Tight Lines (21 page)

I remembered the conversation Charlie and I had an hour earlier. “It seems to me,” I said, “that there were people who stood to gain from her death. And,” I added, “vice versa.”

He looked at me and shrugged. “So what do you want?”

“Who’d she talk about?”

“Her father. Her mother.”

“You mentioned she was in love.”

“Yeah, well, she didn’t say with who. Or if she did, I don’t remember. Understand, we were mostly stoned when we had these conversations.”

“Does the name Dave Finn ring a bell?”

He squinted at me. “Yeah, maybe.”

“Sherif Rahmanan?”

“The Arab? Yeah, she talked about him. In the past tense.”

“What about them?”

“They loved her. Like I said, she was a lovable chick. But she didn’t love them.”

“Well, who did she love?”

“Just one guy.”

“Who?”

“Her father.”

“What about her mother?”

He smiled. “Oh, Mary Ellen hated her mother.”

I
T BECAME CLEAR TO
me that Mary Ellen Ames had not confided much in Sid Raiford. He knew nothing of her entanglement with Jill Costello or her affair with Warren McAllister, for example. When they were together, they were just a pair of potheads, both of them old-timers at it despite the thirty-odd years separating them. They’d sit cross-legged on her living room floor sipping red wine and toking and snorting and listening to Mary Ellen’s collection of Beatles and Moody Blues compact discs and reminiscing about the good old days. I got the impression that Raiford did most of the reminiscing. Mary Ellen was still sucking pacifiers during Sid’s good old days.

The fact that Mary Ellen glorified her dead father and had alienated herself from Susan was not news.

Raiford seemed sincerely touched that Mary Ellen would have remembered him in her will, even though he recognized it as a symbolic gesture. After all, she must have assumed that she’d outlive him.

He said he could surely use the money. He’d rather sell the bookstore, but nobody wanted to buy it. One hundred thousand dollars would keep him going for a long time.

Sid Raiford did not strike me as a man who’d kill for an inheritance. On the other hand, if a lawyer learns anything, it’s that predicting people’s behavior on the basis of a personal judgment of their character is folly. Nice people commit crimes. Sometimes violent crimes. Sometimes murder. No one is immune from greed or jealousy, lust or anger.

After a while, he meandered into a nostalgic narrative of his adventures in Selma, Alabama, of candlelit vigils outside LBJ’s White House, of pig-taunting demonstrations in Harvard Square, of acid and speed and heroin. Sid Raiford took kids under his wing, sat out bad trips with them, pulled them out of the paths of club-swinging rednecked policemen, encouraged them to go back home to their parents in Oregon or Michigan. He had been, I understood, a superannuated hippie even then.

So after the undrinkable coffee had cooled in my styrofoam cup, I gently interrupted Raiford and asked him if I could use his phone for a local call. “Help yourself, man,” he said.

My call to the Tufts switchboard was shuttled to the Fletcher School, and thence to Sherif Rahmanan’s office, where a secretary, asking no questions, put me through to him.

“Rahmanan,” he answered, pronouncing it with a guttural “R.”

“It’s Brady Coyne, Professor.”

“Pardon me?”

“You helped me locate Mary Ellen Ames, remember?”

He hesitated. “Oh, yes. Of course.”

“I need to meet with you,” I said.

“I thought we had an agreement, sir.”

“I remember no agreement, Professor. But if we did have one, things have since changed.”

“And how is that?”

“Mary Ellen is dead.”

The silence at the other end of the line lasted so long that finally I said, “Professor? Are you there?”

“I am here,” he said.

“Did you hear me?”

“I did. I assume you are attempting to shock me.”

“No. I’m just telling you the truth. And we must talk.”

“Why?”

“Because you lied to me the first time.”

A pause. Then, “Yes. I see.”

“Do you know the Charles Hotel?”

“I know it,” he said.

“The bar. Top of the stairs on the right. In an hour.”

“Mr. Coyne, I am in the middle of office hours.”

“Cancel them.”

“Yes. All right.”

It was a twenty-minute stroll from Head Start Books in Central Square down Mass Ave. to Harvard Square with the biting autumn wind in my face the whole way. I wandered around the Square for half an hour, ducking into several bookstores to check out their fly-fishing stock. I exercised admirable restraint and resisted making any purchases. I climbed onto a barstool at the Charles ten minutes before Sherif Rahmanan. I was halfway through a Bloody Mary when he arrived.

