“I wanted to be ready when I met you.”
“You think the old perv is watching us?”
She reached under his shirt, scratched his chest.
“What? You wouldn’t keep an eye on your daughter?” she said.
“When she was seventeen, maybe.”
“To him, I’m still seventeen. Let’s take a spin.”
“All right.”
She stroked his cheek with the backs of her fingers while he drove.
“I know you can’t give me details,” she said. “I understand that. But are you safe, Wes? Tell me the truth.”
“I am,” he said. “I just have to play it right.”
“And what if you don’t?”
“I will.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Things are going well. The guy I’m working trusts me.”
“But you look so tired.”
“He keeps odd hours.”
“I’m worried.”
“About what?”
“You. Us. I think about you every day.”
“It’s temporary,” Raney said. “I promise.”
“The case is,” she said. “But not the work. You don’t know what’s coming next.”
He wanted to reassure her. He wanted to reassure himself. He turned onto a tree-lined side street, pulled to the curb.
“Let’s keep playing teenager,” he said.
He spooled through the conversation with Ferguson all the way to south Brooklyn: Some people are broken…If you see an opportunity, take it. Is that what Ferguson had done to Bruno—put him down? If so, the badge had protected him. He’d been promoted straight from detective to lieutenant just a few months later. The ceremony was televised on local stations.
What bothered Raney wasn’t the content of Ferguson’s advice—the man had come up in a different time, was publicly and unapologetically sorry to see that time go—but rather his paternal tone, his easy confidence. How about the mayor’s detail? An offer he knew Raney would turn down. The 1954 Ferguson would have stuck a gun in Raney’s face, told him to sober up or stay the fuck away from his daughter. People mellowed with age, but they also guarded secrets. Was it coincidence that Bruno had been young Meno’s rival?
Or was Raney just spinning stories to keep the craving at bay?
14
He lay in bed, sipping Scotch, reading the letters from Mavis’s son. Over the years, Mommy turned to Mom, Mom to Mother. The letters themselves were mechanical, written out of obligation rather than love. Still, a biography emerged. The early years included a trail of institutions and foster homes about which the less said, apparently, the better. Young Adler chose factual, detached adjectives. His foster parents were tall or short; the mothers had blond or brown or red hair; one father had muscles and another dressed in plaid suits. The homes they lived in were one or two stories tall. The yards were large or small, came with or without trees.
The adolescent letters featured a single recurring character: Miss Bailey, a social worker. Mavis must have been in touch with this woman; Kurt never explained why he’d been moved from one facility to another, one home to the next, and there was no indication that Mavis asked. Always it was Miss Bailey who picked Kurt up and dropped him off. She drove a purple car with scented strips of paper hanging from the mirror. She drove with the windows up or down. The trips were longer or shorter than an hour.
Mavis sent her son gifts, toys she’d ordered from catalogs. He thanked her in joyless phrases that never varied by more than a word: Thank you for the spaceship; Thank you for sending me the dinosaur puzzle; Thanks for the astronaut action figures. He shared a short burst of emotion when an older kid stole his basketball. I ran after him but he only laughed at me and then I cried so hard I couldn’t see. In the next letter, he thanked Mavis for the new ball.
Age thirteen: Miss Bailey mysteriously absent, Kurt’s first stint in juvie. The circumstances were never discussed. He described his peers by size, crime, age: the tall kid who broke into a car but couldn’t get it started; the fat kid who stole from the Salvation Army; the older kid who set his neighbor’s house on fire. A brief admission: They put me to live by myself because of the fighting. No mention of whom he fought with or why, no comment on the merits and drawbacks of solitude, only: My new cell is the same size as my old cell even though there’s no one else in it.
