Vulgar Boatman

by William G. Tapply

  “I want to ask you about crack,” I said.

  “Why me?”

  “Last time we talked, I got the impression that you knew what was going on in this community. If you work at a drug hotline, you must be pretty concerned about it. And I’ve been led to believe that there’s a problem here.”

  “Two kids dead, I guess we’ve got a problem. Though neither Buddy nor Alice OD’d.”

  “I think drugs are at the center of it, though.”

  He nodded. “I’d say you’re probably right.”

  “What can you tell me?”

  Pritchard rolled his shoulders, as if they were stiff from playing at the machine. “I volunteer at this hotline,” he said. “Five nights a week. Sometimes I’m there all day Sunday. I figure I owe something to somebody. I had a bad problem once, and I called this place. I had a shotgun between my knees, and I was looking down the double barrels, and I called this place so there’d be somebody to listen when I pushed on the trigger with my toe. I had been high, and then I crashed, and I didn’t have any money for more coke, and I couldn’t stand it. And damned if the guy on the other end of the phone didn’t talk me out of it. He came and got me and persuaded me to enroll in a program. And I climbed out of it. Similar to what happened to Buddy. So now, I figure there’ll be a kid sometime with a gun in his mouth who’ll call me.” He shrugged. “I do it because it makes me feel good. It also makes me feel shitty. At least, so far nobody has made me listen to a gun going off.”

  “Lots of problems out there, huh?”

  He nodded. “Even a small town like this. Bad problems. Especially lately.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Crack, like you thought. Somebody’s giving it away.”

  “Giving it away? Free, you mean?”

  “Free,” he repeated. “So far, free.”

  “To get kids hooked.”

  “Right. And it’s damn effective. You understand about crack?”

  “Very little.”

  “It’s ninety, ninety-five percent pure cocaine, okay? Comes in these little hunks. They sell them in glass vials. When they smuggle them, they sometimes disguise them as firecrackers. Down in New York you can get a vial for ten bucks. Up here it’ll go for twenty, twenty-five. Supply and demand, I suppose. Lots of competition in the Big Apple. So far around Boston the market is more closely controlled. Anyhow, you take one of these little hunks of coke and you put it into your water pipe and you light it and suck it into your lungs, and in about ten seconds—I’m not exaggerating, here—it hits your brain. The high is intense as hell. They say it’s like nothing else. A million times better—if that’s the word for it—than when you snort the stuff. It lasts only about ten minutes. Then comes the crash. And that’s a million times worse. The kids tell me, they say, as soon as you crash you feel like you’ve absolutely got to have another hit. It’s virtually instant addiction. That’s why it’s good business for these scumbags to give it away.”

  “I’ve got a question.”

  He peered at me with his eyebrows raised.

  “Who?” I said. “Who’s giving this stuff to the kids?”

  “I don’t know. If I knew, I’d have told the police. Chief Cusick keeps asking me what I hear. Hell, I’d tell him in a minute. I want it stopped as much as he does. But the kids won’t say. They absolutely will not say where they’re getting the stuff. I ask them straight out. I have no problem asking them. But, hey. The stuff is free, right? You don’t rat on Santa Claus.”

  “Santa might kill them if they did,” I said.

  Pritchard shrugged. “There’s that, too.”

  “But these kids know they’ve got a problem.”

  “Mainly, I hear from them because their problem is they don’t have any more crack to smoke. They get more, their problem’s solved.”

  “Pretty soon, though, they’re going to have to buy it.”

  “Oh, absolutely. That’s the scheme. See, I figure Windsor Harbor is like a trial market. You know, the way McDonald’s might introduce spareribs or tofu sandwiches or something. They do their demographics and sell the new thing in a few stores, see how the folks take to it, try to project their profits. Windsor Harbor’s like that. The new product is crack. If it looks like it’s going to be a winner here, then the big boys’ll move in. First here, then the whole North Shore. Crack, they say, is three times as profitable as snow. Foolproof to prepare, no special equipment needed.” He shrugged. “Real bad news, crack.”

