Port City Shakedown

by Boyle, Gerry

  “What are you doing to yourself?” Brandon said. “It’s not even noon. You can’t do this, not now.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “What? That you’re gonna be asleep in the chair if they walk in?”

  He looked at her, the defeat in her eyes. “What is it?”

  “Some criminal is stalking me,” Nessa said. “What am I supposed to do? Have a party?”

  “Have your wits about you. Not be passed out at noontime.”

  “What does it matter?”

  “What do you mean? Of course it matters,” Brandon said.

  “You go be with your girl, dear. She’s lovely, by the way.”

  “What is it, Nessa?”

  Brandon crouched by the chair. Nessa drank, looked grimly out at the bay, the criss-crossing ferries moving like busy yellow bees.

  “What’s what?” she said.

  “You’ve been sliding for a week.”

  “What do you expect? I’m worried about you, these hoodlums you’ve gotten involved with.”

  “It’s not Fuller. It didn’t start with him. It started with Lucky. Is it that it’s bringing it all up again? Nikki?”

  “It’s very hard, seeing him,” Nessa said, her voice low and sad.

  Mia walked back in, holding a plate with a sliced roll and a pat of butter. She stopped short of Nessa, stood and held the plate.

  “I understand that,” Brandon said, “but he liked Nikki, didn’t he? And I didn’t even really know her, Nessa. For me, it’s just been a chance to hear things firsthand, what she was like, what it was like when she was around. I don’t know—”

  “They weren’t good times, Brandon,” Nessa said, somber and serious, staring at the window but not seeing. “Things were out of control. Nikki, neither of us were taking care of ourselves. Or taking care of you. It was—”

  She paused and they waited. “—a bad thing.”

  “What? That she died?” Brandon said.

  “No,” Nessa said. “Before that. Losing Nikki, that was the end. It wasn’t the beginning.”

  She suddenly looked at Brandon, reached out and took his hand. “Please forgive me,” Nessa said, and she started to cry.

  “It was an accident,” Brandon said, clasping her hand in both of his. “It was a boat that was lost. There was nothing you could do.”

  “Just say you forgive me,” she said, tears running down her cheeks. “Please.”

  Brandon hesitated, then said, “I forgive you.”

  She turned away, raised the glass to her lips like a chalice, and drank. Put the glass down on her thin thigh and held it tight.

  “I don’t deserve it,” she muttered, and continued to cry.

  CHAPTER 32

  Mia stayed at the house, kissed Brandon goodbye at the door, pepper spray and cell phone in her hand, Nessa asleep in her chair in the room overlooking the bay.

  “I’ll keep checking on her,” Mia said.

  “Something’s eating her up inside,” Brandon said.

  “Hasn’t it always been? I mean, the way she drinks.”

  “No, it’s like something was dormant and it just woke up. When Lucky came.”

  “Memories,” Mia said.

  “Or nightmares,” Brandon said.

  He leaned to her and they kissed, her lips soft. He hugged her once, said, “Three hours,” and walked to the truck. Pausing at the truck door, he opened it, reached behind the seat. Took out the Marlin and walked back to the house. Mia opened the door, looked at the gun.

  “If you’re not comfortable with—”

  Mia reached for the rifle, cradled it in her arms. “Is it loaded?” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “Show me the safety.”

  Brandon did, loosening the thumbscrew, tightening it again.

  “How many bullets?”

  “Eighteen, including the one in the chamber,” Brandon said. “Call the police first. This is just a last—”

  But Mia turned away, walked back into the house.

  Brandon walked to the truck, started it, and looked back at the door. Drove down the drive, stopped the truck, left it running as he went back and hooked the rusty chain across the stone gates.

  Griffin was talking baseball, Little League not Red Sox. “It’s like I told Jeremy, you reach a level where natural ability alone isn’t gonna do it for you. I said to him, everybody’s got talent in the all-stars. It’s dedication that gets you to the next level. So I throw him a bucket of balls. Curves, change-ups, fastballs, taking something off, of course. You gotta recognize those pitches coming and that takes practice, practice, practice. And then you know what we do?”

  “What?” Brandon said.

  “We pick up the balls and we do it again.”

