Snake Eater (18 page)

Horowitz shrugged. I nodded.

“Anyways, Repucci got it a few years later. Same deal. The assholes want to knock each other off, saves us all a problem.”

“So neither murder was solved,” I said.

“Right,” said Horowitz. “No arrests, even.”

“You check on their war records?”

“Neither of ’em was ever in the service.”

“They don’t sound like the kind of gentlemen who’d march for peace.”

He shrugged. “They weren’t arrested for it. That’s all I can tell you.” He picked up his beer and took a small sip.

“That’s it?” I said.

“That’s all.”

I fumbled in my jacket pocket and found the printout Charlie had given me. I unfolded it and put it in front of Horowitz. He glanced down at it, then looked up at me.

“What’s this?”

“Some names.”

“Christ,” he said. “I can see that.”

“Johnson and Repucci are on this list. This is what I wanted to tell Fusco about. There’s some connection among all of them. Plus Daniel McCloud.”

Horowitz picked up the printout and, without looking at it, refolded it and handed it back to me. “I told you already,” he said. “And you promised.”

“You won’t check them out for me?”

“Absolutely not. And don’t you, either.”

I tucked the printout into my pocket. “Right,” I said. “I promised.”

T
HE SHRILL OF THE
telephone beside my bed popped my eyes open. Seven o’clock. My brain reluctantly ground into gear, and the vise around my temples reminded me of two more bourbon old-fashioneds at Hilary’s after Horowitz left, then a steak, then stopping at Skeeter’s on the way home where I watched the basketball game and argued with a guy who didn’t think Bob Cousy could even break into the starting five for Holy Cross in the new era of basketball.

I’d had a few beers at Skeeter’s. The Celtics won, and I believed I won my argument, too, and so I’d celebrated with a mug of coffee laced with Jack Daniel’s.

Skeeter had made sure I wasn’t driving before he gave it to me.

And throughout the evening, on the level beneath the basketball and the booze and the fellowship of the bar, the question festered in my brain: Why had first Charlie and then Horowitz, two trusted friends, both been so humorlessly earnest in warning me off the Daniel McCloud case? Both of them had indulged me plenty of times in the past, no questions asked, no judgments rendered.

And now, at seven a.m., too damn early on a Saturday morning, my phone was ringing. What now?

I got it off the hook and against my ear. “Yuh?”

“Hey, Pop. You awake?”

I groaned. “I am now.” Joey. My younger.

“Well, say hi to Terri for me.”

“Huh?”

“Terri. Listen. Feel around. She’s the one beside you.”

“There’s nobody here but me.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Something wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong. She’s not here. We’re not together these days.”

“Hm. Too bad. Well, listen. You wanna go climb a mountain?”

“Are you speaking figuratively or literally?”

“Literally. Me and Debbie’re gonna climb Monadnock today and we were wondering if you and Terri’d like to join us. Or you and some other lady. Or just you, if that’s how it is.

“Monadnock’s not a climb,” I said. “It’s a stroll up a long hill.”

“I know a trail up the back side. I mean, you don’t need ropes, but there are some rocks. Okay, so it’s not a climb. It’s not a stroll, either. Call it a hike.”

My head was killing me. The last thing on earth I felt like doing was climbing a mountain. Which was a very good reason to do it. “Okay,” I said. “Climbing Monadnock will give my life some metaphorical significance.”

“Whatever that’s supposed to mean. Hang on. Debbie wants to say hello.”

I took the opportunity to light a cigarette. It did not help my head.

“Hey, Brady?”

Debbie was a junior in high school, a year behind Joey. They’d been together for a year and a half—longer than I’d lasted with Terri, and longer, in fact, than any exclusive relationship I’d managed to sustain with any woman during the decade since Gloria and I were divorced. I wasn’t sure how that was significant, but I believed it was. When Joey introduced me to Debbie, she’d called me Mr. Coyne. About the third time the two of them came to my apartment to eat chili and play cards, Debbie had started calling me Brady. I liked it better than Mr. Coyne.

“Hi, kiddo.”

“You gonna come with us I hope?”

“Sure.”

“Bringing Terri?”

“Nope. She dumped me.”

“Aw. That sucks. Want me to fix you up with a friend of mine?”

