I found a pack of cigarettes and lit one. Then I went to the phone and dialed the police emergency number. Miraculously, I was not instructed to hold, please, and I was able to instruct the woman on the other end how to find my apartment. I made her understand that it contained a corpse, that it was I who had created this corpse, and that I would wait with it for the police to arrive.
She made me repeat it all, which I did. Then I told her to tell State Police Detective Horowitz what had happened, that he would want to know.
I went back to the kitchen, stepping carefully over Mr. Baron’s body, and took down a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. I poured two tumblers one-third full. I took one over to Sylvie and handed it to her. She accepted it and looked up at me.
“Do you want to toast something?” she said, trying to smile and not making it.
“To life,” I said.
We touched glasses. I took a large swig into my mouth, let it roll around for a moment, and swallowed it. Tears came briefly to my eyes. Sylvie took a big gulp, coughed, then sipped again.
“This is better,” she said.
The police got there in ten or fifteen minutes. Their arrival was heralded by a call from Hector. He said into the intercom, “More problems, huh, Mr. Coyne?”
“You sure you didn’t see anything, Hector?”
“I see nothing. I’m sorry again, Mr. Coyne. The police, they are on their way, now. They wanna talk to me again, probably, huh?”
“Probably,” I said.
A minute later there was a knock at the door. “It’s open,” I yelled.
Horowitz was accompanied by eight or ten cops, two in plainclothes, the rest uniformed, some city, some state. He glanced briefly at the dead body on the kitchen floor, then came over to where Sylvie and I were sitting. He looked down at us and smiled.
“What’s so funny?” I said.
“Hey, are you okay there?” he said.
I touched my finger to my nose. “It’s busted,” I said. “Again. And it’s not funny.”
“It looks funny,” said Horowitz. He wore the same blue bow tie he had on the other time he had been in my apartment. He still shifted a wad of bubble gum from one cheek to the other as he talked. “We’ll get it looked at if you want. We ought to talk first, though.” He turned his attention to Sylvia. “How about you, Miss? Are you injured?”
“I am all right,” she whispered.
Horowitz cocked his head and frowned at her. “You sure?”
“Yes.”
He shrugged. “Okay, then. What I’m going to do, if you don’t mind, I’m going to separate you two. Nothing personal here, but we do want to hear the stories separately. Get all the details that way. Understand?”
I nodded. Sylvie said, “Yes.”
Horowitz called a young black cop wearing a freshly pressed suit, which I estimated cost him a week’s pay. He came over. “Interrogate the lady, All, will you?”
“Certainly,” said the cop.
“Come on,” said Horowitz to me. “Let’s move over there.”
We went to the other side of the room and sat in a pair of soft chairs. “Okay, Mr. Coyne,” said Horowitz. “Let’s have it.”
“These two clowns were waiting here when the lady and I got home. Must’ve been around eleven.”
“Two?”
“Yes. That one—” I waved in the direction of the dead man “—and a fat guy. He got away. They called themselves Mr. Baron—he’s the skinny one over there—and Mr. Curry.”
“You say they were here when you got home. Inside, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“How’d they get in?”
“A key. I guess they got the key that Buddy used.”
“The boy who was killed here, you mean. The Baron boy.”
“Right. They’re the ones who killed him.”
Horowitz frowned. “So you never did change that lock.”
“I guess I forgot.”
“Describe the fat one for me. The one who called himself Mr. Curry, who got away. What’d he look like?”
I did the best I could, including the faint traces of a Southern drawl and the way he called me “suh.” When I finished, Horowitz excused himself. He went over and talked to one of the uniformed policemen. As he talked, he kept glancing back at me, as if he was worried I might try to escape. The policeman went to the telephone. Horowitz came back and sat beside me.
“We’re getting a description out. See what we come up with. It seems to match the one your night man gave us of the guy who was here that other time. He’s on his way up. See if he can ID that sack of bones on your kitchen floor.” He blew a bubble. “Okay, now, Mr. Coyne. Tell me how the shooting went.”
