Close to the Bone (19 page)

“Well,” he said, “it’s what I’m doing, and I can’t help what other people think.” He hesitated, then said, “Are the police investigating my—my disappearance?”

“No, I don’t think so. Not actively, anyway. You’re missing at sea, as far as they’re concerned. Some day your body may wash up somewhere.”

“Good,” he said. “That’s good.”

“But I’ve got to tell Olivia, Paul. She’s hurting.”

He shook his head. “No way. If she knows, she’ll be hurt and confused for the rest of her life. I expect now she’s grieving. Fine. She’ll get over that. I’m dead. Out of her life. It’s done, and it’s final, and she’ll move on.”

“I’d be irresponsible not to tell her.”

“You’d violate my trust if you told her. You’re my lawyer.”

“I’m her lawyer, too.”

“Since when do you tell one client’s secrets to another client?”

“You put me in a tough spot,” I said.

“No. You put yourself in a tough spot by coming up here. As your client, I forbid you from telling anybody what you found out today.”

“Shit, Paul.”

“Think about it.”

“I guess I’ll have to.”

“All you’ve got to do is forget it and leave me alone. It’s really simple. Consider me dead. Don’t screw things up for me.”

“It may be simple,” I said, “but it’s not easy.”

“It
is
easy. Just don’t do anything.”

I thought of Alex. She was moving to Maine. I had to decide whether to go with her. “You’re wrong about that,” I said to Paul. “Choosing to do nothing is still a choice. Not telling Olivia would be very hard. It would be lying.”

“It would be preserving our confidential secret. That’s different.”

“How about another beer?” I said.

“Sure.” He got up and went inside, and a moment later he returned. He handed me another Bud. “I generally go to bed when the sun sets,” he said. “I read for awhile. I go to sleep easy, and I sleep soundly, and I wake up with the birds. I put on some coffee and go for a swim, and then I come back and have a mug or two on the porch and watch the sun come up. I’m doing a little writing. Some of my old cases have given me short story ideas. I don’t think they’re very good yet. But I’m practicing. I row around the pond every afternoon. I practice my fly casting, or sometimes I just drift and dangle a worm over the side and catch enough perch and bluegills for a meal. I chop wood. I walk through the woods. Once a week or so I take the truck to the store and get some groceries. Nobody sends me mail. I pay for everything with cash. There’s no telephone or computer or television. Just a little radio that gets a PBS station.” He shrugged. “I’m trying to cut my life closer to the bone, that’s all.”

“Simplify, simplify,” I said.

“Thoreau,” he said. “Sure. Old Mister Midlife Crisis himself. I’ve been reading
Walden
as I sit here listening to the birds and smelling the pines and trying to stop frittering away my life in details. Henry showed us the way.”

“Hole up in a cabin in the woods.”

“Why not? That’s what he did. He made a convincing case for it.”

“Well,” I said, “I do know some things about quiet desperation. I just don’t see how you can run away from it. But if you can carry it off, good luck to you.”

“I
can
carry it off, Brady. You’re the only one who can spoil it for me.”

“I’ll think about it,” I said. I gazed at the pond for a few minutes, then said, “Maybe you can answer a question for me.”

“Maybe,” said Paul.

“Is it Thomas Gall you’re running from?”

“Gall?”

“Don’t pretend you don’t know the name.”

“Oh, I wasn’t.” He sipped from his beer. I thought he wasn’t going to answer me, but after a long silence, he said, “How’d you find out about Gall?”

“I didn’t find out anything, really. Just that he’d visited you on Plum Island.”

“He did,” he said. “We got some things straightened out.”

“The man threatened to get you.”

“Well, as you can see, he didn’t.”

“He threatened me, too,” I said.

Paul turned to me. “Huh?”

“A couple nights ago. At your place, when I found your telephone bills.”

“He was there?”

I nodded.

“What’d he do?”

“He hit me. He grabbed me by the throat. He said if I didn’t leave him alone he’d kill me.” I shrugged. “That’s all.”

Paul chuckled.

“That’s funny?” I said.

“No, not really. I was just thinking. You probably figured Gall had dumped me off my boat. You thought he was a desperate murderer. But, as you can see, he didn’t do anything to me. Don’t be afraid of Gall. He’s all ripped up inside. But I don’t think he’s gonna kill anyone.”

“He might’ve already,” I said.

“Huh?”

“Glen Falconer’s in the hospital.”

“Falconer? What happened?”

