The Whale's Footprints - Rick Boyer

by Rick Boyer

  "The teeth-pulling part isn't any better; that's why I hate that part of it. Too bad it's maybe eighty percent of what I do. But the remaining part is challenging, rewarding, fulfilling . . . all that good stuff. And also, I'm good at it. But back to Joe and Jessica. They had a real rough time, but then Jessica got pregnant again, business was booming, and it seemed they were off to a fresh start."

  "And?"

  "And then, seven months later, just before Christmas time, while she was waiting on a busy intersection on Pearl Street in downtown Albany doing her Christmas shopping, Jessica Brindelli was run down by a speeding car. She and the baby were killed instantly."

  There was no sound from Keegan. I turned to see his jaw slack, his hands clasping the sides of his head.

  "Well, as you can imagine, Joe went off the rails awhile. Always religious, he suffered a deep schism inside himself. Rather than denying God and religion, he came to believe that it was somehow his fault, that he was cursed . . . that everyone he reached out to was doomed . . ."

  "Oh God. That must've been awful."

  "Awful's hardly the word. The family business went to hell, and Joe quit his post before it went under and moved to Boston. That was mostly Mary's idea, and I think it saved him. Then Joe became a priest."

  "You're kidding."

  "Not kidding. And he was good at it, too, until he got in trouble slamming young punks around in his parish. He was in a rough neighborhood in East Boston and he knew that it would take more than prayers and psalms to straighten these kids out. The neighborhood loved him, but not the Catholic brass. So he quit, drifted around a little, and became a cop. See, the car that ran his wife down wasn't driven by a drunk or a teenage hot rodder, but by two men who'd just pulled an armed robbery and were speeding away from the scene.

  "And so he's been trying to catch those guys ever since."

  "In a sense, yeah."

  "Well holy shit. Now I see why I shouldn't have—"

  "The story's not over yet."

  "Oh no. You gotta be kidding."

  "Nope. Wish it were. Anyway, Joe was a great cop. Seemed made for the job, as you can see for yourself. His rise was fast; he became detective lieutenant quicker than anybody in the state's history. About three years after he moved to Boston he met Martha Higgins, who worked right in your headquarters building at Ten Ten Comm. Ave. They started dating, and soon Joe was in love again, and ready to begin his life all over."

  "Ohhhhh, shit . . ."

  "Oh shit is right, Paul. Four months into the relationship, Martha developed a lump in her left breast. A biopsy revealed a malignancy, and she had a mastectomy. It was all she could do to handle it, since she was barely thirty. But she could've hung in there, I think. But Joe came unglued and broke it off. He broke it off because he was by this time convinced that he was the cause of the cancer . . . that he was the world's greatest jinx."

  "Christ almighty."

  "And of course, Martha couldn't help but think he dumped her because she was disfigured. Anyway, it was a sad, pathetic thing. Martha was so crushed she left town, moved back to Pittsfield to live with her parents. She's never married. They still write now and then. Mary and I are convinced Joe still loves her. But he won't get near her—afraid he'll make her sick again."

  There was a long silence. I wanted a cigarette.

  "And so he just keeps torturing himself with this?"

  "And so he just keeps torturing himself with it. Right. Mary and I tried to fix him up a few times. He'd meet these women, who always liked him a lot, but he'd manage to keep his distance every time and let the thing die. Joe was thin then, and very handsome. You can see his good looks in his face. Both he and Mary have the classic Roman profile. Mary's face is strong and fine, like the Statue of Liberty. Ever notice?"

  "You kidding? A guy can't help but notice her, Doc."

  "Yeah. Well, they're both good looking, as only Italians can be good looking. But then Joe began to gain weight. Of course he loves to eat, and he drinks like a fish now and then—as we can all understand, right?"

  "Right."

  "But Mary and I also think he got fat so women wouldn't be attracted to him. So he won't have to deal with it. And it's a goddamn shame, Paul, because there's nothing in this world that Joe Brindelli would like more than a wife and kids. Nothing in the entire world.”

  "Gee, if I'd have ever known that story . . ."

  "Well, now you know it. And maybe you understand my brother-in-law a little more. It explains, for one thing, why he likes to visit us so much. And he loves his nephews. And boy, do they love him. He's spoiled the shit out of 'em since they were babies."

  "Uh-huh. And maybe it explains a bit about you, too, Doc."

  "How do you mean?" I asked. The question made me uneasy.

  "Well, you know. Maybe you still feel guilty about Joe's kid. Even though there's no earthly, rational reason for it, you still feel responsible. And that's maybe why you like to get involved in these cases, especially when there's a kid like Andy Cunningham mixed up in it. That's maybe why you forget you're a doctor and go off—"

  "Let's pull off a second, Paul. I gotta take a leak."

