A Fine Line

by William G. Tapply

  He shrugged.

  “It’s important. Life and death. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Life and death,” he said. “Couldn’t be clearer, sir.”

  “Tell him he can call me any time. He can call me at four in the morning and disguise his voice if he wants.”

  Henshall frowned at me. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “Never mind,” I said. “If you think of something, you call me yourself, okay?”

  He nodded. “All right.”

  I turned and headed for the front of the shop. Henshall followed me.

  Phil was fooling around with a stack of record albums. He looked up at me.

  “You better take some lessons,” I said to him. “Before you hurt yourself.”

  He smiled quickly, then resumed poking among the records.

  When we got to the door, I turned to Henshall. “What do you know about Phil?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What’s his background?”

  He shrugged. “He’s one of those Ph.D.’s who can’t get a teaching job. He likes music. Comes to work on time. That’s about all I know.”

  “What’s his Ph.D. in?”

  “History,” he said. “American history. History professors are a dime a dozen.”

  “American history,” I repeated. “Has he ever mentioned any interest in old documents, or the Lewis and Clark expedition?”

  “Philip and I don’t have those kinds of conversations.”

  “What kind of conversations do you have?”

  He smiled. “To tell you the truth, I rarely have conversations of any sort with the help. They take care of the customers so I don’t have to.”

  “How does Phil get along with Ethan Duffy?”

  Henshall cocked his head and looked at me. “What are you getting at, sir?”

  “Would you answer my question?”

  He frowned for a minute, as if he were thinking deeply. Finally, he shook his head. “I don’t have a good answer for you, sir. Ethan and Philip work here at different times. I never have more than one person out front at the same time. They know each other, of course. But I have no awareness of their relationship, or if they even have one.”

  I nodded and held out my hand to Henshall. He hesitated, then took it.

  “I’m sorry if I came on strong,” I said.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “Real experts have tried to bully me.” He smiled. “For a lawyer, you’re not that good at it.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment,” I said. “Still, I kind of thought yanking those cords out of your computer . . .”

  He shook his head. “Amateur hour.”

  “When I used the phrase life and death,” I said, “I meant it literally and most sincerely.”

  “I believe you, sir.”

  I stepped outside. Henshall pulled the door shut from the inside, and I heard the lock turn and the deadbolt snap into place.

  I was lying in bed waiting for Melville’s heavy prose to put me to sleep when the phone rang. I glanced at the clock. It was a little after midnight.

  I picked up the phone. “Yes?” I expected to hear that muffled voice again.

  “It’s me. Ethan.”

  “Ethan?” I said. “Jesus, son. Are you all right? Where are you?”

  “I’m okay.”

  “So Henshall delivered my message, huh?”

  “Is Henry all right?”

  “I’m taking care of Henry,” I said. I noticed that he didn’t answer my question. “Your mother’s worried sick about you.”

  “Tell her I’m okay, will you?”

  “You tell her yourself. Give her a call, for God’s sake. What the hell is going on?”

  “There’s nothing to worry about.”

  “Your father—”

  “I know about that.”

  “Did you see anything?”

  “I’m just calling to tell you I’m okay. You don’t need to go looking for me or anything.”

  “It’s the police who are looking for you. They want to talk to you.”

  “I know.”

  “Ethan, I’m a lawyer,” I said. “I was your father’s family lawyer, which, technically, makes me your lawyer. I’ll help you, okay?”

  “If you’re my lawyer, you can’t tell the police you talked to me if I tell you not to, right?”

  “It’s more complicated than that,” I said. “But as your lawyer, I advise you to—”

  “Please keep the police out of it.”

  I blew out a breath. “I can’t do that. They’re looking for you. So am I. Dammit anyway, Ethan. I’ve worn out two pairs of shoes looking for you. There’s good reason to think people less friendly than I are also looking for you. Your father has been murdered. Ben Frye, too. Have I got your attention yet?”

