Wicked Fix (3 page)

your butt off the fish pier."

Reuben turned on his cleated heel, hands raised

placatingly. "I'm going, I'm going. See you, doctor," he

promised with an evil wink. "Oh, and ... thanks for

that other thing."

Then he was gone, leaving us sitting there like the

stunned victims of some sudden, cataclysmic natural

disaster.

"What brought that on?" I asked Victor, but he

only waved an exhausted hand and wouldn't answer.

Ted Armstrong brought us each another drink

without anybody asking and motioned Wade's money

away. "On the house," he said. "Sorry about that.

Jeez, I knew I shouldn'a let him in here. But later, you

know, that Reuben makes you pay for it, if you don't.

Jeez, does he ever make you pay."

He wiped his hands on his apron, apologetically.

"Listen, doc, you probably don't feel like it, and a bite

wound's probably not up your alley anyway, you being'

a big brain man an' all."

Victor's prowess as a head doctor was already

town legend; in Eastport it was almost as good as being

able to fix a crapped-out carburetor with a hairpin and

a twist of coat-hanger wire.

"But I got a guy in there," Ted went on plaintively,

"he's bleedin' like nobody's business. Friday night,

clinic's closed up at this hour, and I'm gonna run outta

bar towels."

Victor tucked his beautiful blue striped silk tie into

his shirtfront, out of the way of the action.

"Sure," he said. "Tell your guy he's in luck. The

doctor"--he downed his fourth martini in a gulp--"is

in."

"So much for a quiet Friday night in Eastport,"

Wade said as Victor strode off.

George snorted wryly. "Folks in the big city hear

about it, they'll all be up here. Mecca of excitement."

Somebody dropped another coin in the jukebox:

Tony Bennett.

"Ellie," I asked, "are you out of your damned

mind?"

"I can take Reuben," she replied, "with one hand

tied behind me. And wouldn't I love to?"

Resting there in front of her, Ellie's fists looked

slender but businesslike, pale pink nail polish notwithstanding.

"Guys," I said, turning in appeal, but Wade and

George just grinned at me.

"Ellie beat the you-know-what out of Reuben,

once, out in the schoolyard. Course," George added

judiciously, "back then we were all a little wilder."

"Man, that day she took Reuben on, he ran home

to his mother, crying," Ted Armstrong agreed admiringly.

He had come back to our table and was standing

there, listening and nodding.

"That girl," he enthused, "could punch. Reuben

was a big kid, too, remember. For his age, then. Big

and stupid."

"No, Ted. You're misremembering," Ellie corrected

gravely.

George and Wade suddenly looked sober again,

also, and as I watched I began realizing that in their

view, Reuben Tate was far more than a disruptive annoyance.

To them he was serious trouble.

But I still didn't know why.

Meanwhile, dinner hour was over, a younger

crowd drifting in as the local band Double Shot began

setting up on the small stage near the door. Wade paid

the check as Ellie and I began gathering our things.

Passing the bar, I glanced in to where Victor was

stitching a guy's ear up, using a needle and thread that

he always carried with him since God forbid he should

lose a button. Also in his walking-around kit were dental

floss, a nail brush, some antiseptic hand wipes, and

throat spray.

The guy sat motionless, his shirt drenched crimson,

his gaze fixed tranquilly on some far horizon no one

else could see. I didn't know if the guy was so drunk

that he was anesthetized, or if Victor had hypnotized

him; Victor is like a snake charmer with patients. One

look and they trust him utterly.

Wade put his arm reassuringly around me. "He'll

be okay," he said, meaning Victor. Not for the first

time, I went mentally down on my knees and thanked

my stars. Wade was so serenely unthreatened by Victor,

he actually wished him well.

Meanwhile the fellows at the bar watched Victor

over their beers, their rapt eyes following the needle's

progress intently and their expressions admiring.

"He can do something useful. And he's willing to.

That's the key to it, in Eastport," Wade said sensibly.

"Yeah," I said. "I guess. You've got to wonder,

though. A little town like this, light-years from anywhere.

You can't tell how it'll affect a person."

And especially Victor, who until six months ago

thought a passport was required for venturing out of

Manhattan; that and a guide for negotiating the wild,

outer reaches of Westchester.

"Kill you or cure you," Wade agreed.

George and Ellie were waiting for us on the sidewalk.