So I did, as well as I could reconstruct it. Horowitz listened carefully, interrupting frequently for clarification and detail. When I finished, he said, “So what were they after?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“No clue?”
“Maybe a clue,” I said. So I told him what Christie Ayers had told me about stealing Alice Sylvester’s school records and giving them to Buddy.
“You think these two creeps would kill a boy over a dead girl’s school records?” said Horowitz.
“I have no idea. It’s the only clue I have.”
“Why would they think you’d have it, assuming it’s what they were after?”
“There was this article in the paper this morning…”
Horowitz grinned. “I read it. You think all those ‘no comments’ would do it?”
“Maybe. Combine that with the fact that Buddy came here after he got those records from Christie. Logical to assume they were here. Or that Buddy had told me about them.”
Horowitz looked doubtful. “Maybe,” he said. He blew an enormous bubble, which he pinched between his thumb and forefinger to break. It reminded me of how Mr. Curry had pinched Sylvie’s nipple, and the look of pain on her face.
Horowitz took his gum from his mouth, rolled it in his fingers, and looked around. His eyes lit on an ashtray, which was mounded with dead cigarettes butts. He dropped the gum on top. “Far as they know,” he finally said, gazing across the room through my glass doors at the view of the night sky, “whatever they were after, you still got. Right?”
“Just Mr. Curry,” I said. “Not Mr. Baron.”
He glanced over at Mr. Baron’s body. “Right. By ‘they,’ I mean that fat guy who got away plus the others. Bound to be others.”
“I don’t have anything,” I said.
“But they think you do.”
“Look—”
Horowitz held up his hand. “Here’s how I figure it, Mr. Coyne. These bad guys, they think Buddy Baron got ahold of something incriminating. Something to do with the murder of the girl in Windsor Harbor. He came here, then he left to get it, whatever it is, and then he came back here. So they followed him here. Now, maybe all he got was this girl’s school records, and maybe they don’t mean diddly squat as far as her murder was concerned. But they must’ve meant something to the boy, and it’s pretty obvious he wanted to share them with you, since he came back here.” Horowitz looked puzzled. “What I don’t understand is, why would he hide them? He thought it was his own father coming up the stairs.”
“I guess I was the one he trusted.”
“So when he hears these guys at the door, he hides whatever he’s got, if, indeed, it’s these records.”
“I think it is. The way they were asking me for them. They certainly believed that my briefcase might contain what they wanted.”
“Okay,” said Horowitz. He fumbled in his pockets and came out with a fresh chew of Bazooka gum. I took the opportunity to light a cigarette. “These two guys,” he continued, “they may not know what they’re after. But they know they want it. They’re willing to torture the kid to get it. Only he dies before he tells them.”
“Right. That’s what the fat guy said.”
“And they know you’re snooping around, Mr. Coyne. No offense, but th
at’s how it looks, if you think about it. Maybe they knew you were meeting that girl tonight. And—”
“Damn!” I said, punching my palm.
“What?” said Horowitz.
“Christie. She could be in trouble. Stupid of me.”
Horowitz nodded. “Tell you what. I’ll call Harry Cusick, tell him to keep a quiet eye on her. From what you’ve said, I can’t see as the bad guys would have any reason to harm her. But you’re right. Better to be safe.”
“Thanks,” I said.
Horowitz proved to be a man of his word. He went to my phone and punched out a number. He spoke into it for a couple minutes. I saw him nod and gesture with his hand as he talked. After he hung up he came back and sat beside me.
“All set,” he said. “I talked with Cusick himself. Last thing he needs is another tragedy with a young kid in his town.” He sighed. “Okay. Back to these bad guys. I figure hitting on you is worth a try for them. Nothing to lose. They would have killed you, probably, no skin off their nose. What’s one more murder, more or less? Only now, the way I see it, this fat one, he’s more convinced than ever that you’ve got what he’s after.”
