Vulgar Boatman (4 page)

“Of course.”

Cusick looked at me. “Mr. Coyne?”

“You’re right,” I said. “Although if it comes to that, you better make sure all the T’s are properly crossed.”

The chief grinned. “You can count on that. I am one helluva good T-crosser and I-dotter.” He hooked his glasses around his ears and stood up. “Tom, run home and get me a photograph of Buddy, will you?”

Tom and I stood up. “I’ll do everything I can,” he said.

Cusick came around his desk and moved to the door with us. As we started to walk out, the chief said, “Ah, Tom. One thing.”

Tom turned. “What’s that?”

“I want you to know I appreciate it.”

“What, my coming here?”

“No. You had to do that. No, what I appreciate is that you didn’t ask me to hush this thing up. A man in your position…”

Tom’s smile was forlorn. “Hey. I hope you won’t make a circus of this. But somehow I never thought you would. If Buddy’s name gets drawn into this thing…”

“No promises,” said Cusick. “But I’ll keep it in mind.”

The air outside was downright cold. A cloud bank had skidded in, obscuring the moon.

“Fall’s coming,” said Tom.

“Feels like it’s here.”

He put a hand on my arm. “Brady…”

“I’m with you, Tom. I’ll do what I can.”

“I’m not ready to drop the campaign. I’ve got to keep it going. But I want this handled right. Can I count on you?”

“When Buddy shows up, I’ll be there.”

“I’m concerned about the press.”

I shrugged. “You want a free government, you’ve got to have a free press. You’ve been saying stuff like that yourself.”

“I don’t want my son tried and convicted by the Boston
Globe.
”

“Sometimes it happens that way. It’s the price.”

“When it’s the son of a political person…”

“What do you expect me to do, Tom?”

“Two things. First, I want to be able to funnel inquiries to you.”

“That makes sense. I’m your attorney. What’s the second thing?”

“Help me find Buddy.”

“That’s the police’s job. They’re good at that sort of thing.”

“Harry Cusick’s a good cop, don’t get me wrong. But he’s still a cop. I want Buddy found. I want to know what he did last night, why he disappeared. If he’s found alive, I want him home. If something’s happened to him…”

“You want a private detective, then, not a lawyer. I know a few.”

Tom put his hand on my shoulder. “I am the Republican candidate for governor. I want this kept in the family. Am I asking too much?”

“You’re asking for something I have no expertise in.”

“Look,” he said, his voice low and intense. “Give me a day. One day. Give me tomorrow. I’ll give you some names, some places. If you strike out, Joanie and I will be climbing the walls by then anyway.”

“I dunno, Tom.”

“One day, Brady. Please.”

I shrugged and glanced up at the dark night sky. The breeze smelled damp. “Doesn’t look like tomorrow’s going to be much of a day for fishing. Okay. One day. I’ll come by the house first thing in the morning. You and Joanie get together tonight. Write down everything you can think of. Buddy’s friends. Places he hangs out. Anyplace you can think of he might go. Teachers, employers, whoever knows him. I’ll see what I can do for you.”

Tom sighed. “I appreciate it, friend.”

“Don’t expect miracles.”

“I expect discretion and intelligence.”

“Discretion, at least, I am good at.”

Tom pumped my hand and climbed into his new Buick. I got into my BMW. Sylvie was slouched in the seat, snoring quietly. I leaned over and kissed her ear. Her arm crept around my neck and hugged my face against her breast. “Is it time to eat the fishes with the ugly faces?” she mumbled sleepily.

“Too late,” I said, extricating myself from her embrace. “Gert’s is closed. We’re going home. I’ll cook us something.”

I started up the car and backed out of the lot. Sylvie’s hand crept into my lap like a shy puppy. “I do have great appetites,” she whispered.

“We’ll see how many of them we can satisfy.”

“Promise?”

I picked up her hand and gave it back to her. “I solemnly promise.”

T
HAT INFERNAL ALARM CLOCK
inside my head jangled me awake at five-thirty the next morning, as it always does. Syivie was sprawled on her stomach beside me, clutching her pillow over her head as if to keep away the sounds of artillery fire. When she was awake, she was gay and vibrant. When sleeping, however, the demons of her childhood flight from Hungary still tortured her.

I snuggled against her and lifted up the pillow to kiss her cheek. She moaned and twitched. Her leg kicked convulsively.

