I parked for free on one of the side streets and with the town warrant article setting up the casino zone, I managed to walk around the area it would encompass, which consisted of a number of cottages, a pizza restaurant, a sub shop, and a motel brightly called the St. Lawrence Hotel (rooms daily, weekly, or monthly). It was a warm March day and I sat my butt down on a wooden park bench set right in front of the sub shop, called Tyler’s Famous Subs.
I looked again at the warrant article, and from behind me, a door to the sub shop opened up and a bulky guy ambled out, like he was some black bear finally emerging from his own personal hibernation. He had on black-and-white checked work pants, with a white apron snug against his belly. His buttoned white shirt was tight against his belly as well, and while he was thin on top, he had a full black beard that he kept closely trimmed. He nodded at me and I nodded back, and he sat down next to me, stretched out his thick legs.
“Looks like spring is finally gonna come on schedule,” he said.
Across the street were the municipal parking lots for this part of the beach, and there were still mounds of plowed snow up in the corners.
I said, “If that snow melts in time. Or else a lot of beachgoers are going to be climbing over that to get to the sand.”
“Not gonna happen,” he said. “To make sure all the nice tourists can find a place to park, you can be sure the town will move that snow. Probably to Falconer or North Tyler.”
He laughed and I laughed along, and then he spotted the papers in my hand and said, “Hey, what’s that? A sample ballot? Trying to educate yourself before next Tuesday?”
“That’s right,” I said, twisting around to look at this particular block. “Seems like this is the middle of the proposed casino zone.”
“Ground zero, for sure.” He crossed his legs at his ankles, folded his arms.
“Ask you a question?”
“Ask away, but don’t ask for my secret sauce for my teriyaki steak tips. That recipe’s gonna go to the grave with me.” Another laugh, but I didn’t feel like joining in. Instead, I said, “My name’s Lewis Cole. I live up past Weymouth Point, so I don’t have any dealings with the improvement company. Have you been here long?”
“Twelve years.” He held out his hand, and I gave it a shake. “I’m Chris Tefft.”
“What do you think about this warrant article, about a casino coming in?”
Chris stayed quiet for long seconds. “It’s been a fun twelve years, you know, but mostly, a hard twelve years. Some guys, they go to school, they got that stuff between their ears that keeps ’em in class, even through college and shit. Me, I wasn’t built that way. No excuse, no apologies. When I got out of high school, I thought I was the freest kid in the universe. Knocked around here and there, and then started working here, back when my uncle owned it.”
A few cars drifted by, including one low-slung Toyota that had heavy-duty speakers that thump-thumped so hard I could feel it in my chest. Another sign of the approaching summer.
Chris said, “So when he died—lung cancer, probably because of breathing in all that grease—I took it over. My own business, right? Thought maybe I could get a start here, build it up, do a shop in Falconer, up in Porter, down in Salisbury. But the more I learned about the business, the more I knew my balls were in a vise.” A sharp bark of laughter. “A velvet vise, but shit, it was still a vise.”
“The development corporation?”
“Shit, yes,” he said, waving a hand. “They own the most prime stretch of real estate in New England, and pay five hundred bucks a year for it. A year! And we folks who got buildings on this land, we pay a rent that can go up any year they want, with no appeal. We just get envelopes in the mail, and that’s that. No way to complain, no way to talk to someone.”
“But you own the building.”
“Yep, and what a wonderful, tacky piece of crap it is,” he said. “At least, that’s what one of the bank officers told me.”
It then slid into place. “You don’t own the land. The land is what’s valuable. Not the buildings, not the structures.”
“Bingo.”
“So banks wouldn’t give you any loans for expansion, because the only thing of value you have is the building. You have no title on the land.”
“Bingo again,” he said. “But in a couple of years, the lease expires, and one of three things is going to happen. The first is that the town is going to go to the Tyler Beach Improvement Company to renegotiate a lease and say, fuck you very much, it’s about time you started paying a realistic rent for all this prime beach land. The second thing that could happen is that the company goes belly-up, the land reverts back to the town, and us leaseholders get to buy the land we’re sitting on.”
