Damaged Goods: A Jack McMorrow Mystery

by Gerry Boyle

  “Yeah,” I said. “Very graceful.”

  “Glad you can see that, Mr. McMorrow. Some people just see a pile of wood nailed together. Look at the stern here. Isn’t that lovely?”

  I said it was.

  “When I look at this, I see it all done,” Raven said. “I can picture it in my mind. Painted, with seven coats of varnish, all the brass fittings.”

  He ran a hand over the ribs on the inside. Turned and looked at me. “And that’s what’s really been bothering me about you, Mr. McMorrow. I couldn’t picture it. But it’s starting to come to me.”

  He looked back at the boat. “I think she’s a prostitute, like I guessed. I think this guy today, this Roger, he got obsessed with her or whatever. She put up with him for a while but then he wouldn’t go away.”

  “Have to ask him, I guess,” I said.

  “When he wakes up.”

  “Who is he, anyway?”

  “Who is she?” Raven said.

  “Are we trading information?”

  “Yeah. You give me information, you stay out of jail.”

  He turned to me, eyes cold. No more boat talk. The room was damp and silent.

  “Jail for what?” I said.

  “I prove she’s a prostitute, then maybe you’re in cahoots with her. Maybe you beat the guy over the head. Maybe it’s a love triangle. Fighting over Miss Lasell. You know you really can die when somebody stoves your head in like that. All those sharp bones squished into your brain tissue.”

  “It was self-defense.”

  “That’s for me to decide, after I conclude my investigation. And the ADA. And the judge and jury,” Raven said. “In the meantime, you and Miss Mandi will be on the front page of the local paper, the Bangor Daily, too. Got a good relationship with the local press. I give ’em stories and they print ’em. And a hooker in a love triangle, that’s big news around here. Should I choose to tell them about it.”

  “So you’re asking me to rat her out, assuming she’s done something wrong.”

  “I’m asking you to stop jerking me around. I’m gonna find out eventually.”

  I looked at him. “You’re gonna pull a print?” I said.

  He shrugged.

  “The glass from the apartment?”

  Raven looked at me.

  “FBI doesn’t see any urgency on something, they can take weeks. Trick is convincing them this is an urgent matter. Like somebody might get killed, we don’t find out who she is.”

  I didn’t answer, my mind replaying the scene: the barrel of the gun pressing toward my face, Roger’s finger moving toward the trigger, the gun-oil smell. Mandi, who could have been on her way down the stairs, slamming the crutch into his head.

  “You’re right,” I said. “It’s a nice boat.”

  Chapter 24

  I walked back, winding my way through the boat sheds, along the waterfront. Gulls were hunched on pilings and they leapt into the air, then circled back and plunked down, webbed feet on spatters of droppings. I made my way toward Main Street on a diagonal, ending up behind Mandi’s block. The people next to her had wind chimes hanging on a little tacked-on balcony. Mandi had the shot-out window. From a distance, the pattern looked like a flower.

  I approached, looking up, then at the cars in the gravel lot. There were a half dozen parked there. A VW Jetta with a ski carrier, the kind that looks like a capsule; two pickups, a Toyota like mine with kayaks on a rack, and a four-wheel-drive Chevy, a Harley sticker in the back window; an old hippie Volvo with a bumper sticker that said “No Iraq War;” a plain green Toyota sedan, drab and anonymous.

  Glancing up at the hallway window, I slipped between the trucks and moved to the car. I passed by once, like I was looking for a doorway. Backed away and stopped, peered in. The Toyota was clean inside, nothing in the front seats, nothing hanging from the mirror. I took another step, peered into the back seat. On the floor there was a bag of cat litter and a bowl. The bowl was white and fluted, matched the dishes in Mandi’s apartment.

  I looked the car over more closely: an oil-change tag from a place called Bobby’s Auto in South Portland. It was from January, six months back. A parking sticker, half scraped off. It was from Maine Medical Center in Portland, the rest illegible. I checked the hallway window again. Nobody behind the bullet hole. I leaned over the windshield, slipped a notebook from my pocket. Wrote down the VIN, and with a last glance upward, walked away, up the street, and around the block.

