“You were in the army?”
I nodded. “Yep.”
“What did you do?”
I took a sip from my own mug. “Military police. Spent a lot of time guarding fences and ammo dumps or directing traffic. Pretty boring. Never really heard a shot fired in anger, though a couple of times I did hear Kraut artillery as we were heading east when I got over to France.”
“So you know war, then.”
“I do.”
“And I’m sure you know loss as well.”
Again, the tightening of my hand. “Yeah, I know loss.”
And she must have sensed a change in my voice, for she stared harder at me and said, “Who was he?”
I couldn’t speak for a moment, and then I said, “My older brother. Paul.”
“What happened?”
I suppose I should have kept my mouth shut, but there was something about her teary eyes that just got to me. I cleared my throat. “He was 82nd Airborne. Wounded at the Battle of the Bulge. Mortar shrapnel. They were surrounded by the Krauts, and I guess it took a long time for him to die…”
“Then we both know, don’t we.”
“Yeah.” I looked down at the pad of paper. “So. What do you need me for?”
She twisted the crumpled bit of tissue in her hands. “I…I don’t know how to get to that island. I’ve sent letters to everyone I can think of, in the army and in Congress, and no one can help me out…and I found out that the island is now restricted. There’s some sort of new radar installation being built there…no one can land on the island.”
I knew where this was going but I wanted to hear it from her. “All right, but let me say again, Miss Williams, why do you need me?”
She waited, waited for what seemed to be a long time. She took a long sip from her tea. There were horns from outside, a siren, and I could hear music from the nearest burlesque hall. “Um…well, I’ve been here for a week…asking around…at the local police station…asking about a detective who might help me, one from around here, one who knows the harbor islands…”
“And my name came up? Really? From who?”
“A…a desk sergeant. Name of O’Connor.”
I grimaced. Fat bastard, never got over the fact that my dad beat up his dad ten or fifteen years ago at some Irish tavern in Southie; he always gave me crap, every time he saw me. “All right. What did he tell you?”
“That you used to work with your dad in the harbor, pulling in lobster pots, working after school and summers, and he said…well, he said…”
“Go on, Miss Williams. What did he say?”
“He said that if anyone could get me out to the islands and back, it’d be that thick-skulled mick Billy Sullivan.”
I tried not to smile. “Yeah, that sounds like the good sergeant.”
Her voice softened. “Please, Mister Sullivan. I…I don’t know what else to do. I can’t make it out there without your help, and getting those memories from my man…that would mean the world to me.”
“If the island is off-limits during the day, it means we’ll have to go out at night. Do you understand, Miss Williams?”
She seemed a bit surprised. “I…I thought I could draw you a map, a description, something like that.”
I shook my head. “Not going to work. I’m not going out to Gallops Island at night without you. If I find that box of mementos for you, I want you right there, to check it out.”
“But-”
“If that’s going to be a problem, Miss Williams, then I’m afraid I can’t help you.”
My potential client sounded meek. “I…I don’t like boats…but no, it won’t be a problem.”
“Good. My rate is fifty dollars a day, plus expenses…but this should be relatively easy. And that fifty dollars has to be paid in advance.”
She opened her purse, deftly pulled out three tens and a twenty, which I scooped up and put into my top desk drawer. I tore off a sheet of paper, wrote something down, and slid it over to her. “There. Address in South Boston. Little fishing and tackle shop, with a dock to the harbor. I’ll see you there tomorrow at 6 p.m. Weather permitting, it should be easy.”
My new client folded up the piece of paper and put it in her purse, and then stood up, held out a hand with manicured red nails. “Oh, I can’t thank you enough, Mister Sullivan. This means so much to me, and…”
I shook her hand and said, “It’s too early to thank me, Miss Williams. If we get there and get your shoe box, then you can thank me.”
She smiled and walked to the door, and I eyed her legs and the way she moved. “Tomorrow, then.”
“Tomorrow,” I said.
She stepped out of the office and shut the door behind her.
I counted about fifteen seconds, and then, no doubt to the surprise of my new client had she known, I immediately went to work.
I put on my hat and coat and went out, locking the door behind me. I took the steps two at a time, out to the chaos that was Scollay Square, and then I spotted her, heading up Tremont Street. I dodged more sailors and some loud, red-faced businessmen, the kind who had leather cases full of samples and liked to raise hell in big bad Boston before crawling back to their safe little homes in Maine or New Hampshire.
My client went around the corner, and I quickly lost her.
Damn.
I looked up and down the street, saw some traffic, more guys moving around, but not my client. A few feet away I stopped a man in a wheelchair, with a tartan blanket covering the stumps that used to be his legs. Tony Blawkowski, holding a cardboard sign:
“Yeah?” He was staring out at the people going by, shaking a cardboard coffee cup filled with coins.
“You see a young gal come this way?”
“Good lookin’, small leather purse in her hands, hat on top of her pretty little head?”
“That’s the one.”
“Nope, didn’t see a damn thing.” He smiled, showing off yellow teeth.
I reached into my pocket, tossed a quarter in his cup.
“Well, that’s nice, refreshin’ my memory like that,” Ski said. “Thing is, she came right by here, wigglin’ that fine bottom of hers, gave me no money, the stuck-up broad, and then she got into a car and left.”
Somehow the noise of the horns and the music from the burlesque hall seemed to drill into my head. “You sure?”
“Damn straight. A nice Packard, clean and shiny. It was parked there for a while, then she got in and left.”
“You see who was in the Packard?”
“You got another quarter?”
I reached back into my pocket, and there was another clink as the coin fell into his cup. He laughed. “Nope. Didn’t see who was in there or who was driving. They jus’ left. That’s all.”
“All right, Ski. Tell you what, you see that Packard come back, you let me know, all right?”
“What’s in it for me?”
I smiled. “Keeping your secret, for one.”
He shook his head. “Bastard. You do drive a hard bargain.”
“Only kind I got tonight.”
I started to walk away, then looked back. As a couple of out-of-towners dropped some coins in Ski’s cup, I thought about the sign. It was true, for Ski was an injured vet. He had been in the army, and one night, on leave here in town a couple of years ago, he got drunk out of his mind, passed out in front of a bar, and was run over by an MTA trolley, severing both legs.
Nice little story, especially the lesson it gave, for never accepting what you see on the surface.
