Snake Eater

by William G. Tapply

  Charlie folded his hands on the table and peered at me.

  “You’re trying to tell me something,” I said.

  He nodded.

  “It’s pretty oblique.”

  He shrugged.

  “Okay,” I said. “I get it. But I don’t understand. Yesterday you were hot to figure out what happened to Daniel McCloud, and now you’re saying we should leave dead rabbits where they’re buried, or something to that general effect.”

  “Something,” said Charlie, “to that precise effect. Listen,” he said, leaning toward me and grabbing my wrist, “as your best and most trusted friend, who profoundly hopes we’ll slip into our golden years together, you and I, casting Pale Morning Duns at rising brown trout in Rocky Mountain rivers and slicing golf balls into sand traps on all the great courses in the world, I’m saying to you: Forget it. Okay? Leave it be. Daniel’s dead. Irrevocably dead. Nothing anybody can do about it. It’s a shame, but it happens. One way or the other, it always happens.”

  I pulled my wrist out of his grasp. “What the hell is the matter with you?” I said.

  “Come on, Brady. I mean it. You keep doing this, and it’s time you outgrew it.”

  “Doing what?”

  He waved the back of his hand around in the air. “This,” he said. “This… amateur detective work. This poking your nose into places it doesn’t belong.”

  “Don’t you care what happened to Daniel?”

  Charlie shrugged. “I wish he was still alive, if that’s what you mean.”

  “What about whoever murdered him? Don’t you want to see him fry?”

  He shook his head slowly. “Justice, you mean. You want justice.”

  “Yeah. Justice.”

  “Brady, what is it? Really? Why do you keep glomming onto these things like a big old snapping turtle with a stick in its mouth, shaking your head around and refusing to let go? And don’t give me that justice crap. Anybody who went to law school knows better.”

  I sighed. I shook a Winston from my pack and lit it up. “You’re asking a serious question?”

  Charlie nodded. “A serious question, Yes.”

  “Shit,” I said. “We’ve talked about this before. You know me. I just like knowing things. Or maybe I should say, I don’t like not knowing. Call it a character defect, if you want. I can’t help it. I’m impatient with the mysterious ways of nature or life or God or whatever you want to call it. Some great Catholic theologian once said, ‘Whatever is, is to be adored.’ Well, I think that’s bullshit. ‘Whatever is, is to be understood.’ That’s my motto. That’s what this is all about, being alive and human. Trying to figure things out. Wanting to know things that you don’t know. Listen. You’re always giving me this line, Charlie. Fine. I expect it. But you never really mean it. Tell the truth. I think you kinda like it when I go banging around trying to understand things. Right? You usually try to help me. Now you’re different. Now I got the feeling here that you really do mean it. What’s up?”

  “Teilhard de Chardin,” said Charlie. “The theologian. Whatever is, is to be adored. God’s way. Go with the flow. Comforting wisdom, that.”

  “It doesn’t comfort me.”

  Charlie shrugged. So did I.

  Rita brought our food. Charlie hunched over his soup. I attacked my cannelloni. We didn’t talk. Charlie slurped about half of his soup, then put down his spoon and pushed the bowl away.

  “You all right?” I said.

  He shrugged.

  “Hey. Marie makes the best minestrone in the city.”

  “My stomach’s been a little off lately.”

  I nodded. “That explains it, then.”

  “What?”

  “Your gloom. All these negative emanations zipping out of your skull. Whaddya say, Charlie. Let’s figure this sucker out, huh?”

  “No, Brady. Please. Forget it.”

  “Come on, old buddy. You perform some computer tricks, and I’ll do some pinching and tickling, and we’ll see who squeals and giggles. Whaddya say?”

  He shook his head. “I’m serious, Brady.”

  I stared at him. He lifted his gaze to meet mine. “You really are, aren’t you?” I said.

  He nodded. “Yes. Back off. Do what I tell you.”

