OUR SECRET BABY

by Paula Cox

  Meaning that every Winter, when the winds went crazy, and the water tipped its banks, you have to fight your way through bitter-cold scrappy waters just to get yourself and your catch out of the ocean. And then next morning, when you’ve got to go untie your boat and do it all over again, you might discover the thing is twenty feet up a hill you don’t remember setting it down at.

  If I have all this right, thirty years ago the city of Portsmouth hosted some big-shot young beautiful actress who’d just done a movie with… Lawrence Olivier… or some legend. They took her out on a boat to show her a good time. Then out of nowhere these fifty-mile hour winds come up and start swinging the boat so violently the whole thing ends up capsizing just outside the docks and everyone ends up in freezing waters for the next ten minutes or so until the Coast Guard sends out their boats, with blankets and thermoses of hot coffee. No one died, but the outcry was loud enough the government ended up shelling out money for the new Docks. Fishermen were awfully happy about this. They’d been trying to find a way to get new docks for years, and the solution had just dropped into the water right in front of them. According to the guys who were around then, just a year after the Docks were finished and everyone jumped ship, the Pier looked like it’d been abandoned half a century ago. Which is why it’s opened up for business to the kinds of guys who don’t want anybody else knowing about their business.

  “Is this really where we’re going?” Maya asks me in this ultra-high hope-it’s-not-what-I-think-it-is voice. She’s definitely got a point. Easttown, especially in early winter, has a teen slasher film look to it. Rickety houses set up outside the canal are painted the color of vomit. Chimneys still throw up soot. Snow the color of boots and broken noses. All the lights busted out long ago, and the city is too cheap to buy new lamps.

  “We’re not the hotel type. Here we’ve got privacy.”

  “And all of this—” Her tone includes the sewage canal and run-down houses “—is what you’re waging your territory wars over?”

  “It’s the idea, not the place.”

  “The idea of absolute garbage? Seems like the best thing that could happen to this place is if somebody set it on fire.”

  I slam on the brakes—there’s nobody else on the road with us anyway. Maya is thrown forward in her seat. I dig my fingers into her skin, but I make sure that when I speak I sound calm.

  “We grew up here. You understand? Guys lost their Moms, Dads, and baby sisters in places like this. Easttown’s not the center, but it’s our home. You got that?”

  She gives me a look like she wants to slap me, but she doesn’t. She turns away and yanks her arm away from my fingers and starts to rub it.

  “Sure,” she murmurs. “Can you just get us out of here?”

  The Clubhouse is on the northern side of the Pier. That’s the name the guys have come up with for the giant warehouse they reconstructed into a functioning office space for people to drop in if they need to not be seen, or for others to swing by and see the guys they do want to see. Basic rules go that if you’re on the street, you’re with another Stitch. I’m the exception because I’ve been living in high rises and going through shopping malls. Add to that the fact that my much bigger shadow is Portsmouth’s premier mob boss, and that makes me sort of a hands-off.

  It pretty much goes without saying that my rules don’t apply to the majority of the other guys. We learn when we’re young that if you’re on the street, assume you’re a target. And in the majority of the cases, that’s true.

  Clubhouse—safe house. We’ve even got the docks behind us, and these big searchlights Crash lifted from I couldn’t even guess where to spot any nighttime attacks. The place was built as a fortress, but for the last ten years or so it’s gotten to be a mix of business and home more than anything else. You come to the Clubhouse when you pick up your contracts. You come to the Clubhouse to get briefed on your contracts, so there’s no error of judgment. You pick up your tail or tails—other guys to spot you—when you come to the Clubhouse. You get paid in the Clubhouse. You pay out in the Clubhouse. You hide from guys out for your blood in the Clubhouse. Hide out from cops in the Clubhouse. This is our nucleus.

  I park in the shed and open Maya’s door for her. She steps out like someone with four glasses of beer in them about to take a sobriety test.

  “Are you alright?” I try taking her arm, but she shakes me away.

  “I’m fine—no, thank you.” She rights her purse over her shoulder and pushes me away.

  I shrug. “Suit yourself. But there’s broken glass everywhere.”

  She looks down and sees that I’m right. I can feel her reluctance when she takes my arm. I know what this is all about. She’s trying to be strong, and I just made her admit defeat.

  “It’s like you guys live in a frat house,” she says.

  “These aren’t our beer glasses. We keep the place clean.”

  Maya doesn’t say anything else, but I can feel her trembling through the thin sweater she has on. It might be cold, and it might be nerves, and it’s probably both.

  I lean in to whisper, “Once we’re out of this, I’m going to pick you up and take you to the back seat and fuck you until your eyes pop.”

  She stays quiet, but I see her smile. Her hand comes over mine and commences rubbing.

  The entranceway looks like a barn except that the front door is a giant steel contraption like on a safe, with turning wheel and combination, plus a bearded guy in cargo pants standing in front shouldering a Kalashnikov like a kid with a baseball bat. He looks like a Navy Seal and not long ago.

