Third Strike (8 page)

“Whoa,” I said. “Back up. Machine guns?”

He nodded. “Those small ones. Uzis, maybe? Let me finish. So they tied off at Dr. Mumford's dock and offloaded some wooden crates from the boat and lugged them to a van that was parked there at the end of the dock with its lights on and motor running.”

“Any idea what was in those crates?”

He shook his head. “They were, I don't know, three or four feet long, and they looked to be pretty heavy. It took two men to carry one of them.”

“How many crates?”

He shrugged. “Six or eight. Maybe more. I didn't count.”

“What about the van? Any writing on it?”

“Like I said, it was just moonlight and some flashlights. There might've been some kind of logo on the side, but I'm not sure. I couldn't tell you the make or model, either.”

“So what happened?”

“The longer I kneeled there behind the piling, the scareder I got. I just wanted to get the hell out of there, but I wanted to see what they were doing, too. After they finished unloading those crates, some of the men stood around talking. I could hear their voices across the water, but I couldn't tell what they were saying. And then the van drove away and the men got back on the boat, and it backed away from the dock, still not showing any lights.” Larry looked at me. “Then I did something stupid.”

“They saw you?” I said.

“The boat started to turn,” he said, “and they were going to pass right in front of me, and I guess I panicked. I—I ran, and almost instantly there's a shout and then this big searchlight from the boat goes on, sweeping across the water toward me, and, Jesus, I realize they've spotted me. Their light's panning around, and I'm running down that dock, seems like it's about a mile long, and then they've got me in their beam and I'm waiting for them to start shooting their Uzis at me, but they don't, and then I'm off the dock and zigzagging across the yard, trying to get behind the house and into the woods, and a couple times the searchlight catches me and they yell some more, but I can't tell what they're saying, not that I care. Couldn't even tell if it was English. I just keep going, running as fast as I can, waiting for them to shoot me. But they don't shoot, and I realize, they don't want anyone to hear gunshots, and they're out there on their boat and I'm on land, and if I just keep running they'll never catch me. So that's what I did. I ran all the way home. And they didn't catch me.”

“And you're all right,” I said.

“They saw me,” he said. “They know what I look like.”

“How well could they have seen you?”

“That spotlight, it was like I was on a stage. They probably had binoculars. I think they saw me pretty good.”

“You're saying you think they might recognize you?”

He nodded. “That's what I'm afraid of. Not many people look like me.”

I looked at him, imagined him running down the dock. Tall, skinny, with his scruffy beard and that gray-blond ponytail trailing behind him. He was probably right. “That was two nights ago, huh?” I said.

“Don't tell me not to be scared,” he said.

“All I'm saying is, if they were going to try to catch up with you, they probably would've done it by now.”

“I went back last night,” he said. “After I called you.”

“You're that scared, but you went back?”

“I didn't go out on the dock. I hid in the bushes, like we did. I just wanted to see if they came back again.”

“Did they?”

He nodded. “It was the same thing as before. They pulled up to the dock in front of Dr. Mumford's place, and the van was there, and they offloaded more boxes.”

“Did you notice anything different?”

He shook his head.

“So you brought me down here because you wanted me to see this boat offloading big wooden crates at night.”

“And because I'm scared,” he said. “They saw me. They know I saw them. They had machine guns.”

“But they didn't show up tonight,” I said. “So maybe whatever they were doing, they're finished. Maybe they're gone, and you won't have to worry about them anymore.”

Larry looked down at the table and shook his head. “Yeah, maybe I overreacted. Maybe I shouldn't've bothered you. Maybe it's nothing.”

“No,” I said, “it's something. Of course it's something.”

“I keep thinking I should tell somebody,” said Larry. “Except if I do, they'll know who told. Me. The guy they caught in their searchlight. They had guns, Brady.”

I took a sip of wine, blinked away the rush of tears in my eyes, took another sip, then said, “You called me, and here I am. So what do you want me to do?”

