Follow the Sharks Page 9

  “I like it very much,” I said. “Cover yourself up, will you?”

  She tilted her head and smiled briefly. Then she shrugged and sat up to pull on a tee shirt. It was much too big for her, and it fell below her hips, giving the illusion that it was all she was wearing. It made her look much sexier.

  She picked up the glass and took a long drink. She handed it to me. I sipped then put it down.

  “So you’re here on business, then.”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re not here to comfort the grieving mother.”

  “You shouldn’t be grieving, Jan.”

  “No?”

  “No. You should be helping. You should insist on helping. If we’re going to find E.J….”

  She snorted. “Find him? You mean find his body, don’t you? Am I supposed to be out looking for my little boy’s body?”

  “We don’t know that he’s dead, Jan. There’s no reason not to assume he’s alive. There are things we can do.”

  “The FBI, that guy, Stern, he thinks he’s dead. Right? They’ve given up, haven’t they? And the police, they’re not exactly conducting an all-out hunt for my boy. So what am I supposed to do?”

  “Jan—”

  “I’ll tell you what I’m doing. I’m getting the best goddam tan I’ve ever had, that’s what I’m doing. I’m working hard at it, concentrating. And I’m acquiring a real taste for vodka and tonic. And I figure I’m doing as much as anybody.”

  “Every policeman in the country has a picture of E.J. Every FBI office has his picture. No one has given up.”

  Jan lifted her glass and took a quick swallow. Then she leaned toward me and gripped my leg. “Well, I have,” she hissed. “I’ve spent the last week lying here giving up. It wasn’t easy. But I did it. I gave up. I got it through my dumb Eyetalian skull that my boy is gone, and that you and Stern and all the rest of you guys have gone back to your jobs, and that Eddie’s no help at all, and that it’s all over, and that I’ve got to accept all that.” She hitched herself forward until her face was close to mine. Her dark eyes were shining, and her voice went soft. “So don’t come around here trying to give me hope, Brady Coyne. Please don’t do that. It would be an unwelcome gift. I don’t want hope now. I want it over. I just want to forget it all. Help me do that, will you?”

  Her hand went to the back of my neck and her mouth found mine. Her lips were soft and I could feel her breasts press against my chest, and in spite of myself I found myself responding to her. A little moan came from her throat. Her mouth moved on mine. Our tongues touched briefly, and then hers flicked and darted, inviting mine to follow. I reached up to hold her face in both of my hands and pulled back from her kiss. Her eyes were wide and dry and staring into mine. I kissed her softly on her lips, then hugged her to me. She buried her face in my shoulder and her arms went around my neck. I held her while she rocked and shuddered in my arms.

  I wondered if Sam or Josie were watching from the windows of the house, and if they were, what they were thinking. “Jan, listen to me,” I said into her ear.

  “Don’t. Please. Just hold me.”

  I pushed her gently away. I had thought she was crying, but her eyes were dry. They were scowling at me. “Okay,” she said. “What, then? Damn you, what do you want from me?”

  I stood up and held my hands to her. “Come on. Get up,” I said to her. She staggered a little.

  “Let’s sit in the shade. The sun makes me dizzy,” she said.

  We moved to a pair of patio chairs by a round table with a pole through the middle and a big flowered umbrella on top. I reached across to take Jan’s hands in mine. She sat there passively and let me hold them. They were lifeless, like her eyes.

  “I want you to go on television.”

  “Is this that Stern’s idea?”

  “No,” I said. “It’s mine.”

  “Does the big FBI agent approve?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t talk with him about it.”

  “What do you have in mind?”

  “I know a news director at Channel 5. He’ll get a reporter out here to interview you. Get E J.’s picture on the television, tell your story. Maybe somebody has seen him.”

  Jan studied our hands where they lay together in the middle of the table. “I don’t think I could handle that. It might give me hope again.” She peered up at me. “That would be cruel. Don’t you see?”

  “I don’t mean to be cruel. I think you should have hope. I think it’s reasonable to have hope. I think E.J.’s alive. I really do. I think his sneaker meant just that. That he’s alive somewhere, and that he’ll be coming back to you. But you’ve got to do something, too.”

  “But the FBI is looking for his body. Not him. Not E.J. alive, but his dead body. Isn’t that right?”

  I shrugged. “They don’t know what they’re looking for. But they haven’t given up. I know that.”

