Blood Foam: A Lewis Cole Mystery (Lewis Cole series)

by DuBois, Brendan

  Part of me wished he would stay quiet, because I didn’t want him deep asleep when Mark arrived. These stories he was telling were important, but they didn’t belong to me: they belonged to Mark.

  Will had a deep, rattling cough and, when he caught his breath, went on. “That girl dumped me, of course. . . . She had found somebody else . . . and I needed someplace to belong to, and that was the Stonecold Falcons.”

  “Good for you,” I said.

  The dirt road was still empty.

  He said “I don’t like the tone of your voice. . . .”

  “I’ll see if I can change it when your son arrives.”

  “You judging me, eh?” He coughed again. “Is that what you’re doing, judging me?”

  “Not at all.”

  “You are . . . and you know what, I don’t care . . . in a while I’m gonna meet my maker, whoever He or She is, and I’ll have to atone . . . and yeah, I rode with the Falcons, had the best times, made some good cash . . . some wild times. . . .”

  I thought I heard the sound of an approaching engine.

  “But everything good ends sometime, right?” I said.

  Another hefty cough. “Sure. . . . I rode hard with the Falcons . . . but things changed . . . we got into the crystal meth business, and that shit ate men’s brains, it did . . . and I was getting older . . . and had my boy . . . and Bruno Langley, he took charge . . . liked to humiliate guys . . . make ’em do impossible things . . . just ’cause he could get away with it. . . .”

  Yes. The sound of the engine was getting louder and closer. I shifted in my seat, slid the Beretta back out again.

  “Like tattooing your son?”

  He was quiet, allowing me more time to gauge the closeness of the approaching vehicle.

  “How did you know that?”

  “I saw his arm, where it had been burned off. It happened when he was very young, so young he had no clear memory of it. I can’t imagine a set of parents, no matter how drugged or doped up, allowing their child to get a tat on his wrist like that.”

  I looked over at Will and his eyes had welled up, and he turned his head. “What a bad dad . . . to let a slug like Bruno Langley do that . . . ‘Falcons for Life’ and all that bullshit. But that was just the last straw . . . he did things . . . up in Canada and elsewhere . . . stuff I still get nightmares about. . . .”

  “So why not drop out? Why did you turn witness?”

  “Pah,” he said. “Revenge . . . I wanted to get back at him, for what he did to my boy . . . what he did to me and others . . . the Marshals, they set me up at B.I.W. . . . did okay there . . . had a good life, hunting and fishing and shooting, but I always thought about Mark . . . what he was like . . . what I could say to him.”

  A Mazda with New Hampshire plates appeared on the road, coming down to the house. Mark Spencer was driving. He was alone.

  I stood up.

  “Lucky you,” I said. “You can do that in about sixty seconds.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  I left the porch and went into the living room, and to the kitchen, where I spotted Mark parking next to my borrowed truck. He stepped out and then started walking briskly to the house.

  Something wasn’t right.

  Not right at all.

  And like giant pieces of a jigsaw puzzle slamming together on their own and grandly announcing here we are, I knew just how wrong I had been.

  I opened the door and stepped out on the stone steps. “Afternoon, Mark.”

  He stopped so suddenly, I thought his feet were going to slide out from underneath him. “Lewis . . . how . . . I mean, when. . . .”

  I took another step down the hard stone. “A bit late, don’t you think?”

  His face was the color of the granite I was standing on. “I stopped a couple of times, you know, for gas . . . something to eat . . . and there was road construction. . . .”

  I looked at the Mazda, which was empty. “Wrong answer, Counselor. First things first: why did you leave me behind in Portland?”

  “Because,” he said, defiance in his voice, “this was something I had to do on my own.”

  “On your own? Really?”

  “You got it.”

  I stepped out onto the nearly bare lawn. It was overcast, and a light drizzle was starting to fall. “If you’re so set on coming up here and meeting your dad before he dies, meeting your dad all alone, then why did you keep on helping Reeve Langley?”

  No answer.

  I said, “In other words, you’re helping Reeve find your dad, to kill him. That’s what you’ve been doing, right?”

