Nantucket Sawbuck

by Steven Axelrod

  “No, Henry. I’m running for office. After these convictions I’ll be a shoo-in as a law-and-order governor, and that’s what the Republican Party needs right now. We have to clamp down. We’re at war. People forget that sometimes.”

  All I could think was, what an awkward way to find out someone’s a Republican. I was a Democrat who believed in fewer laws and more disorder. This complicated my life as a cop, but I liked it that way. Poets were the first ones to go when things got as orderly as Carmichael liked them.

  The only small pothole in Ken’s road was something Ed Delavane had said to him about a “big shot” who had supposedly hired him to kill Lomax. They had spoken on the phone, but they had never met face to face. Delavane had what he called proof of the man’s involvement: twenty thousand dollars stuffed into a suitcase in his closet. This potential complication didn’t bother Carmichael. A drug dealer trying to deflect blame with a sack of cash? It had become a joke around the station. Delavane was like a poacher defending himself with a bunch of deer carcasses.

  The lie was pointless, anyway, since Delavane couldn’t identify this mystery man, or turn him in. There was no bargain he could strike with the prosecutor’s office. The information was too vague. It didn’t even make him look good. The merciless and vengeful drug lord suddenly reduced to a small time killer working for chump change and taking the fall.

  “He’s desperate,” Carmichael had shrugged. “He’ll say anything. Hopefully the next thing he says will make some sense.”

  The Lomax murder trial was going to be held on Nantucket despite an attempt by Ed’s lawyer to get a change of venue. That meant the media were going to be sticking around for a while, some of them at least—E! and Court TV and Fox News; stringers from the Globe and the New York Times. I had noticed that attitudes about the press were changing. When they had been outside the station clamoring to be told why “no progress was being made” and the killers were still “at large,” calling Nantucket “a town under siege” (“Yeah,” Haden Krakauer had pointed out, “by them.”), everyone complained bitterly. Now that the press was running stories about the “dogged small-town crime fighters” who broke the case, things were different. Cops were giving interviews and starring in TV “newsmagazine” features about the “dark side” of small town life and the “criminal underbelly” of their famously elite resort community. People magazine had even approached me, inviting me to appear in the next “Fifty Most Beautiful People” issue—”In the required ‘nobodies’ section,” Miranda remarked when she heard about it.

  My face had been on television, which made people assume an alarming intimacy with me. People I had never met stopped me on the street to discuss the murder. Tourists wanted to be photographed next to me. But at the same time, no one at the station was paying much attention as I poked and scratched at the edges of the case. I read through the case binder several times, printed out and pored over the photographs from the MS benefit party.

  A couple of the people who knew about the alarm changeover had been there. One, the guy from Inter-city alarm, was in Fiona’s group, posed by the clock; the other, an electrician, had apparently gotten into a drunken fight with someone about the proposed wind farm in Nantucket Sound, around eleven. Numerous people remembered it. He was in favor of the alternate energy technology and anyone who wasn’t was an oil-squandering, Saudi-loving not-in-my backyard hypocrite terrorist by default. And a fag. Or something. The resulting fight ended with a fractured jaw, a sprained thumb, and two broken lamps.

  The rest of the people privy to the alarm system, including Pat Folger, had unbreakable alibis elsewhere, with lots of witnesses and no real motive for the killing. I sorted through the pictures several times. But nothing jumped out at me.

  Finally I gave up and took Kathleen Lomax out to lunch.

  It was a breath-stoppingly cold day, with new ice glazing the Christmas trees on Main Street. Met on Main was hot and steamy and crowded. We took a table in the back. Kathleen had cut her hair severely. She wore a black turtleneck sweater under her pea coat. It matched the circles under her eyes. We ordered coffee.

  “I like this place,” she said, glancing around. “It’s like a bar in SoHo. Hip and cool.”

  “And expensive.”

  “That, too.”

  The coffee arrived and we sipped it quietly, cocooned in the sociable noise of a busy restaurant.

  “I know this is hard for you,” I said.

  “Not really. I’m in total denial. I say that and it feels like I’m kidding, like I’m even in denial about being in denial. Which I totally deny, by the way. I just deny everything. I’m like a politician. Hey, it works for them. Denial is way underrated. I’d recommend it to anyone.”

  “I know what you mean. I still refuse to admit that my grandmother died and that was five years ago. I keep meaning to call her, just like when she was alive. I’m not getting the twenty dollars at Christmas anymore, though. I can’t really explain that one.”

  “Do all grandmothers give twenty dollars at Christmas?”

  “I’ve heard the modern ones give fifty.”

  “You should tell that to my grandmother. Strictly twenties, since I was six years old.”

  We sat and listened to the Roches singing Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus” a capella on the sound system.

  “Who is that? And how many are there?”

  “The Roche sisters,” I said. “And there’s just three.”

  “King of Kings,” the Roches sang. “Lord of Lords. And he shall reign forever and ever.”

  “Why haven’t I heard of them?” Kathleen asked.

  “I don’t know. They haven’t done much lately. But they were great, back in the day.”

  The waiter came back and we ordered cheeseburgers.

  “I have to ask you about the alarm system again,” I said.

