by Brad Smith
“You see the guy?” Virgil asked.
The woman finished whatever she’d been writing and slid the paper out of sight below the counter. “What’s this about?”
“I was here a couple of days ago, reporting a stolen boat,” Virgil said. “I talked to you. You remember?”
“I remember.”
“The guy in the brown suit—I think that was the guy who took it.”
The woman shrugged. “I never got a look at him. We have people coming and going.”
Virgil could see how it was now. He regarded the woman a moment longer, long enough to make her uncomfortable, then he turned back to the red-faced cop. “Is Malero here?”
They made him wait another half hour before leading him upstairs, to the large open office with the bank of desks where he had last talked to the detective. Malero was drinking coffee, his feet up, joking with two other cops in suits. When Virgil approached, he gave him a look that suggested he didn’t recognize him, and kept on talking. Vigil sat down without being asked and took his brand-new boat registration from his pocket and placed it on the desk in front of the cop. Malero never gave it a glance. When the other two detectives moved away, he leaned back in his chair to regard Virgil. He was very close to smirking.
“You’re back,” he said. “Has your attitude improved any?”
“Last time I was here I was pissed off because somebody pretending to be a cop stole my boat,” Virgil said. “My boat is still missing so I guess my attitude is about the same.”
Malero nodded, staring absently across the room, as if already bored with the conversation. “What can I do for you today?”
Virgil picked up the registration and pushed it toward the cop. “Registration for my boat. You know, so you can start looking for it.”
Malero glanced briefly at the paper but didn’t pick it up. “That’s today’s date. How can you register a boat you don’t have?”
“All you need is the serial number and eighteen dollars,” Virgil told him. “I got the number and a bill of sale from the previous owner. I can give you his address if you want to talk to him.”
“What the hell is this?” Malero said angrily, flipping the registration back across the desk. “You’re up to something. Is this an insurance scam?”
“If it is, it’s not a very good one,” Virgil said. “The boat wasn’t insured.”
Malero made a point of looking at his watch. He took a pen from his pocket and hastily scrawled out the serial number from the registration. “All right, buddy. We’ll keep an eye out for your boat. We’ll put our best men on it.”
“Don’t you want a description?”
The cop shook his head, clearly aggravated at this disruption of his day. “Yeah.” He sighed.
“Cedar strip. Sixteen-foot Peterborough, built in the fifties. Got a twenty-horse Johnson on it.”
After watching the detective write wooden boat on the paper, Virgil got to his feet and leaned over to retrieve the registration. He folded it carefully and put it in his shirt pocket. Malero smiled up at him, an unctuous little grin that told Virgil that no one would be looking for his boat.
“One more thing,” he said to the cop. “The guy who took it was here at the station a little while ago. Kind of an interesting development. Maybe you should put your best men on that.”
* * *
It was noon when Virgil got back to the farm and by then the wheat was dry enough to harvest. Virgil had a quick lunch and then headed out into the north field. The clutch plate in the combine blew apart a half hour later, after he’d made a single pass through the crop. Virgil climbed down from the cab and walked to the machine shed, where he loaded his tools in the back of his pickup and returned to the combine. It took him almost two hours to remove the damaged clutch and he spent the better part of an hour on the phone before he finally located the replacement parts at a dealer east of Red Hook. The parts man said he could courier it out the next morning and it should arrive sometime in the afternoon. Virgil thought about it and then said he would drive over and pick it up.
The combine, with the drive train now in pieces, remained stalled in the middle of the field, a couple hundred yards behind the barn. By the time Virgil returned with the new clutch plate, it was six o’clock. He spotted the note pinned to the milk house door when he pulled up to the barn. He walked over to have a look and saw it was a page torn from a notebook, with Ulster Veterinary Clinic across the top. The note was from Mary Nelson:
Sorry to spring this on you but I was in a bind. Where are you anyway? Those two newbies in the field were rescued this morning from some asshole who used them in plowing competitions when he wasn’t starving them. I might have someone interested in them. I’ll call you later. Don’t be mad at me, Virgil.
The vet had drawn a happy face at the end of the note. If Mary thought that was going to improve Virgil’s mood, she was mistaken. She’d been talking him into taking possession of abused horses for a few years now and every time she showed up with another sad case in her trailer, Virgil told her it was the last one. Today he didn’t even get the satisfaction of doing that.
He walked around the barn to have a look in the front field and saw, among the small herd of horses that had been there when he’d left a couple hours earlier, two huge draft horses, chestnut with white markings. They might have been Percherons but Virgil was no expert. They were mangy-looking and filthy and bone thin, standing by themselves in the far corner of the field, picking at the pasture at their feet.
“Jesus H. Christ,” Virgil said, and headed out to the field to fix the combine.
If things went smoothly, he would just have time to do the repairs before dark. He could be back combining when the dew burned off the next morning. Of course, that was assuming that things ran smoothly, and they rarely did. Hell, a man couldn’t even go to pick up combine parts without a couple of unwanted horses being dumped on him in his absence.
