by Boyle, Gerry
“Sounds wonderful,” Mia said.
“Well, I suppose Maine may grow on me,” Irina said as they crossed the overgrown flower beds, started across the sprawl of unkempt lawn. The grass was damp and they scuffed through it, where the grass was trampled. The path wound down the lawn to a seawall made of granite blocks. There was a wooden ramp going up onto the wall, and then an aluminum pier, the end of which was propped on a small float. Lucky was standing on the float, looking out at the bay, the islands, a sailboat beating into the southeast.
He turned.
“Hey, kids, glad you came,” Lucky called as they started down the ramp. “Welcome to our humble abode.”
“Of the moment,” Irina said.
“Where is home really?” Mia said.
“She loves it here,” Lucky said quickly. “It’s where her heart is.”
“Manhattan,” Irina said. “I can’t stay away from New York City too long.”
“Every day she says it with a little less conviction,” Lucky said, and he put his arm around her shoulder. “I’m wearing her down.”
They stood on the float, breathed the salt air, watched the gulls swooping over the chop.
“What do you think, Brandon?” Lucky said. “Nice spot or what? I can picture Ocean Swell right here.”
“Great,” Brandon said. “But could you bring her in here? How much water out here at low tide?”
“Not sure,” Lucky said, turning away from the bay. “Let’s go up to the house and have a drink.”
They were on a second-story veranda on the water side. Mia and Irina sat, fleeces buttoned tight, a bottle of Chardonnay between them. Lucky had brought two bottles of Shipyard ale from a refrigerator somewhere on the second floor, and he and Brandon sat on the short, shingled wall on the edge of the porch. Lucky held up his bottle and said, “Cheers.”
Brandon drank, felt a wave of weariness wash over him. Griffin, Nessa, the cops in the house, Fuller and Kelvin out there—somewhere.
“So you still leaving tomorrow?” he said. “Supposed to be pretty messy.”
“No problem. Messy weather is the South Atlantic. I remember sailing from Cape Town, boat delivery to Marseilles. Me and Ketch, two Aussies. Big yawl, sixty-footer. Left in the fall, April down there, went from thick, can’t-see-your-bow fog off South Africa, big swells, then the weirdest confused chop you’ve ever seen, wind shifting all over the place. Man, we’re crossing Valdivia Bank, go from five thousand meters to twenty-three. You want to see some wild water. Then squalls, fifty-knot gusts, totally unpredictable. I was damn glad to reach St. Helena.”
“It makes my skin crawl, these stories,” Irina said. “I told him, I have to be able to see land somewhere.”
Lucky grinned, sipped his beer, looked out on the overcast sky, the gray-green waters.
“Relax, honey. I think we’ll be okay with a little rain off Cape Elizabeth.”
He paused, considered Brandon, and said, “You okay?”
“A long couple days,” Brandon said.
There was a silence as the three of them waited for Brandon to explain. He mustered a smile, then began. Griffin. Fuller and Kelvin. Nessa shaken by it all.
When he paused, a long silence.
“So the police think these men killed your friend and now they’re coming after you?” Irina said.
“That’s one theory. It was what Griffin was working on.”
“Big jump from the little stuff this guy was doing to killing a policeman,” Lucky said. “My God. I mean, that’s serious business.”
“I doubt it was planned,” Brandon said. “Maybe he tried to arrest them. They jump him, struggle for the gun.”
“Brandon said he was a really nice guy,” Mia said. “Had two boys.”
“They play baseball,” Brandon said.
Another pause, the cries of gulls faint in the distance.
“So they’re waiting for them at Nessa’s?” Lucky said.
“And my boat. And I’m sure they followed us out here.”
Lucky and Irina looked at him. Lucky looked out at the woods that bordered the sweeping lawn.
“No kidding. Are there detectives in the bushes?”
“I don’t know how they do it,” Brandon said. “They asked where we were going, how long we’d be here, who we were going to see.”
“They go all out when it’s one of their own,” Lucky said.
