22 

There are only two towns on Martha’s Vineyard where you can buy liquor: Oak Bluffs and Edgar-town. The other five towns are, wisely, some say, dry. If you want to get drunk or have wine with your dinner in them, you have to bring your own bottle. As might be guessed, most of the island’s fights are between drunks overindulging in Oak Bluffs and Edgartown. Maybe that’s why the county jail is in Edgartown: it’s convenient to the action.

Since Edgartown prides itself on being wealthy and proper, the police work hard at keeping the bars relatively quiet. Oak Bluffs, on the other hand, is openly noisy, especially along Circuit Avenue, the main drag, which sports several bars and restaurants. Young people prefer to hang out in Oak Bluffs, rather than in the other towns, because of its sound and activity, and the town makes a lot of money off them. So as long as things don’t get too tempestuous, the Oak Bluffs cops just smile and stay alert.

I figured that if Kate had called from a noisy bar, it had probably been one in Oak Bluffs. All of the island’s bars are filled with strangers during tourist season, but since it was now December, I thought there was a possibility that a bartender or a waitress might remember a gorgeous Anglo-Asian woman such as Kate.

I started looking for her at Offshore Ale, the island’s only brew pub. Its home-brewed beers and ales are excellent and it also offers its patrons decent pub food, a dartboard, and a lot of music.

“Haven’t seen you lately, J.W.,” said Elvira when I came in. “What’ll it be?”

“I’m looking for a woman,” I said.

“You already have a woman,” said Elvira, “but if Zee isn’t enough for you, how about adding me? I’ll stick Henry with the kids and you and I can go to Hawaii or some other warm place. What do you say?”

“I’m too old to run off with you,” I said. “You’d ruin me within a week and then Zee would be mad at me and Christmas would be spoiled for my kids.”

“Just trying to help out,” said Elvira.

“You can help out by telling me if the woman I’m looking for was in here last night.” I described Kate.

Elvira shook her head. “Sounds like she’d be hard to miss. Nobody like that was here last night.”

“I’ll keep hunting,” I said, heading for the door. “Maybe Henry will take you to Hawaii.”

“Ha! He’s bought one of those gigantic TVs and he won’t leave home until the NFL play-offs are over and the Super Bowl’s been played!”

I went down to the foot of Circuit Avenue and started back up the street, hitting the bars in succession. In the first two nobody could remember having seen anyone who looked like Kate. Then I came to the Fireside and my luck changed.

The Fireside is not the classiest bar on the island, but before I got married and settled down, it had been one of my favorites. It is the haunt of some of the seedier locals and smells of beer and cigarettes and, more faintly, of marijuana, although smoking either tobacco or weed is officially illegal in public places.

Opposite the bar, along the wall, is a row of booths with knife-marked tables. The farthest of these booths is known to regulars as the Confessional because some peculiar quirk of construction allows people in the next booth to hear everything that’s said within it. Newcomers, especially young lovers, are steered there by jesters in need of entertainment with their beer.

My friend Bonzo worked at the Fireside, sweeping floors, bringing beer up from the cellar, serving drinks, wiping tables, cleaning up spills, and otherwise performing those simple but necessary tasks required in any bar. Their simplicity was exactly challenging enough to keep him attentive, for Bonzo had long ago fried some essential part of his brain with bad acid and had been transformed from a promising lad into an eternal child, sweet and gentle, the sad apple of his mother’s eye.

Now, in midafternoon, the place was almost empty. I waved at Bonzo, who was pushing his broom, sat down at the bar, and ordered a Sam Adams.

“Long time no see,” said the bartender. “A lot of married guys keep right on coming in after they get hitched, but not you.”

“Home is the place for me,” I said. “I’ve spent enough time in bars to last me the rest of my life. You on duty last night?”

“Nope, I was home in front of my fireplace. Nicki was tending bar.”

“I’m looking for a woman,” I said. “She might have been here last night.”

He gestured. “Bonzo was here. Maybe he can help you.”

“Okay with you if I buy him a beer?”

“Why not?”

I beckoned to Bonzo and he came over, a smile on his innocent face.

“Hey, J.W., how you doing?”

“Good. I’m buying you a beer. Your boss, here, said it was okay.”

Bonzo looked doubtful. “You sure? I got work to do, you know. I can’t be drinking on the job.”

“It’s a special occasion,” said the bartender, putting a Sam in front of him. “A sort of Christmas present from the management.”

“Gee, thanks.” Bonzo climbed onto the stool beside mine. “I like beer, you know, but I can’t drink much of it. It makes my head go around.”

I touched his glass with mine. “Cheers.”

“Cheers to you, too, J.W.”

We drank and I told him whom I was looking for and how she looked, and said, “She may have been in here last night. You see anybody like that?”

