A Beautiful Place to Die (16 page)

“Do you remember Billy Martin and Jim Norris being in here when Tim was talking about his job at Wasque?”

Bonzo frowned. “Gee, J.W., there was a lot of people here, you know. It was a Saturday night, and we do a lot of business on Saturday night.” Suddenly his face brightened around his empty eyes. “Oh, yeah! Sure, they were here. I remember now. You know why? Because I thought they were going to have a fight, but they didn't. Lemme see . . . first Jim comes in and he's looking kind of low, like. And he has a beer and I say, ‘Hi, Jim,' and then in comes Billy later and he's mad. I can see that. I didn't say, ‘Hi, Billy,' because when Billy's mad . . . well, he's got a temper, you know? But I watched him and he went right over to Jim and I thought they might be gonna have a fight. But they didn't. Jim started talking to him, and after a while Billy wasn't mad anymore and just looked funny instead, and they sat there and that was when Tim came in and told about his new job for the
Bluefin
and we all laughed.” Bonzo paused and sipped his beer and then said, “You know, J.W., it's a lot nicer to laugh than to fight. It's a lot more fun.”

“You're right about that,” I said. I bought us each another beer. Around us the noisy voices of the noontime drinkers lifted and rattled through the rafters. At a booth
I saw a quick exchange of money and something unidentifiable in a white packet. The smell of marijuana mixed with that of tobacco and beer.

“Hey, Bonzo,” I said. “Can I borrow your tape recorder?”

He was flattered, I think. “Gee, J.W., sure you can. You know what's mine is yours. You know that. You're my friend. Hey, you gonna get some bird sounds, too? Can I hear 'em when you get 'em, J.W.? Can I?”

“Sure. Thanks, Bonzo.”

I picked up the tape recorder and mike at his mother's house. It was a nice rig. Expensive and powerful. Bonzo didn't have many expenses, so he'd splurged on a good piece of equipment. I bought a pack of tapes and put everything in the Landcruiser.

I felt like I'd been away from Zee for a long time. I hadn't seen her, in fact, for almost forty hours. I'd known her eight days. I felt in love. It was scary, bubbly, despairing, hopeful, brainless. I drove to the hospital and went to the emergency ward. I saw Zee, but she didn't see me. She was laughing with a young doctor. Joy was possible for her without me. They were a good-looking couple. I was jealous. I went away and visited George. He was about to go home.

“Bonanza!” he said. “They're letting me out. You leave any fish in the sea?”

“I think there's one left. Maybe two.”

“God, I hate hospitals. They're unhealthy places. People die in them all the time. Almost nobody ever dies fishing.”

That was my line about hospitals being unhealthy, but I let it pass. “Perfect logic, George. How are you getting home?”

“Billy's coming to get me. One o'clock sharp. I told him
I didn't want to be in here one minute longer than necessary!”

I looked at my watch. A quarter to one. “Okay,” I said, “I'll get out of your way. See you on the beach, buddy.”

I went out and stood inside the doors leading to the parking lot. When Billy drove in and parked the Wagoneer, I walked out and met him as if by accident.

“Hey, Billy,” I said, “I've been looking for you.”

“What for?”

“You ever see Jim Norris wear a class ring?”

“A class ring?”

“Yeah. I talked to Jim's sister out in Oregon and she said that he always wore a class ring. But I never saw him wearing one and neither did your sister. Did you?”

“No. Why?”

“Because I found it. I've got it at home.”

“What! I thought . . . Mom said that you . . .” He paused thoughtfully. “No. Come to think of it, she never said you didn't have it. But she didn't think you had it.”

“I missed it the first time I looked, but I found it later. It's at home now. I'm going to send it back to Jim's folks tomorrow. You never saw him wear it, eh?”

“No.” He glanced at his watch.

“Yeah, you're supposed to pick up your old man,” I said. “I just saw him. Tell him that I'm going down to Wasque this afternoon to catch the last fish before he can get there.”

Billy grinned. “Okay, J.W., I'll tell him.”

“I gotta go,” I said, “or I'll miss the tide.”

