Lifeguard

by James Patterson

  I found myself daydreaming a lot. I was the son of a small-time crook, and here I was returning—wanted, a big-time screwup. I’d even outdone my old man. I’d have surely been in the system growing up, just like Mickey and Bobby, if I didn’t know how to skate. Hockey had opened doors for me. The Leo J. Fennerty Award as the best forward in the Boston CYO. A full ride to BU. More like a lottery ticket. Until I tore up my knee my sophomore year.

  The scholarship went with it, but the university gave me a year to prove I could stay. And I did. They probably thought I was just some dumb jock who would drop out, but I started to see a larger world around me. I didn’t have to go back to the old neighborhood and wait for Mickey and Bobby to get out of jail. I started to read, really read, for the first time in my life. To everyone’s amazement, I actually graduated—with honors. In government. I got this job teaching eighth-grade social studies at Stoughton Academy, a place for troubled youths. My family couldn’t believe it. They actually pay a Kelly to be in the classroom?

  Anyway, that all ended. In a single day—just like this.

  Past Providence, everything began to grow familiar. Sharon, Walpole, Canton. Places where I had played hockey as a kid. I was starting to get really nervous. Here I was, back home. Not the kid who’d gone off to BU. Or the one who’d been practically run out of town—and wound up in Florida.

  But a hunted man, with a collar on a whole lot bigger than my old man ever managed to earn.

  The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, I was thinking as the bus hissed to a stop at the Atlantic Avenue terminal in Boston. Even when you throw it.

  Even when you throw it as far as you can.

  Chapter 25

  “SPECIAL AGENT SHURTLEFF put the whole thing together,” Ellie’s boss, George Moretti, said, and shrugged, like, Can you believe it? to Hank Cole, the assistant director in charge. The three of them were in his top-floor office in Miami.

  “She recognized implements at the murder scene that could be used for prying open picture frames. Then she found numbers in the victims’ personal effects that matched Stratton’s alarm code. We located the stolen uniforms a short time later, stuffed in a bag in a car down the street.”

  “Seems you finally put that art degree to some real use, Special Agent Shurtleff,” ADIC Cole said, beaming.

  “It was just having access to both crime scenes,” Ellie said, a little nervous. This was the first time she had been in front of the ADIC for any reason.

  “The victims were all acquainted, from the Boston area with minor rap sheets.” Moretti slid a copy of the preliminary report across his boss’s desk. “Nothing like a crime of this magnitude ever before. There’s another member of this group who lived down here who’s apparently missing.” He pushed a photo over. “One Ned Kelly. He didn’t show up for his shift at a local bar last night. Not surprising—since police up in South Carolina found an old Bonneville registered to him in some strip mall just off of I-95, four hundred miles north of here. . . .”

  “Good. This Kelly have a record?” the ADIC inquired.

  “Juvie,” Moretti said, “expunged. But his father’s a different story. Three stints on everything from bookmaking to receiving stolen goods. As a matter of routine, we’re gonna flash the kid’s photo around that hotel in Palm Beach, where that other incident took place. You never know.”

  “I actually took a look at that scene,” Ellie volunteered. She told her bosses that the times of death didn’t match up. Also, the Palm Beach police were treating the murder as a sex crime.

  “Seems our agent here has designs on being a homicide detective as well,” Hank Cole said with a grin.

  Ellie caught herself and took the dig, her cheeks coloring. They wouldn’t be anywhere on this case without me.

  “Anyway, why don’t we just leave something for the local authorities to clean up.” Cole smiled at her. “So it seems this Ned Kelly may have ripped off his old buddies, huh? Well, he’s sure graduated to the big time now. So whatya think, Special Agent,” he said, turning to Ellie, “you ready to fly up North and put yourself on this guy?”

  “Of course,” Ellie said. Whether they were condescending or not, she loved the attention of being on the A team for once.

  “Any ideas where he’d be headed?”

  Moretti shrugged. He went over to a wall map. “He’s got family, roots up there. Maybe a fence, too.” He pushed in a red pin. “We figure Boston, sir.”

  “Actually,” said Ellie, “Brockton.”

