by Philip Craig
If I hadn’t given up smoking, I could light up right now and blow a few tough smoke rings while Julie suffered. Instead, I just sat there, hoping that she was thinking about scandal at school and at home.
“I . . . I get it at school. How can I trust you? Oh, God . . .”
“You can trust me. Talk to me and I forget I ever met you. You have my word.”
“Your word!”
“My word.”
She cried for a little longer.
“Okay,” I said. “We’ll go down to the station, then. . . .”
“No! No. I . . . I don’t know very much, I swear. Some of us use a little now and then, you know? We get it at school. Brown’s tough sometimes, and we have to unwind. Weekends. Parties. I smoked a little in prep school. I mean, is there anybody under forty who hasn’t at least tried grass? But I’m not really a user. I mean, I’ve tried this and that, but I don’t . . .” She wiped at her face with more tissues.
“Who’s your supplier?”
“Nobody. Everybody. It’s around.”
“Grass may be around, coke may be around, pills may be around. But this stuff isn’t around.”
“Billy,” she said. “Billy has it.”
Billy.
“He brought it around. We liked it. I love him, you know.”
According to her driver’s license she was nineteen. As I remembered, it was a hard time to be alive. A lot of passion, mixed-up thoughts, problems. “That’s why you came over to see him. You love him. You love your dealer.”
She flamed up. “He’s not my dealer! He’s just a boy who—” She stopped, furious.
“You said in his room that you’d heard about the accident, but that was a lie, wasn’t it?”
“What do you mean?” Her anger was suddenly on hold.
“I mean it’s pretty unlikely that you’d just heard about an accident on Martha’s Vineyard when you live down in Connecticut. The Connecticut news doesn’t include stories like that. No, Billy telephoned you and asked you to come up.”
“All right, all right. What difference does it make?”
“It makes a little difference. You brought him some of your needles and dope, didn’t you?”
“No!”
“It’ll be easy to check. If he’s got the fixings, they’ll be right there in his room. The way I see it is this: He’s hurting and he’s in a hospital room where he can’t get anything from his normal supplier, so he calls you to bring him some of the stuff you got from him in the first place. You bring it to him, too, because you love him and you don’t like to have him hurt. That’s about the way it happened, I imagine.”
“Please . . .”
I waited while she cried some more. Then: “Where does he get his stuff? I mean when he isn’t getting it from you.”
“I don’t know, I don’t know.”
“Billy likes to have people know he’s somebody important. He reminds people like the guys who work in the boatyard that his old man has money. That’s the way he is. I’ll bet that he’s dropped a hint or two about his source. Let me help you. His source is on the island, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sure you do. Billy lives on the island. His contacts are here. He hasn’t been on the mainland long enough to tie into the Providence drug circles, so I know he gets his stuff here. But I need to know a name. Give me a name and you walk.”
“Sylvia, he mentioned Sylvia. I don’t know what her last name is.”
“Why do you think it’s a woman?”
Julie looked at me with genuine surprise. “What do you mean? Who else but a woman would be named Sylvia?”
It was clear that Julie and her family did not mingle with the Connecticut Portuguese.
“Never mind,” I said. I got out her license and her father’s business card and gave them back to her. Then I dug out the syringes and the vials. “Do you want these?”
“Nobody wants them right after a fix,” she said bitterly. “Everybody’s strong then.” She stared at her hands. “You keep them.”
“Get some help. Somebody at Brown can point you to the right people.”
“Sure.”
“Or you might try trusting your father to help you. Whatever you decide, I’d change my circle of friends if I were you. You’re young and pretty and probably fairly smart, but you won’t be any of those things if you hang around Billy and his pals.”
“Yeah.” She got out and walked down Circuit Avenue. I wrote down the information from her license and her father’s card before I forgot it. Then I put the vial and syringes in the glove compartment and drove home.
There I put the drug stuff in a paper bag in the fridge, put on a Willie Nelson tape, and poured myself a Rémy Martin. One of my luxuries. No jug brandies for J. W. Jackson. I wear old clothes and my car is fourteen years old, but I drink Rémy Martin, by God! Sometimes, anyway.
