Old School Bones (19 page)

SHE thinks she hears voices. The treading of feet on broken shells. Knows someone has come looking for her. Probably followed her here. And, shit, it is at least a half day sooner than she could ever hope to see Michael. Even if he has talked to Gracie. Even if he figures out I’m hiding here.

When she looks out through the salt-stained windows of the bait shack, everything looks calm. Bird calls seem blue notes from distant woodwinds. The salt pond and upland meadows of Aquinnah glowing silver in the moonlight.

A herd of deer is scattering. The animals loping away from the pond, heading up toward the ridge and the lighthouse. Something has interrupted their grazing. Maybe coyotes, but she can’t be sure.

She blows out the oil lamp on the table, then slowly, softly feels for the deadbolt on the door. Finds it frozen open with rust. So she slips out of her shoes and tiptoes to the closet, gropes in the dark for her father’s old duck killer and the box of 12-gauge shells. It’s an ancient Browning pump gun. There are only three cartridges, and she can’t remember how to load them.

She thinks back to the days when she, Ronnie, and her father would sit in the pond blind, watch the decoys and wait. Their shotguns in hand, the chocolate lab Tibby resting at her feet. Loading up for the moment when her father called in a flight of blackbacks. Finally her hands remember the drill. The shells slide into the ammo tube. When she pulls the pump, the first cartridge clicks up into the firing chamber.

The moonlight slants through the windowpanes, makes a trail across the quilt where she drowned him a week past. In her hair, her hips. The cobwebs, tiny weirs, spread through the night. The air smells cool, suddenly very fishy, as she keeps to the shadows, slides along the walls, hides in the corner next to the hinges of the door. And waits. Her right index finger ready to pull the trigger if some girl-killer from Red Tooth or the Club Tropical dares to cross her threshold.

Still, what if it is someone else? Maybe Ronnie. He used to love this place, too.
But what would he be doing on the island?

Probably she’s just imagining things. Just scared since Bumbledork’s unbelievable bullying, his veiled threats yesterday. Since Danny’s slip later at their favorite lesbian bistro in the South End:
I wish you hadn’t goaded him, Awasha, with that crack about blood on his hands. You want to end up like that girl in the attic?

What girl in the attic?
she had almost said.
I only told you about bones in boys clothes. Never told you about Roxy.
Shit. And double shit.

She had excused herself to go to the bathroom, and beat it out the back door. Got in her Saab and split for the Vineyard. Leaving her ex-girlfriend, a nearly full bottle of pinot grigio, a plate of scampi for the dogs.

Now she hears the burbling of voices again. Birds go silent. The crunch of feet on shells is clearer and coming along the trail circling the pond. She wishes she could just flat fucking break her self-imposed phone silence and call Michael. But that’s probably just what her stalkers want. They want to hear her terror, feel her desperation as they pen her in for slaughter. Shit again!

But maybe the voices, the shadows out there, are just teenagers coming down to the pond to smoke some weed and swill some alcohol stolen from one of the summer places.

There’s a female’s voice, still muffled, but carping about the cold night, the blackberry briars. A deeper voice grunting. Possibly a third. Footsteps coming right up to the bait shack now.

She takes a deep breath, holds it as she does when she makes the cobra pose in her yoga class. Closes her eyes to gather energy. Feels the hair on her wrists rising as her hands tighten around the shotgun.

Then there are steps on the little wharf, right outside the door. Her eyes bolt open. She inhales. Steps back from the door and centers the barrel of the 12-gauge on it. Shouts at the darkness, her words ragged and shrill.

“Who’s there?”

“Hey!”

“Michael?”

“And Gracie, Doc P. We came over on a big-ass ferry. Are you OK?”

“I almost shot you …”

The three of them sit on the floor huddling close together around the open door of a small propane oven hissing in the corner. The old comforter pulled across their shoulders. Michael in the middle, females to either side. They pass a steaming mug of chamomile tea back and forth in the glow of the blue flames.

“First Liberty. Next we find the bones. Then someone runs the jeep off the road. Ronnie gets busted. An intruder clubs the hell out of Gracie. Bumbledork flat out threatens me. And Danny talks about a girl she’s not supposed to know about in the attic.”

“Danny?” He sounds confused. “Danny, your old boyfriend Danny?”

Shit!
Thank god he can’t see the hives rising on her chest, feel her ears burning. “I mean Denise.”

“We can’t just walk away from this now, can we? They know we know they killed Liberty … and Roxy. They are fucking after us.” Gracie’s voice has lost its usual fuck-all edge.

She can feel him take a deep breath, his flanks shiver.

“The problem is who are THEY? Kevin Singleton? His brother? His father? Your dear old headmaster? Other members of Red Tooth? Or those four guys who started the Club Tropical? And … and where does the good dean Denise Pasteur fit in?”

She gulps the tea. Her cheeks are boiling now, palms on fire. She knows he feels her sweat as he takes her hand, tries to deflect the attention. “We need a plan.”

