Third Strike

by Philip R. Craig

  Between Larry’s storytelling and his wine, I’d forgotten.

  I took my cell phone out of my pocket and pressed the On button. When the screen lit up, it read: “New message.”

  Oh, shit. Evie, no doubt. Very few people have my cell phone number. She gave the thing to me for occasions exactly like this one, to encourage me to call and reassure her that I was okay when I was off on some quest.

  I accessed voicemail, hit Send, and was told I had one new message. It had been delivered at twelve thirty-seven that morning. A little after midnight, while Larry and I were lurking around Menemsha Pond.

  “Hey,” said Evie’s recorded voice. “Are you okay? Call me, will you?”

  No “I love you.” Just “Call me.”

  She was pissed.

  I called our home number. Evie didn’t answer. In the shower, maybe. Or maybe she’d hooked up with one of her girlfriends for a day of shopping.

  Or maybe she was standing there holding the telephone in her hand, seeing on the caller ID window that it was from me, and giving it the finger.

  “Hi, babe,” I said when our voicemail invited me to leave a message. “It’s your wayward boy, somewhat hungover here on Saturday morning after a night of drinking Larry Bucyck’s homemade wine, which by comparison makes me yearn for a tall, cool glass of rubbing alcohol. Had an uneventful ride over on J.W.’s catboat. He and Zee send their love. Having an interesting visit with Larry. I’ll tell you all about it. Anyway, I wanted you to know I’m fine. Sorry I didn’t have a chance to call last night. It was thoughtless of me, though I do have an excuse. I’ll try you later on. Hope you’re having a good day. Love you.”

  I doubted if any of that would mollify Evie. I should have called her. She expected me to and would worry if I didn’t. She wouldn’t’ve minded if I’d called late and awakened her.

  I waited around for another hour or so. When there was still no sign of Larry Bucyck, I filled Rocket’s bowl with fresh water and left it by the front door. Then I climbed into Zee’s Wrangler and headed back to the Jackson abode.

  J.W. would know what to do.

  His Land Cruiser wasn’t there when I pulled into their driveway, but Zee was inside. She told me that J.W. had gone off to find some people he needed to talk to, and if she knew her husband, I’d have a good chance of finding him at one of his watering holes. “Try the Fireside,” she said. “If he’s not there, I bet he’s been there and somebody can tell you where he was headed when he left.”

  Zee offered to feed me, which I declined, but I did accept a big travel mug full of black coffee, which kept me company as I drove to the Fireside. J.W. had taken me there several times before. I’d always found it a friendly place, but this time after I had found a place to park and was walking to the door, I saw a police cruiser and an emergency vehicle out front. A small crowd had gathered on the sidewalk to watch the EMTs load a man into their wagon.

  Inside the restaurant, I spotted J.W. sipping a beer at a table and talking with his friend Bonzo. I went over to their table and said, “Hey.”

  J.W. turned and arched his eyebrows at me. “Hey yourself.”

  I slid in beside him.

  “You remember Bonzo?” he said.

  “Of course.” I shook hands with Bonzo. “How’s it going?”

  Bonzo smiled. “Very good, Mr. Coyne. Thank you.”

  J.W. was frowning at me. “Everything okay?”

  “Well,” I said, “Larry Bucyck seems to have disappeared, for one thing. What about you? I saw an ambulance out front. I doubt it’s a coincidence. You in here, an injured body out there.”

  He smiled. “Guy fell off a table, that’s all. You want to talk about Larry Bucyck?”

  I nodded. “I do. I could use some perspective. And maybe some advice.”

  “Okay,” he said. “You want a beer?”

  I held up the mug of coffee Zee had given me, which I’d brought into the restaurant without thinking. “I’m good.”

  Bonzo stood up. “I got work to do,” he said, “and I bet you’ve got things to talk about.” He shook hands with both of us and wandered away.

  I told J.W. about Larry’s encounter with the Uzi-toting men on the boat, how they’d come sneaking into Menemsha Pond in the middle of the night and offloaded mysterious wooden crates into a van, and how they’d caught Larry in their searchlight.

  “Uzis?” said J.W.