Age fifteen: Kurt says outright, If I came to live with you there would be no trouble for me to get into because you said there are only mountains there. Next letter: I would not mix with the boys from the reservation. I do not know why you think that I would. Two months later, as if out of spite, the first and last confession of a crime, the first and last detailing of an arrest, the first and last flagrant recriminations: Tommy [foster brother] smashed the camera with a baseball bat and I held a gun on the man behind the counter and didn’t have to say anything—he just emptied the register. Tommy and I took a bottle of vodka each. We were careful and wore masks but we got drunk and Jack [foster father] found the bottles and gun in our room. He called the police and they came in body armor. And now I am done with you because you are just words on paper. Don’t write or visit—not that you would.
He kept his promise for twenty-one years. Twenty-one years during which Mavis must have continued to reach out. Twenty-one years during which she kept Kurt’s childhood letters either out of hope or an unwillingness to let the wound heal. And then:
Today is my 36th birthday. My time is served and I’m a better person now. I have my GED. I have a job [no details] and am well protected [again no details]. I do not need your money, but I’m glad that you and Jack are doing well. If you write to me, I will write you back. I am a man now and my life is in order.
The letter was more than ten years old. Did Mavis’s promise of money mark the beginning of her new partnership with Jack? Was she looking to lure her son to her, to compensate in the second half of his life for everything she’d deprived him of in the first half? Was Kurt her motivation for killing Jack? Treasure hadn’t worked, so she gave him the opportunity to rescue her? Kurt, I’ve gotten myself into an awful mess…Kurt, I need your help…I have nowhere else to turn. Was it Kurt who’d cleaned out the bunker, torched the pickup?
Raney set the letters aside, took a long sip of Bay’s gift, stretched out with his feet dangling from the edge of the bed.
Raney had been more absent than Mavis, but then his child had grown up in the care of a loving mother. What had Mavis hoped to achieve by merely staying in touch? Had she done anything more than keep the pain fresh?
But then, Raney thought, who am I to judge?
Of course the comparison worked both ways. In the early years, Raney asked for photos and received no response. Eventually, he stopped asking. Sophia gave him nothing more than a name to go on: Ella. In place of memories, Raney had a bank of hazy imaginings: Ella as a toddler, Ella in grade school, Ella in her prom dress. When she was first born, he would lie in bed at night picturing the color of her hair, the complexion of her skin, based on the genetic makeup of her parents. The possibilities overwhelmed him; the effort helped him stay clean.
Raney shut off the light, then switched it back on. He pushed himself out of bed as though he’d forgotten something important. He dug the dimebags from his suitcase, balanced them on one palm, carried them into the bathroom. Setting them side by side on the vanity, he took a slow visual measurement, then opened the second bag, tilted and tapped until its contents came level with the first. He felt a quiet satisfaction, like that of a penitent lighting a candle.
He drifted off thinking of his estranged daughter, but it was Luisa Gonzalez he saw in his sleep.
15
Bay’s office featured large windows interrupted by thin strips of laminate paneling. There was a fern in the corner (secretary? girlfriend?), a stuffed bass from his trip to Alaska, photos of his nephew’s son and daughter. Great-Uncle Bay: the kids ran riot over his ranch two weeks out of every spring. Raney found it e
asy to picture. It was a shame, he thought, that Bay never had children of his own.
They sat on opposite sides of a sprawling desk. Bay set his laptop between them, clicked on a microphone icon.
Operator: Nine-one-one. What’s your emergency?
Silence.
Operator: Hello?
Mavis: [Calm, detached—as though reading from a prompter] Yes, this is Mavis. Mavis Wilkins.
Operator: What’s your emergency, Mrs. Wilkins?
Mavis: I found my husband on our property.
Operator: Found him?
Mavis: He was shot.
Operator: Is he breathing?
Mavis: He’s dead.
Operator: Okay, Mrs. Wilkins. I’ll send someone right out.
Mavis: [Suddenly emotional] Hurry. Oh, dear God, please hurry.
“That’s it?” Raney said.
“Uh-huh. You get anything off it?”
