Vulgar Boatman

by William G. Tapply

  “Why? Why leave and then come back?”

  I shrugged. “I have no idea.”

  Horowitz turned to Hector. “Okay. What then?”

  “I say this already. I’m sorry I do a bad job. A little later, maybe eight-thirty, nine, two guys come. Ask to see you, Mr. Coyne. I say you not home. They ask is the boy there yet. I tell them, yes, he’s there waiting. They say they with him, they wanna wait, too, they all friends, they gonna have meeting with you. What do I know? I call up there, tell the boy they coming up.”

  “What did Buddy say?” I said.

  “He say, who are they? I tell him the names.”

  “Eddy Curry?” I said.

  “That one of ’em, yeah. Other one Tom Baron. I remember that.”

  “You’re sure of those names,” said Horowitz. “Curry and Baron?”

  Hector nodded vigorously and grinned. “Sure. One of ’em got the same name as the man running for governor, right?”

  Horowitz nodded.

  “What did these two look like?” I said.

  “One tall, skinny. Other big guy. Not so tall. Fat.”

  “Tom Baron’s tall and thin,” I told Horowitz. “Curry’s fat.”

  “We’re going to take Hector to the station to look at some pictures,” said Horowitz.

  “Can I ask a question?” I said.

  Horowitz blew a bubble. “You’ve been asking questions right along. Go ahead.”

  “Did you see Buddy leave the other night?” I said to Hector.

  He looked blank. “I send him up there, remember? I don’t see him come down.”

  “He could’ve taken the elevator to the parking garage in the basement,” I said to Horowitz.

  “What about Curry and Baron? Did you see them leave tonight?”

  Hector shook his head. “I tell you that. No. Maybe they use the elevator, too.”

  “Okay,” said Horowitz. “You go back and wait. We’ll be with you pretty soon.”

  Hector stood up and hesitated. He looked at me. “I’m sorry if I fuck up, Mr. Coyne. I’m trying to do a good job.”

  I waved at him. “Forget it.”

  After Hector left, a uniformed policeman approached Horowitz. “Sir?” he said.

  “What is it?”

  “We talked with all the neighbors. On this floor, and five and seven, too. Nobody heard nothing.”

  Horowitz shrugged. “They never do.” He nodded to the cop, who walked away. Then he turned to me. “Well? What do you think?”

  “I think,” I said, “that if Tom Baron and Eddy Curry came here to kill Buddy, they wouldn’t have walked in the front door, given Hector their correct names, let him see them, and then done it here.”

  “Supposing they didn’t intend to kill him. Say they figured they’d just talk to him, and then when he didn’t cooperate they tried to torture him a little. To get information. Whatever it was he went after. It backfired. They ran out when they realized what happened.”

  I shook my head. “Tom Baron wouldn’t kill his own son. Not Tom. Curry’s kind of a bag of shit sometimes, but he’s not a murderer.”

  “What about you, Mr. Coyne?”

  “I’m not a murderer, either.”

  “Nah,” he said. “ ’Course not.” He glanced at his wrist-watch. “You got somebody you can stay with tonight? The boys’ll be here a while, vacuuming and dusting and all. It’s pretty late. You’re just gonna be in the way.”

  “I’ve got to use the phone,” I said. “Is that okay?”

  “Depends.”

  “On what?”

  “Who you’re gonna call.”

  “Tom and Joanie Baron. Buddy’s parents.”

  Horowitz shook his head. “No. Don’t.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  He sighed and popped his gum inside his mouth. “We’re better at that sort of thing than you are.”

  “Come off it, Horowitz.”

  “Okay. I want to handle it my way. And I’m in charge of this case. That good enough for you?”

  “I owe it to Tom to tell him.”

  “Tom Baron is a name in this case.”

  “Tom didn’t kill his own son, for Christ’s sake. You don’t believe that, do you?”

  He shrugged. “I believe very little, one way or the other. I either know something, or I don’t know. Belief has nothing to do with it.” He put a hand on my shoulder. “Look. Call them tomorrow. I promise we’ll handle it properly.”