“Hit and run. He was riding a bicycle.”

“A bicycle?”

“Yes. He’d given up driving cars because he couldn’t give up drinking. Someone ran him down last Saturday night. He’s in bad shape.”

“He was driving his bike while he was drunk?”

“I guess so.”

Paul snorted. “That’s pretty fucking funny.”

“You think so?”

“Sure. In an ironic sort of way. Another vehicular homicide, DUI. Except now the drunk’s the victim. And he’s riding a bike.”

“Irony isn’t always funny,” I said.

“Valid point,” said Paul. “So you think it was Gall?”

“It makes sense, doesn’t it?”

“Maybe it does,” he said. “Still, I wouldn’t worry about Gall. He’s a mess. Anyone would be in his situation. If he ran down Falconer—well, I can see that. But he won’t hurt you.”

“I’m vastly comforted,” I said.

We sat in silence. The darkness that had filled the woods was seeping out into the clearing in front of the cottage. After awhile, Paul got up and went inside. He turned on a lamp. Its light filtered out the windows onto the porch. It cast shadows around the cottage and made the sky look black.

From behind the screen door, he said, “Another beer?”

“No. I’ve got to drive home.”

“Why not stay for supper? I’ll fry up some potatoes, open a can of beans.”

“I’ve got to get going. Thanks anyway.”

Paul came back out and sat beside me. We were silent for a few minutes, then he said, “What’re you thinking, Brady?”

I shrugged. “Nothing, really. I guess I’m just glad to know you’re alive.”

“Yeah, I’m alive.”

I turned to him. “How are you really, Paul?”

“I’m healing.” He smiled. “It’s slow. I’m working on it. Good days and not-so-good days. It was good to see you, Brady.”

“It was good to see you, too,” I said.

“Don’t come back, though, okay?”

“I wasn’t planning to.”

“Nothing personal.”

“I understand.”

I got up and went to my car. Paul followed.

“I almost forgot,” I said. “I’ve got a message for you.”

“You can’t.” He grinned. “I’m dead.”

“Eddie Vaccaro says he needs you.”

“Vaccaro?” He hissed out a quick breath. “I’m not what that son of a bitch needs.”

“He thinks the Russo family’s got a contract on him. He wants to go into the witness protection program.”

“Did you advise him to go to the feds?”

“Of course. But he wants you. You’re the only one he trusts.”

Paul laughed quickly. “I hope Russo gets him.”

“He thinks pretty highly of you.”

“It’s hardly mutual. It was defending guys like Eddie Vaccaro that made me fall out of my boat.” He hesitated for a moment, then said, “Vaccaro went to you, huh?”

“Yes. He showed up in my office last week.”

“Fuck him,” said Paul softly. “You absolutely must not tell him anything.”

“I won’t,” I said. “But I want to tell you, Eddie Vaccaro is a very scary guy. He made me take a fee so he’d be a legitimate client and I’d have to protect his confidentiality. I think he would’ve shot me in the eye if I’d refused.”

“Yeah,” said Paul. “He probably would’ve.”

C
HARLIE WAS WAITING AT
our regular table at Marie’s when I got there a little after noon on Friday. He was sipping coffee and peering through his reading glasses at some legal-looking papers, and when I pulled out the chair across from him and sat down, he looked up and said, “Where’ve you been?”

I looked at my watch. “I’m five minutes late.”

He nodded. “Exactly. You’re late.”

“Shit, Charlie.”

“Do the math, Coyne. Five minutes is a measurable percentage of your lifetime. You shouldn’t waste it.”

Charlie McDevitt is the chief prosecutor for the Boston office of the Department of Justice. He’s also my old Yale law school roommate, fishing and golfing partner, and best friend. We help each other out from time to time in exchange for a lunch at Marie’s. Usually it’s Charlie who helps me and I’m the one who pays for the best non-North End Italian food in Boston.

But this time he’d invited me to lunch. I assumed he wanted something.

“Sorry I kept you waiting,” I said. “But you’re usually not so damned crabby about it. What’s up?”

He took off his glasses, folded them, and tucked them into the inside pocket of his suit jacket. He slid the papers into his briefcase, which sat on the floor beside his chair. Then he put his elbows onto the table, rested his chin on his clasped hands, and looked at me. “Eddie Vaccaro,” he said.

“What about him?”

“Exactly. What about him?”

