Vulgar Boatman (14 page)

“In the first place, I’m always game for lunch at Locke’s, but it’s not the men’s bar anymore. Ladies are shown every courtesy. In the second place, I want to know what this is about.”

“Good. See you then.”

“Wait a minute. This about Tom’s campaign? Because if it is—”

“Twelve-thirty,” repeated Curry, and he hung up.

“Son of a bitch,” I growled into the dead telephone.

I hate being hung up on. I found the Boston phone number I had jotted down from Curry’s message on my answering machine and I punched it out. An efficient female voice answered. “Republican headquarters. Baron for governor. May I help you?”

I asked for Eddy Curry and was placed on hold. I expected to hear a tape of “Happy Days Are Here Again.” Or was that Democratic music? All I got was empty static.

A minute later Curry’s voice said, “Curry.”

I paused before I replaced the receiver on the hook. I felt much better.

Locke Ober’s is located down a little dead-end alley off one of the streets that connect Tremont with Washington Street, just across from the Common. I walked to it from my office, sniffing the sharp autumn air and reconfirming the importance of a vacation. I arrived, as intended, a fashionable—and, I hoped, an insulting—twenty minutes late. The maître d’ steered me to a table in the corner near the bar. Curry was already there, stirring a Manhattan. I guessed it wasn’t his first.

He half rose when I was deposited smoothly at my seat. “Hey, Brady,” he began.

I ignored the hand he held to me and turned instead to the waiter who had materialized at my elbow. “Bourbon old-fashioned on the rocks,” I told him.

“You don’t need to be pissed off at me,” said Curry.

“Who said I was pissed off?”

“You had to call back and hang up on me, right?”

I shrugged. “I didn’t do that.”

Curry grinned. “Right.”

I grinned back and lit a cigarette.

Curry settled his head into his jowls like a turtle retreating into his shell. He regarded me out of hooded eyes. “Okay,” I said. “So what’s this all about?”

His eyes shifted to the glass he was slowly rotating on top of the table. “The candidate thinks very highly of you,” he said. “For that matter, so does the candidate’s wife.” He glanced up at me and grinned. It was not a grin that conveyed humor, or good nature. Curry’s grin was the expression of a large fish—a Northern pike, perhaps—with its eye on a wounded minnow. “Matter of fact,” he continued, “it wouldn’t surprise me if the candidate’s wife had the old-fashioned hots for you.”

“I’ve already talked to Tom about all this,” I said.

Curry shook his ponderous head. “I doubt that.”

“He asked me to be legal adviser to his campaign.”

“Did he, now.” It was not a question.

“Yes. He did. I told him I’d think about it.”

The waiter slid my drink in front of me and hesitated. “Bring us another round in about ten minutes,” said Curry. “We’ll order lunch then.”

“Very good,” murmured the waiter. He pronounced it “vezzy.” He looked Greek, or maybe Turkish.

When the waiter slipped away, Curry leaned forward. “No one knows better than you how tough this whole business has been on Tom and Joanie,” he said. “I’ve been with them most of the weekend. Tom’s a zombie. Joanie’s a total basket case. I’m no shrink, but I don’t see Tom making any kind of sudden recovery.” He lifted his eyebrows at me.

I nodded. “I’m beginning to get your drift.”

“Well. That’s good.”

“But why don’t you spell it out for me anyway.”

He shrugged. “Why not. Sure. Here it is. Tom Baron’s a loser. No way in the six weeks between now and election can he recoup. Shit, a campaign based on law and order, old-fashioned morality, targeting drug pushers, no less, and his kid gets these kinds of headlines? The papers are chuckling up their sleeves and rubbing their hands together. And the polls are already disastrous. He lost four percentage points over the weekend.” Curry peered at me. “Now do you get it?”

“Keep going.”

He sighed. “Okay.” He spread his hands flat on the table. “We want him to resign. It could be done gracefully, with class. Nice speech on the television. Family reasons. Mourning, right? Doing the grief thing. Wants to be with his wife. Everybody would understand. Tom would introduce his replacement. The party’s got him all picked out. Perfect for the situation.”

“Who?”

He shook his head. “Aw, I couldn’t say right now.”

“So you want Tom to resign. And Tom doesn’t want to, right?”

“You got it.”

