Remembering Sarah

by Chris Mooney

  They didn’t. Mike didn’t answer him.

  “Didn’t think so,” Lou said.

  “They found your gold lighter in the snow.”

  “Last time I had it was at McCarthy’s,” Lou said. “Someone stole it out of my jacket. Go ahead and call George McCarthy, he’ll tell you.”

  “Someone’s trying to frame you?”

  “You’re goddamn right.”

  “I understand the police nabbed you just as you were getting ready to blow town.”

  “I was heading back to Florida.”

  “I think you’re going to have a tough time selling that story.”

  Lou gritted his teeth, balls of cartilage popping out along his jaw.

  “I made some calls,” Mike said. After he hung up with Lou, Mike called Sam back, explained the situation and the idea he had in mind. She listened, gave some suggestions, and agreed to help.

  “Frankie Dellanno,” Mike said. “You remember him?”

  Lou nodded. “Old mob boss, ran his crew out of the North End.”

  “The lawyer I have in mind not only kept Dellanno out of jail, he also represented two of Dellanno’s button men—Jimmy Fingers and some other guy by the name of Prestano. They never did any time.”

  “What’s the lawyer’s name?”

  “Weinstein.”

  “Stu Weinstein? Has an office in Brookline?”

  “No, this is a different guy, based out of Boston. He’s next to impossible to hire, but I have a friend who can call in a favor.”

  “So call it in.”

  “He’s very expensive.”

  “How much?”

  “Fifty grand for a retainer.”

  No hesitation from Lou:“Make the call.”

  “The fifty’s just for the retainer. Case like this, with the evidence they got against you, you’re talking a figure that could run you, at a minimum, a hundred grand, possibly two. Guys like Martin Weinstein don’t work on credit.”

  “I said go ahead and make the call.”

  “That part depends on you.”

  Lou’s eyes narrowed.

  “You help me,” Mike said, “and my friend will contact the lawyer. You don’t help me, you’re on your own. That’s how the deal’s going to work.”

  “What do you want?”

  “You’re going to tell me what happened to Mom.”

  “My ass is on the line here and you want to rehash shit that happened in the past?”

  Mike stood up.

  “She left us,” Lou said. “End of story.”

  “A month after she left, she mailed a package to Bill’s house along with a note. That note said she would be coming back to Belham. How’d you find out where she was hiding?”

  “I knew that,don’t you think I would have brought her back home?”

  “Not without giving her a good beating first. You remember those days, don’t you?”

  Lou took a long pull from his Coke.

  “You went away for a few days, remember? On business? Of course you do. You came home and called me into the backyard and delivered a speech about how she wasn’t coming home, that it was time for me to get over it. And maybe I would have bought it if I didn’t happen to see your suitcase opened on your bed and decided to do a little investigating.”

  Mike reached inside his jacket pocket, brought out the yellowed plane tickets and tapped them against the bars.

  “Tickets to Paris and a passport belonging to Thom Peterson,” Mike said. “The guy in the passport photo bears a strange resemblance to you. Want to take a look?”

  Got to hand it to Lou, he didn’t buckle, didn’t waver. He placed the Coke can on the floor and then leaned back against his bed and clasped his hands behind his head, acting like he was listening to a weather report.

  “Thing is, you hate to fly,” Mike said. “Yet you hopped on a plane and flew all the way to France—under a false identity. Now why is that?”

  Lou’s face was flushed with color and the thick, ropey veins in his arms were swollen with blood.

  “You tell me what you did to her, I’ll give you my word I’ll do everything in my power to get you out of here.”

  “And if I don’t?” Lou’s tone carried a warning: fuck with me at your own peril.

  “I hear the cells at Walpole are like POW cages.”

  Lou wouldn’t speak, just continued to lie there with a gleam in his eyes.

  The door opened and Slow Ed walked toward them.

  “Time’s up, Sully.”

