Small Town

Small Town Page 69

There were pictures, mostly of a woman whom Buckram took to be Mrs. Shevlin. In one she appeared as a bride barely out of her teens, standing beside a slim young man with dark hair and a shy smile, who looked to be wearing a tuxedo for the first time in his life. No pictures of kids, nor did he recall Mazarin mentioning any children. A childless couple, married young, lived for decades until the wife died and left the husband stranded.

Like the Harbingers, he thought, in a West Side apartment building just two blocks from here. Not so grand—the Shevlins were in one of the great Art Deco buildings on Eighty-sixth, with high ceilings and an impressive lobby, the Harbingers in a more modest building on a less desirable street. But then the Harbingers had had children to support.

Both men wound up childless, though.

He picked up the wedding picture, wishing it would tell him something. She dies and you buy a boat, he told the young Shevlin in the picture. You’re seventy-two years old, you could certainly afford to retire, but how much time can you spend putt-putting around New York Harbor? So you go to work every day, and you come home, and on nice evenings you go out on your boat.

Where the hell are you?

He wished he could find a more recent photo of Shevlin. The wedding portrait was useless, you couldn’t show it to people and tell them to add fifty years to the kid in the picture. He’d thought Mazarin might have a snapshot of the man, most likely taken against his wishes, but she’d said she didn’t. She wasn’t much of a photographer, she’d said.

When he first entered the apartment he’d wished he’d thought to bring a pair of Pliofilm gloves. He was careful not to touch anything until he’d established with his eyes as well as his nose that there wasn’t a dead body in the place, or any signs of a struggle.

In their absence, there was no reason anyone should presume the place to be a crime scene, so he didn’t worry unduly about breaching its integrity with his fingerprints. He kept them to a minimum, though, and put the things he touched back where he found them.

When he couldn’t think of anything else to do he went over to the phone, looked at it for a few minutes, then picked it up and dialed. If there was ever an investigation, and if they ever pulled the LUDS, there’d be a record of the calls he made, calls placed from Shevlin’s apartment after the man had disappeared. But it probably wouldn’t come to that, and yes, he could have used his cell phone, but the fact was he hated the damn thing.

He started calling the Information number for different regional area codes, asking for Wallace Weingartner. 718 for Brooklyn and Queens, 516 and 631 for Long Island, 914 for Westchester County. There was a W. Weingartner in Manhasset and a W. B. Weingartner in Bedford Hills, and he called those numbers, and the first turned out to be Wanda and the second answered to Bill. Both claimed to know quite a few Weingartners—he didn’t ask if they knew each other—but neither knew a Wallace.

The 202 operator found a W. Weingartner right across the river in Hoboken, so he tried that. And got a computer-generated voice mail response inviting him to leave a message. No indication what the W stood for, and no reason he could think of to leave a message.

He locked up and went downstairs. Four o’clock had come and gone, and Viktor had gone with it. A younger man, presumably Hispanic, presumably Marcos, was on the door. He couldn’t think how to give him the key without confusing him, or getting Viktor in trouble, or both. And why should anybody else need to get into the apartment? If he remembered, he’d return the key to Viktor in the morning. Or find it on top of his dresser in six months and have no idea what it was or where it had come from.

H E W A S H A L F A block away when he remembered he’d promised Helen Mazarin a report. He had taken down her number, and he called her now on his cell phone. He reported essentially that there was nothing to report, but that he didn’t see any real cause for alarm. He’d look into it a little further, though.

The boat, she said. Had he seen the boat? He told her he’d have a look at it on his way home. Would he like her to come with him?

It would be no problem, she could be out the door in half a minute.

He said he didn’t think he’d have any trouble finding it. The Boat Basin wasn’t that large, and how many boats was he likely to encounter named the Nancy Dee? It was nice of her to offer, but he figured he’d know Shevlin’s boat when he saw it.

But if it wasn’t there?

Well, he said patiently, then there’d be nothing to see, would there? She was still thinking about that one when he rang off.

T H E B O A T W A S T H E R E , and he didn’t have any trouble finding it.

There were three ramps leading across the water to the floating docks where the boats were moored, and each had a locked gate restricting access to boaters. The locks looked easy to get through, and even easier to get around. All you had to do was step over the thigh-high railing to the side of the gate, take a few careful steps along the concrete ledge and one big step over the water to the ramp, and you’d finessed the whole business. If you did this furtively, anyone watching would spot you for an intruder. If you acted with the casual nonchalance that was the birthright of every policeman, an observer would figure you’d left your key home.

He walked down the ramp, made his way through the maze of floating docks, found the Nancy Dee, and climbed aboard. It struck him as comfortable enough, and probably seaworthy. Nothing you’d want to cross the ocean in, or sail around the Horn, but it looked as though you could take it on the water if you had to, which was more than you could say about a lot of the moldering old wrecks tied up at the piers.

