“Plenty, but don’t.”
“Okay, okay,” she said covering herself. “But lock the damn door. I’m going back to sleep.”
The ride to my apartment was a wrestle between relief and guilt. I had no intention of spending the night in any car, but the thought of more intimacy raised a sweat. I didn’t regret clearing space, just my inability to clear it honestly.
By the time I roused myself off the couch I’d already blown any possibility of picking up Lou and Lauren at the Hacienda. If I offed the shower I could catch them at the end of their pre-planned brunch. It was nip and tuck, but nip won. If it hadn’t, I’da been tucked on my tuchas all day long.
As it was, I got to the restaurant just in time to see Lou at the cash register. This time they drove through a number of small towns stopping along the way at different parks and ocean views. I hung in the distance though there were times when the Cherokee’s erratic town-hopping had me playing catch-up. When late in the afternoon they finally wound up at the Magnolia train station, I was exhausted.
This had to be one of my perverse days because there was no other reason to watch their farewell. Oblivious again to any passersby, their talk was punctuated with hugs and kisses. I knew the scene was supposed to leave me soft and mushy, but, but, but.
I should have scrammed when the train approached, but all I did was toss the binocs onto the back seat. Maybe I was trying to justify my lie to Boots, or maybe I was reluctant to return to the couch. Either way, I decided to see where Lauren went after Lou boarded the train.
A part of me hoped she would dash into another man’s arms.
Lauren didn’t dash anywhere. Instead, she drove slowly through the coastal towns as if reviewing her weekend. When she turned toward home I kept following, surprised to see her pull off onto Shore Road, park, and leave the Cherokee. I pulled the bulky sedan into a small rest area and watched Lauren hop a fence and stroll down a dirt path through the thick woods toward the ocean.
Maybe she was meeting someone. I waited a good three before following. I hung the binoculars around my neck, carefully hauled my aging body over the same fence, and followed the same path. At first I couldn’t find her. Then I saw a dark form crawling on the scabrous face of a steep cliff which dropped straight down to the raging ocean.
Once I recovered my breath and focused my view of the harsh, ragged rocks and crashing waves, I watched Lauren grapple her way to a narrow ridge that jutted over the roiling water. When I aimed the glasses she was sitting on the ledge, her light windbreaker pulled tight against the ocean’s splatter. As if on cue she turned her head and stared in my direction. I was too well hidden to be seen but I stepped deeper into the woods anyway. The next I looked, Lauren had turned east, knees up, chin on hand, staring into the darkening horizon.
The two of us held our positions for about twenty minutes before Lauren headed back toward her car. At the same moment my neck hairs prickled and I suddenly felt watched. I quickly scoured the cliffs then retreated into the woods, gun drawn, tense and ready for a confrontation. I quietly pushed my way through a number of bushes until I wound up at a small, protected clearing with trampled sticks and grass. Right in the middle of the area it looked as if someone had rolled a rotted tree trunk to use as a seat.
I rummaged for clues on my hands and knees until my back stiffened and I realized I wouldn’t know a clue if I saw one. A downside of buying my license, city living, or both. So instead of playing in the dirt, I carefully toured the woods hoping to surprise anyone who might be in the vicinity.
I found no one but couldn’t shake the hair stand. I returned to the sedan, drove relatively close to the Hacienda, staked, and betrayed my morning lie to Boots.
Though the feeling never returned, for the first time, I actually began worrying that Lauren was onto something. Worried again that the trashed car hadn’t occurred in a vacuum. But hard as I tried, I couldn’t just figure her refusal to speak to the police or her inability to notice anything unusual.
By 4am I was home blearily staring at more reruns. Not much choice—nothing new is ever on at that time. . The coffee table in front of the couch held an overflowing ashtray, empty beer bottles, and my dope pipe. Sleep was coming, but I wasn’t exactly getting there on my own.
Unfortunately, the next day began no better than the last one ended. Worse. Instead of worry and depression, I awoke with a brain-banging mad, dragged from a dreamless, dry-mouth sleep by the relentless shrill of the landline. In self-defense I grabbed the receiver, ready to curse.
