by Joe Clifford
“Bumped into the table.”
“You were passed the fuck out. Been standing out there for fifteen minutes. Could hear you snoring down the block.”
That was rich. Charlie Finn had no business commenting on anyone’s snoring.
Fisher grunted, “Yo,” before blowing past. He never waited for invitations. He had his leather satchel with him. Anytime I saw him, he carted the man purse along. His big bag of secrets.
“Why are you guys here?” I asked, even though I knew the answer.
Fisher began extracting papers from his handbag, ignoring the question like it was so beyond obvious he wasn’t condescending an answer. “You have any coffee?” Then before I could respond: “Charlie, find some coffee. We got work to do.”
“Fisher came up this morning,” Charlie said. “He told me about Tom Gable’s accident. I know how much he means to you. I’m sorry, man.”
“Yeah, me, too.” I pointed at the cupboard. “Coffee’s in there. I’m out of milk.”
“That’s okay,” Fisher replied, perusing his papers. “I like my coffee like I like my facts. Fast, black, cold.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
He looked over. “It does if you think about it.”
“No one drinks iced coffee in this weather. It’s twenty degrees outside.”
“Tell me about it. It’s freezing balls up in this place. Don’t you have a heater?”
“Yeah, Fisher, I do. But heat is expensive.”
“Maybe you should take the money this Biscoglio is offering.” Fisher snickered. “You’re on the job regardless. And that offer is the key to this whole thing.”
“What whole thing?”
“Try to keep up, Porter. Why you’re being set up.”
“Who says I’m being set up?” Sure, I’d suspected the same thing but that didn’t mean I had to lend credence to Fisher’s goofy theories.
“I do,” Fisher said, talking over my head. “How we coming with that coffee?”
“On it, Captain.” Charlie mocked a salute.
“Good. Now let’s get down to brass tacks. Have a seat.”
I hated taking orders from the pipsqueak, but I sat down.
“After we got off the phone last night, I got to work, and—”
“What is it you do for work these days?” I knew Fisher had quit the insurance racket, and judging by his out-there, raggedy appearance, no one was hiring his mangy ass for a traditional nine-to-five.
Fisher reached into his bag of tricks, plucking a thin pamphlet, one step up from those stapled jobs bedraggled poets try to sell you outside the coffee shop, clearly homemade.
“Most of what I do is online,” he said, proudly presenting his product. “I print out a few issues. Pass them to folks at Price Chopper, libraries, take the fight to the streets.”
I unfurled the paper. Occam’s Razor. Typical wackadoodle conspiracy theories: “10 Truths About GMOs, Monsanto, And What Big Pharma Doesn’t Want You To Know”; “We Are On The Cusp of Interstellar Travel—And Why The Government Won’t Tell You”; “Proof Jet Fuel Doesn’t Burn Steel.” Strap on the tin foil helmet and buckle in for a bumpy ride. All the bylines by one author: Fisher. I glanced back at Charlie, who shrugged.
“Don’t look at him, Porter, like I’m inconveniencing you with some truth.”
Just what I needed, help from a conspiracy nut and a thirty-five-year-old alcoholic who used a bicycle as his sole mode of transportation.
Fisher dragged his laptop from his shoulder bag, flipped the lid, and spun it around.
“What do you want me to do with that?”
“Just look. Page is bookmarked.”
The website had the same name, with amateur flashing graphics and visual aesthetic culled straight from ColecoVision, circa 1985.
“What’s Occam’s Razor even mean?”
Charlie brought two mugs of coffee and set them on the table. “Mind if I grab a beer, Jay?”
“Occam’s Razor means the most obvious answer is usually the right one.”
“Great.”
Fisher tapped the screen of his laptop, encouraging me to read his ridiculous ramblings.
“I have no interest in this lunatic fringe horseshit, okay? I dealt with that crap when Chris was alive.” My dead junkie brother did a lot of meth, and that drug in particular turns your brain inside out, unleashes a hall of never-ending mirrors, multiplication charts reflected back on itself, all numbers irrational.
