Straw Man

by Gerry Boyle

  Roxanne said Sophie could have a quick tub in the morning, said she had to head for bed. Sophie gave me a hug and I kissed her good night and she trooped up the stairs in front of Roxanne, saying, “Head for bed” over and over in a singsong voice.

  I stepped outside onto the deck, peered not at the stars, but at the blackening wall of woods. I walked down the steps and across the lawn, stopping every thirty feet or so and listening. I heard the night sounds—voles and moles rustling in the leaves—but nothing else. I crossed to the road and looked both ways. To my left, a quarter mile away at the top of the rise, headlights flared on.

  I reached to my waistband for the gun, but the headlights swung away. The truck pivoted and taillights showed and then they disappeared.

  Billy? Had he seen me? Just wanted to send his nightly message?

  A sound behind me. Breathing. I whirled around. Clair and Louis were fifteen feet away, dark and silent.

  “Could chase him down,” Clair said, “but might just raise a ruckus.”

  “And there’s enough going on,” I said.

  “Yes,” Clair said.

  “I’m sorry,” Louis said.

  “All over the news,” Clair said.

  I hadn’t watched or listened. “How much did they say?”

  “Strangulation and blunt-force trauma,” Louis said. “Found in the woods.”

  “Cops were here. What they’re not saying is somebody tied him to a tree with his suspenders and carved the word ‘rat’ in his forehead,” I said.

  A pause, even from them.

  “Thoughts on who did it?”

  “I feel like I did, in a way. Tried to help him and got him killed.”

  Neither of them answered. A minute passed, the three of us standing there, and then Clair said, “You can wallow in that, or we can do something about it.”

  “Can’t bring him back,” I said.

  “No, but you can make sure that the same person doesn’t hurt somebody else,” Louis said.

  “And that evil acts are punished,” Clair said.

  “Seems a little late for that,” I said.

  “Never too late to make sure there are consequences,” he said.

  They melted away. I went inside and slipped the gun into the drawer of the study desk and locked it. When I went upstairs, I could hear pages turning in Sophie’s room, saw the light on in ours. I pushed the door open. Roxanne was in a sleep shirt, sitting on the bed with her laptop open.

  She looked at me.

  “It’s on Twitter. Bangor Daily.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “It’s not your fault, Jack,” she said.

  “You don’t know,” I said.

  “But I know you cared about him.”

  I shrugged.

  “For what that’s worth,” I said.

  “I have no idea what’s going on in your head these days,” Roxanne said.

  I didn’t answer.

  “I rest my case,” she said.

  I went over and sat on the edge of the bed. I looked over at Roxanne’s pretty legs, her bare feet, her toenails painted red. I wondered if Welt liked the same view.

  “I’m glad your presentation went well,” I said.

  “Thanks. Me, too.”

  There was a long silence, until I said, “Do you think bad things come in threes?”

  “I don’t believe in any of that,” Roxanne said.

  “I don’t know. There’s Abram. There’s Billy and Baby Fat. What’s next?”

  “I just said I don’t believe in that.”

  “I do,” I said. “And other things, maybe.”

  I told her about my theory—that maybe Abram had died at the exact wrong time, when he was feeling doubts about God and all, and that he’d never had a chance to get his faith back. And what if the Bishop was right and we were all wrong.

  “Don’t take this all on yourself, Jack,” Roxanne said. “Abram’s God will understand, if there is one. If there isn’t, then that part of it doesn’t matter.”

  I thought that was an easy way out but I didn’t say so. Instead I said, “I don’t want the third thing to be us.”

  Roxanne put her hand on my arm, but only for a touch, and then took it off.

  “I don’t, either,” she said. She didn’t tell me not to worry.

  Eventually the night would end, I knew, with me staring at the ceiling in the dark. But not yet.

  Roxanne went to bed and I went downstairs, took another beer out of the refrigerator, opened it, and brought it to my desk. I held up the bottle, said, “Abram. I’m sorry.” And then I drank. Then I put the bottle down and took out a legal pad, started to scrawl. The players. The sequence.

