Close to the Bone

by William G. Tapply

  “Pastrami on rye?”

  “Corned beef on wheat, actually,” she said. “With a big fat dill pickle.”

  “How’s tonight?”

  “Sure. Let’s go out and celebrate.”

  “Celebrate what?” I said.

  “Independence Day.”

  “That’s not for another week.”

  “Our independence, I mean.”

  “Independence from what?”

  “Convention. Expectation. The humdrum and the mundane. The slings and the arrows. The tumult and the shouting. The agony and the ecstasy.”

  “Oh,” I said. “That stuff.”

  We ate in one of the upstairs dining rooms at the Union Oyster House. We had Bloody Marys and Alex ordered baked finnan haddie and I had oyster stew, all in the two-hundred-year-old tradition of the Oyster House.

  I wanted to tell her all about Glen Falconer’s bicycle accident and my visit from Eddie Vaccaro and my confrontation with Thomas Gall. A lot had happened in the week we’d been apart. I wanted to brag about how I’d tracked down Paul Cizek, and how I’d found him emulating Thoreau on a little New Hampshire pond, trying to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts, to suck out all the marrow of life, to drive life into a corner and reduce it to its lowest terms.

  I also wanted Alex to know that I didn’t envy Paul. Beneath his brave talk of simplicity, I sensed that he had not really escaped the quiet desperation that had sent him fleeing in the first place.

  I couldn’t tell Alex about Paul Cizek, of course. She was a reporter, and I was a lawyer bound by law and ethic to protect my client’s secrets. Anyway, if we’d talked about Paul, we’d have ended up talking about me, and my own quiet desperation, and how a little post-and-beam home on a dirt road in Maine could work the same as a cabin on a pond.

  Simplify, simplify.

  Sure. Easier said than done.

  Sunday morning at six o’clock it was my turn to slip out of bed while Alex was still sleeping, brew a pot of coffee, and prop a note against it. “Love you,” it said unoriginally. I added several X’s and O’s.

  It was a glorious Sunday in June, and Charlie and I fished from a little after nine in the morning until dark, and all the way to the Deerfield and back, and during our frequent time-outs, when we sat on streamside boulders to listen to the river and watch the trout feed on insects, we did not once violate our sacred agreement to avoid all topics relating to the business of the law.

  We fooled some trout, and some trout fooled us. Neither of us fell in. A perfect day of fishing. We stopped for burgers and beer at a roadside pub in Charlemont.

  During the long ride home in the dark I talked about Alex, how she was moving to Maine at the end of the summer, and how I was afraid I’d lose her, and how tempting it was to go with her.

  All Charlie said was “Change is hard, Brady. Either way, it’s hard.”

  I dropped him at his car in Concord and it was nearly midnight when I pulled into the parking garage under my building.

  I sat behind the wheel for a moment. It was late and I was tired, that healthy fatigue that comes from a long day of wading in a cold river and fly casting in the sunshine and fresh air. The yellow fluorescent lights of the garage cast odd shadows on the concrete pillars and the rows of parked vehicles, and through the half-opened car window I heard the soft echoes of water dripping somewhere.

  I sighed, got out of the car, retrieved my fishing gear from the backseat, and headed for the elevator. I was reaching to push the button when I felt something hard ram into the back of my neck.

  “Don’t turn around,” came a raspy voice I didn’t recognize from behind me.

  “You got it,” I said.

  “Drop your stuff.”

  I let my rod case and waders and fishing vest drop to the floor.

  “Okay. Over there. In the corner.”

  He shifted the gun barrel to my back and used it to prod and steer me around the side of the elevator shaft into the dark corner beside a parked minivan.

  An arm went around my chest, pulling me back against a man who I sensed was bigger and bulkier than I. The gun barrel left my back for a moment. Then it was pressed against the corner of my right eye.

  “Jesus Christ,” I mumbled.

  “Shut up,” came the voice, so close to my ear I could smell the tobacco and garlic on his breath. The pressure of the gun barrel made my eye ache.

  “You’re not Vaccaro,” I said.

