Black River

by G. M. Ford

  “Assuming they’re the same people, of course,” his partner added.

  They stood in silence for a moment, before Corso asked, “You gonna put somebody on the door?”

  Hamer looked puzzled. “What door?”

  “This one.”

  “What for?”

  “In case you haven’t noticed, somebody’s trying to kill her.”

  “She’s safe up here. Nobody knows where she is,” Hamer said.

  “She’s unlisted,” Sorenstam assured him.

  “You found her,” Corso said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Hamer demanded.

  Corso leaned down and put his face in Hamer’s. You’ll excuse me, won’t you, if I’m not exactly dazzled by your investigative footwork?”

  Hamer dropped his hands to his sides and leaned on Corso with his chest. “I was you, I’d worry about my own ass.”

  “You was me, you’d probably have detected something by now.”

  Sorenstam was using his forearms to push them apart. “Hey, now…hey, now…take it easy. We’re all on the same side here.” He looked from one to the other but came away empty.

  “She needs protection,” Corso insisted.

  Hamer used his finger to pry something out from between his teeth and then spit it to the floor. “You think she needs protection, you do it,” he said with a grin. “According to the papers, you seem to be on a roll when it comes to saving damsels in distress.”

  28

  Saturday, October 21

  12:09 p.m.

  Joe Bocco just happened to be Italian. When you’ve got a name like that, a scar on your cheek, and you break legs for a living, a number of stereotypes come immediately to mind, not the least of which would be the assumption that, with his ancestry and occupation, he must be part of some wider, more well-known criminal conspiracy, involving others whose names likewise end in vowels.

  Not so, though. Joe was an equal opportunity thug. Billed himself as private security. For the right piece of change, he’d dance the tarantella on somebody’s spinal column for you or, if he was sure you were a pro, maybe even follow you through the front door of a rock house.

  They’d met five years ago, when Corso had been working a story about the longshoremen’s union. Lotta pension money turned out to be missing. Lotta people thought union president Tony Trujillo was responsible. Some of those same folks wanted him dead. Corso had interviewed Trujillo on a sweltering hot August day, down on Pier 18, while Joe Bocco sat in the corner wearing a turtleneck and a full-length raincoat. Never broke a sweat. Never even blinked. Two days later, a pair of cowboys tried to force Trujillo’s limo off the Fourth Avenue Bridge. Bocco killed the driver and left the passenger paralyzed from the waist down. Front-page news.

  Bocco checked the room, then looked over at Dougherty. “This the one from the paper?”

  “Yeah.”

  He stroked his chin. “Which ain’t the same one you was on the front page with?”

  “No.”

  He marinated the thought for a moment and then turned his gaze back toward Meg. “So somebody tried to cap her and offed a couple of civilians instead.”

  Corso frowned. “Where’d you get that from? That wasn’t in the papers.”

  “It’s all over the radio.”

  “Shit,” Corso said.

  “Be better off the hitters didn’t know, wouldn’t it? They any kind of pros, they’re gonna be pissed as hell.” He pulled open the bathroom door and peered inside. “Obviously, you think they’re coming back.”

  “Could be.”

  “And you want me to make sure she doesn’t get any unwanted visitors.”

  “That’s what I had in mind.”

  “I quoted you a rate on the phone. That gonna work for you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Sooner or later I gotta sleep.”

  “You got any brave friends?”

  He shook his head. “Know a couple of fools, maybe.”

  “Have one of them relieve you.”

  “Be another seven-fifty.”

  “And Greenspan said there was no inflation.”

  Joe Bocco sneered. Did the insurance company commercial. “How can you put a price on peace of mind?” he asked.

  Saturday, October 21

  1:13 p.m.

  Not a word in six hours. Not since this morning, when they seen the TV news about the bitch still being alive. Just sitting there on the bed, cleaning his piece over and over again, staring out the window at the water. When Ramón finally spoke, Gerardo nearly choked on his room-service burrito.

  “Comes a time you gotta listen,” Ramón said suddenly. “Somethin’ in the world is talkin’ to you, tryin’ to take care of you, and all you gotta do is open up your ears and listen to what it’s got to say.”

