Nervous Water

by William G. Tapply

  I turned on the phone and shoved it into my pants pocket. Then I gave Henry a Milk-Bone, told him to behave, and walked down Mount Vernon Street and up Charles to the parking garage.

  As I wended my way onto the expressway and headed north to Maine, I thought about Cassie. Wherever she was and whatever she was doing, I was certain she wouldn’t want Moze to die thinking she was too angry to talk to him.

  I just hoped both of them were okay.

  A sign beside the closed door to the ICU at Maine Medical read, “VISITORS. Please ring the buzzer. A staff person will let you in.”

  Under the sign was a button. I pushed it. After a minute, a middle-aged nurse opened the door from the inside and arched her eyebrows at me.

  “I’m here to see Moses Crandall,” I told her. “I’m his nephew.”

  “Name?”

  “Brady Coyne.”

  “Nephew?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She looked me up and down as if she were trying to determine how I could possibly be Moses Crandall’s nephew. Then she shrugged and said, “This way.” She turned and headed inside.

  I followed her. The ICU was set up in a big square, with the patients’ little cubicles lined up around the perimeter and the medical staff’s desks and all the electronic monitoring devices clustered in the middle.

  The nurse led me to a corner room. “Make it short, please,” she said.

  I had to take a deep breath when I saw Uncle Moze. He looked small and insignificant and terribly still, lying there under his white sheet. He appeared to have aged twenty years in the two days since I’d seen him. An oxygen tube was pinched on his nostrils. Transparent plastic tubes snaked from the back of his hand up to a cluster of plastic bags on a steel hanger. Wires coiled out from under his sheet and led to ticking monitors.

  His eyes were closed. I had to look carefully to detect the faint, slow rise and fall of his chest.

  I turned to the nurse, who had remained standing watchfully behind me. “How is he?”

  “Stable.”

  “Is he in a coma?”

  “No. He’s sleeping.”

  “What do you mean, stable?”

  “I mean,” she said, “the doctors have given him medication. They can’t tell yet how much damage was done.”

  “Damage,” I said. “What happened?”

  “Your uncle had a heart attack.”

  “Is he going to make it?”

  “You’d have to talk to a doctor about that.”

  “Right,” I said. “Yes. I definitely want to do that. How do I get to talk to a doctor?”

  She smiled. “You ask me very nicely if I’ll page him for you.”

  I returned her smile. “Please?”

  She nodded, turned, and went to one of the desks in the middle of the big room.

  I stepped to the side of Moze’s bed and gripped his hand. “Uncle Moze,” I said. “Hey, Uncle. It’s Brady. How’re you doin’?”

  I saw his eyeballs roll under his lids, but he didn’t open them.

  I gave his hand a squeeze. “Hey, old-timer. Can you hear me?”

  He gave my hand a weak squeeze, and I saw his lips move.

  I bent close to him. “Say it again.”

  His face contorted with effort, and his eyelids fluttered open. “That you, sonnyboy?” he said.

  “It’s me, Uncle Moze. I’m here.”

  “Cassie,” he whispered. Then his eyes fell shut.

  “I’ll get her,” I said. “I’ll find Cassie. I’ll worry about that. You concentrate on getting better.”

  He opened his eyes, blinked at me, and closed them. His lips moved.

  I bent close to him.

  “It…was…Cassie,” he murmured.

  “What was Cassie?” I said. “What are you talking about, Uncle Moze?”

  But he was sleeping.

  I sat there beside his bed for a few minutes, and then the nurse came back. “That’s enough,” she said. “He needs his rest.”

  I stood up, gave Moze’s shoulder a squeeze, and told him I’d be back.

  The nurse led me over to the ICU door. “I got ahold of Dr. Drury for you,” she said. “He said he’d be up in a few minutes. There’s a waiting room out there on your left. I’ll make sure he sees you. Okay?”

  “A few minutes?” I said.

  She shrugged.

  There were two cheap sofas and three upholstered chairs in the little waiting room outside the ICU. A small window on one wall looked out onto other hospital buildings. A scattering of magazines lay on the low glass-topped table in the middle of the room. Today’s Health, Good Housekeeping, Popular Mechanics, Downeast, Sports Illustrated. I looked through them. None was less than eight months old.