  They were just off the highway in Falmouth, headed west on a two-lane road through woods and fields. Griffin finished with Jeremy, who was eleven, moved on to Michael, who was eight. Brandon wondered what it would have been like to have this guy for a dad, instead of Nessa. Sometimes it seemed the only thing Nessa had taught him was how to handle a corkscrew.

  “With Mike, it’s fielding. I hit him a hundred ground balls last night. He fielded sixty-one cleanly. That’s up from forty-two a week ago.”

  “Good for him,” Brandon said.

  “I told Mikey it takes patience and perseverance. It’s like police work. Rushing around like a madman doesn’t solve crimes, catch bad guys. You gotta be unrelenting. Bad guy is the hare, you gotta be the tortoise. He runs, stops for a breath, and looks back, you’re still behind him, still coming on. He takes off, stops to rest, you’re still there. Now he starts to panic because he knows you’re not giving up. And when he panics, he makes mistakes. And you’re right there to snap on the cuffs.”

  He slowed the cruiser, waited for an oncoming truck pulled into Crystal’s dooryard.

  “I ran Kelvin. He’s got an eighty-six Caprice, registration expired. A Ranger pickup, expired even longer.”

  Brandon pointed to the nose of a black truck, peeking out of brush and tall grass to the side and rear of the house.

  “Truck’s there.”

  “So chances are he’s driving the Chevy, probably slapped some stolen plates on it. We’ll run that by the mother of the year.”

  A Monday afternoon, a white Mitsubishi parked out front, a baby seat in the back. Crystal was home, the television blaring so they could hear it on the front steps. Griffin knocked and the dog began to bay, the baby started screaming. Crystal shouted at one or both of them, “Knock it off.”

  The door heaved open and Crystal looked out, the baby in her arms. The baby had an orange stain on her pink shirt. Carrots, Brandon thought. Crystal was wearing jeans and a black tank top and there was a whitish stain on the shirt just below her left breast. Over her right breast was a tattoo of a rose.

  Crystal didn’t open the storm door and they looked at each other through the glass, like visitors meeting an inmate.

  “Hey, Crystal,” Griffin said. “Don’t mean to bother you, but wondering if you’ve seen Kelvin.”

  She shook her head.

  “Nope.”

  “Talked to him?”

  Another shake.

  “And you have no idea where he might be?”

  “Not a clue,” Crystal said.

  Brandon looked at the baby. Her mouth was circled by a red stain. Punch.

  “How ’bout Joel?” Griffin said.

  Crystal’s face froze, hardened. Her jaw clenched. She shook her head again, deliberately.

  “He’s been here, hasn’t he?” Brandon said.

  “No,” Crystal said quickly. “Ain’t seen him. Ain’t seen neither of ’em.”

  “Does he know we’ve been here?” Griffin said.

  Crystal shrugged. The baby reached up and stuck a small finger in her nose. She pulled the hand away without taking her gaze off the cops.

  “Don’t know how he would. I ain’t told him.”

  “He’d know just from talk
ing to you,” Brandon said. “He can read people’s voices. He can tell if you’re lying.”

  “You find him, you know him so good,” Crystal said.

  “Is Kelvin driving the Caprice?” Griffin said.

  “Couldn’t tell ya.”

  “What happens to you, Joel thinks you ratted him out?” Brandon said.

  She turned, the baby looking at him, too. “I ain’t rattin’ out nobody.”

  “Didn’t say you were. Just asked what would happen if he thought so.”

  “He ain’t gonna think that ’cause it ain’t true.”

  “People get the wrong idea,” Griffin said. “If we keep coming around.”

  “Wouldn’t you sleep a lot easier if Joel was in prison the next five years?” Griffin said.

  Crystal didn’t answer, her face a closed mask. The baby kicked, clawed at her mother’s breasts with her small, fat hands, leaving faint pink streaks on Crystal’s skin.

  “We violate him, he’s gone,” Griffin said. “You won’t have to worry. You won’t have to worry about your baby there, either.”

  Crystal pulled the child closer, took a step back. Griffin slipped a card from his pocket, stuck it in the frame of the storm door.

  “You call me, Crystal,” he said. “You call and we don’t have to keep coming around.”

