The Water's Edge

by Daniel Judson

  “No.”

  “Nothing has changed, Elle. I’m still the man you know. I’m the same person who’s slept beside you for the past year. Nothing has changed, and nothing is going to happen to you, that much I promise.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because I’m going to make sure.”

  “How?”

  “I just need you to trust me, okay?”

  Gabrielle looked at him. He had a long, thick face, heavily boned. A hard face, even when he smiled. But she didn’t care. There were small, thin scars beneath his eyes and on his cheeks, as if someone had sliced at him here and there with a razor. She knew, though, that these were the scars of the punches he had taken during his years as a fighter. She knew, too, that she had never once sensed anything but caring and tenderness from him, except for those moments when she wanted something other than a light touch. When she wanted the feeling of being taken. But even then, as he obliged her, he had never become a man out of control, never for a second confused passion with violence or degradation.

  Still, it was difficult not to feel shaken by what was happening now, by what, as little as it was, had been said. It was difficult, too, not to see that, despite his assurances otherwise, things were going to change—had changed. How could they not? How could she and he go back to the way things had been, to the life they had as much set up for themselves as fallen into—two people pretending, for reasons unspoken, that their lives had only started more or less on the day they’d met.

  Gabrielle, try as she might, couldn’t see them going back to that. A life of pretend can only last for so long. It was as much her desire to live that way as it was his. But now, suddenly, that desire was gone.

  “No more secrets, Jake,” she said, “okay?” No incrimination in her voice, no judgment, just decisive, certain, calm, as though she were sharing with her lover a New Year’s resolution she was determined to keep. “Not if we’re going to keep sleeping beside each other. From now on, I tell you all about my life, and you tell me all about yours. I think that’s the way it needs to be, don’t you?”

  Bechet nodded. “Whatever you need, Elle.”

  “You’ll be a few hours behind me?”

  “If everything goes well.”

  “And if it doesn’t?”

  By the way Bechet looked at her Gabrielle knew he understood what she meant. How long would she have to wait before she was to conclude he wasn’t coming? Like the night her folks were killed.

  “It will,” Bechet said. “Everything will be fine.”

  As they waited on the platform for the train they stood close to the station house to keep themselves out of sight. Gabrielle had her ditty bag, Bechet his garbage bag with the leather jacket in it. Two refugees, she thought. Bechet studied the handful of buildings that were visible from the station, watching their windows, their doorways, did this for several minutes. Then he watched the various directions from which a car could approach. There were three, Gabrielle counted—Powell Avenue to the east, Elm Street to the south, and Railroad Plaza via North Main. Bechet studied these directions carefully, splitting his attention evenly among them all. Gabrielle watched him do this, standing close to him for warmth, his arm around her shoulder, both her arms around his waist. The train arrived after five minutes, and Bechet got on with her, sat with her, she by the window, he on the aisle. From the conductor he purchased a single ticket to Penn for Gabrielle, but he wasn’t charged when he told the conductor he was just on till the next stop.

  There were three other passengers in the car—a young couple and, a few seats behind them, a man in his sixties. The young couple was nestled together, the boy sleeping, the girl staring absently out the window. The older man, in a wool suit, was reading a newspaper. Bechet watched them all as the train headed west, looked at them, Gabrielle thought, as though he were reading them, as though he were looking into them. When he was done, satisfied that they were in fact what they seemed, he relaxed a little, slouched in his seat and leaned into Gabrielle as she leaned into him. Eventually she rested her head on his shoulder, felt the vibrations and rocking of the train moving through them both.

