Lamentation

by Joe Clifford

  The fake McGreevy’s head lay on the dash, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth, eyes locked in a death gaze. I checked for a pulse, just in case. He was already stiffening up. I could see my brother stirring in the back. I rifled through the dead man’s pockets, searching until I found his wallet. I flipped it open. There was the badge. And right beside it a driver’s license. Roger Paul, New York City. Ashton’s finest had handed my brother off to this guy to be killed.

  “Chris! Chris?”

  My brother groaned.

  “Hold on,” I said, “I’m getting you out of here.”

  I felt in the hitman’s jacket and retrieved the keys for the handcuffs. Then I saw the 9mm on the seat beside him. The last time I’d fired a gun was at beer cans up at Coal Creek. I stuck the pistol in the back of my pants.

  I moved to the rear, opening the door. “Can you move? Anything broken?”

  Chris flopped around, arms still cuffed behind him, pencil-thin neck cocked at an odd angle. Between the straggled strands of bleached blond hair, he had a giant gash on his forehead, and that goofy grin on his face.

  “Hey, little brother,” he said wearily, pushing through a smile. “I knew you wouldn’t let me down.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go. My apartment was obviously out. So too Charlie’s. We were already on the mountain and not far from the foothills. Thank God the truck still turned over when I tried starting it.

  The only person who knew about Ben Saunders’ place was my boss, Tom, and he was out of town for the next couple weeks. Sure, they’d eventually reach out to him, probably sooner than later, but it bought us some time. And I had the 9mm. I was convincing myself by the minute I’d use it if I had to. I wasn’t thinking so great, honestly. In the thin mountain air, oxygen doesn’t flow to your brain, synapses misfire, connections don’t get made. Smacking your skull against glass in a high-speed car crash doesn’t help, either. It’s not the best time to be trying to solve math equations. All I knew was that, until I figured this mess out, we were holing up at the old farmhouse.

  I steered the battered Chevy up the driveway. The U-Haul had been removed, carted off by Tom. I killed the lights, opened the garage, and gazed over the barren countryside. No neighbors for miles, the homestead ghostly. The snow came down steadily now and was starting to accumulate at my feet.

  I latched the overhead doors and sealed us in, then helped my brother out of the truck. He winced as I let him lean the full weight of his body on me. The burden wasn’t great. He felt as wasted away as a cancer patient in the late stages. I let us into the vestibule with the key I’d never given back to Tom.

  The only creature comforts that remained: a folding patio chair and a fire-damaged carpet in the living room. I’d thrown my jacket over Chris’ bum overcoat at the accident site, but he still shivered violently; it was every bit as cold inside the house as it was out. With the hit to his head and a bleeding gash, I worried he’d go into shock. I sat him by the fireplace while I went scouring for blankets or towels, old sheets, anything Tom might’ve left behind to help keep us from freezing to death. All I found was the stack of newspapers I’d been using to wrap valuables.

  Then I remembered the cord of wood I’d tripped over in the pantry, when I cut myself on that exposed nail. Hard to believe it had been only four days ago.

  I considered the smoke coming from the chimney, but quickly dismissed any concern. The only way someone might see the smoke through this storm was if they were coming here anyway. And if they were coming here anyway, what difference did it make? It wasn’t a tough call. I could hear Chris’ teeth chattering all the way in the kitchen. What was left of them, at least.

  Stacking the wood in a pyramid, I crinkled the old, dry newspaper, stuffing wadded sheets evenly, making sure they were perfectly spaced out, and got a flashback of my father doing the same. Down on a knee, arms thick as railroad ties, sweat stains pooled under pits, focused intently on the task at hand. Funny, when I pictured my father, didn’t matter the memory, he was never looking at me. Anytime I thought of him, he was watching someone else, doing something else, engaged in a random chore, but never meeting my eyes. Flames licked the parched newsprint, sparking the wood, and soon a fire raged.