  He was silent for a moment. Then he said, “Yes.”

  “Good,” I said. “Now listen to me. You’ve got to talk to the police, and I want to be with you when you do. Let’s do it right now. Okay?”

  “It’s midnight, Brady.”

  “The cops are open for business all night.”

  “Who else is looking for me?”

  “You don’t know?”

  “You’re trying to scare me.”

  “You got that right,” I said. “Where are you? Tell me where you are. I’ll come get you.”

  “No,” he said. “Not now.”

  “Dammit, Ethan—”

  “I need more time, Brady. I’ll call you again.”

  “Not good enough. You’ve got to—”

  “It’s the best I can do,” he said, and then he hung up.

  I put the phone back on the cradle, blew out a breath, and lit a cigarette.

  Well, at least he was alive. That was a relief.

  He said he was okay, whatever that meant. He hadn’t sounded particularly okay, but it was hard to read somebody over the telephone.

  On the other hand, his father had been murdered, and it was possible that he’d witnessed it.

  It was possible he did it.

  I snubbed out my cigarette, picked up the phone, dialed information, and asked the synthetic voice for the number for Jonathan or Ellen Bramhall in Sudbury.

  It was close to twelve-thirty. Most people are asleep at twelve-thirty on a Wednesday morning.

  Hell, if I were a worried mother, I wouldn’t care what time I got a good-news phone call about my son.

  Her husband answered. “Yeah,” he grumbled. It sounded as if I’d awakened him.

  I know I should have apologized for waking him up, told him who I was, reminded him that I was a lawyer, and indicated why I’d called in the middle of the night. But I’d found him to be an unfriendly sonofabitch, and Ellen didn’t seem to like him much, either, so all I said was: “May I speak to Ellen, please?” He could think what he wanted.

  “Who is this? What do you want?”

  “It’s Brady Coyne,” I said, “and I want to talk to Ellen.”

  “Why?”

  “None of your business.”

  He hung up.

  I hit the redial button.

  When he picked up the phone, Jonathan Bramhall said, “If you don’t stop harassing us, I’m going to call the police.”

  “If you don’t let me talk to Ellen,” I said, “there will be a police cruiser in your driveway in ten minutes with its lights flashing for your neighbors to see.”

  I heard mumbled voices in the background. They sounded angry. Then Ellen said, “Brady?”

  “I just talked to Ethan,” I said.

  “Oh, lord,” she said. “I was worried that . . .”

  “He’s okay. He’s staying with a friend. He made me promise to call you right away.”

  “Well, thank you,” she said. “He could’ve called me himself.”

  “And I expect he will.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He didn’t tell me. He’s upset about what happened to Walt. He’s taking some time to sort
it all out. The point is, he’s fine, and you shouldn’t worry about him.”

  She blew out a long breath, then said, “Well, thank you, Brady. If you talk to him again, please tell him that his mother would like to hear his voice.”

  “Of course,” I said. “I’m sorry I upset your husband.”

  “I’m not,” she said. “Thank you so much.”

  After I hung up, I smiled to myself. I had told Ellen two or three little lies. Not even lies, really. Extrapolations. The fact was, I didn’t know where Ethan was staying, and I didn’t know why he’d decided to go into hiding, and I had no confidence that he’d call his mother.

  But they were benign lies, and I felt pretty good about them.

  SIXTEEN

  A little after ten on Thursday morning, Detective Roger Horowitz, my old friend and nemesis from the Massachusetts state police, showed up at my office. When Julie ushered him in, Henry, who was lying under my desk, got to his feet, went over, and sniffed Horowitz’s shoes. Horowitz glanced down and said, “Go away.”

  Henry looked up at me, sort of shrugged, then returned to his place under the desk.

  I asked Horowitz if he wanted coffee.

  He shook his head.

  “I’ve been besieged with cops lately,” I said.

  “So I hear.”