I checked out the tangled mess of the buildings up and down the street. Some were built right up against each other, while others were separated by alleys so narrow I was certain cats of a certain size couldn’t pass through.
“I would think that would be challenging,” I said. “Purchasing the property. You’ve got to have good land surveys, separating out each lot, to get a secure title. It looks pretty . . . disorderly around here.”
Chris nodded. “Shit, ain’t that the truth. Problem is, when this whole mess started nearly ninety-nine years ago, the survey line would read something like, ‘from the old stump twenty rods northeast from the corner of Ashburn and Hampton Avenues, proceeding point seven miles to the pear-shaped rock visible at low tide at Stella’s Creek.’ All of that made sense back then, but the geography changes, tides move rocks around, even buildings burn down and they’re not rebuilt in the same spot. Shit. What a fiasco that’s going to be. Supposedly there’s a master survey plan that has most of everything covered, but what about the stuff on the edges? Question will be, well, who pays for the additional surveys? And what happens if the surveys don’t agree with each other? Man, that could take years to sort out.”
“You said there could be a third outcome. What might that be?”
He moved his hand like he was trying to force the traffic to move by quicker. “The good people of Tyler rezone this whole stretch of beach property to allow casino gambling. And by some political miracle, the legislature in Concord later passes a law that allows casino gambling in the state, with preference going to this locale that has already been zoned to allow it.”
“I’m beginning to hear a bit of cynicism,” I said.
“Then you haven’t been hearing well from the beginning,” Chris replied. “And after the town does its vote, and Concord does its vote, and a year or so before the lease with the town expires, surprise, surprise, the Tyler Beach Improvement Corporation goes out of business and is replaced by something else equally pretty sounding, like the Tyler Beach Gaming Corporation. Then they go house by house, motel by motel, and”—he gestured with his head—“sub shop by sub shop, and they offer to buy everyone out.”
“Sweet deal.”
“Oh, yeah, wicked sweet.”
I said, “I imagine if you’re a homeowner with heating bills in the winter, leaking pipes, or a restaurant on the edge, or some motel owner fed up with dealing with tenants every season, getting bought out would be an attractive option.”
“You got it, bro. So look at the choices us fine folks might be facing next year. The possibility of gaining title to the land we’ve been sitting on, after spending more money on lawyers and more time fighting it out. Or getting a cashier’s check from the corporation and saying, no more washing bedding, no more leaky roofs, and no more ‘can I get fries with that.’ Tell you, the day everything gets passed and the new corporation offers a buy-out plan, people will be fighting each other to get first in line.”
“Including you?”
“Nope.”
“Oh,” I said. “You don’t want to give up your shop?”
He turned and gave me a look like he was surprised I was able to breathe and talk at the same time. “Shit, no, Lewis,” he said. “I’m not going to be first in line. I�
��m going hold out for a while, jack up the price some. Then I’ll cash out. But I gotta be careful. I don’t want to be last in line.”
“How’s that?”
“With so much money in play, it’s not a healthy place to be, last in line, being the last one to hold out. You can have a car accident, or carbon monoxide poisoning, or your property burns down.”
“Seems like you’ve got it all figured out.”
“Yeah, well, my uncle would be proud of me.”
“Any idea who’s behind the town warrant article, the one pushing it?”
“Well, Chairman Moore was part of the group behind it, ’til he got his head blown off. And word is, I hear, that didn’t happen because of the warrant article, but ’cause he couldn’t keep his fancy pants zipped up. But lots of other Chamber people are behind it. They don’t care about gambling and what might be connected to it. All they care is the color of the money, and it’s green—or whatever color they’re printing it this year—that’s all they care about.”
