Shotgun Lullaby (A Conway Sax Mystery) (10 page)

“The hell is a Barnburner?”

“My AA group.”

“Jesus, AA again. Was Biletnikov a member of this group? Couldn't've been for long.”

“Two months. Maybe three.”

“So you knew Gus Biletnikov a couple months. Your AA buddies asked you to keep an eye on him. A kid got shot in his halfway house, maybe had nothing to do with Biletnikov. But all of a sudden you're stashing him in a safe house? A safe house you used to own?”

Lima: smart and thorough both. He'd checked real-estate transactions to learn the history of that house.

I said nothing.

“It all strikes me as horse shit.” He finished his muffin, began to neatly fold the wax paper. “Were you involved with Biletnikov?”

“Involved?”

“Romantically?”

“No.”

“You queer?”

“No. Why?”

“It's an angle. It's something you look at.” Lima tapped the muffin wrapper. “These things are loaded with sugar, you know. That's how they make them taste good and call them reduced-fat at the same time.”

“Trade-off.”

“Yeah. Trade-off.” He sipped.

I took a guess. “You've spent the past couple days looking at the Weller kid,” I said. “Same way I did, only slower. And you haven't found anything that'd make anybody want to kill him.”

Long pause. “Not a damn thing. That's why we're looking at Biletnikov.”

The way he said it made me sit up straight. “Looking at him how? As the guy who was supposed to get shot? Or as a suspect?”

“You tell me.”

“Gus was with me at a meeting that night. I know you checked that out.”

He shrugged. “There're a lot of ways to have a guy killed. Plus, I was surprised when I tracked him down yesterday and knocked on the door of that little apartment.”

“Surprised how?”

“What with you being Mr. AA and all.”

I didn't like the way Lima's eyes danced while he said it. He was savoring something.

“Surprised how?” I said.

“Surprised at the way it smelled in there.” He paused, sipped. “Did you know he was smoking weed in your little safe house? Man, it reeked.”

*   *   *

Ten minutes later I pulled up to the house, feeling only a red-mist pulse in my head. The pulse had been quiet for months now—I feel it just before doing something stupid—but I knew better than to think I'd beaten it for good.

I eyeballed the house, the ancient outdoor staircase to the upstairs apartment. Me and Randall had busted ass in hot weather fixing, scraping, and painting those stairs.

As Lima and I had chucked our trash and left Dunkin' Donuts, I'd said, “You knew that would burn me up.”

He'd shrugged. “Thought you'd want to know. You're doing a lot for Biletnikov. What's he doing for you?”

Lima was using me the same way I wanted to use Boxer: stir up some shit and watch what happened.

Stairs, apartment door—spare key behind a shutter a few inches to the left—enter, cross the kitchen. I stopped, opened the cupboard beneath the sink, pulled a white trash bag. Stepped into the biggest bedroom, which stank of cigarettes and young dude and reefer and an overmatched air freshener.

Gus lay on the bed in a pile of comforter and sheets.

I slapped open the curtains.

“The fuck, man?” Gus blinked as he said it, shielding his eyes from the light.

“Get out. You got five minutes.”

He sat and rubbed his face. “That frigging cop. Lima. He dimed me out, am I right?”

“Hell yes. Five minutes.”

I went to the main room and looked around. Saw an eighteen-inch-tall bong, orange, on an end table.
Dark Side of the Moon
graphics ringed it. I felt the red-mist pulse, but with something else mixed in. Tears. Tight throat. Helplessness.

Off in the bedroom, Gus stuffed his things in the trash bag. “Wish everything looked black and white to me,” he said. Loudly, for my ears.

But it wasn't black and white. It was red mist. I felt it. Didn't trust myself to speak.

“Wish everything was binary for me,” Gus hollered. “You're drunk or you're sober. You're fer us or agin us. Join the Barnburners or we'll burn down your barn.” He laughed.

He came out with the bag slung over his shoulder. Jeans, gray T-shirt, camouflage backpack. Smoking a cigarette. He started to wise off again but took a good look at me and decided to be quiet.

