“But over the past few weeks... With this new ‘political opportunity’ shaping up... I needed to take a closer look at everything. Do my due diligence. So I had my crew...” He angles his head toward Troop and company. “...turn up their eyes and ears. If this Woodcock had anything on hubby dearest—hotel room videos, whatever—I needed to know about it. We learned that Woodcock had booked a ferry trip to Musqasset. Noteworthy, given the timing.
“I know he came to your house, Elizabeth. Along with this Edgar Goslin character. I know everything that was said.”
“You were spying on me, Daddy?” says Beth, petulantly, like a teenager.
“Spying for you, Sweetheart. I found out this Woodcock was putting the squeeze on you. But not over some hotel-room photos. No. Over something I didn’t understand. So we decided to put the squeeze on him. And Goslin. And what did we find out? That your husband did a very bad thing. One night a very long time ago.”
“It was an accident, sir, I didn’t even know about it,” says Miles. “I wasn’t hiding anything from you.”
“Quiet! So now these people, Goslin and Woodcock, they had to be... made into a non-liability. Which, of course, creates additional exposure. For me. My crew handled it efficiently. I’m sure. Exactly how, I don’t know. And I don’t want to know. And I don’t have to. Do you know why, Miles? Because when you attain my position in life… you can pay others to live with that kind of knowledge. So you can sleep at night. But—and here’s what you need to understand—YOU HAVE NOT EARNED THAT PRIVILEGE YET!”
“No one earns that privilege, Mr. Fischer,” I break in. “Not you, not me, not anyone. Your ‘crew’ murdered Clarence Woodcock by pushing him down his stairs. Your crew murdered Edgar Goslin by bleeding him out and then staging it to look like he died in his car. Your crew tried to murder me by forcing me to swallow a bottle of booze and a bunch of pills. But they screwed up. Didn’t get the job done. Hence, here I am. Hope that didn’t ruin your sleep.”
Fischer laughs sourly. “You make a lot of assumptions, you little shit.”
“Is that so, Mr. Fischer?”
“For instance, you assume I wanted you to die in that kitchen,” he says. “You assume I didn’t realize you were the best source of information I had. About the ‘incident’ in 1999. You assume we didn’t just give you a...” He looks to Trooper Danielle.
“...non-lethal dose of benzodiazepines along with some sugar pills and enough Rohypnol to lay you out on the floor,” she supplies.
“You assume we didn’t want you to find that suicide note,” says Fischer. “You assume we didn’t want you to go into a panic after you’d read it. Wondering who could possibly know such facts about you. You assume we didn’t just tap your phone, sit back and watch. To see what you’d do. Who you’d call. Who you’d email. What you’d google. What you’d write. Who do you think sent those ‘mystery messages’ to Miles? And why do you suppose we sent them?”
I don’t reply.
“Same god-damn reason,” he says. “To stir the pot. See what bubbled up.”
Chapter 42
“You’re claiming you faked my overdose?” I say to Simon Fischer. “And you’ve been spying on me this whole time, just to find out who knew what about Miles?
“All I’m ‘claiming,’” says Fischer, “is that for such a wise-ass, you make a lot of assumptions. Eat your food. You’re skin and bones.”
I think he’s lying. I think he’s just one of those guys who needs to win in every situation—at least in his own mind. He can’t stand the fact that I “beat” him by surviving his attack. I forced him to go to Plan B, and now he has to make it seem like Plan B was Plan A all along. Either way, lying or not, this guy is in serious need of a grenade up his ass.
“You’re not as clever as you think,” I say to Fischer and friends. “I know you planted that fake smoke detector in my room. And those emojis were a dead giveaway that you were tapping my phone.” They weren’t, of course, because I’m mentally deficient. “You think I didn’t notice you blocking my calls to the police and to my sister Angie?”
“Maybe the emojis were a warning,” Leah replies. “A courtesy. Maybe if someone blocked a few calls to your sister, they were doing you a kindness.”
“A kindness?”
“Your sister Angie still thinks it was you who threw that bottle. If you had been permitted to correct her on that point...”
She doesn’t need to say the rest. Angie would have had to join the ranks of Goslin and Woodcock. Maybe Leah does have the remnants of a soul.
“That’s enough!” bellows Simon Fischer. “All of you. I’ve heard way more than I want to. The point I’m trying to make, Miles... is that things have gotten messy. Very messy. For me. Because of you. And now there may be serious egg on my face.”
Simon Fischer chews both his food and his thoughts, then says, “I’m a powerful man, son. More powerful than you will ever be. Even if you one day hold the highest public office in the land. But there are men more powerful than me. Pass the salt, would you? Even the gods have greater gods, eh? Ad infinitum, so it seems.
“Let me tell you something about these people I’ve been cozying up to. I’ll never tell you everything... but let me tell you something. These people aren’t the PACs or the Super PACs. They’re not the L-L-Cs or the five-o-one-c-four political charities. These are the people beyond the Super PACs. These are the people with the resources to make things happen... directly. Need a senior congressman to get caught with a teenage dick in his hand? Need the stock market to get jittery before a vote on the hill? Need a truckload of military weapons to fall into the wrong hands? That’s what these people do. They influence things. In the real world.