  On Main Street, tourists were going into the quaint five & dime, buying the Times at the quaint newsstand. The cafes were filling, people in Gore-Tex slickers sitting in the fogged-up windows watching other people in Gore-Tex slickers walking up and down, peering into the windows of the quaint shops. The unquaint cops were gone. The illusion was restored. I went to Mandi’s doorway, tried the knob. This time the door was locked.

  I stepped back and looked up. Lulu stared down at me like a vulture. I took my phone out and called. Mandi’s cell phone rang. A robot voice told me the number I had reached, said I could leave a message.

  There was a beep. “This is Jack,” I said. “Thanks. Call me when you can.”

  I walked to the truck, got in, and looked up. The curtain moved, but it could have been the cat, which had left its perch on the sill. I backed out and headed for home, twelve miles to hash and rehash, trying to winnow the truth from the lies, and both of those from the stuff that fell somewhere in between.

  Roxanne’s car was in the yard. I parked beside it, went to the door and found it locked. I knocked. Waited. There was a rush of footsteps, Sophie’s voice, then Roxanne’s steps and the sound of the locks being undone. The deadbolt, then the keylock. The door opened.

  “Daddy,” Sophie cried, jumping up into my arms. Roxanne glared at me and turned away. I carried Sophie inside, followed Roxanne to the kitchen. Clair was putting on his rain jacket; he looked at me closely and said, “Everything okay?”

  “More or less,” I said.

  “Call,” he said. “When you have a chance.”

  “Thank you, Clair,” Roxanne said, strain in her voice, holding something back. “Tell Mary to let me know if she’s making jam.”

  “Surely will,” Clair said, and he slid the glass door open, stepped out onto the deck and into the rain.

  Roxanne closed the door, locked it, and closed the curtains. She smiled at Sophie and said, “Honey, can you go watch Jungle Book for a few minutes? Mommy and Daddy have to have a grown-up talk.”

  Sophie dropped down, ran for the den. I heard the click of the television, a rush of music. I took off my jacket, draped it on a chair. Roxanne walked to the counter, picked up a mug of coffee.

  “Was it too much to ask?” she said.

  “Why?”

  “A reporter just called.”

  “How’d he get our number?”

  “I don’t know. He was from the Bangor paper. Wanted to talk to Jack McMorrow. I said, ‘About what?’ He said, ‘The shooting on Main Street.’”

  “Oh, lord,” I said.

  “My heart stopped, Jack. I said, ‘Is everyone okay?’ He said, ‘Yeah, except for this guy got his head bashed in.’ My heart stopped again. I said, ‘Who was that?’ He told me some name. All I know is it wasn’t you.”

  “Somebody was waiting in Mandi’s apartment,” I said. “He had a gun.”

  Roxanne stared at me. “I thought you were going to just drop her off,” she said.

  “Had to get her stuff in. I looked around and left. When I was walking to the truck, I looked up, saw somebody move the curtains. I could tell it wasn’t her.”

  “So you—”

  “Went back,” I said.

  “He tried to shoot you?”

  “Yes, but he missed.”

  “So you hit him in the head?”

  “No,” I said. “Mandi did. With her crutch.”

  Roxanne looked at me, then looked away. Her face was pale and hard, an angry statue of herself. “What if he hadn’t missed?” she said,
her jaw clenched.

  I shrugged. “Well, he did. I don’t think he’d spent a lot of time with guns.”

  Roxanne closed her eyes. Took a long breath. “You can’t do this, Jack. You’re a father. You have responsibilities.”

  “If I hadn’t gone back, he might have killed her.”

  “So you saved her?”

  “I guess. Maybe. Who knows? And then she saved me.”

  Roxanne opened her eyes.

  “He still had the gun when she hit him,” I said.

  “So if she hadn’t—”

  My turn to look away. “I don’t know,” I said.

  Roxanne sipped her coffee, held the mug on her chest with two hands.

  “I’m grateful to her. I am. But are you done with her now?” she said.

  I didn’t answer.

  “Jack, this can’t be one of those things where she saved your life and now you owe her.”

