Marine Corpse (14 page)

I stopped to read the notices on the bulletin board at the end of the hall. Baseball tryouts were coming up soon. A foreign film festival was scheduled for the weekend, featuring Ingmar Bergman. An assistant dean from Bowdoin was coming to address the student body on the subject, “How to Get the Edge in College Admissions.”

After perhaps ten minutes, the pimpled boy left Lee’s classroom and the teacher poked his head out of the door and called to me. “You may come in now, sir.”

I went into the classroom. It felt as if I had been there a million times before. The heating pipes along the outside wall still clanked and farted, the round clock at the rear of the room ticked loudly just as I remembered. It smelled faintly of chalk dust and old sweat and Lysol. The blackboard—actually, this blackboard was green—was covered with messy hieroglyphics intended, I gathered, to uncover the identities of such mysteries as
x
, and
a + b
, and the volume of a cone. The one-piece desks were neatly aligned in rows facing the institutional metal teacher’s desk up front, as they always had been. An American flag and a replica of Gilbert Stuart’s George Washington hung on the side wall opposite the windows.

David Lee stood behind his desk, leaning forward on it, propped up on both of his hands. He wore a blue buttoned-down shirt with the cuffs rolled halfway up his surprisingly ropey and thickly veined forearms. His striped tie was loosened at his throat. His eyebrows were raised in inquiry behind his thick glasses.

It gave me a strange sense of
déjà vu
, right down to the vague tension in my gut that reminded me of how much trouble I used to have with the volume of cones.

Lee smiled uncertainly at me and gestured toward one of the student desks.

“Please have a seat. If you can squeeze yourself in.”

I folded myself in, and he moved around to sit beside me. “Now, Mr…?”

“Coyne. Brady Coyne.”

He frowned.

“I am Stu Carver’s attorney.”

He ran his fingers through his hair. “I assumed you were one of my students’ fathers. Whose attorney did you say?”

“Stu Carver.”

He shook his head slowly. “Is he a student here?”

I sighed. “Mr. Lee,” I said, “let us not bullshit each other. I know you were friends with Stu Carver. I know about your relationship with him. I am not here to make trouble for you. There are some things that I need to know. I think you would be well advised to cooperate with me. What do you say?” I showed him my teeth.

He stood up and wandered over to the window. He stood there for a long minute, staring out onto the wooded hillside. Then he turned, sighed, and came back and sat down. “What exactly do you know about me and Stu?”

“Do you want me to spell it out?”

He smiled thinly. “I guess you don’t have to. Do you mind my asking how you found out about me?”

“Heather Kriegel told me.”

“Ah, Heather. I’m surprised.”

“She did it for your sake, Mr. Lee. She has told nobody else except me. Your secret is still safe.”

He paused for a moment, then said, “I can believe that. She’s an honorable person. I guess you better explain yourself.”

“I assume you know Stu is dead.”

He nodded. “Heather phoned me.”

“And that he was murdered under rather confusing circumstances. That his killer has not been apprehended. That the motive for the murder remains a mystery.”

Lee was staring at me through his glasses. With his thinning hair and round, shapeless body, he was not a conventionally attractive man. But he had an open, pleasant face and a quiet demeanor that I thought would wear well. “Why are you telling me this?” he said.

“Mainly, I like to see the guys in white hats win, and the bad guys get their due. It has also occurred to me that you could be in danger.”

“Why me?”

“You are, er, gay, if that’s the word you prefer. You also use cocaine. One or both of those factors may explain Stu’s murder. There’s at least one federal policeman who thinks so.”

He stood up abruptly and moved to close the door. When he came back he remained standing. “Mr. Coyne,” he said, “I assume you realize that I would lose my job in about one minute if this ever got out.”

I nodded.

“I’m good at my work. I love it, and I need it. I don’t hurt anybody. Yes, okay, I’m gay. And, no, it’s not the word I prefer. There is nothing particularly light-hearted about people with my sexual predisposition, in spite of what some believe to be the increased enlightenment of our time. Queer is more like it, don’t you think? Or faggot. That tells it straight, if you’ll pardon the expression. Homosexual is too clinical.” He placed both hands on the desk I was sitting at and leaned toward me. “Why do we need to be called anything? I’m a man. I’m a teacher and a coach and a chess player. I’m a bad poet and a good son. I’ve got bursitis in my shoulder and a partial plate in my mouth. Define a heterosexual person, and the first thing you say about him won’t be that he’s straight. Right?”