We sat in silence for a few moments, as a young woman wearing black spandex shorts and a Tyler Beach T-shirt flew by on a bicycle. Chris said, “The young, God bless ’em. It should be warm according to the calendar, and they’re going to dress accordingly, no matter what.”
He slapped his hands on his thighs. “Well, enough of this jawing around. Gotta get stuff ready for the lunch rush, though it’ll be pretty quiet today. But come back in a couple of months, the line will be twenty deep.”
“I just might do that,” I said. “One more question?”
“Make it quick.”
“Have you had people coming by, saying they might be part of the casino corporation, once it starts up?”
He paused again, and said, “Shit, well, it’s no secret. We’ve all been talked to.”
I held out the two photos I had printed back at the Tyler library, of Hollis Spinelli and Russ Gilman. “Did either of those guys talk to you? Do you recognize either of them?”
He gave both photos a good stare and said, “Nope, can’t say I recognize either of them.”
Chris lifted his head, grinned like he was putting one over on me. “I recognize ’em both.”
I walked around Tyler Beach for a few minutes, to clear my head and breathe in the sharp salty air. It wasn’t like all of the pieces of the puzzle were coming together, but it was like pieces of the puzzle were suddenly making themselves visible. In my short travels, looking at the Tyler Beach buildings, all so familiar after living for years nearby, it was hard to imagine the shops, restaurants, and motels—none more than two stories tall—being scraped away and then replaced by some sprawling monstrosity that would overwhelm the rest of the beach.
I sat again on a park bench. So what? part of me thought. If that’s what the residents of Tyler wanted, why should I get in their way? And Fletcher Moore? Did he get in the way? Or did he demand more? Or was it someone who had a more personal grudge who ended up murdering him in Porter?
Then Felix Tinios. How in hell did he figure in this mess, along with his real attorney, Raymond Drake. Felix was less than a half-hour drive from home, but he was still refusing to see me, and the FBI was certain Raymond was safe at home, though under some sort of duress.
What now?
I checked my watch, made a phone call.
Lunch.
I went back to Tyler’s Famous Subs, placed an order, and Chris said, “Hey, you’re back early.”
“Decided I didn’t want to wait for warm weather.”
“Glad to hear that.”
With lunch in hand, I walked for about two minutes, ending up at the entrance to the Tyler police station, and then at Detective Sergeant Diane Woods’s desk. Her office was spare, with filing cabinets, her metal desk, and a screened window overlooking the rear parking lot. Today she was out of her official uniform and had on blue jeans and a dark blue flannel shirt.
“Lunch?” she asked. “What a treat.”
“I think you deserve it, so there,” I said.
I emptied out the paper bag and handed over a Diet Coke to her, along with a hot chicken Parmesan sub and a bag of Lay’s chips. I made do with a bottle of water and a large salad. Diane made room on her desk and I saw something that pleased me to no end: a photograph of her and her partner, Kara Miles, framed and sitting in the open. The photo had been taken in the tiny cockpit of Diane’s sailboat, the Miranda, and I just had a brief visit of some quick memories, about how long Diane had kept her relationship with Kara a secret, how on some occasions I had gone along with Diane to certain functions to keep wagging tongues quiet, and how this had caused stress and strain in their relationship.
Now the truth was there for everyone to see, Diane and Kara were planning to get married in three months, and things had changed not only for my best friend and her partner, but also for my conservative, quirky little home state.
Diane saw where I was looking and I was expecting her to comment with something similar to what I was thinking, and instead she said, “Hold on. You call this lunch?”
“What, you don’t like it?” I grabbed the Caesar salad—with no anchovies, for the love of God—and snapped open the plastic top.
She unwrapped her sub sandwich and I was struck by the smell of her meal. My stomach grumbled at the assault. “No, I love it,” she said. “I’m looking at your rabbit food over there. You’re no longer a teenager, Lewis, but for God’s sake, you’re still a growing boy. What, you think you need to be on a diet?”
“My checking account has been on a diet for months,” I said. “I’m just tagging along.”
