Marine Corpse

by William G. Tapply

  “That was a mental institution, I thought.”

  “All the same to ol’ Altoona.” He nodded slowly. “All the same. He won’t go.” He shrugged off his white jacket, hung it on a hook, and took down an expensive looking leather coat. “Well, back to the hospital.”

  I held my hand out to him. “Thank you for your time, Doctor. I know you’ll do your best for Altoona.”

  His hand engulfed mine. “I will. But he’s goin’ die, I’m afraid.”

  After Dr. Vance left, Father Barrone led me out of the doctor’s little office. We paused by the front door. “If there’s anything I can do for you, Mr. Coyne,” he said.

  “Yes, there is. Let me know if anything changes with Altoona, will you? Any change in his health, or if he should become lucid again, I’d like to know about it. Also, if you should hear anything that might shed light on Stu Carver’s death, I’d like to know that, too.” I took a business card from my wallet and handed it to him.

  He studied it for a moment. “That’s a nice address, Mr. Coyne. Sure. I’ll call you.”

  I buttoned up my coat. “About Altoona,” I said. “Do you think he’s afraid? Is that why he’s retreated like that?”

  Father Barrone smiled. “I just think he’s a crazy old man. That’s all.”

  I nodded, shook hands with him, and walked out into the street.

  “Oh, Mr. Coyne!”

  I turned. Father Barrone stood in the open doorway.

  “Come back and visit us, won’t you?” he called. “I’d like to talk to you about our operation here.”

  I nodded, smiled, and waved to the priest. Then I started up the street. Groups of men, clad almost uniformly in long drab-colored topcoats, huddled outside in groups of twos and threes. The thin, cold sunlight, even at noontime, only reached halfway down the sides of the buildings on the opposite side of the street. The slush lay like a gray blanket over the ice on the pavement. I began the long walk back to my office high above Copley Square, where my own daydreams might seem a little more real to me.

  EIGHT

  THE HARVARD FACULTY CLUB sits right next door to the Fogg Art Museum on Quincy Street, in back of the Yard. It’s a pleasant brick building, more of a house than an institutional structure. Ben Woodhouse, as a Harvard alumnus and occasional lecturer on politics, used the Faculty Club now and then, when it suited his purposes. Luncheon at the Harvard Faculty Club impressed out-of-state dignitaries and certain Boston politicians, Ben would say, enough to give him whatever small edge he might need.

  This time Ben wanted me to join him at the bar downstairs at twelve-thirty. There was somebody he wanted me to meet. When I got there, five minutes early, Ben was there.

  The man seated at the round table with him wore a ratty old Harris tweed jacket with leather elbow patches. He was a slim, wiry guy, with a raggedy beard the color of Grade A maple syrup. The hair on top of his head was longish and curly and a few shades lighter than his beard. He had smoky gray-blue eyes and a sunburned face. He jogged, or did something to keep himself trim. I guessed he was close to fifty, even though he looked younger. He struck me as one of those guys who would always look younger than they really were. Typical professor—political science, specialty in the Middle East, author of a definitive text, just back from sabbatical. The sort of guy Ben liked to hang around with.

  Ben saw me and waved me to a chair at the table. “Glad you could make it,” he said, as if I’d had a choice. “Brady Coyne, I want you to meet Gus Becker.”

  I reached across and took the hand of the other man, who nodded and smiled pleasantly.

  “Bourbon, Brady?” said Ben.

  I nodded, and Ben relayed my preference to the college-aged boy who materialized at his side. I grabbed a handful of little goldfish crackers from a bowl on the table and popped them into my mouth one at a time.

  “Anyway,” said Ben to Becker, “this fellow—he’s an Italian, mind you, and from the Back Bay, no less—he says to me, ‘I paid my dues, Senator. I stood up for Goldwater, I stood up for Nixon. I said what had to be said against the colored. I worked for Ray Shamie, for Christ’s sake.’” Ben’s voice imitated the raspy whine of the unnamed politician he was quoting. “Know what I said to him?”

  Becker grinned. “What?”

