by Paula Cox
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I mean bad blood. Red flags. Severe Tire Damage. Danger.”
“Who?”
“No names right now but word on the street is that it’s just a couple guys, Eastern Europeans or something. Big motherfuckers from the sounds of it. Came over here to stir up trouble—they got into a pretty bloody scrap with Miles and his kids over in Easttown.”
“How bloody is bloody?”
“Three guys in the hospital. Another guy dead.”
“Dead? Like dead dead?”
“Look—this is probably an isolated thing. You know Miles and his crew are the shoot-first-ask-questions-later kind. We don’t go poking our heads down any snake holes unless we’re prepared to bite back. Just thought you should know, just in case.”
“In case of what?”
The little LED at the bottom of the phone starts to blink, and my phone asks me if I want to answer the new call. Maya’s face appears alongside Palmer’s number.
“Hey—I’ve got to go,” I say. “You’re not thinking these guys are serious business, are you?” I say so that Palmer can tell me not to think too seriously about it. He doesn’t.
“I don’t know. That’s being honest with you. Ask me my personal opinion, and I’d say that’s insane. If the fucking KGB or whatever the hell they’re called now were in Portsmouth, we’d be in all out war by now. Just keep your head up and hey.”
“Hey what?”
“If you get the chance to stick it in mob boss’s daughter, don’t you dare disappoint me.”
I tell Palmer to go fuck himself and swap calls over to Maya while swinging the Mercedes over towards the entrance of her club. All I can hear on the other end of the line is music, amplifier, shouts and someone shouting, “Where are you?” over and over again. I tell her I’m just trying to find a park, but only get more shouts. How the hell are we going to find one another? Luckily, someone backs out three spots in front of me.
I shuffle the Mercedes into place, switch off the call, text Maya that I’m going in to find her, and get out to have a look around. Maya might be small, but she’s not as difficult to spot in a crowd as you might think. It’s got something to do with the clothes and jewelry. Somehow, even when they look exactly the same, you can just tell the expensive stuff from the cheap.
The bouncer waves me in after I show him the card Theo had given me. The thing works like a charm. Then there’s a long hallway the color of raw liver, and a big room at the end full of strobe lights and half-naked people packed together tighter than sardines. My phone blinks again with Maya’s text. U here?
Hallway, I write back.
Go 2 the end. And tell this guy I’m with to fuck off.
I shove the phone back into my pocket and walk to the end of the hallway like she said. There’s a whole other room I hadn’t seen just to the left filled with couches, beanbag chairs, and tables, with people lounging around laughing and smoking hookah. Two scans of the area and I spot Maya right away. She’s wearing this bright yellow dress with the familiar high shoes, and there’s a guy wearing aviators and super tight jeans with his hand over her elbow, trying to kiss her shoulder and neck and anything else he can get close to. Maya looks ready to strangle someone.
Then, something just switches inside of me, and I get that stupid, goofy grin on my face which tells me I’m about to do something I might regret but to hell with it because it’s a good idea right now. I go over and take the guy’s arm off her shoulder and twist it around. He tries to push himself away from me and throws his head to the side to try and worm out. The aviators go flying. I twist the arm behind his back until I feel the edge of tension.
“Quinn!” I notice that Maya’s there in front of me, beating my chest with her fists. “Stop it, Quinn! Kirill’t break it!”
I hear her but ignore it and twist a little harder, not at all hard enough to shatter the arm but enough that it’ll feel that way. When he starts to scream, I let go. He tumbles onto the table, upsetting several glasses of beer.
I know I ought to say something to this guy, but Maya’s already flying out the door, and the best I can come up with is, “Kirill’t let me see you with her ever again,” and then I’m racing behind her to keep up. I hardly even see the faces staring back at us.
Maya asks me a little woozily if I’ve parked out front and I show her where.
“Over to the left.” I unlock the Mercedes and open her door.
“Holy shit,” she says once we’re on the move and away from the eyes of the people staring back at us. “You scared the living shit out of that guy.” She sounds a little scared herself, and a little proud.
“Wasn’t that the idea?”
“Sorta. Is he gonna be alright?”
“Fine. I don’t just go around breaking other guys’ arms.”
“Sure seems like it.”
“You ever seen someone break another person’s arm?”
“Actually, yes.”
I’m not expecting that, and it shuts me up for a second. “Well, okay. I’d have needed another three inches to do the job. It’ll hurt for a few days or so. I don’t like hurting other people just because,” I say. “There’s gotta be a reason. But I don’t like doing it even when there is one. Even if the guy deserves it. Doesn’t make it any easier.”
Maya looks out the window at the lights and the buildings flashing by. I can’t tell if she’s listening or not or even if she wants to talk, so I don’t say anything.