  Within a minute they were crossing over the canal. It took only a few seconds to reach the other side. Just minutes after that the train was pulling into the Hampton Bays station. Bechet sat up in his seat, and Gabrielle felt a sudden twinge, a kind of anticipatory fear, at the thought of his pending absence. She’d traveled like this before, late at night, at times alone, was accustomed to that. She had done her undergraduate work at Columbia, so she knew New York—well, she knew Manhattan, or parts of it. So she could cram in as much studying as possible she used to take the late train back to Boston on holidays to visit her parents. And one summer, with her sophomore year roommate, had backpacked through Europe—hostels, trains, meals with strangers, an encounter here and there. Her year in Hampton Bays, working as much as possible, staying in that cottage with Bechet, staying put—that was what was uncommon, not this, a late-night journey with only what comforts she could carry. Still, there was no avoiding the fact that this was different. This wasn’t going to, it was running from. Running for her life. Bechet hadn’t said that this was what she was doing, but he didn’t have to. From what little she apparently knew about him, she did know him, could read him, could tell that this was serious, a matter of life and death.

  “I’ll see you in a little while, right?” she said.

  Bechet nodded. “Yeah. Call when you get in. And remember everything I told you.”

  “I will.”

  He looked at her, placed his hand on the side of her face, then kissed her.

  “I love you, Elle.”

  “I love you, too. Be careful.”

  “Always.”

  He got up as the train came to a stop, walked with his garbage bag down the aisle to the exit, hurried onto the platform. He did this, Gabrielle could tell, so he could observe who got on. No one did; very few people were headed for the city at two in the morning. As the doors closed and the train pulled away, Bechet looked for Gabrielle through the green-tinted windows. He saw her and half-smiled. It was meant to be an assuring smile, Gabrielle knew this, but she would need more than just that. She watched him slip past as the platform slid away, and then he was gone from her sight completely.

  She settled into her seat and pulled the fur-lined denim coat around herself. A poor substitute for her lover, but it was all she had, would have to do. She thought about the fact that she was on her own now, for the first time in more than a year. Bechet was always there when she left for work, always there when she came home. Somehow he knew she needed that, knew without her having to say it. It was more than a comfort, his being there, always, it was an anchor, something solid upon which to rebuild—no, not rebuild, the life she had known was gone for good, there was no changing that—so, then, something solid upon which to start over, create something new, something else. Out of the darkness, out of the nothing. But of all nights to find herself suddenly alone—a night not unlike that night her life last changed, a foggy night. What would she do if Bechet didn’t come back? When would she know he wouldn’t be coming back? Where after that? What after that? A life in Brooklyn? In some other place, as of yet unknown to her?

  But she didn’t want to think about that, think that way, so she went over in her mind everything Bechet had told her, every instruction, every detail, every little thing that gave her reason to believe that she wouldn’t have to wait long before she once again sensed him in the empty space beside her.

  Falcetti’s jaw was badly swollen, and there was blood in one eye. He took Bechet as far as South Valley Road, then, as instructed, disappeared, heading west on Montauk Highway. Bechet didn’t know where Falcetti was staying, didn’t want to know. As far as he was concerned, his friend’s part in this was done. All the guy needed to do now was lie low and wait for his face to heal and to forget what had been done to him. As swollen as Falcetti’s face was, Bechet could still
see the look in his eyes, had seen that look in a hundred defeated boxers, had seen it in his own eyes as his career was grinding down, as he lost his speed. He saw that look in his own eyes again on the night the dark star was carved into his forearm by a tattooist. It was that look that had made him plan his way of escape.

  Bechet pushed all that out of his mind as he drove toward Southampton. He put in a call to Paul Scarcella as he went, asking Scarcella to tow Gabrielle’s Rabbit from the Southampton train station to his salvage yard in Noyac, then lose the plates. “No problem,” Scarcella told him. The only question Scarcella asked was if Bechet needed a new vehicle. Bechet told him he might, then ended the call. Taking the long way to the village, Bechet crisscrossed down side streets, watching his rearview mirror as always, checking to see if he was being followed. When he was certain he wasn’t, he drove to Hampton Road, a few blocks south of the train station, and from there to a small garage he rented from an old lady who took cash and didn’t ask for names. It was behind a house and next door to Red Bar, where Gabrielle waited tables. Inside the dark garage, at an old workbench, Bechet sorted through the things he had accumulated, putting what he didn’t need into the garbage bag and what he did need into a small shoulder pack. He kept the knives, the cell phones, the contents of the wallets, and the notebook. He removed the black field jacket and his gloves, put them into the garbage bag, then grabbed a pair of leather gloves from a drawer below the workbench counter, put them on. From active chargers waiting on the workbench he removed a cell phone and a handheld radio scanner, turned them both on and tossed them into the pack. Next to the workbench was a locker. From it Bechet grabbed a hooded sweatshirt, a black mechanic’s jacket, and a new pair of boots. He put them all on, tossing his old boots into the garbage bag with the jackets and gloves and empty wallets.