  “I said, ‘Go talk to Ed King.’ And he looked at me and said, ‘You kidding? Ed King?’ And I said to him, ‘Exactly. Just because I used to hunt ducks with Frank Sargent doesn’t change anything. This is still Massachusetts.’”

  Ben sat back with both hands flat on the table and chuckled.

  Becker nodded, smiling. “It’s quite a city, Boston,” he said. He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and extracted a plastic-tipped cigar. He removed the cellophane wrapper, ran his tongue over it, and lit it. I noticed that he inhaled it deeply. A reformed cigarette smoker, I guessed.

  My drink arrived. The waiter hovered there until Ben looked up at him. “Another, sir?” he said.

  “No,” said Ben. “No, we’re going up to eat now.” He turned to me. “Bring that with you, Brady.”

  Becker and I followed Ben up to the second floor and down a corridor to one of the private dining rooms. The room was dominated by a large oblong table, big enough to seat twenty comfortably. It was set at one corner for three. The single window looked out onto a curving concrete piece of the Fogg. Ben gestured for Becker and me to sit on either side of him, and we waited in silence while a middle-aged waitress presented us with bowls of thick potato and leek soup, served hot.

  We bent to the soup. If there was to be any business transacted, it would be after the meal, over coffee. Ben Woodhouse felt that it was uncivilized to discuss business while eating.

  The soup was followed by a plain salad with bottled dressing, and then an open-faced roast beef sandwich on toast tips with mushroom sauce. The meat was nice and rare and sliced wafer-thin. The sauce was a little heavy on the sherry. Our meal was supervised by a row of dour old men in oil paintings, who appeared to take offense at our pleasure.

  While we ate, the Senator told Becker anecdotes about Boston politicians—not cruel stories, really, not tales that were intended to demean anybody, because that wouldn’t have been consistent with Ben’s nature. They were stories that illustrated the convoluted, Machiavellian character of the city’s politics, the legacy of James Michael Curley and Calvin Coolidge and Honey Fitz and Kevin White and all the ambitious Irish and Italian School Committee and City Council people from Eastie and Southie and Dorchester who never seemed to get any farther, despite their unbounded ambitions.

  When we were done, and the waitress had cleared away the plates and brought Gus Becker and me coffee, Ben stood up abruptly and said, “Well, I’ll leave you two. Brady, cooperate with the man, please. And I’d like a report as soon as possible on how you’re proceeding with Stu’s estate.”

  Becker stood and shook hands with Ben. After the Senator was gone, Becker resumed his seat and smiled at me.

  “Ben says you’re a first-rate attorney.”

  “I am, although Ben and I seem to be having somewhat different views of what that entails lately. I am also curious to know what this mysterious little get-together is all about.”

  “Ben says you dot the i’s and cross the t’s with the very best of them. He says there are damn few lawyers in town who can keep important and sensitive business out of the papers—and out of the courtrooms—any better than you. He’s awfully pleased with the job you’re doing on his nephew’s death. Keeping the lid on, I mean.”

  I lit a cigarette and waited for him to continue.

  “Discreet. That’s the word he used. He says you’re discreet as hell. A master of the telephone. A virtuoso at the two-Manhattan luncheon. You keep things quiet. You settle things. You get things done.”

  “You’re pretty good at what you do, too,” I said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Irritating people. I assume that’s what you’re trying to do now.”

 
Becker grinned. “Ben also tells me that you like to fool around with police work. A regular crime-buster. This does not please him. He suspects that you just might be sleuthing around on the Stu Carver case. That right?”

  “Just who the hell are you, anyway?” I said.

  He stared at me. I stared back into his smoke-colored eyes. It was an old schoolboy game. This time I won. Becker dropped his eyes, smiled, then looked up at me again. “Okay. All right. There’s no sense fooling around. Ben wants you to stay out of the investigation, such as it is. Just do the legal work, and leave the sleuthing to others.”

  “Like you?”

  Becker shrugged. “Ben asked you to cooperate.”

  “Ben Woodhouse is my client, not my boss. He doesn’t tell me what to do.” It sounded prissy, even to my own ears. “Look,” I said, spreading my hands, “why don’t you just tell me what you’re after?”

