Port City Black and White

by Gerry Boyle

  “Where you going?” Brandon said.

  Across the sidewalk, the patch of lawn in front of 317, right up to the building. Brandon and Kat followed, like Christiansen the handler following his dog.

  “Hear it?” Lizzie said. “You gotta hear it now. Oh, my dear sweet Jesus.”

  They squatted beside her, were still.

  “My God,” Brandon said.

  Big Liz said, “See? They’re here. They’re all around us.”

  “What?” Kat said, then, “I hear it.”

  Brandon raised himself up, stayed in a crouch. He looked over to see Mr. Otto standing at the corner of the house, saying, “You okay?”

  Then up to see Mrs. Young in her window. The curtain fell shut.

  “He’s here,” Brandon said.

  Kat moved beside him, froze. Listened. Brandon crouched by the foundation. Listened again. Kat followed. “I can hear it,” she said.

  It was a baby. A frantic, gasping cry.

  “Oh, my God,” Kat said.

  “I told you,” Big Liz whispered. “They’re burnin’ him slow.”

  Brandon stopped in front of a cellar window, boarded over, the plywood painted black. He pulled at it, then stood. Kicked it once, twice. The wood splintered and he and Kat bent, pried the pieces loose. It was louder now—a baby crying. There was pink insulation behind the plywood and they pulled it out by the fistful until they came to an inner board. Brandon squatted and kicked again—once, twice, three times—and the inner board flew off.

  He spun around, stuck his head down and in. Annie Young was looking up at him. She was holding a baby, jiggling it in her arms. The baby looked up at Brandon, too.

  Lincoln Anthony stopped crying.

  Annie Young told O’Farrell that she was just doing her moral duty—they ought to be thanking her, saving the baby from that place, from that horrible excuse for a mother.

  This was in the interview room on the second floor, a digital recorder ticking off the seconds, Annie waiving her right to remain silent, instead talking for seventy-four straight minutes about Chantelle Anthony, her family, her druggie friends. About the State, how they wouldn’t do anything to help the child, who Annie Young found that night, “wallowing in his own excrement.”

  The room was there in the basement. It was Mr. Young’s old ham-radio studio, soundproofed so Mrs. Young didn’t have to listen to his “infernal chatter about nothing with a bunch of nobodies.” Annie Young brought Lincoln down that night and, in the days that followed, picked up baby stuff, little by little.

  When O’Farrell said this was kidnapping, a Class-A felony, Annie bristled.

  “What would you have done, Detective?” she said. “I mean, put yourself in my place.”

  “I think I would have called the police, and the police would have called Child Protective,” O’Farrell said.

  “And they would have handed that poor child right back,” Annie Young said.

  “We wouldn’t have had a young woman jumping off a bridge,” O’Farrell said.

  “She was killing herself slowly anyway,” Annie Young said. “One life sacrificed to save another.”

  While Annie Young was telling her story, Brandon and Perry were in another interview room down the corridor. Another recorder was running. Brandon started with Mia, her friend Lily, her partner Winston.

  The woman in the restaurant from the Ocean Princess, the guy from New York in the home invasion, Lily armed and ready to shoot. Brandon explained that he had found out about the guy dying in St John.

  “What are the chances?” he said. “A crewman dies in a crackhouse, a guy breaks into their house and he turns out to be from a Jamaican posse that deals drugs. And some lady is sure that Winston was on that ship.”

  “So you called the cruise line, identified yourself as an investigator.”

  “Which I am,” Brandon said.

  “We’ll talk about that later. Go on with the story,” Perry said.

  Brandon said he figured it this way: Lily had hooked up with Winston on the ship, except he wasn’t Winston from Barbados. He was Alston Kelley from Jamaica, and he was delivering drugs to St. John. Except instead of making the drop, he—or they—ripped off the buyer, kept the money, and burned the other guy up.

  “Who was Winston Clarke,” Perry said.

  “And Kelley takes his identity, too.”

  “But the Garden Posse didn’t track him down?”

  “I think they just did, by accident.”

  “And he’s too dug in here to just pack up and go,” Perry said.

  “Probably began to believe his own story. Restaurant was making money. Nice life in Portland, Maine. Pretty girlfriend.”

  “Who’s loaded.”

  “I think that had dried up. Why she needed this, to keep up appearances.”

  “Either kill and rob or get a job,” Perry said.

  “It’s a no-brainer,” Brandon said.

  Perry had to smile.

  “And then you started asking questions.”

  “About the cruise ship,” Brandon said. “Lily panicked, thinking things were unraveling.”

  “But stopping you was the last chance to tie things back up.”

  “I’m glad they weren’t better at that.”

  “Peter Principle,” Perry said. “We rise to the level of mediocrity.”

  “A drug runner and a trust-funder,” Brandon said. “I guess in Canada they just got lucky.”

  Mia’s flight was early, the pilot saying something about strong westerly winds. She figured that was an omen, the winds blowing her back to the man she loved.

