Closing in on Hylan, she could see the Atlantic materialize through the tall bare trees across the boulevard. The trees, then the broad, shingled backs of the houses, and then between the branches and over the peaked rooftops the ocean appeared, like a second sky. Seeing the water down on the South Shore always surprised her. She’d reached the edge of the island. A pocket of sprawling waterfront houses down there, inspired by Hamptons and Jersey Shore pretensions, sitting fat and heavy on plank platforms and stilts. You know, in case a big hurricane came swirling up to Staten Island. The owners probably had their own separate institute for the kids, to make sure they didn’t get dirtied up among the unwashed masses. Another world. Private streets and security patrols, like they weren’t even part of the island, like money could turn the backside of Hylan Boulevard into the Outer Banks or Hilton Head. But they did have their own beach, their own space. Piers and docks for their boats. That’s what she’d heard. She’d never been down there herself. Probably never would be. Not without a tray in her hand.
She hung a left at the intersection, putting her right shoulder to the ocean, and kept running. Fewer cars on Hylan. The air tasted cleaner, a touch of sea salt stinging the back of her tongue as her breathing turned ragged. Everything is so jammed up around here, she thought. Everyone is packed in so tight it’s hard to remember this used to be a beautiful island, a resort island, even. Out beyond the homes, the strip malls, the diners, and the barrooms, there remained on the island’s edges secluded cattailed marshes stalked by gray-legged herons and ivory-feathered egrets, rocky shorelines surveyed from above by gliding osprey aloft on the drafts. At least on the parts of the coast that hadn’t been plowed under for McMansions and their private piers.
Panting through her mouth, Maureen forced the air in and out through her teeth, refusing to let her jaw drop, or her arms, holding her fists high. She pumped her arms harder to make up for the weakening in her legs, their previous exuberance now fading fast. This is when the work gets done, her old coach had said. When you’re tired.
I’ve been working, Maureen argued back, for ten straight years. When’s the work over?
Underneath her cap, sweat broke out on her scalp. Stopping and tearing off the cap would feel so good. A few more blocks, she told herself. Make it like sex, like the shift’s first cigarette. The longer you hold out, the better it feels when you give in. That was the myth, anyway. Believe it. Anything to keep going. She strained to read the street signs two, three blocks ahead, looking for Downey Street, giving herself a target. Keep going, she told herself, and eventually you’ll feel great, even if it’s only for a few moments. Her feet slapped the sidewalk now as if she ran in flippers. Her lungs couldn’t hold a breath long enough to pull enough oxygen from it. A block short of Dennis’s street, a killer stitch tore open in her side. All right, enough. This is exercise, not suicide. She sprinted to his corner.
Turning up Downey, Maureen forced herself to ease down on the throttle instead of slamming to a stop. No sense cramping and ending up flat on her back. She didn’t need some dumb Samaritan calling her an ambulance. Hands on hips, chest heaving, she slowed to an easy walk for the next two blocks up Downey. Not bad, she thought. No one at the Narrows (except for maybe Clarence) could hit off a mile, more or less, right out of bed. Betcha Molly couldn’t do it. John, either, no matter what kind of acrobatics they got up to in the sack. Waters would’ve had a heart attack after four blocks.
She pulled her smokes from her hat, tore it off. The cold wind in her hair felt wonderful. She closed her eyes, held her arms out at her sides. For a moment, she felt so light that a good gust might lift her right off the street. But after another half a block, the cold had crept in around the edges. She pulled her cap back on. She craved a cigarette but resisted. That’s the problem with highs; they don’t last.
Three-oh-two was the address she wanted. She checked the number on the house in front of her: 318. She reversed her direction; Dennis’s place was back toward the corner. Maureen looked up and down the street. Where was Tanya, waiting in her car? Maureen didn’t see it, and the few cars parked on the block sat empty.
She dragged her hand across her mouth, spat out a stray thread her glove left behind. Man, she was thirsty. Why hadn’t she stopped sooner, picked up some water at one of the delis she had passed on Hylan? Could she raid Dennis’s fridge or would that be too weird? She stopped at the end of the walk in front of Dennis’s house. Where was Tanya? Goddamn, Maureen thought, that girl had better not pull a no-call-no-show on this. Wouldn’t that be like her, though? And just like me to show up anyway.
