“I’m sure,” I said, feeling an opening. “And I do want to talk about what he was like before he got sick.”
He looked at me hard, squinting and scowling. And then he said, “I blame the goddamn comic books. Started reading that shit, was never the same.”
“Can we talk about that then?” I said.
He wavered, gave the dogs another whack.
“It won’t take long.”
He looked at my truck.
“Come all the way from New York, huh?” he said.
I smiled.
“It’s important.”
“Well, git in here, then,” he said, turned and moved deeper into the house. I followed.
21
k
The place was full of stuff. Stacks of car magazines. Trash bags full of clothes. A piece of plywood on sawhorses, engine parts spread out on the board. The room reeked of solvent.
There were two recliners, one occupied by a grizzled gray cat. The chairs smelled new and faced a massive TV that occupied most of the end wall. A talk show was playing, two larger-than-life women screaming at each other about someone cheating. Barney made no move to turn it off, or the volume down.
He whacked at the cat with his cane and it snarled and leapt stiffly off the chair and slunk away. The dogs were all around me, one of them sniffing my crotch.
“Git away from there, you slut,” Barney said, whacking the dog, too.
“Set,” he said, and I did. He sat in the other chair, held the cane across his lap like a rifle. In the time I’d been there, it hadn’t touched the floor.
I took out my notebook. Barney looked at it and said, “You one of those places that pay?”
I looked at him, taking a second to get it.
“Pay for interviews?” I said. “No. Sorry.”
He shrugged.
“Teak,” I said. “When did he start to get sick?”
“Jesus,” Barney said. “Eighteen? Nineteen? He was outta school, working sternman for me. Hard worker, the boy was. Strong as a bastard, go all day, too. I mean, Teak, he always gave a hundred percent. Played basketball up to the school there, and the coach said it. ‘Teak, he lays it all out.’ Come home from games, knees and elbows all scraped up. He’d just throw himself after that ball.”
He paused.
“I didn’t raise him to be no murderer. You make sure you put that in there. I did the best I could by him. After his mother died, for a while it was just me and the kids. Ain’t easy, lobsterin’, trying to keep track of where the hell they are, who they’re with.”
“I’m sure,” I said. I flipped the page on my notebook.
“Him and his brother, night and day. Jason, he was always looking for the easy way. Ask him to do something, he’d try to sweet-talk his way out of it. Pay him, he’d hire Teak for cheap, pocket the difference.”
“I see.”
“And another thing. Teak, he’s a stand-up guy. His girlfriend Tawny, after he knocked her up, he was right there for little T. K., changing diapers and shit, feeding the kid bottles, whatever.”
Ah, Teak as a dad. The story had just gotten exponentially sadder.
“How old is T. K.?”
“He’s six, maybe seven. I can’t keep track. Teak started getting sick, got to the point it weren’t good for him to be around the boy. Weren’t sure what he’d do, all this comic-book Hakata crap going on in his head. Him and his secret missions.”
Barney paused.
“So when did it start swirling around?”
“Right outta high school, when it got really bad. Like I’d lost him. Didn’t know where his head was at, and wherever it was, I couldn’t go there.”
I nodded, kept writing.
“Broke him right up, not being able to support his family. ’Cause Teak, he ain’t sick all the time. He comes out of it, he knows his life is fucked up, that little boy growing up without a daddy.”
I was writing fast and hard. He waited for me. I wondered if he thought it would get him that payment.
“Tawny with somebody else?” I said.
“Oh, here and there. Nothing that’s stuck. She hangs around with Jason some these days. Don’t get me started on that twisted shit. But hell, she’s got her own—”
He hesitated, looked around the room for the right word.
“—issues, as they say. Anyway, it all got worse for Teak when I went away.”
I knew that euphemism, said, “How long were you gone?”
“Four to six.”
“Months or years?”
“Months,” he said. “Shit, I ain’t no hardened criminal. Receiving stolen property, buncha bullshit. Like I told the fucking DA there, how was I supposed to know where the goddamn snow machines come from? Just figured it was a good deal.”