I nodded. “You’re right. Of course.”

He straightened up and sighed. “I sound paranoid, I guess. I don’t really think I am. I’m sorry to lecture you.”

I shrugged. “I’m sorry I had to mention it. But it seems relevant, in this case.”

“Here’s the relevant question,” he said. “Can you tell me why people think that so-called gays are so much more dangerous to young people than heterosexuals? Some of the men on this staff—women, too, for that matter—are absolute rabbits, utterly promiscuous. This is not perceived as a problem. But I, who mind my business and keep my private life private, would be heaved out on my poor fat bottom if there was the remotest suspicion of what they like to call a perversion. No questions asked. No due process, not in private schools. And as for drugs, okay, another no-no. This is the biggest hypocrisy in the school. The kids are totally open—even blatant—about it. But teachers? Corrupters of the youth, all of us. Okay. Yes. Stu and I were lovers. And now and then we smoked a marijuana cigarette and used a little cocaine. In the privacy of our own homes. We hurt nobody. I don’t see how any of this could get Stu murdered, or pose a danger to me.”

“Where did you get your drugs?”

He shook his head. “I’d hate to have to tell anybody.”

“You may not have a choice.”

“Are you threatening me, Mr. Coyne?”

“No. I’m simply telling you that a policeman could come by with questions for you, and he might not care as much as I do about discretion.”

Lee sighed. “I see,” he said. “All right, then. I see how it is. He’s a professor of physics at Harvard. Living in Cambridge, he has what he calls sources. I never inquired about them. He is emphatically not what you’d call a pusher, or a dealer, or any kind of criminal. He gets stuff occasionally. When he does, he’s good enough to share it. That’s all.”

I nodded. “Has this professor ever had a problem with it? Been arrested, or threatened, or extorted? Anything like that?”

“Not to my knowledge. He’s a highly regarded member of the faculty, fully tenured, the author of a definitive textbook. I’m certain he’s extremely careful. He has too much to lose.”

“Stu Carver went to Harvard.”

“So did I.”

“Did Stu and this professor know each other?”

“No. This man has only been at the University for seven years. Stu graduated something like twelve years ago. Anyway, Stu had no idea where I got the stuff.”

“I’d like to know his name.”

“I suppose you would.”

“Well?”

“No. I don’t think I’ll tell you. I’m certain it would do no good, and it could do much harm to a good man.”

“Mr. Lee—”

“The answer, Mr. Coyne, is no. Emphatically, finally, definitively no.”

I shrugged. “Okay. Let me ask you about Stu, then. Can you think of anything that would indicate he was in danger? Did he say anything to you, or did you notice anything in his behavior? Anything to do with his being threatened, or in some financial difficulty? Any new acquaintances?”

He frowned for a minute, then slowly shook his head. “No. Nothing like that, no.”

“When was the last time you saw Stu?”

He hesitated, then said, “Well, it must have been late September, early October. Just before he donned his rags and went to live on the streets.”

“You knew about his project, then.”

“Yes. I tried to discourage him from it, but he was adamant.”

“Why did you try to discourage him?”

Lee smiled. “Because I knew I would miss him terribly.”

I nodded. “And you had no communication with him after that?”

“None. When I heard he was dead…” He took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I still miss him terribly.”

I thought for a moment, then stood up. I held out my hand to Lee. “I appreciate your time,” I said. “I’m sorry if I have upset you.”

He grasped my hand. “I understand what you feel you have to do, and I hope you catch the son of a bitch who murdered Stu. I’m afraid I haven’t helped you.”

I grinned. “Well, no, you really haven’t. Perhaps you’ll think of something. Let me give you my card. Call me if anything occurs to you, will you?” I took a business card from my wallet and handed it to him.

“I will,” he said. “I’ll call you.”

I started to leave, then turned to face him. “One more thing, Mr. Lee.”

