“What?”
“She calls herself Patty Marx, did you know that? She’s a reporter, or was.”
“I knew,” Myna said, so softly I barely heard.
“Wish you’d told me.”
“It’s … embarrassing. The child rejects the mother’s name. Embarrassing, Mister Sax. Who is this crime-spree man she’s involved with?”
“I don’t know for a fact she’s dating him, and even if she is, she may not know everything he’s up to.” I thought Patty Marx was in it up to her eyeballs, but saying so would hurt my chances.
“What exactly do you mean by ‘crime spree,’ Mister Sax?” Crime shpree. “That’s quite a broad term.”
“The police are wondering if Tander Phigg’s suicide was really a suicide.”
“Oh my God!” I heard air go out of her, pictured her sitting hard on the sofa.
“Look,” I said, “none of this is fact. I’m guessing, and even if my worst guesses are true, nobody knows how your daughter fits in. But you’re going to get a call or a visit soon. The police will have questions about Patty.”
“I don’t have anything to tell them! I told you everything there is the other night.”
“So tell it to them. Tell it all. Don’t hold back, don’t try to guess what they’re after. Just tell it.”
There was a long pause. Ice cubes clinked.
“You said you wanted to talk about two things,” Myna said. “I certainly hope you didn’t save the worst for last.”
“I want to tell you about Tander Phigg’s son.”
And I did. I told her about Trey Phigg—his curiosity about his father’s five good years, a fight that chased him to Vietnam, a young family, the way he came home to make peace with his father and found him dead.
She listened hard. No ice clinked.
By the time I finished, I was idling in Charlene’s driveway. Myna was hooked. She jumped when I finally asked the favor. I started to ask if I could help with travel arrangements, but she interrupted me.
“Believe it or not,” Myna Roper said, “we have the same Internet down here that you have up there.” Click.
* * *
Charlene was sound asleep. I closed her bedroom door, went back downstairs, and flipped the news on, but they were just rerunning the report I’d seen already. I muted the volume and lay with my hands behind my head.
Vermont and New Hampshire state cops, working together. With the Enosburg Falls killings hitting the news, the New Hampshire detectives who hadn’t listened to McCord about Phigg’s death would look like idiots. No, worse: They’d look like lazy assholes who’d blown a chance to stop two killings. They ought to be embarrassed, but if I knew anything about cops, they’d be pissed at the world instead.
They were going to come after me, Trey, and maybe Josh with everything they had.
When they saw my record they were going to drool.
I was on parole for manslaughter two. I’d been seen with Tander Phigg the day before he died, and it was me who called in his body. I was a known associate of Ollie and Josh. Solid canvassing would show I’d driven them right to Ollie’s mom’s house.
Shit.
I pulled my cell, hesitated, dialed McCord.
He picked up and said my name. In the background I heard the Red Sox radio announcers. “Pretty late for a ball game,” I said. “They on the west coast?”
“Seattle.”
I took a guess and said, “You’re sitting at the side of I-Ninety-three waiting for a drunk to go by.”
“Or a speeder.”
“So you figured out the Phigg thing first, but you’re stuck working graveyard anyway? No promotion? No apologies from the detectives? No employee-of-the-month award?”
He either laughed or said, “Unh.”
We said nothing while the Red Sox screwed up a hit and run. Then McCord said, “Nobody likes the guy tells them they screwed up.”
“And they did screw up. Royally.”
“What do you want, Sax?”
“I didn’t do it.”
He knew what I meant. “Which one?”
“Any of them.”
“I hear they’re looking at the son,” he said. “They’ll want to interview him again.”
“He didn’t do it either. I’ll vouch for him.”
“I had a look at your record. Not sure how much weight your voucher carries.” He stifled a yawn. “Anyway, you’ll get a chance to tell it to the detectives tomorrow. Two-state task force with an assist from the FBI.”
“Jesus.”
“They love a task force, especially when they’re embarrassed.”
We were quiet.
McCord said, “You understand I need to tell my boss about this call?”
