“Tommy, I’m hurt, man.”
His voice was cast low, each word punctuated with a gasp. Tagliabue waited. A second man burst from the trees in a short run and dove to the ground. Tagliabue saw him but there wasn’t time to aim and shoot. He held his fire. The three men lay on the forest floor, each twenty yards or so from the other, only the wounded one moving. He clutched his gut with one hand and pulled himself forward with the other. A piteous moan twisted into the air.
“God . . . help me.”
Tagliabue heard his partner start to move to his aid. The second gunman moved, then stopped, listening. He moved again. He was suddenly at the wounded man’s side.
“Lemme see where he got you, Joe.” His voice was muted. It barely carried through the dry morning air to Tagliabue’s location. He had to hold his breath to hear what the man was saying.
“Ah, fuck, it hurts, Tommy.”
“Okay, man. It’s gonna be all right. Lemme see.”
Tommy rolled Joe over and unbuttoned his shirt. “Shit, you been gut shot.”
“Am I gonna die?”
“Naw. If I can get you outta here we can get it stitched up. Keep some pressure on it so’s it don’t bleed so bad.”
“Okay, Tommy.” Joe was still breathing hard but his voice seemed calmer than before, as if his partner’s presence had eased his fears.
Tommy slid off Joe’s belt to tie a tourniquet. As he raised up a few inches with the belt in his hand, Tagliabue shot him in the head. It was an easy shot from the short distance. The wounded man wailed. Tagliabue put one in his head too. As the gunshots echoed away, the forest turned silent again.
He slung the Ruger over his shoulder and worked his way back to the spot where Alex had almost been shot, the last place he had seen him and the Bushman. Now he had to be careful that he didn’t get shot by the man he was trying to rescue. When he arrived at the bottom of the long flat rock that Alexis had walked across before he disappeared into the Bushman’s lair, he called out.
The Russian answered, “We are okay.”
“Good. Don’t shoot. I’m coming in.”
Tagliabue blew out a breath. He had to trust someone, so clenching his abdominals he stepped up on the flat rock and walked to the hill. He found tree limbs and small trunks closing off the face of a cave, a cave he hadn’t seen even from the bottom of the rock. The trees still had leaves on them. Two pairs of eyes looked out at him. The tree door opened and he walked in.
“How often do you change the trees?”
The Bushman answered, “I change one pretty near ever’ week.”
The cave was about five feet deep, lined with a dried grass bed, a flat stone stove, and an open fireplace fashioned from rocks braced in place with parts of a bicycle, an old heater box, and pieces of aluminum framing. A section of rusted stovepipe vented the fireplace. Tagliabue spoke as he kept watch on the woods outside the Bushman’s cave.
“You comfortable in here?”
“Best home I ever had.”
Tagliabue nodded at that. “Where’d you used to live?”
“Under the Fifty-Ninth Street Bridge, mostly.”
“You need anything from us?”
“Don’t think so.”
“Okay then. Thank you for warning us about the bad guys moving off. And thank you for accommodating Alex here while I took care of some business.”
“Alexis.”
“Beg your pardon?”
“His name’s Alexis.”
“I know. I call him Alex because we’re friends.”
The former homeless man said nothing to that. Tagliabue told him he and the Russian were leaving. He said nothing to that either. Alexis went over and shook his hand. He and Tagliabue slipped out onto the flat rock and walked through the woods to the road fronting Lake Loughberry.
“Are we friends, bolshoy chelovek?”
“That depends on what a bolshoy chelovek is,” Tagliabue responded with a smile.
“It means large man. I don’t know your name.”
“I’m Anthony.”
“I’m Alex.”
They laughed at that, both relieved to be safe finally, and walked down the graveled road until they came to Giselle’s big Ford SUV. Driving past Brunson’s cabin, they saw a gray Hyundai stashed in a copse of pines. The assassins’ car, Tagliabue figured: Jack Brunson would never drive something so mundane. He went on into Saratoga Springs. He stopped at a CVS and bought a cell phone. He called Giselle and told her about Tommy and Joe in the woods.
