by Matt Hilton
Before he met Tess, Po had enjoyed the company of other women, but few of them seriously. Elspeth Fuchs was one of the small number he had dated for longer than a week or two, and the only woman before Tess he’d ever considered settling down with. Until she’d upped and left him with barely a goodbye said. He had missed her and regretted that their relationship had ended so abruptly. She would be approaching forty years old now and, if anything, her maturity made her more beautiful than ever.
A trickle of guilt wormed its way through him. He loved Tess and was betrothed to her; he shouldn’t be admiring an old flame like this. But it was difficult to look away. He watched her smile and coax the boy to strike a different pose, and then she snapped away. She lowered the cell phone, checking the screen for how well the pictures had come out, and then she raised her gaze to the boy again. The smile froze on her lips, and she straightened up. She was looking across at where Po sat looking back.
He was torn, as to whether or not to wave in greeting or just turn away and pretend not to have noticed her. But then the kid must have picked up on his mother’s unease, because he turned and sought what had caused her sudden change of mood. The boy was tall and slim, but with a wiry strength undisguised by a black T-shirt and jeans. He had a shock of wavy black hair and deep-set eyes. The boy stared at Po, with his mouth hanging slightly open, before he looked up at his mom for clarity on an unspoken question.
Po felt that worm of guilt turn into a river of icy water that washed the length of his spine and caused the back of his neck to tingle.
Without warning, Elspeth grabbed the boy’s wrist, turned and walked briskly away. Po stood, watching them go, trying to decide whether to chase after them. He had an unspoken question requiring clarification too.
If he didn’t know otherwise, when he stared at that boy, Po would swear he was seeing a ten-year-old version of himself.
THREE
Annoyed and overheated, Tess Grey pushed out of the courthouse and stood on Newbury Street. She breathed hard, exasperated at how most of an afternoon had been wasted. She had sat for hours in a stuffy room where the air-conditioning unit groaned out the barest trickle of air, waiting to give evidence in a case against a man accused of theft. In her role as a private investigator, Tess had tracked down the stolen property to a pawnshop, and identified the suspect on the corresponding CCTV footage, before sending for the cops. She had been summoned to court to testify to the chain of evidence. Playing the system, the accused had eked out his freedom until the last moment and offered a guilty plea just as the proceedings commenced. The case had been adjourned for sentencing at a later date. With no trial going ahead Tess’s evidence hadn’t been required, so she’d been released. It was as frustrating as all hell. It reminded her of the eternal hours she’d wasted waiting in court when she was with the Cumberland County Sheriff’s department.
She had dressed professionally in a suit and blouse and sensible loafers. Her clothing wasn’t fit for a hot day in Maine, and she couldn’t wait to get into something lighter and more comfortable. She looked up at the sun, as if divining the precise time from its position in the vault of blue sky and thought that Po must be royally pissed off by now: she’d promised she wouldn’t be too long in court, but that had been hours ago. She walked stiffly out onto the sidewalk, and checked for Po’s Mustang parked at curbside, but it wasn’t there. She took out her cell phone, then after pushing back her fair locks, and blowing out a hot breath, she brought up his number. She should apologize to him for wasting his time, but was too aggravated to concoct the few sincere words necessary. Instead, when he answered, she said, ‘You can come get me now.’
‘You’re done there?’
‘Yes. Otherwise I wouldn’t be asking you to pick me up.’ She caught herself; it was unfair speaking to him so brusquely, and after all it wasn’t his fault another damn criminal had decided to play the system for all it was worth. ‘Sorry, Po, yeah, I’ve been let go. What a waste of time it’s been here.’
‘Can you maybe gimme ten minutes an’ I’ll come get you?’ he said.
‘Something wrong?’
‘No. Nothing’s wrong.’ He sounded a little breathless. ‘It’s just I’m outta my car, so I’ll have to go fetch it.’
‘Where are you? Is it easier if I walk on over and meet you at the car?’
‘No, Tess. Just stay put and I’ll come get you. I only need ten minutes.’
There was something off in his tone.
‘Po. Is everything OK? You sound—’
‘Everything’s fine. Stay put and I’ll be along in ten minutes.’
He ended the call.
Frowning, she shoved away her phone. When she first met Po, she’d found him difficult to comprehend. Sometimes getting him to speak more than a few words had proven as difficult as drawing a rusty nail out of a weathered plank with her teeth. On other occasions he had a way of saying nothing, but exuding meaning through his actions. He wasn’t very verbose, and what he did say was usually after some consideration. In the passing years she’d learned to understand him, and these days didn’t need him to verbalize when she could read a quirk of his lip, or a crinkle of his eyes as plain as the words in a book. His clipped, hurried manner here was plain wrong.
There was a one-way system around the court buildings. Tess decided to cut Po off at the pass, by walking around the block to Lincoln Park. It would be cooler there under the shade of the trees, and besides they were nicer surroundings than reflective stone and overheated asphalt. She took off her suit jacket, opened a couple of buttons on her blouse, and set off. She slung her jacket over her shoulder for the short walk, while her purse bumped softly against her hip. It was hot in the afternoon sun, but there was a cold sensation at the core of her. She considered ringing Po back and demanding to know what was going on, because something was troubling her man.
