Mission Flats

55

I had been away from Versailles only seventeen days, but I had the sense I’d been away longer and traveled farther. I came back with the peculiar feeling that accompanies the end of a long trip: the pleasant tension between at-homeness and alien-ness, the sense of being an outsider in your own home. You notice details. You find beauty in a street or park or building where somehow you’d never discerned it before. It is the shock of the familiar, the same jolt you sometimes feel when you see your wife or your lover standing on a street corner, and for a split second you see her as a stranger would. You realize, She’s lovely. I forgot how lovely my wife really is. Versailles seemed profoundly beautiful, even the parts that I know are not beautiful at all.

Behind the hills, thunderheads were drifting in from the west. From the looks of it, we were in for a cold, wintry rain. Leaf-peeping season was over, the tourists gone. Time for winter, time for the ‘hard cold’ to make its first appearance.

A group of kids played touch football on the green, unconcerned by the storm clouds.

On Central Street, Jimmy Lownes and Phil Lamphier were loafing outside the Owl, smoking cigarettes and glancing up at the sky. Jimmy gave us a little two-fingered wave, a Marlboro pinched between his fingers. Before long, he’d be spreading the word that I had returned with a black kid under arrest, and the whole town would be aware of it before supper. That was fine too. It would save me the trouble of announcing the news.

At the station, we moved Braxton into the holding cell. Whatever misgivings I might have had about his guilt, Braxton was still under arrest for murder. Procedures had to be followed.

Then Kelly, Dick Ginoux, and I lingered a moment at the front door of the station.

‘Gorry,’ Dick said, ‘it’s gonna be a gullywasher.’

‘Why don’t you go home, Dick, get some rest. I’ll sit with him.’

‘No, Chief-’

‘It’s alright, Dick. I’ll be alright.’

He gave me an appraising look. ‘Alrighty, Ben. If you say so.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, ‘for keeping an eye on things while I was away.’

Dick looked away. ‘I’ll stop by to check on you later.’ Before ambling off, he gave Kelly a little wave that resembled a salute. ‘Officer Kelly.’

‘Officer Ginoux.’

Kelly emitted a tired sigh. ‘Well, looks like you made it back home, Ben Truman.’

‘Looks like.’

‘You want me to take the first watch?’

‘No, Mr Kelly, I think it’s time for you to go home too.’

‘Home?’

‘You’re retired, remember?’

‘Oh, that. Well.’

‘There’s nothing left to do here. It’s Boston’s case now. They’ll pick up Gittens, if they haven’t already. This here is just guard duty. We’ll arraign Braxton in the morning, then the staties will take him away until the trial. Really, go home. It’s alright.’

‘You’ll be alright with him?’

‘Yeah. I’ve seen worse.’

Kelly snorted. He produced the nightstick from inside his coat. ‘Well, take this. In case he acts up.’

‘I can’t take that.’

‘Of course you can. What am I supposed to do with it? I’m retired.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Take it, Ben Truman.’

I took it.

‘Alright then,’ Kelly said, as if relieved to be unburdened at last of that little baton. ‘Alright then.’ He stood there a moment, apparently unsure what to do next.

I told him, ‘I’ll stop by soon, let you know how it all worked out.’

‘I’d like that.’

Kelly went to his car and folded himself into it like a daddy longlegs receding into a crack in the wall. He rolled down the window. ‘It’s a shame, you know. You might have made a good professor someday.’

‘Who says I still won’t?’

He made a knowing little smile then said, with a nod toward the nightstick in my hand, ‘Don’t hurt yourself with that thing.’

Back in the station I pulled a chair in front of the entrance to the back room and stretched my legs across the doorway. The nightstick weighed heavy in my lap.

Braxton said, ‘Just you and me now, huh, Chief Truman?’

By late afternoon the thunderstorms began rolling through. Rain gusted against the stationhouse windows with a snare-drum sound.

Around four I asked Braxton what he wanted for supper. He had barely spoken during the five-hour ride from Boston or in the four hours since we’d arrived.

‘I’ll have a lobster,’ he said.

‘You’re thinking of a different Maine. Try again.’

‘Steak.’

‘Steak? How about like a burger or a sandwich?’

‘I told you: steak.’

‘Okay Steak.’

When the food was delivered from the Owl, I brought it back and unlocked the cell. There was no place to sit in the little hallway, so I sat on the chair inside the cell while Braxton sat on the cot. His steak was gray and cupped in the middle like a recently vacated pillow. He took a bite and grimaced. ‘What is this, moose or some shit?’