“And there’s a guy near there living in a cave.”
“Ah, yes, that must be the famed Adirondack Bushman, part of the local lore I’ve been reading. What about him?”
“He did the right thing for us. I don’t want him hurt or hassled.”
“Roger that. These guys are a cleanup crew, not operatives like you. They just now got to Brunson’s cabin. I’ll tell them about your Bushman friend.”
“I appreciate that.”
“What do you know about Brunson?”
“Nothing. I’m thinking he’s on the run. We’re watching out for him anyway, in case C. L. Cuthbert taught him enough to make him come after us. I doubt it though. He shot me in my vest and didn’t try to finish me off. If he thought I was dead because of a single body mass shot, he must still be an amateur. I imagine he’s in way over his head.”
“Okay. Watch for him and get the Russki here safely.”
Tagliabue drove through the McDonald’s on Broadway for some road food and then out to I-87, the Northway, heading south. On the road to Albany, the Russian asked about the two colleagues of Cuthbert and Brunson.
“They’re not in the game anymore, Alex. Forget about them. Brunson, now, he’s a different story.”
“He still playing your game?”
His tone made Tagliabue look over at him.
“Look here, Alex. You’re a brave guy, doing what you did. You knew it was a dangerous move. You’re lucky to be alive. These guys after us and the ones that kidnapped you and killed Carlos were either going to give you back to Mr. Putin and his torture chambers or kill you. They were probably just waiting for word to filter back to them from Moscow. Put these guys out of your mind. Put me out of your mind. Life is going to get a lot better for you real quick. Think about that, instead of worrying about a couple of mutts who are better off dead.”
Alexis was quiet for a few highway miles. Then he asked, “What about Brunson? Will he not kill me if he can?”
“He’s a lawyer, not a gangster, although I admit it’s hard sometimes to tell the two apart. I don’t know how he got mixed up with Cuthbert and his crew. I suspect Cuthbert sold him a story about how much money he could make by snatching you. Jack’s not a good guy but he’s never been involved in dangerous stuff like this before. So he’s a wild card, all right.”
“He will come after us, do you think?”
“Possibly. I think he probably believes he killed me or at least put me out of commission in the cabin and is on the run. But then again, he did shoot me. We know he’s armed. He probably doesn’t know about the two thugs sent to kill us in the woods, so maybe he’s out looking for us. Or for you.
“Jack Brunson’s a nervous cat by now. He stepped into an alley for a little fun and profit and got into something so dark he never imagined it could happen to him. Now he’s part of that darkness. That’s what I think.”
After a few more miles, he asked Alexis who killed Carlos on the Hatteras.
“The other bolshoy chelovek with the, um, plaster over his nose. He hit him with his gun, in the head.” He shook his head at the memory. “It was terrible, the way it sounds, the way he falls.”
“I’m sorry you had to witness that, Alex. Carlos was a good guy. The guy with the broken nose has paid for his sins.”
They were quiet until the big car pulled into a parking place outside the entrance of the Embassy Suites. Before he left the car, Alexis turned to Tagliabue and said, “I’m glad we’re friends, A
nthony. Thank you.”
In Suite 104 Giselle took the wallets Tagliabue handed her and gave them to a suit.
“There are two more in the woods.”
“Roger,” Giselle said. “Our cleanup crew will get them if they haven’t already.”
She turned and spoke softly to Alexis in what sounded to Tagliabue like Russian. The young man nodded and replied. Before he went off with another suit, he turned to Tagliabue, and shook his hand. “I will remember you,” he said, “no matter what you say.”
Giselle and her agent sat down at the same table they had used to discuss the hunt for the Russian. She sighed.
“You broke the back of Cuthbert’s ring, Tony. They were a serious thorn in the side of The Project. For a long time now. You also got our defector back. I guess I should express my thanks.”
