by E H Davis
Yet some part of him knew otherwise. The time bomb in his blood had been set ticking. He’d suspected it days ago, and he knew it now. But, like most, he’d learned to distrust and ignore his instincts. The same inner barometer told him, unequivocally, that going to see Vivian before talking with his lawyer was a mistake.
For the rest of the ride he stayed under the limit, though his mind and heart were racing on a collision course.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Jens pounded on the front door of the home he’d shared with his wife and son for the past fifteen years, calling his wife’s name over and over. Ironically, the venerable Schlage cylinder lock that had served them as a first line of defense against intruders was now being used to exclude him; it had been re-keyed.
The shades had been drawn on the picture window in the living and dining rooms. Upstairs, the bedroom lamps shone warmly in the gloaming. Jens stood in a parabola of light from a lamp mounted beside the door, triggered by a movement sensor. He felt raw and exposed — unreal. This couldn’t be happening to him.
“Teddy!” he shouted at the upstairs window. “Teddy! It’s me. Dad! Come down and talk, son!”
There was no answer. He backed away, cupping his hands to make a megaphone.
“Vivian! I don’t deserve this! Come on, let’s talk!”
On a thought, he pulled out his phone, thinking she might respond to a call on her cell. The script at the bottom of his droid’s screen informed him that he had a message, sent minutes earlier. He tapped the text icon from Teddy.
“Get out of here, Dad! Cops on the way. Tried to warn you about Mom earlier.”
Jens glanced up at the house, hoping to catch a glimpse of Teddy, to wave “okay.” As he backed away, a deep male voice boomed behind him.
“Put your hands on your head and turn around slowly.”
A glaring beacon blasted him. Car doors slammed. Another voice rang out, harsh and insistent.
“Hands on your head!”
Jens judged its owner to be smaller, less formidable than the first speaker. He began to turn toward the voices.
“Gun!” the voice screamed.
Jens felt the sudden impact of furious men tackling him from opposite sides, knocking the wind out of him. He collapsed. As he lost consciousness, he felt his cell phone being ripped from his hand.
That’s no gun, he wanted to tell them. It’s the last thing he remembered.
When he came to, he was prone on his stomach, a bony knee stabbing him in the back. His hands were cuffed with plastic ties, cutting off the circulation.
“Get the fuck off me!” he bellowed.
The smaller of the officers pressed his knee deeper. “Want verbal abuse on a police officer added to the charges?”
The other cop crouched beside Jens and shone a torch in his face, brandishing it with menace. “Jens Corbin?”
“Y-e-s-s-s-s!” he answered with difficulty.
“I didn’t quite catch that.”
“I’m. Jens. Corbin!”
“No need to shout,” said the lightweight, digging his knees into Jens’ kidneys. They laughed at him moaning in pain.
“A beater,” one of them sneered. “Tough guy, huh?”
“You are in violation of your restraining order. Do you understand?” said the basso profondo.
“Y-e-e-e-s!” he moaned.
“That means that you are forbidden by law to come within twenty-five yards of this property and its occupants.”
“Is that clear?” insisted the monkey on his back.
“Get off!” Teddy hurled himself at the cop.
The weight was suddenly gone from Jens. He glimpsed Teddy wrestling with the smaller cop, getting the better of him. Jens tried to get up, to come to Teddy’s assistance, but the other cop held him down.
“Stay where you are!” he commanded, a restraining paw on Jens’ shoulder.
From the corner of his eye Jens saw Vivian running toward them.
“No!” she screamed. “That’s my son. Please don’t hurt him.” She pulled Teddy away from the officer who was scrabbling for the baton at his belt.
“I’ll take it from here, officers!” barked a familiar voice. Trooper Morrison, Ferdie, approached. She saluted the officers smartly with the requisite two fingers snapped off the brim of her Smokey.
It was clear to Jens that State Trooper trumped the local Lee Sheriff’s Department, though the officers didn’t surrender their turf without a fight, especially not to a woman.
The big cop heatedly braced her, face to face, talking in private a few feet away. Jens strained to hear what they were saying.