  I was thumbing through the NBA preview issue of SI from the previous September when a deep voice said, “Excuse me? Are you Mr. Crandall’s nephew?”

  I looked up. He wore a white coat and brown pants. He had pale skin and a smooth, pink face, and despite the fact that his sand-colored hair was receding from his forehead, he looked about fifteen.

  I stood up and put out my hand. “Brady Coyne,” I said. “Mr. Crandall’s my uncle, yes.”

  He took my hand. His grip was surprisingly firm. “Wilton Drury,” he said. “I’m his cardiologist.” He gestured to the sofa where I’d been sitting.

  I sat down again, and he sat beside me.

  “How is he?” I said.

  “He’s had a heart attack,” he said. “He should recover. He was lucky. With that aneurysm of his, it’s a miracle it didn’t rupture and kill him. He’s a—”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “What’s this about an aneurysm? Does he know about it? What kind of aneurysm?”

  “It’s an aortic aneurysm,” Dr. Drury said, “and of course he knows about it. It was only a few weeks ago when we diagnosed it. He said he’d been feeling tired, listless, short of breath lately, and a friend of his finally talked him into seeing me.”

  “How bad is it?”

  “He’s had it for a while. It’s getting bigger, the vessel walls are getting thinner.” He looked out the window for a minute. “It’s bad. It’ll kill him. Probably within a year.”

  “Isn’t there anything you can do?”

  “Sure,” he said. “We can operate.”

  “But?”

  “You know your uncle,” he said.

  I realized I didn’t know my uncle very well, but I could guess what Dr. Drury meant. “He refused?”

  The doctor smiled. “Said he had a string of lobster pots to tend, didn’t have time for no damn operation.”

  “I’ll talk to him,” I said.

  “Oh, I talked to him,” said the doctor. “I explained the situation as straightforwardly and graphically as I could. I told him how the walls of his aorta are being stretched with each beat of his heart. It’s blowing up like a balloon. I told him how one of these days that thing’ll just explode inside his chest, and then, just like that, he’ll be dead.” A little smile twitched at the corner of Dr. Drury’s mouth. “Know what he said?”

  I nodded. “I can guess.”

  “He said,” said the doctor, “ ‘Sounds good to me.’ ”

  “I was with him day before yesterday,” I said. “He didn’t say anything about any aneurysm to me.”

  “Of course he didn’t.”

  I smiled. “If you’ve got to die,” I said, “a ruptured aortic aneurysm sounds like a good way to do it.”

  “Yes, I suppose that’s what he was thinking.”

  “Still,” I said, “you could operate. Maybe if Uncle Moze felt that he had something to live for.” I was thinking of Cassie.

  “Well, actually,” said Dr. Drury, “this heart attack complicates matters.”

  “It’d be risky?”

  “Very risky. I wouldn’t recommend it.”

  “But if he doesn’t have that thing operated on…”

  He shrugged.

  “So,” I said, “when you say he’ll
recover…”

  Dr. Wilton Drury shrugged again. “I mean, he won’t die of this heart attack. Mr. Crandall is in amazingly good physical condition given the fact that he smokes and drinks and pays no attention whatsoever to his diet. He’s going to have to change his lifestyle.”

  I smiled. I couldn’t imagine Uncle Moze changing a single thing about his lifestyle. “How long do you think he’ll be here?” I said. “In the hospital, I mean.”

  “Hard to say. A few more days in ICU, at least. We’ve got to do some tests, keep a close eye on him, work out his medications. Then if all goes well, we’ll move him over to the hospital floor for a few days, and if he’s still doing okay, get him into rehab. Start his PT, build back his strength, see how it goes. That aneurysm complicates it.”

  “My uncle’s a lobsterman,” I said. “Every day he goes out on his boat, hauls his pots. He lugs heavy things. Hot sun beats down on him. He gets rained on.”

  “He can’t do that anymore,” said Dr. Drury flatly.