  When I got back in the car, Paul suggested we just change the subject. I said that was just fine with me. just absolutely, goddamn fine. We got to Woods Hole before ten.

  THIRTY-THREE

  A FEW WEEKS slid by, the way they seem to do, faster and faster with each passing year. Fall arrived. The leaves got bright and the nights got cold and clear. Jack missed his court appearance, of course. We could stand it. Paul Keegan was wrong; Boyd Cunningham didn't walk. He got ten years reduced to two, which meant he was eligible for parole in six months. Bill Henderson and his partners from OEI took the fall for the two B and Es. But their sentence was paltry. Joe said they'd be out and around within a year or so. To make matters worse, the smart money was betting that they'd be back in business then, hauling lengths of drilling pipe out to Tuckernuck Island. Where it would end, nobody knew, but the Woods Hole community wasn't exactly overjoyed.

  As for Eddie Falcone, a.k.a. Slinky, he disappeared shortly before his scheduled arraignment, Dropped out of sight like an anvil in Lake Baikal. Joe was furious, thwarted at not putting another mobster behind bars. He speculated that Slinky unloaded his big white wagon, called in all his notes and markers and cashed them in, maybe did some last-minute scrounging and gouging, and took the loot and flew back to Sicily.

  "Or else maybe he's gone undercover somewhere here, like Vegas, doing some low-level shit work for the Wiseguys. Who knows?”

  Well wherever he is, I hope he's fine," said Mary, unloading the dishwasher and putting things away. "He wasn't violent, was he? I kinda liked him, if you want to know. And are you guys forgetting that he was the one who saved our son's life?"

  "Says who?" said her brother. "I think Boyd Cunningham saved Jackie's life."

  "No, Mary's right. I think it was mostly Slinky. We were damned lucky he came calling that night."

  "And while we're on the subject of young men gone bad, I hope you revise your soured opinion of Andy," said Mary, turning around and looking me in the eye. "I mean, it's easy as hell for you to condemn him for being money hungry, Charlie. You, who never had to worry in the least about it. But I've seen enough poor people to know this: poverty does not ennoble you. It does not give you character. It does not make you strong. It robs your self-respect and makes you scared as hell of every goddamn thing that comes down the pike. And I just, well . . . I just feel sorry as hell for both those kids."

  She turned back to the sink and I saw her shoulders shaking. I went up and put my arms around her. She leaned back into me, wiped her eyes, and tried to smile.

  "C'mon now," she said. "Hurry up you two; the party's at five, and we've got to meet the boys."

  We finished breakfast and went up to Wellfleet Harbor in time to see Ella Hatton come storming around the breakwater. The sloop-rigged catboat came up to the wharf wing and wing, dropped sail, an
d made fast, with Jack, Tony, Tom McDonnough, Wayland Smith, and Art Hagstrom disembarking. They'd come around the outside of the Cape on a four-day cruise from Woods Hole, whale watching all the way. We drove them all back to the Breakers in two cars, stopping only long enough to buy yet more food and drink.

  In early afternoon Moe showed up. He'd brought a carton of live lobsters and five bottles of first-class wine as his contribution. Jim and Janice DeGroot drove down from Concord, too, bringing two beef tenderloins, two bushels of butter-and-sugar corn, and a quarter-barrel of St. Pauli Girl.

  A little later, Brady Coyne called to say he couldn't make it, but that he'd just received the split-bamboo fly rod I'd sent him from Orvis. This was a token of thanks for help he'd given us in our darkest hour when Jack had needed the best legal help that influence could buy.

  "God, it's great, Doc. just great," he said over the phone. "How can I ever repay you?"

  "You can't possibly," I sniffed, and informed him he'd have to live out the remainder of his lifetime under obligation to me. His reply to this was unfitting, if not downright rude, which only goes to show that when you go out of your way to be nice to people, they turn on you. Every time.

  At four-thirty, after an hour of warm-up partying, Joe lighted two big stacks of charcoal, each sitting in its own wide grill. Down on the beach, people were frolicking in the surf with the dogs, coming ashore only to warm themselves in the sun and drink beer. Fall is tremendous on the Cape; the crowds are gone, the water's still warm, and you have a fire every night. Tony and Smitty were busy assembling a large pile of driftwood on the beach for that very purpose. Art Hagstrom had bought scallops in Wellfleet and he and Mary were wrapping them in bacon strips for grilling. Jim was filling the big lobster kettle and fiddling with the gas burner underneath. Moe was shucking corn, humming Haydn, reading a book propped up on the picnic table, and playing chess games in his head, all at the same time. Jack and I were leaning over the deck rail, drinking beer and just hanging out together, talking about whales again.

