The Fisher Boy (9 page)

She took the bottle of liquor into her lap. She held it like it was a baby. “Be kind,” she said, in a strangled voice.

Why had she confided in me, for her benefit or mine? Her secret had become a burden she could not longer hold, a burden she needed to put down, if only for a moment, for a conversation. Or the death of another of Duncan Drummond’s sons—and the vodka—had loosened her tongue. She was always horrified by violence. In the house, she couldn’t crush a moth or step on a beetle without a ripple of regret, so I supposed the violence of Ian’s death, the deliberateness, had unhinged her.

But thanks to her, I’d had sex with my brother, the brother I’d found dead and been denied the privilege of knowing, of really knowing. And my father—Duncan Drummond—was he anything more redeemable than a rake? Could I ever find out? His dementia was a fortress more formidable than any trust or the walls of an Eastern Point estate.

“Be kind,” my mother repeated.

So I went south, to Cape Cod, back to the place where my brother Ian was so brutally slaughtered.

Chapter Eleven

The week of Ian’s murder, the Christian Soldiers opened a small office opposite Spiritus Pizza. Dotted Swiss curtains brightened its plate glass windows. No grisly crucifixions were on display, or sinners blistering in hell, just two cardboard posters depicting scenes of the Holy Land, Manger Square and the Sea of Galilee. From the street, it might have been a travel agency. You expected El Al airfares to be posted daily.

Their people were in the street too, not Parris Island toughs in combat fatigues, but handsome men, young like Mormon elders, in brown ties and starched white shirts. They carried clipboards but no pens or petitions, and approached groups of straight tourists, saying, “Have you heard the good news?” At first, the tourists paused, expecting discount coupons for lobster or two margaritas for the price of one. The tourists kept smiling but edged away once the Biblical content of the good news became evident. “God bless you,” the young men said, making it sound like a rebuke.

And there was a second group in town that blistering summer that could not have been more different from the Christian Solders in manner or hygiene. Commercial Street was also clotted with girls and boys, teenagers with vacant or piercing stares, with bare feet and a kind of nineteenth-century sense of fashion, a liking for gingham skirts and overalls that might have been found at grange meetings a hundred years ago. In fact, the rings on their toes and puncturing the cartilage of their ears were the only indications the new millennium was imminent. Some of the runaways banded together to play instruments made of strange things: hollowed-out African gourds and logs. They congregated under the chestnut tree outside the Provincetown Public Library, on the town hall steps, and on MacMillan Wharf when the ferry from Boston was docking. “We’re Scandinavians,” they said, as if this explained their presence. The
Vasa,
the Swedish tall ship, was long gone from Provincetown Harbor, probably sailing into Chesapeake Bay, nearing her final American port of call, Annapolis.

Occasionally, the street kids sold things, including flowers. I bought a glorious bouquet of lilies for Roberto, tall and spindly and pink as flamingoes, like something from the hot soil of the Congo. These were a peace offering. And I bought a Hallmark card, just this side of clever, with a cartoon mouse and a message about forgiveness. “Can you come for dinner at my apartment at 4:30?” I asked in my accompanying note.

Arthur had claimed Roberto was now a houseboy at the White Gull. Climbing the guest house steps, I expected to confront an enraged Roger Morton, berating me for fighting Ian that night at Quahog. But neither Roger nor Roberto was on the premises. Gary, the houseboy manning the desk, said that Roger was in Boston on some sort of business and Roberto was on break, swimming at Herring Cove. Gary promised to give Roberto my flowers and card.

Roberto appeared at my apartment at four-thirty sharp. Wearing lime-green Speedo trunks and a sprinkling of sand like salt on his pretzel-brown legs, he’d come straight from Herring Cove via the front desk of the White Gull. I had never seen him shirtless and could have given him the compliment he made about my view of Provincetown Harbor: “Very nice.”

“Thanks for the fabulous lilies,” he said.

“If they wilt, put a penny in the water. The copper is supposed to revive them.”

“My room at the White Gull is sweltering,” said Roberto. “It’s in the attic. Got an extra roll of pennies to revive
me?”

“No,” I said, but I had some new Chablis.

“Does everybody hate me?” I asked Roberto as we lazed on my back deck. He wore a gold star of David on a chain as fine as powder. By “everybody,” of course, I meant the guys from the troupe, for setting my most memorable scene in the audience.

