Follow the Sharks (26 page)

I drank and soaked and hummed the bars of the Beethoven and dozed, and I felt the poisons start to seep out of my body. I tried to keep the troublesome question on the fuzzy edges of my consciousness: How do you tell a ten-year-old boy that his father has been murdered? How do you tell him it’s your fault?

When my glass was empty and the tub water cool and all the bubbles gone, I heaved myself out and tried to dry my body with a big bath towel. I kept dropping it, and every time I stooped over to pick it up I lost my balance. Somehow it struck me funny. I finally finished the job while sitting on the floor. I was wrestling with my jeans when the phone rang. I brought my empty glass to the kitchen phone and poured some more Jack Daniels into it before I lifted the receiver.

“Howdy,” I said.

“It’s me. Stern.”

“Hi there, old pal.”

“You all right, Coyne?”

“Tip top.”

“How’s the leg?”

“Better than ever. I’ll be
en pointe
again in no time.
Pas de deux,
know what I mean?”

“No, I don’t. Listen, maybe you should get somebody over there to stay with you tonight.”

“Oh, yeah, heh heh. The lubricious Sylvie Szabo, maybe.”

“Look,” said Stern. “I’ve got some news. You think you’re sober enough to understand me?”

“I’m as sober as a churchmouse. That’s right, isn’t it? A churchmouse?”

“I guess so. Will you listen to me?”

“Okay, okay. Don’t yell at me.”

I heard him sigh. “Bad news and good news. Bad news first. They made a positive ID on the other body. It was Donagan.”

“They’re sure?” I said.

“They’re sure. That’s the bad news.”

“Okay,” I said, feeling, suddenly, at least as sober as a churchmouse. “What’s the good news?”

“A couple of things, actually. Vincent Quarto has spilled his guts. Everything. We got a signed confession from him. So I would say the case against them all is open and shut.”

“That’s real good.” I sipped from my glass. “What else?”

“Quarto and Lucci didn’t follow you to Lanesborough yesterday. They had tracked down Donagan before that. They were already there. If you hadn’t showed up they would’ve killed the boy along with Donagan and Grabowski. If you’d stayed overnight, they would’ve killed you too. But when you left with the boy they figured they had to stop you. They thought they had succeeded. Then they went back to the farm. You understand what I’m saying, Coyne?”

There was a sudden constriction in my throat. I felt my eyes mist over. Booze sometimes does that to me. I nodded.

“Coyne, are you there?”

“Yes.”

“The only thing you did yesterday was to save that little boy’s life. If Donagan had listened to you, if he had followed your advice, he and Grabowski would still be alive. You did everything right, see? Nothing to blame yourself for. Nothing at all.”

“Yes. I see,” I managed to say.

“Listen, Coyne. I mean it. Get somebody over there to stay with you. I think you could use company tonight.”

“Good idea. Thanks.”

Stern paused. “Look, I’ll be in touch. You want anything, call me. Any time. I’m home. You’ve got my number. I’ll be here all night. Okay?”

“Yes, okay.” I cleared my throat. “And thanks. Thanks, Marty.”

“Coyne, for Christ’s sake, sober up.”

“You shouldn’t try to deceive me, Marty.”

“What the hell do you mean?”

“It’s not a churchmouse. It’s a judge.”

Stern hung up on me.

I replaced the receiver gently. Then I took my glass of Jack Daniels over to the sliding doors. I stood inside for a few moments, sipped, and watched the ocean. A motorboat inscribed white scrolls over the smooth surface of the water. Gulls cruised and darted. Overhead puffy fragments of fair-weather cumulus drifted across the darkening evening sky.

I went back to the telephone and dialled a familiar number. It rang half a dozen times before I heard Gloria’s voice, breathless, as if she had just dashed in from the garden.

“Hullo?”

“It’s me.”

“Oh, Brady. Well, how are you?”

“I’m okay,” I said. “I was just wondering. How are the boys?”