  Party . . . Roust Semi . . . text from Lloyd or Jones. Lloyd and Jones arrested in NH . . .

  I stopped. Went back and drew a line from the word text. The phone was gone, so I tried to recall the exact words. Slick. His bitch. Maine, the woman said, is Appalachia. Her street name: Gucci.

  If Slick and Gucci weren’t with Lloyd and Jones when they were arrested, where were they? It had been something about him saying it was time to load up and leave. Time for Lloyd and Jones to load up. Where was he?

  And what had Semi said? Something about G-Block.

  I flipped on the laptop, Googled it and Boston gangs. G-Block was a gang in Dorchester. The Globe story said G-Block was feuding with the Keith Street gang. In July a guy named Randall “Juicy” Luce had been shot and killed in a park there. Three guys with him had been wounded. Luce was seventeen, with Keith Street. The Boston PD gang interdiction unit was investigating, along with Boston Homicide.

  A few more mentions, all connected to shootings. In 2011 a twelve-year-old boy had been shot in the head on his way to choir practice, also in Dorchester. He was expected to survive. Cops said he was an innocent bystander, hit by a round from a .45 caliber handgun fired on the next block. “The G-Block–Keith Street feud is a threat to public safety,” an assistant police commissioner said.

  And still was.

  Slick. Gucci. Where were they now? I Googled them, and Dorchester, and gangs, and got nothing. I looked at the page, illuminated by the glow of the laptop screen. Flipped back to e-mail, opened the photo of the list of incoming calls to Semi’s phone. Among the various area codes were a few Maine numbers, probably cell phones, probably Semi’s buddies, like the guys from the party and the video. I could text them, say I was a buddy of Semi’s, got another live one, way hotter than the Amish chick. Want to hang out?

  See if we could invite them to the party. The party could be me, Clair, Louis, and one dirtbag at a time.

  Would they have killed Abram? To accomplish what? Keep him from talking about the video? Would they even be ashamed of what they’d done? With Semi on the run, would they respond to a stranger?

  I looked at the numbers more. A few exchanges I recognized, one number that looked familiar. I took my phone out and compared them. Three of them were gun sellers, Semi and Abram and I making the same rounds. Had they called Semi to confirm an advertised gun was available? Called to say there were more guns to be had for the right price?

  And then there was another number, 338, the Galway exchange. Three calls in two minutes, all received. Then another an hour later, for sixteen minutes. Making up? Someone who would know where Semi would go underground? How fast would the detectives track these numbers down?

  I pictured many interviews with many Mennonites before they got to this level. So I tapped the number in. Waited. It rang. And then a click:

  “Waldo Street Hotel,” a woman’s voice said, cheery and eager. “This is Celeste. May I help you?”

  Galway. Boutique hotel. Expensive.

  “Hi,” I said. “I’m looking for a friend of mine—hope he’s still there.”

  “Yessir,” Celeste said. “Who would that be?”

  Another image. Where is he? He can’t just leave me here in this hick town. Put him on. Don’t you hang up on me. I know he’s there.

 
; “Well, I don’t know what name he would have checked in under, but he goes by Slick. His girlfriend is Gucci. They’re from Boston. They were just up for a few days, you know, a romantic getaway sort of thing. I hope I haven’t—”

  “The rapper, you mean,” she said.

  “Right,” I said. “Is he still there?”

  “I’m sorry, they checked out this morning.”

  “Oh, shucks,” I said. “Just missed them.”

  “Yeah, he had some meetings with producers.”

  “Slick’s a busy guy.”

  “Yeah,” Celeste said. “He was sweet, though. Treated the staff real nice.”

  “Yeah, he’s very generous.”

  “I’ll say. That’s why I didn’t mind when she called.”

  “Gucci?”

  “Yeah. Is she a friend of yours?”

  Wariness in her tone.

  “I’ve met her a couple of times is all.”

  “Yeah, well,” Celeste began, the caution gone, “she’s lucky we liked her boyfriend so much.”

