Later I ended up at the Wallis Public House, a private, members-only club in one of the fancier sections of Wallis, the next town up from North Tyler. Raymond Drake had rented a function room that overlooked the rocky shoreline, and as the waves rolled in, tossing up spray and foam, a celebration party began, attended by Felix, Raymond, and assorted friends and acquaintances of both. I felt drained and tired, but I wanted to spend time with Felix as he once again enjoyed dodging the full force and fury of law enforcement and government.
Away from the buffet tables, open bar, and lovely young ladies eager to learn your name and where you were from, I caught up with Felix in a small alcove that was lined with real books, with a cushioned seat big enough for two. We both had a Sam Adams. He sat next to me, smiling widely, though there were still bruises around one eye.
We clinked our bottlenecks together.
“You’re free,” I said.
“I am,” he said back. “Thanks to you getting Raymond out of his mess. But, Lewis, a high-powered flashlight? For real?”
“A spotlight,” I said. “I wasn’t in the mood for hurting anyone. I just wanted to get in and get out, with Raymond in tow. And if there was shooting, I was going to leave evidence, and I didn’t want to do that. I didn’t want any cops from Massachusetts showing up at my doorstep.”
Felix took a long swallow. He had on gray slacks and a striped dress shirt, with the sleeves rolled up along his muscular and hairy wrists. I said, “What are your plans?”
“Short term is to go home and sleep for a day in a real bed,” he said. “With or without company, depending on my mood. Long term, I have no idea. I imagine I’ll get back to work someday, when the job and the price is right.”
I rubbed a finger over the opening of my bottle. “Hollis Spinelli’s father. How did you kill him?”
Felix frowned. “Well, I didn’t come out and kill him, kill him.”
“Not sure I see the difference.”
“Oh. Let me explain, then. It was years ago, when I was pretty fresh on the streets, and pretty dumb. I’d go anywhere, do anything, so long as my sponsor told me what to do. As to Hollis’s dad, he owed a lot of money to some shady businessmen. My job was to break a limb or two. I got carried away, I did three.” He gave a whaddya-gonna-do shrug. “My bad. Like I said, it was early in my career.”
“Some history,” I said. “You going to speak at a school’s career day anytime soon?”
Felix took another swig. “Only if I’m invited by a school official who wants to retire the next day. Anyway, I did what I was told, Hollis’s dad ended up in Beth Israel Hospital, and then it came to pass that he had a feud going on with some folks from Providence. Being in a hospital room meant being a target, and one night, instead of getting a sponge bath, he got a visit from Messrs. Smith & Wesson.”
I thought about that and said, “Hollis still blames you for his dad’s death.”
“Hollis is going to be eating a lot of apple sauce and oatmeal over the next several months,” Felix said. “Maybe he’ll have time to reflect, put away the hatred.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But he sure had time and energy to come up with a scheme to put you away. He didn’t want to nail you directly, but indirectly.”
Felix said, “He’s a lawyer.”
We sat like that for a few moments, and a couple of well-dressed and giggly women approached us, but they somehow sensed words unsaid between Felix and me, and they tottered off to another part of the room.
He stared. Quiet. “Well?” he said.
“Who was the shooter?” I asked.
Felix eyed me and then smiled. “You’re good.”
“I try,” I said. “I’m just glad the shooter was equally good. One round through two windows, no slug left behind, but close enough to scare the crap out of me. That was the purpose, right? To scare me, to put pressure on me to do what had to be done.”
“That’s right.”
“Who was he?”
“An unnamed professional, hired through an acquaintance.”
“How did you get word out?”
“A little bit of message smuggling from a network in the jail. Pricey, so I only used it once to make the arrangements.”
“You didn’t trust me?” I asked. “For real, Felix? After all these years, after . . . everything, you didn’t think I’d make the effort?”
I sensed something fighting behind that impassive yet muscular face, and I knew I had put Felix on the spot, and he didn’t like it. He let out a sigh.