“So where do I come in? How do I rate lunch at Locke Ober’s? You think I’m important enough, you’ve got to let me in on all this smoke-filled-room stuff? Hell, you could have told me this on the phone. For that matter, you didn’t have to tell me at all. None of my business. I never vote Republican anyway. Not since Frank Sargent. I wasn’t going to vote for Tom Baron, and I’m not going to vote for his stand-in. So you don’t have to feed me a fancy lunch.”

“Come on, Coyne. Don’t give me a hard time. You know what I want.”

I shrugged. “I haven’t heard it.”

At this point our waiter returned with a manhattan for Curry and another old-fashioned for me. He slid menus in front of us, bowed, and moved discreetly away. I picked up the menu and scrutinized it. “What looks good to you?” I said.

“Dammit, Coyne. You wanna make me grovel, is that it?”

I nodded, very serious. “I want you to speak plainly. If that’s groveling, okay. But first I think we should order.”

Curry rolled his eyes.

I jerked my head at the waiter, who came over and said, “Sir?”

I ordered the swordfish, knowing it would still be twitching when they slid it under the broiler. Curry had something with a French name, which he pronounced badly.

After the waiter left, I said, “So why don’t you fire him?”

“You can’t just fire him. Christ, anybody knows that. He’s gotta resign, and he’s gotta resign gracefully, with dignity. And you’re the only one who can talk him into it, dammit.”

“What if I can’t?”

Curry shrugged. “He loses.”

“And what if I refuse to try?”

“Same damn thing.”

“I’m a little slow,” I said. “Let’s see if I’ve finally got it. Tom Baron can’t win. You want him to quit. But he doesn’t want to. And you can’t make him. So you want me to talk him into it. If I don’t, he runs and loses. Right?”

“Exactly.”

“We’ve got a problem, then.”

Curry sighed.

“Because,” I continued, “I’m not going to do it. He’s been after me to be his legal adviser. I’ve been saying no. It’s been selfish of me. I disagree with his politics. But then I see you. You’re a useful example, Eddy. Know why?”

He shrugged his massive shoulders.

“Because you don’t even have any politics, but you don’t have a problem working with Tom. As far as I know, you do a good job. It doesn’t matter what you believe or what kind of a human being you happen to be. You can help a candidate. Right?”

“If you say so.”

“So it makes me realize there’s no reason not to be Tom’s legal adviser. I can vote any way I want and still work for him. And it happens that, among other advice I might offer him, one thing I’ll say is to go ahead and run. Keep on with the campaign. The hell with your polls.”

“So you’re on, then.”

“I’m on.”

“Congratulations, I guess.”

“You want to know why I’m on?”

Curry shrugged. “Go ahead. Tell me.”

“Two reasons. One, I hate to see a man being treated like a piece of shit, kicked when he’s down, abandoned when he needs support. I won’t be a party to any of that. Second, Tom Baron has one compelling reason to continue his campaign, and becoming governor has nothing to do with it.”

“And what could that be?”

“To clear his son’s name. And his own. If he quits, people are going to assume that Buddy was a drug dealer and maybe a killer to boot.”

Curry shrugged again. “Well…”

“See? You’re assuming the same thing. Am I right?”

He spread his hands. “Who knows?”

“Guilty until proven innocent, right? Listen. I don’t think Buddy Baron did anything wrong. I think he was a good kid who went through a bad time and had the spine to get through it. And then circumstances got him. If freedom and democracy and justice mean anything—if Tom’s speeches mean anything at all—they mean that Buddy Baron shouldn’t be tried and found guilty and punished after he’s dead and can’t defend himself. Tom can defend him. He’ll have to, right? Now it’s a campaign issue. See, I can help him with this. And I’m going to.”

Curry stared at me for a minute, then hunched his neck. “This is a mistake,” he said.

I shook my head. “I don’t think so. I’m willing to live with it.”

“Think it over. You’ll change your mind.”

“Nope.”

“Well,” he said, “we’ll just have to try something else, then.”

“You got any dirty tricks up your sleeve, you better think twice,” I said. “Because Tom Baron’s legal adviser is going to be on the alert for them.”

Curry smiled placidly. “I don’t think you wanna play hardball with us, Mr. Coyne.”

“Oh, I don’t know. I’m sort of looking forward to it.” I pushed myself back from the table and stood up. “You can cancel my order. Or eat it yourself. Thanks for the drinks.”

Curry waved his hand. “Aw, sit down. Relax. This is politics, for crissake, not anything serious. Hey, you win some, you lose some. For now, you win. It’s okay. We can still have lunch together, some nice conversation. Come on. Sit.”

