Black Tide (13 page)

The Tyler police station is a one-story concrete structure that looks like it belongs at a nuclear testing site. It didn't take much of an architectural genius to design the building, and this lack of effort shows in a lot of ways: it's always too cold in the winter and too hot in the summer, and during a few spring and winter storms, when Ashburn Avenue floods out, the police dispatchers have to use two chairs: one to sit in and the other to rest their legs on, so as not to be ankle-deep in water for an entire shift.

It's adjacent to the beach fire station of the Tyler fire department, and Diane rolled her cruiser out back, where the door for the booking area leads. As she brought the cruiser to a halt, I said, "Diane, you know, it would have been just as easy for me to bring this nut's car to the station, instead of leaving it on the street. "

She was smiling again. "I know, Lewis. Haven't you figured it out?"

I reached for the door handle. "Sure. You're going to call to have it towed." "Right," she said, getting out of the cruiser. "That way, this clown gets to pay a seventy-five-dollar tow-and-storage charge, in addition to his other fines."

I got out and she looked over at me from across the roof of the Crown Vic. "That'll give him a little lesson in the pocketbook on how not to talk back to ladies."

I said, "I'm not too sure if he's going to take it that way."

She laughed. "Ask me if I care."

Diane went to the rear door with a smile and said, "You know, this just put me in a good mood. Driving along, bitching and moaning to you, and bang, the adrenaline rushes right through you and cleans out your whole system. I'd recommend it to anyone."

"Thanks, but I prefer something a bit quieter."

From inside the cruiser I could hear the driver moaning again and Diane said, "Thanks for dinner."

"You're welcome. But next time, let's do it someplace that doesn't involve driving."

With that, Diane got her prisoner out of her car and I headed over to my Range Rover, which was also parked in the police lot. Through the good graces of Diane Woods, I have a "Press Parking" pass which I can toss onto my dashboard and which lets me park for however long I need to at the Tyler police station. One of the many secret privileges of being a magazine writer, I suppose.

When I got to the Rover and unlocked the driver's door, someone called out "Lewis! Lewis Cole!" and I turned and saw Roger Krohn walking out of the booking-door entrance to the police station. He had on jeans and a pressed light pink polo shirt, and around his left wrist he was wearing a gold bracelet. His thick brown hair seemed as perfect as ever, and he was smiling at me as he strode across the parking lot.

I shook his outstretched hand and he said, "How are you doing, Lewis? Gotten over that crazy swim you had, pulling in that body?"

"Oh, I guess so."

"Yeah," he said, shaking his head. "I talked to a couple of m friends down at 1010 Commonwealth in Boston, and they couldn't believe what had happened up here. Man, what a case. Headless and handless diver. Something as crazy as that belongs in New Jersey, not New Hampshire."

"I'd have to agree with you there, Roger."

He glanced around the parking lot and said, "I was just getting free for the night, and wondered if you want to go get a beer and maybe something to eat. You've been here awhile, you probably know the places. That sound okay?"

At first I was going to say no and head home by myself, but his smile was so wide and his tone was so eager. I'm sure it must be lonely sometimes, being up here in a resort town by yourself.

"Yeah, I know a good place," I said. "It's within walking distance, but it can sometimes get noisy. You mind noise?"

"Hey," he said, holding his hands open. "I'm from Boston!"

"It'll help," I said, relocking the Rover's door. "But not by much."

Chapter Eight

We were on the outside deck of Grace's Beach House, so we couldn't make out too much of the screaming coming from the second-floor dining room, but I could tell that Grace Grayson was in her usual form. A couple of older men were standing at their table --- which I could see through the sliding-glass doors leading inside --- while Grace went at them. A waitress with long black hair slid open one of the doors and I heard Grace yell, "I told you, and I told you again, we don't take no American Express. Now you get me something else or some cash or I'm calling the cops on both of you."

The waitress, laboring under a tray that looked as if it was holding a squadron of boiled lobsters, merely shook her head as she went by, but some of the diners inside were cheering Grace.  The door slid shut and it got somewhat quiet. Roger Krohn, sitting on the other side of our dinner table, raised his Budweiser and said, "Hell of a way to run a restaurant. Thought the trick was to make the customer happy."

I lifted my glass of ice water in a return salute. A beer had sounded nice for dinner, but the memories of Felix's disapproving gaze a couple of days ago was still too fresh, and so I had decided to go with a cup of Tyler's best. There had been a line to get in but a little wheedling on my part and the fact that I had made an earlier reservation had helped. The furniture out on the deck was wooden chairs and tables, and most were stained with the remains of past dinners. There were no empty tables.

"Grace doesn't care about making her customers happy," I said.  "She just cares about bringing customers in. Most of these people are transient, just tourists. They hear about Grace's Beach House from friends and decide to go see the show. They have a hell of a time and go home and tell their friends and family, and then they show up in a month or so. A nice little cycle."

Before us were the leftovers of a typical summer dinner: a few cold French fries and half-eaten rolls for Roger, who had taken care of a fried clam dish, and the empty shells of two one pound lobsters for me. Roger turned to take in the view. From the deck you looked over tiny cottages that are rented on a weekly basis by tourists from places as nearby as Salisbury and as far away as Quebec City, and a few hundred yards from the mass of cottages and stores is the harbor that is shared by the fishermen and boaters of Tyler and Falconer. Beyond the harbor are the flat grasslands of  the marsh, and the squat concrete-and-steel buildings of the Falconer nuclear power plant, still quietly humming away, generating electricity for a million New Englanders and producing radioactive wastes that squabbling politicians couldn't decide where to store.

Roger said, "You know, a guy could get used to this view could get used to living up here in a place like this."

