Shotgun Lullaby (A Conway Sax Mystery) (11 page)

“Crap,” I said.

Behind her hair, Jessie smiled for the first time since she'd come home.

*   *   *

The four of us headed back to Charlene's place. It was a quiet ride, though I tried.

“We talked this through,” I said.

Charlene said nothing. Left her arms folded.

“Me, I've got my Barnburner thing,” I said. “You, you're no Martha Stewart. And you don't want to be. Remember?”

Charlene said nothing.

Which was too bad. I would've liked to talk with her—with
someone
—about Gus. About tough love. About zero-tolerance policies. About how rotten they feel.

They sound good in meetings, in counselors' offices.

But try to
live
tough love. Try to throw a kid out on his ass for smoking a little weed.

It's harder on the thrower than it is on the thrown.

And the thrown know it. They leverage it. They leverage anything,
everything
. Drunks and Junkies 101.

Which is why tough love is the way to go.

Full fucking circle.

I parked Charlene's Volvo SUV in her driveway. We all climbed out. I handed Charlene her keys, unpocketed my own, unlocked my truck.

She didn't ask where I was going.

*   *   *

I spent an hour prowling Framingham. Gus wasn't answering his phone. I wondered if it was the GPS kind that could tell you its location. Probably. But how did you go about that? Cops? Court order? I thought about calling Lima. Decided against. Asked myself why, decided it was con's instinct. You don't tip your hand to the law. Period. Not even if he seems okay, as Lima did.

So you're on your own. Think like a junkie who's got a few hundred bucks in his pocket and is on foot. And favors cocaine.

The map in my head told me after being chucked down the stairs, Gus would've headed a few blocks south to Route 135, gravitating toward noise and traffic and shops. From there, east would mean Natick and nicer towns. West, on the other hand, meant Framingham's downtown—train station, Salvation Army, alleys, and all. It's not a big city, not hardly, but Gus could find what he needed there.

West it was.

I crawled the little downtown. Hit every street, every loading dock, every doorway. Framingham's mostly made up of workers. Blue-collar: too tired on a weeknight to raise much hell. But there are some places you don't want to be after dark.

I looked in those places.

Tough love.

No Gus.

I asked a dozen creeps in a dozen spots. White kid, probably looking to score? All his stuff in a backpack or a trash bag slung over his shoulder?

Nobody'd seen him, or would cop to it. A Bahamian outside the train station wearing three hoodies mumbled and pointed enough so that I stuck a pair of fives in his hand, which was missing its ring finger. “Well?” I said.

“Thatum,” he said, pointing west. “Or thatum.” East. “You got a light, mon? You got a smoke?”

I took back my fives.

“Aw,
mon,
” the Bahamian said to my back.

I kicked my truck's tire out of frustration. Climbed in, heel-rubbed my eyes, checked my watch. Midnight. Thought about calling the Framingham cops, but Matt Bogardis was the only one I trusted, and what were the odds?

“Hell,” I said out loud to nobody.

And called Luther Swale.

“Sorry,” I said when he picked up on four and a half rings. “It's late, I know. But I'm looking for a kid.”

I listened to Luther breathe for maybe fifteen seconds. “How old?” he finally said.

“Twentyish.”

“And yet you called him a kid. When I was twenty, I was a supply sergeant down at Otis.”

I rolled my eyes. “Yeah yeah yeah. And these days they're boys until they're thirty, and even then half of 'em want to take the easy way out and be stay-at-home daddies. Hell in a handcart. We've covered all that, amigo. But I'm helping this one.”

“Helping. The way you help. Your Barnstormer pals.”

“Barn
burners
.”

He sighed. “What do you need?”

“He might have hopped on the commuter rail, looking to get out of Framingham and score. If you take Boston, I'll take Worcester.”

“You don't even know what
direction
he went in?”

I said nothing.

“What would he be after?” Luther finally said. “Ups or downs?”

“He's a cocaine boy. Limited funds, so I'm guessing crack.”

