Stay close

35

Lucy The Elephant was closed for the night. Ray waited for the last guard to leave. Ventura’s Greenhouse, a rather happening restaurant and bar, was in full swing across the street from Lucy. It made entering from that side particularly difficult. Ray circled around to the usual spot by the gift shop and hopped over it.

Years ago, when Cassie had lifted a key off an ex-boyfriend, she had made him a copy. He had kept it all these years. He already knew that it didn’t work anymore, but that didn’t worry him much. Lucy had doors in both thick hind legs. The visitors used one. The other had a simple padlock on it. Ray picked up a heavy rock and broke the lock with one swing.

Using his key ring flashlight to guide him, Ray headed up the spiral staircases and into the belly of the mammoth beast. The “innards” were a vaulted chamber that gave off the feel of a small church. The walls had been painted a strange shade of pink that was purported to be the anatomically correct hue for an elephant’s gastrointestinal tract. Ray would take their word for that.

In the day, he and Cassie had hidden a sleeping bag in the bottom of the closet. It looked like the closet had been taken out during a renovation. Ray wondered if someone had stumbled across the old sleeping bag and what they’d made of that and what they ended up doing with it-and then he wondered why, when the world was caving in on him again, he was thinking of something so asinine.

Silly to come back here.

He hadn’t been inside this six-story pachyderm in seventeen years, but if this stomach lining could talk… He let the smile hit his face. Why not? Why the hell not? He had tortured himself long enough. That horrible night was all coming back now. There was no way to stop it. He was about to face some really bad times, so why not remember the glorious nights? As his father had always reminded him, you can’t have an up without a down, a left without a right-and you can’t have good times without expecting bad.

Here he was, in the belly of the beast, waiting for the only woman he’d ever truly loved, and he realized that there had been virtually no good times in the past seventeen years. Just the bad. Pathetic. Pathetic and stupid.

What would his father have thought?

One mistake. One mistake made seventeen years ago and he-the intrepid photojournalist who had no issue with working the frontlines during firestorms-had let that mistake cripple him. But that was how life worked, wasn’t it? Timing. Decisions. Luck.

Crying over spilled milk. How attractive.

Ray took the spiral staircase up to the canopy/observatory on Lucy’s back. The night air was brisk now, the wind coming in hard off the ocean. It smelled wonderfully of salt and sand. The sky was clear, and the stars glistened off the Atlantic tonight.

The sight, Ray thought, was breathtaking. He took out his camera and started snapping pictures. It was amazing, he thought, what you could live with and what you could live without.

When he finished with that, Ray sat out in the cold and waited and wondered-another what-if-how telling Megan the truth would change things all over again.

When the doctor put the bandage on Megan’s arm he muttered something about working for a butcher in his youth and wrapping ground chuck. Megan got it. The arm was, to put it kindly, a mess.

“But it’ll heal,” the doctor said.

The arm still throbbed its way through the morphine. Her head ached too, probably from the aftereffects of a concussion. She sat up in bed.

Dave had been made to stay in the waiting room while Megan was interviewed bedside. The cop-she had introduced herself as County Investigator Loren Muse-had been surprisingly reasonable. She had let Megan patiently explain what happened, never so much as raising an eyebrow, even though the story sounded crazy: “Yes, see, I was leaving an old folks’ home when this preppy blonde jumped me with a knife… No, I don’t know her name… No, I don’t know who she is or why she tried to kill me, except, well, I saw her hanging around Harry Sutton’s office last night…”

Muse had listened with a straight face, interrupting rarely. She didn’t ask condescending questions or look dubious or any of that. When Megan was finished, Muse called Broome down in Atlantic City to confirm the story.

Now, a few minutes later, Muse slammed closed her notebook. “Okay, that’s enough for tonight. You must be exhausted.”

“You have no idea.”

“I’ll try to get an ID on the blonde. Do you think you’ll be up for talking again tomorrow?”

“Sure.”

Muse rose. “You take care of yourself, Megan.”

“Thanks. Would you mind doing me a favor?”

“Name it.”

“Could you ask the doctor to let my husband come down now?”

Muse smiled. “Done.”