Maureen was seriously considering heading back to her mom’s when Tanya walked out the door of 302’s side apartment.
“You went in already?” Maureen asked. “Am I that late?”
Tanya glided up the red brick walk. Her Pocahontas hair floated off her shoulders in the wind. She wore a heavy brown suede coat, brand-new and stylish, with a belt and a fur collar. The coat reached the top of her calf-length boots. Why does this girl, Maureen thought, always look like she’s walking up a runway? Maureen tugged at her sweatpants, stuck with sweat to her thighs. And me? I look like a housewife who’s been chasing the paper boy for bombing her hedges and teasing her dog. Well, fine then. Tanya couldn’t have run that mile.
“I was freezing,” Tanya said. She stopped on the other side of the gate. “You’re not late. Did you run all the way here?”
Maureen sniffed in her snot. Her nose had started running. She couldn’t decide what looked worse, wiping her nose on her glove or letting the fluid leak down her lip. She chose using the glove. Tanya didn’t notice. She was distracted, disconnected. Well, like that’s news. “It’s not that far. I needed the exercise.”
“They have gyms for that,” Tanya said. “Warm, indoor gyms. Like Clarence’s.” She opened the gate, the frosted yellow grass of the dead lawn crackling under her boots as she stepped off the walk to let Maureen into the yard.
“So I’ve heard,” Maureen said. She headed up the walk toward the house. She heard Tanya close the gate and hustle up behind her.
At the front door, Maureen stepped aside to let Tanya open it. Tanya settled her fingers on the brass doorknob, but didn’t grip it, didn’t turn it. Biting her bottom lip, she glanced at Maureen, looked back at the door. Maureen waited, tired, thirsty, and growing impatient. She was sorry Dennis was dead, she truly was, and she felt for Tanya, but enough with the drama. Couldn’t she do anything for herself?
“I want you to know,” Tanya said, looking up at the sky, “that I’m sorry about this. I wish there was another way.”
“T, it’s all right, let’s just get it done. You can make it up to me at work, cover a shift for me. Is it kind of creepy in there?”
Tanya kept her gaze fixed overhead.
“We’ll pretend he’s just not home,” Maureen said. She reached for the doorknob.
Tanya sucked in a wet breath through her nose. “Remember I said I was sorry.”
From the other side of the door, Maureen felt the knob turn in her fingers. She jerked her hand away. The door opened. Sebastian stood not three feet from her, at the foot of a dark staircase.
“Enough already with the bullshit,” he said. “Get in here.”
Maureen stepped back from the doorway, out of his reach. “Fuck you.” She glared at Tanya. “Fuck, Tanya. How could you? I tried to help you. I thought we were friends.”
Tanya looked pale and horrified, her bottom lip trembling. “I’m sorry.” Her eyes flitted from Maureen to Sebastian and back again. They finally settled on empty space. “I had to, Maureen. You don’t understand.”
“Upstairs,” Sebastian said. He stepped aside to let Tanya into the apartment. She ran up the stairs. Sebastian glanced over his shoulder, then looked back at Maureen. “You too.” When Maureen didn’t react, he returned to the doorway. “We need to talk about you and the police. Come inside. Now. You’re letting the fucking heat out.”
Maureen bac
ked up the walk, pointing her finger at him. “You take another step and I’ll scream.”
Sebastian stepped out the door. He closed it behind him and followed Maureen up the path, letting her keep a few steps’ distance between them. He walked with one hand open on his chest, his other arm extended, as if inviting Maureen to dance. “I just wanna talk. Why is it you’ll talk about us to everyone but me?”
Maureen wanted to look around, needing to pick a direction to run in. But she feared taking her eyes off Sebastian. If she let her guard down, he could close the few feet between them in seconds. “Go back in the house or I swear to Christ I’ll scream bloody murder.”
Sebastian glanced up and down the street. “You see anyone around to hear you? This is a family neighborhood. Work, school. People who live in the daytime, like normal Americans. The land of the living.” He smiled, his nostrils flaring. “Anyways, you’re not a screamer. I know people. I can tell.”
“You are a fucking freak. Stay away from me.”