The dogs looked up from the floor.
“Right,” I said.
“But like I say, I blame them comics. My brother, he goes to live with his girlfriend in Gouldsboro, cleans out his trailer. Gives Teak his comics. Called it a collection, but really it was just a lot of crap in a box. Right from the get-go, Teak couldn’t keep his nose out of the things. I’d say, ‘Teak. Go watch the friggin’ TV.’ No, he’d sit on his bunk and just read those things for hours. I’d say, ‘Teak. It’s just a bunch of made-up horseshit.’ ”
“So are a lot of things.”
“Not around here. You make stuff up, people notice.”
“That right.”
“You know what guys were calling Teak?”
I shook my head.
“Lobsterman. Like Superman. ‘Hey, Lobsterman. Can you fly? Hey, Lobsterman, flip that boat over.’ ”
“I get it,” I said. “And all of this seemed real to him?”
“Like this thing with the hatchet and Lindy Hines?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, sure. He was still working for me, before I hurt my back. Thing is, he read all this crap and then he made up his own. Crazy stuff. His hero or whatever was Finnish, like from the country there. I’d say he was a Viking, and Teak, he’d go, ‘Finnish, Pa. The Vikings were scared shitless of the Finnish.’ ”
He looked at me, shook his head.
“Vikings? Finnish? I mean, what the fuck?”
“His hero have a name?” I said.
“Yeah,” Tim Barney said. “That’s Hakata, like I said.”
He drew the word out. Ha-ka-ta.
“Means ‘ax’ in Finnish. So I guess it was like Ax Man. Teak drew these pictures of the guy in his costume. I go, ‘Teak, what the hell, boy? It’s like you’re playing with friggin’ paper dolls.’ ”
“Right,” I said.
“And then it hits me. I go, ‘Jesus, he thinks this stuff is real.’ It was like the rest of us were the ones who were clueless. I remember I said one time, ‘Teak, it’s all made up. There ain’t no Hakata or any of the rest of ’em.’ He smiles at me in that way he has, this little thing he does with his eyes. He goes, ‘Nobody’s ever seen Jesus, neither.’ ”
I wrote that down. The women were still screaming on the giant TV.
“So you got hurt and couldn’t fish,” I said. “And Teak took off?”
“Even before that, every coupla months he’d just disappear. I mean, you can’t have a sternman doesn’t show up.”
“Where did he go?”
“I don’t know. Riverport, mostly, I think. Wanted to be in the big city. He’d be gone a coupla weeks. Come back like he’d been on some secret mission. Sometimes he’d kinda let it slip that Hakata had asked him to go do something.”
“Really. Were they violent things?”
“I don’t know,” Barney said. “I mean, you don’t want to think the worst about your boy. This thing with this lady. Your own flesh and blood doing what he did? Jesus God almighty.”
/> He started to tear up, and I wondered what Brock at the diner had been warning me about. I’d met worse.
Wiping at his eyes, he heaved himself out of the chair, again without using the cane. I wondered if it turned into a sword.
“Gotta use the head,” he said, and walked across the room and through a door by the kitchen. I heard a door close and I got up, walked to the counter, the dogs padding behind me. There was a half-empty jug of coffee brandy, a joint stubbed out in a clamshell, a dirty dish towel in the sink. A spot of blood. There was a needle protruding from under the towel. I poked at it and the syringe slipped out, blood in the barrel. I lifted the towel, saw the burnt spoon.
Back injury. Opioids. In this part of Maine, Barney was the rule, not the exception.
I went back near my chair and stood. There was a copy of Cousin Harold’s Weekly on the table. I looked closer, saw that it was open to Trucks: Light Duty. One was circled: 2007 Chevy Silverado. Sharp, red. Low miles. No rust. Never plowed. $10,000. Cash only. Eastport.
I heard someone pull in and turned, hurried to the door and looked out. There it was, the sharp red Chevy. A man and woman slid out. More of the clan. I crossed to the chair and sat, notebook on my lap.