“Sure,” I said. “About that task force. No help from Canada yet?”
“What do you mean?” His voice was different, like he’d straightened up.
I realized he didn’t know yet about Montreal. Most likely none of the cops knew. I said, “Have you guys taken a good look through Dufresne’s garage yet?”
“Not sure. Why?”
I told McCord about the heroin runs, the Montreal connection, the guys from the black Escalade who’d creamed Ollie’s knee.
McCord said nothing. I heard a keyboard as he took notes on his cruiser’s laptop.
Finally I said, “That’s some good stuff, huh?”
McCord was quiet.
“You tell the detectives all that,” I said, “and maybe they ease off me and Trey Phigg. Plus you look good.”
“Maybe.” McCord clicked off.
* * *
The next morning, cereal-bowl clinks woke me. As I realized I’d fallen asleep on the couch, I craned my neck and saw Charlene doing something new—humming and dancing a box step in the kitchen while she ate her raisin bran.
She didn’t know I was awake, so I held still and watched and listened. After a minute I figured out the tune: “I Feel Pretty.” Morning sun lit the edges of her blond hair. She wore work clothes: black pencil skirt, pearl-gray blouse.
It was nice watching her while she didn’t know she was being watched.
When she danced her cereal bowl over to the sink, I said, “You look pretty.”
She jumped six inches, turned, put hands on hips. “How long, Conway Sax?”
“Couple minutes.”
Charlene tried for a mad face but couldn’t hold it, smiled, held her arms out like a TV spokesmodel. “The empty-nester life,” she said, “is the life for me.”
Then she ran into the family room—the tight skirt making for choppy steps—and plopped herself on top of me, straddling. Had to wiggle the skirt real high to make it.
I said, “Wow.”
Charlene laughed and wriggled and put her hands on my chest. “No ‘Where’s my homework?’ No three-day pout because somebody didn’t get her way. Freedom!” She did the spokesmodel flare again and slowed her wriggle, gave it some purpose, moved her hands to the waist of my jeans.
“Got a stiff neck,” I said.
“And then some,” she said, giggling. When I tried to sit up to kiss her, she flat-handed my chest. “Stay right there, dragon breath.”
I don’t know how she got her panty hose off without climbing from me.
But she did.
* * *
After, Charlene was all business and bustle. A bathroom cleanup, fresh panty hose, check the makeup, ready to split. She glanced at the TV, which was tuned again to the New England news station, as she crossed the room. Said she wanted to hear more about the Vermont deaths, but it’d have to wait. She leaned down to peck my temple.
I grabbed her wrist. “What about Fred?”
Her eyes went hard for an instant—she hates being interrupted while on a mission, and she was on a mission to get to the office—but then she softened and sat. “I did everything I could think of,” she said. “I drove around two hours last night looking for him. I called the Shrewsbury police and the state police again. I even e-m
ailed the gal who runs the town blog, sent her a cell-phone picture of Fred that Sophie took. I said Fred may be wandering around, implying he has Alzheimer’s.”
“Did you call Vicky Lin at Cider Hill?”
“I did,” she said, brushing nonexistent hair from my forehead.
“And?”
“And she said it happens more often than not.” Charlene kissed my forehead as she stood. “I’m sorry, Conway. Doctor Lin said this happens almost every time.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
It was time to deal with Montreal. That meant driving to Rourke and acting like a worm on a fishhook.
I spent the ride thinking about Fred, wondering what pushed him out of Charlene’s place. He tried to drink himself to death for thirty years or more. I wasn’t sure I’d ever heard of such a hard case sobering up the way he had. I wouldn’t have believed it but for Vicky Lin’s tests.
So you stop using, cold turkey. You get through the worst of it, find yourself a cushy setup—Charlene’s home, her money, a pair of adoring females—and hit the streets again?
I sighed. Knew it could happen, had seen it a hundred times. There’s nothing rational about a man who drinks that long.
Once Fred cleared Charlene’s neighborhood, he could blend in. The main drag was less than a mile from her house, and from there it was ten minutes to Worcester. In that city, bums lugging trash bags are a dime a dozen. And there’s a hell of a rail yard to boot. My father could be rocking his way to Vermont, Florida, you name it.