He looked up at me and shrugged. “I don't know.”

“We've got to report it.”

He shook his head. “Not me, man. I'm staying out of it.”

“You want me to handle it. That your idea?”

“You're a lawyer.”

“Meaning, you're my client, whatever you tell me is privileged. Right?”

“That's what I was thinking,” he said. “Yes. I mean, you can report what I told you. Just leave me out of it.”

I smiled. “Okay, so let's see. I go to, say, the Coast Guard station here in Menemsha, and I say, ‘I'm a lawyer, and this client of mine, he saw this big boat come into the pond, and there were men with guns, and they were offloading some big wooden crates.' What do you think the Coast Guard people would say to me?”

Larry nodded. “First thing they'd say, I guess, would be, Who is this client? What you're telling us, it's nothing but hearsay. Get your client in here so we can cross-examine him and get the story firsthand.” He reached across the table and put his hand on my wrist. “See, Brady? That's why I wanted to show it to you. So you could see it for yourself. So it wouldn't be secondhand.”

“Relieve you of all responsibility, huh?”

He nodded. “You put it that way, yeah, I guess so. So I'm telling you, you can't mention me. If I tell you not to tell anybody where you heard what you heard, that's what you've gotta do, right?”

I nodded. “If you insist, yes. You're my client. Whatever you tell me is privileged.”

“I didn't move down here to get involved,” Larry said. “All I want is to be left alone.”

“If you really felt that way,” I said, “you wouldn't have dragged me down here. You think you've seen something shady and dangerous, and you can't ignore it.”

“I guess you're right,” he said. “I couldn't ignore it. So I told you. I did my civic duty. So will you do it?”

“Me?” I shook my head. “Oh no. Not me. Us. Whether you like it or not, we're going to handle this together.”

He shook his head. “Aw, man…”

“You and me, Larry.”

“Not if I don't want to. And I don't. I don't want to. You can't make me.”

“You want to be responsible for somebody getting blown up or something? Is your—your anonymity, or whatever you call it, your privacy—is that worth it?”

He looked at me, then shrugged. “Yeah, I guess I knew you were gonna say that. Okay, then. What are
we
going to do?”

“Right now,” I said, “we're going to go to sleep. It's the middle of the night, and that wine has reached my brain.”

Larry gave me a crooked smile. “Mine, too. Whew.”

“Tomorrow night,” I said, “we'll go back to the pond, hide in the bushes. I'll bring my cell phone. If that boat comes in, we'll call the Coast Guard.”

“What if they don't show up?”

“We'll go to the Coast Guard anyway, tell them your story.”

“You could go back to the pond without me,” said Larry. “I showed you how to get there.”

“Maybe I could. But I'm not going to. It's gonna be you and me.”

“You don't understand,” he said. “I need my life to be simple. I need my privacy. I can't—”

“Think of it this way,” I said. “If I go there without you, and if they spot me and catch me and shoot me, how will you feel?”

“Oh, man,” he said. “I just wish to hell I'd never gone flounder fishing that night.”

“We'll take care of it in the morning,” I said. “Right now, I've got to go to sleep.”

“You take the bed.” He pointed his chin at the bed. It wasn't much bigger than a cot, but it had what looked like a clean blanket and a plumped-up pillow on it.

“What about you?” I said. “I can't take your only bed.”

“I sleep outside in the hammock in the summer.”

“Will you feel, um, safe, sleeping outside?”

He smiled. “Rocket will be with me. He's not much of a watchdog, but he'll howl like crazy if he hears noises in the night. You ever hear a basset howl?”

I smiled. “Doesn't it get a little chilly for sleeping outside this time of year?”

“That's how I like it.” He stood up, staggered, and braced his hand against the wall. “Wow. My wine's pretty good, huh?”

I stood up, too. When the room began to spin, I sat down again. “Your wine,” I said, “is positively lethal.”