“It’s like she took a drug to calm herself, then fought the drug in order to sound like a woman who just found her husband murdered.”
“Or like someone was coaching her,” Bay said. “Standing there, telling her to turn up the hysterics.”
“Someone like her son,” Raney said.
“Speaking of which…”
Bay pushed a copy of Kurt Adler’s postjuvie record across the desk. Raney skimmed, paraphrased the main points out loud:
Age eighteen: Assault and battery; six-month sentence; additional two years served for nonfatal stabbing of cell mate; moved to solitary; twice denied probation because of violent cell extractions.
Age twenty-three: Possession with intent to distribute; resisting arrest; served three years of five-year sentence.
Age twenty-five: Arrested on suspicion of trafficking; mistrial; case dropped.
Age twenty-six: Arrested for the murder of William Tinti, failed florist turned bagman for the Ricci family. Tinti was shot point-blank in Charles River Park. The lone witness recanted; no physical evidence; case dismissed.
Age twenty-eight: Arrested for putting Tyrone Max, small-time dealer, in a body cast. Tyrone refused to ID; case dismissed.
Age thirty: Arrested for fatal stabbing of a prostitute and near-fatal beating of her pimp. Case dropped because of uncooperative witnesses.
Age thirty-one: Arrested in a bar brawl on Christmas Eve; both the bar’s owner and the man Kurt hospitalized declined to pursue criminal charges.
Age thirty-three: Suspected in the shooting deaths of two Boston patrolmen. A warrant served on his home and car turned up nothing. Held for forty-eight hours; released.
Age thirty-three: Arrested on drunk and disorderly. Spent two weeks at Mass General recovering from a beating administered by unidentified jailhouse assailants. Released shortly after.
“Payback,” Raney said. “The drunk and disorderly was a phony. The cops probably meant to kill him. Or have him killed.”
Age thirty-three to present: Nothing. Not so much as a parking ticket.
Specs: six foot three; two twenty-five; current age forty-six.
Four years older than Raney.
“Jesus,” Bay said. “This is Mavis’s son?”
“Biological son.”
“He’s been quiet for thirteen years. You think he went straight?”
“I’m guessing he was promoted. Somewhere above street level. Maybe the beating he took finished him as muscle. Or maybe he was given his own crew to run. The cop killings would have been a rite of passage. In his last letter to Mavis, he said he was protected now.”
“Don Corleone protected?”
“Some kind of organized crime. It’s not unheard of in Boston.”
“Let me see if I’ve got this straight: Mavis locks her husband in a bunker with the Mexie twins; the three of them turn on each other; Mavis sees the mess, calls her long-lost mobster kid to come clean up; he obliges, probably enticed by the free dope, then ends up tussling with a cartel blade man; the son and the assassin come out even, and both drive off.”
“That plays. But the missing Jaguar still bothers me. There had to be a third party.”
“Question: Why didn’t Mr. Adler get rid of the bodies altogether? There’s plenty of scrubland around here. Plenty of wild mouths to feed.”
“He would have needed a small crew for that. He figured he had us beat. How do you prove murder by padlock? If Mavis stuck to the script, they’d be fine. She might even collect insurance.”
“As long as she didn’t get her throat slit. You think Adler has the drugs now?”
“Nothing else makes sense. But if he was here, he’s a ghost. There was no sign of him at the house.”
“So he holed up somewhere else with the coke.”
“Someplace close by,” Raney said.
“The casino?”
“Maybe. We couldn’t look for him there. And he could see the Wilkins ranch from his window.”
“No way to confirm it.”
“Not officially.”
Raney tore Adler’s mug shot from the top page of the file, folded it into his pocket.
“You won’t get much in the way of cooperation,” Bay said.
“No, but I know someone who might.”
“Someone who gives art classes up at the reservation?”
“Maybe.”
“Deputize the eye candy. You’re a clever son of a bitch. Tell me, did you go as hard on her as you did on Mavis?”