“I should have trusted you,” he said. “For that, you have my deepest apologies and regrets. But I was in jail. The defense attorney I could trust with my life was missing. I had an attorney representing me on a relatively airtight murder case whose goal was to put me away. I hate to admit it, but I was feeling pressed. I could count on you. I know I can always count on you. But I wanted something more, to help tip the balance in my favor. Again, my apologies.”
A couple of heartbeats passed, and I reached and clinked our bottlenecks again. “Apology accepted.”
And I was pleased to see the relief on Felix’s face.
We talked weather and Red Sox for a while, and I said, “So what was it with you and the Feds? They seemed very concerned that you were going to tell tales to get your sentence reduced.”
“Well, you know how the Feds work. Suspicious. Paranoid. Wheels-within-wheels. I’ve done a couple of favors when the time came, and I guess somebody somewhere in some anonymous office park wanted to make sure there wasn’t going to be a problem.”
“I see.”
He cocked his head. “For sure? Boy, you must have forgotten all that tradecraft you had when you were younger. You said your Fed wanted to make sure I was freed before the trial’s conclusion. What do you think would have happened to me if that hadn’t happened? I’ll tell you. Like that Vietnam movie. Terminated with extreme prejudice. Either through Hollis or the Feds, I wasn’t going to live when spring finally made its appearance.”
I was going to debate the finer points of that when Raymond Drake barreled his way over, waving a newspaper. “Cole! You son of a bitch! Look at this! Just look at this!”
“This” turned out to be the front page of that day’s Tyler Chronicle, with the lead story and big headlines announcing that a recently discovered land survey put into question tomorrow’s voting on the legality and effectiveness of the town warrant article concerning casino gambling at Tyler Beach.
“Looks like news,” I said.
“You fucker,” he yelled, and the rest of the room started growing silent. “That was privileged communications! Private mail! You had no right to pass that information on to the newspaper.”
“Was the envelope sealed when you picked it up?”
He stopped, panting, slowly crumpling the newspaper in his hands. “You . . . ”
“What, you think I took that envelope, steamed it open, made a copy of the documents, left them for a reporter at the Tyler Chronicle, and then returned them to the envelope and sealed it? My, that’s a lot of double-crossing. Sounds like lawyer work, doesn’t it?”
Raymond was working himself up to another round when Felix put a hand on his shoulder. “Enough.”
“But, Felix, there were millions of dollars on the line, some very serious people and—”
“Raymond. Enough.”
“Millions!”
Felix’s entire demeanor changed, and the room grew cold. “Feel like a boat ride when this is all over?”
That did it, for that was history between them, how Felix had saved Raymond’s life by intercepting a one-way trip out to Boston Harbor. Raymond dropped the paper on the floor and stalked away. The conversation slowly resumed and got back to normal.
“Thanks,” I said.
“No problem.”
He said, “Still doing favors for the lovely Paula Quinn?”
“I am.”
“You hoping for something?”
“I’m always a hopeful
guy.”
Later Raymond came up to me and apologized, hugged me, and apologized again, and I said it was all right, and then I slipped out and drove back home, my Pilot moaning, groaning, and shuddering every mile of the way. Even with the celebration and the fine food and drink, I didn’t feel so hot.
After parking my Pilot in my new garage, I went to the front door and saw a white envelope tacked to its center. It had a return address of the FBI field office in Boston. I tore it off, opened it up, and there was a single sheet of paper, with the following typewritten words:
FOR SERVICES RENDERED.
And the paper was wrapped around fifty one-hundred-dollar bills.
That brought a smile, and I felt pretty good. I went inside, tossed off my coat, and with his business card in hand, I dialed Special Agent Krueger’s number.
And I got the blew-bleep of, We’re sorry, that number is no longer in service.
I tried a few more times. I even called the Boston field office of the FBI.
No joy.