“This business of ours. Yours and mine. Getting you that Senate seat. That was meant to be… a ‘test.’ For me as much as for you.”
He chews some more.
“The governor of our fine state, you see... we golf, him and me. We schmooze. Visit each other’s summer homes. And as you and I have already discussed... in the state of Maine... when a U.S. Senator resigns in the middle of a term... it’s the governor who names their replacement. So when I heard about Aldridge getting a visit from ol’ Johnny Carcinoma. And with you getting some good press lately. And that state Senate seat. The stars were aligning. I saw an opportunity. I suggested to my pal. The governor. That you’d make a fine member of Congress’s upper chamber. When Aldridge threw in the towel. But it turned out Governor Rick had his own guy in mind. Shame.
“I turned to my... document specialist here.” He indicates Leah. “She’d already helped me in a couple of business situations. I knew the quality of her work. With my access and her skills, we were able to place some... things on Governor Rick’s computer. Written, anyone would think, in his own words. Then ‘leak’ them to me through an ‘anonymous source.’ I won’t tell you what those things were, but... Devastating. Take a bow, Leah. Fine work, fine work.”
So Leah is her real name. She responds with a tiny nod.
The fact that Simon Fischer is letting Jeannie and me hear all this stuff is not an auspicious development for either of us.
“Anyway, the governor is now enthusiastically on board. So...” He wipes his hands and mouth, fires his napkin at the table. “What I’m trying to tell you is... I have been stepping out on a slippery ledge for you, Miles. And what have you been doing in return? DICKING ME IN THE ASS!”
“I didn’t lie about that accident, sir,” pleads Miles. “I didn’t know about it. I was drunk that night. I passed out cold. I had to be taken to the ER.” He looks to Beth, but she’s not going to bail him out—not this time, no siree. “I only found out about it today!”
“Today? Even if I believed such grass-fed horse
shit... you lied to me about the filia nothus. So I must assume you lied to me about other things. So be it. That’s the situation we are in. Accept what is. Right? That’s what Eckhart says. But before this day is in the books... we will clean up our loose ends, you and me. All of them.”
“What are you planning to do, sir?” asks Miles, an audible cringe in his voice.
“What am I planning to do?” says Fischer. He stands and gazes out at the sinking sun through the enormous dining room window, stretches his arms, then locks eyes with Miles. “I’m going to take a nap. I don’t have to redeem myself. I don’t have to prove myself. You, on the other hand...”
“What? What do you want me to do, sir?” says Miles in a little-boy voice that makes me pity him in spite of the circumstances.
“Handle the situation.”
“How?”
“By making a decision and acting on it, that’s how. Prove to me you are worthy of my absolute trust and confidence.”
“I’ve proven that to you over and over, sir. With the Camden situation, with the golf course at Belgrade Lakes, with Fish Pier...”
“Fish Pier was nothing. You were just following my orders. I told you what I wanted to happen. And you carried out my wishes.”
So Simon Fischer was the silent money—the big money—behind the marina development on Musqasset. Should have known. Should have fucking known.
“What I’m talking about here, my boy, is an executive decision,” he says. “You evaluate the situation. You decide on a course of action, whatever it might be. You ensure that it’s carried out to completion. That’s what needs to happen. And then we will reassess where we’re at.”
On that note, Simon Fischer departs the scene.
. . . . .
A minute or two later, no one has spoken yet. Miles is pacing the floor, grabbing at his hair as if he literally wants to tear it out. “What should I do?” he asks Beth at last.
“You’re on your own,” she says, “and I mean that in every possible way.” She pushes her chair away from the table and walks out of the room, slamming the carved mahogany door behind her.
Quiet takes over again as Miles paces back and forth.
At last he stops, apparently having come to some kind of decision. He turns to Chokehold. “You,” he says, “stay here and guard them”—meaning Jeannie and me.
“I take orders from Mr. Fischer,” says Choke. “Not you.”
“Well, I’m giving orders on Mr. Fischer’s behalf. If you want to verify that, you can go drag him out of bed and ask him.”
Choke waves his hand in concession.
“You two,” says Miles, pointing to Leah and Trooper Danielle. “Come with me. You’re my consulting team.”
Miles exits the room, muttering, “Sorry, Finn,” with a lump in his throat. Leah and Danielle follow him out. Jeannie and I are left alone, with Chokehold standing guard.
. . . . .
An eternity seems to pass, Jeannie and me sitting side by side, not looking at each other. I want to say something, but my vocal cords absolutely refuse to make a sound.
Jeannie finally ventures, “Miles had been... ‘expressing an interest’ in me since college. I never reciprocated. Never. Until...” She chews on her inner cheek, stares abstractedly ahead. “We only hooked up three or four times, and then I came to my senses. ...I said I did it to punish you, but that’s not really true. I did it to punish myself. You were the only person in the world whose opinion I cared about.”