“So?” I said.
“So,” he said, glancing across the room to where Sylvie was talking with the black policeman in the expensive suit. “So you want to catch the bastard?”
I thought of Buddy Baron’s face when I found him tied to my kitchen chair. I thought of the way Mr. Curry had squeezed Sylvie’s nipple and lifted up her dress. “Hell, yes,” I said. “I want to catch the bastard. What do you want me to do?”
At that moment, a policeman came in with Hector. Horowitz excused himself and got up to meet him.
He spoke to Hector for a moment. The young man nodded nervously, licking his lips and looking wide-eyed around the room. Then they went over to where the dead man lay sprawled on my kitchen floor. Hector stared down, looked up at Horowitz, nodded vigorously, and turned his face away. I saw Horowitz jut his jaw at Hector, who shook his head and continued to look away. Horowitz grabbed Hector’s chin and jerked his face sideways, forcing him to look down again. Hector nodded quickly and tried to move his head. Horowitz let go of his chin. Then he strode over to me.
“He says it’s the same guy who was here the other time. Which is what we figured.”
“So,” I repeated, “what do you want me to do?”
“Nothing, really. Just don’t let on that you don’t have this whatever it is. I know you talk to the newspapers, and after this there’ll be more stories, and your boss, there, the real Mr. Tom Baron, he gets a lot of air time. It wouldn’t hurt if you managed to say ‘no comment’ if you get asked what these guys were after, or if you have it.”
“You want me to be a decoy, you mean.”
He rolled his gum back and forth a few times. “A decoy,” he said. “Nah. Not really. All I’m saying, Mr. Coyne, is, if you get some more unusual visitors, or strange phone calls, maybe you ought to let us know. Of course, it would help us if you did get these visitors or calls. And if you can manage to act just a little mysterious whenever somebody asks you what this was all about, so much the better.”
“You want them to come after me again?”
Horowitz blew a bubble. “They might just do that, whether I want them to or not.”
“And you’re going to have a policeman or two nearby, right?”
Horowitz nodded. “I think you need protection.”
“Cops at the door.”
“We’ll keep an eye on the place.”
I shrugged. “And Sylvie.”
Horowitz nodded. “Of course.”
“Because she shouldn’t even be involved in this. It’s because of me—”
He put his hand on my arm. “Don’t worry. We’ll take good care of her.”
“You better,” I said.
Thirteen
AFTER A SHORT TIME, the black detective brought Sylvie back to the sofa. He steered her politely with his hand just touching her elbow. She walked stiffly. When she sat beside me, I put my arm around her. We drank more Jack Daniel’s and watched the police scurry busily around in my apartment.
The medical examiner arrived. He knelt beside the body of Mr. Baron for a few minutes, then stood up and nodded to a young woman, who proceeded to take some Polaroid flash pictures of it. Then she and the M.E. departed, and two men wearing white jackets rolled Mr. Baron into a black plastic body bag and lugged him away.
Horowitz came back to us and said, “If you don’t mind, Mr. Coyne, we’re going to have to ask you to find someplace else to stay tonight.”
“We can go to Miss Szabo’s place,” I said. Sylvie looked up at me and nodded.
“I’m going to have to take your gun. You’ll get it back. Assuming it’s properly licensed.”
“It is.”
“And we’d appreciate it if you and the lady would come to the station tomorrow and look through the mug book. See if we can figure out who your Mr. Curry is.”
“Sure.”
“You want me to drive you?”
“I can drive,” I said. “No problem.”
He frowned at me. “You ought to get that beak of yours looked at.”
“Not much they can do for a broken nose.”
“Might need a few stitches.”
I touched my nose gingerly. “I’m afraid of needles.”
Sylvie wrapped my flannel bathrobe around herself and we went down the elevator to my car. She leaned against me, and I kept one arm around her shoulders. She scuffed heir feet a little as she walked. She stumbled once. I didn’t know whether it was from the shock of events or the Jack Daniel’s she had consumed.