“Jesus, Fred,” I said out loud.
I was still playing around with ideas when I rolled into Rourke. My best guess put Montreal near Motorenwerk, eyeballing the place. He thought there was a big pile of money inside the shop. I thought he was right.
As I neared Mechanic Street, I put on my left turn signal. There was no traffic coming the other way but I hesitated anyway, stutter-stepping the F-150 like a man trying to make up his mind. I canceled the turn signal, weaved back to my lane, and cruised toward Jut Road. I kept an eye on my mirror, wondering if he’d take the bait.
Montreal made it too easy. Maybe he was stupid. More likely he’d grown cocky and bored sitting around in a nothing town, waiting. I hadn’t even cleared Rourke’s three-block downtown when the black Escalade snorted out of Mechanic Street, squatted under acceleration, and came after me.
I might have smiled, McCord style, at my rearview mirror. The only drawback I could see to my plan was that I’d have to take a beating to make Montreal buy it.
I’ve taken beatings before.
I led them out of town. Montreal was behind the wheel of the Escalade. He tailgated me, trying to scare me half to death. I made a big show of noticing him, checking my mirrors again and again, trying to look nervous.
When we hit Jut Road, I pulled in like a man who’d run out of options.
As we parked, Montreal jammed his truck against my rear bumper. We all climbed from our vehicles. Montreal’s lounge-lizard look was going strong: He wore another shimmery suit that looked gray or olive drab, depending on how the sun hit it, and his pompadour was tall.
He snapped his fingers like a gangster in a black-and-white movie. His muscle man, wearing a black T-shirt that advertised a gym I’d never heard of, moved in.
I gulped and made a let’s-all-take-it-easy gesture with both hands. “Plenty for everyone,” I said, just as muscle man punched me in the stomach.
I flopped against my truck and doubled up—and felt happy. I’d guessed muscle man didn’t know how to fight, and the punch proved me right. For starters, I’d seen it coming two yards away. Had tensed my abs, barely felt it. Could have sidestepped if I’d wanted to, and he would’ve broken his hand on my door. And despite the big windup, the punch was all arm. He hadn’t set his feet, hadn’t started by torquing his thigh.
He probably worked as a bouncer and thought he was pretty tough because he could slam a drunk’s head off an alley wall.
Thinking all this, I dropped to a knee. Muscle man got set to hit me in the face with a downward-slanting left that might have actually done damage, but I said, “Okayokayokay,” and Montreal snapped his fingers again.
“First, a correction. There’s not plenty here for everybody,” he said. Zere’s. “What is here is mine, and you will take me to it or my man will put you in the river and stand on you awhile, eh?”
I hoped I looked like a beaten man, holding my arm against my ribs as I stood. I jerked a thumb behind me at the shack. “You were close,” I said. “When you bought a hammer and bashed up the walls inside.”
“How close?”
“I’ll show you,” I said, and winced my way down the slope to the river.
* * *
Ten minutes later I knocked the last peg from its hole and slipped out of the way as the false floor swung down. It wasn’t a hard job once you knew what you were looking for. There was nothing there, of course, and so I went into act two of my sell job—cursing, begging, swearing to God it was all supposed to be here. “Those goddamn—”
“Yes? Goddamn who?” Montreal said.
I looked at my boots, which were in six inches of water, and said nothing.
Montreal snapped his fingers again. You could tell he liked the move.
Muscle man grabbed the back of my shirt and kicked my feet out from under me, dumping me in the ice-cold Souhegan facedown, my nose grinding coarse sand. As promised, he kept one boot on my back as I flopped and struggled.
I’d been ready and had gulped a deep breath on my way down. But instinct is instinct, and after thirty seconds I didn’t need to playact my thrashing. He kept me under another thirty seconds. By the time he lifted his boot and I thrust my head from the water, I had a lungful of river. I gagged and retched on hands and knees.