I remained standing. “What do you want to talk about?”

“You follow the Patriots?”

I shrugged and sat. “Rather talk fishing.”

Curry smiled. “I can talk anything. That’s part of my charm.”

The swordfish was, as expected, excellent, the Bibb lettuce salad crisp and cool. Curry regaled me with political stories. And he did turn out to have a sort of crude charm, at that.

“Never underestimate the importance of ethnics,” he told me around a mouthful of lobster au-something.

“Ethics?” I said. “I wouldn’t have thought ethics—”

“Ethnics,” he interrupted, smiling. “Race. You know. This is a real issue with Tom Baron. Now, you and I know Tom’s a Yankee. Good old WASP. But, see, the Irish, they think he’s a Jew, and the WASPs, they’ve got him pegged for a wop who fixed up his name. The blacks assume he’s some kind of Polack. The Hispanics, they don’t trust anybody anyway. Nor do the Orientals. So what’s he got? He’s got nobody. He can’t help it. And it ain’t like he can go on the tube and explain himself. Candidates can’t talk about stuff like this. Always somebody to offend. Everybody else talks about
it,
though.”

While we waited for coffee, he told me about the candidate who participated in a charity bluefishing tournament a few years earlier. With the television cameras rolling, he barfed a couple of six-packs all over the microphone the interviewer was holding for him. There was some point about tactics Curry was trying to make with that tale. I wasn’t sure I understood it.

On the subject of Tom Baron’s wealth, Curry said, “The candidate can’t win anyway. If he’s rich, the voters figure he’s a crook. If he’s poor, they peg him for a loser. If he’s rich and a lawyer, he’s smart rich. If he’s a real estate trader like Tom, he’s dumb rich. Nobody likes either kind.”

Later, Curry said, “What a political campaign is, it’s a strategy, a bunch of tricks by which you take away as many reasons as you can for people to vote against your guy, and give them as many reasons as you can for them to vote against the opponent.” He folded his arms across his big chest and smiled. “It’s a helluva lot of fun.”

As I walked back to my office from Locke Ober’s, I figured out that Curry was trying to show me that a political campaign was no way to try to clear Buddy Baron’s name with the public. Politics was shabby and petty and negative. It was dirty gutfighting, and I didn’t know anything about it.

I had not intended to sign on as Tom’s legal adviser. I had told him I’d think about it only to put him off until I could devise a graceful way to say no. Then Curry came at me like the bully I knew he was, and I reacted with my usual adolescent bravado. Kick sand in my face, eh? Not only do I refuse to talk Tom into resigning, but, by God, I’m going to help him win.

Showed that bully how tough I was.

And I could kiss that vacation good-bye, at least until after the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November.

By the time I got back to the office I was thoroughly depressed.

Julie greeted me with her usual sexy Irish smile. “Locke Ober’s, huh? Have a nice time?”

“Great,” I grumbled. “Pisser.”

“Jeez,” she said. “Good thing he didn’t take you to Burger King.”

I bent down and kissed the back of her neck. “Aw, I’m sorry, sweetheart.”

I told her how I had stupidly committed myself to joining Tom Baron’s campaign staff.

“I think that’s lovely,” she said. “I’m proud of you.”

“Lovely,” I said.

“No, really. Good for you.” She paused and frowned. “You don’t think he’s going to win, do you?”

I laughed. “I hope not. That certainly isn’t the point.”

“Well, you going to tell him?”

“Suppose I ought to.”

I went into my office and rang Tom’s number. Joanie’s slurry voice answered. “H’lo?”

“Joanie. It’s Brady.”

“My rock,” she murmured. “Oh, Brady. Dear God.”

“Joanie, I’m sorry. If there’s something I can do…”

“Hold me,” she whispered quickly. “Hold me, stroke me, hold me. Oh, dear, dear.”

“Is Tom there?”

“You gonna come see me? Put your arms around me? Shut away all the bad? Hold me with your arms, those strong strong hands….”

“I have to talk to Tom, Joanie. Is he there?”

I heard a man’s voice in the background. Then Joanie suddenly shrieked. “Fucker!” A moment later Tom said, “Brady? Is that you?”

“It’s me.”

“Don’t pay any attention to her. They’ve got her all doped up.”

“It’s okay.”

“She’ll be all right.”

“Sure she will,” I said.

“Did you think it over?”

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I did. If you still want me, I’m with you.”