by Brad Smith
“What’s this about a Russian?” Buddy asked.
“I don’t know how he fits in,” Virgil said. “Whether he’s just muscle for Hoffman or something else. Big bastard. I got a feeling he’s seen too many Clint Eastwood movies. A little on the mean side, I’d have to say.”
Virgil saw Buddy look at his watch, and in that instant he could see Buddy’s focus shift. He knew that Buddy was thinking about the tall blonde again.
“She could be in a shitload of trouble,” Virgil said.
“Mimi?”
“Dusty.”
“Right,” Buddy said. “And you’re thinking about riding to her rescue?”
“No. I just want my boat back.”
“Bullshit.” Buddy laughed. “You’re going to get yourself in shit, you know that? Why fuck around with these people if you don’t have to? You can buy another boat. Go back to your farm, let them fight it out among themselves.”
“Okay.”
“You’re not even listening to me.”
Virgil finished his beer. “Sure I am. Thanks for the information, Buddy. I hope you have a nice dinner.”
“I hope I have a nice dessert.”
Virgil got to his feet. He was nearly to the door when Buddy called out to him. Virgil turned.
“Stay out of it, Virgil. These guys aren’t fucking around. People like this will kill you just to make a point. And we’re talking about a couple million dollars here.”
Virgil nodded.
“How do you know this girl’s not playing you?” Buddy asked. “Shit—she might be the baddest one of the lot.”
Virgil smiled. “She told me the same thing.”
* * *
As he headed for home, hitting Route 385 at Coxsackie and driving south, Virgil considered what Buddy Townes had said. And he knew that Buddy was right. He knew nothing about the woman named Dusty Fremont, other than that she was acquainted with a nasty bunch of people. She had shown up at Virgil’s farm telling half-truths, trying to get him to reveal things that he didn’t know, that he would have no way of knowing. No matter how Virgil tried to paint her in a positive light, the fact remained that she was looking for a shipment of cocaine that was apparently worth a small fortune. She wasn’t a cop, so it seemed unlikely she was looking to get the dope off the street. In spite of her insisting otherwise, it was easy to assume that she wanted the coke for the same reason everybody else did. To get rich. Either she was on one side or the other.
Still, there was nothing about her that suggested that she was driven by greed. Virgil wanted to believe her when she said she’d rather not be involved in the situation at all, that she wished he’d never found the thing to begin with. But there were things she wasn’t telling him, something she was protecting. And, on a certain level, in spite of her tough talk and her street swagger, Virgil knew she was scared.
He was approaching Kimball’s Point now, and as he drove past the entranceway to Brownie’s Marina, he glanced over to see several police cruisers in the parking lot. The tackle shop was encircled with yellow tape. He continued on for another mile or so, and then turned back.
Mudcat McCluskey was sitting on the steps of the shop, his head in his hands. Cops, both in uniform and plainclothes, were milling about. A number of rubberneckers were gathered in the parking lot, and the outside deck of Scallywags was full of drinkers, watching the proceedings like spectators at a sporting event. Virgil rolled to a stop on the far side of the lot and sat there for a moment until he spotted Wally farther off to the right, smoking a cigarette and leaning against the chain-link fence that surrounded the boat compound. Virgil drove over and got out.
“What’s going on?”
Wally took one last pull off the cigarette and flicked it with his forefinger into the compound behind him. “Oh, looks like Brownie had himself a little trouble last night.”
“Somebody rob him?”
“I don’t know that they robbed him,” Wally said. “But they strangled him and stuffed him under the dock there. Mudcat found him floating this morning when he came to open up.”
Virgil turned toward the activity around the tackle shop.
“Mudcat’s taking it hard,” Wally said. “You would, too. Brownie was the only guy who liked him even a little bit, and now he’s dead.”
Virgil could see that Wally wasn’t taking things nearly as badly as Mudcat. A police van pulled in off the highway, then did a half circle in the lot before backing up to the tackle shop. A guy and a woman, both wearing white coveralls with County Police on the back, got out and went inside.
