Way Past Legal

by Norman Green

  There was a scar on the pine tree I had hit with the Subaru, but not a big one, considering the damage I’d done to Hobart’s vehicle. A piece of bark was missing, maybe ten inches wide and two or three high, the exposed wood just a little punky from the impact, weeping sticky pine sap. I parked the minivan next to a GMC pickup in Mrs. Johnson’s front yard. A tall kid came out of the house, he was a couple of inches taller than me, but skinny, long dark hair, dark eyes, ropy, corded muscles in his arms. “Hey,” he said, extending a hand.

  “Chris Johnson?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Your mom around?”

  He blinked at me in surprise. “She went on downstreet,” he said. He was curious, I could tell, but he didn’t ask. “You want me to go get her?”

  “You think she’ll be long?” I said. “Is it okay if I wait?”

  “Sure,” he said. “She should be back in a few minutes. Get you a cup of coffee? Beer?”

  “No, thanks. I’m good. They told me you were up in the Allagash, but nobody told me what it was.”

  “Allagash Wilderness Waterway. You never been?”

  “Never even heard of the place.”

  “Oh, man,” he said. “You should go. Little crowded, right now, we seen other canoes almost every day we was up there, but still . . .” He shook his head. “I got pictures. You wanna see ’em? Better than me trying to tell you what it’s like.”

  We were still looking at the pictures when Chris’s mother came walking up the road. She just glanced at the minivan, but then she saw me talking to her son. “Hey, Coyote,” she said. “You come back to tell me some stories?”

  “I came back to ask you a question. I owe you some money, too.”

  “That’s right, you do. Some businessman I would make, huh?”

  Chris glanced at me, then at his mother. I guess he thought his mom and I were an odd combination, and maybe we were. He shook his head, suppressing a smile. “I’m going back inside,” he said. “Nice to meet you, Manny.”

  “Same here. Thanks for showing me the pictures.”

  I told Mrs. Johnson about Rosario leaving the hospital.

  “He’s that man you carried out of the woods,” she said. “Do you still have that cell phone?”

  I got it out of the car and gave it to her. She made some calls, speaking, as she had done the first time, that strange language. All I understood were the names and an occasional sentence in English, like, “Oh, no, John, are you telling the truth?” I had no choice but to wait, so I leaned back against the van and tried to relax. There was a bunch of cedar waxwings feeding in some juniper bushes across the road from Mrs. Johnson’s house. At first I saw only a couple, and I thought they were female cardinals—waxwings have a similar crest and a sort of subtle reddish tan coloring—but the longer I looked, the more of them I saw, there had to be twenty or thirty of them, and cardinals never flock together like that. Waxwings do, though, certain times of the year they forget their territorial impulses and get together to feed in bunches. I wonder if they do it because they enjoy each other’s company. Ornithologists and other scientists will tell you that’s bullshit, that birds don’t enjoy or not enjoy, for them there’s only instinct. I’ll tell you something, though, they don’t know, either. They’re just giving you their best guess.

  Mrs. Johnson shut the phone off and handed it back to me. “Do you remember my friend, the doctor?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Absolutely.”

  “Well, he told me that your friend is crazy. Yesterday morning your friend got up out of bed, disconnected himself from the tubes and machines, went down to the hospital loading dock, and stole a station wagon.”

  “Station wagon?”

  She shook her head. “My doctor friend told me that they have a walk-in cooler down behind the dock, and when someone dies in the hospital, they just put a shroud over them, tie a tag on their big toe, wheel them in there on a gurney, and leave them there. When the man from the funeral parlor comes to get them, he just backs his station wagon up to the dock, goes inside to fill out the paperwork, then brings his gurney into the walk-in box, and they flop the dead person from the hospital’s gurney onto his, and he loads up and goes away. Just like someone picking up a load of frozen hamburgers.”

  I waited for her to go on, but she didn’t, she just stood there looking at the ground and shaking her head. Rosario on the loose. It was a good thing Nicky was with the Bookmans. “So what happened? Rosario stole some undertaker’s van?”

