Fatal Harbor

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The stairway descended quite a way before it ended in a dirt cellar. To the right were wood pallets piled high with paper towels, napkins, and toilet paper. To the left was a brick archway. A series of overhead lightbulbs went off into the distance. I ducked my head and started walking. The dirt was well packed. It smelled of dirt and dampness and old things not disturbed in a long, long time. I moved the best I could. Other stairways went up to the left, no doubt to other parts of the old mill complex. I passed one door, bolted and locked. Another door, also bolted and locked.

Third door was the charm. It said FIRE ESCAPE on a sign up above, and there was a push bar to gain access. I pushed the door and stepped out on a narrow sidewalk. Rain was coming down. The door slammed behind me. I turned too late to get back inside. There was no door handle to get me back in. I pulled my coat tighter. I was at the other end of the brick building. The road was lined with parked cars. There were no entrances to other businesses over here. Just blank doors like the one I had just left.

The rain was coming down harder. I shivered, stamped my feet. All around me were the old mill buildings, full of memories and dust and old stories of immigrants speaking French, German, Italian, and Gaelic, working long hours, getting bodies bloodied and broken. It was getting dark with the thick rain clouds overhead.

Felix was nowhere about.

What now?

I pulled my coat around myself tighter. A wind came up, cutting through me. A car splashed by, headlights on against the heavy rain.

Where to go?

Felix had told me to wait.

So I waited.

I shifted my weight. The rain was a steady downpour. I thought about when this day was over, I could be home and turn up the heat and take a long shower, put on some fresh dry clothes, and then I stopped thinking.

I didn’t have a home anymore.

It was now smoking timbers, wet books, charred clothes, and who knows what else.

I put my hands in my coat pockets.

My hair was soaked through.

A black van went up the road. I didn’t pay any attention to it.

Pants were soaked through, too.

I looked up the road, which went up a slight incline.

The van had stopped at the top of the incline.

Then it made a three-point turn.

It was coming back.

Well, this was getting interesting.

The van came down the road, slowed, and stopped across from me. Engine idling, headlights on, windshield wipers flipping back and forth, back and forth.

The passenger’s side door opened up. A man came out.

My right hand went up under my coat, slipped my Beretta out of my Bianchi leather shoulder holster. I brought my hand down and rested it behind my back.

No matter what was going to happen, I wasn’t getting into that van.

The man had on black slacks, a long black coat, and a tweed cap on his large head. He looked both ways before crossing.

A careful man.

I switched the safety off the Beretta, pulled the hammer back. There was a round in the chamber. There was always a round in the chamber. I didn’t want to waste time working the action.

The man sloshed his away across the street, stood before me. His hands were in his pockets. I decided then and there that if one of his hands came out of the pocket with a weapon in his hand, then I’d open fire.

I remembered my training. Aim for the lower trunk, keep on shooting, because the recoil would cause the pistol to buck, meaning subsequent shots would go right up the torso.

He stopped. Grinned. “Hey,” he said.

“Hey yourself.”

“Hell of a day.”

“I’ve seen worse.”

“You need any help?”

“Excuse me?”

“I said, you need any help? Shelter, place to stay, a warm meal?”

His right hand came out of his pocket and my pistol started coming up, until I saw he was holding a brochure. Clumsily, I brought my hand down, turned so he couldn’t see what was in my hand.

“Not at the moment, but thanks,” I said.

He held out the brochure and I cautiously took it with my left hand. “Catholic Charities,” he said. “Just driving around in this awful weather, see if we can help people who are in need.”

I nodded, folded the brochure in half. “I’m all right, honest. Thanks for stopping.”

He touched the tip of his tweed cap. “Just looking to help.”

“Glad to hear it.”

He went back to the van. I stomped my feet, splashing up some water.

Hell of a day.

About fifteen minutes later, a light red Chevy pickup truck slowed down, and Felix was driving. He stopped in front of me and I stepped forward and got into the truck. The interior was warm and oh, so comfortable. I sat down and slammed the door.

Felix said, “You didn’t think about waiting inside?”

“I like heavy weather.” I rubbed at the console of the truck. “Not your usual style of driving.”

“You complaining?”

“Observing.”

We pulled out, got into the nearly empty streets of Manchester. I sat back. It felt good to be moving. Felix said, “Got what I could from what was available.”

“Meaning what? You got supply dumps scattered around the state?”

“Around the northeast.” Jazz music was playing from the radio.

“How did you do that?”

“Pretty simple.”

