by Joe Clifford
“Yeah. It sorta does.”
“Not you, too—”
“Despite what you think about me, Porter, I don’t hate you. I think you act like a conceited jerk, like your shit don’t stink, but I don’t hate you. You haven’t had it easy. With your mom, dad. Chris. Jenny, Aiden. I also happen to think you are a talented guy.”
“Talented? At what? Moving shit in a truck?”
“I remember those stories you used to write in high school. Charlie would get your letters from Concord, pass them around English class. We’d bust a gut.”
“High school was a long time ago.”
“Tell me about it.” Fisher tightened the hair bun atop his head. “And I didn’t ask when Tom left the letter. I asked when he wrote it.”
“Wrote, left. What difference does it make? They found it the morning he went to meet me.”
“It makes a difference because he could’ve written that letter years ago, for all you know. He’s always liked you, right? Would it be that weird if one night, after a few drinks, Tom writes an addendum, says if the unexpected happens, he wants you to have first shot at the business?”
“Yes, it would be pretty fucking weird.”
“You know a sealed letter is basically a will?”
“Bullshit.”
“Dude, you worked in insurance, too.”
“For about a week.”
“Trust me. I worked that shell game for years. And, yeah, a sealed, dated letter serves as a makeshift will, and saves you about six hundred bucks in probate costs. People do it all the time.”
“Still doesn’t explain the timing or attack. Tom writes a do-it-yourself will, then someone breaks into his house? Leaves the note where Freddie can find it, before trying to kill the guy? To frame me?” I made an okay sign with raw digits. “That makes sense.”
“None of this makes sense, man. But you need to start asking the right questions. Was the letter dated? One page? Part of a page? Who did know about it? You said Tom was in the process of rearranging his home office, right? That letter could’ve fallen out of a box. You’re sure the envelope was properly sealed? And not steamed open?”
“How the hell should I know?” I shook him off, waiting for fat-ass Turley to lumber back with the cutters. “I know you’re trying to help, but you’re not.” I also knew Fisher was right. I did act like a self-centered prick sometimes. I felt like I gave enough to this world, had a firm grasp on how everyone should act, and if they acted that way, this world would be a better place. Which is pretty much the definition of a self-centered prick.
Turley came huffing back, hoisting the cutters above his head like he’d just won the Most Improved Swimmer Award at Weight Watchers Camp.
“Give me that,” I said, swiping the cutters. I dropped to a knee. With one good chomp, I bit through the steel.
I rolled up the garage door.
We all stood there, seeing the same thing.
CHAPTER TWELVE
WHICH WAS NOTHING. As in we’d been robbed, cleaned out, hit. The entire space, top to bottom, bare. Might as well have dusted and vacuumed the place for us, too.
“There was a lot of stuff in there?” Turley asked.
“Packed to the hilt. Mostly merchandise from the auction Thanksgiving night. Sofas, chandeliers, carpets. A lot of furniture. But some other shit, too. Couple empty filing cabinets. Box of tools.” I paused. “Old hard drives.”
“Was the furniture that expensive?”
“There were good pieces, sure, but nothing so out-of-this-world awesome someone would go through all this hassle to get it.”
Turley looked up and saw the cameras.
“I’m hoping the footage shows something, too,” I said. “Already called the guy who owns the property, Yu Chen. Waiting for him to call back.”
“Wouldn’t count on it,” Turley said.
“You know him?”
“No. I mean, no wires running from the cameras. They’re not working. Purely for show.”
“What about wireless?” I asked, then realized how unlikely given the spotty reception up here, my fleeting hope of exoneration gone as fast.
“Doubt it. Tom get a cut-rate on this place?”
“Tom doesn’t skimp on security.”
“Even the doors,” Turley said, inspecting the frame, slipping his fingers along the edge. “They look heavy, but you can jimmy the latch, slip it off the rollers with a claw hammer or crowbar. That’s how they got in.” He pointed at dented metal rims.
Turley walked up and down the alley, checking other pods for the same telltale signs, shaking his head. “You already called the owner?”
“I told you I did.”
