The Wrong Man

37

Scott emerged slowly from his car, staring at the man he knew was O’Connell’s father. The father brandished the ax handle menacingly. Scott stepped back out of the weapon’s reach and took a deep breath, wondering why he oddly felt so calm. “I’m not sure you want to be threatening me with that, Mr. O’Connell.”

The older O’Connell twitched and grunted, “You’ve been up and down this neighborhood asking about me. So I’ll put it down when you tell me who you are.”

Scott fixed his eyes on the father’s. He narrowed his gaze, remained silent, poker-faced, until the man said, “I’m waiting for an answer.”

“I know you are. I’m just wondering what sort of answer you’re going to get.”

This confused O’Connell’s father. He stepped back, then forward again, lifting the ax handle as he repeated, “Who are you?”

Scott continued to stare, slowly looking O’Connell senior up and down, as if he had absolutely nothing to fear from the ax handle aimed at his head. The man’s build was both soft and hard-beer belly hanging over his stained jeans, thick, muscled arms sporting a variety of entwined tattoos. He wore only a black T-shirt with the Harley-Davidson logo above his jeans and boots, seemingly oblivious to the cold November air. His dark hair was streaked with gray, cropped close to his head. A tattoo with the name Lucy prominently displayed on his forearm was probably all that remained of his marriage, other than his son and the house. Scott thought the man had probably been drinking, but his words weren’t slurred, nor was his step unsteady. He had probably drunk just enough to loosen inhibitions and cloud his thinking, which, Scott hoped, was a good thing. He slowly folded his arms and shook his head at O’Connell, a motion to underscore the idea that he was in charge of the situation. “I could be more trouble than you’ve ever seen. And I mean the worst sort of trouble, Mr. O’Connell. The kind of trouble that has significant pain attached to it. On the other hand, I could also be a big help to you. That would be an opportunity to make some money. Which is it going to be?”

The ax handle came down partway.

“Keep talking.”

Scott shook his head. He was making things up as he went along.

“I don’t negotiate on the street, Mr. O’Connell. And the man I represent surely wouldn’t want me spilling his business all over the place where anyone might take notice of it.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Let’s go inside your place, and then we can have a little private conversation. Otherwise, I’m going to get back in my car, and you will never see me again. But you might be visited by someone else. And that someone, or even a couple of someones, Mr. O’Connell, I assure you, will not be nearly as reasonable as I am. Their sort of negotiation is significantly different from mine.”

Scott thought O’Connell had probably spent much of his life either making threats or receiving them, and so this was all a language the man was likely to understand.

“What did you say your name was?” O’Connell asked.

“I didn’t say. And I’m not likely to, either.”

O’Connell hesitated, the ax handle dropping farther.

“What’s this about?” he demanded. But the tone his words carried contained some interest.

“A debt. But that’s all I’m saying right now. This could be valuable for you. Make some money. Or not. Up to you.”

“Why would you pay me anything?”

“Because it is always easier to pay someone than the alternative.” Scott let O’Connell’s father mull over what the alternative might mean.

Again, O’Connell’s father paused, then the ax handle swung down to his side. “All right. I’m not buying any of this bullshit. Not yet. But you can come inside. Tell me what this is all about. Make your pitch, whatever it is.”

And with that, he gestured across the street to his home, using the ax handle to direct their path.

There is a place in the woods beyond the dirt road that parallels the Westfield River, below a spot called the Chesterfield Gorge, where either side of the stream is protected by sixty-foot-high sheets of gray rock, carved by some prehistoric seismic shift, that is favored in the colder months by hunters, and in warmer times by fishermen. In the hottest days of summer, Ashley and her friends would sneak up to the river and go skinny-dipping in the cool pools.

“I think you should use both hands,” Catherine said sternly. “Steady the weapon in your right hand, grip them both with your left, take aim, and then pull the trigger.”

Ashley moved her feet slightly apart, cupped her left hand over her right, and tightened her muscles, feeling the trigger with her index finger. “Here goes,” she said quietly.

She pulled the trigger and the gun bucked in her hand. The shot resounded through the forest, and a piece of tree bark splintered off the oak she had aimed at.

“Wow. I can feel it tingle right through my forearm.”

Catherine nodded. “I think what you want, dear, is to pull the trigger five or six times, while you are holding the gun steady, so that all six shots will be clustered together. Can you do that?”

“It feels like it wants to jump around. Go all over the place. Almost like it’s alive.”

“I guess you could say that it has a personality all its own.”

