Murder at the B-School Page 26

  Presumably, not a lot of tourists checked in at the police station first. But this was a necessary professional courtesy. And depending on what happened, she might well need some help from someone with jurisdiction down here.

  The cuartel de policía was a small municipal building made of cream-colored cinder block, several blocks outside of the congested center of Isabel Segunda. About half the building was given over to a vehicle-maintenance and cleaning shop, mostly open to the weather along its long side. A half-dozen guys of various ages and shapes hosed down vehicles and poked around under hoods. One or two looked up and nodded at her; most simply kept hosing and poking.

  Behind the reception desk, a uniformed woman manned the phones and directed traffic. Fans moved the humid air around the station at high speeds. Just behind the desk and slightly to the left was the station’s lone cell—the cuarto detenidos, according to a plastic sign above the barred door. Brouillard hoped that no one she knew would wind up in that particular cage.

  It took a while for the dispatcher to find someone who spoke good enough English to deal with the policewoman who had come from all the way up in Boston. Agente Montoya, who arrived about twenty minutes after the call for an English-speaker went out, had a puffy, saggy copper face, with bags under his eyes that made him look world-weary and skeptical. He invited Brouillard into the sealed-up conference room, steered her toward one of the mismatched chairs around the Formica-topped table, welcomed her to Vieques, and asked how he could help. His English was peppered with out-of-date colloquialisms, as if he had studied a very old English textbook.

  Brouillard explained that she had followed an American down here, a man named Vermeer, who appeared to be linked to several deaths up in Boston but who had not been charged with anything. This was an informal surveillance, more than anything, Brouillard said, and the American didn’t appear to pose any sort of threat, but of course, Agente Montoya and his colleagues needed to be aware of all this. Meanwhile, she said, another gentleman—a Mr. Alonzo Rodriguez—had been compelled to return unexpectedly to his family home on Vieques. It appeared that Mr. Rodriguez might have some useful information regarding Mr. Vermeer. Or, Brouillard shrugged, he might not. So a conversation with Mr. Rodriguez would be helpful.

  What followed was a negotiation disguised as a conversation. If we were to follow the rules to the letter, Agente Montoya said, you would of course need to work through the extradition unit at Hato Rey, which, of course, would require you to go over to San Juan. If Hato Rey agreed that you needed to talk to Mr. Rodriguez, they would call us, and we would call Mr. Rodriguez, and he could choose to come in or not, and he could choose to bring along his lawyer. All of this would require a lot of time, of course.

  “So now,” Montoya concluded, in a casual-sounding tone, “tell me more about this American of yours—this Señor Vermeer.”

  Brouillard had thought this through. Vermeer had to sound bad enough to warrant bending the rules and questioning Rodriguez, but not so bad that the local police would feel compelled to act on their own. Although it might come to that. “The fact that I’m here, Agente Montoya, means that my department takes this individual seriously. Very seriously. He had some sort of personal connection to a young man who died under strange circumstances. He also had a connection to the young man’s sister, who was murdered several days ago.”

  “I have heard of these killings,” he said. “A bad situation.”

  “I advised him to get out of the public spotlight, for his own good. The next day, he vanished. Then he turned up here.”

  Montoya shrugged. “So he is either taking your good advice or he is running away from you. Well. If he thinks he is beyond the reach of the American police here, of course, he is mistaken. If he appears on the Interpol computers as a fugitive, your FBI will fly in and pick him up. He would have been wiser to go to Brazil, I think. There is harder extradition from Brazil.”

  “If he’s actually on the run,” Brouillard agreed. “Frankly, if he had called me before leaving town and told me that’s what he was doing, I probably wouldn’t be here.”

  “And yet . . .” Montoya said slowly. “And yet, he chooses our little Vieques. Not the first place you Americans think of when you want to get away from it all. And meanwhile, as you say, Señor Rodriguez also leaves your town in a hurry, headed for the same small island that most Bostoners—you would say that? Bostoners?—have never heard of. And so you have asked yourself, is this a coincidence?”

  “Yes. That’s what I ask myself. As a Bostonian.”

