High Season (19 page)

“Hey!” he shouted, clapping his hands. The two coyotes trotted away, glancing at him over their furred shoulders before they disappeared into the mist.

Coffin kept walking. Twin shafts of yellow light swept up slowly from his left; a car had turned into the cemetery from Shank
Painter Road, its headlights throwing Coffin's long-legged shadow on the grass in front of him—ambling along, gangly and monstrous.

He could hear the low throb of the engine and the sound of the gravel under tires, like popcorn popping. The headlights seemed very bright; he turned to look and had to visor his eyes with his hand. It was a pickup truck, a big one. He could just make out the gold Chevy logo on the grille.

“Rudy?” Coffin said.

The truck stopped and the lights went out. A big hand beckoned from the window. “Got a second, Frankie?”

“I don't remember you being so theatrical, back in the old days,” Coffin said.

“These are theatrical times,” Rudy said. “Shakespearean, almost.” The ropy tang of marijuana smoke drifted from the rolled-down window.

“I thought you'd left town,” Coffin said.

“I had a business matter to attend to,” Rudy said, shoving the lit joint at Coffin. “I'm heading out tomorrow. Gene-spliced, Key West mastuba nativa. Want a hit?”

Coffin waved the joint away.

Rudy shrugged. “Your loss,” he said. He took a deep hit and held the smoke in his lungs before blowing it out in a thick blue stream. Then he licked the tips of his thumb and index finger, snuffed the joint, and put the scorched roach in his shirt pocket. “Listen,” he said, “I've got to tell you. I think you're losing it.”

“How's that?” Coffin said.

“You're chasing your tail on this thing with the Moors,” Rudy said. “It's killing me. I can't stand to watch it anymore.”

“So don't watch,” Coffin said. “It's not your problem, right?”

“Look—what do Merkin and the Duarte kid have in common,
besides the Moors complex?” Rudy took the roach from his pocket, waved it under Coffin's nose. “It's obvious.”

“Drugs? That doesn't make sense. There's no evidence that Merkin was a habitual drug user.”

“Don't be a dope, Frankie,” Rudy said. “He was taking a trip down the K-hole, wasn't he? I mean, the guy liked to dress himself up like the school librarian—who knows what else he was up to?”

Coffin rubbed his chin. “Even if he was, I still don't see the connection. Heroin and club drugs, those are whole different worlds.”

“Maybe, maybe not. Things change fast in the recreational pharma biz, Frankie. You know that as well as anyone. There's a business cycle—diversification, then consolidation. We're in a consolidation phase right now.”

“We?”

“The town, I mean. So I hear.”

A long, quavering wail started up from the Catholic section of the graveyard, first one coyote, then two and three. Before long, all the dogs in the neighborhood had joined in.

“We used to shoot those son-of-a-bitching coyotes when we saw them,” Rudy said. “Now they're a damn protected species. Wait till they drag somebody's kid off their front porch—we'll see how protected they are
then
.”

“I guess the drug angle's a possibility,” Coffin said, lighting a cigarette. “In the Duarte killing, anyway. His old man said he owed a lot of money.”

“There you go,” Rudy said. “There's a good chance he was dealing. If his accounts payable situation got out of hand, he might have run into trouble with his suppliers. There are some rough Cape Verdean boys operating out of New Bedford, you know. And I hear some of the local Jamaicans are trying to move in.”

“Dogfish would know about Duarte,” Coffin said.

“Dogfish
would
know, you're right,” Rudy said, relighting the joint with the truck's dashboard lighter, the red glow filling the cab for a second or two. “If I was you, I'd saddle up the lesbo-cop and go roust his ass. Catch him first thing in the morning, when he's asleep.”

Coffin shivered a little. Dogfish lived on a houseboat that was almost always anchored in the harbor. He was a twenty-year junkie and small-time dealer who knew everything there was to know about Provincetown's heroin trade. The police let him operate in exchange for information, though that was likely to change under Boyle's clean-sweep regime.

“One other thing,” Rudy said. “About your ma. I've made some arrangements.”

“What kind of arrangements?” Coffin said.

“She's not as loopy as you think, you know,” Rudy said. “There are times she's sharp as a tack.”

“The doctors say she comes and goes. When you say ‘arrangements,' what do you mean, exactly?”

