Fire Season (18 page)

“You'd think after making so many of them, he'd eventually get good at it.”

Coffin looked at the merganser more closely. Its beak was slightly off-center, its feathers were lumpy, its eyes out of whack.

“Look at the paint job,” Lola said. “It's like a kid did it.”

She was right—the paint was messy, thick and gloppy in some spots, scant and spotty in others. “Huh,” Coffin said. “Maybe this is an early one.”

Lola retrieved an eider from the mantel. It was as poorly made as the merganser, as were the wood duck, the teal, and the mallard Coffin took from the shelves.

“Okay,” Lola said, after they'd examined another dozen of the decoys. “This is something I clearly don't get about men.”

“You mean, how we can spend thousands of dollars on a hobby and still suck at it?”

“Well, yeah. It just seems like such a waste of money and time. It's like the more inherently pointless it is, the more obsessed you-all get. I'm not upsetting you, am I? I mean, you're not secretly into model trains or anything, right?”

Coffin laughed. “I tried playing golf for a while,” he said. “I did pretty well at first—kind of got sucked in. There's nothing like the feeling of hitting a good drive—no matter how frustrating the rest of the game was, one or two good shots in a round were enough to keep me coming back.”

“Were you, like, incredibly bored with your life then?”

“Totally,” Coffin said. “It was a long time ago. Thank God I stopped getting better. After a few months I developed a wicked slice—if there was water or a sand trap, I was in it. I'd hit the ball into the parking lot, into the club swimming pool if they had one, onto the practice green, you name it. Finally it occurred to me that life is humiliating enough without golf. I haven't played since.”

Lola picked up a wooden grebe and looked into its off-kilter eyes. “But life was not humiliating enough without this duck, apparently. Not for Branstool.”

“Maybe the passion just hadn't worn off yet,” Coffin said. “I bought a whole new set of clubs before I realized the problem wasn't the clubs.”

Lola turned the grebe over. “Huh,” she said. She held it up, showed it to Coffin. “Look what I found.”

Coffin took the grebe; it was faintly tacky to the touch. There was a neat seam running around its underside, a fine indentation visible through the paint. “Well now,” he said. “This is interesting.” He tapped the grebe with his fingernail; it emitted a hollow
thwonk
.

Lola picked up another duck, but it appeared to be solid. After checking six more, they found another that had been hollowed out. Then after eight more, another.

“Are you thinking what I'm thinking?” Lola said, after they'd found five hollow ducks.

“I'm thinking I wish we had a drug dog,” Coffin said.

“So, smuggling?”

Coffin nodded. “Not a lot of volume, so something pricey—high-quality heroin or coke, maybe.”

“Could be some other smuggling thing,” Lola said. “Diamonds. Krugerrands.”

“And any minute now Cary Grant could jump in through the window,” Coffin said.

Lola punched him in the shoulder.

“Ow,” Coffin said, arm tingling. He shook his head. “It's weird. He's making the ducks in the wood shop—loading them with God-knows-what that probably comes in on a fishing boat or a yacht, and shipping them off, where?”

“What are the odds he kept meticulous records in an easy-to-decipher spreadsheet program on his desktop computer?”

“Ha. A girl can dream.”

“It doesn't make sense,” Lola said. “Who smuggles coke inside a wooden duck? Plain old FedEx isn't good enough? It's so … elaborate.”

Coffin held the grebe up in front of Lola's face. “What looks less suspicious than a duck?” he said. “Seriously, look at his little face. The sincerity!”

“Don't make me hit you again,” Lola said.

*   *   *

The search for Branstool's stash box didn't go well. Coffin combed the ground floor, while Lola took the upstairs bedrooms. They looked in closets, bathroom and kitchen cabinetry, dressers, behind the bookshelves full of ducks, behind the watery, blue-green pictures on the walls—checking especially for hidden panels and false bottoms, any concealed space big enough to contain a quantity of cash, drugs, or weapons. When they were done, they were careful to put everything back in its place. After an hour and a half, they met downstairs in the living room. Coffin flopped onto the big, beige sectional couch.

“Nada,” he said. “You?”

“Zip,” Lola said. “That drug dog might come in handy—you're right.”