  Chair and all, I dragged my brother as close to the heat as I could without burning him. He was nearly convulsive, he was so cold. I wrapped my arms tightly around him, rubbing his back, trying to warm him. I knelt down and checked the wound on his head. I couldn’t see much, the cut smeared and crusted over, mingling with the layers of homeless dirt.

  I went to the kitchen. Water still worked. Wet my shirttail, then cleaned Chris’ cut. The bleeding had stopped. When I washed away the dried blood, I saw the gash wasn’t as deep as I’d originally feared. In fact, once cleaned off, it wasn’t much more than a scratch.

  “It’s getting dark, Doc,” Chris rasped, shaking with exaggerated palsy. “Smoke? Can I get a last smoke?” He laughed. And instantly stopped the phony seizures. This was my brother’s fucked-up sense of humor, mocking my motherly concern.

  “Sure. Laugh it up.” I plopped on my ass and watched the flames dance, bathing the musty old room in a brilliant amber-orange hue. Shadows stretched across the hardwood, up water-stained walls, rendering my brother and me distorted versions of ourselves.

  I tossed him the cigarette pack. He bent far forward and lit one directly from the fire.

  “How’d you know that guy wasn’t really a cop?” he asked me, hopping up, suddenly spry.

  “Fisher. You remember him?”

  “Sure. You went to second base with his girlfriend back in high school. Gina something. Said she had a terrific rack.”

  “How the fuck do you remember that?”

  “Because you told me.”

  Guy couldn’t get it together long enough to visit a dentist, but he remembered me copping a feel in the tenth grade.

  “Whatever. So Fisher works as an investigator for an insurance company down in Concord, and he recognized the name. Seems a couple weeks ago, this detective turns up dead. Anyways, doesn’t matter now. The important part is, we figured it out as they were handing you over.”

  “You tell Turley?”

  “I tried to. Wasn’t a lot of time. Anyone pretending to be a cop wasn’t taking you for ice cream.” I looked up at him from the floor. “When did you figure it out?”

  He screwed up his face like he had to think about it. “Probably when he said he was going to shoot me in the head and bury me beneath the ice.”

  “You could’ve told him I had the disc.”

  “For what? So he could cut a hole big enough for two?” Chris turned. “Did you look at it?”

  “Yeah. So did Fisher and Charlie.”

  “And?”

  “And … I can’t say for sure. Could be Mr. Lombardi. There’s not much to go on. Only a couple pics show a face. Grainy as hell.” I reached to get back my cigarettes.

  “That’s what I figured. Pretty stupid of me, eh?”

  “I don’t know, Chris. Guy has the same hunched posture, and the computer did come from Lombardi. If you’d gotten more evidence, maybe you could’ve—”

  “What? Been a hero?” He winced a grin.

  “Did that Roger Paul guy say who he worked for?”

  “Didn’t have to,” Chris said, drawing deeply on his cigarette. “So what’s the plan, Wyatt Earp? We gonna smoke ’em outta their holes?” He laughed until he coughed a fit.

  Despite his “What, me worry?” act, my brother looked more peaked, drained, emaciated than usual. I was hardly an expert on the drug lifestyle and its physical toll, but I knew once you’d been on them long enough, you started needing them to survive, like food. And, boy, did he look hungry.

  “Haven’t really thought this through, little brother, have you?”

  “Didn’t exactly have the option of planning.” I checked my phone. Again. No bars. No surprise.

  “You know they
can trace your cell? Tri-ang-u-late,” he said, pronouncing every syllable. “They’re gonna find us eventually, you know that, right?”

  I tried to formulate an escape, conceive a plan. Nothing doing. I felt hopeless.

  “It was an accident,” Chris said. “Guy wasn’t even a real cop. Maybe they’ll just give you a stern warning this time. Get off with community service. I’m not sure vehicular manslaughter is even a crime anymore.” He chuckled.

  “There’s nothing funny about any of this.”

  Chris arched his back, stretching until he yawned. “Good call on the fire.” He peeled off my jacket and tossed it to me, shaking off his overcoat, quaking till he busted out a jellied shimmy. “You should just drive back.”

  “And what about you?”

  “What about me?” He smiled. “Don’t you know it’s too late for me, little brother?”

