Nantucket Counterfeit

by Steven Axelrod

We stared at each other. There was nothing more to say. I reached into my pocket and handed him the letter.

  He skimmed it and handed it back. “Someone’s pissed off. I suggest you find them.”

  “I just did. Or do you know anyone else with the initials J.F.L.?”

  He laughed, a short smirking snob’s laugh, as if I’d used the dessert fork for the salad or referred to a sofa as a couch. “These initials are J.L.F. The last name goes in the middle in a monogram. Ask your girlfriend about it. She comes from a good family. And double-check your facts before you bother people next time.”

  “It’s true,” Jane said later. “I thought everyone knew that.”

  I sighed. “Almost everyone.”

  We were standing in the cemetery, inspecting her grandmother’s grave. It looked good. She had finished cutting back the big juniper tree. With the new grass and the gravestone lifted and resettled and scrubbed of lichen, the area had a civilized, cared-for look.

  “All it needs is some mulch,” Jane noted. “Want to go to the dump? I have two barrels in my truck.”

  The town set piles of mulch and compost at the entrance to the landfill; all you needed was a container and a shovel. “Absolutely.”

  But I lingered for a moment by the iris and santolina. Set between a triangle of busy roads, Prospect Hill felt like an entirely separate world. Sound carried differently and time itself seemed to slow down. You looked out at the busy cars and felt invisible, at one with the generations below your feet.

  Jane studied my face. “The millions.”

  “What?”

  “The millions—that’s what Thornton Wilder called them in Our Town. All the ancestors up here.”

  I nodded. “You can feel them.”

  She took my arm. “You are a much finer specimen than Chief Blote.”

  Blote was the pinhead Police Chief in Jane’s cozy mysteries. “You set the bar low,” I said.

  She stood on tiptoes to kiss my cheek. “Don’t trip over it.”

  I filled her in on the case as we drove out to the dump. The moors rolled down to Hummock Pond in the mild air. I knew what Jane was thinking as she drove, she’d said it to me before: the island was still beautiful, despite everything, this stretch of it at least. She could still see the Nantucket of her childhood out here, where she’d spent the long summer days on her bike, roaming with her friends, a bag of lunch in the handlebar basket, not straggling home until dusk.

  Today she drove quietly and let me talk. When I was done I said, “So who is J.L.F.? That’s the question.”

  “Well, the first thought that comes to mind is Joe’s sister Jenny. She divorced Aaron Feldman five years ago. Switched sides, if you know what I mean. She’s quite a strident member of the LGBTQ community now. Aaron runs Feldman Properties. It was his dad’s business, he’s one of those second-generation Nantucket stuck-ons. He’ll never leave the island. And he’s kind of a rat. If anyone could turn a heterosexual girl into a lesbian…”

  “Jennifer Little Feldman. That works. Wait—J-Feld? the disc jockey on ACK radio?”

  “Right. She could have taken the law into her own hands. Jenny always was a vindictive little bitch. They say she poisoned Lonnie Fraker’s dog just because it growled at her once. No one could prove it.”

  I smiled. “So she’s Caroline Cressman in The View from Altar Rock.”

  She patted my knee. “You’ve completed all your reading assignments! You are an ‘A’ student, Henry Kennis. But kind of a suck up. Are you trying to be the teacher’s pet?”

  “Always. So what did Jennifer think about that portrait in your book? The ‘she should thank me. Ugly girls are better off dead’ vixen?”

  Jane laughed, short and emphatic. “She didn’t recognize it. Most people have zero self-awareness, thank God. Jenny thought she was the nicest girl in school.”

  As we were shoveling mulch into the big plastic garbage can a few minutes later, Jane said, “I don’t think Jenny’s your killer. That letterhead looked so—I don’t know. Businesslike and blocky? Like a man’s monogram. Jenny was always kind of a girly-girl, even after she came out. Pink skirts and pedicures. She was the first person I knew who got a perm. I would have bet she’d have flowers on her stationery. Or at least flowery lettering.”