  “She could have gotten away,” I said, “but she didn’t. She stayed. If she hadn’t—”

  “If you hadn’t gotten involved in the first place, you never would have been there at all.”

  “It was a story,” I said. “That’s all.”

  “It’s always a story,” Roxanne snapped. “That’s how it always starts.”

  ‘It’s what I do.”

  “Other reporters don’t get shot at. Other reporters don’t have their lives saved by prostitutes.”

  “Some do, I’m sure,” I said. “If you were in Russia or something, or Thailand. Places like that where—”

  “Goddamn it Jack, this is Maine. Why can’t you just write about something normal? Something nice?”

  “I don’t do those stories.”

  “Well, you’ve got a daughter. A family.”

  “So do you, honey. Why don’t you work in a gift shop? A law office? Why do you have a job that has you snatching kids from wackos and drug addicts?”

  “You know I can’t let those kids just rot.”

  “And I can’t not write what I write.”

  “Why not? Does the world really need to know that there are call girls in Galway, Maine?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?” Roxanne said.

  “Because it’s true,” I said.

  “Oh, God,” she said, and the tears began to flow. I took her in my arms, the coffee mug hard between us. Roxanne slid it out and put it on the counter and wrapped her arms around me, pulled me close. “Oh, Jack,” she whispered, her tears on my cheek. “Oh, my baby. What would I do if something happened—”

  “I’m fine,” I said. “We’re fine.”

  “Hugs,” Sophie said from behind us and she ran into the room, wormed her way between us, and I lifted her up as Roxanne wiped her eyes.

  “It’s a mommy and daddy samwich,” Sophie said.

  “And you’re the peanut butter,” I said.

  “I’m hungry,” Sophie said. “Can I have a sandwich now?”

  “Sure,” Roxanne said, and she peeled away from us, turned toward the cupboard. She opened the door, was reaching for the peanut butter when the phone rang. She picked it up from the counter, said, “Hello.”

  I saw her face tense. “You can’t call here,” she said.

  Still holding Sophie, I went to the Caller-ID box and looked. An area code I didn’t recognize.

  “Mr. Wilton,” Roxanne said. “Nobody is holding your children hostage. We are—”

  I heard a man’s voice shouting from the phone. I put Sophie down and said, “I’ll bring your sandwich. Mommy has to do some work.”

  Sophie looked at her mother curiously, then skipped from the room.

  “I’m going to hang up now, Mr. Wilton,” Roxanne said. “Don’t ever call here again. If you do, you could be prosecuted—”

  There was more shouting from the phone. Roxanne’s expression was hard. “This isn’t going to help you get your children back,” she said. “I wish you would try to understand—”

  Louder shouting, a string of obscenities. Roxanne started to hang up the phone but I moved and took it from her. “Listen, you crazy son of a bitch,” I said, my hand guarding the receiver. “If you ever come here again, I’ll kill you. If you ever call here again, I’ll come and find you. That’s a promise. I will track you down. Got it?”

  I paused, listened, and then Roxanne grabbed the phone from me. Hung it up. “Jack,” she said.

  “Sorry.”

  “You don’t have to be,” Roxanne said. “You don’t. He was going on about a conspiracy and Christians and how Satanists have been persecuted for thousands of years and he wasn’t going to take it any more. And what did he say to you?”

  “An eye for an eye,” I said.

  We heard music from the den, then Sophie’s twinkling laugh.

  Chapter 25

  Roxanne talked to Trooper Ricci by phone. Ricci said she’d been to the Wilton compound but he wasn’t there, or at least didn’t show himself. She’d talked to a woman who wasn’t Mrs. Wilton and had told her to tell Wilton the state police wanted to talk to him.

  We were still talking about it in bed that night.

  “What about a tracking dog?” I said. “Flush him out.”

  “She said they were doing everything in their power,” Roxanne said.

  We tried to sleep, listened to each other’s breathing, felt the bed shift as we turned one way, then the other. Finally, I took Roxanne’s hand in mine and held it, waiting for her to fall away.

  She did, settling slowly. I counted her breaths up to a hundred, then started again. And then I slept, but fitfully, dreams waking me. I was awake again when, at a little after three that morning, he called. “An eye for an eye,” he said, when I answered, then hung up.

