Crow's Landing

by Brad Smith

  “Okay,” Malero said. “So it’s not a fifty-dollar boat. But it’s not registered, so I guess we can make the argument that the thing doesn’t even exist. How do we go about finding a boat that doesn’t exist?”

  In that instant, Virgil was no longer thinking about telling the cop about the cylinder. He got to his feet. “Oh, it exists. That’s not the problem here. The problem here isn’t even that neither one of us knows where it is. The problem is that only one of us gives a flying fuck.”

  He went through the station and out the front doors and onto the street. He’d parked a couple blocks away, in a municipal lot, and as he was walking toward it, he passed the compound where the department parked their vehicles. There were quite a few cruisers inside, both marked and unmarked, and several SUVs, mostly dark blue or black. Virgil wished he had thought to take the plate number of the truck that had towed his boat.

  Walking past, he saw a guy in a suit, a cop by the look of him, talking to a man in jeans and a faded beige shirt. The second man had his back to Virgil; his gray hair reached past the collar of the shirt. There was something familiar about the guy but Virgil, unable to see his face, couldn’t say what it was. As he walked past the compound and into the lot where his truck was parked, he glanced back. The man had finished his conversation and was now out on the sidewalk, approaching the lot where Virgil stood.

  It was Buddy Townes.

  Virgil waited until Buddy made his way to a dark green Cadillac, maybe fifteen years old, with the right rear quarter crunched in, the damaged taillight secured with a liberal application of duct tape. Buddy fished his cigarettes from a pocket before opening the driver’s door. He was lighting a smoke when Virgil spoke.

  “I heard you ran off to Florida.”

  It took Buddy a few moments to place him. When he did, he smiled. “Break out of any jails lately?”

  “Nary a one.”

  Buddy pulled on the nonfilter and nodded his head, as if agreeing to a statement nobody had made. “You want to grab a beer?” he asked.

  “It’s ten o’clock in the morning,” Virgil told him.

  “Rye, then?”

  They settled on coffee at a greasy spoon a couple of blocks from the police station. Buddy looked about the same as the last time Virgil had seen him, when Virgil had been on the run from a murder charge in Ulster County. Buddy was fifty-five going on seventy, his face lined and creviced from too many years of liquor and tobacco and general self-abuse. He wore a gray mustache now, the ends dipping down past the corners of his mouth. His voice was, if anything, harsher than Virgil remembered, as if somebody had taken a wood rasp to his vocal chords.

  “That Florida dream was a good one, in theory anyway,” he told Virgil when they were settled at a table. “But there were certain things I hadn’t counted on.”

  “Like what?”

  “One—my amazing capacity for pissing away money,” Buddy said. “And two—my equally amazing capacity for finding a high-maintenance and weak-moraled broad to help me do it.”

  “Sounds like a perfect exacta.”

  “It was a perfect something. Fun while it lasted, though.”

  Virgil dumped a little cream into his coffee. “Did Jane Comstock really give you a million dollars?”

  “No,” Buddy said. “I asked for that, and she gave me half. And then you and Claire Marchand ran her to ground anyway. She should have kept her money. But she’s got plenty left, she ever gets out of jail.”

  “How did you end up here?” Virgil asked.

  “Here in the city? Well, I don’t live here, I’m just in and out. Back to doing some investigative work to pad my shitty little pension. Couple of criminal lawyers in town I work for. Nobody as much fun as Mickey Dupree, but these guys still have pulses.”

  Virgil smiled. “Mickey Dupree. Shit, I went to jail for killing the guy, and I just now realized I never even knew the man. That sound right to you?”

  “No. But it sounds about the way things are.” Buddy tested the hot coffee. He gestured out the window to the city outside. “No, I wouldn’t live here in the city. I rent a place on the river, near Coeymans. Got used to living on the water down in the Keys. Winterized cottage, with a woodstove and a dock. A few bars nearby, within staggering distance. I fish every day I can. I got a little aluminum with a ten-horse on it.”

  “I had a boat once,” Virgil said and he told Buddy about the incident at the marina.

