“Hmmmm,” went the Button, as he sketched and scribbled a few extra parts specifications on the margin of the diagram.
“It’ll also have to be simple enough to be set up entirely by me.”
“Hmmmm, that simple, eh.”
“Uh-huh.”
He scratched out a few connecting lines on the diagram and drew some more direct ones.
“Lastly,” I said, “I need a special kind of triggering mechanism.”
“What kind?” he said.
“I want a trigger that will activate when I release it, not when I depress it.”
The Button frowned. “When you release it?”
“That’s right.”
He doodled a bit more on the diagram and looked up. “Like what they use on a subway train?”
“Subway train?”
“Yes. They call it a ‘dead-man’s switch.’ ”
I exhaled a bit longer than usual. “Exactly,” I said.
The Button crossed to the door, swung the gone-to-lunch side of the sign outward and pushed a red plastic square at the baseboard. He came back and beckoned me through the curtain. There he assembled and demonstrated each component, including the two-step arming of the switch. When he was satisfied I was familiar with the system, he slipped it into a brown shopping bag along with four mounting braces of varying angles and metal screws of varying diameters.
I pulled out some money, and he asked if that was it. “Almost,” I replied. “Now I’d like to call your brother.” The Button wagged his head. He didn’t even look surprised.
An auto graveyard is a busy place during a New England winter. The average car-owner now keeps a car something like seven and a half years. That’s a lot of road salt, sand, and skids to work on a car. Toss in drunk middle-aged drivers and inexperienced teenaged drag-racers, and you have a junkyard’s bonanza.
I followed two late-model Japanese cars being towed inside Eddie Shuba’s gate. Eddie was from Lithuania, and in 1945 he was seventeen years old. That was when Eddie and thousands of other refugees were sandwiched between the Red Army pushing west across Germany and the American forces pushing east. By some miracle, he’d had a little English and got enlisted in our Army. He received citizenship, served in Korea, and qualified for a disability pension which he parlayed into the auto yard.
“Johnnie, Johnnie, good! Very good to see you now!”
He came humping over to me, his war leg inflexible in the cold. He wore a brand-new olive-drab field jacket with a U.S. flag stitched carefully where a unit patch would otherwise be. The driver of one of the tow trucks honked to get his attention, but Eddie ignored him.
“How are you, Eddie?” I said, shaking the hand that pumped mine.
“Oh, good, good. Stiffer in the leg and older is all.”
He had a crew cut more gray than white and a few facial scars, but still a grip like one of his mechanical car-crushers, screeching and grinding off to the right.
“So how are you?” he said, open-faced and smiling.
I smiled back. No need to worry about Eddie reading “disquieting” news in the papers.
“I’m fine, Eddie, but I need a favor.”
“A favor? For you, anything. You think I forget? My arm, my business, what you need?”
About seven years ago, some high-level car-strippers were using Eddie’s yard, through a dishonest foreman, to shelter some of their skeletons. My old employer, Empire Insurance, was underwriting a lot of theft and vandalism policies then, and an overly eager assistant DA tried to connect Eddie to the ring. Eddie was clean, but he also knew that I was the one who steered the assistant straight with some help from a Holy Cross classmate who was one of the assistant’s superiors. The only time I ever saw Eddie in tears was when he became convinced that his foreman had betrayed him by fronting for the ring.
“Just a small—” I said, when I was cut off by the tow truck driver, who shoved me aside and started to beef to Eddie. The driver was maybe thirty, at 220 about forty pounds overweight. He came complete with a freely running nose and body odor, even in the cold, like a month-dead moose.
Eddie just swung his wrecking ball of a left fist fast, hard, and upward into the driver’s stomach. The driver went down on his knees, gagging, and Eddie cuffed him alongside the head with the heel of the same hand, toppling him over into the slush and mud.
“Swine!” bellowed Eddie. “You wait until Eddie Shuba ready for you. Now, get your rig and get out forever. Move!” Eddie kicked him rather gently for punctuation, glared at the other driver, who was obviously in no mood for the same, and then gave me a forward-march gesture with his right arm.