When she was alone, Megan lay her back on the pillow. On the nightstand to her right was the cell phone. She thought about texting Ray that she wouldn’t show up-wouldn’t ever show up, in fact-but she felt too weak.

A moment later, Dave rushed into the room with tears in his eyes. A sudden hospital memory surged through Megan, taking her back, making it hard to breathe. Kaylie had been fifteen months old, just starting to walk, and they’d taken her to Thanksgiving dinner at Agnes and Roland’s house. They had all been hanging in the kitchen. Agnes had just handed Megan a cup of tea when she turned and saw the stumbling Kaylie lean hard against the baby gate at the top of the basement stairs. Roland, she would later learn, hadn’t set up the gate correctly. As she watched in mounting horror, the gate gave way, and Kaylie began to tumble down the concrete steps.

Even now, thinking about it some fourteen years later, Megan could still feel that maternal panic. She remembered that in that split second, she could foresee the inevitable: The basement steps were steep and dark with jagged edges. Her baby would land headfirst on the concrete. There was nothing Megan could do to stop it-she was too far away-but sit there, teacup in her hand, frozen, and watch her baby fall.

What happened next would stay with her always. Dave, sitting next to her, dived toward the open door. Dived. As if the floor were a pool. Without any hesitation or even time for conscious thought. Dave was not a great athlete nor did he possess lightning reflexes. He was not particularly quick or agile, and yet he dived across that linoleum floor with a speed he could never duplicate if he trained for ten years. As Kaylie started to fall out of sight, Dave slid across toward the open door, stretched his arm out, and grabbed the falling Kaylie by her ankle. He couldn’t stop his momentum, couldn’t stop himself from falling down those harsh steps, but somehow he managed to throw Kaylie back toward the kitchen floor, saving her. Dave had no way to break his own fall now. He crashed to the bottom of the steps, breaking two ribs.

Megan had heard about such heroics before, those rare spouses or parents who sacrificed themselves without thought. She read about shootings where husbands naturally stepped in front of their wives, saving them. They weren’t always good men, by classic definition. Some were drunks or gamblers or thieves. But they also were on some base level congenitally brave. There was a selflessness within them, a purity of action. They made you feel safe and cared for and loved. You couldn’t teach it. You had it or you didn’t.

Even before that, Megan knew that Dave had it.

He sat next to her and took her hand-the hand of the good arm-in his. He stroked her hair gently, as though she were suddenly made of porcelain and might break.

“I could have lost you,” Dave said, and there was a terrible sense of awe in his voice.

“I’m okay,” she said, and then because life can also be frighteningly practical in moments of abject horror, she asked, “Who’s watching the kids?”

“They’re with the Reales. Don’t worry about it, okay?”

“Okay.”

“I love you,” he said.

“I love you too,” she said. “More than you can ever know. But I need to tell you the truth.”

“It can wait,” he said.

“No, it can’t.”

“You’re hurt. My God, you were nearly killed tonight. I don’t care about the truth. I only care about you.”

She knew that at this very moment he meant that-and she also knew that eventually that thought would change. She would heal and come home, and then life and questions would nibble around the edges again. Maybe he could wait. But Megan couldn’t.

“Please, Dave, just let me talk, okay?”

He nodded. “Okay.”

And then while his hand slowly slipped off hers, Megan told him everything.

When the doorbell rang, Del Flynn’s hand automatically went for the Saint Anthony medal.

Del sat at home watching the Celtics take on the Sixers. He cheered for the Sixers-they were his favorite basketball team-but the only team the Flynns truly loved was the Philadelphia Eagles. Football was Del’s game. Three generations of Flynn men-Del’s dad; Del; Del’s son, Carlton-had been huge Eagles fans. Twenty plus years ago, when Del had finally started making some serious dough, he started to buy Eagles season tickets right on the fifty-yard line. It took him two years to persuade his old man to skip working the pub on just one Sunday and attend a game. It had been a great day, the Eagles beating the Cowboys by three. Del’s father died not long after that-lung cancer, probably from all those years in that smoky pub-his work literally killing him. But that game was a good memory, one Del kept with him and took out sometime when he wanted to remember his old man before that damned disease ate away at his insides.

