Black Tide

by Brendan DuBois

  I went inside and shut the sliding-glass door, making sure it was locked. From the living room I picked up my 7x50 binoculars, and I raced upstairs, trying to keep my breathing even. I slipped into my study, which has windows facing north. I brought the binoculars up to my eyes, and even through the screened window, I had a good view of the man as he clambered over rocks and boulders, heading even closer in my direction. My hands were shaking and the shape was darkened, since he had come down from the hill and was no longer being backlit through the good graces of the city of Porter. It seemed as if he might be carrying something in his hands.

  From the study I went across the small hallway into my bedroom and knelt beside my bed, reaching down to a rectangular piece of foam rubber which was under the mattress and frame. I slid the piece of foam out, pulled off the cloth covering, and picked up my 12-gauge pump-action Remington shotgun with extended magazine. I didn't bother to see if it was loaded. All of my weapons are loaded, for it's a sure thing that with an unloaded weapon and a sudden threat coming into your house, the sudden threat will always win.

  I don't like those kinds of sure things.

  Taking a small flashlight off my nightstand, I went back downstairs, running checklists through my mind, wondering who the man could be, and not liking the situation one bit. Sure, he could be a night beach wanderer. Sure, he could be someone lost and scared, and seeing my house here, wanting to come over just to borrow the phone.

  Sure.

  I still didn't like it. He was trespassing. On my land. At my home.

  It took me only a moment or two to decide to go outside. Being outside, I had areas to move to, places to hide behind. Inside the house, I was trapped. I decided to go with maneuverability against the security of my house. I slipped out the front door, ducking down as I went around the house, and then I felt the hot breath of shame against the back of my neck as the man came up my small backyard, whistling and switching on a flashlight in his hand.

  "Felix," I called out, switching on my own flashlight. "You came about ten seconds away from having to answer some very stern questions.”

  As my light hit him, he gave me a rueful smile as he walked over. The light from my small flashlight made his dark face look even more , as if he had a two-week shadow of stubble on his face. He had on black high-top sneakers, gray sweat pants and a white tanktop.

  He shook his head. "Wasn't trying to be a sneak, and I knew about fifty feet away that you were waiting for me. Helpful hint, next time you're scurrying around the upstairs getting your shotgun. Don't leave the bedroom lights on."

  "Thanks," I said. "Why the roundabout walk?"

  He shrugged. "It's just that I know some people are trying to keep tabs on me. I decided to walk over here the back way, keeping things nice and quiet. Of course, I didn't expect you to nail me with a light and a shotgun."

  "I didn't know it was you, and I didn't know it was a visitor. I like my privacy."

  Felix tried to make a joke of it and I wouldn't let him. "Don't you know you're supposed to trust your fellow man?" he asked.

  "I tried that once," I said. "Damn near killed me, and it brought me here, Felix, and it still might kill me in the end."

  That comment seemed to make him think. He just nodded, slowly. "I've always wondered, and you've never told me. They must have done something awful to you, Lewis. Something awful indeed."

  I decided to drop it. "You want to come inside?"

  He shook his head. "Nope. Want to keep moving if you don't mind. Wanted to let you know I've made contact with the people who have been sending me the notes and messages."

  "You have?"

  "Yep. The meet is on for tomorrow night, Saturday, at seven P.M. It's gonna take place at the Vault Restaurant in Porter. And it's with a guy I know from my past. One Tony Russo."

  I switched off the flashlight, not wanting to light up things too much, and not wanting Felix to see what kinds of emotions were moving across my face. After a bit I said, "Do you still want me there?"

  Felix's voice was brisk. "Yeah, I do, Lewis. Tony and I don't have that great a relationship, if you know what I mean. I used to work for him, years ago, about the time I was being bounced around and when I did some stuff for Jimmy Corelli. I had to do some things for Russo… Well, I'll tell you later, but what I had to do for Russo is the main reason I'm here and I'm freelance. But yeah, I'd like to have you there, Lewis."

  "My calming influence, as you say?"

  "Whatever you want to call it. I just don't want to be near Tony Russo and lose it if he starts in on me. I want you to help keep me focused and on the straight and narrow. I've already told him that you'd probably be there, and he didn't have any problem at all."

