Shotgun Lullaby

by Steve Ulfelder

  “Shit.”

  “Yeah, shit.”

  “Let me nail something down,” I said. “Just for the hell of it. Is the shotgun from Crump’s SUV the one from Almost Home and Gus?”

  He said nothing.

  “I’m not asking for court-of-law proof,” I said. “Come on, Lima. You know, or think you know. Same gun?”

  “It has not been ruled out.”

  Now I said nothing.

  “It’s all I’m allowed to say.” He sounded sorry about it.

  I didn’t give a rat’s ass if he was sorry.

  “My pizza’s ready,” I said. And clicked off.

  * * *

  It wasn’t a good night, what with the cardboard pizza and Sophie mourning and me thinking about the case and Charlene trying to pretend everything was okay.

  But we got through it.

  At two in the morning, the home phone and my cell rang at the same time. The cell was a Framingham cop. The home line was a reporter from the MetroWest Daily News.

  Both callers said my shop was on fire.

  It was two thirty by the time I got there.

  Ladder trucks, engines, pumpers, ambulances, cop cars. Half a dozen sirens screaming at each other. The fire crew had axed a hole in the roll-up door, busted out all the windows. They were hosing like crazy. It looked like the fire was under control, and this was mop-up time.

  I stepped. I stared. I felt heat on my face.

  My jaw: slack.

  A cop asked who the hell did I think I was and tried to chase me off.

  Another cop told him I was the owner.

  I said nothing to either of them. I just stood and watched and thought.

  There were at least two customer cars inside. They were junk. It looked like more customer cars in the parking lot were goners, too, between the hoses and the heat. I wondered if Floriano had backed up the computer. I wondered about my insurance. I wondered if we’d kept up with all the EPA and OSHA bullshit. The insurance companies love to find a regulation you missed, then screw you with it.

  I wondered, in other words, the things you wonder while you watch your business burn.

  With no warning, I felt like I’d been punched in the gut. I dropped to a knee. The nearest cop asked if I was okay. I nodded. He said wait here, then left. Came back in thirty seconds with what had to be the boss firefighter.

  I stood. We shook hands.

  He said he was sorry, then yelled in my ear. “How many waste-oil drums you got?”

  I held up one finger.

  “How full?”

  I had to yell myself. “Been two weeks and change since they pumped it out. Must be pretty full by now.”

  He mouthed: Fuck.

  On cue came a deep, dull thump as forty gallons of dirty oil caught fire.

  A new round of flames jetted from the windows and the bashed-in door. Neighbors screamed. Firemen backed up, controlled but fast. Every cop in sight started herding civilians away.

  I backed from the heat on my face. Matt Bogardis, the cop, came over. He walked me to a cruiser where we didn’t have to yell.

  “Your neighbor saw something,” Matt said. “Or heard, actually.”

  “Which neighbor?”

  “The guy owns the aquarium-supply store. He sleeps on a cot in his back room. I guess his family life ain’t so hot.”

  “What’d he hear?”

  “A window breaking. Just before she caught.”

  I looked at Matt.

  “While the fire was under control,” he said, “I took a quick look at the window. I wanted to see if maybe it popped once the heat built up.”

  “Did it?”

  He shook his head. “There’s no glass in the alley. It broke from the outside in. Your place was firebombed, Conway.”

  Then Matt patted my shoulder and asked what I needed and said things about nobody being hurt and thank God for insurance, huh?

  I wasn’t listening, and I wasn’t thinking about insurance.

  I was thinking about the Pundos.

  I was thinking about how they were going to pay.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  This was the third shop I’d owned. It was the most successful by far, but I wasn’t married to it the way I’d been to the previous two. Maybe because we’d been up and running less than a year. Maybe because we worked mostly on Japanese cars, rather than the BMWs and Mercedes I loved.

  Maybe because Charlene had bankrolled this one.

  By the time the cops and the firemen were done interviewing me, there was no sense trying to sleep.