  “Nah. I don’t shoot guys in the eye like that weasel. I shoot ’em in the back of the head. Civilized, you know?”

  “Can you move the gun, then?”

  He chuckled. “Sure. Whatever you say.” The gun left my eye and jabbed into the base of my spine. “That better?”

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  “Where’s Vaccaro?”

  “Is that what this is?”

  “My uncle needs to talk to him.”

  “I don’t know where he is. I hardly know him. I—”

  The gun barrel rammed into my side. “Don’t bullshit me, pally. He was in your office the other day.”

  “Yes. But that was the only time, and he didn’t tell me where he was going. I have no idea where he is.”

  “So what did he say?”

  “He just said he was looking for his lawyer. Not me. A friend of mine. He thought I might know where he was. But I didn’t.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  “What else?”

  “Nothing.”

  The man hugging me against him was silent for a moment. Then he said, “Uncle tells me to bump you, that’s what I do. Right? This time he says ask you questions polite. So I do that. I do what my uncle says. You telling me the truth, no problem. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Uncle finds out you’re lying…”

  “I hear you,” I said.

  “We got an eye on you,” he said. His arm moved away and then the pressure from the gun barrel in my back was gone. “You stay right here for awhile. Got it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Five minutes.”

  “All right.”

  I heard his feet moving on the concrete floor, and I listened until the echoes faded and died. I took a deep breath, hesitated, then turned. The parking garage was quiet and eerie and empty. I went to the elevator, gathered up my fishing gear, and rode up to my sixth-floor apartment.

  I flicked on the lights and dropped my gear onto the floor. “Alex?” I called.

  There was no answer. I went into the bedroom. She wasn’t there. I sat on the edge of my bed, and that’s when I noticed that my hands were trembling. I fumbled a cigarette, got it lit, and dialed Charlie’s number on the phone by the bed.

  It rang five or six times before he answered.

  “It’s Brady,” I said.

  “Christ, I just spent a whole day with you. I just got into bed. I’m pooped.”

  “Charlie…”

  He hesitated, then said, “What is it? What’s this I hear in your voice?”

  “I just had a gun stuck into my eye by someone who was looking for Eddie Vaccaro.”

  “Oh, man…”

  “He said—”

  “Vinny Russo,” said Charlie.

  “He didn’t say. He mentioned his uncle.”

  “That’d be Vinny.” Charlie paused. “You met one of Russo’s thugs. Look, Brady, you don’t know where Vaccaro is. Hell, nobody knows where he is. They’re just checking out all their possibilities. Okay?”

  “I didn’t like it at all,” I said.

  “No. But I don’t think you need to worry.”

  “Ever had a gun stuck in your eye?”

  “No. Listen, Brady. They’ve got no reason to hurt you. They don’t hurt people for no reason. Understand? That’s not how they operate.”

  “I lied to him,” I said. “I didn’t tell him that Vaccaro wanted to turn himself in to you.”

  Charlie chuckled. “You didn’t even tell me
that.”

  “I’m telling you now.”

  “We already knew that, Brady. I’d guess Russo knows it, too. It’s no secret. That’s why everyone’s looking for him.”

  “So…”

  “So you’ve probably got nothing to worry about.”

  “Probably? Shit, Charlie.”

  “Don’t worry. Nothing’s going to happen. Go to sleep.”

  “Fat chance,” I said.

  Eventually I did get to sleep. It took a while. When I woke up, the sun was shining and the fear I’d felt down there in the gloomy, midnight shadows of the parking garage had faded. Only a tender bruise near the base of my spine reminded me of my encounter with Vinny Russo’s hired thug.

  I spent Monday in court and ran into my old friend Judge Chester Popowski in the lobby afterward. When I told him about my adventure in the parking garage, Pops insisted on buying me a drink. He echoed Charlie’s advice. I had nothing to worry about, he said, and he made me believe it. By the time we parted it was too late to go back to the office. It was another beautiful June-almost-July afternoon, so I walked all the way home from East Cambridge to my apartment on the harbor.

  I found myself glancing back over my shoulder from time to time. Nobody seemed to be following me.

