“Oh, jeez, they print everything on that stuff. Letters, report cards, progress reports.”
“So you have no idea.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Coyne. No idea.”
I picked up my coffee cup. My coffee was cold. Then I felt Sylvie’s hand creep onto my thigh, where she began scratching gently with one long fingernail. I glanced at my watch. Christie sucked on her straw until it made gurgling noises in the bottom of the glass. I said, “Christie, you did the right thing, calling me and telling me all of this. And don’t worry. I will protect your confidentiality. I’ll keep your name out of it. Okay?”
She smiled and nodded.
“The other thing is, I don’t want you telling anybody else about it. Nobody. Not even your best friend.”
“My best friend was Alice,” she said softly.
I picked up the damp check the boy had left by my elbow. “Right now,” I said to Christie, “Miss Szabo and I have an appointment.”
The three of us walked out to the parking lot together. Christie climbed into a late-model Chrysler—Daddy’s car, I assumed. He probably figured that his Christie was at the library searching for old books on the Civil War, instead of meeting strange attorneys at ice cream parlors.
Sylvie and I cut through the back roads, heading for Gert’s, where the monkfish would be off today’s boat, the vegetables fresh from local gardens, and the breads baked that afternoon. If Gert’s were located in the city, and if it were discovered by the Beacon Hill crowd, you’d have to call a week in advance for reservations, and even then, you’d only get a table if you held office or if Gert knew you.
But Gert’s is situated on Route 127 outside of Gloucester. It hasn’t been discovered yet, though I fear its days are numbered. It’s a simple, square, weathered building. The sign outside says only, “Good Food,” which, for those of us who know better, is like saying Shakespeare wrote good sonnets. Gert’s features red-and-white checked oilcloth tablecloths, cloth napkins the size of bath towels, candles in old Chianti bottles, fishing nets and lobster buoys hung from the knotty pine walls, and a view of thick woods beyond the parking lot and the big dumpster out back.
The waitresses are all local girls. They sweat a lot.
The music that drifts over the good speaker system is all Italian. It ranges from Verdi to Julius La Rosa.
People go to Gert’s for the food. I know no one who has ever been disappointed.
I feel about Gert’s the same way I feel about a certain trout stream in north-central Vermont. I only tell my closest friends about the place.
Sylvie and I shared a bowl mounded high with steamed mussels reeking of garlic and butter, which we washed down with several glasses of the dusty house white. Then came the monkfish, an exquisite white-fleshed fish, delicate almost—but not quite—to the point of blandness. Gert seasoned it with a little lemon juice and freshly cracked black peppercorns.
Sylvie and I ate earnestly. It was one of the things I loved about Sylvie. She knows when to eat and when to talk and when to make love, and she knows when not to mix up her priorities among them.
It was a little after ten when we left Gert’s. As we crossed the parking lot heading for my car, Sylvie put her arm around my waist and leaned her head against my shoulder. Our hips bumped awkwardly as we walked. “I’m really tired,” she mumbled.
“I’ll take you right home and tuck you in.”
“That’s not what I had in mind.”
“My house, then.”
She chuckled deep in her throat. It reminded me of what she was wearing.
I couldn’t wait to get my hands on her.
She dozed in the car. I played a Benny Goodman tape, happy that his music was outliving him. An hour later I pulled into my spot in the parking garage in the bowels of my apartment building.
In the elevator on the way up, apparently refreshed by her nap, Sylvie leaned against me, her mouth lifted, her eyes half shut. It was a long kiss, the full six floors, and it was accompanied by some preliminary groping and stroking, and we didn’t break it off until the elevator door slid open.
We walked over to my door. Sylvie hung on to my arm while I patted my pockets for the key. “Want me to help look?” she said, slithering her hand into my pocket.
“Jesus, cut it out,” I said.
I found the key, unlocked the door, and Sylvie and I stepped inside. I found the light switch and flicked it on.
“Welcome home,” said a voice.
He was a jowly guy. He was wearing a rumpled suit, and he was sitting at my kitchen table. He held up both hands, like a priest blessing his congregation. “Come on in. Make yourselves comfortable.”
“Yeah. Get over there and siddown.” This was a different voice, and it came from behind us.