Muscle man stood not two feet from me, his crotch level with my head, his arms folded, his pride obvious. I wanted to show him the truth about street fighting; it’d be so easy to reach out and twist his nut sack until he passed out. I doubted I could actually tear his balls off, not through his jeans. But I could try my damnedest.
But this was working. I fought back the urge and instead crawled ashore, coughing up water, making I-surrender gestures.
Montreal stepped over and toed my side. His knees popped when he crouched. He spoke gently. “You don’t need to die here today in a cold river, Conway Sax. Who took the money from this place?”
“They’ll kill me.”
“He will kill you first.”
“You don’t get it,” I said. “These are bad hombres. Survivalists, mercenaries.”
Montreal sighed, stood, snapped. “Two minutes this time.”
“No!” I said as muscle man stepped toward me. “Okay. I’ll take you there. They live a couple towns over.”
“You will indeed take us there,” Montreal said. “You will also provide an address and a map. In case we get separated.”
“If I give you the address, what’s to keep you—him—from killing me right now?”
“If you don’t give it,” he said, “what is to keep him from standing on your back for two minutes, thirty seconds?”
I tried to look like I’d had it. Stood, sloshed over to my truck, pulled a pen and a map of New England from the glove box. Spread the map on my hood.
I managed to not crack a smile as I told them precisely how to get to the Beet Brothers’ compound.
* * *
Fifteen minutes later we neared the place, the Escalade a car length off my bumper. I sat in a puddle and wondered how many times I had to get dunked in the Souhegan.
My directions had been perfect: We’d found our way over to Route 123, had paralleled railroad tracks, and now you could see the Beet Brothers’ mailbox, cemented into a stack of old truck wheels to keep snowplows and vandals from knocking it over.
Time for me to make my move and hope. I put my turn signal on, began to swing into the dirt road—then straightened the wheel and gassed the F-150. The truck’s six-cylinder engine d
idn’t have a lot of juice, but I worked it through the gears as fast as I could, watching my mirror the whole time.
The Escalade had lurched to an awkward, angled stop when I took off. Now Montreal and his muscle man had a choice. They could hope I’d led them to the right place but had then panicked and rabbited. Or they could use their horsepower to chase me down, then beat on me until they got another address.
I liked my odds. Dealers were used to seeing people roll over for them, and they were used to people who panicked when the heat was on. Plus, after sitting around doing nothing for a week, they felt ready for action.
Wrong. They didn’t want any part of Beet Brothers–style action. But by the time they figured that out, it’d be too late.
Before I disappeared around a gentle left-hand bend, I saw the Escalade cut down the Beets’ dirt road. For maybe five seconds I felt bad for Montreal and his muscle man. They were dime-a-dozen crooks like a thousand other guys I’d known.
Then I thought about heroin, the things I’d seen junkies do. Thought about Ollie Dufresne, who survived the French Foreign Legion so he could be hung like a side of beef in his boyhood room. About his mom, a widow lady making turkey sandwiches in her own kitchen when muscle man wrapped apron strings around her neck.
But mostly I thought about Tander Phigg, Jr. Born in his father’s shadow, tried to step out, didn’t quite make it. Chased his only son away, hid inside a bottle of Scotch, climbed out, got greedy or stupid, lived in a shack while he watched his dream house rot, wound up hanging from a pipe stub.
There were plenty of people to feel for here. Montreal wasn’t one of them.
The Beets’ compound disappeared in my mirror. I headed south.
* * *
On the drive I shivered and played guessing games about Fred. I wondered how he’d walked out of Charlene’s neighborhood without causing neighbors to call the cops, wondered where he’d go. Without really deciding to go there, I found myself aimed at Purgatory Chasm. By ten I was parked there, facing roughly east, squinting against the sun. Had the place to myself for thirty seconds. Then a big black Toyota Sequoia parked and spilled three little blond kids and a nanny driver. The nanny tried to round up the kids, but she didn’t have a prayer—the two boys and a girl were all under six, and they scattered.
Purgatory Chasm: A Mystery Page 22
