Nantucket Red Tickets

by Steven Axelrod

  “You can’t prove that.”

  “Actually, Dave, I can.”

  “Yeah? Like how?”

  “You don’t want to know. Because if you behave, confess to Bissell, take your two-game suspension, and confirm Mike Stoller’s confession about trying to buy opioids from Gary Pressman, I may be able to keep you out of criminal court.”

  He stared right into my eyes, no doubt because he had read somewhere that liars tend to look away. In fact it’s just the opposite. Liars overcompensate. They stare. He said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Then why were you parked at the Jackson Point landing?”

  “I wasn’t.”

  “Don’t force me to make you lie under oath, Dave. Your car was identified in that location.”

  Well, maybe not the car itself, but the leaking oil under his car right now was a good circumstantial fit, and I knew I could match the brands if I took a sample.

  “Look—” he began

  “Are you telling me you have any friends besides Pressman on Tuckernuck?”

  “He’s not my friend.”

  “I’m glad you understand that. You boys didn’t buy the drugs because he was selling in bulk and you couldn’t afford the price of the shipment. But you can testify against him and help us find his stash. Where is he hiding it?”

  “I never saw the stuff, Chief. But I mean—he’s Gary Pressman. It wasn’t like he was bullshitting us.”

  “That’s a start. So you’ll testify?”

  Two kids approached the car, Dave waved them away. I took that as a good sign. “Can it be…like…anonymous or secret or, you know, in chambers or whatever?”

  “I don’t think the Selectmen would have it any other way. The suspension’s going to be tough enough for the town. They don’t want their golden boy tangled up in a drug case.”

  “Maybe they could give me some community service. Like…cleaning the beaches or something.”

  “Maybe. But first things first. Come clean with Bissell and Springer. And apologize to my son.”

  “Okay, okay.”

  “And if you have any other schemes for making money this season, forget about them.”

  “Uh—okay.”

  “In other words, stay away from Maxwell Blum. He’ll just get you in trouble.”

  “Yeah, I guess. Okay.”

  “Okay. Here’s a question that wasn’t on the midterm. You read Ballad of the Red Earl this semester, right? Well here’s a stanza of Kipling for you:

  “You have cast your lot with these, Red Earl

  “Take heed to where Ye stand

  “You have tied a knot with your tongue, red Earl

  “That Ye cannot loose with your hand.

  “How does that relate to your current situation, Dave?”

  “Uh…”

  “Think about it.”

  “I’m…it’s—the opposite?”

  “Exactly. Ted Springer would be proud of you. Now go untie some knots with that silver tongue of yours. I’ll take care of the rest.”

  By the time I got back to my cruiser the kids were waiting for me and the war was on. I had read about sibling rivalry during Miranda’s first pregnancy, when the concept of a new human being arriving between us seemed baffling, and the prospect of two was beyond my grasp. Still, I did my homework. I was intellectually prepared to experience some jockeying for position, some struggle for power and attention between a pair of healthy kids. But this was different. This was a relentless blood feud that seemed like it would go on forever. I knew that probably wasn’t true—my brother and I get along pretty well now, though we don’t see each other much. And we’d fought like tomcats. But the dry, abstract assumption that my kids might grow up to be good friends was scant comfort in the trenches of their childhood.

  I stood back for a few moments, waiting for a lull in the combat.

  Carrie was texting while Tim practiced with his hacky-sack bags again. He actually had all three going at once—for a few seconds.

  He dropped one, and Carrie snapped.

  “Can you please just stop that! You look like an idiot. And a spaz!”

  “It’s cool!”

  “It’s lame! You’re pathetic. You want to grow up and be a clown? You already are a clown! All you need is big floppy shoes and a red nose. No, seriously. You should, like, totally get the whole outfit. Then you’d have an excuse when everybody laughs at you.”

  “No one laughs at me.”

  “Omigod! You are such a delusionoid. Debbie Garrison laughs at you.”

  “That’s bullshit!”

