Marine Corpse (5 page)

“Jefferson was wrong, as history has demonstrated, about several things.” Altoona smiled. “Mao said that a revolution is not the same as inviting people to dinner, or writing an essay, or painting a picture. That man had a true sense of politics. And I have quoted him accurately.”

I held up both hands, palms out. “You win. I can’t beat you in a duel of quotations.”

I was saved further embarrassment by the arrival of our meals. We ate in silence. Altoona broke off chunks of bread from the crunchy loaves and then meticulously picked the crumbs off the front of his shirt and popped them into his mouth—whether from innate neatness, or an old habit born of hunger, I couldn’t determine. When we finished, he proclaimed it a “splendid repast” and a “gustatory delight,” and he gallantly kissed Marie’s hand as we prepared to leave. She smiled, touched his cheek, and said, “You’re welcome. Any time.”

Outside the restaurant the November air stung my cheeks, a harbinger of winter. I huddled into my sports jacket and thought of Stu Carver spending a frigid Boston winter on the streets.

Altoona held out his hand to me. “We part company here, for now,” he said. “I must get home, if you’ll pardon the expression.”

I hesitated, then drew my wallet from my pocket. I extracted a twenty-dollar bill and held it out to him. “For your troubles,” I said.

He accepted it without surprise and tucked it into his pocket. “Cutter, I trust, will reimburse you eventually,” he said.

“He most certainly will,” I smiled. “How will you use it?”

His grin reminded me that I had been rude, and that his own manners were too good to mention it. “A bottle of expensive gin would be tempting, of course. But I expect I shall opt for a greater volume of cheap vodka. Such good fortune must be shared with my friends. From each according to his ability and to each according to his needs, Mr. Coyne. That is true communism.”

I smiled. “Yes, I suppose it is. Give my regards to our mutual friend. I expect I’ll see you again.”

He nodded, lifted his hand, turned, and trudged away from me, a small shapeless figure not that much different from many of the others on the Boston sidewalks.

When I got back to my office I looked up the number for the St. Michael’s mission and dialed. The person who answered said, “Father Joe.”

“My name is Coyne,” I said in my most businesslike voice. “I’m an attorney.”

“Yes?”

“I’m concerned about one of the men who I believe lives with you.”

“Which one?”

“He calls himself Altoona.”

“Sure. What about him?”

“He’s very ill.”

“That’s right. He has tuberculosis. He probably should be hospitalized.”

“Oh. You knew that already.”

“Mr. Coyne, Altoona is being treated to the best of our very limited ability. Dr. Vance—he volunteers here—has him on medication. I make sure he eats regularly. He has a cot here. Beyond that, there’s not much we can do. He refuses to see anyone except Adrian—Dr. Vance, that is. He will absolutely not go near a hospital. We take care of him as well as we can. That is our mission here.”

“Is there anything I could do?”

I heard the voice laugh harshly. “Do? You said you were an attorney, didn’t you? Mr. Coyne, there’s no end to what you could do.”

“I meant for Altoona.”

“Of course. Make sure he dresses warmly. Be kind to him.”

“I see.”

“Come visit us some time. You might be interested to see what we do here.”

“Maybe I will.”

Altoona showed up at my office every Monday for the next several weeks after that to deliver a manila envelope containing a spiral-bound notebook, and each time I took him to lunch at Marie’s and gave him a twenty when we parted. At each lunchtime he came prepared with an issue for discussion. We debated the management of the Red Sox and of the Federal Reserve, appointments to the Supreme Court and to the woodwind section of the Boston Symphony, the philosophies of Plato and Hugh Hefner, starving African children, and Cabbage Patch dolls. We argued about the assassination attempt at Faneuil Hall when it occurred. We discussed the effects of the Pope’s visit to South Africa, the possibility of nepotism in the Flynn administration, and the plight of the Bruins. We wondered how many more manuscripts attributed to Ernest Hemingway would be unearthed in the coming year.

Altoona, I came to believe, was better read than I, and he had a pragmatic perspective that allowed him to see each issue separately, with a clarity that I envied. At the same time, he loved complexity, and he loved to point it out to me where I hadn’t seen it. He held firm opinions which usually conflicted with my own. I found myself reading the papers more carefully, in order to prepare myself for our weekly get-togethers.