  I got there around six. Alex was on the balcony munching an apple. Her shoes were off and her bare feet were propped up on the railing and she’d hiked her skirt up over her knees. Her glasses were perched on top of her head and her face was tilted to the sky and her eyes were closed. I kissed the side of her neck.

  Without turning or opening her eyes, she reached up and touched the side of my face. “You’re all sweaty,” she said.

  “I walked all the way from the courthouse.”

  “Good for you. Gonna join me?”

  “Let me change and get an apple of my own.”

  I did, and when I sat beside her and propped my own heels on the railing next to hers, she reached for my hand and said, “I drove up there yesterday.”

  “To the—your place in Maine?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  She took her hand away and ran it through her hair. “I just wanted to see it. To see that it was real. To see if it was the way I remembered.”

  “And?”

  “I love it. It’s perfect. And it makes me sad.”

  “Alex—”

  She turned, leaned toward me, and kissed my mouth. “Let’s not talk about it,” she said. “We’ve already said everything.” She stood up and threw her apple core out into space. We watched it arc down to the water. The splash it made on impact was barely visible from my balcony.

  She rubbed her hands together, then smoothed her skirt against the fronts of her thighs. “I bought salmon steaks and fresh peas and baby potatoes,” she said. “You stay here and relax. I’m cooking.”

  Darkness was seeping into the apartment and Alex and I were patting our stomachs and sipping coffee at the table when the phone rang. I didn’t move.

  “Aren’t you going to answer it?” she said.

  “No. I’m too comfortable. Let the machine get it.”

  After the third ring, the answering machine in the corner of the living room clicked on, invited the caller to leave a message, and then beeped.

  “Oh, Brady,” came Olivia Cizek’s voice. “Oh, Jesus. You’ve got to be there. Please answer.”

  I got up quickly and picked up the wall phone. “I’m here,” I said. “What’s up?”

  “It’s Paul…”

  “Yes.”

  “He—I talked to him. He wants to see us.”

  “Us?”

  “Yes. You and me.”

  “When?”

  “Now. Tonight.”

  “I can’t do it tonight, Olivia. I’ve got company.”

  “I know you talked to him,” she said. Her breath seemed to catch in her throat, and I guessed that she was crying. “He told me everything. I—he’s frightened. He sounds—I don’t know. Desperate. I don’t—”

  “All right,” I said. “I’ll pick you up. I’ll be there in half an hour.”

  “Please hurry,” she said.

  I hung up the phone. Alex was sitting with her elbows on the table and her chin propped up on her fists, staring out the window. I went over and stood beside her. “I’ve got to go out,” I said.

  She nodded without looking at me.

  I squeezed her shoulder. “It’s Olivia Cizek,” I said. “It has to do with Paul. I’ll explain later. I’m sorry.”

  She pressed her cheek against my hip. “It’s okay. Go take care of business.”

  “Will you be here when I get back?”

  “I don’t know.”

  23

  THE TRAFFIC WAS LIGHT, and I pulled up in front of Olivia Cizek’s house on their suburban side street in Lynnfield a little after nine-thirty. Before I could set the emergency brake, the passenger door opened and she slid in.

  “Let’s go,” she said.

  I pulled away from the curb. “Can you tell me what’s going on?”

  “What’s going on is Paul’s alive after all and he’s somewhere in New Hampshire and he’s in some kind of trouble. He said you knew how to get there.”

  “Yes. I found him. I couldn’t—”

  “I know. He told me. He made you promise not to tell me.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s all right. Please. Just hurry.”

  Olivia sat there staring straight ahead. I drove fast. I tried to start a couple of conversations, but she made it clear she didn’t want to talk. After a while I slid a tape of Bach’s first two Brandenburg Concertos into the player.

  An hour and a half later I passed the barn with the rusty tin roof. I found the “Gallagher” sign and turned onto the long dirt driveway that wound its way down to the pond.

  The two big windows on the front of Paul’s cabin threw a pair of pale yellow parallelograms onto the pine needles. Otherwise the darkness was complete in the thick grove of pines. I pulled up in front, and before I could turn off the ignition Olivia had opened the door, jumped out, and run over to the cabin.