  I gestured to the sofa. “You want to sit?”

  “No,” he said. “You gotta come with me. I got a car waiting outside.”

  I arched my eyebrows. “What now?”

  He sighed. “You’re in the middle of something. They asked me to come get you. On account of the fact that you and I are buddies.”

  I smiled. “Buddies, huh?”

  He shrugged.

  “Walt Duffy and Ben Frye and arson fires, huh?”

  “Bigger than that,” he said. “Sandy Mendoza and Matt Keeler have got those cases.”

  “Bigger than homicides and arson fires?”

  He gave me his familiar sardonic smile.

  “So who’s ‘they’?”

  Horowitz frowned. “Huh?”

  “You said they asked you to come get me. I’m asking who ‘they’ are.”

  “You’ll see. I’m not supposed to tell you anything. Come on. I already told Julie I was taking you with me.”

  “Can I bring my dog?”

  “No.”

  A state police cruiser had its motor running at the curb around the corner in front of the library. I sat in back. Horowitz got in front beside the uniformed trooper who was behind the wheel.

  Nobody said anything in the fifteen minutes or so it took us to hook out onto Storrow Drive heading inbound, exit at Cambridge Street, and stutter through the traffic to Scollay Square. I smoked a cigarette, and they didn’t even tell me to put it out.

  We pulled into the paved area behind Center Plaza, the wide curved building that had been built in front of the old Suffolk County courthouse. Horowitz led me down some steps and into One Center Plaza. He signed us in at the door, and we took the elevator to the sixth floor, where the Boston field office of the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation was housed.

  So. The FBI.

  We passed through a metal detector in the cramped reception area, and Horowitz spoke to a woman behind bulletproof glass. A door buzzed on our left, and I followed Horowitz down a corridor and into a conference room. Two men and two women were seated around a rectangular conference table. I recognized the two Boston cops—Homicide Detective Saundra Mendoza was one of them, and Lieutenant Matthew Keeler, the arson guy, was the other.

  The second man wore a dark suit and a white shirt and a striped necktie. The other woman was dressed the same minus the tie.

  The dark-suited man half stood when Horowitz and I stepped into the room. “Mr. Coyne,” he said. “Thank you for coming.”

  “I wasn’t given much choice,” I said.

  “I’m Agent Aaron Elliot,” he said as if he hadn’t heard me. “I’m with the Boston field office of the F.B.I. This—” he waved his hand in the direction of the dark-suited woman “—is Agent Pauline Randall, from headquarters.” Randall was thumbing through a sheaf of papers. She didn’t look up. “I believe you know the Boston officers? Saundra Mendoza, homicide? Matthew Keeler, arson?”

  “We’ve met,” I said. I nodded to them. Keeler gave me a quick smile. Mendoza nodded.

  “Won’t you sit down?” said Elliot. He didn’t offer to shake hands, so neither did I.

  I sat. It was a small room. There was a pale oak conference table with upholstered chairs gathered around it. The upholstering on the chairs matched the thick royal blue carpet, and the oak furniture matched the paneling of the walls. An American flag and a flag of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts stood on flagstands in one corner. A large map of the United States dominated one wall. There was a white dry-erase board on another wall. Nothing was written on it. A television and a computer sat on a table against another wall. There were bright fluorescent lights in the ceiling and two tall windows with vertical Venetian blinds. The blinds were shut.

  The whole effect was austere, sterile, standard-issue. I was willing to bet that every FBI conference room in America looked pretty much like this one.

  Agent Elliot cleared his throat. “You’re an attorney, Mr. Coyne.”

  “That I am,” I said.

  “So I don’t have to remind you that whatever might be said in this room is, um, sensitive.”

  “Oh,” I said, “it’s always a good idea to remind me.”

