Past Crimes

by Glen Erik Hamilton

  How far had I gone? With my hands full, I couldn’t reach around to grab the gauge. I made myself stop before the sudden pressure change did very bad things to my joints. I couldn’t feel the containers under my arms. Maybe I had dropped them. I looked down to check before I realized I couldn’t see them either.

  And then the air hose jerked once, my lungs grabbing at nothing. Hollis’s tank was dry.

  The bends would be better than drowning. I kicked again. Air in my lungs swelled and forced its way out of my mouth. The steel tank dragged at me, but there was no time to get myself free of it.

  There. The cloud above me was definitely lighter now. Not as bright as the firecrackers exploding in my head. Almost.

  I saw a flatness, the underside of the sky.

  And then I saw nothing.

  *

  “JESUS GOD, KID. YOU scared the holy shit out of me.”

  I was in the water. Mostly. My head was out, and I took my first conscious breath, deep, before coughing it painfully back out. I looked up to see Hollis, leaning way down from the stern of the speedboat. He had a grip on the shoulder strap of the scuba tank and was holding me above water.

  Hollis’s voice was strangely high and fast. “You bobbed up next to the boat, went faceup, and then you started to drift back down. Thank Christ you were close enough for me to snag you with the boat hook.” He shook me. “Are you all right? Say something, you mad son of a bitch.”

  Where were the cylinders? My arms were drifting aimlessly at my sides. I looked down dazedly. Maybe I could dive again, catch them before they got too far….

  “I’ve got the tubes here, lad. Don’t worry. You were hanging on to them like they were your own babes.”

  “Get this damn thing off me,” I said. We managed to undo the straps, and he heaved the tank up into the boat. I followed, with a lot more effort on both our parts. I lay against the side of the cockpit, too tired to even remove my fins. Hollis gave me a towel, and I rubbed at my limbs until they turned a raw pink while Hollis saw to the tank and gear. Before long I felt like I was past the danger of toppling over.

  Hollis picked up one of the cylinders. He shook it gently, making a muffled rattle. “Are these what I pray they are?”

  “All we’ll get.”

  He handed the cylinder to me. The black rubber exterior was dirty and slightly pitted by the seawater. I twisted the end off, exposing a screw cap inside. I opened it and poured some of the contents into my hand.

  They weren’t cut or polished, but still unmistakable. Diamonds. Silver-white, the largest about the size of my thumbnail. Ice that would never melt away.

  Here, Dono had said to me, his hand gripping mine.

  Not only trying to tell me where the little hunk of madrona wood came from. But here, this place that only you and I know.

  Here, this is yours.

  After Ondine’s cut I estimated that Dono had walked away with the market value of about four million dollars. Seven cylinders in the cooler. If each cylinder held the same amount of diamonds, that meant I had over half a million dollars in my hand.

  Putting it another way, at my current pay grade I was holding about thirteen years’ worth of salary. A quarter of a century, if you counted the other cylinder.

  “The loveliest ugly rocks I’ve ever seen,” Hollis said.

  “Glad you approve.”

  He nudged me in the ribs with his foot. “Don’t ever fucking do that to me again.”

  “Next time you go.” I kicked the fins away and eased myself up to sit in the pilot’s chair.

  Hollis grunted. “And you said the rest are gone?”

  “Not gone. Just way out of reach.”

  He thought about it, shrugged. “Still, a damn good day’s work. Maybe if we come back with proper gear and some lights …”

  Maybe. Or maybe the diamonds would be of more use to me if they stayed right where they were.

  I was beyond tired. I wanted to curl up in the tiny cabin of the speedboat and sleep for a month.

  “Let’s take what we need off the Francesca,” I said, “and go home.”

  We beached the speedboat and waded ashore to Hollis’s boat. We went in the side door, to avoid stepping over Alec’s body again. Hollis began packing up his personal effects, and I raided the Francesca’s rapidly warming refrigerator. I was ravenous. When Hollis came back to the main cabin, I was eating cold cuts straight from the plastic bag.