“What, some high-school junior?”

“No. An older woman.” Debbie giggled. “A senior.”

“Tempting. But not today, honey. Don’t tell Joey, but I’m a wee bit overhung this morning.”

“Mountain air’ll cure that. Well, see you soon, then. Here’s Joe.”

“We’ll come get you in an hour,” he said. “I got the lunches and everything. Don’t forget to bring some extra layers and foul-weather gear. This is November. Mountaintops get chilly.”

“For Chrissake, son.
You’re
the kid, remember?”

“Gets confusing sometimes, doesn’t it, Pop?”

“Not to me,” I growled.

It wasn’t until after I hung up that I wondered how it happened that Debbie and Joey were together at seven on a Saturday morning. And Terri and I weren’t.

The sun shone brilliantly in a transparent November sky. The air carried a chilly bite. It was a perfect day to climb a mountain, figuratively as well as literally. Within fifteen minutes the mountain breeze blew my head clear. It felt good to stretch the hamstrings. Joey’s trail offered its challenges. It was erratically marked by an occasional splash of white paint on a rock or tree trunk, and we strayed from it a few times. In several places we had to clamber over rocks. Joey went first, then Debbie. He helped her from above and I had the pleasure of boosting her up from underneath. Then they both reached down to haul me up.

When we got to the top Joey unpacked his knapsack and we ate the salami and extra-sharp cheddar sandwiches Debbie had made. Southern New Hampshire lay spread out around us in its muted November colors, and from up there you couldn’t see the shopping malls and high-tech office complexes and condominium developments that had invaded the once-rural landscape. Just trees and meadows, hills and distant mountains, meandering country roadways and rivers, the way it had always been. A man or an automobile would have been a speck, impossible to identify. That was the perspective from the mountaintop. From that distance, the details were indistinct. The big picture came into focus.

It was important, I realized, to climb atop a mountain once in a while.

I mentioned these thoughts to Joey and Debbie as we sat there munching our sandwiches. Debbie nodded. Joey told me I should quit with the metaphors.

He was probably right.

We sat up there drinking coffee with our backs against a rock, sheltered from the hard persistent wind, until clouds obliterated the sun. Joey cocked his head at the sky. “We better head back,” he said.

Billy, my older boy, is irresponsible and lazy, a dreamer and risk-taker, sometimes a hell-raiser. He’d switched his major about six times at UMass already, and he’d just begun his junior year. Lately, he was talking of quitting altogether and heading west to become a fly-fishing guide, a career I sometimes aspired to myself. He always seemed to have three or four simultaneous girlfriends, who all knew and liked each other and adored Billy.

Joey’s the practical one. He got his homework done ahead of time, mowed his mother’s lawn—sometimes without even being reminded—and had, as well as I could tell, remained faithful to Debbie for what amounted to a significant chunk of his young postpubescent life. He kept his room reasonably neat and won prizes at science fairs and sent thank-you notes. He always finished what he started.

It was as if I had been divided in half and a whole man was constructed from each contradictory part.

I loved them both equally and without reservation.

So it was Joey who had to remind his father that we ought to get back down the mountain ahead of the storm. Billy would have wanted to experience a November blizzard on a mountaintop.

The snow came quickly on a hard northeast wind, catching us exposed before we had descended into the tree-line. It blew at an acute angle, tiny hard pellets of frozen mist. The three of us hastily donned all the layers we had brought with us and plowed downhill. The rocks grew slippery. Joey again went first, and then the two of us helped Debbie down, and once she lost her footing and if I hadn’t been gripping her wrist she would have fallen. When we reached the tree line, the trail leveled off a little and the snow became rain, and the three of us turtled our necks into our jackets and slogged through the dripping woods.

The descent seemed to take much longer than the climb. I mentioned this to Joey. He accused me of looking for metaphors again.

We stopped at a coffee shop in Jaffrey for hamburgers and hot tea, and it was after eight in the evening when Joey and Debbie dropped me off. I invited them up, but there was a party in Wellesley that required their presence. I thanked them for inviting me along. They shrugged as if there was nothing strange about a couple of high-school kids wanting a parent to join them for a Saturday outing.

I figured I must have done something right.