  I shrugged. “Larry wouldn’t know an Uzi from a garden rake. Some kind of nasty weapon.”

  “You believe this story?”

  I shrugged. “Larry believes it. I know he’s afraid. I’m not sure what he actually saw, or how much his imagination has colored it. He saw something, all right. Could’ve been some fishermen unloading their gear, I suppose.”

  “Without running lights?”

  I shrugged. “If, in fact, that’s what Larry saw.”

  “I wonder what was in those crates,” J.W. said.

  “Nothing good, I wager,” I said. “Nothing legal.”

  “You’re probably right. And that was Larry’s conclusion, too, I gather.”

  “He’s really scared,” I said. “I made him agree to go to the police or the Coast Guard or somebody with me this morning, but when I got back from fetching coffee, he was gone.”

  “He was there when you woke up?”

  “Snoring away in his hammock.”

  “But gone when you got back from your coffee run.”

  I nodded.

  “You think something happened to him?”

  “That’s what worries me. At first I thought he’d just chickened out, decided he didn’t want to talk to any authorities. He’s a very shy, private guy, living like Thoreau down there in the Menemsha woods. He says he just wants to be left alone. But the more I think about it, yeah. I’m worried about him. I do believe something might’ve happened to him.”

  J.W. nodded. “Sure you don’t want a beer? You could use a beer.”

  “I got coffee,” I said. “I’m all set.”

  He nodded. “Some of us dig alcohol, some prefer caffeine. You in your way, me in mine. Tell me more about this guy Bucyck. He sounds a little…”J.W. waved his hand.

  “I got nothing against alcohol,” I said. “Drank quite a bit of it last night, in fact. And yeah, Larry is a little…” I waved my hand, imitating J.W.

  I told J.W. about my evening with Larry Bucyck, the way he’d chosen to live, his stone sculptures, his excellent quahog chowder, and his vile homemade wine, our midnight walk down to the pond where he’d seen the boat come in.

  “Except,” J.W. said, “the boat didn’t come in.”

  “No boat,” I said. “It was like he was telling me, I can show you right where it happened, which proves I’m telling the truth, so now you’ve got to believe me.”

  J.W. chuckled. “I keep remembering the hard-throwing right-hander who couldn’t find the plate that night against the Angels,” he said. “Hard to reconcile that kid with this nutty old hippie you’re describing.”

  “What were you like when you were twenty-one, twenty-two?”

  He nodded. “Valid point.” J.W. drained his beer glass, pushed back his chair, and stood up. “Sounds like we better go check it out, then.”

  “I can’t ask you to do that,” I said. “You’ve got—”

  “Did you ask?” he said. “I didn’t hear you ask. This is my idea. Let’s go. I’ll follow you.”

  We went outside. J.W. got into his Land Cruiser, and I climbed into Zee’s red Wrangler, and we headed for Menemsha.

  When we came to the dirt ruts that led to Larry’s house, I stopped. J.W. stopped behind me, got out, came up to my window, and pointed into the woods. “That has to be one of those sculptures you mentioned.”

  I nodded. “He says he moved those rocks without machinery. Levers and pulleys and planning and time, he said.”

  J.W. blew out a quick breath. “Impressive work. I like it a lot. It’s like I can almost see it breathe.”

 
“I agree,” I said. “I think creating them is a Zen thing for Larry.”

  “It’s a Zen thing for me, too,” J.W. said, “just contemplating it.”

  J.W. went back to his car, and we drove up the driveway and parked in the dooryard.

  J.W. and I got out of our vehicles. I opened the door to the house and looked inside. Larry wasn’t there, but I said, “Hey, Larry,” anyway.

  He didn’t answer, of course.

  We went around back. I half expected to see Larry cooking something in his big kettle, or chopping wood or moving rocks around, or snoring in his hammock, but he wasn’t doing any of those things.

  I didn’t see Rocket, either. J.W. meandered over to the outhouse on the edge of the woods. The door hung ajar. He poked his head inside, then turned, looked at me, and shook his head. He came back to where I was standing. “You hear that?” he said.

  “What?”

  “Howling. Hear it?”

