“Hey, Sal,” Joel said, still smiling.
A smile finally broke, slowly spreading across Sal’s otherwise menacing face. “Had a feeling you might be around sooner or later.”
“It’s good to see you, man.”
As they closed the gap between them, Joel offered his hand. Sal engulfed it with his big, meaty paw and gave it a firm shake. His body still looked powerful, but he’d acquired a sizable gut that hung over his belt. Once-chiseled arms, while still thick, covered with bulging veins and likely solid, were wrinkled and no longer sculpted as they’d been in his youth. He took a long pull on his beer, killing it, then crushed the can and fired it over into the side yard. “That tasted rather moreish. You want a brewski?”
“Little early in the morning for me, but thanks.”
“Don’t worry about it. Light beer, pussy shit. You’ll be fine.” He belched, gave Joel’s shoulder a playful slap that nearly knocked him over, then motioned to the garage. “Come on, let’s get out of the cold and talk.”
Inside, the house looked a lot different than it had years before. It hadn’t been updated and was cluttered, messy and old. When they were kids, Sal’s parents had always kept the house immaculate. Now it looked like it needed a thorough cleaning and straightening.
Feeling as if he were following his old friend back into the past, they entered the house through the side door and walked directly into the kitchen. Sal grabbed a couple beers from the refrigerator, tossed one across the table to Joel, then headed into the living room.
“Need to get somebody in here to clean,” Sal said, pushing some magazines from the couch to the floor before sitting down in a recliner across from it. “Had a chick that used to come in and do it, but she went back to school or some shit.”
“No worries.” Joel sat on the couch, which looked almost as old as he was, and noticed a dusty hutch against the far wall showcasing all of Sal’s old amateur boxing trophies and belts, including his Golden Glove trophies, now faded and in serious need of polishing. Much like Sal, they’d lost a good deal of luster with time and age.
“Me and Barbie divorced a few years back,” he announced.
“Sorry to hear that.”
“Yeah, I was banging this cocktail waitress worked over at the dog track in Raynham.” Sal shrugged, and popped open his beer. “Got bagged. Wasn’t the first time she caught me with my pants down, if you get my drift, so I knew I was fucked.”
Unsure of what to say, Joel just nodded.
“How about you, still married?”
“Yup. Taylor and I are doing well.”
Sal took a gulp of beer. “Good,” he finally responded. “That’s good.”
The eight-hundred-pound gorilla in the room watched from the corner as silence fell over the house.
“Kids?” Sal asked a moment later.
“Nope, didn’t do the kids thing.”
Sal’s right leg bounced nervously like it had when he was a kid. “I got three,” he said. “Two girls and a boy.”
“No kidding? That’s great.”
“Ready for this shit? I’m a fucking grandfather, dude.”
“No way.”
“What are you gonna do?” Sal waved at him the way one might at a flying bug. “My boy—Sal Jr.—he’s just like his old man. Little bastard can’t keep it in his pants for five minutes. Lives with his girlfriend in Warwick, she dances over in Providence. You should see the tits on this kid. Madone. Anyway, they had a little girl few months ago. So it’s official, I’m old as fuck. The other two, the girls, they’re still living at home with Barbie and the dick she married over in Acushnet. They’re all living happily ever after in my house, got to love it. Lost it in the divorce.”
“That’s rough, but congratulations on the granddaughter.”
“Yeah.” Sal sighed. “My father died in 2000, and we lost Ma a few years ago.”
Joel remembered Sal’s father as a gruff and unpleasant man who rarely spoke, and his mother as a sweet, heavyset woman who loved to cook and feed Sal’s friends whenever they were at the house. “Jesus, man, sorry to hear that.”
“Thanks. So I’m a fucking orphan now too.” He laughed and powered down more beer. “Ma left us the house and I needed a place to live, so I bought out my brother and sister. Got to live someplace, right? Why not the old neighborhood?”
“Doesn’t look like it’s changed that much,” Joel said.
“Not much does.” Sal killed his beer, dropped it on a cluttered coffee table between them, then sat back. “Except for you, maybe.”
“I’m still me, Sal.”
“I don’t know, with them khakis and that nice button-up shirt, you look like a fucking yuppie over here. One of them little prissy boys from Maine now, huh?”
Joel knew he wasn’t serious, it was just Sal’s way, and as he’d said, not much had changed. “Listen, I know I lost touch with all you guys and…”
“That’s how the cookie crumbles, paisan. You got out of college and moved on, had new friends, a different life. We all understood that. But you cut us loose and never came back. People got married, had kids, lived, died, and you were never there for any of it, man. For Christ’s sake, you even had a private wedding and didn’t invite any of us.”
Now he was serious, and he’d left no room for misunderstanding that. “Sal, it was a small ceremony with just immediate family.”
“Hey, all I’m saying is that we were a band of brothers growing up, right? Figured that meant something.”
“Come on, man, of course it did.”
“Seemed like you washed your hands of us, you know? Like we didn’t matter. Same way Trent did. But Trent was a mess. We expected it from him, not from you.”
