by Alan Hruska
“No hospital,” she says, curling herself up next to him. “And it’s not your fault. It’s mine. For doing business with a creep like that. For ever letting him into my home.”
It takes Sam a couple of seconds. “He’s been here before?”
“Once,” she says, then sighs. “No, twice.”
“Why,” he says.
She shakes her head.
“You slept with him?” he says.
“No! I’m not that stupid.”
He sits up. “Okay,” he says roughly. “Why don’t you just tell me?”
And now she can’t say anything, or even look at him.
“When?” he says. “Circumstances?”
“It’s not what you think.”
“Then tell me.”
“Gus died, I was sick with grief. I was standing at the sink in an open nightgown. Probably crying. And there was Phil’s face, right in the window. He’d come over to give condolences, explain what had happened on the boat. I thought he was being kind, but the prick then started telling me how great I looked ‘in the raw,’ as he put it, and made a pass at me. I screamed at him. He left. Next day he came to the funeral. Acted as if nothing had happened. I made a decision. I’d act that way too. And so I have. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize to me.”
“Who to? You’re the only one I care about.”
He gets up, tries to think clearly about it.
“So what does this do?” she says. “I disgust you?”
“What do you think?”
“I don’t know, Sam!”
He holds the covers around her again. “Abby, for Christ’s sake, you don’t disgust me. I love you like my life.”
She twists around to hold him. “Me too, me too,” she says. Then shivers. “He’s such a twisted bastard. This thing today was to scare me. He had me believing he was going to cut me to pieces in the bathtub, had two of his goons pull my clothes off, then at the last minute gives me a warning. As if he, the fucking executioner, had just changed his mind.”
“Abby, calm down, stop talking for a minute.”
“I want to kill him!”
“It’s amazing he didn’t kill you.”
“I think he believes he doesn’t have to.”
Sam looks puzzled, and Abby takes some time before continuing.
She says slowly, “I never said anything about Aaron. I never said anything about Gus. I’m afraid of Phil, and he knows it. And there’s something about that he likes. A lot.”
“You’ve known he killed Gus?”
“No,” she says. “Not known. Not for certain.”
“And you still worked for him.”
“That’s why I had no choice but to work for him. He prefers watching me squirm to killing me, because he thinks he can trust me. And he can, up to a point. I’m not going to the cops. I just want to kill him. That’s the part he hasn’t worked out yet.”
Sam’s having a hard time with all of this.
Now,” she says, “I think it’s you he wants. He may have found out who you are and that it was you who put the tap on. He also knows where you live; he went there first and has probably gone back.”
Sam relaxes his hold. “Okay, you need a doctor, if not a hospital.”
“No, I don’t. You’re better than a doctor. And we have to leave right now. For Maine.”
Sam looks at her, as if to say he’s taking her nowhere but the hospital.
She says, “You leave me behind, I’m just going up on my own. I wanna kill that prick. And I’ve got three guns here. I’ll give you one, and take two.”
“You’ll be the one who gets shot.”
“Maybe. But I’ll get a shot at him. I do know how to shoot.”
“You’d be in my way, Abby.”
“I’m going up there, Sam—with you or on my own. I’m dead serious.”
Sam lets out a sigh of resignation. “An unfortunate choice of words.”
“I mean it.”
“It’s Friday. The roads’ll be jammed.”
“Then we better get started,” Abby says.
EIGHTY-THREE
On Whalley Avenue in New Haven, one of many clapboard colonials is inhabited by three young women from Bulgaria who are overseen by a generously built Chinese-American female, who works for a local hoodlum named Dominick. The young women are not physically restrained, but they have no money or papers and have seen what happens to escapees who get caught. Dominick, six-five and relentlessly toned, often works out in the basement of this very house. He does what he wishes with the girls, including whacking them around. But the beatings are relatively soft. The young women are, after all, his property. Nothing like the beatings he puts on those who try to leave him.
When Phil arrives with Vito and Joe, Dominick’s burly hand collars the prettiest of the girls, pushing her forward at the door, like an offering.
