Nantucket Red Tickets

by Steven Axelrod

  But that wasn’t going to happen, and no one knew it but me.

  I reached into my coat pocket and felt the flimsy stub against my fingertips, slipped it into my palm, closed my fist as Sam Trikilis talked about having to give up his business when he left the island, trying to figure out where he and wife could go without becoming a burden on his family.

  He had no choices and no prospects.

  “Once you leave Nantucket, there’s no coming back, you know what I mean?” he was saying. “You can’t afford the rent even if you could find a place to live, and you can’t. You cross that bridge, it’s burnt. Forty years building a life here and you’re just a homeless bum. You don’t have the big bucks? You have to win the lottery just to get a house you can afford to live in around here! I was talking to a couple of kids yesterday. They won the drawing for one of those covenant houses on Old South Road. ‘We get a house! We get a house!’ Yeah, built on the cheap, smack dab against ten other crappy little houses, but it beats moving away. I felt like telling them, ‘When I was your age, I started a business and bought a house here. No games of chance required, just hard work.’ But that was back in another century. Now I have to play the goddamn lottery, too. But that’s life, I guess.” He lifted his box of tickets with a morose little smile.

  Sam was right—he needed a miracle.

  And I was holding one in my hand.

  I pulled the ticket out and handed it to him. “Take this one, Sam,” I said. “It could be the miracle you’re looking for.”

  He gave me a bewildered smile. “You only have one ticket?”

  “One is all it takes.”

  I pressed it into his hand. “Come on. It’s my contribution.”

  He took it and pulled me into an awkward hug, half-pressed against his box. “Thanks, Chief. I’ll keep a special eye on this one.”

  “You do that.”

  I eased away into the crowd. I had crossed a line but I didn’t care. I’d been given the power to do something good for someone, and I took it. It was a crazy fluke, but a happy irony—Max Blum’s nihilistic, cynical scheme would now serve to save a family’s home and allow a beloved member of the community to remain. I couldn’t imagine the Red Tickets Raffle serving a better purpose.

  I was on the steps above Lizza when she drew that last ticket. I saw the sliver of red in her fist before she plunged her hand into the pile. No one else saw anything and I studied her face when she handed the ticket to Dan Taylor and he read off the numbers into his megaphone. She was looking off to the left where Patty was standing and I took a moment’s pleasure in the look of bewilderment on Lizza’s face when the crowd in the middle of Main Street around Sam Trikilis erupted into cheers and applause.

  “Looks like we have a winner,” bellowed Dan Taylor. “Come on up!”

  Sam could barely make it through the crowd. People were slapping him on the back, hugging him. Someone had a bottle of champagne in a shopping bag—they popped the cork and handed the foaming bottle to Sam, a clear violation of the municipal open-container laws which I had absolutely no interest in enforcing. Sam lifted the bottle took a huge swig and handed it back, to a new round of cheers and applause. There was a brief scuffle and then two big guys lifted Sam up on their shoulders like a winning quarterback and carried him through the crowd. The mass of people parted like fabric ripped along the seam and Sam opened his arms to them all.

  They had all gathered in the center of town on a frozen afternoon, glad to participate and happy to lose. Now, unexpectedly, all of them had won.

  Sam shook my hand again when they let him down and he climbed the stairs of the bank, pulling me into a bear hug. “A miracle!”

  I set him back at arms’ length. “I told you one ticket was all it takes, Sam. Merry Christmas. And many more to come.”

  Sam was laughing and crying at the same time. I slipped away before I started crying, too.

  An hour later I stood in front of his house with Jane, listening to Carrie and Patty Whelden and the other Grace Notes sing “Good King Wenceslas” to Sam and Jennifer and Alana, the latter wrapped in a big blanket against the cold.

  Jane touched my arm. “That’s her.”

  I turned. “Who?”

  “Marcia Stoddard. My supposed look-alike. In the full-length down jacket and the Santa cap.”