“I’m a freak? Because I let Dennis suck my cock?” Sebastian frowned. “Really, Maureen, you’re more enlightened than that. How do you know it wasn’t his idea?”
“Tanya told me about Dennis and the money,” Maureen said, “and how you were getting him and Tanya to pay you back. How about I call the Advance, the Daily News, and tell them what Tanya told me?”
Sebastian laughed. “Go ahead. You know what Tanya told you? Whatever she had to for you to show up here this morning. If she got overly dramatic or grotesque and she upset you, I apologize. Blame her. She always did want to be an actress.” He smiled. “I made sure she was motivated to play her part.” His smile, his humor suddenly disappeared. “Coming at it from another angle, what makes you think, for a second, that if those reporters do show up at her door, she’s gonna say anything other than what I tell her to? Just like when I sent her looking for you.”
“Maybe I invite them to my door,” Maureen said, backing away. “Maybe I tell them what I saw at the Narrows.”
“You’ll get laughed at. Think, Maureen. Look at yourself, look at your life. What reporter is gonna believe you? Is even gonna risk talking to you? Especially without a single living witness to back you up.” Sebastian stepped closer, his eyelids drooping lizardlike as his eyebrows drifted up his forehead. He spoke just above a whisper. “And what do you think, Maureen, the cops will find in your apartment should a single breath of that story ever surface? Dramatic and grotesque won’t even be the start of it.”
“The cops know about you,” Maureen said. “They’re plenty interested in what I know about Dennis and Tanya.”
“Yeah, well, I know things, too.” Sebastian stepped to her, looming over her now. “I know all about Detective Nat Waters, for instance. I’ve known him probably longer than you’ve been alive.” Sebastian chuckled. “Waters didn’t scare me back in the day and he doesn’t now. You know what your problem is? You think you know who you’re dealing with, and you don’t. You think you’re smart, and you’re not. Next time you see Waters, ask him about me. Ask him about Brooklyn. Then come back to me and tell me which one of us you really want on your side.”
Maureen had reached the end of the walk. Sebastian had her backed up against the front gate. Time to slip out to the sidewalk and hit the street running. Even if Sebastian chased her, he’d never catch her. She felt around behind her back for the gate latch, found it. But she couldn’t raise it; it was stuck. She found something heavy with her hand. A padlock. She tugged. Locked. When they’d come through the gate before, Tanya had locked it behind them.
Maureen slid her eyes to the left and to the right. Both ways, Dennis’s street was a ghost town, a low-rent suburban movie set. Out in the land of the living, Maureen realized, the middle of the day was no more alive than the middle of the night. The only sound she heard was Sebastian breathing. She brought her arms to her sides, clenching her fists. The eyes and the balls, she thought. Go for the eyes and the balls.
A car horn honked behind them. A car was coming up the street. Maureen’s heart jumped. Finally, another human being. Sebastian ignored the sound. “Since we’re suddenly pressed for time, let’s simplify things. You like your apartment?”
“What?”
“Your apartment, do you like it? How about your job?”
The car honked again, the long angry note coming from right behind her.
Sebastian’s eyes looked over Maureen’s shoulder now. “Forget Brooklyn,” he said. “Next time you see Waters, you tell him that, you and me, we worked everything out. Tell him whatever he needs to hear to crawl back into whatever rat hole he climbed out of.” His eyes came back to Maureen’s. “You do that and maybe I let you keep what little you have. Can you do that for me, like a good girl?”
Maureen turned when Sebastian took a step back, his hands in the air, his face lit up with a megawatt smile, warm and disarming. Maureen couldn’t believe she was looking at the same man who had pinned her against the fence. Out in the street, a middle-aged man in a brown suit, a short, chubby version of Dennis, hurried around the front of a giant Chevy Tahoe, a ring of keys in his hand. An older brother, had to be. Tanya burst out the front door of the house, hustling up the walk, Dennis’s video camera in her hand. She spotted the new arrival, stopped short, and tucked the camera behind her back.
“What’re you people doing?” the man shouted. He unlocked the gate. “Who are you people?” He pulled up short as he recognized Sebastian. “I’ve seen you on TV. You’re that politician, the state senator.”