“You can ask about wireless security when he phones back. But I’d be surprised.” Turley gestured toward the cameras. “Plastic crap, novelty. Used to be able to get them in the back of magazines. Now you got hundreds of websites hawking this garbage. Pop in a battery, light turns red. Better than nothing I guess. Might scare away some stupid junkie. Seeing more and more of ’em these days.” He readjusted his hat. “Want to follow me down to the station, fill out a report?”
“Will it do any good?”
“Doubt it,” he admitted. “Not with a heist this big. If you want to give me a list of the items, I’ll put a call out. Have my boys check the pawnshops and secondhand furniture outlets along the Turnpike. Might get lucky.”
“Sure, I can do that.” I already knew what it would yield: a whole lot of nothing. This wasn’t drug addicts or garden-variety theft. Whoever had targeted our pod had done so for a reason. Someone had been looking for something specific. Out-of-this-world awesomeness aside, I could only think of one thing: those computers. I’d read this book before. Except when Chris had gotten his hands on that hard drive, we’re talking about the most influential family in town. The Lombardis were state senators, helmed one of the largest construction outfits in the Northeast. These were men of power and ambition, with skeletons hiding in very large closets. Tom Gable? He collected the garbage no one else wanted. What possible secret could he be harboring? What did he know worth stealing and killing for?
“You got a pen and paper?” I asked Turley. “I’ll write down what’s missing.”
Turley patted his pockets, coming up empty. Fisher went to his car, returning with a pen.
“What about some paper?”
He shook his head.
“You don’t have a fucking scrap of paper in your entire car? What about your satchel?”
“My briefcase is at Charlie’s, and I keep my shit clean, Porter.”
“Old insurance card? Back of the owner’s manual?”
“I’m not defacing material I need because you don’t have the foresight to carry a notebook.”
“I’ll head back to the squad car,” Turley said. “I’m sure I got something back there.”
Turley started walking. I patted down my new winter coat. “Hold up,” I called after him, surprised to find a sheet of folded scrap inside the breast pocket. “Can you get me something to write on? Or is that too much to ask?”
I cleared the snow from the trunk. Fisher let me write on his owner’s manual. Big of him. Ten minutes later I’d done the best I could to recollect the stolen merchandise. I didn’t possess Tom Gable’s iron-trap memory for this kind of thing but I’d gotten most of the big-ticket items. I passed the folded paper to Turley.
“Might’ve missed one or two things,” I said. “Tom has the complete inventory. I gave it to him when we met at Julie’s for breakfast.”
“Who’s Maria Morales?” Turley asked.
“How the fuck should I know?”
He held up the paper with the list of stolen items, flipping it around. “This is her death certificate.”
“Beats me. I picked up this coat at the auction. Must’ve been left by the previous owner.” Was supposed to be my tip. Was supposed to be new. Why are the rich always the cheapest fuckers?
“Mexican.” Turley tried reading the
death certificate, stumbling over the foreign-sounding words. “Accidente . . . de . . . coche.” He looked to Fisher, pointing down at the paper. “What’s that mean? Hemor-ra-go por . . .”
“Traumatismo. Means she hit her head in a car accident and died.”
Turley spun it back, straining. “Zi-hu-at—” He tried giving it to me.
“What do you want me to do with it?”
“What’s that word?”
“Zihuatanejo.”
“Isn’t that where Andy Dufresne escapes to in Shawshank Redemption?”
“Yeah. So what?”
“Why do you have this woman’s death certificate?” Turley asked, unable to hide his natural police suspicion.
“Because I’m running a credit card scam like my dead junkie brother, Turley. You caught me.” I bound my wrists together. “Tom found out and I bashed his skull in to keep him quiet.” I nodded back at the pilfered pod. “Then I broke in and stole the hard drives to cover my tracks. But the jig is up. You got me.”
“There’s nothing funny about this, Jay. Tom is in bad shape.”
“No shit. And he’s my friend. Why don’t you stop busting my balls because I found some dead woman’s crap in a jacket I got at auction? We get shit from all over the world. Stop wasting my time, and go find Tom’s missing merchandise, or when he wakes up—and he will, because Tom Gable is one tough sonofabitch—I’m going to tell him you didn’t do jack to find out who robbed him.”
“Are you threatening me?”
“Yeah, Turley. I am.”
He stepped to me, and me him. Fisher intervened, wedging between, pushing us back.
