Small Town

Small Town Page 71

“Oh, yes,” she said softly, and pressed his hands tighter against her throat. “Oh, please, yes.”

H E A W A K E N E D T O T H E smell of coffee brewing.

It was the perfect aroma to wake up to, and in fact you could use the coffeemaker as an olfactory alarm clock if you wanted, loading it up with coffee grounds and water, and setting it to start its brewing cycle when you wanted to get up. That had always struck him as too much trouble, but here was the perfect solution: have someone sleep over, and let her wake up before you.

And bring you coffee in bed, which she did a moment later.

She was dressed, and looked beautiful. “I went out for the Times,” she said. “It’s a holiday weekend, so it’s smaller than usual.

It only weighs ten pounds.”

She’d been about to wake him, she said, if the smell of the coffee hadn’t done the job. His interview with Matt Lauer was due to air in ten minutes. Meanwhile here was the Book Review section.

They sat on the couch with separate sections of the newspaper.

The TV was on and tuned to the right channel, with the sound muted until the show came on. He tried to read a review of the latest offering by a South American magic realist, then tried to read Marilyn Stasio’s crime fiction column. But his mind kept wander-ing away, imagining the reviews Darker Than Water might get.

Would they like it? Would they hate it? Did it matter?

And there was Matt Lauer, wearing the same jacket he’d worn the day before. He put the sound on, set the paper aside. His interview would probably be later on in the show, but he wanted to watch the whole program.

Beside him, Susan leaned gently against him, and he put an arm around her, drew her close. Jesus, a new game, Hide the Banana. How’d he get so lucky?

And then he remembered how she’d taken his hands and put them on her throat, how she’d kept them there, pressing them to her. Please, she’d said, as if begging.

He sensed something unpleasant, some unthinkable thought, hovering just out of sight, just out of reach. He took a breath and willed it away and made himself pay attention to what Matt Lauer was saying.

thirty-seven

CHANNEL-SURFING, BUCKRAM happened on Matt Lauer, interviewing a terrorism expert on parallels between the Carpenter and the demento with the mail-order anthrax. The most striking point of similarity, he thought, was that so far nobody had managed to catch either one of them. It had been almost a year since Mr. Anthrax started spreading his powdered cheer, long enough for him to have slipped everybody’s mind, including, apparently, the fucking Bureau.

He stayed with the show, though, muting it during the commercial, and the next segment paired Lauer with John Blair Creighton, the writer, whom Buckram had seen last at Stelli’s. The guy had been on top of the world that night, and he looked even happier now, happier than anyone had a right to look on a Sunday morning.

Right off the bat, he found out the reason. Somehow he’d missed hearing that the DA’s office had thrown in the sponge and dropped charges. Nice for Creighton, he thought. Had to feel good if he was really innocent, and had to feel even better if he wasn’t.

And then Creighton was giving credit to Jim Galvin, mentioning him by name, saying he’d worked the case on his own time.

He watched the show through to the end, then found Galvin’s number and called. It was busy, but he got through five minutes later when he tried again.

“I know two things about you now,” Galvin said, before he could say more than hello. “You’ve got cable and you skipped church this morning.”

“Everybody’s got cable,” he said, “and I’ve skipped church every morning for the past twenty years. Longer than that, if you don’t count weddings and christenings. That was some nice pat on the back he just gave you, and some nice piece of work you did.”

“Phone’s been ringing off the hook,” Galvin said. “Of course I never saw it myself. I was watching female bodybuilders on ESPN Two.”

“If I’d known about that,” he said, “I wouldn’t have wasted my time on Matt Lauer. Seriously, congratulations. It’s gonna bring you some business. Plus some offers to be on some shows yourself, which’ll bring in more business.”

“Yeah, but don’t worry. I’ll fuck up a few cases and be right back where I am now. But thanks, Fran. I got lucky, but it’s luck I made for myself, so I don’t mind taking a bow for it. And I got the guy out from under, and that’s something.”

“You think he really didn’t do it?”

“No, the DA gave him a walk because he’s got such a nice smile.”

“He was using it a lot this morning,” Buckram said. “That’s one happy fella. Seriously, what’s your best guess?”

“The man paid me,” he said, “which he legally didn’t have to do, although in another sense he did have to. But he also gave me a nice bonus, which he definitely didn’t have to do, plus he sent over a case of booze.”

“Your brand?”

“Better. I drink Jameson, and that’s what he sent, but he made it the twelve-year-old.”

“Only an innocent man could do a thing like that.”

“My reasoning exactly,” Galvin said.

H E W A L K E D U P T O Seventy-ninth Street, took a bus, got off at West End Avenue, and walked the rest of the way to the Boat Basin. The Nancy Dee was right where it had been when he’d been warned off it by the very guy who always used to beat the shit out of Popeye until he downed the can of spinach. That’s who he looked like, the surly son of a bitch.

