Close to the Bone

by William G. Tapply

  The Skylark was registered to Vaccaro’s wife, whose name was Marie and who lived in Maiden. The steering wheel, door handles, dashboard, and vinyl upholstery had been wiped free of fingerprints, although the technicians had found some partials on the frame that matched Vaccaro’s and some smudges that might’ve belonged to somebody else.

  There were bloodstains on the backseat where the body had been lying, but they found no skull fragments or brain tissue in the car, suggesting that the actual shooting had happened somewhere else.

  They found no murder weapon, no note, no matchbook or cigar butt or lost wallet in the car. No clues at all, obvious or microscopic.

  “The absence of clues,” said Charlie, “being an important clue, of course.”

  “A professional hit,” I said.

  “So it appears.”

  “That’s what he was afraid of,” I said, “and that’s what happened.”

  “And there goes Vinny Russo,” said Charlie. “Down the tubes. And now we’ve got to try to find the guy who hit Vaccaro, and we’ll offer him immunity, and see if we can’t get him to give us Vincent Russo. Uncle Vinny knows this, of course. So he’ll hire someone to hit the hit man before we catch up with him, and so it goes, round and round. Next time a professional killer shows up in your office, why not have Julie give me a call, huh?”

  “I doubt if it’ll happen again,” I said.

  Alex wasn’t there when I got home that afternoon. I hadn’t expected she would be. I changed into jeans and sat on my balcony. I smoked and stared at the sky. I thought of Eddie Vaccaro and Glen Falconer—one dead, the other close to it. And I thought of Paul, of course. He was dead, too.

  I thought of Vinny Russo sending his henchmen out to find and kill a man who might’ve already been dead.

  My mind kept switching back to Alex. I contemplated the ephemeral nature of youth and happiness and love and life itself.

  Images of Alex kept transforming into Olivia and Maddy Wilkins. Paul had apparently been screwing Maddy. If so, Olivia must have suspected. She couldn’t have missed seeing the evidence in the drawer of Paul’s bedside table when she retrieved his car key and again when she put it back.

  Where did Thomas Gall fit into this equation? A sad, grieving, perhaps desperate man. But a murderer?

  Eddie Vaccaro, of course, was a murderer. But he died first. So he couldn’t have killed Paul.

  The pink afterglow of the sunset still tinged the sky over the Plum Island marsh as I pulled in behind the yellow Volkswagen with the JUST SAY YO bumper sticker.

  I mounted the steps of Maddy’s cottage. The inside door was open, and amplified guitar music came at me through the screen door. Jimi Hendrix, if I wasn’t mistaken. I rapped on the door frame and called, “Maddy? Are you there?”

  A minute later she appeared on the other side of the screen door. She was holding a can of Diet Coke. She wore a plain blue T-shirt and pink shorts. She squinted at me through the screen. “Hello?” she said uncertainly.

  “It’s Brady Coyne,” I said. “Paul Cizek’s lawyer?”

  “Oh, sure.” She pushed the screen door open. “Come on in.”

  “I need to talk to you,” I said. “Can you come outside?”

  She glanced over her shoulder, then turned back to me and said, “I guess so. Want a Coke or something?”

  “No, thank you.”

  She came out and we sat on the front steps. “What’s up?” she said.

  “I want to ask you a couple of things, Maddy. It’s very important that you tell me the truth.”

  “Oh, wow,” she said. “Like a cross-examination, huh?”

  “Yes. It’s actually possible that the questions I ask you could be asked of you in court, under oath.”

  “I haven’t done anything wrong.”

  I flapped my hands and shrugged.

  “Are you trying to scare me?”

  “No. I just want you to tell me the truth.”

  She hugged herself. “You are scaring me. What’s going on?”

  “I’ll explain,” I said. “First, I want you to remember everything you can about the man with the black beard who we saw the first day I was here. You know who I mean?”

  She nodded. “I already told you everything. He was at Paul’s place a couple of times. I saw them one night talking out on his deck.” She shrugged.

