Follow the Sharks Read online

  “Do you know why they all swim in the same direction?”

  I jerked my head around. She was tall, nearly my height, with sleek ebony hair and olive skin and dark almond eyes. She wore open-toed sandals, blue jeans, and a pale yellow silk blouse buttoned tight to her slim throat. I thought she was the most beautiful Oriental woman I had ever seen.

  “I never really thought about it,” I answered.

  “They follow the sharks,” she said, in a voice that sounded like a mountain stream bubbling over white stones.

  “I would’ve thought it was for the same reason the water swirls down the bathtub drain counterclockwise in the northern hemisphere,” I said, smiling. “Or maybe it’s just the currents in the tank.”

  She didn’t return my smile. “Maybe that’s it.” She looked me up and down quickly. “You are Mr. Coyne?”

  I nodded. “And you? What’s your name?”

  She frowned. “I told you. No questions. Please, I’m not—”

  “And I told you. You can trust me.”

  “I don’t know that,” she said. She moved closer to me. “I’m Annie. I—I saw the mother on television.” We watched the fish for a minute. “I decided I had to help. I don’t know. I think it was a mistake.” She glanced back over her shoulder. “I should leave. I should never have come here.”

  “Don’t be afraid.” I touched her shoulder.

  “But I am afraid. This was stupid.”

  “Are you interested in the reward? Is that it?”

  She drew away from me and shook her head. “No. Of course not. It—it’s my conscience, don’t you see?”

  I nodded. “Then let me help you.”

  She stared into my eyes. “You can’t help me. It’s too late for that. I know what you’re thinking, but I’ve got to take care of myself now.” She put her hand on my wrist. “Mr. Coyne, listen. I’m going to trust you. I’m involved in this. You know that. I didn’t know—never mind. I have to do something now. I can’t just follow the sharks. If they knew what I was doing, if they ever found out that I was here with you…”

  “Annie…”

  “Don’t,” she said. Her hand found mine, and I felt her pass me a scrap of paper. She gave my hand a quick squeeze then pulled it away. “Don’t look at it now. Put it into your pocket. I’m going to leave. Please stay here for fifteen more minutes. Don’t even turn around when I go. Don’t try to follow me or anything. If—when I’m certain I can trust you, I’ll get in touch again.”

  “Does this…?”

  “This doesn’t give you all the answers you want to know. It’s—it’s something. For now it’s all I dare.”

  “Annie,” I whispered. “Just tell me. Is E.J….?”

  But she was gone, as abruptly as she had appeared. I remained standing there, watching the fish follow the sharks in their slow eternal circles and feeling the scrap of paper in my pocket weighing there like a ton of guilt.

  A quarter of an hour later I turned and walked out into the liquid heat of the city.

  I was seated at a tiny metal table at the Cafe Florian on the sidewalk of Newbury Street. The breeze that was funneled down the street ruffled the linen tablecloth but failed to relieve the city heat. I sipped iced chocolate and nibbled at a rich chocolaty Sacher torte and wondered if I’d done the right thing. I probably shouldn’t have called Stern. He’d bitch and bluster and insist on trying to find Annie. But a glance at the paper she’d given me persuaded me that I needed his help. My first obligation was to E.J. Donagan, not the Oriental woman who called herself Annie, and who, after all, had participated in kidnapping him.

  On the other hand, Stern could screw it up, and then we’d be back where we started.

  I took the sheet of paper from my jacket pocket, unfolded it, and smoothed it on the table. I don’t know what I had expected it to say. Annie had made it clear that she wasn’t ready to tell me where to find E.J., or who had kidnapped him, or even if he were still alive. But I had hoped for something more, something less oblique, something that made sense.

  She was cautious, and she had given me a puzzle. Five names. The names of five baseball players. So her message concerned Eddie. That was as far as I could take it.