  It seemed as though the sound of the waves grew louder. ''All right, then."

  Even in the darkness, standing there by my house near the ocean, I could sense Felix's smile. "Look, there's a bar a couple of blocks down from the Vault. The Frozen Chosin. Let's say you and me meet there at about six P.M., we'll go over a couple of things, and we'll walk over to the restaurant. We go in, do some discussions, and by Sunday we'll do the exchange and when it comes Monday morning we'll both be making healthy deposits our bank accounts."

  "That easy?" I asked.

  "Oh, it's never that easy, but as much as Tony is… well, Tony still has a good head for business. If he wants the safe house's address and the paintings and he's willing to pay, it'll be a sweet deal for all of us."

  There didn't seem to be that much to say. I went over and picked up my shotgun and said, "Well, Felix, I guess we're on for dinner tomorrow night."

  There came the sound of his laugh and there was a quiet movement, as if he was coming near to shake my hand or touch me on my shoulder, but the moment passed and he was back heading to the beach, walking to the dark hills of the wildlife preserve.

  When I got back into my house, I smelled the sweat of fear upon me, and I wasn't sure if just a shower would take care of it.

  Tomorrow night seemed very far away.

  Chapter Twelve

  The Frozen Chosin is a rarity among the scores of restaurants and bars in Porter, in that it wasn’t designed to be a specific type of place for a specific type of customer. There is a lot of money to be made in Porter from tourists who don’t like the sand and noise of Tyler Beach, and there are many restaurant consultants who’ve convinced businessmen and businesswomen what type of place to open and kind of food and drinks should be served.

  But the Frozen Chosin is owned and operated by one Art Cloutier, a sixty-three-year-old ex-Navy Yard worker and ex-Marine who still limps on his right foot from the frostbite he suffered while taking part in that horrible retreat from the Chosin Reservoir in Korea in 1951, and who’s told many a person that he doesn't give a good damn what anybody thinks about his place. He serves a handful of beer brands, some mixed drinks and free popcorn ,and he has a dinner menu that can be printed on a four-by-five postcard. Those customers who don't know their history and who come in looking for a frozen margarita or daiquiri usually leave with their faces red and their steps quick.

  His place is in downtown Porter, near enough to the waterfront to see ships glide into the harbor. It's on two floors, with lots of brass, old wood and some plants, though no ferns. American and Marine Corps flags are on the walls, along with old photographs from Korea and pictures of some of the scores of submarines that were built at the Porter Naval Shipyard. On this Saturday evening the place was just beginning to get crowded, with sunburned tourists standing next to burly men in jeans and T-shirts who'd just finished a shift at the shipyard, along with a good mixture of the artist and writer crowd that Porter has always attracted.

  Felix and I were at a small table in an alcove that had windows overlooking the downtown, and we saw the foot traffic of Porter, the people in shorts and casual clothes, many carrying shopping bags, thronging the sidewalks outside. The windows were open and rock music from a loft apartment down the way echoed softly in the early
evening streets. Felix and I were dressed almost identically in tan chinos and short-sleeved shirts, although Felix looked almost naked, not wearing a jacket to cover a holster and pistol. Both of us were weaponless that night.

  He picked up a glass and swirled some ice around, looking outside, his features set. "The thing is, I'm not too sure how Tony Russo is going to approach this. There's a couple of ways, you know. Start off sharp, try to get me fuzzed up, needle and poke. He just might try it soft, build up gradual and then just let it hang out." The ice cubes rattled again as he moved his glass. “Then he might fool us and just lay it on the line. He accepts my demand, we arrange the meet, and we give up the address of the house and the paintings tomorrow. And tonight we leave good friends after coffee and dessert."

  "From the way you're acting, I don't think he's going to fool us, Felix."

  "Yeah, I know." I took a sip from my own glass. We were both drinking ice water. This wasn't the kind of night to be drinking any type of alcohol. When I had ordered two glasses of ice water, Art Cloutier --- wearing a tank top with an American flag that said "These Colors Don't Run" ---- glared at me and was going to say something nasty, until I slid a ten-dollar bill over the stained wood of the bar.

