Speak Ill of the Living

by Mark Arsenault

  Eddie spread his feet for balance, gripped the gun with both hands and stared down it at her.

  Bobbi’s eyes widened with a sudden revelation.

  She blurted, “You’re not going to kill me out here!”

  “I said I would do anything to get my brother out of prison, and I meant it,” Eddie said. “You and Ralph Nicolaidis are killers. You deserve whatever you get—it’s justice. Why shouldn’t I get my brother back?”

  She shrank against the car and slid to the pavement. Against the front tire, she huddled like a frightened animal. Softly, she said, “You need to put the gun away, Eddie. I’m your family.”

  She’s not going to break.

  Bobbi wasn’t buying Eddie Bourque as a vigilante killer. Eddie couldn’t blame her. He wouldn’t have bought it either—not yet.

  “Put down the gun, Eddie!” a voice called out.

  Eddie whirled.

  Detective Orr, prompt as always, stood beside the shrine. She wore a Lowell police department sweatshirt, gray sweatpants, wet below the knees, and her gunbelt.

  “I’ve been tailing you, Eddie,” she said, walking toward him, shooting a quick glance toward Bobbi. “When I saw your bike coming this way, I took the bridge to the boathouse, and then rode my windsurfer here. I came up the riverbank and hid behind the shrine. I heard everything.”

  “Get outta here, Lucy,” Eddie ordered.

  She continued walking toward him. “The law will sort this out, Eddie.”

  “Get away from me.”

  Detective Orr drew close and reached a hand for the gun.

  The weapon spit fire and thunder, a low boom, like a giant knocking two boulders together.

  Lucy Orr spun, clutched her chest and fell convincingly enough. Maybe too convincingly—when Eddie turned the gun back to Bobbi, it was shaking in his hand.

  “Oh Christ, no!” Eddie cried.

  He lunged one step toward Orr on the ground, and then abruptly spun back toward Bobbi. He panted for a few seconds, to let her process the scene, and then growled, wet and throaty: “See what you made me do? She was my friend.” He sighted down the pistol. “You’re evil…and you’re going to pay.”

  She cracked.

  “Do you know how many times I saved your fucking miserable life?” she snarled.

  So the tears had been part of her act.

  “You didn’t save anybody,” Eddie said.

  “Ralph thought you might have seen him at Crane’s place, and decided to take you out with the van,” she said, angrily. “He never consulted me. When he saw that you had gotten away, he was enraged. But I persuaded him that you could be useful with your pigheaded brother. I convinced him to hold off until I had approached you, to see what you knew about Crane and Roger Lime. As it turned out, you hadn’t seen a thing at Crane’s garage.”

  She held eye contact with Eddie and pushed herself back to her feet.

  “You can still help us,” she said. She nodded in an exaggerated way. “I can control Ralphie. Help us with Henry and we’ll split the gold three ways.” She waved her hands at him; it was an odd and distracting motion, like she was about to do a magic trick. Eddie focused on her face.

  “Where,” Eddie asked, “is Ralphie?”

  “I’m here, asshole.”

  A chill passed like a cold blade through Eddie’s gut.

  Slowly he turned toward the familiar voice.

  Even without his ski mask, Eddie recognized Ralph Nicolaidis, a bull in human form.

  The Bull was standing with Lucy Orr. One of his powerful hands held Orr by the hair, drawing back her head, exposing her white neck, at which his other hand held a bayonet. Moonlight flashed off the blade.

  Eddie saw Orr’s throat ripple as she swallowed.

  Orr said slowly, “He got the drop on me. He was in the trunk.”

  Eddie’s eyes flashed to the old Lincoln’s trunk, which gaped open a few inches, bouncing slightly in the breeze. He gripped the gun in both hands and aimed it at the Bull’s head, a big square block of boney brow, military-style haircut and droopy walrus moustache. The Bull pressed its head close to Orr, like her conjoined twin.

  Eddie was six feet away. Down the sight of the gun it seemed like sixty.

  “Tut-tut-tut, you wouldn’t want to hurt the lady cop,” warned the Bull. “Like you said, she’s your friend. She must be, to go along with an act like you pulled tonight.” To Bobbi he ordered, “Get in the car, babe, we’re getting the fuck outta here.”