  “Bos-toe-nian,” he repeated, rolling the word on his tongue. “And you do not think your fellow Bostonian, Señor Vermeer, represents a danger to Vieques? Or specifically, to my Señor Rodriguez?”

  “No. I don’t think so.”

  “But you are basically—what is the phrase?—‘winging it’? ¿Improvisar?”

  “‘Monitoring,’ let’s say. With your awareness, of course, Agente Montoya.”

  “And are you asking us for our help in this . . . monitoring?”

  “Absolutely not. That would be inappropriate.” She winged it.

  “Good.” He nodded. “We could not participate in anything like that without official approval from the mainland. And so the question is, Captain Brouillard, will you conduct yourself professionally on our island, even though you are not here in a professional capacity? And will you call us immediately if there’s something we need to know about?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “No guns, of course?”

  “I’m on vacation.”

  “Well, then,” he said, reaching for the phone, “let us invite Señor Rodriguez in for a conversation. Did I mention to you, Captain, that he is a cousin of mine?”

  Rodriguez showed up looking flushed and a little haggard. He sat down next to Brouillard, nodding at her but not moving to shake her hand. He used the cloth handkerchief in his left hand to dab the sweat off his forehead. To Montoya he said something in rapid-fire Spanish—incomprehensible to Brouillard—and Montoya simply shrugged in response. Finally, Rodriguez turned slightly and addressed her. “I am very surprised to see you here, Captain,” he said. “Very surprised.”

  “Not as surprised as I am to be here,” she said. “Thank you for agreeing to come in and talk with me.”

  “I don’t know what more I can tell you. My understanding was that Bill Weiskopf was going to set up the meeting you wanted.”

  “Uh-huh,” she said. “And my understanding is that that meeting will take a while to set up. And without you there, it’s going to be much less helpful.”

  Agente Montoya sat with his arms resting on the rounded shelf of his belly. He appeared to be nodding off.

  Rodriguez, for his part, now looked put-upon. “Excuse me, Captain, but as I’m sure you were informed, I needed to return to Vieques. There was not much I could do about the situation.”

  “Sí, I meant to ask you, Alonzo,” Montoya said in a drowsy-sounding voice. “The captain here says Ernesto was taken ill. I hadn’t heard of this. How serious is this problem?”

  “He’s doing fine now. No longer any cause for concern.”

  With this exchange, to Brouillard’s eyes Rodriguez’s body language had shifted from annoyed to uncomfortable. He seemed ill at ease talking about his father’s illness in front of another family member.

  “Mr. Rodriguez,” Brouillard said, taking another tack, “I wanted to ask you how well you know Wim Vermeer.”

  “Professor Vermeer? Not well. I’ve been introduced to him, and of course, I’ve seen him around the campus.” He dabbed at his forehead.

  “Ever invite him down here?”

  “To Vieques? Of course not.”

  “Ever talk to him about Vieques?”

  “Never.” He was clear enough on that point. He seemed baffled by the general line of questioning.

  “Do you have any idea,” she continued, “why he might have hopped a flight shortly after you did—on short notice, just like yo
u—and come down here, too?”

  “Vermeer is here?”

  “Assuming that the airlines are telling me the truth, which they generally tend to do. And they’ve gotten a lot better about checking IDs.”

  “But . . . but why?” Rodriguez asked hesitantly. “Why here?”

  Brouillard shrugged and put her palms up. “I asked you first. Have you seen him?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “So why would he pick your island to come visit, of all places? Is he looking for you? And if so, why?”

  “No, no,” he replied, sounding distracted, as if he were calculating with most of his brain. “No, not looking for me, no.”

  “Oh, come on, Al. Who else on this island would he be looking for?”

  Rodriguez glanced at Montoya, who now appeared to be fully asleep, chin resting on chest, breathing heavily. “I really . . . ,” Rodriguez began hesitantly, “I really don’t think I should be guessing about what is on the mind of Professor Vermeer. I just don’t know about that.”

  “Fair enough,” Brouillard admitted. “Let me sharpen up my question a little bit. Do you know of anyone else on this island who has connections to Harvard, or the Harvard Business School, or to the MacInnes family?”

