A Beautiful Place to Die

by Philip Craig

  “Sure. What? If it’s about the accident, I’m afraid I can’t tell you much. I don’t know what happened.”

  “Tell me about that morning, before the explosion happened. Was there anything odd about the boat when you got aboard?”

  “What do you mean?” He winced when he frowned.

  “Your sister thinks somebody fixed it so the explosion would happen.”

  He paled beneath his burn, and his eyes widened like a deer’s before a gun. “What? What do you mean? What are you . . .” His voice rose and thinned.

  “Your sister thinks that somebody tried to blow you up and that it was to keep you from talking about your old drug buddies. She asked me to check it out.”

  “She’s crazy. She’s just crazy with worry. And shook up because of poor Jim.” He paused. “She’s wrong. I’ve been away from the drug scene for over a year. Since last summer. I don’t see that crowd anymore.”

  “Somebody saw you last week in front of the Fireside. They say you and your friend Danny Sylvia got in an argument and that he said he’d get you.”

  “Who told you that?” He leaned up off the pillows, then eased back. “Of course. Susie told you. She got there about the time Danny said that. But believe me, it didn’t mean anything. That’s just Danny’s way. Besides, Danny’s not on dope anymore, either. He’s straight, like me. Anyway, he left for California to go to summer school, so it couldn’t have been him.”

  “What was the argument about, then?”

  “A girl. It was about a girl we both know. You know what I mean?” He gave a small grin, then stopped it. It hurt for him to grin just like it hurt for him to frown.

  “Was there anything odd or unusual about the boat that morning. Any sign of tampering, maybe?”

  He thought. “No, nothing at all. The boat was locked up, the tanks were full, everything was fine. Jim and I started her up and took her right out. No problems.”

  “Did you smell any gas fumes?”

  “No. Well, maybe. But nothing that I thought anything about. Nothing at all, really. Just that sort of oily smell you get sometimes from an engine.”

  “We saw you and Jim as you passed the lighthouse. Then what happened?”

  “We were rounding the shallows off Cape Pogue when I noticed that the anchor line was adrift off the foredeck. I left Jim at the helm and went forward. I was up there coiling line when it happened. I guess it blew me overboard. The next thing I knew I had a mouthful of water and all I could see was fire. I tried to see Jim, to get back to him, but . . .” His cracked lips tightened and he stared ahead of him, looking hard at a spot in midair.

  “Okay, Billy. Don’t think about that.”

  “I can’t help thinking about it. I’ll always think about it. I’ll never forget it. Jim was my friend and I couldn’t help him!”

  I let a moment pass. When his eyes were again in focus on me, I said, “One more time, then—you’re sure that nobody had any reason to want to get rid of you?”

  He came back from his gloom and almost smiled. “Oh, I’m sure that some of my old pals wouldn’t have shed any tears if it had been me that got killed out there. But none of them would actually do it, you know? They’re just dopey people trying to find money for their next fix, they’re not killers. Hell, they haven’t got their shit together enough to be killers.”

  “There’s a lot of dope on this island, and the guys who are running the show have a lot of money at stake. Their shit is plenty together.”

  He shook his head and grimaced. “I wouldn’t know. I never knew any guys like that. I got my stuff from friends.” He thought back. “Friends. Sure, some friends . . .”

  * * *

  I drove home. Sometimes people know things they don’t know they know, so they can’t tell you. Other times they know things they don’t want to tell you. Other times they just lie. As I drove past the June People soaking up the rays of the Vineyard sun and splashing in the little waves hissing on the beach, I thought about the various things I’d been told.

  When I got home, I opened a beer and made lunch. If you live alone you’re apt to start eating carelessly, tossing down whatever comes easiest because it doesn’t seem worthwhile spending time on food if there’s no one to share it with. I try to treat myself like a guest. Today my guest got ham and cheese sandwiches and deli-style half-sour pickles with his beer. A feast fit for a king. Then I spent half an hour with the food processor, chopping veggies and mixing up a jug of gazpacho: into a gallon jar went tomato juice, chopped tomatoes, onions, cukes, green peppers, and garlic; and salt, pepper, oil, and sherry. I put the cap on the jar, shook everything up, and put it in the fridge. Tomorrow it would be delish, with or without vodka.