  “Well, fuck it, then,” I said.

  “You’ll back off?”

  “Shit, no. I’ll just have to do it without you.”

  19

  I WALKED BACK TO Copley Square from Marie’s in Kenmore with the collar of my jacket turned up against the November chill. But I was more chilled by Charlie than by the weather. He was always telling me to grow up and mind my own business. But he never really meant it. Charlie, as a prosecutor for the Justice Department, had plenty of opportunity to nose around in crime and mystery. It was his business, and he enjoyed it, and he understood why I sometimes found myself trying to figure out who had cheated, robbed, extorted, and occasionally even murdered my clients or their friends and relations.

  We always joked about it. Lawyers do that. If law school doesn’t make you cynical, the practice of law quickly does.

  Lawyers rarely admit they’re committed to justice. They never admit it to each other. We talk mostly about billable hours, sometimes about winning. Among ourselves, we call the law a business and ourselves businessmen.

  But most of the lawyers I know still nurture the vestige of what got them into law in the first place. The quest for an abstraction. Justice.

  Ever since the day I met him at Yale, Charlie McDevitt had always dreamed of a seat on the Supreme Court. With Charlie, it was never prestige. It was the ultimate opportunity to make justice.

  Now something in him had changed, and it worried me.

  But it didn’t change my mind.

  When I got back to the office I called Horowitz at the state police barracks. When he answered the phone I said, “You get ahold of Lieutenant Fusco yet?”

  “Ah, shit,” he said. “I told you I was gonna do that, didn’t I?”

  “You promised.”

  “What was the question?”

  “The Daniel McCloud murder in Wilson Falls.”

  “Right.” He popped his bubble gum. “Okay. I seem to recall there was a lunch in this for me.” There was, yes.

  “Where?”

  “You name it.”

  “I will.”

  “Couple of things, while you’re talking with Fusco,” I said.

  “I wouldn’t push too hard, Coyne.”

  “I called him a while ago. Had some names I thought he might want to check out.”

  “Names?”

  “Maybe connected to the McCloud murder.”

  “And?”

  “And he never called me back. I’m just trying to cooperate.”

  “Hm,” said Horowitz doubtfully.

  “Anyway,” I said, “along the same line, there’s something specific you can mention to him when you talk to him. Okay?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Just a couple of old crimes out near Springfield that Fusco might know something about. Got a pencil?”

  “I’ve got a pencil, for Christ’s sake,” he growled.

  “Okay. One, William Johnson, murdered in 1984. Two, Carmine Repucci, murdered in 1987.”

  “So what’s the question?”

  “Mainly, if and how the two of them might be connected. They were both small-timers, spent time in Billerica. I’d like to know if they were there at the same time, maybe cellmates. Were they partners when they got out? I’d like to know if they were in Vietnam, or in the service at all, and if so, when and where. I want to know if anyone’s been prosecuted for their murders, or suspected but not prosecuted, or what.”

  “What you want to know,” said Horowitz, “is how either of these, two guys might be connected to your McCloud. Right?”

  “What I really want to know,” I said, “is if the same person killed all three of them.”

  “This’ll be one helluva lunch you’re gonna owe me, Coyne. But,
yeah, lemme see what I can find out.”

  “When?”

  “When what?”

  “When are you going to see what you can find out?”

  “I can’t do it while I’m talking to you, can I?”

  “Nope.”

  After I hung up with Horowitz I began to rummage among the neat stacks of paper that Julie had assembled on my desk, and before I knew it she was poking her head into my office and telling me she was leaving. I wished her a pleasant weekend and returned to my paperwork. She stood in the doorway for a minute beaming at my diligence, and I wondered if she had talked to Charlie. Julie would like it if she thought I had overcome my childish obsession with unbillable hours.

  At five-thirty Horowitz called. “Meet me at Hilary’s in fifteen minutes,” he said.

  “You mean please?”

  “No. Meet me.”

