Vulgar Boatman (7 page)

I heard him chuckle. “Maybe there is. Why don’t you come on over. We can chat for a few minutes.”

“If we can do it right now. I’ve got to get back to the office this afternoon.”

“Tell you what,” said Cusick. “I’ll be here waiting for you.”

“It’s important, then.”

“Yes.”

Fifteen minutes later I was sitting in Harry Cusick’s office. The chief kept a neat desk, which set him apart from all the other cops I knew. A single manila folder rested on top of the blotter. Cusick was fingering the edges of it.

He squinted at me through his steel-rimmed glasses. “I have issued a warrant for the arrest of Buddy Baron,” he told me.

“You’ve learned more than I have, then.”

He nodded. “Alice Sylvester’s parents told me that she was supposed to meet Buddy the night she died.”

“Supposed to?”

“He wasn’t in the habit of picking her up at the house. Something about his not wanting to confront her parents, who, I gather, did not entirely approve of him.”

“Understandable.”

“Mm,” he said. “So Alice would walk out and Buddy would meet her somewhere. She always told her folks what she was doing. And that’s what happened the other night.”

“So say her parents.”

Cusick nodded. “So they say. Anyway, as you are about to point out, that by itself would be considered hearsay. Good reason to talk to the boy. Not a good enough reason to arrest him.”

“But,” I said.

“But, there’s a waitress at Brigham’s who saw them together.”

“Aha.”

“They had hot fudge sundaes. Each of them paid for their own. They left the girl a fifty-cent tip. Alice Sylvester was wearing blue jeans, a pink blouse, denim jacket. She had a white bow in her hair. Like that singer.”

“Madonna,” I said. “She’s got a new look now. The new Marilyn.”

Cusick arched his eyebrows at me. “If you say so. Buddy Baron was wearing gray corduroy pants and a blue sweatshirt. Got the picture?”

“Your witness seems reliable.”

“She knew both kids. Talked with them a little. Said they seemed depressed, or grouchy, as if they were arguing.”

“Sounds bad.”

“There are compelling conclusions to jump to,” said Cusick. “I am always reluctant to jump. On the other hand, everything points in one direction.”

“If I find Buddy, I know what to do,” I said. “But I don’t intend to keep looking. It’s not in my job description. I talked to a few people today. You got there before I did, and you probably learned more.”

“Well, if you’re the family lawyer…”

“I wouldn’t necessarily be defending Buddy.”

He nodded and picked up the folder. He extracted a sheet of paper, pushed his glasses up onto his nose with his forefinger, and frowned at what he was reading. “Some things about the case do bother me,” he said slowly. “I’ve got this final report from the medical examiner.” He ran his finger down the page. “This, for example. I think I may have mentioned to you that the girl had had sexual intercourse shortly before she died. But I didn’t know this when I spoke to you.” He peered up at me over the tops of his glasses. “It would appear that Alice Sylvester had had sexual intercourse with two different men.”

“At the same time?”

He peered at me to see if I was joking. He evidently decided I wasn’t. “More or less. Within an hour or two of each other, at most. See, they can type semen. Like blood. Same process exactly. Antigens, whatnot. Type A positive, Type B, and so forth. This girl had two different types in her.”

“Everybody says this was a real nice girl,” I said.

“According to the M.E. this was not rape.”

I nodded. “So what do you make of it?”

He shrugged. “I guess I’d like to know who the second one was, since he’d be the last one to have been with her.”

“Not necessarily.”

He stared at me for a moment. “Of course. We’re just developing hypotheses here. Anyway, some other things. Whoever killed her did it with his hands. Crushed her larynx and trachea with his thumbs. There were bruises on her face and throat. And he repeatedly banged the back of her head against something hard while he was doing it. There was significant damage to her cervical vertebrae and major trauma to the back of her head. Fracture of the skull.” He glanced up at me from the paper he was holding. “I’m summarizing what it says here.”

“Sparing me the technical words. Thank you.”

He nodded without smiling. “You get the picture. This was vicious. Whoever did it was trying to kill her, and didn’t stop until he had.”

“During intercourse, do you think?”