“The troupe voted to take a little breather. To think about reconvening in the fall.” Roberto was diplomatic, considering every word like a contestant vying for the jackpot on a quiz show. He said Andy had a new job in human resources at John Hancock; Sammy had quit the troupe to take a course in HTML. “But the general consensus was that Ian deserved his free beer. And Roger Morton agrees…”

He was my brother, I almost said, I just learned it from my mother. Half of my life isn’t missing anymore, I know who my father is, but it’s upended my world. Since I couldn’t share this—or the horror on the breakwater—I described Ian’s funeral and the sphinx at his grave and my fight with Suki Weatherbee about Provincetown.

“Of all the people in the community to become a martyr,” Roberto said. “Ian Drummond!”

A vigil had been held last night, while I was in Gloucester, Roberto explained. More than three-hundred people had marched from the Unitarian/Universalist meetinghouse up Commercial Street to the breakwater, many carrying candles or signs like “Ian Drummond: Killed By Hate” and “Disarm the Christian Soldiers.”

“Do you think it was a random hate crime?” I asked Roberto.

“Isn’t it obvious?” he asked. “The thing at Arthur’s, then Ian being murdered. Both after these lunatics show up? You do the math.”

Then, through the buzz from the Chablis, I heard someone calling at the foot of my back stairs, the wooden stairs descending from my deck to the ground.

“Hello? Mark Winslow? Sergeant David Almeida, Provincetown police.”

Roberto actually stood, like a St. Harold’s boy greeting the headmaster’s wife.

“I’m Mark Winslow.” I remained seated while extending my hand, which Almeida clasped to steady me and assess me with eyes that were dark yet cold.

“I have a few questions I’d like to ask you about Ian Drummond,” he said.

Then I noticed he wasn’t alone. A second man squeezed past him up the stairs so that the two of them were overpopulating my deck, already crammed with K-mart summer furniture, with aluminum chairs and a table.

“This is Detective DeRenzi,” Almeida said of his colleague who could be typecast as a pathologist: pinched and ascetic, I could picture him around tweezers and refrigerated samples of dead flesh.

“Do you mind if we tape you?” Almeida asked.

What could I say but, “Oh, no, go right ahead.”

Almeida spoke to the tape recorder, reciting the date, time, and place of our conversation, and noting the names of those present, including Roberto. He knew Roberto’s name without asking, and that bothered me. As he and DeRenzi each took a chair, he said, “What was your relationship with Ian Drummond?”

“We were friends…” I felt foolish not offering them wine, with the bottle right there, but they were obviously on duty, and offering it even as a courtesy might seem like bribery. “…And Ian and I were at school together.” I shouldn’t say more, I should get an attorney, I thought. But mentioning that might seem to amplify my guilt, my guilt at never reporting finding Ian’s body.

“St. Harold’s?”

“Yes.” I could see the tape gleaming through the pane of darkish plastic as it turned on its slow, steady spool, like ropes turning on the wheels of a medieval rack.

“St. Harold’s was located in Stark, Massachusetts?”

“Yes,” I said. They had seen Ian’s body, these policemen. It wasn’t theory for them, they didn’t have to imagine it, the stones soaked with blood, the opened throat. Yet the accounts in the media didn’t mention his throat wounds, only the wounds to Ian’s chest. Remembering the horror on the breakwater, I remembered the broken vodka bottle and shivered.

“When did you last see Ian Drummond, Mr. Winslow?”

My very name, Winslow, now felt like a lie. “I saw him June fifteenth, at Herring Cove.” That was the truth, but of course blood was throbbing through my temples, burning my ears scarlet.

“You saw Ian Drummond June fifteenth at the beach at Herring Cove?”

“Correct,” I said. It was the wrong word to use; it sounded hostile at worst, pompous at best.

Then I remembered it, my beach towel on the breakwater by Ian; the wind had blown it along the stones, flipped it into a pool of Ian’s blood. And a corner of the towel, just a tiny corner, had stained. I’d thought it was blood, but it could’ve been tar, tar from the beach. I’d meant to throw it out, but it was “evidence,” so I didn’t. That towel was inside my apartment. Would they search it?

“What time did you see Ian at the beach?”

All of them were staring—Almeida, DeRenzi, and Roberto. The gleaming tape kept winding behind the darkish pane of plastic. It was all being recorded, not just my words but my tone, my hesitations. The hesitations would seem incriminating, I thought.

I would have to lie now, lie again. I couldn’t link myself to Ian by admitting we’d talked late that day. That might make me the last person to see Ian alive. But if I did tell the truth—that we’d talked later, shared vodka, had sex—at least that would demonstrate we weren’t enemies at the end, that the rancor from the Quahog fight had faded.

“What time did you see Ian at the beach?”

“Mid-afternoon. He was with some friends. I knew one, Barton Daggett.” Again, I massaged the facts: “I’d gone to the beach alone.” Surely mentioning Edward would be asking for trouble—and he had walked away from me, walking down the beach; he’d walked as though we were separate, I’d have witnesses to that.