“Mattapan by moonlight, looking for a white boy who's looking for a rock. That ought to make for a nice evening.”

I gave a twenty-second description of Gus. “Luther,” I said, “I owe you.”

“You made it off paper,” he said. “You don't owe anybody anything.” Click.

Parole officer's view of the world. You're on paper or you're off.

I headed for Worcester.

“I need help.” The last thing he said to me. Junkie leverage, like when the dog gives up the fight and shows his belly.

And the hell of it is, it's true. He
does
need help, and he knows it. But he's also showing his belly to play you, to con you. Truth and bullshit both.

I pounded the steering wheel. Shook my head, felt stupid.

*   *   *

Felt stupider at daybreak, having burned half a tank of gas, dodged two stickups, and found not a whiff of Gus.

Luther hadn't made out any better. We'd called back and forth every hour on the hour. At five, I'd told him to go home. He'd said why bother, he was headed for a diner.

Both Swales, father and son, must curse the day I clown-shoed into their lives. I brought them nothing but hard work and misery.

I gassed up, tried to think.

Downtown Framingham, such as it is: ruled out. Cocaine safari to Worcester or Boston: hard to say definitively, but rule that out too.

Home? Sherborn?

Could be. Family was family.

But Rinn Biletnikov had told me Gus and his father weren't exactly seeing eye to eye. No, it'd been more powerful than that.
Gus was on terrible terms with his father,
she'd said
. Peter is the
last
person Gus would have confided in.

I'd overlaid that on my own situation with Roy, had found it easy to believe.

Which is why you didn't check Sherborn first,
I admitted.
Which you should have done out of common sense. It's home and it's close.

It was time to visit Peter Biletnikov.

I felt bad over what I'd put Luther through.

I would feel worse soon.

Because about the time I flipped down my sun visor at an off-brand Worcester gas station and aimed my truck at Sherborn, somebody blew a hole in Gus Biletnikov.

 

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Haley, the nanny, answered the door. She wore running gear—had an iPod clipped to her upper arm and everything—but held a baby on her hip in that way that looks so natural for women. In her other hand she held a plastic baby bottle and wadded-up earbuds. How she'd managed to open the door I couldn't figure.

It took her half a beat to remember me. Then she said, “Oh,” and looked at her runner's watch.

“Early, I know,” I said. “But I figured this for an early house. Looks like I was right.”

“You were,” Haley said, nodding me in and kicking shut the door. “Usually I can squeeze in five K on the treadmill before she wakes up. But you were a restless, hungry girl this morning, wasn't you, sweetie? Wasn't you? Is she not the bee's knees?”

“I guess.” Never have gotten the hang of baby talk. It makes me grind my teeth. “Uh, how old? Is she, I mean.”

“Just over six months. And perfect. Seventy-fifth percentile for length, weight, and head size.”

I guessed that was good.

We stood in the warm front hall. Slate floor opening onto a massive, cathedral-ceilinged kitchen and great room.

Haley nuzzled noses with the baby. Who seemed okay with it. Maybe she was cute. I'm the wrong guy to ask.

“Well,” I finally said. “Is Peter here? Awake?”

“Peter,” she said. “Interesting.”

I looked a question at her.

“Because
Rinn
can't stop talking about you and your compadre, Randall.”

I said nothing.

“You fascinate her. She finds you very
genuine,
very
real
.”

“What the hell do you have against me?”

“Why, nothing. Sir. Mr. Sax. What makes you say?”

“Knock it off,” I said. “The eye rolls, the sneer every time you open your trap. What's it about?”

She started to mouth off. But she was a good kid deep down, as I'd thought, and so she deflated instead. “I'm sorry. I'm transferring frustration to you. Uncool. Not fair.”

“Transferring from where?”

She swept an arm. “From here. From this. From
them
.”

I waited. She was dying to tell more, to spill. My best move was to say nothing.

I'm good at that.

Haley looked at the baby, then her watch. Cocked her head, hearing a household noise that meant something to her but not to me. She sighed, tossed earbuds onto the black granite countertop, and turned to present me her arm. I figured out she wanted me to de-iPod her. I ripped Velcro, set the rig next to the earbuds, waited for Haley to spill.

