Marine Corpse

by William G. Tapply

  “That’s not done routinely?”

  “Supposed to be, I guess. But they got stiffs piled up in there like cordwood, if you know what I mean, and I guess it’s up to them who they want to cut open. Some wino who froze to death ain’t high on their list of priorities.”

  “The nephew of the leading Republican in the Commonwealth ranks right up there, though.”

  “Sure. See, we’ve all got the same problem. Too many dead guys, not enough time.” He scowled at me. “I mean, maybe with lawyers it’s different.”

  “It’s a little different, yes,” I smiled.

  “So, anyway, that’s when they found the wound. When they did the autopsy.”

  “Tell me about that wound.”

  Santis shuffled the papers in the manila folder, glanced at one of them, grunted, and looked up at me. “You can read it, if you want,” he said. “Amounts to this. Somebody stuck an icepick into his brain, is how he died.”

  “That,” I said, “would do it.”

  “That would do it very nicely. See, the entry wound was in his left ear.” He demonstrated on himself with his forefinger. “A wound like that won’t bleed hardly at all, especially when it’s like ten above out there. You’d never see it if you weren’t looking for it. Puncture wound like that, inside of the ear. No blood, hardly.”

  “Sure,” I said. “But now it’s a homicide.”

  Santis’s laugh startled me. “Well, now, it don’t exactly look like an accident, does it? Probably not what you’d call self-inflicted, either. I mean, we don’t want to go out on a limb or anything, but we’re guessing it was maybe a homicide. That, I imagine, is how come you’re here talking to me.”

  “That’s part of it, yes. What can you tell me about your investigation?

  He stared at me for a moment. Then he sighed, leaned back in his chair, and tilted his head to study the ceiling. “Mr. Coyne,” he said softly, “you gotta understand. First, we’ve got this assassination thing. This little Spic goes running up to the Deputy Secretary of State yelling ‘Free Haiti,’ or something, and starts shooting, which means already our security was shitty, and then the little Spic gets killed so nobody can ask him any questions. Mickey Gillis at the Globe won’t leave it alone. Every goddam day, an editorial, seems like. And Internal Affairs is going bananas trying to pin the blame on somebody, and the Commissioner is trying to keep a lid on the whole damn thing.” He shook his head.

  “What are you trying to tell me?”

  “Look. Whatever this Carver guy used to be, he was a bum when he died. When that icepick went into his brain, he was drunk. Not just legally drunk, understand, but absolutely shitfaced. So says the ME, even though I expect Senator Woodhouse didn’t like to hear it. He had probably passed out. He wasn’t wearing socks, Mr. Coyne. He didn’t have on any underwear. He was filthy dirty. Sores all over his body. He had about two weeks’ beard on his face, and there were pieces of dried-up puke caught in it. You know what I’m trying to say?”

  I stubbed out my cigarette in the big glass ashtray on Santis’s desk. “You’re trying to say that the death of a wino isn’t worth investigating.”

  “You tell me something,” said Santis quietly.

  “What?”

  “Was Carver a drunk?”

  I hesitated. “He got drunk from time to time. But he wasn’t an alcoholic, if that’s what you mean.”

  “What I mean is this,” he said. “He certainly looked like a drunk to us. A bum, a derelict, is what he looked like. And he looked like a bum to everybody else, no matter whose nephew he was. You want me to investigate the murder of old Ben Woodhouse’s nephew, and I’m telling you that we’re trying to investigate the murder of an anonymous bum. Because that’s what whoever stuck that icepick into his head thought he was.”

  “That’s your theory.”

  He sighed. “Okay, then. It’s a theory. You got a better one?”

  “No. I don’t have a theory. But I don’t believe it was just a random, arbitrary killing, either.” I shrugged. “I guess you know more about this sort of thing than I do. What have you found?”

  He shook his head. “Found? What we’d expect to find. Which is to say, not much. Listen. It was three days before we even realized he’d been murdered, you know? Three days before we knew who he was or anything. We got no suspect, no weapon, no motive, no witness. Nothing. Just a theory. We checked the missions. Showed his photo. Couple people recognized him. Know what they called him?”

  “Cutter, probably.”