  He looked past me to the main cabin. “That’s not mine,” he said.

  It was a large brown leather satchel, half buried under one of the piles of clothes and other crap thrown around when the Francesca hit the shore.

  I retrieved the satchel and opened it. Inside it was clothing, and a Glock pistol, and a canvas bag holding something large and squarish. A leather wallet and some papers—scattered receipts, a Seattle street map, a bus ticket—were tucked in an inside pocket.

  “Boone’s,” I said, glancing at the dark, gaunt face on the Illinois driver’s license.

  “Shitheel,” said Hollis, going back to forage for his belongings.

  Maybe the Glock was the same gun that Boone had fired at me at Julian Formes’s apartment. Any evidence would help. I took out the canvas bag and looked inside.

  Bundles of cash. Still in their blue plastic wrap. The spoils that Boone had taken from Cristiana Liotti’s apartment after killing her. I put the canvas bag back into the satchel. A dead woman’s money, shrouded in a dead man’s clothing.

  “At least you can get your life in order again,” Hollis called from the forward stateroom. “Get your truck back from the cops, see the house one more time before you have to leave.”

  I nodded without really thinking about it, looking around for anything I might take with us, still preoccupied with the cash. There was something bothering me about it, maybe not this money but a different stack of cash. And Hollis had said something too, about the truck….

  A cold snake writhed in my stomach.

  I walked quickly back to the satchel, opened it again, and took out Boone’s papers. Found his bus ticket. Leaving Stockton at 11:20 P.M. the past Saturday night. Arriving Seattle 7:40 P.M. Sunday night.

  At least fourteen hours after Dono was shot.

  I felt like I was back down in the black again, the pressure caving in my chest.

  I’d been blind. Focused solely on Boone and Alec, the stone killers who were right in front of me. I had never questioned if there might be someone else.

  But there had to be someone, the beast snarled inside me. You just didn’t see it.

  Maybe I just didn’t want to.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  I STOOD IN THE STORAGE room of the Morgen, looking down at Dono’s casket.

  Somebody had cleared the room of all the cases of food and whiskey, but it was still a small space. The casket and the flower stand with its wreath of white roses took the lion’s share. The mortuary attendant and I took most of the rest. Big Willard had to stand out in the hallway.

  The lid of the box was closed. The attendant looked at me. I nodded, and he withdrew a hex key and unlocked and opened the top half of the casket lid. He and Willard walked silently back toward the main room of the bar.

  Dono’s skin had a slight sheen to it, like the casket’s varnish. His gray hair was brushed back flat against his scalp. He didn’t look peaceful. He didn’t look angry. He had no expression at all.

  The funeral home had dressed him in a navy blue suit with matching tie and white shirt. I didn’t know if the clothes were his or bought by Willard for the occasion. Dono had been shot behind the left ear, but that side was turned to the back of the box.

  Someone came up in the hallway behind me. It was one of the junior attendants, returning with the sash for the wreath.

  “Get out,” I said.

  When I turned back to the casket, I saw that Dono had his wedding ring on. He must have mentioned it in the funeral instructions he’d left with Ganz. Even I wouldn’t have thought
to hunt through the house for the ring, much less put it on him.

  For your grandmother. If I’m going to see her again, I’d better be wearing it.

  “You should have sent for me earlier,” I said. In the small room, my voice bounced around the walls, hollow. “You didn’t need the goddamn diamonds.”

  There was no answer. I left him.

  The main room was nearly empty. A couple of women in white shirts and black bow ties were setting up a buffet of food at the far side. The bar tables and chairs had been left in place for people to sit where they wanted. A microphone stand was in the center of the small stage.

  The front door opened, and Willard and another girl in caterer’s clothes came in from the alley. They were both carrying cases of wine. Willard wore a brown tweed suit made of enough fabric to cover a small car. He closed the door behind them, and they took the cases to the bar. The girl began opening them while Willard made a circuit of the room, checking everything.

  “We’re about set,” he said as he lumbered past me. “You want me to open up?”