  “You don’t have to keep living this way,” I said. “You could get your ass straightened out, get a regular place to live, a job. You’re not even forty yet.”

  My brother wrinkled his mouth. “I’ve been at it too long.”

  “Bullshit. You could quit if you wanted to.”

  “You’re right,” he said. “And I don’t want to.”

  “How the hell can you say that? You want your teeth falling out? You want to sleep outside in the freezing cold? Sell your body? For what? Are the drugs really that good?”

  “The truth? I don’t even feel them anymore.” My brother reached for the sky, threadbare T-shirt rising. I could count each bony rib in the firelight. “I only feel it when I don’t do them.” He winked, then walked to the window. “No, I’m in too deep this time, and I don’t have the energy to fight my way out.”

  “What did you really do?” I said. “You broke into a house, a job site, so what?” I didn’t add that he’d also beaten the shit out of a man and broken his arm, trusting Turley at his word that he’d be able to keep that one off the books.

  “I don’t have an alibi for the night Pete died.”

  “But you didn’t do it.”

  He didn’t respond.

  I waited.

  “Right?”

  Slowly, he shook his head no. “People heard me making threats, though. I was his friend, his partner. I don’t have an alibi. And Adam and Michael know I know, and they won’t take a chance I’ll talk. I don’t have any leverage.”

  “We have that disc, right?”

  “No one can prove that’s Gerry Lombardi in those pictures. You said so yourself.”

  “We could at least turn it over to the cops. The accusation alone—”

  “From a junkie like me?”

  “I’ll back you up.”

  “Now why the hell would you do something like that?”

  “I have a son of my own. I can’t let a monster like that run loose. It’s sick. It’s wrong.”

  “You’re not even certain it’s Gerry Lombardi.”

  “But you are.”

  “Yes. I am.”

  “Then that’s good enough for me. I’ll back you up. We take the disc, go to the cops. The press. Full-on assault.”

  “You want to take on Adam and Michael Lombardi? Then you’ll have them after you too. No, little brother, I can’t let you do that. You’re right. You have a son. And you need to be there for him. This is a losing battle, and only one captain needs to go down with this ship.” He started humming, then singing quietly, swaying gently in waltz timing. I couldn’t make out the tune until I heard the words “Gitche Gumee,” and then I recognized “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.”

  “Will you knock it off?”

  “Does anyone know where the love of God goes?” he sang, earnestly. “When the waves turn the minutes to hours?”

  “Is everything a joke to you?” I said. “I know it wasn’t easy for you when they died. And I know it got you started on whatever this … this thing is you’re on. But regardless of what you think, it’s not too late. It’s never too late. We can check you in somewhere, get you help. I mean it. I’ll vouch for you with this disc, back you up all the way.”

  “You’re not really dumb enough to stick your neck out for me, are you?” He sighed. “When will you stop being such a hard case? I saw the way Jenny was looking at you. When I said you still loved her, she blushed, right in the middle of that shit storm. She blushed.” Chris flicked his butt into the fire. “What are you waiting for? You’re wasting your life.”

  “I’m wasting my life? Oh, that’s rich. This coming from the guy who hangs out at truck stops …” I caught myself. “You don’t understand. I’m not husband material. I’m not father material. I’m not cut out for it like Dad was. I can’t do that domestic shit. I can’t give Jenny and Aiden what they need. They’re better off—”

  “What? With an abusive asshole like Brody? Give me a break. You’re acting like a chickenshit coward, and you’re selling yourself short. You think you can’t measure up to our father, so you don’t bother trying.”

  He turned slightly over his shoulder. The flames carved up his cadaverous features.

  This might’ve been the most honest conversation I’d ever had with my brother. And I hated him for doing this to me now.

  “What would you know about it, Chris? You take nothing seriously. You take no responsibility for anything.”

  “I did it,” my brother said, as casually as if he were confessing to eating the last cupcake, or leaving behind an empty container of milk in the fridge.

  “Did what?” I asked, agitated.

  “What they say I did.”