“Come, Johnnie, we go into my office. Where there is peace and men can talk.”
I followed him into the shack. The driver’s dry heaves weren’t quite drowned out by the compressors that seemed never to stop.
Eddie closed the door behind us, which shut out most of the noise. He offered me vodka.
“Only if I can sip it,” I said.
He roared laughter and an epithet about how I had to learn to drink vodka properly. He poured us each about two ounces of 100 proof into styrofoam cups. He handed me mine, we toasted the U.S. of A., and then he threw his drink off in one gulp, smacking his lips without a hint of coughing.
I took a polite slug. He seated himself in a big, worn leather office chair, using both hands to position his bad leg at a more comfortable angle.
“So, Johnnie, how can Eddie Shuba help you?”
I prefaced my request with an abstract explanation of how I was helping the widow of a war buddy and was dealing with a very bad man. Eddie nodded gravely.
“So basically I need an old car that’ll drive maybe thirty miles competently at highway speed. I’ll also need a key to your front gate.”
“Sure thing. I got a four-door Chevy Nova that run.”
I shook my head. “No, I need a bigger car, preferably a two-door, with a long engine compartment.”
Eddie poured and tossed another shot, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “I got maybe two cars so. One a Pontiac, ’67. The other a Buick, ’69. The Buick run better maybe, but it’s four doors. The Pontiac got only two.”
“Make it the Pontiac then.”
Eddie looked grieved when I pulled out my bankroll. “No, no,” he said, “favor to good friend. Eddie—”
I held up my hand. “I insist,” I said, counting out three hundred. “By the way, do the cops in this town come by here much at night?”
Eddie, rummaging around through some dog-eared, stained paperwork, gave his lion’s laugh again. “Hoo, sure, Johnnie, sure. Just like they go to church. Every Christmas and Easter.”
He gave me a registration and a set of car keys, then tossed a gate key on top. “Come, we try this beauty for you.”
“Oh, Eddie, two more things?”
“Yeah?” he said, turning at the door as I finished my vodka.
“We’re going to talk some more, but if anybody asks you about today, you tell them I just asked you if I could use the driveway beyond the gate as a meeting site. I never got any old car or any gate keys from you.”
“Okay,” he said, a quizzical look on his face.
“And, Eddie?”
“Yeah?”
“After I use it, I want the car crushed.”
“Crushed?” said Eddie.
“I’ll be leaving it here tomorrow night, and I’ll want it crushed first thing in the morning.”
Eddie fixed me squarely. “I show you where to park it. I work crusher Friday morning myself. First thing.”
We went back out into the yard.
After Eddie Shuba, I saw the Button’s brother. I barely had time to catch the post office before it closed. I decided to let it and the stationery store go ’til tomorrow morning. I looped and skipped as much rush-hour traffic as I could, buying an evening Globe from a kid at an intersection just as it hit the street a little after 5 p.m. At the next six traffic lights, I leafed through it
. My identification as the corpse was dumped to page six by two flare-ups in the Middle East, a political corruption case, three fires, and a schoolbus accident. I pulled off into a Seven-Eleven store parking lot and called Lieutenant Detective Robert Murphy.
He picked up on the third ring.
“It’s Mr. Lazarus,” I said.
“Who?”
“You know, the Charcoal Kid?”
“Hold on,” he said, bellowing something at someone on his end. I thought I heard a door close.
“Where have you been, Cuddy?”
“Busy.”
“What have you got?”
“Nothing definite.”
“Let’s hear about the maybes.”
“I’d rather not.”
“Now look, mister,” Murphy said, the telephone growing warmer from his voice, “I am out on a limb for you. I have an as-yet-unidentified—”
“Mis-identified,” I interjected.
He growled but drove on. “Un-identified body in the morgue and I have to either confirm or deny the Globe article.”