  “That what you been doing?” Gerardo asked around a mouthful of bun. “You been listening to the world?”

  Ramón felt his anger rise. “I meant like, you know, metaphorically.”

  Gerardo dredged a pair of french fries in ketchup and stuffed them into his mouth. “What’s that mean?” he asked. “Meta…”—he waved a pair of red fingers—“whatever you said. What’s that mean?”

  “It means I’m thinkin’ we ought to maybe lay low for a while,” he said, as much to himself as to Gerardo. “Maybe take a little time off.” He looked at Gerardo. “You could visit your sister in Florida.”

  Gerardo washed the burrito down with Coke. “Kids must be getting big by now,” he mused. He flicked a glance at Ramón. “You could maybe see your mom.”

  Ramón sighed. “We got nothing to say to each other.”

  “She’s your mother, man.”

  “I’m telling you. It’s not me, it’s her. She don’t want nothing to do with me. Got this new husband. Plays fucking golf. Don’t want none of the old-time shit coming back at her. She don’t talk to my sister neither.”

  Gerardo stopped chewing. Frowned. “We gonna tell the Russians?”

  “Fuck, no. They’ll cap us for sure.”

  Gerardo started to argue, but Ramón cut him off. “We’ll get replaced just like we replaced those Colombian dudes.” He held up two fingers. Two in the head. “They ain’t gonna want us walkin’ around. We know where the bodies are buried.”

  Gerardo waved the burrito around. “That’s another one of those meta things, huh?”

  Ramón wanted to explain that it was and it wasn’t, but instead he kept things simple. “Yeah,” he said.

  “When we gonna go?”

  “Soon as we take care of business.”

  Saturday, October 21

  1:13 p.m.

  “I told you he was in her pants,” Nicholas Balagula said in Russian. It came out with a bit of reverberation because of the way the hotel’s Swedish masseuse was pummeling his vertebrae as he spoke. She was a large red-faced woman with thinning blond hair and a pair of big red hands strong enough to strangle a heifer.

  She grabbed a double handful of his smooth rubbery flesh and began to knead it like bread. Balagula put on his glasses and read the text beneath the picture of Renee Rogers stuffing her underwear into her purse. He looked up at Mikhail Ivanov, who was holding the paper in front of his face. “You didn’t—”

  Ivanov raised an eyebrow. “Of course not.”

  “Not the Cubans?” Balagula asked.

  “I did what you told me,” Ivanov said. “They followed him home to the boat and then reported in. That was it.”

  Balagula nodded. “When this is over,” he began.

  “I’ll see to it personally,” Ivanov said. They’d agreed. When the trial was over, they disappeared into retirement. No need for the likes of Ramón and Gerardo.

  She was using the sides of her hands like cleavers, working her way up and down his spine. The thick skin of his torso vibrated from the blows.

  “The timing is interesting.”

  “I thought so too.”

  “Or perhaps Mr. Corso merely has a knac
k for making enemies.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised,” Ivanov said.

  Balagula reached back and grabbed the woman’s wrist. “Enough,” he said in English. The woman stepped back, offered a curt bow, and crossed the suite to a black athletic bag she’d left on the side bar. She pulled a white hand towel from the bag and wiped her hands. “Charge to the room?” she asked.

  “Please,” Ivanov said, and she was out the door and gone.

  Nicholas Balagula pulled the towel from his buttocks and sat up. “Some company for tonight.” Ivanov looked away. “Something fresh. Something not so long on the vine this time.”

  “You think this is easy?” Ivanov snapped. “In a strange city?”

  Nicholas Balagula shuffled across the floor. As he walked, his privates swung to and fro beneath his belly. He put a hand on Ivanov’s shoulder. “Soon, Mikhail,” he said, “this farce will be over, and you can run to that house of yours in France. Find yourself a cow to service you.” Ivanov stepped out from under the hand. “In the meantime…”

  “I’ll do the best I can,” said Ivanov.

  29

  Saturday, October 21

  4:54 p.m.