“Nothing’s ever simple when you get involved, Felix.”

We came to a stoplight. He stopped, draped a big wrist and hand over the steering wheel, revealing a gold bracelet. “In my years of… self-employment, sometimes it worked to my advantage to arrange a cash discount in exchange for future services.”

“Funny, you don’t look like Don Corleone.”

“Well, it’s more than just favors. And I’d never do anything to humiliate or embarrass my former clients, or to put them in an uncomfortable spot. But due to… services provided, I have the ability to get transport, housing, meals, and other oddball items rather quickly. So be glad I’ve done so.”

“Very glad. So, how did you get this pickup truck?”

“From an apple farmer in Bedford,” he said. “He had an idiot son-in-law who kept on pressuring him to sell the joint, so another lifeless office park could be built on the property, make everybody a ton of money.”

“Doesn’t sound like something you’d do,” I pointed out. “Get involved in a family squabble and all that.”

“Yeah, but it was the son-in-law who had contacted me first. He had the oddest idea that I’d kill the old man for a sum of money. I told him that he was misinformed, and when he wouldn’t take no for an answer, we had what diplomats call a frank and open exchange of views.”

“I take it you prevailed.”

“Don’t ever doubt me,” he said. “So I went to the old man and explained the situation, and in exchange for letting him know about his idiot son-in-law, and for allowing the poor boy to live, I had the use of the farm’s spare pickup truck and free apple pies for the foreseeable future.”

“And what about the idiot son-in-law?”

“Last I heard, he’s still an idiot. And he’s finally gotten rid of his crutches.”

The light changed, we took a left, and it was good to be moving again.

Felix added: “By the way, now it’s your pickup truck. As long as you need it. Just don’t use it to haul around hay or manure or anything like that.”

“That’s what it’s designed for, Felix.”

“No, it’s designed to give suburban men the illusion that they have deep roots to the land. Or something like that.”

“Looks like you’re reading GQ again,” I said. “But another favor, if I may.” I passed over a set of keys. “The Subaru I’ve been driving, it belongs to Kara Miles, Diane’s partner. Can you get it delivered back to Tyler?”

He took the keys, tossed them into the air, caught them and put them in his coat pocket. “It’ll be delivered with a full gas tank and a full car wash.”

“Skip the car wash.”

“Why?”

“I think the rust is the only thing holding it together.”

About twenty minutes later, Felix dropped me off at a motel just off Interstate 93, called the Laurentian Peaks. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours with your wish list,” he said. “Then maybe you can take me out to an early dinner.”

“Fair enough, since I’m using your cash advance.”

Check-in was fairly straightforward, with a plump older woman with dyed black hair who spoke French to a man about her age, who sat in a corner, reading a newspaper with French headlines, half-watching a black-and-white television hanging from the white foam ceiling. From her directness and tone of voice, I imagined the guy was her husband. Or her long-suffering husband, if he ever got a word in edgewise to tell me.

Cash and my driver’s license was good enough, and I got a real key with a triangular hunk of plastic and a white number 5 in the center.

“You need anyt’ing,” she said, leaving the “h” out of the third word, “you jus’ call up ’ere, eh?”

I nodded in thanks, went to my room, and dumped my clothes about halfway to the shower. I took my 9mm Beretta along and put it on the toilet seat, within easy reach, and after unwrapping two of those little soap bars, washed up and warmed up in equal measures.

I wrapped myself in a white towel and hung up my wet clothes in the bathroom. The room was small but clean, with a constant drone coming in from the nearby Interstate. Inside the nightstand were a Gideon Bible, and also one in French. On the far wall was a portrait of the famed Chateau Frontenac; next to that, a crucifix. I didn’t have the number of the ACLU on speed dial on my cell phone, so I let it be. The television was a small color Sony, chained to a credenza; after a long, troubled nap, I watched a little news while waiting for Felix to show up.

Big mistake.

I caught the five o’clock news from the ABC affiliate in Manchester, and after a story about a shooting in the state capitol in Concord, the second story was about a suspicious fire in Tyler Beach. An earnest young man with blond hair, wearing a trenchcoat, and who looked like he had started shaving during the last Nielsen sweeps week, stood in front of the police yellow tape in the parking lot of the Lafayette House. Behind him was the smoldering wreckage of what used to be my home and garage. Because of the angle from the television camera, the garage was more in display than the house, which meant I got a terrific view of the tail end of my Ford Explorer, which had once been blue and was now charred black. It looked like the roof of the house had collapsed just over my bedroom. Beyond the bedroom, of course, was my office and my hundreds of books on the second floor, with plenty more on the first floor.

