Follow the Sharks (20 page)

America. It’s not the Grand Canyon or the Empire State Building. It’s not the Harvard Yard or the Old North Bridge. It’s not the Boulder Dam or the Statue of Liberty. America’s not an Iowa cornfield or the Chicago stockyards or the Rocky Mountains or Silicon Valley.

America is the Burlington Mall shopping center.

The sporting goods store where Eddie Donagan had sold running shoes was located there near Lauriat’s, and I found it easily, thanks to one of the several big maps that had been erected by the entry for my shopping convenience. As soon as I walked into the store, the credit cards in my hip pocket began to squirm and twitch, reminding me that I was not entirely immune to the lure of Things. I strode resolutely past shelves of golf equipment, past racks of warm-up suits, past a display of two-man tents, and found the fishing department. Here, I knew, I’d be safe. I already had more fishing gear than I could ever use, the result of numerous other trips to other sporting goods stores.

I was slobbering over some expensive English fly reels in a glass-topped case when a young man with a wispy blond mustache sidled up to me and said, “May I help you?”

“Is that a Hardy reel?”

“Yes, sir. Would you like to look at it?” He went behind the glass case, took out the reel, and laid it reverently on top of the glass counter.

“I’m, ah, just looking,” I said. The salesman looked a lot like Larry Bird, except for being about five-seven and chubby. “Actually, I was wondering if Eddie Donagan was working tonight. Is he here?”

“Eddie? Oh, he used to be over in shoes. He doesn’t work here any more.”

I picked up the reel. It was a beauty. “He’s not here any more?”

“You a friend of Eddie’s?”

“I used to know him,” I said.

The boy—he couldn’t have been more than twenty, and I estimated his mustache was eight years in the making—looked me up and down for a moment, then said, “He hasn’t worked here for a few weeks. He quit.”

“Quit?”

“More or less. He stopped coming to work. The boss was bullshit, needless to say. But that’s Eddie for you.”

“You knew him, then.”

“Does anybody know him? Funny guy, Eddie. One day, friendly as hell, next day he won’t talk to you. We had beers after work a few times. Listen, you like that reel?”

I put it back onto the counter. “No. Well, yes, I like it, of course. But I’m not going to buy it. Look, did he happen to mention anything about quitting to you before he left?”

“Nope. Just one Monday he didn’t show up. The boss called a few times, I guess, and got no answer, and that was it. But you know Eddie, I guess. Hell, I think they still got a paycheck waiting for him. Betcha he never comes for it.”

“You’re probably right. You haven’t heard from him since he quit, have you?”

“Nope. Wouldn’t expect to. We weren’t close, exactly. Somebody told me he used to be a ballplayer. Is that true?”

“Yes. He was. Once. Pretty good one, too.”

“Funny guy, Eddie. Never talked about it. Hey, let me show you something about this reel.”

At nine o’clock I made my way down to the other end of the mall where the Haagen-Dazs booth was located, clutching a shopping bag with the Hardy reel nestled in the bottom. It was in a big open horseshoe-shaped area, in the middle of which were scattered seventy-five or eighty white tables with white aluminum chairs. Big skylights were set into the arched ceiling. Trees grew among the tables, giving the illusion of privacy to the shoppers who paused there for a snack and a smoke.

The booths were lined up along the outside of the horseshoe. Besides ice cream, you could get hot dogs with chili or sauerkraut, barbecued chicken, seafood, shish kebabs, soup, salad, pastries, Chinese or Mexican platters, and coffees and teas from all nations. All fancy, all quick, all expensive.

I claimed a table and lit another Winston, and Suzanne Anders appeared a couple of minutes later.

My ex-wife would have said Suzanne Anders had a “cute figure,” which would be a little like calling New York City a “good-sized town,” Shakespeare a “fair poet,” or Rembrandt a “decent draftsman.” Her hair was cut short and straight in the style popularized a few years ago by the figure skater, Dorothy Hamill. The dimple in her right cheek could have buried a marble. Behind her rimless Gloria Steinem glasses her dark eyes were smiling at me.

“Mr. Coyne, I presume,” she said.

“And you must be Suzanne Anders,” I said.

She sat across from me and sighed deeply.

“Oh, what a boring job,” she said.

“It’s not what you do regularly?”

“I’m not knocking it,” she said carefully, “but cashiering at a bookstore isn’t my idea of a career. No. I’m at law school. Suffolk. I’m working my way through.”

“Good. Good for you.”