  I glanced up and saw Stern coming down the sidewalk toward me. I refolded the paper and shoved it back into my pocket. Stern walked with a cocky, elbows-out swagger that reminded me of a rooster. His hatchet-shaped face and big dark-rimmed glasses completed the picture.

  He didn’t look too happy.

  He sat down opposite me and flourished his handkerchief. He was sweating profusely. “Damn this humidity,” he muttered. “No relief in the whole damn city.”

  “Have some iced chocolate,” I said. “Cools you right down.”

  He took off his glasses and mopped his face. “I could use a beer.”

  “They don’t sell beer here.”

  “I could use my air-conditioned office, is what I could use. So whyn’t you just tell me what the hell you’ve got, huh?”

  “Take it easy. Relax. We’ve got to have some understandings first. Okay?”

  Stern narrowed his eyes. “What kind of understandings?”

  I ate a hunk of my torte. Stern watched me, his eyebrows lifted expectantly. “I think I’ve got a source of information,” I said. “I have agreed to certain things. In return, I think we may get some help in solving this case.”

  Stern jabbed at me with his glasses. “You’ve agreed to certain things, huh? Like what? You know this is a federal case, don’t you? If you plan to withhold information material to a federal case, Coyne—”

  “Don’t, for Christ’s sake, try to tell me the law. This person came to me because I’m a lawyer, okay? You’ll notice she didn’t go to you.”

  “She?”

  I nodded. “The person. My source.”

  “It’s a woman, huh?”

  “Look,” I said. “We can terminate this right now. I do want your advice, but I’ve made certain commitments.”

  “Client privilege. Sure. Figures. This woman is your client.”

  “Right.”

  “Coyne, I can get a subpoena, you know.”

  “Oh, don’t try to bully me. Just shut up and listen. Okay?”

  He shoved his glasses back on and frowned. “Go ahead,” he said.

  “She called me this afternoon. She said she wanted to talk to me. I recognized her voice.”

  “The same one?”

  “Yes. I met her at the Aquarium. She gave me something. Said there’d be more, implying that it depended on my handling it discreetly. Talking to you now isn’t particularly discreet. So I’ve taken a risk. But I figured you should know what’s going on.”

  He nodded. “What did she give you?”

  I removed the paper from my pocket, unfolded it, and spread it out on the table for him to see.

  He glanced at it and frowned. “There’s just five names here.”

  “Yes.”

  “Who are these people, do you know?”

  “They’re baseball players. Or they were. None of them is still active.”

  “You think they’re the ones who kidnapped the boy?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m afraid it’s not that simple. Two of these men aren’t even alive. This one—” I pointed to one of the names “—this Gus Geralchik died of cancer two years ago. And Bobo Halley here, drove his car into a bridge abutment or something back in eighty-three.”

  Without warning Stern’s fist came down on the table. I grabbed at my glass of iced chocolate and saved it from tipping over. “Damn it, Coyne!” he growled. “You’re telling me you had this—this woman, who helped to kidnap E.J. Donagan, and all you got out of her is this. The names of five goddam baseball players, for Christ’s sake? Listen. Did you ask her who did it? Did you ask her who snatched the boy? Did you?”

  I took a sip of my chocolate. I could tell that my refusal to allow him to ruffle me infuriated him. I put down my glass and dabbed my mouth with a napkin. “No. No,
I didn’t.”

  “Did you threaten to bring her in?”

  “Of course not. And I didn’t hint at thumb screws or water torture, either. Calm down for a minute and listen to me. She called me. Of her own free will. She’s very scared. I gave her my word that I would ask no questions, that I’d take what she had to give. And this is what she gave me. She said maybe there’d be more.” I shrugged.

  “Terrific,” he mumbled. “Just terrific. So she wants us to play a fucking game of Clue with her.” He shook his head sadly and peered up at me. “Okay. So tell me about these baseball players, then. You checked ’em all out, right?”