“What happened to your arm?” Wally asked.
“Fell out of the hay mow,” Virgil told him.
“Shit. That farming is dangerous work.”
“So is running a tackle shop, apparently,” Virgil said. “You say it wasn’t a robbery?”
“I got close enough earlier, before they ran me off, to hear a couple of the cops. They were saying nothing was touched inside. Kind of looks like whoever did it waited for Brownie to close for the night and then grabbed him. Strangled him with some fishing line, according to Mudcat.” Wally laughed. “That ten-pound test is good stuff.”
Virgil shook his head and waited for Wally to stop chuckling. “Well, you have an opinion on most things, Wally,” he said. “You got any ideas on who did it?”
“I got one, but it’s half-assed,” Wally said. He pointed his chin toward Scallywags. “There was a guy showed up last night about eight o’clock. Driving a blue Mercedes convertible. I was shooting pool. Guy comes in and sits at the bar alone, drinking Jack. Doesn’t say shit to anybody. He left just after dark. Drank a lot of bourbon and never left Suzie a tip, she was some pissed.”
“So?”
“So nothing,” Wally said. “There was just something off about him. Not tall, but really put together, like a bodybuilder or something. Jet-black hair. Gold jewelry. Fucking guy kept looking at himself in the mirror behind the bar. One of those guys.”
“You tell the cops?”
“Nope,” Wally said. “If I’m wrong, then I got no reason to tell them. If I’m right, then I might be the next guy in line for a ten-pound test necklace. If the guy’s strong enough to strangle a big fat fucker like Brownie, he’d have no problem with a little shit like me. I’ll keep my mouth shut, thank you very much.”
As Wally was talking, Virgil watched as Mudcat suddenly looked their way, then moved at once to point Virgil out to a couple of plainclothes cops who were standing on the dock, having a smoke.
“Something else going on with Brownie this week,” Wally said. “He had a big bandage taped over his ear and his face was all marked up. Looked like somebody laid a beating on him.”
“Yeah?” Virgil said absently, still watching Mudcat. “I wonder who would do a thing like that.”
Now Wally followed Virgil’s gaze. “Look out,” he said. “You can bet Mudcat’s spouting off about your problems with Brownie. You better take a hike, Virgil.”
“Why would I take a hike? I didn’t kill Brownie. If I did, I probably wouldn’t be hanging around here, talking to you.”
Virgil started across the parking lot, his eyes still on Mudcat, who was indeed enthusiastically expounding on something as he approached. Virgil was almost to the dock before he noticed that one of the detectives standing there listening was Malero. Mudcat didn’t see Virgil until the last moment, and when he did his eyes went wide and he clammed up at once.
“Well, well,” Malero said, turning. “Look who we have here.”
“You find my boat yet?” Virgil asked.
“Never mind your goddamn boat, smart guy. We got a few questions for you.”
“What are you even doing here?” Virgil asked. “I thought this was out of your jurisdiction.”
“An ex-cop from Albany PD is dead,” Malero said. “My jurisdiction is wherever I say it is.”
Virgil shrugged. “Fire away.”
“Mr. McCluskey here tells us that you threatened G
ordon Brown a few days ago. You want to tell us what that was about?”
“I’d have an easier time doing that if it was true,” Virgil said. “I never threatened Brownie. I did threaten Mudcat here. I told him I was going to kick the shit out of him if he didn’t stop lying. Apparently he didn’t listen to me because here he is lying again. And this time he’s lying to the cops. Hey—why don’t you guys kick the shit out of him?”
“You seem to think this is a laughing matter, Mr. Cain,” Malero said. “A man has been murdered here. A man you had words with a few days ago. Are you going to deny that?”
“We had words, yeah,” Virgil said. “You see, Brownie was the one who called the guy who came and towed my boat away. You know—the boat you’re allegedly looking for. You having any luck with that?”
“Mention that boat again and I will arrest you,” Malero said.
“And charge me with what—mentioning?” Virgil asked.