  I glanced over. Dusk was settling in but I could see her clearly. Jane was much prettier but I could see the resemblance. It’s a verifiable fact of human nature, that if you tell someone they look like someone else—even if that other person is much better looking—they’ll be insulted. No one wants an accidental twin. It’s like hearing your own voice on tape, your full-throated baritone reduced to a nasal tenor. It constricts your self-image.

  Of course, I didn’t say any of that. This was not the moment for nuance.

  “She’s your height. That’s it. Hey, people used to tell me I looked like Phillip Seymour Hoffman.”

  “Before he got fat, I hope.”

  “And before he died. I look much better than him now.”

  She elbowed me in the side but I got the smile I was looking for.

  When the song was finished another group appeared out of the growing darkness. It was Jill Porter, Bessie Trott, and the other Accidentals, out on their own rounds of caroling. Jill approached Carrie. They looked like two mountain lions at the same watering hole.

  “That sounded pretty good,” Jill said.

  “Thanks.”

  “I had no idea we had so many good singers in school.”

  “Well…we do.”

  “Yeah…” She brightened. “Take a selfie with me? I have FaceLight Flash. We’ll get a million shares.”

  “Cool!”

  They took the picture and Carrie said “Let’s sing one together. How about “Adeste Fidelis”?”

  “In G major?”

  “Perfect.”

  They were singing, all twenty of them sweetly in tune like some Viennese church choir, when my phone went off. I checked the screen—Judge Perlman. He had the warrant ready for me in his office.

  It was time to arrest Jackson Blum.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Three Spirits

  Jackson Blum was drowning in his own life. The telephone call from Mass. General had tumbled him into dark water. When the police arrived, five minutes later, he felt fingers gripping his ankle, pulling him down. He couldn’t breathe. He had done this to himself. This was suicide. He had been committing suicide for years and he hadn’t even known it.

  He’d read somewhere about a man who jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge and survived. As soon as he started to fall, this man knew he had made a catastrophic mistake—the last mistake in a life full of them. None of them could be corrected, none of them could be taken back. Yet he had survived somehow, with his ankles shattered, his knees and hips broken, his shoulder dislocated, and his vertebra crushed. He had been pulled out of the bay, hauled aboard a fishing smack, and lived to tell his tale.

  Blum would not be so lucky. You could survive the real ocean, the real fall, but not the one inside, not the one you made yourself. There were no happy accidents on that ocean, no convenient fishing boats, no helping hands, no blankets, no doctors, just the cold currents and the grasping fingers clawing you down.

  They had been having drinks in the living room, anticipating a rack of lamb and Marjorie’s garlic mashed potatoes for dinner, followed by coffee and key lime pie and the annual viewing of what his son Max regarded as the finest holiday movie ever made: Mickey’s Christmas Carol. “You’re Scrooge McDuck, Dad,” Max had laughed last year. “Own it!” What could you say to that but “Bah, humbug”? So he had. Max had just shaken his head. “Making my point for me. Just like always.”

  This year was more tense, but Max seemed reconciled to his brother’s banishment, and apparently chastised by the day�
��s events. Something bad had happened, but Blum chose not to pry. As for Marjorie, she just wanted to salvage what was left of her favorite holiday. Everyone was making an effort. The line was narrow, but they were all walking it together, single file.

  Until the phone call.

  Blum set his drink down and hurried out to the front hall, listening to the muffled “Ride of the Valkyries” ring tone fanfaring from his coat pocket. He dug out his iPhone and answered.

  “Hello?”

  “It was you! It’s your fault! You did this.”

  “Hello, who is speaking, please?”

  “He’s dead, are you happy now? That’s what you wanted and you got it. That’s your Christmas present, you miserable, rotten, fucked up—” The voice broke into ugly, heaving sobs.

  Blum pulled the phone away from his ear a little. “For the last time, who is this?”