‘Yeah, I probably should have warned you about the steak.’

He worked his steak awhile in silence. My supper was better, a turkey sandwich. I offered to trade but he waved me off.

‘Aren’t you afraid I’m going to get out?’ He nodded toward the open cell door.

‘Nah. Where would you go? You’re a hundred miles away from the middle of nowhere. Besides, right now the safest place for you is probably right here in this cell.’

‘Might be the safest place for you too.’

There was a shadow conversation going on here. Braxton had not murdered Bob Danziger. He knew it, of course, and by sitting down to supper with him I signaled that I knew it too. My every polite comment carried the same coded message. What do you want for supper? and How’s the steak? and all the rest were understood to mean I know you didn’t kill Danziger.

Braxton said, ‘Gittens is coming, you know.’

‘I figured.’

‘What you gonna do?’

‘Not sure.’

‘Well, you better think of something, Chief True-Man, ’cause Gittens is already rolling, I promise you.’

‘What would you do, Harold, if you were me?’

‘I’m not you, dog.’

‘But if you were, and Gittens was coming?’

‘Call my niggers.’ He used the word easily. It held no political charge for him.

‘I can’t do that.’

‘You’ve got cops. Call them.’

‘It’s not that simple.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because.’ My eyes sought out a dusty spot on the floor. ‘It just doesn’t work that way’

‘What about the tall guy? Call him.’

‘Kelly? No. I can’t.’

Braxton nodded — not because he understood, I think, but because he didn’t want to waste his breath on a dumb cop who wouldn’t listen.

‘You want me to call mine, get ’em up here? We’ll get your back, if you want.’

‘No, Harold. No, thanks.’

The phone rang. It was nearly five, daylight faltering. The stationhouse groaned in the wind and rain. I knew before I picked up that it was Martin Gittens.

‘Ben? We have to talk, Ben.’

‘Martin. Talk about what? There’s a warrant out on you. Where are you?’

‘I’ve been investigating. I have something to show you. New evidence.’

‘What is it?’

‘Oh, I think you should see it for yourself.’

I did not respond. For a time, there was silence on the line.

Then, speaking slowly and patiently, Gittens said, ‘Ben, everything’s going to be alright. But we have to stay cool. Stay cool and think. Can you do that, Ben?’

‘Yeah.’ My voice failed. I cleared my throat and said, ‘Yeah, Martin, I can do that.’

‘I know you can. I’ve been watching you, Ben. You’ve been staying cool for a while, haven’t you? Now think. It’s your decision: Do you want to meet me and see what I’ve got, or would you rather I just left?’

‘I’ll meet you.’

In the cell behind me, Braxton said, ‘Don’t do it, dog. Don’t go.’

‘Good decision,’ Gittens said. ‘Why don’t we meet at the lake? We can talk there.’

‘The lake?’

‘Yes, Ben. At Danziger’s cabin. Is that alright with you? Or does it upset you?’

‘No, it doesn’t upset me.’

‘Good. We have to work together now, you and me. We’re a lot alike, you know.’

‘No,’ I said, ‘we’re not.’

Gittens paused, then told me, ‘Come alone.’

By the time I got to the lake, the air glowed with a numinous phosphorescent light. The rain had stopped, and surfaces glistened. In hindsight I suppose the glow was just moonlight slipping between the clouds, which had already begun to scatter. But at the time the night-light seemed faintly miraculous. It seemed to emanate from the lake itself, shining up from the water to illuminate the sky.

Through the windshield, I saw Gittens standing on the hard-packed sand by the water. He looked out over the lake, wearing neatly pressed khakis and a yellow rain slicker with a designer’s name stenciled across the back.

Beside him was my father.

Braxton, in the passenger seat, asked, ‘Sure you want to do this?’

‘I don’t have a choice. That’s my father with Gittens.’

‘Alright then. I got your back.’ When I hesitated, he shrugged. ‘This is what it is.’ His meaning was opaque — this is what it is — but he seemed to feel the aphorism explained this entire situation.

Braxton and I climbed down from the Bronco, and Braxton remained by the truck while I walked down to join Gittens and my father at the water’s edge.

Gittens glanced up the access road at Braxton, then returned his attention to the lake, with its weird phosphorescence. ‘I told you to come alone.’

‘You also told me to think.’

He smirked at me. ‘Like I’m looking in the mirror.’