  After I’d washed and stacked my cooking tools, I got the Gazette and found a story I’d glanced at earlier. A small story about an enigmatic ongoing investigation by the D.A. and off-island law enforcement people. The Gazette prefers to underemphasize the dark side of Vineyard doings, so not much was said, and it was not said deep in the paper. Or maybe not much was said because the reporter didn’t know much. I reread the story of the explosion and noted again that Jim Norris’s parents lived in Oregon. I’d never heard of the town.

  I dug out my Boston phonebook. It was five years out of date, but it still had the number I wanted. It belonged to a reporter who works for the Globe. We’d met when I was a Boston cop, and we’d hit it off the way a cop and reporter sometimes will. He still owed me a favor, particularly since I’d had him down to the island a couple of times during the fall bluefish derby.

  “Quinn, it’s pay-up time.”

  “All right, I confess that it was me who robbed the Brinks truck in Plymouth, but I spent all the money on wild women, so all you can do is throw me in jail. How’s the back?”

  “Fine. Listen, I’m looking into something down here and I keep running into drugs. Everybody I talk to has something to say, but nobody is really saying anything. Is there something going down? Something here on the island? You’ve got a long nose; I figure you might have heard.”

  “Yeah, I’ve heard something. I’ve heard that you aren’t a cop anymore. Not even a private one.”

  “Quinn, you remember that fourteen-pound blue you got last September? Well, you remember him good, because that was the last blue I’m ever going to put on your hook for you.”

  “No, no, not that. Anything but that.” Quinn yawned. “Okay, I did hear something. The feds and the state are both in on it. DEA and all that, so their security has some holes in it. Not a sieve, just some holes. It’ll be a good story. Giant drug bust in affluent summer resort. Big crooked money side by side with respectable old money. Famous names sharing their island with underworld kingpins. Balzac quoted once again to the effect that behind every great fortune lies a great crime. That sort of thing. Anyway, it’s supposed to Happen soon. I hear they’ve got infiltrators down there and maybe a stoolie or two. Just rumor, you know. The D.A. on the Cape is coordinating things, I’m told. That what you wanted to know?”

  “That’s part of it. Do you have any names?”

  “No names yet. But I did hear that there was a Portuguese connection.”

  “Portugal Portuguese or the local variety?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll dig around if you want.”

  “Dig around. Half the population down here is part Portuguese at least. Get a name for me.”

  I hung up and thought of one Portuguese name in particular: Zeolinda Madieras.

  — 5 —

  “This is my lucky day,” said the chief. “Imagine, two conversations with you in a single twenty-four-hour period.” This time he was in the patrol car outside the station. I’d been waiting for him.

  I climbed in beside him. “A snow white dove has descended from heaven, circled three times around my head, landed on my shoulder, and whispered in my ear that there’s a big drug bust about to come down hereabouts in the very near future. My dove says that the big narcs have little narcs inside the loca
l operation and have lined up some stool pigeons, too. My dove says there may be a Portagee in the middle of it all. Now whoever that Portagee might be, he wouldn’t maybe be worried about Billy Martin squealing, would he?”

  “Gee, you talked a whole paragraph there,” said the chief admiringly. “You’re becoming verbal instead of maintaining the stoic calm I’ve come to expect from you. Where did you learn about those doves and all? In Sunday School?”

  “It was part of the academy training program. We had to learn to talk to God before we talked to the sergeants. What about my boy Billy? Does he have a problem nobody wants to tell me about?”

  “Like I told you, I can’t think of any reasons why anybody would be mad at Billy. I can think of why somebody might be mad at you, though. Making wild talk like that about Portagees. You’re not a Portagee, you know. Somebody might think you’re prejudiced.”