Turn the page to continue reading from the Brady Coyne Mysteries

F
ELIX GUERRERO HUNKERED DOWN
into the beige windbreaker he had stolen from the big department store and wondered why the hell he had ever let Paulo talk him into leaving Miami.

The sign outside the bank near Faneuil Hall told him it was minus four degrees centigrade outside. Dirty, hard mounds of week-old snow lay against the buildings and edged the sidewalks. Puddles of frozen slush glittered dully in the reflected yellow light from the phony gas lamps that illuminated the brick-paved plaza. Felix was wearing low-cut sneakers. For speed. Good, leather New Balance. Also stolen. His toes ached from the cold. It was
muy frio
in Boston. Very damn cold. Nothing like Miami. Nothing like Cuba.

The sign blinked, and then it told Felix the time: 6:42
PM
. He had another eighteen minutes to wait before the man would arrive.

There wouldn’t be much of a crowd, they had told him. Just enough for him to lose himself, but not so many people that he wouldn’t be able to run. He’d be able to get close to the man.

Felix kept his hands in the pockets of his jacket. He had to keep them warm. His right finger caressed the trigger of the little square automatic they had given him. A lady’s gun, he had called it. But they told him that it was clean and it would do the trick, and he should shut up.

He kept his finger on the trigger, rubbing it lightly, lovingly, the way he would rub a woman’s nipple to make it grow hard.

Get close to him, they had told him. When he gets out of the black limo, just walk up to him. Smile, as if you wanted to shake his hand. When you are standing in front of him, take out the little automatic and stick it at him and yell the words—be sure to yell the words, they told Felix, that was very important—and start pulling the trigger. Then run away. Run for the crowds of people and they won’t shoot you. Go around the building and turn down the alley. Run to the end of the alley. A car will be waiting. Get into the car. You’ll be in Miami the next day.

Felix had walked through it that morning. He knew where the alley was.

He hugged himself and shuffled his feet.
Maldito
! It was cold. He made fists, rubbing his fingers together inside his pockets. He couldn’t do the job if his hands were numb.

But it sounded easy enough. Already it was dark outside, and the people were beginning to gather there, their breaths coming in little white puffs. They were young, most of them, jolly and fat and full from expensive meals in fancy restaurants, and now they were gathering to see the man with the pig face that Felix was going to kill. Men and women, just hanging around in their expensive, warm coats, furs and big wool topcoats and colorful ski parkas. Felix thought he should have stolen a ski parka.

He patted his shirt pocket. The thin envelope crinkled. A comforting thing, that envelope. It contained five big ones. There were five more to come after he finished the job. And then the sunshine and all the
niñas guapas
, the pretty white girls on the white beach, and a few lines in the evening for his nose and some good Jamaican weed and he wouldn’t be cold anymore.

Felix would buy himself a tight little black bikini bathing suit to show the
niñas
on the beach what he had. He’d wear a big gold cross and stroll up and down the white sand, and the girls would see him and he’d look them over and pick one out.

Cousin Paulo had said there’d be work in Boston.
Chinga
cousin Paulo. Fuck him. There was nothing in Boston but snow and snotty dried-up women with zippers between their legs and big black dudes who liked to beat up little Cubans.

Now Felix had a job. It was work he knew well enough. It was work he’d done before.

Just like Americans, thought Felix, to make speeches on a day of national disgrace. Pearl Harbor Day! The day the Japs kicked the
mierda
out of the American Navy. And they celebrate it with speeches by important men like the one with the pig face.

Cuba had a day like that. The day of
Babia de Cochinos
, the Bay of Pigs. Felix wondered why the Americans didn’t celebrate that one, too.

The man with the pig face, they had told Felix, was an important man,
mucho hombre
, a man of the government, and Felix would be a big hero when he killed him. They had tried to explain it to Felix, that the man was going to tell why the Americans were giving weapons to the government of Haiti to kill the guerillas. These guerillas were young men just like Felix, they had explained, so this man was an enemy of Felix and an enemy of Cuba and an enemy of the great communist revolution in Haiti.

