The Romanov Cross: A Novel (17 page)

“You mind if I ask you a question now?” Harley said.

“Shoot.”

“What are you doing out here in the armpit of Alaska?” Glancing at Nika, he added, “No offense, Your Honor.”

“None taken. And you can knock off the ‘Your Honor’ stuff.”

He liked that it had gotten to her.

Slater bobbed his head, wiped up some ketchup with the last of his fries, and said, “Just some preparedness drills with the Coast Guard. Better safe than sorry.”

But his eyes didn’t meet Harley’s, and now Harley knew that something pretty big must be up, after all. Charlie’s suspicions were right; he might be an asshole, but he was smart. Harley would give him that.

“By the way,” Slater said, “what ever happened to that coffin lid that you rode to shore like a surfboard? I saw a photo of it in the paper.”

“Why?”

“Just curious.”

“As a doctor?”

Slater’s expression gave away nothing—and everything.

“I was thinking about putting it up on eBay,” Harley taunted. “But if you want to make me a cash offer …”

“Actually,” Slater said, “I was thinking along rather different lines. I was thinking that it doesn’t belong to you, and it ought to go back where it came from.”

“Oh yeah? Where’s that?”

“To the graveyard, on St. Peter’s Island.”

Then Slater looked straight at Harley, no bullshit anymore, and Harley could see he was dealing with more than some doc on a training run. So it was high time that the doc knew who
he
was dealing with, too.

“Law of the sea,” Harley said. “I found it, it’s salvage, and it’s mine. And no one better fuck with me.” He stood up, pushing off from the chair. “See you around,” he said, before glancing at Nika and adding, “Your Honor.”

“I do not think I would trust that man,” Kozak said, as Harley stalked off. Finishing off his mug of beer, he plunked the glass down on the table and burped softly.

“I think you would be right not to,” Nika said. “Harley and his brother Charlie are both bad news.”

Kozak excused himself to head for the men’s room, and Slater asked her for the full rundown.

“We’d be here all night,” Nika said, “just going through the police blotter.” But she gave him the capsule description of the Vane family and its long history in the town of Port Orlov. He seemed particularly intrigued when she mentioned that Charlie ran an evangelical mission over the Web.

“So that explains the lighted cross above that house in the woods,” he said. “I couldn’t help but notice it from the chopper.”

“X marks the spot.”

“And you think he’s for real?”

That was a tough one, and even Nika was of two minds. “I think he thinks so. But can a leopard really change its spots? Underneath, I’ve got to believe that Charlie Vane is still the same petty crook he’s always been. You can judge for yourself tomorrow.”

“How come?”

“He’s sure to be at the funeral service for the crew of the
Neptune II
. The whole town will turn out.”

“I’m not sure the professor and I should attend.”

Nika laughed. “You might as well. I mean, if you think your being here is some kind of secret, you’ve never been to a town like Port Orlov. Harley’s probably bragging already about how he told you to stuff it. If he’s lucky, it’ll be a good enough story to get Angie Dobbs back into bed with him.”

“Who’s Angie Dobbs?”

“The town’s most eligible bachelorette,” Nika replied. “The blond waitress over by the jukebox.”

Indeed, Harley was loudly regaling her, and a couple of others, with some tale or other. Slater wryly shook his head.

“It sounds like you’ve got your hands full running this town.”

Nika shrugged; she didn’t want him to think she felt that way. But it was the truth, nevertheless. Port Orlov, like so many Inuit villages in Alaska, was a wreck. With far too few social services and way too many problems, there were times when she felt marooned in the wilderness. Even if the town could just manage to get a decent, full-time
medical clinic, it would be a huge step forward, but try finding the money for it, much less a doctor to staff it. For all of her noble intentions, Nika only had two hands and there were only so many hours in the day.

“We make do with what we’ve got,” she finally said.

“Sometimes,” he sympathized, “the satisfaction has to come from knowing you’ve done all that you can. No matter what the odds.”

She had the feeling that he was talking about his own work, too, and she wondered what terrible scenarios he might be revisiting in his mind. He had the look of a man who’d seen things no one should see, done things no one should ever have to have done. And despite their differences—not to mention that fact that they’d gotten off to a bumpy start at the hockey rink—she was starting to feel as if Slater might prove to be a kindred spirit.