“Yes?”

“Is the physics professor by any chance gay?”

“That word again.” He laughed. “Mr. Coyne, if you’ll excuse my saying so, that is the sort of question that is produced by a stereotyped mind.”

“You’re excused,” I said. “Whatever. Is he?”

“As a matter of fact, I have no idea.”

By the time I got back to my office, Julie had already left. The coffee was unplugged, the answering machine was turned on, and a thick stack of memos sat in the exact center of my desk. These were arranged according to Julie’s usual system—in descending order of her definition of urgency, from top to bottom. I glanced through them, finding, as I expected, according to my own standards of importance, the most urgent to be the least interesting.

On top was the message that old Doc Segrue, who was embroiled in a dispute with the IRS over some investment property, had called. I made a note to phone Doc’s accountant first thing in the morning. Eileen Benson was concerned about the claim her deceased husband’s son by one of his previous marriages was making against the estate. I could smooth her feathers at my leisure. Frank Paradise had an emergency which he refused, as usual, to explain over the phone—to Julie, or to me, for that matter. I’d have to drive down to Brewster to visit him sometime soon.

Meriam Carver had called. I knew what that one was all about. I had no intention of returning her call.

Near the top of the stack was a note that Gloria had called. Julie considered all my messages from my former wife urgent. If Julie had her way, I would marry Gloria again. On the memo, Julie had noted, redundantly, “Something personal,” and, editorially, “sounds important.” Gloria’s phone calls were always personal, and, in her mind (as well as in Julie’s imagination), always important. She and I harbored no significant grudges against each other. We had no disputes over alimony (generous but fair), nor did we exchange recriminations over the issues that had led to the dissolution of our marriage a decade earlier (mutual agreement, spiced with a pinch of incompatibility).

In fact, Gloria and I got along considerably better once the marital bond had been broken, so that now our communications tended to focus on the growing-up crises of our two boys—young men, actually—Billy and Joey. Gloria and I weren’t that much different from any middle-aged married couple, except for the fact that we were no longer married.

We even loved each other.

Perhaps
that
made us different.

Often, we called each other just to say hello. When Gloria called me to say hello, however, she usually had an afterthought to share—which, of course, wasn’t really an afterthought at all.

She’d say, “Oh, by the way, the guy at the Ford agency is trying to rip me off.”

Or, “That reminds me, I’m sure I smelled booze on Billy’s breath last night.”

I put Julie’s memo aside. I would call Gloria back. I was sure I could handle that one.

I riffled through the rest of the memos. The one on the very bottom of the stack said, “Al Santis (the cop??) wants you to call him.” That Julie would bury that particular message didn’t surprise me. She didn’t approve of my involvement in police matters. I had done it before and ended up with my jaw wired shut for a month. Another time it got me a raised red scar on the back of my leg. I also suspected that Julie didn’t think it was dignified of me.

I picked up the phone immediately and tapped out the number Julie had jotted down for me.

“Yeah, Santis,” he answered.

“This is Brady Coyne, returning your call.”

“Oh, right. Hang on a second, can you?”

“Okay,” I said, sensing that he had already put the phone down on his desk by the time I got out the word.

I lit a cigarette, and Santis came back on the line in a moment. “Sorry about that. There was a guy here I had to get rid of. Reason I called was, a couple weeks ago we were talking about the kid that got killed with the icepick, right?”

“Yes. Did you catch somebody?”

“Nope. Listen, do you remember I said I bet we’d find another stiff, killed the same way?”

“Yes, I remember.”

“Well, we did.”

“You did.”

“Yup. Same MO. We found this old wino in a parking garage down off Washington Street. Same wound, in the left ear.”

“Have you identified him?”

“Not exactly. That’s why I’m calling. We checked around. The priest who runs the St. Michael’s mission house there knew the guy. He also mentioned you. I think it might be a good idea if you could come over and we could have a little conversation.”

“Oh, Jesus…”

“The priest says the dead guy went by the name of Altoona.”

A
L SANTIS HAD A
square of waxed paper spread out on his desk. It was splattered with the droppings from his half-eaten Italian sub, which he waved at me when I entered, pointing with it to the chair beside his desk.