“You never have before.”
She laughed, her teeth-showing smile. “I don’t mean by saying thank you. I mean to give you a bonus.”
“That would be timely.”
“I know. You mean to leave the game, marry Agnes Ann, and live out on Westfarrow Island, mucking stalls and breeding. Mares, I mean. Although I suspect you’ll be doing some hominid breeding as well.”
“How could you know I want to retire?”
“You’ve been at it for a long while, and you came back different from this one. I can see it in your eyes, big guy. Everybody with a working conscience has a limit. You’ve reached yours. Know that you’ve done a lot of morally good things for the human race, and I hope you’ll take some comfort in that.”
He nodded in reply.
“George will drive you back to the airport. You can catch the two fifteen to Boston.”
“George? You mean your minions have names?”
“Please forget I said that. He won’t answer to it anyway.”
He smiled at her and reached for the doorknob. Giselle spoke again.
“Tony.” He turned to her. “Don’t forget that Jack Brunson is still out there. He’s no concern to The Project, but he might not know that. The state constabulary will be seizing his assets once we tell them about his activity in the murder and kidnapping, so I expect he’ll be somewhat desperate for money after a while. I don’t know how that might affect you and Agnes Ann. Just take care, eh?”
He nodded.
Giselle continued, “And I’ll take my Walther back.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Anthony Tagliabue flew to Boston, thinking all the while about Giselle’s parting admonition. Jack Brunson was somewhere out there. He might think he had killed Tagliabue in the cabin, in which case he might think he could escape legal repercussions from his part in the kidnapping of the Russian defector and the murder of Carlos Solis. He might be able to claim he wasn’t in the cabin when the criminal enterprise took place, although he probably could be placed on the Hatteras. If he had learned enough about Giselle’s agency from the turncoat Cuthbert, he might even realize that most traces of his latest criminal activity would be erased by her cleanup crew. At least from his cabin. The boat might be a different story, since the Coast Guard already had found Carlos’s corpse on board, but who knows what strings Giselle or her boss could pull to smooth over that episode also?
Brunson was probably in hiding somewhere, trying to establish an alibi for whatever charges the police might try to bring against him. Eventually, though, he would represent a threat to Agnes Ann and her son, if not to Tagliabue himself. Tagliabue wondered if he should hunt Brunson down.
The question was rendered more or less moot when he found Agnes Ann waiting at his apartment. She hadn’t heard from her ex-husband, but she did have important news for Tony: her diocese had transmitted word from its tribunal that her marriage to Brunson was considered nullified on the grounds of his early and often unfaithfulness and his abandonment of their child.
“The canon lawyers found that he couldn’t have taken his marriage vows seriously, based on his actions after we were married.”
“So, no commitment, no marriage?”
“Right. It’s as if I was never married.”
“They think like that, these canon lawyers?”
“They do. Fortunately, we don’t know any of them.”
“What about Jesse? If there was no marriage, what does that make him?”
“Not a bastard, if that’s what you mean. This is just a decision of the church; it has no legal standing. As far as the State of Maine is concerned, Jack and I were married and divorced. But it was never about legalities for me. It’s about my faith. Clear?”
“Clear enough. You made a vow and you were sticking to it. Now the vow has been voided. I’m thinking this means we are free to wed, you and me.”
“If we agree to, yes.”
Tagliabue grew quiet. He knew he had a lot to learn about this woman.
“So, you mean, ah, if I ask you and you say yes?”
“Right again, big guy.”
“Agnes Ann, will you marry me?”
“Just as soon as you get me a ring.”
“A ring?”
“Yeah, an engagement ring. That’s how humans pledge their troth in this country.”
“Pledge their troth,” he said. She waited peacefully, drinking a cup of coffee at his dining room table. She smiled at him.
He said, “I need to take a nap.”
Afterward he did go to Bingham Jewelers and purchase an engagement ring. Agnes Ann put it on and looked as happy as he had ever seen her. Her eyes were wet when she told him she would, indeed, marry him.