Rudy spat out the window, narrowly missing Coffin's shoe. “Pah!” he said. “Doctors. What the fuck do they know? If you lived your life according to doctors, you'd do nothing but exercise and eat broccoli. I'd rather be dead.”

“Rudy—”

“Okay, okay. It's a small investment. I can't give you the details yet, but if it works out, it should be enough to keep her in style the rest of her life.”

“Is it illegal?” Coffin said.

Rudy started the truck. “God, she was gorgeous, back in the old days,” he said. “I had kind of a thing for her, I don't mind telling you. A real spitfire, gave your old man all the hell he deserved, and then some—but Christ, the awe-inspiring
rack
on that woman.” He grinned and dropped the truck into gear. “Don't let your meat
loaf, Frankie,” he said, reaching a big paw out the window and waving the thumb-pinky “hang loose” sign at Coffin. The truck pulled away.

“Rudy!” Coffin said, walking after it, watching it accelerate rapidly down the gravel road. “Hey—what
kind
of investment?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

P
PD 2 was a twenty-seven-foot Boston Whaler, powered by two big Mercury outboards. It was Provincetown's only police boat—PPD 1 had been swamped and damaged beyond repair in Hurricane Charley, back in 1986.

Coffin felt nauseous and dizzy, even though the harbor was almost dead flat and he was standing on the Coast Guard wharf, where PPD 2 was secured by a stout line. The Mercuries rumbled to life. There was a sickening whiff of gasoline in the air.

Teddy Goulet, the harbor cop, stood in PPD 2's pilot house and pointed at his watch. “You coming, Frank?”

Coffin swallowed hard. “Sure,” he said. “No problem.”

“Just undo the bow line there and hop aboard,” Goulet said. “Chop chop—haven't got all day.”

Coffin unlooped the line from the big brass cleat and tossed it onto PPD 2's deck, then scrambled awkwardly aboard. He felt light-headed, out of breath. His forehead was sheened with cold sweat.

“You all right, Frank?” Lola said.

“I'm not that crazy about boats,” Coffin said. PPD 2 eased away from the wharf, and he grabbed the rail hard. His mouth tasted sour.

“Really?” Lola said. “I love boats. My folks had a lake house when I was a kid, up in northern Wisconsin. We had a little Sunfish, and we'd go sailing every day. I got pretty good—my dad used to call me Captain Ahab, because I was kind of obsessed.”

“That's great,” Coffin said. “Ha ha.”

“Let's blow the carbon out, what do you say?” Goulet shouted, one hand on the wheel, the other holding a travel mug full of coffee.

“Go for it!” Lola shouted back.

“Do we have to?” Coffin said.

Goulet pushed the throttles up, and the big outboards roared happily.

Coffin almost fell over as the bow lifted and PPD 2 surged forward, cutting a foaming wake across the harbor.

 

Dogfish lived on a ramshackle pontoon boat, anchored just inside the breakwater. He'd built it himself, out of scrap lumber and fifty-gallon drums. He appeared to be in the process of painting it Di-Gel green but had evidently run out of paint halfway through; the old paint was chipped and peeling, and had faded to nondescript gray.

Coffin stood on the pontoon boat's deck as it rocked sickeningly in PPD 2's wake. He took a deep breath and knocked on the door, which had been discarded or stolen from a home renovation project. Its veneer was warped and peeling.

“Dogfish?” he called. He knocked again, then tried the door. It was unlocked. He motioned to Lola, who took the big flashlight
from her equipment belt. Coffin pushed the door open, and Lola aimed the flashlight beam into the cabin.

“Holy crap,” Lola said. The cabin was small and dim, lit only by daylight filtering in through two dusty, curtained windows. She swept the flashlight beam slowly around the cabin's interior. Every inch of wall and ceiling space was occupied by some bit of flotsam found on the beach: broken lobster pots, gull feathers, brightly painted wooden buoys, skulls of seals and fish and birds, hairless plastic baby dolls in various sizes and degrees of dismemberment, hundreds of luminous shards of beach glass, the washed-out flags of several nations, pennants of inscrutable nautical significance, chunks of driftwood shaped like animals or human body parts, and an almost infinite variety of faded plastic toys, including an Etch A Sketch, two model airplanes, and a large purple dildo. A table and two chairs—painted highway-cone orange—stood bolted to the floor. A small potbellied stove crouched in the corner. A twin bed, shoved up against the far wall, appeared to be occupied by a pile of dirty laundry. The pile sat up and rubbed its eyes.