  In his periphery, Eddie saw Bobbi climb into the car. The door slammed. “Ralphie,” she said out the window, “what are we gonna do?”

  Never taking his eyes off Eddie, the Bull answered, “We’re going to take the lady cop for a ride, so your brother-in-law knows not to follow, or call the cops.”

  The gun in Eddie’s hand wavered. It was getting heavier, as if nature had turned up the gravity.

  Orr wheezed, “Shoot him, Eddie.”

  “Shut up,” ordered the Bull.

  “You can do it, Eddie,” said Orr.

  Eddie willed the gun to be steady. Why wouldn’t it listen? Why won’t you fucking listen?

  The Bull looked at his big hands, both occupied holding Orr. Then he glanced down at Orr’s gunbelt. “Take out your gun and hand it to me,” he whispered to her. “I want it.”

  Orr didn’t move. The Bull squeezed her. She gasped. Her eyes closed.

  “Do it!”

  Eddie watched Orr’s hand move slowly toward her pistol.

  No Lucy…if he gets your gun…

  She slid the holster guard aside, gripped the handle with a thumb and forefinger and slowly withdrew the weapon.

  “That’s it,” said the Bull. “Bring it up so I can reach it.”

  Orr paused, looked at Eddie, blinked once, and then with a sudden flick of her wrist flung the weapon away. It clunked and skidded into the darkness.

  The Bull squeezed her again and pulled the dagger tighter to her throat. “Bitch!” he croaked. The blade drew a dribble of blood. Orr grimaced.

  Sweat ran like acid into Eddie’s eyes. The acid mixed with tears. Lucy Orr had defied the Bull to save Eddie—with a bayonet at her throat. Eddie’s breathing was loud and irregular. He held out the pistol. He blinked away the tears, saw the Bull’s head moving in and out of his gun sight. The muscles in Eddie’s arms burned under the weight of the impossibly heavy gun.

  The Bull grunted. He looked to the car, then back at Eddie. “Let’s go,” he whispered to Orr, and stutter-stepped her toward the Lincoln.

  Eddie panned the gun toward them as they moved. The trigger seemed to push back against his finger with irresistible force.

  “Shoot him, Eddie,” Orr said, tension rising in her voice.

  “Shut the fuck up!” said the Bull.

  “Imagine the Lone Ranger,” Orr said. “Shoot him where the mask would be. He won’t even flinch.”

  “He’s not shooting anybody,” said the Bull, as he backed up against the car. “Get the door, Bobbi.”

  The door opened. The Bull pulled Orr toward it.

  Blood dripped down Lucy Orr’s neck from where the blade had broken the skin. She closed her eyes, gasped, and then looked fleetingly toward the shrine, eyes huge in the moonlight. “Eddie,” she called out, “if he gets me in this car, I’m dead!”

  The Bull stopped pulling and looked at Eddie. “Ahhhh,” he purred. “I know your little secret. In your one-act play a few minutes ago, that gun fired blanks.” He grinned, the way he had in the old well. It was his killing grin. Lew Cuhna had seen it. Dr. Crane, too.

  But not Eddie’s friend Lucy Orr. She would not see it.

  I have another little secret.

  Only the first round had been blank.

  Boom.

  Eddie killed him.

  Chapter 31

  The parade of government cars passed for hours by the Stations of the Cross.

  Eddie tried not
to listen when Bobbi called his name as the cops placed her in the back of the squad car. He looked away when the coroner’s long gray station wagon arrived. Investigators showed up. Evidence gatherers. Crime scene photographers. Blood splash-pattern experts. Ambulances. Fire trucks. Last to arrive were the politicians—who had come to tell everyone else how to do their jobs.

  The sun had barely cleared the triple-deckers to the east, and it was already hot at the Grotto. From the bench atop the shrine, Eddie sipped a Dunkin Donuts hazelnut that one of the cops had brought for him, at Detective Orr’s urging.

  The Merrimack River ran steady, not in any rush this morning. A hot breeze blew. It seemed like a fine day to take up windsurfing.

  “Eddie? Eddie? You’re not paying attention,” Detective Orr said.