“I'll call Mancini. The state police have a few. Assuming their budget hasn't been cut.”

“There's still the garage. And the wood shop.”

“I'm not entirely sure I can go back into the wood shop,” Coffin said. “It's pretty bad up there.”

Lola shrugged. “Fine. You do the garage, I'll take the wood shop.”

There was a commotion in the front foyer, and then two big men dressed in jeans and leather car coats strode into the living room.

“Be still, my heart,” Bitters said. “It's
him
.”

“Oh, to touch the hem of his blues,” Hump said.

“So you met Adams,” Coffin said.

“Nice kid,” Hump said. “He wants you to autograph his chest.”

Bitters unbuttoned his coat. “He wants to have your baby.”

“So what brings you gentlemen out this way?” Coffin said.

“Oh, you know,” Hump said. “Investigating and shit. You?”

Coffin told them about the ducks, but not about the search for Branstool's stash box.

“That's interesting,” Hump said, stroking his chin. “Hollow ducks.” He looked at Bitters.

“Maybe they float better,” Bitters said, looking at Hump.

“Right,” Hump said. “That's probably it.”

“Why don't you two go get a bite?” Bitters said. “We'll take it from here.”

“Absolutely,” Hump said, tapping on one of the hollow ducks. “You two look exhausted. Go get a tasty beverage. We'll make sure nothing gets overlooked.”

Coffin nodded. “Sure. You guys help yourselves. We're pretty much done here.”

“Yep,” Lola said. “Knock yourselves out.”

*   *   *

Outside, the wind had grown chill and sharp, and the sun was already going down. Long shadows stretched from the house and garage. Coffin's shadow looked monstrous—long legs and torso, tiny little pinhead. He waved. His shadow waved back, freakish, demented.

“If I didn't know better,” Lola said, “I'd think those mutts were trying to get rid of us.”

Coffin grinned. “Ya think?” He wanted a cigarette. He thought about bumming one from Adams, but resisted the urge. Instead he asked Adams for the keys to the garage.

“Those two state police detectives,” Adams said, keys jingling as he handed them over. “They weren't too happy when I told them you were here.”

“No,” Coffin said. “I don't imagine they were.”

*   *   *

Coffin's search of the garage yielded nothing new. He thought again that it was probably the cleanest garage he'd ever seen—not a drop of oil on the floor, nothing out of place. The cars were immaculate, too—as though Branstool had had them polished every day, but didn't actually drive them. Coffin was about to go bum a cigarette from Adams when Lola came pounding down the stairs from the wood shop in her engineer boots.

“Frank!” she said. “I've got something.”

“Great,” Coffin said. “It had to be in the wood shop.”

Climbing the stairs, he felt dizzy—his legs suddenly too long, the wooden steps slanted and far away. He stopped, took a deep breath, then kept climbing.

“It might not be anything,” Lola said when they'd stepped into the wood shop, “but it sure looks like a hidey-hole.” She'd pulled aside a wheeled metal shelving unit full of small power tools: behind it, a section had been cut out of the drywall just above the wood shop's floor and then replaced with drywall screws. It looked innocent enough—it could have given access to the plumbing, or hidden the wiring necessary to install a flat-screen TV. It was about two feet square—plenty big enough for a good-sized lockbox, Coffin thought.

“We've got about five minutes,” Coffin said, trying not to look at the blood-splattered corner where the radial arm saw crouched. “Find me a cordless drill and a Phillips bit, would you?”

“Ask and you shall receive,” Lola said, handing Coffin a Makita drill with a bit already in the chuck. “I was going to take the panel off myself and surprise you,” she said, when Coffin shot her a look, “but I figured that being a man you'd want to do the part that involved tools.”

“Thank God somebody's watching out for my ego,” Coffin said, backing out the first of the four drywall screws holding the panel in place.

“See?” Lola said. “Look at you go.”

The last three screws came out just as easily, and Coffin lifted the panel carefully from its rough frame.

“Well, now,” Lola said. “What have we got here?”

“Come to Papa,” Coffin said.

 

Chapter 16

“Okay,” Lola said. “Now what?”