We shook hands. “Thank you for being prompt,” I said.

“This is a grave matter.”

“Pun?”

He frowned.

The bartender, a young blonde in a short skirt, came over. “Drink, sir?” she said to Rahmanan.

He waved his hand. “Soda water.” He turned to me. “What has happened, Mr. Coyne?”

I told him the parts of the truth I wanted to tell him. While I was talking his drink arrived. He ignored it. I concluded by saying, “So, Professor, whether you like it or not, you are involved.”

“I am
not
involved, sir. Anything between Mary Ellen and me ended a long time ago.”

“That’s not true.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I said it wasn’t true. It’s a lie.” He opened his mouth to speak, but I held up my hand. “Understand me, Professor. I did not ask to meet with you in order to threaten you. But as far as I’m concerned, it’s not at all certain that Mary Ellen’s death was an accident. I am quite prepared to turn over the information I have to the state police.”

This was a mild distortion. In fact, I had already mentioned Sherif Rahmanan’s name to Horowitz, who had so far chosen not to pursue it.

“You
are
threatening me, sir.”

“No. I am simply clarifying my position for you.”

He nodded. “What,” he said softly, “do you want from me?” He was stirring his glass of soda water with the swizzle stick that protruded from it, studying the way the ice cubes swirled in it.

I spread my hands. “Just the truth.”

“I did not kill the girl.” He looked up at me. “I loved her.”

“The one does not preclude the other,” I said.

He nodded. “Yes. Quite so. All right, then. The truth.” He paused, took a deep breath, sipped from his glass. “I couldn’t let her go. It was she who broke off with me. That was ten years ago. My feelings for her never changed. I kept track of her. Yes, I knew where she was living. Yes, I tried to contact her. Oh, many times. I spent many evenings, evenings when my wife thought I was at my office working on a monograph or grading exams, standing in front of her building on Beacon Street, gazing up at her lighted window, wondering who was with her, what she was doing, whom she loved. I telephoned her. She screened her calls, Mr. Coyne. She allowed her machine to answer for her. She talked with only those whom she chose to talk with. Alas, I was not one of them. I left her messages. Plaintive, querulous messages. I told her I knew she was there, listening. I begged her to speak with me. But she didn’t. Not once. Not ever.” Rahmanan shook his head slowly back and forth. “She was more mature than I, of course.” He sipped from his drink, then shrugged. “This is pitiable, sir. I know it. I am deeply embarrassed. Do you understand why I was not forthcoming with you?”

I shrugged. “I don’t like being lied to.”

“There was no good reason for me to tell you the truth, Mr. Coyne.”

“There is now.”

“Of course. And I have.”

“You haven’t spoken with her or been with her?”

“Not for ten years.”

“But you wanted to.”

He smiled. “Desperately.”

“This must have been very frustrating for you.”

He shrugged. “Love creates complex emotions.”

“She must have made you angry at times.”

“Anger is one of those complex emotions, yes.”

“And jealousy, too. She had other men.”

He nodded. “I suppose so.”

“Greed as well.”

His head jerked back. “Greed?”

“Money, Professor.”

“I’m afraid you lost me, Mr. Coyne.”

“You knew of her will, of course.”

“Whose will? Mary Ellen’s? She had a will?”

“Yes.”

He frowned. “What about it?”

“She bequeathed a substantial sum of money to you, Professor.”

He smiled. “Now I know you’re trying to manipulate me, sir. Mary Ellen and I have been out of touch for ten years. She would have no reason to bequeath anything to me.”

“She did. One hundred thousand dollars.”

He shook his head. He frowned. He cocked his head and peered intently at me. “This is the truth?”

I nodded.

He blew out a long, worried breath. “This is terrible. Something must be done.”

“Excuse me?”

“Don’t you see, sir? I cannot accept any bequest from Mary Ellen Ames.”

“You can’t use money?”

“Of course I can use money. But that’s not it. How in the name of heaven could I explain it to my wife?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “You could try lying to her.”

He smiled. “You are a cruel man, Mr. Coyne.”