“Hey,” he said, appealing to Turley. “Jay is upset, all right? That’s his boss, his friend. He’s been working for Tom Gable longer than you’ve been a cop.”
Turley took a deep breath, like he had to think about it. He tucked the piece of paper away, backing up but keeping an eye on me. Like I was hiding a bazooka behind my back. This was why I couldn’t get along with this guy. Or any cop.
“I’ll run those items through the system,” he said.
“Glad to see my tax dollars at work.”
He hadn’t gotten ten yards away when he shouted above the mounting storm winds. “And when I said don’t leave town, I meant it.”
I didn’t bother responding to that.
Fisher waited till Turley trudged off. “I’ll have to hack into Tom’s e-mail accounts the old-fashioned way.” Fisher made for his car. “Send me a text with Tom’s birthday, name of any pets, favorite band, that kind of shit. Might not even matter. Half the time it’s Password1234.”
As soon as Fisher backed up and drove away, I called in my refill for the lorazepam. The pharmacy was closed. I’d have to pick it up tomorrow. I’d held it together okay, but my heart was racing through my forehead. I was pissed off and in dire need of some relief.
I was not my brother. He’d been dead for years. Why did everyone want to compare me to Chris?
Because a brother is as close as you get to another you.
I had to get off the road. The latest weather report had the blizzard continuing through the night, so I made a quick stop at the grocery store for more beer and a carton of Marlboro Lights. I’d made the switch from full-flavored Reds. It’s the little things you can do for your health. I also grabbed a few items to make the next twenty-four livable. Like food. Soup, milk, cheese, hamburger meat, bread, eggs. Which covered the extent of my cooking skills. This was a hunkering-down, waiting-it-out kind of storm. The Price Chopper was always the last to close, capitalizing on fear and hysteria. Nothing moves product like impending doom.
Maneuvering back to my apartment, I enjoyed limited visibility, threading fifteen miles an hour. What a clusterfuck this had turned into. I had an auction’s worth of merchandise missing, my boss laid up in the hospital, and a manslaughter charge hanging over my head—with the not-so-subtle implication I was as bat-shit crazy as my brother. And this had all started because I agreed to host that last-minute sale. Reminded me of something my dad used to say: no good deed goes unpunished.
Except where did it really go wrong? Slimy Owen Eaton swindling Keith Mortenson in the parking lot? That was par for the course in our crooked game. Vin Biscoglio, the stranger who showed up out of nowhere with the job offer too good to be true? Or did it start much, much earlier than that?
After a nervous breakdown, nothing is ever the same. Even after life returned to normal, stable, I still made the trek back to Plasterville once a week to see Dr. Shapiro-Weiss. I trusted her. And it helped. Not the talking part so much. Maybe I got something out of that. But the meds worked wonders. More than the pills, it was the idea that I had a safety net, a stopgap to prevent me from free falling. Knowing sanity was a tab away provided the real benefit. I hated relying on pharmaceuticals. Made me feel like a hypocrite. I busted Chris’ balls—society busted Chris’ balls—for relying on drugs to regulate his moods. How was I any different? Alison Rodgers was right. My medicine was legal. His wasn’t.
I couldn’t keep going to the doctor because of the cost. No such thing as health insurance in my line of work, and Dr. Shapiro-Weiss had offered a sliding scale as long as she could. Now I had to check in every few months, and she did me the solid of writing my prescription. I never planned on being one of these fruitcakes who needs to go to the shrink every week anyway, a fragile bunny who has to talk about how his dad didn’t love him. That wasn’t my problem. My problem—then much like now—concerned my brother. A ghost. No, a dead junkie ghost, whose voice I still heard. I didn’t admit that to anyone, not even the doc. But it was something Dr. Shapiro-Weiss said during our last visit that was haunting me now.
“The thing with PTSD, Jay, is symptoms can manifest themselves any moment. Blindside you. Flair up when you least expect them, when you are least equipped to deal with them.”
When that Roberts situation was coming to a head, things got so bad I began seeing people who weren’t there. Hearing people who weren’t there. You know how fucked that is? Seeing and hearing people who aren’t real? Freaked me the fuck out.
