“I-I guess I did.”
“That wouldn’t be too smart, would it?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Huh. The boss said you were pretty sharp. I thought you might pick up the thread a little faster.”
“Look, I’m not quite sure why you’re here. I have some personal business with Johnny Buscemi and I don’t really see what that has to do with you.”
“Lemme make it real clear: He sent me to pick up the package you called him about.”
“Well, I don’t have that package with me. I was expecting Johnny a bit later. I was taking a stroll.”
“With your luggage?”
Annie can’t help but look over her shoulder at the three bags she wishes she still had in her hands, sitting in a row on the seawall.
“Looks to me like you’re going somewhere.”
“I—” Annie’s mind is completely blank. She cannot think of one single thing to say or do. The resourcefulness that had been her stalwart companion throughout many lives—and just as many crises—has deserted her.
She reckons this man will kill her, right here, right now, on Bay Street, right in the middle of Watch Hill. He could shoot her with a silenced gun and push her in the water. She racks her memory to try to come up with famous Watch Hill murders of the past, some nefarious grouping that she is surely about to join in the seedy underbelly of this perfect town.
She casts her eyes to the heavens above and thinks to utter a little prayer, put in one last ask. This time, she will ask for grace. If she is going to go, tonight, at the hands of Danny Ravello, she would like to do it with dignity. She knows she did not enter this world with much of that comely commodity, but maybe she can redeem herself now. Go down with her tiara on.
“Come on.” Ravello grabs her forearm, which snaps her out of her trance. “Let’s march. Let’s go get that package.”
“Ow! You’re hurting me!” Annie’s spunk materializes at the first touch of his hand. And then she drops her tone to threaten him in return. “Let go of me.”
“I don’t think so.”
“At least let me get my bags.”
“Fine.” He shoves her, just a little, over to the seawall.
And then, as Annie is bending to hoist her duffels over her arms and looking around for an exit, she hears the distinct Locust Valley Lockjaw of Cecilia Thatcher.
“Susan!”
There stands Cecilia, resplendent in pink Jack Rogers, a green Lilly Pulitzer shift, a cable-knit sweater, and a headband. With her is her husband, Tom, and their basset hound, Daphne. “We missed you at the cookout last week! Aren’t you a naughty girl to go off at the last minute!”
Cecilia Thatcher waggles a finger at Annie, while casting meaningful glances in the direction of Danny Ravello. She waits for the socially correct number of seconds to allow Mrs. Ford to introduce her companion.
Annie says nothing.
Cecilia shakes her head, almost imperceptibly, at this breach of etiquette. “Cecilia Thatcher!” she finally says, as she thrusts her right hand toward Ravello. “And, this is my husband, Tom!”
God, she is irritating. But Annie is ready to kiss her feet right now.
“Uh, Ravello,” he says, as he grudgingly produces his hand.
“Oh! Italiano! Piacere di conoscerti!” Cecilia laughs in a flirtatious way as she keeps ahold of his big mitt in her two little hands. “I studied Italian back at Pembroke! Oops! Now I’m giving away my age!”
Annie has finally regained her equilibrium. In one move, she leaps onto the seawall, and hops over the gate to the dock.
“Susan!” Cecilia’s mouth drops open.
Annie bolts full speed down the length of the pier.
Ravello yanks his hand away from Cecilia. He grabs her by the shoulders and thrusts her to the side, to clear his own path after Annie. He fumbles to opens the gate. Finally, he gives it a good kick, splintering its pickets in all directions, and sets off down the long pier.
Annie bypasses Venus and sprints to the end of the dock. She works to untie two ropes attaching a much smaller boat—a little inflatable Zodiac.
Danny Ravello advances steadily toward her.
Annie throws both lines aboard the Zodiac and jumps on after them. She reaches under the console to grope for the key—it should be hanging there on its little floating donut.
Ravello is getting closer.
Annie locates the key and tries shoving it into the ignition. She drops it onto the deck.
“Shit!” she mutters.
