The Girl with a Clock for a Heart: A Novel (14 page)

“I can go,” she said. “I wouldn’t mind seeing my nieces. And there’s something a little bit exciting about suddenly having to leave town because your life’s in danger.”

“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” George said.

“But what about you?”

“I can handle myself,” he said in a mock baritone.

“Clearly not.”

“No, clearly not. But I’m going to put myself in the hands of the police. It’s the only thing to do, and it’s the right thing to do. Honestly, I can’t even imagine that either Liana or Jenks is still in Boston. It doesn’t make any sense. They got what they came for.”

“How do you know that one of them didn’t screw over the other? Maybe Donnie Jenks took the diamonds, or maybe Liana did and that’s why Donnie is still around.”

“I thought of that. It’s a possibility. There are lots of possibilities, really. That’s why I want you to leave town. I have no idea what’s going on.”

“Agreed. I’m leaving town. I can’t help feeling I’m going to miss out a little. On everything that’s going on here.” She smiled.

“It’s not funny. All I can see is your horrible eye.”

She brought her hand up to the bandage. “I keep forgetting about this somehow. You have to promise to call me every day and let me know what’s happening. I’m worried about you too.”

“I will,” George said, but remained on the couch.

“You’re not leaving,” Irene said.

George leaned across the couch and kissed her. He didn’t know what to expect, but Irene returned the kiss with a hungry intensity, pushing back against George so that she was on top of him. He unbuttoned her Wakefield jersey and cupped her breasts, her small dark nipples already hard. “Bedroom?” George asked, his voice hoarse and low. She shook her head no as she unzipped his shorts. He slid his fingers under the waistband of her pajama shorts to shuck them off. She stopped him, pulled the stretchy fabric to the side, and guided him inside of her, her shorts still on. He bit his lip to stop himself from immediately coming, and she bore down hard on him, bucking her hips back and forth with a singular ferocity. She took hold of his hand, folded it into a fist, and pressed it against her, rubbing against his knuckles. They came together in just under a minute.

I
rene walked him to the door. “You should nearly get me killed more often,” she said as they hugged good-bye.

“No kidding.”

They pulled apart. Irene’s cheeks were deeply flushed, and she was not meeting his eye. “I
am
sorry about this mess,” George said.

Irene flicked her hand, saying, “Psssh. You didn’t mean to sic a murderer on me.”

“It’s not just that. . . .”

“All right, you’re getting maudlin. You look exhausted. You can stay here if you want, you know.”

“I have to go to the police.”

“Be careful out there. I’ll call you when I know my travel plans.”

George stood for a moment after the door had shut, confused but also settled in his intention.

Chapter 17

O
utside Irene’s building the sky was an electric blue, but the archway was in total darkness. A wind chime that hung from one of the fire escapes chimed tunelessly. Two mounted lights cast thick intersecting shadows across the brick courtyard, and in one of the shadows George thought he saw the silhouetted figure of a man. He stood still for a moment, allowing his eyes to adjust to the night. A Prius zipped silently by on the street, its headlights briefly illuminating the courtyard, enough so that George could tell he was alone.

He started toward his car, alternately telling himself he was being too cautious and not cautious enough. If the fake Donnie Jenks was still around, then why wouldn’t he be here? He’d been here the night before, when he knocked Irene to the ground. If he wanted to get to George, he’d know that this was a likely place for George to show up. George walked a little faster, passing a house with wide-open windows,
America’s Funniest Home Videos
blaring from a monstrous flat-screen TV. When the sound faded, he thought he heard an echo of his footsteps behind him. He sped up a little, tilted his head, and felt rather than saw someone behind him. His heart rate seemed to double. The street he’d parked on was coming up on the right; turning onto it would give him a chance to look back and see if there really was someone behind him. He sped up a little more to make the turn, and as he did he looked back as casually as he could. There was someone, about half a block back, who was walking almost listlessly and was partly obscured by the row of trees planted along the sidewalk.

He considered his options. His car was a couple of hundred yards down the street. He could run to it, in the hope that whoever was following him was in even worse shape than he was, or he could keep walking, hoping that it all was just paranoia, that the person behind him was on an evening stroll. But nothing about George’s recent life suggested that he was being overly paranoid about anything. Coming up on his right was a minivan sitting in a driveway in front of a single-family home. Without thinking, he darted behind it and crouched down, hoping he’d done so before his follower reached the corner.

Willing himself to breathe quietly, George listened. The footsteps, loud and with a slight drag on one side, grew louder. He thought he heard a hesitation, as though his follower was suddenly confused about where he’d gone, but the footsteps kept coming. It was dark where George was crouched, but he’d worn a light blue shirt and the minivan was painted a dark metallic gray. He pressed himself into the driver’s-side door, and as his head grazed the door handle a piercing siren erupted from the vehicle, its front and back lights flashing on and off.