An unfamiliar voice spoke quickly, impatiently. “Mr. Jacobs? Mr. Jacobs?”
“Hold on,” I growled, swallowing my swear. I swung my legs off the bed and lit a cigarette. Nothing like a brushfire in a desert, but I needed help restraining my temper.
“It’s Jacob, without an ‘s,’” I finally said, eyeing leftover water in a smudged drinking glass. I couldn’t remember if it was last night’s or from the night before. “Who’s this?”
“Ted Biancho. I was wondering if we might meet?”
“How did you get my number?” I lifted the glass and killed the water. As soon as he told me his title, I surveyed the room, irrationally worrying about hiding all my dope. Ted Biancho was the Police Chief of Lauren Rowe’s town.
“Is this a formal invitation?”
Biancho chuckled. “You’ve lived in the city too long. We’re more easygoing up here.”
Easygoing or not, there clearly was no room for refusal. “And what time am I expected?”
“Whenever is convenient. Let me give you directions or you’ll miss it.”
“That would be a shame, huh?”
“Not a shame, a mistake.”
I stubbed out my smoke. “I’ll get a pencil.”
No more sleep for this head hurting weary. No comfortable breakfast of caffeine, nicotine, and newspapers. No sit-ups, pushups, or long loping laps around Roberto Clemente` Field. What the hell, the older I’d become the less I liked to run. But nor was I thrilled to be on the receiving end of an invitation from a town’s top cop.
Although the morning was ruined, I stubbornly refused to rush. Shower, smokes, and caffeine after all. It was past twelve when I picked up my car from Manny’s, long past one when I drove into Lauren’s tiny town. Hopefully the office closed early.
If I hadn’t taken the Chief’s directions I might have made the mistake he warned me about. It was difficult to imagine a more unlikely looking police station. The rambling New England farmhouse had been added to—clumsily—at least twice during its lifetime. One addition was tacked to the back, the other stretched at a right angle from the middle of the main structure. All the connected buildings were painted a pleasant pale yellow, effectively masking its bulk. The only indication that it was headquarters was a small wooden plaque hanging on a hook next to the front door.
I stood on the wooden porch, finished my smoke, and tossed it onto the sidewalk. Uniforms never failed to strum my anxiety and an invite from a heavy Blue had me checking pockets, making certain I wasn’t accidentally holding.
I took a deep breath, walked through the screen door and found myself in a huge white room, completely empty save a large desk and chair butting up to an arch on the far side. Someone had taken decorating lessons from Mussolini.
I was halfway across the oak floor when a slim, medium height, dark-complected figure with close cropped brown hair appeared from the back and leaned against the arch’s frame. I stopped as he took a bite of an apple, chewed, swallowed, and pitched the core into a pail.
“You’re Jacobs?” he asked in a soft, polite voice. He was in his late thirties—an age I hadn’t seen in quite a while. No uniform, although his pleated green chinos and yellow Izod were close to an official something.
“Jacob,” I reminded. “You’re Chief Biancho?” I walked close enough to see his sharp features. Despite the languid pose, his intense dark eyes scraped my face and scratched my nerves.
“Thanks for stopping by.�
��
“Thanks for the directions. You get hit during the night?” With me, banjo nerves usually came loaded with an open mouth.
Razor thin lines crossed Biancho’s smooth forehead. “What?”
I waved my arm around the empty room. “Some terrorist steal all your stuff?”
He smiled briefly. “I told you we’re a small operation.”
“Small is different than empty.”
“Just a ‘mom and pop’ office with more pops than moms,” Biancho said, a touch less pleasantly. “We don’t use this room. People generally come through the side door.”
“At least you don’t have to rent a hall for the Police Ball.”
Biancho smiled tightly, pushed himself off the frame, and turned his back. His alligatored knit back.