Whoever Special Agent Krueger was, with his mission over, he went back to the place where I used to live and work, in the shadows.
I tossed the business card back on my kitchen counter and called it a day.
The phone rang in the middle of the night, and there was a burst of static and whining and I rolled over in bed and said, “Oh, Christ, not you again.”
Then something on the other end clicked and a brisk male voice said, “Cole? Is that you?”
I slowly sat up in bed. “That’s right. Who’s this?”
A sharp, older man’s laugh. “What? You don’t recognize the voice of your former editor?”
“Admiral Holbrook,” I said, realization slowly coming my way. “I thought you were overseas. Called back to active duty.”
“Still am,” he said.
It came together. “Have you been calling these past several days?”
“Shit yes, and in these mountains, satellite phones aren’t worth shit.”
I rubbed at my eyes. “Which mountains are those?”
A squeal and then, “—be stupid. Look, I don’t have much time here. You turned down the job as editor at Shoreline, am I right?”
“You’re right.”
“Don’t blame you,” he said. “Who the hell wants the aggravation? Question is, do you want your old job back? Monthly columnist?”
I guess some time passed, because he said, “You still there, Cole?”
“I am,” I said. “The answer is yes.”
“Good. You’re back on the payroll, full benefits, starting now. I might be back stateside next month, we’ll have dinner. If I do get back.”
“I’d like that very much. Perhaps you can tell me some of what you’ve been up to.”
Another squeal and burst of static. “Just the latest round in the newest Hundred Years’ War. We’re currently losing, but what the hell, the effort must be made, debts must be paid.”
Then he cut out.
Dead air.
I hung up the phone and stayed awake for a very long time.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The next day I went to the uptown fire station in Tyler, to do my civic duty and vote in the town election. The fire trucks and an ambulance had been parked outside to allow for the day’s voting, and it was a brisk March day indeed, with a sharp, biting breeze coming from offshore.
Usually town meetings can be a snooze-fest, but on this Tuesday in March, the voting line went out of the fire station and into the near parking lot. I saw a variety of signs for a variety of causes and candidates, but none supporting Article 13, the vote to allow casino gambling.
I went in, identified myself, got my lengthy ballot, went into a cloth-covered voting booth, and, grabbing a black marker, spent the next several minutes voting. I exited onto the shiny floor of the fire station, passed my ballot to a selectman I barely knew, and then I saw Diane Woods, leaning on a metal cane, wearing her police uniform, looking grand indeed.
As I went up to her, she said, “I hear you’ve been getting into trouble in North Tyler.”
“Guilty of something,” I said.
She shook her head, smiled. “Driving a van into an open home foundation. Surprised you didn’t break your silly neck.”
“It may be silly, but it does its job. How are you doing?”
“Oh, fine,” she said. “Just working a bit at the polls, providing a police presence in case communists or anarchists decide to disrupt the proceedings.”
“Don’t think there’ll be much chance of that.”
“Ah, but one can always hope,” she said. Diane shook her head and said, “Felix Tinios got off. Unbelievable.”
“Life is full of surprises.”
“Yeah, but a criminal like that . . .”
“I guess it just wasn’t his turn.”
A smile, and I said, “How are you doing?”
“Me? Doing great. PT’s going well, I’m catching up on some old cases, and I should be able to toss this cane away in a month.”
I looked to make sure we weren’t being closely observed, and I said, “How about that other thing?”
“That other thing?” she replied. “Oh, you mean my employment status, and the efforts of one Mark Spencer, town counsel, to push me out. Well, no worries there.”
I nodded with satisfaction. “Glad to hear it.”
“You should be,” she said. “Didn’t you hear the news?”
“Lots of news I probably haven’t heard about,” I said. “Which particular news is that?”
“Mark Spencer’s quit as town counsel,” she said. “And with that, no more worries on my end.”