  “Sure I am,” he told her. “Just not to your questions.” He smiled so she would know he was kidding, and then said, “Haven’t we covered it? I’ve told you everything I know.”

  She looked out to the river, nodded, slipped her notebook in her waistband and sat down next to Eddie. She fiddled with the white gauze around her neck. It had been a shallow cut, no stitches. “You’re right,” she said. “Enough for now.”

  They watched the river for a minute. Then Orr said, “Why do you think they killed Jimmy?”

  Eddie sipped coffee. “Just being practical,” he offered. “They knew I’d be bringing the police to the farmhouse after I got out of the well. The property deed for the farm leads right back to Jimmy’s mother, and to Jimmy. Better to silence the old convict, before you and Detective Brill hauled ol’ Jimmy to an interrogation room and stuck a bright light in his face.”

  “We don’t do interrogations that way.”

  “Or put him in thumbscrews or clamped jumper cables on his nuts—whatever,” Eddie said. “Nicolaidis probably called Bobbi from his van, and had her pick up Whistle and bring him to the farm. The son-of-a-bitch probably made Jimmy dig out the bones before he killed him.”

  “Which reminds me,” Orr said, pulling out her notebook and flipping through it. “Tyngsboro police found the van, abandoned down a dirt road. The VIN number matches a van reported stolen six months ago in upstate New York.”

  “Seems about right.”

  “They say there’s an odd little coffee table inside—shaped like home plate,” she said. “I could probably get it for you, if you wanted it.”

  Hmmmm. Eddie didn’t want Henry’s table destroyed, but did he want it in his house? “Let me think about that,” he said.

  They watched the river a little longer.

  Orr said, “That’s a lot of bodies, even for a thousand pounds of gold. Four men dead.”

  Roger Lime. Dr. Crane. Jimmy Whistle.

  Who else?

  Oh, of course, Eddie thought with a shake: Ralph Nicolaidis.

  “Plus don’t forget Dumas and Forte, the other two guards,” Eddie reminded her. “They were killed thirty years ago for that gold.”

  She cocked her head. “Yeah, what about that? How do their deaths figure? I mean—knowing what we’ve learned?”

  Eddie’s phone buzzed. He checked the caller ID number: Ryan Daniels, the only half-decent student in Eddie’s class.

  He answered, “Hey Ryan!”

  “Whoa—you’re psychic, man!” Ryan said. “You’re the coolest teacher ever!”

  There was no way Eddie was going to disagree with that. “What’s up, Ry?”

  “Uh, Professor Bourque,” Ryan said. “I’m afraid I have to drop your class.”

  “What? Hold on.” Eddie covered the phone and said to Orr, “Teacher-student conference.”

  She nodded, hint taken, and walked off.

  To Ryan, Eddie said, “You can’t leave now—you’re the first one who’s actually starting to get it.”

  “Oh, yeah, dude, I know—I mean, Professor Bourque,” Ryan said. “That’s why I’m dropping the class. I’ll be working nights, covering concerts as the new full-time music writer for The Second Voice.”

  The phone squirted from Eddie’s hand. He grabbed for it, batted it twice into the air before snatching it. He said, “Lew Cuhna’s old paper? Ryan, that’s great.”

  “Yeah, man, thanks,” Ryan said. “Um, it’s a small staff, as you know. So I gotta do some cop coverage, too. You know? And I heard about you on the police scanner this morning, and I was wondering if you could help me on my story, gimme a quote or something.”

  Eddie laughed. “Tell you what, at the police press conference today, ask the chief to explain how this incident is related to the kidnapping of Roger Lime. Watch him pop an artery! Blam!”

  “Whoaaaa. No shit?”

  “Good luck, man. You know more about reporting right now than I did in my first job.”

  Chapter 32

  Eddie arrived in upstate New York tired and wind-chapped, sunburned and bow-legged, with an aching back and a sore ass. He left his helmet and goggles on The Late Chuckie’s rat bike, took a thin cardboard box from the saddlebag and went inside the prison.

  The guard’s eyes narrowed at the box. “You can’t bring anything into the visiting room,” he informed Eddie.

