“It’s i-c-a, not i-k-a.” Angelica sighed. “Angelica. Like Angelica Garnett.”
“Who the fuck is Angelica Garnett?”
Angelica slumped in her chair and stared morosely at the carpet while Vinny tapped on the keyboard. I looked out the window and saw Nick waiting for me on the porch, his big hands gripping the arms of a wicker chair like a man on the witness stand. He was watching something across the driveway—a couple of squirrels tussling on the grass.
“You’ve got renewals for a bunch of subscriptions to crappy literary magazines,” Vinny reported. “And there’s an e-mail here from the Richmond-Sotherbury publishing house.”
“Oh.” Angelica picked at the lace on her skirt. “What’s that one say?”
I sipped my coffee while Vinny read silently.
“Says they tried to call you but you didn’t answer.” Vinny yawned, scrolling through pages. “They want to make you an offer.”
Angelica’s back straightened slowly. She looked at the screen, then she pulled the laptop toward her. Vinny and I watched as she read the e-mail he’d opened. She seemed to read it a few times, looking away and then looking back, blinking. Her eyes narrowed, then widened, and then her mouth turned down and opened until it was a dark cave.
She hung her head down and burst into loud, heaving sobs. Vinny and I looked at each other.
“Oh my God.” I put my coffee down and went to Angelica. Vinny tried to turn his broken wheelchair, making the poorly fitted bolt clunk. “Is it bad news?”
“No, no, no.” Angelica sobbed, grabbing my shoulder as I crouched before her. “It’s—it’s—it’s—I’m being published!”
“Huh? I don’t get it.” Vinny’s lip curled. “I thought you were published. Ain’t you some kind of New York Times … fucking … award-winning … whatever-whatever?”
“I lied.” Angelica wiped furiously at her eyes with her left hand, but the tears kept coming. “No one ever asked to read my work anyway. I started telling people I was a writer a long time ago, and then I just … I just stretched it and stretched it.”
“You’re not a writer at all?” My mouth was hanging open and so was Vinny’s.
“I am a writer,” Angelica cried. “But I just … I’m not a published author. Or I haven’t ever been. I was speaking to some people once and I told them I wrote novels, and they just assumed I’d been published. And then once I’d let that lie go unchallenged, it seemed easier to maintain it than to explain. And then perhaps I … I let the fantasy go a little more. I added some awards. What’s the point in being a pretend author if you’re not going to be a successful pretend one?”
I didn’t have an answer for that.
“Writing is all I think about. It’s all I talk about!”
“We noticed,” Vinny said.
“It has been my dream since I was a little girl, and … ” Angelica broke into fresh sobs. “No one cared, so I could say what I wanted. I was just pretending.”
Angelica kept crying, and Vinny and I stared at each other, trying to take this in.
“I’ve submitted manuscripts, of course,” Angelica said. “Siobhan used to read my work. But they … they always failed. I’ve kept all my rejection letters. There are four hundred or so.”
“Four hun—” Vinny roared. I cut him off with a look. Nick came to the window to see what the wailing was about, and Susan appeared at the door to the hall, clutching her satin robe, looking alarmed.
“Richmond-Sotherbury.” Angelica moaned, covering her face with one hand. “Richmond-Sotherbury!”
“Is that good?” I asked. Vinny shrugged.
“They’re the best.” Angelica nodded. She gave a long, loud wail that could have been pure misery or unbridled joy. “They’re the best!”
She turned and fell into Vinny’s arms, and he patted her back as she cried, looking at me for help, but I didn’t have anything to offer.
I was still trying to decide if I should console or congratulate Angelica when my phone buzzed in my pocket. I answered, and Sheriff Spears spoke before I could say a word.
“There was a killing spree last night,” he said.