Driving in that whirling wind and snow, Chevy sliding all over the dark road, not a soul out because everyone else was smart enough to have already walled their asses indoors, I started wondering if it was happening again. I mean, what if I was hallucinating all this? No one else had seen Vin Biscoglio. None of the research I’d done online yielded the name. Not a single picture. Ethan and Joanne Crowder, sure, but not this Biscoglio character. Nothing in the company directory either. He was a phantom. That entire conversation we’d had, witnessed by an audience of one. What if in some fugue state I’d written that number on a blank card? That I had to even ask the question terrified me. I couldn’t trust my own version of events. Was my grip on reality so tenuous I’d invent an imaginary friend at my age? Maybe I was a nutty bunny. Of course Vin Biscoglio was real. I felt like I was reading Jim Thompson’s After Dark My Sweet, how Collie, the punch-drunk prizefighter, randomly meets that psychiatrist in the diner, and then every conversation they have thereafter takes place in a vacuum. I’d read that book a half dozen times, and always suspected the shrink was a figment of Collie’s too many concussions. I forget who convinced me otherwise. Probably some chick in a bar.
But that’s what I was thinking about, that book, and Fight Club, and the old Twilight Zone episodes my mother loved so much, memories lost, buried deep. I wasn’t sure if I was relieved or scared shitless when I saw Vin Biscoglio, standing in the middle of Hank Miller’s parking lot, unwavering in the nor’easter howl, stone-like at midnight. An absurd amount of snow crossed my headlights, an opaque sheet of white chopping shadows, as if an impatient stagehand had dumped all the confetti at once, because that’s how hard and heavy it was coming down. His animal yellow eyes breached the assault. I saw him. Sure as I was sitting behind the wheel. He was there. Except I had nothing to hold onto, no one to blame, bearings too slippery to grasp, reconfiguring orientation a zero-su
m game. My reflexes lagged behind my brain, synapses slow to catch up, picture distorted, surreal, unreal. Is this what hard drugs felt like? A week of sleep deprivation? Had I gone mad? The way he stood there, smirking in the fast-approaching headlights, unimpressed, immovable, even when I slammed on my brakes and fishtailed, missing him by inches, he did not move, until all that was left behind was the smug satisfaction burned on an overtaxed brain, everyone in on the joke but me.
I smacked my head on the wheel, snapping my neck back. I cleared the cobwebs and blinked away the exhaustion. Hitting the high beams, I saw the front of a plow freed from the grill. Two yellow reflectors stared back through the snowfall like eyes.
I needed to sleep and everything would be right in the morning. That’s what I told myself. But I needed my medication more.
It was happening again.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
TWO FEET OF fresh powder had accumulated overnight, and I saw I had several missed calls. I slogged out of bed and staggered to the window. My bones ached, which happened with drastic changes in barometric pressure. Always thought that was an old wives’ tale. My bum leg dragged behind me like an underachieving childhood friend. I gazed out the window. The new day blustered, covered in white. The worst of the fast-moving storm had moved out to sea but the fury of wind remained. I saw Hank Miller in the filling station lot, trying to shovel, and threw on my new winter coat. I dug gloves out of my old one and headed outside to lend a hand. Caught the clock on the microwave, a little before eight, sleeping in for me.
By the time Hank and I were done cleaning up, I didn’t get back upstairs until ten thirty. I had more messages. I started at the beginning.
Turley checking in to give me an update. No, they didn’t find our stuff. No, Tom hadn’t woken up. Stay in town.
A bunch of calls were from Charlie, the first ones starting out fun-loving and optimistic at the bar the previous afternoon, inviting me out, everything wonderful like it always is when the party first starts, oblivious to the approaching blizzard, no mention of his friend at the phone company, no indication he recalled our conversation from yesterday morning period. Just Good Time Charlie tying one on. I was tired of Good Time Charlie. Working with my friend these days required increasing handholding, something I’d lost patience for. The final call saw the return of rambling, drunk, incoherent, lonely Charlie. Like the one on Thanksgiving, his voice dipped in sorrow. I wanted to console the hurt. I hated seeing him like this. Maybe when this latest tragedy was over, I’d meet him for a beer. We’d laugh again. Someday. Right now, much as it pained me to admit, I had to avoid the guy. I couldn’t let his habit become my problem.