  I nodded. “Not that it’s something I exactly look forward to.”

  “Don’t talk to anybody about what happened here, Mr. Coyne. That’s an order.”

  “I hear you,” I said.

  Sylvie was still out of town, but I had a key to her Beacon Street condo. I told Horowitz where I’d be and promised to show up at the state police headquarters the next morning to give a deposition.

  I spent a restless night alone in Sylvie’s big bed watching old black-and-white movies on a UHF channel. The next morning I called Doc Adams to cancel our bluefishing expedition. Then I taxied over to Horowitz’s office.

  Horowitz was still jawing on his gum. I wondered if it was the same piece he’d been worrying the previous night.

  He had me talk into a tape recorder, telling everything I knew about Buddy Baron and my involvement with him and Tom. He prodded me with gentle questions, and it took nearly two hours. When I was done, he snapped off the recorder and said, “Well, that’s about it for now.”

  “What about Curry and Baron?” I said.

  Horowitz shook his head. “It wasn’t them. Your night man, there, we showed him photos, he was positive it wasn’t them. He didn’t find anything that struck his fancy in the mug book. We got a couple sketches. The guy was pretty hazy, though.”

  “Can I see the sketches?”

  Horowitz popped a bubble inside his mouth. “I was going to show them to you, you give me a chance.”

  Horowitz was right. The sketches could have been anybody. One had a fatter face than the other. The hairlines were different. I handed the sketches back and shrugged. He nodded.

  “You want to keep an eye out, you know?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “These two guys, they went to your place, right?”

  “So?”

  “Just take care. We never did find any key. Assume they’ve got it. Better change your lock. We’re circulating the sketches, of course, but as you saw they’re pretty nondescript.”

  “You think they might…?”

  He shrugged. “Can’t tell what’s going to happen, Mr. Coyne.”

  “What about Buddy’s parents?”

  “They’ve been told. They’re coming to ID the body this morning. We’ll be holding it for a while, get an autopsy. And I talked to the chief at Windsor Harbor. Harry Cusick. He and I will be coordinating. He’s got that girl, I’ve got this boy, and we figure two kids from a dinky place like Windsor Harbor get themselves killed—both strangled, actually—there’s a connection. This does not take a lot of brains. So we’re working together. What they call good, professional police work. We’ll see where it goes. Maybe the Feds’ll get involved.” He stood up. “Anyway, Mr. Coyne, we appreciate your help. If you think of something, be sure to let me know.”

  He escorted me out of his office. We paused in the doorway to shake hands. “You can go home now, if you want,” he said. “We’re all done there.”

  “Find anything?”

  “I don’t know yet. Forensics’ll put together a report. There’ll be some things to check out. May need your help on that later. I’ll let you know.”

  Noontime on a crisp September Saturday and I had nowhere to go and nothing to do. I wandered up Commonwealth toward the Common, aiming more or less for Sylvie’s place. Too late to change my mind about bluefishing with Doc. Too early to hit a bar. The Red Sox were playing out another futile season in Cleveland, so Fenway Park would be locked up. The Old Howard had been razed years before.

  A hug from Sylvie wou
ld have helped. But she was still in New York.

  With a little mental shrug, I cut over to Copley Square. Might as well hit the office for a few hours. I could write a few letters and clean up my perpetually tardy paperwork. Julie would be proud of me when she came in on Monday.

  I picked up a ham and Swiss on pumpernickel and a can of Pepsi at the deli and took them up to the office. I spread everything out on Julie’s desk and ate while I listened to the tape from the answering machine.

  Frank Paradise had called. “I want my boat” was the entire, plaintive message.

  Two attorneys called, both asking me to get back to them on Monday regarding cases of mutual interest.

  I perked up my ears at the next message. It was Eddy Curry. “Tried your house,” he said. “No answer there, either. Appreciate it if you’d call Monday.” He left a phone number that I recognized as a Boston exchange.