“I wouldda met you guys up there, I told Vito.”
“It’s okay,” says Phil. “You were on our way.”
“Yeah, but Phil—”
“It’s better, Dominick. This way we’re all together. And you don’t have to try to remember where you’re going.”
Dominick blinks. “I see. It’s because I had to ask Vito for the address. I didn’t want to write it down, and then I wasn’t absolutely sure.”
“Get your coat on, Dominick. There’s a chill.”
“Where’s Ed?”
“He’ll meet us up there.”
Dominick gives Phil a long, questioning look.
Phil says with annoyance, “You getting a coat, or aren’t you?”
“Sure Phil, but… maybe you’d like….” He gestures at the girl he still holds at the neck, a slight, dark-haired, frightened eighteen-year-old who understands what she’s being proffered for.
Phil studies her expression, which is not unintelligent, and her body, which is clothed for the occasion in only a slip.
Dominick says, “She can take punishment. I’ve got a layout in the basement—”
The girl squirms, which picks up Phil’s interest.
“Maybe on the way back,” he says, turning toward the door.
About five miles south of Reefer’s Harbor, there’s a new motel with clean rooms. Sam and Abby check in a little past three a.m. Sam thinks, if Phil or Dominick, or both of them, are coming up with guns, they’ll be driving, not flying, and will be arriving at about the same time. So it isn’t likely to be happening that night. Or it’s already over. Sam and Abby drive by the house to make absolutely sure, get out, case the property for about twenty minutes, finding Larry, the FBI man, asleep in his chair.
They move off toward the seawall and work out a simple plan. On the way to Maine, Sam had argued with Abby unsuccessfully about her being at the house at all. “I know the address, Sam. If I have to, I’ll take a cab. Or you will.” So, of necessity, the plan includes Abby. In fact, it’s hers.
At sundown, she proposes, they’ll park the car about a quarter of a mile away, walk to the house, hide in the marsh close enough to hear and see any trouble, and when Phil puts in an appearance with his thugs, creep out, take aim and start shooting. The point Sam gets Abby to give in on is that she’ll fire the rifle from a prone position. Small comfort, of course. There’ll be three, maybe more, experienced killers against two amateurs who haven’t held guns in years, much less fired them. It’s reckless for Sam to be there. He hates that she’s tagging along.
The further complication is the swordfish bones. It takes a few minutes even to make out what they are. “The place is littered with them,” Abby says in a sibilant whisper. “What the hell is this all about?”
Sam gives it thought, then says, “Haven’t a clue.”
“You think the house came this way?”
“These seem freshly painted.”
“He’s your son.”
“Doesn’t mean I can figure him. Never could.”
“But he’s planning something.”
“Looks that way.”
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“Does it change anything for us?”
“Can’t see why it should.”
“Should we tell him we’re here?”
“No,” Sam says. On that he’s definite. Sam and Alec never saw eye to eye on anything.
They drive back to the motel in silence and sleep until Saturday afternoon.
Harvey flies up Saturday morning. “You two look like you could use some sleep,” he tells them at the airport gate.
Alec grimaces.
“Just saying,” says Harvey.
“Lovely to see you too, Harv,” Carrie says.
On the phone, beforehand, they had offered either to drive both cars to the Portland airport so Harvey could head back in his Caddy right away, or to entertain him for a weekend of Waiting for Godot, as Alec put it.
“I’ll spend the night,” Harvey said. “See what that feels like.”
“Not a wise choice,” said Alec, “but a welcome one.”
On the drive home, car windows open, air piney, salty, as crisp as autumn, Carrie leans back in the breeze, laughing, chatting with Harvey. Alec thinks, how normal it feels, in the midst of incipient panic.
Harvey, getting out of the car in the driveway, gives a low whistle. “This house high enough for you two guys?”
“We have an architect looking at adding a floor,” Alec says.
“God bless you!”
They have lunch in the kitchen—sandwiches—then spend the day on the local beach.