In a backwater like this, they weren’t easy to come by.

“Who do you trust?” Charlie asked, staring into the Skype lens attached to his computer.

“You mean which doctor?” the woman asked, confused. “I don’t know, they’re all so confusing, talking about carcinomas and—”

“Who do you
trust
?” Charlie broke in, his powerful hands gripping the wheels of his chair.

The woman on the screen visibly drew into herself, shoulders hunched, head down. Her straggly hair looked plastered to her skull.

“Who gives it to you straight?”

“You do?” she ventured, like a student hoping she’d found the right answer.

“Wrong!” he exploded.

She shrank further.

“I’m just the vessel, I’m just the messenger.
Jesus
gives it to you straight. ‘Whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.’ Jesus is saying, put your faith in me—all your faith, not just a little bit, not just whatever you think you can spare—but the whole enchilada.”

“I do,” she pleaded, “I do believe in the whole thing, in God, but—”

“No ‘buts’ allowed! God says give it all, and I will return it all, one hundred fold. What’s holding you back?”

She paused. Children’s voices could be heard from another room. “I’m afraid,” she said in a furtive voice. “I’m so afraid.”

Charlie realized he was losing her; he was coming on too strong. This woman was still in the grip of worldly concerns, she was afraid of dying, and she was putting her faith in all the wrong places. He deliberately lowered his voice and adopted a more consoling tone. “I was once like you,” he said, “before God took away the use of my legs. I lived in fear, every day, fear of losing whatever I had—my health, my family, the love of my friends.” Even Charlie had to admit that the love of his friends was a bit of a stretch, but he was on a roll and could be forgiven. “And then, God gave me a good hard slap, he wrapped my canoe around a rock in the Heron River Gorge and stuck me in this wheelchair like he was planting a turnip in the ground.” In the time before the Forestry Service had gotten there to rescue him, Charlie had seen Jesus, as plain as he saw this woman on his computer screen now. He was wearing a long white robe, just like in the pictures, only his hair was long and black and the crown of thorns sparkled, kind of like it was made of tinsel. “And I have been growing ever since. My body has shriveled, but my spirit is as tall as a sequoia.” He had never seen Jesus again, but he knew that that day would come—either in this world, or the next.

Just out of range of the lens, and in a low voice not meant to be picked up by the computer, Rebekah said, “We’re going to be late.” She was standing in the doorway to the meeting room, her coat and gloves already on.

He waved one hand behind him, again too low to be seen, to signal that he had heard her. The woman on the screen was crying.

“I’m not as strong as you,” she murmured. “Between the biopsies and the scans and all the tests, I’m just … exhausted.”

“I hear you, Sister.” He called all of his online parishioners either Sister or Brother. “But God never gives us more than He thinks we can handle.”

“Bathsheba’s waiting in the car,” Rebekah hissed.

“I have to go now. There’s a prayer service in town; they’re waiting for me.” Although he might have given her the impression that he was
presiding at the prayer service, which wasn’t exactly true, he hadn’t lied, either. There
was
a service—the memorial for the crewmen who had drowned on the
Neptune II
—but the only reason they’d be waiting for him was because he was planning to pick up his brother, Harley, who was supposed to offer some remarks. Charlie had already written them out for him.

“God be with you, Sister,” he concluded. “If you don’t abandon Him, He won’t abandon you. Never forget that.”

“I try not to.”

“PayPal,” Rebekah urged in a low voice from the doorway.

“Right,” Charlie said, so wrapped up in his divine mission that he had almost forgotten the Lord’s instructions to find the means to spread the word. “And don’t forget to send in your tithe via PayPal.”

The woman nodded, blowing her nose into a wadded-up ball of Kleenex.

“Bless you, Sister.”

“Bless you,” she said, before signing off.

Rebekah, sighing in exasperation—“You must think this place runs on prayers instead of money!”—wheeled him down the ramp to the garage, then helped as he hoisted himself into the driver’s seat of the blue minivan. His upper-body strength was still good. While Rebekah stowed the chair in the back, Bathsheba huddled over a book. If Charlie asked her what she was reading, she would claim it was Scripture, but more than once, it had turned out to be one of those
Twilight
books about vampires and such. Charlie had had to chastise her severely.