  “Call the O.I.C.,” Eddie said, using the slang for officer-in-charge.

  The guard pressed the phone to his head, shooting Eddie glances as he spoke. He hung up and shrugged. “You got friends in high places. You’re all set.”

  Eddie didn’t bother to mention that he had a friend in Congress, who happened to sit on a House committee with the congresswoman who represented this section of the Empire State.

  The guard looked in the box, to make sure it did not contain a machine gun or a grappling hook. Satisfied, he led Eddie into the visiting room.

  “Sit at number five,” he advised. “The phone’s busted at six.”

  Eddie sat. Waited. Checked the clock. Waited.

  There’s so much to say, hardly any time.

  No, Eddie thought, there was time. This was a marathon. You don’t win a marathon in the first hundred yards. The two brothers had the rest of their lives to get to know each other.

  A door beyond the glass opened and Henry came out, cuffed and shackled and looking precisely as he had before. He nodded at Eddie, smiled, and sat.

  Eddie took the phone.

  Henry did not.

  He stared at Eddie for a minute, a little smile at the corners of his mouth. Henry looked to the telephone, and then nodded toward the guard’s station, the next room over. Then he pantomimed listening to a telephone with his hand over the mouthpiece.

  He was pretending to eavesdrop. So the guards eavesdrop.

  Henry smiled and nodded as understanding spread over Eddie’s face. Then Henry mouthed five words, slowly so that Eddie could read his lips:

  “Do.”

  “You.”

  “Want.”

  “The.”

  “Gold.”

  Eddie had expected the question. He had spent the past two weeks, after the confrontation at the Grotto, rationalizing about all the good Eddie Bourque could do with six million dollars in gold. But he couldn’t take it. He could melt down the gold and recast it into any shape he liked, but he would never strain out the blood.

  “No,” Eddie mouthed back.

  Henry laughed without sound on his side of the glass, and then picked up the telephone.

  “You got my letter?” Eddie asked.

  “Next time include beer.”

  “I’m sorry about your wife.”

  “Marriage isn’t prison.”

  Eddie looked for pain in his brother’s face. There was thirty years’ worth. “I’m taking some time off,” Eddie said. “For the mountains. I thought you could pick one you’d like to visit. I’ll camp there, make some notes, tell you about it.”

  Henry nodded. “I killed those two guards,” he said.

  “I know.”

  They met eyes, understanding each other. Eddie had dreaded this mom
ent. He was glad when it was over.

  “You could still file motions for a new trial, or for clemency,” Eddie said. “It’s been thirty years.”

  Henry shifted in his chair, looking uncomfortable. “Maybe some day,” he said. Looking away, refusing to meet Eddie’s eye, he added: “I need to be sure it would never happen again.”

  A lump grew like a tumor in Eddie’s throat.

  “Maybe some day,” Eddie repeated at a whisper.

  Henry switched the phone to his other ear. “I’ve done what you asked—petitioned for a transfer to a state pen in Massachusetts, maybe Gardner—that’s not too far from you.”

  “Naw, just forty-five minutes. That would be perfect.”

  “Probably take a few months, but I’m first on the list when a bed opens up. Next time somebody gets shanked, I’m in.” He made a bright, hopeful face and held it, batting his eyelashes.

  Eddie couldn’t help himself and burst into laugher.

  “You’re good at puzzles,” Henry said. “Their whole plot was based on misdirection. You cut counter-grain to solve it.”

  “I get lucky sometimes.”

  “Are you going to try to solve any more puzzles?”

  Eddie shrugged. “If any come up.”

  “I have a lot of time to think about puzzles.”

  “I could use the help.” Eddie was beginning to learn how Henry communicated. Keep it moving. Henry had not even glanced at the box on the counter on Eddie’s side of the glass. Eddie patted the box. “This is for us.” He took from it a small black-and-red checkerboard. He set up the plastic chess pieces—white for Henry, black for himself.

  “I’ve been playing chess every day since you wore diapers,” Henry warned, a little smile on his lips. “You can’t possibly beat me, not in a hundred tries.”

  “You’re probably right,” Eddie said. “But prepare yourself for that glorious day when your little brother learns to kick your ass. Now move!”

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