Harvey declares the ocean too cold for humans. Alec walks alone on the shore, giving Carrie and Harvey a chance to talk for a while.
At dinner—lobsters, sweet corn, apple pie—Harvey tells stories. “The good old days,” when Harvey was young and worked for the now-deceased, legendary partners of what was then Kendall, Blake, van Vleck & Steele. When there was no pretrial discovery to speak of, when lawyers engaged in trial by ambush, and when investigators such as Harvey therefore meant something. The stories are old; the denouement is surprising. “Our young friend here,” says Harvey to Carrie, “is a throwback. He would have prospered in that era. Present-day rules simply level the playing field for the dull ones. More likely to do justice is the argument—and maybe that’s right—but it’s a lot slower and not nearly as much fun. Not as sporting.”
“Larry,” Carrie calls out through the kitchen window. “How’d you like a thermos of coffee?”
“No thanks, ma’am. I’m just fine tonight.”
Alec says to Harvey, “They send one guy. It’s ridiculous.”
Harvey glances at Carrie. “The Feds say it’s unlikely Phil’s coming.”
Carrie makes a scoffing noise.
“I agree with them,” Harvey says. “Phil’s not that stupid. It’s too conspicuous.”
Harvey, given his choice of bedrooms—among sixteen—picks one on the third floor, facing the street, but also next to the back stairwell of the house.
In the master bedroom, Alec and Carrie are alone and stare at the bed.
“You think Harvey’s right?” she asks.
Alec shakes his head, no.
Carrie says, “I can see Phil using that argument—‘I’m not that stupid’—in claiming he never came here. But actually leaving us alone? After threatening us? After my testimony sends him up? I don’t think so!”
Alec, sitting on the window sill, makes a wry expression.
“What’re you saying?” Carrie asks.
“You heard me say something?”
“What’re you thinking?”
“You know what I’m thinking.
You ought to be staying at that motel. As I’d arranged it. Where you’d be safe.”
“We’ve been over this, Alec. Fifty times.”
“It’s not too late. There are two cars downstairs. Take one of them.”
“Listen to me! I’m not doing that. This is not something you get to decide. Phil’s coming, and I’m gonna be waiting for him.”
“It’s unnecessary.”
“Not so. It’s better with two. I won’t touch the gun. I’ll be out of any firing line. That’s what I agreed to.”
Alec, unhappily resigned, looks out the window at the glowing array of swordfish bones that carpet the marsh.
Carrie, leaning against the wall, slumps down to the rug. “I want to stop running,” she says.
EIGHTY-FOUR
It’s the middle of the night. In the large bed, neither Alec nor Carrie can sleep. They can hear their own breathing, the surf pounding a half-mile away, the breeze in the marsh reeds. After several hours, it sounds almost like peace. Then the bedroom door opens. Not oiled, it creaks. And they bolt upright.
Total darkness. Total terror.
A child stands at the threshold, wide-eyed and scared. “Mommy?”
It’s Sarah, and Carrie runs to her, kneels, hugs her, looks over the child’s shoulder. “Honey, how’d you get here?”
“Daddy brought me.”
Alec, fear pounding in his temples, steps into the hallway, turns on the light. The hall’s empty.
Then the lightning-crack sound of a single gunshot outside.
Carrie huddles over Sarah, shielding her. “Let’s play a game, sweetheart. You remember in the book, when Curious George played hide-and-seek with the man in the yellow hat who was like his daddy?”
Sarah gives a tight nod.
“So that’s what we’re going to do, hide from Daddy. Go baby, hide! It’s very important. Find a good spot and, whatever you do, wait for Mommy to come get you.”
Sarah is far from convinced she wishes to play this right now.
“Go! Please, baby!”
Fright lines on her mother’s face send Sarah scurrying. Alec throws open the screen door to the deck outside the bedroom, goes onto the deck, tosses the loose end of the rope ladder over the railing and scampers down. Carrie follows right behind him, flashlight in hand. They move quickly, quietly—without having to think about their actions because they’ve practiced them.
