Vulgar Boatman (2 page)

Tom had kicked off his campaign with one of his frank-and-bean shindigs at Windsor Harbor the previous May. Ostensibly, he was campaigning for the primary election in September. Actually, though, he had that all sewed up, since he had the endorsement of every important Republican in the Commonwealth, and now the polls showed him a scant seven percentage points behind his probable November opponent, Governor McElroy himself, the Democratic incumbent. Eddy Curry found the nineteen percent undecided in the polls particularly encouraging.

Sylvie put her hand on my knee. “If you are so cynical about your friend Mr. Baron, why are we going to see him?”

“Because he is still my client, and he is my friend, and because he has a problem.”

“But must we go and eat this awful food?”

“Tell you what,” I said. “For putting up with all this—and with me in general—you don’t have to clean your plate. We’ll take a detour on the way home and have dinner at Gert’s. Ever had monkfish?”

“It does not sound pretty.”

“It’s downright ugly. Maybe the ugliest fish in the sea. Also maybe the most delicious. Fortunately, they don’t serve monkfish faces in restaurants. We’ll have the monkfish at Gert’s, carafe or two of her nice house white, then we’ll go back to my place and…”

Sylvie’s hand began to slither up the inside of my thigh. “And what, Bradee?”

I grabbed her hand and moved it to her lap. “I’m driving,” I told her. “And don’t try to seduce me with your Hungarian accent, either. You know perfectly well and what.”

She squeezed my hand and laid her head on my shoulder. “I will try the monkfish, then. As long as I don’t have to eat any beans.”

The parking lot beside the Windsor Harbor Elks lodge was nearly full. I found a slot between a Toyota and a Ford pickup. There weren’t any other BMW’s there.

Inside, the big room was lined with long narrow tables covered with paper tablecloths. I estimated that there were fifty tables, each of which would seat ten or twelve people. At twenty bucks per, that would clear the Tom Baron for Governor coffers around ten grand before expenses. Not much, by current standards. But Tom had plenty of other sources. Money wasn’t the point of these events.

Sylvie and I stood in the doorway. She grabbed my hand and whispered, “Do we really have to do this?”

“Hey,” I said. “It’ll be fun.”

People were milling about. Many had already laid claim to seats. The place was filling up fast. “We should find a seat,” I said to Sylvie.

Eddy Curry pushed his way through a knot of people and extended his hand to me. “Brady. Damn glad you could make it. Our candidate has been asking for you.”

“I’m here,” I said. “Sylvie Szabo, this is Eddy Curry.”

Curry looked Sylvie up and down. She was well worth examining. She grinned at him and held out her hand. “Mr. Curry,” she said, “Brady tells me you are a politician.”

Curry took her hand. “Yeah, I suppose you could say that.”

“That,” said Sylvie, still smiling, “is unfortunate.”

Curry shrugged. “If that’s your opinion, Miss, I guess it’s my loss.”

He was a big man, soft and fat, his neck bulging over his shirt collar, his forehead perpetually damp, the armpits on his shirts ringed. He had achieved the reputation as the shrewdest campaigner in the state, and when the Republican bosses summoned Tom Baron, they insisted that Eddy Curry run the campaign.

Curry, as far as I could tell, had no particular loyalty to Tom. For that matter, he evinced no loyalty to the Republicans, either. His loyalty was to the game, to the tricks and ploys and tactics, to the winning.

And to the enormous fees he commanded, too.

“Can I see Tom?” I asked him.

“Not until after the speech. He’s getting ready to come out now.”

“Psyching himself up, huh?”

“Yeah. Like that. Look. Everyone’s finding seats. Whyn’t you and the lady grab a chair and enjoy yourselves.”

“Fat chance of that.”

Curry grinned. “How’d you like to do this five, six times a week? Tom’ll catch you later, okay?”

He slapped my bicep and waddled off into the crowd. I took Sylvie’s hand and we wended our way to a distant table where it looked like we might have a little privacy.

No such luck. Our table filled rapidly with people who all seemed to know each other. They were friendly enough, calling me and Sylvie by our first names, actually “Brad” and “Sylvia,” but it was close enough. The meal was served family-style—a big vat of baked beans, a platter of hot dogs, several baskets of steamed brown bread, jars of catsup and mustard and relishes. Paper plates, plastic flatware.

