Dead Winter (27 page)

I shrugged. “Who is she? Where is she? Is there a chance that she’ll come forward, make things embarrassing?”

“She—she was just this girl. I have no idea where she is now, or what’s become of her. Last I heard she got married. I assume she’s got as many reasons as me to keep this quiet. I am very certain that she will confirm nothing about this. It’s over. Ancient history.”

“But somebody seems to think differently.”

“Brady,” said Pops, “listen to me. I want you to tell this guy to stuff it, okay? He’s got nothing to blackmail me for, and I won’t be bluffed. I don’t give a shit what kinds of threats he makes. He thinks he’s got something for the press or for Marilee, tell him to go ahead. He gets nothing out of me. Nothing. Okay? Does that satisfy you?”

I nodded. “Okay. Yes, it does.”

“Well, good.”

“You’re not holding back on me, Pops?”

He held up his right hand, palm out. “Honest to God, Brady. I know better than to hold anything back from my lawyer. It’s just, when your lawyer is your friend, and you value his good opinion of you…”

I nodded. “Okay. I still think you’re a helluva man. So how’ll I recognize this guy?”

He hesitated. His eyes swung away from me for a moment. Then he leaned forward toward me. “You won’t.” He grinned at me. “He’ll recognize you.”

I stared at him. He shrugged. Then I laughed. “You’re unbelievable.”

“I had a hunch you’d offer to go.”

“You knew goddam well I’d offer to go. You set me up.”

“If you hadn’t offered, I would never have asked.”

I shook my head. “Okay, okay. So how will he recognize me, then?”

“I told him you’d be drinking bourbon and smoking Winstons. Told him you’d be the handsome guy alone at the bar.”

“So I better not let any ladies sit with me.”

“At least not until after you finish with our friend.”

“That’s gonna be hard, keeping the ladies at bay.”

“It’s tough work like that I pay you a fat retainer for,” said Pops.

T
HERE WERE TWO WOMEN
at Skeeter’s when I got there a little before nine. They were seated on stools at the end of the bar near the door, as far from the giant-size television down the other end as they could get. One was dark-haired and one was blond. Both wore blazers over silky blouses, with dangling earrings and gold chains at the throat and dark narrow skirts that showed a great deal of sleek thigh. The female yuppie uniform. Both appeared to be in their early thirties. They could have been secretaries or stockbrokers or lawyers or hookers. There was an empty stool between them, and they didn’t appear to be talking with each other. Both were drinking white wine and smoking long, skinny filtered cigarettes and studying the rows of bottles lined up in front of the mirror over the bar.

I took one of the several empty seats in the middle, halfway between the women and the cluster of men around the TV.

The women ignored me completely.

Skeeter’s Infield was a long, narrow tavern at the end of a short alley off State Street within walking distance of my waterfront apartment. The entire length of the left side was taken up by the bar. Along the right wall were ten or a dozen high-backed booths. The walls were hung with posters of old major leaguers—superstars like Yaz and Willie and Mickey, Skeeter’s heroes, and others, too, who had been his friends—José Tartabull, Dalton Jones, and Joe Foy.

Along the back of the bar artifacts of Skeeter’s game were displayed. Bats and gloves, shinguards, baseballs, even the protective cup once worn by a pitcher named Gary Bell, who had the unhappy penchant of stopping hard-hit grounders with it. The cup had a dent in it. Skeeter told me that Bell had been nicknamed “Ding Dong” by his teammates. Skeeter said when you got hit by a ball off the cup it clanged.

Skeeter’s was famous for its half-pound ground sirloin hamburgers and five-alarm chili. Mostly, though, people went there to drink. To drink and talk with Skeeter and maybe rub elbows with a sports celebrity.

Skeeter O’Reilly was a kid from Southie who had actually made it to the big leagues. In the course of his twelve-year major-league career, he played with seven different teams. He was pegged early as a backup infielder—steady glove but limited range, a Punch-and-Judy hitter, a feisty kid who could move a runner over, steal a base, and wasn’t afraid to turn a double play with someone like Don Baylor bearing down on him. He spent one season on the Red Sox bench—1968, the year after they were in the World Series. That was the closest Skeeter O’Reilly ever got to real glory.