I followed it through the rest of the great hall into a long corridor that led to the additions. The Chief waited until I caught up before heading toward a plain, but large and comfortable, office.
“You usually man the fort alone?” I asked before sitting on a small leather loveseat across from a floral upholstered wing chair. On the other side of the room there was a neatly kept mahogany desk with a framed photograph of a beautiful redhead. Dum dums to silver bullets, we were talking wife.
Biancho shook his head as he sat down in the pretty chair. “Deborah called in sick. I was planning to send her on errands when you arrived, anyway.”
I tried to ignore my sudden shot of panic. “It’s good to be Chief.”
“Pretty good. Got me pegged as a regular small town shit-kicker, don’t you?”
I couldn’t stop wagging my tongue. “Not yet.”
Biancho’s mouth moved but I couldn’t tell if it was a smile or swear. “This morning you asked where I got your number.”“After you told me who you were I figured the phone company.”
“I went through your car yesterday when it was parked near Shore Road and ran across your ticket. Bad habit to leave your wallet in the trunk. Trunks get popped all the time.” Biancho eyes bore into mine.
I hoped he didn’t see how fucking stupid I felt. I’d spent half the goddamn night in a car worrying about nothing. While Biancho’s b&e didn’t explain the trampled grass in the woods, it probably did explain the “feeling.” Still, something about that campsite continued to disturb me.
I raised my brows. “This time it was the good guys who did the popping.” Now that I knew he’d been in my car, I felt a mixture of anger and alarm; I couldn’t remember whether I had finished all my weed before I’d followed Lauren out to the rocks.
“There’s no reason to worry, Mr. Jacob. We’re on the same side. When I called your police department to check on you, an interesting thing happened.”
“Everybody cheered?”
“No cheers, but your name caught their attention. It took a couple of hand-offs but I finally spoke to a mutual acquaintance. Washington Clifford. They called him your “babysitter.”
Whatever wind left in my sail escaped. Washington Clifford was a vicious son of a bitch who more than once Buddy Rich’d my body.
“I’m sure he gave you a balanced report,” I said sarcastically. Clifford lived a sanctioned life between the official cracks of Boston’s Police Department. My dislike was matched only by fear. Clifford’s dislike was undiluted, despite situations where we had helped each other out.
“You leap to conclusions awfully fast, Mr. Jacob.”
“Why don’t you just call me Matt? Mister makes me feel even older than I am.”
“Sure. Clifford was complimentary.”
“Why not? I make him feel like Mohammed Ali during his prime.” I angrily reached into my pocket and pulled out a cigarette. “You own an ashtray?”
Biancho sprung to his feet, walked over to a cabinet, and returned with a fancy glass bowl.
“Okay,” I said. “So you talked to Clifford. Let’s stop dicking around. What is it you want?”
“Information.” He saw my puzzled look. “Let me explain. This is a small town. We only get large in the summer. The residents like it that way.”
“You mean the rich folks like it that way, don’t you?”
“That just about covers everyone.”
“I hope they pay you well for protecting all that wealth.”
“I do all right,” he said tersely, “but here’s the rub. While there is concern for safety and security, the town doesn’t want to feel like an armed camp.”
“Don’t worry, they’ll spring for crime lights when the. Jihadists show up. ”
Biancho frowned. “Clifford told me about your mouth.”
I raised my hand in front of my face. “That my cue to shut up?”
“Just the opposite. You see, people talk and I listen. That’s how I keep a handle on security.”
“Well, I’m not from up here and I don’t like serious talk.”
Biancho ignored me. “People have been gossiping about Lauren Rowe and her new boyfriend. When rumors start, I keep my eyes open.”
“And I rolled right in front of them?”
“You’re pretty good. I’ve never seen anyone stay as far away from a subject as you and still do a decent job.”
I didn’t know what he knew or whether he’d spoken to Lauren. Stonewall time.
“What subject is that, Chief?”
“Please, Jacob, I keep hoping we can work together. I know your father has been seeing Ms. Rowe so I understand your interest. But I won’t have you tailing any of my town’s residents. I just can’t allow it.”