He grinned.

I stood up again, more carefully this time, and after a moment the room righted itself.

Larry and I went outside and peed in the yard. The sky was bottomless and full of stars, and the air was chilly.

“Sure you'll be all right,” I said, “sleeping outdoors?”

“I'm used to it.” Larry grinned. “All that wine, I bet I could sleep through a nor'easter.”

After we zipped up, he said, “I don't want to talk to anybody, Brady. Do I have to?”

“I'll be with you,” I said. “It'll be okay.”

He nodded. “Okay,” he said. “I trust you.” He wrapped his arms around me and hugged me hard. “Thanks, man.”

I patted his back. “It's what lawyers are for.”

Then I staggered inside and went to bed.

F
ather Georgio Zapata headed one of the dozen or so small churches on the island that offered religious services to the growing Vineyard population of people of Portuguese and Latino descent, many of them Brazilian. They, like the practitioners of every ethnic or religious group of which I was aware, apparently couldn't agree about what constituted the True Faith and therefore worshipped at a lot of different churches, varying from Protestant evangelical ones to others preaching forms of ultraconservative Catholicism. As a Baptist friend once told me, “If you have four Baptists, you have at least three churches.”

Zapata's church was reportedly an institution of his own making, combining elements from various more traditional forms of Christian worship, chiefly Roman Catholicism. I presumed he'd taken his title as Father from the latter.

Gossip had it that Zapata had been born in Brazil but, like many South Americans, had only arrived in the United States after wandering and working, and in his case preaching, his way through Central America and Mexico. In any case, he led two services on Sundays, one in Portuguese in the morning and one in Spanish in the evening, thereby saving his different congregations from the dangers of nodding off while listening to sermons in languages they didn't understand. It was a wise idea, I thought, remembering the Bible story of the young man named Eutychus who, when listening to Paul preach, had gone to sleep and fallen out of a third-floor window and been killed, thus becoming the first person officially recorded as bored to death by a sermon. For this I had personally canonized him, making him St. Eutychus.

When he wasn't leading his flock, Father Zapata ran a company called Zapata Landscaping and was doing good business. He owned half a dozen trucks and a couple of backhoes adorned with the company logo, and he had several crews of workers armed with the hand tools they needed to establish and care for gardens, lawns, hedges, trees, and shrubs.

Since it was Saturday, I caught up with him overseeing the work at a big new house not far from the Katama airport. He was a medium-sized man who appeared to be in his thirties. He wore a billed Red Sox cap and a white shirt over khaki work pants. He was calling out some orders in Portuguese when I approached, but switched immediately to only slightly accented English when I asked if he was Father Zapata. He was one of those people whose hands moved when they talked, rising, falling, constantly gesturing. I'd often wondered if such people could speak at all if they had to keep their hands in their pockets.

“I am Georgio Zapata,” he said, and he put out one of those bronzed hands.

I took it. He had a good grip, but not one of those that intentionally tests the hand it meets.

I gave him my name and said, “Any relation to Emiliano?”

He smiled and shook his head. “Not that I know of, though I wouldn't mind if I was.”

“Do you share his views about politics and economics?”

He spread those talkative hands. “Emiliano fought for the poor, and they are my people as well. I try to lift them up even though Jesus said they will always be among us. My sermons are mostly along the lines of loving God and following the golden rule.”

“It's a better rule than most,” I said. “I've been asked to investigate the death of Eduardo Alvarez. Since I don't know much about him, and since he was one of your parishioners, I hoped to talk with you about the sort of man he was.”

Zapata's friendly smile lingered on his face. “He was an ordinary man, like all of us. He will be greatly missed.”

“His wife described him as almost a saint.”

Zapata's voice was kind. “I have known many men and women, but no saints.”

I said, “It's popularly believed that Eduardo killed himself by accident when he blew up the engine of the
Trident
. His wife says that's impossible because he didn't believe in violence and would never have done such a thing. What do you think?”