  “Oh,” she said, looking up. “Sorry. The man from the funeral parlor had his wagon all loaded when your friend found him. Your friend had a knife, and he made the man drive around the block, and then he stole the poor man’s clothes, left him standing there in his boxer shorts. And then he left the dead person in the McDonald’s parking lot. The police found it there, the gurney with the body on it. Oh, and I almost forgot. You remember that Russian, the one that hit his head on a rock? They found him dead in his hospital bed. My friend says it looks like he was strangled.” She clucked her tongue. “What do you think happened to your friend, Coyote? Did he lose his mind?”

  “No.” I looked over at her. “Did you ever know somebody who was so sure that everybody was going to screw them that they almost made it happen?” She nodded. “Well, Rosey is like that. He’s so afraid, he thinks so much about everything bad that could go wrong, that he winds up doing something so crazy that it seems to attract bad results. It’s like if you have to buy tires for your car, but you’re so sure the tire guy is going to screw you, you go in there and treat him bad, you yell about every dollar it’s going to cost you, you force the guy to screw you just to cover himself. You know what I mean?”

  She was nodding. “He calls up the evil spirits. You believe in spirits, Coyote?”

  “No.”

  “Don’t be so sure of yourself. So what is he going to do now?”

  “He’s looking for something he can hold over my head. He thinks he’s going to have to force me to give him his money. And the only thing up here that I care about is my son Nicky.”

  “You’d better go get him, then,” she said.

  “He’s in a safe place.”

  She shook her head. “Go get him.”

  “I’m on my way. Listen, I figure I owe you four hundred bucks, let me give you that.”

  “I only took you out one day. That’s a hundred.”

  “Yeah, but you sat with me two days in the hospital, and if you hadn’t known that doctor, my life would’ve gotten a lot more complex. So I owe you for three days, plus you gotta get a tip.”

  She was shaking her head. “A hundred dollars,” she said firmly.

  “Mrs. Johnson?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Please.”

  She stared at me for a minute. “All right. But you’ve gotta come back and tell me how this comes out.”

  I was surprised, the minivan broke one hundred, no problem. I kept my foot on it all the way back to Route 1. I passed only two other cars, they were going in the opposite direction, and they seemed to be crawling. It was much tougher going once I got southbound on Route 1, there was lots of other traffic. Not too many tourists, though, mostly Maine plates, cars and pickups and a lot of pulp trucks hauling big logs. Then, of course, everybody had to slow down to go through Calais, and there were some traffic lights and so on. But I don’t think it mattered. If I had been able to keep my speedometer needle buried the whole trip back, it still would have taken too long. Once I got through Calais, though, Route 1 followed the St. Croix River on its way to Passamaquoddy Bay, and it’s only a two-lane road, without a lot of places to pass. I got stuck behind a UPS truck, which was a good thing, I suppose. The guy was moving pretty fast, not fast enough for me, though, but a state cop passed us heading north while I was still looking for a space to get by. It got me thinking that Bookman might be the county sheriff, but he wasn’t the only police authority up in this place, they have staties and even some town cops, so I cool
ed out a little bit and stayed behind the UPS guy.

  I could understand Rosario sweating about his money. I could even understand why he would want to wax the Russian, especially after the hurt that the Russian had put on him. And it was not in Rosario’s nature to trust anybody, not even me. He might be able to do it for a couple hours or a half a day, and if the two of us had a job going, he might even restrain himself for a couple of days, long enough for us to be able to do what we needed to do, but that was the upper limit. Even after I had saved his ass, carried him out through those woods, he just knew I was going to screw him unless he had a stick he could hit me with. Or it could have been that he was just more comfortable that way, I don’t know. I read someplace that LBJ was like that, that he wouldn’t trust you unless he had a gun stuck in your ear.