  She smiled sadly. “I wish Eddie were here.”

  “You haven’t heard from him either?”

  “Eddie’s gone. Remember what he said? ‘I’m gone.’”

  “I tried to reach him at work,” I told her. “They haven’t seen him, either. But you know Eddie. He’ll probably call. He always has.”

  Jan sighed. “Oh, yes. I know Eddie. He runs away from things. He ran away from baseball. He ran away from me and E.J. Now he’s run away from all this. He always talked about Alaska. No, Eddie’s gone. That’s what he does when he stops hoping. I work on my tan and drink vodka tonics. Eddie runs away.” She squeezed my hands and then pulled hers away and leaned back in her chair. “It’s all the same, I guess.”

  “Go on television, Jan. Do it.”

  “No. I can’t.”

  I nodded. “Okay.” I stood up. “I guess I’ll give up, too, then.” I turned to leave.

  “Brady, wait.”

  I stopped but did not turn to face her.

  “Don’t you understand how hard that would be for me?”

  I shrugged. “Sure. So give up, then.”

  I felt her standing behind me. Her hand touched my shoulder. “You’re right, of course,” she said softly. “I’ve been trying to give up. I don’t want to hope. It hurts too much. I try to tell myself that it’s over, that he’s gone forever, and sometimes it works and I can just be numb. But then when I’m not careful it creeps up on me and I see him smiling and I know I’ll never stop hoping and crying for him.”

  I turned to face her. She leaned against me and put her arms around my waist. She tilted back a little so she could look up at me. “Last night I was getting ready for bed,” she said, “and I went to brush my teeth. And there in the holder was his toothbrush. It’s a little green kid-sized toothbrush, and it has old toothpaste all gunked in the bristles. He always hated brushing his teeth. I mean, I see him every day. His room, the furniture he used to sit on. There are pictures of him. His toys are under the sofa. And I don’t think of him as being dead. I should. I think I should. I try to. I try to imagine it. I pretend it’s as if he had never been born. If he’d never been born, I wouldn’t miss him now, see? But it doesn’t work. I can’t make it work. I can’t trick myself that way. So, yeah, I’ll go on television, if you want me to. Just tell me I must. Tell me I have no choice, that you’re making me, that it’s not my decision.”

  I kissed her forehead. “You must. I have decided. I’ll arrange it right away.”

  Sylvie Szabo and I sprawled side by side on my sofa, our bare feet propped up on a stack of old newspapers atop the coffee table. We were sipping white wine and, like untold millions of other Americans, staring at the six o’clock news on the television. After a brief introductory lesson on feminine hygiene, featuring the relative benefits of pads versus tampons, the anchor people came on and told us all we’d ever need to know about Arthur, the season’s first tropical storm gathering steam two hundred miles southeast of Cuba, the President’s newest tax reform scheme, hostilities in the Mid-East, and a cocaine bust in New Orleans starring a well-k
nown professional football player.

  “He was always considered a shifty one,” smirked the anchorman.

  “That’s right, Frank,” replied the anchorwoman. “Heh, heh.” She turned to face a different camera. “And now on the local scene, we have this story from Winchester.”

  I sat up. “This is it,” I said to Sylvie. She gripped my hand.

  On the screen appeared Sam Farina’s house. It looked more opulent on television than it did to the eye, if that was possible, as the camera panned across the broad emerald lawn and lingered meaningfully on Sam’s putting green and then switched to the kidney-shaped swimming pool out back. The reporter, in voice-over, was saying, “This is the home of Salvatore Farina, owner of the Farina Liquor chain. Farina lives in this custom-built seven-bedroom home on the exclusive west side of Winchester with his wife and daughter and, until almost two weeks ago, his ten-year-old grandson. But tragedy now haunts this home. One week ago last Saturday little E.J. Donagan failed to return home from his paper route. He has not been seen since.”

  At this point a photograph of E.J. flashed on the screen. The reporter continued, “Little E.J. was kidnapped. The family, working with the Winchester police, the State Police, and the FBI, delivered one hundred and fifty thousand dollars in ransom money. E.J. Donagan, whose father is the former Red Sox pitcher, Eddie Donagan, has not been returned to the family. I talked with Janet Donagan, E.J.’s mother, this afternoon.”