“Can I have my ice cream now?” she said, her voice mimicking a small child.

“Okay.” We went to the Haagen-Dazs booth. “What do you recommend?” I said.

“They’re all good. I’ve had ’em all. Elberta Peach, Rum Raisin, Carob, Macadamia Nut. The sorbets are delicious. I especially like the Boysenberry and Cassis.” She arched her eyebrows at me from behind her glasses. “I think I’ll have the Carob this time.”

I studied the list of flavors. To my relief, they had what I wanted. “Chocolate,” I said.

She smiled at me. I shrugged. “It’s what I like.”

“I could have guessed,” she said. “Chocolate. I could’ve figured you for chocolate.”

The small cones—and they
were
small—cost $1.10 each. It had been a long time since I’d had an ice cream cone. The last time, I seemed to recall, they cost fifteen cents for a double dip.

We took our cones back to our table. Suzanne licked hers delicately, her pink tongue flicking in and out, her cheeks working to savor the flavor. She saw me watching her. “Want a lick?” she said. I smiled. “Oh, God,” she said. “A genuine, old-fashioned, dyed-in-the-wool dirty old man.”

“Gimme a lick,” I said.

She handed me her cone. I tasted the Carob. Something like chocolate, only not as good. I gave it back to her. “Not bad,” I said. “Not chocolate, of course. But not bad.”

“That’s silly.”

“I just figured out the color of your eyes,” I said.

“Oh?”

“Yes. Hot fudge sauce.”

“Well, gee whiz,” she said, “enough about me. You wanted to talk about Eddie.”

“Yes. He’s disappeared. I want to find him.”

“What do you mean, disappeared?”

“Just that. He hasn’t shown up for work. He hasn’t been at his apartment. No one has heard from him.”

Suzanne nodded. “He disappeared from my life, that’s for sure. It’s just like him, though, isn’t it? Eddie’s a funny guy. I pretend to be mad at him, but I’m not. Maybe a little hurt. More bewildered than anything. We weren’t lovers, or anything like that, you know. It hadn’t gotten anywhere near that. It probably never would have.” She shrugged and twirled her cone against her tongue. “I used to see him around. Herman’s is practically next door to Lauriat’s, you know. One night I was here, having an ice cream after work, and he came in. We nodded to each other. He got a cone and sat at another table. I went over and sat with him. He didn’t seem surprised, or pleased, or anything. Very casual guy, he seemed. We started talking. More accurately, I started talking. He listened. When our cones were gone we said goodbye. I realized he hadn’t said a damn thing about himself. He was a good listener, though. Anyway, a few nights later we met here again, and we sort of got in the habit of it. He took me for drinks a couple of times. That was our relationship. I did like him a lot. But I had the feeling that he could take me or leave me, you know?”

“That’s hard to believe,” I said. “Listen, you don’t have to tell me this. Your relationship with Eddie is your own business.”

“I’m just trying to explain why I probably can’t help you. He gave very little of himself. I can tell you one thing. He really loved his wife and his little boy. When he talked about them he lit up. Otherwise he was a sad, lonely man. You know,” she said, leaning toward me, “he never touched me, never even tried to kiss me. I’m not used to that. At first I figured it was his way of coming on to me. It’s one of the tricks. I’m familiar with it. They make you think they don’t want you, and you begin to wonder what’s wrong with yourself, and pretty soon you find yourself trying to seduce them.”

“But that’s not what Eddie was doing.”

She shrugged. “No. I don’t think so.” She smiled. “I guess we’ll never know, huh?”

“Well, I hope he comes back,” I said. “Did he ever mention anyone—a friend, a relative, anybody besides Jan or E.J.? Can you think of anything he ever said that might give us a clue about where he went?”

She thought for a minute. “Well, of course, he did talk about baseball. He seemed to know a lot about it, although he was always making fun of it. ‘Stupid game,’ he always called it. ‘Stupid people play baseball,’ he said. It was a long time before I realized he’d played baseball himself. He told me he hadn’t seen a baseball game since the last one he played in. He said he’d never go to a baseball game, never watch one on television. I think he really hated the game. It did something bad to him, though he never came out and told me that.” She looked at me. “Do you like baseball?”

“Yes. Yes, I do,” I said. “I love baseball.”

She nodded. “Me, too. I wanted him to talk more about it. He did, but it was still all negative. He said it was phony, just a show. He said it wasn’t important enough for anyone to pay attention to, or for people to get paid for. He was very bitter about baseball.”