He always wore his old tweed topcoat, which was frayed at the cuffs but not dirty, and those floppy boots. He never failed to appear at my office clean-shaven. Both Julie and Marie seemed to revel in his old-fashioned chivalry. I considered taking up the practice of kissing hands and spreading my Harris Tweed across mudpuddles, since both women, I imagined, had begun to look upon me as an ill-mannered dolt.

Whenever we met, I inquired perfunctorily after Stu, whom I remembered to call “Cutter.” Altoona’s reply was invariably, “He’s learning.” I glanced through the notebooks when he delivered them. Stu’s handwriting remained virtually illegible to me, and since his notes hadn’t been made for my eyes anyway, I didn’t try to decipher them. I just built a stack of them in the back corner of my office safe.

On the Monday before Christmas I took Altoona for a steak at J. C. Hilary’s. We started off with martinis—two each—and finished with big wedges of hot apple pie for dessert. When the waitress brought our coffee I took a gift-wrapped package from my briefcase and handed it to him.

“Merry Christmas, my friend,” I said.

He cocked his head at me, and for once he had nothing to say. He carefully undid the Santa Claus paper and removed from the box a maroon knit wool cap and matching scarf. He pulled the cap over his ears and wrapped the scarf around his neck. “Brady Coyne, you are a kind man and I thank you,” he said.

He reached into the pocket of his topcoat, which hung over the back of his chair, and took out a small package wrapped in brown paper. He held it across the table to me. “Nothing of much utility,” he said. “But felicitations of the season to you.”

I unfolded the paper. Inside was a wood carving of a human hand, the size of a child’s, cupped as if to receive a handful of jelly beans. It had been rubbed to a satiny gloss. It was the color of bourbon, and its close grain and density suggested that it had been crafted from oak.

“It’s beautiful,” I said, genuinely touched. “A real work of art.”

He smiled shyly. “You, sir, have extended me a helping hand during these past few weeks. Now, this is a useless thing, but I did want to find a way to give you a hand for a change. So here’s a hand. Perhaps you can use it for a paperweight, or an ashtray.”

“You made it, didn’t you?”

“Yes. A skill I practiced at the hospital, once they felt they could trust me with a little blade. Under the most watchful supervision, of course.”

I rubbed the smooth curves of the little hand with my thumb. It was exquisitely proportioned, and so lifelike I felt it might twitch and grasp my finger. “It must have taken you forever.”

“I have forever,” he said.

When we parted outside, I gave him a fifty and told him to extend my Christmas greetings to his friends. He shuffled away, his new maroon cap bobbing among the crowds.

I saw him one more time, on the Monday before New Year’s Day. Julie ushered him into my office, as usual, and I poured him a drink, as had become our custom. We settled into our regular seats, he on the sofa and I in the armchair. He handed me Stu’s weekly journal.

I stood up and took it to my wall safe.

“Look at it,” said Altoona.

“I’m not really interested,” I said. “I’m just keeping them.”

“Take a look at this one.”

I opened it to the first page. It was blank. I riffled through the rest of the notebook. It was all blank. I frowned at Altoona.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he said quickly. “You think he had nothing to write this week, but he wanted to make sure I got my Monday lunch and twenty-dollar bill.”

I grinned. “I guess it crossed my mind.”

“He has been writing this week. I’ve seen him.”

I held up the notebook. “Then…?”

Altoona shrugged. “Not in there, obviously.”

“Something he doesn’t trust me with.”

“Or me,” said the old man. “Not either of us.”

“How does he seem?”

“Different, lately. Secretive. He avoids me, now. He used to seek me out. At first, I figured he was just getting acclimated, didn’t need ol’ Altoona anymore. But I don’t think that’s it. It’s more as if he were protecting me than avoiding me.”

“Can you be specific?”

He coughed, cleared his throat, and sipped his drink. Then he peered up at me with watery eyes. “Specific, no. But I can tell you this. I know fear when I see it. Our friend Cutter’s in some kind of trouble.”

Altoona didn’t appear in my office the following Monday. But I didn’t expect him to. Because by then Ben Woodhouse had already called me to say that they had found Stu Carver’s body frozen in an alley.

