Mean High Tide (Thorn Series Book 3)

by James W. Hall

  Thorn sat down in the client's chair and watched as Rochelle Hamilton came through the door. She wore a dark green cotton T-shirt and baggy white jeans, suede sandals. She had her hands in the pockets of the jeans, looking back and forth between Thorn and Sugarman.

  "Rochelle," Sugar said.

  "Hi," she said, and stood awkwardly in the doorway a moment before turning and shutting the door. "Hi, Thorn."

  He gave her a neutral hello.

  "I came by," she said, " 'cause I started thinking about the other night. How I was. I wanted to say I'm sorry."

  "It's okay," Thorn said. "Forget it."

  "You want to sit down?" Sugarman said.

  "I brought something. I don't know, but I thought it might be useful."

  She hesitated briefly, looking at Sugarman, then the office, as though something was dawning on her she hadn't expected.

  "I don't know if I should."

  "What is it, Rochelle?"

  She pulled a newspaper clipping from her pocket and stepped forward and handed it to Sugarman. Then she stepped back, her eyes wandering to Thorn, then cutting away to the wall.

  "You might need a magnifying glass," she said. "I did."

  Sugarman looked at the clipping, read it, looked up at Thorn. Then he opened his desk drawer, pawed through it for a while, came out with a magnifier. He grunted, leaned close. And without looking away from the clipping, he reached out for the desk lamp and hauled it over, switched it on.

  "What is it?" Thorn said.

  "Where the hell'd you get this, Rochelle?" Sugar's head still down.

  "I knew you were going to ask."

  Thorn got up, peered at the clipping. There was a photograph of a man fallen forward into his plate. Face turned to the side. The headline said, THIRD MOB KILLING IN FOUR DAYS.

  "Try the magnifying glass, Thorn, tell me what you see. The guy in the pasta, face toward the flashbulb."

  Thorn took the glass, angled the light at the newspaper, found the best distance and bent close.

  "No . . . no way," he said. Then, "Well, wait a minute."

  "So? Which is it?"

  The man's hair was darker and fuller, his face a few pounds thinner. But with the same jowls, the lump of a nose, same eyebrows. That coarse, dark complexion. Roy Murtha.

  "Raymond Bianetti, is what he's called here, shot seven times while he was eating his fettuccine Alfredo."

  Thorn set the magnifying glass aside.

  "Would you all tell me something?" Sugarman said. "Why the hell do they always do that? Get so specific in the newspaper about the pasta or whatever. I mean, hey, it's degrading. Sounds like some kind of reporter's joke, is what it sounds like. Those cynical pricks. Mr. Sugarman was found dead of a stroke, his head floating in his Campbell's alphabet soup. An A and C stuck to his cheek. It's a cheap shot, is what it is, making fun of some guy who's dead, for christ sake."

  "This guy, though," said Thorn, "he isn't dead. This one got up and walked away."

  "Not according to the New York Times. Pronounced dead at Cedars Sinai at four thirty-eight A.M., January ten, 1975. Also known as Raymond the Clink. Sources say he had something like twelve human beings on his life list. Old Ray was a busy guy, punched a lot of tickets."

  "Where'd you come by this, Rochelle?"

  "Murtha and I . . ." She took a breath, and shook her head in disgust.

  "You had a thing," Thorn said. "You and the liquor store guy."

  "Yeah," she said. "When he first moved into the condo. It didn't last long. A week."

  "And you found this in his apartment?" Sugarman said.

  "I was looking for an aspirin one night," she said. "Murtha snoring in the bedroom. I was in the guest bathroom, opening drawers, not finding anything, then there it was, in this cabinet underneath the towels and facecloths. A scrapbook. Dozens of clippings, same story from different papers. I pulled one out, started reading. It was just starting to register when I heard him moving around in the bedroom. I got flustered. I mean, all I had to do was shove it back with the rest of them. But I didn't. I slid it in the pocket of my robe. It was so stupid, but Jesus, I was scared; I didn't know what the hell I was doing."

  Rochelle closed her eyes, bowed her head.

  "Raymond the Clink?" Sugarman said, looking up from the article. "What kind of goddamn name is that for a mobster?"