He was halfway up inside the Massey, with just his legs showing, trying to align the pilot bearing, when he thought he heard a vehicle up near the house. Thinking it might be the person allegedly interested in the two draft horses, he ducked down to have a look between the drive pulleys but didn’t see anything, although the driveway was partially concealed by the barn. He watched a moment and went back to work, where he was having no luck fitting the clutch and the pressure plate together. The parts man at the dealership had tried to sell him an alignment tool, but for sixty-five dollars Virgil had declined. He was beginning to regret the decision when everything suddenly fell into place. Then he heard the woman’s voice.
“I’m looking for Virgil Cain.”
So apparently there had been a vehicle in the drive.
“Yeah?” he replied.
“You Virgil Cain?”
“You come for the horses?”
The woman hesitated. “Um … no.”
“What can I do for you?”
“Police.”
Virgil smiled. It was about time. Apparently somebody had been listening to him after all. Malero said he’d put his best men on the case. Maybe his best man was a woman. Virgil snugged down the bolts on the plate and came out from under the combine.
“I was hoping that somebody—” he began, and he stopped.
The woman standing in his wheat field was early thirties, he would guess, medium height and very fit, with short dirty-blond hair and beautiful green eyes. She had a tattoo of a serpent on her right forearm, and another, this one a panther, on her shoulder, the back legs of the cat disappearing into her tank top.
“Thought you said you were a cop.”
“I am,” she said. “Undercover.”
Virgil took a rag from his pocket to wipe his hands. “I’m Indiana Jones.”
“Don’t get smart with me,” she said. “I’m tracking the cylinder you found. I got some questions for you.”
“You got a badge?” Virgil asked. “Last phony cop showed up, at least he had a badge. Why don’t you take
a hike?”
He went back under the combine and picked up the wrench. He didn’t have enough daylight left to get everything back together and would have to finish in the morning. At least he could tighten down the clutch so it remained in place.
“Okay, I’m not a cop,” he heard the woman say.
“And you’re obviously not familiar with the phrase take a hike,” Virgil said as he worked.
“I still need to talk to you.”
“About what?”
“The cylinder. I told you that.”
“You also told me you were a cop,” Virgil reminded her. “You should realize that when the first thing out of your mouth is a lie, then I’m probably gonna be a little skeptical about the second thing out of your mouth. You’re not running for office, are you?”
“Jesus Christ,” the woman said. “Just that I’d heard you’d been to the cops the other day and—”
Virgil was interested enough now that he came out from under the combine again. “Who’d you hear that from?” he asked.
The woman shrugged.
“I said who’d you hear that from?”
“You know a guy named Wally, doesn’t know shit about outboard motors?”
“I know Wally. I didn’t know he was so loose-lipped. I guess a pretty girl shows up and he starts to babble.”
“If she can clean a magneto, he does,” she said, letting the pretty-girl comment pass. “Wally says you were out fishing and you hooked the cylinder with your anchor. Off Kimball’s Point.”
“Wally’s just a fountain of information, isn’t he?”
“The man could use a bath.”
Virgil smiled. “What’s your name anyway? You know mine.”
“Dusty,” the woman said after some consideration.
“Dusty who?”
“All you need to know,” she told him.
“All I need to know,” Virgil scoffed. “Is that the same as that other peckerhead saying he’d be in touch? What the hell is going on here anyway? I’m the only one minding his own damn business and look what I get. One day I’m out fishing and I pull up this cylinder—that I’m pretty sure is not full of Jell-O pudding—and the next thing I know, I got a phony cop who sticks a gun in my face, tells me I’m a criminal, and then steals my boat. And now I got you. Whoever the hell you are.”
“I’m not trying to pull anything,” Dusty said. “I’m looking for the cylinder. Simple as that.”
“What’s in it?”
“Doesn’t matter,” she said. “What’s in it has nothing to do with you.”
“Yeah?” Virgil asked. “Did you hear the part about the guy stealing my boat?”
“Okay,” Dusty said. “You’re right. You got fucked on that count. Maybe I can help you out. Tell me about the guy who did it. He claimed he was a cop?”
Virgil glanced toward the sky to the west. The sun was gone and it would be dark in fifteen minutes. He exhaled, resigned to having a conversation with the woman. “Let’s start back to the barn. I’m going to get the third degree, I might as well be drinking a beer while I’m getting it.”
They walked across the field together. At the barn the woman stood by as Virgil filled the water trough for the horses and gave them a half bushel of feed. He carried extra grain to the two draft horses, still in the corner of the field. They didn’t look as if they’d been properly fed in weeks. The woman’s truck, an older Ford with rust issues and mud splattered on the doglegs behind the wheel wells, was parked halfway between the house and the barn. After he shut the tap off Virgil went into the old milk house, where he kept his beer in a round-shouldered fridge that was over fifty years old but miraculously still running.
“I’d offer you a Budweiser, Officer,” he said, “but I assume you don’t drink when you’re on duty.”
She smiled at him. “Wally never mentioned you were a comedian. I’ll take a beer.” She was standing in the doorway, her hip against the jamb, arms crossed. She’d been following him since they’d left the field and every time she’d tried to engage, he’d held up his hand, as if telling her to wait.