She didn’t call. He’d explain what was going on when he saw her, and that would have to do.
Many times in the past she’d sat in Lincoln Park, listening to the tinkle of the fountain and chirping of birds in the trees. There was no play area for children, but young mothers used the park when pushing their little ones in their strollers. Sometimes they’d sit and chat a while and Tess had found herself cooing at a baby or tickling a toddler under the chin. Today Tess had the park to herself. She sat on the grass in full view of the turning where Po would have to join the one-way system.
She waited. Ten minutes came and went, and soon it was approaching twice that long. She had no right to be annoyed with Po for keeping her waiting, not after he’d had to hang around for her all afternoon. Besides, annoyed wasn’t the correct word for how she felt; she was more concerned, and that was what was making her antsy.
She took out her cell phone, about to ring him after all, but thought if he were driving he wouldn’t answer. Instead, feeling a little underhanded about it, she opened an app on the screen. A few months ago they had become embroiled in a case involving blackmail and coercion, and Po had gotten himself abducted in an ill-advised attempt at finding his way to the ringleaders. Tess had suffered a worrying time before discovering his whereabouts, almost too late to save him from torture at the hands of a sadistic thug. After that they’d both installed a GPS tracking device on their phones so that they wouldn’t be placed in the same untenable position again. Apart from trying out the app, this was the first time she’d had cause to use it, and it felt a bit like snooping. But, still. She brought up a map on screen and saw Po’s tag was static outside an ice cream shop on Portland Pier. Maybe he’d decided to treat her to something cold and delicious to counteract the heat and had gotten held up in a long queue. No, that explanation was far too hopeful. There was something else going on.
She watched the cursor, hoping to see it move. It did, but only to roadside on Commercial Street. What on earth was the fool man up to? Had he forgotten she was waiting? She closed the app and hit his number. It rang but went unanswered. Now she was particularly worrie
d. She stood, and hit his number again. Slinging her jacket over her shoulder once more she set off marching, her phone pressed tight to her ear. Po didn’t answer. She again pulled up the app and saw he had still not moved. It was only a five- or six-minute stroll from the park to the pier, with her head down and a steady pace she could cut a couple minutes off the time. It was a straight path down Pearl Street, and in all likelihood it would be the route Po came by if he ever recalled that he’d left her hanging. Periodically she checked the app, ensuring he hadn’t set off and was taking a more roundabout route to the courthouse. Nope, he was still there, on Commercial Street.
Sweating, but still with that icy sensation clutching at her gut, Tess reached the intersection with the main strip. Portland Pier was a block down to her right, and from where she emerged she could see the ice cream shop, and true enough there was quite a long queue outside, as well as dozens of tourists and locals milling about. She couldn’t see Po. One last time she checked her app and saw that he’d moved, but only across the road to stand outside a Starbucks from where she’d regularly grabbed a latte. He was two blocks away, but trees decorated the sidewalks here and their branches hung in full bloom, making it difficult to see beyond a few dozen feet. Tess began walking, and so he didn’t realize she had been snooping, she shoved her cell phone away in her bag. She walked a block and was held up by a delivery truck turning out of the side street. As the truck cleared the junction, Tess checked for Po and this time caught sight of him. It was useful that he was taller than most of the other people on the sidewalk. Where he was standing he had his head tilted down, and looked to be in conversation with somebody shorter. Actually, his interaction looked more intimate than that: he was holding the hand of a woman, beside who stood a little boy. The boy studiously kicked at the sidewalk, wanting no part of the adult stuff he was party to.
For a reason she couldn’t fully explain, but which felt very much like suspicion, Tess halted in her tracks and watched. Some of the other pedestrians on the sidewalk had entered shops or returned to cars parked at roadside, so she had a clear view to where Po suddenly leaned in, and embraced the woman. After a moment she returned the hug, before Po set her loose and she stepped back. She raised a hand to her mouth, then turned away, but if she hadn’t blown a kiss in parting then Tess was blind, stupid, or both. The boy followed the woman, but walked backwards a few paces, staring up at Po, before Po offered a wave. The boy didn’t return it; he spun about and trotted after the woman. Po stood, thumbs in his belt as he watched them go around the corner onto Market Street. Po stood a moment longer, then took a glance in both directions along the sidewalk. Tess backed into the doorway of a café advertising a Mediterranean-influenced menu, but she needn’t have been so clandestine, as Po’s gaze hadn’t traveled the entire length of the block. He turned away and trotted through a gap in the traffic to the wharfside, and as he reached the sidewalk he dipped his hand in his pocket and pulled out his cell phone. Her phone began ringing.
She took out her phone, watching him still as he strode – unusually hurried for Po – towards where she assumed he’d parked his Mustang.
‘Hey, Tess!’ he said breezily when she answered.
‘Hey!’ she replied, but the word felt like chalk in her mouth.
‘You still at the courthouse?’
‘I waited,’ she said, ‘but thought something must be wrong.’
‘Uh, yeah. Sorry I took a bit longer than I promised.’