He put his hands on his chest. “Our Savior tells us to judge not, that we be not judged.”

“That's probably good advice,” I said, “but I'd still like your thoughts about Eduardo. You don't have to judge him. Just describe him. Was he as gentle as his wife says he was? Or was he capable of violence?”

Zapata looked around the yard at his workmen, then brought his eyes back to mine. “Even Christ grew angry at the money changers.”

“I can refer to scripture, too, and the devil can quote it,” I said a little impatiently, “but I'm asking about Eduardo Alvarez.”

He held up a hand. “Peace, Mr. Jackson. Peace. All I mean to say is that even the best of us are capable of almost any act if the circumstances are right. Eduardo was probably no different. But if you'll grant me that caveat, I will say that he was the very last person I would have thought of as a potential bomber. He supported the union out of loyalty, but he hated the anger and violence that pervaded the strike. He wanted the strike to end before anyone got hurt.”

“Ironic.”

“Yes. I never heard him say a bad word about anyone on either side of the issue.”

I didn't know what I expected to learn from Zapata, but whatever it was, I hadn't gotten much that was new. I asked, “Do you have any idea what he might have been doing in the engine room of the
Trident
?”

“I do not.” His hands opened to show they held nothing.

“Do you know of any friend who might have led him to do something he otherwise would never have done? Some more passionate partisan, perhaps.”

Zapata shook his head. “My people rejoice in their feelings, but few of them have close emotional ties with the boat line. They're concerned about the strike because it may make their lives more difficult, but no more or less than other people on the island who have the same concerns.”

“Is there anyone in your congregation who might know why Eduardo was on the docks that night and not at work at the restaurant where he was supposed to be?”

He was silent for a moment, then said, “No, I can't think of any such person. Perhaps you should make inquiries at the restaurant.”

“I plan to do that.” I scribbled my name and phone number on a piece of paper and gave it to him. “Well, thanks for your time. If you think of anything, please let me know. Gloria Alvarez hates these rumors about her husband.”

He shook my hand. “I will. You are doing a good thing. It is a blessing for those who mourn to have one who comforts them.”

“That's a twist on the beatitude,” I said. “Besides, I haven't comforted anyone yet.”

“You're trying,” he replied. “God gives you credit for trying.”

“That's good,” I said.

I'm leery of anyone who presumes to know God's desires, and Zapata seemed to read my mind. “It's called faith,” he said, smiling and pointing a forefinger toward the sky.

It was mid-morning, but not too soon to visit the Wheelhouse, since the restaurant served breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Most tourists were not yet up and about, so I figured I might even find a parking place.

On Martha's Vineyard, certain locations attract restaurants that go out of business within a couple of years only to be replaced by other restaurants that go out of business a couple of years later. According to my friend John Skye, who is a professor of things medieval at Weststock College, a lot of people who love food are sure that they would find bliss in opening a restaurant and running it the way it should be run. The problem, he says, probably correctly, is that a love of food and cooking is not a guarantee of a successful restaurant any more than a love of books is a guarantee of a successful bookstore. What any business takes is a good business mind, an unimaginable amount of hard work, and a lot of luck.

The Wheelhouse was the latest restaurant incarnation on a site on Edgartown's upper Main Street, not far from Cannon Ball Park, so-called because it features stacks of cannon balls much too large for the cannons situated beside them. There had been other restaurants in the building before it became the Wheelhouse, and there would probably be others to come, because it looked like a wonderful site in spite of the historical evidence that it was not.

I parked in the restaurant's almost-empty lot and went inside.

The place was halfway between breakfast and lunch, and the only people there were cooks in the kitchen and workers setting things up for the noon crowd they hoped would come. I asked to see the manager and was directed to her office.

She turned out to be a woman whose face I'd seen around town. She was about my age and had reading glasses on her nose. She looked a bit harried but had time to stand up from her desk and give me a smile and a handshake.