But Fisher wasn’t pointing at an article. He was pointing at an ad. A commercial for stomach ailments accompanied by a picture of a vivisected rock, innards red, as if it were bleeding. The banner underneath: “The Secret Cure For All Your Stomach Woes.” His entire website was covered with similar ads.
“Know how much companies pay to advertise on my website?”
“I don’t know how computers work.”
“I do. So shut the fuck up. Remember last time I saw you I said I was taking journalism classes?”
“Sort of.”
“I got an Associate’s.”
“Good for you.”
“Laugh it up. But my blog gets five thousand hits a day. On average. Which means businesses want to advertise with me. I charge five bills for a tiny ad like that one.” He pointed at a small picture of an engorged tick. “I make more money selling ads and writing these conspiracy pieces than I ever did at NorthEastern Insurance.” He stared me dead on. “And I guarantee I make more money than you.”
He jabbed a hand over the table and snared the brown paper bag Tom gave me the other day outside Julie’s.
“Do you mind?”
He unwrapped the thermostat and auto-lighting kit. “Why haven’t you installed this? Your apartment wouldn’t feel like the goddamn Arctic.”
“It hooks up via the Internet. I’m not good with that shit.”
“You have Wi-Fi?”
“Jenny made me get it.”
“What’s your network name and password?”
“Some long-ass number. It’s on the fridge.”
He hopped up, snatching the password from under a magnet, fishing a screwdriver and clippers from my junk drawer.
I pointed at his newspaper articles. Bright, scintillating titles, which were all variations of “What they don’t want you to know . . .”
“You don’t really believe these things?”
“Some of it I do. Some I . . . embellish.” Fisher was at my thermostat, prying panels. “Point is, beats a day job. I’m my own boss, I’m making bank, and I’ve learned a thing or two about digital investigation, which is ninety-nine percent of the game these days. Charlie, hand me that Nest and Osram unit.”
Charlie followed orders. Fisher threaded a ribbon cable, snapping the plate in place. An LCD glowed. He plunked down at the computer, pecking away. Charlie drank his beer, leaning against the stove. When my friend first walked in, he’d seemed twitchy, on edge, like his skin were a too-tight suit. A couple sips of beer and he was right as rain.
“Have you searched Ethan Crowder online?” Fisher asked me.
“A little.”
“You might want to start taking this a little more seriously. Give me your cell.”
“Why do you need my cell?”
“Lights and heater hook up to it. It’s called an app. What century do you live in?”
I keyed in my passcode, Aiden’s birthday, and handed him the phone.
“So, Crowder,” Fisher prompted. “Talk to me. What’d you find?”
“I told you. Not much. Silver-spoon trust-fund kid. Inherited the company from his father. Used to be a bit of a player. Had a habit of knocking women around. Mended his violent tendencies, or at least found a way to keep them out of the spotlight. Learned about an ex-wife in Wyoming. Got Joanne’s address in Coal Creek. Didn’t get much further than that.”
“What did your unexpected guest have to say?”
“Oh you mean Vin Biscoglio? The guy you’ve never met? Know nothing about? And
definitely did not refer to me?”
“Don’t be a smart-ass, Porter.”
“Works for Ethan Crowder. Says Crowder’s estranged wife, Joanne, had their sixteen-year-old son, Phillip, shipped off to a radical rehab in Middlesex. Overreaction to pot and pills. Gave me the name of a place. Rewrite Interventions.”
“You call the rehab? Talk to Joanne Crowder? Have you done any legwork?”
“I told you. I haven’t had a lot of time.”
Fisher flipped me my phone. “Real simple. The heater and lights will monitor your usage, get accustomed to your schedule, automatically dim, adjust, turn the heat down when you aren’t here. Tap that app.”
“Why do I need to automatically dim lights if I’m not here? I barely use the heat, period.”
“This shit saves money. Think about your friends. No one wants to freeze their nuts off when they visit. Now I suggest you get your ass up to Joanne Crowder’s.”
“If it were that easy, why wouldn’t Biscoglio have already done that? This whole thing stinks. Why come to me at all?”
Fisher placed one finger on his nose, the other pointing at me as if we were playing a game of charades.
“I’m not taking the money.”
“I didn’t say to take the money. But you have to take the job.”