“Where I’m from,” Irina said, “they attack the criminals and kill as many of them as they can. Dump them on the street corner so everybody can see. It’s routine, this sort of—what is the word, Mia?”
“Reprisal?” Mia said.
“Yes. I knew our writer would know the word,” Irina said.
“So all of this began after, what was it? You punched this guy’s mother?”
“Elbowed,” Brandon said. “But it’s not about that. It’s about money.”
“Another scam, another angle to work,” Lucky said.
“Then the policeman, it must have been not part of the plan,” Irina said. “There’s no money to be made there, you think?”
“But something went wrong,” Lucky said. “A scuffle, as you say. The guy doesn’t want to go back to jail. What kind of sentence?”
“Five years,” Brandon said.
“Not a lifetime, but not nothing,” Lucky said. “So now he’s desperate. Every cop in the state gunning for him. But he’s short on cash, right?”
“I wouldn’t doubt it.”
“So if he’s smart he doesn’t just steal a car, get picked up sleeping in some rest area in Ohio. If he’s smart, he’s right here still, looking for money to travel with, support himself until he finds the right spot to settle again.”
“Your grandmother,” Irina said. “Does she have money?”
“Maybe fifty dollars at a time,” Brandon said.
“But she has a nice house,” Mia said. “To somebody like him—”
“She’s rich,” Lucky said. “A cash cow.”
“And if he and his friend come here—” Irina said.
She didn’t have to finish the thought. Almost in unison, they all looked out over the lawn to the spruce-edged woods, dark and dense and shadowed.
“You could have a dozen Fullers watching you from there,” Lucky said.
“Or detectives,” Brandon said.
“Creepy,” Irina said. “Let’s go in.”
Irina was making pannini: eggplant and tomato, cheese and olives. Lucky took Mia on a tour of the house, Lucky starting to talk about the time he sailed into Havana and visited Ernest Hemingway’s place. Brandon stood in the kitchen, open-beamed ceiling and copper counters. He offered to help and Irina pointed to a grater and a block of feta cheese.
Taking a long machete-like knife from a drawer, Irina sliced eggplant and tomato. She was efficient and strong, moving with quick economical movements.
“You’ve worked in a restaurant?” Brandon said.
“No, but I grew up watching a good cook.”
“Your mother?”
“Yes. In Poland it was an art to make something good out of very little.”
“Is she still living?”
“I think—I mean, yes.”
“Do you go back to visit?” Brandon asked, the grated cheese mounding on the countertop.
“Once in a great while,” Irina said. “I left home when I was eighteen, didn’t go back for ten years. So we aren’t close. It’s too bad, but couldn’t be avoided.”
“Did everyone else stay in Warsaw?”
“Yes, I was the prodigal daughter, except I haven’t really returned. Are you still the prodigal child if you don’t come back?”
“I don’t know,” Brandon said. “You definitely wouldn’t get a Bible story.”
“Someday, if I get back to Europe, I’ll go to Warsaw and see them. Maybe in the spring I’ll go to Paris, get away from the Maine, what do you call it? Mud season?”
“March and April,” Brandon said.
“Oh
, but Lucky, he’d rather sail in a hurricane than fly. Hates planes.”
“He’s in control of the boat,” Brandon said.
Irina, slicing eggplant with the machete, smiled. “You got that right. He does not like it at all when he’s not in charge.”
The cheese was grated, left in a cream-colored mound. Brandon excused himself, started down the hall for the bathroom. He could heard Irina start to sauté, the hiss as the eggplant hit the oil in the pan. Brandon listened for Mia and Lucky, heard their faint voices from upstairs. He went into the bathroom and out the opposite door. Hurrying down the hall, he peeked in each door along the way.
A room with hooks for jackets.
Another room with two love seats, wing chairs.
A room with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves still full of books. Biographies of Roosevelt. Mozart. Lincoln. Novels he’d never heard of. A big maple writing desk with pens in brass cups. A leather valise on the desk, a woman’s bag next to it.