“You guys ever heard of dogfish?”

“What?”

They’re little sharks, he says. Like two-feet long. Bottom feeders. Scavengers. Not much in the way of teeth. But when you get them in a net there’s hell to pay. They can get in there by the hundreds in just a minute or two. And when you haul back, they will be stuck in every bit of mesh.

“I don’t see what you’re getting at.”

“You can’t get them out sometimes. You’re better off just cutting loose the net. Kissing thousands of dollars away. Starting fresh. Like take your boat and go somewhere else to look for cod fish. Where the dogfish can’t find you.”

“You want to do that?”

“Haven’t we already started?”

“Yeah but now what? We can’t really stay here forever.” He sighs. “Can you guys just sit tight here for a day or so?”

“What? Why?”

“Maybe it’s time to go on the offense. But first, I think I need to talk to Lou.”

“Who?” Gracie asks.

“His cop friend.” She feels the heat rising in her skin again, a stinging in her brain stem. Pulls her hand away. “But what do we do while you’re off playing Batman and Robin? Bake cookies?”

He tosses off the comforter, stands up. “I don’t know, Awasha. I really don’t. But it was your idea to hide here. Isn’t this some kind of holy place? Maybe you could come up with something spiritual and Indian to do. Or maybe you guys could start by trying to reach Gracie’s parents. Trying to get her on a plane back to Hong Kong … and away from this mess, you know?!”

Suddenly she’s remembering why she thought women might be a better match for her.

“Hey,” Gracie says. “Stop it you two! Like united we stand, divided we fall right? I’m in this to the end. The fucking dogfish killed my friend.”

“It’s really cold, Doc!”

“I’m sorry. But this is the only blanket.”

They are lying on the floor of the bait shack, middle of the night, pressed as close to the sputtering oven as they dare. The moldy comforter folding them together into what she thinks of as a sort of a human taco. Gracie closest to the fire. Awasha lying a bit farther off.

“Maybe if you put your arms around me.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” She imagines Danny’s breath on her chest, her stomach, tries to push the urge for tenderness out of her veins. The need to melt away the fear. The quivering.

“I wouldn’t mind.”

“Just try to sleep.”

“YOU look like shit.” Lou Votolatto pours a cascade of sugar into his coffee cup. The last of the breakfast crowd at the Fishmonger’s Café in Woods Hole is queuing up at the register to pay their checks. Now it’s just the cop, eyeing the bum dropping down next to him at the counter. His jeans, flannel shirt, blue fleece vest are rumpled, speckled with lint and car crumbs. Cheeks dark with two-day growth, hair spiking in six directions.

“I slept in my car last night.”

“The old Portagee hotel, huh? She throw you out?”

“Knock it off, OK? I’m worried.”

The cop leans back on his stool. “Finally.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“The shit’s really starting to hit the fan, isn’t it?”

“What kind of a person takes a club to a girl when she’s sleeping?”

“The same kind that drugs a kid before he slits her wrists … or disguises a chick as a boy before he stashes her body in an attic. Kind of the same M.O.”

“Who are we looking for, Lou?”

“A coward. A planner. A cold-blooded killer.”

“What about the guy who ran me off the road?”

“I don’t know. Doesn’t fit the profile. You’re probably dealing with more than one vampire here, don’t you think?”

“You sure are a comfort.”

“Just telling it like it is, Rambo. You see your squaw last night, or is that someone else’s lipstick on your neck?”

“It’s not what you think. She’s hiding on the Vineyard. Gracie’s with her.”

“You have to get them out of there.”

“Why?”

“You remember what happened to her brother?”

“You’re saying there’s a connection?”

“You didn’t hear that from me.”

“Who have you been talking to?”

“Pocahontas’ twin, your client, who else? One of her other boy toys?”

Suddenly he remembers her odd remark.
She said Danny when she meant Denise.
A slip of the tongue. As if they were one and same. As if Denise Pasteur had been her …

“Why am I always the last person to find shit out? Jesus Christ!”

“I don’t know, kid. But maybe you better have a chat with Brother Ronnie, Nippe Maske, Water Bear. Or whatever he calls himself. Sooner rather than later. Know what I mean?”

The big man in the green chamois shirt and stained khakis smells of bourbon. He holds open the screen door to the tiny cottage on the cranberry bog in Yarmouth, welcomes Michael in with the sweep of his arm. Past the muddy deep-waders lying on their sides, the stretched-out moccasins, a paper bag full of Cheetos, Gatorade, cigarettes, and packaged lunchmeats that have not yet made it to the kitchen. The 30.30 rifle leaning against the door jamb.

“Imagine this. Johnny Cochran paying me a house call.”

The sky outside has turned gray, drizzly. Inside, the weather seems the same, except for the violet light of a TV. Oprah doing her thing.

“We need to talk, Ronnie.”