Willie sang about Poncho and Lefty and about fishing and growing old and I thought about my day. I realized that I’d liked it. I’d liked nosing around. It felt good. Natural. It had been six years since I’d done it professionally and I’d never planned to do it again, but today I had and it felt pretty good. I ran everything through my mind, turned the tape over, and thought some more while Willie sang. When Willie was through, I went to bed.
I woke early, thinking of Zee. I got up and made four loaves of Betty Crocker white bread and set it to rise. I took scallops out of the freezer to thaw. I was at the A&P when it opened and bought leeks, onions, ice cream, canned peach halves, frozen raspberries, cream, butter (unsalted, of course), and fresh asparagus. When Al’s Package Store opened across the street, I bought a bottle of cherry liqueur and a good Graves.
Home again, I set the raspberries to thaw, then made a cream of refrigerator soup with the leeks, some butter and milk, a potato, and whatever leftover vegetables I could find in the fridge. Green vichyssoise, sort of, with salt and pepper and thyme for seasoning. Then I made a scallops St.-Jacques and flavored it with parsley, sage, no rosemary, and thyme. And basil.
I had a beer and punched down the bread, and after it had risen again put it in the oven. By noon it was finished, and I had eaten nearly half a loaf. There is nothing, simply nothing, better than fresh hot bread and butter. When the bread was cool, I put two loaves in the freezer and then had most of the other half of the open loaf with more beer and some ham and cheese.
Supper was ready. The wine was in the fridge. I’d make the peach melba at the last minute. It was only one o’clock. What efficiency.
I got out my Gazette again. The captain of the Bluefin was named Tim Mello. He lived in Vineyard Haven. I called his number. Nobody home. I decided to find the boat.
Vineyard Haven is where most of the ferries from the mainland come in, much to the annoyance of many business people in Oak Bluffs who wish even more ferries landed there so they could make even more money from day trippers. Vineyard Haven is not particularly islandish or nautical or even quaint. It looks a lot like any other little New England town, but it’s located on the Vineyard so it’s not really like a mainland town. Out on West Chop there are a lot of big houses, for instance, and the harbor has more schooners in it than any harbor I know of. Vineyard Haven is also the traffic jam capital of Martha’s Vineyard.
I got through the traffic jam and eventually found the Bluefin lying at a dock not far from the shipyard. I parked beside a little red M.G. sportscar. Beyond the Bluefin rose the masts of the yachts lying inside the breakwater. The biggest masts belonged to the Shenandoah, the lovely old hermaphrodite brig that cruises the south coast of New England in the summer. Someday I plan to play tourist and take a sail on her myself. But not today.
The Bluefin was sixty-five feet long and equipped with a pulpit, outriggers, and more electronic gear than I imagined existed. She was a beauty, the sort of boat rarely owned by individuals anymore, but by corporations. She had a black hull and teak everything else. Tim Mello, her captain, was a
young fellow, which means younger than me. Most cops are, too. So are a lot of other people, a fact that perplexes me. How did it happen? I remember when almost everybody was older than me.
I asked Mello for permission to board and he waved a hand. He was installing a new loran. Something better than the billion-dollar one that they’d gotten by on before, I supposed.
Mello laughed. “I didn’t buy it, I just run the boat. What can you do for me?”
A jester of my own caliber. “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for et cetera,” I said.
“Okay, what can I do for my country, in this case you?”
I told him that I represented a member of the Martin family and that I wanted to talk about the rescue of Billy Martin.
“I made a full statement to the police. I imagine you can get it. If you’re an insurance agent, you’ll be better off talking with the corporation lawyer.”
“I’m not anything official or unofficial. Billy Martin’s sister asked me to find out anything I can about the accident. I’ve seen the cops, I’ve seen the guys at the boatyard in Edgartown, and I’ve seen the Martins, and now I’m seeing you.”
“Okay,” he said, “fire away. You don’t mind if I keep on working, I hope.”
I didn’t mind.