  Besides, I was enjoying my revenge plan. Savoring it. Felt like I finally had a clean target: the House of Pundo. Sure, I’d had my eye on Peter Biletnikov for Gus’s murder. But this changed that. A firebombing was a gangster move all the way. I would’ve tipped to that even if I hadn’t watched Charlie Pundo’s guys torch his warehouse.

  No way would I call Randall this time. He’d just talk me out of it.

  I was going west hard and hot, and if the Pundos weren’t nervous about it, they ought to be.

  That was the plan, anyway. The 4:30 A.M., false-dawn, shivering-on-the-bumper-of-a-fire-truck plan.

  But false dawn’s a rough time.

  All the gung ho had trickled from me, leaving me instead with the image of Gus dead in his backyard, a few feet from the motocross track he made as a kid.

  I was fighting to get the gung ho back when my cell rang.

  Charlene.

  I’d filled her in at three. She shouldn’t be awake at four thirty.

  “Jessie was arrested last night,” she said. Her voice: equal parts exhaustion, panic, competence. She was holding herself together. Barely.

  “Tell me,” I said.

  “She was running with a pack of college kids. Some crazy off-campus loft party, as far as I can tell. I’m in Worcester. They’ll release her to me soon, and then we go straight to family court.”

  “On Saturday?”

  “They set it up special. They had to. There are a couple hundred kids here. It was a rave that turned into an orgy that turned into a riot.”

  “Hell.”

  “The police broke it up twice. The third time, some of the boys got mouthy and started bumping the cops. A car got turned over. The cops called in the riot squad. Conway?”

  “I’m here.”

  “The policeman at the desk says Jessie was loaded.” Sadder than I’ve ever heard her.

  “Booze? Meth? Pills?”

  “I don’t know. Her pupils were dilated, she was abusive, she couldn’t follow directions. Or wouldn’t. They … Conway, they hog-tied her with those puh … puh … plastic handcuffs to get her in a police car. The man at the desk said they had no choice…”

  Charlene wept.

  My heart hurt.

  I said, “I can be there in twenty-five minutes.”

  “No! Hang on.” She blew her nose and took a breath I could hear. “I can take care of this end. I need you to handle Sophie for me.”

  “Okay.” Then I remembered the cheerleading comp.

  In Springfield.

  “The team meets at ten at the Civic Center,” Charlene said. “She needs her uniform, and a high ponytail, and her bag, and a water—”

  “She’s got it under control. Had it all laid out last night. I saw it.”

  Charlene gave me numbers for her sister—I hate her and she hates me—and Sophie’s coach. After the comp, the girls would go out for dinner as a team. I should make sure Sophie wound up in somebody’s car. “Take good care of her. It’s a buh … buh … big day for her. And it’ll be wild at the Civic Center, all those girls running around. Buh … buy her flowers, okay?”

  I said I would.

  “And the shop,” she said, really losing it. “Why now, why all this at once?”

  “Don’t worry about the shop,” I said. “I got you covered.”

  “Yes,” Charlene said. “You do. Thank you. I love you.” Click.

  A comp in Springfi
eld.

  Huh.

  I sighed, rubbed my eyes, went to my truck.

  * * *

  “How old do you have to be,” I said, “before you remember things?”

  “That came out of nowhere,” Sophie said.

  Sophie: sweater and skirt in white, gold, blue. Across the top: COLONIALS. Ponytail tied high on her head with blue and gold ribbons. Glittery stuff in her hair. Sneakers white as a movie star’s teeth.

  We were on the Mass Turnpike, logging westbound miles. It’d been a quiet ride. I was thinking about the shop. Surprise feeling: freedom. No urgency about rebuilding, reopening. Instead: something that felt an awful lot like relief.

  That would be an interesting conversation with Charlene. She’s not big on letting the spirit move you. She believes in hard work and lots of it.

  Floriano wouldn’t suffer. He had standing offers from two indie shops that I knew of.

  I did feel bad for Andrade. Like Floriano and me, he’d lost six or eight grand in tools. Mine and Floriano’s were insured. I doubted Andrade’s were. Mental note: ask if he needed help getting by until his elbow healed.

