The Barbed-Wire Kiss (9 page)

“Jesus.”

“There was no gun anywhere, but there was cocaine in the van—two kilos. But when the passenger—the driver’s brother—came to trial, he testified there was another kilo that Dunleavy took out of the van before he called EMS.”

“Was it true?”

“Probably. Regardless, the brother had a good lawyer. The case was dismissed on the grounds it was a bad stop. A week later Dunleavy was charged with aggravated manslaughter.”

“I can guess how that came out.”

“The jury ruled it self-defense, justifiable homicide, that he was in fear of his life, whether there was an actual weapon or not. But he didn’t make out as well in the internal review. There’d already been rumors that he was stealing from drug dealers he’d stopped, taking their stash and letting them go. He didn’t have much support in house. They gave him a choice: quit or face departmental charges. He quit.”

“And now he’s working for Fallon.”

“Apparently.”

Bobby looked down, scuffed at the ground with his heel.

“What do you think we should do?” he said.

“Stick to our plan. Fallon wouldn’t bother Andelli with a problem like this, it would make him look bad. But just in case there is something in the works, we should stop it short. Giving him this money will help.”

“In the works? What’s that supposed to mean?”

Harry didn’t answer.

Bobby looked away again.

“Eight grand,” he said, after a moment. “It’s not much, is it?”

“It’s enough for now. He’s just going to have to wait for the rest.”

“Yeah, but will he?”

“He’ll have to,” Harry said. “He has no choice.”

That night, he sat at his kitchen table, counting out the money Bobby had given him. It was mostly hundreds and fifties, with only a few twenties thrown in. He added it to his own five thousand, then divided the total into three piles, wrapped each with a wide rubber band.

He’d stopped on the way home from Bobby’s and bought a package of heavy-duty four-by-ten manila envelopes. He slid the money into one, licked the flap, and sealed it. The phone on the wall began to ring.

He looked at it, then at the clock above the sink. Ten forty-five. He waited. It rang again, loud in the empty house. He got up from the table just as the answering machine on the counter clicked on. He punched it off, lifted the receiver.

“Hello?”

“You were in the phone book,” she said.

Her voice was deeper than he’d known it, rough-edged, with the harshness of cigarettes.

“Yes,” he said.

“It’s funny. I never thought to look until today. I’ve been back here for almost seven months now and I never thought to look.”

“I never left.”

“It was a shock, seeing you like that.”

“For me too.”

“I knew he was meeting someone there, but he didn’t tell me who.”

“You haven’t changed much.”

“You’re being nice, but you’re lying. It’s been nearly eighteen years. A long eighteen years.”

“You’re his wife.”

“Yes.”

“How long?”

“Three years now, almost.”

“Where did you meet him?”

“In Florida. That’s where I was living at the time. He brought me back up here with him.”

“Back home.”

“It’s not home for me anymore, Harry. It hasn’t been for a long time.”

There was a distant whine of static on the line.

“What’s that?” he said.

“I’m on a cell phone. In the garage. It’s some kind of interference.”

“Why did you call?”

“To say hello. To see how you were. That’s all, I guess.”

“I’m glad you did.”

There was silence on the line and, for a moment, he thought she had hung up.

“I am too,” she said finally. And then there was a faint click and she was gone.

He called the Sand Castle at ten-thirty the next morning, left his name and phone number. After he hung up, he made a second cup of coffee, then flipped through the phone book until he found a listing for a J. Cortez in Bradley Beach. He wrote the number and address on the back of an envelope, then tried the number, let it ring a dozen times. There was no answer.

He was on his third cup of coffee when the phone rang.

“Yeah.”

“You the guy called, looking for Mr. F.?”

“That’s right.”

“What can I do for you?”

The man coughed, a deep, wet sound choked with phlegm.

“He and I spoke at the club,” Harry said. “He’ll know who I am. Tell him I’ve got something for him. It’s ready now.”

“The guy from the club. Okay, I’ll pass it on. I’m not sure if I can find him right away, though, you know? He’s in and out. We’ll see what happens.”