The entrance to the cabin—he didn’t suppose you called it a door—was locked. He squinted through the glass—he didn’t suppose you called it a window—and couldn’t see any signs of life. He knocked, listened, knocked again.

Behind him, and not all that far behind him, a man asked him what he wanted.

He turned, saw a heavyset man about forty, with untrimmed dark hair and an untrimmed full beard. He could have played heavies in pirate movies. The man’s question was reasonable enough, but for the first time Buckram was just as glad he’d brought the gun along.

“I’m trying to find Peter Shevlin,” he said. “You know him?”

“I know there’s nobody home on that boat.”

“So do I, now that I knocked. Do you know Shevlin?”

“Don’t pay much mind to names,” the man said. “So I won’t even ask you yours.”

And don’t ask me mine, seemed implicit in the statement.

“You know the man who owns this boat?”

“You some kind of a cop?”

“I’m trying to get in touch with Mr. Shevlin,” he said.

“You didn’t exactly answer the question, did you?”

“Why should I? You haven’t answered any of mine.”

“People around here mostly got better things to do than answer questions, especially when they don’t know who’s asking ’em. One thing we do know, we know you don’t go on a man’s boat without an invitation. You’re standing on his deck.” The son of a bitch had a point. He got back onto the pier, and the man yawned, showing Buckram what he’d obviously not shown a dentist in ages.

He said, “Answer a question, and save us both some trouble.

Have you seen Shevlin in the past two weeks?”

“I don’t keep much track of time. Or of who I seen and when I seen ’em.”

“Has anybody taken the boat out recently?”

“What’s it matter?”

What he wanted to do was kick the big son of a bitch in the knee. Knock his leg out from under him, then shove him off the pier and into the water. The water was no pure mountain stream, but he’d come out of it cleaner than when he went in.

But then, grudgingly, the dipshit answered the question. Sometimes the old man boarded the boat at night. Took it out for a couple of hours, then brought it in.

That was all he was going to get, and as much as he’d expected.

Nor did he figure to get much more from anybody else. He’d do better going into some dark holler in the Ozarks and asking if there were any illegal stills operating nearby. He understood those folks really knew how to make you feel welcome.

thirty-five

THE CARPENTER, WEARING his yachting clothes, the cap perched jauntily on his head, sat on a shaded bench in Riverside Park. He waited while the shadows deepened and the last of the sunset’s glow faded from the darkening sky. He didn’t see anyone coming or going from the Boat Basin, and judged it safe to board the Nancy Dee.

He was doing just that when a voice said, “Hey, Shevlin.” The gun was in the cabin, clipped to the top of the little chest of drawers. He had the key to the cabin in his hand. If he could just ignore the voice long enough to get into the cabin and get to the pistol . . .

“Isn’t that your name? That’s who he was askin’ for.” So this person didn’t know Peter Shevlin, wouldn’t unmask him as an imposter. And his information might be important.

The Carpenter turned, smiled at a black-bearded mountain of a man, a Hell’s Angel costumed as a wharf rat. “We never met, but I seen you around,” the man said. “Don’t want to stick my nose in, it’s not my nature, but you had a visitor, and I figured you’d want to know about it.” And he told of a man who’d come aboard the Nancy Dee late that afternoon, a well-dressed middle-aged man who sounded like a cop.

“But he didn’t flash any tin, and he didn’t push it like a cop would. And he got off your boat when I called him on it.”

“There’s a lawsuit,” the Carpenter said. “They want me to appear as a witness, and it’s all very tiresome.”

“Figured it was something like that. Just thought you’d like to know about it.”

“That was thoughtful of you. I appreciate it.”

“Hey,” the man said, “we got to stick together, you know?” He grinned. “We’re all in the same boat.”

O N E L O O K A T T H E river told you it was a holiday weekend. Even at this hour there were still plenty of boats out. He loved the way they looked, small private craft enjoying the city’s great harbor. The little sailboats were especially attractive, and it looked like fun, sailing around as they did, pushed by the wind. It would be silent on a sailboat, too. You wouldn’t have the noise of the boat’s engine.

But you’d have to know what you were doing. He supposed it was the sort of thing a person could learn, and felt a momentary pang of regret that he never had. It was something one ought to have done earlier in life, and for a few minutes he allowed himself a fantasy of what might have been, pictured himself at the helm of a small sailboat, accompanied by his wife and children. He’d bark out orders— Mind the boom! Hoist the jib! —and they’d hasten to carry them out. He didn’t know what the words meant, but he’d have learned that whole vocabulary, and they’d sail away the hours, sail away the days.

Someone had put his feet on the deck of the Nancy Dee. Someone had come around snooping, asking questions, looking for Peter Shevlin.