  “And metro is denying any knowledge of it?” Buddy asked when he was finished.

  “They’re suggesting it wasn’t a real cop.”

  Buddy took a drink of coffee, thinking. “It’s still a stolen boat. And you’re a citizen making a complaint. They can’t exactly ignore that.”

  “Apparently it’s a jurisdiction thing.”

  “But the cop who took it claimed to be Albany PD?”

  “Yeah,” Virgil said. “And he had the badge.”

  “They should be looking into that, if nothing else.”

  “Another thing against me,” Virgil said. “The boat wasn’t registered. I bought it from a farmer and fixed it up and I never thought to register the thing.”

  “Do it now.”

  “How?”

  “Find out if the farmer had the numbers and do it after the fact,” Buddy said. “It’s still your boat. Just because somebody stole it doesn’t change that. You filed a theft report. The cops can’t ignore that.”

  “I guess not.” Virgil finished his coffee.

  “But that’s not the bigger question here,” Buddy said. “Obviously the guy wasn’t interested in your boat. You got no idea what was in the cylinder?”

  “None. The thing had no cap, no valve, nothing to access it. It was welded tight. And I’m pretty sure it was stainless steel, which means it would have lasted a lot of years down there.”

  “Sounds like something you would do with contaminated waste,” Buddy said. “But why the fuck would anybody want to seize a cylinder full of waste?”

  “And pretend to be a cop while he was doing it.”

  “Yeah,” Buddy said in agreement. “I can ask around if you want. I don’t know these boys like back in Ulster County, but I can ask.”

  “Sure. I couldn’t care less about the cylinder, I just want my boat back.”

  “I don’t blame you,” Buddy said as he stood up. “But you got to be curious about that fucking cylinder, man.”

  “Yeah.”

  They left money for the coffee on the table and walked out onto the sidewalk. Buddy lit a cigarette before turning to Virgil.

  “You realize that curiosity can be a dangerous thing.”

  “That’s just for cats,” Virgil said and he crossed the street, heading for his truck, and home.

  * * *

  Driving out of the city, Virgil went back over his conversation with the detective named Malero. While it was obvious that the cop had zero interest in the missing boat, Virgil’s gut told him that the man wasn’t actually covering anything up. Maybe it was somebody posing as a cop who took the boat. Or an ex-cop with an agenda. If either was the case, then maybe Buddy Townes would turn something up.

  Whoever it was who had taken the cylinder, he’d shown up at the marina pretty damned quick. It couldn’t have been more than an hour from the time Virgil docked the boat until the man in the SUV arrived. Someone had called him and Virgil was about ninety-nine percent certain who that someone was.

  He pulled into the marina shortly before noon, parked by the tackle shop, and went inside. Mudcat McClusky was at the counter, selling bait minnows to a couple of fishermen, both elderly and of Asian descent. One man asked if they were catching perch off the pier. Normally a question like that would have Mudcat rambling at length, delivering all manner of detail regarding the fish being caught, whether what he said had any truth behind it or not.

  “I ain’t a fishing guide, nipper,” he said to the man. “You’re gonna have to figure that out for yourself.”

  Virgil held the do
or for the two men as they left, and he saw the anger in their eyes.

  “Hey, Virgil,” Mudcat chirped when they were gone.

  “Where’s Brownie?” Virgil asked.

  “Went over to Home Hardware for deck screws. We’re fixing those stairs down to the dock. I’m going to—”

  “Who’d he call about the cylinder yesterday?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Yesterday,” Virgil said. “I came off the river with that steel cylinder in my boat and you came down to the dock and had a look and then you came scurrying up here like the little schoolgirl that you are, and told Brownie about it. And then he walked over to that phone there and made a call. Who did he call?”

  “Come on, Virgil,” Mudcat said. “I never done any such thing. I don’t think I even mentioned the cylinder to Brownie. None of my business.”

  Virgil watched Mudcat’s eyes, how they shifted back and forth, looking for someplace safe to settle. “When’s Brownie due back?”

  “Anytime now …” Mudcat began, but then he changed his story. “No, actually, he has business in town. He could be gone a long time. I wouldn’t wait on him.”