Dad’s appearance was shocking. He wavered as if he might tip forward in a dead faint. Dark circles sagged under his eyes, and his hair, soaked, fell out in sparse curls. His hands were crossed over his belly.

I said to Gittens, ‘Take the cuffs off him.’

Gittens did so without hesitation, and my father massaged his beefy wrists.

‘Dad, are you drunk?’

His eyes fell, embarrassed.

I said to Gittens, ridiculously, ‘You did this to him.’

‘No, Ben. He did it to himself. I found him this way.’

‘Dad, what did you tell him?’

My father searched the sand for an answer.

‘Claude? Did you say anything to him?’

Gittens said in a soothing tone, ‘Of course he did.’

‘I didn’t ask you!’ I grabbed my father’s arms at the biceps and shook him. ‘Dad?’

Gittens intervened, ‘It’s alright, Ben, calm down. I already knew.’

‘What do you mean, you already knew?’

‘Ben, come on, think! I had an advantage: I knew I didn’t kill Danziger. I was the only one who could have known it for sure.’

I began to feel dizzy. My eyes scanned Gittens. Granules of sand adhered to his loafers and the cuffs of his pants. Rainwater beaded on his coat. As he moved, the beads skittered down his sleeves.

Gittens said, ‘It’s okay, Ben. Stay cool.’ He opened his raincoat and produced a gun, working it out of his belt with a seesaw motion.

As he turned to me, however, we were interrupted by a shout: ‘Hey!’ Braxton paced toward us pointing a gun at Gittens.

Gittens let the pistol dangle from his finger in the trigger guard, and he held it out for me to take. ‘It’s alright, Ben. You and I don’t need guns.’

I took the heavy gun, the same big black. 38 my father carried for years as chief of police.

‘Murder weapon,’ Gittens said simply.

‘That’s crazy.’

‘If you say so, Ben. We’ll let ballistics confirm it.’

It crossed my mind that I could heave the gun out into the lake. I imagined it twirling in the air, against the luminous sky, splashing, disappearing.

Gittens turned and said to Braxton, ‘It’s alright, Harold. We’re just talking.’

Braxton lowered his gun — my Beretta — and took a step back.

Gittens said, ‘The longest time, I could not figure out why you went to such lengths to follow this case, why you took such risks. You seemed too smart to take those kinds of chances. At first I thought you really must have killed Danziger. It was the only explanation. But it didn’t quite fit. You’re no killer. Even if you were, you’d never be so sloppy about it. It took a long time before it occurred to me: You were protecting someone.’

‘Braxton-’

‘No. Harold’s too smart. Besides, he didn’t need to do it. Harold and Danziger already had their deal.’

In my hand, the. 38 was heavy and still warm from Gittens’s belt. I wrapped my fingers idly around the plastic grip for the sensuous pleasure of its shape and its raised crosshatch texturing.

I said, ‘Dad, I think you better go. Martin and I need to talk.’

He said, ‘I’m sorry, Ben.’ He looked at me, then grabbed me in a bear hug. His nose beside my ear, I could hear deep breaths whiffle in and out of his nostrils. He squeezed my arms hard against my sides. I said, ‘Okay, Dad,’ and tapped him to signal the hug was over. But he did not let go. Maybe he could not let go. ‘Okay,’ I said again. Still he held tight.

Over his shoulder I saw Braxton standing by the Bronco, watching us.

That night in September — could it have been only six weeks before? it felt like another lifetime — my father had appeared at the stationhouse with a spray of red blood on his shirt and face. He seemed to be in shock. Rambling, incoherent. He could not explain the blood and, mistaking it for Dad’s own, I searched his body for an injury. It was Danziger’s blood. Dad had killed him with a single shot from the. 38.

Facing me in the stationhouse, he repeated the same question and answer: ‘What have I done? I did it. What have I done?’ And then, ‘Ben, what are we gonna do?’

I hesitated. What were we going to do?

Danziger. In our one brief conversation, hours before he was killed, I’d sensed Bob Danziger’s gentleness. I’d even liked him — his obvious decency — even as he said he would indict me for the assisted suicide of Anne Truman.

Wasn’t there something I could tell him? he wanted to know. Wasn’t there anything he could hang his hat on, anything to mitigate the facts in his file — a cop participating in a mercy killing. A cop! Help me out, Chief Truman, help me understand. I came up here myself hoping you could tell me something, hoping you could change my mind. If you weren’t a cop, then maybe, maybe…

I told him I had nothing to say, he’d wasted a trip. It was a family matter anyway.