I pivoted around to look. A tall, gaunt man wearing a dark windbreaker stood inside the doorway. He kicked the door shut behind us, his eyes never leaving me and Sylvie.
He held a very large automatic pistol in his hand. It was aimed at my sternum.
Twelve
“WHO THE HELL ARE you?” I said to the fat guy at the table.
He had squinty, pig eyes, and when he smiled his cheeks bunched up and almost obscured them completely. “Mr. Curry, sir,” he replied. The last word was a genuine Southern “suh.” He gave a courtly dip of his head. “And this gentleman is Mr. Baron.”
“Mr. Baron,” the gaunt guy with the gun, grinned wolfishly at their joke. Then he waved at me and Sylvie with his gun. “G’wan,” he grunted. “Get over there.”
Sylvie and I moved toward the table where “Mr. Curry” was seated. He pushed himself out of his chair and held it, gesturing with a sweep of his hand that Sylvie should sit there. She looked at me. I nodded. She sat down. The thin man, “Mr. Baron,” poked me again, and I sat at the table across from Sylvie.
“How’d you get into my apartment?” I said.
“Your young friend was kind enough to let us borrow his key,” said “Mr. Curry.”
“Buddy.”
“A very courageous young man,” said the fat man.
“Did you have to kill him?”
“An unfortunate accident, sir. Unfortunate in several respects. Unfortunate, of course, for poor young Mr. Baron. Also unfortunate for this Mr. Baron here, and for me. Because the young gentleman failed to disclose the information we sought from him. He had the lack of consideration to die too quickly.”
I nodded. Sylvie was staring wide-eyed at me. “These are the men who killed Buddy Baron,” I told her. “Their names aren’t really Baron and Curry. They think it’s a joke.”
“Oh, it is,” said Mr. Curry, puffing his cheeks again. “It’s a good joke.” He was standing at one side of the table, both hands flat upon it, leaning forward so he could talk confidentially with us. Mr. Baron was leaning against the kitchen sink across the room, one ankle crossed over the other. He kept his gun pointed at me.
Mr. Curry turned to Sylvie. “You’re a pretty one,” he said. “Stand up, sweetheart.”
Sylvie frowned at him and didn’t move.
“Come on, darlin’,” he said. “Lemme have a look at you, like a good girl.”
“Leave her alone,” I said. “She’s got nothing to do with any of this.”
Mr. Curry whirled to face me. His pale pig eyes glittered. “You shut the fuck up, friend. I’m getting to you.”
“Oh, dear,” I said, fluttering my eyelids. “The mean man is threatening me.”
Mr. Curry twitched his head at Mr. Baron, who slowly unlimbered himself and ambled across the kitchen toward me until he was standing beside my right shoulder. “Hey,” he whispered. “Hey, asshole.”
“Up yours,” I said wearily, without turning around.
Mr. Curry grabbed a handful of Sylvie’s blond hair and gave it a sudden yank. Her head snapped backwards. She started to say something, but the words were choked as her throat was constricted by the motion.
I instinctively put my hands on the table and began to push myself up when Mr
. Baron hit me with his gun barrel. He did it casually, the way one might swipe at a pesky housefly, and he caught me across the bridge of my nose. I saw a white flash of pain, and I heard the familiar crunch that meant another broken nose. It’s the sound you hear when you step on a pavement littered with acorns, and you’d swear it’s just as loud. But in fact, it’s a noise heard only inside your own head.
“Aw, shit,” I said. Tears were running down my cheeks, mingling with the blood from the gash across my nose and all the ruptured blood vessels inside.
Mr. Curry had hoisted Sylvie out of her chair, and he held her pressed backwards against his fat body, one wrist against her throat, the other arm across her chest. Sylvie was looking at me. There was no fear in her expression.
“Brady,” she said.
“I’m okay,” I told her. To the fat guy, I said, “Why don’t you let her go?”
“Because, sir, we need something from you, and we are perfectly willing to do whatever needs to be done to get it. And I am not sure you believe that quite yet. Now do you understand?”
“What do you want?”