  I speared the shovel into the pile and caught my breath. “Besides, she was broadcasting when the murder went down.”

  My phone rang as we were hefting the big barrel into the back of the Ford Ranger Jane used for her landscaping business. I checked the screen: the main number at the station. That had to be Barnaby Toll, at the front desk.

  I poked the connection open. “Yeah, Barney.”

  “You gotta get down here, Chief. They’re trying to take Hector’s dad.”

  “What? Who is? And what’s he doing there anyway?”

  “He came down to bail out his brother and they got into an argument about the cockfighting and it turned into a shoving match and pretty soon they were rolling around on the floor, punching and kicking. Anyway, they both wound up back in jail, public nuisance, disturbing the peace, assaulting a police officer—”

  “Assaulting a police officer?”

  “The brother took a swing at Ham Tyler. You know Ham, he went nuts. He clocked one brother, then the other brother jumped in, and Charlie Boyce and I pulled them apart, but—”

  “Which brother punched Ham?”

  “Who knows? Who can tell them apart? They’re practically twins, seriously.”

  I knew it; I had made the same mistake myself just two days ago. It had been Hector’s uncle, not his father, at the cockfight.

  Jane opened her mouth in a silent grimace—“What?” I held up one finger, the new universal “wait until I’m off the phone” gesture. I had to organize this news. “Okay. You have both brothers in lockup. Who’s trying to take them away?”

  “ICE, Chief! Three guys from ICE. They have the jackets and the earpieces and everything.”

  “Who told them that the Cruz brothers were even in custody?”

  “I don’t know. Ham Tyler, maybe? He hates Mexicans. He calls them ‘spics,’ Chief. I’ve heard him.”

  “I’m on my way. Don’t do anything until I get there.”

  “But these guys want to—”

  “Stall them, Barney. Ask for the paperwork.”

  I put my phone away. Jane said, “I’ll drive you back to your car.”

  We jumped in the cab, and I slammed my door as Jane cranked a perfect two-point turn. We roared out of the dump and back up Madaket Road. “Hamilton Tyler,” I said as we passed the Ram Pasture parking lot, crowded with cars, as usual. “That punk has no business on the force.”

  “So what’s he doing there?”

  “He was hired long before I showed up, He’s like, grandfathered in.”

  “You can’t fire him?”

  “It would be tricky. He’d have to do something a lot worse than getting rough with two undocumented aliens in the booking room.”

  “Can you suspend him?”

  “The Selectmen wouldn’t like it. He’s Dan Taylor’s cousin or something.”

  She nodded. “The Taylors and the Tylers. Ham was always a nightmare. I remember he dropped a load in someone’s lunch bag one time.”

  “Dropped a load? You mean—?”

  She pulled her mouth down, shook her head, as if to deny the memory. “Yeah. But who was it? Billy Delavane would know. He stood up for the kid and Ham laid off. Billy was great, he did it quietly, nobody knew but me and Haden Krakauer.” She tapped the steering wheel with her fist. “Right. It was Lonnie Fraker’s half brother, Doug. Ham made that kid’s life a living hell until Billy stepped in. Douggie everyone called him. He left the island and never came back.”

  We were slipping off-topic. “I’ll deal with Ham Tyler later. Right now I have to think
about Immigration and Customs Enforcement.”

  “Don’t let them take Sebastian.”

  “How do I swing that?”

  She shrugged. “Just say ‘No’?”

  “Nancy Reagan would approve.”

  “I think even Ronald Reagan would approve.”

  I mulled it over. “I can make Nantucket into a Sanctuary City.”

  “They’ll take all your federal funding away.”

  “What federal funding? We spent all our bailout money. I think we repaved every road on the island. The new middle school is up and running, the hospital money is all in place and most of that was private donations, anyway. How much more can we spend?”

  She smiled. “Nantucket can always spend more.”

  “I guess.”