  When I pictured Fat Teddy Pundo lobbing the Molotov cocktail in my back window, then hopping in his Mercedes with Boxer the wheelman, my temples pounded. Black, red, black.

  I needed to send my head in a different direction.

  That’s why I asked Sophie about memory.

  “How old?” I said.

  She smoothed her skirt, flattening each pleat. “There’s not as much consensus as you’d think. Most experts agree four is the age at which genuine, lifelong memory begins. Now many people report recollections from much earlier, but the hard research explains these as implanted memories—stories that were told around the dinner table for so long, and in such detail, the subject mistakenly believes he recalls the event itself.”

  “Anybody ever tell you you’re pretty smart?”

  She shook imaginary pom-poms, looked straight through the windshield. “Hold that line!”

  I smiled.

  “Why did you ask?” Sophie said after a mile or so.

  “Something happened the other day.”

  She looked at me. I thought about baby Emma being placed in my arms. The jolt. How I’d been everybody at once: Emma, me now, baby me, my mother then, my mother now.

  It had felt so real.

  I tried to form up the words. Didn’t have much luck.

  “It’s hard to explain,” I said.

  “The reason I ask,” she said, “and the reason I’ve looked into it … I remember something myself. From when I was younger than two. Eighteen months, or thereabouts. It’s very general. But I swear it’s a memory, not a memory of being told something. I know it is. I think … I think we can remember broad concepts before we’re three. Specifics? No. Concepts? Yes.”

  “What do you remember?”

  She stared dead ahead, palms on skirt, so long that I asked again.

  “Echoes,” she finally said. Her voice was tiny.

  “Echoes,” I said.

  “I’ve always hated them. All my life. A while back, I asked Jessie if she knew why. She teared up and kissed my head and finally told me.”

  I waited.

  “When I was about one and a half, Mom … Charlene…” Her voice dropped so much I leaned sideways to catch what she said next. “… Charlene sold everything in our apartment. The furniture, the housewares. The rugs.”

  “To get high,” I said.

  “To get high.” Sophie swallowed. “The only thing she didn’t sell was my high chair. She set me in it and told Jessie to watch me. I cried all morning. In my high chair. With no furniture and no rugs…”

  “The place echoed.” My throat was tight as I said it.

  We neared our exit. We’d be at the Civic Center in ten minutes.

  Sophie said, “Do you know what Jessie did?”

  “What?”

  “When the carpet store down the block opened, she carried me there. She asked the man if we could just sit on rugs for a while.” She swallowed. “Maybe the man knew Charlene, or knew of her, because he gave us two of those carpet samples the size of a doormat. We took them home and sat on them the rest of the day. Now that part I got from Jessie. But the echoes I remember.”

  “She carried you.”

  “There and back. And the two samples. She was eight.”

  I paid the toll.

  “Your turn,” Sophie said. “What’s your early memory?”

  I shook my head.

  “Not fair. I told you mine. Is it specific, or is it more of a concept? A feeling?”

  I thought it through, reached back for that moment Haley set Emma in my arms. The bolt. I felt loved. I felt forgiven. I felt pure.

  “I remember being warm,” I said.

  “Sounds legit to me,” Sophie said.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  The Civic Center was a nuthouse, all right. Five hundred or more girls, eight to thirteen. Pumped up, massing in every corner, every stairwell. Blue-white-golds, red-and-whites, blue-and-whites, crimsons, kelly greens, Carolina blues, purple-and-golds, black-and-silvers. Impromptu cheers, laughs, screeches. Volunteer moms counting noses, dazed dads lugging bouquets.

  We found the other Shrewsbury Colonials. Sophie forgot all about me in half a second. Head coach: no-nonsense woman about my age, short brown hair, runner’s build. I introduced myself so there wouldn’t be a problem later when I picked Sophie up.

  I grabbed a seat, one of three thousand spectators grouped in the western end of the arena. On the floor: mats, judges’ tables, TV gear. Production people, judges, behind-the-scenes workers, all walking around trying not to look self-conscious.