“Why, sir, I believe you know that. I surely do.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Mr. Curry moved his hand so that it cupped Sylvie’s breast. She tried to move her mouth to bite the wrist that was levered against her throat. He increased the pressure, and Sylvie made a gagging sound. Suddenly Mr. Curry squeezed her breast. I could see his fingers dig in cruelly. Sylvie’s scream was pure pain. I instinctively started up from my chair. Mr. Baron whacked the side of my neck with his gun, and for an instant my entire left arm went numb. I slumped back into my chair.
I looked helplessly at Sylvie. Tears ran down her cheeks, whether from pain or anger or humiliation I couldn’t tell. “Do not hurt him,” she said hoarsely.
“I’m okay,” I managed to say, although I was sure I didn’t look it, the way the blood continued to drip onto the front of my shirt from my poor nose.
“Well, Mr. Coyne? What do you say?” The fat man was panting, from the combination of exertion and sexual arousal, I judged.
“What are you after?”
The skinny guy was holding the muzzle of his gun against the back of my neck. I figured he’d enjoy using it. So I had to watch as Mr. Curry grabbed the neckline of Sylvie’s dress and ripped it down, exposing both of her breasts.
“Hey, look,” said the thin man with the gun. “Bare tits. She ain’t got on any underwear.”
I felt the muscles in my shoulders and back tense. The fat man took one of Sylvie’s nipples between his thumb and forefinger and manipulated it experimentally. Suddenly he squeezed it hard. Sylvie screamed. I half rose in my chair, and Mr. Baron tapped me square on the top of my head with the butt of his gun. The pain shot straight down to my rectum.
I was drenched with sweat. My muscles were drained of strength. I could only slump there and watch as Mr. Curry’s fat hand reached down to the hem of Sylvie’s dress and lifted it up. “My heavens, look at this,” he chortled.
From behind me I heard the skinny man’s lewd laugh. “Blonde, by crackey!” he said.
The fat man’s red suety face was all bunched up so that it looked like a ball of uncooked hamburg. His fingers moved over Sylvie’s thighs and bare belly.
“How about my turn?” said the man with the gun.
“We shall take turns, Mr. Baron,” said the fat one, his bulk shaking at the humor of it all. “I shall go first.”
“Wait,” I said.
“Excuse me, sir?”
“I said wait. I’ll give you what you want. I have it.”
“An intelligent young man after all.”
“Take your hands off the lady.”
“Not until we have what we came for, sir.”
“It’s in the other room.”
“Where?” said the skinny one.
“I can get it.”
Mr. Curry jerked his head at Mr. Baron. “Okay. Go with him.”
“It’s just in the bedroom,” I said.
I felt the gun barrel prod at my kidneys. “Let’s go, asshole.”
I limped slowly into my bedroom, flipped on the light switch, and went to the corner where my Harlan Fiske Stone briefcase stood. I pointed to it. “It’s in there,” I told Mr. Baron.
“Pick it up,” he said.
I reached down and grabbed the leather handle.
“Bring it out.”
I lugged the briefcase back into the kitchen. Sylvie and Mr. Curry seemed to have arrived at a kind of stalemate. He had let the hem of her dress drop, and he was fondling her bare left breast mechanically, kneading it as if it were a wad of pizza dough, while Sylvie sagged back against him, her eyes closed, her mouth set in a grimace of resignation.
I hefted the briefcase onto the table. “Now will you let her go?” I said to the fat man.
Mr. Baron stood across the table from me, facing me, his gun pointing at my chest. Mr. Curry remained at my left, still holding Sylvie.
“We’ll have to see what you have for us, first,” he said. His hand remained on Sylvie’s breast.
“It’s in the briefcase.”
“Take it out,” said Mr. Curry.
“Hang on,” said the man with the gun. “I’ll do that.”
I shrugged.
“No,” said Mr. Curry. “I want him to do it. Slowly, now Mr. Coyne.”
I unsnapped the top of the old briefcase, pulled open the accordion top, and leaned over to peer down into it. Then I reached my hand in. There was a stack of papers on top. Drafts of the contract for the young couple who wanted to have a baby. I snaked my hand under them until I felt the cold steel of my Smith and Wesson .38. The way it lay in the bottom of the briefcase, the barrel was aiming toward me. I felt for the handle, found it, and tried to turn the gun around.