  “I looked ’em up in the Baseball Encyclopedia at the library, and then I called a sportswriter I know at the Globe. Can’t say I really learned a hell of a lot. This one here, Pete Bello, is managing in the minor leagues in the Pittsburgh chain. Arnie Bloom is selling life insurance out in Sacramento. And Johnny Warrick has a hog farm in Alabama.”

  Stern stared at the list of names, neatly printed on the single sheet of plain white paper. “What do you make of it?” he said.

  “I don’t know,” I said slowly. “Obviously it makes you think of Eddie. But they couldn’t have been his teammates. These guys weren’t even each other’s contemporaries. Geralchick played in the late fifties, and Bello had a couple of years in the big leagues in the mid-seventies. Halley pitched for the Tigers a couple of seasons back in the sixties. Three of them played for the Red Sox. Bello had eleven games with them at the tail end of seventy-three, after Donagan had left, and Bloom was with them four seasons before they traded him to the Twins. Warrick, you may remember, played his entire undistinguished career with them.”

  “Reserve outfielder, right? I remember, now.”

  “Yes. Bloom and Geralchik were pretty decent players. The other three were journeymen.”

  “So,” said Stern, tapping the paper with his eyeglasses. “They played for different teams at different times. Some were good, some not so good. Different positions. And some are alive and some aren’t. Not much, is it?”

  “There has to be something. The names must mean something. Anyhow, the girl said she’d get back to me. I assume to give me more information. Maybe we’ll learn more then.”

  “What do you figure her game is?” said Stern.

  “It’s pretty obvious. I think she wants to help us find the guys who kidnapped E.J. Donagan. I think she wants to do that without them knowing she helped. She’s scared and she feels guilty, and as long as we don’t mess it up she’ll keep feeding us information. That’s the way it seems to me.”

  He nodded. “Yeah. That’s possible. Or it could be nothing. A ruse, a smokescreen, a joke, for Christ’s sake.” He reached across the table, took a sip of my iced chocolate, and grimaced. “Anyway, what can you tell me about the girl?”

  I stared at him. “I can tell you what she looks like. But I don’t think I will.”

  He lay his forearms on the table and leaned toward me. His hands were clenched into fists. “Look,” he said, his voice tense. “I know about you.”

  I leaned back and folded my arms. “Oh?”

  “Yes. I know you like to interfere. You’ve got some sort of Wyatt Earp complex. You like to ride into town with your guns blazing.”

  “You mean having Jan go on television, for example.”

  “For example, yeah.”

  “You checked me out, too, huh?”

  “I did. Right. You don’t think much of the police, do you?”

  I shrugged. “I’m a lawyer. I just do my job.”

  Stern smiled sarcastically. “You’re not that kind of lawyer. You’re out of your element, now. Way out. You’ve been there before, and you’ve gotten yourself in trouble. I understand you tend to wind up in the hospital.”

  “If I didn’t know better, I might think you disapproved of me.”

  “Funny thing, Coyne. You might be surprised. Fact is, I don’t necessarily disapprove. You’ve got the right idea. Too goddam many citizens are afraid to get involved. They refuse to come forward, they refuse to cooperate. They never see anything. They say, ‘Not my problem.’ Right? Look, don’t get me wrong. I don’t care for your methods. You should be working with us. This shouldn’t be an adversary relationship, you know. Listen. We haven’t given up on this case, and just because we don’t give you a blow-by-blow of what we’re doing doesn’t mean we’re sitting around sucking our fingers. But we can use help. Any help.” He cocked his eyebrow at me. “Even your help.”

  I stared at him for a moment. “You think we can work together?”