“This fucking guy,” the other cop said. He stepped forward, pushing his way in front of Virgil. He was big, with a blond brush cut and breath that stank of cigarettes. “Listen, asshole. This isn’t a fucking comedy club. You are a person of interest in a murder. Now suppose you tell us where you were last night.”
“I spent most of the day in the local hospital, getting this,” Virgil said, offering up his cast. “You can check with Dr. Stone down at the ER. Last night I was home, eating painkillers. If you think I came out of surgery and came down here and with one arm strangled a guy who had to weigh two hundred and fifty pounds, then you’d better go ahead and arrest me right now. Otherwise I’m heading home. I was you boys, I’d start looking elsewhere for whoever killed Brownie. Shouldn’t have any trouble rounding up a few suspects—I can’t imagine there’s any more than a couple hundred guys in the area that didn’t like him.”
The two cops were stymied. Virgil thought for a moment they were pissed enough that they might take him in and keep him overnight, just to inconvenience him, but they obviously decided not to waste their time with him. He turned to walk away and as he was stepping off the dock, Malero called to him.
“Hey, shithead. What makes you think that Gordon Brown called about your boat? Why would he do that?”
Virgil hesitated for just an instant. He had almost told Malero about the cylinder the last time they talked, and he’d decided against it. This time, he didn’t even consider the option.
“I don’t know why he did it,” Virgil said. He smiled, indicating the tackle shop. “You could ask him, but it looks to me like you’re about a day late.”
NINETEEN
The weather cleared overnight and the new day arrived cool and crisp, with a good breeze from the southwest. The temperature climbed throughout the morning but the air remained dry and by eleven o’clock the remaining fifteen acres of Virgil’s wheat was ready to come off. He combined right through lunch, finishing the field just after three. He emptied the wheat into the GMC stake truck with the racks and went into the house to call the co-op about bringing it in. They were swamped for the day and he was advised to wait until morning, so he backed the truck into the machine shed, out of the weather, although the forecast called for clear skies the next couple of days.
He walked to the house and scrambled up a couple of eggs, which he ate at the kitchen table, covering the eggs with hot sauce. He washed the frying pan and his plate, opened a beer, and walked out to sit on the side porch, taking with him the weekly newspaper that had arrived with the mail. He read the front page twice without really seeing it and then set it aside.
He’d been thinking about Dusty ever since he’d gotten out of bed that morning. Actually, he’d been thinking about her since he’d left Brownie’s Marina the day before. And even before that, he realized. Buddy Townes was right. These people were dead serious. Of course, Virgil had known that, to some extent. He had a cast on his arm and a stainless steel rod in the bone as evidence of that. But somebody had taken it a step further with Brownie. When Wally had mentioned that someone had put a beating on Brownie a few days earlier, Virgil was quite certain that somebody had been Dusty. After all, she’d told him that she’d persuaded Brownie to talk. But Virgil couldn’t believe that Dusty had come back and killed him. He’d already spilled his guts, so what would have been the point? Besides that, Virgil wasn’t ready to believe Dusty was a killer. Or she might be the baddest one in the bunch after all.
It occurred to him that maybe the fact that Brownie had talked to Dusty had something to do with Brownie now being dead. But why, Virgil had no way of knowing. There were people involved who seemed very willing to go that far, and the Russian cowboy who had broken Virgil’s arm was big enough for the job. As for the guy who Wally had seen in Scallywags the night before, well, he was just another wild card in the deck. Wally had an active imagination. Chances were the man admiring himself in the mirror behind the bar had nothing to do with any of it. Of course, that didn’t change the fact that somebody had killed Brownie.
At one point during the day, while running the combine, Virgil had decided that he was done with the whole damn mess. Now, thinking about it again, he knew it was absolutely the right decision. Since the day he’d hooked the cylinder with his anchor off Kimball’s Point, things had gone as wrong as they could go. He had lost his boat, been stonewalled by an uncooperative police department, and suffered a good old-fashioned shit-kicking in his own kitchen. As unhappy as Virgil was with those developments, compared to Brownie, he’d gotten off pretty easy.