O
N THE SUNDAY AFTER
I talked with Detective Al Santis, I drove out to the Senator’s country estate in Wayland. The foot of snow that had fallen the previous night had been plowed off the half-mile drive through the meadow and up the pine-wooded slope to the low hill where Ben’s Federal period colonial stood, hidden from view from the main road. Ben owned a hundred or so acres of fields and woodlands, the far side of which descended to a marshy wildlife sanctuary bordering the Sudbury River.

The house itself was much like the Senator himself—square, weathered, old, well-preserved, immaculately tended, and solid. It contained sixteen large rooms, eight on each floor, four full baths, plus a big ell that had been added onto the back for a kitchen and glassed-in dining area overlooking the pasture and river vista below it. There was a garage large enough for four cars, and above it living quarters for Ben’s gardener and stableman. Out back was a barn and a stable. Old stone walls paralleled the winding driveway and demarcated the meadows, pastures, and woodlots on the property. The estate had been in Ben’s family since the early nineteenth century. As keeper of Ben’s estate, I knew that its market value was close to three million and appreciating at a solid fifteen percent a year.

If there had been neighbors, they would have seen automobile headlights cutting through the woods up to Ben’s house at odd evening hours from time to time, as the movers and shakers of what was left of the Commonwealth’s Republican Party came to pay court, and to scheme and connive with the Senator. Ben’s Wayland house was the geographical locus of Republican power in Massachusetts.

I expected the parking area beside the circular drive in front of Ben’s house to be jammed with Cadillacs, Mercedes, and Lincolns. As the death of a Prime Minister or President or monarch demands tribute from all the world’s governments, so, I thought, would the death of a Woodhouse require a visit from representatives of Ben’s former, present, and future political allies and enemies. Especially the enemies.

But there were only a dozen or so cars there, which, I realized, was more in keeping with Ben’s style. It would be family and close friends only. Ben kept his tragedies in the same Yankee perspective as he did his triumphs.

I wedged my BMW in between a new Porsche and an old Dodge and started for the house. A couple was coming toward me, holding hands and skidding across the ice on the long curving pathway.

“Hey! It’s Brady!” said the better-looking of the two. It was Mary Adams, and the hand she held belonged to her husband, Doc, one of my favorite fishing companions, and the best of an otherwise unpleasant lot of oral surgeons who have hurt me. Doc Adams had constructed a regular suspension bridge inside my mouth a few years earlier, and later, on my recommendation, he completed some renovations on Ben Woodhouse’s bite. That sort of intimacy seems naturally to lead to friendship, at least with Doc, so I wasn’t surprised to see him and Mary there.

Mary threw both arms around my neck and kissed me hard on the mouth. Doc grinned and pumped my hand.

“Can’t be all that bad in there,” I observed.

Mary turned down the corners of her mouth in that peculiarly Calabrian grimace of hers. “Oh, it’s veddy veddy civilized,” she said.

“The booze was okay,” added Doc. “How’re the choppers behaving?”

“Perfect,” I said hastily. “Absolutely terrific. No problems at all.”

“Special on root canals this week. Two for the price of one.”

“Jeez, I’m gonna have to pass it up,” I said.

“Too bad,” he said. “Day’ll come, you’ll wish you had more foresight.”

“Seriously,” I said. “How are Ben and Meriam taking it?”

“Seriously,” said Doc, “you’d think this was another one of their campaign parties, rather than a memorial get-together for a murdered nephew. We WASPs are hard to figure.”

“You sure as hell are,” said Mary.

We agreed to get together soon for dinner at their house in Concord—something Italian, veal, probably, that Doc would pound out and cook himself—and I headed for the house while they continued sliding and hollering their way to their car.

I followed the path to the front porch, went up the steps, and rang the bell, stamping the snow off my shoes. I don’t normally enjoy the festivities associated with offering condolences to bereaved families, but Ben had put me at ease when he called the previous night. “We’re having a little get-together,” he said. “A few drinks, some hors d’oeuvres from the caterer. Just to make Meriam feel better. Morbid conversation strictly forbidden. There’ll be no funeral, none of that ghastly viewing of the body, no moaning or wailing or gnashing of teeth, no speculating on the destiny of Stu’s immortal soul, no contemplating on the wonders of God’s ways. We’ll have the football game on the tube and some Mozart on the stereo. The young folks will want to play that silly trivia game. If you’re not too busy, I’d love to have you here.”