  That got his attention, and I pressed my advantage. “Everything started after you went to Wyoming. Was that a trip to find your father, or a trip to see if there was anyone around who wanted to hurt him for what he had done to his gang years ago?”

  I took a step forward. Mark took a step back, holding up his hands in a gesture of frustration or surrender.

  “You’ve got to be crazy! What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Talking about you angry about being abandoned by your father. Maybe looking for revenge, and not a happy reunion. Revenge from the son of the man that your dad put in prison.” I took a deep breath. “Look at the facts, Counselor. Reeve had a pretty good and quick idea of where Paula lived and worked, and he knew he could squeeze her to get to you. Then when I track you down to that island, who shows up at the same time? Reeve Langley and friends.”

  “A coincidence, that’s all!”

  “Sure. One hell of a coincidence, unless you told him you might be there. And we have time to kill while your info guru gets the information on your dad’s address, and we go to North Conway, where there’s dozens and dozens of shops in a one-block area alone. You choose a leather-and-shoe store. Same store that Reeve Langley had been in earlier. We had just missed him. Was that a back-up meeting point? A place to get together if something went wrong at the island meet?”

  I stepped forward two more times, determined to keep him off balance. I said “This morning, you bailed out on me.”

  “Like I said, because I wanted to do this alone!”

  “Alone, really? Or did you want the opportunity to meet up with Reeve, help lead him here to your dad? What was it? String along Reeve, maybe he’s paying you off, all for the two of you to get your revenge. Him for abandoning you, Reeve for putting his dad in jail. Look, Counselor, you had at least an hour advantage over me on getting up here. If you were really in a hurry to meet your dad after all these years, I would have rolled in here and I would have found you sharing a cup of coffee out in the porch.”

  “You’re fucked in the head.”

  “Probably, but you and I are going in there, and we’re going to do our best to get your dad out of here before Reeve shows up.”

  Mark looked past me at the house. “Why the hell do we have to do that?”

  “Maybe I’m just overreacting. What’s your excuse?”

  Mark lowered his arms. “How sick is he?”

  “Pretty damn sick,” I said. “His nurse said if he’s moved, it might kill him.”

  “Then why the hell do you want to move him?”

  “Because I think he’d rather die trying to be saved, than by being betrayed by his son. Let’s go.”

  I led him into the house, quickly through the kitchen and living room, and out to the porch. I heard a sudden intake of breath from Mark, and then he went around me to look at the old man in the bed.

  Will was sleeping, head turned, a line of drool running down a cheek. The oxygen tubes were still in place, and his hands were still above the bedcovers. Mark stepped forward.

  “Dad?”

  A wheezing sound from Will. I said, “His nurse said sometimes he falls into a deep sleep, but when he wakes up, he’s one sharp guy. He and I had a good talk just before you showed up.”

  Mark didn’t seem to be listening to me. He leaned over, gently shook Will’s left shoulder. “Dad? Dad?” His voice choked up. “Sweet Jes
us, Dad . . . so many, many years. Why did you leave me alone? Why didn’t you try to get in touch?”

  I said “He thought about it. He was a laborer at Bath Iron Works. He didn’t feel like he could have offered you a good life. He was happy to hear about you growing up in Vermont.”

  Another gentle nudge from Mark’s hand on Will’s shoulder, and I looked out the porch windows. Just the Mazda and my truck. “Mark, we don’t have time.”

  He looked at me. “Shut up.”

  “Mark, enough is enough. Bring your Mazda over here, we’ll do our best to gently load him in the car. We drive off. The woman who was nursing him . . . she said she was going to call the cops. It’ll take time, but they’ll get here. Let’s go.”

  “No.”

  “Mark, what the hell are you talking about?”

  He reached under his jacket, pulled out a stainless-steel Ruger .357 revolver. A nice, handy, and easy-to-use revolver.

  I’d had one just like it back at home before the fire destroyed it. I guess he was serious about the importance of being armed.

  “We’re not going anywhere until I’ve said my piece.”

  “Mark. . . .”