They did that a week later in a short ceremony during the noon mass. They had a celebratory lunch, along with the priest, Jesse, Tom Sharkey, Maurizio Tagliabue, and Timmy O’Brien, at Boncoddo’s Oyster House. If Carlos had survived, Tagliabue would have invited him.
The newlyweds flew out to Westfarrow Island, where Anthony got to work at the horse ranch. He fixed fences and cut firewood; he schmoozed Auntie Maybelle. He tuned farm vehicles and hauled broken ones to the repair shop; he mucked out stalls and composted the manure. The weeks drifted by. October brought a change of leaves. They did not hear from or about Jack Brunson. When they drank coffee on the front porch and watched the sun go down over the Atlantic, they did not speak of him.
They did speak of Agnes Ann’s filly, Francine.
“She’s developed a little softness on a bone in her fetlock,” she said to her husband. “The vet thinks a few months rest will make it calcify and become stronger than before, so we’re not going to race her again until the spring.”
“I hope it’s not something serious.”
“I don’t think so, and neither does Mr. Collier. I think he’s happy not to risk running her again as a baby.”
“Well, one other good thing is that we won’t have to leave the island again to go racing in New York.”
“There’s that, Tony. Maybe we’ll have a spell of peace and quiet.”
They did, but it was a short spell.
Two weeks deeper into the month, after Tagliabue watched condensed breaths of the horses wreathe their heads like cirrus clouds as they clopped in from the meadow for their breakfast, Johnny Coleman called. Tagliabue agreed to meet him at the town marina. When they drove up an hour later in Agnes Ann’s F-150, they saw the detective standing on the dock next to a familiar white sportfisherman.
“You joining the yachting set, Detective?” Tagliabue asked.
“Not hardly. One ride out here is enough for me.”
“You drive this thing?” Tagliabue gestured to the sixty-footer at the pier. Coleman laughed. He said to Agnes Ann, “Your old man thinks he’s funny.”
Sagadahoc County agreed to ferry a charter captain home to the island if he would pilot the Hatteras. Tagliabue thought he knew why but he asked anyway. Coleman sighed.
“Somehow, this evidentiary property ended up titled in your name, Anthony. I suspect it actually belonged to Mr. Brunson before it became property of the US government when it was used in a federa
l offense. You know anything about that?”
“How could I?”
“Course not. Well, some goddamn federal—excuse me, Mrs. Tagliabue. Some agency I never heard of asked the sheriff to deliver it to you after we were done with it. The Coast Guard found a dead body on it, some undocumented immigrant named Solis. The FBI did a forensic scan of the boat and then handed it over to us. We didn’t find anything much on it except traces of you and one John ‘Jack’ Brunson. The sheriff went down to Portsmouth to raise hell about federal interference. When he got back, he told me to deliver it to you. Same as before.”
Coleman sounded frustrated.
“Johnny, I’m sorry they’re being so high-handed. I’m not allowed to tell you anything more, except that the case is done with. Over. Jack is sort of a loose end, but he seems to have disappeared.”
Coleman sipped on his paper cup of coffee. He hadn’t offered any to Tagliabue or his wife. “You hunting Brunson?” he asked.
“No. The case is done and I’ve retired. I hope never to see Jack Brunson again.”
They drove the detective out to the airfield where he caught the noon shuttle to the mainland. Afterward they lunched at the Pelham Island, open post-season only on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. They sat in the main dining room and watched the bartender lay logs in the fireplace. There were customers at four other tables, none nearby.
“Was that wishful thinking? About Jack?” Agnes Ann asked.
“I’ve asked myself that, Aggie, many, many times. I’m still not sure. I believe he got into this, er, deal with some bad characters. He probably thought he could handle them, but his idea of bad guys is the Magpie or Red Fowler. He had no idea how vicious and remorseless these international gangsters can be. He’s probably hiding under a desk somewhere far away.”
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