“You fishermen are all alike.” Billy smiled, shaking his head. Billy was not a fisherman.

I went home and got things ready for the afternoon. It took about an hour, and I had a couple of beers while I
worked. When everything was ready, I drove to Katama. Traffic wasn't bad because it was early afternoon. People who planned to go to the beach were already there, and it was too early for them to be going home. The sun was hot and bright and high in the sky. There was a thin line of clouds far to the south.

When I got to Katama, I drove onto the beach and parked behind a dune. I got a beer out of the cooler. When I finished the beer, I drove back home. I parked the Landcruiser across the end of my driveway, locked the doors, and walked down to my house. When I neared the house I could see a yellow sportscar. Billy drove such a car, as I recalled.

I circled through the trees until I came up behind my storage shed. I peeked inside and saw that no search had been made there, yet. I saw no one in the rear windows of my house, so I slipped quickly up to the outdoor shower. Under the house, behind the shower, was Bonzo's tape recorder. The mike was hanging from a rafter in the living room. Bonzo's good equipment might even pick up sounds from adjoining rooms as well. I popped out the tape in the machine and put in a new one, then peeked in through my bedroom window. There was Billy at my desk, looking in drawers and cubbyholes. I had a good view of his back and his busy hands. He was trying to be thorough yet leave things looking undisturbed. A hard task for a professional, and Billy was no professional. He was an amateur. He slammed a drawer shut and cursed.

I went around to the front of the house and eased up onto the porch. I peeked in a living room window. No Billy. I went inside, glad that I'd oiled the hinges earlier that afternoon. I went to my bedroom and stuck my head into the doorway.

“Hi, Billy,” I said.

He was at my bedside table, his back to the door. He
jumped and spun around, his eyes wild for a moment. But then they narrowed.

“Jesus, J.W., you scared
the
hell out of me! I didn't hear you drive in.”

“You find anything, Billy?”

“Find anything? No. I wasn't looking for anything.” He put a grin on his face. “I found out what you read in bed.” He half turned around and picked up my bedtime book. I have a book by my bed, a book by the toilet for throne reading (poetry, usually, stories and essays being too long for that locale,) a living room book by the couch, and a glove-compartment book in the Landcruiser. “The Bible,” said Billy, waving the book at me before putting it back. “I never took you for a Bible reader, J.W.”

“It's a good book,” I said. “Mindless sex and violence, religious fanatics, war and pestilence, sin and salvation. They should make a movie out of it or a TV series. I'm having a beer. You want one?” I wanted him in the living room.

“Sure,” said Billy. What else could he say? He followed me into the living room and waited while I got two Molsons from the fridge. I gestured toward a chair and we both sat down. Billy was working out his story. I brought the ring out of my pocket.

“Here it is,” I said. “Jim's ring.”

His eyes fixed on it.

“It's got initials inside,” I said. “GHM. George Harrison Martin. Your dad's name, your dad's ring. Jim's ring. Sit back, Billy, and relax. I'm going to tell you a story.”

I told him about George and Marlina, how they found and lost each other and how Marlina ended up in Oregon pregnant and ill. I told him how a young nurse, Mrs.
Norris, who wanted children but couldn't have them, adopted Marlina's child and got the ring, and how, later, she gave it to the boy.

“Then Jim took to the road,” I said. “He liked to work for a while and then move on. Maybe one day he came to a town called Longview. Maybe that's how it happened. Or maybe he traced his father just like I did. No matter. He found his father's name.

“But it didn't do him any good because he had no way of knowing where his old man was. Then two years ago, in June 1985, he read that story in
Time
and knew where he was. Jim came up that summer to meet him in person. He knew from the article that George liked to fish, so he managed to meet him on the beach. But he didn't want his dad to know who he was, so he put the ring away and didn't wear it for fear that George might recognize it.

“Jim was a genuinely nice guy. Everybody who knew him says so. He knew George had a new family and he didn't want to be a long-lost son suddenly appearing on the scene. All he wanted was to get to know his old man. And he did that. Better yet, he and George got close. They liked one another. And Jim liked Susie, too. And I even think he tried to like you.