  The thing was, the more I thought about it, the more I was convinced that Rosey was going to spoil Buchanan’s deal for both of us. He was attracting way too much attention, and the cops were bound to get him sooner or later, and when they did, he would turn back into the aggrieved party, he would tell them how I had fucked him out of his money. That would get them looking, and from there it was just a short hop to the SEC, and I would be broke again. And worse than that, Bookman already had Nicky. I started adding it up: There was the initial heist, and stealing money is against the law, even if you steal it from bad guys. Then there were those three dead guys in the Dumpster, the cops would try hard to get me as an accessory to that. On top of that, I had snatched Nicky, I didn’t know if they would call that kidnapping or not, but they’d get me for it either way. And now there was a dead Russian in the Calais hospital, not to mention the stiff that Rosey had dumped in the McDonald’s parking lot.

  First things first, I told myself. All you gotta do right now is get to Nicky, then you can figure out what comes next.

  I pulled into Bookman’s driveway. Their dog went ape shit, he came running over to the minivan, barking and showing his teeth. I opened the door a crack and he jumped back, started running around in circles and generally making as much noise as it is possible for a dog to make. Stupid mutt. He was afraid, I guess, but he was trying like hell to do his job. The front door to Bookman’s house opened and he came out, down the steps and into the yard. The dog was more afraid of him than he was of me, and he began making larger circles, avoiding Bookman altogether, barking the whole time.

  Bookman did not seem his normal imperturbable self. “Scruffy!” he bellowed at the dog. “Get over here!” At once the dog stopped barking and running. He flattened himself down as close to the ground as he could get and still be able to walk, and he went slinking over toward Bookman, his ears flat back on his head. “Be quiet!” Bookman thundered at the dog. He pointed in the direction of his backyard. “And get outta here!” The dog looked at him, glanced back at me, and did his crab walk back toward the rear of the house. He stopped when he got to the back corner of the house, and lay down in the grass, watching the two of us. Bookman turned and looked at me, visibly struggling to regain his composure. It was going to be my turn next. “Fuckin’ dog,” he said, but it was unclear whether he was talking about me or Scruffy.

  Behind him, the front door to his house opened again, and Mrs. Bookman came out carrying Nicky’s knapsack. Bookman heard her, but he didn’t even turn around. Instead he dropped his shoulders, looked straight up at the sky, sucked in a big breath, held it, blew it out. She marched right past him, came over to me, and thrust Nicky’s knapsack into my hands.

  “I’m going to miss him so much,” she said. “We all will. Especially Franklin.” Behind her, Bookman stared at the ground, shaking his head. She turned and looked at him. It was obvious that the two of them had discussed what they should do about Nicky and me, but it was just as obvious that Mrs. Bookman had reached her own conclusions, which were not subject to debate. One thing I’ve noticed about women, you can’t tell them what to do, particularly the good ones. They won’t listen, especially if they think they know something you don’t. She turned back to me, reached out and squeezed my arm. “That child is going to be something special,” she said. She turned away then, headed back to her house. She stopped in front of her husband. “Taylor,” she said firmly. “Go get them.”

  He had the barest hint of a smile on his face. “Yes, deah,” he said. She glared at him for a second, and then she went back inside the house. Bookman stared at me until he heard the front door slam. “Women,” he said. “If Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.”

  I didn’t dare to smile. I turned away instead, silently thanking whatever goddesses had interceded on my behalf, and I stuck Nicky’s knapsack into the minivan. “Come on,” Bookman said. “Theyah down over the hill, fishing.” He looked at me. “Listen,” he said. “That boy belongs with you. You understand me? The thing is, there’s plenty of people think they know bettah than you. The state, the teachahs at school, the ministah at yaw church, they all wanna tell you what’s best for yaw kids. You got any goddam brains at all, you’ll take that boy fah away from heah. You keep mucking around, yaw going to lose him.”

  “I hear you.”

  We walked out past the cars, out toward the back of Bookman’s house. He paused when we got to where his dog was laying in the grass. Bookman pointed his finger down at the dog. “Stay,” he said. The dog stared back at him, watching intently with big brown eyes. “Stay, damn you.”