Joel opened his beer but didn’t drink any. “I’m sorry, Sal, for everything. I had a lot of what I thought was success very quickly, and it went to my head. Then when it all came crashing down, it took me with it. I had to run if I wanted to survive it, had to start over somewhere else. I needed to let the past go. All of it.”
“That don’t forgive everything, but I understand. We all got our problems. You did good, better than any of us. You got your chance and you got your education and you got the hell out of here. Used to piss me off, ’cause I thought you got too good for us, too fancy, and kinda left us in the dust, you know? But when I got a little older, I understood.”
“You could’ve gotten out if you wanted to. You were a great boxer, could’ve gone pro. Might’ve been heavyweight champ one day.”
“Nah,” he laughed, his emotions turning on a dime just as they had when he was younger. “Remember when I got that chance to go to New York City and train at Gleason’s with the big boys? That pro trainer and manager were looking at me, seeing if the hype was justified. Turned out it wasn’t. I was just a big fish in a little pond, dude. I might’ve been a badass around here, but out there, I was one more punk barely good enough to spar with those guys. Got my ass kicked from pillar to post, and then I knew: boxing wasn’t supposed to be my life. Cars, that’s my life. That’s what always made me happy, working on cars. I boxed ’cause that’s what my old man wanted me to do. All it ever got me was headaches, a bunch of scars, a busted nose and a cabinet full of trophies from a hundred years ago nobody gives a shit about. But being a mechanic? That got me my own place, my own business. I supported my family and put food on the table, toys under the tree at Christmas. I’m my own man. I don’t answer to nobody and I do what I love all day. So, fucked up as my life is sometimes, I done okay, you know?” He sat forward. “But you hit the big time.”
“Not really. It just looked that way for a while.”
“I read your book when it came out, saw you on all them shows.”
“You learned how to read?”
“Little bit.” He grinned. “You fuck.”
Joel laughed lightly, hoping it mi
ght defuse the awkwardness of the situation.
“Word was it all fell apart though, and you had to go away for a while.” After seeing Joel’s discomfort, he added, “Westport’s a small town, man, then and now. People talk.”
“I had to get some help,” Joel explained, “but that was years ago. I’m fine now. Been fine for a long time.”
“Glad to hear it, bro.” He cracked his knuckles with a loud pop. “But good as it is to see you and catch up, we both know you’re here about Lonnie.”
Joel nodded.
“Me and Dorsey, we figured we’d see you at the funeral.”
“I didn’t know, Sal.”
He raised a skeptical eyebrow.
“I had no idea Lonnie was dead until his daughter came to see me,” Joel told him. “Lonnie knew about what I’d gone through, and he told Katelyn to leave me alone if anything ever happened to him. She did, until she had nowhere else to turn and asked me to look into his death.”
Sal nodded. Apparently the response was acceptable. “You still a reporter?”
“More or less.”
“You on the clock then?” With another sigh, Sal removed his hat, tossed it on the coffee table and ran a hand through what was left of his hair.
Joel hadn’t expected that. Sal’s thick locks were all but gone. He still combed what little remained straight back, but there wasn’t even enough hair left to slick it back like he had in his youth. “No, I’m here as a friend.”
“Hard to believe Lonnie’s really gone. We were still friends, still hung out every once in a while. Now I wish we spent more time, you know?” He caught Joel looking. “Yeah, lost my lettuce. Nice, huh? I’m fat now too, in case you were wondering. The chicks still dig me, though, who knows why?”
“I’m thinking it’s your charm.”
“Could be my giant cock.”
“See? What could be more charming than that?”
Sal smiled but it faded quickly. “So you find anything out or what?”
“Few things. I think Lonnie was into something heavy, Sal.”
“Like what?”
“Not sure yet.”
“Or maybe you just don’t want to tell me yet.”
Sal was many things, but stupid wasn’t one of them. “You mentioned Trent before,” Joel said, then took a sip of beer. “Katelyn said he’s out west somewhere.”
“Last I heard, yeah. I haven’t seen or talked to Trent in years, dude.”
“Any of his family still around?”
“His sister lives in the Midwest someplace. His mother got Alzheimer’s and they put her in a nursing home few years back.”
“Any idea where?”
“New Bedford. Whaling City Shores, it’s in the south end.”
“How do you know all this?”
“Like I said, man, small town.”
“And what about Trent?”
“What about him? He lost his fucking mind. You know how he got all weird right after high school with all that punk rock bullshit and all that paranoid crap about the world going to hell? He got heavier into drugs and drinking, had a lot of problems. Married this real cunt from Swansea, bitch acted like her pussy dripped diamonds. You know the type. He was crazy in love with her, though. It didn’t last a year, and when she divorced him, he really went off the fucking rails. I mean, you remember Trent, he was always weird, and I used to bust his balls about his look and all that but I never let anybody else hassle him or any of youse. Shit, like you used to say, we all deal with things different, right? That was Trent’s way.”
Joel nodded. He knew what Sal was referencing without actually saying it.