‘What was so urgent it needed doing?’
‘Uh, nothing much. I had to see a guy about a dawg.’
‘Really?’
Po was involved in some legitimate business enterprises, no less his ownership of Bar-Lesque and also Charley’s Autoshop, but he also dabbled in areas skirting the law and they had an agreement that he would never involve her in any of them. In her role, often sub-contracting to a specialist inquiry firm working on behalf of the Portland district attorney’s office, she must remain above reproach.
‘Don’t ask …’ he said, making light of their agreement.
‘And you won’t have to lie to me,’ she finished off their dictum.
Except he was lying to her and he couldn’t know how badly it hurt.
‘Where are you now?’ he asked.
‘Pearl Street.’ She realized that she too was lying and it made her feel even worse. ‘I walked. I’m almost at the front, so you can pick me up outside the old Custom’s House building, if you’d like to?’
‘Sure I will. Gimme a minute.’
‘Where are you?’ she asked, trying to sound like the model of innocence.
‘Just down the road apiece.’
He wasn’t exactly lying this time, but there was no committing to divulging his exact location either. She assumed his Mustang was in the public parking lot at Fisherman’s Wharf. She trusted she could make the walk back to Pearl Street well before he arrived, be waiting there for when he pulled in to collect her, and giving him no idea that she had witnessed his intimacy with the woman outside Starbucks. It wasn’t that he’d hugged a woman that troubled her or that she’d blown him a kiss. Hell, she too was a hugger and often squeezed the life out of their mutual friend Pinky Leclerc, garnering no hint of jealousy from Po. It was the fact he had stood her up for going onto half an hour now, and had concocted a lie to cover his sneaky ass. To Tess, they smacked of actions to be suspicious of, and it tore her up to even have the slightest reason to distrust her man.
She was still stewing in her own juices when the Mustang growled to a halt at curbside, and Po waved her across three lanes. She crossed, watched all the while by Po, and she climbed in alongside him. She dumped her suit jacket and bag between her feet in the footwell, and without asking permission reached to turn the A/C to its highest setting.
‘It’s hot,’ he said needlessly.
‘I’m boiling.’ Tess didn’t explain, but there was a deep crease between his eyes as he stared a moment at her. He understood he was in hot water with her, but was man enough not to try worming his way back into her good book.
‘Where d’you wanna be?’ he asked.
‘Home.’
Yeah, the privacy of home, she thought, would be the best place to broach a subject that could have them raising their voices before long.
She didn’t speak to him at all during the drive back to his ranch-style property north of the city limits near to Presumpscot Falls.
FOUR
Po swigged at an open bottle of beer, hardly tasting the brew. His thoughts were elsewhere.
Bangs, thumps and soft curses emanating from inside the house spoke volumes of Tess’s mood. He hoped she would join him outside, though he was a tad anxious how things would go if she did. But they must speak.
If not an apology, he owed Tess an explanation at least. He’d left her waiting in the hot sun, and prompted her to march to find him. When he had finally picked her up she had been drenched in sweat, and her feet had been chafed raw because of her unsuitable leather footwear. He suspected her mood was as much about her discomfort as it was his inattentiveness, but whatever the cause, he was responsible. Since arriving back home she’d barely uttered a word to him. She had gone to shower and change into something less restrictive, and he’d taken himself out onto the porch and sat on the swing chair to think. He wanted to tell Tess everything, clear the air, and ask for her help. He simply didn’t know how to broach the subject of Elspeth Fuchs though, not without possibly complicating matters and further darkening Tess’s mood.
There were aspects of his life that he kept from her. He had secrets he held, but only to protect her from any fallout should they ever come to light. His secrets weren’t criminal per se; they were more about flouting and bending laws and regulations rather than breaking them. Tess was a licensed private investigator, and she was bound by rules. He was not. Yet he assisted Tess when she was working certain cases where she needed somebody to step beyond the lawful boundary that constrained her. It was best that his i
nvolvement never compromise Tess’s employment, or in fact her trustworthiness as a witness in court. He kept some of his dealings close to his chest, so that a desperate defense attorney couldn’t challenge Tess with them. They had held to the dictum of ‘don’t ask and I won’t lie’, and the agreement had worked for them.
He’d been open with her from the get-go. He had told her about his past, how he had killed the man responsible for murdering his dad, and how that had affected the entirety of his adult life. He had made no bones about having to defend his life several times while in the Louisiana State Penitentiary, and how – to survive The Farm – he’d had to become a more frightening creature than the monsters that wished him harm. He told her how he had become a guardian to Jerome ‘Pinky’ Leclerc when the Aryan Brotherhood had targeted the young, gay, black kid, and how doing so had formed a lifelong friendship between two men vastly different and yet so alike. Hearing his story, Tess had judged him, but not negatively. She came from a law enforcement background, while he was a convicted killer, but in their hearts they were both protectors, the difference being she’d carried a badge while he hadn’t. Occasionally he did things some people might deem wrong, but never to anyone’s detriment that didn’t deserve it. There were some things he’d done that he wasn’t proud of, but until now, nothing he should be ashamed to admit.