“He had a right to be,” I observed.

“But, you know, there was a funny thing.” Suzanne frowned at me.

“What was that?”

“He always wanted to know the scores. We were at this place one night. There was a television over the bar. We were at a table having a drink and talking. Suddenly Eddie jumped up and went over to the bar to stare at the TV. A minute later he came back shaking his head. I asked him what was so important that he had to leave so quickly without saying excuse me. He said he wanted to catch the weather report. But I could see the set. It wasn’t that. They were giving the baseball scores.”

“I think he bet on the games,” I said.

She looked puzzled. “But he hated baseball.”

“I know. I don’t think that made any difference. Did he ever talk about the players? Do you remember any names he might have mentioned?”

“No. I don’t think he ever talked about anybody except his family.”

“Jan and E.J.”

“Yes. That’s what I meant. Just them.” She bit into her cone. “You know where he might have gone?”

“Where?”

“Alaska. He talked about going to Alaska. As if it were a place where he could start over again. I never took it seriously. It seemed to be just a kind of figure of speech for him. I mean, that’s like going to the moon.”

“It seems as if that’s where he went.”

“Alaska?”

“No. The moon,” I said.

We walked out of the shopping mall together. When we were outside, Suzanne said, “Where’s your car?”

“Over there somewhere,” I said, gesturing. “You?”

“Other direction.”

“I’ll walk over with you.”

“Don’t bother. I can manage, thanks.”

I shrugged. “Well, thanks for talking with me.”

“I guess I didn’t help much.”

“Hard to say. It was nice to meet you, anyway.”

She smiled. “Sure,” she said. The lamps that illuminated the parking lot glittered on her glasses so that I couldn’t see her eyes. She held out her hand. I took it.

“Maybe we could have a drink together some time,” I said.

“I don’t think so,” she said.

She released my hand and turned away. Then she stopped and came back to me. “Eddie said a funny thing to me. It was that time when he went to check on the baseball scores. When he came back to the table, he said, ‘I just bought the farm.’ What do you think that meant?”

“It meant he died,” I said. “Figuratively, of course. To buy the farm is to die.”

“He must have lost a lot of money on his bets.”

“I imagine that’s what he meant.”

Suzanne Anders nodded and walked away from me. She did have a cute figure, no matter how you looked at it.

F
RIDAY DAWNED CLOUDY AND
cool. Wispy fog floated around my apartment building and gauzed the skeletons of the boats that drifted like dried leaves on the harbor below. Julie had the day off. I had left my “Gone Fishin’” message on the answering machine.

I had two mugs of coffee out on the balcony, savoring the rich sea smells that wafted up on the moist air. Then I went inside and ate a cold slab of leftover deep-dish pizza. I decided not to shave, slapped together a couple of peanut butter sandwiches, and gathered my fly-fishing gear together. I stowed my fly boxes, spare leader tippets, insect repellant, fly and line dressings, and spare reels into my fishing vest, chose an old Orvis eight-foot split bamboo rod, and slung my chest-high waders over my shoulder. Thus burdened, and feeling wickedly independent and carefree, I rode the elevator down into the basement of the building to where my car was parked. Minutes later I was heading west, the city behind me and the Deerfield River three hours ahead.

I slid a Julian Bream tape into the deck and allowed my mind to ride on the lyrical voice of his classical guitar. The trout, I figured, would be taking terrestrials off the surface—black ants and grasshoppers. I imagined an old acquaintance, a monster brown trout, rising at the head of Diamond Drill Hole, and upstream, in Lookout Run, the rainbows would be working.

Inevitably, my mind turned to Eddie and E.J. Donagan, and I realized, with sudden, surprising clarity, that they were both probably dead. The concurrence of their disappearances had to be more than coincidental, and I felt stupid for ever believing that Eddie would choose the occasion of his son’s kidnapping to take off for Alaska. He loved E.J. too much, I knew. No, whoever took E.J. had somehow taken Eddie, too. That, I figured, was what Mary Ann Mikuni had been trying to tell me before she, too, was killed.

The fish all follow the sharks, she had said. It could be a metaphor, although I didn’t suppose she had intended it that way. Eddie gambled. Bobo Halley, whose name appeared on the list Mary Ann Mikuni had given me, had gambled, too. Bobo Halley had died. E.J. had been kidnapped. A big ransom had been delivered. The dog did nothing in the nighttime, Sherlock Holmes had pointed out. Eddie told Suzanne Anders that he had bought the farm.