  I listened, and then I heard it, off in the distance.

  “That must be Rocket,” I said. “Larry’s hound.”

  “And that odor,” said J.W.

  I sniffed the air. “Pigs,” I said. “Larry said he had some pigs. I didn’t smell anything yesterday.”

  “The wind’s shifted a few degrees,” J.W. said. “It’s more westerly today. It was out of the south yesterday, as you no doubt noticed when we sailed in it.”

  I didn’t tell him that I’d paid no attention whatsoever to the direction of the wind, landlubbing sailor that I was.

  “Let’s go see the pigs,” he said. “It’s in that direction. Where the howling is coming from.”

  It wasn’t hard to follow our noses along the pathway that wound down the hillside to the pigsty, which we found tucked in a shady area under a couple of big oak trees. Larry had cobbled together a pen and a lean-to–style shelter. The fence was about four feet high, made from random-sized planks of wood nailed to posts made out of six-inch-thick tree trunks. The shelter had a tin roof.

  The odor was overpowering, and Rocket was sitting outside the fence. When he saw us, he stopped baying and came over to us.

  There were five pigs, oinking and grunting and rooting around in the pig-knee-deep muck. They were enormous pinkish creatures, and when J.W. and I leaned our elbows on the fence, a couple of them waddled over and looked up at us out of their squinty, intelligent eyes.

  “Sorry, fellas,” I said. “No food.”

  Then J.W. said, “Oh-oh.”

  I turned to him. “What?”

  He pointed toward the far side of the pen, where one of the pigs was digging his nose in the mud.

  It took me a minute to recognize what I was seeing sticking up out of the mud.

  It was a hand and part of an arm. The elbow was at a funny angle.

  When the pig moved, I saw the rest of the mudcovered body sprawled on his belly. His face was buried in the muck, but I recognized the ponytail.

  “Jesus,” I said. “It’s Larry.” J.W. put one leg over the fence. When I started to follow him, he said, “You stay there.”

  “He’s dead,” I said.

  He nodded. “I want to be sure,” he said. “If so, we should leave him for the police. No sense both of us getting stinky. I’ll do it.”

  I watched as J.W. climbed over the fence and began to slog over to where Larry lay in the muck. The pigs stood back and watched him. When he got over there, he gave the pig that was rooting around Larry’s body a gentle kick in the ribs, and it moved away.

  J.W. squatted down and lifted Larry’s face out of the mud. He bent close to him and pressed his fingers against Larry’s throat.

  A minute later he looked over at me and shook his head.

  He lowered Larry’s head back into the mud, came back to where I was waiting, and climbed out of the pigpen.

  He stood there frowning at me.

  “What?” I said.

  He shook his head. “Nothing. He’s dead, that’s all.”

  “Could you tell how he died?”

  “No. He wasn’t breathing. No pulse. That’s all I know. He’s all coated with mud.”

  “Like he went in to feed his pigs and they attacked him?”

  J.W. shrugged. “I don’t know if pigs do that.”

  “Or he slipped in the mud and…and drowned in it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I blew out a breath. “He was murdered, wasn’t he? That’s what happened, isn’t it? Somebody killed him.”

  J.W. patted my shoulder. “Take it easy, man. We don’t know anything.”

  I was shaking my head. “I really didn’t take him seriously,” I said. “I was humoring him. And now…”

  “I don’t see how you can blame yourself for this,” said J.W.

  “The man was truly frightened. Now he’s truly dead.”

  “That doesn’t make it your fault. You got your cell phone on you?”

  I took my phone out of my pocket and handed it to J.W. “Who are you gonna call?”

  “State cops. Dom Agganis, if I can reach him. Or Olive Otero. It would be a pretty good joke if Olive had to go sloshing around in a pigsty.”

  “I feel funny,” I said, “leaving Larry’s body there in the mud.”

  “The cops should see him where we found him,” he said.

  I nodded. “I know that.” I looked at J.W., and I couldn’t help it. I smiled. His feet and legs and arms were caked with wet pig muck. He had mud on his face and in his hair.

  “What?” he said.

  “You don’t smell so good. Zee won’t let you in the house.”