Del remembered taking Carlton to his first game when he was only four. The Eagles had played the Redskins, and Carlton had wanted to buy a Redskins pennant, even though he hated the Skins. After that, it became something of a tradition-Carlton collecting pennants of the opposing team and hanging them on that wall above his bed. Del wondered when that stopped, when Carlton didn’t want the pennants anymore, and when he eventually moved from that to taking them down.

From the TV, the Sixers’ new center missed two straight free throws.

Del threw up his arms in disgust and turned as if to bemoan the poor shooting with his son. Carlton, of course, wasn’t there. He wouldn’t care anyway. He was all about the Eagles too. Man, that kid had loved going to the games. He loved everything about it-the tailgating, throwing a football in the parking lot, buying those pennants, singing the Eagles’ fight song. Of the eight Eagles home games per year, Carlton usually got to go to only two or three, though he begged for more. For the others, Del took friends or business associates or gave them to some guy he owed a favor.

Man, what a dumb, stupid waste.

Of course, as Carlton had gotten older, he didn’t want to go with Del either. Carlton wanted to go with his friends and hang out and party afterward. That was how it was, right? Dad and son can’t get on the same page-like that old song “Cat’s in the Cradle” or whatever. Del wondered where Carlton had started to slip off the tracks. There was an incident his senior year of high school where a girl accused Carlton of rape and assault after a date. Carlton had told Del that she was just pissed off because he’d dumped her ass after a one-night stand. Del believed him. Who raped someone on a date? Rapists hid in bushes and jumped out and stuff. They didn’t get invited back to a girl’s place, like Carlton. Still, there were bruises and some bite marks, but Carlton said that was how she liked it. Del didn’t know, but in the end, he didn’t care about thin lines and all that she-said, he-said stuff. No way was his son going to jail for some misunderstanding. So Del made some payments, and it all went away.

That was the way it worked. His son was a good kid. It was a stage he was going through maybe. He’d grow out of it.

But still, something had changed in his boy, and now, with so much time on his hands, Del tried to figure out what. It could very well have been football. When he was really young, Carlton had been a great running back. Even in eighth grade he broke all the town records for yardage in a season. But then Carlton stopped growing. This frustrated the hell out of him. It wasn’t Carlton’s fault. It was genetics, plain and simple. Nothing you can do about it. When Carlton got demoted to second-string, he started lifting more and, Del suspected, started taking steroids. That was where it started. Maybe. Who knew for sure?

Del tried to concentrate on the Celtics and Sixers, and, surprising himself, he could. Funny how life worked. He actually gave a crap if the Sixers won. Still. Despite what was going on in his life. Maria, of course, would laugh her ass off when she saw him get so involved in watching a game. She’d point at the TV and say, “You think these guys would go to your job and cheer you on?” She had a point, but so what? And as if to show she didn’t mean any harm, Maria would always bring out a snack for him then, potato skins or nachos or something.

It was at the moment, sitting on his white couch and thinking about his sweet Maria, with the Sixers on an eight-to-zero run, that Del heard the doorbell ring.

His hand immediately landed on the medal of Saint Anthony of Padua. You were supposed to invoke his name in the memory of lost things, including, Del knew, lost people. When he was younger, Del found such stuff total nonsense, but he’d grown superstitious over the years.

He pushed himself off the white leather and opened the front door. Goldberg, the cop, stood there in the cold. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. Their eyes met, and Goldberg gave him the smallest, most devastating nod one man could give to another. Del felt something in his chest crumble into dust.

There was no denial. Not at first. At first, there was only a crushing clarity. Del Flynn understood completely what this meant. His boy was gone forever. He’d never be back. His son was dead. His young life was over. There would be no reprieve, no miracle, nothing to save him. Del would never hold him or see him or talk to his boy again. There’d be no more Eagles games. Carlton was gone, no more, and Del knew that he would never recover.

His legs gave way. He began to collapse to the ground-wanted to actually-but Goldberg caught him in his strong arms. Del sagged against the big cop. The pain was too great, unfathomable, unbearable.

“How?” Del finally asked.

“We found him near where we found his blood.”

“In the woods?”

“Yes.”

Del pictured Carlton there-alone, outside, in the cold.

“There were other bodies too. We think it might be the work of a serial killer.”

“A serial killer?”

“We think so.”

