Small Town

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.

He walked up to 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.

He was going through 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 solicitation. 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 irritated 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.

First, though, he spent 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.

Something occurred to him, and he went looking for the photocopies Herdig had made for him at the Two-Oh. He read Shevlin’s description — height, weight, age, complexion, color of hair, color of eyes.

At seventy-two, Peter Shevlin was ten years older than the Carpenter, but everything else was pretty much on target. If you put the two men in a lineup they probably looked entirely different, but that was the point; you could put them in a lineup, because they were close enough in physical type.

Close enough to fool the big galoot with the black beard? Popeye’s worst nightmare?

Yeah, maybe.

If he’d been working the case with a partner they’d toss ideas back and forth, batting them around, throwing verbal spaghetti on the wall to see what stuck. He was running a solitaire version of the same game, tossing his own ideas in the air and taking a swing at them.

Maybe he needed a partner. Maybe he should call Galvin, let him try for another brass ring.

Maybe he should call whoever was heading up the Carpenter task force. Odds were good it was someone he knew, and a hundred percent certain it was someone who knew him.

And if the Carpenter was hanging out, keeping an eye on things?

No way they could infiltrate an area like the Boat Basin in force without making their presence obvious. If he was on the boat, well, fine, they’d have him sewn up tight. But if he wasn’t?

And if he had never been there in the first place, if Peter Shevlin was having a hot time with somebody else’s wife and didn’t want the world to know about it, then what? And wouldn’t the word get around that a certain former police commissioner was just a little bit past it?

You couldn’t go in without backup, he thought. Not unless you were out of your mind. Not even if you were out of your mind.

But you could take a look first. You could do that much. Hang out, sneak a peek, make sure the wild goose was there for the chasing. You could do that, couldn’t you?

He took his cell phone, his holstered .38. Found a set of handcuffs, dropped them in a jacket pocket. And, feeling a little foolish, and wishing the day were cooler, he stripped to the waist and dressed again, this time with the Kevlar vest underneath his shirt.