  “Why’s that?” I said.

  “Well, her sunglasses? Yes, I’ll mail them to her, but she ought to know better. What goes around, comes around, you know?”

  “Gucci can be a little snooty.”

  “I guess to heck. Which is fine, if you don’t need people. But sometimes you need something, and they remember.”

  “She needed her sunglasses?”

  I was tapping the keys softly.

  “Mailed to her. Overnight. She said they cost four hundred and eighty dollars and they’re discontinued, and they’re her favorites of all time, and, and, and.”

  I called up the Dorchester map. Picked a street.

  “You mailing them to Slick? At the Geneva Avenue address?”

  “No, to her. Except she isn’t Gucci on the mail. She’s Deloris Franklin.”

  “On Geneva Avenue, right, thirteen-eighty?”

  “No, she wanted them to go to her.”

  “Oh, I thought she was living with him,” I said.

  “Well, her fancy sunglasses aren’t. They’re going to six-eleven Intervale Street, number three.”

  “Uh-oh,” I said. “Sounds like trouble in paradise.”

  She paused.

  “They did leave together, in this big shiny black SUV thing, but last night? I thought we were gonna have to call the police.”

  “No kidding. Well, Gucci, she does have a temper.”

  “I guess. I mean, she was calling him every name in the book. You could hear it on the whole second floor. And she doesn’t think much of Maine, either.”

  “She was mad because he brought her to Maine?”

  “I can’t really say,” Celeste said.

  I waited, knew she would.

  “One of the girls, she said they were arguing about another woman. She was texting him, and Gucci, whatever she calls herself, she saw the texts.”

  “Whoops.”

  “I guess there were pictures.”

  “Double whoops.”

  “And besides,” Celeste said, indignant now. “Appalachia, at two-fifty a night? Taittinger in your room at check-in? And it costs us, like, twenty-five bucks a bottle, and that’s by the case. Heated towel racks? Lobster omelets? If this is Appalachia, I’m, like, signing up.”

  “He said he was glad to have some privacy,” I said. “Just kick back.”

  “I know. He wouldn’t even tell us his rapper name at first,” the young woman said.

  “Which one did he give you? Slick Fitty?”

  “No, Slick X.”

  I could hear her fingers on a keyboard.

  “Are there more under Slick Fitty, ’cause I could only find two for Slick X. Him and all his friends, dancing around with guns and bottles of liquor and big stacks of hundred-dollar bills.”

  “Yeah, that’s Slick all right.”

  “Are you one of the guys in the videos? You don’t sound black.”

  “Black Irish,” I said. “Celeste, you have a good night.”

  And that’s exactly what Slick X was doing in the videos on YouTube. He was a muscular guy, big smile under his Phoenix Suns ball cap, jeans held up by the big G buckle of his Gucci belt. He was rapping in the courtyard of a project, surrounded by his buddies, everybody flashing wads of cash, drinking Courvoisier out of the bottle, pulling guns from their waistbands and aiming at the camera.

  A beat-up TEC-9 machine pistol, a long-barreled .357 revolver, a snubnosed .38, a Glock with a thirty-round clip. The words mostly had to do with what would happen to anybody who messed with them, what had happened to people who had. “Putting steel to your grill, head shots we pull.”

  I sat back in the chair. So this was the destination for the guns Semi bought in Dixville and Davidson, Monroe and Newburgh. I wondered what the sellers I’d met would think of seeing their guns waved around like toys. Was this what Abram had been killed for? Street gang had met Old Order Mennonites and the gang had won.

  For now.

  If Gucci wanted her sunglasses sent down to Dorchester, and they had come to Maine together, then they were back home. I doubted Lloyd and Jones would flip on him, the rap videos full of scorn—and death—for snitches. They’d sell out Semi in a second, but Slick, the guy calling the shots, would walk.

  Had he stuck around to tie up a loose end? When he got word that his boys had been arrested, did he go after Semi? When Semi couldn’t be found, had Slick killed Semi’s Amish friend?