  “We got an outdoor shower.”

  Rocket and I stayed there beside the pigpen watching over Larry Bucyck’s body while J.W. wandered away with my cell phone. The pigs apparently had lost interest. They were ignoring Larry’s corpse.

  J.W. came back in a minute. He gave me the phone. “They want one of us to go back up to the, um, Larry’s house and wait for them there, and one of us to stay here, keep an eye on the body. You better go. I might scare them away. Take the dog with you.”

  I nodded. “You are quite scary.”

  “Keep the phone turned on. If they get lost, they’ll call.”

  “You gonna be all right?”

  He smiled. “As long as I stay here, nobody will know how bad I smell.”

  It took about half an hour for them to arrive. When they did, it was a full-blown cavalcade—state-police cruiser, two unmarked sedans, a Chilmark PD cruiser, and an emergency wagon. They pulled into Larry’s front yard and parked randomly.

  Dom Agganis, whom I’d met a few times previously, got out of the passenger side of one of the unmarked sedans. He came over to me. “Where is it?” he said.

  “Down the hill behind the house. I’ll take you there.”

  I led him down the path to the pigsty. Rocket came along with us. The rest of them—Olive Otero was one of them, and the others, I assumed, were forensics experts and people from the coroner’s office—followed along single file behind us. The occupants of the Chilmark cruiser remained behind.

  When we got there, Agganis turned to me and said, “You stay here.” He went over to talk to J.W.

  Olive Otero touched my arm. “Let’s go over there.” She led me through the grove of trees to the edge of the clearing and gestured at a couple of boulders. “Sit down.”

  I sat, and Rocket sprawled on the ground next to me. From there, I couldn’t see what was going on at the pigsty.

  Olive sat beside me. She gave Rocket a pat on his head, then took a notebook out of her pocket. She arched her eyebrows at me. “Why don’t you tell me about it?”

  “What do you want to know?”

  She shrugged. “Everything. Why you’re here. Everything you know about Mr. Bucyck. How you and Jackson found him.”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “Don’t leave anything out.”

  “Do you know who Larry Bucyck is?” I said.

  “Dead, is all I know,” she said.<
br />
  So I told her Larry’s whole story, from his brief career as a Red Sox pitcher to his flight to the Vineyard to his years as a hermit. I told her how he called me on Thursday and insisted I come down to help him. I told her how it was important to him that I was his lawyer so that whatever he had to tell me would be privileged.

  “Now he’s dead,” she said.

  “Yes. So now I’m telling you his story. If he was alive, I wouldn’t.”

  “I don’t think any of that would qualify as privileged information,” she said.

  I shrugged. “You’re probably right. I wouldn’t’ve told you anyway without his permission. Whatever. Now the question is moot.”

  “So what happened today?” she said.

  “I don’t know. When I woke up this morning, he was sleeping in his hammock. I drove to Edgartown for coffee—the dog came with me—and when we got back, Larry wasn’t in his hammock and we couldn’t find him. After a while, I went and got J.W. We heard Rocket howling and found Larry there.” I pointed in the direction of the sty. “J.W. climbed in. Larry was dead. So we called you.”

  “How come J.W. climbed in there instead of you?”

  “He said he didn’t mind getting dirty.”

  Olive looked sideways at me, then shrugged. “Okay. Let’s go over that again.”

  She made me tell it all over again, except this time she kept interrupting me with questions. A few times I found myself contradicting myself, confusing times and sequences, mixing up elements of the stories Larry had told me. Olive seemed to find it interesting that we’d drunk quite a bit of moonshine wine before bed, and that gave me the idea that after Rocket and I went to Edgartown for coffee, Larry might’ve rolled out of his hammock and wandered down to the sty, hungover and unsteady on his feet, to visit his pigs. Maybe he went into the sty to feed them or something, and he slipped and fell in the mud and panicked, and the pigs came over, poking and prodding him with their snouts, smothering his face in the smelly muck.

  I shook my head. It sounded pretty far-fetched, and I didn’t share the scenario with Olive Otero.

  After a while, Dom Agganis came over. His legs were caked with wet pig muck.