  He called at 6:10 and said, “This will not stand.”

  At 7:34 he said, “Satan will not let you keep my children.”

  When he called at eight-thirty, Roxanne said, “I’m out of here. I’m taking Sophie.”

  The state said they’d put her up in a hotel in Portland or wherever. Roxanne picked wherever, said she’d call when she could. This was Friday. She said she’d let them know if she was going to be in on Monday.

  We left the house in staggered order. It was a sunny morning after the rain and the trees were dripping, the road still puddled. I drove to the first intersection, stopped at the pavement. Roxanne left in the Subaru ten minutes later, with Sophie playing hide and seek in the back seat. Sophie hid first, on the floor.

  Clair was a hundred yards behind her, in his big Ford. When Roxanne reached the intersection, he went ahead, waited at the main road. I let her go, sat and watched to see if anyone followed. There was one car, an old man from the Freedom side of Prosperity, his beagle on the seat beside him.

  He waved. I followed.

  We did it four times, leapfrogging our way to Waterville. At the Interstate, Clair peeled off. I followed Roxanne down the highway to Augusta, pulled over to the breakdown lane as she got off the exit. I watched to see who followed. A tractor-trailer from Quebec, loaded with lumber. Two young women in an SUV from Maryland, a Colby College sticker on the back window. A Willie Nelson look-alike on a Harley, who took a right at the bottom of the ramp and headed west.

  Roxanne waited in the parking lot of a seafood restaurant. When I called, she got back on the highway.

  We did that in Brunswick, too. Nobody followed. When we got off the Interstate in Portland, we made a loop through the back streets of Munjoy Hill. Pulled over and parked and waited to see if anyone showed.

  Did it one more time, Roxanne calling to say Sophie had to go to the bathroom. We drove into the Old Port, swung into the Regency Hotel drive, and Roxanne and Sophie left the car with the valet and went in, Sophie skipping with her backpack on.

  I made a loop, sat in the truck at the corner.

  Watched. Waited.

  I called. “What name?” I said.

  “Allison Parker,” she said.

  “I love you,” I said.

  �
�We love you, too,” Roxanne said.

  Away from the phone, she said, “Want to say hi to Daddy?”

  “We’re going in the swimming pool,” Sophie said. “Good thing I brought my swimming suit.” I smiled, put the phone down and headed for home—or at least in that general direction.

  Ellsworth Street ran from Congress down toward the bay. It was a neighborhood I remembered for its criminals, but now they were gone—in jail or dead—and the streets were full of twenty-somethings with good looks and college degrees.

  Number 14 was on the Congress Street end, a square tenement with shingles painted dark red and white Christmas candles in the windows on the second floor. There was a mountain bike locked to a tree out front; an older BMW motorcycle parked on the walk to the side door, a Ford pickup in the driveway.

  I pulled in by a hydrant and waited, hoping someone would come or go. After five minutes a man appeared from the side door dragging a heavy trash bag behind him. He was 60 or close to it, short and stocky, wearing dirty jeans and a black T-shirt. I got out and started up the walk, saw sweat stains on the shirt, a tape rule in a leather case on his belt. The landlord.

  I walked toward him, tucked my notebook in my pocket. “Hello there,” I said.

  “You looking for a place, I got nothing here,” he said, his accent Spanish. He crossed the driveway, heaved the trash bag into the truck. “But something coming open on Munjoy Street, end of the month. One-bedroom, real nice.”

  “No, I’m not looking for an apartment,” I said. “I’m looking for one of your tenants. Ex-tenant.”

  He was walking back to the house but he stopped, turned to me. “You the police?”

  “No,” I said. “A reporter.”

  His eyes narrowed and he put his hands on his hips. “One of my people in the newspaper?”

  “No,” I said. “Just someone I met a few months back, wondering if she’s still around.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Sybill Lasell.”

  He hesitated, eyed me more closely. “Nice girl, Sybill,” he said carefully. “She left, maybe six months ago. How you know her?”

  “I interviewed her once.”

  “About what?” He watched me, waited.