“So you mean, like, there was no reason? It was just random that he killed my boy?”

“We don’t know yet.”

Del tried to push away the pain, tried to concentrate on what Goldberg was saying. That was what you did in times of agony. Some people used denial. Some used the need for vengeance. Whatever, you didn’t concentrate on what it all meant to you because that would be too much to bear. You divert with the irrelevant because you couldn’t change the awful truth, could you?

With the tears starting to flow, Del asked, “Did my boy suffer?”

Goldberg thought about it for a second. “I don’t know.”

“Have you caught the guy?”

“Not yet. But we will.”

From the TV, Del could hear the home crowd cheering. Something good had happened for the Sixers. His son was dead, but people were cheering. No one cared. The electricity in the house still worked. Cars still drove by. People still cheered for their favorite teams.

“Thank you for telling me in person,” Del heard himself say.

“Do you have someone who can stay with you?”

“My wife will be home soon.”

“Do you want me to stay with you until then?”

“No. I’ll be fine. I appreciate you coming by.”

Goldberg cleared his throat. “Del?”

He looked up at Goldberg’s face. There was genuine compassion there, but there was something else too.

Goldberg said, “We don’t want any more innocents hurt. You know what I’m saying?”

Del did not reply.

“Call those psychos off,” Goldberg said, handing him a cell phone. “There’s been enough death for one night.”

Through the blinding agony, there was indeed the crushing clarity. Goldberg was right. Too much blood had been spilled. Del Flynn took the phone from Goldberg’s hand and dialed Ken’s number.

But no one answered.

Broome called Sarah Green. “Will you be home in an hour?”

“Yes.”

“Can I come by?”

“Something new?”

“Yes.”

There was a brief pause. “It doesn’t sound like good news.”

“I’ll be there in an hour.”

The streetlights in front of Ray Levine’s residence were too bright and too yellow, giving everything a jaundiced feel. Four Atlantic County squad cars were parked in front of the modest dwelling. As Broome approached, he saw the feds pull up in a van. He hurried inside and found Dodds.

“Anything?” Broome asked.

“Nothing surprising, if that’s what you mean. No murder weapons. No hand trucks. Nothing like that. We already started going through the photographs on his computer. On that score, at least, the guy was telling the truth-the pictures by the old iron-ore mill were taken on various February eighteenths, not Mardi Gras.”

That backed Ray Levine’s story in a pretty big way.

Dodds looked out the window. “That the feds?”

“Yep.”

“They taking over?”

Broome nodded. “It’s their baby now.” He looked at his watch. There was no reason to hang here. He could get to Sarah’s and start to explain. “If there’s nothing else…”

“Nope, not really. Just one thing I found weird.”

“What’s that?”

“Ray Levine. That’s the guy’s real name?”

“It is.”

Dodds nodded more to himself. “You know any other Levines?”

“A few, why?”

“They’re Jewish, right? I mean, Levine is a Jewish name.”

Broome looked around this dump of a basement and frowned at Dodds. “Not all Jews make a lot of money. You know that, right?”

“That’s not what I meant. I’m not stereotyping or nothing like that. Look, just forget it, okay? It’s no big deal.”

“What’s no big deal?” Broome asked.

“Nothing. But, okay, like I said, we didn’t find anything incriminating. It’s just that, well”-he shrugged-“what would a Jewish guy be doing with this?”

He handed Broome a small plastic evidence bag. Broome looked down at the contents. At first he didn’t comprehend what this was, but a few seconds later, when he did, when it finally registered, Broome felt a sense of vertigo, like he was falling and falling and couldn’t stop. His world, already teetering, took another sudden, jarring turn, and it was almost hard to stay upright.

“Broome?”

He ignored the voice. He blinked, looked again, and felt his stomach drop, because there, inside the plastic bag, was a medal of Saint Anthony.

From his spot across the street, Ken watched Lorraine leave La Creme by the back door. It took her a fair amount of time to get through the lot. Her departure seemed to be something of an event. Every girl who worked in that cesspool called out to the older barmaid and gave her a long hug. Lorraine in turned accepted the embrace and then seemed to give each one of them something they craved-a sympathetic ear, a crooked I-get-it smile, a kind word.

Like she was their mother.