“I dunno,” she says, “Avery probably deserved it. Not because of anything he did with me. He just tried to grab my boobs and was kissing me after I told him to stop. Then he said that he was on his game and that I must be a lesbian if I didn’t like it and also something about his girlfriend being out of town and he only had this one chance and that I was ruining it. Then I laughed because it all sounded so melodramatic and dumb and I told him he was making pretty shitty dialogue. And then he called me a bitch, so I slapped him but not all that hard and then he grabbed my ass, and it was right after that that I texted you. Voila, the night.”
“You know this guy then?”
“Met him tonight. Why?”
“No reason. Sounds like a pig.”
She shrugs. “He’s just a boy. They’re all like that.”
“Do they all say that kind of stuff to you?”
“Not all of them, of course. I’d say forty percent are the Averys. Thirty percent are the nice boring guys and ten percent are the nice guys looking for an excuse to cheat on their girlfriends. Another ten percent for the unclassifiables. Kinda pathetic, right? What happened to the days of shitty pickup lines and straight rejections? The worst part is that it’ll take him a full fifteen minutes to find a girl who’s gonna eat all that stuff up. Makes me nauseous just thinking about it.”
“So why go?” I direct us over to the highway, which is almost deserted. Not a lot of people leaving town at two in the morning. Rain spatters against the windshield. It looks cold.
“Because it’s a place to go. Can’t spend all your time in museums unless you wanna go crazy.”
“There are probably better places. Better clubs.”
“Sure there are. But the guy who owns that one only owns it because Dad gave him a loan, and Dad likes to know the people I’m with.”
“So he only lets you go there because he knows the owner?”
“Yep.” She sighs and turns the sigh into a yawn, and then leans on her elbow against the door. “Welcome to my world.”
“It sounds miserable,” I tell her.
“Funny. I was thinking the same thing.”
She goes quiet, and we pass a few more streetlamps. I count the seconds in between them and arrive at somewhere between three and four.
“You’re lucky, you know.”
“What do you mean?”
“Lucky that you’re free. No one tells you what you have to do. Where you have to go. What time you have to be home by.” She shifts to her left
elbow and leans it against the center consul. “Goddammit. I sound like the Little Mermaid.”
It occurs to me that I could tell her it’s not as simple as she thinks. That I’ve got to work to survive. That I’ve got the Stitches to think about, and that there are guys out there who would like to see me or some of my brothers dead. That none of us would dream of leaving our houses without an Item somewhere on our person. But I don’t say any of that because I know she’s right. I’ve always been free. More free than she’ll probably ever be.
Her next words are a whisper. “And it’s not just that. I know he’s like a grandpa with you. He does that with everyone. That’s why people love him so much. He’s so good at hiding it.”
I say nothing. Six lamps. Seven.
“I’m afraid of him, Quinn. Honest to God afraid. I even tried to run away when I was sixteen, but he had goons in the next town over. You can’t imagine what it feels like to have someone who’s always watching over you. Someone who tells you he wants the best for you but then keeps you locked in your room for days ‘for your protection.’ Someone who says that they love and protect you and who you think—really think sometimes—must be exactly what he says he is. The nice old Dad everyone thinks is so charming and kind. And then to hear about the kind of things he does to his enemies—to hear all that and to try and tell yourself that it didn’t really happen when you know that it did. To have to live in both places at once. You get so—so tired.”
“But you’re trying to get away,” I say because I know I’m supposed to say something now, she looks so weak and desperate. “You’re trying to take control. You’re trying to start your own life. If you believe in it, you’ll have your own life one day. Your father will have to see that then. He’ll have no choice.”
Twenty-seven. Twenty-eight. The little pools of yellow light are filled with even littler pools of freezing rainwater.
“You know,” she states and scrubs a palm over her eyes, which I pretend not to notice. “You know you sound just like a high school coach in one of those teen movies.”
She smiles. I smile. She takes her elbow from the consul and lays her arm down alongside mine. Her palm cups the top of my hand on the gearbox. Her fingers are tiny, bony, and freezing cold, and suddenly I want to warm them up between my hands. I want to tell her more cheesy things and remind her that there’s more in the world than her father or club punks like Avery or this tiny, miserable city with its bleak winters and crabby fishermen and old fishermen’s wives. I want to say it’ll be okay even if it won’t because at this moment it seems like only now will she ever believe me.
Her fingers leave my hand and go over to the gears, cranking up the heat. “It’s fucking cold in here, you know?”
She leans back in her seat and closes her eyes. Sixty-three. Sixty-four.
I can still feel the coolness of her fingers. Something tells me I’m going to remember that touch for a long time.
Chapter 9
“Mr. Tolliver, I’m very sorry if I’ve woken you.”
“I wasn’t sleeping.”
“Good. We’ve had a situation. I’ll need you to take Maya away from the estate just for a few days until Mattias and I can settle this.”