“Jesus,” it said. “What fucking time is it?”

Coffin looked at his watch. “Quarter to seven,” he said. “We wanted to make sure we caught you at home. Rough night?”

“The usual.” Dogfish pushed the covers aside. He was naked—skinny and hairy, with dark, bruised-looking veins in his arms and legs. His right hand was wrapped in an ace bandage. The outline of a shark was tattooed on his left forearm, with the word
DOGFISH
stenciled below it in wavery blue script. “Excuse me,” he said, pulling on a pair of shorts, “while I go outside and take a piss.”

“Would you look at this place,” Lola said, peering at the forest of junk bristling from the walls. “It's incredible.”

“He goes out every day just after high tide and combs the beach,” Coffin said. “If you wonder why you never find any good
stuff when you're out on a walk, it's because Dogfish already got it and tacked it up on his wall.”

Dogfish stuck his head in the door. “Admiring my collection, I see,” he said.

“It's very impressive,” Lola said. “Do you always just pee off the deck?”

“The world is my toilet,” said Dogfish.

“What happened to your hand?” Coffin said.

Dogfish looked down. “I slammed it in a door,” he said. “While I was stoned.”

“How's business?”

“Oh, you know. Slow. The gay guys are all into crystal meth now. It's crap, but it's cheap and it'll keep you going all night—in more ways than one. Nobody cares about a quality high anymore.” Dogfish busied himself starting a small fire in the potbellied stove. “I'm gonna make some coffee if you want some,” he said. “Just take a few minutes.”

“Not for me,” Lola said, eyeing Dogfish's rusty coffeepot.

“No, thanks,” Coffin said. “What about Jason Duarte? He a customer of yours?”

“Off and on,” Dogfish said, striking a kitchen match and lighting the newspaper he'd wadded carefully into the stove. “Usually when he was broke, 'cause he knew I'd sell to him on credit. I had a good supply of A-grade Burmese that wasn't super expensive—good clean stuff.” Dogfish looked at his bandaged hand, then looked down at the plywood deck. “But then he got flush all of a sudden and started buying this Afghani flake from some Cape Verdeans out of Fall River. He gave me a hit once. That shit was dangerous.”

“Dangerous how?”

Dogfish looked up, met Coffin's eyes. “Very, very pure and extremely potent. You know, the Afghani poppy was almost wiped out under the Taliban. Now the market's flooded with incredibly
cheap, incredibly high-grade stuff, thanks to the CIA and the Afghan warlords. George W. Bush, making the world a safer place. To shoot up in.”

“Did Jason ever deal?”

Dogfish looked at his hand, looked down. “Some. I don't know. Sure. He'd sell a little bit to friends or something, just to help cover his costs.”

“Enough to rile the Cape Verdeans? Or the Jamaicans?”

Dogfish frowned, tilting his head. “Jamaicans? What Jamaicans? There are no Jamaicans moving heroin out here.”

“The Cape Verdeans, then.”

“Maybe,” Dogfish said. “They're some crazy motherfuckers.”

“They have any trouble with you?”

“Me? Nah. I'm small beans. Hardly a blip on the radar. The Cape Verdeans are mostly trying to expand along the I-95 corridor. They wouldn't give a fuck about P'town, unless something big was going down.”

“But you said Jason was only selling to a few friends.”

“Yeah, well,” Dogfish said, blowing into the woodstove, then shutting the little door. “That was the old Jason. He changed a lot in the last six months or so. Suddenly he had
money,
man. Wads of it.”

“Must be hard, shooting up with just one hand,” Coffin said.

“It ain't easy,” Dogfish said, looking at the bulky, pink bandage. “If you were an amputee or something, I don't know how you'd do it.”

“What kind of door did you say it got slammed in?” Coffin said. “Pickup truck, by any chance?”

“No, man,” Dogfish said, putting the coffeepot down with a sharp little
clang
. “That's just wrong.” He held up his bandaged hand. “Rudy had nothing to do with this.”

Coffin and Lola both stared at him.