  “Well, I told you about the several people whom I’ve helped to get employment. They—”

  “Skip them. Anyone else?”

  Once again he passed his handkerchief across his brow, even though the air conditioner had gotten ahead of the heat, and the room was now quite comfortable. “Well, no, other than Professor Pirle, of course. But I wouldn’t know if those two are in contact with each other.”

  Brouillard tried to keep the astonishment off her face. Ducking down, stalling for time, she reached into her bag and pulled out her pad and pencil. She riffled back through her Pirle notes. Vieques? Nothing. She hated shooting blind. “So Pirle is here right now?”

  “Well, I really couldn’t say,” Rodriguez said, obviously not comfortable. “I don’t keep track of when he’s here and when he’s not. You could telephone him at the villa.”

  “Pirle = Vieques villa????” she wrote, small enough so there was no chance of his reading it upside down. “Thanks. I’ll give it a try.”

  “Listen, Captain, I hate to cut this short, but—”

  “I know. You have to get back to your father, whom you’re taking care of. And who’s making a nice recovery.”

  “Uh, yes,” said Rodriquez warily, throwing a glance at his cousin as he got to his feet. “Well, call me if you have any more questions. Although I really don’t think I can tell you much more. There is no need to wake my cousin. Give him my regards.” And with that, Rodriguez scuttled out of the room.

  There was only a moment of silence. Then Montoya spoke. His eyes opened, and his chin moved—nothing else. “My sense, Captain Brouillard,” he said sleepily, “is that my cousin was not being entirely truthful with you. Why, I do not know.”

  37

  BY MIDAFTERNOON, BROUILLARD HAD FOUND HER WAY AROUND the island. She first scouted out Pirle’s villa, up in the hills—two cars in the drive behind the locked gate, she noted—and then wound up at the odd place where Vermeer was a registered guest. The Rising Moon, she said to herself disapprovingly. No doubt owned by some aging hippie sending out a coded signal to his fellow burnouts.

  At first she had had no intention of staying where Vermeer was staying. But in her brief circuit around the island, she had learned that there weren’t a lot of choices. The Rising Moon was expensive, but the alternatives ranged from unappealing to scary-looking. Reluctantly she handed over her credit card to the fortyish woman at the front desk. “Do you have anything that’s not in the main traffic flow?” she asked. “I’m a late riser.”

  “Let me see,” said the desk clerk. Like her face, her accent was flat and full of the U.S. Midwest. She had a missing front tooth. “Room two-oh-nine is up the stairs and all the way to the back. It’s not the nicest view, but—”

  “I’ll take it.”

  “Excellent. Since you’re a first-time guest, why don’t we start with your tour of the Rising Moon, and—”

  “No, thanks,” Brouillard interrupted again. “I can find my way.”

  The woman looked annoyed, as if the tour were an important part of her day. “Suit yourself,” she said, handing over the room key. “Breakfast starts at eight and ends at ten. It’s complimentary.” She started to walk to the back of the office.

  “But there is one thing that you can do for me that would be very helpful,” Brouillard said. The woman stopped and turned, her face brightening. “Look,” Brouillard continued, making up her story as she went along, “I’m something of a hometown celebrity back where I come from—broadcast journalism—and I have reason to believe that there is a photographer who has followed me down here to try to get some unauthorized pictures of me. For money. You know—a tabloid kind of thing.” Now she was grateful to the chief, back in Boston, for planting a version of this ridiculous idea in her head.

  “You mean, like, paparazzi? Here on Vieques?” Her eyes widened at the thought.

  “Exactly. Exactly. So if someone asks after me, could you just . . . you know . . . draw a blank? Not remember me?”

  The woman stood up ramrod straight, as if called to attention. “Ms. Brouillard, that is the Rising Moon’s policy, in any case. But I personally will make sure that your privacy is protected during your stay with us.” She leaned forward and spoke in a lower tone. “Just so you know: I’ve had some trouble with photographers, myself. And if you want a recommendation for some very secluded beaches, you just let me know.”