I guess she took pity on me, and she said, “Poor bugger got arrested for drunk driving. Guess the selectmen and town manager allowed him to resign, instead of being fired.”
“Was he arrested here? In Tyler?”
“Christ, no. You think the Tyler cops would be stupid enough to do something like that on his home turf? He got arrested in Falconer.”
“What happened?”
She gently caressed the handle of her hated cane. “Maybe somebody saw him drinking a bit too much following a Chamber of Commerce breakfast a few days ago. Maybe notice was paid. Maybe the word got around to certain sympathetic police officers.”
I nodded.
Diane grinned. “Or maybe a lucky Falconer cop saw the son of a bitch weaving across a double-yellow line, and pulled him over. Who knows?”
“Not me,” I said.
Outside of the fire station, I found Paula Quinn, rapidly typing away on a laptop balanced on the hood of her light blue Ford Escort. She smiled as I approached and she said, “I’m on deadline here, doing a piece for the Associated Press about the election.”
“I understand.”
“Still, I have to thank you for the casino story.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Yes, I do.”
“All right,” I said. “How about this? Dinner tonight after the polls close?”
Paula ran a strand of hair behind her left ear. “That would be fine. Where?”
“My house,” I said. “If that’d be all right.”
She went back to her laptop. “That’d be perfect.”
So that night in my home, several hours later, I got dinner out in preparation for Paula’s arrival. Our meal would be a slow-cooked roast beef, with homemade gravy, as well as a homemade béarnaise sauce, along with twice-baked potatoes, salad, and a fine bottle of Chilean cabernet. I moved around the kitchen with sure footsteps, every now and then glancing at the pile of mail at the end of the counter and smiling, for buried there among the flyers and credit card come-ons and furniture store discounts was a fat envelope from my insurance company, along with an apologetic letter and a check so healthy it could run up and down the New Hampshire seacoast on its own.
At eight P.M. on the dot, the door opened up and Paula walked in, taking off her coat and tossing it on the couch. “There you go,” she
said, walking into the kitchen. “Voting over, ballots tallied, and that casino article is somewhere buried deep off Hampton Shoals.”
“Good news, I guess.”
“You guess?” she said, sniffing appreciatively and looking at the food laid out on the countertop. “As rude and as ticky-tacky as Tyler Beach can be, having a casino there . . . ugh.”
She turned to me, wearing flat black shoes, tight black slacks, and a white fuzzy sweater with pewter buttons going down the middle.
Paula’s gaze was open and steady.
“You look great,” I said.
“Glad you noticed.”
“I’ve always noticed.”
And then we were kissing, and kissing, and kissing, and long and delightful and tasty minutes later, she whispered in my ear and said, “Upstairs, right now.”
“What’s the hurry?” I asked, running my hands down her back and to the swell of her bottom.
“I don’t want to scare the horses,” she whispered, running a hand up underneath my shirt.
“Silly woman, there’s no horses here.”
“Silly man, haven’t you heard about seahorses?”
So upstairs we went.
Some delightful time later, we rushed downstairs to eat our cold dinner, which was still pretty good. We finished everything, decided to pile the dishes in the sink for later, and with a half bottle of Chile’s finest in hand, we raced back up to bed, and eventually, we emptied the bottle.
Eventually.
At some moment during the night, Paula slipped out of bed to use the bathroom, and she came back and looked out the window. “Huh,” she said. “Funny, when I drove down here, the stars were all out. Now it’s black. Must be a storm cell forming somewhere out there.”
“Maybe,” I said, admiring how she looked in my bedroom’s dim light, not wearing the proverbial stitch of clothing.
“Hey,” she said. “Do you know, there’s a hole in your window over here?”
“Really? Come back to bed and do tell me all about it.”
She giggled and ran back and made it a point to jump into bed with a squeal, and she slid underneath the covers, and her warm and smooth and delicious body was wrapped up with mine, and we kissed and we kissed. I could not believe the sweet sensation of it all.
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