“Yeah, we will. Just make sure he gets the message.” He hung up.

A half hour later, he was watering the flower beds on the side of the house when he heard the phone ring. He shut off the valve, coiled the hose, and went inside.

“Yeah?”

“Okay, here’s the deal,” the voice said. “He wants to meet with you tomorrow.”

“Where?”

“Here at the restaurant. You know where it is?”

“I know. What time?”

“Say, four-thirty. Just come on in. We’ll be waiting for you.”

“Four-thirty.”

“Sharp.” The line went dead.

He drove slowly, counting house numbers. It was a street lined with squat, redbrick apartment buildings and two-family houses, far enough from the beach that it might as well have been in another town. Dirty children played on the sidewalk, and all the cars he saw were at least ten years old.

Cortez’s apartment was above a garage in a rear yard, at the end of a dirt driveway. He parked the Mustang on the street, walked back. He’d worn a shortsleeved T-shirt, but he could already feel the sweat trickling down his back. As he passed the front house, he caught movement from the corner of his eye. He turned to see a boy of about six watching him from an uncurtained window, expressionless.

The backyard was overgrown, strewn with broken toys. A swing set sagged in one corner of the yard. He looked through the side window of the garage, saw that the inside was cluttered with junk and old furniture. But space had been cleared for a car, and oil stained the concrete floor.

He went up white wooden steps to the apartment, knocked, listened. He shaded his eyes and looked through a window, but the blinds were tightly closed. He knocked again. There was no sound from inside.

“Jimmy’s not there, if that’s who you’re looking for.”

He turned. A woman stood at the rear of the main house, holding open the screen door, the boy from the window at her side. Behind her, a dog that was at least half German shepherd was trying to squeeze past her leg. She pushed it back.

He went down the stairs slowly, watching the dog. The woman stamped her foot, drove the dog back, then stepped outside with the boy and shut the screen door behind her. The boy glanced at Harry, then ran past him and clambered up the ladder of the swing set.

Inside, the dog began to bark. It leaped against the screen door, shook it in its frame.

“It’s okay,” the woman said. “He can’t get out. He’s just not used to strangers.”

She was in her early twenties, a little over five feet tall, with light brown hair cut short, pale blue eyes. She wore cutoff jeans and a man’s blue work shirt with the tail out and the sleeves rolled up. She folded her arms over her breasts, watched him.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” he said. “My name’s Harry Rane. I’m a friend of Jimmy’s.”

“You looking for him?” Her voice held the rhythms of Appalachia. Child bride transplanted to the Jersey Shore.

“Do you know where he is?”

“He’s not here. At least not now. I don’t know where he went, either.”

“You own this property?”

“Why?”

She was watching him closely, suspicious but maybe intrigued. She met his gaze without looking away, and for the first time he saw the compact toughness there. This was a woman who could hit back if she had to, and would make it count.

“Jimmy’s sister asked me to look in on him,” he said. “She lives out in Colorado. She hasn’t heard from him in a few weeks, couldn’t get an answer when she called. So she asked if I’d stop by, see what was the matter.”

“You live around here?”

“Colts Neck.”

“You rich?”

He smiled. “No.”

“Live out there you must have some money.”

“It’s an old farmhouse my grandparents owned. They left it to me.”

“What’s his sister’s name?”

“Andrea,” he said. She seemed to register the moment’s hesitation.

“And you two are friends?”

“All the way back to high school,” he lied. “Red Bank Catholic.”

She scratched an elbow, looked past him at the garage, as if she were considering everything he’d said, turning it over to find the falseness in it. He waited.

“Well, like I said, he’s not here. And he hasn’t been for a while. He may have moved out, for all I know.”

“Why do you say that?”

“He hasn’t been around in close to a month. The mail was piling up, so I started to take it in. People around here, if they know you’re away, they’ll break in, rob you blind. It’s bad up here. It’s not like home.”

“Where’s home.”

“West Virginia.”

“That’s beautiful country down there.”

“I guess. But it’s nowhere you’d want to spend your life.”

He smiled at that, liking her more now, sensing the intelligence beneath the pose.

