A Beautiful Place to Die (3 page)

“You can call me Jackson' or J.W.' or Jeff or none of the above.”

“Is that ‘Geoff with a
G
or Jeff with a
J
?”

“It's
J
as in Jefferson.”

“Don't tell me what the
W
stands for. Did your mother have a thing about presidents, or what?”

“She never explained.”

“Does anybody ever call you ‘Wash'?”

“No one living.”

We hooked left off the beach just before the lighthouse and drove through the seagull nesting grounds up to the tower. George's Wagoneer was parked there. You could see Cape Cod fading off toward Chatham across the Sound, and the Oak Bluffs bluffs to the northwest. Beneath us, the cliff fell down to the beach, where jeep tracks formed a sandy road. It's one of my favorite spots. Someday when I win the lottery I may buy one of the lonely houses out there.

“How do these people get supplies?”

“By four-by-four or by boat. There's Edgartown, over to the west. By water it's not too far. By car, the way we've just come, it's a long haul. This is the place for people who like to be alone.”

“Do you like to be alone?”

I thought about it. “I'm alone whether I like it or not.”

She gave me a long look.

George had his binoculars out and was looking toward Edgartown, trying to spot the
Nellie Grey
coming out. She was his boat, a nice thirty-foot fishing toy for the man who could afford such toys. She had clean lines and a wide cockpit with three chairs for trolling. She was the kind of boat I'd want if I didn't prefer sail.

From the north I saw another boat coming. A long black expensive job with outriggers and a pulpit, the sort of boat you could take a long way out with no trouble at all. She was on a course that would take her a half-mile or so east of us. I guessed she was on her way to the swordfishing grounds south of Nomans or maybe even farther. She was not the sort of boat that hung on the Wasque rip trolling for bluefish. I thought maybe I'd seen her in the Oak Bluffs harbor or in Vineyard Haven, but I wasn't sure.

Beyond her, other boats were coming out. How did they know the bluefish had arrived?

“There she is,” said George, looking through his glasses. “I hope they don't have any more trouble with that engine.”

“Don't worry, Daddy,” said Susie, “the yard checked it out and I did, too. I took her out yesterday afternoon and everything was fine.”

I must have had a question mark on my face.

“Gas leak,” said Susie. “One of the lines in the engine compartment. You could smell the fumes sometimes, so we took it in. Just a bad connection, but out of the way so it was tricky to find. But they found it and fixed it, and yesterday I took
Nellie
halfway to Falmouth and back. No problem.”

Now the
Nellie Grey
was in sight, moving smoothly out
with mild following waves, the wind at her back. She came past the lighthouse and we could see Jim and Billy. They waved and we waved back, and they went on out beyond the shallows that reach east from Cape Pogue. Beyond the
Nellie Grey
the long black boat altered her course to hold outside the
Nellie's
turn as she swung south beyond the shallows to follow the beach toward Wasque.

“Come on,” said George, lowering his binoculars, “let's go back to Wasque so we can watch them fish the rip. The east tide will be running and there may be something there.”

Susie, looking sad, nodded and turned to the Wagoneer.

“We'll follow you down,” I said, “but then we're going on into town. We want to sell these fish.”

“And I've got to get some sleep,” said Zee. “I've got duty again tonight, and right now I'm frazzled out.”

Just at that moment the
Nellie Grey
exploded. A great red and yellow flower opened from the sea and expanded into the air. Petals of flame and stalks of debris shot up and arched away as a ball of smoke billowed from the spot where the
Nellie
had been. A moment later the boom of the explosion hit us, and the sea around the
Nellie
was one of flame. I thought I saw a body arc into the burning water.

The black boat turned and I could see her white bow wave as she sped in toward the burning wreckage. I thought I could see a figure thrashing in the oily water. The black boat came in, dangerously close, and someone leaned over the side and dragged a man up over the rail.

Behind me I heard a cry and turned to see Susie with her father in her arms. His hand was groping toward his shirt pocket as his knees buckled.

