Spiked

by Mark Arsenault

  “Then what is it? Is this a lifelong contest between you and the people who’ve hurt you? Is there a scoreboard hanging somewhere?”

  She studied Eddie with a puzzled face.

  Phife gave a low throaty snarl. Over her shoulder, Eddie saw Phife reach a hand toward them. Red light glinted off a silver gun.

  Eddie drove his shoulder into Chanthay.

  Phife fired. The bullet ricocheted off the satellite dish. Eddie rolled over Chanthay and pulled her behind the Empire E. Phife fired again. Glass shattered. Half the E went dark.

  Chanthay pushed Eddie aside, scrambled to her feet and reached her gun around the giant E. She fired three blind shots.

  Commotion stirred on the floor below. Footsteps clomped up the ladder. “Shots fired! Shots fired!”

  Phife dashed across the roof. Chanthay and Eddie gave chase.

  At the roof’s west edge, Phife vaulted the safety wall and disappeared over the side.

  “No!” Eddie screamed.

  There was a metal clang, and then footsteps. Eddie and Chanthay glanced at each other in surprise, then rushed across the roof. Eddie leaned over the parapet and saw Phife pounding down the fire escape.

  From the trap door on the other side of the E, someone yelled, “Police! Hold it there!”

  Chanthay sprang over the safety wall. She dropped the twelve feet to the fire escape and landed with a grunt. The platform squealed and trembled. She popped up and ran down the stairs, gun drawn.

  Police officers poured onto the roof.

  Eddie traced the sign of the cross as he went over the side.

  The fire escape’s tenth-floor landing wobbled when he hit. The blow yanked rusted bolts from the wall with a sharp screech, and the platform wailed like an iron beast as its welded metal joints bent under the strain. Eddie threw himself headfirst down the steep stairs toward the next iron landing. The welds gave out; the top platform lurched from place. It rushed past Eddie and plummeted toward the river of asphalt ten stories below. Eddie turned a somersault down the stairs and felt them give way beneath him, ripped down by the falling metal. He grabbed for the next platform, catching three fingers in the grate. Momentum swung him under the landing, shearing skin off his fingers. He snapped back and dangled in space, nine stories above the street. His other hand clawed for a hold.

  The tenth-floor platform, its railing and stairs, a quarter-ton of iron, slammed into the ground.

  Eddie grabbed at the metal grate and scraped his hands raw pulling himself up. There was no time to catch his breath. He stormed down the stairs. The belt he had left earlier on the last rung was still there. It slipped through his bloody fingers. Eddie dropped hard on the sidewalk. He groaned, slowly hauled himself up and caught sight of Chanthay sprinting down the street.

  A shot flashed from the darkness ahead of her. She dove to the ground, rolled and fired back.

  Phife screamed. He staggered under a streetlight and into an alley, clutching his hip.

  Chanthay ran after him; Eddie ran after her. He was hurt and tired, but adrenaline overpowered the part of him that wanted to quit. He didn’t want another murder on Chanthay’s soul; didn’t want another on his own. But something even greater pushed him on. There was an invisible web that connected him to everyone he knew, and then to everyone they knew, and so on, forever. How many holes had been punched through that web? Father Wojick. Danny Nowlin. Samuel Sok. Sok’s faceless victims. Even the two hitmen in the mill. Back alley revenge might work in her world, but this was Eddie’s turf.

  This is where it stops.

  Eddie clenched his teeth as he whipped every muscle fiber to run, run faster. He barreled into the alley.

  Phife was on the ground, propped up on a discarded truck tire. His head was down. Blood pooled under him. His gun was under Chanthay’s foot.

  She raised her gun to his ear.

  Eddie shouted, “Enough!”

  She turned to him and scowled. “You have no business here,” she hissed. “He has to pay.”

  Eddie wheezed. “He’ll pay. Murder one, no parole.”

  “I will take revenge for Danny.”

  Eddie spat on the ground. “Liar,” he cried. “This isn’t for Danny. This is for you.”

  She glowered at him.

  “You’re so used to taking revenge, you don’t know why you do it anymore,” he said. He stood over Phife to block her line of fire.

  “I’ll shoot through you,” she threatened.

  Eddie sighed and said gently, “You told me how you like revenge, the feeling it gives you, and I don’t doubt it’s good. This one time, for me—see how justice feels.”

  They stared at each other, as they had done in the old house a few days before. Eddie imagined his finger tracing the bulge of her cheekbone. A police siren wailed in the distance. Chanthay backed away, deeper into the alley. They held their gaze until darkness swallowed her, and she vanished.

  Chapter 38

  The predawn horizon smoldered pink.

  The giant neon E was dark, its glass tubes silent and dead white. Eddie sat in the satellite dish, sipping a beer left over from the night Gordon Phife had tricked him into touching the murder weapon. Seemed like ages ago. The paramedics who had taken Phife away had wrapped Eddie’s fingers in gauze. The police who had taken his statements had gone.

  Eddie was brittle but wide awake. He had come back to the roof to watch the sunrise.

  And he wondered, What next?

  His only plan was to pick up the General in a few hours. He couldn’t see any further into the future. The crash of emotions after the night’s events had blown out his pilot light.

  The trap door slapped open. Shoes crunched on the pebble roof.

  Detective Orr came around the E. She admired the sunrise for a moment and then plopped down next to Eddie. “Beautiful view,” she said.

  He nodded. “I think there’s another beer left.”

  “A wee bit early for me,” she said. “I’ll take my wire, though.”

  Eddie reached under his shirt, yanked the recorder off his chest—she had been right, it didn’t hurt that much to take it off—and handed the contraption to Orr.

  “How’s the other tape?” he asked.

  “It’ll hold up in court, but we’re assuming he’ll plead out.”