  The last call intrigued me even more. The caller identified herself as Ingrid Larsen. I remembered the green eyes and the blond hair and the way her knit dress had clung to her curves when I followed her through the corridors of her school. “I wasn’t very civil with you the other day,” she said, “and I wanted to apologize.” She sounded breathless, in a hurry, as people often do when leaving messages on a tape. “I am considerably less hostile away from the office, honest. Like in elegant restaurants.” She cleared her throat. “Anyway, just to say sorry.”

  She left no number, no request for me to return her call. I thought about looking it up and calling her anyway. But I didn’t. I didn’t need an adventure just then. And I wanted to be witty and charming the next time I saw Ingrid Larsen, qualities of which I felt utterly devoid at that moment.

  I downed the warm dregs of my Pepsi and went into my office. On my desk were the notes I had made for the Fallon case. Just what I needed. A writing exercise in legalese.

  I roughed out a draft of the agreement between Steve and Cathy Fallon and Eleanor Phelps regarding their respective obligations toward their as yet hypothetical child. When I finished, I went back over it, adding a few whereases and whereupons until it sounded right. Then I rolled a piece of paper into my typewriter and put it into a form that Julie would be able to read.

  It was nearly five o’clock when I finished. I propped my feet up on my desk and smoked a Winston. Then I smoked another one. Then I did what I had known all day I had to do.

  I called Tom Baron.

  An unfamiliar female voice answered the phone. “The Baron residence,” it said warily.

  “I’d like to speak to Mr. Baron.”

  “May I ask who this is?”

  “May I,” I retorted cleverly, “ask who you are?”

  She cleared her throat. “I happen to be a neighbor, and Mr. and Mrs. Baron—something has happened. They can’t come to the phone.” She paused, then added, “I’m sorry.”

  “My name is Coyne,” I said. “I’m the family’s attorney.”

  “Oh, well. Yes. Please hang on. I’ll see if Mr. Baron can speak with you.”

  I heard voices in the background, and a minute or so later Tom came on the line. “Brady, Jesus Christ.”

  “I’m real sorry, Tom.”

  “This is unbelievable, Brady. It’s…”

  “Tom…”

  “Nobody is blaming you. I had to go identify his body.”

  “How’s Joanie?”

  “The doctor gave her some pills. She’s sleeping. He wanted to give me some, too. I told him I needed to feel it. Joanie, I don’t know what’s going to happen to her. Hell, I don’t know what’s going to happen to me. This is—it’s a nightmare. It’s worse than any nightmare. A nightmare, you know you’re going to wake up.”

  “I should’ve brought him in when I had him,” I said. “Tom, he was a good kid. I liked him.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “He was a good kid. Some of us, we never gave him credit. He was—we thought of him as a pain in the ass. He screwed things up for us. I mean, you love your kid. But you wish he was different. You wish you could be proud of him, instead of wishing he wasn’t around. Not Joanie, though. She always accepted him. No matter what he did, she was his mother, by Jesus, and she was right there. Behind him. Me, all I ever did was try to fix things up. Fix him. Make him the way I wanted him to be. Make him so I wouldn’t have to think about him.” I heard Tom sigh deeply. “Brady,” he said softly, “you should have seen him.”

  “I did, Tom.”

  “Christ! I forgot. God, that must have been awful, walking in like that, seeing him there.”

  Here was Tom Baron, his son having been murdered, trying to make me feel better. It revealed more sensitivity than I had thought him capable of. “Tom,” I said, “if there’s anything I can do.”

  “One thing.”

  “Name it.”

  “Don’t quit on me now.”

  “I don’t intend to.”

  “No, listen. I mean, I want whoever did this. To Buddy and to Alice. I’m not talking about the campaign here. Hell, I don’t know what I’m going to do about that. I just don’t want this to get lost in some police file.”

  “I already decided that,” I said. “I’m involved. Somebody kills somebody in my house, it’s personal with me. I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I’m in this. All the way.” I hesitated, then added, “Tom, listen. The guys who did this. There were two of them. They used your name. You and Curry. They gave the watchman at my place your names to get into my apartment.”

  “That explains something.”

  “What’s that?”