When bone chips in his ankle ended his career he came back to Boston and bought the run-down joint in the alley off State Street. He installed indirect lights, lots of glass and brass and leather and dark wood and that five-foot television screen, and himself behind the bar. Skeeter wore the same droopy red mustache he grew when he played ball in the sixties, and a long shag of red hair spilled from under the shapeless old Red Sox cap he always wore when he was tending bar. Only a select few of us knew that under his cap Skeeter’s dome was as hairless as a baseball.

Skeeter smiled a lot, and when he did he revealed the empty place in his mouth where one of his eye teeth used to grow. It was a battle scar of sorts, the product of a headfirst slide into Elston Howard’s shinguard, and Skeeter wore it proudly.

He ran a modest book on professional sports, too, which the Boston cops blinked at out of respect for Skeeter’s status as a local sports hero.

I unzipped my ski parka and fished out a cigarette. Skeeter was down with the guys at the television, moderating an argument. I glanced at the two ladies to my left. Neither of them glanced at me.

“But the
Broons
are playin’ the
Whalahs,
fah crissake,” said one voice from near the TV.

“Screw the Broons,” said another. “Buncha loosahs. Get the Celts on fifty-six. They’re playin’ the Knicks. I wanna see Pat Ewing.”

“Ahh, basketball’s fer wimps.”

“You wanna see blood, fah crissake, go lookit yourself shavin’. Them basketball players’re
ath-a-letes.”

Skeeter glanced at me, arched his eyebrows, said something to the sports fans, and came my way. He held his hand across the bar to me. “Hey, Mr. Coyne. Great to see ya again.”

“How’s business, Skeets?”

He turned down the corners of his mouth and wiggled his hand, palm down, over the bar. “Metsa-mets,” he said. “You know, Mr. Coyne, in the old days it was simple. You’d play baseball in the day and talk about girls. Then at night you’d go to a bar with a girl and talk about baseball. Now? Boy, I don’t know. You tell me. What’d you do? Show ’em the hockey or the basketball? I never have this problem in the summer. Baseball’s all there is. But there are times in October, for God sake, you got the Celtics and the Bruins and the Patties and the World Series all at once. Makes me want to shoot holes in the damn tube. Boys don’t get to watch what they want, they don’t stay around to drink my booze.”

“I understand the Boston Symphony’s playing Beethoven on Channel Two,” I said. “I got my money on Beethoven.”

Skeeter cocked his head at me and grinned. “Somehow I don’t think that’s the answer.” He produced a rag and swiped at the bar in front of me. “Special drink this week’s the Whitey Ford. Wanta try it?”

Skeeter had earned modest fame in Boston with his inventive concoctions, which he named after old ballplayers. I had once tried a Don Drysdale, which Skeeter said was guaranteed to “knock you on your ass and keep you there.” He didn’t lie. He boasted that his Wee Willie Keeler would “hit ’em where they ain’t.”

“What’s a Whitey Ford?” I asked cautiously.

“Dark rum, Guinness stout, papaya juice,” he said. “It’s sneaky fast. Before you know it, you’re back in the old dugout. Just like when you tried to hit Whitey’s curve.”

“Think I’ll pass this time. Give me a shot of Rebel Yell on the rocks.”

“Always the bourbon, huh, Mr. Coyne?”

I didn’t tell Skeeter that Pops’ mystery man would recognize me by my bourbon. “I don’t want to be snuck up on,” I said.

He grinned, showing me the gap in his teeth. “Oh, and happy Groundhog Day,” he said.

“Thanks.” I decided not to share my newfound lore about Candlemas Day with Skeeter.

Skeeter brought me my drink with a side of water, gave the bar a final swipe with his rag, and wandered back to the controversy at the television. It appeared that the Bruins had won the day. Boston has always been a hockey town.

The ladies to my left continued to gaze into the mirror. I glanced at my watch. Nine-fifteen. I lit another cigarette and sipped the southern sour mash and watched the hockey players zip around the big screen.

He was wearing a Ben Hogan tweed cap, dark shades, snug-fitting blue jeans, and a fleece-lined sheepskin parka. Wisps of longish blond hair showed under the cap. He had a bushy blond mustache a shade darker than the hair on his head. “Mr. Coyne, is it?” he said.

“Yes. Who’re you?”

He grinned, showing perfect teeth that might have been capped. “It’s not important, who I am,” he said. His voice was deep and well modulated, with no trace of any sort of regional accent. It seemed faintly familiar, and I had the feeling that had he taken off his sunglasses I would have recognized his face.

Skeeter came over. My companion ordered a St. Pauli Girl. We sat in silence until his beer and frosted glass arrived. After Skeeter moved over to refill the ladies’ wineglasses, the man said, “You know why I’m here?”