  “I want this . . . scum to wake up and look me right in the eye, and tell me why he did what he did to me.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Mark, either we get going now, or Reeve Langley is going to show up and things are going to get real ugly, real quick.”

  Mark shook his head no.

  I said, “Did you hear what I just said?”

  Another man’s voice behind me. “Maybe he didn’t, but I sure as hell did.”

  I turned, and a smiling and very confident-looking Reeve Langley was standing there.

  It was like the porch had tilted up on its side and was threatening to tumble me over on the floor. Reeve wasn’t alone: there was another bulky man standing behind him. Reeve stepped forward, smiling widely from a leathery, creased face from a long time on the back of a motorcycle. He looked calm, comfortable, freshly washed and dressed and at peace with the world. He had on khaki slacks, flannel shirt, and a Navy blue wool pea coat, opened up. The leather of his own shoulder holster was visible. On his bald head was a cloth cap with a bill, and his Vandyke was neatly trimmed. The only jarring part of his clothing ensemble was a pair of leather boots that were oil-stained and broken in.

  Reeve was well dressed, but he looked like a grizzly bear at a circus, dressed ridiculously in people clothes that weren’t his.

  His eyes were the color of old slate, and they terrified me. He had the merry look of a man who never doubted his own choices and decisions, no matter how bloody and obscene they were. I had seen such looks before, including a time back when I was at the Pentagon and had observed the interview of a Serbian paramilitary leader whose specialty was long-range sniping that blew off the heads of young boys and girls at play in Muslim enclaves. During the interview he was laughing, joking, and, with pen and paper at hand, delighted in mapping out his best shots.

  “So, Lewis Cole,” Reeve said, his voice calm and mellow. “Just yesterday we were on the phone, with you ignoring my gracious offer. And it’s only been a couple of days since you shot out my tires back at . . . back at . . . Billy, what was the name of that town again?”

  “Tyler,” Billy said, voice uneasy. Billy was making do with his own fashion sense of soiled blue jeans, Red Sox hoodie, and dungaree jacket. He was younger than Reeve, face pockmarked, barely-there beard, and a long black ponytail. He had a Glock semi-automatic pistol in his hand.

  “Ah, Tyler,” Reeve said. “I’m told you’re a magazine writer, right?”

  “Not at the moment,” I said. “Had a disagreement with my editor. On my own now.”

  He stepped closer to me. Mark started speaking, and Reeve raised an arm; Mark instantly shut up. His Ruger revolver was no longer in sight. I imagined he had slipped it back underneath his coat when he saw Reeve come into the porch. My Beretta was less than two feet away from my right hand, under my jacket, but reaching for it would have been suicidal. The man called Billy was covering me, and Reeve looked like he was one big coiled collection of muscles, ready to tear off my head or chase a cheetah across an African plain.

  I braced myself for what was no doubt coming my way, and my terrified meter pegged off the scale at what happened next.

  I was expecting shouting, a punch to the face, a kick to the groin; but instead, Reeve reached out and gently stroked my left cheek with a rough hand. “A magazine writer. A couple of years ago, a magazine writer begged me and begged me to ride along with us for a few weeks. Wanted to be the next Hunter Thompson, whoever the hell he was. I was feeling generous, and the clown showed up in a rice-burner. He tried to keep up with us for a while, and one night, at a rally, he just bored me. All these questions. Yap yap yap.”

  Another soft stroke to my cheek. “Last year they found his shiny stripped bones, in a grassy stretch of prairie outside Laramie. Guess his death is still being investigated. You ever been to Wyoming?”

  “No, but I hope to get there one of these days.”

  That brought forth a smile, and his teeth were firm, clean, and very white. “Sorry, I’m afraid that’s not going to happen. But later, I’ll tell you all about Wyoming . . . face to face, not over the phone, and I’m going to enjoy every long delicious second.”

  I tried to make sure my legs weren’t shaking. “I look forward to listening.”

  His hand came up once more and tap-tapped my cheek. “Remember saying that, Lewis. Remember that well. In a number of hours, you’ll be begging me for a shot to the forehead, and that’s when I’m going to whisper in your remaining ear that I’ve just begun. Billy!”