I feel an urge to point out she had a funny way of showing it, but my tongue clings to muteness.
“I figured you already thought I was... well, maggot slime,” she goes on. “Worse. So I asked myself, what can I do to live down to your opinion of me, to really earn the feeling that I’m fully worthy of your contempt? Miles started hitting on me almost the moment you left the island. I said to myself, ‘That’ll do the trick.’”
“All right, that’s enough, you two,” says Chokehold. “Save it for Maury.”
“That was hitting bottom for me,” continues Jeannie, undeterred. “That’s when I quit drinking. That’s when I started examining my life and making some changes.” She takes a long, shuddery breath. “After a month of sobriety, I was already seeing things more clearly. I decided I was going to go to the mainland, track you down, tell you I loved you, try to win you back. And that was when I found out I was...” Pregnant. “And that was the end of that.”
“Ah, Jeannie,” I say, finding my voice. “Jeannie, Jeannie, Jeannie.”
“Because I do, you know,” she says in a papery voice. “Love you. So much. I don’t know why I could never convince you of that. You’ve always been the one. Ever since I laid eyes on you in that Abnormal Psych class. No one else ever had my heart. No one.”
“I mean it, you two,” says Choke. “Shut up. You’re giving me a fucking toothache. In fact... you”—he points at me—“in there.” He nods toward a nearby men’s room.
Having seen his stun gun, I comply with his order.
Perhaps it will even play into my hands.
. . . . .
The men’s room is tiny, half the size of a jail cell, with only a toilet and a sink.
Chokehold shuts the door on me. Good.
What I just learned about Jeannie and Miles has knocked the wind out of me, for sure, but still I must keep my wits about me. I take the burner phone from my pocket and check it. The call I placed earlier seems to have gone through and is still live. But the battery power is down to about twenty percent. I might be stuck in here a while. I need to conserve what little juice the phone has left. I whisper, “I’ll call back,” into the mike and shut off the phone.
I’ll have to reboot it and place the call again later. That might not be easy, though.
. . . . .
After a good chunk of time has passed—at least an hour—I hear Choke’s phone receive a text. It might be his signal to get things moving. Whatever that means. Listening at the door, I hear his chair shift slightly as he stands up.
I slide my ass back toward the middle of the bathroom floor and turn the burner phone back on.
I hear Choke push his chair away from the table.
I stare at the burner phone, willing it to power up faster. It is taking its damn sweet time. I know I turned the volume off, but I’m not familiar with this phone model. I’m praying it doesn’t make an electronic jingle of some kind when it reboots. If it does, I’m fucked to the gills.
I hear Choke’s heels walking in my direction. He’s about fifteen feet away.
The phone shows only black screen with logo, black screen with logo, black screen with logo. Come on, turn on, you piece of shit! Come on, come on!
Finally, the phone lights up, in blessed silence, and is running again, with its small reserve of battery power. Choke stops at the door.
I frantically navigate to the Recent Calls list and redial the earlier number—Enzo’s—then slip the phone back into my left pocket, mike facing out, just as Choke opens the door.
He enters, wielding his stun gun. My hand is still in my pocket. I ease it out, hoping the glow of the phone screen doesn’t show through the fabric of my pants. Choke orders me to stand up and jerks me out into the dining room. Jeannie is still waiting there.
Outside the yacht’s big windows, I notice the sun has set and full darkness is rapidly descending. The decks are now tastefully lighted for nighttime.
To Jeannie’s surprise and mine, Choke hands us both back our confiscated cell phones. He also returns my wallet to me. Why? He then gives me a knowing grin, reaches over and pulls open the top of my left pants pocket—the
one with the burner in it.
My heart sinks.
He stares at me for a long moment, waiting for me to surrender the burner voluntarily.
I start to say, “Take it,” but then he reaches into his own shirt and pulls an item out: a folded-up piece of paper in a sealed Ziploc sandwich bag.
He slips it into my pants pocket. As his fingers slide down into my borrowed chinos, I’m sure they’re going to make contact with the burner phone, but they miss it by a hair’s breadth. He pulls his hand away.
“Leave that there,” he says, referring to the ziplocked paper in my pocket, then gives Jeannie and me a shove and tells us to move our asses. To where, we don’t know.
As we march along, I hear my regular phone—the one Choke just returned to my hand—ping a text-sent signal. Jeannie’s phone pings a text-received tone a second later. I look down at my phone screen and see a Sent text from me to Jeannie. Ah, so Leah has taken control of our phones again. The text from “me” reads, I just wanted to say I’m sorry... I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said... And, of course, you’re right.
A few seconds later, another text exchange pings. This time it’s Jeannie’s hijacked phone replying to mine. It doesn’t mean I don’t love you, texts phantom Jeannie. The real Jeannie hasn’t touched her phone’s keyboard. Jeannie and I exchange WTF looks.
Choke marches us down a set of stairs to a lower deck, and we head toward the stern of the craft. If there’s going to be an opportunity to use the knife in my pocket, it will have to come soon.
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