“I’m a lawyer,” I said. “What did you expect?” I laid a five and a one on the bar and swiveled off my stool. “An attorney named Elizabeth McCarron will contact you about Mary Ellen’s will, Professor,” I said. “She may be less cruel than I.”

I left Sherif Rahmanan sitting there poking with his forefinger at the half-melted ice cubes in his glass of soda water. I took the T back to my office and got there a few minutes before five. Julie was just pulling the dust cover over her computer when I walked in. She looked up, widened her eyes, and said, “Oh, my. What a lovely surprise. It’s Mr. Brady Coyne.”

“Come off it, babe,” I said. “What I don’t need right now is a bunch of shit from my secretary.”

“Oh, but just to catch a glimpse of you. I didn’t dare hope.”

“Julie…” I tried to inject a hint of warning into my voice.

Julie was skilled at ignoring my hints. “I left a stack of phone messages on your desk. You might want to glance through them since you’ve chosen to honor us with a brief visit.”

I went over to her and kissed her cheek. “Thank you, sweetheart. Have a nice evening. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

She made an exaggerated O of her mouth. “You will? Wow!”

“That is my present plan. A long day of paperwork. I will be entirely at your disposal.”

“How unprecedented.”

“Go home,” I said.

She grabbed her coat and swirled out of the office. She paused in the doorway to blow me a kiss. I feigned a swoon. Then I went into my office. I sat behind my desk, lit a cigarette, and glanced through the dozen or fifteen telephone messages Julie had left for me. All but two were from clients or lawyers with no business I judged urgent. The other two were from Dave Finn, one at 3:10 and one at 4:30. Both of his messages were identical: Will try again. In neither case had Finn left a phone number where I could reach him. I remembered he was living in a trailer with no phone.

I thought of returning a few of those other calls. Then I thought better of it. I judged there was nothing that couldn’t wait until the next day. So I turned out the lights and went home.

And I had barely changed from my suit to my jeans and sweatshirt when Finn called. “Gotta talk,” he said.

“Good. Let’s.”

“Not on the phone, Mr. Coyne. I’m in these folks’ kitchen.”

“We can meet somewhere, I guess.”

“Yeah, well I ain’t got a car that works right now. So how’s about you coming here?”

“Where’s here?”

“Townsend.”

“Christ,” I muttered. I knew Townsend. The Squannacook River, a fair trout stream, ran through Townsend. Townsend was at least an hour’s drive from my apartment on the harbor in Boston, assuming no road repairs, detours, or traffic. I sighed. “If necessary, all right. When?”

“What’s wrong with now?”

“Only that I just got home after a long day and I haven’t even had a chance to sit down, never mind have some supper.”

“Well grab a bite and come on out. Listen. Here’s how to find me.”

He dictated directions to me. They were complicated, involving landmarks such as a lumberyard, roads without signs, fields, and a farmhouse. I wrote them down carefully, then said, “All right. Look for me around eight. And I hope this is going to be worth it.”

“Well,” he said, “I dunno. I sure feel I need to talk to you.”

“I’ll be there.”

T
OWNSEND, MASSACHUSETTS, IS ONE
of those little rural communities northwest of the Route 495 high-tech arc that continues to thrive in the same family-farm country-store way it has for the past fifty years. You don’t see many cornfields being bulldozed into condominiums or office parks or shopping malls around Townsend. The barber shops, drug stores, insurance and lawyer and real estate offices, and home-cookin’ restaurants that cluster around the rims of village greens in places like Groton and Townsend and Pepperell stay in the family. They get a coat of fresh paint every third summer. There’s an air of tidy, modest prosperity about these towns, although it’s a mystery how and where their residents make a living.

I picked up Route 119 in Littleton, as Finn had instructed, and followed it through the darkness of the October evening, past stubbled cornfields and roadside farm stands. I arrived in Townsend after driving for nearly an hour. I pulled to the side of the road to recheck the directions Finn had recited to me over the phone and decided I had already passed the country roadway just beyond the lumberyard, just as he had predicted I would. So I backtracked and found it. Four miles by my odometer and I came to the white farmhouse with the big silver silo beside the tin-roofed barn. Another right, this one unpaved gravel. It wound through woods and pasture. Past the third bungalow on the left was another roadway, this one even narrower. A hundred yards later I came to Dave Finn’s trailer hunkering in a pine grove where the roadway petered out.