  "Why Porter?" I asked. "You'd think he'd be wanting you to come to Boston. Having someone with his reputation… well, it seems odd that a guy connected with the Boston mob would be traveling an hour or so north to Porter."

  "Yeah, I thought about that, too. My guess is that he knows the safe house is somewhere in Maine, and he's working out of a place around here. Thing is, too, the post office box I replied to is in Porter."

  "Is that how it worked, when you made contact?"

  Felix nodded. "I finally sent a card back, saying I was ready to talk, and I told them the final and absolute price for the address of the safe house. Within two days, Tony Russo called and left a message on my answering machine, and he set the time and place. The Vault Restaurant. Tonight."

  "Does it make you nervous that he set the time and the place?"

  Felix turned and smiled at me. "Why, are you worried about an ambush? What do you think this is, The Godfather? Think Tony Russo is going to get up to take a crap and when he comes back he's gonna blow us both away?"

  I rattled some ice cubes of my own. "The thought's entered my mind a couple of times." "

  “Just a couple of times?”

  ''All right, a couple of times in the last thirty seconds." He took another sip. "You writer types think and worry too much. Listen, Lewis, I've been in situations like this before where the stakes were a hell of a lot higher, when you were negotiating between two groups who were fighting and had a history of dumping bodies in car trunks. You want to talk nervous, then nervous is when you're sitting across from someone whose brother’s just been nailed by your pals. That's nervous. But talking’s a good sign. It means the other side is serious, is looking for a settlement. And putting the meet in one of the most popular restaurants in Porter, well, that's another good sign. Look. I'd be a hell of a lot more nervous if he wanted to meet at a gravel pit in Tyler Falls at midnight. Then I'd be wearing a Kevlar vest and I have a guy or two as backup in the woods with a scoped AR-15, Lewis. Relax."

  Felix turned away and I didn't bother telling him that I was already relaxed. Well, that wasn't the whole truth. It wasn't relaxation, and it wasn't fear. It was something else. It was like I was racing above it all, like an ice skater on an incredibly smooth lake surface, gliding away and moving with no effort or thoughts. I was with Felix and a Sousa march was playing on the speakers , and even the ice water had a mysterious taste to it, a taste that hint of something exciting and wonderful.

  When Felix turned around again I said, "Tell me about Tony Russo, then. You said you would."

  He looked at his wristwatch. "We don't have that much time.”

  "Maybe so, but I want to know."

  He looked down at his glass, and for a moment I had to strain to hear his voice. Art Cloutier was yelling something about how Douglas MacArthur was an idiot in World War II but managed to learn something in Korea, and I leaned forward some more.

  Felix said, "Like I said last night, one of the several good and heavy reasons that I'm up here, remote and away from the action, is because of Tony Russo."

  "Oh."

  “Yeah, oh. Back when I was in my twenties, Lewis…. well, it’s hard to explain. You're young, connected and invincible. You eat the best food, you go all over the country and you pull in some great bucks. You look at civilians and the way they have to earn a living, Jesus, doing nine-to-five shit that would drive anybody batty. I mean, humping and working for some company, so that after you work for fifteen years, you get four weeks vacation out of fifty-two? That's living? And going week to week not knowing if the place you're working for, if it's still gonna be there a week from now?"

  The words were something, but his eyes, his manner, were telling me something else. "So how come you're still not in Boston? Or New York?"

  "Hmm," he said, finishing off his ice water. "Many a time I've been asked that question. And you're probably one of the few people I could give a good answer to. It just started after a while, seeing how nobody who was connected was much older than their forties or fifties. It's 'cause they die out. They get killed or they go to prison. So it started eating at me, wondering if that's what I really wanted. Making great money and pulling off incredible deals, and then ending up in a prison, taking showers with a dozen tattooed bikers, all 'cause I got ratted on by someone turning state's evidence. Or driving somewhere and getting a piece of piano wire wrapped around my neck 'cause I winked at someone's sister. Back then, when I started thinking like that, well, I wasn't fully in. I still had some room to maneuver. Then, one weekend, I was working for Tony Russo."