  “No problem, officer,” Lou said, a satisfied grin plastered on his sallow face. “Michael, since you’re so interested in digging up skeletons, why don’t you start with your wife—excuse me, your ex-wife. Ask her about the guy she was screwing at the bed and breakfast in Maine the weekend before you got married.”

  CHAPTER 30

  You never told me about the tickets and passport,” Bill said. “It’s not the sort of thing you go around advertising,” Mike replied, and then helped Bill lift one of the custom-built cherry cabinets that were going into Margaret Van Buren’s new gourmet kitchen. Her kitchen was a magazine showpiece with cabinets totaling eighty grand, granite countertops, two sub-zero refrigerators and, of course, the top-of-the-line Viking stove and oven. Only Margaret Van Buren hated to cook.

  Bill said, “I’m surprised Lou never confronted you on it.”

  “He probably thought he misplaced them somewhere. Who knows? It was a long time ago.”

  “So you just held onto them.”

  “You think I should have given them to the police?”

  “They thought Lou was responsible for your mother’s disappearance.”

  “You and I both knew, even back then, that Lou had cops on his payroll. Father Jack confirmed that fact on more than one occasion.”

  “True.”

  “And plus, I was nine at the time. I thought that if Lou ever found out I had those tickets, I’d probably be lying somewhere next to my mother.”

  “You feel that way now?”

  “I wouldn’t put anything past him.” Mike wiped the sweat away from his forehead. “I thought I had him. Lou’s never been in a situation like this—you know, trapped and needing me to help him. Showing him the envelope in his state of mind, I thought I could have forced his hand.”

  “And instead he planted that crack about Jess in your head.”

  “Yes,” Mike said as he worked the drill. “He certainly did that.”

  “You call her?”

  “No.”

  “But you’re going to.”

  For the next hour, they didn’t talk. When they finished the cabinets, they went to work on installing the shelves in the walk-in pantry.

  “Lou burning a guy like that,” Bill said. “Don’t seem right.”

  Mike stopped what he was doing, turned around and faced Bill. “We’re talking about the same Lou Sullivan I grew up with? You were there when he bounced John Simon’s head off a car bumper and almost killed him.”

  “Is Lou capable of burning a guy? No question. He’s capable of that and probably a hundred other things you and I can’t even think of. Hiding behind a shed and leaving cigarette butts and a gold lighter—it just seems sloppy, you know?”

  Mike had thought the same thing.

  “One thing I’ll say about your old man, he wasn’t sloppy. All those jobs he did, he was smart enough never to get caught. He never left any evidence.”

  That’s because he buried the bodies where nobody could find them.

  They didn’t talk for the rest of the afternoon. Six o’clock rolled around and Bill decided to call it quits.

  “You going to meet Sam in town for dinner?” Bill asked as he grabbed his coat.

  “I’m going to finish up some stuff here and then head home.”

  “Good idea. Why go into town and have fun with a beautiful woman when you can spend a night fighting with your ex-wife?”

  “I’m not going to Rowley.” But he had gone out to the truck tw
ice to call Jess. Still no answer. Her plane was supposed to have touched down at three. Maybe there had been a delay, or maybe she had taken a later flight.

  “Patty’s sister is taking the kids tonight,” Bill said. “Patty and I are going to order up some Chinese and watch the new Adam Sandler movie.”

  “How’d you get her to agree to watch that?”

  “Because last weekend she made me sit through this movie called The Hours. Said there were lesbians in it.”

  “Let me guess. No lesbians.”

  “There were, but not the hot kind.” Bill sighed, shook his head. “Flush it out of your head, Sully.”

  “Could you?”

  “If it came out of Lou’s mouth? Yeah, I could.”

  “So if someone told you this about Patty, you’d just drop it.”

  “Patty and I are still married. You and Jess are divorced. What’s the point?”

  Mike picked up a large paper cup full of coffee. “What time you want to meet here tomorrow?”