  “Yeah.”

  He went back and unlocked the door and opened it wide. I stayed where I was, just out of the room.

  There was a small crowd of people waiting outside. Jimmy Corcoran was first through the door, shouldering his way through the throng. He was followed by a couple of men I recognized, although they were a lot older than when I’d last seen them. Dono’s associates, from back in the day. They filed in, shaking hands with Willard like he was a retired heavyweight champ greeting high rollers at a casino.

  Luce came in next, leading Addy Proctor. Addy was wearing a black sweater and gray pants, with a black knit shawl draped over her shoulders. Her spiky white hair looked like it was freshly cut. Luce had on a black knee-length dress with two-inch heels, which made Addy look even shorter beside her.

  Luce looked around the room and spotted me lurking in the side passageway. She gave me a sad smile. I smiled back. It made my face hurt.

  Damn near all of me hurt. It had been only the previous afternoon when Hollis and I had left the island. We’d pounded the speedboat through the evening darkness down the straits as fast as we could stand it. When we finally reached Seattle, I’d dropped the exhausted Hollis off at a motel.

  But I’d had one more stop to make before I could rest.

  Finally I’d driven to Luce’s to crash. I had called Detective Guerin on the way, to offer him a deal. I would hand him Dono’s killer—and maybe more. And he wouldn’t arrest me until he absolutely had to.

  Another handful of people drifted in from the alley. Family types, maybe neighbors or some of Dono’s old contracting clients. Ephraim Ganz came in, wearing a double-breasted suit in a dark purple-black. He looked a little lost. He peered around until he saw me and made a beeline.

  “Hi, kid,” he said, shaking hands. “How you doing?”

  “Thanks for coming, Ephraim.”

  “I don’t think I’ve been in this place in twenty years. I hardly recognize it. ’Cept for that thing.” He pointed at the medieval tapestry.

  I saw Hollis by the door, talking with Willard. Hollis had borrowed a dark blue corduroy suit from somewhere, and it actually fit him better than most of his own clothes. His face was still pink and swollen, but his cuts had scabbed over. He nodded toward the stage, and Willard patted him roughly on the arm and walked over. He ignored the microphone and let his rumbling mixer of a voice quiet the crowd.

  “Okay,” Willard said. “Thanks for coming. Dono Shaw was a hell of a friend to me. In a good way, I mean. To lots of you, too. Dono asked that Luce—Miss Boylan—start us off today.”

  He sat down. Luce walked to the stage. She looked good. Her blond hair was swept back from her forehead in sleek ribbons, held there by some mysterious product, and small silver earrings accented a thick chain around her neck. Someone, Corcoran maybe, whistled low.

  Luce held up a sheet of paper. “This might not be what you’d hear at other services,” she said. “But you all know that Dono was not your ordinary guy. He told me once that this song was one he and his late wife held dear.”

  She began to sing. She had a high voice, not perfect, but clear and strong.

  For to see Mad Tom of Bedlam,

  Ten thousand miles I’ve traveled.

  Mad Maudlin goes on dirty toes,

  For to save her shoes from gravel.

  Still I sing bonny boys, bonny mad boys,

  Bedlam boys are bonny,

  For they all go bare, and they live by the air,

  And they want no drink nor money.

  There were surprised sounds from the crowd, and a brush of laughter from Dono’s associates at the back.

  I knew the song. Dono had an old long-playing record of it, sung by three women, with only a bodhran keeping a steady beat to back up the voices. An ancient poem of madness and defiance. Not your average dirge.

  Luce waited until the noise had quieted.

  No gypsy, slut or doxy

  Shall win my mad Tom from me.

  I’ll weep all night, with stars I’ll fight,

  The fray shall well become me.

  So drink to Tom of Bedlam,

  Go fill the seas in barrels.

  I’ll drink it all, well brewed with gall,

  And maudlin drunk I’ll quarrel.

  Still I sing bonny boys, bonny mad boys,

  Bedlam boys are bonny,

  For they all go bare, and they live by the air,

  And they want no drink nor money.