  “But that’s all settled. I explained it. I told everyone already. I forgot to reset the alarm and the…the people got in, but if I testify and explain what happened they’ll all go to jail and—and even though I was a part of it, I can still do something to make things right.”

  “Is that what Ken Carmichael told you?”

  She nodded.

  “Because it sounds almost exactly like what he told me.”

  “It’s true.”

  “All of it?”

  “He told me they were going to jail for life, Chief Kennis.”

  “Probably. But that’s not what I meant.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You told me you reset the alarm. You told me that twice.”

  “I was confused.”

  “Did Mr. Carmichael confuse you? An interrogation can be intimidating.”

  “No, no, he was very nice. I just—I couldn’t be sure, when I thought back. And the way he described it, it made so much more sense if I had just forgotten. What happened was my cell went off just as I was leaving. Margie was calling me, about some—some stuff I was supposed to bring to this party.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Stuff?”

  “Yeah, just—it doesn’t matter. I didn’t have it anyway. In fact we had a fight about it. I wound up being late, and Margie’s boyfriend—Dane Collier? Do you know him? He was totally losing it because—”

  “Kathleen.”

  “—he had no idea that—what?”

  “I need you to concentrate for a minute. How close to the keypad were you when the phone went off?”

  “I was at the front door. So I was right next to it.”

  “And the phone was in your purse?”

  “That’s right.”

  “So you pulled it out with your right hand.”

  “I guess.”

  “That means your left hand was next to the key pad. Was your purse strap over your shoulder?”

  “I don’t know. I think so. Sure. Usually.�
��

  “So your left hand was free. Did you set the code while you were talking?”

  “I—maybe. I don’t know. I could have.”

  “How long did you talk before you left the house?”

  “Not long. We were still, like, going at it in the car. I know you’re not supposed to drive and talk on the cell phone.”

  “Especially at night. On icy roads.”

  She looked down. “Sorry.”

  Our food came and we ate quietly for a few minutes.

  “You told me you fought with your dad about the alarm,” I said.

  “That’s right.”

  “But you also said he’d won that war. You do it more or less automatically now.”

  “I guess…I don’t know. If I reset it, why didn’t it go off when those people broke in?”

  I sighed. “I don’t know, Kathleen. That’s what I’m trying to figure out, myself.”

  We turned to other subjects. Kathleen was trying to write a eulogy for the memorial service. She was fighting with her mom and still reeling from some nightmare with her boyfriend she didn’t want to discuss. She had broken up with him, but missed him and wanted to call him and hated herself for that. She was looking for PhD programs in Political Science and studying for the GRE. She had missed several days of work at the gallery she managed in Boston. I was able to help her there.

  “Your father just died,” I told her as I paid the check. “They’ll cut you some slack. Which is just about the only upside to the whole thing. I mean it. I’ve been there. You can get away with pretty much whatever you want, those first few weeks. It’s tough, though—you don’t want to take advantage, and it’s tempting sometimes.”

  She shook her head. “You don’t talk like a cop, Chief Kennis.”

  “I’m just telling you the truth.”

  “That’s what I mean.”

  “Cops tell the truth.”

  “But not the whole truth. And there’s always an angle.”

  I shrugged. “Well, in my other job all I do is look for interesting ways to be as honest as I possibly can.”

  “Your other job?”

  “I write poetry.”

  “That’s a job?”

  “Well, it doesn’t pay much. And the benefits package is bad. No dental plan. I guess the idea is, artists are supposed to suffer.”

  She looked up at me. “Since we’re telling the truth…my father really was a drug addict, wasn’t he?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “He was a bad person. A cheater and a liar and a thief.”

  “I don’t know if—”

  “I’ve read the articles. I saw the segment on CNN. I’ve heard people talking. It’s true isn’t it? He was a bad person.”

  I nodded. “Apparently. I’m sorry.”

  “And supposedly he bankrupted The Nantucket Shoals?—because he was angry about an article, which he said was a lie but…I guess it wasn’t. When he choked that waiter at Topper’s?”

  “There were witnesses.”

  “So he got all his cronies to pull their ads, and now …”

  “It’s looks like we’re going to be a one-newspaper town again.”

  “That’s so unfair. It’s so—just so mean.”

  “He lashed out. He was angry.”

  “I worked for the paper when I was in college. I was supposed to be an unpaid intern but David—David Trezize, the editor?—he paid me anyway. This was before I got my inheritance. I was totally broke all the time. David let me use his charge at Daily Breads. I practically lived on their pizza that summer. David’s a good person and a good writer. He doesn’t deserve this. He loved that paper.”

  “A lot of us did.”

  “I guess he made my dad angry. But I never saw that side of him. He never got angry at me. Ever. He read The Catcher in the Rye aloud to me when I was twelve years old. I was exactly Phoebe’s age, she’s Holden Caulfield’s sister, that was why he wanted me to hear it then. He used to take me out of school for lunch at this little dim sum restaurant called HSF? On the Bowery, in Chinatown. Just him and me, just for fun. I guess I was his favorite. Parents aren’t supposed to have favorites but I was always his little girl.”

  “I’m sorry, Kathleen.”

