Nantucket Sawbuck (16 page)

The lights glowed from Billy's beach shack. Mike parked and sat in the car, listening to the surf and the faint sound of Van Morrison from Billy's house, carried on the wind. “Blue Money.” How appropriate. He had no idea what he was going to say, or how he was going to begin.

As it turned out, he didn't have to say anything.

Billy came to the door in sweatpants and an old Delavane Construction T-shirt. The wood stove was going and the little house was warm. There was a faint smell of varnish. Van was singing “Cleaning Windows” now. Maybe it was a message; people always needed their windows cleaned. Billy's pug, Dervish, jumped up, front paws on Mike's knees, curlicue tail twitching. Mike leaned over to rub behind the little dog's ears. Dervish had a nice little set-up here. A warm house, constant attention, and all the food he could eat. “Hey, Dervish,” he said. “Good boy.” Dervish stretched to lick his nose. Some people would have been disgusted by that; Mike took it as a compliment.

He straightened up and Billy said, “Come in. Have a drink. Tell me how much you need.”

“No, look, I didn't—”

Billy took his shoulder and pulled him inside. “Hey, relax, check yourself out. It has to be money, unless Cindy's leaving you. Or you have something incurable, and I can't help with that.” He kicked the door closed with his foot and stared at Mike. “Wait a second. Is Cindy leaving you?”

“No, not yet…at least, I hope not.”

“Then, let's get out of here. I've been working this bird feeder all night. I was just getting some sealer on it.”

“You missed the party.”

“No, I showed up early, had a few drinks, and split. Pat was trying to corner me. The McKittricks' basement is leaking and they're suing him. He wants me to testify if it goes to court.” He grabbed his coat off the rack near the door, and pulled it on. “I built the kids' bunk bed and installed the cabinets. What the hell do I know about the basement? Anyway, if he wants to talk about, it he can do it on his own time, on the job. It's not cocktail party talk. Except, Pat doesn't have anything else to talk about. Come on, let's get to the Box before it closes.”

Mike explained the situation as they rode back to town. He was finishing as they turned away from the Stop& Shop into the Chicken Box parking lot: “So I need five thousand dollars and I have no idea when I'll be able to pay it back.”

Billy laughed. “Don't stop there—really sell me. Say you'll gamble it all away at Mohegan Sun and then avoid me like I was contagious for the next five years.”

“No man, come on, you know there's no way—”

Billy punched him on the arm, “I'm kidding. Relax. Gentleman's rule: retain your sense of humor under duress.”

Mike let out a long breath. “Oh yeah—I remember those rules. Your dad was great. Borderline psychotic, but great.”

“And he really was a gentleman, in his own way. He never broke his own rules. Don't argue about politics. Pick up the tab. Notice small improvements. Remember birthdays. Call home. Walk the dog.”

“Help your friends.”

Billy nodded. “Treat them like family. Because they are.”

He leaned over and pulled his checkbook out of his pocket, pulled a pen from the ashtray, scribbled a check, tore it off, handed it over.

Mike was confused. “This is for seventy-five hundred dollars.”

“That was one of my dad's best rules: a gentleman never asks for as much as he needs.”

“Thank you.”

Billy cuffed him lightly on the head, “Come on. Let's shoot some pool and have a beer. You're buying.”

Chapter Twenty

Romance and Retribution

“I just wish there was something I could do to him,” Mike said.

They were still at the Chicken Box, drinking draft Guinness. Billy Delavane was running the pool table. With Billy's check in his pocket Mike's frenzy had subsided, but he could still feel the noise of it resonating in the silence, like a football stadium after a playoff game.

“There's things you can do. Four ball in the corner.” Billy had an expert ease with the pool cue, leaning over the table, giving a couple of smooth piston warmups and a single sure strike that sent the cue ball rocketing at the corner. It knocked in the four ball and floated back to the middle of the table. “Six in the side.”

Mike took a long swallow. “Like what?”

“You're a Nantucketer. You have to use the classic Nantucket weapons.”

“Mildew? Red tide? Powder Post beetles?”

Billy looked up, grinning. “Gossip,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“That's your weapon. Good old-fashioned small-town back-stabbing gossip. Three in the side.” He walked around the table for the shot. The white ball brushed past its target, tipping it down and gone. Another rumble; then silence, or as close to silence as you could get, with U2 howling about a street with no name from the other side of the room. The Irish lads had control of the jukebox tonight.