  I got out of the car just in time to hear her scream.

  She was kneeling on the ground with her head bowed as if she were throwing up. Her fingers were clawing at the pine needles. Her breath came in long, gagging shudders.

  I started toward her. “Olivia,” I said. “What—?”

  She stood, ran to me, and threw her arms around me. “It’s him,” she said. “It’s—oh, God.”

  I looked over her shoulder and saw Paul.

  He was sprawled on the ground in the shadow of the porch, facedown, with one arm reaching into one of those yellow rectangles of light. The pine needles all around his body were wet and shiny with blood.

  I held Olivia tight. She lifted her head, looked blankly at me for a moment, then buried her face against my chest. Her fingers dug into my back. Her shoulders heaved.

  As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I could see that Paul’s side from neck to waist was drenched with blood. He was wearing the same overalls and T-shirt he’d had on the day I’d visited him, and his feet were bare, and his body looked shrunken in his clothes.

  “He’s dead,” she whispered. “Oh, Jesus. Somebody killed him. He’s dead.” She was shuddering against me, and I held her close.

  And then I realized that whoever had done this to Paul could still be around, lurking in the shadows, fully prepared to do to me and Olivia what he had done to Paul. “We’ve got to get away from here,” I said.

  “But what about…?”

  “We can’t help him. Come on. Let’s go.”

  “Shouldn’t we cover him or something?”

  “We’ve got to leave him that way. For the police.”

  She nodded. “Yes, of course.”

  I put an arm around her waist and helped her stumble back to the car. I opened the passenger door and guided her inside. Then I went around the other side and slid behi
nd the wheel.

  I turned around and headed back up the dirt road. Olivia huddled against the door, hugging herself.

  I drove back the way we’d come. I remembered a little mom-and-pop store at a crossroads a couple of miles before we’d come to the barn with the tin roof. There had been a pair of gas pumps out front and a Coke machine beside the door and hand-printed signs advertising live bait and cold beer. I thought I recalled seeing a phone booth.

  The phone booth was there. I pulled up beside it and got out, leaving the motor running and the headlights on. I told the officer that I was reporting what I thought was a murder. I started to try to give directions, but when I mentioned the “Gallagher” sign he said he knew where the Gallagher cottage was. He asked me my name and told me to meet him at the top of the driveway.

  I got back into the car. “The police are coming,” I told Olivia.

  I headed back to Paul’s place.

  “I thought he was dead,” Olivia whispered. “Then he called. And he wasn’t dead after all. And now…”

  I couldn’t think of anything to say to her.

  I turned onto the driveway and stopped. A minute or so later a police cruiser with its blue light flashing pulled up beside me. The window went down and a cop leaned out. “Follow us,” he said.

  We drove down to the cottage. Two uniformed officers got out. One of them went to the cottage and played a flashlight over Paul’s body while the other one came over to my car. Olivia and I were sitting inside with the windows open, and he rested a forearm on the roof, bent down, and asked if we were okay. We both nodded.

  “You folks wait right here,” he said.

  After a minute, the one with the flashlight went back to the cruiser. I could hear him speaking into the two-way radio, and I heard the crackling voice of a dispatcher. Then he came over to join us. “They’re on their way,” he said, and he joined his partner in leaning against my car to wait.

  A few minutes later I heard sirens in the distance. Their wail grew steadily louder, and then a fine of headlights appeared on the hillside, weaving its way down through the trees to us.

  First came another cruiser, followed by a rescue wagon and two unmarked vehicles. Three EMTs hopped out of the wagon and jogged over to Paul’s body. A man in a sport jacket opened the passenger door and said, “If you’ll come with me, please, Miss.” He took Olivia’s elbow and led her to his sedan. A guy wearing a suit with no necktie introduced himself to me as Lieutenant Capshaw. I accepted his invitation to follow him over to his car. We sat in the front seat. He kept the door open, and the dome light illuminated the inside of the car and made the outside seem darker. I related the events of the evening, beginning with Olivia’s phone call to me and ending with my phone call to the police.