  I lit a cigarette and looked around for an ashtray. Pritchard opened a drawer in his desk and took one out. It was square glass with the logo of a computer company on it. “So how do you figure Alice Sylvester?” I said.

  “Alice Sylvester got herself hooked on crack. I don’t know, maybe she threatened to go to the cops. Whatever. They killed her. Object lesson, I suppose.”

  “Object lesson?”

  “Sure. This is what happens if you even threaten to tell anybody where you’re getting your crack. You get cut off. And then you get strangled to death. Only way to explain it.”

  “And that’s why the kids are so close-mouthed.”

  “They’re scared,” he said. “Hooked and scared.” Pritchard grinned at me.

  “You might have a small idea of what it’s like.”

  “Huh?”

  “You’re hooked on those things, right?”

  I looked at my cigarette. “I guess. It’s hardly the same.”

  “It’s closer than you think.” He glanced at his watch. It prompted me to glance at mine. Ten of six.

  I stood up, and he stood, too. He held out his hand to me. “Good luck, whatever it is you’re up to.”

  I shook hands with him. “I appreciate your help,” I said.

  I got into my car and drove over to the high school. The long curving driveway was illuminated by tall lights, but the place looked abandoned. No cars in the big parking lot out front. No lights shone from inside. Just some floodlights up in the eaves of the sprawling brick schoolhouse, bathing the surrounding lawns and shrubbery in a surreal orange glow.

  The driveway narrowed where it curved around the side of the building. This, Ingrid Larsen had told me, would take me to a direct entrance to the computer room. Here the drive was poorly illuminated. It ended in a little turnaround beside the building. One first-floor room was brightly lit. I parked beside a newish Volkswagen Golf and went to the doorway. I tried the handle, found it unlocked, and went inside.

  I had entered directly into the large, air-conditioned computer room. The machines hummed almost sub-audibly. In a corner a printer was clattering. Gil Speer was sitting in front of it, watching the paper roll out of the machine. He was wearing well-faded jeans, cowboy boots, and a blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows.

  “Excuse me,” I said after I walked up behind him.

  He didn’t turn. “Hang on a minute.”

  I hung on. A few minutes passed, during which the perforated paper slid out of the printer and folded itself neatly in a shallow box. Speer seemed mesmerized by the mechanics of it.

  Abruptly the printer stopped. Speer tore the paper where it exited from the printer and picked up the folded stack. It looked to be about half an inch thick. Then he turned to look at me.

  I was struck again by his youth and the softness of his appearance. A man of the future, all brain, vestigial body, with superior manual dexterity built into his genes in order to manipulate the machinery that would make civilization function. I felt awkward and out of proportion beside him, a crude throwback to a time when bulk and strength were survival tools.

  Speer smiled. “I crunched some serious numbers, here. You want to decide whether you should repair roofs, build new schools, consolidate, whatever, all you’ve really got to do is know how to ask the machine. Lots of variables, of course, which makes it fun. Like the town’s bond rating, demographics, enrollment projections, tax rates, state reimbursements. Factor all that stuff in there, turn on the switch, and th
is is what you get.” He hefted the stack of paper in the palm of his hand as if he were weighing it.

  I smiled. “I really don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr. Speer. But I think my question will sound pretty simple in comparison to all that.”

  He stood up, gestured for me to follow, and walked across the room to a large metal desk. He bent and slid open a drawer, placed his stack of papers into it, slammed it shut, and sat in the swivel chair behind the desk. I took a seat beside him.

  “So,” he said, “what can I do for you? Ingrid said it had something to do with a grade being changed?”

  I took Alice Sylvester’s report card from my pocket, unfolded it, and placed it on the desk facing him. He glanced at it and looked up. “How did you get ahold of this?”

  “That’s not important now—”

  “These things are in the files. This is a copy, see? On this kind of cheap paper. It’s a carbon. This is not the report card that went home. This came from a school file. How in hell did you get it?”

  I shook my head. “Can I ask you a question?”