  “Well, he probably will.”

  “It’ll kill him,” he said. “Guaranteed. If his heart doesn’t get him first, the aneurysm will. If he’d been out on his boat when this happened…”

  I nodded.

  “His family’s going to have to talk sense to him,” he said. “You’re not his only family, are you?”

  “No,” I said. It took me a minute to remember which of my mother’s brothers and sisters were still living. “He’s got a brother, Jake, and a sister. Faith’s her name. Jake’s still in Moulton as far as I know. I’m not sure where my aunt Faith is. And Moze has a daughter, if I can reach her. Cassandra. Cassie.”

  “Good. The family needs to be involved in some of our decisions.” Dr. Drury cleared his throat. “Actually, I’m glad you’re here, Mr. Coyne. There’s something else you should know.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The ER doctor noticed it when they brought him in,” he said. “Mr. Crandall had a fresh bruise on his chest.”

  I frowned. “A bruise?”

  Dr. Drury patted the area over his left breast.

  “He fell,” I said, “hit something when he had his heart attack. Is that what you mean?”

  He shook his head. “It looks like a fist hit him.”

  Six

  I stared at Dr. Wilton Drury. “A fist,” I said. “You saying somebody punched him?”

  “That’s certainly how it appears.”

  “A fist as opposed to some blunt object?”

  He nodded. “Did you play baseball when you were younger, Mr. Coyne?”

  “Sure. Third base, mostly.”

  “Ever get hit by a pitch?”

  “Of course.”

  “The bruise a baseball makes on your ribs or shoulder or your leg? You can see the stitches.”

  “You can see the knuckles when someone punches you?” I said. “That what you’re saying?”

  “That’s what your uncle’s bruise looks like to me. Knuckles. He was lying on his back when they found him.”

  “As if he was punched and it knocked him backward,” I said.

  “Typically,” he said, “when someone has a heart attack, if they’re standing up, the pain causes them to bend over, and they fall forward.”

  “That is impressive forensic deduction, Doctor.”

  He smiled quickly. “It’s speculative at this point, of course, but thank you. Unfortunately, your uncle’s in no condition to tell us what actually happened. I reported it to the Moulton police, as I’m required to do. I’m expecting an officer to show up any minute now, as a matter of fact. If you want to join us…”

  “I do. Definitely. What does ‘any minute now’ mean?”

  He smiled. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  Dr. Drury wandered away and I was left with that old Sports Illustrated. I flipped through it, looking at the pictures but not really noticing them. A jumble of thoughts was clanking around in my mind.

  One thought was: No wonder Moze was suddenly so eager to track down Cassie. He’d just been given a death sentence.

  Another—more disturbing—thought was: The words that Moze had struggled to whisper to me from his intensive care bed, if I’d heard them accurately, were “It was Cassie.”

  Did he mean that it was Cassie who had punched him in the chest?

  What else could it mean?

  It was nearly an hour later when the doctor came back. A woman was with him. She was medium-tall, slim, midthirties, I guessed, brownish blond hair in a ponytail, big silver hoop earrings, good tan, no makeup, and none needed. She wore a pale blue jersey and tight-fitting white jeans and dirty sneakers.

  A badge was clipped to her belt. An automatic handgun sat in a holster on her hip.

  Dr. Drury said, “Sergeant Staples, this is Mr. Coyne, Mr. Crandall’s nephew.”

  She smiled and held out her hand. “Charlene Staples,” she said. “Moulton PD.”

  I took her hand. “Brady Coyne.”

  She cocked her head at me. “You’re a Crandall, huh?”

  “That’s right. My mother’s side.”

  “You used to visit Mrs. Crandall on Harrington Street in the summer sometimes? Came in that big black Cadillac with Massachusetts plates?”

  “Gram Crandall,” I said. “My grandmother. Yes, I confess, that was our Cadillac. My father was a big-shot Boston attorney.”

  “I suppose that explains it,” she said. “I grew up down the street from the Crandalls. My mother used to suck her false teeth whenever she saw your car go gliding past our house. She’d say, ‘Just who do those people think they’re trying to impress?’ ”

  “We pretty much got the same reaction in our neighborhood in Massachusetts,” I said.