  “Did you hear what they were saying?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t remember.”

  “It could be very important. Please try.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. Then she opened them and looked at me. “Well…”

  “Yes?”

  “I wasn’t spying on them.”

  “I know, Maddy. I’m not accusing you of that. What did you hear?”

  “I didn’t realize that other man was there when I went over. I didn’t mean to sneak around, but I was barefoot, and it was dark, and I guess they didn’t know I was there. I heard voices out on his deck, so I went around the side of the house, and when I saw that Paul was with somebody I stopped so they wouldn’t see me. Paul was… he said something like ‘Play it my way’ to that man. And the man kind of nodded, and Paul said, ‘Trust me.’ ”

  “Are you sure that’s what he said? ‘Play it my way’?”

  She nodded. “Maybe not those exact words. But something like that, because I remember wondering what they were planning to do. I do remember him saying ‘trust me.’ It struck me as pretty strange.”

  “What else, Maddy? Did either of them say anything else?”

  She looked at me and shook her head. “Nothing. I left. It was obviously a private conversation.”

  “Did Paul ever mention that man to you?”

  “No. Never.”

  “And you didn’t say anything to him about seeing them together?”

  “Oh, no.”

  “Can you remember anything else?”

  “Not really. I hung around by the end of Paul’s street, waiting for the man to leave, and after awhile the two of them came out and walked to where the man’s truck was parked. They shook hands and then the man drove off and Paul went back to his place.”

  “They shook hands.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  I paused to light a cigarette. Then I said, “Okay, Maddy. Just one more question, okay?”

  “I still don’t understand—”

  “I’ll explain, I promise. First, I want you to tell me about you and Paul.”

  “What about us?”

  “Were you lovers? Were you sleeping with him?”

  She let out a long breath that could have been either a laugh or a sigh. “Is that a crime?” she asked softly.

  “No,” I said. “But lying about it might be.”

  She was shaking her head. “I liked to pretend,” she whispered. “I had such a wicked crush on him. I told my friends that I was sleeping with him, that he loved me, that he’d promised to marry me as soon as he got his divorce. Half the time I believed it myself. He was so nice to me, it was easy to think he really loved me. I wanted to take care of him. I wanted to hold him and kiss him and make him happy. He was so sad and tense all the time. I knew I could make him feel better.” She turned to me, and I could see tears glittering in her eyes. “You know what I mean?”

  I nodded. “I know about love, yes,” I said. “Are you saying that you and Paul never slept together?”

  “Not even close,” she said softly. “He treated me like a daughter, not a lover. He took me on his boat a couple of times. He let me cook for him. He liked to talk to me about my future and my career and stuff like that. One time he kissed me on the top of my head. That was the closest we ever came. I mean, he already had someone anyway. It was stupid of me to—”

  “Someone else?”

  “Sure.”

  “Another woman, you mean?”

  She nodded. “She was there a lot. Whenever I saw her car there I’d get this twisted-up feeling in my stomach.”

  “Did y
ou ever see this woman?”

  “Oh, yeah.” She smiled quickly. “I—I kinda spied on them a couple times.”

  “What did she look like?”

  “She dressed rich. You can tell expensive stuff, even if it’s just a skirt and a blouse or something. She seemed very sophisticated, and she was beautiful. Tall, thin, blond. It made me sad, you know? Next to her, who was I? I knew I could never compete with a classy lady like that.”

  “Her car was parked there, you said?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you remember what the car looked like?”

  “Sure. It was a really neat little white sports car. A two-seater. A Mercedes convertible.”

  26

  MADDY,” I SAID, “I’VE got to use your telephone.”

  “Sure, but—”

  “I’ve got to make a call. It’s important.”

  She shrugged. “Okay. Come on in.”

  Jimi Hendrix had stopped singing, and a young woman was sprawled on the sofa eating yogurt from a cardboard container and reading a magazine. Maddy pointed to the telephone on the wall in the kitchen, then stood there watching me.

  “I need privacy, Maddy,” I said.