That was something Roger had talked about through most of the dinner, about how much he had enjoyed his brief time up here in Tyler and how he wasn't looking forward to returning to Boston. We had exchanged the usual small talk about our backgrounds, and once again I was surprised at not feeling any guilt about glossing over my years in government service. Instead of telling him the truth --- which could have gone on for a half hour or more --- I said, "So after a couple of years at DoD, I got tired of shuffling papers and lucked out in getting this magazine job."

A convenient lie, but one I've never had the guts to use with someone who knew anything about magazine work. They would have raised an eyebrow or two, then would have rushed back to their office and made some phone calls, and I would have gotten some very unnecessary and dangerous attention.

Then Roger had smiled and said, "Then for a while we were both working for the same group of guys?"

"Oh?" I said, hoping I was appearing terribly disinterested, when in fact I was anything but.

"Yeah, but I had to wear a uniform. Spent a few years in this man's Army, learning to kill people and blow up things. Went to jungles and deserts and came out with my skin intact, and what did I do? Decide to become a cop, so people could continue to shoot at me."

We had both laughed at that and now he shook his head and said again, "Yep, a nice view to get used to. Beats hell out of looking at three-deckers."

"It seems like there's something going around," I said, remembering the conversations I'd had with Paula Quinn of the
Chronicle
and Diane Woods about their careers and lives over the past week. "You're the third person in almost as many days that's told me that they don't like what they're doing."

He spun back in his chair and rubbed the neck of the bottle across his too large chin, and said, "No, don't get me wrong, Lewis. I do enjoy my work, always have. It's the place where I'm doing it that I don't like."

An original thought, I guess. Big-city blues. Paula Quinn and I once went to see a concert in Boston at the Berklee Performance Center. The concert was fine but after spending nearly fifteen dollars to park and another hour in the city traffic, dodging drivers who think a yellow light means go fast and a red light means go faster, Paula had said, "There's only one thing better than coming to Boston. And that's getting out of Boston."

I said, "Boston getting you down?"

He grimaced. "Look at the news, Lewis. It's not just Boston. It's most of the cities in this country. New York City is ungovernable. Los Angeles is no better ---- people are busy choking on the smog and fumes --- and in Chicago, man, the color of your skin can get you killed if you go down the wrong block. I got a cousin, he's a cop in a Manhattan precinct, and he tells me some cops are setting up off-hours death squads. Can you believe that? Death squads. They go out at night and snatch guys they know are guilty, and bang-bang, it's taken care of. It's either that or keep on arresting and shoving them into court. And the way courts are, chances are someone's case will get plea-bargained down to shit, or charges will get dropped, or the case file will disappear, and the guy will walk. This way, at least, the guy's off the street."

I chose my words carefully, because the look on his face didn't match the words he was saying. "Sounds like you don't approve, Roger."

He looked surprised. "What, you think I'm nuts? Last time, I checked, this is supposed to be America, right? Constitution and all that. And death squads don't belong here --- this isn't Central America or Brazil."

"You sound like someone who's up to making some changes."

“Bah." He eyed the waitress as she went by, looking at the short denim miniskirt she was wearing and her tight white T-shirt. The tray was now empty and she played with it in her hands as she went back inside the restaurant, rolling it among her slim fingers like a ship's wheel.

Roger said, "You know, I was like that once, full of vim and vigor, ready to change the world and make things better, and that was knocked out of me after about a month on the streets. It's just too big and complex, and there's too many groups, all fighting and screaming at each other. It's hard to help any of them, let alone make a difference. The young rich kids who think that you're under their hire and direction. Your Third World groups, who think we lie awake at night dreaming about better ways of oppressing them. Your working-class stiffs, who're just lookin' for a break, and your politicians, who love you when the bullets are flying and who can't be found when it's budget time."

I swirled the ice around in my glass. "Replace the name Boston with a hundred or so other city names, and I guess you're making a fair statement, Roger."

"Yeah," he grumbled, "but that doesn't mean I gotta be happy. Place like Tyler, though, a guy could make a stand, make a difference. Not many places like that left. The way I figure it, some bright boys after World War II managed to screw up the cities in their quest to make a perfect world, and that's fine. I guess that's what bright boys are used for. Me, I'm not that bright, and I can't figure out how to make things better. All I know is how to be a cop, and I know that whatever I do is being wasted down in Boston. "

I eyed him and said, "Word is on the streets that you might be interested in staying in Tyler after the exchange program is completed. Anything to that little rumor, Detective?"

It seemed for a moment he was going to sit up in indignation and deny everything, but instead he smiled shyly and said quietly, "The thought's entered my mind. Nobody's talking much about the chief and his condition, and in my mind, that means the news isn't good. For me, I could do worse, Lewis, and this'd be a good chance to start over fresh. Besides, there's something else interesting that's got my attention here in Tyler. Know what it is?"

I said I didn't and in a brief second I prepared myself for whatever he was going to say. I'm glad I did, for he looked at both sides of the restaurant and leaned forward and said, "This is going to sound crazy, but I really think Diane Woods is one good lookin' woman. What do you think, Lewis? Think she might be interested?"

Oh my. I'm glad I had prepared for something odd, and one definitely set the unusual meter on its head. I said, "Interested in you, Roger?"

He shrugged, with a sheepish grin. "Maybe so. Is she dating, do you know?"

I was going to say something definite and decided not to, and after a few moments sorting through about a half dozen options, I said, "Roger, that really should come from her. I know Diane, but I feel uncomfortable talking about her personal life, and there are some things about her personal life that I don't know. So why don't you ask her?"

And in my mind, I offered a silent apology to Diane. Sorry, kid, sometimes thinking fast on my feet isn't my best skill. With that, Roger finished off his beer and said, "Well, I just might ask her. Listen, I gotta go, Lewis. I got two more weeks in this exchange program, and I'm sure I'll be running into you later."