  Sitting in her window seat, watching the sky turn from black to deep blue to a gorgeous salmon, she told herself they could work it out. She’d decided when she was talking to her parents, the two of them ganging up on Brandon, Mia knowing she had to come to his defense. Had to be with him.

  She’d be more accommodating, go with the flow. One rule: When they did have time, they’d spend it together. Take the boat out and anchor in a secluded cove. Shut the world away.

  And then she was asleep and the attendant was tapping her shoulder. She shook herself awake, got up, edged her way into the line of passengers, trotted across the tarmac, up the stairs, out into the lounge.

  Mia looked for Lily, but she wasn’t there, as she’d promised. Mia checked her phone. Lily hadn’t sent a text. Hadn’t called.

  Waiting for her suitcase, she looked back toward the doors, the sidewalk. No Lily. The bag came around and she edged her way in, grabbed it, wheeled it to the door and outside, expectant.

  Nobody.

  She checked her phone, started to send Lily a text. And then the Saab came down the access road, her Saab. With Brandon at the wheel.

  So the two of them had planned this, Mia thought. Probably Lily said, “I’m supposed to pick her up, but why don’t you go. Surprise her. It’ll be so romantic.”

  Brandon agreeing, maybe picking up some flowers.

  The car rolled up and she ran to it. Brandon was smiling, happy, but something wasn’t right. It was his sad smile, Mia thought, and they hugged on the sidewalk, but then she pushed his face back and said, “What?”

  “We have to talk,” Brandon said.

  “Are we okay?” Mia said. “Please don’t tell me we’re not okay.”

  “No,” Brandon said. “We’re good. The two of us, we’re going to do just fine. We have to.”

  It was Thursday, twenty-six hours later, a little before 4 a.m. In a little town called North Fryeburg, Maine, an Oxford County deputy named Beliveau was backed into the brush along a back road, just a hundred yards from the New Hampshire line. He had the plate number of the Mercedes on a sticky on his dash. When the silver SUV actually went by, Beliveau said, “Holy shit.”

  And then he floored it, not wanting to lose the biggest arrest of his four-month career.

  He got up on the Mercedes bumper, lights and siren on, then swerved left and pulled alongside. Screamed “Pull over!” i
nto the PA, and the Mercedes did, the cruiser cutting it off.

  The driver bailed, but he wasn’t running for the woods. He was coming toward the cruiser, big black guy, looked like a movie star, smiling, walking with a limp. Beliveau was out of the car, crouched behind the door, gun leveled.

  “Stop right there. Put your hands up and turn around.”

  The guy was saying, “What’s the problem, sir?” Still walking, he said, “Do you want my ID?” He reached behind him, Beliveau shouting, “Hands out, hands out.”

  “But I have my license right here,” the guy said, still reaching—as a woman popped out of the Mercedes and screamed, “Officer, he’s got a gun.”

  “Lily, what are you doing?” the guy screamed, turning back toward her, but when he whirled around, his gun was out and showing in the headlights, not pointed at the deputy, not yet, not ever. Beliveau fired, once, then again, the first time other than at the range. The guy stumbled backwards, dropped the gun, turned toward the woman, her head showing behind the car.

  “Lily,” he said as he fell.

  Beliveau stepped out from behind he door. And he almost shot Lily, too, as she came running at him, crying, saying over and over, “He was holding me hostage. He was holding me hostage.”

  Those were the stories that played out in the Portland Tribune.

  Portland Woman: Lover Threatened Her With Death

  Lily Lawrence says restaurateur had secret past; if she revealed truth, she’d be killed

  By Matt Estusa

  Staff Writer

  The girlfriend of a prominent Portland restaurant owner says the Jamaican man forced her to witness the killing of a Canadian man two years ago, then said he or members of his drug “posse” would kill her if she ever told authorities.

  Lily Lawrence is facing multiple charges, including murder and the attempted murder of a Portland police officer. Lawrence said she was repeatedly threatened with death if she tried to leave or turn in her boyfriend, known as Winston Clarke.

  Clarke, who police say was really Alston Kelley, was shot and killed by an Oxford County deputy on July 18. “Eventually, I just gave up,” Lawrence said, in an interview at the Cumberland County Jail. “I was exhausted from living in fear.”

  Said Lawrence’s attorney, Bradley Hornsby, of Portland, “It’s an absolutely classic case of the Stockholm syndrome. She not only was forced to keep his secret, but she was also brainwashed into thinking this man actually loved her.”

  Lawrence is charged with the attempted murder of Portland police officer Brandon Blake, a rookie cop who reportedly became suspicious of Clarke and began to investigate. In an exclusive interview, Lawrence said it was Clarke/Kelley who tried to kill Blake three times—by setting fire to his boat in a South Portland marina; shooting at his car in South Portland; and assailing him in his girlfriend’s Munjoy Hill apartment.