“I had a party of two,” he said. “They wanted to go bluefishing in the Wasque rip. They came down about eight and we left. I could see a boat coming out of Edgartown as we got closer to Cape Pogue. I knew he’d have to go outside the shallows off the point, so I hooked out a little. I wasn’t really watching the boat, but the people in my party were. They say she just blew up. I saw the flash from the corner of my eye and turned just as the boom got to us. I saw somebody in the water, thrashing around. I went in as close as I dared and got hold of him with a boathook and pulled him aboard. He was pretty singed, and he was yelling about his friend Jim. I circled as close as I could, but I didn’t see anybody else in the water, so I radioed a mayday to the Coast Guard and to the Edgartown harbormaster. Then I got worried about the survivor. Burns and shock. He didn’t look too good. So I radioed for an ambulance to meet us in Oak Bluffs. This baby can do mega-knots, and she did them all on that trip.” He looked up from his work. “That’s about it. Say, can you get a hand under there and fit this nut on that bolt?”
I could and did. “Who else was with you? Who was in the fishing party? I’d like to talk to them, too.”
“Here. Use this wrench to hold the nut while I tighten it from here with the screwdriver. Their name is Sarusa. Nice old couple. Over from New Bedford. Never been boat fishing before. Never got to go this time either, because they had to go back home that same afternoon. They were pretty excited. Rescue at sea and all that. They’re probably telling their grandchildren about it whenever they get the chance.”
We tightened another bolt together. “Who owns this floating palace?” I asked. “I may send them a bill.”
“I’ll pay you with a beer. Fred Sylvia gives me my orders, but Brunner International actually owns it. Business expense. The executives use it to entertain clients. Sometimes the wives and kids get a ride, too. Occasionally we charter. This was one of those times.”
“Did you take the charter?”
“Me? Never! Fred Sylvia calls me and the party shows up and I take them wherever I’m told. In this case I got the call on Saturday for a Monday morning trip. Two days’ advance warning, at least. Sometimes I get less.”
“Where’s headquarters?”
“My checks come from New York, but they’ve got offices all over the world.” He grinned and we admired our work. “How about that beer? The sun is over the yardarm.”
We went below, and he got two Watneys out of a refrigerator bigger than mine in a galley bigger than my kitchen. We sat in chairs designed by someone who actually knew how human bodies are built and what it took to relax them.
“Not bad, eh?” Mello smiled. “Robbie Burns may have had a high opinion of honest poverty, but as for me, I’d rather be rich.”
“Where does the help live?”
“Up forward. Spartan quarters. Merely elegant, not luxurious. I suffer up there as best I can when the bosses are on board, but when the cat’s away the mouse plays out here.”
“Maybe someday you’ll meet a corporate daughter who’ll fall madly in love with you. You’ll get married and become the principal heir to the principal stockholder and all of this will be yours.”
“Yeah,” he said, “good plan.”
“When it happens, will you hire me for your old job?”
“Sure,” he said, “I wouldn’t consider anyone else.”
We drank our Watneys. “I don’t recall ever seeing the Bluefin on the Wasque rips,” I said.
“She’s never been on the Wasque rips. Bluefin is made for tuna, sword, marlin, that sort of thing. But my orders were to go to Wasque, so that’s where we were going. They call me a captain, but I’m only a slave. You’re not the only one to think Wasque’s an odd place to fish in the Bluefin. The guys at the Fireside had a good laugh when I told them about it Saturday night.”
I couldn’t think of anything else to ask him, so I finished my beer, thanked him, and left.
I stopped at the hospital on my way home and saw George. He looked good. “Fish are still in,” I said.
“Save some for me.”
“You’re kidding. I’m getting all I can while I have the chance. I’ve been trying to outfish you for five years, and if they keep you in here long enough I may get enough of a head start that you’ll never catch up. This is my year.”
Susie walked in. She kissed her father, then turned to me. “Hi, J.W. How’s it going?”