Despite the impulse, George neither screamed out loud nor pissed himself. Instead, he lurched from the van as though it were suddenly on fire and careened into the sharp branches of a hedge that lined the driveway. Gritting his teeth, he turned toward the man on the sidewalk, who had turned toward him. George knew instantly from his bowling-pin shape that it wasn’t the Donnie Jenks he was scared to see. It was DJ, the private investigator. He held a flat hand above his heart and looked as scared as George did. He was still partly in shadow, but what George could see seemed deathly white and sweaty. DJ put both his hands on his knees and breathed heavily. “You okay?” George asked, coming out onto the sidewalk. The siren pealed across the neighborhood. “Let’s get away from this van.”

They walked together toward his car, DJ breathing like a linebacker who had just run a forty. “You followed me here?” George asked.

“Yeah. That siren nearly gave me a heart attack.”

“You’re not really having one, are you?”

“I don’t think so. I actually had one once, so I know what it feels like. It doesn’t feel like this.”

George didn’t know what to say, so he asked, “Where’d you follow me from? Boston?”

“Yeah. Kind of hoping you might lead me to Jane Byrne.”

“How do you know I didn’t?”

“Because you went to visit Irene Dimas, and unless she’s somehow harboring Jane . . .”

“How do you know about Irene?”

“I’m a detective. I detect. Were you somehow trying to hide your fifteen-year relationship with an ex-co-worker?”

“I guess not. You’ve been outside this whole time?”

“I have. I missed my dinner.”

They reached George’s car. The siren still screamed in the background. They stood awkwardly together for a moment, as if they were wondering whether to continue the date or call it a night. “I don’t know where Jane is,” George said.

“I believe you. Ms. Boyd does not. We also know there are things you haven’t told us yet.”

“That’s true. I’ve thought about it. I’m ready to tell you anything you want to know. The police too.”

“Okay.” The siren stopped. As far as George could tell, no one, including the owners of the minivan, had come out onto the street to determine if a crime was happening.

“I’d rather not tell you everything here on the street. Is there somewhere else we can go? Where’s your Suzuki?”

DJ laughed. “Next street over.”

“I wouldn’t think that’s the best vehicle for remaining undetected.”

“I followed you, didn’t I?”

“What do you do if someone gets onto a highway? Can it go over sixty?”

“All right now, you’re talking about my baby. Let’s just say that in my line of work I don’t actually do a lot of tailing of suspects on highways or otherwise. I spend more of my time in an office.”

“So where should we talk?” George asked. “We could go back to my neighborhood in Boston. There’s a comfortable bar.”

“Fine with me. I can meet you in front of your building. I think I’ll manage to keep up.”

George moved around to the driver’s-side door, and DJ prepared to cross the street. He looked both ways down the darkened, quiet street, and George smiled to himself at such overcaution, but as DJ began to cross a white car came barreling down the street, its lights off. George yelled to DJ to look out, but DJ was already halfway across. DJ hesitated a moment, deciding whether to keep going or turn back; in that moment the car’s brakes screamed like a girl in a horror movie, and DJ managed one step toward the curb before being upended over the still-moving car’s hood. George watched his enormous hips float up into the air as though he were weightless. DJ got a forearm out in front of his head, and that was what hit the windshield, splintering it. DJ pirouetted out of sight, and as the car halted, the brakes’ scream abruptly ceasing, George heard the sick, heavy thud as DJ hit the pavement.

George moved toward DJ, casting an eye toward the driver of the vehicle, but stopped short. The window of the car—it was a white Dodge—was rolled down, and its driver held a sawed-off shotgun, its twin barrels resting casually out the lip of the window. George stopped, hands instinctively rising, and his feet beginning to reverse direction. His heel hit the curb he’d just stepped off, and he fell backward onto the sidewalk. He heard what he supposed was the pump of the shotgun and half rolled/half slid himself behind his car just as the explosion of the shotgun shook the air. George’s Saab rocked on its wheels. One of its windows disintegrated. In the quiet aftermath, he heard the Dodge leave with another short scream of tires. The smell of burning rubber and hot metal filled the air.

“DJ,” George called out into the night, but he heard nothing back, just the hiss of a ruptured tire and, from somewhere else, the sound of a screen door slapping open, voices coming toward him.

G
eorge had been in the interrogation room of the Boston police station for over an hour, left alone on a plastic chair under fluorescent lights. He’d finished his coffee, then steadily torn pieces from the rim of the Styrofoam cup till it was half its original size. It was just before midnight when the door swung inward and Detective Roberta James entered. She wore jeans, a short-sleeved button-up blouse, and a green Boston Celtics cap.

“Hi, George,” she said, placing a mug and a folder on the table and sitting down.

“Detective,” George said.

“You had a scare tonight, I heard?”

“What can you tell me about Donald Jenks? I’ve asked just about everyone here.”

“Broken elbow. Dislocated shoulder. Concussion symptoms. They’re keeping him overnight in the hospital.”

