The Survivors Club

Chapter 28

DETECTIVE MIKE WATERS GOT OUT OF HIS CAR ALREADY wearing a pair of gray sweats and a white T-shirt bearing the emblem of the Rhode Island State Police. He swung a dark blue gym bag over his shoulder, and waited for Griffin to unlock the front door. Both were parked in the driveway; Griffin had his weight set and boxing equipment set up in the single-bay garage.

“Nice place,” Mike said, eyeing the small, teetering white bungalow warily.

Griffin smiled. “You see any places in the floor that look mushy, trust me. Don't step there.”

He opened the door and led the way in. He'd purchased the house six months ago, needing a fresh start and finding a new hobby. The home sat on prime real estate. North Kingstown. Waterfront access. On a clear day, he could sit on the back deck and see well past the Newport Bridge. Peaceful place. Lots of birds, a few gorgeous hundred-year-old beech trees. In other words, the house itself was an absolute shack. A real person-i.e., one with money-would've bulldozed the place and started over. After his generous donation to the American Cancer Society, however, Griffin didn't have that kind of money. Besides, he liked to live dangerously.

“I heard you were fixing it up.” Mike's tone was more dubious now. He stepped over the threshold with a critical look at the water-stained hardwood floor, then the plaster ceiling that was literally peeling away in foot-long sheets.

“Full-time for six months,” Griffin said.

“No way.”

“I started with wiring, then moved on to plumbing, then did the roof. Now I just have the kitchen, bathroom, the ceilings, the floors and three bedroom walls to go. Oh, and the back deck. Oh, I think something may have crawled in and died beneath the garage.”

“So… sometime before the extinction of man?”

“That's my plan.” Griffin directed Mike into the tiny kitchen. The floor was a dirt-brown vinyl, straight out of the seventies. The stove was olive green, also from the seventies. The refrigerator, on the other hand, was a tiny, domed icebox circa 1950. He pulled on the metal lever-handle and gave a sigh of relief when the door actually opened. “Beer? Soda?”

“Afterward.”

“Suit yourself.”

Griffin disappeared into the first-story bedroom, changed into sweats himself, then led Mike to the garage. He had a nice free-weight system. Not from his brief days of money, either. No, he'd been carefully acquiring these pieces since he graduated from college. His first purchase, of course, had been the Everlast heavy bag hanging from a heavy-duty swivel and chain in one corner. Next to it was a twin pair of small, leather-covered speed bags with specially inserted rubber bladders for greater recoil. If you blinked at the wrong time, those things could knock you out-or give you one helluva black eye. Don't ask Griffin how he knew.

They headed to the boxing corner first. Mike had done some lightweight work in college. He looked too skinny for the sport, but what he lacked in bulk he made up in reach and speed. First time he and Griffin had squared off, he'd nailed Griffin four times before Griffin ever saw him coming. Of course, with an extra fifty pounds behind him, Griffin only had to land a single punch to end the sparring. They'd stuck to the bag after that. Pretty much.

Waters unzipped his blue canvas tote. He took out an ump's face guard, and matter-of-factly slipped it over his head.

Griffin froze. He got the hint and wasn't sure how to respond. He finally settled on a smile. “I'll just batter the rest of you,” he warned and was secretly relieved when Mike smiled back.

“I don't think so,” Waters said. “I've been practicing. You know how much shit a guy gets when his best friend breaks his nose?”

“Ahhh, they all figured out that you were slow?”

“Slow? Hell, they left a Ronald McDonald nose in my locker. I even wore it one day just to make them feel guilty.”

“Did it work?”

“Nah. Next day they left me his shoes. Detectives have way too much time on their hands.”

Mike stood. He left his face guard on, and positioned himself behind the heavy bag.

“Any luck with the bar search?” Griffin asked.

“Not yet. But I only made it to six joints. Ask me again tomorrow.”