No point in moving in for a closer look. No point in coming here at all today. He had a damn good explanation for Helen Mazarin, although he wasn’t going to bother delivering it. Shevlin had taken a trip somewhere, and yes, his boat left its slip occasionally, and not because some friend of Shevlin’s had been given permission to take it for a spin. That tub of shit with the beard had borrowed it without permission, he or one of the other lovelies who lived there. Knew the owner was out of town, and their own waterlogged wrecks weren’t going anywhere, so why not sail away on the Nancy Dee? He couldn’t imagine anybody who knew boats would have a hard time gaining entry or starting the engine, and if they brought it back Shevlin would never know it had been gone.

Obvious, once you thought of it.

He just missed his bus back across town. Typical, he thought. A wasted trip gets a little longer. And this was Sunday, so God knew when there’d be another.

He caught a cab and went home.

H E W A S G O I N G T H R O U G H his notebook, tearing out pages with obsolete and often meaningless notes on them, and came to a phone number. WW, and ten numbers starting with 202.

It took him a minute, but then he cracked the code. W. Weingartner, and the W would be Walter or Winifred or Wilma, or maybe Why Bother.

He picked up the phone, dialed the number, and a woman answered. He asked for Wallace Weingartner, and she said, “Yes.” When she left it at that, he said, “Uh, is Mr. Weingartner at home?”

“I’m sorry,” she said, “but I never respond to telephone solicita-tion. In fact this number is on a national Don’t Call list, and you’re in violation of a federal regulation. I suggest you act accordingly.”

And she hung up.

The day, he thought, was just getting better and better. He hung up himself, and went into the kitchen to see if there was a cup of coffee left in the pot. He was pouring it when he realized the voice had sounded familiar, though he couldn’t place it. Maybe all irri-

tated women sounded alike. God knows there were enough of them around.

He picked up the phone, pressed Redial. When she answered he said, “I’m not a telemarketer. I’m trying to reach the Wallace Weingartner who’s a department head at Fitzmaurice & Liebold.”

“That would be me.”

“Yeah, that was you on your office voice mail. I knew I’d heard it somewhere. I’m sorry, because of the name I assumed—”

“Of course you did,” she said. “Everybody does. It’s W- a- l- l- i- s, my mother was absolutely starry-eyed nuts about the Duchess of Windsor, and I’ve spent my whole life trying to figure out why. I don’t think I got your name.”

“Francis Buckram,” he said. “That’s Francis with an i.” She had a good laugh, rich and generous. “I thought it might be,” she said. “How can I help you?”

He explained that he was calling on behalf of neighbors of Peter Shevlin, trying to find out what had become of the man.

“I believe he’s ill,” she said. “He failed to come in one day and didn’t call, which is very unlike Peter, and later that same day I had a call from either a cousin or brother of his, I don’t remember which.”

“Saying that he was ill.”

“Yes, and I got the impression that it was serious, the sort of thing one doesn’t recover quickly from.” She paused, then said, “If at all.”

“I see.”

“I was shocked,” she said, “because Peter had been perfectly fine the day before, though he’s not a young man, and I guess things can happen suddenly. But the brother rang off before I could ask him how we could reach Peter. We’d have sent flowers, of course, and called to find out more about his condition.”

“And you never heard anything further.”

“Not yet, no. I’ve been hoping the brother would call back, but so far he hasn’t.”

He told her he’d let her know if he learned anything, and gave her his own number in case she found out more before he did.

After he’d rung off he still realized he had no idea what sort of business Fitzmaurice & Liebold carried on, or what Peter Shevlin did there.

Whatever it was, he had a feeling he wouldn’t be doing it anymore.

F I R S T, T H O U G H , H E S P E N T the better part of an hour on the phone, doing what he should have thought to do yesterday. He called area hospitals, trying to find one that had Peter Shevlin for a patient. He didn’t think Shevlin was in a hospital, didn’t think he was alive, but he had to make the calls to rule out the possibility.

Hadn’t the Carpenter done this before? In Brooklyn, in Boerum Hill. Hadn’t he called Evelyn Crispin’s office, said she’d been called out of town?

So that no one would come looking for her.

So that he could live in her apartment, water her plants, feed her goddamn cat. Live there in perfect comfort, at least until the smell got too bad and drove him out.

He might have moved on by now. Might have holed up on Shevlin’s houseboat for a few days or a week. But he’d have killed Shevlin somewhere else, not on the boat, so he wouldn’t have the same problem he’d had with Crispin.

Unless his visit yesterday had spooked him somehow, in which case he was in the wind. So long, see you later.

But he didn’t think so. He’d had a feeling about this one right from the start, from the minute Susan started telling him an apparently pointless story about someone neither of them knew.

Right away he’d thought of the Carpenter. That was the only thing he thought of, the only thing that could have made him take even a cursory interest in the business, let alone get off his ass and get involved.