  “No, I think I’ll wait,” Virgil said. “And I’ll meet him in the parking lot, before you get to him, and the first thing I’m going to ask him is whether or not you told him about the cylinder. And if he says yes—then you and I are going to have a problem, Mudcat. The boys over at Scallywags tell me that you’ve been beat up about a hundred times for being a lying, thieving little weasel. So I guess a hundred and one isn’t going to bother you much.”

  Mudcat was chewing on his bottom lip as he listened to the threat. Apparently the prospect of a hundred and one was bothering him quite a bit. “You know, maybe I did mention the cylinder. In passing. But I don’t remember any phone call.” He was quick to elaborate. “I’m not saying there wasn’t one. I mean, I was in and out. You know?”

  “Yeah,” Virgil said. “I know.”

  He went outside and sat down on the bench in front of the shop to wait for Brownie. It was an exercise in futility, he knew, but he had to go through the motions if for no other reason than to let Brownie know that he wasn’t fooling anybody. But Virgil knew that Brownie would deny having anything to do with the matter.

  Which is what he did, when he showed up fifteen minutes later.

  “I never made a phone call,” he told Virgil. “Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to?”

  “I was hoping you might tell me who it was you called,” Virgil said. “But I’m thinking that’s unlikely, if you’re going to lie about making the call in the first place. Right?”

  “Get the fuck out of here,” Brownie said. He turned to walk away but then stopped and came back. “I’ll tell you what I saw yesterday. I saw you coming off the river with a steel cylinder you picked up someplace and then Albany PD shows up and seizes it, along with your boat. Which makes me wonder just what the fuck you’re involved in, pal. And now you got the nerve to get in my face?”

  “So it was Albany PD?”

  “What?”

  “The cop. He was Albany PD?”

  Brownie hesitated. “I got no idea.”

  “Yeah, you do. You couldn’t see the badge from the bait shop, and the vehicle was unmarked. But you know because you called him.”

  “You can get the fuck out of here,” Brownie said. “And don’t come back. I’m taking away your docking privileges.”

  Virgil smiled. “You’re taking away my docking privileges the day after your buddy took my boat? That’s like taking a man’s shoes after you cut off his feet. I’m beginning to think that you and Mudcat are sharing a brain, Brownie.”

  Virgil got into his truck and drove away, leaving Brownie fuming and spitting obscenities in the parking lot. By the time he got back to the farm, Virgil had to accept the fact that the day had been wasted; he didn’t know any more now than when he got up that morning. Well, he had established that Mudcat and Brownie were a pair of liars, and that there was something sketchy about the sweaty little cop in the SUV who had stolen his boat.

  But those were things he already knew.

  SIX

  The auction sale was Saturday morning, on the southern shore of Lake George, at a consignment place called Terrapin’s. They’d been in business for ten years or so and they handled mainly estate items—high-end furniture, glassware, some artwork. They rarely had cars to offer, and Parson was banking on this working to his advantage.

  He picked Zoe up at her apartment just before eight. The sale started at ten and it was an hour and a half to get there. Parson had no idea just when the vehicles would go under the gavel, so he wanted to be there on time. Zoe had worked the bar the night before, one of the places on Madison that catered to college kids, and when he arrived at her walk-up on Ontario Street he’d had to knock on the door to get her out of bed, and then wait in her cramped kitchen while she took a shower. There were dirty dishes on the table and in the sink, cigarette butts in coffee cups. A bottle of Jack with maybe half an ounce left, on the table. A pair of large black cowboy boots were in the middle of the floor, as if they’d been removed in a hurry, and a man’s denim jacket on the back of a chair.

  As he waited, a fat white cat wandered out from the bedroom and jumped into Parson’s lap before he could swat it aside. He was wearing brown pants and a black golf shirt, and both were now covered with white fur. He spent the next five minutes listening to the noisy shower in the bathroom and plucking the hairs one by one from his clothes.

  When Zoe finally came out, wearing jeans and a Lynyrd Skynyrd T-shirt, her hair still wet, Parson was standing impatiently by the door.