  "I don't know," said Thorn. "Clink, like in jail, maybe."

  "Well," Sugar said. "Doesn't inspire much terror in me. Just sounds dorky."

  "Guy had to've paid plenty to fake something like that," said Thorn. "Hospital staff, police, restaurant people. Had to spread around a shitload of cash."

  "Or maybe he's in witness protection. The feds might've staged this. One of those deals."

  "Do you know anything about that, Rochelle?"

  "No," she said. "I never got that close to him or anything. We barely talked."

  "Man," Sugar said. "Only the federal goddamn government would do something like that. Good old U.S. of A. Kill a dozen of your fellow citizens — hey, no problem. All you gotta do, testify against somebody for jaywalking, we'll set you up in a sweet little liquor store down in the Florida Keys, purge the old record. Shit, even the Pope wouldn't stand for that kind of absolution."

  Thorn took a last look at Murtha in his fifties and pushed the clipping back across the desk.

  "Doesn't really matter, does it? If he staged it himself, or the government did it. He's still in the middle of this."

  Sugar said quietly, "No, it doesn't matter. Not at all."

  Rochelle said, "I guess I better get going."

  Thorn stood up, came over to her.

  "Thanks, Rochelle. Thanks for bringing this over. I know you didn't have to."

  "Could I be in trouble?" she said. "I mean if he misses the clipping, figures out who might have it."

  "If there were a lot of others just like it in the album, I doubt it. And you took it a few months ago," said Sugar. "He hasn't missed it yet."

  "He's the one in trouble," Thorn said. "Don't worry about it. Just keep your door locked. If he shows up, call Sugar."

  "All right," she said. "Well, I guess I'll get on to work."

  "I'll drop by later," Thorn said. "Check on you."

  "Will you?" she said. Then she caught herself, lowered the emotional volume and said, "Don't bother, Thorn. I'll be okay."

  "I said I'll drop by, so I'll drop by."

  Rochelle smiled vacantly. Heard that one a few times too often. When she'd left, Thorn sat down again in the chair across from the desk.

  "It could explain why he shot up your house the other night. Guy thinks Darcy is on to him, going to reveal his real identity. He murders her, then he comes after her boyfriend."

  "Bullets through the floor? Doesn't sound like Mafia to me. Sloppy, unprofessional."

  "Guy's in retirement. Been out of the game awhile. Lost his thirst for blood, maybe."

  "Maybe," Thorn said. "But anyway, I still want to tug on the Winchester thread. It feels like it's woven deeper into this thing. Think you can handle Raymond the Clink?"

  "Oh, yes," Sugar said. "I believe that's entirely within my capabilities."

  Sugarman swiveled his chair to the side, leaned back, glanced into the beauty salon where a pretty young black woman was getting her hair frosted a few feet away.

  Watching the woman, he said, "I want you to know, Thorn, I'm hurting too. I loved Darcy. Maybe not the same way you did, but just as much, in my own fashion. Just as much. And trust me, buddy, there isn't a thing on god's earth I won't do to set this right. Within the law."

  He filled his lungs and held it for a few seconds, then let it back out. Turning back to Thorn, a complicated smile rising to his lips. Serene, but urgent. A dark burn in his eyes.

  This was a man who'd never been a hater. Apparently born without the necessary organs to support bitterness or spite. About the most Sugar could manage was a mild huff, a growl of displeasure now and then. Rage and fury were beyond
him.

  Thorn often recalled a particular Friday night in October, twenty-five years before, Sugar and him pinned helplessly to the grassy turf at the bottom of a tangled pile of football players. Sugar with the pigskin in his arms after squirming for yet another first down. They'd looked at each other through the grids of their face masks, the fans cheering, the referee's whistle screaming above them, and they'd smiled at each other, giddy, never been happier.

  And just at that moment a big white hand had appeared through the churning mass of bodies, and it reached down and located Sugar's face guard, and some rawboned linebacker named Langstaff from the sugarcane fields around Clewiston dug a bony finger into Sugarman's right eye. Gouged him deep. Thorn grabbed for the arm to take a bite out of it, but it wriggled away and was gone as the bodies unpiled.