  “Quinn Tolliver. And I was just betting with Crash that you wouldn’t be coming back at all. Dropped a grand on you, boy.”

  “Nice to see you too, Bolt.”

  I take Bolt’ arm and pull him in for a hug. He points the Kalashnikov in the air, which makes me a little more comfortable.

  “This your girl?” He pulls away from me. Maya looks from him to me, then back to him.

  “You’re going to want to be polite with her,” I’m saying but it’s already too late. Out comes Maya’s hand faster than you can blink. It smacks Bolt square in the right cheek with a sound of wood hitting the ground.

  “Young lady would have been fine.” Maya shakes out her hand. “I’m Maya Butler. Kirill’t call me ‘girl’ again.”

  There’s something surreal about watching a girl barely above five feet and thin as a sapling talking up to Bolt—a monster with a submachine gun and eyes like fire. There’s also something intensely rewarding about how amusing it all is, but I don’t make any of this clear to Bolt. He gives me a look, then her, and then bursts out laughing.

  “Whatever you say, Miss Maya Butler.”

  “No.” She literally wags a finger at him. I never thought anyone except for nannies did that. “Kirill’t be disingenuous about it. That’s being an asshole. Say ‘Maya’ and be done with it.”

  “Sure thing,” Bolt says. He’s getting as much out of this as I am. Probably even more.

  “Quinn—you got a password for me?”

  I whisper it: stitch and tatter. Bolt nods, plugs in the combo for the door and opens wide. A cold, sterile smell comes out, like an ice chest filled with medicine.

  “You know Palmer’s been all over your ass?”

  “He called me twice.”

  “Then you know the score.”

  “Enough of it to come back.”

  “Alright. Good seeing you Quinn man. And Maya.”

  The door slams shut behind us. This is the entrance room where they filter people through before deciding to let them continue on into the Clubhouse. We’re supposed to wait here until someone collects us and takes us further in.

  Maya’s shivering again. There’s no heat in this place, and it’s at least freezing point outside, considering the snow. I pull her into a hug, and she doesn’t resist. Wonder where I’m going to leave her. There’s a café on the first floor where she can stay and get warm. It kills me, but it’s got
to be done. There’s no way I can bring her in with Palmer and the other boys. There’s no way I can just let her listen to these guys—a bunch of hitmen deciding the next score. Far as I know, she must think we’re a club of petty mobsters. Vigilantes, even. Not hired professionals. Not guys who’d kill anyone for money.

  We wait ten minutes. Palmer hasn’t shown up yet.

  “When we get inside, you’re not going to be allowed into the meeting. That’s just how it works. So I’m going to leave you in one of the rooms we have. You’ll be safe and warm.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’d bring you with me if I could.” I bring my hand up the back of her neck, beneath her hair. She closes her eyes. “I’d bring you anywhere you wanted to go if I was free enough.”

  “I know you would. But you’ve brought me far enough. You’ve told me everything.”

  I wince at those last words. If only she knew everything - the whole truth. What would it even mean if she knew what I’d done? Would she call me a monster? A murderer?

  I don’t get any further in my thoughts than this because at that moment the door opens. A tall, thin guy—thinner even than Maya—walks in and looks at me, one hand rooted at the hip.

  “Well hello there, stranger,” Palmer Glass says.

  Chapter 17

  Palmer and I show Maya the way to the café. You’d think in a giant warehouse the best we might have rigged up would just be a few spool-shaped tables and some benches, but no. Some of the boys have gone the full nine miles on the place, and it shows - nice furniture, dim lights, and a six hundred dollar espresso machine you can get things like mint and cinnamon out of.

  “That’s not half bad,” is the best I can get out of Maya. Still, it’s a compliment.

  “We’re not going to be long.”

  “You’ve already said that, sweetheart.”

  “And I mean it.”

  Palmer’s standing right behind me but what the hell, I’m not going to pass up a chance for one of her kisses if I’ve got a breath left in me. Then I turn and follow Palmer up the staircase, to the third floor.

  “So that’s what they call bodyguard work,” he says. “For bonuses like that, you ought to be taking bullets.”

  “I’m never doing that again.”

  “Kirill’t say never, hotshot. Not until we’ve decided what’s going down.”

  He shakes out a cigarette from his pack of Camel Blue’s and lights up. I pretend not to notice. Two, three puffs in, then, “Shit man, sorry about that. I forgot you quit.” He flings the smoldering light out a nearby window.

  “Kirill’t worry about it.” Christ—no Tic Tacs again. I chew the side of my tongue instead, which at least takes my mind a little off the cigarette.

  “So you’ve called everybody in?” I ask to switch topics.