  “How do you live like this?”

  “Bitch, bitch,” she said.

  They took 87 north. Parson was driving the black Escalade, not wishing to call attention to himself as a dealer by arriving in one of his muscle cars. Zoe was quiet until she’d had her takeout coffee.

  “So what are we doing?” she asked.

  “They’ve got some vintage hot rods,” Parson said. “One of them is a ’70 ’Cuda ragger with a Hemi,” Parson said. “Supposed to be numbers matching.”

  “All right,” Zoe said. “How high do I go?”

  Parson flipped open the console compartment and handed her an envelope full of thousand-dollar bills. “Thirty grand here. If I can queer the provenance, it’ll go cheaper. If I can’t, it’ll go higher and we’ll pass.”

  Zoe yawned. “All depends who’s there, right?”

  “Way it is.”

  “Maybe somebody smarter than you.”

  “Can’t see that happening, Zoe.”

  “I know you can’t.”

  “Make sure you get the title when you pay.”

  “Right. I’ve never done this before.”

  “You’re cranky in the morning.”

  “You’d be cranky too on three hours’ sleep.”

  “Nobody told you to stay up all night screwing, Zoe.”

  “I was working.”

  “I saw the cowboy boots in the kitchen. You working on a ranch these days?”

  Zoe reached into her coat for her cigarettes. “You weren’t so critical back when they were your boots.”

  Parson laughed. It was true. He and Zoe had had some times together. They had even talked about moving in, having kids. But then she went bad on meth, and Parson had left her alone. When she came back into his life, a couple years later and clean, he’d been glad to reconnect but the sexual thing was gone. The dope had taken her down physically, and she never made it all the way back. Her cheeks were sunken and her eyes were dull, as if something had smudged her soul and she couldn’t get it clean.

  But she was a good partner when he needed one, like today. She was smart and knew how to keep her mouth shut. And she was always up for making a quick five hundred. Of course, knowing her, she’d probably spend it on the guy who owned the cowboy boots, the guy who was, presumably, still snoring away in her bed this morning
.

  “You’re not going to smoke in my car,” he told her now, watching her fish around in her purse for matches.

  “Let me out then.”

  Parson shook his head in resignation. “Use your coffee cup for your ashes,” he told her. “I don’t want you getting my ashtray dirty.”

  Zoe lit up. “You are an anal motherfucker, Parson.”

  Terrapin’s Auctions was housed in a converted barn on a paved road a few hundred yards from the shore of Lake George. Parson could see the cars set to go on sale from a quarter mile away, lined up in the parking lot in front of the building. The vehicles were all from the same era—a Thunderbird, a GTO, an Impala, and the ’Cuda. The online literature advertising the sale stated that they were part of a collection of the man whose estate was on the block today, and that they were older restorations. They looked good from the road.

  “The white one on the end,” Parson said as they drove slowly by.

  “I know what a Barracuda looks like,” Zoe snapped.

  He dropped her at a gas station a mile away and while she went inside to call a cab Parson drove back to the auction house and parked in the lot behind the barn, then walked over for a closer look at the cars. They’d been done up right, probably ten or fifteen years earlier, although somebody had decided to change the GTO from an automatic to a four-speed and, rather than find the proper console, they had cut an ugly hole in the existing one to accommodate the shifter. Still, it was only the ’Cuda that interested Parson. He had the production figures in a notebook he carried and he checked the numbers on the door plate against those on the inner fenders and those on the engine block. He pulled on coveralls from the back of the Escalade and crawled underneath to make certain that the transmission and differential were original as well. It was a good car. The odometer read 43,000 miles and Parson had no trouble believing it was accurate.

  Zoe arrived while he was checking out the ’Cuda, and he saw her as she got out of the taxi and went directly inside to register to bid. Parson shed the coveralls and went to sit on a picnic table in the shade of some maple trees in an expanse of lawn beyond the auction parking lot, checking and replying to messages on his BlackBerry while he waited for the auctioneer to come out. Zoe never came back outside and Parson presumed that she was watching the sale.