They were in the Crown Vic, heading back toward Provincetown. To the right, Pilgrim Lake was silver gray in the lowering light; to the left, behind Beach Point's neat row of cottages, the bay spread out toward the horizon. Coffin felt himself yearning toward them, their strange romantic tug.

“I could use a drink,” Coffin said. “How about you?”

“Sure—but what about the you-know-what?”

A black leather gym bag bulged on the backseat. It was packed with bricks of light brown heroin, tightly wrapped in plastic bags.

“We could sell it,” Coffin said.

“Yep,” Lola said. “We could.”

“Fun to think about.”

“Mm-hm.”

“I could totally use a new car.”

“I thought you said Jamie was getting a minivan.”

“Right.”

There was a minute or two of silence, broken only by the low growl of the Crown Vic's big V8 and the rushing of the wind.

“How much do you think it's worth?” Lola said finally.

“Depends how much it weighs,” Coffin said. “A million? Two? Who knows.”

“Think it's real? Not just brown sugar or something?”

“It's real.”

There was another silence. Lola reached into the glove box, found a pack of gum, opened it, and folded a stick into her mouth. A faint whiff of artificial mint drifted through the Crown Vic's interior.

“I'm going to hand it over to Gault,” Coffin said.

“You trust her?”

“Even if I don't,” Coffin said, “it establishes a clear chain of custody, with witnesses. She'll hand it over to Mancini, maybe, or the FBI.”

“Bitters and Hump aren't going to be happy.”

Coffin laughed—a sharp bark. “They might still end up with it, is the funny part. Where it goes after Mancini or the Feds get it is anybody's guess. But at least we made it a little more complicated for them.”

“Frank?”

“Mm?”

“You ever think about cashing in—seriously?”

“Who hasn't?” Coffin said.

“You had opportunities, though. Back in Baltimore.”

“Me? Not so much, in homicide. The guys in narcotics—that's a different story. You'd hear all kinds of stuff. Bribes, shakedowns, robberies. Big sacks of cash or drugs lying around—if you find it first, nobody knows how much is in there but you, right? Stuff disappearing out of the evidence cage. You name it, it happens—and if you play it smart…”

“Frank?”

“You're asking?” Coffin leaned back in his seat. “Really?”

Lola kept her eyes on the road. “No. Not really.”

“I had a partner in homicide—great guy. Rashid Johnson. Before I worked with him he was a narcotics detective for awhile, and one night when we were out for drinks after a rough shift he told me this story. You ready?”

“Sure. Ready.”

“Okay. So Rashid's a young detective, and he's got this older partner named Rizzuto. Rizzuto's a decent guy, a little on the take but not a big-time crook the way a lot of the guys in narcotics are. He pays a call on a distributor he's been after—guy they called Woodrow—stops by his apartment. Rizzuto's undercover, doing his very convincing mob guy routine—the full Tony Soprano, right? He's almost ready to make the big buy he's been setting up for weeks, that's his story.”

“Got it.”

“Woodrow's place is a penthouse—zebra rugs, gold chandeliers, full view of the harbor, the whole bit—Woodrow's big-time. He's not home—but his girlfriend is. She wants to have a drink, so they have a drink. Then she wants to do a few lines, so they do a few lines.
Then
she tells Rizzuto she's pissed at Woodrow because he's been fooling around with the other strippers at her club.”

“So she's a stripper?”

“Right—and she's gorgeous. Big, tall redhead—and Rizzuto's got a thing for redheads, right?”

“Where's Rashid?”

“He's home sick. Can I tell the story now?”

“Sorry.”

“So Rizzuto's there by himself—Rashid's home sick. Okay? And the pissed off stripper girlfriend practically jumps out of her panties and does Rizzuto right there on the couch. He's loving it—he's thinking it's his lucky day. Then, when they're done, she leads him to the hall closet and hands him a suitcase and says, ‘Take it! I don't want this shit in my house no more.' He looks inside and it's full of coke and hundred-dollar bills. Rizzuto's thrilled—his ship's come in, right? But he's a little nervous—something doesn't feel quite right. So the girlfriend—get this—does him
again,
down on her knees in the front hall.”