  Filling the eastern end: the cheerleaders, squads sitting together to wait their turn. Breaking into spontaneous line dances or cheers when a new song blasted over the PA. The only song I recognized: Queen’s “We Are the Champions.”

  The girls knew them all.

  In spite of everything, I caught myself smiling. Picked out Sophie, forty yards away. I waved, but she didn’t see me.

  When the PA went quiet for a few minutes, I called Floriano. Got voice mail. Left a message about the fire, said let’s talk, asked him to check in with Andrade.

  Our end of the arena filled. Buzz grew. An emcee with a wireless headset shushed everyone. National anthem, “America the Beautiful,” convocation.

  The competition began.

  Some of the routines were impressive: choreographed to the hilt, girls flying everywhere. Truth be told, though, after twenty minutes they all looked the same to me. I just wanted to see the Colonials. I picked out Sophie again. This time she was looking for me. She smiled, waved.

  I zoned out. Thought about the shop, the Biletnikovs, Jessie. I didn’t know who her father was—doubted Charlene knew herself—but the smart money said he was a junkie or a drunk or both. Kid was born behind the eight ball.

  New movement, a sense of something not right, snapped me back. I cleared my head. Across the way, in a mostly deserted section up high, I caught motion.

  I looked.

  It took a half beat to register.

  Teddy Pundo. Up in the nosebleed seats, standing by himself, holding a half-assed sign, Sharpie on cardboard:

  YEA SOPHIE B!!

  U GO GRRL!!!!

  He was staring across at me.

  He was licking his lips.

  He was thrusting his hips in time to the music.

  While a squad of ten-year-olds from Lunenburg performed, I exploded from my seat.

  Into the tunnel, take a hard right. I passed concessions, a table selling roses, a table selling cheer gear. Running as fast as I could, semi-controlled.

  Semi-controlled.

  It was the right term. It tied up more thoughts and events and people than I can explain. Roy. Charlene, Sophie, Jessie. Gus, his belly three shades of blood. Donald Crump, spilling from his Escalade, carrying me to the pavement.

  Semi-contr
olled.

  I used it all, used them all. Pumped everything into arms and legs, running just so, goddamn flying if you want the truth.

  Semi-controlled. Black, red, black.

  Rounded a corner, saw Teddy’s cardboard sign on the floor near the ramp. No Teddy.

  Ducked into the arena, picked out Sophie. Giggling, standing, her coach and a couple of moms keeping an eye on the girls. Sophie was safe.

  I sprinted half the arena’s circumference. No Teddy. He’d left the building.

  Good.

  It was time to get this done.

  Fat Teddy Pundo forfeited everything the second I saw that sign.

  I shot down to street level, semi-controlled. Crashed outside.

  With the competition going full blast, it wasn’t crowded out here.

  I sprinted the three blocks to my on-street parking slot, working keys from my pocket as I ran.

  As I swung around the front of my truck, I heard a tire chirp, a six-cylinder howl. Coming at me: a maroon Nissan Altima. Teddy.

  He tailed you all the way from Charlene’s place, and you didn’t make him because he wasn’t in his usual ride. You are one stupid fucker.

  Thinking this as Teddy came hard, deep in the throttle. I tossed myself onto my hood, tucking my legs beneath me. Teddy creased the F-250’s left flank. His right-side mirror brushed the sole of my left boot.

  I jumped from the hood as Teddy grabbed a hard left at the end of the block, the Altima’s overworked front tires squalling, smoking, trying to slow and steer at the same time.

  The creasing had jammed up my driver’s door. That cost me seconds: I sprinted to the curbside, climbed in the passenger door, fumbled and shrugged into the driver’s seat, took off. Slid around the left-hand turn.

  No Teddy.

  I pounded the dash, cursing the world, just about weeping in frustration.

  I pictured Fat Teddy following me from Charlene’s house with Sophie at my side.

  I thought of the police report Lima’d slipped me, the Guatemalan girl.

  I thought of Teddy’s sign. YEA SOPHIE B!!

  He knew her name.

  He forfeited everything when he let you see he knew her name.

  The thought calmed me for a moment, made me feel semi-controlled.