I gave her my name and thanked her for seeing me, since obviously she was busy.

“I'm Nellie Gray,” she said, sitting back down. She waved at the piles of menus, orders, and food and restaurant magazines that cluttered the room. “Forgive the mess. What can I do for you?”

I told her the nature of my investigation and ended my speech by saying, “Eduardo Alvarez was supposed to be working for you last Wednesday night, when he was killed. I'm hoping that you or someone else who was here can tell me why he wasn't here.”

She tightened her lips and shook her head. “I wish he had come to work here that night, because then he'd still be alive. I liked him. He was a hard worker and until that night had been absolutely dependable. He didn't call in to say he wasn't coming. He just never showed up. That happens sometimes, especially this time of year when some college kid doesn't see any need to tell you he's leaving.”

I nodded. “The scuttle is that they're kids who want a vacation before going back to school and who don't plan to come back next year looking for a job.”

“That's right.” She signed something and absently tapped her pen on her desk. “They're mostly pretty good kids, but they're thoughtless. But I didn't take Eduardo to be that type. He had a wife and daughter, and he was serious about taking care of them. Do you know what time he got killed? I know it was Wednesday night, but I haven't heard just when. I've wondered if maybe he planned to come to work but died before he could.”

“When was he supposed to come on duty?”

“At ten. He helped bus tables until we closed at midnight, then he was on the crew that cleaned up and got things squared away for breakfast.”

“How long had he worked here?”

“A couple of weeks. When did the strike start, exactly? I forget. Three weeks ago? Anyway, he came looking for work just a few days later.”

“Did he ever talk about the strike?” I said.

“Only to say he wished it was over. I told him I was kind of glad it wasn't, because I liked having him work for me. We both knew he'd go back to the boats as soon as he could.”

“Any other strikers work here?”

“Only one,” she said. “Norm Frazier. But I could use a couple more if they're as dependable as Eduardo.”

Honest, dependable, hardworking Eduardo. Every boss's dream employee, a perfect husband, a friend to all mankind.

“Did he have any particular friends here?” I asked. “Anyone he might have confided in?”

“He seemed to like Norm. I guess they worked together on the ferries. Here they acted like they enjoyed their jobs and each other. You know what I mean? Some people just do the work, some people do it but don't like it, and there are a few who do it and make it seem like fun. Eduardo and Norm were two of that kind. After the customers were all gone, the two of them bustled around whistling like the Seven Dwarfs.” She paused. “Come to think of it, Norm wasn't here Wednesday night, either, because it was his night off.”

“I should talk with him, too, I think. Maybe the two of them were together.”

I wished her luck with her restaurant as I left. History suggested that she'd need it.

It was a bit early to hit the Fireside, but I drove to Oak Bluffs anyway, taking the road along the barrier beach between Nantucket Sound and Sengekontacket Pond where, at one spot, I could see our house on the far side of the pond. Above me, the pale blue sky arched from horizon to horizon, and beyond the sound I could see the hazy line that was Cape Cod.

The parking places on the sound side of the highway were rapidly filling with cars as young families lugged children, umbrellas, blankets, coolers, and toys to the beach only a few yards from the road. It was the best beach on the island for small children, because it was so close to the parking spots, and because the wind was generally offshore, the waves were small, and the water shallow and warm. We called it Mothers' Beach because it was so popular with young moms, many of whom sported Mothers' Tans. Because the sun was behind them as they sat watching their offspring play in or near the water, their backs and the fronts of their thighs were brown but their bellies and calves remained pale. You could spot a young mom quite easily by her two-toned tan.

When their children got old enough, the moms could take their eyes off them long enough to turn their pale parts to the sun, so after that you had to identify them by their hair. Moms wore their hair short, whereas non-moms often wore theirs long. Zee, mom though she was, wore hers long anyway. On her pillow it looked like a blue-black halo.