  “And now I find out he was this whole other person. Eric and Danny were right about him. All the things people are saying about him…I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

  “There’s nothing to do. Just…remember him the way he was to you. It sounds like you got the best of him. Keep that. Don’t let anyone take it away—even Eric.”

  She nodded. “Thank you, Chief Kennis. I really…you’ve been very nice through all this. Not like some people. I appreciate it. I have a feeling policemen only hear about it when they do something wrong or someone complains. So anyway—thanks.”

  Outside on Main Street, we went our separate ways. I had an appointment the middle school in twenty minutes. I had volunteered to give a D.A.R.E. lecture to the seventh graders. My speech to the high school had been a great hit, supposedly. The Drug Abuse Resistance Education program struck me as a waste of time and money. But the Selectmen liked the program and it was good diplomacy to participate. We called it SCARE around the cop shop. The program wanted to terrify kids, but equating marijuana with crack seemed foolish to me. I saw D.A.R.E. T-shirts around the school, but only the hard-core drug-users wore them. The program amused them.

  The slant-parking in the school’s access lane was all taken. I parked my cruiser against the curb in the tow-away zone.

  It struck me as I walked inside and out of the wind that Kathleen Lomax might enjoy my speech; it wasn’t going to be the usual propaganda. For one thing, I didn’t think Not Doing Drugs was a particularly positive or useful focus for a kid’s life. Steely-eyed drug haters had at least one thing in common with the stoners they reviled: drugs were their number one priority. I thought drugs should be marginalized, treated as a peripheral annoyance. That’s what I told the seventh graders. I told them that weed would make them forgetful and stupid. It would give them the munchies and make them gain weight. You see a fat, pimply kid who can’t keep a train of thought going for more than two sentences? Probably a stoner. Yeah, he’s cool—but only to other stoners. The problem is, they’re also fascinated with wallpaper patterns and the endless lame solos on bootleg Grateful Dead concert albums.

  I got a few laughs, told a few self-deprecating anecdotes—I had smoked enough weed in college to know it was a depressing waste of time—and got out. The teachers looked at me strangely but at least a few of the kids were receptive. The perils of addiction, lung cancer, and brain damage may have meant nothing to them. Pimples, they could understand.

  I was walking to my car, buttoning up my coat against the cold, when Alana Trikilis skidded up to me on the icy sidewalk. She must have been waiting behind the front doors of the high school. She had run the twenty-yard distance, out of breath and carrying a flat, wrapped package in her hand.

  “I want to give you this,” she said. “It’s a present, I made it myself, like we always do at Christmas. I mean, in my family. We never buy presents. We have to make them. It’s kind of stupid, but I wanted you to have this. Unwrap it.”

  She handed me the package.

  “This is very nice.” I tore off the paper and saw it was a framed pencil sketch of me. I seemed very serious in the drawing, looking back over my shoulder at something I didn’t like. The drawing was good, slashed out in a matter of seconds, with very few lines, like a Duchamp sketch I had seen at the Museum of Modern Art years before. Its casual vitality had impressed me far more than all the urinals, hat racks, and nudes descending staircases put together.

  “It’s just a thank you,” Alana was saying. “For being so kind to Rick Folger. He’s not a bad person. He’s a good friend of Mason’s—and mine…and—I do
n’t want to see him just kind of sucked under by a bunch of creeps, you know?”

  “You don’t have to worry. Rick will be fine.”

  She smiled faintly. “I hope so.”

  I stared at the drawing. “This is extraordinary. You have to get out of here. I know that sounds bad. But you have to go someplace where people can appreciate this.”

  She looked away. “I’m working on it.”

  “Good.”

  She glanced around nervously. “I’m not really supposed to even be here today. I’m not allowed ‘on school grounds.’ I got suspended for doing a stupid drawing, but that’s a long story and anyway…I just—I heard you were going to be here and I wanted to give you this.”

  “Could I ask you where you did it?”

  “At the VFW Hall. At the auction. Osona’s auction? Two weeks ago.”

  “Oh, right, of course.”

  “You were only there for a few minutes. You were really upset about something.”

  I hefted the picture gently. “I can tell.”

  “Well, anyway—thanks again. Bye.”

  She darted away, almost slipping as she turned, running lightly back toward Surfside Road, half skating over the patches of ice. She crossed the street and then I was alone at the edge of the big pavilion.

  I looked at the drawing in my hands, thinking about the auction. I remembered being upset, but the face in the picture was angry and determined—a man with a mission. It didn’t matter, though. It was over, we had resolved the problem, Fiona’s explanation made sense. I had the pen she’d bought me that day in my pocket. I always carried it, though it was impractical for everyday use. I touched it now, through my coat.

  After a while, I climbed into the car and put the picture on the passenger seat. I needed to get back to the station, but I found myself driving out to the ocean. I kept thinking about the auction and the glimpse it had given me of Fiona’s hidden life. She and Parrish had been bidding on a Thomas Donovan porringer. That explained the bidding war. But they still lost out to Preston Lomax. You could never win, playing the I-get-what-I-want entitlement game with someone like that. He was too willful, too relentless and too rich.