“What the hell are you doing?” said Mr. Baron.
I leaned over the briefcase again, and pretended to look around. “It’s in an envelope,” I said.
“Just dump everything on the table.”
“No, wait. I got it,” I said. I held the revolver by its grip. My thumb found the hammer. I held my breath as I double-cocked it. The click was inaudible from inside the heavy leather briefcase. I barely touched the trigger. It had always been set too light for me. The report was muffled by the briefcase. It sounded like the cherry bombs we used to explode inside mailboxes when we were kids.
Mr. Baron looked surprised. His eyebrows went up. He lifted his gun slowly. Then he dropped it. His mouth opened, as if he were about to sing the opening lines of the national anthem. No words came out. Instead came a gurgling noise, followed by a rush of blood.
A red splotch spread across the front of his windbreaker. Mr. Baron stood there, looking surprised. Then he fell backwards.
Mr. Curry, considering his bulk, reacted with an athlete’s reflexes. He shoved Sylvie at me, and I instinctively reached to catch her. But one of my hands still held my Smith and Wesson, which had become entangled inside the briefcase, so that when Sylvie hit me I fell sideways onto the floor, bringing Sylvie, the briefcase, and the revolver with me.
Mr. Curry ran for the door. I scrambled out from under Sylvie and wrenched the gun from the briefcase. Mr. Curry was at the door, not hesitating, yanking at the knob. I leveled the gun at him as he pulled the door open.
“Stop right there!” I yelled, squinting down the barrel at Mr. Curry’s fat back.
He didn’t pause. He opened the door, skittered out, and slammed the door behind him. I lowered the gun.
I sat there on the floor stupidly, staring down at the gun. Sylvie moved beside me. She put her hand on the back of my neck. “Why didn’t you shoot that man?”
“I couldn’t shoot a man, Sylvie.”
“But you did.”
“My God,” I said. I stood up and sprinted out of my apartment. I stopped in the corridor, looking one way and then the other. I checked the elevator. According to the light, it was a
t the lobby. I went to the stairwell. I neither saw nor heard anything.
The fat man had gotten away.
I returned to my apartment. I phoned down to Hector in the lobby. He hadn’t noticed anybody either entering a while earlier or having just left. I told him to watch out for a fat guy, probably the same one he had seen the night Buddy was killed. Hector was apologetic, and expressed great enthusiasm for helping.
I went over to where the thin man who called himself Mr. Baron lay on my kitchen floor. He was on his back, his arms outthrust, his legs spread. The front of his windbreaker gleamed wetly with the blood that had not yet begun to dry. His eyes stared at the ceiling. His open mouth was red, and his chin and lips were stained bloody.
I put my ear to his mouth and then felt for a pulse in his neck. I turned to Sylvie, who hadn’t moved. “He’s dead.”
She nodded. “Good.”
“Are you all right?”
“I am all right. My breast is sore. That is all.”
“Let me find you something to put on,” I said.
She looked down at the front of her ruined dress. “Yes, please. I am very cold.”
I went to her and hugged her close against me. I could feel her shake and twitch. “I was so frightened,” she mumbled against my chest. Her entire body began to shudder. I squeezed her tight. I could feel her fingernails dig into my back.
“Me, too,” I whispered. “I was very frightened.”
She clung to me, heaving and shivering. I smoothed her hair against her head and moved my hand in small circles on her back and kissed her forehead and cheeks, and gradually she began to relax. She pulled her head back and looked up at me. Her face was wet and her eyes were red and swollen.
“I am very glad you killed that son of a bitch,” she hissed. “But I wish you had killed the other one, too.”
“We’ll get him.”
I helped her into the living room and sat her on the sofa. She hugged herself and pressed her knees together. “Sit tight,” I told her. “I’ll be right back.”
I went into my bedroom and found an old flannel bathrobe hanging from a hook in the back of the closet. I brought it out and sat beside Sylvie. I put my arms across her shoulders, urging her to lean forward so that I could drape the robe around her. She cooperated passively. She was staring in the direction of the skinny man I had killed.
Vulgar Boatman Page 15