You know, Bob Danziger told me, it’s first-degree murder, you understand that? The intent is there, the whole thing was planned. I’ve tried to worry it down to second-degree or manslaughter, but I can’t see a way. The facts just don’t fit. With one hand, he worked the skin around his eyes. There were red freckles on the backs of his fingers. Sometimes, he said, this job is just too much.

A few hours later Danziger was gone.

And here was my father, a thread of Danziger’s blood caught in his hair. He said, ‘I couldn’t let them take you, Ben. Not you and Annie both. I just couldn’t let him do it. When I heard, I just-’

He said, ‘What do we do?’

I hesitated.

What was I going to do? What was a son and policeman supposed to do?

I hesitated — then, in a moment, it was decided. ‘Where’s the gun, Dad?’

‘I dropped it.’

‘Where?’

‘The cabin.’

‘Dad, we have to go get it. Right now, you hear me?’

I do not excuse my actions, and I certainly do not excuse my father’s. I simply did not have the strength — of will, of emotion, of character — to erase my family completely. My mother was dead, now a man named Danziger was dead too. I tried to stop the chain of suffering there.

We went to the cabin, retrieved Dad’s gun, and locked the place up.

And we waited.

An hour became a day became a week.

I went back to the cabin again and again. I pored over the body. I read Danziger’s files and discovered the pattern of kill shots used by the Mission Posse: a gunshot to the eye, just as my father had shot Danziger. It was a fateful convergence. I tweaked the scene, made it look like a gang murder. I burned the file on my mother’s death. To delay the discovery of the body and destroy the papers that now bore my fingerprints, I ran Danziger’s Honda into the lake one night after dark.

Then I closed the cabin and waited. It took only a week before Dad started sneaking a drink here and there. Still I waited, unsure, needing someone else to find the body so I would have no link to its discovery; at the same time hoping the body would never be found, hoping its decay would inexorably destroy Dad’s connection to it — and mine. When it seemed I could wait no longer — when my own paranoia and Dad’s unraveling seemed to limit the time we had available — I ‘discovered’ the corpse.

As a student of history, I should have known better. Any historian will tell you: There is no end to any chain of events, ever. There is no cause without an effect, no incident without its sequel. I tried to break this chain of suffering, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t prevent my father’s pain. I could only deflect it onto others.

The hillsides across the lake, mossed over with pines, were darkly illuminated.

Gittens said, ‘We went to a place like this once, in New Hampshire, when I was a kid. Cabin by a lake, my whole family. I remember there was this girl in one of the other cabins. She was about my age, pretty little blond girl in a blue bathing suit. She used to do gymnastics on the beach. She had this springy way of walking, like any moment she was going to jump into one of those tumbling runs.’ He looked out at the water. ‘You know, I never said a word to that girl.’

I could barely listen. I had a sense of myself crumpling — of some interior structure finally buckling and collapsing. It was not fear; fear already seemed irrelevant, the time for it long past. The feeling was more like exhaustion. Acceptance. Surrender.

It must have registered on my face, or maybe Gittens, with his instinct for weakness, just sensed it. He said, ‘Stay cool, Ben. Think.’

‘What do you want, Gittens?’

He regarded me, then reached into my coat and patted my chest, sides, and back for a wire.

The rain, until now a mist suspended in the air, began to fall again. It ticked in the bare trees.

‘What’s your next move here, Ben?’

I did not respond.

‘Did you leave yourself a way out? An exit strategy?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking ab-’

‘Oh come on, Ben, stop! We’re too smart for that!’

‘What’s your way out? What’s your exit strategy?’

‘Don’t need one.’

‘No? Franny Boyle is going to testify you killed Fasulo and Trudell.’

‘Franny’s credibility is nonexistent. Lowery won’t indict anything with Franny as the only witness. Besides, all Franny has is hearsay — rumors whispered in his ear by dead people. None of it’s admissible. There’s no case against me, no proof. You’re a smart guy, Ben. Come on now, you’ve got to think.’

But there were no thoughts. There was no exit, no future. Only the past.

‘I can help you, Ben, if you just let me. Cops help each other. Let me help you.’

‘Help me how?’

‘Ben, without me, there’s no proof. I’m the one your old man confessed to, I’m the only one who knows that gun in your hand is the murder weapon. If I keep my mouth shut, there’s no case against your old man. Or you.’

‘What happens to the Danziger case? They’ll need someone for it.’

‘Braxton,’ Gittens said.

‘They’ll never buy it. Danziger had given him a deal.’