  “Huh? Oh, sure.” She went over and sat with her friend on the sofa.

  I glanced at my watch. It was a little after nine. I pecked out the number for Horowitz’s office at state police headquarters. Horowitz wasn’t there. I asked to be patched through to him and apparently managed to make a convincing case for it.

  I waited a few minutes, and then Horowitz said, “This better be damn good, Coyne.”

  “I think it is,” I said. “Or pretty bad, depending on how you look at it.”

  “I don’t need any fucking riddles. What do you want?”

  “I want you to tell your counterparts in New Hampshire to fingerprint Paul Cizek’s body.”

  “Why?”

  “To identify it, of course.”

  “Yeah, why else?” He paused. “Wait a minute. That body’s already been ID’d, hasn’t it?”

  “Mrs. Cizek identified it, yes.”

  “Then—?”

  “Lieutenant,” I said, “I could be wrong. If I am, I’m sorry. But if I’m right, then that body doesn’t belong to Paul Cizek.”

  “I thought you saw it.”

  “I saw a body,” I said. “It was facedown.”

  “You mean you never…”

  “No.”

  He was silent for a moment. “No shit?”

  “No shit.”

  “I think you better explain, Coyne.”

  “If I’m right, I will. If I’m wrong, you’ll be too mad at me to care.”

  “You got that right, pal,” he said. “Okay. I’ll get back to you.”

  After Horowitz and I disconnected, I dialed Roger Falconer’s number in Lincoln. Brenda answered.

  “It’s Brady Coyne,” I said. “I need to talk to you.”

  “Okay. Go ahead.”

  “I think it would be better in person.”

  She hesitated. “When?”

  “As soon as possible. It’ll take me at least an hour to get there. Make it ten-thirty.”

  “What’s this all about, anyway?”

  “You and Paul Cizek.”

  She was silent for a moment. Then she said, “Yes. All right.” She paused. “I don’t think you should come here.”

  “I agree. You tell me where.”

  “How about the Colonial Inn in Concord? Meet me on the front porch.”

  “I’m on my way,” I said.

  Brenda was sitting in one of the rockers on the front porch of the Colonial Inn, gazing out over the village green. She was wearing tight-fitting jeans and a sweatshirt with a picture of Wile E. Coyote on the front of it, and she was smoking a cigarette.

  I’d never seen her in jeans, and I’d never seen her smoking, and I’d never have pegged her as a Wile E. fan.

  I realized I barely knew her.

  I took the rocker beside her. “I wanted to talk to you before the police did.”

  “I haven’t committed any crime,” she said quietly.

  “No,” I said, “but several crimes have been committed, and I suspect you can shed some light on them.”

  “I don’t see how.” She flipped her cigarette away, then turned to me. “Sure, I was sleeping with Paul. Frankly, I don’t much care who knows it. Roger might be upset, but Glen’s beyond understanding or caring. Actually, Glen’s been beyond understanding or caring for years.”

  “I’m certainly not judging you,” I said.

  She angled her head and stared at me for a moment. Then she nodded. “Okay. Good. Then I don’t know what you want. It’s a simple story, see? Glen’s a drunk, and drunks don’t seem to have much interest in other people. They love their booze, not their wives, and you can forget sex, because drunks don’t, um, function. Paul Cizek was a sexy guy, and he wasn’t a drunk. He was separated from his wife. We hit it off. We were attracted to each other. Very attracted.” She spread her hands. “Then he disappeared, and that was that.”

  “You never heard from him after that?”

  “I assumed he fell off his boat and drowned.”

  “He didn’t. He faked it. He was living in New Hampshire.”

  Both of her hands went to her mouth. “That bastard,” she whispered.

  “Did you ever talk to him about Glen?”

  She nodded. “Sure. He talked about Olivia and I talked about Glen. I guess that’s what adulterers mainly talk about. Their spouses.”

  “Did you tell him how Glen had given up driving cars and was riding bicycles around the back roads at night?”

  “Sure. We laughed about it.”