  “You remember our deal?” Eddie said.

  “The tape gets fuzzy when you talk about a story Mr. Nowlin had done. Static, you know.”

  Eddie nodded. “Thanks.”

  They watched the sunrise for a few minutes. The light gathering at the horizon finally ignited into sunfire. Eddie was glad the night was over.

  “Thanks for believing me,” he said.

  Her face glowed yellow in the new light. “The bloody golf club did have your fingerprints all over it, but your story was too weird to be made up. You guys really hit golf balls off this building?” She grinned. “I’ll tell the chief I solved that rash of broken windows.”

  Eddie tried not to smile, but couldn’t help himself. He sipped some beer.

  “Will you be writing this story?” she asked.

  “Don’t work here anymore.” He slouched on the dish.

  She frowned. “I’m going to have to talk to somebody. Who can I trust to be fair?”

  Eddie thought a moment. “Do me a favor,” he said. “When The Empire calls for this story, insist on giving the scoop to Boyce Billips.”

  Detective Orr promised she would. She put her hand on his and squeezed gently. “You did the right thing, and you played your part perfectly, first on the phone with him, and then here on the roof.”

  Eddie sighed and poured out the rest of his beer. A puddle of white foam burrowed into the gravel.

  “Enough angst,” Orr declared. She playfully punched Eddie’s shoulder. “Tell me what you know about this body in St. Francis de Sales.”

  “Oh Christ,” Eddie muttered. “You don’t want to know.”

&nbs
p; He thought about the church and had an idea. He straightened up. “Do you have a phone?”

  Orr squinted at him, smiling. She unclipped her telephone from her belt and handed it to him. “Is this the appropriate time of day to be making a call?”

  Eddie dialed a townhouse in Washington D.C. “It’ll be fine,” he assured Orr. The phone rang five times before someone answered with a gravel-throated, “Dammit all to hell! What?”

  “Hey Hippo, it’s Bourque,” Eddie said. “You gotta catch the early flight to Logan. It’s time to have that press conference you talked about, to spill the secrets about the plot to destroy the Acre. I can fill you in on how Templeton and The Empire were in on it.”

  Eddie jerked the phone away from his head. The little device ranted.

  He shrugged at Orr and said, “I thought guys his age got up early.”

  Chapter 39

  The woman waited for Eddie at a little round table reserved for Bourque, party of two, right in front of the stage. Eddie looked her over from across the club. He had not seen her for weeks. He recalled an image of her in his recliner. She looked so different now, dressed modestly in a blue knit top with a neckline that hugged her Adam’s apple. She had done nothing to accentuate her good looks, and she wasn’t turning heads. But she held your eye, once she had it.

  She waited patiently, nursing a syrupy-looking drink, bright red, in a dainty stemmed glass. She smiled and stood as Eddie wound through the mushroom patch of little tables.

  They embraced. She kissed his cheek.

  “Good to see you, Eddie.”

  “You too, Jesse.”

  They sat. A waitress hustled over, balancing a pint of stout beer on a tray. She placed the drink in front of Eddie and said, “Somebody’s been waiting all night to buy you a beer.”

  “Is he nervous?” Eddie asked.

  The waitress held her hand flat and tipped it back and forth. “A little, not bad.” She bustled off.

  Jesse tapped Eddie’s arm affectionately. “I saw the piece you freelanced to The Globe’s Sunday magazine on those heroin addicts under the bridge,” she said. “What a wonderful story. Frightening, but I couldn’t put it down.”

  Eddie sipped his stout and then wiped away his beer moustache. “Thanks. I got a lot of feedback on that story. This treatment center in Connecticut has offered two free beds for them, if they commit to the in-house program. Leo and Gabrielle are thinking it over. I hope they do it.”

  “You sound good for a guy with no job.”

  “I have two more freelance pieces in the works. I’m starting to think I don’t need a job.”

  “Good for you!” she said. “Looks like you quit The Empire just in time.”

  Eddie smiled. “Congressman Vaughn’s press conference sure rattled that place. There’s nothing a newspaper hates more than becoming part of the story. Some neighborhood groups in the Acre are organizing a circulation boycott. It won’t be long before the advertisers buckle and Templeton is forced out.”

  “He’s not the only one with problems.”

  “Yeah, Vaughn nearly torpedoed the whole incumbent City Council, too. That wasn’t an election, it was a turkey shoot.” He sipped. “And how are you?”

  Jesse frowned and looked into her drink. “It’s been harder lately than it was at first. The key is staying busy. My girlfriends have been taking me to the symphony a lot.” She looked up and smiled. “You should tag along sometime.”

  Eddie clinked his glass to hers. “Maybe I will,” he said. “You tell me when they’re playing Claude Debussy.”

  The houselights dimmed and a spotlight beamed to the stage. An emcee introduced the first act. “Fresh from his mother’s basement, puh-leeeeeeeze welcome—comedian Stan Popko!”

  The audience clapped politely and welcomed Stan to the microphone.

  Stan shuffled on stage in a wrinkled gray suit and a polka-dot bow tie. He sighed, fidgeted with the microphone, and gazed over the group as if barely interested in the crowd. Then, in the leaden monotone only Stan could command, he droned, “Welcome students—to the first day of comedy class. I am your professor of hilarity—Mr. Popko.”

  Perfect. Giggles passed over the audience.

  “Today’s lesson is entitled, The Three Stooges: Why a Finger in Curly’s Eye—Puts a Stitch in My Side.”

  The crowd didn’t love him, that would have been asking too much, but they liked him. Laughter simmered throughout Stan’s lecture, and the warm applause at the end was sincere.

  Jesse leaned to Eddie and spoke over the applause, “You’re absolutely beaming! Is that fatherly pride?”

  Eddie nodded. “Look at him—he’s smiling.”

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