“This is an RSA 458.16 violation. A local matter,” spat the sheriff’s deputy, his chauvinism flaring.
“I know,” barked Ferdie, undaunted. “The restraining order came across my desk. When I saw who it was for, I got here as soon as I could.”
The deputy waited for her to go on.
Trooper Morrison lowered her voice. Jens caught only a few words: “Conway ... case in Florida ... famous writer ... friend.”
“Thanks,” said Jens, as Ferdie and the deputy hauled him to his feet. Once his ties were cut, he urged the circulation back into his hands. He sought out Vivian in the darkness. His anger surged.
“This is what you wanted, Vivian? To put Teddy in harm’s way?”
Ferdie took him by the arm, led him away.
“To humiliate me in front of my son?” he called over his shoulder.
“You can’t be talking to her except through a lawyer.” Ferdie faced him. “Shut up or I won’t be able to keep you out of jail,” she hissed.
“Seventeen years — this is what I get?” He shook Ferdie off, spun on Vivian. “What did I ever do to you, Vivian, except love you and take care of you and our son?”
Tears were flowing down Vivian’s cheeks.
“I’m sorry, Jens. You’ll never understand. Just let it go,” she pleaded.
“This is all about that bastard Laurent, isn’t it?”
She pressed her lips together, silent.
“I never put a hand on you.”
Ferdie pushed him toward his cruiser.
“You’re threatening and abusive,” she said, angry again. “You’re doing it now, coming here.”
Jens started to respond but Ferdie blocked him.
“Don’t say another word, Jens. She’s baiting you for the record. You’ll get your day in court.”
“She froze me out of our bank account. Isn’t that criminal? You tell me.”
Ferdie tipped her hat to the deputies as she steered Jens to the passenger’s side of her cruiser.
“Teddy,” Jens called over the roof as he got in. “I’m sorry I dragged you into this.”
Teddy nodded, his eyes shining.
Ferdie put her hand on Jens’ head to keep him from hitting it on the door frame.
As they drove away, Jens asked about going back for his car. Ferdie shook her head.
“Because your wife’s call came over 911, the deputies are obliged to charge and book you.”
She turned to Jens and winked.
“Unless, of course, you’re not available.”
Jens stared ahead, in shock.
“I don’t know what would have happened if you hadn’t come along. Thanks.”
She shrugged, smiled mysteriously.
“I’ll drive you back later when the deputies are gone.”
“Why are you doing this?”
________
They stopped at the diner at the Lee traffic circle, took a booth, and ordered coffee and pie. Ferdie told him about her parents’ divorce when she was in high school, and how much it had embarrassed and isolated her.
“You’re a good Dad, I know, I see how you are with your son. I don’t want him to suffer like I did.”
She toyed with her fork while he waited for her to go on. Jens sensed she wanted to talk more about her trials and tribulations as a teen. He wondered if coming out in high school was also part of her painf
ul story.
“Do you have someone now?” he asked sympathetically, before he could stop himself.
She looked at him in mock horror.
“Oh, my goodness,” she exclaimed, laughing, surprised. “You mean like a lesbian lover, maybe? Or...”
Jens understood he’d gone too far.
“I’m sorry, Ferdie. I didn’t mean to —”
“Bit personal, don’t you think?”
Her chest was heaving in spite of herself. She tamped down her flattop, even though it was perfect.
________
Later, when it was safe, Ferdie dropped him at his car at the house in Lee and idled on the side of the road until Jens started up and drove away.
He was headed for Portsmouth, where he had the best chance of finding a Rite Aid or 7-Eleven still open to get some toiletries. To economize, he decided to check into a motel over the state line, in Maine.
He found a trucker’s motel on the 1A bypass in Kittery, its shabbiness consistent with his low mood. He spent the night on a lumpy mattress trying to sleep, the tang of the ocean seeping in from the estuary behind the motel, like ghost fingers unhinging latches to his past. Marsh gas recalled the sulfurous stench of paranoia and his bout with madness, decades ago.