I had to stop watching, but I couldn’t bring myself to move. A man and a woman, wearing blue windbreakers with STATE FIRE MARSHAL OFFICE stenciled on the back in yellow, and wearing light-blue latex gloves, seemed to be discussing something in my front yard, now cluttered with burned shingles and what looked to be a shattered window from the first floor.

Along with the images I saw, part of my overprocessed brain caught phrases, breathlessly spoken by the young member of the Fourth Estate.

“… fire believed to be suspicious in origin… ”

“… firefighters had difficulty fighting the blaze because of lack of nearby hydrants… ”

“… historical structure, first used as a lifeboat station in the late 1800s, and then officers’ quarters for the nearby Samson Point coast artillery unit… ”

“… belonged to Lewis Cole, a reported magazine columnist… ”

“… whereabouts unknown… ”

“… reporting live from Tyler Beach, this is Abner Brewer.”

I finally switched off the television.

“Get your facts straight, kid,” I said to the blank screen. “I’m currently an unemployed magazine columnist.”

A little while later, Felix rapped at the door, and after ensuring it was him and he was alone — by looking through the shade at the front window and a peephole in the door — I let him in, still clad in a towel, my Beretta behind my back.

“Based on what you’re wearing and what you’re carrying,” he said, “it looks like you’re either looking for love or looking for trouble.”

“Or both,” I said.

He was carrying two bags, one large and made of plastic, the other small and made of soft black material, looking like a duffel or equipment bag. He tossed the larger bag at me, which I missed catching and which fell to the floor.

“Now I know why you were always picked last for sports at the playground,” he said.

I picked up the bag, peered inside. Pants and socks and shirts and a few other things. I looked up. “Pretty damn thoughtful.”

“Only thoughtful if I got your size right,” Felix said. “Besides, I don’t want you coughing over dinner. It’d be damn impolite.”

“I’ll be right out,” I said. “And lucky you, you’ll be paying for dinner.”

He managed a smile.

“I don’t mind, so long as it doesn’t make me late for breakfast.”

It had finally stopped raining when we went out to dinner, which was just a short stroll down the block to a restaurant called Chez Vachon. Like my new place of residence, it was French-Canadian, and as we sat down I pointed that out to Felix. He smiled. “Sometimes you get the attention of knuckleheads who may be well armed but are lacking in the street smarts department. That’s why I like to mix it up some, by not establishing a pattern of the kind of places I like to eat. Besides, they do a great pork meat pie. Give it a shot.”

And I did just that, and surprised both Felix and myself by having an extra slice. It was spicy, hot, and very filling, and with a side salad and some wine, it fit the bill.

When we were at the coffee stage, I said, “Thanks for getting me out of Fratello’s. How did you get out?”

“With no difficulty, which I found sort of insulting. They’re after you, Lewis, not me. And that’s not the way of the world.”

“We all have our burdens.”

“You seem to have your share of them. So where do you go from here?”

In my briefing back at the Italian restaurant, I had told Felix the details of my visit with the father of John Todd Thomas, the murdered Colby student, and where we were now. “So like I said before, I’m waiting to hear back from Lawrence Thomas. He’s trying to track down the area where Curt Chesak is making his phone calls.”

Felix said, “And then when you get a good location from this ex-spook, you plan to do what then? Go in as an avenging angel?”

“Go in avenging, that’s for sure,” I said. “But I’m no damn angel.”

“Again, is it worth it?”

I stared at him, not quite believing the question. I said: “Less than an hour from here, one of the best friends I’ve ever had in my life is still in a coma. If that wasn’t enough, the best home I’ve ever had, filled with memories and books and what few mementoes I have of my parents and my time in D.C., has been burned to the ground. If I didn’t think it was worth it, Felix, I’d be back there, talking to the arson inspectors and my insurance company.”

A slow nod. “I had to ask the question. I know from experience how… personal issues can cloud one’s judgment.”

“My judgment is as clear as a bell. And unlike Don Corleone and his crew, this definitely isn’t business. It’s strictly personal.”

We sat quietly for a while, finishing our coffee, and he quietly said, “My original offer still stands.”

“As does my original objection,” I said. “This is going to be a one-man mission. Thanks for the logistics and the cash, but that’s how it’s got to be.”

Felix nodded. “My turn for the bill.”

“Wouldn’t have it any other way.”