  “Tim!” I intervened.

  “Sorry.” He bent over to pick up the dropped hacky-sack bag and started working them again.

  “Why do you think she avoids you? She pretends she doesn’t know you! You embarrass her!”

  “I do not!”

  Maybe it was the shouting, but Tim lost concentration and one of the bags spun out of control. It hit Carrie’s hand and knocked her phone loose. It hit the sidewalk and the cover popped off. This was one hacky-sack attack too many. Carrie cried out, “Ugh! I hate you!” and stamped on the bag. It burst and dozens of little pellets squirted into the street. I gaped at the ruptured scrap of cloth.

  The kids finally noticed me. “Dad! Carrie wrecked my hacky-sack bag!”

  “Tim broke my phone!”

  Their shouting scattered around me like wind. I wasn’t listening. I was paralyzed by that sense of retroactive stupidity you get from the obvious answer to a difficult question. Carrie had done a lot more than break one of Tim’s juggling toys.

  She had solved a case.

  Jackson Blum and Arnold Sprockett would have to wait. If Blum had committed a crime, it was twenty years old and it could wait another day or two; if Sprockett was involved in dealing drugs on the island, I’d be rounding him up soon, anyway.

  Two hours later, I had dropped the kids off at Miranda’s house, tracked down Sal Pereira, and was headed across Madaket Harbor toward Tuckernuck, search warrant in hand. I was alone this time. I didn’t want to alarm Pressman, Karen was buried in her research, and Pereira and I were getting along fine, thanks to her introduction.

  Judge Perlman had bent the rules a little to grant the warrant, and he wagged his finger at me as I left his chambers, with a chastising “Don’t be wrong about this.”

  That was okay. Because I wasn’t.

  The wind was high and the water was choppy on the fifteen-minute crossing. I was cold and wet by the time Sal let me off at Pressman’s dock. It was a clear day and I hadn’t thought about needing a raincoat. I did have my other supplies, though.

  He turned the boat around with a curt “Call me when you’re ready to back. I got things to do,” and put-putted away.

  Alone on the pier, I pulled a ping-pong ball out of my coat pocket and pushed it into the gas tank of Pressman’s outboard motor. It’s an old harmless trick to temporarily disable an outboard—the ball gets trapped by the intake and stops the motor. I had patrol officers watching Jackson Point and the Madaket Public Landing, but a few extra precautions couldn’t hurt.

  Bailey was snoozing on the porch when I walked up from the beach. He lifted his head and thumped his tail a couple of times in greeting. I bent down to ruffle the fur behind his ears.

  I had the warrant in my hand when I knocked on the door. Pressman opened it wearing a U-Mass hoodie and sweatpants and an old pair of Reeboks. The house was warm—he had fired up the wood stove.

  “What?” That was his greeting.

  I handed him the warrant. “Read that while I look around.”

  I pushed past him into the house and crossed the living room to the bean-bag chair. He was right behind me. “Hey, I told you about that chair—”

  “Yes, you did. No sitting on the museum pi
ece. But you didn’t say why.”

  “What are you trying to—?”

  “Stop it, Pressman. How do you open this thing?” I picked it up—a giant, misshapen hacky-sack bag. I felt up and down the length of it and found a flap of leather covering a Velcro closure. I twisted the bulky leather chair around to show him. “This little addition would ruin the chair’s integrity as an art object, Gary. Don’t bother taking it on Antiques Roadshow now. It’s worthless. But that doesn’t matter, does it? It’s what’s inside that counts.”

  I yanked the Velcro loose and cascade of round white pellets avalanched out of the chair…along with thousands of dollars’ worth of oval blue pills: oxycodone.

  I expected him to ask me how I’d figured out his cunning little hiding place. The answer would have been mildly embarrassing, but it never came up. Pressman had a different, less thoughtful response to the growing mess on his living room floor.

  He ran.

  Chapter Seventeen

  High and Dry

  In five seconds Pressman had sprinted to the back door, leapt across the deck, and charged into the moors beyond his house, breaking for the line of low trees in the middle of the island.