Then Zee was beside him, helping him with his nitroglycerin
pills and I was on the C.B. radioing the Chappy beach patrol to alert the Emergency Center that we were coming in with a heart-attack patient and to tell the harbormaster and Coast Guard that the
Nellie Grey
had just blown up off the Cape Pogue light.

We took the Wagoneer because it was bigger and more comfortable, and I drove us south along Cape Pogue Pond. I cut over the Dike Bridge and raced to the ferry. On the far side the ambulance waited. The ambulance took George and Susie and Zee and went off, sirens wailing. The tourists stared. Beyond the Edgartown light the harbor patrol was roaring out toward Cape Pogue.

I took George's Wagoneer out to his house. Nobody home. His wife had gone to the hospital. It had been a bad day for the Martins. I left the keys with the housekeeper and hitched back into town.

I got my dinghy at Collins Beach and went putt-putting off to Cape Pogue Pond, where I beached the boat and walked up to the lighthouse to get the Landcruiser. Out in the sound there were boats hovering around the spot where the
Nellie Grey
had gone down. The Coast Guard and the Edgartown harbormaster's boat were there, and I could see skin divers in the water. I remembered Marcus Aurelius's advice: Do not act as if thou were going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over thee.

The fish in my box—mine and Zee's—were too soft to keep, so I tossed them off the cliff and watched the seagulls swoop in for the feast. The morning that had started off so
beautifully had turned all sour. I drove back, picked up the dinghy, and went down to Wasque. The terns and gulls fed along the edge of the water, and I saw oyster catchers and a little blue heron. Nothing had changed for them; the sun still showered light down upon the sand and sea. The wind still blew softly from the southwest. The sky was still pale blue. At Wasque a dozen four-by-fours were lined up, and poles were bending in the hands of fishermen as the east tide ran. I heard shouts and laughter as the fish were reeled in. I drove on by.

The next day I read all about it in the
Gazette.
George was still alive and was expected to recover. Billy was alive, though burned by both the explosion and his efforts to save Jim Norris. Jim was dead, his body having been recovered from the wreck by skin divers. Billy had been saved by the quick action of the captain of the
Bluefin,
which had picked him up and raced with him to Oak Bluffs, radioing ahead for an ambulance to meet them at the docks.

Credit was given to nurse Zeolinda Madieras, who had accompanied George to the hospital. Tim Mello, skipper of the
Bluefin,
was praised by the boat's owner, Fred Sylvia, by the passengers aboard the
Bluefin,
and by his mother. About Jim Norris there was little. He was from Oregon, his parents had been notified. He was well remembered by those who knew him as a pleasant, hard-working man who enjoyed outdoor work and fishing. A tragic loss.

I wrote a note to George accusing him of being too rotten to die and saying I'd see him after he was no longer news. I told him my fish had gone soft because of him and that the next time we'd haul him in in my Landcruiser and leave his Wagoneer out there so
his
fish could spoil.

Then I went out and hoed my garden for a while. I
plant early in April, and greenies were appearing in little rows. I'd have radishes and lettuce any day now, and my beans and peas looked good. I wondered if my carrots would be as bad as usual and if I'd been right to try broc and cauliflower again since I'd never yet managed to make them grow.

I had rows of flowers planted between the rows of vegetables, but had a hard time telling which little plants were flowers and which were weeds. I'm better at recognizing vegetables than flowers.

I was through hoeing and had the sprinkler turned on, and was having a beer as a reward for my hard work when a car came down my driveway.

Since I live in the woods at the end of a narrow, bumpy road, I don't see many people in my yard who don't want to be there. I don't get many in any case.

The car stopped and Susie Martin got out. I was glad I was at least wearing shorts. Sometimes I'm inclined to walk around my place wearing only sandals. I have tender, flat feet.

“Hey, kid,” I said, “how's the old man?”

She had an odd look about her. “He's okay. I guess it wasn't too bad. Learning that Billy was okay helped a lot.”

“How's Billy?”

“He's okay.” She had a way with words. “I want to talk with you, J.W.”