CHAPTER EIGHTY-EIGHT
NICK DROVE TO the VA hospital while I sat in the passenger seat and talked to Clay. The sheriff sounded colder, less emotional than I had ever heard him. I sympathized with his plight—he was unable to trust his men, and his little patch of New England was steadily growing night-marish. I followed Nick into the foyer of the hospital. The muscles between my shoulder blades were tight and hot with tension.
“You remember that woman from Addison Gilbert, the one with the crush on me?” I asked. Nick looked like he wanted to smile at the memory but my expression forbade it. “They found her dead in the hospital parking lot last night. She was shot walking to her car.”
Nick reached for a stand of information booklets but managed to stop himself before he grabbed it and smashed it to the ground. The veins in his arms rose beneath his brown skin.
“She didn’t even know anything,” Nick snapped.
“Cline might have been looking for one of his guys,” I said. “He found Christopher ‘Simbo’ Jackson in a shitty motel in Amesbury and took him out. They don’t know where Russell Hamdy is.”
“Has Clay picked Cline up?”
“He can’t,” I said. “All they’ve got is a shadowy figure on the security camera in the hospital parking lot, and they know the area has been the site of a few assaults and robberies lately. The footage is not good enough to be connected to Cline. Simbo left a suicide note. The guy put a cable tie around his own throat, or that’s how the Amesbury cops saw it.”
“What about the other guys?” Nick asked.
“Tray ‘Bones’ Ramirez has disappeared,” I said. “He and Stanley Turner split from the ambulance that picked them up after Clay beat the shit out of them. The paramedic at the scene thought Bones had internal injuries, and he was pretty sure Turner had a skull fracture and a broken arm. Bones is probably being seen to by one of the doctors on Cline’s payroll, and we both know where Turner is.”
Nick exhaled. I tried to shake off visions of Susan and me dragging Stanley Turner’s corpse out of the back of my car. If Clay didn’t find him that afternoon, I would have to call in an anonymous tip.
“What about the big guy?” Nick said. “The one whose kneecap Vinny blasted out.”
“That’s Hamdy. He went to Addison Gilbert and then they lost him,” I said.
“They lost him?”
“They literally lost him.” I nodded. “He had checked in and was waiting for surgery when he disappeared. He’s either hobbling around somewhere with a shattered knee or Cline got him too.”
Nick walked away from me, rubbing his neatly shaven head, blowing air out in angry huffs. We took the elevator to the psychiatry clinic on the third floor. Nick signed in, and then we stood in the empty waiting room. The tiles were sticky and the magazines on the low table offered exclusive pictures of Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston’s wedding.
“I can’t do this, man,” Nick said, turning to leave. “Cline’s coming for us next. Once he’s gotten rid of his old crew, he’ll assemble a new one, and we’re the only loose ends in this thing. We gotta go.”
I put a hand on his arm, stopping his progress. “You’re not going anywhere. An hour or so isn’t going to make a difference.”
“You kidding me?” Nick pushed away my hand. “Cline wrapped up half his business last night. We’re—”
“We’re fine without you for the moment,” I said. “Malone and Effie have got the house. Clay’s on the murders. I’ll stay out of trouble until you talk to the people here. Nick, you’re doing the right thing. You need this.”
“Mr. Jones?” The woman behind the front desk stepped out, holding a clipboard. Nick looked at me like he’d just been shut in the gas chamber and I was the guard about to turn the lock and walk away.
CHAPTER EIGHTY-NINE
I WASN’T WORRIED about Nick. He
was doing the right thing. I was sure he had PTSD, and now the veterans hospital would take care of him, schedule therapy, maybe put him in a support group. That had to be the hospital’s bread and butter. But as I wandered the halls, I began to feel an aching concern in my stomach. There were elderly men in wheelchairs staring out the windows at the parking lot; one was sleeping with his head at an awkward angle, the front of his shirt soiled with food stains. At a counter on the second floor, an exhausted-looking nurse was having a shouting match with a patient on crutches. She stopped to bat away a fly that had been buzzing around her face. I watched the fly go, strangely disturbed by its presence in the hospital. The smell of this place wasn’t the same nostril-tingling, disinfectant freshness of Addison Gilbert. It was faintly sour and tainted with something unmistakably biological.