  Jan appeared on the screen, sitting on Sam’s living room sofa. The reporter, a young blonde, sat on a chair facing her.

  “She looks so sad,” whispered Sylvie.

  “Mrs. Donagan,” began the reporter, “what is being done to find your son?”

  “I don’t know,” said Jan with a shrug. “We—for a while, they—the FBI, the police—they were here all the time. But now—lately—we don’t see them. I don’t know. I guess they’re looking. I don’t know.”

  “You are still hopeful?” The reporter’s voice was soft and spread thickly with sympathy, like honey on toast.

  The camera zoomed in on Jan’s face in time to catch the sparkle of panic in her eyes. “Hopeful?” she repeated. “Oh, Jesus! Yes, I’m—we’re trying. I can’t believe…”

  E.J.’s picture appeared again. “The FBI and the other authorities declined to be interviewed,” said the reporter, “but the family’s attorney told this reporter that they are prepared to offer a ten-thousand dollar reward for information leading to the return of E.J. Donagan. Or,” she went on after a pause, her voice low and dramatic, “the boy’s body. Call this number if you have seen, or know anything of, E.J. Donagan.” And the phone number of the Winchester police appeared on the screen under E.J.’s picture. After a moment’s silence, the reporter said, “And now back to you, Dorothy and Frank.”

  I got up and snapped off the television, then returned to my place beside Sylvie. She snuggled close to me. I turned to her and saw tears glittering in her eyes. “Oh, that is so sad,” she murmured.

  I grunted.

  “Will they find him?”

  “I don’t know. We hope somebody has seen him. It’s been two weeks. He could be anywhere.”

  “Oh, Brady…”

  I put my arm around Sylvie’s shoulders and stared at the blank television screen. What else could we do now? The news story, as brief and as superficial as it had been, was touching. Jan and I, in talking to the reporter off camera, had refused to discuss the details of the ransom payment or the aborted meeting in the quarry, hoping to allow the kidnappers no opportunity to feel trapped or pursued. We wanted only to get E.J.’s picture on the screen. And while the reporter had been unable to resist the attraction of the tragedy-befalls-the-wealthy aspects of the story, much as they insist on squeezing the most out of every Kennedy catastrophe, she had accomplished what we wanted. I hoped it wouldn’t backfire. The story was out, and there was no way to pull it back.

  I was startled by the jangling of my telephone. I went into the kitchen and answered it.

  “Helluva show,” came Stern’s sarcastic voice. “Damn nice.”

  “Glad you approve.”

  “You know what you’ve done, Coyne? You’ve just sealed that boy’s death warrant is what you’ve done. You think if those people still have him they’ll keep him alive now that everybody in the state is drooling over that ten K reward? And are those folks in Winchester prepared to have People magazine crawling through their peony beds and taking pictures through telephoto lenses, and having every crackpot after that reward? You just shit the bed, Coyne.”

  “I can’t see that what you’ve been doing has accomplished much,” I said lamely.

  “You’re not supposed to see it. You’re supposed to go back to your lawbooks and make out some wills or whatever the hell it is you do for a living, and keep your goddam nose out of places where it’s gonna get all bloody. This was the stupidest, most destructive thing you could’ve done.”

  “I see,” I said. “Division of labor.”

  “Hey, you’ve gotta face them. You’ve gotta live with it. Good luck to you.”

  “Look, Stern. I hope—”

  “You better hope, Coyne. You better hope and pray and meditate and every other damn thing you can think of.”

  I heard him replace the receiver. He did not do it gently.

  I hung up and wandered out onto my little balcony. Sylvie followed me. She handed me my wineglass and we stood side by side staring out toward the horizon, where the sky was the same gray as the water and they merged together so that you couldn’t tell where heaven and earth joined.

  “Are you all right?” murmured Sylvie.

  I hugged her against me. “No, dear, I’m not all right. I may just have done a very stupid thing.”

  She nuzzled against my throat. “Would you like to make love?”

  “It probably won’t help,” I said. “But we could try it.”

  Part 3 Annie

  10

  A SULTRY FRIDAY AFTERNOON in July, a week after Jan’s appearance on television. Julie had the day off. I don’t exactly give her days off. We don’t work that way. She’ll say to me, “Any problem if I take Friday?” and I’ll say yea or nay and we work it out. The other side of that particular coin is when I say to her, “How about Saturday morning?” It all balances out.