  He picked up the paper. “This is two years old. All of this information is transferred to the permanent record section. It’s printed out on transcripts. Then these files are erased. This was printed out year before last. Most of the stuff here—these term grades, the absences, that stuff—it all disappears. Only the final course grades stay.”

  “One of the final grades on this report card got changed along the way.”

  He shrugged. “Occasionally teachers will authorize that.”

  “Not in this case.”

  He shook his head. “You’re wrong.”

  “Unless Mr. Tarlow is lying.”

  He cocked his head at me. “Ira Tarlow doesn’t change grades. He doesn’t lie, either.”

  “Then how did this D in biology end up as an A on the transcript?”

  Speer gazed across the room toward the bank of computers, as if he were seeking answers there. “Alice was good,” he said slowly. “Quick. But she was no hacker. She never could’ve broken the codes.”

  “That’s one thing I wondered.”

  “Of course, it’s possible somebody else…”

  “Somebody else?”

  He grinned at me. “I must admit, I’ve trained some pretty accomplished hackers over the past few years. Anything’s possible.”

  “So you’re saying that some kid changed this grade for Alice?”

  He shook his head. “No. It’s not really likely.”

  “I thought the system was supposed to be absolutely hackerproof. Dr. Larsen seemed quite certain of it.”

  “And this,” he replied, tapping the green-and-white paper with his finger, “suggests to you that she is wrong. Am I right? Look. I change the codes every week. I don’t write them down anywhere. They are only in my head. Mine and Ingrid’s. Unless she writes them down.”

  “What if she did?”

  He held his hands up in front of him in a gesture of surrender. “Then I cannot be held responsible. A janitor, a secretary, a student gets into her office, looks in her top drawer. The codes would be worth a lot of money to the person who knew how to use them.”

  “Who’d know how to use them?”

  He smiled. “Anybody who has taken my course.”

  “Then—”

  “Then, if Ingrid has been indiscreet, we’ve got a helluva problem. Imagine trying to verify every transcript. If Alice Sylvester’s grade was changed, how many others?”

  I nodded. “Supposing Ingrid Larsen did not write down the codes?”

  “Look, Mr. Coyne. My codes are random numbers and words. Sometimes nonsense words. There is no pattern. It would take a skilled and patient hacker weeks to figure out one set of codes. Since I change them every week, there is only one explanation for this.”

  “It’s Ingrid Larsen’s fault.”

  He shrugged. “What else could it be?”

  I smiled. “You.”

  He grinned. “True. I didn’t think of that.”

  “You can see why I would, though.”

  “Well, frankly, what’s missing here is a reason. You lawyers would call it a motive, huh?”

  “I can think of several,” I said.

  He held up one finger. “Let me show you something, Mr. Coyne.”

  He pushed himself back from his desk. Then he bent over and slid open the bottom drawer. He reached in, fumbled for something, and then pulled it out and showed it to me.

  It was a large square automatic pistol. Gil Speer was aiming it at my chest.

  Sixteen

  “SO,” I SAID.

  Speer smiled. “So.”

  “Well, aren’t you going to tell me to stick ’em up? Reach for the sky? You got me covered, pal.”

  He lounged back in his chair. The gun didn’t waver. The bore was intimidating. “You pretty much have it figured out, don’t you?” he said.

  “Pretty much. I figure you changed Alice’s grade. So she had something on you and you killed her. The rest of it’s a little fuzzy, but I can see the outlines of it.”

  He nodded. “Let’s go for a ride, Mr. Coyne.”

  “Aw, shucks. I was hoping we could play with your computers.”

  He stood up. “Come on.” He gestured for me to go out the door I’d just entered. When I got to it I hesitated, and he said, “Open it. Slowly and carefully. Don’t try anything funny.”

  “You get your dialogue from late-night movies?”

  “Try not to be nervous.”

  We went out to the parking lot. Speer ordered me to open the door on the passenger side of my BMW. He stood there by the open door and told me to slide behind the wheel. Then he climbed into the passenger seat beside me.