“But then something he hadn't expected happened—Susie fell in love with him. He knew that she was his half sister, but she didn't know he was her half brother. Since he didn't want her to know who he really was, he decided to bag it and head back to Oregon. He'd found out that his dad was a terrific guy and that was enough. He didn't need to rake the past up and make things more complicated for the Martins, so he just decided to leave.

“But you love your sister. She's probably the only person you do love, but you do love her. And when you found her
crying because Jim had given her the cold shoulder, you blew your stack and went after him. Big brother coming to little sister's rescue. Very commendable.

“When you found Jim up at the Fireside, you were ready to punch him out, but he managed to get you to listen to him and he told you the truth about himself—that he was George's son and that your sister was his sister and that the two of you were brothers and that he was going back out west and wouldn't be back. He told you about the ring and about the story in
Time.

“And that might have been the end of it, but it wasn't. You knew that Jim could change his mind and show up again, and that if he ever told the truth about himself and backed it up with the ring, he stood a good chance of inheriting a large hunk of George's money. Bad news for you, because you spend money so fast that you have to sell dope to maintain your life-style.”

I finished my beer.

“You can't prove any of this,” said Billy.

“Just as you and Jim were talking, you heard Tim Mello making jokes about his charter to take the
Bluefin
to fish the Wasque rip at eight o'clock Monday morning and you get an idea. The
Nellie Grey
has had some gasline problems, and maybe people will think they never really got fixed. You buddy up to Jim, brother to brother like, and you tell him the two of you should take one last fishing trip together before he leaves. You tell him you'll make Wasque at eight
A.M
. You need to have a boat nearby to rescue you when the
Nellie Grey
blows up, and now you know the
Bluefin
will be there.

“And it works like a charm. You go out from Edgartown and you can see the
Bluefin
coming down from Vineyard Haven. You wave at us there at the Cape Pogue light, then
cosh Jim, loosen a fitting on a gasline and go up on the foredeck so you'll be away from the explosion. I expect you sloshed some gas around in the cabin first and had some kind of timer made out of a clock and a battery or something like that, so when its spark detonated the fumes you were almost overboard already. Then you made your heroic effort to save your buddy/brother Jim, but all in vain. The
Bluefin
pulls you out of the drink and, lo, you're almost a hero, not a murderer at all.”

“You're crazy,” said Billy. “You're full of shit. You can't prove a thing.”

I held up the ring. “I've got motive and opportunity. Your sister and the guys at the boatyard will swear that the
Nellie Grey
had no gasoline leaks. Ergo, the explosion was no accident. Once the cops have reason to believe that, they'll do a lot better job of examining the evidence still out there where the
Nellie Grey
went down, and I imagine they'll find some stuff they overlooked before. Battery and wires, maybe. Maybe whatever it was you coshed Jim with. I think the D.A. will be able to stick this one to you pretty good.”

“I'm getting out of here.” He stood up. I stood up. He sat down. I sat down.

“You knew about the ring from the time Jim talked to you that Saturday night at the Fireside, when I imagine he told you about it. You knew that you had to get rid of it because it was the one tangible object that could tie Jim to your father. But you couldn't steal it the next day because Jim was home most of the day packing his gear. And you couldn't get it later because you were in the hospital while the authorities packed up his stuff and sent it west. You thought the ring had been shipped west with the rest of his
things, and that wasn't too bad because nobody out there had any reason to link Jim and your father together.

“But then I got the call from Jim's sister about the ring being missing, and I told your mother and sister about it and that night somebody broke into Jim's house and tore things up looking for something. As you might guess, I figure that somebody was you, because your mother and sister told you what I'd told them—that the ring hadn't gotten to Oregon.

“But you didn't find the ring because I already had it and knew what it was. But just to be sure, I set up this latest little housebreaking effort of yours. I told you that the ring was here and that I'd be gone. If it meant nothing to you, you'd have stayed away. But here you are. I watched you for a while through the window while you went through my desk. You're not a nice guy, Billy. All your family's rotten genes must have settled in you.”