Chinga
these Haitian guerillas.
Chinga
their revolution.
Chinga
this pig-faced man who wanted to make a speech in the old square brick building in Boston. All Felix wanted to do was get away from this frozen hellhole of a city where everybody wanted to kick his ass and Cousin Paulo was in jail and therefore unable to introduce Felix to the men who would pay him to carry drugs.

He turned up the collar of his thin windbreaker and shivered. The sign told him that the temperature had dropped another degree.
Tan frio
. Too damn cold. It was 6:56. He eased himself closer to the front entrance of the building. His finger lightly stroked the trigger of the little gun in his pocket.

Two uniformed policemen stood by the steps. Warm orange light shone through the windows of the building. The policemen looked cold and bored, as if they’d rather be inside. Felix tried to look bored, too. He didn’t have to try to look cold.

The two black limos pulled up, close to the steps, closer to the entrance to the building than Felix had expected. A tall man with a child perched on his shoulders stepped up beside him, and he could feel people pushing up in back of him. They had seen the limos, and they were gathering around to see the man with the pig face.

They had shown him a picture of the man. He was an old man with round pink cheeks and a flattened-out nose and white hair and tiny eyes. A pig-faced man, Felix had looked at the picture for a minute and nodded. He wouldn’t forget the face. The man’s name, they told him, was Thurmond Lampley. Felix had shrugged. He didn’t care what the man’s name was. He was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Latin American Affairs, they told him. Felix rolled his eyes. He was an enemy of the brave guerillas in Haiti, they continued, an enemy of Castro, an enemy of Cuba, and Felix didn’t even bother to tell them that he didn’t give a shit who the man was or what he believed.

They told him it would be a good and brave thing to kill this pig-faced man. Felix remembered what he had said. “I do not hate this man,” he had said. “But I am happy to kill him.
Tengo cojones
.” I have plenty of balls.

The one thousand dollars, the trip back to Miami, these were the things that made Felix happy to kill this Thurmond Lampley with the pig face.

The first one out of the limo was a big blond man without a topcoat or a hat. He stood there for a moment, not smiling, looking all around. Felix saw him nod to the policemen and then bend back to the open door of the limo. Then the man with the pig face climbed out. The blond man stood straight and looked around some more. He stared right at Felix. It seemed that he was staring right into Felix’s soul, and Felix eased himself back behind the tall man with the child on his shoulders.

When Felix looked again, the blond man was no longer staring at him. The man with the pig face was smiling at the crowd and at the same time speaking to another man who was standing beside him. “
Chinga tu madre
,” cursed Felix under his breath, trying to hate the man, because that always made it easier.

Then the pig-faced man and the two others began walking toward the building. They had only a few steps to go. If they made it into the building, Felix would have missed his chance.

“Excuse me, please,” mumbled Felix to the tall man in front of him. The tall man glanced down, smiled, said something to the child on his shoulders, and moved aside. Felix stepped forward, gripping the gun in his pocket, and began to run toward the man with the pig face.

“
Haiti libra
!” he yelled, as they had told him to. And he yelled it again as he took out the gun and pointed it at the man. He saw the startled look on the pig face, a flash of fear that Felix liked to see. But then the blond man turned and calmly stepped in the way. Felix pointed his gun. As he yanked on the trigger, something pushed him from behind, and Felix felt his foot slip on some ice and his shots went into the air. “
Mierda
!” he muttered. He tried to stop, to regain his balance. He felt hands clutching at him, and he saw the blond man reaching inside his jacket.

Felix managed to turn and darted back into the crowd of people, who moved quickly to step aside for him. He didn’t feel cold, now. He felt warm and alive and he moved quickly. The crowds seemed to open a pathway for him, and he followed it across the brick-paved plaza, around the building, and there were no bullets coming after him.