The door rattled open and they stepped in, the woman first, the guy behind her. I figured them for Jason and Tawny. Both gaunt, sunken eyes and gray shadows. Meth sores around their mouths. Tweakers. The woman was carrying a pizza box. The dogs jumped and yipped, tails wagging. The woman said “Git away” as the guy closed the door behind him. They looked at me.
“Hi there,” I said.
“Who are you?” the guy said.
“Jack McMorrow.”
“Where’s my dad?”
“Bathroom.”
“Whatcha doing here?”
They looked at the notebook. Eyes dilated. Wired. They’d smoked up.
“I’m a reporter. I work for the New York Times. I’m talking to Tim about Teak.”
“Jesus Christ,” the woman said.
“Are you Tawny?” I said. I turned to the guy. “And you’re Jason?”
The woman said, “What the fuck?” Which I took for confirmation. The guy stepped in front of me and said, “Out,” jerking his thumb toward the door.
The dogs joined in, barking and circling like dervishes.
“Easy, Jason,” I said. “I’m just doing a story. Tim and I were having a talk.”
“Out,” he shouted, boozy breath in my face.
I didn’t move. “Tim was right in the middle of his story,” I said.
“I don’t care what he was in the middle of. Get the fuck out.”
The woman—skinny as a skeleton, draped with a blaze-orange sweatshirt—hurried out of the room toward the bathroom, tossed the pizza on the counter on the way. I heard her call out “Timmy, are you out of your mind?”
The guy—my size, beard, camo parka, hat that advertised ammunition—said, “We ain’t talking to no fake news.”
“You related to Teak?”
“I’m his brother, and I speak for this family; me and Tawny, we got no fucking comment.”
I smiled, trying to go easy, not set him off. I didn’t want to wrestle with a meth head. If I did, I wanted to be ready. Last one I’d seen had fought four cops to a standstill, took a Taser like it was a tap on the arm.
“You don’t have to comment, that’s fine,” I said.
“You bet your fucking ass it’s fine,” he said.
He grabbed for my notebook and I yanked it back. He missed the notebook, grabbed me hard by the upper arm. I wrenched loose and backed away, dogs darting for my legs, snarling and snapping.
Tawny and Barney came back into the room.
“Jason,” Barney said. “What the hell you doin’?”
“We told you to go,” Tawny said to me.
The dogs were lunging and I heard my jeans rip, felt teeth slash my thigh. Jason pulled a knife off a sheath on his belt. I reached under my jacket, pulled the Glock out, and pointed it at his face.
They all froze, except for the dogs.
“Back off,” I said to Jason.
“He’s fucking DEA,” Tawny said.
The dogs were nipping at the tear in my jeans, smelling the blood. I looked away to kick at them. When I looked back, Jason was a half-step closer, the point of the knife blade making small circles in the air.
I shifted the Glock, fired a round into the wall behind him, just to the right of his head.
“Fuck,” he said, and ducked. Tawny shouted, “Tim,” and Barney hurried from the room, probably to get his own gun. Tawny was screaming, “Jason, get him.” The dogs were snarling and snapping as I moved toward the door, Tawny and Jason pivoting with me. I reached behind me, opened the door, and yanked it open. Kicked the storm door and backed out.
I ran to the truck, started it, slammed it into reverse, and spun my way back out onto the road. As I threw the truck into gear, I saw Jason fling himself out of the house, run for the pickup. His own gun. I stopped, reversed, buzzed the passenger window down.
Fired two shots at the right front tire.
The first round hit the fender. The second blew the tire and the truck sagged, Jason throwing himself between the truck and the house. I hit the gas, put the gun on the passenger seat, thought, That was the $10,000 truck in the ad. The big TV. The chairs.
Where’d this crew get cash?
22
k
I sped north, passed the store, and headed for Route 1, checking the rearview mirror. A mile up the road, I saw a pickup in the distance, but closing. Older Chevy. Jason in his dad’s truck? Tawny riding shotgun?