“But he got worse, started talking all this crazy shit, conspiracies and how the government was coming to get us all, crap like that. He came by, said he was going to the desert to live by himself until the end of the world, ’cause it was coming soon. Poor bastard did too many drugs. You ask me, it rotted his brain, scrambled it all up, you know? Last time I seen him, to be honest, I didn’t really want him around me. He was bad, Joel. Real bad. I’m talking full-throttle, motherfucking crazy.”
“And that was it, he was gone just like that?”
“Never saw him again.” Sal stood up. “Why, what’s Trent got to do with all this?”
“I was told Lonnie was in touch with Trent not long before he was killed.”
Sal flashed a questioning look. “Told by who?”
“Somebody that worked with him. The information’s solid, and I believe it.”
“Lonnie never said shit to me about Trent being back in the picture.” Sal thought a moment. “You tell the cops this?”
“No. Far as I can tell, they’re going to pin Lonnie’s murder on a drug deal gone bad or something along those lines.”
“Dickheads. Wasn’t no drug deal, I’d bet my life on that.”
“You got any theories, Sal?”
He seemed surprised at being asked, but rather than answer, disappeared into the kitchen and returned a moment later with a fresh beer. “Like you, I was born and raised here. It’s my home. I love it. There’s no place like it. We got our share of assholes, but mostly there’s good people here.” Like a black cloud passing over the moon, something dark and deadly crossed Sal’s face. “There’s darkness here too, though. Who knows that better than us? It was here long before we were here, and it’ll be here long after we’re gone. We all know it. We all feel it. We all live with it. And we all look the other way. We pretend it’s not there. But deep down we know better, don’t we? We knew about it from the time we were kids. Back in the day, you found out what goes on in that darkness. Maybe somewhere along the line, Lonnie found out too.”
A heavy burst of wind rocked the house.
“Did Lonnie tell you something before he was killed?”
Sal remained standing but was having trouble staying still. “He was seeing shit, did you know that? Said there were things after him. Demons. It was crazy.”
“Crazy like Trent?”
“No, not like Trent.”
“I don’t understand.”
“See, Trent thought he was fine and it was everybody else that was crazy.” Sal looked down at the floor. “But Lonnie…Lonnie was going nuts…and he knew it, Joel. The poor bastard knew it.”
Joel had another swallow of beer. “Did he ever mention a Tuser Industries?”
Sal shook his head. “No, don’t ring a bell.”
“What about a man named Jerry Simpson?”
“Never heard of him.”
“Does the term number stations mean anything to you?”
“What’s that?”
Joel put his beer can down on the coffee table. “Still working on it.”
“I know Lonnie was into something, like you said. I just don’t know what.” Sal squared his stance. “But if you do, you need to tell me, man.”
“I’m still trying to figure out what’s real and what isn’t.”
“Good luck with that.”
“It’s like years ago, when I was investigating the cult thing. Some of what I ran across was so insane, so impossible, and yet there were these kernels of truth that couldn’t be denied. It makes you start to second-guess everything, but sooner or later, you come to realize that not everybody can be crazy.”
“You sure?” Sal asked.
“No. I wish I was, but I’m not.”
“Seems that way sometimes, don’t it? Look at us. Trent. Lonnie. Even you.”
“I’m not insane, Sal.”
“Maybe not now.”
“Maybe not ever.”
“They put you away for it.”
“Afraid you’ll be next?”
Sal flexed his arms, then shook them loose like he had years ago before he’d pound on his heavy bag. But he wasn’t intimidating anyone. Even after
all these years, they knew each other too well for that. He was afraid, just like the rest of them, because he’d been hanging on by his fingernails for years, and it was only a matter of time before he lost his grip. It was who they were, what they knew.
And what they didn’t.
“What do you want from me, Joel?”
It took everything he had to get the words out. “Do you ever think about it?”
Sal stared at him with dark, angry eyes.
“The black car,” Joel pressed, “do you ever think about it?”
For what seemed an eternity, only the wind answered.
The big black Cadillac at the top of the street…
“I still dream about it sometimes,” Joel admitted.
Sal walked over to the bay window, looked out at the street. “Me too,” he finally said, his voice uncharacteristically soft. “But we always said we’d never talk about that again.”
Just…there…motionless…the windshield and windows tinted dark and impenetrable…
“Maybe it’s time.”
“There’s nothing to talk about. We don’t even know what happened.”
Four boys on their bicycles…watching…wondering why it’s stopped there and looks as if the car itself is staring them down…
“Don’t we?”
“Don’t go getting all cutesy clever with me, bro.” Sal remained at the window, his back to Joel, his arms hanging at his sides and his hands clenching into fists, then releasing, again and again. “This is me you’re talking to. All I know is, nothing was ever the same after that day. That’s what I got.”
And then the tires screech and it’s barreling toward them, rocketing down the street straight for them, the summer sun reflecting off the shiny hood, blinding them…
“Something happened, Sal. To all of us.”
“We were just kids,” he said suddenly, turning away from the window and stuffing his hands in his pants pockets. “It was just a game.”
“We told ourselves that, but it’s bullshit. Something got in our heads and—”
Orphans of Wonderland Page 15