Mike finished his beer. “How would that work?”

“Look around you. There are some crazy people on this island. Some of them are so crazy they can't live anywhere else. A lot of them have guns. And most of them have been working on the Lomax job for the last eight months. I see four carpenters, three floor guys, two electricians, and a partridge in a pear tree. No, that's Pat Folger getting a rash in his dress up wool turtleneck. He must like to suffer.”

Mike took in the crowd at the bar: Tom Danziger, Lomax's electrician; Arturo Maturo, his plumber. Both of them were capable of murder. And the landscaper—Jane something…Stiles, that was it—was shooting pool at the next table with the big blonde who ran her crew. Those girls were scary. Pushing a lawnmower all day made you strong, and Jane had a temper. Mike had watched her fire a customer last summer, one day before a giant wedding reception was scheduled at the lady's house. “You don't treat me like a human being, and I'm sick of it,” she had said, and stalked off across the uncut lawn, past the un-pruned hydrangeas, over the un-weeded driveway, while the lady sobbed, “What'll I do, what'll I do?” Jane turned back. Her Parthian shot: “Treat people better.”

That girl was one tough customer. Was she a killer? Who knew? Mike was warming to Billy's plan. His dad always said. “Kill 'em with the truth.” This crowd might just take the phrase literally.

Why not? This was definitely a truth worth killing for.

Billy checked his watch. “We have time. Let's get another round.”

“It's a good thing I don't own that watch,” Mike said. Tilting his head down an inch, toward the Patek Phillipe on Billy's wrist. “I'd have sold it a long time ago.”

“I don't think so. Not if you knew the history. Not if you'd lived it.”

“And you're never going to tell me, so fuck it.”

“Sounds like you're finally giving up. Quit when you know it's futile.”

“Dad's rule?”

“One of the best. Okay, here we go.”

He nodded as they approached the crush of bodies at the bar, giving Mike his cue.

Mike started talking in mid-sentence. “—that's what I'm trying to tell you. I heard Lomax talking. I was right there. He's going to stiff everyone. He doesn't care. Fuck, man, he was bragging about it! He's like some creepy kid pouring gasoline into an ant hill. He likes killing the bugs. That's us, by the way. We're just a bunch or worker ants to that piece of shit.”

Everyone was listening now, and pretending not to.

“Jesus. What are you going to do?” asked Billy.

“I don't know. But I know what somebody should do. If he's dead the estate sells the house and everybody gets paid. Fuck, man, I'd kill him for free. If I had the guts. I'll tell you something, though. If someone's gonna do it, they better do it soon. His bags are packed. He's splitting. I'm serious, man. He's outta here. And once he's gone, forget about it. We're all screwed.”

Mike turned to the bartender. “Two more, Larry. We really need 'em right now.”

Mike put a ten on the bar, grabbed the mugs of stout and gave one to Billy. They threaded their way back to the pool table, angry conversation igniting behind them.

“Sounds like a lynch mob,” Mike said.

Billy took a long swig and set his glass down listening appreciatively. “Yes sir,” he said after a moment or two. “Our work here is done.”

***

An hour later, Mike Henderson stood in his living room, staring down at his wife's note. It had been scrawled in a hurry. It was terse and uninformative. Cindy was in New York. She had to “get away.” She had “a lot to think about” and “decisions to make alone.”

He had a pretty good idea what those decisions were—keep her life with Mike or discard it, baby and all. He knew Cindy would be at her parents' apartment. They hated him. When she had asked them to pay for the wedding her mother had said, “We'll pay for the divorce.” That was probably what they were discussing today—the most cost-effective way to rid themselves of the loser they had warned her against, in vain.

Conrad Parrish, Cindy's father, was a brain surgeon with an unabashed God complex: “I hold fate in my hands, Mike,” he had announced one night after too many sea breezes. “I reach into the pulsing heart of creation and confront the mystery of life and death, every day. I'm God's good right hand: his mechanic. I correct his mistakes. That's quite a feeling. Savages would build shrines to me: the white man with the knife who slices their flesh apart and heals their sickness. And I'll tell you something. Those pygmies wouldn't be far off.”