  “That policeman—Horowitz—he grilled Eddy. Where were we last night. Times, names, corroborating witnesses, all that. Probably would’ve liked to grill me, too. Guess he figured I just might be feeling some emotions, just hearing my son’s been murdered and all. Hell. I was giving the speech in Weymouth last night. About five hundred witnesses. Place was packed. Eddy was with me. Horowitz wouldn’t say what he was after, according to Eddy.”

  “Well, that’s what it was. The watchman looked at your pictures. Told him it wasn’t you guys.”

  Tom cleared his throat. I waited for him. Finally he said, “Brady, I don’t want you to take this the wrong way.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Eddy Curry’s been great. With us all day. Handling things. Making arrangements. But he told me I’d have to be thinking about something.”

  “The campaign.”

  “Yes. Did I want to quit. I think some of the party boys are getting nervous. All the headlines. Eddy didn’t actually say that. He just asked me. I told him I’d have to think about it. Talk to Joanie, when she’s able to listen. What do you think?”

  “Aw, Tom. That’s a tough one for me.”

  “It’s a helluva lot tougher for me. I need a rational mind. Someone with perspective. Not Eddy. Not Joanie. Shit, especially not me. I can’t stop thinking. If I wasn’t in this goddamn campaign…”

  “I can’t see how the campaign has anything to do with what happened to Buddy.”

  I heard him sigh. “That’s what I mean. Perspective. I keep telling myself the same thing. But no matter what I think, it doesn’t change how I feel.”

  “You feel guilty.”

  “Hell, yeah. I look back. A kid’s whole lifetime. Eighteen years. Where did I fuck up? What did I do, that if I did it differently Buddy’d still be alive? I mean, it’s hard not to blame yourself when your kid gets involved in drugs, right? And if he wasn’t involved in drugs…”

  “Cut it out, Tom. This isn’t helping.”

  “Actually, it is helping. It makes me hurt. I feel like I ought to hurt. I deserve to hurt. When I hurt, it makes me feel better.”

  “Well, Jesus…”

  “Life’s got to go on, right? Isn’t that what everyone says? What’s done is done. So you’ve just got to push on.”

  “The campaign, you mean.”

  “The campaign. Brady. What the hell am I going to do?”

  “You already said it. Push on.”


  Tom paused for a long time. “I need you, pal.”

  “I already told you—”

  “No. I mean, I need you to talk to. You’re the only goddamn person I can talk to that I can trust. Listen. Is there any sense in me quitting the campaign? Tell me the truth.”

  “I don’t see any sense to it. There’s nothing to be gained.”

  “Right. Yeah. Okay. Then how do I handle it?”

  “What?”

  “You know. Buddy. I mean, if I do decide to keep on with the campaign, there’s going to be questions. Legitimate questions. People are going to want to know. The press, the public. There’ll be stuff in the papers. About Buddy and me and the family. Buddy’s problems.”

  “And that,” I said, “is Eddy Curry’s bailiwick. Not mine, if that’s what you’re suggesting. You want to continue your campaign—well, I guess you ought to. I’m your friend. I’ll continue to be your friend. And your attorney. But—”

  “I wish the hell you’d come aboard, Brady.”

  “I’ve told you a million times—”

  “That was then. This is now.”

  “I don’t think so, Tom.”

  “Will you think about it?”

  “Sure. I’ll think about it. What I was going to say was this. I talked with Buddy a lot the other night. I am absolutely convinced he committed no crime. For all I know, he was trying to solve one. I’ve got a feeling that whoever killed him thought he knew something about Alice’s murder. It’s for damn sure that he didn’t kill Alice. All of this will make its way into the papers. Hell, Tom. Buddy was a victim here. I’ll bet he turns out to be a hero. I don’t know much about politics. But if you’re worried about this hurting your campaign I think you can relax.”

  “I never said I was worried about that.”

  “Fine.”

  “I haven’t been able to put my mind to it. But, yeah, okay. That’s good.”

  “Curry knows more about it than I do, though.”

  “Brady, I need a legal adviser.”

  “We’ve been through that.”

  “You said you’d think about it.”