  I took off after him, awkward in the big rubber boots I’d worn for the boat ride, feeling the absurdity of the chase but badly wanting to tackle him anyway. Pressman could run into the swampy oak and grapevine forest ahead of us, but Tuckernuck was small, his boat was disabled, and unless he had a personal gyrocopter stashed somewhere nearby, running wasn’t going to help him much. I heard occasional gunshots, as well as distant ATV motors. Pressman and I weren’t wearing orange vests. The most likely result of this absurd footrace would be one of us getting mistaken for a deer and shot by a hunter.

  I was winded and panting when he disappeared into the low dark interior forest. I stood bent over with my hands on my knees, catching my breath, assessing the situation. Pressman must know all the trails and paths through this marshy woodland—he’d lived on Tuckernuck most of his life. There was no chance I’d be able to catch him in there. His best move once he lost me would be to circle back and try to get to his boat.

  I walked back to Pressman’s house. A noise from inside made me freeze on the back porch. I was alone, Pereira was gone. If someone had been in the house before, they must have been hiding. I drew my gun and stepped inside.

  Jim Prescott was standing in the living room in a drift of opioid tablets. He looked like his son, but heavier, with that rawboned face filled out by middle age, and his hair thinning on top.

  “Where’s Gary?”

  “What are you doing here?”

  He just shook his head. “You ruined everything.”

  “How’s that?”

  “You don’t understand. You don’t get it.”

  I re-holstered my gun. “Enlighten me.”

  “You think I buy drugs from this piece of shit? You’re right. That’s why I’m here right now. The most secluded spot on the Eastern Seaboard, and some goddamn cop blunders in like it was the airport on poker night. Jesus Christ. Anyway, yeah. I buy the drugs from him because the Mexicans won’t do business with me anymore because their end-user pool dried up. Guess that makes me the worst middle man ever. Me and my group.”

  “Your group?”

  “There’s a few of us. We pool our money and buy the drugs. But we don’t sell ’em. We burn ’em.”

  I stared him. “You’ve got to be—what does that cost you?”

  “It doesn’t matter. I watched Pat’s son, Doug, go down to this shit—”

  “Pat Folger is part of your…group?”

  “I’m not saying that. But Doug is gone, Chief. He’s at the bottom of a hole and he’s never climbing out again.”

  “He went to rehab! He was fine.”

  “He went to rehab three times, thirty grand a pop. And it didn’t make any difference. They can’t stay away from the stuff, Chief. This isn’t a bunch of desperate inner-city kids. It’s regular kids. It’s your kids and my kids. You know how Doug got into it? He and my son and a few of their friends were sitting around somebody’s house while the parents were off-island. They watched some PBS documentary about the drug scene in Boston that showed kids lighting up oxy pills and smoking them. It looked like fun, so they found some of the stuff in the mom’s medicine cabinet and tried it. Boom bang done. End of story. That’s all it takes to ruin a life and wreck a town. Some random well-meaning TV show and an open medicine cabinet. That’s when we started buying from the MS-13 boys, but they got pissed off when the drugs disappeared. Lots of unhappy customers. They told us to back off and we did. Those guys don’t fuck around, Chief.”

  “So, the next move was Pressman. What happens when he figures out what’s going on?”

  “He’ll be in jail, looks like, so who cares? Someone else’ll grab the business and we’ll be there.”

  “Until they find out. It’s not sustainable, Jim.”

  “Yeah? Well, maybe not. But at least we’re doing something. We’re trying. That’s more than the DEA ever did.”

  “They’re stretched thin. They can’t cover every little town in America.”

  “That’s why you’re here.”

  “Exactly. That’s why I’m here. In Pressman’s house, busting him. It’s my job.”

  “What about MS-13? You going after them?”