  She smiled. “About your uncle. It appears that somebody punched him. Any idea who’d do such a thing?”

  “I should tell you,” I said, “that until last Saturday, I hadn’t seen Uncle Moze for about thirty years. I doubt if I’m going to be much help.”

  “Last Saturday, you say?”

  “Yes. Went out on his lobster boat with him, helped him haul his pots, did a little trolling in the river. Then we went back to his house, had a beer.”

  “Why?” she said.

  “Why…?”

  “Why after thirty years did you visit with him last Saturday?”

  “It’s kind of a long story, Sergeant.”

  “Why don’t you call me Charlene.” She smiled and sat down. “I’ll call you Brady, okay?”

  “Good,” I said.

  “So tell me your long story. I’ve got time.”

  “I haven’t,” said Dr. Drury. He looked at Charlene Staples. “Anything else I can do for you, Sergeant?”

  “Just tell the nurses I’m going to want to try to talk to Mr. Crandall,” she said. “Thanks for alerting us to this situation.”

  He gave her a little two-fingered salute and turned to leave.

  “Doctor,” I said. “Would you do me a favor?”

  He stopped and looked at me with his eyebrows arched.

  “Could you ask the nurses to talk to me if I call on the phone about my uncle?” I said. “They were fairly uninformative when I tried this morning.”

  “As they’re supposed to be,” he said. “Sure. I’ll tell them. Give me your number, why don’t you. If anything changes, I’ll call you myself.”

  “Great,” I said. “Thank you.” I handed him one of my business cards. “You can call me anytime.”

  Dr. Drury left, and Charlene turned to me. “Okay. Let’s have your long story.”

  I tried to condense it, but it amounted to my family history, what I knew of it anyway, and it took a while. I ended by telling her what Moze had whispered to me. “It was Cassie.”

  “And you think he meant that it was Cassie who punched him?” she said.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Yeah, I guess so. That’s probably what he meant.”

  “Would that make any sense to you?”

&nb
sp; “What would make more sense,” I said, “is that he’s just had a heart attack, he’s heavily medicated, he’s in a hospital for the first time in his life, he’s disoriented, probably hallucinating, he’s been thinking about nothing but Cassie for months…”

  “On the other hand,” she said, “as far as we know, Mr. Crandall’s the only witness we have.”

  “If you ask me,” I said, “he’s the least reliable witness imaginable.”

  “A lawyer’s opinion, huh?”

  “Anybody would see it that way.”

  She shrugged as if she didn’t necessarily see it that way. “Cassie Crandall was four years behind me in school. She had a reputation.”

  “That was a long time ago.”

  “She was gorgeous and sexy and smart,” she said. “Terrific athlete. She ran track, played basketball and Softball. Great singing voice. The boys drooled over her. She was always quite, um, mature for her age. The girls hated her. I never thought she deserved her reputation. It was all lies and envy. High-school stuff. Cassie was better than everybody else at just about everything.”

  “I didn’t know her at all then,” I said.

  “So she and her father are estranged, huh?”

  “I guess you could say that. She’s the one who broke off communications.”

  “And you’re trying to, um, reconcile them?”

  I waved a hand. “I’m just trying to find Cassie, see if I can convince her to mend fences with Moze. Now, with him in the hospital, it feels way more important.”

  She cocked her head at me. “With him saying that she did it, it feels very important indeed.”

  “You can’t take that seriously,” I said.

  “It’s what we call a clue,” she said. “When a victim IDs the person who assaulted him, we take it seriously, yes.”

  “Well,” I said, “that’s just nuts.”

  “Maybe.” She looked at her watch. “You in a hurry to get back to Boston?”

  “Nope.”

  “You feel like giving a police officer a hand?”

  “Sure. What can I do?”

  “You were inside your uncle’s house last Saturday, you said, right?”

  I nodded.

  “I’ve got to check the crime scene, on the assumption that there was a crime, which the doctor believes there was. Come with me, tell me what you see. Will you do that?”