  Chapter 26

  KELTY’S, ON THE CORNER of Temple and Main in south Brockton, usually closed around midnight. After the Bruins’ postgame report or Baseball Tonight, or when Charlie, the owner, finally pushed the last jabbering regular away from his Budweiser.

  Tonight, I was lucky. The lights dimmed at 11:35.

  A few minutes afterward, a large guy with curly brown hair in a hooded Falmouth sweatshirt yelled, “Later, Charl,” and closed the door behind him as he stepped onto the sidewalk. He started to head down Main, a knapsack over his shoulder, leaning into the early April chill.

  I followed on the other side of the street, a safe distance behind. Everything had changed around there. The men’s store and the Supreme B Donut Shop where we used to hang out were now a grungy Laundromat and a low-end liquor store. The guy I was following had changed, too.

  He was one of those thick, strong-shouldered dudes with a cocky smile who could break your wrist arm wrestling if he wanted to. His picture was up in the local high school. He’d once been district champ at 180 pounds for Brockton High.

  You better plan how you’re going to do this, Ned.

  He made a left on Nilsson, crossing over the tracks. I followed, maybe thirty yards behind. Once, he looked back, maybe hearing footsteps, and I huddled in the shadows. The same rows of shabby, clapboard houses I’d passed a thousand times as a kid, looking even shabbier and more run-down now.

  He turned the corner. On the left was the elementary school and Buckley Park, where we used to play Rat Fuck on the basketball courts for quarters. A block away on Perkins was the ruin of the old Stepover shoe factory, boarded up for years. I thought back to how we used to hide out in there from the priests and cut classes, smoke a little. When I turned at the corner, he wasn’t there!

  Ah, shit, Neddie, I cursed myself. You never were any good at getting the jump on somebody.

  And then I was the one being jumped!

  Suddenly, I felt a strong arm tighten around my neck. I was jerked backward, a knee digging deep into my spine. The sonuvabitch was stronger than I remembered.

  I flailed my arms to try and roll him over my back. I couldn’t breathe. I heard him grunting, applying more pressure, twisting me backward. My spine felt as if it were about to crack.

  I started to panic. If I couldn’t spin out quickly, he was going to break my back.

  “Who caught it?” he suddenly hissed into my ear.

  “Who caught what?” I gagged for air.

  He twisted harder. “Flutie’s Hail Mary. The Orange Bowl. 1984.”

  I tried to force him forward, using my hips as leverage, straining with all my might. His grip just tightened. I felt a searing pain in my lungs.

  “Gerard . . . Phelan,” I finally gasped.

  Suddenly, the vise hold around my neck released. I fell to one knee, sucking in air.

  I looked up into the smirking face of my younger brother, Dave.

  “You’re lucky,” he said, grinning. Then he put out a hand to help me. “I was going to ask who caught Flutie’s last college pass.”

  Chapter 27

  WE HUGGED. Then Dave and I stood there and took a physical inventory of how we’d changed. He was much larger; he looked like a man now, not a kid. We slapped each other on the back. I hadn’t seen my baby brother in almost four years.

  “You’re a sight for sore eyes,” I said, and hugged him again.

  “Yeah,” he said, grinning, “well, you’re making my eyes sore now.”
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  We laughed, the way we did when we were growing up, and locked hands, ghetto-style. Then his face changed. I could tell that he’d heard. Surely everyone had by now.

  Dave shook his head sort of helplessly. “Oh, Neddie, what the hell went on down there?”

  I took him into the park and, sitting on a ledge, told him how I had gone to the Lake Worth house and saw Mickey and our other friends being wheeled out in body bags.

  “Ah, Jesus, Neddie.” Dave shook his head. His eyes grew moist, and he lay his head in his hands.

  I put my arm around his shoulder. It was hard to see Dave cry. It was strange—he was younger by five years, but he was always so stable and centered, even when our older brother died. I was always all over the place; it was as though the roles were reversed. Dave was in his second year at BC Law School. The bright spot of the family.

  “It gets worse.” I squeezed his shoulder. “I think I’m wanted, Dave.”