  “It’s Connor! Connor McKenzie! Your son’s gay lover! Who loved him! Who loved him more than you could ever even imagine loving any one. And he loved you, that’s the sickest most fucked part of the whole thing, he loved you so much. All he cared about was your opinion. What will Dad say, Dad would love that. Dad should read this, Dad should hear that, I can’t wait to tell Dad whatever the fuck it was. Dad, Dad, Dad! Well, he finally told you something—he finally got up the nerve to tell you the most important thing in the world—he gave you trust and love and you gave him hate! You threw it in his face. You rejected him and kicked him out and disowned him and now he’s dead!”

  “He’s—he…what? I don’t—”

  “Your son committed suicide tonight! Understand? I’ll send you the note! It’s all about you. Dad, Dad, Dad, just like always. I kept telling him you could change, you’d come around, there was still hope, even Dick Cheney supports gay marriage now, but he didn’t believe me. I was on your side! Isn’t that fucking hilarious? But he wouldn’t listen. He knew better. He laughed when I tried to pull that Mary Cheney stuff. ‘Do you think Dick would adopt me?’ That was what he said. And I told him Mary said she was Darth Vader’s daughter and he said, ‘I’ll take it! At least Darth admits he’s on the dark side! He calls his weapon the Death Star! Dad would call it the Peace Moon!’ He was so funny. I don’t know where he got his sense of humor from but it wasn’t from you. He said he’d never seen you laugh, not once, not ever. Until now. You have the last laugh now because you did everything you could to make his life a living hell and now he’s ended it. You might as well have stuffed the pills down his throat because you killed him and you’ll have to live with that for the rest of your life.”

  “Wait, I—”

  But Connor was gone.

  Blum stood in the front hall, gasping for air, choking and panicking, the dark water closing over his head, listening to Max and his wife laughing about something, some trivial moment in their separate world, in these last moments before he destroyed that world forever with his news.

  He stood there for a long time, listening to their bright chatter, taking shallow panicky breaths, trying to hold back the moment, trying to stop time, but it was futile and he knew it. He walked back to the dining room door.

  “Martin is dead,” he announced, with someone else’s voice. “He committed suicide this afternoon. Connor called from the hospital.”

  The two faces gaped at him, blank with disbelief.

  At that moment they heard the pounding on the front door, and the vices bellowing from the other side.

  “Police! Open up!”

  He stumbled back down the hall, cravenly relieved not to face his own family, and opened the door. Chief Kennis was there, and Assistant Chief Krakauer, and three uniformed cops.

  “Jackson Blum,” Kennis said. “I have a warrant for your arrest for felony first-degree murder in the death of Theodore Coddington. You have the right to remain silent. If you choose to speak, anything you say can be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney—”

  “Wait—”

  “If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you by the state.”

  “Chief, listen—”

  “Do you understand these rights as I have read them to you?”

  “Chief—”

  “Do you understand these rights as I have read them to you?”

  “Yes, yes, but—”

  “We’re going to take you into custody now, Mr. Blum. As a courtesy, you won’t be handcuffed, but I’m going to have to ask you to—”

  Blum’s mind finally caught up with the moving train of this new outrage. He swung himself onboard, assembled the words he had always known he might have to utter someday. He started to speak but the words caught in his throat like acid reflux, the irony burning his esophagus.

  Suicide.

  Within the space of an hour, the mortal sin that had just destroyed his life was now going to save it. Now he had to be thankful for suicide! Suicide to the rescue! He had driven Ted to the act, long before Martin. Blum was toxic. He left death behind him, like a worm in an apple—everything in front of him fresh and white, everything behind him brown and rotten.

  “Mr. Blum?”

  He still hadn’t spoken. Some atavistic lust to survive fought free from the paralyzing self-hatred. He croaked out the words: “Ted committed suicide! I found him—I buried him…he killed himself with my gun. I knew what it—how it would look, if the body was ever found. I can prove it! I have the note.”

  Kennis squinted at him. “You kept your friend’s suicide note for twenty years?”

  “Yes, because—”

  “And you never showed it to anyone. His widow, for instance. Didn’t it occur to you that she might want to know what happened to her husband?”