I rolled out of bed, stretched and yawned, and slipped into my jeans and sweatshirt. The coffee machine in the kitchen, on its own alarm system, had already begun gurgling. I retrieved my morning
Globe
from outside the front door of my apartment and took it to the table by the glass doors, leading out to the patio. Outside, six stories down, the gray ocean of the Boston harbor spasmed and kicked as restlessly as Syivie slept in the other room. Hard raindrops ticked against the glass.

The story was buried on page seventeen. The headline read:

“Body of Merit Scholar Found in Windsor Harbor.”

The body of seventeen-year-old Alice Sylvester, a senior student at Windsor Harbor High School, was discovered by Windsor Harbor police early Tuesday morning.

According to local police, the honor student had been strangled. Her fully clad body was found in a thickly wooded area near a parking lot by the high school.

The little North Shore community of Windsor Harbor is the hometown of Tom Baron, the Republican candidate for governor.

Windsor Harbor Police Chief Harry Cusick said, “The young lady was murdered. It appears she was strangled. We have no suspects at this time, but we are pursuing several leads. We have no further comment, pending a full report from the Medical Examiner.”

Gubernatorial candidate Baron, in a prepared statement, said, “The death of a young person is always a tragedy. Our prayers are with the family and friends of Alice Sylvester. This will hit our community hard. We trust the police will exhaust every resource to bring to justice the individual who committed this awful, senseless crime.”

I got up, poured myself a mug of coffee, and brought it back to the table. Then I reread the brief newspaper item. In Tom Baron’s “statement” I detected the fine hand of Eddy Curry. There was no mention of Buddy Baron. So far, at least, the press had not caught on to the possibility of a link between Buddy and Alice Sylvester.

I flipped through the rest of the paper, sipping my coffee, listening to the storm rage outside, and resenting the promise I had made to Tom Baron. I did not relish playing detective, even just for a day.

I solved the chess problem and had just begun to study the daily bridge hand when Sylvie staggered out of the bedroom. She had pulled on one of my T-shirts. It was big for her, but not by much.

I cocked my head and regarded her. “Fetching,” I said.

She yawned and stretched. The T-shirt rode up. More fetching yet. “I smelled coffee,” she mumbled.

She poured herself a mugful and sat down across from me. She propped up her chin with the palms of both hands.

“Isn’t that cold?” I said.

“What?”

“The vinyl of the chair where you’re sitting?”

Sylvie giggled. I got up and poured myself a second mug of coffee. When I returned she was reading the article on Alice Sylvester’s death.

“You will solve this crime, no?” she said.

“Probably not,” I answered, setting fire to my first cigarette of the day. “That’s not my job. But I will see if I can track down Buddy Baron.”

“That may be the same thing.”

“Maybe. I doubt it. Wouldn’t you like to put some clothes on?”

“First I will drink my coffee. Then you and I will have a shower. Then I will get dressed.”

“You will drink your coffee while I take my own shower,” I said.

“Brady is a poop.”

“This is true.”

After I showered, shaved, and dressed, I went back to the kitchen. Sylvie was at the stove, tending an omelette. I sat at the table to watch her cook. I thought of Julia Child and the famous chefs of Chicago and New Orleans and the other public television cooking series. I had my own idea for a can’t-miss series: The Great Bareass Cooks of America.

Sylvie would be a star.

After we finished eating, I knotted my tie and retrieved my raincoat from behind the sofa. It was a bit rumpled, but what the hell. It was going to get rained on anyway.

Sylvie followed me to the door. “When will I see you?” she said.

“I’ll call when I can. Don’t you dare straighten things out before you leave. The last time you did that, I lost my sneakers.”

“I put them in the closet.”

“They belong in the living room. Under chairs. Who’d ever think to look in the closet?”

I arrived at Tom Baron’s house in Windsor Harbor a little after eight. Tom and Joanie built their place on a high bluff overlooking the Atlantic, where the ninth fairway of Tom’s father’s golf course used to be. It’s a long, low, rambling place, with lots of glass and fieldstone and cedar sheathing. You could putt on the rolling sweep of lawn.

Joanie answered the door wearing a floor-length burgundy robe made of some kind of clinging silky material. She had done her hair and her face. Her brittle smile looked as if it might shatter.