“You're insane,” Mike had muttered.

The night had gone downhill from there.

Mike had no desire to call Conrad Parrish at this hour, frantically searching for Cindy, begging him for a clue to his daughter's whereabouts.

So he sat in his bathrobe, watching The Weather Channel. The forecasts were inaccurate, sometimes ludicrously so, but he enjoyed them anyway. He liked the radar graphics; he liked watching the great green masses closing in on the island, while the self-important anchors made high drama out of scattered showers or a dusting of snow. They were naming ordinary storms now—“Winter Storm Iago.” What was next? “Summer Drizzle Amelia”? It was insulting to hurricanes—and their victims. Mike especially loathed the brazen way the forecasts changed: a week of rain became a week of sunshine with no acknowledgement or apology. Not even an “oops” or a blush. Just a radically different forecast as if they'd been saying it all along.

They needed their illusions, just like he did. His happy marriage, his growing business, they were as bogus as the weather maps.

He heard his back door open, and Tanya Kriel walked into the room. She was unzipping a bulky parka, pulling off a knitted watch cap that glittered with snow. She squinted down at him.

“You look exhausted. Did you sleep at all?”

He glanced up. “Cindy's gone.”

She let the coat drop, and twisted out of her thermal underwear T-shirt.

“Good. I need to be alone with you this morning.”

Chapter Twenty-one

Choices

Mike was inside Tanya Kriel when the phone rang. He knew who it was instantly and his mind spun through array of possible responses: let the machine pick it up? At almost two in the morning? If he didn't answer the phone that would only lead to more questions and confrontations. Answer it and act as if she had just awakened him? But he couldn't fool Cindy and he knew it. He could just hear her: “Why the fake ‘sleepyhead' stuff? Is someone there with you?”

The phone rang again. It seized him up inside like a police siren, like the flashers in his rearview mirror. Tanya was staring up at him. He had lifted himself off her by the full extension of his arms. He looked like he was doing some kind of stretch in yoga class. He looked down at her face. She was baffled and frustrated, but also concerned. She didn't know what was going on yet, and a call this late usually meant trouble of some kind—a heart attack or a car crash.

Mike eased out of her with the familiar physical tug of reluctance. He pushed himself off to her side and sat up at the edge of the bed. The phone rang again. If he didn't pick it up before the next ring, Tanya would get to hear Cindy's grating late night message. That would be bad.

He picked up the phone.

“Mike?”

“Cindy, where are you? What's going on?”

“Are you alone?”

“Of course I am. It's two in the morning.”

Cindy was crying.

“What's happening? Are you all right? Where are you calling from?”

“I'm—I decided to…I'm at the Logan Airport Hilton. I'm taking the first flight tomorrow.”

He put it together. She must have fled the party, and rushed home to pack. Then the mad rush to the airport to make the last flight out. He had been upstairs with Tanya when her plane was lifting off. He forced himself back to moment.

“The first flight?”

“To New York.”

“Wait a second—I don't…What's going on?

Mike heard Tanya shifting on the bed behind him. His furnace kicked on. The wind was steady against his house. The phone line was alive with the imminence of the unspoken.

“Cindy?”

“I have a date with Mark Toland tomorrow. I've been dreaming about him for years. Now there's no reason not to see him.”

“Except your marriage.”

“Are you going to lecture me about fidelity? It would never have occurred to me if you hadn't—”

“So this is revenge?”

“It's reality. You changed the rules. Things have to be different after that. This is the way things are now. If Mark Toland had wanted to undress me last year I would have told you about it and it would have been exciting. You always liked the idea of other men being attracted to me. I might have even flirted a little, let him look down my dress or at least say I did, just to get you revved up. But to actually let him do anything…”

“Jesus.”

“Please, Mike.”

“What—I can't have a reaction to this?”

“You can react. But you can't make me feel guilty and you can't expect anyone to sympathize
with you. No one's going to do that. It's like watching a mugger get robbed. People cheer when that happens.”

“So you're doing it to hurt me?”

“No, Mike, it had nothing to do with you. I've been in love with Mark Toland since the ninth grade.”

“Why call me, then? Why wake me up at two in the morning to tell me about it?”

“I don't know. But I didn't wake you up.”

He expelled a long breath. “No. You didn't.”

“I hate this.”