She didn't get a chance. Peter Biletnikov pounded in.

He was almost tall. He was almost handsome. I would have guessed Russian even if I hadn't known already, from the weak mouth, the apple-red cheeks, and the way his hairline was moving up his forehead, leaving a widow's peak that was his second-best feature. His best: quick blue eyes. They took me in, resented me, and filed me away as a nuisance in the time it took to cross to the stainless fridge and pull out a bottled smoothie.

“Haley,” he said, reading the smoothie's label instead of looking at either of us, “who is this gentleman and why is he here so early?”

“Peter Biletnikov, Conway Sax. The man who's been helping Gus.”

“Gus was staying with some friends of mine,” I said. “Since the shooting at the halfway house.”

“I see. And why are you here?”

Haley'd had enough. She popped the bottle in the baby's mouth and began to make a casual break for a long hallway.

“I'm here,” I said, “because Gus is missing. And I'm afraid he's using.”

Haley stopped dead. Peter read his smoothie label. “Missing?” he said.

Time to come clean. I sighed. “I ran him out of my friend's place for smoking weed. Haven't seen him since. I, ah … I feel responsible.”

“Correction. You
are
responsible.”

I hadn't known Peter Biletnikov two minutes, and I wanted to slap the smoothie out of his hand.

But he was right. Damned if he wasn't.

“What I was wondering,” I said, gritting my teeth, balling my fists, “I was wondering if he'd shown here. Come around looking for money, maybe. Or a bed.”

“No,” Peter said.

“Yes,” Haley said.

“Huh,” I said.

“He came by last night,” Haley said. “He wanted me to take him to the ATM and withdraw the maximum on your card, Peter.”

“And?” he said.

“He made me nervous. He was either high or desperate to get that way. I gave him a hundred dollars to get rid of him. Then he went down the hill toward the guesthouse.”

“Of course,” Peter said.

“Did you see him after that?” I said.

“No,” Haley said. “You can get back to the road from the guesthouse. There's a path.”

The baby began to cry.

“Take her,” Peter said.

“I know, I know,” Haley said, and this time she did disappear down the hall.

I said, “Did you ever visit Gus at Almost Home?”

“No,” Peter said.

“Mind if I ask why?”

“It sounds like you've been part of this world, this AA-rehab-counseling-drug thing”—he made a circular motion with his drink—“for a while now. So you must know how hard it is on the family.”

“It's kind of hard on the person doing the AA-rehab-counseling-drug thing, too.”

His eyes flashed. “I've helped Gus every way I could, make no mistake. I've nodded like a good boy and done whatever the guidance counselors, drug counselors, policemen, shrinks, and rehab sales reps told me to do. And do you know what I never heard from any of those people?”

I waited.

He slammed his smoothie on the countertop hard enough to fountain purple berries. “What they never said, not one of them, was, ‘Your son is a spoiled brat, Mr. Biletnikov. He's sucking up trust-fund income and laughing at you while he does so. He's happily riding his monthly check until the big score, the inheritance, comes in.
That,
Mr. Biletnikov, is what Gustav Biletnikov the Second looks forward to most. Your son gets a little thrill of anticipation every time you board an airplane, every time you cross a busy street.'”

He panted, nostrils flaring, cheeks redder than ever. These Russians have a way of coming across as royalty and white trash at the same time. Not sure how they pull it off, but they do.

He pinched his nose, breathed deep a few times. Finally looked at me again. “I wish nothing but the best for Gustav. I bid you go find him. Talk to Rinn, talk more with Haley, do as you wish. As for me, though”—he dry-washed his hands—“I am done with it. With him. With you.”

Peter Biletnikov clapped once, fished car keys from a wicker basket, and walked out without looking back.

The word that hung in my head: “inheritance.” It meant a lot more than Peter seemed to know. It meant a lot even if you didn't have two nickels to rub together.

Like my dad.