Ashley nodded, and Catherine added, “And not a particularly nice one.”

“Let me try again.”

Again she assumed the firing position, and this time tightened her left hand’s grip to steady herself. “Here we go.”

She fired the remaining five shots. Three hit the tree trunk, spaced about two or three feet apart. The other two spun off into the forest. She could hear them whistling into oblivion, snapping through branches and the few remaining low-hanging leaves. The sound of the gun echoed in the bare trees around them and filled her ears. She let out a long, slow whistle of breath.

“Don’t close your eyes,” Catherine said.

“I think I should try again.”

Ashley clicked open the cylinder and dropped the spent shells on the pine-needle floor. She slowly took another half dozen bullets and loaded them into the weapon. “Only going to use this thing one time.”

“Yes. True enough. And only then if you really have to.”

“That’s right.” Ashley turned and took aim at the tree trunk once again. “Only if I really have to.”

“If you have no choice.”

“If I have no choice.”

Both of them had much to say about that, but didn’t actually want to use the words out loud, not even in the silent anonymity of the forest.

Scott moved slowly up the half-gravel, half-dirt driveway that led to O’Connell’s house, a distance of perhaps thirty yards from the quiet street. It was a single-story, white-framed building, with a battered television antenna hanging from the roof like a bird’s broken wing, next to a newer, gray satellite dish. In the front yard, a faded red Toyota was missing one door, one wheel up on a cinder block. Large brown rust stains marred the sheet-metal surface. There was also a newer black pickup truck, parked by a side door, partway beneath a flat roof constructed out of a single sheet of corrugated plastic. The roof made the space into a carport, but it was littered with a beaten red snowblower and a snowmobile missing its treadmill. As Scott walked past the pickup, he noticed an aluminum ladder, a wooden tool kit, and some roofing materials had been thrown haphazardly in the bed. O’Connell was pointing him toward the side door, but Scott noted a main entrance in the front. He doubted it was used much.

Probably a back entrance, he thought. Check to make sure.

“Through there. Don’t mind the mess. I wasn’t expecting company,” O’Connell’s father said gruffly.

Scott let himself in the aluminum screen door, then through a second, solid-wood door, into a small kitchen. Mess was an accurate description. Pizza boxes. Microwavable dinners. Three cases of Coors Light in silver boxes. A bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label on the table to accompany the array of cans.

“Let’s go into the living room. We can have a seat, Mr.-okay, Mr. whatever your name is. What should I call you?”

“Smith works,” Scott said. “And if you have trouble keeping that straight, Jones will do just as well.”

O’Connell’s father snorted a small laugh.

“Okay, Mr. Smith or Mr. Jones. Now that I’ve invited you in here, why don’t you sit right over there where I can keep an eye on you, and you can explain yourself nice and quick, so that I don’t go back to thinking that my friend the ax handle is the better way of dealing with you. And you might get to the how-I-make-some-money part real quick. You want a beer?”

Scott walked into a small living room. There was a threadbare sofa, a recliner with a large red-and-white cooler next to it that served as a table, across from an oversize television set. Newspapers and pornographic magazines littered the floor, along with piles of grocery-store circulars and catalogs from various hunting stores. On one wall there was a stuffed deer head, which stared out blankly from behind glass eyes. A T-shirt hung from one of its antlers. He tried to imagine the house when O’Connell had been growing up here, and he could see in its bones the potential for a kind of normalcy. Get the debris out of the yard. Remove the interior clutter, fix up the couch. Replace the chairs. Hang a couple of posters on the walls, and spruce everything up with paint, and it would have been almost acceptable. The random piles of litter told him much about the father and little about the son; O’Connell’s father had probably replaced his dead wife and absent son with much of the mess.

Scott slid into a chair that creaked and threatened to give way and turned toward O’Connell’s father.

“I’ve been asking questions because your son has something that belongs to the person I represent. My client would like it back.”

“You a lawyer, then?”

Scott shrugged.

O’Connell slipped into the lounge chair, but kept the ax handle in his lap. “Who might this boss of yours be?”

Scott shook his head. “Names are really irrelevant to this conversation.”

“Okay, then, Mr. Smith. Then tell me what he does for a living.”

Scott smiled, as evil a grin as he could muster. “My client makes a great deal of money.”

“Legally or illegally?”

“I’m unsure whether you want to ask that question, Mr. O’Connell. And I would probably lie anyway, if I were going to respond.” Scott listened to the words tumbling out of his mouth, almost shocked at the ease he felt in inventing a character, a situation, and leading the older O’Connell on. Greed, he thought, is a powerful drug.