In Biancho’s head, one and one added up to three. It gave me some wriggle room and I decided to squirm. “Father-in-law, Chief. I’m impressed, you give good security. I can back off, but it would help if you gave me some idea who he’s dealing with.”
“I thought you might ask,” he said, nodding his short-haired head. “Now you see why I wanted us to meet alone? Chatter flies around this town.”
The telephone interrupted and Biancho walked to his desk. “Yes. Of course I will. No bother at all. Thanks for calling.”
After he replaced the receiver, Biancho leaned his tight body against the desk. “Quality of life, Matt. That’s what we worry about up here. Apparently some teenagers broke a few bottles on our public tennis courts.”
“Easily remedied,” I replied. “Find the bastards and shoot ‘em.”
Biancho chuckled. “Not my style. Excuse me for a moment. I’m going to send someone to clean up the mess. Tonight I’ll talk to the boys and their parents.” Biancho stretched and took a few steps toward the door.
“If you find out who they are,” I said to his back.
He took a few more steps then looked over his shoulder. “This isn’t the big city, Jacob. I already know.”
I smoked while Biancho raised the quality of life in his corner of the world. His comment about my interest in Lauren Rowe and his contact with Washington Clifford fueled my curiosity, so, when the young, good-looking Chief returned, I planned to prod. He couldn’t bust me for pushing, I’d already cleaned my pockets. If I had to, I could always tell him I was working for the person he was trying to protect. The Chief seemed a whole lot more amenable to listening than Washington Clifford.
Biancho strode back into the room.
I stayed silent until he was seated. “Look, Chief, I don’t want to hoof after your flock. It’s my time and dime. But it would go a long way if you told me something about the Rowe’s.”
Biancho studied me as a small smile softened his intense face. “Your father-in-law and Lauren Rowe have been seeing each other for a while. A little late off the mark, aren’t you?”
“Part of my charm,” I paused, “late or not, I’m not comfortable letting him walk into something ice cold.”
Biancho wasn’t buying altruism so I tried avarice. “He and I are partners in a couple of buildings.”
The Chief’s eyes bore into me again. “Washington Clifford told me you’re stubborn. I’ll talk with you now so that stubbornness doesn’t get
you in trouble later, understand?”
I nodded, though I’d already begun considering a talk with Clifford myself.
“This has always been a wealthy, right-wing town. In the seventies, Lauren and Paul Brown moved into the old Fuller house. Let’s say they didn’t exactly fit into the community.”
“Too liberal? Not rich enough?”
“Everything must have gone into the house and this was long before the boom. The family had trouble making ends meet. Around here people buy from local stores and run tabs. Paul and Lauren fell behind to everybody.”
“That’s a credit card society for you.”
He ignored me. “Their house became a quick cure center for anything from war to herpes. For a while the place functioned as a commune.”
“Sex and drugs?”
His lips tightened. “Rumors.”
“Rumors about both Paul and Lauren?”
“Most people didn’t think Paul had much choice. Look, in this village, if you aren’t rich or don’t service ‘em, no one understands why you’re here.”
He noticed his own bitter undertone and quickly corrected. “Lauren Rowe has changed over the years,” Biancho said impassively, “but around here she’s still an outsider.”
“And her husband?”
“He never had her reputation.”
“And Lauren still makes people uncomfortable?”
Biancho shook his short hair while I lit another cigarette. “She’s had problems with her sons and that hasn’t helped,” he said flatly.
“You like the lady, don’t you, Chief?”
“My job is to protect everyone who lives here, Jacob,” his voice neutral.
“And you take your job seriously.”
“Part of my charm. It also keeps me employed. Lauren Rowe could live to be a hundred but people will still think of her as a misfit,” he added testily.
“Sounds personal.”
His thin features were pinched, but his voice calm. “I don’t like private detectives who put words in my mouth.”
I understood the warning. “Where are you from, Chief?”
The Complete Matt Jacob Series Page 91