“Now what is the white man trying to blame me for?” His broad, tan cheeks are flushed. Eyes dewy. Black hair, having been cut short for his court appearance, is unwashed, speckled with dandruff. Clothes giving off the scent of sweat and ass. Hard to believe he’s Awasha’s twin. Or Indian. He looks like a brother.

“I don’t think this is about what you did. Maybe not even about you. It’s about your sister. You know she got fired?”

“Those bastards.” He eases himself down into the only armchair in the living room. Motions for Michael to take the couch.

“Yeah.”

“I heard about that girl who died. Liberty. Somebody killed her, huh?”

“Looks that way.”

“And my sister won’t let it go.”

He nods.

“That’s the thing about us.”

“What?”

“We never know to quit when we’re ahead.” The Indian scoops his Winstons off the floor, shakes out a butt, lights it with a Bic. “We always have to go the distance.”

“That can be a good thing.”

“Not when you don’t really know the rules.”

He straightens up on the edge of the couch. “I don’t understand.”

“You want a drink?” Ronnie shifts his weight, seems ready to get up out of his chair. “I got some Jack and Coke in the—”

“Come on. Talk to me, Ronnie. What rules?”

“You know. The fucking Ten Commandments of Whitey’s World.”

“And what would those be?”

“That’s what I’m saying. You got to ask Whitey. And he ain’t saying. Just slaps us dark folk down when we cross the line. You’re Portagee, you know what I mean.”

“Like Thou shalt not look in the white man’s closets.”

Water Bear jumps to his feet. “I need a little Jack in my glass … if we’re going down this road.”

Midmorning, a Monday, late Spring. He brings her flowers. His second attempt, hiding them in his rucksack so that he looks just like every other G.I. out on patrol. The air buzzing with the sound of children playing street soccer. The scent of figs, dates, oranges. The blood of freshly butchered lambs from the cart vendors mixing with the fumes of Humvees growling along Haifa St.

“I came back,” he says in a shaky voice when she opens the door.

“And you are most welcome.” Her cheeks flush as she takes the roses from him.
“
Come in, Nippe Maske. Have some coffee and tell me about the life of my savior. Praise, Allah, my mourning period is finished.”

He feels his breath stop. The light in her big eyes, the fine curve of her nose, the full bow of her lips may be the most beautiful things he has ever seen. Aaserah, in her black
abaya.
The curves of her hips showing as she cradles the flowers to her breasts. The pale blue
hijab
framing her face. He still remembers her long, braided, brown hair, almost as dark as his sister’s. Saw it when he burst in on her so many months ago. Pictures that hair now trailing down her back.

And maybe she is picturing him beneath the battle gear, because she sets the flowers on a chair, and reaches for his face.

“Let me see you.” Her fingers trace the chin strap under his jaw. Soft as the wings of a tiny bird, they brush his lips. Snap the strap free with a loud pop.

“Hey!”

“Take this off. Please.”

“You fell for her, this Aaserah?”

Ronnie rises from his armchair and again heads for the kitchen table, the bottle of bourbon. Pours himself three more fingers of Jack. “I told Awasha never to … Why the hell am I talking about Baghdad? I must be fucking wasted.”

“Maybe, like you said before, you have to go the distance. Relive the pain to let it go. I don’t know. Maybe that’s your way. Maybe mine, too. Like in our genes or something.”

“You’re a philosopher now?”

He says he’s sorry. Really sorry. Ronnie doesn’t have to talk about Iraq. He just came here looking for answers that might put an end to all this hell. Might find some justice for Liberty Baker. Might help him work through some of his own shit. He thought maybe Ronnie could tell him something about his bust that …

“Like what?”

“You were set up. Somebody planted that cocaine on your boat … then called the DEA.”

“Hey man, we already know this. I told you and that dick Voto-whoever about twenty times. Dog, is this not our defense?”

“Yeah, but maybe you left something out when you told me. Lou said—”

“You’ve been talking to the cops?”

He feels his back teeth grinding.
Shit.
“He just told me maybe I should go over the circumstances of the bust again with you. He said I might find something I missed before.”

“Awh, Jesus.”

“You ever think you could be taking the hit for your sister?”

“Like somebody dropped a dime on me to mess with Awasha?”

“Something like that.”

“Why? Somebody wants to fuck with her, put her off all this Liberty Baker stuff at that boarding school, why not just get on with it? Cap her.”

He winces at the image: Awasha’s face a wreckage of blood, flesh, hair. “Maybe that’s not Whitey’s style.”

“Fuck Whitey.”

“Maybe Whitey knows your sister. Knows it’s your pain that pushes her over the edge … not her own.”

Ronnie stares across the room, seems to fixate on the grocery sack, the bag of Cheetos, the carton of Winstons poking out of the top.

“Man … that would be Awasha. You know what I used to call her when we were kids?”

“What?”

“Mother Teresa.”

“Talk to me.”