  “Oh, dear me. Gosh and gee whiz. Who tells the Portagee jokes around here, anyway? Me? No, you do. And pretty bad ones, too.”

  “That’s different. I’m a Portagee myself, so I can say anything I want to about them. You’re some kind of off-islander without a drop of Portagee blood in you. You should only insult your own kind.”

  “I’ve lived on this island so long now that some Portagee has rubbed off on me. Besides, I insult everybody indiscriminately. What can you tell me about this action that’s coming down?”

  “I can tell you this—as far as you’re concerned, nothing’s happening. You hear me? Nothing’s happening. My advice is to stay away from what you’re nosing around in.”

  “You want me to stay away from whatever it is that’s not happening, right?”

  “You’re sharp as a razor, J.W. That bullet might have clipped your gizzard, but it never touched your brain. I’m serious—stay away.”

  “If somebody’s mad enough at Billy to try to blow him up in the Nellie Grey, the same somebody might be mad enough to try for him while he’s in the hospital flat on his back.”

  “You watch too much TV. Nobody’s after Billy.”

  “Who’s the Portagee Connection?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I hear the blues are in. Go fishing for a couple of weeks.”

  We both got out of the cruiser and looked at each other across the hood. “I don’t own a TV,” I said.

  “You’re fast with the repartee,” said the chief enviously. Then his tone changed. “I don’t want anything messing up this action. I don’t want the bad guys getting any tipoff that there’s an axe over their heads. It’s happened in the past and we’re trying to find the leak right now. The best thing you can do for me is to stay out of this until the dust settles.”

  “You think the leak’s local? Remember, there are state and federal people involved, too, and they’re not famous for keeping secrets. Hell, I heard about this from Boston.”

  “From a confidential source, no doubt.”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, your source didn’t tell you when all this was going down, did he? That’s the key that’s still in the lock, and I don’t want it out till it’s time to make arrests. Twice in the past two years we’ve found empty space where we should have found people and evidence. Somebody’s tipping them off.”

  “And nobody’s after Billy, eh? It’s a comfort to us average citizens to know that you men in blue are out there.”

  “Protect and serve,” said the chief. “That’s our motto.” He walked into the station. Through the window I saw Helen Viera turn away and move back to her desk. She’d been watching us and probably wondering why the chief was parked out there talking when she probably had plenty of work for him to do at his desk.

  I found the Landcruiser right where I’d left it, and got out my tide table. The end of the west tide was about seven o’clock. I found a phone booth and called the Martin house. George’s wife, Marge, was home. She was doing housework, a woman’s solution to being nervous, she said. I told her I’d seen George and Billy at the hospital and that they both looked pretty good, and I asked to talk to Susie. She was at the hospital. Marge thanked me for my help and I managed a reply in the “Aw, shucks, ma’am, it was nothin’ ” mode. I asked if I could come out and talk with her and she said yes, so I drove out.

  I didn’t know Marge Martin very well. George and I shared the fishing spots, but Marge was in the tennis and cocktails set, where my feet rarely trod. Still, we hit it off well enough. She, like George, was only lately rich. She hadn’t been born to it and she remembered what it was like to have to work. If she wanted to play tennis and never break a nail digging clams, it was okay with me. Everybody to his own style, I say.

  She met me at the door. She was fifty or so, tanned, in good shape from tennis. Her hair was short and fashionable and she was wearing summer shorts and a pastel top decorated in rich-girl pink and green. The parent-of-preppies look. Not bad.

  She took my hands in hers. “Oh, J.W., I can’t thank you enough. If it hadn’t been for you and Zee Madieras . . .”

  I there-there’d and smiled, and she smiled back and led me into their living room. It was an old New England house but with modern touches, which made it a lot more comfortable than it had been when the old New Englanders had been obliged to live in it. I liked it. We sat down and I got right to the point.

  I told her about Susie coming to me and about what she’d said about everything, including Mrs. Sylvia and her son Danny. Emotions moved over Marge Martin’s face, changing the way her skin fit over the bones beneath it. But the emotions were elusive to me. I asked her what she had to say about Susie’s ideas.