O’Connell smiled. “So, you’d like to get in touch with my wayward kid, huh? Can’t find him in the city?”

“No. He seems to have disappeared.”

“And you come snooping around here.”

“Just one of a number of possibilities.”

“My kid don’t like it here.”

Scott raised his hand, cutting O’Connell’s father off. “Let’s get past the obvious,” he said stiffly. “Can you help us find your son?”

“How much?”

“How much can you help?”

“Not sure. He and I don’t talk much.”

“When did you see him last?”

“A couple of years. We don’t get along too good.”

“What about at holidays?”

O’Connell shook his head. “I told you, we don’t get along too good. What’s he taken?”

Scott smiled. “Again, Mr. O’Connell, information like that would render your position, shall I say, precarious? Do you know what that means?”

“I’m not stupid. Of course. And how precarious, Mr. Jones?”

“Speculation is useless.”

“Just how much goddamn trouble is he in? The type of trouble that gets you beat up? Or the type of trouble that gets you killed?”

Scott took a breath, wondering just how far to push the fiction.

“Let’s just say that he can repair the damage he’s done. But it will require cooperation. It is a sensitive matter, Mr. O’Connell. And much more delay could prove problematic.” Scott felt utterly cold inside.

“What, drugs? He steal some drugs from somebody? Or money?”

Scott smiled. “Mr. O’Connell, let me put it to you this way. Should your son try to get in touch with you, and you were to advise us of that action, there would be a reward.”

“How much?”

“You asked that already.” Scott rose out of his chair, letting his eyes roam over the room, seeing a single hallway, leading to the rear bedrooms. It was a narrow space, he thought, that wouldn’t allow much maneuvering. “Let’s just say that it would be a pleasant Christmas gift.”

“So, if I can find the kid, how do I get ahold of you? You got a phone number?”

Scott put on the most pompous voice he could manage. “Mr. O’Connell, I really dislike telephones. They leave records, they can be traced.” He gestured toward the computer. “Can you send e-mail?”

O’Connell wheezed out rapidly, “Of course. Who can’t? But I got to have a promise, Mr. fucking Jones or Smith, that my kid ain’t going to get himself killed over this.”

“Okay,” Scott said, lying with ease. “An easy promise to make. You hear from your kid, you send an e-mail to this address.” He walked over to the table and found an unpaid phone bill and the stump of a pencil. He made up a completely bogus e-mail address and wrote it down.

He handed the paper to O’Connell. “Don’t lose that. And the phone number where I can reach you?”

The father rattled off his telephone number as he stared at the address. “Okay,” O’Connell’s father said. “Anything else?”

Scott smiled. “We won’t be seeing each other again. And, should anyone ask you, I presume you will have the sense to say that this little meeting never took place. And, should that someone be your son, well, then that admonition would go double. Do we understand each other?”

O’Connell’s father looked at the address a second time, grinned, and shrugged. “Works for me.”

“Good. Don’t get up. I can show myself out.”

Scott’s heart was moving rapidly as he slowly made his way back out. He knew that somewhere behind him was not only the ax handle, but a gun, which the neighbors had told him about, and probably a heavy-caliber rifle, as well; the glassy-eyed deer head mounted on the wall said as much. He had to trust that O’Connell’s father hadn’t had the simple good sense to write down his license plate number, although it was doubtful that he would fail to recognize the distinctive old Porsche if he saw it again. Scott told himself to take note of every detail on the way out; he might return to the house again, and he wanted to be familiar with the arrangement of the furniture. He took note of the flimsy locks on the door, then exited. Greed was an awful thing, and someone who would sell out his own child owned a cruelty that went somewhere beyond his own emotional reach. He felt a sudden wave of nausea nearly overcome him. But he had the sense to poke his head around the back side of the house, revealing the extra doorway that he had expected. Then he turned and hurried down the driveway. He could see gray clouds scudding across the horizon.

Michael O’Connell thought that he had been far too quiet and far too absent over the past few days.

The key to forcing Ashley to understand that no one-other than him-could actually protect her lay in underscoring everyone’s vulnerability. What prevented her from fully recognizing the depth of his love and the overwhelming need he had for her to be at his side was the cocoon that her parents had erected around her. And when he thought about Catherine, he got a bilious taste in his mouth. She was old, she was fragile, she was out there alone, and he had had the opportunity to remove her from the equation, but had failed to, even when she’d been within his reach. He decided that he would not make that mistake again.