  I thought a smile twitched at the corner of Elliot’s mouth, but he restrained himself admirably. He was a bulky guy. Not fat. Solid-looking. He had big shoulders, a round face, shrewd pale eyes, and thinning, blond-gray hair. He looked to be in his early fifties. He gestured at a carafe in the middle of the table. “Water, Mr. Coyne?”

  I shook my head. I didn’t notice any ashtrays. “You dragged me away from my law practice with no notice. I came willingly. You don’t need to soften me up, or impress me with the gravity of the situation. Why don’t you just tell me what you want.”

  Elliot glanced at Horowitz. Knowing Horowitz, he’d warned the agent that I was a smartass. I wasn’t, normally. But Horowitz always seemed to bring out the smartass in me, and Elliot was doing the same thing.

  “Okay,” he said. “I’m going to turn this over to Agent Randall.” Elliot nodded at the woman, then sat down.

  Randall stood up. Her blond hair was cut short and nononsense, and her face was angular. She looked about forty. She had a thin, hard-looking body. “We want to talk with you about Walter Duffy,” she said. There was a trace of the Smoky Mountains in her voice.

  “Walt was my client,” I said.

  “Of course.” Agent Randall nodded. “And we both know that client privilege does not extend postmortem.” She arched her eyebrows at me, and I shrugged.

  She glanced down at one of the papers in front of her. “You told Detective Mendoza that Mr. Duffy asked you to hand-deliver a parcel for him the day before he was murdered.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And you delivered that parcel?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I gave it to Benjamin Frye.”

  “You told the detective that as far as you knew, the parcel contained old letters.”

  “I looked at them. They were letters from Meriwether Lewis to Alexander Wilson, written almost two hundred years ago. They were about birds. Apparently quite valuable.”

  “You looked at all of the letters?”

  “No. They were in a plastic envelope. Walt told me not to touch them. Touching them could damage them. I looked at the top one.”

  “And how many letters were there?”

  “I didn’t count them.”

  “And where are these letters now, Mr. Coyne?”

  “They’re in the safe in my office. Ben gave them back to me after he looked at them.”

  “The evening before he was killed.”

  “Yes.”

  “Before you put them in
your safe, where did you keep them?”

  “I had them in my briefcase over the weekend.”

  “I understand,” said Randall, “that on Monday night, your briefcase was stolen.”

  “That’s right.” I touched my forehead. The bump had shrunk, but there was a scab there. “I was mugged in my parking garage. He got my wallet and my briefcase.”

  “This was after you removed those letters and put them in your office safe?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where they remain.”

  I nodded.

  “Mr. Coyne,” said Randall, “you claim that you’ve been receiving some, um, unusual telephone calls.”

  “I don’t claim it,” I said. “It’s true. I’ve reported them.”

  “Of course,” she said. “To Detective Mendoza and Lieutenant Keeler. Two calls, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “The first one came the night before Mr. Frye died in a fire,” she said. “You told the officers that the person said the words ‘Beau Marc Pier Seven.’ ”

  “I didn’t understand the words when I heard them,” I said. “They sounded like nonsense syllables. The voice was muffled—disguised. But, yes, I think that’s what he said.”

  “He was naming the building that was torched the following night,” she said. “The building where Benjamin Frye’s body was found.”

  “I guess so, yes.”

  “Telling you it was going to happen.”

  I shrugged. “Evidently.”

  “And then two nights ago you got another call.”

  “Yes.”

  “The same caller?”

  “It sounded like it.”

  “And what did he say this time?”

  “Fall River. I called Lieutenant Keeler immediately.” I looked at Keeler. He nodded.

  Randall picked up a remote control device that had been sitting on the table beside her. “Please take a look at the TV, Mr. Coyne,” she said.

  She hit the remote. The screen flickered, and then what looked like a child’s charcoal drawing of an owl appeared. A few seconds later the owl picture flicked off and the big red letters S O L F took its place. They looked as if they’d been finger-painted on a piece of white cardboard.

  There was no sound with the video. The camera wavered a bit. Handheld. Very amateur.