  “Yeah.” Billy stepped forward.

  Reeve deftly reached over to me, under my jacket, and disarmed me. “First, take care of this. Second . . . this porch is getting a bit crowded. I want Mister Cole here to have a front-row seat. So go in the house, find a chair or something, and rope or duct tape. The brave magazine writer is going to get the story of his lifetime, what’s left of it.”

  Reeve gently walked by me and said, “Oh, please don’t try to make a move, all right? It’ll quickly turn loud and messy. And I’m saving you for dessert.”

  He went to the end of Will’s bed and stood there, hands clasped in front of him, and sighed loudly in satisfaction. “So very, very long . . . I’ve waited for this day for a very, very long time.” He leaned over the end of the bed. “Hey! Hey, Will, you old bastard! Wake up!”

  Will’s face remained the same, eyes closed, gently rasping. Mark said, “He slides in and out of consciousness. He was talking just a while ago.”

  Reeve turned and, still smiling, said “Mark, young man, I don’t fucking think I asked you a goddamn thing, now, did I?”

  Mark seemed to lose a foot in height. “Okay.”

  “Ah, don’t worry about it,” Reeve said, sounding like a Roman emperor, allowing a bit of mercy before a gladiator match was about to start. “Even though you tried to fuck me over at the very last minute, after I was ready to pay you lots of cash to find this old piece of shit. Let’s see what I can do.”

  From inside the house came a loud, clattering noise, and Reeve turned and yelled, “Jesus, Billy, what the hell are you doing out there? Building the goddamn thing from scratch?”

  “Sorry,” came the meek voice. “Found some chairs piled on top of a table . . . a couple fell to the floor . . . I’ll be right there. . . .”

  In a minute he was, holding a wooden dining-room chair in one hand, a length of rope in the other. He put the chair down near the door leading outside, and Reeve motioned me to have a seat. I took my time, as much as I could, hoping that Maureen had made the necessary phone calls by now, and whatever passed for the U.S. Cavalry in this part of rural Maine was riding or driving to the rescue.

  I sat down and Billy came forward, and Reeve said, “Wait. Hold on, genius.”

  “Hunh?” Billy said.

  Reeve shook hi
s head and gave me a whaddya-gonna-do look. “Moron. You don’t tie someone up with one long length of rope like that. That gives ’em too much slack. Cut the rope into four sections, and tie him off at the ankles and wrists. I don’t want him floppin’ around like a fish when I start playing with him later.”

  Billy’s face reddened and, with a sharp knife, he did as he was told. He looked at me and I took a quiet, deep breath, tensed my legs and arms, twisted them some, and Billy went to work. Reeve turned his attention back to the old dying man.

  “Hey! Wake up, you old bastard!”

  More rasping. Reeve tugged up the bedding at the edge of the bed, said “Billy, your knife, if you please.”

  Mark said “Hey, what are you going to do?”

  Reeve said “The fuck do you care? Considering who brought me here, just watch and keep your mouth shut.”

  Reeve grabbed a pasty white foot, splotched with bruises and broken blood vessels, and quickly shoved the pointed end of the knife into the sole of Will’s foot. Mark gasped and I wanted to look away, but I kept still, and then Will slowly opened his eyes, coughed, and said, “Jesus Christ, what the hell was that?”

  Reeve tossed the knife back at Billy, who tried to catch it and failed, the knife clattering to the porch floor. He picked it up, and Reeve said “Will, Will, Will . . . it’s been a long goddamn time, hasn’t it.”

  Will coughed. “Sure has . . . hey, is that you, Reeve? For real?”

  Reeve went around to the side of the bed. “The same. In the flesh.”

  Will said, “Jesus . . . last time I saw you, you was crying and sniffling, shitting and pissing into your diapers . . . what, you were about thirteen then, right?”

  For the briefest of moments, Reeve flinched, like something had bored its way into his armor, and then he relaxed and patted Will on a thin shoulder.

  “Still got it, you old bastard.”

  Will moved his head and shoulders a bit. “Speaking of old bastards . . . how’s your dad Bruno? Still in the SuperMax . . . eh?”