She took a healthy bite, murmured something, wiped at a trace of tomato sauce on her chin with a brown paper napkin. “For Christ’s sake, lad, I’ve told you before, scores of times, that I can—”
“Diane, if and when I’m at the stage where I need a loan, you’ll be the first on my list to call.”
Busy chewing, she just nodded, and I said, with a light tone, “Besides, I don’t want you fronting me money when I want you to spend your funds on the wedding of your dreams.”
She finally swallowed, took another wipe at her chin, and said, “That assumes there’s going to be a wedding of my dreams. I’m not in a position to say that.”
I was no longer hungry. I put my salad container in my lap. “Diane, if that’s a joke, it’s a rotten one. Please tell me it’s a joke.”
“No joke.”
“What’s happened, then? You and Kara . . .”
Another bite, this time smaller. “Oh, we’re still together. No worries there.”
I was so relieved at hearing those words that I almost missed what came next. “Thing is, I don’t know if it’ll make sense to pay for a big-ass wedding, if I’m unemployed.”
She looked at me, gave me a wan smile, and said, “You’ll still come if we just get married by the town clerk?”
“You can count on it. Why will you be unemployed? What’s going on?”
Diane popped open her Diet Coke. “What’s going on is that the town is looking to see if it makes more sense financially to pension me off, instead of keeping me on the payroll. There’s concern about my injuries, whether or not I’ll be able to keep up with the demands of the job, will I expose the town to more long-term medical bills, that sort of thing.”
Her metal cane was leaning up against her desk, like it was an iron girder, forever chained to her side. “I suppose you don’t agree with them.”
“Damn straight I don’t agree with them, but it looks like it’s going to be a fight.” She spent a moment trying to open her bag of potato chips, and it was a struggle with her trembling hands. I struggled as well, to keep still and not offer to help.
“Diane.”
“Yep, that’s me.”
“Tell me, is Mark Spencer pushing this?”
She munched on a chip. “Very good, my friend. In fact . . .”
“What?”
Another chip disappeared. “I probably shouldn’t be tellin
g you this, but a week ago, I went to his office, had an off-the-record meeting, just trying to figure out why he was coming after me like that. Was it something I had done? Was it something fixable? And you know what he said?”
“I hope I’m about to find out.”
“He said, ‘Go ask your friend, the magazine writer.’”
The cane was still there. I now had the incredible urge to borrow it from Diane, get in my Pilot, drive up to the center of town, find Mark Spencer, and attempt to wrap it around his head. “He did, did he?”
“Yeah. So what’s that about, then?”
“I think he’s having premarital problems.”
“With Paula Quinn?”
“None other,” I said, taking a swig of water. “Paula’s now in public without her engagement ring on, she won’t tell me much more than that, and the other day, we had lunch and a sweet goodbye kiss to set it off.”
Her eyes sparkled. “For real?”
“Yep.”
“Where did you have this lunch?”
“Takeout in the front seat of my Pilot, in the parking lot of the superior courthouse.”
“Wow,” Diane said. “Who said romance is dead? You plan on following up with the dear assistant editor?”
A good question, and I think I surprised us both when I said, “Absolutely. Without a doubt.”
“Good,” she said. “And it seems our town lawyer doesn’t like being left at the pre-altar.”
“No,” I said. “I also don’t like him dragging you into this. Besides being unprofessional, he’s being a creep. More than usual.”
“You planning on doing something?”
“A number of things are coming to mind.”
She wiped her chin again. “Christ, the Tefft family makes a mean sub. Okay. Do me a favor, all right? Leave Mark Spencer to me.”
“Diane . . .”
“Lewis, where is it written in the world that you always have to be on horseback, riding off to save whatever maiden happens to be in distress that day? I’m a big girl.” She smiled ruefully and glanced down at her lap. “And since I haven’t been exercising enough, my ass is getting bigger, and so am I. Don’t worry about me and Mark. I’ve got it covered.”
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