So far.
Time to cut his losses, stay on his own ground, and be finished with it. It was what a wise man would do, and from time to time Virgil liked to think he fit the description. He knew nothing about drugs and drug dealers, and he was happy to keep it that way. The only drug he’d ever tried that still appealed to him was Budweiser. Back when he was playing ball, they practically had to tie him down to force him to take a cortisone shot. He had never tried cocaine, but then, the situation at hand wasn’t really about the cocaine, it was about the people surrounding the cocaine. Well, they could have it, and all the shit that came with it.
Having made his choice, he began to feel better about things. He regretted losing the cedar strip but, like Buddy said, he could always find another boat. Cutting his losses was the smart move, and—given what happened to Brownie—the healthy move. He finished off his beer and went inside for another. Back on the porch, he put his feet up on the railing and watched his herd of horses.
Technically they weren’t his horses; they were animals that had been rescued from various abusive situations by Mary Nelson. He had finally talked to her last night; the phone had been ringing when he walked into the house after his encounter with the cops at the marina. Mary was apologetic about leaving the two draft horses, which she confirmed were Percherons, and she was more apologetic when telling him that the home she’d thought she’d found for them had fallen through.
“But they’re workhorses,” she reminded him. “You could do your plowing with them.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Virgil said. “You know, when the world finally runs out of fossil fuel.”
“Besides, you would never admit it, but you like to take care of things,” she said before hanging up.
That wasn’t quite true. Virgil didn’t even like horses all that much, but he liked the notion of saving them from the type of assholes who would mistreat them. Thinking of those faceless bastards caused him to consider the people surrounding the goddamn cylinder he’d found, the people he had decided just a short time ago not to consider anymore. And so he pushed them from his mind again. The only one he could say he was concerned about was Dusty, and she was going to have to handle whatever came up on her own. It was her bed; she could lie in it.
He wondered, though, if she knew that Brownie had been murdered. If not, somebody should tell her. But not Virgil, of course. He was done with it. At this point all he needed to do was to stop himself from thinking about it. He had made his
decision and that was that.
The afternoon sun was warm on his face and after he finished the second beer, he began to doze in the chair. He was almost asleep when he remembered what she had said to him in her truck the night she had shown up at the hospital.
The only one I trust is you, and that’s because I think you know less than me.
Virgil straightened in his chair, his eyes open.
The only one I trust is you.
He sat and looked at the front pasture, at those damn horses. The horses he hadn’t asked for, but which had somehow come under his care. They wandered about, at their graze, oblivious of Virgil and of everything around them.
“Shit,” Virgil said. He walked down off the porch and got into his truck and headed for the city.
* * *
Hoffman’s car was behind a thrift store in Arbor Hill, rammed into the block wall there, the headlight broken and the driver’s-side front fender collapsed against the wheel. Hoffman had had no idea where the car was until a beat cop called him with the information. The cop knew who he was, even addressed him as Detective, and Hoffman, who quite obviously couldn’t introduce Soup or a hundred pounds of cocaine into the conversation, was obliged to make up a story about the car being taken by his wayward nephew, who had accidentally crashed the vehicle while out joyriding. Hoffman told the cop that he’d known that the car was there, and was in fact on his way to pick it up when he received the call. He further assured the officer on the phone that he would be disciplining his nephew in his own way. He didn’t want the city police out trying to hunt down a nephew who didn’t exist.
He took a cab to the alleyway and, after prying the fender off the wheel with a tire iron, drove the car to a nearby garage to have the headlight replaced. Then he went back to the Third Avenue pool hall to talk to Yuri. He had considered the possibility that the Russian might just pull out of the whole venture after Soup ripped Hoffman off, but to the contrary, Yuri had called Hoffman twice already that morning, and he seemed more determined than ever to make the buy. Of course, at the moment, there was nothing for the Russian to buy. Maybe it was true after all—everybody wants what they can’t have.