  “Nice wheels,” he said. “Start it up.” I obeyed. “Now head on out the way you came in. And whether you think the expression is hackneyed or not, I advise you not to try anything foolish. I am perfectly prepared to shoot you. If you drive too fast, or too slow, or try to blink your lights or something, I will shoot your knee. It will hurt like hell.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “Take a left down here at the end of the driveway.”

  I did as he instructed. “So why did you change the girl’s biology grade?” I said as we drove north on the road, away from the center of town.

  “Let’s hear your guess.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I figure it this way. She found out you were giving crack to high school kids. Probably heard it from Buddy Baron. So she went to you, threatened to tell. You asked her what her price was. You figured if she didn’t have a price, she would’ve just told, and not bothered going to you. Her price was changing that biology grade.”

  “It was stupid of me,” said Speer.

  “Which,” I said, “you soon realized. Your only out was to murder her. And since by then you figured Buddy knew about you, and would know that it was you who killed her, you had to murder him, too.”

  “I didn’t murder Buddy,” he said. “Take a right up there past the streetlight.”

  We turned down a narrow two-lane road that, if I was properly oriented, headed toward the ocean. There seemed to be very few houses along this road. It passed over a small saltwater creek, which looked as if it was at low tide. A vast marshland bordered it. It was illuminated brilliantly by the silver light of the full moon overhead.

  “Slow down. It gets narrow and twisty up ahead. We wouldn’t want to have an accident.”

  “I’m an excellent driver.”

  “I meant, we wouldn’t want something happening to your knee.”

  “Oh,” I said. “That kind of accident.”

  We drove on for a few minutes. The marsh gave way to low piney hills. Then more marshland. “Were you screwing Alice Sylvester?” I said.

  “Moi?” said Speer. Then he laughed. “Sure. She was an absolutely stupendous piece of young flesh. Inventive, too. She did whatever I told her to do, and then found variations I’d never thought of. I can’t i
magine where a child like her learned all that. I like to think I inspired her. But I know better. She was a natural, I guess. I felt terrible when she died.”

  “When you killed her.”

  “Whatever.”

  “What happened?”

  He laughed again. “I suppose you think my telling you will get you somewhere.”

  “I’m just curious.”

  “Sure you are.” He said nothing for a minute or two. Then I heard him chuckle. The whole conversation was quite amusing to him. It was, I figured, the locker-room syndrome. Guess who I screwed? Alice Sylvester puts out. Gee, gosh. No kidding, Gil. What a stud.

  “She came to me,” he said in a softer voice, “all self-righteous and principled. Giving drugs to teenagers, Mr. Speer. How awful. What a naughty man. Really should just go right to the police. But… And I knew I had her. She wanted something. It wasn’t hard to get it out of her, because it’s what she wanted to say. She got this D from Mr. Tarlow. Totally unfair, but everybody knows he’s a creep. Never get into Mount Holyoke with that D. Suppose I changed that grade for you, my dear? Oh, can you do that, Mr. Speer? Sure I can, young lady. But it would be very dishonest. But isn’t giving drugs to kids dishonest, too? Well, I suppose it is. So I changed it, as you know. And we were even. She wouldn’t tell on me, because then she’d have that awful D in biology. I couldn’t tell on her, naturally, since I was the one breaking the rules, not to mention the law.”

  “But that’s not where it ended,” I prompted when he lapsed into silence.

  “No. It’s not. A few days—maybe a week—later she showed up in the computer room. It was late. I was getting ready to leave. I think she’d been lurking around, waiting to catch me alone, which isn’t easy to do. She wanted to try crack. She knew I could get it for her. Said she just wanted to see what it was like. I told her it was bad for her. Nice kid like her shouldn’t get mixed up with a bad drug. Told her to go ask her friends for some grass. She laughed. Said she knew all about grass. She came close to me. Put that soft little hand of hers on my cheek and said, ‘Aw, please, Mr. Speer.’ Look. I didn’t want to get that chick involved with crack.”

  “I believe you,” I said. “It would make her unstable, unreliable. No telling what she’d do.”