Brandon listened again, heard the distant clatter of pans. He moved to the desk opened the valise. There were receipts. He glanced at the door, listened. Took the receipts out, flipped through them.
A pair of women’s shoes for $1,234. Dolce & Gabbana, from Neiman Marcus at the mall in Short Hills, New Jersey. The next for a skirt, two blouses, and a sweater: $2,854 at Saks at the same mall. Bras and under-pants from Victoria’s Secret. $912.
Irina paid cash.
Then another receipt sticking out like a duck in a flock of chickens. Wal-Mart in Paramus. Jeans. Skirts. Tops and shoes. Underpants and bras. Something called “nightwear.” The list was four inches long. $603.89. Enough stuff to outfit a college sorority for the price of one Dolce and Gabbana pump.
Did Irina send clothes home to Poland? Did she have a half-dozen sisters in various shapes and sizes?
A bang from the kitchen, Lucky’s voice, distant but approaching. Brandon shoved the receipts back, flipped through the pockets and folders in the bag. Felt something stiff in a zippered pocket on the side. Slid the zipper open, fished out two folders.
Plane tickets.
British Airways.
Kennedy to Heathrow.
Departing 7:03 p.m. 7 July.
First class. One way.
Zalina N. Maricova and Willem S. DeHahn were flying to London in two weeks.
CHAPTER 44
Dinner was in the round room at the base of the turret. Lucky poured wine, a California Chardonnay from a vineyard owned by friends. He talked about the ocean, how people think that because the top of it is flat, it must be a big wide bowl. Instead, the ocean bottom is made up of canyons and ridges and mountain ranges and plains, just like the land.
“Where are you from, Lucky?” Brandon said.
“Oh, here, there, and everywhere,” Lucky said, pouring more wine for Mia, answering without looking away from the glass. “My dad was in the military, moved around a lot. I guess that’s why I tend to move even now. I get restless staying in one place too long.”
“I guess I feel like I don’t know you as well as I should,” Brandon said, rolling the stem of his glass between his thumb and forefinger. “With our connection, you know?”
Mia looked at him, smiled tentatively.
“What branch of the service was your dad in?” Brandon said.
He saw Irina look to Lucky, her smile placid.
“Navy, the supply side. He made sure ships had enough Rice Krispies when they went out on a cruise. Sheets and pillowcases for everyone on the aircraft carriers. Toothpaste. I used to make up stuff to tell kids because I was embarrassed about what he really did. Changed the toothpaste and cereal to torpedoes and missiles.”
“So where’d you go, following him around?” Brandon said.
“Oh, everywhere. Newport, Rhode Island. San Diego and Monterey. Subic Bay in the Philippines. Eighth grade I was in Diego Garcia, hottest place this side of hell.”
“College?”
“Two years, UC Santa Barbara. Did more partying than anything else. My dad said I was wasting my time and his money. I agreed and left. Next time I saw him was at his wake.”
“Traveled around?”
“Like I was blown by the wind. Thailand, Malaysia, New Guinea, New Zealand, up to London. Met a woman there, in a pub at Russell Square, slowed me down.”
He patted Irina’s hand.
“But not like you, dearest.”
Irina smiled.
“Then it was Belgium, Amsterdam, a couple of months in Latvia. Fascinating places, these forgotten Eastern European countries. Very isolated and charming in a very backward sort of way.”
Irina looked at him and smiled. Coldly, Brandon thought.
“Lands that time forgot,” Lucky said. “Anyway, then to Toronto for a bit, down to D.C., met another woman, moved with her to Seattle. My mother got sick in San Diego while I was out west, I went back home and this time I got to say goodbye.”
Lucky paused. Sipped. Smiled sadly.
“So in your wanderings, how did you come up with money to invest?” Brandon said.
“Good story,” Lucky said, sipping his wine. “Met up with Ketch in Santa Cruz, started crewing with him, deliveries and all. Up and down the west coast. Then trans-Atlantics. Came to Maine and that’s when, you know, Black Magic was lost.”
He paused.