  “I couldn’t stop him,” Lawrence said. “He terrified me. It was like I was paralyzed.”

  Blake has been at the center of several police firestorms in the city, since he was hired a year after shooting a man dead in a city hotel.

  Investigators concluded that Blake killed Joel Fuller, 29, of Portland, but the shooting was justified.

  Art Student Pleads Guilty In Immigrant’s Death

  Paul Boekamp, 21, to receive 30-year sentence for drowning Sudanese teen who was carrying their unborn child

  By Matt Estusa

  Staff Writer

  A Portland art student has pleaded guilty to the murder of a 17-year-old Sudanese immigrant, saying he was afraid of what would happen when her family learned of the relationship.

  Boekamp, who lived two blocks from Fatima Otto on Granite Street in the city’s Parkside neighborhood, said he drowned the young woman after she said she was pregnant, he was the father, and she was going to tell her father and brothers.

  “I figured they would kill me if they found out,” Boekamp wrote in a statement given to authorities.

  He confessed to drowning Otto in a bathtub at his apartment, then throwing her body off the Portland bridge to make her death appear a suicide.

  Otto would have been the second young woman from her tenement house on Granite Street to kill herself by jumping from the bridge. Chantelle Anthony, 23, leapt to her death from the bridge after her six-month-old son, Lincoln, went missing in July. Police later found the boy had been taken by neighbors, who said they feared Anthony’s lifestyle, which included the use of illegal drugs, was harming the child.

  Portland Woman Charged In Baby’s Abduction

  Police say downstairs neighbor snatched Lincoln Anthony, hid him in cellar

  The Portland woman charged with abducting a six-month-old baby from a neighbor in her Granite Street apartment house says she’d do the same thing again under the same circumstances. “To leave that little boy in that household—that would be a crime,” Young said.

  Anne J. Young, 41, is charged with kidnapping and unlawful restraint in the case. She has not yet entered a plea, but in an interview with the Tribune, she said six-month-old Lincoln Anthony was living in deplorable conditions, and she felt she had no choice but to take him.

  Young is alleged to have kept the baby for five days in a secret basement room, before being discovered by police. In an interview at the Cumberland County Jail, where she is being held without bail, Young said she considered alerting authorities to conditions in the third-floor apartment, but felt nothing would be done.

  “Drugs, drinking, smoking, neglect—you name it, that child was subjected to it,” Young said. “I had no choice.”

  The child’s mother, Chantelle Anthony, 23, leapt to her death from the Portland Bridge after the child disappeared. The woman’s family charges that harsh treatment of the young mother by Portland police led to her suicide.

  The child has been given to his father, Toby Koski, of Portland, a fisherman and U.S. Army veteran.

  It was a Sunday, August 7, and all three stories had installments in that day’s Sunday Tribune, including an odd follow-up to the Brandon Blake shooting. The gun was bought on craigslist. It was delivered to Winston Clarke by two men, including Lance McCabe, boyfriend of Chantelle Anthony. In a box left on a step.

  Brandon didn’t read it. He left the paper where it lay on the dock. Jumped off Bay Witch, unhooked the stern line, hopped back on. Mia throttled up, eased the boat out of the slip, past the floats and out into the harbor.

  The newspaper was left behind.

  They motored out of the harbor, Mia at the helm. The wind was out of the west, 10 knots. The sky was a deep, dense blue. The bay was blue-green, their wake a pale plume, like something on an exotic bird.

  Bay Witch rose and fell with the slight swell, gulls rising up in front of her bow, lobster buoys swept aside. Brandon and Mia were quiet, watching the boats on the bay, the islands coming up. They passed between Great Diamond and Peaks islands, skirted the southwest tip of Long. Just south of Long Island was Vaill Island, with a sheltered cove facing the morning sun, a crescent of sandy beach.

  Mia slowed as they came around the island’s southeast tip. Brandon went forward and waited as she swung the boat back into the wind.

  “Okay,” Mia called, and Brandon released the anchor. The chain ran, then slowed as the anchor caught and the boat fell back.

  Mia shut the motor off, went to the stern. Brandon was there and he pulled the dinghy in. Mia eased down the ladder and got in the stern. Brandon climbed in and rowed to the beach.

  Mia carried her sandals as she waded ashore. Brandon beached the dinghy. Mia spread the blanket. They sat side by side. Brandon opened his book, about strategies used in naval battles of the War of 1812. Mia had a legal pad and she began to write.

  She looked over.

  “You and me, right?” she said.

  “Oh, yeah,” Brandon said. “Now and forever.”

  Mia smiled, went back to her pad, sketching out thoughts for a new story.

  When Margaret was twenty, she had a doz
en close friends—a big, boisterous, nosy clan that made every decision a group one, every agreement consensus. There was one rule: Be honest. Violators were expelled.

  By the time she was twenty-four she was left with just one friend. The only other person on the planet she could fully trust, if not totally understand. He was the last man standing.