The service was scheduled for noon, and Charlie knew that Harley would barely be up in time. He backed the car out of the garage, using the array of rotary cable hand controls that allowed him to drive without having to use his feet on the gas or brake pedals; it was all done by twisting the specially installed shift on the steering wheel. The driveway was long and bumpy, and the main road wasn’t much better.

“I don’t like you talking to that woman so much,” Rebekah said.

It took a second for Charlie even to figure out who she was talking about.

“She’s just calling for sympathy,” Rebekah went on.

“She’s dying, for Christ’s sake.”

“That’s no excuse. We all die.”

“She’s part of my flock.”

“Then shear her and be done with it.”

Bathsheba tittered in the backseat, and Charlie glanced in the rearview mirror.

“What’s so funny?”

“Nothing.”

After they’d moved in with him, it had taken Charlie a few days before he realized that Bathsheba wasn’t just shy—she was actually a bit slow. Her older sister looked after her.

Still, he needed help around the house, and even more help running the Vane’s Holy Writ website and church. Rebekah had a lot of business sense, and Bathsheba could be entrusted with the simple housekeeping chores and such. Beyond that, however, she could be a problem. “We’re not going to have any trouble today, are we?” he asked over his shoulder.

Bathsheba pretended not to know what he was referring to.

“No fits? No antics?” The last time they’d set foot in the Lutheran Church, which served as the all-purpose house of worship for Port Orlov, Bathsheba had claimed to be assailed by devils. Raised in a tiny fundamentalist, Northeastern sect that had splintered off the mainstream a hundred years ago, the two women had arrived in Port Orlov with some pretty well-established, if unorthodox, ideas. But Charlie chalked up incidents like that last one to those damn books Bathsheba read. Thank God the town library, housed in the community center, consisted of about three shelves of tattered
Reader’s Digest
books.

“Don’t you worry about my sister,” Rebekah said sharply. “You take care of that brother of yours.” Indeed, he was planning to do just that; he had a very full agenda for both Harley and those two screw-loose friends of his, Eddie and Russell.

They drove in silence until they reached the outskirts of the town, then turned onto Front Street, pulling in between the lumberyard and the gun shop. The trailer still rested on the rusty steel hitch, a foot off the ground.

“Go get him,” Charlie said to Rebekah, and she said, “It’s cold out. Just honk the horn.”

Obedience, Charlie thought, would be the theme for his next video sermon.

He honked, and watched as the window blind was raised. He could see the outline of Harley’s head, framed by the pale violet glow of the snake tank. Charlie had never actually been inside the trailer, but Rebekah had been, and she’d filled him in on the gory details.

The door opened and Harley stumbled down the steps, still zipping his coat. His hair looked wet from the shower. He climbed into the backseat next to Bathsheba, who stashed her book out of sight. Charlie looked back and said, “Show me the speech you’re going to make.”

“What speech? I’m just gonna say a couple of things and sit down as fast as I can.”

“I thought you’d say that.” Charlie fished some typewritten notes out of his coat pocket. “Read these over on the way. It’s what you’re going to say.”

Harley grudgingly took the paper and studied it as Charlie drove. Charlie rather fancied his own way with words—over the years he had been able to talk his way out of more than one rap, including armed burglary and assault—and even if he couldn’t be the one declaiming them, it would be his words spoken from the pulpit of the town church.

With his handicapped sticker, Charlie was able to park the van right beside the front stairs. Rebekah pushed his chair up the ramp. Just inside, not far from the plaque that listed all the fishermen who had been lost at sea in the past hundred years, there were bulletin boards covered with the names and photos of the newly dead. Lucas Muller. Freddie Farrell. Jonah Tasi, the Samoan. Buddy Kubelik. Old
Man Richter. It said here that the old man’s first name was Aloysius. No wonder he never used it. The photos showed the men holding up fish they’d caught, or crouching over dead elk, or hoisting beer mugs at the Yardarm. Some people had tacked on little notes and cards saying good-bye.