  Headphones on, I watched the video again. With all the guns, the gun talk, wouldn’t Slick have shot Abram? A blunt instrument, Louis had said, possibly a gun butt. Maybe Slick had walked Abram into the woods at gunpoint, realized the shot would be heard, and decided to hit him on the head instead.

  And then leave his message.

  But like Celeste had said, what goes around comes around. I finished the beer, closed the laptop, shut off the light. And then I crossed the room, stood by the sliding doors to the deck. Stepped out into the night. Took a long, deep breath.

  “I know how you feel,” a voice said.

  Louis. He moved out of the shadows under the lilacs.

  “How would you like to go to Boston?” I said.

  26

  The girls overslept, left the house in a rush of sneaker-finding, blow-drying, and Did you brush your teeth?

  I hadn’t noticed the time because I was online again, studying the street view of 611 Intervale Street, rotating to see across the street, up and down the block. Roxanne sped across town, raced up the driveway to the school. I sat in the truck as she and Sophie trotted across the lot and through the door.

  It was 7:15, teacher arrival time. I took out my phone. Tapped in a number, waited.

  “Sergeant Cook.”

  He was driving.

  “This is Jack McMorrow.”

  I said I had some information for him. Slick and his girlfriend, Gucci, how they stayed in Galway. That he was some sort of superior to Jones and Lloyd.

  “Uh-huh,” he said.

  “So he could have done it, after he heard his boys were busted.”

  I heard the sound of traffic.

  “Well?” I said.

  “A step ahead of you, Mr. McMorrow. The subjects you’re speaking of were interviewed last night. They say they never heard of any Mennonite, that they were in Maine on vacation.”

  “Says who?”

  “Says both of them, including Miss Franklin. She said she couldn’t get out of Maine fast enough.”

  “Maybe she left separately?”

  “Doesn’t have a driver’s license,” Cook said. “Said she’s never learned to drive at all. According to her, they had an argument and she demanded he take her home ASAP.”

  “Could have cut through Prosperity on the way home.”

  “Could have, but they say not. At this point we have no information tying him or their vehicle to Prosperity. Not like the town is filled with video surveillance. And now he’s lawyered up.”

  �
�So what do you do now?”

  The sound of the car slowing, then stopping, the motor shutting off.

  “Continue our investigation in other directions, Mr. McMorrow. And speaking of that, I was going to call you.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah. Bishop Snyder. He told me that he warned you not to speak to his son or his daughter. That you were a bad influence on them, that you were known to be a violent person and he didn’t want you associating with Abram or Miriam.”

  “His opinion,” I said. “Not Abram’s.”

  “But Abram—the circumstances of his death might suggest that his father was right.”

  “Or that he should have been warning somebody else off,” I said.

  “We’ll be talking,” Cook said.

  “No doubt,” I said.

  I met Louis and Clair at the restaurant, the two of them in a booth at the far end of the room, looking out at the view to the west. Belle was behind the counter and she said good morning, then gave me a searching look.

  I moved closer and she said, “Awful about your friend.”

  “Yes. He was a very good guy.”

  “Seemed it. But he would be, being a Mennonite, right. Awful for his family.”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Word around town this morning is it was guys from out of state,” Belle said. “Been having parties up there in the woods.”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Feds have been up here.”

  “Really.”

  “Yup. Hope they catch whoever did it and lock them up.”

  “For a long time,” I said.

  “Oughta bring back the death penalty,” Belle said.

  “I don’t think the Mennonites would go for that.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe somebody oughta stick up for them, if they won’t stick up for themselves.”

  She was breaking eggs in a big metal bowl.

  “Heard Semi was looking pretty beat-up,” she said, without looking up.

  “Ran into a door,” I said.

  “Funny how that happens,” Belle said.

  “They say most accidents occur in the home.”

  She turned and poured the eggs onto the grill. They sizzled and steamed. She poked at them with a big spatula, then turned back. “What can I get you, Jack?”