"You okay?" I asked Ellie. She was an Eastport

girl right down to the marrow, and she had been my

friend since my first day in town, a couple of years

earlier. Now, though, her expression looked queer to

me: distracted. Oddly distant.

"Fine." She forced a smile, while Wade and George

conferred privately about something. "I was just thinking

again about what Ted Armstrong said."

Her gaze probed uneasily into the shadows along

the dock, away from the harbor where the deck lamps

of the freighter Star Hoisin lit the cargo platform like a

movie set. Beyond the ship, the night was so clear and

dead calm that you couldn't tell where the stars ended

and their reflections on the flat water began.

But the stillness felt ominous and the sunrise that

morning had been red, promising weather; maybe not

soon, but sometime in the next week or so. All the

boats from the fishing fleet were snug at their moorings

inside the boat basin.

"What?" I said, wondering again what Victor had

gotten himself into. "About Reuben Tate being so big

and mean? Because he isn't. Not big, anyway."

My voice sounded uncertain. I'd never seen him up

close before, and his size had surprised me, even reassured

me. But now an unwelcome mental picture of

him rose up: those arm muscles, and the boots. His

small, neatly modeled features radiated malice like the

face of an evil, flaxen-haired doll, the more malevolent

for being in miniature.

As if summoned by my thought, footsteps came

out of the darkness where Ellie was staring. Somebody

back there on the seawall, I realized, was walking.

Listening, maybe, too.

"No," Ellie said. "I mean about him not being

smart. It's a mistake, underestimating Reuben. He's

sharp as a tack." She shook her head, her red hair

moving like water under the neons.

Water with something in it. My imagination was

getting the better of me, courtesy I supposed of an extra

margarita and that guy with the bloody shirt.

"That's what makes him so different. So dangerous.

He's too smart. I wish," Ellie said earnestly, "he

hadn't come back."

Then she thought of something else. "Are you,"

she frowned, "still involved in that deal with Victor?"

"Yes," I admitted, knowing she disapproved.

I did, too, actually; involvement in anything that

included my ex-husband was a prescription for trouble.

But now that he was here, for Sam's sake I'd thought I

needed to do something about Victor. And the something

had involved money: my investment in a new

trauma-care center that Victor was starting in Eastport.

"It's a very good plan," I said to Ellie. "All he

needs to do is the medical part. I can handle the rest.

And once it's all going, it'll keep him out of my hair."

As usual when I tried to explain this, she looked

skeptical. Her apparent interest in big money ranged

somewhere between zilch and nada, and her idea of

keeping Victor out of my hair involved wrapping an

anchor chain around his legs, then taking him on a

boat ride.

"One more week and the financing'll be wrapped,"

I said. "I'm just the seed money. He's got to meet the

people I've lined up for him. The other investors. Afterwards,

it's a done deal."

There was, actually, a little more to it than that,

and Ellie knew it. Under the neons, she gave me what

Sam would have called the hairy eyeball: Yeah, sure.

But before she could say any more, George came over

and took her hand.

Out on the water, a foghorn honked in the distance.

Across the bay, the lights on Campobello were

like a string of rhinestones. The four of us parted in

front of the old Eastport Bank building, a tall brick

Victorian pile jutting darkly against the dark sky.

Wade's arm draped around me as we walked up

Key Street to my house, passing beneath the half-bare

branches of the maples, spectral under the streetlights.

"You okay?" he asked.

"Yeah," I said, but I wasn't. Not really.

At the corner, Victor's lovely old Greek Revival

house stood proudly, gleaming with fresh paint, new

windows, and tall rebuilt red-brick chimneys. He had

at first meant to put a medical office in it, but lately

he'd made these other plans.

"I wonder what Reuben meant about talking to

Victor again," I said. "What would Victor have to talk

to Reuben about?"

The worry went on nudging me as we passed more

antique houses--Federals, Victorians, old Queen Anne

cottages with their gables looking out every which

way. The moon rose, backing the rooflines with silver.

Wade shrugged. "You know Reuben. Or anyway

you've heard about him, enough to figure it out. He

likes to say threatening things, even when they don't

mean much."

"I suppose," I said, not believing it. "He picked on

Victor because he was there, probably. And because

Victor's so different from most everyone else in town."

Different, I meant, from the fishermen, dockworkers,

boat handlers, and rough-hewn but determined

entrepreneurs of various stripes that made

Eastport a vibrant place. There was another group beginning