  “That he killed himself? Over an affair with her sister? No! I thought she should never know that! I hoped she would never find out. Better the mystery, better not to know.”

  “But you knew. You and no one else.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Private remorse rarely pushes a man to kill himself, Mr. Blum. My guess is you were blackmailing him.”

  “That’s ridiculous! You can’t prove that. The note says nothing about that. Let me show it to you and we can end this nightmare.”

  “All right. Go get it. I’ll come with you. And just so you know, I have men posted at your back door.”

  “You think I’m going to run? You think this is some crazy trick?”

  “I keep an open mind.” He stepped forward. “May I?”

  Blum stepped back, turned and strode back past the dining room, through the great room and his office. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Max rising from the table. Marjorie sat still, stricken—a waxwork impression of herself, a pale statue of grief and horror.

  In the office, Blum crossed to the closet, pulled the old tobacco humidor off the high shelf and set it down on the desk. He pulled it open.

  Empty.

  He stared at the blank interior, the faint smell of cedar and cigars drifting up to him. He thought of the day his car had been stolen in Manhattan years ago—walking to the empty parking space, double checking it, unable to process the obvious facts.

  “It was here,” he mumbled. “It was right here. I put here, that day. I—it…this makes no sense. Someone—someone took it!”

  “But no one knew about it,” Kennis said quietly. “That was your whole point.”

  “They must—someone must have found it, someone must have been snooping—”

  With the tingle at the back of his neck that had alerted animals to silent predators since the dawn of time, he twisted around to see his son, Max, smiling, ever so slightly, just a tiny lift at the corners of his mouth, gone as soon as Blum caught his eye.

  Max.

  Some rabid snarl of accusation died in his lungs. What was the use? Max would deny everything, he had probably
destroyed the note long ago. To attack his son, now, in the caustic shadow of Martin’s death and his own culpability…it was impossible.

  Kennis was glancing from father to son, studying the moment. Did he suspect something? How smart was he, really? Smart enough for this. But he did nothing. Blum saw it all so clearly. No one was going to help him. And that was how it should be. He had dug his own grave. All he had to do now was climb into it and let the first spadeful of soil hit his face. Eat the dirt, gag on it, let it block his throat. A different kind of drowning, a more appropriate one.

  Let the punishment fit the crime.

  He turned to Kennis. “Let’s go.”

  ***

  They put him in a cell in the basement of the new police station and left him alone. The claustrophobia of the cage surged and receded. He didn’t ask for a lawyer, he didn’t care about bail. He didn’t want to talk to anyone or see anyone. He couldn’t bear the thought of anyone looking at him, judging him, seeing him for what he was.

  He sat on the hard bunk, clasped his knees with his hands. He was bad. He was a bad man. Everything everyone had ever said about him was true. Kennis had seen through him, recognized him as a blackmailer. Was there a lower crime than that? A more despicable sin? Using someone’s weakness against them? In Ted Coddington’s case, using the purest feeling the man had ever known, the true love that Blum himself had always scoffed at, the most vulnerable fold of a man’s hardened heart, to destroy him with the threat of shame and disgrace? And all for money! All to close a deal. But it wasn’t just money, it was power, influence, prestige, making himself more important. He had to be the biggest fish in this ridiculous little pond. A guppy in a bucket. And why? So he could strut and preen and lord it over people like poor Arthur Sprockett and Homer Boyce? All Homer needed was a break on his rent. And Arthur, what was Arthur’s emergency request? Three thousand dollars? Pocket change! Money that meant nothing to Blum. Sprockett might as well have asked for the pennies and dimes. Three thousand dollars! He spent more than that on a set of Hermès boxers and a pair of Berluti loafers! And he’d never ever worn those shoes. Where was he supposed to wear them on Nantucket? What a joke. And now that poor boy was going to be crippled for life because Blum cared more about feeling superior than lifting one finger, one pinky to help someone else.