  Now, an hour later, sitting under the dark overhang of a mostly open-air restaurant, sipping a lukewarm Corona, Brouillard allowed herself a smile as she thought back to that moment of false intimacy: two women commiserating about being pestered by paparazzi. She knew she herself was in no danger of being photographed surreptitiously; she doubted that the desk clerk was now or ever had been.

  She had chosen the time, more than the restaurant. Even in paradise, the basic rhythms of life would hold, and three in the afternoon would be the deadest time of the day in any local restaurant, anywhere. The last late luncher would be on his way out; the front end of the happy-hour crowd would not yet be on the prowl for free hors d’oeuvres. In other words, a good time to pick up on the local gossip.

  The rhythms of life were observed at Amanda’s Seaside Café, a brown-shingled affair up a flight of stairs and right off the main street in the little town of Esperanza. Aside from Brouillard, the clientele was down to two tables. At one was a young Spanish-speaking couple, windblown, Brouillard guessed, from a ride on the shocking yellow scooter parked down below on the sidewalk. The boy came up well short of handsome, but the dark-haired girl, tricked out in tiny tight orange Hooters-type shorts and a tight top, was stunning. They were only using one chair: She was straddling him, performing something just this side of a lap dance.

  Amanda herself, a tall, thin type in her fifties, with a no-nonsense haircut and a shoulder-to-knee apron sporting a prominent name tag, attempted to take their order. Around the energetic kisses and caresses of his lover, and in a strangled voice that came out in heavily accented English, the boy ordered two turkey clubs and two Dos Equis.

  “Anything else?” Amanda rubbed the back of her neck, looking as though she’d seen it all before.

  “Both with . . . extra . . . mayo.”

  This last request, gasped out, drew stifled snorts of laughter from two deeply tanned and wrinkled ladies in their late fifties, sitting across the room at the only other occupied table. Chain-smoking and drinking what looked like G and Ts with large slabs of lime, they scrutinized the passionate couple until the turkey clubs arrived and the young lovers disentangled briefly to eat. The wrinkled ladies turned back to their own conversation, now and then still snorting softly.

  Brouillard, a practiced eavesdropper, tuned in. One of the two women was recounting what a
ppeared to be the latest installment in the endless saga of her new refrigerator. The fact that it had actually showed up on the island, which happened yesterday, was a cause for mock celebration. (The two women raised, clinked, and pulled on their G and Ts.) However, the new refrigerator’s owner continued, it was not really clear where it was on the island now; it now had to be found again, and then a truck had to be found, and then the delivery had to be made.

  “And listen, Sal,” said her friend, “when it finally turns up, don’t let them just plunk it down on the damn sidewalk. You make sure those guys get it into the kitchen and plugged in, and you make sure it works before they take off on you.”

  “Hear, hear.” They snorted, laughed, and raised their glasses again.

  Now Amanda pulled up a third chair and joined them. She had a bottle of beer that must have been ice cold—colder than Brouillard’s Corona—which was sweating profusely in the warm, humid air. She wrapped a napkin tidily around its base, and the table conversation drifted from refrigerators to other island chatter. When she finished her beer, Amanda made her way back into the kitchen.

  Brouillard felt an odd sensation, a disconnectedness. She wondered if she was coming down with something, or if she was drinking her beer too quickly. Then she realized, with a little jolt of embarrassment, that she was enjoying herself. When was the last time she had sipped a warm beer in the middle of the afternoon? When was the last time she had had no paperwork due, no idiot at the next desk, no gun on her hip?

  A warm, perfumed breeze blew in steadily from the ocean, setting the palm trees that lined the ocean side of the road to clattering. Although the little town obviously had some aspirations—someone at some point had constructed an elaborate terrace with a cream-colored, balustraded concrete railing that ran the length of the town along the beach, like something out of Palm Beach—it still welcomed all kinds. Three brown-skinned local kids at the water’s edge poked at crabs hiding under worn-out-looking rocks. A strange-gaited character in huge gray dreadlocks accosted an American tourist and his wife—cameras at the neck, belly bags at the waist—and scared them with some sort of mad commentary.