‘They’ll buy what I sell them. Especially if you back me up, if we work together.’

‘But…’ My voice trailed off.

‘Let Braxton take the hit, Ben, for all of it. He’s got it coming to him. He’s hurt enough people in his time. This just evens the score. Braxton’s not with the good guys, Ben. We’re the good guys. Remember that. Let me talk with him. He’ll confess to both-’

‘Confess? He didn’t do anyth-’

‘He’ll confess! He’ll confess, then he’ll attack me just the way he attacked you last week. He’ll grab my gun and it’ll go off.’

‘It’s murder.’

‘No, it’s the right thing. We’ve got to do what’s necessary, Ben.’

I shook my head. ‘I can’t.’

‘You don’t have to do anything. Just let me do the heavy lifting.’

I couldn’t answer.

‘Ben, there’s no other way. If I walk out of here, your old man does life without parole. They’ll whack you, too, for obstruction. Let me help you. You’re not thinking straight right now.’

I heard myself say, ‘What do you get out of it, Gittens?’

He shrugged.

‘You get rid of Braxton,’ I said. ‘He’s the only one left who can hurt you. That’s why Danziger wanted him so badly. You tipped Braxton off that night. He’s the witness who can put you behind that red door.’

With a nod, Gittens asked for the. 38 in my hand. I gave it to him, my thoughts dreamy and slow.

‘Ben, what I’m offering you here is the only way out. Take it.’

I stared out over the lake, with its lunar phosphorescence and dark rim of hills.

‘Take it,’ Gittens urged.

I shook my head no.

Gittens let out a frustrated sigh. ‘Don’t do this, Ben. It’s what you do after checkmate that matters. We have to trust each other.’

‘Is that what you told Artie Trudell?’

There was a silence. The rain plinked the surface of the lake.

He weighed the. 38 in his hand, then replaced it in his belt. ‘It’s a hell of a choice you’re making, Ben. This is your father we’re talking about.’

I looked back at my father, who was standing with Braxton by the truck. The Chief. So withered, rain-soaked, and small.

What happened next I do not recall clearly. There are glinting memories of that instant: my arm whipping down, a chuff of breath rushing out of my mouth, the stinging vibration in my palm. What remains vivid are the sounds: the clop of John Kelly’s nightstick on Gittens’s skull, a hollow sound like a horse’s foot on pavement; then Gittens’s body flumping on the sand.

The nightstick bounced up off Gittens’s head with such force I lost my grip on it. It twirled over my shoulder and landed in the sand.

There was no blood at first. The body lay face-down, motionless.

I looked up to see Braxton and my father rushing down the access road, then I looked back toward the lake and was struck again by the water’s glow.

The body stirred. Its legs bicycled slowly in the sand.

Braxton and my father stared down at it.

‘It’s the only way out,’ I told them.

My father looked up at me. His features were fallen, his lips parted slightly.

I said, ‘It’s the only way.’

I heard my voice — so self-possessed, so calm — and was surprised by it. I was anything but calm. Something was loose inside me, some wild energy I could not control and did not wish to. I glanced around for the nightstick. Where was it? I’d heard it hit the sand — I’d heard it!

Gittens groaned and struggled to his knees.

I looked again for the nightstick. Where the fuck was it? I needed it now!

Gittens dragged himself toward the lake with an indistinct grunt. In his hair, there was blood salted with grains of sand.

I said to my father, ‘What now?’

He did not answer. Just blinked at me, frowning. Creases sunk into the skin near his mouth, and sad little blankets gathered around his eyes, and rain fell on his face.

I couldn’t look at him. I turned to Braxton: ‘What now?’

Braxton gestured with his chin toward Gittens, who was attempting to raise himself on all fours. He said, ‘You want me to do it?’

I told him no.

Gittens sprawled forward. His forearms were in the water now.

Braxton said, ‘It’s the right thing.’

I stood over Gittens, hooked my arms under his chest, and heaved him forward into the shallow water. The cold revived him. He pushed up with his arms to lift his head and shoulders out of the water. It was only a foot or so deep. With my right hand on the crown of his head, I pressed him down into the water. He shook his head free and came up with a gasp, thrashing wildly. His yellow raincoat glimmered. My hands gripped his skull, fingers over his ears, thumbs squeezing down on the occipital bone, the little bony horn at the back of the skull. I pressed his face all the way down into the sand. A thin screech bubbled from the water. It cut through the sound of his thrashing. High-pitched, like a baby’s cry. It was the worst sound I’ve ever heard.