The guy seated next to Sylvie, an emaciated old fellow with thick suspenders and big wattles hanging from his chin, loaded up Sylvie’s plate with beans and franks despite her protests. Several of our tablemates made jokes about flatulence. Their wives all giggled pinkly. They seemed to be having a grand time. Clearly, Tom Baron was a prince of a fellow to make all this revelry possible.

The man with the suspenders kept touching Sylvie. She was wearing her long blond hair in a braid, and this old guy liked to tug it and make a sound like a train’s whistle. “Woo, woo,” he’d hoot, and then he’d look around expectantly to see if anyone besides himself was guffawing. Sylvie rolled her eyes at me. I grinned back at her. I knew she could take care of herself.

“C’mon, little lady,” wheezed the old guy. “Eat them beans. Put some meat on your bones.” He poked her ribs, very near her breast. “Yep,” he opined, looking around and nodding. “Need to put some meat on you.”

After a few minutes of this, Sylvie leaned close to the guy and whispered into his ear. He listened for a moment, his grin transforming itself into a frown, and then his head jerked back as if she had slapped him. He stared at her briefly, his mouth agape, and then shoved back his chair and fled.

Sylvie arched her eyebrows and shrugged at me.

“What’d you say?” I asked her.

She leaned across the table to me. “I just asked him if he wanted to get laid. I guess he didn’t, huh?”

A gang of volunteer waitresses cleared away the debris of the meal and slid paper plates of apple pie in front of us. We passed around big stainless steel pitchers of hot coffee for our Styrofoam cups. From the head table came the whine and hum of the amplifier. A voice said, “Can I have your attention, please?”

The conversational din gradually died, and all heads turned to the front. A guy with slicked-back black hair and sideburns was standing at his place at the table, holding a hand mike. “Probably the head Elk,” I whispered to Sylvie. “Guy with the biggest rack.”

“Folks,” he said, and he frowned at the feedback from the system. “Folks, Tom Baron is back where he started. Back here with his good friends and neighbors in Windsor Harbor.”

There was a ripple of polite applause. One man yelled, “Baron for governor!” Louder applause.

“Absolutely right, friend,” said Sideburns, warming to his task. “Tom is on his way. But he never forgets his roots. And it’s my pleasure tonight to give you our native son, and the next governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Tom Baron.”

He stepped aside as Tom made his way to the microphone. The two men shook hands ceremoniously. Around me, folks were standing up, clapping their hands, whistling, and calling out, “Way to go, Tom,” and, “Hey, Big Tom.” I glanced at Sylvie, who looked at me and shrugged. We both stood up. Neither of us applauded.

Tom Baron had the look, no doubt about it. A thick unruly head of black hair, with just the right touch of gray at the temples. Solid jaw, fierce gray eyes, a lanky, Lincolnesque frame.

All politicians have a Speech. It’s the same one, and they deliver it over and over again, substituting the names of local politicians and appropriate anecdotes. Tom Baron’s speech touched on hoary old themes dear to the hearts of politicians—the identification of the speech-giver with the good folks in the crowd, the sanctity of God, community, and family, the virtues of hard work and law-abiding behavior, the evils of drugs and promiscuous sex. Tom, to his credit, made it sound new and sincere, and even a hardened cynic such as I was touched momentarily by the possibilities of renewing the American Dream under an administration headed by Tom Baron. His powerful voice rose and fell in hypnotic rhythms, carrying the hometown folks on its waves, and when he finished, the applause thundered and rolled through the room.

Sylvie leaned across to me. “What did all that mean?”

“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “But he said it awfully well, I thought.”

Up front, Tom beckoned to his wife, Joanie, who had been sitting at the head table with him. She rose with a great show of reluctance and stood beside him. She was a fading blonde, perhaps thicker-waisted than in her cheerleading days, but still photogenic. A definite asset. Tom threw an arm around her shoulder. She gazed fondly up at him. He bent and kissed her cheek. The folks in the Elks lodge applauded this move with renewed enthusiasm.

After a few minutes, Sideburns reappeared. Once again he and Tom shook hands. Tom handed him the mike and returned to his seat. Sideburns continued to stand there, beaming. Gradually the noise died down.

“Okay,” he shouted. “Let’s have music.”

Everybody stood up and began milling around. Tables were shoved against the walls to clear the way for dancing. I grabbed Sylvie’s arm and steered her outside.

We sat on the front steps of the Elks lodge. I smoked a cigarette. Sylvie sat close to me. “I’m hungry,” she said.