Ravello rounds the corner, where the dock flares out in a T. He is steps from the Zodiac now.
Annie finds the key, wiggles it into place and turns it. The engine sputters and coughs.
Ravello grabs onto the side of the Zodiac.
And now Annie prays. A quick, silent prayer: Hail Mary, full of Grace, the Lord is with Thee…. She turns the key once more and, finally, the engine starts.
Just as Danny Ravello puts one foot on board, she retrieves her gun and points it straight at him.
“Get your ass off my boat,” she says in her lowest voice, “or I will shoot you.”
“I really don’t think you’ll do that. I have a gun aimed right at you.”
And he does. It looks like a big one.
In a flash, Annie tosses her gun to the deck of her boat. She grabs the wheel, revs the engine and drops Danny Ravello into the drink.
His gun sinks like a stone.
Annie easily avoids his splashing grasp as she speeds out into the dark harbor of Watch Hill. She maneuvers through the boats at anchor in the bay. It is high summer, and the harbor is filled with vessels. At the moment when she could continue straight, to follow along Napatree Point and on by the side of Sandy Point, to leave the harbor and enter the sea, she makes a different choice.
There, she takes a sharp turn to the right and motors quietly up the Pawcatuck River. Half an hour later, she turns the wheel toward a private, residential dock on Margin Street in Westerly. She cuts the engine and jumps off, making sure she has her bags and her gun. She kicks the boat back into the current.
She watches it float down the river toward Watch Hill. She imagines it floating out to Fisher’s Island Sound, drifting on past the lighthouse and into the open ocean of the Atlantic.
Free.
She thinks about her dogs, asleep in front of the fire. She pictures them dozing there all night, Calpurnia and Pliny, enjoying the dying embers, dreaming their doggie dreams. Snoring. She hopes they will not wake until Helen comes in at eight the next morning.
She pictures the FBI agents, knocking at her door at right about this moment. She pictures Sammy already in a car, almost at the airport, or wherever it is they are taking him. She imagines Danny Ravello, fishing himself out of the bay.
She pictures them all crisscrossing each other tonight, all over the little village of Watch Hill.
67
Time: 10:47 p.m.
Annie arrives at the Westerly Train Station just before the 10:54 p.m. arrival of the 178 Northeast Regional from New York. The last train in either direction to stop here tonight. She arrives on foot. She has walked the final stretch from the dock, through the streets of downtown Westerly. She pauses a moment, in the shadows, to catch her breath. Station wagons and SUVs are parked, trunks open, ready for family members’ bags. Two taxis wait, as well, for anyone who might be in need of their services.
The elegant Westerly Train Station was rebuilt in 1912 in the Spanish Colonial Revival style. Stucco walls, a terra cotta tile roof supported by wooden rafter tails, and arching colonnades always make Annie think more of California than New England. It is a beautiful station and creates a picturesque welcome to travelers, arriving in search of a sandy beach by the sea.
Annie slips onto the platform, unremarkable in her dark clothes and bags, another traveler at the train station. When the train pulls in, she merges with the disembarking crowd, exiting to the parking lot in the clump of arriving passengers. Anyone who is la
ter asked if they had seen her at the station would not remember anything unusual. Just the regular passengers with their regular luggage, getting off of the regular train.
Annie separates from the group and jumps into a taxi. She asks to be taken to the Mohegan Sun Casino.
“Why didn’t you get off at New London?” the driver barks.
“I must have slept through it and the conductor didn’t remind me,” Annie explains. “I just woke up and am so glad I haven’t gone too far.”
“That’ll be fifty bucks,” he says, which seems a bit steep.
“Is cash all right?” Annie asks, sweetly.
And they’re off.
68
Tuesday, August 19, 2014
Connecticut
Time: 12:45 a.m.
Annie looks around, a bit dazed by the five thousand slot machines of the Mohegan Sun Casino. The faux logs and ersatz birch bark of the Native American décor make a surreal backdrop to the clanging machinery. The sheer number of slot machines is formidable. Five thousand people can drink, smoke, and lose their money at any one time, twenty-four hours a day. A tax on the poor, Jack had always called it.