  The door closed. The lock clicked. Brandon and Griffin walked to the cruiser and climbed in. They sat in the yard for ten minutes, the motor running, police radio on loud, windows down. Brandon said he thought Fuller was a sociopath and Griffin agreed, then recounted other socio-paths he’d known and locked up. Every couple of minutes the blinds moved in the front window. Cars passing on the road slowed, the locals checking out the cops. Finally Griffin put the car in gear, said, “Enough squeezing for today.”

  CHAPTER 33

  It was four-thirty, and in twenty-five minutes they were back in the city, Congress Street, out by the bus station. There were a couple of bars on the block, a no-star hotel. They took a right at the bus station, drove a couple of hundred yards, and turned in at a lot surrounded by chain-link fence topped with barbed wire.

  Inside the fence were two dump trucks, a bulldozer on a flatbed, asphalt mixers on wheels, buckets and boards and junk. They parked in front of a small building, beside a tall, black pickup truck that said, “Ibezia Paving” on the side. They were getting out of the cruiser when a man—short, stocky, bald, with a black goatee—came out of the door of the building, turned, and locked it. Looked up at the two of them and said, “Yeah?”

  “Officer Griffin. This is my colleague, Brandon Blake. We’re looking for Kelvin Crosby.”

  “Crosby? He been gone for weeks.”

  “Quit?

  “Got hurt.”

  The guy held up two fingers on each hand and waggled them. “Hurt,” he said again.

  “He’s out with an injury?” Griffin said.

  “Out. Whether it’s an injury is up to worker’s comp to decide.”

  “So you haven’t heard from him?”

  “Heard from his lawyer, some lowlife ambulance chaser.”

  “So he’s suing you?” Brandon said.

  “He’s bluffing. But what these guys don’t realize is, I don’t settle. You say you got hurt on the job with me, you better have bones sticking out of your skin or I’ll see you in freakin’ court.”

  He moved toward the truck.

  “Learned my lesson early on that one. Settled with this one clown, says he’s got a ruptured disc. Find out he’s moonlighting with one of those tree services, you know? Climbing trees with a chainsaw.”

  “What’s Kelvin’s injury supposed to be?” Brandon said.

  “Some back bullshit, excuse my French.”

  So Kelvin had gambled on a settlement and there was no payoff in sight, Brandon thought. Until Fuller came along.

  “You know where he might be?”

  The guy shrugged, put a hand on the door, and then stopped. “He going to jail?’

  Griffin’s turn to shrug. “Depends.”

  The guy thought, figured this was cheaper than his lawyer.

  “Crew used to ride Crosby a little. Big guy, strong, but not the sharpest tool in the shed, you know what I’m saying?”

  They nodded.

  “Guess his wife rode him hard, too. Kelvin musta said something to them about getting kicked out of the house ’cause they had this way of ragging him. They’d say, ‘Kelvin’s sleeping in the camper. Whatsa matter, Kelvin? Sleeping in the camper?’ That kinda thing.”

  “So there’s a camper somewhere?”

  “I pictured the guy walking out the door in his boxers, you know? The old lady tossing his pillow out after him, like in the cartoons.”

  “Gotcha,” Griffin said.

  “Well, if she was thinking she was gonna get rich off me, she was wrong,” the guy said, opening the pickup door and swinging into the seat. “I work hard for my money.”

  “I’m sure,” Griffin said.

  The guy started the motor, smiled, and said, “If you talk to him, give him a message for me. ‘Over my dead body.’”

  Brandon thought of Fuller, said to himself, “Be careful what you wish for.”

  They drove back to the sheriff’s office, quiet for a few minutes. Griffin swung off under the bridge, took the roundabout route along the water-front. Brandon looked out the window at the warehouses, the offices, the fishing boats on the wharves.

  “There wasn’t a camper on the back of that black truck, was there?” he said.

  “Ranger’s too small,” Griffin said. “Could have hauled it off, I suppose.”

  “I don’t think anything moves much around there,” Brandon said. “Finds a place and stays there until it rots.”

  Griffin nodded. They had moved up into the hip section of waterfront— pubs and architects’ offices. Suddenly Griffin turned right down one of the wharves, easing down the narrow street, people coming and going from the fishing supply companies, a warehouse that shipped lobster, a fishermen’s bar.