She was serious and nervous.

“Sure, kid. Sit down. Want a Coke?” This was the first time she'd ever been to my place, and she was looking it over in a halfhearted way. “Old hunting camp,” I said. “My father bought it way back when island land was cheap. I inherited it.”

“Daddy says you were a policeman once.”

“Not anymore. Now I'm just a guy on a medical pension.”

She wandered to one of
the
almost-matched lawn chairs I'd salvaged from the Edgartown dump and had repainted until they looked almost new. I sat down in the one I'd just gotten up from. She ran her fingers over the chair's plastic webbing. She was wearing shorts and one of those shirts with an animal above the left pocket. Restrained yet expensive, stylish in the Martha's Vineyard summer mode. My shorts were from the thrift shop. It's the way I like to live.

“I don't know how to say what I want to say. . . .”

I got up. “Sit down. I'll get you a drink.”

I went inside and got a Coke from the fridge for her and another Molson for myself. I skimp on what I can, but one cannot skimp on one's beer. Except toward the end of the month. I gave her the can and watched her diddle with it, then take a sip. I sat down and had a snort myself.

“You're going to think I'm a nut . . .”

“Take a chance.”

She gripped the can with both hands and looked right at me. “That wasn't an accident. Somebody tried to kill my brother! I checked the
Nellie Grey
out the day before it blew up. There wasn't a thing wrong with it. Somebody did something to it before Billy and Jim went out that morning!” She twisted the can in her hands. “Poor Jim. They didn't care about him. All they wanted was Billy!”

“Who wanted him? Why?”

She was fierce. “Who do you think? Billy's druggie friends, of course! They're afraid he'll turn them in now that he's gotten straight!”

Melodrama. Did I roll my eyes? I saw her looking at me with that furious expression youth wears when it's speaking seriously and is taken lightly. She leaped to her feet.

“Sit.”

She sat, eyes aflame. I sucked down some more beer.

“Don't get put off. It's my face. I play roles with it. I look the way I feel or sometimes I look the way I think I'm supposed to feel or the way I think I should pretend to feel. That's probably why I never made detective. You got to admit your story sounds like television: ‘My brother's gone straight, and the mob is afraid he'll talk.' ”

“Why do you say ‘got to'? You know better!”

True. “Sorry. It's more game playing. Probably a bad habit. No more games, okay? Now, who's after Billy? Why? How do you know?”

She leaned forward. A nice young womanish body. If there was a God, some lucky fellow would one day benefit from it. But not middle-aged me. “I don't have to tell you, do I, that this island isn't just a happy summer resort, but that there's a big drug trade here, too. You know that this place may be the drug capital of the East Coast. You know how easy it is for expensive boats and planes to come and go from this island without attracting any attention at all, and you know that every year or so they have a big drug bust involving people or houses down here for laundering money or other stuff like that.

“My brother was very strung out for years right here on this island, and he knows that scene. It almost killed him, but now he's going straight. He's at Brown, you know. He's not dumb. He's on the dean's list! But I saw him in Oak Bluffs last week, just outside the Fireside. Jim was with him. I saw one of the creeps he used to know shove Billy, and I ran over just as Jim stepped between them. But I
heard the guy say, ‘You'll get yours!' before he ran off. I know a dopehead when I see one, and he was a dopehead. It was that Danny Sylvia, damn him! Damn him!”

“You know him?”

“I know him, all right. He's the one who got Billy started. At the tennis club, would you believe it! Mom and Mrs. Sylvia played there and the next thing you know that damned Danny had Billy using first one thing, then the next. I hate him! I hate her!”

“Her?”

“His mother!” Susie's face was hard and sullen. “She brought Danny there. She got him and Billy together. They played tennis. My mother never liked it.”

I emptied my Molsons. “What do you mean? Never liked what?”

Susie was suddenly evasive, the way people are when they believe something that's unpleasant and hard to know for sure. “Mom just stopped playing tennis with Maria Sylvia, that's all. I don't know why. Ask her!” She stared down at her Coke.