  “Did Paul seem unusually interested in it? Did he ask questions about it?”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Oh, Jesus,” she said. “I know what you’re thinking.”

  I waited, and a moment later she said, “Paul asked me a lot of questions about Glen. He wanted to know when he went out on his bike, the roads he took, the places he went to. It seemed like—you know, pillow talk.” She fumbled in her bag and came out with a cigarette. I took out my Zippo and lit it for her. She took a long drag and exhaled it out there on the porch of the Colonial Inn. The pale glow of streetlights illuminated the trees growing on Concord’s village green. From behind us, inside the inn, came muffled laughter. “He was using me,” she said softly. “Using me to get Glen.”

  “I guess he could’ve done it without you,” I said.

  “But I helped.”

  “For Paul,” I said, “I think his relationship with you probably started as a way to get back at Glen. Paul hated the people he defended, hated what they did, hated the fact that they went tree, hated himself for every not-guilty verdict he got. Having an affair with you gave him a measure of revenge against Glen.”

  She was nodding as I spoke. “I guess I was getting some revenge against Glen, too,” she said. She laughed quickly. “It’s pretty ironic. I was attracted to Glen because he was so weak and dependent and needy. It took me a long time to figure that out, but I did. I thought about leaving him. But I couldn’t make myself do it. Because—well, because he was so weak, dependent, and needy. Then Paul Cizek came along, and at first he seemed to be Glen’s opposite. He seemed strong and independent and self-sufficient, living out there by himself on Plum Island. But when I got to know him, you know what?”

  I nodded.

  “Paul turned out to be weak, dependent, and needy, too,” she said. “And part of me felt liberated when I heard he drowned. Just the way I feel liberated now that Glen’s probably going to die, God help me.”

  Horowitz called me at my office the next afternoon. “You got some explaining to do, Coyne,” he said.

  “It’s not Paul, is it?”

  “No.”

  “Who is it, then?”

  “They haven’t figured that out yet. But whoever it is—”

  “I know,” I said. “Whoever it is, it’s Paul Cizek wh
o murdered him.”

  “Not only that—”

  “Right,” I said. “His wife was part of it.”

  “We tried to find her,” said Horowitz. “Her Saab is in her garage, but she’s not home and she’s not at her office.”

  “She’s gone,” I said. “And so is Paul.”

  “We’re looking for them,” he said. “Now. Explain.”

  “Here’s how I figure it,” I said. “After Paul got Glen Falconer off, he separated from his wife and moved to Plum Island, where he began an affair with Glen’s wife, and—”

  “Whoa,” said Horowitz. “What’d you say?”

  “Paul was having an affair with Brenda Falconer,” I said. “And that gave him the idea of killing Glen. Or maybe he had the idea first, and that’s why he began the affair. Either way, he faked his own death and disappeared. He was presumed dead. So no one would suspect him when Glen was run down. When I tracked down Paul, I told him that Eddie Vaccaro was looking for him. That gave him another idea.”

  “You think Cizek’s the one who did Falconer, then?”

  “Yes. And Vaccaro, too.”

  Horowitz paused for a moment. “Pretty good,” he said. “He kills a few people. One of ’em he dresses up in his own clothes, and he arranges for his wife to ID the body—”

  “He had to,” I said. “Because the first time he tried to fake his own death, I tracked him down. This time he made sure I was there to see firsthand that he was dead.”

  “And you bought it,” he said.

  “Yes,” I said. “I did. But I never really looked at him. All I could think of was that whoever blasted Paul could still be lurking around, and we should get the hell out of there and call the police. And Olivia…”

  “Sure,” he said. “She reacted like it was him. And then she ID’d him for the cops. Who’d think to doubt the bereaved wife?”

  “Exactly,” I said. “Especially if the family lawyer is there to more or less corroborate it. Hell, he was there at the cottage, where we expected to find him. According to Olivia, he’d called saying he was scared, needed help, come fast. In the dark it looked enough like Paul. Dressed like him, same size, lying there on his belly in all that blood…”