He beamed. “You know something, J.W.? I sure did see her. She’s not very big but she sure is a pretty girl. I liked looking at her and—you know what?—she smiled at me!”

“What time was she here, Bonzo? Do you remember?” He thought about the question but then shook his head. “It wasn’t too late, but I don’t know exactly when it was. I know she and the man were gone before we closed up because I kept looking at her, you know, and one time I looked and she was gone. Sorry, J.W. I should have looked at my watch, maybe.” He showed me his watch. It, like mine, was the under-ten-dollars kind.

“That’s okay, Bonzo. Tell me about the man. Did you know him?”

“Oh no. I never seen him before. He was a stranger, just like her. These days, you know, we have strangers around almost all year. It’s not like it used to be when off-island people only mostly came in the summer. Now they come down earlier every year and stay later.” He looked into my face. “It’s what they call the shoulder seasons, you know. Like the shoulders on a man. They’re getting wider all the time, so we have strangers here all the way to New Year’s these days. He was one of them, and so was she.”

“Did you happen to hear his name?”

He thought some more, then shook his head.

“No, I never did. And I guess I never heard her name either because if I’d heard it, I’d remember it.

I sure wouldn’t forget the name of a girl as pretty as she is.”

“If it’s the same woman, her name is Kate. If she comes back, maybe you should ask her.”

He blushed. “Oh, I don’t know if I could just go up to her and do that. I don’t think I could just go up and ask her if she’s named Kate. Gee, no, I don’t think so.”

“What did the man look like?”

His brow furrowed as he thought back. “Well,” he said finally, “he looked like he was glad to see Kate.”

“You mean they didn’t come in together?”

“Oh no. She came in first and then he came in and pretty soon they were sitting together over in that booth there, laughing and talking like they was old friends. I could tell that some of the other guys were getting ready to go talk with her themselves, but then the man came in and he talked with her first and after that, nobody else talked with her. Just the man.”

“Can you describe him? You know: Was he tall or short? Young or old? Did he have a beard? What color was his hair, if he had any? What kind of clothes was he wearing?”

“Oh, I get what you mean, J.W. Let me think.” More furrows, then his brow smoothed. “He was what you’d call medium. Not tall, not short, not young, not old. Sort of as old as you are, maybe; you know what I mean? He was wearing winter clothes just like everybody else, and you know what?” He held up a forefinger and smiled happily. “I remember for sure that he didn’t have a mustache or a beard because when I brought them their drinks, he didn’t have either one! And you know what else I saw?”

“What?”

“I saw her talking once on one of those little telephones everybody has. I’d like to have one of those myself, J.W., so I could just call somebody whenever I wanted to.”

That might have been her call to Joe Begay. “What were they drinking?” I asked. “Can you remember?”

His professional pride appeared. “Heck, yes, J.W. I work here in this bar, you know, and I have to remember what people are drinking! They were both drinking bourbon and water. Ladies don’t usually drink bourbon, but that’s what she was drinking. They both had several before they left.”

“How’d they seem to be getting along?”

“They were getting along good, J.W. They were talking and laughing and having a good time. And I think they were still happy when they left because they left a big tip like happy people do.”

After I left the Fireside, I spent an hour going into all of the other bars in town, but no one else had seen Kate or her companion.

Where had they gone? Who was the man?

I drove to Edgartown and parked in front of the police station. Kit Goulart buzzed me in, then rang the Chief to see if he was free to see me. I went to his office and told him most of the truth about what had happened to Toni Begay’s car, leaving out only the part about Joe and me being in the woods when Joe pressed the button that detonated the explosives. Then I told him about Kate being out of touch and about my talk with Bonzo.

“You’ve had a busy day,” he said.

“How about your day?” I asked. “Did you find out anything about the guys on the list I gave you?”

“What I found out is police business.”

“Here I tell you everything and you won’t tell me anything.”

“That’s right.”

“Hell of a note.”

“If you’re going to cry, I’ll give you a tissue.”

I looked at the computer on his desk. “If you found anything out, you did it awfully fast. Did you use that thing?”

“What if I did? Modern technology is a tool of modern law enforcement. Too bad you’re still living in the last century, otherwise even you could probably find out things you want to know.” He leaned back and put his hands behind his neck.

“Are you telling me that the information I want is there on the Internet?”

“I’m not telling you anything.”

“How do I find it?”

“You probably can’t, because you’re not as computer smart as me or your children or your wife.”

Hmmmm.

I looked at my watch. In not too long, Zee and the kids would be at John Skye’s house. “Well,” I said, getting up, “it’s been great talking with you.”

“The pleasure has been all mine,” said his voice as I went out the door.