit and Barbie dolls had arrived, to cheers and whistles. “I used to think there were just two genders. Then I thought there were five. Now I have no idea,” Coffin said.
“Five?” Pinsky said. “Shit. Who are you trying to kid?”
“Lesbian, gay male, straight male, straight female, bisexual,” Coffin said, ticking them off on his fingers.
“Bisexual isn’t a gender, honey,” the tall drag queen said. Her voice was as slow and rich as molasses. “It’s just not knowing your damn mind.”
A man with a shaved head and red-rimmed glasses said, “That’s not even half. What about butches and femmes, bottoms and tops, and the, like, seventy-eight different shades of transgendered people?”
Lola nodded. “I went to college with a short, fat, hairy guy who had a sex change because he wanted to be a lesbian. Talk about complicated.”
“What about you, Detective?” Pinsky said. “You’ve been here a long time—ever think about seeing how the other half lives?”
“I never get any offers,” Coffin said. “It’s like I’ve got a big tattoo on my forehead that says STRAIGHT GUY.”
“Oh, come on,” Lola said. “No man has ever hit on you?”
“Not never. But not very often, either. And lately not at all.” Coffin patted his gut. “I’m not the most buff guy in town, it turns out.”
“But when they did?” Lola said.
“Men aren’t my type. What can I say?” He shrugged. “I seem to be a hardwired hetero.”
“That’s right,” Pinsky said. “We’re all hardwired. Boys and girls.” He lowered his voice. “These people here are going against nature.”
The tall drag queen made a clucking noise with her tongue and draped a long, elegant arm around Pinsky’s shoulders. “You need to relax yourself, baby. Let Lawonda show you how.”
Lola laughed, and Pinsky smiled sheepishly.
“So, are you-all a couple?” one of the other drag queens said. She was very slender, sheathed in a sequined minidress. “I mean, are you shopping for a boy-toy or just being, like, tourists or something?”
“Actually, we’re police officers,” Coffin said. He took Merkin’s photo from his jacket pocket. “We’re wondering if anybody remembers seeing this man.”
The drag queens gathered around. “It’s Reverend Rhonda,” Lawonda said, tapping the photo with a long, sparkly fingernail.
“Oh my God,” the drag queen in the sequined dress said. “Look at that sad little outfit. It’s just heartbreaking.”
Lola took a fistful of business cards and a sheaf of photos from her backpack. “We need to know if Ron Merkin was with anyone the night of his death, which was last Friday, or anytime late at night that week,” she said, passing them around. “Any information you can give us would be very helpful.”
There was a low swell of conversation as the photos were passed from hand to hand. Coffin and Lola waited several minutes, but none of the men stepped forward.
“No one?” Lola said. “Are you sure?”
“Our phone numbers are on the cards,” Coffin said. “If anyone remembers seeing Ron Merkin late at night, please call us—anytime. We’ll protect your anonymity.”
After Lola’s Camaro disappeared around the corner, Coffin stood in the street for a minute or two, thinking. His house was completely dark. He always left the floor-lamp in the living room on, plugged into a timer. Maybe the bulb had burned out. Or maybe someone had turned the lamp off. The hair on his forearms rose. A blue Chevy pickup truck was parked across the street.
Crouching a little, Coffin peered through the living room window. It was velvety black inside except for the glow of a lit cigarette—someone was sitting in his father’s red easy chair, smoking with all the lights out. For a moment, Coffin imagined he was seeing his father’s ghost; all that was missing was a glass of scotch and the Red Sox losing a crucial game on the snowy TV. Then the cigarette glow arced up and brightened, partially illuminating a man’s face. Coffin stood up and rapped on the window. The man started and dropped his cigarette. Coffin could see his bulky silhouette moving quickly toward the door.
“Relax, Rudy,” Coffin said, stepping onto the screen porch. “It’s just me.”
“Jesus Christ,” Rudy said, standing just inside the door. He was a big man with thick gray hair and broad features. He held a large pistol. “You scared the shit out of me.” He stuffed the pistol into his jacket pocket. “Got any bourbon? I looked around but couldn’t find any.”
“Time to start locking my doors,” Coffin said, reaching for the light switch.
Rudy grabbed his wrist. “Leave it out,” he said. “I’m not supposed to be here.”
“That your pickup outside?”
“Tony’s. He let me borrow it. He’s not the sharpest tool in the shed, but he’s a good boy.”
Coffin felt his way to the kitchen and fumbled through the liquor cabinet in the dark. “No bourbon,” he said. “Scotch or vodka.”
“When’d you get so goddamn fancy?”
“Things have changed since you’ve been gone. The whole town is going upscale.”
“The whole town can bite my ass,” Rudy said.
“It already did,” Coffin said, pouring scotch over ice in the dark, trying not to slop any liquor onto the counter.
Rudy eased his bulk into the red armchair. “You’ve got a point there,” he said, sipping his drink. “But who’s to say I won’t get the last laugh?”
“Ever the optimist,” Coffin said, sitting on the couch.
The room was silent for a while, except for the rusty scraping of crickets outside.
“I suppose you’re wondering,” Rudy said, when he’d drained his scotch and chewed up the ice cubes, “why I was sitting here in the dark, waiting for you to drag your ass home.”
“I am,” Coffin said.
Rudy cleared his throat. “There’s something I want to give you.”
“No thanks,” Coffin said.
“For your ma.”
“Nope.”
“Now how can you stand there and say ‘nope’ when you don’t even know what it is?”
“Is it stolen?”
“Okay, here we go,” Rudy said, throwing up his hands. “Just assume that anything I’d give you is stolen. Real nice.”
“Well, is it?”
“Kind of.”
“Then no thanks.”
>
“It’s money, Frankie. Lots of it. Untraceable. You could put your poor old mother in a nicer place, down in Chatham or somewhere. You could get the fuck out of here, if that’s what you wanted.”
Coffin frowned. “And where would I say I got the money, Rudy? When the IRS came to call?”
Rudy snorted. “The IRS. Jesus. Make sure you don’t ride your bike on the sidewalk.”
Coffin didn’t say anything. Outside, crickets sawed in the grass.
“Three hundred thousand, Frankie.”
“What?”
“Three hundred large. I got it right here.” A briefcase stood on the floor beside his chair—dark object in a dark room. He picked it up and held it in his lap.
“You’re riding around in Tony’s truck with three hundred thousand dollars?”
“Try twice that,” Rudy said. He patted his jacket pocket. “That’s why I’ve got the firearm. This town’s gotten dangerous all of a sudden.”
“You’re fucking kidding me.”
“It’s a shitload of money, Frankie. Bundles and bundles of it. A present from your old uncle Rudy.” He patted the briefcase.
“Look, I know I’m going to be sorry I asked—”
“But you want to know where I got it.”
Coffin nodded.
“Your dad and me. We started up a little business venture, back when you were still in high school. You knew about that, right?”
“I figured, maybe. I didn’t know for sure.”
“Well, now you do. There was a lot of money to be made in those days, if you had some balls.”
“You were smuggling.”
“I had the connections, your old man had the boat. We had a great thing going—it was bulletproof. We scored big a bunch of times. We never got caught, and we never would’ve got caught.”
“Then Dad was lost at sea.”
“Lost at sea can mean a lot of things.”
“Like?”
“Like he fell in. Like he was thrown in. Nobody knows.”