He shook his head. “Probably not. She was fully dressed when we found her body. She was even wearing panty hose under her jeans. Her clothing wasn’t torn. Nothing inside out or backwards. No, I’d say she dressed herself afterwards. Doubtful if the murderer would dress her again after killing her. Not typical, anyway, though there are all different kinds of nuts around. You figure, if a guy was careful enough to get her all dressed again, logically he would have tried to hide the body. But Alice Sylvester was found on the grass right beside the parking lot. As if she’d been dumped out of a car. We looked for a rock or something her head could’ve been banged against. There would’ve been a lot of blood. We didn’t find anything. I figure she was killed inside the car and then rolled out onto the ground. We find the right car, we’ll find blood inside of it.”

I sighed. “This is not a heartwarming tale.”

“There’s more,” said the chief. “I mentioned, I think, that the M.E. found traces of cocaine in her blood. This report—” he shook the paper he was holding “—says that there were also traces of coke in her lungs. Congested mucous membranes. Inflamed trachea.” He arched his eyebrows at me.

“Crack,” I said.

He smiled thinly. “You are really up to date, Counselor. Right. Cocaine that is smoked. Possibly free-base, but most likely crack. This stuff is starting to find its way up here from New York. A little shocking for this sleepy little seaside community.” He grimaced at his own cynicism. “You figure Roxbury, Dorchester, Lawrence, Lowell—”

“Actually,” I interrupted, “you figure Wellesley, Winchester, Concord. What I hear, this is upper-class dope. Sexy. Prestigious.”

“Cocaine, yes,” said Cusick. “Crack, not necessarily. It’s cheap, for one thing. And just deadly as hell. In any case, Windsor Harbor is not exactly your hub of the drug underground. But if nice high school girls like Alice Sylvester are getting ahold of crack, we’ve got more of a problem than one murder.”

“Windsor Harbor is a seaport,” I suggested.

“A very minor seaport, Mr. Coyne. A few sport fishing craft, lots of sailboats and runabouts. Nothing commercial.”

“You don’t need anything commercial to haul this stuff.”

He nodded. “I’ve thought of that, believe me. Matter of fact, I talked with a guy at the Coast Guard this morning. Guess what he said?”

“He said it’s a long coastline.”

“That,” said Cusick, nodding, “was the essence of it. Of course, if we can come up with any good leads, they’d be delighted to seize a vessel on the high seas for us.”

“And accept full credit.”

“Sure. Anyhow, that’s all conjecture. Point is, the girl was smoking this stuff, had sex with two guys, and then got herself strangled to death. And I need all the help I can get.”

“Well, I’ll cooperate, don’t worry about that. I really find it hard to believe that Buddy Baron…” I let my voice trail off. Harry Cusick regarded me benignly. “Not that I knew him that well,” I added.

The chief stood up dismissively. “You just never know,” he said gently.

We shook hands and I left. I played Vivaldi on my tape deck on the way back to Boston. I had my seasons mixed up. It seemed like the dark pit of a dead, frozen winter, with the cold rain angling out of a black sky, and the slick roads littered with fading leaves, and young people getting murdered in a nice little town like Windsor Harbor, Massachusetts. I was eager to get back to the sanity of my law office.

I nosed my BMW into my reserved space in the parking garage and took the elevator up to my office. Julie, my secretary, was working at the computer keyboard, listening through earphones to a tape I had dictated for her. I still missed the cheerful clack, clatter, and ding of the old typewriter. She looked up at me, crossed her eyes by way of greeting, and said, “Well, look who’s here,” without missing a beat at the keyboard. “Be with you,” she added, and returned her attention to the tape.

I poured myself a mug of coffee and took it into my office. A place for rational analysis. Legal theory. Precedents, hoary old Latin terms, statutes and torts and contracts, all the good stuff that was evolved to enable attorneys to maintain an abstracted distance from the human pain and inequity the law is supposed to mediate. In one corner of my office, I have two shoulder-high file cabinets crammed with abstractions. Two shelves of weighty tomes full of more abstractions. Thousands of little legal pigeonholes, each with its unique shape, into which real flesh-and-blood people are supposed to be fitted.

The fit never seems perfect.

Those volumes and file cabinets are full of laws. But they’re not the law. That’s why they put people into offices like mine, along with the files and the books. Laws are like automobiles: They need lawyers to make them go.

Julie scratched on my door with her fingernails.

“Abandon all hope, ye who enter here,” I said.

She came in and stood in front of me, looking slim and Irish and gorgeous as usual. She carried a sheaf of papers in her hand.

“Care to discuss business, or do you want to bag the rest of the day?” she said.

“What I want to do and what I’ve got to do are two different things.”