George exhaled. After being shot at, he had willed his rubbery legs to move and had gone to the other side of the street. DJ was half on the sidewalk, twisted onto his side, his hair soaked and sticky with blood. He’d been conscious, but when George asked him how he was, he’d only looked up with confused eyes, then looked back toward the pavement as though the question had shamed him.

“What happened?” a voice had said from behind them. It was a woman in her thirties with a blond buzz cut. She hovered a few yards away, a worried frown on her face.

“He was hit,” George said. “By a car. The car drove off.” His voice sounded both formal and shaky, and he thought that he was probably in some kind of shock. The woman took a hesitant step toward them. There was suddenly a man next to her, speaking into his cell phone. He was whispering, as though he didn’t want anyone else to hear. A patrol car arrived moments before the ambulance. More neighbors emerged onto the street, forming a low-talking semicircle. While the EMTs dealt with DJ, George spoke with a police officer, showing him the skid marks on the asphalt and the side of his Saab that had been peppered with shotgun spray. The officer, clearly another car lover, studied the damage with a grim solemnity. George told the story as it had happened, omitting the far more complicated larger picture, but he did produce Detective James’s card and tell them that what had happened was connected with a case she was investigating. After the ambulance had left, he was taken to the station and told to wait in an interrogation room.

“You want to tell me what happened?” Detective James asked. He wondered about her partner, O’Clair, and whether he was watching and listening on a monitor somewhere.

“Sure,” George said.

“Do you know who shot at you tonight?”

“I know who it was, but I don’t know his real name. The name he gave me was Donnie Jenks.”

“Donald Jenks who’s in the hospital right now?”

“No, that’s the real Donald Jenks. The man who ran him over with his car, and the man who shot at me, is calling himself Donnie Jenks, but it’s obviously not his real name, or else it’s a
very
big coincidence.”

“I’m confused.”

“Okay,” George said. “I’ll back up and tell you everything I know.”

And he did. It was the second time he’d told the story that night, the first time to Irene, and retelling it only made him feel increasingly naïve and incompetent. He told Detective James everything that had happened since Friday night without going into specifics about his past, twenty years earlier, with Liana. He did, however, give up her real name. “There’ll be a file on her. She’s wanted in Florida for homicide.”

“How does she spell her last name?”

“D-E-C-T-E-R.”

“Why didn’t you give us this information this morning?”

George shrugged. “I didn’t know at that time that she’d . . . that I’d been implicated in a murder. I still thought it was possible that what she’d told me had been the truth, that she was in Boston to return money and to try and get back a semblance of safety in her life. Obviously, I was wrong.”

“And you don’t know where she might be?”

“No idea. I doubt very much that she’s still in the area. I would say it’s a certainty that she’s long gone except for the fact that, clearly, her partner is still around.”

Detective James opened the folder in front of her, removed a black-and-white mug shot, and spun it so that it faced George. “Is this the man who called himself Donnie Jenks?”

The man in the picture had long, swept-back hair and was at least a decade younger than “Donnie Jenks,” but the features seemed right, small and clustered on a head that seemed larger toward the top. George looked at the nose; it was hard to make out in the grainy shot, but it looked like the same nose, snub and with a flattened bridge. “It looks like him,” he said. “Who is he?”

“His name is Bernie MacDonald. That name mean anything to you?”

George told her it didn’t.

“But you’re sure it’s the man you met in New Essex, the man who punched you in the kidney?”

George looked again. The face in the mug shot was calm, almost cocky, as though he was not particularly worried about whatever had led him to be in that situation and whatever was going to happen next. It was that calmness that told George this was definitely the man calling himself Donnie Jenks. “Yeah, I’m sure. Is he connected to Liana Decter, or Jane Byrne?”

“We have nothing concrete, but until recently he lived in Atlanta. He was a bartender at a place near where Liana worked and lived. His prints showed up on a stolen vehicle outside of the city. That’s how we pulled his file.”

“What was he arrested for?”

“Nothing too serious. Aggravated assault. Petty theft. No murder, or attempted murder. Not yet anyway.”

“Good to know.”

“Do you think that Bernie MacDonald and Liana might be holed up at that place in New Essex?”

“I don’t. It’s a total dump, not even habitable. For whatever reason, one of them knew about this place, and it’s where they decided to stage my meeting with this guy . . . this Bernie. The plan was obviously that he would scare me enough so that I would feel the need to do this favor for Liana.”

“What about somewhere near the place? Why do you think they picked New Essex?”

“There’s another house on the lane. I knocked actually, to see what I could find out. The woman there was pretty strung out.”

“Did you get her name?”

“No. I just asked her if she knew anything about who might live in the old cottage. She wasn’t too helpful.”

“Okay.” The detective slid Bernie MacDonald’s mug shot back into her folder and closed it. She arched her shoulders back, and George heard an audible pop. “Am I free to go?” he asked. His entire body ached. Despite his nap earlier in the day, he felt as though he could fall asleep by simply closing his eyes.