I wandered the corridors, thinking about Cline, my head down, tracing the smudgy footprints of others on the linoleum. After a while I came into a hallway and witnessed another argument, a nurse trying to reason with four very large men standing outside a darkened ward.
“You have to respect visitor protocols,” she said. “We have a system here, and you have to have approval.”
I watched, my hands in my pockets. The four men were obviously military. They had the functionally muscular bodies of men who worked out several times a day, but in addition to the muscles that looked pretty, they had well-developed muscles in their hands, forearms, and necks, the kind of muscles you get only by picking up and moving heavy equipment across long distances. They were dressed in civilian workmen’s clothes that had never been worked in. Flattops you could rest a beer can on. Two of them were backing the nurse toward me without touching her, their big hands up, a moving wall of hard flesh.
“Thanks for your concern, ma’am,” one of them said. “We got it from here.”
Something seemed to tell the nurse that whatever it was, their having it was set in stone, and her protests were useless. She turned and brushed past me as she left, bringing me to the attention of the men. The nearest one met my eyes as the four of them walked back to the door, and I saw recognition flash there.
“Is there a problem, sir?” he asked.
“No problem.” I noticed a restroom door behind the wall of men. “Just want to use the restroom.”
“There’s one on the second floor.”
“I want to use that one.” I pointed. “It’s my favorite.”
“It’s out of order.” The meathead squared his shoulders. “Move on.”
Now I knew what I was dealing with. I smiled and nodded toward the door.
“Cline’s guy,” I said. “Russell Hamdy. Tell him I want to see him.”
CHAPTER NINETY
RUSSELL HAMDY TOOK ten minutes to decide whether or not he’d see me. The recognition I’d seen in one of the guys probably meant they had been briefed on people who might approach the room, and I was one of them. Russell’s military friends watched me silently from the doorway, looking from their charge to me, their eyes mean and their mouths hard. In time I was beckoned in, although no one moved to let me through, which forced me to slide between tautly stretched fabric and clouds of strong antiperspirant.
Cline’s man was sitting upright in the bed, a complicated apparatus around his bloodied and bandaged knee. His face was pale and drawn; an oxygen tube was under his nose. Russ had his hands beneath a blanket on his lap, and I knew that he was holding a loaded gun that was pointed at me.
“This is one hell of a disappearing act,” I said, looking around at the curtain pulled tightly over the window and the four empty beds. “How do the nurses feel about you giving yourself a private room?”
“They’ll do what they’re told,” he said. His words were slightly slurred, probably an effect of whatever painkiller he was on. “They don’t want my blood all over the floor any more than I do.”
“So you’re ex-military,” I said. “What’s Cline doing with an ex-military guy on his crew? I thought he only took losers and jailbirds.”
“I was a loser and a jailbird.” Russ gave a lopsided smile. “After two tours in Iraq, I was deployed to help out after the Boxing Day tsunami in Indonesia in 2004. We were pulling bodies out of the water for six weeks straight. Kids and all. That kind of shit fucks you up pretty good.”
I nodded.
“I did some things I’m not proud of, and Cline stepped in when I hit rock bottom,” Russ said. “But before all that I was a Marine. And once a Marine, always a Marine.”
The guys in the doorway stirred, wanting to give an oo-rah, perhaps, but not wanting to drop their menacing cover. I admired the setup. Russ must have called the team of military thugs from his past when Vinny popped him, knowing that if his old friends didn’t swoop in and rescue him from Addison Gilbert, Cline would come creeping in before dawn. Even if Cline knew Russ was ex-military, he’d be safe from the drug lord behind his wall of human steel, at least until he was charged and incarcerated for attacking my house. I wondered if Bess, the nurse at the triage desk, had helped the men secure a way out for this damaged soldier turned gangster. She’d have known, looking at his injuries and the state of affairs in her hospital, what she was likely dealing with. Her assistance of the man before me might have cost the woman her life.