  “A week ago I was watching this program about how you can donate your body to cadaver research at medical colleges. You’d be surprised how easy it was. All it took was some minor paperwork. Your old man’s going to make quite a specimen.”

  CHAPTER 31

  At four o’clock the following afternoon, Mike rang the doorbell to Jess’s house. A FOR SALE sign was posted on the front lawn.

  Jess looked amazingly well-rested and put-together with her dark blue designer skirt and ivory shirt with a long, sloping V-neck. Her hair was different too, cut shorter and with highlights, and as he took her in, he was amazed at how this woman he had known since high school, this girl who once lived in jeans and a sweatshirt and thought a fun day was tailgating at a Patriots game with friends and beers, had now morphed herself into another woman,one who took great care in picking out her clothes and spent long weeks traveling through Europe.

  Mike stepped inside the foyer and she immediately hugged him.

  Holding her like this brought back the larger memories, the markers that had defined their lives together: comforting her at her father’s funeral; dancing together at their wedding; hugging each other after the neonatal specialist came in and told them that Sarah had fought off the lung infection. He felt all of the smaller moments too, the seemingly inconsequential moments that he had taken for granted every day: laughing at a movie, kissing her goodbye as he left for work. It made him feel frantic, lost.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said against his chest. “I’m so, so sorry.”

  He wasn’t sure if she was sorry for him or sorry about Jonah, or for all of it.

  Jess eased herself away from him and rubbed the corners of her eyes. She didn’t know what to say—or maybe didn’t want to say anything, at least not yet—and walked away from him and into the dining room. The majority of the furniture inside the house, he noticed, was already gone.

  “When are you leaving?”

  “Tuesday morning,” Jess said.

  Two days away.

  “This is the best I could do,” Jess said, making a sweeping gesture with her hand at the various plastic plates holding scrambled eggs, bacon, toast, sliced apples and melons.

  Mike sat down. The sun pouring through the windows was warm on his face. He clung to that feeling, to the smell of the sweet, cool air blowing inside as he listened to Jess explain how the pots and pans—pretty much everything from the kitchen—was on its way along with a few select pieces of furniture. He vaguely heard her mention something about a moving company coming in and doing all the packing, how expensive it was.

  Jess lies on her back, helping the pair of rough hands working the buttons of her shirt.

  Mike kept his eyes on the cut-up pieces of honeydew melon as the number 10 flashed in his mind. He focused on the number, holding onto it as he took in a long, slow deep breath through his nose. Deep belly-breathing—that was the key.

  Jess tucks her thumbs in the waistband of her jeans and panties and feverishly works them down over her hips and legs as though the denim is burning her skin.

  Jess was saying something to him.

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  “I asked you what’s wrong.”

  In his mind’s eye Mike saw Lou grinning.

  “I packed up some of Sarah’s room Friday night,” Mike said. He kept his eyes focused on his plate of food, the bright colors of the melons and strawberries.

  Jess folded her hands on the table, waited.

  “It felt wrong. Like I was telling her I didn’t have any room in my life anymore. The next morning I wanted to put everything back the way it was.”

  “Maybe you’re not ready to say goodbye,” she offered.

  That’s the thing, Jess. I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready.

  He sighed, said, “How much do you know?”

  “I read the stories on boston.com. The Globe did a very comprehensive job.”

  “You want me to fill you in on rest of it?”

  “Only if you want to.”

  Mike started with the night he had stood on Jonah’s porch and took her through the rest of it, to his meeting with Merrick at Dakota’s, and as he talked, his attention drifted out the window to the backyard, to the patches of greening grass and blooming flowers, to the different parts of Sarah’s jungle gym—anywhere but Jess’s face. He thought if he held her face in his eyes then the thoughts he had been carrying since yesterday’s afternoon visit with Lou would boil over and he’d lose it, verbally tear into her like he did during their marriage.