“Brady,” she said. “Please come in. Tom’s gone already. Some sort of breakfast thing in Greenfield. He left something for you.”

I stepped into the foyer and Joanie helped me out of my wet raincoat. She ushered me into her kitchen, part of a big open area that included the dining room and one of the living rooms, walled in on three sides by floor-to-ceiling glass. The view of the ocean was spectacular.

She sat me at the kitchen table and poured two cups of coffee. Then she produced a bottle of brandy. “Little snort?” she said.

I shook my head. “Don’t need it.”

“I do,” she mumbled, dumping a healthy slug into her cup.

“No word from Buddy, then.”

She sipped her coffee and gazed out at the storm-chopped sea. “No. Nothing. Brady, I’m so grateful that you’re going to help.”

“I told Tom that this isn’t my line. I’ll see what I can do.”

“You’d think he’d at least call his mother.”

I shrugged.

“Unless,” she continued, “something’s happened to him.” She peered up at me hopefully.

“I’m sure he’s fine,” I answered automatically.

Joanie sighed. “Let me get what Tom left for you.”

She got up and swished into the other room. It didn’t look as if she was wearing anything under her robe.

She was back in a minute and slid an envelope onto the table. I ripped it open.

Brady:

Only names I can come up with—

Dr. Larsen, principal at W. H. High School. Knew Buddy pretty well, also Alice and others. Gil Speer, computer guy at the school. Only teacher Buddy liked. Or vice versa. Bob Pritchard, Buddy’s boss at Computer City. Middle-aged hippie type. Knows the scene, I think. Mr. and Mrs. Sylvester, Alice’s parents, who probably won’t want to talk to you and I wouldn’t even try.

Good luck. Call me tonight.

T.B.

I folded the note and tucked it into my shirt pocket. To Joanie I said, “Didn’t Buddy have any friends?”

She touched her hair with her hand. “Boys he went to school with. They’re all off to college now. With all his trouble, he’s been avoiding them anyway. When he wasn’t working or home, he was with Alice.” She hesitated. Her voice shifted gears. “He was—he had become quite reclusive, Brady. A loner. He was depressed. It was natural, I guess. We tried to get him to therapy. It was recommended. Even Tom saw the need for it. But Buddy refused. He said he was all right, that he could work things out for himself. But I don’t know.”

I reached across the table and touched Joanie’s hand. “What are you saying?”

Her eyes brimmed. “I guess I’m saying that I don’t know what Buddy might do. Might have done. He’s a stranger to me. Tom thinks he knows his son, but he doesn’t. Buddy’s been through a lot. He’s fragile. You don’t want to touch him, because you think he might crack. Do you understand?”

I nodded slowly. “Joanie, do you think Buddy could have hurt Alice?”

She flinched when I said it, but she met my eyes and nodded. “In the sense that I don’t know what he’s capable of anymore, I guess I think so. He was wound real tight. He could have snapped. Then…”

“Joanie,” I said after an awkward moment, “what else do you think he could have done?”

She sighed deeply and took a big gulp of brandy-laced coffee. “As you know, he had a drug problem. I mean, sure, he got caught selling it. But his problem was using it. Marijuana. LSD. Cocaine. Whatever he could find, I guess. He did rehabilitation, as the court ordered. Afterwards he went to those meetings. Every single night. But there was a black part of Buddy where he wouldn’t let me in. Maybe he let Alice in there, I don’t know. But not me and not Tom. He spent a lot of time in his room. Not listening to that awful music, not reading. Just lying there, staring at the ceiling. Sometimes he seemed on the verge of talking about it. But then he’d pull back. There was no anger, none of those overt behaviors you might expect. That we were told to expect from him. But no joy, either. Just this awful, passive blackness. To answer your question, I think he was capable of hurting himself more than hurting somebody else. That’s what worries me. And if he did hurt Alice…”

She didn’t need to finish. I sat there, smoking a cigarette and sipping my coffee while Joanie Baron composed herself.

After a few minutes she looked up at me and made her mouth smile. It was not particularly convincing, but I pretended it was. I stubbed out my cigarette and stood up.

“I best get on with my sleuthing,” I said lightly.

Joanie followed me to the door, retrieved my raincoat, and held it for me. As I turned to open the door, she put a hand on my arm. “I really appreciate this, Brady,” she said.