Two casinos cluster in close proximity in northeastern Connecticut—only forty minutes away from Watch Hill—Foxwoods and the Mohegan Sun. Annie has chosen the Mohegan Sun with a roll of the metaphorical dice. There is zero chance that any of the wealthy denizens of Watch Hill will be present to recognize Mrs. Ford walking through its cavernous spaces at one o’clock in the morning. None of her friends will be here to see her, dressed in black and carrying her luggage, on her way back from the ladies’ room and looking for the bus stop.
The Long Lucky Bus is departing shortly. One of several bus lines that ply I-95 in the summer, New York to Boston and all casino stops in between, it will be her lucky coach tonight. Her bus ticket to New York will cost less than her cab fare from Westerly to the casino. Her ticket to New York is buyable with cash, requires no identification, and comes with a pizza coupon.
Annie sits in the waiting room, holding her bags on her lap, trying not to doze, to keep her attention focused on the glass double doors. She ignores the three other lonely souls in the waiting room, those whose money and luck have run out. Others, those who still have cash in their pockets or room on their credit cards, gamble until the last minute. But, eventually, they join her group.
Like the pilgrims in The Canterbury Tales, Annie and her fellow wanderers board the bus. Should they choose to share their stories, like those 14th century travelers did, to pass the time, to amuse each other, to win a free dinner (though they all have their pizza coupons), Annie wonders what those stories might contain. Would her own tale be the most interesting? Would she possess more secrets than the average person? Or is she, as she half suspects, given what she’s seen of human nature thus far, just one among many, not that special and not that different. These people, catching a bus at a casino in the middle of the night must surely have tales to tell.
Annie selects a seat in the back and keeps her bags with her. She tucks one tightly under her feet and keeps the other two on her lap. Should she sleep, which she both longs for and fears, she needs to be able to feel any movement of those bags. The bags carry everything she has to start a new life. Except for Jacob’s number, which she has tucked into her pocket.
The bus begins to roll. The motion and the darkness have a soporific effect, and, for the first time, Annie realizes she is exhausted. She does not want to think about her little dogs. She does not want to think about the men in her life—not Jack or Jack Jr. or Johnny or Sammy. And, certainly not Danny Ravello. She does not want to think of the women either. Those she has abandoned—Susan, her grandmother—even Diane, in a way, when she held onto those pictures for so many years. And, of course, her daughter. The biggest abandonment of all.
She does not want to think, and she does not want to feel. She will close her eyes, safe on the bus at this miniscule moment in time. She will rest, knowing that this much of her plan has been successfully carried out.
The spinning of the bus wheels, for now, eclipses the spinning of her mind.
69
Time: 2:55 a.m.
The Long Lucky bus heaves its bulk to the right, off the highway and into a rest stop. Tires squeal and brakes hiss as the bus comes to a lumbering stop.
“Fifteen minutes!” the driver announces.
Annie hesitates then remembers her bladder—one of the disadvantages of advancing age. She could use the bathroom on the bus, but she might as well go here. It is probably cleaner inside. She collects her load and trudges off to the ladies’ room.
Mindful of the time, she leaves the stall and tucks her bags tightly between her feet to wash her hands. She has to pick up all three bags with her dripping hands to make her way over to the hand dryer, on the wall near the door.
It is then that she notices someone watching her. Glancing up, Annie makes eye contact with the woman before she can catch herself.
“Look at you.” The woman could be any age, forty, fifty, sixty. She is dressed in stretchy pants and a printed blouse. Medium height. Non-descript in every way. “Win some money?”
Annie bitterly regrets leaving the safety of the bus.
“Who, me?” Annie smiles widely then tones it down a notch. That smile was too big. She looks like the Cheshire cat, grinning in the bathroom. “Nah, I just have my clothes and things.”
“Want me to carry one of those bags for you? Your clothes look pretty heavy.”