I was staring at the bong. At the joint where the aluminum bowl met the plastic tube, a toy action figure wearing a blue helmet was perched. A typical stoner joke.

I recognized the action figure.

I stepped to the table, held up the toy. “Where'd you find this?”

“Oh. I had a buddy over yesterday. We got a little high, as your cop friend clearly told you. My buddy found that little guy under the dresser. I told him to leave it be, but he didn't listen. We goofed with it. Sorry, man.”

I hit Gus with a looping right. He took two crossover steps, dropped his bag, and fell sideways. His head hit the hardwood floor.

After that, I only half-knew what I was doing. Dragging Gus across the floor, beating him, kicking him, screaming in a voice I barely remembered. I opened the door, pulled him from the apartment by his backpack, got a work boot on his hip, shoved him down metal stairs in an ugly tumble. Threw the trash bag after. Stormed the apartment, grabbed the bong, came outside, whipped it down at him, didn't miss by much.

Screaming the entire time, tunnel-visioned from the red mist. After a while, I recognized what I was hollering: “It was all there for you! You should've been one who made it!”

Over and over, Gus looking up at me from the bottom of the stairs.

I only stopped screaming because my voice gave out.

Then there was a weird near silence. A man working under the hood of a Civic across the street had stopped turning his wrench. Two boys on the corner who ought to be in school looked at me over orange sodas.

Gus said, “I need help.”

I closed the door.

*   *   *

I picked up the action figure. Sat on the sofa, looked it over. It's a cheap GI Joe knockoff, a three-inch-tall soldier. Oversized biceps, gold bandolier on each shoulder. Vaguely Asian features, visible rivets. His arms, legs, and torso move. When you stretch him, you can see the elastic cords that hold him together. His right foot is missing, snapped off at the ankle.

I bought him at a flea market in Grafton when my son was four.

I was freshly sober. After maybe a dozen phone calls, my ex had agreed to bring Roy for a visit. By then, the two of them had moved to the Berkshires.

It was a good weekend. Sunday morning, I took Roy to a big flea market on Route 140. There was a lot to see, must have been five acres of junk for sale. Roy sat on my shoulders, pulling my hair like a horse's reins when he wanted to change direction. I'll never forget that.

I told Roy I would buy him one thing.
Anything,
but just
one
thing. He wanted to examine all his options. He's still that way. He steered me to every table. I carried him on my shoulders for two hours. He finally chose the action figure. I paid a buck. It was a big deal.

To both of us.

Then we went down the hill to Dunkin' Donuts. In line, he dropped the cheapo toy. Its foot broke off, just like that. We didn't have time to go back for another.

With Roy staring at the action figure in one hand and the broken-off foot in the other, tears welling, I had to think fast. I named the toy Brokenman, said now he was special. Then I launched into the first in a series of stories: “The Adventures of Brokenman.”

Brokenman got the bad guy every time, see. But it always cost him a foot.

I wouldn't meet one-footed Randall Swale for more than a decade. Funny how life works out, huh?

Roy loved Brokenman stories until he was seven. Then he didn't. One weekend, he left the toy on his bedside table at my apartment. I called and promised to put Brokenman in the mail the next day.

“That's okay, Dad. You keep him.”

I remember the way my heart dropped in my chest when Roy said that.

I did keep the toy, though, kept it a long time—right up until I'd moved from this apartment. The time had seemed right to pass Brokenman along. I guess I'd pictured a little kid starting his own series of adventures.

I hadn't pictured a stoner goof.

I locked the apartment and walked down the stairs. Took Brokenman with me. I would offer him to Roy again.

You never know.

 

CHAPTER TWELVE

I said, “Balboa the explorer dude was beheaded?”

“Yes!” Leaning across the table, Sophie whacked her plate with a breadstick. “Pedrarias
claimed
Balboa was setting up a rogue government, but really he was just jealous—”

“The hell is a Pedrarias?”

“I
told
you on the ride over, he was the new governor of the colony! A total political hack.”

“What colony?”

She dropped her breadstick, grabbed her head with both hands.

Jessie said, “He's screwing with you, Sophie.”