“Did you speak with Mr. Drummond?” Almeida was doing all the talking. Was this police detective new—or the ambushing type, like Ian?

“I saw Ian from a distance. He was walking near the water. I was further away, up toward the dunes.”

“So you didn’t exchange words with Ian Drummond June fifteenth?”

“No.” A complete lie.

“Do you have any idea who killed Ian Drummond?”

At last I could be honest again. “I have no idea.” And the relief that came from saying something honest almost made me break down, then and there. Roberto was regarding me with protective concern, for which I felt an immense gratitude.

“You’re an actor, aren’t you, Mr. Winslow?”

Was he implying my answers were a performance? “I’m in an acting troupe, an improv troupe.”

“He’s very good,” Roberto said. He was trying to be helpful, giving a compliment. “I’m in the troupe too. We did a show at Quahog.”

“Yes,” said Sergeant Almeida, “I know.”

The “I know” made me realize Roberto’s compliment was disastrous.

“Your performance at Quahog, the night of June thirteenth, I wanted to bring that up. Ian Drummond attended that performance, did he not?”

The “did he not” was hostile. I wanted to take a sip of my Chablis because my mouth was dry, just like onstage during that awful gig, but I thought needing liquor would seem incriminating.

“Yes. Ian was there.”

“Was it a successful night?” Sergeant Almeida asked.

“Ian was a bit tipsy. He was drunk, actually. He was harassing us, shouting out comments—”

“Isn’t that the whole point of improv, the audience participating?”

“There’s a distinction between participation and disruption,” Roberto said.

“We’re speaking with Mr. Winslow,” DeRenzi stated.

Would they read my Miranda rights now? Would they brandish their warrant then search my apartment? Would they find my towel with Ian’s blood, stuffed under the bureau in my bedroom? They were twenty feet away from evidence placing me squarely at the scene of the crime.

“Ian arrived with some friends, they were pretty bombed.”

“Go on,” Almeida told me.

“Ian was disrupting the show. He brought up an old incident from prep school.” As I spoke, Almeida’s face was beginning to look familiar. I had seen it reproduced in both
Advocates,
the Provincetown newspaper and the national gay magazine. Of course, he was a Provincetown native, the police officer who’d come out last October. His left earlobe was pierced; I could see the faint puncture, although an earring was absent. “Ian mocked me about an incident at prep school, about touching his shoulder. He wasn’t out then, not even to himself.” It sounded petty saying it, in light of Ian’s murder. But I continued: “He made fun of me.”

“At Quahog or St. Harold’s?”

“At both…We became friends after college. We’d lost touch during college. He went to Dartmouth, I was at UMass Amherst. We’d grown up together, in Gloucester.”

I reached for the wine and popped it open, so that the cork shot up and out of my fingers, dropping down the stairs and hitting each step like the bouncing ball hits each word of a song you’re supposed to sing. I filled my glass with Chablis and drank deeply.

“Ian was a bit of a bully,” I said. “That was always an element of his personality. You had to accept that to get along with him. That the bully part might activate at any moment. He got way out of control at Quahog.” I let my eyes meet Almeida’s. “I emptied a pitcher of beer over his head.”

“Did you kill Ian Drummond, Mr. Winslow?” Almeida asked, casually, with no more emotion than he’d displayed on any previous question.

“No,” I stated.
“
I didn’t.”

Almeida said, “Just a few more questions about another incident. Did you know an Edward Babineaux?”

Was he questioning my story about the beach, about going there alone, and not with Edward? “I knew him socially. He…was staying with Arthur Hilliard for a while.”

“Mr. Hilliard is accusing him of stealing some valuable antique candlesticks.”

I nodded.

“Do you know where Edward Babineaux might be staying now? He disappeared the morning after Ian Drummond’s murder.”

With relief, I was able to answer truthfully, “I have no idea.”

“Did this Edward Babineaux know Ian Drummond?” asked DeRenzi.

Here I could cooperate, more or less. I described seeing Edward and Ian at the two parties, Arthur’s inauguration of the Provincetown season and Ian’s St. Harold’s “memoriam.” I didn’t mention meeting Edward in Ian’s bedroom—or our brunch after church at the Café Blasé, where he’d spilled his assault-in-the-woods tale. Edward was probably not a suspect in Ian’s death because he’d been with Arthur when Ian was killed.

“Thank you, Mr. Winslow,” said Sergeant Almeida. “By the way, you’re an excellent actor. I’ve had the pleasure of seeing you with your troupe.”

To be polite, I asked, “When?”

“On the night of June thirteenth, this year, at Quahog.”