“The killings didn’t happen on her property. She wasn’t married to one of the killers.”
“No, but if Mavis had an inner circle, Clara was it. Her knowing nothing don’t figure. I could see Mavis holding quiet about the drugs, but about her son? A woman doesn’t keep that secret from another woman.”
“Maybe not. I’ll press harder.”
“Good. What do I do in the meantime?”
“Wait. We need the troopers to turn up that Jaguar. Preferably with the son and drugs inside.”
“You think he’d be that sloppy?”
Raney shrugged.
“What about the Mexican?” Bay said. “I want the bastard who killed Junior.”
“We’ve got uniforms searching hospitals and clinics. We’ve got eyes on the border. It won’t be long.”
“A mobster and a Mexican assassin,” Bay said. “Things are getting a little too lively around here. Might be time for me to cash in my forty.”
“You hear Alaska calling?”
“Louder every day.”
“There is something you could do for me before you go.”
“What’s that?”
“See if you can find anything on Kurt’s father. And his mom, for that matter. What was Mavis up to before she married Jack?”
16
Clara came to the door in a turquoise bathrobe, her hair fresh off the pillow. She appeared soft in the early morning, as though the haze through which she saw the world were somehow reflected back on her. Like an actress in an old Hollywood movie, Raney thought.
“What is it?” she said. “Have you found something?”
“Maybe. I’m hoping you can help.”
She stood in the doorway, one bare foot on the pavement, pulling her robe tight over her chest.
“With what?”
“The children you teach at the reservation—are you friendly with any of their parents? Specifically, parents who work for the casino’s hotel? Cleaning staff? Reception?”
“I’m friendly with a few of the mothers. Or at least they seem to like me. Why?”
“Would you mind asking them some questions? Just one question, really. A question I should ask you first.”
He showed her Adler’s mug shot.
“Have you seen him before?”
She took a corner of the photo between her thumb and index finger, held it at eye level. Raney watched her examine Kurt’s face, caught no glint of recognition, only fear, a suspicion that she was looking at Mavis’s killer.
“Is he the one?”
“He’s a person of interest.
I think he might have been staying at the casino, but I have no authority there. I can’t ask directly, or if I did, chances are slim anyone would talk to me. All I want is confirmation that he’s been here sometime in the last week.”
“All right,” she said. “I can do that.”
“Now?”
“Give me an hour. Mrs. Hardin isn’t here yet. And I’d rather not prowl around the casino in my bathrobe.”
Raney walked the only commercial street, an east-west thoroughfare with residential offshoots running a few houses deep. The town did what it could to maintain its pioneer charm: raised wooden platforms in place of sidewalks; bishop’s-crook lampposts; diagonal parking, as if the vehicles were tethered to troughs. The squat brick buildings differed in size and shape, as though they’d been constructed to fit the dimensions of the town’s original makeshift structures.
He turned his back to the sharp morning sun, strolled past a hair salon, a used-car lot, a mechanic’s shop, the sheriff’s office, a semiabandoned movie theater that still showed revivals every Saturday afternoon, a megastore that sold everything from baby formula to guns and ammo. Why, he wondered, had this town survived instead of any one of the ghost towns within a ten-mile radius? It wasn’t situated off a major highway, wasn’t en route to any tourist attraction. There was no local specialty, nothing to be had here that couldn’t be had anywhere else.
With the exception, maybe, of the casino. Facing east, he could see its top floors buried in the foothills, a rectangular stucco peak mounted with satellite dishes and antennae, an alien structure making a halfhearted attempt to blend in.
Clara had brushed her hair, wore a draped halter top and jeans. The rings, absent when she first answered the door, were back in place. She had a habit of tugging on the pendant around her neck. The motion of her fingers drew Raney’s eyes from the road.
“Are you going to tell me who this guy is?” she asked.
“A person of interest.”
The Exiled Page 8