  “Yes. I do.” He fiddled with his glasses but didn’t take them off. “Look,” he said, “I happen to think we can agree on how to handle this. I think you did the right thing to call me, and I’m willing to try not to do anything that doesn’t feel right to both of us. Okay? I know, you’re afraid I’ll try to catch up with that girl, and that we’ll lose out on what she’s going to give us. Well, I won’t do that. At least not for now. Not as long as there’s a chance of her helping us. So here’s what I think. I think I’ll agree not to go after her unless you and I discuss it. But I think you should help me get a line on her. See if we can’t figure out who she might be. Do the research. Be ready. The more we know, the better off we are. What do you think?”

  I took a bite of my torte, and stared at the people passing along the sidewalk while I chewed it. Then I looked at Stern. “You wouldn’t interfere?”

  “No. I’d just like to be ready to act when the time comes. It would be nice to know who she is.”

  I swirled the dark remains of my iced chocolate in the bottom of my glass. Then I nodded. “Okay. Her name is Annie. She’s tall. Maybe five-ten or eleven. Mid-twenties. Black hair, black eyes. Slim. Oriental. Japanese, maybe. No scars or tattoos that I could see. Pretty well educated, I’d say, from her diction. New Englander, from the way she drops her R’s.”

  Stern had taken out a little notebook and was making notes. When I finished he looked up. “That’s not much.”

  “Did I say how beautiful she was? And how her voice sounds like rain falling in a pond? And that she smells like hyacinths?”

  “Jesus!” said Stern, grinning. “Are you in love with her?”

  “Wouldn’t be difficult, believe me.”

  “What else?”

  I thought for a minute, then shrugged. “That’s about it. I was only with her a couple of minutes.”

  He shoved the notebook back in his pocket. “Guess I’ll go get some real food, then,” he said. “There’s a good cue over Kenmore Square.”

  “Cue?”

  “You know,” said Stern. “Bones. Ribs.”

  “Oh. Barbecue. You fooled me. You don’t strike me as the barbecue type.”

  “Well, you don’t strike me as the iced chocolate type, either,” he said. “I spent six years in an office in El Paso. Rib joints and whore houses is what they’ve mainly got in El Paso. You learn to adapt. Pros and bones. That’s about it in El Paso.” He pushed himself away from the table and stood up. “Why don’t you let me take that paper with me. We can run it through the lab, for whatever that might be worth. And we can do a rundown on these baseball players, too.”

  I hesitated, then took my hand off the paper with the list of names on it. “We have an understanding?” I said.

  He picked up the paper. “We do.” He extended his hand and we shook. His mitt was small and bony, but his grip was surprisingly hard. “Keep in touch,” he said.

  I gave him a half salute. “Roger.”

  He turned with a little nod and I watched him swagger away. He had surprised me. He didn’t seem to be such a bad guy.

  11

  THE PRUDENTIAL BUILDING WAS Boston’s first legitimate skyscraper. For many years the Pru stuck up from the middle of the city all by itself, all fifty-two stories of it. Charlie McDevitt used to liken it to an upthrust middle digit, giving the finger to an otherwise distinctive skyline of church spires and low-slung office bui
ldings. Then, not to be outdone, the John Hancock Insurance folks built their own tower practically next door, and the Pru lost whatever distinction it may have held.

  The restaurant on the fifty-second floor of the Pru is called The Top of the Hub. It has pretty decent seafood, a panoramic view of the city, and prices geared to business luncheons on company credit cards. That’s where Farley Vaughn insisted on meeting me for lunch. “On the Red Sox,” he said over the phone, which was okay with me.

  When I was deposited in the lobby of the restaurant after an ear-cracking ride on the express elevator, I whispered Vaughn’s name into the ear of the hostess who greeted me. “Oh, yes, sir,” she said, in a tone that suggested she and I shared an important secret. “Mr. Vaughn is expecting you.”

  Vaughn was seated at a small table against the window that was wrapped all the way around the restaurant. He was gazing off toward the eastern horizon where every few seconds an airliner descended from its holding pattern toward the runway over at Logan. He was toying absentmindedly with a wineglass containing an unnaturally brilliant colored rose. He stood and extended his hand when I arrived at the table.