  We drove along. Jane turned off onto Millbrook Road, a dirt track cut-through between Madaket Road and Hummock Pond Road. It was early summer; the rich people had returned for the season, so once again there was a good chance that the lane had been graded recently, maybe even since the last rainstorm. Millbrook Road was always a gamble, but it paid off this time. It reminded me of a poem I’d written at the end of my marriage, when all the temporary fixes had failed, when we could no longer count on the counselors, and our new experimental “open marriage” had broken apart. The short-term solution to Nantucket’s dirt road problem, filling the ruts with sand and gravel, had struck me as peculiarly apposite.

  “No longer graded, but paved,” I said.

  Jane chimed in: “No longer rescued, but saved.”

  That spun me around. “What?”

  She offered a bland helpful face. “Excuse me?”

  “How do you know that poem?”

  She swerved to avoid a rabbit. “Well, Chief Kennis, that happens to be one of the only poems you ever actually published. Mulch Magazine, issue number forty-five, Autumn 2008.”

  “You googled me.”

  “I did.”

  “Yikes.”

  “I found another one, from some defunct magazine called Tesseract. ‘Because a true poem is always a four-dimensional construction.’”

  “Please.”

  “It’s such a sad poem.”

  “Mid-Life Crisis?”

  “That’s the one. Want to hear it?”

  “God, no.”

  She grinned. “Tough. I have an excellent memory.”

  Then she launched:

  “Turning forty

  Asleep by ten

  Yearning for different things

  Than other men—

  Not craving cars or travel

  Drugs or one-night stands or Zen.

  Just wondering about if and when

  Thinking about now and then—

  Scraping at this single longing

  With a pen:

  I want you to fall in love with me

  Again.”

  “That packs a lot of sad into fifty-four words.”

  “But who’s counting?”

  “Well, me.”

  “The really sad thing is what happened when I gave it to Miranda for Valentine’s Day.”

  “She didn’t like it?”

  “She hated it. She said she was the one who felt unloved. And if I wanted her to fall in love again I should try doing the dishes or folding the laundry once in a while. ‘More prose, less poetry.’”

  “Ouch.”

  “She had a point, actually.”

  Jane let that one alone, as she turned onto Hummock Pond Road.

  I went on: “It reminds me of something Sebastian Cruz said to me a couple of weeks ago. I was dropping off Carrie at the house and he was working in the yard. His wife called out the kitchen window, ‘Do you have your gardening gloves on? You should be wearing your gloves!’ He shouted, ‘Got them!’ and pulled them out of his back pocket. He put them on, looking kind of sheepish. He said, ‘I used to argue with Mirabel, but it turned out she was always right. Now I just follow orders.’”

  “He’s a good guy.”

  I nodded. “He really is. I would call him…a keeper.”

  “So let’s keep him.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  The three ICE agents were waiting for me in the booking room with Charlie Boyce. They reminded me of Lonnie Fraker’s State Police storm troopers: same crew cuts, same attitude of toxic authoritarian swagger. They wore windbreakers with the word POLICE on the back.

  I was glad to see they’d made that mistake.

  They introduced themselves with swift bone-crushing handshakes: Grimes, Shaw, and Hardesty. Over their shoulders I saw the two Cruz bothers in the main holding cell. Ramon was sitting on the bench with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. Sebastian was pacing. He had too much energy to sit still, even in jail.

  “Nice to meet you all,” I said, when we finished with the introductions. “Detective Boyce will walk you out to your car.”

  Charlie shifted from foot to foot. “Uh, Chief…I’m not sure if we should—”

  Grimes made a brusque wiping gesture with his open palm. “Relax, son. This isn’t your problem.” He swung back to me. “Just turn over the prisoners and we’ll be on our way.”

  “That’s going to be a problem, Agent Grimes. These men aren’t prisoners.”

  “They’re under arrest.”

  “They were.”

  “Wait a second—”

  “They were initially charged with misdemeanor disturbing the peace, but—”

  Grimes pointed into the cell. “That man attacked a police officer!”