“How long have you been out here?”

She unfolded her arms, put her hands in her back pockets.

“Three years now. But we’ve only been in this place”—she nodded back at the house—“for about nine months.”

“You know Jimmy well?”

“He was living there when we moved in. I know him to say hello to and all that but … it’s not like we socialized.”

“Is your husband home?”

She brought her left hand around so he could see there was no ring.

“So you don’t own the property?”

“No. I rent. We all rent around here.”

The dog had stopped barking but was watching him intently through the screen door. He could hear a television on somewhere inside.

“Miss …”

“Pettimore.”

“Miss Pettimore, do you mind if I have a look in the garage?”

“Go ahead. It’s unlocked. There’s some things of ours in there, but mostly it’s Jimmy’s stuff. God knows what all’s in there.”

She looked back at the house.

“If there’s something you need to do …” he said.

“It’s the baby. I put her to bed right before you got here. I don’t like to leave her alone for this long without looking in on her.”

“Go on,” he said. “Don’t worry, I won’t take anything.”

She gave that a small smile, started back to the house. He watched her hips as she walked, knew she was aware of his eyes on her. He felt something stir inside him, something gone for a long time.

He went over to the garage door, twisted the handle, and heaved until the door rattled up on its tracks. Inside, an old washer and dryer, edges eaten through with rust, were shoved against one cinder-block wall. A child’s plastic wading pool, a hole in its side, was propped against the other. He knelt and touched the oil stains on the concrete. One of them was still wet.

He found a rag on a shelf, wiped his fingers, and looked around. There was a battered kitchen table against the far wall. On it were half a dozen cardboard boxes sealed with masking tape. He took out his pen knife, sliced through the tape on one box, and pulled the flaps back to reveal a set of cheap dishes packed in newspaper. The next box contained glasses, packed the same way. A third held clothes.

He heard the screen door shut as she came back out. He resealed the flaps as best he could, folded the knife, and put it away. When he turned, she was standing at the entrance to the garage.

“Find anything?” she said.

“Nothing that helps.”

She nodded at the washer and dryer. “I tried to haul them out myself once, but they were too heavy. And I just can’t see paying someone to do it. Terry—that’s my husband, ex-husband now—wanted to clean all this out, build a workshop. I guess he just never got around to it. Like everything else in his life.”

“He lived here with you?”

“For a while.”

“He know Jimmy?”

“Not hardly. I don’t think they liked each other very much.”

“Why not?”

“Terry was the jealous type. Not that he had any reason to be.”

“What do you mean?”

“Jimmy’s one of those boys who act like they’ve got the world wired. Some girls go for that, I guess. I didn’t.”

“Has your ex-husband been around lately?”

“He comes by every week or so, to see the baby. And he gets Terry Jr. every other weekend. A boy needs his father, after all, even if his parents can’t get along. God knows we couldn’t, no matter how much we tried.”

“So you last saw Jimmy when?”

“End of June?” She scratched her collarbone beneath the shirt. “Three weeks, at least.”

“Well, Miss Pettimore, I’ll be honest.”

“Lynn.”

“Lynn. Jimmy’s sister is worried about him. It isn’t normal for her not to hear from him for this long.”

“I can understand that. If he were my brother …”

“You wouldn’t happen to have a key to his apartment, would you? For emergencies?”

She tilted her head.

“I don’t think I could do that,” she said. “I mean, he’s gone and all, but still, it wouldn’t be right.”

“You can come with me if you like. I just want to take a quick look around, see if there’s any clue where he might have gone. And … you never know.”

“You mean he might still be up there? Sick or something?”

“I doubt it. But when I call his sister back, I want to be able to tell her that for sure.”

“But I heard him leave that night. In the car.”

“When was this?”

“About three weeks ago, like I said. It was maybe two o’clock in the morning. I hadn’t seen him for a week or so, then one night I was up late with the baby and I heard the car pulling out. He was in a hurry, I guess, or drunk or something.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Look what he did to the door.”

She pointed and, for the first time, he saw the scrape on the garage’s wooden doorframe at about knee height.