  She shook her head. “I can’t believe that anybody would try to kill Billy. That’s not possible. Billy’s been away from drugs for over a year. He’s no threat to anyone. He never was! I can’t imagine where Susie got those ideas!”

  “What about Danny Sylvia? Susie says he’s the one who got Billy started on dope in the first place. She saw them a week ago, arguing. She says Danny threatened him.”

  She put her hands on her knees. “No, I can’t imagine it. Maria and Fred Sylvia were just as horrified as I was when they learned that Danny was using drugs. They sent him off to some place in California for the cure. I remember how furious and determined they were, how they forced Danny into the toughest program they could find and made him stay there until he was absolutely freed from his addiction. I don’t think that Danny would dare get involved with drugs again. He’s in college out west somewhere, I think. No, I can’t imagine Danny being so angry with Billy that he’d threaten him. Susie must have been mistaken.”

  “Why did you stop playing tennis with Maria Sylvia?”

  She looked at me with secret eyes.

  I gave her a suggestion. “Was it because her son had corrupted yours?”

  She tossed her head in a peculiarly youthful way, which allowed me to glimpse her daughter in her. “No. If you want to know the truth, it was because she likes young men too much. She’s my age, but she surrounds herself with men half her age, with boys young enough to be her sons. She has one of them working in her house who doesn’t do anything but drive her around or play tennis with her. He’s supposed to be her husband’s bodyguard, I hear, but it’s her body he’s guarding. She likes the tennis pro at the club. After a while I decided I didn’t care for it, so I broke off from her.”

  “A lot of men prefer younger women.”

  “That’s different.”

  “A lot of women prefer younger men. I’m told it’s quite fashionable, in fact.”

  “I’m not one of those women.”

  “Did she have an eye for Billy?”

  She gave me a cold look, then let it fade and shrugged. “You’re astute. Yes, I thought she was more interested in him than she needed to be, and I didn’t like it. I wanted him away from his old companions, so I took him and left.”

  “And sent him off for a cure of his own.”

  “Not right away. At first we deceived ourselves by thinking th
at he’d give up the drugs on his own. But of course he hadn’t. He pretended to, but he hadn’t. After that we sent him to a private hospital.”

  “And he came back cured.”

  “Yes. He was accepted at Brown and he’s doing quite well.”

  “And nobody he once knew might want him dead?”

  “No.”

  I got up and so did she. At the door she said, “I really think that Susie is quite wrong. All I can imagine is that she’s in some kind of shock. She was very fond of Jim Norris, and she and Billy are close. The accident must have disturbed her very much indeed.”

  We exchanged good-byes and I left. As I drove I wished I hadn’t stopped smoking. There was a drug bust coming up and there was the explosion, and there was Susie Martin saying there was a link between the explosion and drugs but the chief and Marge Martin saying there was no such link. Maybe the chief was lying just to keep me from nosing around and screwing up the impending bust, but then again maybe he wasn’t. If Billy was a squealer, why didn’t the chief just tell me? If he’d done that, I’d probably have agreed to keep my nose out of things until the bust was history, and then maybe he and I together could have looked into the theory that Billy had been set up for murder. But the chief didn’t act like a man with a murder to solve. He was directing traffic and riding around in the cruiser and acting as normal as a policeman can who knows that the big state and federal guns are about to swoop down on his community. Ah, how I missed my old corncob pipe!

  I went home and called Quinn in Boston, but he was out. So much for that angle. So much for every angle. I had just enough time to make Wasque Point. I got into the Landcruiser and headed for the fishing ground. I thought back five years and reminded myself that I’d left police work behind me quite consciously, quite deliberately, because I was tired of trouble and no longer believed that I could or should devote myself to curing society of its ills. Rather, I’d live within myself and seek the simple life, close to earth and sea, apart from human foible and folly. It seemed as good a plan now as it had then. I was glad when I got to the beach.