  Paul Keegan and wife showed up just as Joe was pouring himself a large G and T. He'd been drinking beer all afternoon, but announced it was now time for the "heavy artillery."

  "This party's gonna be a real shit-kicker, Doc," Joe said. "just what I need."

  "Don't we all."

  Janice DeGroot, emerging from the cottage in a brand new, unbelievably brief bikini, walked to the center of the deck and pirouetted on her toes, spinning around like a model so all could see.

  "Ta dahhhhh."' she said.

  "Wow!" said Joe.

  "Can we talk?" said Mary, taking her firmly by the elbow and hustling her back inside. Janice reappeared moments later, pouting, wearing conventional swimwear.

  "Killjoy," I said to Mary under my breath.

  "Just you wait, pal. Just you wait."

  "Hey Mary, how's your book?" asked Moe.

  "Fine, Moe. I'm just about finished. I think they're gonna go for it. I just have to, you know, spice it up a bit."

  Spice it up a bit. Give me a break, Mare.

  Well, in capsule summary, the gala was one for the record books. We started in earnest around five-thirty, with cocktails and the grilled bacon-scallops in butter for appetizers, moving on to chilled gazpacho or steaming clam chowder—your pick of one, or both—followed by the surf-and-turf meal of lobster and filet mignon with corn on the cob, all washed down with vats of beer and wine, and topped with deep-dish apple pie, ice cream, and cappuccino. Then back to the keg again.

  Everybody got totally out of line. It couldn't have been better. Sometime around nineish, as the gold faded to crimson over the bay and we were standing around the big, snapping beach fire, I felt an expert hand goose me from behind.

  "Ahhhhhh, that feels great," I said, and turned to see Mary, giving me a hard, level gaze.

  "Oh, it's you," I said.

  She squinted at me; the jaw crept forward a fraction of an inch. Uh-oh. Never could take a joke.

  But she put her face up to mine and gave me a long, wet kiss.

  "C'mon, hunk. Time for the show ..." She led me up the beach, up the deck stairs, inside, and upstairs to our bedroom. "But Mare, what'll the guests think?"

  "Whatever they like. You know, Charlie, it's the strangest thing. I seem to get real horny after a couple of drinks . . ."

  By this time she was just about undressed and was working on me. Seeing there was no way out, I helped her remove the rest of my clothes and watched—her go to the door and lock it. Then she flashed the wall switch off and on, off and on.

  "What the—"

  "Curtain time!"

  Then she jumped into the sack, pulling me after her.

  "Ohhhhh, Charlie," she said afterwards, and began tickling my back. "I'm so lucky."

  "You said it."

  She kept tickling and rubbing my back. The hoot and babble of merrymakers wafted up through the window. How sweet the sound.

  "Mary, of all the things I've ever done, or dreamed of, marrying you and having our kids have been the greatest things of all."

  She leaned over and kissed the back of my neck and said we'd better get dressed and rejoin our party. So we did. We got some catcalls and hoots and off-color comments from the crowd as we reappeared at the beach fire. The worst offender was none other than Number-Two Son Tony, who had a saucy young thing in tow. I noticed her blouse was buttoned all wrong. No telling where they'd been, but what they'd been up to was obvious. Ever notice how the people who give criticism about something are always the worst offenders themselves? It's true. Think about that the next time you see a TV preacher.

  We sat down at the fire's edge and sang songs with our guests. The dogs lay at our feet drying off in the fire's glow. I noticed Mary gazing wistfully up the beach every so often. Perhaps she was hoping that Fuente and Company would appear on horseback over the nearest rise and come thundering up the sand looking for a little R and R. As for me, sitting on that cool sand, I hadn't thought about Patty Froelich at all. Hardly.

  I was tired, so I lay down with my head on Mary's thigh. Jack sat down behind me and put his hand on my shoulder. I'm confident Tony would have done the same if his hands had been free. But it was all the thanks I needed. I was positive that there was no luckier man on earth than Charles Adams, M.D.

  By and by I dozed off. Mary said later Jack just sat there in the firelight, watching me sleep. He didn't know it then, but his old man was dreaming about the whales.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My thanks to John Boyer, Larry Kessenich, Bill Tapply, Dan Otis, and Charlotte Wade for their helpful criticisms and comments on the manuscript. I would also like to thank the following people for their professional insights and their time and patience: Frank Edwards, M.D.; Dr. Kim Klitcord and Dr. David Folger of the USGS, Woods Hole; and most especially, Dr. Richard Whittaker and his staff at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole. The Mexican romance is for Geraldine, of course.