  His mother, his brothers, and his sister were inside with the relatives, huddled around casseroles and coffee, the air filled with hushed talk about moving on to a better place and how maybe it was all for the best or was part of some grand plan not apparent to humble folk such as themselves.

  He stood on the dirt floor of the garage, looking up at the trunk in the rafters, half expecting some specter to appear and demand to know why he wasn’t inside with his mother and what in hell he thought he was doing. He shivered.

  He pushed the rusted wheelbarrow over to the center of the room, stepped up into the bucket and grabbed the trunk with both hands. Somehow, he’d always imagined the trunk to be of great weight and so was momentarily taken aback when it turned out to be a mere fraction of what he’d expected.

  The metal strapping was cold to the touch as he slid the trunk into his arms and then stepped down onto the floor and started across toward the ancient GMC pickup truck backed halfway into the garage.

  He wasted no time. Just set the trunk on the tailgate, hurried over to the workbench, and grabbed a claw hammer. The brass key that opened the lock was probably around somewhere, but he wasn’t inclined to look.

  With a single snap, the hammer pulled the hasp free of the trunk. He took a deep breath and pushed open the lid. The top layer was a shallow tray, divided into compartments. Closest, a pair of rusty dog tags and three dull brass shell casings. To the right, an American flag folded into a tight triangle. A stack of letters, written in his mother’s childish hand. Got as far as Dear Wayne before his eyes refused. Bunches of army insignia, campaign ribbons. A small porcelain figure of a smiling hula dancer with HAWAII painted across the base.

  He grabbed the brass rings and lifted the tray from the trunk. On top was a neatly folded dress uniform and hat. He carefully pulled the hat and uniform out and set them on the tray. Beneath the folded pants was a brown paper sack from Baxter’s Market.

  He peeked inside. His breath caught in his throat. A leaner, younger version of his father stared back at him. He stood knee-deep in snow, leaning on an M1 rifle, looking like he’d rather be any other damn place on earth. When he pulled the picture out, the headline hit him in the face: LOCAL POW COMES HOME TUESDAY. His hands shook as he picked the yellowed newspaper article from the bag and carefully unfolded it. The Buford County News, November 10, 1954: Longtime Tiree resident Wayne D. Corso returned to his wife and family after nearly three years in a North Korean prisoner-of-war camp. Captured early in the Korean conflict, Mr. Corso…

  As he stood peering down into that broken vault, he’d felt his childish sense of certainty float off and disappear into the winter sky, until he was left with only the disquieting suspicion that, from that moment forward, the world would always be something other than what it first seemed to be, a thought that left him shivering in that dank garage, feeling more alone than he’d ever felt in his life.

  And then an iron hand gripped his shoulder, and he knew it was him, come back to…

  Corso opened his eyes. Joe Bocco stood next to his chair.

  “I think she’s waking up,” he said.

  Corso blinked twice, ran his hands over his face, and got to his feet.

  Something certainly had changed. She was restless, trying to move her hands, which were secured to the metal bed rails by elastic bandages, designed to keep her from disrupting the IV tubes sprouting from her body like vines.

  Corso walked to the side of the bed and put his hand on her arm. Her body jumped as if she were startled by the intrusion.

  “Should I get somebody?” Bocco asked.

  Corso said yes. Joe Bocco buttoned his coat and left the room at the exact moment when her eyes popped open. Her eyes squeezed down in pain when she tried to move her head and survey the room. She groaned and then tried to speak. Nothing.

  Corso poured a glass of ice water from the chrome pitcher by the bedside, stuck one of the hinged hospital straws in, and held it to her mouth. Took her lips three tries to master the sucking thing. She closed her eyes and made noises like a puppy having a bad dream as she slowly but surely emptied the glass. When her lips released the straw, he refilled the glass and repeated the process.

  She was halfway through the second glass when Joe Bocco returned with a nurse. She was maybe thirty, a big woman but nicely shaped. Apple cheeks and sparkling blue eyes, hair a little too red to be real. Had a name tag with rhinestones around the edge that read TURNER. “Easy now,” she said to Dougherty as she took the cup from Corso’s hand. “There’s no rush.”