In that bewildering half-sleep known only too well to insomniacs and the insane, in the absence of light just before dawn, he reacquainted himself with the morbid attraction of suicide. In his dream, he was flitting through worlds within worlds, calling, crying out. But there was no one there to answer.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Unbeknownst to Jens, in the very same motel, the River Run, only a floor above and a few doors over, lay his nemesis Laurent.
Also unable to sleep, Laurent was suffering a paroxysm of conscience — whipping him between hope and despair, between heaven and hell, between life and death.
He had been cut off from the object of desire, Vivian, and with it his reason for living. He had no choice. She’d stopped returning his phone calls. Her farmhouse was off-limits now, with Teddy around.
“Armand,” she’d hissed at him when he’d surprised her at the State Street gallery where she was working as an art consultant.
He’d dressed up in his “tourist clothes” again — slacks, dress shirt, sports jacket, all looking worse for the wear — and was posing as an art collector, as he had weeks ago when he’d first arrived in Portsmouth. Though now he felt — and looked — even more out of place than he had then.
As she went about her work, she’d been caught off guard by his appearance in one of the exhibition rooms, where he stood staring blankly at a larger than life seascape not hers.
“I’d like to see a D’Arcy,” he’d garbled, unable to sustain the élan he’d hoped to impress and win her over with. “You must have one here, don’t you?”
“I don’t want you here!” she’d hissed. “That’s all Jens’ lawyer needs, to catch me with you! Now leave!”
“Vivi,” he’d pleaded as she escorted him out. Luckily, for her sake, she’d been alone in the gallery. “I... can’t go on like this.”
Now, as he relived his humiliation, he recalled how he’d been with Vivian in this motel room, on the very same day they’d met at the park, a stolen moment in Paradise. It had felt so right; he’d felt anchored.
Now, he was free-falling.
Back through his hard-won triumphs over the forces of fate. Prison time, slow time, no time, hard time: time spent wrestling strength from defeat, forging the will to survive. Gone all pride and determination. Along with it, tenderness, joy, and hope but briefly tasted. Gone.
Vivian had decreed that they must part — until the divorce was over. Wasn’t it enough that she was divorcing her husband of almost twenty years? And there was her son — what about him? She did not want to lose him, accused as an unfit mother because of her liaison with Laurent.
What was left for him?
An idea took shape, one that would either bind him to her permanently or deliver him to hell. He glanced around the shabby room, seeing it for what it was.
How easy it would be to step off this very chair, rope around his neck, noose tied to the light fixture, and surrender to the forces of chaos that nip, always, at the edge of every con’s life, once on the outside. Would anyone care? Would she?
No, it was not enough that she was divorcing him. Corbin had to be punished, eradicated, expunged. Only then would she turn to him, Laurent, and give herself without reservation.
________
Later that morning, Laurent stepped into the rental office of the motel, to complain that his toilet was backed up and that he’d like it attended to — today — while he went about his errands.
The walk to Portsmouth would take him half an hour at best, and he was already running late for an appointment with Warren to put together some equipment and finalize their plans to extort Corbin.
The clerk, a haggard young man, was checking out a guest, a man in his late 40s, tired-looking, dressed in wrinkled clothes that looked slept in. Something about him was familiar.
The tiny rental office, crammed with a counter, computer, and two rickety wooden chairs for guests, barely accommodated one check-out at a time. Laurent grew impatient, shifting nervously in place, suddenly reminded of the time he’d spent in lockup.
He cleared his throat and gave the clerk a toned-down version of his prison yard stare — why waste it?
“Room 217 backed up toilet. Fix it,” he barked. “I gotta get to work,” he lied.
The guest glanced at Laurent with bloodshot eyes. Suddenly, they grew wide with recognition.
Laurent jolted with recognition, too.
Corbin! He wanted to take him right there, but knew he couldn’t.
He backed out of the office, walked briskly to his room, tossed his meager belongings into the paper bag he’d arrived with.
He was gone. In the wind.