“Tell them that no positive identification is possible until my prints come in from Washington.”
“The hands were too burned. I got Daley calling dentists. You know how many—”
“I haven’t been to the dentist since mine died two years ago.”
“That’s all right. Boring him is better than chewing his ass for the reporter slip. Now, what have you found out?”
“Al Sachs was killed by a guy he’d met in the service. Al had blown the guy’s cover somehow.”
“How? What’s the guy’s name?”
“I’m not sure of that yet.”
“You’re not sure of the name?”
“No, of how Al found out.”
“What difference does that make? Do you know who the killer is?”
“No, not as such.”
Another growl. “What do you mean, ‘not as such’?”
“Look, Lieutenant, I’m at a pay phone, and there are three teenage thugs looking to—”
“Fuck the thugs. What’s his name?”
“Sorry, Lieutenant, I can’t hold—” I jiggled the cradle five times, then pressed it down. I’d have to be straighter than that with Murphy next time.
I got back into the rental and drove to Nancy’s house.
“You know,” she said, lazily swirling the wine in her glass, “it’s kind of nice coming home to a cooked dinner.”
I had stopped at a small grocery and bought four split chicken breasts and some Shake ’n Bake. I tossed the ingredients together, and the meal was ready just fifteen minutes after she’d come in the door.
“In my opinion, it’s the Green Giant Niblets that set the whole tone of the meal.”
She laughed. We were both half-kneeling, half-squatting around the low table in her living room, throw pillows under our rumps.
I sipped some of my wine. She pushed some corn around on her plate.
“Are you getting close?” Nancy said, eyes down and casual.
“Close to what?”
“Close to whoever or whatever you’re after?”
“Yes.”
“Can you tell me about it?”
“Not ever.”
Nancy nodded. She finished her meal in a subdued, but not sulky, manner. She cleared the dishes while I finished my glass of wine.
Nancy came back into the room. “How about a walk on the beach?” she said peppily.
“The beach?”
“Yeah, Carson’s Beach.”
“Nancy, it must be zero with the wind chill.”
“So, you can use some of my sweaters.”
“They wouldn’t fit.”
“Then I’ll ask Drew Lynch for some of his.”
“I don’t want him to know I’m here,” I said lamely.
Nancy came over and put her hands on my shoulders gently, as though lecturing a slow learner.
“John, you won’t have to show Drew any identification for me to borrow a sweater from him. Besides, he certainly knows you’re up here by the sound of your footfalls.”
I thought back to Jacquie and Ricker above me in Curly Mayhew’s house. I shuddered.
“Chill?” she said.
“No,” I replied.
“Well, then, let’s go.”
“What about the numerous ruffians who no doubt frequent the area?”
Nancy laughed. “Don’t worry, it’s too cold for them.”
I yielded.
Drew’s sweater was a thick-ribbed, oily burgundy turtleneck that closed out the cold. The stars were bright over the patch of inky black harbor we could see as we strolled along the beach. A couple of joggers in ski masks thumped by us, looking like terrorists and raising their mittens at us in salute. Nancy swung her arms conservatively at her side. I kept my hands in my pants pockets, thanking whoever had given Drew the sweater for Christmas.
“It’s tomorrow, isn’t it?” she said. Quietly, but the air was so cold and the night so still that I was sure the joggers, at least a quarter mile behind us by now, could have heard her. We kept walking.
“What’s tomorrow?”
“Whatever it is that you’re going to do.”
I exhaled heavily. My breath clouds never got started because of the wind coming off the harbor.
“Probably,” I said. “If all goes well.”
Nancy dug her hands into her own pockets and watched her feet. “Would it do any good for me to argue that the court system is the better way to resolve disputes like this one?”
She made me smile in spite of myself. “No, it wouldn’t.”
“John Francis Cuddy,” Nancy said wearily, “you are too old, too recently drugged, and probably too damned decent to deal with these people.”
“You left out too loyal, too arrogant, and too stubborn to quit now.”