Maureen hurried away from Sebastian, through the open gate, and onto the sidewalk. Thank you, Dennis, she thought, for covering my ass one last time.
Sebastian dialed down the wattage in his smile, dropped his eyes in mock humility. “I certainly hope to be. You flatter me. The election hasn’t been held yet.”
Standing there on the sidewalk, Maureen felt as frightened by the bizarro charming Sebastian as she had by the menacing bully of a few minutes ago. The transformation had been as simple and as immediate as someone slipping off a pair of sunglasses.
“I knew Dennis,” Sebastian said. “He helped me some with my campaign. I liked him, though I wasn’t lucky enough to know him very well.” He extended his hand. “You must be his brother. I am terribly sorry for your loss.”
“Tony Lacoste, Dennis’s older brother. I own this property.” He gestured toward the Tahoe. “We were coming to close the place up, to sort through his things. Maybe find some photos for the memorial service.”
“You’ll contact my campaign,” Sebastian said, “and let me know when that is?”
“Of course,” Tony said. “We’d be honored to have you.”
Maureen was ready to gag. So everyone from the Narrows, the people who worked with Dennis, talked to him, who saw him every day, they could go fuck themselves. But this lying snake, he was a guest of honor? She took a deep breath. Maybe she had it wrong. Clearly, Tony must’ve seen Sebastian threatening her. Maybe he’d called the cops. Maybe he was going along with Sebastian’s bullshit to keep him calm, to keep him in place until the police arrived. She decided to remind Tony that she was there.
“Listen, Mr. Lacoste, I really need—”
But before Maureen could finish her sentence, Sebastian moved between her and Tony, blocking her from Tony’s view. “Dennis’s girlfriend here,” he said, “needed to grab a few things she’d left behind. We didn’t want to bother your family with it.”
Maureen watched the questions cross Tony’s face, the main one being where Sebastian fit into all this. A voice in the back of her head ordered Maureen to blurt out the truth, that they’d all been dragged there in Sebastian’s effort to clean up his dirty business. Another part of her watched in fascination, curious to see what lies Sebastian would spin next. Maureen could tell that he’d seen the same questions in Tony’s eyes that she had.
“The young lady,” Sebastian began, tilting his head in Tanya’s direction, “is one of my press people.
She and Dennis met through my campaign, got together.” Maureen caught Tanya’s guilty eyes as she slipped the camera into her coat pocket. Tanya looked lonely and pathetic, like an angry kid thieving candy she didn’t even want and waiting to get caught. But if Tony had even noticed Tanya leaving the house, and if he’d even heard Maureen’s attempt to speak to him, he gave no sign. Tony’s attention stayed fixed on Sebastian, the alpha male, the one who, though trespassing with possibly an eye toward kidnapping, had somehow managed to put himself in charge of the situation.
Maureen wanted to grab Tanya’s hand and run for it. Then, once she and Tanya were alone, kick the living shit out of her. I’ll teach that stupid slut to pick the wrong side. Right after I save her ass.
“We were in a staff meeting earlier,” Sebastian said. “She asked for the morning off to come over here. I offered my company for support. Insisted, really.” He held up his hand. “Tony, I owe you and your family an apology. I’ve invaded your privacy at a very difficult time. I just thought I could help.”
For the first time since he’d arrived at his dead brother’s house, sadness settled into Tony’s face. “I’m sorry, I’m a bit shocked by everything. Dennis working with your campaign, a girlfriend. I never knew. He was getting himself together, I guess.”
Tony glanced back at the car. Maureen figured the old people in the backseat had to be the parents. They gazed emotionless out their respective windows, pointedly not looking at Maureen or anyone else, their mouths moving as they talked to themselves or each other, looking like goldfish through the glass.
“I wish we would’ve known,” Tony said.
Maybe if you’d ever called him, Maureen thought. Ever. Then she remembered that most of what Sebastian had said wasn’t true. Good God, she thought, he’s almost got me caught up in it. She couldn’t settle whether telling Tony these lies about Dennis was cruel or kind. But the lies had nothing to do with Tony, or the Lacoste family, or Dennis. They were for no one’s benefit but Sebastian’s. Maureen watched as Tanya came up the walk, slipping her arm through Sebastian’s when she reached him.
The Devil She Knows Page 13