________
Jens waited while Ferdie cautiously peeked into the room Laurent had occupied on the second floor of the motel, where he too had spent the night, never suspecting that the man he hunted, the man he wanted out of his life, was close, oh, so close.
Why hadn’t he pounced on Laurent when he had the chance? What would Laurent have said, done? Agreed, Laurent was formidable: prison-bulked, tattooed, dead-eyed. Jens thought about what his alter-ego, Honore Poulon, would have done in a similar situation. If unarmed, like Jens, he’d have called for backup. As had Jens.
Did that make him a coward?
He glanced up at the balcony. Ferdie was no coward.
Her weapon drawn as a precaution, she kneed open the door and advanced, though convinced that Laurent was no longer there.
She reappeared on the catwalk outside room 217, shaking her head and confirming the obvious.
Jens watched as she keyed her mini two-way radio attached to the collar of her uniform and called for a BOLO, be on the lookout, for Laurent, a possibly armed and dangerous ex-con.
She gestured for Jens to join her up in the room and he climbed the shabby stairwell to the catwalk leading to room 217.
Taped to the mirror, apparently left behind in Laurent’s haste, was an older publicity picture of Jens from a yellowed news clipping, along with a tattered map of Lee with an “X” marking the location of Jens’ farmhouse.
If this was the only picture Laurent had of him, it was easy to see why Laurent had been slow to react in the motel office. As for Jens, recognizing Laurent had been instantaneous.
The one thing that Jens hadn’t anticipated was how big, how formidable, how intimidating the ex-con was. And this was the man Vivian had been screwing? He burned with anger and shame.
Meanwhile, Ferdie miked her radio, sending a patrol car to Corbin’s home in Lee to protect Vivian and Teddy, repeating the BOLO on Laurent.
“We’ll get him, don’t worry,” she reassured Jens as they trudged down the stairs to the parking lot. “Cons like him have few friends and no place to hide.�
��
Chapter Thirty-Eight
While Laurent was breaking into an isolated cabin in nearby Northwood Meadows Park, where he planned to hide out for the next few days, hopscotching from one unoccupied hiker’s hut to another, Jens was weaving through Portsmouth’s bustling lunch time crowd on Market Street.
He was headed to the professional building around the corner, wedged between two upscale seafood restaurants and a tourist trap selling nautical knickknacks.
His attorney’s office.
Exhausted from troubled sleep, his adrenals squeezed dry by worry, he climbed to the loft floor of the restored warehouse on Bow Street. Weeks ago, though it seemed like days, Jens had sat with his agent Jean at the dockside restaurant below on ground level, quaffing gin and tonics, riding the rip curl of his enthusiasm for his book about stolen children.
He remembered glancing up that day, mid-pitch, at the neat chrome and glass condo balconies clinging to the ledges of the high-rent wharf district and thinking how blue-collar Portsmouth had been sold out to stockbrokers and lawyers from Boston and New York. Now, as he dragged himself up the last few steps of one of those very same properties, on a mission to get custody of his son in his impending divorce battle, he too felt beaten and sold out. Sold out, in his case, by a vindictive woman to whom he’d given himself body and soul. Hadn’t he? To a cheater with a shady past.
He rang the buzzer alongside the brass plate with his friend’s name embossed in raised script: Vincent Polcarpi, Esquire, Divorce & Family Law Practice.
The door lock released. He pushed inside and stepped up to the reception desk, commanded by a middle-aged brunette wearing too much makeup, in a silk blouse and half-glasses on a gold lead, the glasses resting on her ample breasts. She flashed him a professional smile, urging him to speak.
“Jens Corbin,” he stammered self-consciously. “12 o’clock appointment.”
She agreed but only after consulting her computer screen. “Please have a seat, Mr. Corbin.” She gestured to the leather couch and recliner comprising the focus of the spot-lit waiting area. “He won’t be long.”
Lost in thought, Jens stood at the plate glass window partaking of the magnificent view of the harbor — its tugboats, wharf, and three bridges to Maine arching hundreds of feet over the wide Piscataqua River.