  Santis squinted at me. “Yeah. That’s it.” He shrugged. “Anyhow, he started showing up in the middle of October, near as anyone could recall, though none of them like to talk to cops. Best we can tell, he had no friends to speak of. No enemies, either. Just a few folks who recognized his face is all. They’d say, ‘Oh, yeah, that’s Cutter,’ and we’d tell ’em Cutter was dead, and they’d say, ‘Yeah, that happens.’” Santis shrugged again.

  “This is not very encouraging,” I said.

  “You got any reason to think somebody wanted Ben Woodhouse’s nephew dead? You think this is political or something? If you think we’re on the wrong track, let me know.”

  I shook my head. “I can’t help you there.”

  “Well,” he said, spreading his hands palms down on the littered top of his desk, “we haven’t given up. Look. You wanna know something?”

  “Tell me.”

  “I’ll bet some day soon we find another bum with a little hole inside of his ear. And then another and another. And then we’ll put some cops out there in raggedy clothes, with radios in their pockets, pretending to be passed out in the alley. And eventually we’ll catch some crazy guy with an icepick, who gets a big hard-on when he pulls it out of his pocket, and who creams his jeans when he sticks it into somebody’s ear.” He nodded, as if he had persuaded himself. “That’s my personal idea.”

  “That’s a neat theory,” I said, smiling so that Santis wouldn’t think I was mocking him. “They didn’t find anything in Stu’s pockets, then?”

  “Like clues, you mean?” Santis’s grin did mock me.

  “Specifically, a notebook.”

  “I don’t remember any notebook. If there was a notebook, I guess I’d remember it. That,” he said, his eyes twinkling, “would be a clue, huh? There were a few odds and ends, as I remember it. Hang on. There’s a list in here somewhere.” He peered into the manila folder and extracted a sheet of paper. “Okay. One matchbook. One meal chit for supper at the kitchen at St. Michael’s. Two nickels and a quarter, which might or might not eliminate robbery as a motive. A pencil. Handkerchief. Probably not freshly laundered or pressed. That’s it.” He closed the folder and placed his hand on top of it. “No notebook. So listen, Mr. Coyne. Tell me. What the hell is this Stuart Carver, who calls himself Cutter, and who happens to be the nephew of Senator Ben Woodhouse himself, doing, passed out in an alley on New Year’s Eve, anyway?”

  “Research,” I said. “He was working on his new novel.”

  TWO

  BEN WOODHOUSE HAD INTRODUCED me to his nephew two years earlier. Ben and I were sitting on the patio outside the men’s lounge at Ben’s country club in Dover, sipping vodka tonics and watching the afternoon’s last foursome straggle up the sloping fairway toward the eighteenth hole. Ben slouched down in his white wicker chair, his long legs propped up on the low brick wall that fronted the patio, his shoulders hunched up against his ears. Ben had served one term in the United States Senate during the Eisenhower years. Since then, he preferred to wield his considerable political clout from behind the scenes. But he was still called “The Senator”—as if he were the only Senator—by most people in Massachusetts.

  “My sister Meriam’s boy, Stu Carver,” he was saying to me. “The family black sheep. I’m rather proud of him, myself, but then, I’ve always been a bit out of step with the rest of the clan.”

  Ben had ascended gracefully into his seventies, with his unruly shock of slate-colored hair still as inta
ct as his political influence, and his patrician nose as long as his memory and as straight as his ethics. “It wasn’t bad enough, he grew a beard and marched around Washington carrying a candle during Vietnam. Hell, Chub Peabody’s mother did that, too, though my brother and sisters didn’t think that should absolve Stu. After all, Peabody was a Democrat, so that sort of misbehavior might be expected. But it wasn’t dignified for a Woodhouse. And, of course, moving in with that Jewish girl—well, his mother admitted that it could have been worse.” Ben chuckled.

  “He could have married her,” I said.

  “Yes, I’ve mentioned that to you before, haven’t I, Brady?” He gazed out over the rolling fairways. “Stu thinks this place here”—he waved his hand, taking in the green sweep of the golf course and the big rambling clubhouse “—is a shameful example of conspicuous consumption. Of course, he’s right.”