“Have the police been here yet?” I asked Russ.
“Two undercovers.” He shifted painfully against the pillows. “And I told them the same thing I’ll tell you. I’m not talking about Cline.”
“Are you serious? You’ll go to prison for that merciless prick?” I said. “You’ve got these beefcakes standing guard to protect you from him. You know he’s coming to kill you. Why don’t you put him where he belongs and save yourself?”
“Because if I stay quiet, he might give me a chance,” Russ said. “All I can hope is that after a while he’ll see that I’m still loyal and give up trying to get at me.”
“Look at you.” I gestured to his mangled leg. “Cline did this. It’s your service to him that got you into this fix. You’ll never walk properly again. And you want back in with this guy?”
“Man.” Russ shook his head. “You’ve still got no idea who you’re dealing with.”
“So enlighten me,” I said.
“Cline’s not one of these everyday dealers who is happy to lawyer up and do a small amount of time when he gets backed into a corner,” Russ said. “He’ll kill to make sure he doesn’t ever do time.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s got more to lose than just his business,” Russ said.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
Russ just glared at me. He knew he’d said too much. I looked at his leg, fantasized about grabbing the apparatus supporting it and giving it a shake to get him to open up more. But I knew the guys at the door would turn me into a human pretzel at the slightest wrong move.
“Tell me how I can get to Cline,” I said. “I’ll solve your problem for you.”
“You won’t get near him.” Russ shook his head. “He’s cleared his house. He’s vulnerable until he gets a new crew. Cline will go to ground for a while, get some new soldiers, pop back up again. Maybe here. Maybe somewhere else.”
I felt the fury rising in my throat. “That’s bullshit. He doesn’t get to just come into my town, threaten and kill my friends, and then disappear.”
“He won’t disappear completely.” Russ smiled. “He’ll wait. In a few months, a year, maybe, he’ll come back into your life so silent and so fast you won’t know he’s there until he’s got his gun in your mouth. That’s what he does.”
A chill prickled through my body, making the hairs on my arms stand on end. I knew that the man before me had seen Cline do this, reappear in his victim’s life like a curse, never letting anyone escape him. If Cline hadn’t taken care of all his crew now, he would get to them in time. The most that Russell Hamdy could hope for was that the man would change his mind.
I realized my best chance to grab Cline was to do it now, before he
disappeared and reemerged stronger than he had been before.
My phone rang in my pocket. We had spoken of the devil, and he’d heard himself being discussed.
CHAPTER NINETY-ONE
I DIDN’T LET him speak this time. I went out of the room before I answered and took the call in the hospital hallway.
“It takes a special kind of asshole to cut down his own men at the first sign of weakness,” I said. Cline wasn’t ready for my attack. He paused, and then he laughed.
“My uncle,” he said. “He bred racing greyhounds. Have I told you this?”
I was taken aback by Cline’s friendly, reflective tone. He sounded refreshed and bright, like someone waking from a long, deep sleep. Killing had done this to him, made him cheerful. I grunted.
“I forget who I’ve told things to sometimes,” he said. “But my uncle, yeah, he had these greyhounds. I was always curious about them, being as I was a kid and an animal lover. I wanted to pet the dogs, but they were vicious, hysterical, easily spooked things. He made them that way. A good dog will run fast primarily because it wants to catch and kill the rabbit up ahead, but if you add a terror of what’s behind it, the motivation is double. These dogs spent their lives trapped between what they wanted and what they feared. You could see the whites of their eyes all the time.”
I thought about Cline’s guys standing outside his house, so ready to jump at anything that threatened their master. They were vicious purebreds trapped between fear of him and desire for the life he provided.
“Are you telling me this for a reason?” I snapped.
The Inn Page 20