“Fishing trip got rained out, huh?”

“Yes, but that’s not it.”

“Something heavier than getting rained out of a fishing trip? Want to talk about it?”

“Yes. But not now. Come in. Sit down. Fill me in.”

Julie took the chair beside my desk. Up close, I could see the spatter of freckles across the bridge of her nose, the last vestiges of her summer tan.

She took the top sheet of paper from her pile and looked at it. “Mr. Paradise called. Three times. You have to call him back.”

“My kind of law,” I said. “He’s got a new invention, no doubt. Frank Paradise is my favorite client. He never calls me for anything bad. He’s always excited when he calls. Frank is a helluva guy. What else?”

“Doctor Adams. He left a message, and I quote: ‘The blues are going bananas off Plum Island. Interested?’ ” Julie frowned. “This must have something to do with fishing.”

“Right,” I said. “Bluefish. Doc wants to go fishing.”

She sighed. “Sometimes I feel more like a social secretary than a legal one. Mr. McDevitt wants to play golf. He told me he thinks he’s cured his slice. In vast and totally incomprehensible detail. He used the word ‘pronate’ several times. Mentioned his ‘V’s’ often, too, and where they should be properly aimed.”

“His grip,” I said. “Charlie is messing with his grip again.”

Julie shrugged. “I just take the messages. But he was very agitated. He said, and I’m quoting again now because he made me write it down, he said, ‘It’s a matter of great urgency that we convene on Friday.’ That’s the end of the quote.”

“He said ‘convene’?”

“Of course. I am very precise about such things.”

“Of course you are. Friday, huh. How’s my calendar look?”

“You always keep it clear on Friday afternoons. Golf, fishing, Hungarian ladies…”

“Hmm,” I said. “Charlie’s afraid he’ll forget his new grip. Okay. Anything else?”

“I took the liberty of making a ten-thirty for you tomorrow. Mr. and Mrs. Fallon. A referral from Doctor Segrue.”

“Divorce?”

“
Au contraire
,” said Julie, smiling. “They want to have a child.”

“I’m not a sex therapist.”

“A classic understatement,” said Julie, rolling her eyes. “Somehow I didn’t get the impression that they were looking for that. Mrs. Fallon was understandably reluctant to discuss it with me. But, frankly, my dear, I am curious as hell, so after you see them…”

I reached over and patted her arm. “You will hear all, I promise.”

She grinned. “Okay. And that’s it. I took care of everything else.”

“I must say, it’s a pleasure working for you,” I said. “Now leave, so I can do what you’ve assigned to me.”

“I know you’ll call Doctor Adams and Mr. McDevitt. But don’t forget Mr. Paradise. He did sound anxious.”

“I’ll call him first,” I said.

“Yeah, sure,” she said.

Well, she knows me too well. I called Doc Adams. I got his assistant, the delectable Susan Petri, who told me that Doc was conferring with a patient at the hospital. I told her to have him call me at home later in the evening. Then I phoned Charlie McDevitt’s secretary, Shirley, and told her to confirm with Charlie our Friday golf date. She told me Charlie had cured his slice. I figured we’d read all about it in the papers, the way Charlie was spreading his joyous news.

Frank Paradise lives in Brewster on Cape Cod. He owns an old farmhouse with two centuries’ worth of ells and dormers, a big barn converted to a workshop, an Olympic-sized swimming pool, a tennis court with a clay surface, a sailboat, a forty-eight-foot tuna-rigged boat, and a pair of hostile Dobermans.

Frank made a lot of money designing jet engines after the war, and since then he has devoted himself to his lucrative hobby of inventing things. Most of the stuff he dreams up I don’t understand—computer innards, electronic doodads about the size of a B-B pellet, and elegant little gizmos that make space ships fly and weapons kill.

Once in a while, though, he comes up with something I can appreciate. For example, he concocted a super-strong instant-drying glue that bonds anything to anything else, but rubs right off human skin as slick as rubber cement. He sold the patent to a big drug company. Almost at the same time, he came up with another glue that bonds only human skin. He was negotiating the sale of that stuff with the CIA.

Frank sends me off to Washington about twice a year to conduct patent searches. I usually enjoy the trips, unless Frank happens to have invented something in August. There’s a political science professor at Georgetown who insists that the restaurants in D.C. are better than those in Boston, and always likes to try to make her point. She also knows the Smithsonian inside out and enjoys showing off her expertise.