I sped north, the big Ford roaring. The Chevy was a quarter-mile back, heeling through the curves, straddling the center line on the straightaways. I could outrun them until I hit some sort of traffic, and then they’d be on my back bumper.
Jason the tweaker had lost face. He wouldn’t let that stand.
I sped up on a straight, went airborne over the next rise. The truck landed heavily, bounced a couple of times as I wrestled it down the road. There was a sharp left-hand turn, a frozen cove. I floored it, then jammed on the brakes, slid off the road and along the side of a boat shed. At the end of the shed there was a loading dock, and I yanked the wheel, slid up to the dock, and stopped.
Took my foot off the brake to turn off the brake lights. Sat with the Glock in my hand. Watched the rearview.
Saw the Chevy speed past, bound for the intersection with Route 1.
They’d be back, once they saw I wasn’t in sight in either direction. I drove out onto the road, headed north for a hundred yards, and turned into the yard of a lobster co-op, a long, barn-like building, the water end on pilings.
I circled, backed along the south side, out of sight of the road from the north, but with a view of the road as it continued south. I waited. Fingered the Glock. Watched the road.
A refrigerator truck pulled out from the other side of the shed, crossed the lot, and turned north. I considered following it out, staying snug on its rear bumper. Decided to stay put.
Waited another five minutes. Maybe they were staking out the main road, figured there was only one way off the peninsula. Sitting in the truck and snorting whatever, getting good and riled.
I counted off four more minutes.
Saw them pass.
The Chevy was headed south, Jason behind the wheel, Tawny in the passenger seat. I watched until they disappeared behind the next bend, then drove slowly out of my hiding place, crossed to the north side of the building, and exited the lot. Hit the gas and caught up to the lobster truck a quarter-mile from the intersection. I waited for a short straight, punched the throttle, and passed the truck, hoped it would run interference behind me on the bends leading up to Route 1.
There was a stop sign. I rolled th
rough it, headed west. I was sagging back into the seat when my phone buzzed. I dug it out.
“Yeah.”
“Hey,” Clair said. “How’s it going?”
“Well, let’s see. Bit by a dog, chased out of a house by a couple of meth heads. Had to fire a warning shot, put a round into the guy’s tire. I guess those are the highlights.”
“Glad to hear everything’s under control,” Clair said.
“Smooth sailing. Family makes Teak seem downright productive. Unemployed drug users, except seem like they recently came into some money.”
“What kind of money?”
“New old truck, recliners, and a big TV.”
“Bigger than a scratch ticket, short of the lottery. Rob their dealer?”
“I’m thinking more like a windfall. Not sure they have the organizational skills for a successful robbery.”
I heard Clair’s truck start, a metallic hum as he hit the switch that lifted the plow.
“Where you headed now?” he said.
“Renys in Ellsworth, buy some jeans. Dog ripped my pants.”
“That’s the way they’re wearing them,” he said. “All torn up.”
“There’s a little blood, too.”
“Don’t know if that’s caught on,” Clair said.
“Next stop is MDI, find the ex,” I said. “If your ex-wife dies after you dump her for a younger woman, are you still a widower?”
“No, just a jerk.”
“Teak saved him a pile of dough.”
“There’s always a silver lining,” Clair said.
“Thank you, Pollyanna,” I said. “Still, I don’t think he’s going to be glad to see me.”
“What goes around, comes around,” Clair said.
“That’s the idea. Find the bastards, ruin their days.”
“Jack.”
“What?”
“I know. The woman killed right in front of you. It’s hard up close. First time I saw a man killed was a kid from Hatch, New Mexico. Place is famous for chili peppers. Name was Gino. He flunked out of college and got drafted. Real funny guy, thought the whole thing was absurd, him being a soldier. Which it was, but not the best attitude to take into combat. Anyway, Gino stepped on a mine and it blew his bottom half right off. I was two guys in front.”
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