  There was a neatly mowed patch of green lawn out behind Bookman’s house, and a field of tall yellow grass behind that. A rock wall bordered the far side of his property, and some big maple trees grew along the border, along with some smaller trees and puckerbushes. We followed a path that paralleled the wall. It led up a long hill behind the house.

  “You know how I wound up with that fucking dog?” Bookman said.

  “No idea.”

  “Someone driving past the house,” he said, “must have chucked him out the windah when he was a puppy. Franklin found the stupid thing. It was hurt, naturally, and nothing would do but I had to take it to the vet.” He shook his head. “Cost me over a hundred bucks to fix up a fifty-nine-cent mutt, but Franklin was in love with the goddam thing, and my wife wouldn’t have it any uthah way.” He walked a few paces in silence. “So now I’m stuck with him,” he said. “I still think about shooting or drowning him ’bout once a day, though. Do you undahstand where I’m going with this, Manny?”

  “I think so.”

  “You and that goddam mutt have got a lot in common.”

  “That’s what I thought you meant.”

  “The dog,” he said, “earns his keep, I guess. Bahks whenevah someone he don’t know comes around. He is, mahginally, less trouble than he’s worth. But there is a limit, if you know what I mean.”

  “I get it.”

  “I found out what you did for Eleanor Avery,” he said.

  I had forgotten all about that. “Okay.”

  “You keep surprising me,” he said. “First by being bettah than I thought you were, then by being worse. How come you never told me about this other character? The one caused all that trouble up to the Calais hospital?”

  “I was trying to get rid of him,” I said. “I was going to pick him up this morning, as a matter of fact. I had intended to put him on a plane today, but I found out he had kicked over the trash cans while I was down in Manhattan.”

  “What’s his name?”

  I thought briefly about giving him a phony name. If the cops got Rosey, then the master plan Buchanan and I had put together would still come crumbling down. I couldn’t do it, though. Not after what had just happened. I still had some cash in my duffel bag over in Louis’s house, I could settle for that, as long as I got to keep Nicky. “Rosey,” I told him. “Rosario Colón.”

  “Do you have any idea what Mr. Colón is going to do next?”

  We had reached the crest of the hill, and the field fell away in front of us. The rock wall, the trees along the border that it made, and the path through the tall grass slope
d gradually down to a stream at the far end, maybe a hundred yards away. There was an enormous beech tree at the far end of the field, right next to the road that ran along the bank of the stream. The tree had to be four feet thick at the base. A raven flew out of the top of the beech tree, cawing sharply as he went. Telling his friends, Watch out, palefaces coming. There was a green station wagon parked under the tree, with one of its back doors open. Rosario stood next to the car, and he had Nicky by the hair.

  12

  “Oh, shit,” Bookman said. I took off and left him there. I could hear Nicky’s sharp cries, faint in the distance, I could see him struggling in Rosario’s grip. It didn’t do him any good, of course. Rosey tossed him into the back of the station wagon and slammed the door closed. He turned and headed for the driver’s side, and as he did so he must have caught the motion out of the corner of his eye, because he turned and looked in my direction. It was too far to tell for sure, but I thought I saw him grinning, I thought I could read triumph in the way he stood, looking in my direction. I was moving as fast as I possibly could, but I was too far away. He had plenty of time, and he knew it. So did I, but I kept on anyway. What else could I do? I heard Bookman yelling behind me, I heard a pistol shot. He couldn’t run, he was middle-aged and out of shape, but he was doing what he could, I guess. The pistol shot was just an empty threat, though, he was too far away to hit anything, and he wouldn’t take a chance on hitting Nicky anyhow.

  Franklin came lumbering up the stream bank behind Rosey. He dropped the two fishing rods he was carrying and he wrapped his hairy arm around Rosey’s throat. I couldn’t run any faster, I couldn’t do anything but keep going. Just hang on to him, Franklin, I thought, just hold him there. . . . But there was no way. No matter what he looked like, Franklin was a gentle soul, a little boy. Rosario broke his hold, turned, and crashed an elbow to Franklin’s jaw, and Franklin melted down into the grass at the side of the road.