  “Everyone who could afford to, yeah. We’ve got a couple guys over in Augusta doing a run on some guy’s cheating wife. Miles is in the hospital,” he finishes, quieter. “Listen, I didn’t want to say this on the phone because it just seemed wrong. We’re not sure Miles is gonna pull through.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just what I’ve said. Those Eastern European guys? Russian guys, yeah? Remember when I told you they got into another fight? Picked our guy off the streets in the middle of broad daylight and drove him out to the quarry and chucked him right in like an old tire. Broke his neck, back, arms, legs, all of it. Laid there two days before a couple kids found him and called the police.”

  “Holy shit.”

  “That’s not half of it. That’s the instigator.” He jostles his pack back out and lights up again, forgetting what I’d told him a minute ago, just like I knew he would. “We’re talking drive-bys. Death threats. Guns in bars. Tension, Quinn. Motherfucking tension. It’s got me strung like a…like a…”

  He takes a drag on his cigarette and leaves the rest of the sentence to me. This is Palmer, though. Strung out and nervous before anything goes down. But if you had a gun in his face, or if the cops caught him stealing some guy’s TV, he could charm snakes with his explanations. Just the kind of guy you need when you’re in a tight spot. We reach the top of the stairs and head towards a room in the corner.

  “And listen.” He blows smoke. “Really, honestly listen, Quinn. I’m not bullshitting you on this one. Man, last thing I’d want to do is bullshit you about something like this.”

  “I know.”

  “But tell me truthfully, what is it with this babysitting gig? You guys man and wife already?”

  “Nothing like that.”

  “Have you fucked her? Quinn—man—tell me the truth. Are you fucking the mob boss’s daughter?”

  “The hell do you care for? What does this have to do with your war? You’re gonna drive up to big man’s house and tell him yourself? Think you’ll get a reward out of it?”

  My hands are clenched and shaking. I hadn’t noticed when I was talking, and now I relax them.

  “Easy, easy Q. Nothing meant by it. Come on.” He chucks the halfway-smoked cigarette through this window like he did with the last one. “We’ll try and get you back soon as we can.”

  This room has more of the hackneyed feel to it. The place is tiny, and the walls are a suffocating brick. There’s one round table in the center, like we were King Arthur’s knights or something, and a few wooden chairs set around it. I recognize my boys immediately. Kirill’s sitting to the left, then Crash—a slippery, red-haired bastard with the polar opposite temperament as Palmer, which is cool, then frantic. Then Nail—two hundred and seventy pounds of muscle and mouth like a bottle cap. I’ve known the guy six years and never heard him say one word.

  I know shit’s already gone down just by looking around. The guys look like they haven’t slept in a year, like a steamroller’s just been dropped on their heads. They hardly look up when I walk in. I make eye contact with Crash and Kirill and find my seat.

  “We’re practically adjourned here,” Palmer says, doing likewise. He turns to me. “I gave Quinn the rundown already. What we’ve got on our hands is a travesty. We’ve got to decide if we’re gonna make it into a war.”

  “A war against who?” I say, sitting down. “Are these guys scattered or are they organized?”

  “We don’t know,” Kirill says. He rubs his jaw with one hand. It’s sharp as a throwing star. “But you can do the math. We were attacked not once, but twice by the same group of fellows. Two of ours dead—new guys.” He raises his eyebrows at Palmer.

  “Already told him about all that.”

  “Then you understand the situation. They’re not interested in sending a message, whoever they are. They’re putting targets on our guys’ backs.”

  “My baby brothers can’t sleep at night,” Crash adds. “And they’re in the west, in the center of town. They say they’ve been getting looks from random big guys in the streets. They’re carrying knives. Imagine that—eleven years old, man, and he won’t go inside a Starbucks without his switch.”

  “They want us exterminated. That’s the simple truth,” Kirill says. “Maybe they’ve got beef with us because of a hit. Maybe they just want us out of town. Maybe it’s the territory wars all over again. We think it’s the Russians coming over from New York. Competition too hot in the big city so they think this small-town stuff would be better suited for their needs. Can’t go up against the mob bosses because they’re too powerful, but if they take us out, then they’ve got a hole they can fit themselves into all nice and snug.”

  “You know it’s the Russians?” I ask.

  “We’re pretty goddam sure,” Palmer says.

  My mind flips over to Theo’s guards, Andrei and Ikov. Just for a moment—but that wouldn’t make any sense at all. Theo is knowingly financing a member of the Stitches—that’s practically, no literally, sponsorship. There’s no way anyone working for him would be stupid enough to declare open war against a friendly organization—that’s just the way to find yourself at the bottom of the canal. Hell, judgi
ng from the guys’ muscles he was probably the guy Theo called to put the guys down the water he didn’t’ like.

  “How many?”

  “We’ve only got guesses. Ten to twenty we think. The guys’ who have attacked us haven’t come in crews any more than five.”

  “So we’re evenly matched.”

  I turn around and survey the faces again. Everyone’s gone quiet. I guess that means they’re waiting on me.

  “What is it?”

  “You tell us,” Kirill says.

  “Tell you what? What I know about your Russians? Not a thing.”