  “Okay.”

  After I hung up I reorganized the stacks of paper on my desk. There was a new stack now. Stuff I had done. It wasn’t very tall. But I was proud of it.

  I switched on the answering machine, got my jacket, locked up, and left. J. C. Hilary’s is across the square from my office building. Horowitz had chosen it for my convenience, which wasn’t characteristic. And when I thought about it, I realized it was uncharacteristic of him to meet me at all. Usually he’d tell me what he’d learned over the telephone.

  He must’ve learned something.

  I found a booth and ordered a bourbon old-fashioned. I sipped at it and smoked cigarettes and watched the Friday evening bar crowd tell loud stories and flirt with waitresses, and I was halfway through my second drink before I saw Horowitz shoulder his way toward me. He was three-quarters of an hour late.

  He slid into the booth across from me. “Traffic,” he muttered.

  “I thought cops were never bothered by traffic. Flick on the siren and the flashers and everyone pulls over to let you by.”

  “Shit,” he said. “Flick on the siren and the flashers and everyone ignores you. I need a beer.”

  He looked around and caught the eye of the waitress. She nodded to him and in a minute or two she came over. “Sir?”

  “Gimme a light beer.”

  “We’ve got Coors, Mich, Bud, Miller.”

  Horowitz waved his hand. “Michelob, I guess.”

  He stuck his forefinger into his mouth and removed a wad of chewing gum. He put it into the ashtray. He looked up at me from under his shaggy black eyebrows. “Coyne,” he said, “I got instructions for you.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Goodie.”

  “Leave cop work to the cops.”

  “This from Fusco?”

  He leaned toward me. “This is from me. All you do is annoy people. You take up their time. You get in the way. You do more harm than good. You—”

  “I’ve heard it,” I said quickly. “You’re trying to tell me that Fusco doesn’t have anything, that they’re making no progress on the McCloud case.”

  He shrugged. “That’s true, but—”

  “And everyone’s embarrassed at their incompetence and they don’t want the civilians to know it.”

  “Listen,” he said. “There’s things you don’t know.”

  “Hey,” I said. “A revelation.”

  “Dammit, Coyne. I’m talking to you as a friend here.”

  “That’s a first.”

  He stared a me for a moment, then lowered his eyes and shook his head slowly back and forth. “I mean it,” he muttered.

  “About being my friend?”

  “No. About putting down your fucking lance and leaving the windmills to us.”

  The waitress brought his beer and said to me, “Another, sir?”

  “No,” I said. “I’ve got to stay sharp so I can figure out what my friend here is trying to tell me that he won’t say.”

  She frowned, then shrugged.

  After she left, Horowitz said, “Okay, Coyne. I’m gonna be straight with you.”

  “Another first.”

  “The McCloud case is on the back burner.”

  “You mean they’ve buried it.”

  He shrugged.

  “Why?”

  “Can’t tell you.”

  “Do you know?”

  “I got an idea.”

  “This Fusco’s doing?”

  “No.”

  “Somebody higher than Fusco, then.”

  “Look,” said Horowitz, “I shouldn’t have told you that much, okay? Except I am trying to impress upon you the importance of your backing off.”

  “As a friend.”

  “Sure,” he said. “As a friend. Okay?”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “You don’t have to get it, Coyne. You’re not supposed to get it. You’re just supposed to do it. Go argue alimony, or whatever it is you do.”

  “And leave cop business to the cops.”

  “Yes.”

  “Except they’re not doing it.”

  He blew out a long sigh. “Call it a warning. Call it advice. Call it whatever you want. Just tell me you hear me.”

  “I hear you,” I said.

  He sighed deeply. “Good.”

  “I will take it into account.”

  “You pigheaded son of a bitch,” he said.

  “What about Johnson and Repucci?” I said. “Learn anything about them for me?”

  “If I tell you will you get the McCloud bug out of your ass?”