“No thanks.” Annie tries to make the hoisting of the bags look effortless. Her hands are still wet, but she needs to get out of there. “Not heavy at all. Well, goodnight.”
“Oh, I’m going with you. We’re on the same bus.”
Shit.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
Annie gets back on the bus and into her seat and tucks her bags in around her.
She is determined to stay awake. She only has an hour to go. She cannot afford to sleep now, with that leering woman on board. She stares straight ahead. She should have bought coffee. Her eyes start to flutter. Her head droops and snaps up a few times. Then one last head drop, and she is gone.
And then she has it—the precious kernel of a memory—just what she has been searching for since this entire nightmare began. Her comfort thought, the one that makes her believe in miracles. It comes to her effortlessly in a dream, as the bus flies down the highway.
She met Jack on July 14, 1996. Bastille Day. It was a sultry Sunday night in New York. She had gone with a group of friends to Florent, in the Meatpacking District, for a little French celebration. They were a ragtag lot, this being July and this being New York.
At that point, more than sixteen years into her life as a new person, she had come to think of herself as Susan. The vestiges of Annie were fuzzy around the edges, dreamlike. The remnants of the real Susan, or the old Susan, for she thought of herself as very real, were equally ephemeral. In all those years, she had never once run into anyone who had known either person back in Michigan. There were occasional days, though not very often, when she did not think once of that summer of 1979.
She was of an age at which many of her peers were married with children. Those friends were not out on a Sunday night. They may have been in the country or they may have been in the city, but they were definitely not in a bar. This group that she was with was composed of the footloose ones, the commitment-phobes, the die-hards.
Chief among these friends was young Jack Ford Jr. They both worked in real estate, she for a little boutique firm—a job Jack Jr. had helped her land—and he for his eminent father and namesake.
Jack Jr. was gregarious and funny, and everyone loved to be with him. The two of them had spent a lot of time together since they’d met in the subway three years before. He was the life of any party and she usually said yes when he invited her out. But she had been vigilant about maintaining a physical wall between them. Jack was a ladies’ man and she no longer had a tolerance fo
r that sort of arrangement. She believed that their friendship was actually a relief for them both.
It was already late. Champagne was flowing, in honor of the French Revolution. They hadn’t had their main course yet. The words to la Marseillaise could be heard in the corner being mangled by some men who should have been cut off hours ago. “Allons enfants de la patrie” was as far as they could go, so they repeated it ad infinitum.
Jack had stepped away. When he came back to the table, he announced that one more would be joining their group. He’d just spoken to his father, who happened to be in the city and who happened to say yes to his son’s invitation to join them.
“Move over, Susan, and my dad can sit next to you,” Jack said to her. She was glad for the rest of her life that she did so.
Jack Ford Sr. walked into Florent, the way he walked into any place, with quiet confidence. He was not a swaggerer, but he was no shrinking violet, either. Jack exuded a peaceful acceptance that he belonged wherever he went, which made him both likeable and a little bit intimidating.
And then there was the way he dressed. This was the Meatpacking District, so the color black was de rigueur. Black on black, shades of black, variations of black, a black shot with a black chaser. Jack walked in like he’d just stepped off a Hinckley yacht—pink pants, a green and white checked shirt, navy blazer, yellow socks and a sky-blue sweater thrown around his shoulders. He was a cacophony of color.
She laughed out loud when she saw him, so utterly charmed was she by his originality. It was that quality that she perceived first, that she fell in love with and of which she remained forever in awe. Jack was 100 percent Jack, through and through. Plop him down in Paris, Shanghai, LA, or Abidjan, and he would dress the same, talk the same, be the same.
She, Susan, who wasn’t really even Susan, who had lived her life as a chameleon, was amazed and impressed. She, who had always been whatever she needed to be to get by, felt, for the first time, that she was in the presence of someone with whom she might be able to be herself. It was a gut reaction she had not felt in years and years. Not since her Sundays at St. Mary Magdalen Church with Grandma Annie.
Finding Mrs. Ford Page 26