  On the other side of the room, in the bottom drawer of a standing tool chest, hidden within a box of sockets, was a second stash of cash. Five grand, this time a mix of twenties and fifties. He put some bills in the pocket of his jeans, some into the pack, and the rest in a jacket pocket. Back outside he tossed the garbage bag into the Dumpster behind Red Bar. It was Tuesday morning, garbage pick up was just hours away, not long after dawn. Soon enough everything connecting Bechet to LeCur—everything but the contents of his wallet and notebook—would be gone. A piece of luck, this, Bechet thought. He welcomed it, hoped that it wouldn’t be his only piece today.

  In his Jeep he headed eastward, back toward Wainscott. It started to rain again, not a downpour like before but close enough. The fog was still breaking, so he made the trip quickly. A half mile from Helenbach he parked his Jeep in the lot of a garden center, shouldered his pack, and made his way as quickly as he could along the scrub that lined the two-lane road. He reached the edge of the unlit parking lot in just under five minutes. The gate was still open, exactly as it had been when he left. He crouched down as he opened the pack and removed one of the matching folding knives he had taken from the LeCurs and slipped it into the back pocket of his jeans. The hunk of rope was still there. It connected him to the younger LeCur, so he flung it into the woods. He was about to make his move and sprint across the parking lot toward the gate when something made him wait.

  A sound emerged from the noise of the rain.

  Hissing tires coming from Montauk. A car approaching, moving fast along the wet pavement. Bechet stayed low, expecting the vehicle to pass. It did, a pickup, followed a few seconds later by another vehicle. Instead of passing, this second vehicle slowed and made the turn into the parking lot. Its headlights swept past where Bechet was hidden, and he crouched down even lower out of reflex. The vehicle was a dark town car, and it came to an abrupt stop by the open gate to the compound. Its driver got out, took a quick look around, then opened the back door. Castello emerged, talking on a cell phone. He and his driver—the driver’s handgun drawn—hurried through the open gate.

  Maybe they had a system in place, Bechet thought, a timetable in which the younger LeCur was to check in with Castello. That seemed likely; they had covered every other possibility. But what had brought them back here didn’t matter now, they were here, at this moment freeing LeCur. Bechet stayed low, watching, not making a move. He had a wild hope that maybe LeCur had suffocated, but less than a minute after Castello and his driver had entered, LeCur appeared in the open gate, moving like an animal sprung from a trap. He had a cell phone in his hand, was dialing. When he was finished dialing, he brought the phone to his ear.

  Suddenly, from Bechet’s pack, the muffled ringing of a cell phone. It wasn’t loud enough for LeCur to hear over the sound of the rain, and across the parking lot, but Bechet nonetheless scrambled to locate and silence it. The phone ringing was one of the LeCurs’ phones. The father’s, more than likely. No name on the display, just a number and the initial C.

  Bechet now had Castello’s cell phone number.

  He didn’t answer the phone. What would be the point? The only real advantage he had now was that neither LeCur nor Castello knew for certain what was going on. The longer Bechet kept them guessing, the better. When the time was right, he’d make certain they knew exactly what he needed them to know. But only then.

  Castello and his driver emerged from the club. Castello tried to calm LeCur down but couldn’t. The man was in a rage. The driver scanned the parking lot, his handgun still drawn. Even though he was scanning their surroundings, the driver was also keeping an eye on the thug ranting nearby. Bechet was able to determine, without hearing what was being said, that Castello was demanding LeCur hand over the cell phone. It was, after all, Castello’s cell phone, and he had to know that Bechet would have taken the phone belonging to LeCur’s father as a matter of procedure. Castello and the Algerian argued for a bit, and then finally LeCur obeyed, but unhappily.