On the side lawn there’s a body. Larry Stahl, lifeless, a bullet hole in his head.
Carrie stops, gasps, lets out a cry.
Alec pulls at her, adrenaline pumping out everything but fear.
Sam thinks: Egrets and other fishing birds can be invisible in a marsh in daylight. Despite a full moon, he and Abby, crouching low in brown and gray clothes, should not be detectable to the group thirty yards away.
If Sam and she can keep silent.
So they barely breathe.
They listen to the surf, the crickets. And they hear everything the would-be assassins say.
There are five men. Sam recognizes Phil’s voice and Vito’s. Sam and Abby are a bit deeper into the marsh, and Phil’s group is between them and the house. Phil is explaining what each of his band is to do. Vito and a man named Ed are to go to the house, and stay there, entering from the first-level deck, then covering front and back. Phil, Joe, and Dominick will spread out on the perimeter of the marsh, in case Alec and Carrie attempt to escape that way.
“My guess,” Phil says, “they want to come through here. They’ve got something planned for these bones. And when they do, if they have the child with them—and they probably will—they’ll give up. We get them separated, then we separate the guy.”
Vito’s look questions whether he’s to take this literally.
“Yeah,” Phil says. “Like the wings off a fly.”
“On our way, boss,” Vito says, and he and Ed jog off.
In a few seconds, Sam hears them climbing onto the deck.
Phil signals to Joey and Dominick, and the three start moving apart.
Sam gives Abby a strained now-or-never look.
Another dread-filled moment, and he says, “Now!”
Gunfire at the house.
Sam and Abby step out and start tearing through the marsh, reeds slapping their faces. Sam yells at Abby, “Lie flat!” She doesn’t. It’s Joey they come upon first, waving his gun, trying to aim. They blast away at each ot
her, point blank. Joey falls, his shot hitting Abby, who screams. Dominick, a huge target, appears from the reeds. Sam’s shot gets Dominick in one eye. Then Phil is there lurching, firing at Sam, blasting him under the right shoulder, too fast for Sam’s shot to land.
“What the fuck!” Phil says, standing over their still bodies, recognizing who’s been shot. “Can’t anyone take a joke anymore?”
Alec and Carrie enter the marsh near the seawall. They hear gunfire at the house and in the marsh not fifty yards away. Their plan draws them closer to exactly that danger spot. Alec almost trips on another dead body. Not Phil. Not anyone Alec recognizes, but Carrie does. “One of Phil’s,” she says. Then two bodies, one a woman who seems to be breathing, and—
“Oh my God!” Alec says.
“What?”
They hear someone else, yards away, cracking swordfish bones underfoot. Then they hear another gunshot. From inside the house.
They thrash through the marsh reeds, getting scratched, muddy, covered in sweat, blood—both in dark T-shirts and shorts—and, despite their sweat, both freezing. They know where they’re going, get there, and wait. It’s a small island of glowing bones where Alec, as quietly as he can, removes their rifle from its waterproof carrier. Silence. They can hear themselves breathing and try to stifle that sound. They hear more bones cracking. There is definitely someone else still threatening them in this marsh.
Their eyes have adjusted to the moonlight. Shapes are visible. Standing with Carrie in a ten-foot clearing, shivering, Alec screams silently at himself to get a grip. Tries to think. What the hell was his dad doing here, and who is that woman? He thought he saw his father still breathing. Could the gunshots inside the house have been fired by Harvey? Could he have gotten a weapon through airport security? Larry Stahl had a two-way radio. Did he have time to use it to call for help?
Someone’s barreling through reeds. Getting closer. Some FBI guy? Harvey? In another small clearing twenty yards away, a large man bursts into view parting the reeds in front of him. Carrie catches him in the beam of her flashlight. Phil.
In a loose, flowing shirt and slacks, he casts a menacing shadow. “As you can see,” Phil says, “I have a very effective weapon pointing at whoever is holding that flashlight.”