I began shucking layers the moment I closed the door to my apartment behind me, and I left a soggy trail of clothes all the way to the bathroom. I got the shower steaming and stood under it until the final vestiges of chill were driven from my bones.

I slipped on a sweatshirt and jeans, made myself a watered-down Jack Daniel’s, and it was only when I went into the living room to catch the third period of the Bruins game that I noticed the red light of my answering machine winking at me. Blink-blink, pause. Blink-blink, pause. Two messages.

And that reminded me of Daniel McCloud, and the eight names he had posthumously left for me, and the warnings from Charlie and Horowitz, and Cammie and Oakley, and all the rest of it, and it occurred to me that I had, for one day on Mount Monadnock, not thought about any of it.

I depressed the button on the machine.

“Brady, it’s Terri” came the familiar voice. “It’s, um, about three Saturday afternoon. I was just—I don’t know why I called, actually.” She laughed quickly. “Melissa’s at Mother’s, and it’s pretty gloomy outside. I had WBUR on and they were playing Mendelssohn and I was remembering how we… Ah, I’m sorry. I guess I just wanted to hear your voice, for some reason. Anyway, hope all’s well with you, Brady Coyne.” There was a long pause. “Well, ’bye,” she said softly before the machine clicked.

Then came another voice. “Mr. Coyne? This is Bonnie Coleman. Al’s wife, remember? It’s around five Saturday. Will you give me a call, please?” She left a number with an 802 area code. Vermont.

I hastily jotted down the number while my machine rewound itself.

Daniel’s book, I thought. She’d found Daniel’s book.

What was she doing in Vermont?

I lit a cigarette, then pecked out the number she had given me. A man answered. His voice was cultured, elderly, cautious. “Yes?” he said.

“May I speak with Bonnie Coleman please?”

“Who shall I say is calling?”

“My name is Brady Coyne. I’m returning Bonnie’s call.”

“One moment, sir.”

I puffed my Winston and took a sip from my glass of Jack Daniel’s. The ice had melted in it.

“Mr. Coyne?”

“Hi, Bonnie. Let’s make it Brady.”

“Thanks for getting back to me,” she said. “I, uh, have some information I’d like to share with you.”

“Great. Let’s have it.”

“It really doesn’t lend itself to the telephone. Something I’d like to show you.”

“Have you found the book?”

She hesitated. “Not exactly. Look, I’m staying with the Colemans for a while.”

“Al’s parents?”

“Yes. We’re leaning on each other.”

“So let’s get together, then.”

“Good. How’s tomorrow?”

“That would work. Where are you?”

“Dorset. Know where it is?”

“Sure. North of Manchester, which is the home of Orvis and the Fly-fishing Museum, on the banks of the fabled and overrated Battenkill River.”

“It’s a beautiful river.”

“It’s the trout fishing that’s overrated. Where shall we meet?”

She described a coffee shop on the Ethan Allen Highway, known to Vermonters as Historic Route 7A, just north of Manchester Center. We agreed to meet there at noon. I inferred that either she didn’t want Al’s bereaved parents to see her with another man so soon after their son’s death or she wanted to insulate them from the information she had for me.

In either case I found myself intrigued.

Maybe it was a breakthrough. Maybe finally I’d learn something that would connect the dots—the missing manuscript, the list of eight mysterious names, Daniel’s murder, as well as Al’s, and the strange protective reactions of Charlie and Horowitz to my inquiries.

I tried to conjure up Bonnie Coleman’s image from our days in New Haven. I remembered blond hair, a flirtatious smile, long slender legs. But that was more than twenty years ago.

She’d undoubtedly aged. Hadn’t we all?

I
SPRAWLED ON THE
sofa and flicked on the Bruins game. It was tied at two-all midway through the third period and remained that way through the five-minute overtime. Everything was happening between the blue lines. The puck bounced and dribbled from team to team, the players kept trying to knock each other down, and they all seemed less interested in winning than in preventing defeat. Another insight into the human condition. I’d had a productive day at such insights, although any useful applications for them had so far eluded me.

When the game mercifully ended, I clicked off the set and dialed Daniel McCloud’s number. Cammie answered with a cautious “Hello?”

“It’s Brady.”

“Oh, gee. How are you?” I heard Bonnie Raitt in the background.

“I’m fine,” I said. “I was just wondering—”