Virgil gave her the beer and pulled an old vinyl-and-chrome kitchen chair around and sat. He indicated another chair to the woman but she stayed on her feet. There was something cautious about her, like a stray dog, even though it had been she who had shown up uninvited. But stray dogs did that too, always on the prowl for scraps of something, while poised to run away. It seemed as if the woman was no different. Virgil leaned back against the wall, lifting the chair’s front legs off the concrete, and took a long pull on the beer before smiling at her.
“So you’re what a drug dealer looks like these days,” he said.
“Nice try,” she said. “But you’re not even close. What makes you think there’s drugs involved anyway?”
“The fact that I wasn’t born yesterday?”
She drank from the bottle. “I was you, I think I’d be assuming that the less I know, the better. I can see you wanting your boat back. I’ll try to help you out with that—if you tell me what I want to know.”
Virgil smiled. “I got a feeling you already know a lot more than I do.”
“Maybe not. All I heard was basically what you told me. You found the thing and brought it into dock, then an hour later somebody shows up, flashes a badge, and takes it away from you.”
“And my boat.”
“Yeah, yeah. We won’t forget about the boat. The part I don’t get is how it happened that fast.”
“Somebody made a phone call.”
“I figured that,” she said. “But that’s still pretty fucking fast. I could see the dude showing up the next day maybe. Takes time for word to get out, especially out here in the boonies. So who made the call? And who was the guy that showed?”
Virgil shrugged. “Claimed to be Albany police. But I went to the station the next morning and they say they had nobody out that way seizing a boat or anything else. They seemed pretty damned sure of it, since they have no jurisdiction out here. So I have to think that the guy was a phony. The badge looked real, and the gun sure as hell looked real, but I guess you can fake anything nowadays. All I know for certain is that it was somebody who was real interested in that cylinder. You know—somebody like you.”
She tipped the beer bottle up, glancing at the whitewash where it was peeling away from the ceiling. It occurred to Virgil that she was thinking of what to ask next.
“He did look like a cop,” Virgil added. “You don’t.”
“And what do I look like?” she asked. “I mean—to a guy like you?”
“Like somebody running from the cops.”
“Well, I’m not. If that’s what you’re worried about.”
“Did you think I was worried about something?”
“No,” she admitted after a moment. “So you got no idea who the guy with the badge was.”
“Nope. But I saw him today.”
“What? Where did you see him?”
“I drove into the city to see how the cops were doing with their make-believe investigation of my boat. And the guy walked out of the station, just before I walked in.”
“You talk to him?”
“No. He was too far away and he jumped into a car and left.”
The woman drank again, then wiped her mouth. She had intelligent eyes, and they moved constantly; she was like a pool player trying to figure the angles. “You tell the cops?”
“I tried. They made out like they had no idea what I was talking about. They kind of made out like I had no idea what I was talking about.”
“So who the fuck is this guy?” the woman asked. “Something doesn’t fit here. Is he a rat? Is he undercover? What’s he up to?”
“I can’t help you with that,” Virgil said.
“I know somebody who can,” the woman said. “The guy that dropped a dime on you. You got any idea who did it?”
“I got more than an idea,” Virgil said. “I know exactly who called it in. Brownie, the guy that ow
ns the marina. You know, where you and Wally share secrets.”
“Wally did all the sharing. Not me.”
“Now that I believe.”
“Why do you think it’s this Brownie?”
“He’s a nosy ex-cop who was standing there inside the tackle shop watching the whole thing that day. And what he didn’t see he heard from his little buddy Mudcat. Wasn’t hard to figure out who made the call. The next day I asked them about it and they both lied. But they weren’t very good at it.”
“What’s a little buddy Mudcat?”
“It ain’t much, I can tell you that.”
Dusty frowned but let the subject pass. “So—you always know when people are lying to you?”
“I’ve been right on the money with you so far.”
“You’re kinda fucking rude, you know that?” Dusty said. “I told you—the less I tell you, the better off you are. I’m trying to protect you, man. You should be grateful.”
“Gee, thanks,” Virgil said. “So you going to tell me what’s in the cylinder?”
“I don’t think so,” Dusty said. “But I’ll tell you this—I’m not all that interested in the contents, I’m just interested in who has it. My life would be much better if you’d never hooked the thing.”
“And why is that?”
“Long story. I don’t want to bore you.”
“That’s one thing you haven’t done.”
She took a moment, as if she might tell him more, but then shook her head. “Let’s just say that I have to find it.”
“Before the bad guys do?”
“Maybe,” she said. She looked at the beer bottle in her hand. “Maybe I need to find it before the good guys do.”
“Which side you on?”
The woman tipped the bottle back, finishing it. “I guess I’m somewhere in between. Thanks for the beer.” She put the empty on top of the fridge. There was a notepad there from the vet, dust-covered, with a couple of pens alongside. She thought for a moment, then scribbled on the paper until she got one of the pens to work and wrote down her name and a number. “Here’s my cell. If the guy decides to return your boat, give me a call, will you?”