  They drove past signs that said no trespassing, one of the perks of being a cop, pulled up at the end of the pier. The radio mast of a fishing boat poked up from the boat tied alongside the pier below.

  “I don’t know if I’d like it, living on a boat,” Griffin said. “There’s no yard. Where would you play ball?”

  “Easier without kids,” Brandon said. “But families do it. Just need a bigger boat.”

  “How big’s yours?”

  “Thirty-five feet. It used to belong to my mother. She—”

  “I know,” Griffin said. “I’m sorry.”

  “How?” Brandon said, surprised, suddenly wary.

  “Checked you out before I took you on. Didn’t want to ride around with a knucklehead.”

  They stood for a moment, not talking. A lobster boat appeared to their left, a kid in big boots standing on the stern. It swung into the gap between the wharves and out of sight.

  “It is what it is,” Brandon said.

  “No dad, huh?”

  Brandon shook his head. Griffin was gazing out on the water, but listening.

  “Who raised you?”

  “My grandmother. ’Til I didn’t need her.”

  “How old was that?”

  “Maybe ten.”

  “You’re a different sort, you know that? Like you came out of a time warp.”

  “My own, I guess.”

  “Got many friends? Your own age, I mean.”

  “No. Not many.”

  “Don’t need anybody?”

  “Not usually,” Brandon said. “When I do, I ask.”

  “Lonely sort of life,” Griffin said.

  “I’m fine.”

  Griffin let it die. Waited, watched the boats and water. Smelled the smell of the water, diesel, fish.

  “I was walking a beat back then,” he said, “just starting out. Things were pretty crazy down here. Hard drinking. A lot of drugs. Cocaine coming out of the woodwork. We brok
e up two, three fights a night, and I mean real fights, not two guys shoving each other, praying for somebody to hold ’em back.”

  “You remember when the boat went down? Black Magic?”

  “Vaguely.”

  “Who knew the docks back then?” Brandon asked. “I mean, in terms of cops?”

  Griffin considered it. The gulls swooped, engines chugged, Brandon heard none of it.

  “When was this exactly?” Griffin said.

  “Seventeen years ago.”

  “There was Jimmy Fallon, good detective, but he retired, down in Sarasota now. I heard he’s kinda losing it. And there was a lady detective. Kathleen Rogan. Don’t call her Kathy. She’d take your head off. Smart cop, kind of the elite. Did a lot of drug stuff. Worked some murders.”

  “Where’s she?”

  “Left the force after some guy jumped her. Scumbag was into very young girls, when he wasn’t teaching school. Rogan’s closing in on him. Guy tries to blow up her car. It blows up, but she doesn’t die.”

  “She still around?”

  “Yeah, does some P.I. work for lawyers, I guess. Big settlement, doesn’t have to work. I just saw her at the mall back in the winter. I almost didn’t recognize her.”

  “No?”

  “Word was she had some brain damage.”

  “Jeesh.”

  “Lost an eye, had all this plastic surgery, but still doesn’t look right. Like the two sides of her face don’t quite match.”

  “How ’bout her memory?” Brandon said, as the lobster boat backed out below them, loaded with bait, the kid still perched on the stern. The gulls flocked around him like big white flies.

  “She remembered me,” Griffin said. “And I was just some rookie. Why?”

  “I don’t know,” Brandon said, as they turned back to the cruiser. “I’ve always wondered about the guys on the boat with my mom. Not just their names. I mean who they really were.”

  “But she won’t know them unless they were bad guys,” Griffin said.

  “I don’t know that they weren’t.”

  “Then talk to Kathleen,” Griffin said. “That’ll be the test.”

  CHAPTER 34

  Lucky had the course charted, running down the coast twenty miles offshore, beating into the southeast wind. Now he stood at the wheel in the dark, a half-squint, a half-smile, his expression a blend of contentment and concentration. Under power, sails furled, he was threading his way through Casco Bay, the flashing beacons atop the Cousins Island towers showing the way. Behind Littlejohn Island he put the spotlight on, picked up the buoy, set a course of 249 degrees, and watched the miles tick off in tenths.