“I already have a job.”
“And now your boss is laid up in a hospital.”
“And the cops suspect you put him there,” Charlie said.
I glared over my shoulder at Charlie.
“Don’t shoot the messenger,” Fisher said. “Our best defense is a good offense.”
“Turley knows me better than to think I’d hurt Tom.” I didn’t mention the letter, which would further murk already muddy views.
“Unless Tom doesn’t make it, and they can’t find anyone else to pin the rap on.”
The way Charlie said that scared me. Of course, I knew I had nothing to do with Tom’s attack. The truth would come out. Eventually. Unless it didn’t because Tom died with it. Facts were facts, true or not, and that letter leaving me his business could convince a jury. The way things stood, they had enough evidence to arrest me now, which invited its own mess. Exonerated didn’t mean squat; any legal action would drain my limited resources. I bypassed the coffee for a beer, too. I needed to refill my prescription.
“Ask yourself this,” Fisher said. “Why wasn’t Ethan, rich and powerful as he is, able to get custody?”
“One, they aren’t divorced.”
“All the more reason the boy should be with him.”
“Maybe he doesn’t want custody?” I hadn’t contested with Jenny. “If they’re headed for a divorce, judges tend to side with the mother.”
“For a mere mortal. Ethan Crowder is royalty.”
“How many times has the dude been married?” Charlie asked.
“Two,” replied Fisher. “Don’t know about number one, but he was smart enough to get a pre-nup this go-round.”
“Live and learn.”
“Except he’s still paying out the nose to Joanne,” Fisher said. “A lot of money to a woman he supposedly hates. And before you say he’s providing like a good father should, Crowder treats people like possessions. He has a long history of violence against women. He’d be fucking Joanne six ways to Sunday. If he could.”
“Then why isn’t he? Maybe the charges against him are bullshit. Pissed-off exes lie. Wouldn’t be the first time.”
“Oh, Ethan smacked these women around. Black eyes, broken bones. There are hospital records, if you dig deep enough. The guy has real rage issues.”
“And you know all this how?”
Fisher shook his head, slow and full of pity. He pointed at the laptop, like every answer was contained within that tiny machine. Who knew? Maybe it was.
He began scrolling webpages. “Let’s get started.”
“Doing what?”
“Coming up with a strategy.” Fisher closed his computer and took off the glasses he didn’t need, staring me down with those beady eyes of his. “We need to find the boy.”
“I’m not interested in doing Ethan Crowder’s bidding.” I grabbed my new winter coat from the back of the chair and snagged another beer for the road.
At the door, I turned around. “I appreciate you both stopping by. I know you’re looking out for me. But I am not taking on any ‘case,’ especially one I can’t get paid for. Regardless of whoever turned Biscoglio on to me—” I made sure to look at Fisher when I said that last part “—I don’t see how beating Tom Gable senseless connects to a missing teen. And that is what I care about. Finding who attacked my boss.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE CLEARING HOUSE was a couple hours south of Ashton, all the way to Moultonborough and Lake Winnipesaukee. The lake saw a lot of tourist action, making it a better location for an auction house than Ashton. Getting there was a headache. Around the mountain, down the 93, over the 113, tracing the shoreline halfway to Wolfeboro. Too much time alone. Too much time to stew in my own juices.
If Turley were doing his job instead of harassing me, he’d have taken a harder look at Owen Eaton, who had as much of a motive as I did, maybe more. Tom goes down, his main competition is gone. Freddie sells the business, she’s not waiting around until I scrounge up the capital. Owen had better credit, the bigger name. Banks would line up around the block to loan the guy money. If he didn’t already have the cash on hand. My chances were a long shot to begin with. And that was before Freddie blamed me for her husband’s death.