  He was talking about the Mara Salvatrucha, a West Coast gang that had started franchising itself in New England. They had begun in El Salvador, and I’d heard that “Salvatrucha” was a combination of “Salvador” and the Caliche term “trucha,” which roughly means being sharp-witted and on your toes. I’d dealt with the gang in L.A., after they merged with some local groups and added the 13 to their name—M is the thirteenth letter of the alphabet. These were tough, ruthless criminals, and I thought I’d left them behind when I moved to Nantucket.

  No such luck. “Yes we’re going after them, Jim. We’re working with Immigration Customs Enforcement and we’re making progress. A lot of arrests, a lot of drugs and weapons confiscated. But it’s a slow process. There’s a whole Hispanic community who have nothing to do with this shit and I don’t want to target them. I want to protect them—they’re the main victims right now. It’s tricky and it’s slow and there’s not much margin for error. That’s why I need you to stay out of our way and let us handle this.”

  “You going to arrest me?”

  “No. But I want the names of your friends. I need to talk to them, too. This has to stop. It’s well-intentioned, it’s enterprising, but it has to stop before one of you gets caught in the act and busted or beaten up by these gangbangers—or killed.”

  He stared at the sandy, pine-plank floor. “All right. But I’ve got to talk to them first.”

  “Do it soon.”

  “Okay. Sorry, Chief. We’re all getting a little crazy around here.”

  I let him go—he had a Boston Whaler tied up at the other side of the island. I wanted to call Lonnie Fraker at the State Police headquarters and State’s Attorney Dave Carmichael in Boston, but there were no landlines on the little island and my cell phone had no reception at all.

  I blew out a breath. There was no rush now. This was going to be a big bust, finally one with no ICE involvement, especially if we could get Pressman to roll over on his supplier. I knew Dave would want to get out in front of it. He’d be writing the press releases as soon as we got off the phone.

  I let Bailey in and sat down on the couch. He jumped up to join me, circled his pillow a few times, and then settled in with his head on my lap. I stroked his neck and he snuggled closer. What an excellent dog! Pressman was going to jail. What would happen to Bailey?

  I had a brainstorm about that just as I heard an outboard engine kick to life. It wasn’t Jim’s—this was the heavy snarl of a four-stroke engine, not a Boston Whaler two-stroke. And the so
und wasn’t coming from Pressman’s boat, obviously. My ping-pong ball had taken care of that. Gary must have grabbed a neighbor’s boat, and known where to find the keys. Tuckernuck people trusted each other—maybe too much.

  I had the Madaket Landing points covered, but Pressman could head around Eel Point and along the north shore into town; he could even cruise to the mainland if he had enough gas in the boat. The wind had died down. And Sal Pereira had left me stranded.

  My simple arrest was turning into a nightmare.

  I eased Bailey’s head off my lap, stood up, and went outside. On the porch, with my head cocked to listen, I must have looked a little like a dog myself. In the clear, still air it was easy to follow the sound of the outboard engine. It was coming from the direction of North Pond. I started along the dirt road that looked the most direct route and after a hundred yards or so I got a break. A hunter driving some sort of modified golf cart offered me a lift.

  “Great day for the race!” he boomed as I climbed aboard. I could smell the rye whiskey on his breath.

  “Which race?” I asked, knowing the answer but giving him the satisfaction of pounding the old joke into the ground—call it cab fare.

  “The human race!” he shouted, clapping me on the back.

  “Right—of course. The human race.”

  He stuck out his hand. “Ted Stackpole. Remember me? I was at a town meeting, shouting down those goddamn ’Sconset plutocrats and their geotubes.”

  “I do remember that.”

  “This is the place,” Stackpole said, sweeping of his arm to embrace the empty moorlands and the scattered houses. “This is my Nantucket.”

  “Do you own a home out here?”

  “My grandfather sold our family place in the fifties. Bought and sold a few times since then. The new people just finished a big renovation—they brought in some architect from Boston to trash the house. But here I am anyway, keeping the deer out of their flower garden! And they say I hold a grudge. Chasing the bad guys today?”