“What’s happened?” I say, trying to keep the concern out of my voice.
“A situation, as I’ve said.” Theo sounds tired, like a man who has spent the whole day making sure his orders have been fulfilled.
“Is Maya in danger?”
“Good Heavens, no. This has nothing to do with Maya. I’d simply prefer for her not to see this.”
A few muffled voices say something about a mess.
“Only for a few days, maybe a week. We’re not expecting any danger in the slightest. How soon can you be here?”
I take the highway thirty miles over the speed limit—it’d taken me a week of experimenting to realize that on the road, Theo’s Mercedes was virtually invisible— and get to the mansion in ten minutes, just a little after midnight. The butler shows me in, looking appropriately grave, and directs me straight to Theo’s room. There are no guards around.
Theo is behind his desk, which looks as though it’d been clubbed several times with an ax. He’s got a phone balanced between neck and shoulder. He looks just as tired as I’d imagined him looking on the phone, maybe even more. He’s still wearing an evening shirt and tie but the tie has been loosened near the throat, and the shirt is crumpled. His eyes are bloodshot, and the wrinkles beneath them are etched and steely—he wears them like some kind of uniform. The cuffs of his shirt are covered in blood.
He waves me inside but makes no motion for me to sit, so I don’t. “Whatever you wish to say to him you may say,” Theo says into the receiver. “It doesn’t change what we both know must be done. As far as I’m concerned, we’ve long since said everything we need to say.”
I look away from Theo and try to form an idea of whatever the hell’s happened in the room. Someone has clearly gone to work on the place. Theo’s desk is split almost in half, and there are bright chunks of missing mahogany like bits of flesh from where the ax or whatever weapon was used, ripped out stray pieces. There are the same notches in the walls too. The two velvet chairs on either end of the door have been done in completely, but what I notice most are the cages, lying in crumpled shards on the floor. Like a giant smashed them together between his hands. Bright feathers peek out from between the crushed bars. There’s blood everywhere on the carpet.
“As long as we understand one another,” Theo says. “Tomorrow morning then. Get some rest.” He hangs up the phone. “Mr. Tolliver. You’re certainly timely.”
“Thank you,” I say and shake the old man’s hand. “I’m sorry about your birds.”
“Yes. Me too.”
He stares at the wreckage, and I can see the twitch in his eye as he looks on. “A great loss,” he finishes, “though I regret what’s to come more than what’s happened. You can’t at all imagine how much it pains me to do what I have to do.”
“So you know who it was?”
“Yes,” he says, biting the inside of his cheek in the way people do when they know something but don’t want to say it. “Might have seen this coming, too. That’s the real tragedy of it. We’ve all lacked foresight, and now we must pay for our mistakes, young Kit in particular.”
“Kit Holcomb?”
“You know him? But I introduced you two, that’s right.” Theo picks up a busted picture on his desk and tries to distract himself. Then he seems to remember something. “I’m sorry—I’ve been very rude. Would you care for a Scotch?”
“It would choke me.”
“Not much of a drinker, eh?” Theo smiles conspiratorially and orders two anyway, saying nothing until the butler brings them in.
“Kirill’t refuse a mobster’s generosity, young man,” Theo urges when he sees me hesitate. I take the glass with absolutely no intention of doing anything with it apart from holding it there in my hand. Theo sucks at his greedily.
“Kit Holcomb, I’m afraid. He seemed a shaky one to you when you met him, didn’t he?”
“I just thought he was nervous.”
“We thought the same. Some of the men even took to calling him ‘Kitty’ because they wanted him to loosen up. Even Michelangelo took up the call. My parrot, you know.”
He sucks the Scotch dry like a man in the desert. I’ve never seen someone go through a hard drink so quickly.
“We were wrong as things turn out.”
“What do you mean ‘wrong’?”
“Kit Holcomb’s a manic-depressive. He has been seeing a shrink since he was eighteen and never breathed a word about it to Mattias. About four hours ago I was out with my driver, we don’t keep guards here at night, but all of my associates have keys to the place in case of emergencies. Kit must have just snapped. Maybe it was a long time coming or a sudden break. Maybe just got tired of being called Kitty. We don’t know. Anyway, he broke into my office with the hatchet and went to town on the pl
ace. Best as we can figure out his target was my parrot.”
“Jesus.”
“If you’re not going to drink that,” he adds. I hand him the Scotch. “It’s been a long day,” he says after another drink. “Long story short one of my guards came back for a missing wallet or something and found the room in the state you see now. Kit was hiding out in the greenhouse out back, two barrels of a twelve-gauge shotgun in his mouth. Kirill’t know how long he was sitting out there before someone found him.”
“He didn’t kill himself then?”
“No. The gun wasn’t even loaded. Can’t tell what the man was thinking, but he’d have saved us an awful lot of trouble if he’d just gone through with it.”