  The Algerian obviously wanted blood. For what Bechet had done to him, but also for what Bechet had most likely done to his father.

  LeCur and Castello talked some more, Castello standing next to LeCur, his hand on LeCur’s shoulder, like a coach consoling a player riled by a foul. Finally, Castello talked LeCur into getting in the town car with him. Only then did the driver holster his handgun. Exiting the parking lot, the car turned left, heading east.

  Bechet noticed that one of the taillights was out. He also got a long enough look at the license plate to get its numbers, memorized them, though little good it would probably do him; he didn’t have the connections Castello had. Still, collect what you can, everything you can, you never know. Bechet hurried back across the half mile to his Jeep, remaining as always in whatever darkness was available, even if it meant veering from a straight line. He knew now that killing LeCur would no longer guarantee Gabrielle’s anonymity, no longer serve to sever his wanted future from his unwanted past. More than just a simple killing would be required now.

  He waited at the edge of the garden shop parking lot before approaching his Jeep, checking to see if anyone was lying in wait for him. But there was no way to be certain, so Bechet took a breath and bolted across the parking lot. He half-expected at any moment to hear a shot or feel the knockdown punch of a bullet, but he didn’t. The night, with the exception of the sopping rain, remained quiet. He climbed in behind the wheel and cranked the ignition, getting out of there fast, his Jeep the only vehicle to be seen anywhere on the drenched blacktop.

  Returning to Southampton, Bechet checked into a motel on the edge of the village, not that far from his garage, leaving his Jeep behind the single-story building, out of sight from the road. His only hope now was that there was something in the items he had taken from the two LeCurs that would give him an edge. Something, anything. He needed to take the offensive, couldn’t afford to sit and wait for them to come to him. This was, for now, the only hand he had to play.

  Bechet got out of his wet clothes, laid them to dry on the heating unit, then, naked, tipped his shoulder pack upside down and spread its contents out onto the motel bed. By the weak light coming in from
the street he began to sort through what was there.

  Six

  IN HIS APARTMENT, MILLER WAITED FOR BARTON TO ARRIVE. Though the blue flame was gone there was still a lightness in his head, as if he had just awakened and was no longer in the world of dreams but not yet in the waking world either, drifting instead along some narrow, twilight edge between the two. He knew he wouldn’t feel this way for long, that the effects of the painkillers would dissipate and that sense of lingering in a kind of no-man’s-land would, like the blue flame, be gone. But there was nothing he could do till then, so he closed his eyes and listened anxiously for the sound of Barton’s car on the street below his front windows. Of course, when he closed his eyes, all he saw was Abby.

  He had been able, for a while, to keep track of her after she had left. Doing so had nothing to do with his being a private investigator, or his being the son of the former chief of police, with the certain set of skills that were no doubt in his blood. It had, instead, everything to do with Southampton being a small town, especially during the long, desolate winters. After leaving Miller, Abby had waited tables for a few months at LeChef, the French restaurant on Job’s Lane, met an older man while working there, a regular customer, a man with money and a boat, or so the rumors said, with a house in Sag Harbor and all the time in the world to spend with Abby, keep her company day and night. Even now, all these years later, Miller found himself cringing at the idea of the nights she and this older man must have spent together. Abby was, when Miller had been around to receive it, when he wasn’t too busy with furthering his personal redemption through PI work, a dedicated lover, willing to do anything, to become just what the man she loved wanted. It was all Abby wanted not to be left alone at night, and so she made love as if doing so kept back the darkness and all the monsters that roamed within it, kept it all at bay. It was difficult for Miller, then and now, to imagine another man receiving Abby’s devoted attention and sometimes bold curiosity and eagerness—an almost wild need—to please. It was even more difficult for Miller to imagine this occurring night after night, imagine this other man—this older man—free to explore and enjoy what Miller, because of his business, his quest, had been unable to.