“Is that what this is about?” I said. “Here I am, thinking my old pal wants to buy me lunch, talk fishing, reminisce about our days in New Haven, tell a few jokes, and what it really is, he wants to play quiz games with me.”

“A week ago Wednesday,” said Charlie, “at one-thirty-seven
P.M.
, Edward R. Vaccaro, a killer in the employ of Vincent Russo, who, as you probably know, the Feebs have been trying to nail for years, entered a certain one-man law office in Copley Square. He emerged at four-forty-two. As you undoubtedly also know, a couple years ago this Vaccaro, who makes a pretty decent living by shooting people in the eye with a twenty-two-caliber automatic pistol, refused to testify against Russo, even when given the opportunity to exchange an almost certain life term in a federal penitentiary for immunity from prosecution and life membership in the witness protection program. He went to trial and,
mirabile dictu
, a clever Boston defense attorney managed to outmaneuver a contingent of federal prosecuting attorneys. Vaccaro went free. No testimony. No Vincent Russo.”

“Charlie—”

“Very embarrassing,” he said. “It looked like a lock. We assumed somewhere in the course of the trial, Vaccaro and his smart lawyer would see the light and come across for us.”

“Paul Cizek,” I said, “being the smart lawyer.”

“And your client, right?”

I shrugged. “You know better, Charlie.”

“Sure, okay. Client privilege.”

“You don’t have to tell me about Vaccaro,” I said. “I know who he is.”

“I’m sure you do,” said Charlie. “You probably also know why he spent over three hours in your office nine days ago.”

“I do,” I said. “How’d you know he was there?”

“How do you think?”

“Oh, sure,” I said. “He’s being followed.”

“Yes. And the reports come to me. And when I read that he appears to be lining up a new attorney, I figure something’s afoot. And I want to know what it is. So when this new attorney happens to be the one guy who—”

“Charlie,” I said. “Please don’t.”

“Vaccaro’s a cold-blooded killer,” said Charlie. “And Vinny Russo’s not exactly your Mr. Rogers, either. He gets kids hooked on drugs. He pays money to have people murdered. He lures young girls into prostitution. He—”

“You don’t have to tell me this,” I said.

“How do you think it looks?” he said. “Vaccaro hires Cizek, refuses our deal, and Cizek gets him off. Then Cizek, who’s your client, turns up missing, probably dead. And then Vaccaro shows up in your office? And it just happens that you are my best friend?”

“I don’t know what you’re thinking,” I said, “but whatever it is, it’s wrong.”

Charlie sat back and shook his head slowly. “I’m sure it is, Brady. I don’t like what I’m thinking. I want you to straighten me out.”

“I wish I could.”

“Meaning what?”

“I met with Vaccaro for about twenty minutes. I will not meet with him again. But for reasons that you should be able to infer, I can’t tell you what we talked about.”

“You accepted a fee from Eddie Vaccaro?” Charlie shook his head.

“Charlie, shit—”

He held up his hand. “I can imagine how it was, Brady. He’s a frightening man. I don’t blame you.”

“Believe me, Charlie—”

“Forget it,” he said. He cocked his head and peered at me. “This has something to do with Paul Cizek’s death, doesn’t it?”

“Tell you what,” I said. “Let’s order lunch. Then I’ll tell you something. How’s that?”

“You’ll actually tell me something? Wow.”

“Don’t, Charlie. You know you can trust me.”

He nodded. “I always thought I could.” He looked around, lifted his hand, and a moment later one of the BU undergraduates who Marie hires to wait tables came over.

Her name was Ellie, and she wore a gold stud in her nose and a gold cross around her neck. She told us she was a physics major with a minor in music and an ambition to go to law school. Charlie told her the law was a fine profession, and I didn’t contradict him.

Charlie ordered the cannelloni, and I settled on the antipasto for one.

After Ellie left, I said, “I can tell you that Vaccaro wanted me to deliver a message to Paul Cizek. I can’t tell you what that message was.”

“Wait a minute,” said Charlie. “Didn’t Vaccaro know that Cizek had died?”

“He didn’t seem to believe that Paul was dead.”

“And that’s why he went to you? Because he thought Cizek was still alive?”

“Seemed peculiar to me,” I said. “At the time.”

Charlie sat back and stared at me for a moment. Then he nodded. “At the time,” he repeated. “You’ve learned something since then.”

“I wish I could talk about it.”

Charlie began nodding. “Cizek isn’t dead, is he?”

“If I’d known what was on your mind today,” I said, “I’d have refused to meet with you.”