“I know.” She grabbed her breadstick. “Anyway, Balboa got back from…”

Charlene and I smiled at each other across the table and let Sophie build a head of steam. Charlene looked at her watch. We were at an Olive Garden in Marlborough, across the road from a mall. A kid with spiked hair and two different-colored eyes had taken our order, brought us salad and rolls, and disappeared. Charlene gets testy if the main course doesn't hit the table in fifteen minutes.

Dinner out was a way to fold Jessie back in, according to one of the experts Charlene was paying to figure out the anorexia deal. When I'd picked up the ladies, Charlene had palmed me a note:
Per shrink, don't mention J's eating
.

All I could think about was Gus, out on the street with his gear in a trash bag. I would have skipped the dinner to look for him, but it was one hell of a big deal—the first time we'd been able to talk Jessie into going anywhere with us.

Sophie wore a blue, gold, and white Windbreaker that said
COLONIALS
on its left breast. Against all odds, and for no reason Charlene and I could figure, she'd joined Pop Warner cheerleading in her final year of eligibility. Most of her teammates had been doing it since they were six, and Sophie's lack of experience showed at every practice. But she was gung ho, and the other girls were less snotty than I would've predicted, so it was fine by me—something new for a kid who maybe spent too much time by herself.

What we hadn't known when Sophie signed on was that these days, cheerleading is a sport unto its own damn self. Hell, it's a whole
lifestyle
if you let it be. When Pop Warner football ended, the cheerleading competitions kept rolling along. And wouldn't you know it: the Colonials were damn good this year, which meant at least one road trip a month to Boston, Hartford, Kittery, Albany. I didn't mind, but the cheer fests, with the makeup and the primping and the stomping and the hugging and the crying (win or lose), were quietly driving Charlene nuts. She wasn't wired for that kind of thing.

We made small talk, everybody keeping a sneaky eye on Jessie. She hid behind her hair and mostly looked at her plate. But she gave us reason to hope, too. She'd agreed with Sophie that the waiter was cute, with his blue eye and his brown eye. And while the rest of us pretended not to look, she scooped a few spinach leaves and olives onto her salad plate and even tore off a quarter of a roll. Whenever she took a bite I held my breath, felt Charlene doing likewise.

More than anything else recently, that hitch in my breath when Jessie lifted a roll made me understand parenthood.

Jessie. The older one, the one Charlene had always butted heads with. Her face as I remembered it was frank, strong, dominated by powerful eyebrows and nose. It was more handsome than pretty, maybe a tough face for a girl to grow up with, but a damn fine face for a woman once she knew what she was about. But you had to wonder if Jessie would get that far: now the face was slack and pale and formless, collapsing into itself behind a wall of dyed black hair. She'd been a jock until sophomore year in high school, when the usual combo—the addict's gene, the things she'd been through—had shunted her to self-puking, pills, and parties she was too young for. She'd put Charlene through hell.

Which Charlene said she deserved, and then some.

When the Department of Social Services took the girls away, Jessie was eight and virtual mom to Sophie, who was a toddler.

Eight years old. Imagine the weight.

“Phew,” Charlene said to the waiter when our food finally came. “We thought you'd fled the country.”

Sophie rolled her eyes. She tried to make a joke of it with her sister, but Jessie hid behind her hair.

I ate chicken parmigiana. Sophie talked about Balboa. Charlene talked about the great gal managing her new office in Augusta, Maine.

“How were things at the shop?” she finally said, looking down at her veal something or other, trying for casual and almost making it. But I knew her too well to buy it: Charlene and Floriano had been chattering. They did every day. I wished they didn't, but there wasn't much I could say about it: she holds the paper on the garage.

I looked at Sophie while I answered. “You know the junker F-350 we use to plow the lot?”

She nodded.

I felt Charlene's stare but kept my eyes on Sophie's. “Things were great,” I said, “until Floriano totaled it.”

“What?” Sophie's eyes went big.

“On purpose.”

“What?”

“To take out a pair of gangsters who were tailing me.”

“Holy shit,” Sophie said.

“No shit,” I said.

Charlene threw her napkin on the table, rose, walked out. Never looked back.