“Went back west and wandered a bit more, but then my mother’s estate cleared probate. Back up to Seattle, met these two guys at a party who had this idea to put videos on the Internet. Sounded good to me. Kicked in a hundred grand. Five years later they went public and my investment, well, let’s just say it had multiplied. I cashed in.”
“Good move,” Mia said.
“Dumb luck,” Lucky said. “What do I know about the Internet?”
He looked at Brandon.
“I know,” Lucky said. “Boring. More fun to talk about the places I’ve been.”
“No, it’s not,” Brandon said, “I just want to hear about you. And Irina. What you’re really about. What’s important to you? I know it sounds weird, but—”
“He means knowing you as people,” Mia said. “In your stories about your travels, you tend to disappear.”
“That’s right,” Lucky said. “Sometimes I think that’s why I’ve always kept moving. Keep from looking at myself too closely.”
Irina smiled. “But why is that, Lucky?” she said. “What is it you don’t want to see?”
Lucky looked at her, then at Mia and Brandon.
“Who knows? The guy who didn’t live up to his father’s expectations?”
He grinned. “I’m sure there’s a shrink somewhere could tell me all about myself.”
Brandon sipped his wine, looked to the window, the bay in the distance, a lobster boat chugging home. “You know, Lucky,” he said. “You’re the person who saw my mother last and I don’t even know your real name.”
Lucky looked at him, his mouth still smiling but his eyes hardening. And then that moment of disconnect was over, and Lucky was grinning again, his eyes, too.
“I used to make my friends in school promise not to tell,” he said. “My real name is Willem.” He pronounced the W as a V.
“Always hated it,” Lucky said. He rose from the table and began to clear the plates.
“What time do you leave in the morning?” Mia said, filling the silence.
“Up at five, set off by seven,” Irina said.
“We should go,” Mia said. “We have to get back, check on Nessa.”
“Be sure to give her my best,” Lucky said. “Tell her I’m thinking of her. Really, make sure you do. I think a lot of Nessa. I think about her every day. Please make sure you tell her that.”
Brandon and Mia left, waving from the car, then speeding out the long drive and through the stone gates.
Lucky and Irina turned from the closed door and walked to the bay room without talking. Lucky poured another glass of wine, went to the window. Behind him, Irina collected the empty glasses.
“I didn’t know your father was in the Navy,” she said.
“He wasn’t.”
“So you didn’t move all around the world, live in those places?”
“As a kid? No.”
“Where did that come from, then?”
“I made it up,” Lucky said.
“Right there?”
“It’s called improv, darling. You’ve been known to spin a yarn or two, my ‘Polish’ beauty.”
“Did you travel to all those countries?”
“No. Mostly other ones.”
“What was your father?”
“An accountant. Did people’s taxes. Thought small. Lived small. One of those people content to let the world pass him by.”
“Were you always such a liar?”
“Only after I figured out the truth was a dead end.”
“He’s beginning to ask a lot of questions,” Irina said. “And she’s always listening. And there’s those idiots following them around, a zillion cops. We were supposed to be under the radar.”
“Two weeks and we never see any of them again.”
“I don’t like the feel of it. I’m going to tell Victor.”
“Tell him what? That we aren’t coming? That they can turn around and go back? Unload in Nova Scotia, two hundred miles short?”
Irina didn’t answer.
“We’re in, baby,” Lucky said. “There are no problems here. You can handle Mutt and Jeff with one hand tied behind your back.”
“It was either Mutt or Jeff who shot a cop.”
“Some chump, probably didn’t even have a bullet in his gun. So what. And if Brandon and Mia do pry too much, I’ve got the trump card.”
“The grandmother?”
“She knows it, too. I could tell at the house.”
“If you could tell, they could tell,” Irina said. “That girl, she doesn’t miss any little thing. Always, she’s studying us.”
“She’s a writer,” Lucky said. “Maybe she’s going to put you in her next novel.”
Irina started for the kitchen, stopped, and turned back. “Is your real name really Willem?”
“Must be,” Lucky said. “Says it on my passport.”
“Not all of them,” Irina said.