  This time she was off with her Edward and little Megan for a long weekend in Ogunquit. Overdue and well deserved.

  I spent the day talking to other lawyers, all of us trying to find alternatives to going to court. We attorneys spend most of our time looking for ways to avoid practicing law. So far as I know, no one has come up with anything better than a leisurely luncheon at Locke-Obers. On any given day, more legal disputes are resolved in the mirrored downstairs Men’s Bar, Hizzoner the distinguished maître d’ in his black tie presiding, than in all the courtrooms in Suffolk County.

  I mended a fence here, created a strategic gap in one there, cajoled the odd client, the telephone suctioned to my ear for most of the day. Real Perry Mason stuff. When the phone jangled about three o’clock, it interrupted the daydream I was indulging in which I packed my waders and seven-foot Orvis fly rod into the car and drove to the Deerfield River in time for the evening stonefly hatch.

  “Mr. Coyne?” The voice was low and tentative. I recognized it immediately. I had heard it three previous times, once over the crash and clatter of pins being struck by bowling balls.

  “Yes,” I said. “Do you have another recorded message for me?”

  “No. I want to talk to you.”

  “You have news of E.J. Donagan?”

  “I don’t want to talk on the phone.” She hesitated. “Can I trust you?”

  “Yes,” I said immediately. “Yes, you can trust me.”

  “You’re a lawyer. You’re supposed to…”

  “I promise you client privilege, yes. You’re in trouble.”

  I heard her exhale abruptly. “You know I am. But you mustn’t ask me any questions. You hav
e to promise not to ask me anything. I—I have to do this my own way. If you go to the police or something you’ll never hear from me again.”

  “You need an attorney.”

  “Okay. Let’s put it that way. You’re my attorney.”

  “I’ll have to know your name.”

  “No. No questions. Please.”

  “This isn’t—”

  “It has to be my way, Mr. Coyne. I want to trust you. I don’t know if I can. I think you can understand that.”

  “Sure. Okay.”

  “Can you meet me in an hour?”

  “Where?”

  “The Aquarium. Be there at four. Okay?”

  “Yes. How will I recognize you?”

  “You won’t. I’ll recognize you. What do you look like?”

  “Well, I’m wearing a brownish glen plaid suit, a bit rumpled, yellow shirt, dark green tie. I’m six-one, just the beginnings of a pot belly that you’d never notice, black hair with a little more gray in it than there was yesterday. Bluish-gray eyes.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Carry your jacket over your shoulder. Look at the fish. I’ll find you.”

  She hung up. I found my pulse beating hard in my temples and a kink in my stomach. I leaned back in my chair, sighed deeply, and lit a Winston. I contemplated calling Stern, then quickly discarded the idea. He wouldn’t like it, but I had the feeling that he wouldn’t want me to handle this alone, and that this woman was too cautious for me to handle it any other way. I decided to go along, do it exactly her way. The worst that could happen would be nothing, and then we’d be no worse off than we had been. At best I might learn something about the disappearance of E.J. Donagan.

  Every summer camp and recreation program in the city had decided to bring the kids to the New England Aquarium to escape the oppressive heat of the afternoon. It was a good choice. Inside the big concrete structure down on the waterfront it was dark and cool.

  I worked my way through the clusters of small children along the spiral ramp that encircled the great tank in the core of the building. I found a spot by a thick glass window so I could watch the fish fin past in their slow, endless circles. Some of them I could identify—the striped bass, the big sawfish, the primitive gars, turtles the size of the Plymouth Rock, and the stolid sharks, whose dead little marble eyes seemed to lock onto mine each time they glided past my window. Then there were the exotic species that most of us see only in aquariums. There was a hypnotic rhythm to the monotonous, ordered movement of this community of fishes. They swam effortlessly, round and round, all at the same speed, their tails and fins barely moving. Once in a while one fish would dart forward, but then it would fall back into the pace. They reminded me of joggers on a circular track, moving for the sake of moving, going nowhere, passing the time, hour after hour, day after day, for a lifetime. I imagined one of the fish dying. I supposed it would just sink to the bottom, and none of the others would notice. They’d continue to move in their drugged orbits, waiting for their own turn to die. Each seemed to know its place, and I wondered what happened to procreation and hunger and aggression and territoriality in this artificially sterile little ecosystem.