“Soon as I talk to Tom, we can go.”

The September night air promised frost. A half-moon hung over the big maples that rimmed the town common. Sylvie put her head on my shoulder. “Pretty,” she said. “My village in Hungary, it was like this in the fall.”

“And now you are living the American Dream.”

“It was all silly, what he said. But I do believe it, in a funny way. I cannot be too cynical.” Sylvie’s voice was soft. “What I came from, I cannot dislike what he was saying. Here, at least, it is possible.”

“But it is more possible for some than for others.”

“Ah, you are such a cynic. I don’t know what I see in you.”

Loud voices seeped over us as the door behind us opened. I turned around. Tom Baron was standing there. He sat down beside me.

“Gimme one of your butts, will you?”

I took out my pack of Winstons and shook one loose for him. “What a rat race,” he said. “Gimme a light.”

I held my Zippo for him. He inhaled deeply and sighed.

“Sylvie Szabo, Tom Baron,” I said.

Tom barely glanced at Sylvie. “Yeah, nice,” he said. “So what’d you hear in there? What do the simple folks say?”

“Lots of jokes about farting. Beans the musical fruit. Like that.”

“Ah, Coyne,” said Tom, smiling. “I can always count on you for necessary deflation. They’re having a good time, though, huh?”

I shrugged. “What’s this all about, Tom?”

He pulled back from me gently and moved away from the light that spilled out of the Elks lodge windows. I followed him. We leaned against the hood of an ancient Cadillac parked in a shadow.

Tom sighed and flicked away his half-smoked cigarette. “They found the body of a high school girl in the woods behind the school this morning. Kid named Alice Sylvester. She was strangled, they think. This was a real popular kid. Cheerleader type. Honor Society. Small town like Windsor Harbor, Brady, something like this is a big tragedy.”

“Big tragedy anywhere,” I observed.

“Yeah, right. Thing is, this girl, this Alice, she was Buddy’s girl friend.”

“That has to be rough on the kid,” I said. I took a hard look at Tom. I realized I had missed his point. “What are you saying?”

He gazed away at the dark sky. “For all I know,” he said slowly, “Buddy was with Alice last night.”

“What do you mean, for all you know. Didn’t you ask him?”

“I couldn’t.”

“Why the hell not?”

“Buddy didn’t come home. We haven’t seen him.”

Tom started pacing back and forth in front of me. I went to him and put my hand on his shoulder. “What exactly are you trying to say? Do you think your son killed the girl?”

He shook his head at the night. “I don’t know what to think, Brady.”

“I mean, I know Buddy has had some problems. But I wouldn’t think he was a murderer.”

“I didn’t say Buddy was a murderer,” said Tom softly, not looking at me. “Hell, I don’t think he is. In my heart, I know he’s not. But my head—ah, shit, you know what I mean. All I’m saying is, this is a problem. I don’t know how to handle it.”

“What have you told the police?”

He turned to face me. “Nothing. I called you.”

I nodded. “But they haven’t come knocking at your door?”

“No.”

“And you haven’t reported that Buddy is missing?”

“He’s not exactly missing. He just didn’t come home last night. Hell, he’s eighteen years old. He comes and goes. He’s stayed out all night before.”

I took out my Winstons again and offered one to Tom. He shook his head impatiently. I lit one for myself. “I want to know what you think,” I said.

“Well, I don’t think Buddy killed his girl. That’s one thing. Hell, he loved that girl. He really did.”

“Those,” I observed, “are the people who kill each other.”

“I don’t really need your cynical homilies, Counselor. You’re not exactly making this easy, you know.”

“I wasn’t trying to make it easy. I think you ought to assume that Buddy is in trouble.”

“You don’t think I thought of that already?”

“There’s another thing,” I said.

“Yeah. I know what you’re going to say. Something could’ve happened to Buddy. Right?”

“Right. Either way, we should’ve talked to the cops a long time ago. You have already screwed up. A felony has been committed. You possess relevant information.”

Tom’s laugh was sudden and harsh. “No shit, Counselor. Relevant information, indeed.” His tone shifted abruptly. It became soft, hesitant. I sensed a rhetorical trick, but it was still effective. “Look,” he said. “This is, ah, delicate, Brady. Sensitive. You understand, I know.”

“You’re saying that these events are inconvenient. They do not serve to advance the cause.”