  “It was an accident. Officer Tyler found himself in the middle of a family dispute. There are no hard feelings and no one’s pressing charges.”

  “Oh, yes they are!”

  Charlie stepped toward me. “Uh, Ham said he was determined to—”

  “Ham’s not doing anything. He’s in enough trouble as it is. I’ll talk to him later.” I faced Grimes—faced him off. “It was a misunderstanding, Agent Grimes. The charges will be dropped by this afternoon.”

  He shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. Until that happens, we’re legally empowered to take custody.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “Really? Are you familiar with the Priority Enforcement Procedure?”

  “What used to be called S-Comm? Yeah, I am.”

  “Then you understand the guidelines. It clearly mandates—”

  “—that you can detain convicted felons and or individuals who pose an immediate danger to the community to ICE custody. Neither of these men is a convicted felon. And neither of them poses any danger to anyone…except possibly each other.”

  “That’s for us to decide.”

  “Not yet, it isn’t. You’re not law enforcement on this island, and by the way—until you are, never show up here again with the word ‘Police’ on the back of your windbreakers. That’s impersonating a police officer. You pull that shit and people sue the town, not the federal government. You have your fun, and we have to pay the damages. People win those suits because in this country, the police are supposed to handle public safety—not the immigration system. Get the distinction?”

  “As a matter of fact, I don’t. And I see no reason to stand around listen to some local yokel lecturing me on—”

  “You wouldn’t need the lecture, if you’d paid attention in civics class. But okay, I’ll cut it short and make it simple. When you use the immigration system to enforce criminal law, you create a double standard where nothing matters but a person’s immigration status. That’s the problem, Grimes. Because in America, we still guarantee due process and equal protection for everyone. Even immigrants.’

  “Nicely put. But the fact remains. You are in violation of a forty-eight-hour hold order legally issued by ICE to this jurisdiction.” />
  “I never saw it. And I don’t have to acknowledge it.”

  “I can arrest you if you don’t.”

  “Sure. Then the case will go to the State Attorney General, he’ll file charges against ICE, and you’ll get fired.”

  “You don’t know Dave Carmichael. He’s tough on immigration.”

  “Actually, I do know him. He’s tough but he’s fair.”

  “He’d never file on us.”

  “Try him. Try it, right now. Or get out of my house.” Then came the staring contest. What Grimes didn’t understand was that by entering it he had already lost. He wasn’t going to get me to back down. He had to pull three pairs of handcuffs or walk away. Procrastinating only made him look weaker.

  He finally figured that out. He tried the traditional stymied villain’s fallback line. “This isn’t over.”

  “What is over, Grimes? What is ever over? I got divorced six years ago and I’m still putting my ex-wife’s sticky bun dough in the refrigerator to rise at five a.m., every Christmas morning. On the other hand, I don’t have to come home to her every night. That’s another important distinction for you to think about. Things don’t have to be over to be done. And we’re done.”

  I tipped my head toward the door and Charlie herded them outside.

  Sebastian was grinning when I opened the cell door. “For a candy-ass liberal who never throws a punch, you are fucking badass, pandejo. You mess with the Feds—and then you bitch-slap their stinking clichés, too! Next thing, I thought you were going to tell him his shoes came from the two-for-one table at Payless.”

  “The shoes were bad. But that’s a line I won’t cross. And speaking of clichés? The only bitch you know is your dog Daisy and you’d never slap her. So don’t call women bitches. And don’t insult men by calling them women. You have a reputation as a revolutionary populist playwright to maintain, hombre. You’ll mess that up, talking like a sexist thug.”

  “Hey, man—”

  “Don’t worry about it. Word to the wise. I’m a little on edge right now.”

  With good reason—the expected call from Dave Carmichael came as I was driving the brothers home. We had just dropped off Ramon and we were sitting in his weedy driveway off Fairgrounds Road.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing, you goddamn crazy, dumb-ass fuck-up? You’re killing me out here!”