I knew I could be a stubborn sonofabitch and that I wasn’t the easiest guy to be around, especially when the heat was on. If I were the sentimental type, I’d say it was cool having friends like Charlie and Fisher who had my back. But while I loved Charlie like a brother, Fisher bugged the hell out of me. Just being around him irritated me, like slow-flying flies hovering above a dirty sink. Which made me a lousy person, I knew, because Fisher tried to be my friend. At thirty-four, I didn’t want any more of them. Friends, I mean. People who demanded my time. When I was younger, I was always up for a party, going down to the reservoir, drinking life to the lees, like this poem I read in high school. I don’t remember who wrote it but that line always stuck with me, this idea that life was meant to be lived. Go big or go home. It’s the kind of crap you believe in high school because you aren’t going to settle. No compromise, you are going to have it all. Then you hit a certain age, and you don’t want to be awake after ten o’clock.
Before Aiden was born, Jenny bought a bunch of baby books, strategically placing them around the apartment for me to read. My wife really wanted to bring up our boy right. Titles like How to Raise a Strong Sensitive Boy. How’s that even possible? You can’t be strong and sensitive. They tell you that you can. But you can’t. It’s a lie. And that’s the thing with all these platitudes they shove down your throat—they’re all lies.
Most of the information in these baby books was common sense—set firm but caring limits, let the child know actions have consequences, love, logic, that kind of thing. There was one passage, though, that really resonated, like that drinking-life-to-the-lees poem. It was this bit about teen angst. Even though I was thirty-four, a huge part of me was still stuck at sixteen. This one baby book—I can’t even remember the name—maintained teen angst stemmed from the realization you’d been lied to growing up. Like a few weeks ago with Aiden. He’d gotten into trouble at school, and Jenny wanted me to talk to him. So I took him out for pizza and ice cream, my dad money move. He was slow to warm up, which is another part that sucks about being a part-time dad. Every time I’d see my son, I’d have to prime the parental pump again, re-win his trust. Anyway, he’d gotten into trouble at school because he didn’t share. Kindergarten is big on sharing. Aiden didn’t want to share, and so he got a time-out, which is how they punish kids these days.
At the restaurant, I said, “Aiden, why didn’t you want to share? Sharing is fun.” I was trying to teach him a valuable life less
on, be a role model.
My son stared across his pepperoni pizza and said, “No, it’s not.”
And I thought about that. Fuck, he was right. Sharing isn’t fun. It’s a pain in the ass, a compromise none of us wants to make except for the fact that we are all stuck on this spinning blue orb together. It might be necessary, but it sure as fuck isn’t fun. Why was I telling him it was?
That was the point of this book, how as parents we tell our children the way the world is supposed to be. Shit like sharing is fun, and if you work hard enough you can be anything you want to be, and it’s what’s on the inside that counts, money doesn’t buy happiness. Then we hit sixteen and realize we’ve been lied to. Poor people get scraps. Fat people get made fun of. The richest and the prettiest get all the spoils. Our entire lives we’ve been lied to by the people we trusted most. And it pisses us off. Most move on. I never got over that. Which I recognized at my age was counterproductive. How much do you cling to your vision of the way the world should be in the face of mounting evidence that it’s anything but? Going down with a sinking ship ceases being heroic when land is in sight, a stone’s throw away. I’d begun to suspect my moral compass was seriously broken.
Pulling into the sprawling Clearing House parking lot, I felt like I was hitting the mall at Christmastime. On non-auction days, we were lucky to draw half a dozen window-shoppers. People on their way to somewhere else who’d stop by on a whim because they’d seen our sign from the Turnpike and thought it might be fun to look at a couch.
Midday, the Clearing House was packed with families, shopping carts rolling in and out revolving doors, a sea of big-screen televisions, chandeliers, gigantic artwork. I had to circle the lot twice to find a space.
Out front, big red banners boasted sales in between the inflatable wacky wavers, long arms berserking wild in the wind.
My son, Aiden, had a fear of dolls and dummies. Jenny was terrified of squirrels. I didn’t have any phobias, other than ending up the same man I was now. But, Christ, those wacky wavers freaked me out.
This current sale was for Cyber Monday, which made no sense. I thought the whole point of that one was online deals. Didn’t matter. It was a ruse. A new sale would highlight whatever bullshit holiday landed next on the calendar. Every day is a holiday in America. Presidents’ Day. Arbor Day. Fucking Feast of the Immaculate Conception. Next week Owen Eaton would be knocking off 40 percent to commemorate Pan American Aviation Day.