When she was finally through the crush of girls and headed for home, Ken followed at a safe distance. The walk to her place wasn’t far. The barmaid lived, of course, in some two-bit dump, a house that one might kindly say had seen better days, though it was probably grimy from day one.

Lorraine used a key to open the door and disappeared inside. Two lights went on toward the back. Before that there was no illumination in the house. That seemed to indicate that she was here alone. Ken circled the house, peeking in through the windows. He found Lorraine in the kitchen.

She looked, he thought, exhausted. Her high heels had been kicked off, her bare feet up on a chair. She warmed her hands on a cup of tea, gently sipping it and closing her eyes. In this harsher light, she was far less attractive, far older, than she had looked in the dim light of that strip joint.

That made sense, of course.

Some life this barmaid had made for herself, Ken thought. He’d be doing her a favor if he just put her out of her misery. Ken felt that itch return in full force. His hands tightened into fists. He looked at that kitchen table and thought, Yes, it would probably be sturdy enough to do the job.

Time to get to work.

As Ken approached Lorraine’s door, his phone vibrated. He checked the number, saw it wasn’t Barbie, decided not to answer it. He knocked, patted down his hair, and waited. There was a shuffling sound, and then Ken could hear the top lock’s deadbolt sliding open. Odd how many people just did that. You have the most expensive lock and yet you just open the door to any knock.

Lorraine’s eyes widened a little when she saw Ken, but she didn’t slam the door closed or anything like that. “Well, well. If it isn’t the handsome mourner who looks like my ex.”

She tried to give the crooked smile, the one he’d seen in the club, but it wasn’t quite working. Ken spotted… fear maybe? Yes, fear. The tiniest trace rippled across her weather-beaten face, and that excited him.

Ken offered up his most gentle expression. “I need to talk to you about something.”

Lorraine looked reluctant-maybe scared too-but she wasn’t the type to make a scene or turn someone away.

“It’s really important,” he said. “May I come in?”

“I don’t know,” Lorraine said. “It’s kinda late.”

“Oh, don’t worry.” He gave her the smile with all the teeth. “This will only take a second, I promise.”

And then Ken pushed his way in and closed the door behind him.

It was getting cold outside, so Ray took the stairs back down into the vaulted “stomach room” of Lucy. It had been a dumb idea to come here. What, really, was the point? Yes, he had wonderful memories here. Maybe he thought that Cassie would too. But so what? Did he think bringing her here would somehow soften the blow? Did he think that if he could get her to go back to that time and place it would help her see why he did what he did?

Dumb.

Yes, some things could be made better by setting and context, but was he really naive enough to think, what, that there would be a hormonal rush just being inside this edifice, and that that rush would somehow make what he had done more palatable? He suddenly felt like a bad real estate agent believing location, location, location could somehow make his confession that much better.

Ray looked at his cell phone. No text messages from Cassie or Megan or whatever the hell her name was. He debated calling her again, but what was the point of that? He’d wait another hour, maybe two, and then he’d leave. Where would he go? The cops were probably finishing up at his place, but did he really want to go back to that dingy basement?

No.

It was time to move on. If Cassie-that would always be her name to him, not Megan-didn’t want to hear what he had to say, well, he’d just have to find a way to deal with that. But staying here, with the world around him falling apart, made no sense. It was too risky, and while he certainly had had no trouble finding ways to wreck his life over the years, he wasn’t overtly suicidal.

When Ray started for the stairs in Lucy’s hind leg, he heard a noise below. He stopped and waited.

Someone had opened the door.

“Cassie?”

“No, Ray.”

His heart deflated when he recognized the voice. It belonged to Detective Broome.

“How did you find me?” Ray asked.

“Your cell phone signal. It’s easy when someone leaves their phone on.”

“Oh. Right.”

“It’s over, Ray.”

He said nothing.

“Ray?”

“I hear you, Detective.”

“There’s no point in running. The place is surrounded.”

“Okay.”

“Are you armed?”

“No.”

“I’m here to arrest you, Ray. Do you understand?”

Not sure what to say to that, Ray settled for: “Yes, I understand.”

“Then do both of us a favor,” Broome said. “Make it easy and safe. Get down on your knees and put your hands on top of your head. I’ll cuff you and read your rights.”