  He gazed at the ceiling for a minute, as if seeking patience there. Then he said, “I really can’t tell you. You’ll have to trust me.”

  “Top secret stuff, eh?”

  “You might say that.”

  “I’m familiar with that ploy,” I said. “I use it myself. Sometimes it works. Other times people tell me to fuck off.” I grinned at him. “Fuck off,” I said.

  He glared at me for a moment. Then he nodded. “You’re right. Let’s start over again. You can’t blame me for trying, can you?”

  I shrugged. “I could. But, okay. Start again.”

  He took his time. He fished out another plastic-tipped cigar, fired it up, puffed on it, sipped his coffee, studied the old oils lined up on the wall. “You’ve got to understand, Mr. Coyne, this is top secret,” he began. “It involves something very big. Much bigger than the murder of Stuart Carver.” He puffed, stared, sipped, then leaned toward me. “I’m with the Drug Enforcement Administration,” he said finally. “Boston. It’s a battleground. It’s a territory, and there are armies fighting to control it, armies from Detroit and New York and Miami. It’s a real war, and soldiers are dying. Civilians, too. All to see who gets to sell the cocaine in your city. Ben has been educating me a little. But it’s a hell of a lot deeper than the petty stuff the politicians are into—although some of them have their fingers in this pie, too.”

  “You think Stu was dealing drugs?”

  Becker shrugged. “That’s a big step. There are certain connections I can’t make yet. I hope you can help me. I’ll tell you this, though. I don’t think that boy’s death was a random, meaningless thing, the way the police do. Just how it’s related I can’t tell you. Maybe he stumbled onto something. Maybe he was involved in some way. Maybe he bought drugs, or sold them, or carried them. I don’t know. That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

  I thought for a moment. It made some sense, I realized. I had never been comfortable with Al Santis’s assumption that Stu’s death ought to be passed off as the work of teenage hoodlums or some perverted thrill-killer. On the other hand, I couldn’t imagine Stu being involved in drug traffic, either.

  “So what do you want from me?”

  Becker’s eyes were as cold and gray as the slush on the sidewalks outside. “Stu Carver was working on a book,” he said.

  I nodded. “That was no secret.”

  “You were his agent.”

  I nodded. “So?”

  “I figure,” said Becker slowly, “he must’ve been keeping some sort of journal. A diary, maybe. Something for when he went to write the book.” His eyes stared impassively into mine.

  I shrugged. “That would make sense.”

  He suddenly grinned. “You’re not bad, Mr. Coyne. Not bad at all.”

  I nodded and stood up. “Why don’t you give me a call tomorrow morning. Maybe by then I can think of some way to help you. Okay?”

  Becker stood and held out his hand. “That’s just the way I’d do it. And I’ve already got your number.”

  “That,” I said, “doesn’t surprise me.”

  When I got back to my desk I called Charlie McDevitt.

  “Mr. McDevitt’s line,” answered Shirley, his secretary.

  “Oh, be still, my heart,” I said.

  I heard her giggle. “Oh, you, Mr. Coyne. You’re going to get in trouble someday, you talk to the ladies the way you do. Did you call to talk to me? Do you want to take me dancing?”

  Shirley was a chubby old gal about sixty years old. She wore her gray hair in a tight bun. She had a mole on her chin with several curly black hairs growing out of it. She had eleven grandchildren, whose pictures I exclaimed over every time I went to Charlie’s office.

  Charlie McDevitt was an attorney with the United States Justice Department’s Boston office. I had roomed with him in New Haven when we were both at Yale Law School. He was still my best friend, as well as my golfing and fishing partner. From time to time we found ways to help each other out.

  “Shirley, sweetheart, would that I dared take you dancing. But I know I couldn’t keep my hands off you. One thing would lead to another. Alas, I must live with a broken heart.”

  “Oh, you rascal,” she said. “Hang on. Charlie’s right here.”

  “Hey, you wanna go ice fishin’?” Charlie’s voice boomed into the phone. “They’re taking big brown trout out of Walden, I hear.”

  “I can think of easier ways to freeze my ass off,” I said. “I want to try out a name on you.”

  “What sort of a name?”