  I nodded absently. The golfers had reached the green. By the way they squatted behind their putts, dangling their putters in front of their faces and squinting along some imaginary line of sight, I supposed large sums of money rested on the number of strokes it would take them to knock the balls into the holes. I was thoroughly relaxed in Ben Woodhouse’s company, and not the least bit concerned about consumption, conspicuous or otherwise.

  “He’ll be late,” said Ben. “He’s always late. It’s his way of protesting.”

  “Protesting what?” I asked.

  Ben grinned. “Doesn’t matter. In this case, I imagine he’ll rant and rave against the tyranny of time. He likes to say that the wristwatch was the invention of a fascist mind. ‘You’re never free,’ he says, ‘when you have your arm shackled onto one of those things.’ But if it isn’t one thing, it’s another. That’s why I admire him. He holds his principles firmly, even if they’re silly.”

  “And the closest you ever came to protesting was hiring a lawyer from Yale,” I observed.

  “I’ve got to admit, Brady, my boy, the family didn’t take too kindly to it. We’re all Harvard, as you know. But that wasn’t it. You were the only one who wouldn’t let me beat him at golf. I can’t trust a man who won’t try his damnedest, and accept the consequences of victory as graciously as those of defeat. It’s blasphemy, I know, but I find those Harvard Law School types mealy-mouthed at best.”

  “Well, Ben,” I murmured, “I’ve enjoyed our relationship.”

  “And well you might. Ah, here he is now.”

  Ben unfolded himself from his chair, and I stood up beside him, as a dark-haired man of middling height approached us. He wore baggy corduroy pants, a blue dress shirt open at the neck, and a broad smile. He was, I guessed, in his early thirties. He moved with the quick grace of a gymnast to shake Ben’s hand. “Uncle Ben,” he said. His ice-blue eyes narrowed impishly. “I’m surprised that you risked permanent ostracism from the Woodhouse clan to do this for me.” He looked at me. “You must be Mr. Coyne.”

  I extended my hand. His grip was firm. “At your service.”

  “You know what you’re getting yourself into here, Mr. Coyne?”

  “Brady, please,” I said. “And, no, actually, I don’t. Your uncle has been very mysterious about this. But when The Senator calls, I come.”

  “Don’t they all,” smiled Stuart Carver. “You going to buy your wayward nephew a beer, Uncle?”

  “A beer?”

  “Well,” said Carver, “a beer for starters. Just for the thirst. Then some good Cutty Sark for the serious sipping.”

  I detected the trace of a frown skitter across Ben’s face. But he made a circular motion in the air with his forefinger and a young man in a white jacket materialized before us. “A Beck’s for Mr. Carver, Alan, and a refill for Mr. Coyne and me,” Ben said.

  “Very good, Senator.” The waiter dipped his head and left.

  Stu Carver pulled a wicker chair up beside me and Ben. We all sat down. Carver leaned forward, his knee jiggling furiously with nervous energy. “Let’s get to it, Uncle.”

  “You have no sense of propriety, Stuart,” Ben replied benignly. He sighed. “Ah, the impetuosity of youth,” he said to me. “It seems that my nephew has written a book, Brady.”

  “Good for you,” I said to Carver. “What sort of a book is it?”

  “It’s a novel, actually,” he said. “I’ve been working on it, off and on, for about ten years. It’s based on some field work I did in college.”

  “Harvard?”

  He grinned. “Afraid so. Senior year, for a sociology project, I studied this religious cult. They had what they called a cell down near Central Square, and I joined them. Went through the initiation rites and so forth, and, for about two months, I lived with them. My novel is based—pretty loosely—on that experience.”

  I nodded uncertainly. “So where do I fit in?”

  “Stu wants to publish his book,” said Ben, as if that explained it.

  I shrugged. “So…?”

  “But the family doesn’t want me to,” said Stu. “They think it’ll besmirch the good family name. And, of course, in things that involve the good family name, the good family makes the decisions.”

  “Democratically,” said Ben. “The family voted that Stu would not publish his novel—assuming he was able to find a publisher, which, given the, er, access the family has, he probably would.”

  “So this was Uncle Ben’s idea,” said Carver.

  “What, for God’s sake, was his idea?”