“Don't do it.”

She sighed. “I mean all of this.”

“Come home.”

“Give me a reason.”

Tanya walked around the bed. Mike noticed she had gotten dressed, but she was barefoot. She held out her hands, elbows tight to her body, and let her palms curl up as if tugged by her eyebrows. She might as well have said, “What the hell is going on, how long is this going to take?” He answered with a lifted arm, one finger up, miming “Give me a little more time, I'll explain later.”

“Cindy—”

“Forget it. I have things to do in the city anyway.”

“What things?”

“Just—appointments. I don't really feel like going into it.”

He squeezed the phone so hard his knuckles hurt. This was much worse than the planned adultery. He mashed his eyes shut.

“You don't want to tell me? Fine. I'll tell you.”

But Tanya chose that moment to give up on him. She raised her arms again but the gesture this time was different. She might have been throwing two crumpled pieces of paper at him. She shook her head and bent down to grab her shoes. Her back was to him as she started for the door. Mike covered the phone with his hand.

“Wait—”

She gave him a thin, tired smile. “You're a little too married for me, Mike. Sorry.”

Then she was out the door. When he put the phone to his ear again, Cindy said, “She's there.”

“What?”

“That girl. She's there with you.”

“She's leaving.”

“You were with her in our bed.”

“Cindy—”

“You better go after her, Mike. Don't let her leave angry. Tell her you're getting a divorce. It will be interesting, telling the truth for a change.”

She hung up.

Mike heard the front door close. A minute later he heard Tanya's truck start up and pull out of the driveway.

He fell back on the bed. For the moment he had no energy, but he knew what he had to do. First thing: wash these sheets. Then he had to try and sleep for a couple of hours. He dug his fingertips into his forehead, staring up at the ceiling, which definitely needed to be taped, spackled and repainted.

He sat up, swiveling the Rubik's cube of logistics. He hadn't gotten the chance to say it, but he knew the appointment Cindy was talking about. She was going to see her family doctor, who worked with Planned Parenthood and enjoyed a profitable sideline in clean safe abortions.

Mike was pacing now, hyperventilating. He had to stop her. And he would, he'd talk her out of it. He just needed to think. It was early Sunday morning, that was a huge advantage. She couldn't see the doctor until Monday. Mike had time to get into the city. Billy's check wouldn't clear until Tuesday at the earliest, but that was okay. He could dip into the thousand dollars he had stashed in case the IRS attached his bank account. He could show her a nice time in the city if he got the chance,, and replace the cash out of Billy's check next week. And he had an old Hy-Line ticket left over from the summer, when a some emergency had forced him to cancel a trip off-island. Those tickets were good for a year.

The first boat was 7:45. He'd be on the road by 9:30.

His clients Josh and Emily Levin kept an old Acura sedan in the Steamship Authority parking lot for just this sort of occasion. They always spent the month of December in Nevis, some little island in the Caribbean. He had the key to their brownstone on West Seventy-fifth Street. He knew their alarm code and they had long ago given him an open invitation to use the house when they were away. He had painted the place top to bottom five years before.

He could stay over and be at the doctor's office bright and early, well-rested. The office was on Eighty-second and Madison, with a coffee shop across the street: an excellent surveillance post. And the coffee was pretty good.

This was doable.

Mike took a breath. He had good friends. More than that, he had allies. He had partisans. People like Josh Levine and Billy Delavane would always come through for him. What was that phrase? It took a village—to raise a kid or keep your marriage going or stay solvent. Well, fuck the village.

He had a platoon.

And he had hope. Cindy couldn't have decided yet. She would never contemplate some random sexual dalliance on the eve of such a huge step. Maybe she was using Mark Toland to help her decide. Either way, Mike would be there to keep her from making the mistake.

Mike felt infallible that morning, as he got ready to leave. But he wasn't. In fact he was making a terrible mistake, one in a long string of accidental blunders. Every move Mike had made for the last month, now including this trip to Manhattan, taken together and viewed with the cold eye of the law, would combine in the diabolical machinery of circumstance to cast him as the primary suspect in Nantucket's most gruesome and notorious murder, ever. In less than a week he'd be in jail and facing the very real possibility of life in prison. If he'd known all that, he would have gone anyway. But he would have left a paper trail.

He was going to need one.