  I said nothing, watching as Felix reached into his glass and yanked out an ice cube, which he popped into his mouth and crunched for a moment. He said quietly, "It was summer, sort of like the weather we're having now. Me and another guy --- Ricky Grimes, he got killed doing a bank job in Connecticut later --- we were told to pick up two people and deliver them to Tony’s house. We had a nice Lincoln Continental, and we drove out to East Boston. Well. We picked up two kids. Brothers, maybe ten or eleven years old. And they were waiting on the porch, like they were expecting us. No mother or father there to say good-bye. Even today, I wonder where they were. I think they were in the house, hiding. Out of shame. We took them out to Boxford, up on the north shore, and they just sat in the backseat, not saying a word. Ever been to Boxford? If there's a house in that town that's worth less than a quarter million, then I'd eat my shorts."

  “That's where Tony Russo was living?"

  He poked at another ice cube with his fingers. ''At the time, yeah. Nice place, with a long driveway and a house that could fit twenty people, with big windows. We drove up and a couple of Russo's people took the kids in. Ricky and I were told to wait."

  "Then what?"

  Felix shrugged. "The kids never came out. And I don't know they ever did. One of Tony's boys came back an hour or so later and sent us home, and that was it. Oh, maybe I overreacted or something. I don't know. Maybe the kids were spending the night with Tony, maybe he was their godfather or something. Maybe. But I just remember seeing those two kids go up the walkway, and then they started holding hands, and they looked back at me, like I was going to come rescue them. I got a strange feeling that night, one I've never been able to shake, and right then I knew I wasn't gonna work for Tony Russo or Jimmy Corelli or anybody else ever again. They demand obedience, Lewis, utter and unquestioning obedience, and I wasn't going to give it to them, or anybody else. So I left, and I've never gone back."

  He stayed quiet for a few moments, and another Sousa march played over the speakers. I looked outside and back at Felix and said, "We should get going."

  "We should," he said, and in several seconds we were outside the warm and troubled night, heading out to see Mr. Anthony Russo.


  The Vault Restaurant is four blocks from the Frozen Chosin, located on the ground floor of an old five-story hotel whose upper floors have been turned into condominiums. The building had a lot of old brickwork and turrets, and granite steps flanked by large lions, lead up to wooden double doors at the entrance to the restaurant. Felix held me back as I started walking up the steps, and I nodded in understanding when we fell behind two couples that were going in the same direction. Both men gave us quick smiles as they led their women up the steps.

  Safety in numbers. As I followed the two couples, I almost started laughing at the utter absurdity of it all. The couples in front of us ---two husbands and two wives in their early fifties --- were going out for a quiet evening in Porter in their best summer clothing. I'm sure they had pleasant expectations of a nice meal, good companionship and interesting conversation, but I'm also sure that in their wildest imaginings they couldn't know that they were serving as human shields for the two well-dressed and polite men following them. I patted the head of one of the lions for good luck as I went in with Felix.

  The hostess took care of the couples, and when she came back, standing behind a wooden lectern, Felix winked at me and said to the hostess, "We're here for Mr. Corelli." She made a check mark on a notepad and pulled up two menus, and we followed her into the dining area. The inside of the Vault is heavily carpeted, with deep mahogany wainscoting along the walls and carved panels in the ceilings. The lights were faux Tiffany lamps, and there were sets of tables with white tablecloths and secluded booths that were separated from each other by bookshelves filled with old leather-bound volumes.

  She took us to a rear booth to the right that was about the most secluded, and a man was sitting by himself with a drink before him. He looked up and she said, "Well, the rest of your party has arrived," and he replied, "Isn't that nice."

  Felix slid in first, saying, "Tony," in an oddly strained voice, and I sat next to him, conscious that I was smiling, and yet I was looking quite hard at Tony Russo. From the story Felix had told me, I was expecting a jowly old man with stained clothes and wet lips, with "Child Abuser" tattooed on his forehead, but the man sitting there could have been a model for whenever Esquire runs its fashion spreads for men in their late forties. He was wearing a dark blue suit and white shirt with a striped club tie, and his light brown hair was cut close and sculpted to his head, showing me a man who knew he was losing his hair and wasn't going to put up with the indignities of a toupee or a hair transplant. His skin was slightly tanned and I saw that he was squinting his eyes while looking across the table, like he was slightly disgusted at the two of us.