  Dougherty’s eyes opened and found the new voice.

  “Nice to have you back,” the nurse said, as she began to unwind the elastic. “You don’t have to answer me; just listen,” she said. “I’m going to free your hands now. I’m going to need you to keep your hands away from the top of your head.”

  Dougherty tried to nod and immediately regretted the action, as even a slight movement squeezed her eyes closed in pain. As the nurse made her way to the other side of the bed, Dougherty took her freed hand and rested it on her stomach. She looked over at Corso. “Hey,” she croaked.

  “Hey yourself,” he said.

  She swallowed twice and asked, “How long?”

  “Since the crash?”

  She blinked what Corso took to be a yes. He counted backward in his head.

  “Four days,” he said.

  “What day?”

  “It’s Saturday the twenty-first.”

  “David?”

  Corso looked over at the nurse, who gave him a somber shake of the head.

  “He’s been in a lot,” Corso assured her, and then abruptly changed the subject. “Just blink if I’m right, okay?” Blink. “You walked in on something going on at Evergreen Construction.” Blink. “A killing?” Blink. “You saw the killers?” No blink. “You didn’t see the killers.” Blink. “They chased you.” Blink. “You crashed your car into a moving van.” Blink. “That’s all you know.” Blink.

  She looked over Corso’s shoulder and noticed Joe Bocco for the first time. She frowned and mouthed the word who.

  “His name is Joe,” Corso said. “He’ll be over there in the chair in case you need anything.” On cue, Bocco crossed the room and settled himself into one of the chairs, facing the door.

  Nurse Turner came back around the bed. “The young lady’s had about all she can handle at a time like this,” she said. “Why don’t you come back tomorrow? She may be feeling better then.” Corso started to protest, but when he looked over at Dougherty her eyes were closed and her mouth hung open in a manner she wouldn’t have permitted if she had been awake.

  He looked over at Joe Bocco. “You got everything you need?”

  “Marvin gonna do ten to six,” he said. “I’ll be back after that.”

  Corso let the
nurse lead him by the elbow toward the door. She looked back over her shoulder at Bocco. “You too. Come on.”

  Corso shook his elbow free. “Mr. Bocco will be staying,” he said.

  She wanted to argue, but something in Corso’s flat gaze brought her brain around. “Oh, you mean from like before…downstairs.”

  Corso pulled open the door and followed her out into the hall.

  30

  Sunday, October 22

  9:41 a.m.

  Corso held his breath as the straps began to tighten. Somewhere beneath his feet a timber groaned and then the sound of falling water began, as the engine whined and the Travel Lift started to raise Saltheart from the water, pulling the big boat higher and deeper into its belly until the keel came clear of the dock and swung gently between the massive tires of the machine.

  Paul’s son Eric fed diesel to the engine, and the Travel Lift began to ease Saltheart forward, down the ramp, into the boatyard.

  “You said you called Dave Williams.”

  Paul Hansen was third generation. His family had owned the Seaview Boatyard for over seventy years. “Yeah,” Corso said, as he watched Saltheart roll off across the asphalt. “He said he’d start on the woodwork first thing Tuesday morning.”

  “So what that means is Thursday or Friday.” Hansen waggled the clipboard. “You know how he is. He’ll be shacked up with some Betty and I’ll have to send one of the boys to roust him.”

  “He does good work.”

  “The best,” Hansen agreed. “Long as you’re not in a hurry.”

  “So how long you figure?” Corso asked.

  Hansen checked his list. “Ten days minimum. You got any unauthorized through holes, maybe two weeks.”

  “All I’m sure of is that I’ve got a forward bilge pump that won’t quit running, so either something clipped a waterline somewhere in the boat or I’ve got a bullet hole somewhere in the hull.”

  “Heard you had a little excitement the other night.”

  Across the yard, an old man with a white beard was sanding the window casings on an ancient tug, whose chipped and peeling transom announced her to be the Cheryl Anne IV. He was humming as he worked. Not a whole song, just some little part that he kept recycling over and over.