  “Wanted?” He cocked his head. “You? Wanted for what?”

  “I’m not sure. Maybe for murder.” This version I told him everything. The whole tale. I told him about Tess, too.

  “What’re you saying?” Dave sat there looking at me. “That you’re up here on the run? That you were involved? You were part of this madness, Ned?”

  “Mickey set it up,” I said, “but he didn’t know the kind of people who could pull it off down there. It had to have been directed from up here. Whoever it was, Dave, that’s the person who killed our friends. Until I prove otherwise, people are going to think it was me. But I think we both know”—I looked into his eyes, which were basically my eyes—“who Mickey was working with up here.”

  “Pop? You’re thinking Pop had something to do with this?” He looked at me as if I were crazy. “No way. We’re talking Mickey, Bobby, and Dee. It’s Frank’s own flesh and blood. Besides, you don’t know—he’s sick, Ned. He needs a kidney transplant. The guy’s too sick to even be a hood anymore.”

  I guess it was then that Dave squinted at me. I didn’t like the look in his eyes. “Neddie, I know you’ve been down on your luck a little. . . .”

  “Listen to me”—I took him by the shoulders—“look into my eyes. Whatever you may hear, Dave, whatever the evidence might say, I had nothing to do with this. I loved them just like you. I tripped the alarms, that’s all. It was stupid, I know. And I’m going to have to pay. But whatever you hear, whatever the news might say, all I did was set off a few alarms. I think Mickey was trying to make up for what happened at Stoughton.”

  My brother nodded. When he looked up, I could see a different look in his face. The guy I had shared a room with for fifteen years, who I had beaten at one-on-one until he was sixteen, my flesh and blood. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Nothing. You’re in law school.” I rapped him on the chin. “I may need your help if this gets bad.”

  I stood up.

  Dave did, too. “You’re going to see Pop, aren’t you?” I didn’t answer. “That’s stupid, Ned. If they’re looking for you, they’ll know.”

  I tapped him lightly on the fist, then threw my arms around him and gave him a hug. My big little brother.

  I started to jog down the hill. I didn’t want to turn, because I was afraid that if I did, I might cry. But there was something I couldn’t resist. I spun around when I was almost on Perkins. “It was Darren.”

  “Huh?” Dave shrugged.

  “Darren Flutie.” I grinned. “Doug’s younger brother. He caught Doug’s last pass in college.”

  Chapter 28

  I SPENT THE NIGHT in the Beantown Motel on Route 27 in Stoughton, a few miles up the road from Kelty’s bar.

  The story was all over the late news. Brockton residents killed. The faces of my friends. A shot of the house in Lake Worth. Hard to get any sleep after that.

  Eight o’clock the next morning I had a cab drop me off on Perkins, a couple of blocks from my parents’ house. I had on jeans and my old torn BU sweatshirt. I tucked my head under a Red Sox cap. I was scared. I knew everyone there, and even after four years, everyone knew me. But it wasn’t just that. It was seeing my mom again. After all these years. Coming home this way.

  I was praying the cops weren’t there, too.

  I hurried past familiar old houses, with their tilting porches and small brown yards. Finally, I spotted our old mint green Victorian. It looked a whole lot smaller than I remembered. And a lot worse for wear. How the hell did we all ever fit in this place? Mom’s 4Runner was in the drive. Frank’s Lincoln was nowhere around. I guess Thomas Wolfe was right about going home, huh?

  I leaned against a lamppost and stared at the place for several minutes. Everything looked all right to me, so I snuck around to the back.

  Through a kitchen window I saw my mom. She was already dressed, in a corduroy skirt and some Fair Isle sweater, sipping a cup of coffee. She still had a pretty face, but she looked so much older now. Why wouldn’t she? A lifetime of dealing with Frank “Whitey” Kelly had worn her down to this.

  Okay, Ned, time to be a big boy. . . . People you loved are dead.

  I knocked on the glass pane of the back door. Mom looked up from her coffee. Her face turned white. She got up, nearly ran to the door, and let me in. “Mother of God, what are you doing here, Ned? Oh Neddie, Neddie, Neddie.”