  With his eye bloody, Sugar kept on playing. Didn't seem angry, just more focused. More precise. Until late in the fourth quarter, he broke through the line and into the open field, and Langstaff was there, taking a bead on him, galloping head-on, big guy, six three, outweighed Sugar by thirty pounds, and this time Sugar didn't swivel his hips, didn't feint, even seemed to slow his stride, torquing down to a lower gear, and both boys lowered their shoulders as the point of collision approached, but somehow Sugar got his the necessary fraction lower, and planted his helmet in the linebacker's gut, stood him up straight, then ran the hell over him. The hayseed was unconscious for twenty minutes, Sugarman sipping Coke on the sidelines. Not mad, not celebrating. Just playing by the rules.

  Sugarman rested his elbows on the ink blotter. Eyes still severe.

  "Promise me, Thorn, when you get thrown in jail over in Naples, use your one phone call on me, okay?"

  Thorn stopped at the office door.

  "You know she loved you too, Sugar. You know that, don't you?"

  Sugarman looked down at the ink blotter, took a breath.

  "Yeah," he said from a long way off. "But somehow, at this moment, that's not a whole hell of a lot of comfort."

  "Maybe not," said Thorn. "But it's all the comfort we got."

  ***

  Thorn spent that Tuesday afternoon patching his roof. Working out in the August sun, ninety-four degrees. The humidity so thick he could've taken a few swipes through the air with a drinking glass and collected enough water for a healthy sip.

  He tore off each wooden shake that had been splintered, pried off the others above it till he'd exposed a clear patch of tongue-in-groove decking. Then with galvanized siding nails he hammered each new shake into place. Twenty-three bullet holes. Sixty-eight cedar shingles. Four hundred and twelve nails.

  He worked through the afternoon and sweated away pints of tequila and beer. He knew that wasn't biologically correct. The liver disposed of the booze, but all that sweat seemed to cleanse him nonetheless. And when he was finished with the work, his house watertight again, the sun just starting to bleed into Blackwater Sound, he barely had enough strength to climb down from the roof. He felt like he'd been running wind sprints in full pads for weeks. A flulike achiness.

  In the kitchen he drank a gallon of water, then drank another. Carried a glass out to the porch and watched the sun ignite one isolated cloud, which sprouted from the horizon like a great sugar maple going through its fall colors. A mild blush of pink, then the harder reds, and in a while the cloud turned silver, then finally a dark leaden gray before it disappeared into the thick forests of the night.

  Thorn drank more water, but couldn't quench his aching throat. He drank water until the stars came out, then lay down in the porch hammock, his eyes open, his mind ringing with the sound of his hammer driving each siding nail home. He lay in the hammock all night and didn't shift positions, and he didn't sleep.

  CHAPTER 16

  Doris Albright waited beside the passenger door of the gold Eldorado while Billy and Don Malton lifted her husband out and set him in his wheelchair. Boss man still coming to work no matter how sick he was, how feeble and out of it.

  The Malton brothers had worked in the fish house, cleaning lobsters, shucking oysters, filleting fish, whatever needed doing, for close to fifteen years, a hell of a long time on this island for anybody to stay with anything. Working for Philip that many years, they still spoke to him with the same careful deference they'd used before his stroke reduced him to this limp sack of flesh.

  Philip had once been as gruff and scathing as any man Doris'd met. But not long after she met him, she began to see that the surliness was simply camouflage for a deep sentimental streak. Secretly he treasured Billy and Don, thought of them as sons, just as he loved all the men and women who worked for him, who like Philip had gashed and mangled their flesh for years to haul fish after fish from the cold depths.

  Doris walked behind Billy as he rolled Philip's wheelchair up the cement ramp and into the fish house. She exchanged greetings with the half dozen employees she could still afford to keep on. None of them knew it yet officially, though most probably suspected, that their place of work was up for sale. A million three, the asking price. Barely enough to pay off the two mortgages, the mountain of medical debts, back taxes. A million three hundred thousand. An unthinkable amount.

  As each of the employees wished Philip well, he replied in grunts, bobbing his head with great effort. She took over the chair and wheeled him into the glassed-in office, shut the door and locked it, then set about closing the several sets of Venetian blinds.