  My only thought was Pete, which made no sense, since we’d just talked about that. “You’re changing your story now? Telling me you murdered Pete? I don’t believe you. You’re being ridiculous. Five minutes ago—”

  “Not Pete,” he said.

  A chill ran through me.

  He turned back around, talking through the glass, as if to the night. I watched his breath spread over the windowpane, cracking silver ice on a mountain lake.

  “I waited for the night of the Merriman’s annual Christmas party,” he said, “because I knew he’d take Lamentation Bridge. The bridge always ices over that time of year.”

  “What are you—”

  “I’d driven with him enough to know he took Lamentation Bridge faster than he should, especially when he’d had a couple drinks, and he always had a couple drinks before the Merriman’s party. Of course, I couldn’t have known it would actually work. Brake lines snapping ain’t an exact science.” At this he peered over his shoulder at me, a wicked glint in his eye. “But it didn’t matter, Jay. If it hadn’t worked that time, I’d have kept trying until it did.”

  “You’re lying. Why are you saying this? You’re lying.”

  He went back to talking softly to the night. “She knew,” he said, voice so lulled it was almost a whisper. “The whole time, she knew. I wasn’t going to let him do to you what he’d done to me.” My brother let his head fall, resting on the cold glass.

  I lowered my shoulder and tackled him to the ground. We crashed in a heap. The 9mm in the back of my pants fell out and slid across the floor. I had him pinned.

  “That didn’t happen!” I screamed into his face. I began raining blows on his chest. He didn’t squirm or try to fight back. “You’re making that up! Like that bullshit drowning story. And all your other bullshit stories.” I grabbed him by the collar, shaking him violently. He responded like a limp rag doll, flopping about, googly eyes rolling back in his skull. “I know you’re lying! Tell me you’re lying!”

  I let him go. His head thudded. He looked off to the side, like he’d grown disinterested in the conversation, sleepy, or simply bored.

  “Was it Lombardi? Did he do that to you? Is that why you hate him? Is that what this is all about? Answer me, Chris!” I was almost crying. “Dad never did that. Tell me you’re lying. Tell me that never happened.”

  “I’ve told so many stories,” my brother said. “I’m not sure w
hat’s even true anymore.”

  We both fell silent.

  Feedback hissed from a bullhorn. Flashing colors swirled through the windows like a kaleidoscope. White-hot spotlight poured in.

  “Come out with your hands on your head!”

  That wasn’t Pat or Turley.

  I dragged Chris away from the window, sticking him in the corner away from an open shot. I picked up the 9mm from the floor and pointed it at him. “Stay there!”

  This wasn’t happening.

  I peeked out the kitchen window. There were a lot of cop cars, way more than Ashton’s limited fleet. And more were speeding up the driveway, sirens sounding, blues and reds whirling, tires screeching to a halt.

  I crept toward the front door. I heard Chris walk into the kitchen behind me.

  “They want me, Jay. Not you.”

  “Shut up. Let me think. I told you not to move!”

  “Lombardi won’t stop.”

  I spun around. “That isn’t Adam or Michael Lombardi out there. Those are cops.”

  “Those aren’t Ashton cops. They’re not putting me in the county jail this time. I’m going to prison, little brother. I’ll be dead before breakfast. There’s no way I walk out of here alive.”

  “Stay put and let me handle this.”

  “Jay, it’s me, Turley. I need you and your brother to come out. Hands on your head. Okay? We’ve got to straighten this out, Jay. It’s not too late to straighten this all out. Come out with your hands up.”

  “He wasn’t a cop!” I shouted back.

  “I know. Now come out with your hands on your head before someone else gets hurt!”

  There was a seismic shrill as the megaphone was ripped from Turley’s grip.

  The police switched off their lights, casting the house in total darkness.

  “This is Lester Gibbons of the Concord Police. Exit the premises now with your hands on your head. This is the last time you will be instructed to do so. You have thirty seconds to comply.”

  “Or what?” I shouted back.

  “What are you planning on doing, little brother? Going out like Butch and Sundance?” Chris chuckled in the dark.