  “It was a compromise,” said Ben. “In the finest democratic tradition. Something we Massachusetts Republicans have become rather deft at accomplishing. The meat of politics, compromise. When you can win, you go for the throat. When you’re going to lose, you go for the compromise. It was my idea. We let Stu publish his novel. But he must use a pseudonym. No one must know that it was a Woodhouse, by any other name, including Carver, who wrote this book. That’s where you come in, Brady.”

  “Oh, sure,” I said.

  We paused while the waiter set our drinks down on the table. Stu Carver lifted his glass of beer and drained off half of it in one long draught. “See,” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, “I’ve got to have an agent. Somebody who can keep a secret, who can handle all the business so the revered family will not need to soil its fingers.” He dumped the rest of his beer down his throat. “The point is, they think it’s trash.”

  Ben touched his nephew’s knee. “It is trash, Stu,” he said gently. He turned to me. “The other half of the story is this, Brady. We have persuaded Stu that he wouldn’t want his novel published just because he wrote it, and because anything written by a Woodhouse would be instantly newsworthy. We have appealed—successfully, I believe—to Stuart’s artistic integrity, and he agrees that he wants it accepted or rejected on its own terms. Through you, and pseudonymously.

  “So you want me to peddle Stu’s book,” I mused. “I don’t know much about that.”

  “But you do know how to be discreet, and if there should be a contract in the offing, you could certainly handle that.”

  “Yes, I could. And if all you want me to do is keep your name out of it and work on a contract, I don’t see why I shouldn’t give it a try. It goes with the territory, I’d say.”

  “Good, good,” nodded Ben. “Then it’s settled. Now. Shall we dine?”

  Later that night I started reading Stu Carver’s manuscript. He called it Devil’s Work. It was a real page turner, replete with bizarre religious rites, sexually perverse ceremonies of all descriptions, torture, and death. I found scant redeeming social value in it, and it wasn’t particularly well written, by my standards. Stu had decided to use the pen name “Nick Cutter,” which I thought had a certain ring to it, and, all in all, I had to agree with the Woodhouse clan’s verdict: Stu’s book was trash.

  Which was what the editor from one of Boston’s biggest and most prestigious publishing houses told me two weeks after he had agreed to read Stu’s manuscript. “It’s garbage, Mr. Coyne,” he told me on the phone, pronouncing
it as if it were a French word, with the accent on the second syllable. “Drek. Crapola. Utterly, irredeemably without literary merit.”

  “Well, that’s all right,” I said. “I understand.”

  “No, I don’t think you do,” he said. “We want to publish it. We think it’s going to be a big seller.”

  And it was. The publisher gave it a big pre-publication buildup, and when it hit the bookstores nine months later—which, I learned, is the average gestation for a book as well as a human being—it landed near the top of the local bestseller lists. I earned my hefty retainer from Ben Woodhouse just by keeping the media at bay and nurturing the mystery of Nick Cutter’s identity—which did nothing to hurt the book’s sales. The publisher encouraged me to accept invitations to radio talk shows to discuss Devil’s Work, and when I told them I’d have to give my honest appraisal of it, they encouraged me to do that, too. “Call it trash,” they told me. “Trash sells big.”

  For the first couple of months, supermarket tabloids and other gossip-brokers debated the question: “Who is Nick Cutter?” I had fun, teasing them when they asked me. Stu and Ben thought it was quite grand. Ben told me the family remained apprehensive that I’d let the pussy creep out of the sack, or that Stu would find himself unable to resist the temptations of celebrity. For my part, discretion was easy. For Stu, it was a relief that his real name hadn’t been appended to the manuscript. “I guess the clan was right,” he told me. “It really is trash. And, anyway, it’s more fun this way.”

  I had my own fun, negotiating the sale of rights with British and Italian publishers and movie and television option brokers. I rather enjoyed my ten percent off the top, too.

  After the initial hubbub died down, several months after Devil’s Work made its splash, Stu Carver showed up at my office. It was a golden October Friday afternoon, and I had kept my calendar clear for a golf date with my friend Charlie McDevitt, my old roommate from Yale Law days, and presently a lawyer with the Justice Department’s Boston office. I told Stu I could only give him half an hour.