She stopped and punched me in the arm, harder than I was ready for.
“Don’t!” Nancy cried out, then dropped her voice. “Don’t you dare make fun of yourself.”
“O.K.,” I said, feeling the little glow inside again. “I won’t.”
She shook away the tears beginning to form in her eyes. She went up on tiptoes and threw her arms around my neck, drawing her face up into the side of my throat.
“Please come back,” Nancy Meagher said. No sobbing, just an even, reasonable request.
I stroked her hair and began to realize just how much I wanted to.
We walked back to her house, Nancy’s left arm slid into the crook of my right. Climbing the stairs, we both knew I’d taken a step out there on the beach. She had the good sense to realize that a step wasn’t a leap.
“Couch?” she said lightly.
I nodded.
“I usually set the alarm for seven,” Nancy said in the same tone.
“That’ll be just fine.”
She walked into her bedroom. “Why don’t you take the bathroom first,” closing the door behind her.
Twenty-Three
MY AGENDA FOR THE morning was short, and the first two items took no time at all. I drove to Newton, a city about eight miles west of Boston. I obtained a large General Delivery mailbox for a month at the Newton Post Office under the name of “J. T. Davis” and bought ten dollars worth of stamps. Then I stopped at a stationery store and bought five large book-mailing envelopes with the legend “Books—Fourth Class Mail” already printed on them. I put these in the trunk of the rent-a-car, just above the blanketed shotgun I had bought at the shop of the Button’s brother. I got into the car and drove to Eddie Shuba’s junkyard.
I drove by slowly and counted off the five sidestreets Eddie and I had agreed upon yesterday. I turned right and spotted the old Pontiac slumped into a parking space next to a weather-beaten house and across from a non-operational auto body shop. I pulled in ahead of the Pontiac and walked back to it.
I got in and found the keys on a wire just under the glove box. I pulled off the ignition key and turned the engine over. T
he car started on the third try. I let it warm up while I went back to the rental and transferred my cargo to the Pontiac’s cavernous trunk. I put the Pontiac in gear and drove it into the driveway of the auto body shop and behind the building itself. The old car still had effortless power steering and crisp, albeit squeaky, braking.
I turned off the engine and sat in the car for a few moments with the front windows rolled down. No noises, no voices. I got out and walked to the back of the car, my footsteps crunching the unshoveled snow. I reopened the trunk, taking out the tools Eddie had left there for me, and returned to the front of the car. I opened the hood of the Pontiac and went to work. It took less than an hour.
Oh, I had to push a few wires and hoses out of the way. Also, I spent fifteen awkward minutes cutting a hole through the engine side of the glove box and niggling into place a doubled-over shirt to take the powder burns. Three of the Button’s braces were perfect, though, and the wire to the dead-man’s switch was easy to attach. I ran the wire down through the dash and mounted the switch itself on the floor next to the headlights’ dimmer switch. I armed the switch with the shotgun empty and did a few trial runs. Then I tossed my remainders into the trunk and folded one of the mailers into the glove compartment.
I reset the system and took the Pontiac out for a bouncy test drive of about two miles. I came back in behind the auto body shop and tried it again. I heard the satisfying click from under the hood. I reset the switch and loaded the shotgun. Then I paused a few minutes to think things through one more time. The only flaws I could see were those of timing that I had already anticipated and those of chance that I could not predict.
I started the Pontiac and headed toward Weston Hills. I stopped at a pay phone in Newton and dialed Murphy’s number.
“Lieutenant Detective Murphy’s line, Detective Cross speaking.”
I tried to disguise my voice. “Lieutenant Murphy, please.”
“I’m sorry, but he’s not available. Can I take a message?”
“No, I can call him back.” I paused. “Just tell him Mr. Lazarus tried to reach him.”
“All right.”
I hung up. I walked several stores down and bought a paper, a tuna sub, and two root beers. I walked back to the Pontiac and killed nearly three hours before driving on.
The Staked Goat Page 20