He was seated at his computer, idly toying with the cursor, oblivious to the quiet that surrounded him. The machine was new. After Matthew Murphy had smashed his old one, he had almost instantly gone out and acquired a replacement. After a moment, he turned away, shutting down his machine with a couple of quick clicks.

He felt an overwhelming urge to do something unpredictable, something that would get Ashley’s attention, something that she couldn’t ignore and that would let her know it was useless to run from him.

He stood up and stretched, raising his arms above his head, arching his back, unconsciously mimicking the cats in the hallway. Michael O’Connell felt a surge of confidence. It was time to visit Ashley again, if only to remind them all that he was still there and still waiting. He picked up his overcoat and car keys. Ashley’s family was unaware how close the parallels between love and death really are. He smiled and believed that they didn’t understand that in all of this he was the romantic one. But love wasn’t always expressed with roses or diamonds or a saccharine Hallmark greeting card. It was time to let them know that the picture of his devotion had not changed. His mind churned with ideas.

The phone was ringing as Scott returned to his house.

“Scott?” It was Sally.

“Yes,” he said.

“You sound out of breath.”

“I heard the phone ringing. I was outside. I just got home and had to dash inside. Is everything okay?”

“Yes. Sort of.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, nothing overt has happened. Ashley and Catherine spent the day off doing something, but they won’t say what. I’ve been in my office trying to see our route out of this mess with mixed results, and Hope has hardly said a word since she got back from Boston, except she says we all need to talk once again and without delay. Can you come right over?”

“Did she say why?”

“I told you, no. Aren’t you listening to me? But it has something to do with what she found out in Boston, when she was watching O’Connell. She seems very upset. I’ve never seen her so sullen. She’s sitting in the other room, staring into space, and all she will say is that we all need to talk right away.”

Scott hesitated, thinking about what might have turned Hope so quiet, which wasn’t her usual style in the slightest. He tried not to react to the almost frantic tones he heard in Sally’s voice. She was being stretched thin, he thought. It reminded him of their last months together, before he knew about her affair with Hope, but when, on some deeper, more instinctual level, he had known everything was wrong between the two of them. He found himself nodding and said, “All right. I found out a great deal more about O’Connell, as well. Nothing damn good, and…” He paused again. For the first time since he had driven across the state, the vaguest semblance of an idea had begun to form in his imagination. “I’m not sure how we should use it, but…Look, I’ll be over shortly. How is Ashley?”

“She seems withdrawn. Almost distant. I guess some pop psychologist would say this is the start of a major-league depression. Having this guy in her life is like having some sort of really difficult disease. Like cancer.”

“You shouldn’t say that,” Scott said.

“I shouldn’t be a realist? I should be some sort of optimist?”

Scott paused. Sally could be tough, he thought, and she could be maddeningly direct. But now, with their daughter’s situation, it frightened him. He was unsure whether his we can get out of this thinking or Sally’s we’re in big trouble and it’s getting worse attitude was right. He wanted to scream.

Instead, he gritted his teeth and replied, “I said I’ll be right over. Tell, Ashley…”

He stopped again. He could sense Sally breathing in hard.

“Tell her what? That everything’s going to be okay?” she asked bitterly. “And Scott,” she added after a small hesitation, “try to bring whatever our next step is. Or else a pizza.”

“They are still reluctant,” she said.

“I understand,” I said, although I wasn’t sure that I truly did. “But still, I need to speak with at least one of them. Otherwise the story isn’t complete.”

“Well,” she said slowly, obviously thinking over her words carefully before speaking, “there is one who is willing, in fact, eager, to tell what they know. But I’m not sure that you are completely ready for that conversation.”

“That doesn’t make any sense. One wants to talk, but what? The others are preventing it and think they are protecting themselves? Or are you protecting all of them?”

“They’re not sure that you fully understand their position.”

“Don’t be crazy. I’ve talked to all sorts of people, been all over this. They were in a quandary. I know that. Whatever they did to get out, it would seem justified…”

“Really? You think so? The end justifies the means?”

“Did I say that?”

“Yes.”

“Well, what I meant was-”

She held up a hand, cutting me off, and stood looking across the yard, out past some trees to the street. She sighed deeply. “They were at a crossroads. A choice had to be made. Like so many of the choices that people-ordinary people-are forced to make, it would have profound personal consequences. That’s what you need to understand.”

“But what choice did they have?”

“Good question,” she replied with a small, haunted laugh. “Answer it for me.”