  “That morning out on the trail,” Mike said. “I should have let him suffocate.”

  “You did the right thing.”

  He could tell by her tone that she didn’t mean it.

  “Is that why you’re angry?”

  “I’m not angry.”

  “Your neck is beet red.”

  “I’m hot. I think I’m coming down with the flu that’s going around.”

  “Then why are you avoiding looking at me. You only do that when you’re trying to avoid a fight.”

  She was right, of course. Jess recognized all the signposts of his moods, knew all of the emergency detours and exit ramps he used to back his way out of painful conversations.

  “If you’re angry about something,” Jess said, “get it out in the open and we’ll deal with it.”

  A diamond bracelet was on her wrist. Probably a gift from her new boyfriend. He stared at it

  (as her fingers fumble for the man’s boxers and when they find them, they grip the fabric and yank them down hard, maybe even ripping them, because when Jess Armstrong wants something, people, she goes right after it, it’s always been about her needs, about what she wants—isn’t that right, Mike?)

  and felt Lou’s words from yesterday sink their teeth deeper into the meat of his brain.

  Mike looked up and into her eyes. “I take it you know what’s going on with Lou.”

  “Yes,” she said, then sighed. “I’m sorry you have to deal with that on top of everything else.”

  “You don’t seem surprised. About Lou, I mean.”

  “When it comes to your father, nothing surprises me.”

  “I talked with him yesterday. At the jail.”

  “Jesus.”

  “He wants my help.”

  “Why on earth would you put yourself through that?”

  “I ever tell you I thought Lou’s claustrophobic?”

  “What does that have to do with you going to visit him?”

  “I thought I could use that weakness against him. Make him tell me what I wanted to know about my mother. I had him backed into a corner, and this time I had proof.” Mike told her about the plane tickets and passports, how he found it.

  “You never told me that story,” Jess said. Her face looked wounded. “When the police came around asking questions about your mother, you should have told them.”

  “It wouldn’t have done any good.”

  Jess thought about it for
a moment, then said, “You’re probably right. When it comes to keeping secrets, your father’s a pro. Did he say anything?”

  Lou didn’t say anything about my mother, Jess. He did what he always did: deny, deny, deny. What he did, though, was cough up this tidbit about you being involved with some other guy the weekend before we got married. I’d dismiss it if the son of a bitch didn’t look so goddamn smug when he said it, like he was daring me.

  Mike had known her since high school. Any question about her fidelity would, even now, be the equivalent of a slap in the face. She held herself—and unfortunately, most everyone else—to a strict moral code of conduct. When one of Jess’s best friends since high school revealed she was having an affair with a married man, Jess had hit the roof. Mike had been at home, listening to Jess from the kitchen: I don’t care how much you love him, Carla, the man’s married. It’s wrong.

  So why would Lou say it?

  Jess is your only link to Sarah’s memory. You ask Jess that question, just make sure you’re prepared to say goodbye.

  Jess put her hand on top of his and squeezed it. Whatever words he chose to share, she would help bear that pain along with him and, just as she had during their marriage, show him how to navigate his way through it.

  “Tell me,” she said.

  “He denied having anything to do with it.”

  “Then why do you sound so surprised?”

  “I really thought I had him. You should have seen his face. He’s dying in there.”

  “Good,” Jess said, squeezing his hand harder. “Good.”

  CHAPTER 32

  In the months that followed Sarah’s disappearance,Mike got accustomed to the phone ringing at all hours of the night. When he heard the phone ringing, he turned over and picked up the cordless from the nightstand, expecting the caller to be Jess, Merrick or yet another crank call from some mentally deficient, jobless loser who had nothing better to do than to call from a pay phone with some bogus story about having seen Sarah or professing to have knowledge of what had happened to her.

  It was Rose Giroux.

  “It’s Ted,” she whimpered.

  Mike sat up in bed. He knew of her husband’s three previous heart attacks, the last of which had almost killed him.