  “Guy with the DEA”

  “We should be able to pop that up on the computer. What’s the name?”

  “Becker, Gus.”

  “Hold on. I’ll give it to Freddy.” I heard Charlie speak to somebody, then he came back to the phone. “It’ll take just a minute. Damn computers. Make everything too easy.”

  “Julie’s been after me to get one.”

  “We were talking here the other day,” said Charlie. “Freddy, our computer whiz, was saying how he thought the computer was the best thing ever invented. Jimmy Duckworth was there, and he said that, in terms of the total impact on civilization and all, he’d vote for the gasoline engine as man’s number one invention. What do you think, Brady?”

  “Shit, I don’t know. How about the condom?”

  “No, I’m serious, Brady. Lou, the Chinese guy, he said gunpowder, for the way it changed around warfare.”

  “Gunpowder was very good,” I said.

  “Another fella in here said electricity. Somebody pointed out that, strictly speaking, electricity was a discovery, not an invention. Right?”

  “Sure. You’re absolutely right, Charlie.”

  “Anyway, I told the guys that they were all wrong, if they’d only think about it. It’s really pretty obvious. The greatest thing ever invented has to be the Thermos bottle.”

  “The Thermos bottle,” I said.

  “Easy. Hands down. No contest.”

  “Okay, Charlie. How do you figure the Thermos bottle?”

  “Look,” he said. “You put soup in it, the Thermos bottle keeps it hot. You put martinis in it, it keeps them cold.”

  I sighed. “So what, Charlie?”

  “Well, shit, man. How does it know?”

  I groaned.

  “Hang on,” said Charlie. “Freddy’s got a printout here for us. Let’s see. Okay. Becker, Augustus. Born December nine, nineteen thirty-eight, Des Moines, Iowa. BA University of Iowa nineteen fifty-nine, blah, blah. What do you want to know, anyway?”

  “He’s with the DEA, then?”

  “Sure. Just like you said. Been all over. Europe, Middle East, South America. Working out of Washington right now.”

  “He’s here. In Boston.”

  “Well, sure. That would make sense. Anybody working the east coast would be working out of Washington.”

  “That’s all I wanted, I guess,” I said.

  “That’s it, huh?”

  “Yup.”

  “Well, you wanna try some ice fishing, let me know. I’ll bring the Thermos bottle, keep our coffee hot
.”

  “How would it know?” I said, and hung up.

  Gus Becker called me the next morning. I told him to come on over. He arrived in less than an hour.

  Julie showed him into my office. He sat on the same sofa that Altoona always took. He crossed his ankle over his knee, hooked his elbows over the back of the sofa, and grinned. “Your secretary’s got a nice ass.”

  I nodded without smiling. “I will help you,” I said.

  He nodded: “I figured that’s why you invited me over. What’ve you got for me?”

  I picked up the stack of papers that I had left sitting on the corner of my desk and handed it to him. He held it in his hands and narrowed his eyes at me. “What’s this?”

  “Stu’s notebooks. You guessed right. He left them with me.”

  Becker grinned. “What’s in ’em?”

  “I don’t know. Stu’s handwriting is terrible. I haven’t tried to decipher them.”

  Becker looked down and started to riffle through the pages. “These are photocopies,” he said.

  “Yes. Does it matter?”

  He picked up one random page and held it close to his face. “Hard as hell to read.”

  “It’s the best I can do for you.”

  “Where’s the originals?”

  “Stu’s roommate has them. She’s thinking of doing some sort of book.”

  He glanced up at me. “No kidding?”

  I shrugged.

  He put the stack of papers back onto his lap. “You going to sit down, Mr. Coyne, or are you trying to tell me that I should leave?”

  I sat on the chair across from him and lit a cigarette. He studied me with those narrow smoke-colored eyes. “So,” he said after a moment. “What else can you tell me?”

  “I checked up on you,” I said.

  “I figured you were going to. Glad you did.”

  “If you really are who I guess you are, then there’s no reason for me not to do all I can to help you.”

  “No reason whatsoever.”

  “Do you really think Stu’s murder was purposeful?”

  “If you mean not random, yes, I believe that,” said Becker. “I think it was drug connected.”