  We hugged and Mom held me as tightly as if I’d come back from the dead. “Poor kids . . .” She pressed her face against me. I could feel tears. Then she pulled back, wide-eyed. “Neddie, you can’t be here. The police have been around.”

  “I didn’t do it, Mom,” I said. “Whatever they say, I swear to God. I swear on JM’s soul, I had nothing to do with what happened down there.”

  “You don’t have to tell me.” My mother put her hand lightly on my cheek. She took off my cap and smiled at my mess of blond hair, the Florida tan. “You look fine. It’s so good to see you, Neddie. Even now.”

  “It’s good to see you, too, Mom.”

  And it was—to be back in the old kitchen. I felt free for a moment or two. I picked up an old Kodak print taped to the fridge. The Kelly boys. Dave, JM, me on the field behind Brockton High. JM in his red and black football jersey. Number 23. All-Section safety his junior year . . .

  When I looked up, my mother was staring at me. “Neddie, you’ve got to turn yourself in.”

  “I can’t.” I shook my head. “I will, eventually. But not yet. I have to see Pop. Where is he, Mom?”

  “Your father?” She shook her head. “You think I know?” She sat down. “Sometimes I think he even sleeps at Kelty’s now. Things have gotten worse for him, Neddie. He needs a kidney transplant, but he’s past the age when our coverage is gonna pay for it. He’s sick, Neddie. Sometimes I think he just wants to die. . . .”

  “Trust me, he’ll be around long enough to bring you more misery,” I snorted.

  Suddenly we heard the sound of a vehicle pulling up to the curb outside. A car door slamming shut. I was hoping it was Frank.

  I went over to a window and pulled back the blinds.

  It wasn’t my father.

  Two men and a woman were coming up the driveway toward the house.

  My mother rushed to the window. There was worry in her eyes.

  We’d seen my father taken off to jail too many times not to recognize the law.

  Chapter 29

  BOTH OF US STARED wide-eyed at “twenty to life” in prison coming toward the house.

  One of the agents, a black guy in a tan suit, peeled away from the other two and headed around back.

  Shit, Neddie, think! What the hell do we do now . . . ?

  I’ve never felt my heart pounding the way it did for those seconds it took the agents to make their way up the stairs. It was useless to run.

  “Neddie, turn yourself in,” my mother said again.

  I shook my head. “No, I’ve got to find Frank.” I took my mother by the shoulders, a pleading glimmer in my eye. “I’m sorry. . . .”

  I pres
sed up against the wall next to the front door, not knowing what the hell I would do next. I didn’t have a weapon. Or a plan.

  There was a knock at the door. “Frank Kelly?” a voice called. “Mrs. Kelly? FBI!”

  My imagination was running wild but coming up with nothing that could help me. Three agents, one a woman. The female was tanned, which probably meant she’d come from Florida.

  “Mrs. Kelly?” They knocked again. Through the blinds I could see a husky guy in front. My mother finally answered. She looked at me sort of helplessly. I nodded for her to open the door.

  I closed my eyes for half a second. Please, don’t do the stupidest thing of your entire life.

  But I went and did it anyway.

  I barreled into the agent as soon as he walked through the door. We rolled onto the floor. I heard the guy grunt, and when I looked up, his handgun had slid out of his hand and was about four feet away. We both fixed on it. He, not knowing if a vicious killer had just gotten the jump on him. I, knowing once I made a move for that gun, my life as I knew it was over. I didn’t care about the woman, or the guy sneaking around to the back. I just went for the gun. There was no other way.

  I rolled off him and wrapped both hands around the gun. “Nobody moves!”

  The agent was still on the floor. The woman—who was small and cute, actually—fumbled under her suit jacket for own weapon. The third agent had just made it through the back door.

  “No!” I shouted, and extended the gun. The woman looked at me, her hand on her holster.

  “Please . . . Please, don’t pull that out, now,” I told her.

  “Please, Neddie,” my mother was begging me, “put the gun down. He’s innocent.” She looked at the agents. “Ned wouldn’t hurt anyone.”

  “I don’t want to hurt anybody,” I told them. “Now put your guns on the floor. Do it.”