  Luce’s last note died away. Her song had held everyone rapt, me included, and it was a moment before the applause started.

  Over the sound of the clapping, there was a clunk from the back of the room. I turned to see Mike Tolan holding the door open for his mother, Evelyn, the family slipping in under the cover of the clapping. Davey let the door close itself. Luce walked across the room to greet them as Willard stood up again.

  “So if anyone’d like to say anything, there’s the mike,” he said. “Whenever the mood strikes you. And if your mood needs some help, there’s the bar.”

  Laughter from the crowd. Addy Proctor stepped up to the microphone and started telling a funny story about when she’d moved onto the block and finagled Dono into helping her fix her porch light. I joined Hollis by the door.

  “You look like I feel,” he said.

  “It’s almost over.”

  “Christ, it’s just getting started. When word about the diam—about what happened at the island gets out, our lives are headed to hell in a bullet train. Every kind of cop you can name is going to want a piece of this.”

  One of Dono’s legitimate clients was on the stage now, saying something about Dono’s work on his home and how Dono was a true craftsman. Nobody paid much attention. The guys like Corcoran and Willard at the back of the room, the ones with the really interesting stories about Dono, would never tell them. At least not someplace where the tales might count as evidence.

  Luce had taken a seat at a table against the back wall, with Davey. Mike wove his way toward them through the crowd from the bar, carrying a bottle of Redbreast whiskey and shot glasses. He caught my eye and waved me over.

  As I crossed the room, people kept stopping me—all of them citizens, like the liquor distributor for the Morgen or the guy who fixed Dono’s truck. Each shook my hand and gave his condolences. I nodded and said thanks and excused myself. I’d done all the mourning I could for one day.

  At the table Mike was filling the three shot glasses. Davey already had a tumbler in front of him. Mike clapped a big mitt on my shoulder and passed me a glass. I sat down. Luce gave me a short but serious kiss. Davey downed the last of his whiskey and held it out to Mike for a refill. His eyes were on the stage, where another speaker had taken the microphone.

  “You gonna get up and talk?” Mike said to him.

  Davey snorted. “You’re the one who always kissed Dono’s ass. You go. It’s your last chance.”

 
“Davey,” said Luce, glancing at me.

  “It’s nothing,” Davey said. “Van knows it’s nothing, don’t you, Van?”

  I sipped the whiskey. My throat was still raw from nearly drowning at the island, and the good liquor burned like acid. I set the glass back down.

  “You and Dono never liked each other,” I said.

  “Never liked?”

  “All right. You hated him.”

  Davey grinned. Now we were talking. “He hated me first.”

  “But not best. Dono didn’t care enough about you to really hate you, Davey.”

  Mike looked back and forth between Davey and me as we stared at each other across the scarred wood of the table. My fingers were tight around the shot glass.

  “The fucker kicked you out of town,” Davey said.

  “No. Leaving Seattle was my idea.”

  “You might have stayed with me and Mike. Ma would have let you.”

  “It was time for me to grow up. Take some responsibility.”

  “Bullshit,” Davey said. “You’re making excuses for him. Do you know why Dono asked you to come home? He wanted to twist the knife a little.” Davey’s voice was high. People glanced over from nearby tables. “Dono was giving the bar to Mikey. Yeah. The old fucker wanted to tell you to your face that you were disowned.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” said Mike.

  Davey toasted him. “Congrats, little bro. Free drinks for life.”

  Luce looked as puzzled as Mike. “No one else knew about that.” Her expression changed as she stared at Davey. “You were here at the bar. The night Dono told me he was leaving his share of the place to Mike.”

  “Hey, it’s not like I meant to listen in,” Davey said. “I was headed out the back for a smoke, and I passed the office and heard Dono talking to you about Van. Of course I stopped.” Davey looked at me. “Sorry, man.”

  “Must have been a shock,” I said. “Your brother getting the Morgen.”

  Davey scowled. “It should have gone to family. To you.”