Griffin grunted and got on with it. He started slow. Warmed his muscles and thought that for the first time back with Mike it would be good to show a little control. But the day had been long, the case hard. He was thinking too much about Eddie Como and was he or was he not perpetrator number one and then was there or was there not a perpetrator number two. Then he thought of Carol, still no news. And then he thought of Jillian Hayes, the way her eyes turned molten gold when she was mad, the way her fingers had curled around his arm just an hour before.

He pummeled the living shit out of the heavy bag. Even Waters was breathing hard when he was done. The detective didn't say a word. He motioned with his head, and they changed places.

Holding a bag for Mike wasn't too difficult. He didn't have the mass to hit that hard. But he liked to thoroughly work over the target; Griffin had watched him do it before. Turning the bag into a human proxy, then going after various points. Kidney, kidney, kidney, right uppercut. Stomach, stomach, stomach, left chin.

Griffin relaxed, let his body do the work on setting the bag, and allowed his mind to drift. It had been a while since he'd worked out with anyone else. Brought back a certain measure of comfort. The smell of chalk and sweat. The heat of bodies working hard. The silence of men who didn't need to talk.

Afterward, Griffin hit the weights while Mike amused himself with a jump rope. Then Griffin played with the speed bags while Mike used the weights. Then an hour had passed, neither one of them could move, so they grabbed two beers, a gallon of water and headed for the back deck.

Sun was down. In the distance, the lights of the Newport Bridge twinkled like stars while the breeze came in off the water and covered their sweat-dampened skin with goose bumps. Mike dug out a sweatshirt. Griffin retrieved a fleece pullover.

They still didn't speak.

Cell phone rang. Griffin went back inside to get his phone off his bed. It was the hospital calling. Carol Rosen had been moved to the ICU. Her stomach had been pumped, but she had yet to regain consciousness. The doctors wanted to keep a close eye on her.

When he came back out, Waters had finished off the H₂O and cracked open both beers. He held out the red-and-white can of Bud to Griffin as he took his seat.

“I see you still only buy the best,” Mike said.

“Absolutely.”

They lapsed back into silence. Finally, ten, twenty, thirty minutes later, it didn't really matter, Mike said, “You still miss her?”

“Every day.”

“I miss her, too.” Mike looked at him. “It was hard, you being out. It was as if I'd lost both of you.”

Griffin didn't say anything. He and Mike went back fifteen years now. Mike had been there for Griffin's first promotion to detective. He'd been there when Griffin came back from a hiking trip raving about this woman he'd just met. He'd served as best man at Griffin and Cindy's wedding, and then one bright spring afternoon, he'd been a pallbearer at her funeral. It was hard sometimes for Griffin to remember that the pain was not his alone.

“David Price was a piece of shit,” Waters said abruptly. “And he hid it really well, not just from you. It's over, though. He took enough. Don't give him any more.”

“I know.”

“Good. She'd want you to be happy, Griffin. She never wanted less for you than you wanted for her.”

“It wasn't fair, you know,” Griffin said.

“I know.”

“That's the hardest part. If I think about that…” He spun the can of beer in his hands. “If I focus on that, I start to go a little nuts again.”

“Then don't think about that.”

Griffin sighed heavily. He went back to studying the dark depths of the ocean at night. “Yeah. Things happen as they happen. People who think they're in control of life-they're just not paying attention.”

“Amen,” Waters said. He went back inside and fetched them both another can of beer.

Later, Griffin said: “Did you follow up with Corporal Charpentier?”

“Yeah.”

“And?”

“David Price doesn't know anything.”

“You're sure?”

“Corporal Charpentier tracked down Como's former roommate Jimmy Woods, the guy now serving time in Steel City. According to Woods, Eddie Como was a first-class whiner even behind bars. All he ever did was go on and on about how he was innocent, and this was all some horrible mistake.”

“This is what Woods said?”

“That's what Woods said. Just for the sake of argument, Charpentier followed up with Price. Price said Woods was lying, but Charpentier wasn't impressed. Charpentier even asked Price if he knew who had done Sylvia Blaire. You know what he said?”

“What did he say?”

“He said Eddie Como. And then he laughed.”