She huddled against the door of my car, her legs tucked up underneath her and her arms folded tightly across her chest. She stared out the window on her side as I negotiated the largely empty Boston streets that took us from my place on the waterfront to her condo on Beacon Street.
“You okay?” I said.
“I am okay,” she said, her voice just a whisper.
“Do you want to talk about it? It might help to talk about it.”
“I talked with the policeman. He was very nice. Now I do not want to think about it.”
I shrugged. “Okay.”
We were passing by the Common on Boylston Street when Sylvie said, “Stop the car, please.”
“Why…?”
But I heard her gag, so I braked quickly and reached across her to unlatch the door. Just in the nick of time.
I went around to her side and helped her get out. I held her while she purged herself of mussels, monkfish, Jack Daniel’s, and ugly memories, right on the sidewalk. A pair of young men strolled by, arm in arm, and they whispered and giggled and turned around to watch Sylvie puke.
“Go bugger each other,” I yelled at them.
They seemed to think this was an enormously witty thing for me to say. One of them shouted back at me, equally cleverly. “Fuck you, Charlie.”
After a few minutes, Sylvie said, “I am better now.” I gave her my handkerchief and she wiped her face with it. Then we got back into the car.
I found a slot on Beacon Street only two blocks from Sylvie’s place. I parked and we walked up. Sylvie walked better. She said she was feeling fine.
It was about three in the morning. A megadose of adrenaline was zipping through my veins. I felt like a speed freak who had just shot up. I felt as if I would never sleep again. I sat in Sylvie’s living room sucking at a bottle of Molson’s ale and smoking a cigarette while she went into the bathroom. I heard the shower go on. I listened to it run while I finished my Winston. I drained the bottle of ale. The shower was still running. I got up and went to the bathroom. I opened the door and was greeted by a cloud of steam. I shucked off my clothes and tapped lightly on the opaque glass door of the shower stall.
“I need someone to scrub my back,” I said.
“I have done that before.”
I stepped in. Sylvie was slick as a seal. Her blond ha
ir was pasted to her head and face. I moved it away from her mouth and kissed her. She held herself rigid. Then she quivered and moved away from me.
“Where’s the soap?” I said.
“Turn around,” she said.
I turned and she lathered my back. Then she put the soap into my hand. “Now do me,” she said.
She turned her back to me. Her shoulders were hunched forward, her head bowed. I moved the soap in circles on her smooth back and down around her hips. She arched backwards toward me. “That feels good,” she murmured.
I moved closer to her. Carefully, slowly, I lathered her throat and shoulders, standing close against her. One of her hands moved behind her and touched my hip, urging me closer. I moved the soap around her breasts. Her nipples hardened, and I heard her murmur something in her throat. I lathered her stomach. Her hand came down to touch mine, to urge it downwards.
She turned to face me, lifting her arms and offering her mouth. “You taste soapy,” I said.
She pressed herself against me and laughed.
“What’s funny?” I said.
“Your nose. And your eyes. They are both black. You look like a raccoon. Or a robber.”
I kissed her again, and somewhere in her throat she said, “Oh,” and she didn’t laugh, and a moment later she said, “Oh, yes,” quite distinctly, and the steamy water cascaded over us, washing away the evil of the evening, and Sylvie and I shuddered together. She clung to me that way for a long time, with her knees locked up around my hips and her mouth against the side of my neck.
Later we dried each other with big towels. We powdered each other’s body and walked hand in hand to Sylvie’s big bed. We held each other and we slept.
The next morning Sylvie and I went to the police station.
“You’re a sight and a half,” observed Horowitz.
I ruefully touched the Band-Aid Sylvie had stuck onto the bridge of my nose. “It’s a bit tender,” I said nasally.
Horowitz gave us big albums full of portraits of criminals. We pored over them for nearly two hours. I didn’t find a single picture that looked like the fat man who called himself Mr. Curry.
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