  I stared up at the ceiling, pretending to ponder. “Okay,” I said. “It’s a deal.”

  “Mean it?”

  “Sure.” It was a lie, but it didn’t bother me.

  He stared at me for a moment. “Okay,” he said. “Johnson and Repucci both did time at Billerica in 1981. Their sentences overlapped by about three months, and they were in the same cellblock, so they undoubtedly knew each other. Johnson got out first and turned up in Springfield. Repucci grew up in Eastie, and that’s where he got arrested. When he got out, he went to Chicopee, which, as you know, is right next to Springfield. Whether him and Johnson worked together or not I couldn’t tell you. Logical assumption, though. They were both fringies, well known by the police, pulled in several times, but never charged with anything. When Johnson got offed, they questioned Repucci about it, but nothing came of it. They never made any arrests on Johnson’s murder. Guess they assumed it was a territory thing. Drugs, hookers, protection. One less asshole on the streets. You know how it works.”

  Horowitz shrugged. I nodded.

  “Anyways, Repucci got it a few years later. Same deal. The assholes want to knock each other off, saves us all a problem.”

  “So neither murder was solved,” I said.

  “Right,” said Horowitz. “No arrests, even.”

  “You check on their war records?”

  “Neither of ’em was ever in the service.”

  “They don’t sound like the kind of gentlemen who’d march for peace.”

  He shrugged. “They weren’t arrested for it. That’s all I can tell you.” He picked up his beer and took a small sip.

  “That’s it?” I said.

  “That’s all.”

  I fumbled in my jacket pocket and found the printout Charlie had given me. I unfolded it and put it in front of Horowitz. He glanced down at it, then looked up at me.

  “What’s this?”

  “Some names.”

  “Christ,” he said. “I can see that.”

  “Johnson and Repucci are on this list. This is what I wanted to tell Fusco about. There’s some connection among all of them. Plus Daniel McCloud.”

  Horowitz picked up the printout and, without looking at it, refolded it and handed it back to me. “I told you already,” he said. “And you promised.”

  “You won’t check them out for me?”

  “Absolutely not. And don’t you, either.”

  I tucked the printout into my pocket. “Right,” I said. “I promised.”

  20

  THE SHRILL OF THE telephone besid
e my bed popped my eyes open. Seven o’clock. My brain reluctantly ground into gear, and the vise around my temples reminded me of two more bourbon old-fashioneds at Hilary’s after Horowitz left, then a steak, then stopping at Skeeter’s on the way home where I watched the basketball game and argued with a guy who didn’t think Bob Cousy could even break into the starting five for Holy Cross in the new era of basketball.

  I’d had a few beers at Skeeter’s. The Celtics won, and I believed I won my argument, too, and so I’d celebrated with a mug of coffee laced with Jack Daniel’s.

  Skeeter had made sure I wasn’t driving before he gave it to me.

  And throughout the evening, on the level beneath the basketball and the booze and the fellowship of the bar, the question festered in my brain: Why had first Charlie and then Horowitz, two trusted friends, both been so humorlessly earnest in warning me off the Daniel McCloud case? Both of them had indulged me plenty of times in the past, no questions asked, no judgments rendered.

  And now, at seven a.m., too damn early on a Saturday morning, my phone was ringing. What now?

  I got it off the hook and against my ear. “Yuh?”

  “Hey, Pop. You awake?”

  I groaned. “I am now.” Joey. My younger.

  “Well, say hi to Terri for me.”

  “Huh?”

  “Terri. Listen. Feel around. She’s the one beside you.”

  “There’s nobody here but me.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Something wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong. She’s not here. We’re not together these days.”

  “Hm. Too bad. Well, listen. You wanna go climb a mountain?”

  “Are you speaking figuratively or literally?”

  “Literally. Me and Debbie’re gonna climb Monadnock today and we were wondering if you and Terri’d like to join us. Or you and some other lady. Or just you, if that’s how it is.