  She had to change into her work clothes before starting her day here. Doing all of Philip's work: balancing the books, dealing with the stream of suppliers, and the endless conversations with hard-luck lobstermen and shrimpers. Overseeing the cleaning and shucking, the packaging, endless grinding of chum, and the thousand other details of the retail fish market.

  This morning it had been another trip to Baptist Hospital up in Miami, one more MRI. There'd been another seizure last night, and when it was over, Philip had described in his muddled and breathless way another visitation by the dream man who he claimed was slowly poisoning him. Routine, the neurologist said. In the feverish spasms of a seizure, it wasn't uncommon to experience hallucinations.

  Doris was still in her city clothes. The white cotton gauze dress that tumbled in tiers of ribbon and lace trim. White canvas sandals on rope-covered wedges with laces that wrapped up her ankles. A garden-party outfit as cool and crisp as pineapple sherbet. She would've worn shorts and a jersey, but Philip liked the outfit so much she put it on every other day now. He'd bought the dress impulsively a couple of years ago on a Caribbean cruise they'd taken. Now, whenever she wore it his eyes brightened. And anything that accomplished that, Doris was willing to do. Anything at all.

  She was down to her bra and panties, reaching for her denim sleeveless dress hanging from the hook on the back of the door when she noticed Philip was mumbling, leaning forward in the wheelchair, his face turned to her, eyes poring over her exposed flesh.

  A broken smile disfigured his face, and he curled a finger at her, beckoning. She put the denim dress back on the hook and walked over to him, checking the blinds as she went. Smoothing a couple of slats into place, then moving close, standing in front of him, offering herself, till he lifted a hand and reached for the elastic band of her panties.

  His fingers were crabbed and callused, brittle against her flesh as he pulled the panties down an inch or two, a contented croon working up from his throat. She felt a shiver pass through her, a complicated chill, love and regret, and though she hated to admit it, a mild aversion to this man who now inhabited a stranger's body. Philip bent forward, focused mightily on the job of tugging at her underwear. She dropped her arms to her sides, and let him slide his hands inside the silk and fumble between her legs. Where once he had been so smooth in delving her, now he was all bump and spastic flutter, a man in an iron glove.

  In the years before his first stroke they'd made love Sunday mornings usually, and one night midweek. He, a vigorous sixty-four, she, many years younger. All the attraction s
till there. The delight in each other's body unfailing in fifteen years of marriage. A reliable and powerful heat that kept the weld strong.

  But now, some glitch in the wiring of Philip's cortex had made him horny day and night. Unable to manage an erection, yet he still had an inexhaustible fever for her, constantly gripping her, lifting her skirt, reaching inside her blouse to bump his mangled hand against her breasts so he could bring himself to another fruitless, imaginary ecstasy. And she complied whenever possible, giving him this, no matter how awkward and uncomfortable it often was. Giving him what she hoped was some echo, however faint, of what they'd known before.

  Just this morning, with Philip deposited in the waiting room, Doris had questioned the neurologist about this new lustfulness, and the M.D., a woman about her own age, put down her notes and stared across her desk at Doris and said, "And you're complaining?"

  Philip groaned to himself, one of his crooked fingers finding its way inside her, wriggling now, and Doris looked down at the top of his head while she stroked his thin hair. She could hear an argument rising in volume out on the loading dock, could make out something about the Orion scale weighing light.

  Philip gripped her buttocks with his free hand, drew her closer, lost in the dreamy rhythms of his fantasy. His finger making short strokes along the familiar angle that always had given them such pleasure.

  Outside on the loading platform, a fistfight had broken out, and Tilly called for Doris to come out and intervene. She knocked on the door and called Doris's name while out on the dock the men hooted and catcalled.

  Doris turned her eyes to her husband's thin white hair. He was finishing now, with a shudder and a sad whimper. Breathing hard, he tipped his head up and looked into her eyes, squinting the way he always did when they finished making love, his silent question; Had she come too?

  She nodded at him, yes, she had. No reason not to lie. And then stepped back out of his hold, drawing her panties into place. She took her denim dress off the hook on the door and stepped into it and buttoned it up.

  Again someone knocked on the door. Several hard raps, a pause, then more.