Code talk. “It’s going okay. If I achieve any major breakthroughs in my life, you’ll be the first to know.” It was a lie, but not one I had to think about very much. Besides, maybe it wasn’t really a lie because I hadn’t really achieved any breakthroughs. I mean, no real Breakthroughs with a capital B.
I tried to look honest and trustworthy, and she managed a smile. “Please do.” She turned to her father.
Down the hall I stuck my head into Billy’s room. He seemed asleep. No Julie. Maybe she’d taken my advice to seek a better class of companion. Maybe not. I went home and called Boston.
“Well?” I asked Quinn.
“Well, what?”
“Well, what’s the guy’s name?”
“Don’t know. People are being very cagey. About all I’ve got is that whatever’s happening looks like it’s happening next week. Jesus, J.W., I got other work to do, you know. There are seven million stories in the naked city, and I’m not on that one.”
“Okay, okay. Tell me about Brunner International.”
“What?”
“Brunner International. What is it? Who runs it? Where is it? Stuff like that. Everything you can tell me.”
“Why don’t you buy a Wall Street Journal, you cheap bastard?”
“I’m spending all my money on my telephone bill.”
I rang off and got out my Gazette again. It was beginning to look pretty worn. I cut out the stories about the accident so I could carry them around with me. There was no telling what I might need “to know next. By this time, I knew, Sam Spade would have solved my problem, but Sam was not around. He never is when you need him.
— 8 —
According to the Gazette, the passengers on the Bluefin were Manuel and Alice Sarusa of New Bedford. When I phoned her, Mrs. Sarusa was delighted to tell me of her adventure. I finally managed to ask her how they happened to charter the Bluefin and why they decided to go to Wasque when they could have gone a lot farther for their money.
“Well,” said Mrs. Sarusa, “Manny used to fish off the beach at Wasque when he was a young fellow, and he always envied those men out there in the boats, so when Freddy Sylvia—that’s Manny’s cousin who lives there in Vineyard Haven, you probably heard of him, he works for Brunner, the big outfit, you know?—so anyway, when Fredd
y charters the company boat for us on our fiftieth, naturally Manny wanted to finally go fishing off Wasque!”
“Brunner International?”
“That’s the one. Freddy’s a very big man there, but with us, well, he’s just folks. You know what I mean? Just family. He set the whole thing up for us. Got us the boat, bought us tickets to the island, arranged everything. A real gentleman of the old school, like I told Manny . . .”
By the time I was able to hang up, the phone company owned my soul. I looked up Fred Sylvia’s number. It wasn’t there. There were a couple of dozen Sylvias, but no Fred in Vineyard Haven. I wasn’t discouraged; even some natives have unlisted numbers.
I had a beer and put a bottle of vodka in the freezer. Icy martinis on order if demanded by my guest-to-be. I considered Fred Sylvia, cousin of Manny Sarusa. A gentleman of the old school, husband of Maria who liked young men, father of Danny who’d gotten Billy Martin hooked on drugs before taking the cure himself. I wondered if Tim Mello, youthful captain of the Bluefin, was Maria’s type. If so, maybe he didn’t need to wait for a corporation daughter to fall for him.
I went out to the garden, yanked out a few weeds, pulled up a radish to see if they were big enough for salads (they weren’t), and turned on the water. Beyond the garden I had a good view of Nantucket Sound. It was filled with sail. I wanted a sailboat and was trying to save for one, but couldn’t afford it yet. Or maybe I could, but just hadn’t gotten around to buying it yet. I hadn’t gotten around to doing very much of anything for the past five years. I imagined Zee and me in a sailboat out there. We didn’t look bad. The sky was blue, the wind was fifteen knots on the beam, the air warm, the sun shining. The way sailing ought to be. If you’re going to imagine something, imagine something good. I hardly knew her, but Zee seemed to be invading my fantasies.
Back inside, I put the asparagus in a dish. If you want good asparagus, the best way to cook it is in a 300-degree oven: you rinse it, trim it, salt and pepper it and dot it with butter, cover it with foil, and bake it for half an hour. When I got it covered, I put it in the fridge, got another beer, and phoned Quinn.