“I don’t even know why I’m here,” I said.

He gave me what looked like a well-practiced smile. “It’s really quite simple, Mr. Coyne.” He touched his mustache with his forefinger. “I have a commodity that is very valuable to your client.”

“And what is this commodity?”

“My silence.”

“It’s my belief that your commodity has no value whatsoever,” I said. “To my client or to anyone else.”

“He told you that, huh?”

I shrugged.

“Did he tell you about Karen Lavoie?”

“Yes,” I said.

He grinned and spread his hands. “Well, then.”

“Look, friend,” I said. “You’re running quite a risk here. Blackmail is against the law, in case you didn’t know it. Neither my client nor I is interested in violating the law. Technically, you have already broken the law. So my sincere advice to you is to finish your beer, shake my hand, acknowledge that I have misunderstood your intention, and be on your merry little way.”

“Blackmail,” he said, arching his eyebrows in mock surprise. “Oh, dear.”

I nodded. “Fine. Excellent. So I have misunderstood your intention.”

“Your client, I assure you, has not misunderstood my intention, Mr. Coyne. And I know that you know that there’s not a damn thing you can do about it. Except do business with me.” He played with his mustache again.

“What is it you want?”

“Convey the figure of ten thousand dollars to your client.”

“If I were wearing a wire, you could be arrested right now, do you realize that?”

He smiled lazily. “Perhaps. Perhaps not. In any case, if I were arrested tonight, tomorrow’s papers would be full of the story of Chester Popowski and Karen Lavoie. That’s why you’re here. That’s why His Honor didn’t hang up on me. He wasn’t always quite the proper judge everybody thinks, you know. And that’s why I know you’re not wearing a wire.”

“We appear to be at a stalemate, then,” I said.

He leaned close to me. “Look. My source is impeccable, believe me. I’ve got the proof. The ball’s in my court. If I weren’t sure of what I had, do you think I’d’ve risked meeting you this way, in person? Do you think the judge would’ve had you come here to meet me?”

“I think the judge could survive all of this much easier than you could.”

He sat back and took a long draft from his beer. “Ten grand,” he said. “Tell that to the judge. And tell him I’ll be in touch.”

“Don’t bother.”

He whirled quickly on the barstool and grabbed a handful of my jacket. He put his face close to mine. “I’m gonna call day after tomorrow,” he snapped at me. “Make sure Chester Y. Popowski knows that.”

I tried to twist out of his grasp. “Let go,” I said softly.

He leaned back and held his palms in front of him in a gesture of surrender. He smiled. “Take it easy, friend. No offense, huh?”

Skeeter appeared. “Everything okay, Mr. Coyne?”

I nodded. “No problem, Skeets.”

He looked from me to the man beside me and shrugged. “Okay. Another?”

“No, thanks,” I said.

“No,” said the man.

Skeeter wandered away. I hunched my shoulders back into my jacket. The guy beside me swiveled off his barstool. “Tell him I’ll be in touch,” he said. “Ten grand. Just tell him I said ten grand.”

He headed for the door. “Hey,” I yelled at him.

He turned. “Yeah?”

“You didn’t pay for your beer.”

“It’s on you,” he said as he went out the door. “The judge’s paying your expenses.”

I sat there simmering. Skeeter came back. “Who was that?” he said.

“I don’t know. You ever see him before?”

Skeeter cocked his head. “Seemed familiar. Not a regular. Dunno. Can’t place him.”

“I’d like to know who he is,” I said.

He shook his head. “Nope. Can’t place him. He giving you a hard time?”

“Nothing I couldn’t handle.”

“I get all kinds in here. Guy has a fight with his old lady, doesn’t dare take a swipe at her, he comes in here looking for someone he can slug. Fella has a few down the street, they shut him off, he comes in here looking for another. Sorry he picked on you.”

“Not your fault,” I said.

“Look, Mr. Coyne,” said Skeeter. “I’m gonna give you a refill on the house for your trouble.”

“You don’t have to do that, Skeets.”

“I want to. I like to take care of my customers.”

“You talked me into it. Thanks.”

I sipped my second shot of Rebel Yell. I caught the dark-haired woman watching me in the mirror. I smiled at her. She looked away and said something to the blonde beside her. A minute later she slid a couple of bills onto the bar and both women left.

As I had said to Pops, keeping the ladies at bay was a problem.