Smitty nodded. “That’s Aries, his dealer up in Salem. Nox seems to favor her because she enjoys doing the unsavory stuff. Lets Nox keep his hands clean, relatively speaking.”
My fingers balled into a fist so tight that I could feel the bones bend in protest.
“It sounded like your brother had taken something from Nox,” Smitty said. “Some page from an old journal or something. And from the tone of Nox’s voice, he would do anything to get it back.”
I slipped a hand into my hoodie pocket and brushed my fingers across the fragile surface of the journal page. There was no doubt in my mind: The old document in my possession was the very thing that Nox had been grilling Jack for.
Something about it was so important to Nox that it cost Jack his life.
“So you’re telling me that you just stood there while they interrogated my brother?” I pictured Jack limping across the bridge, the pained twist in his face every time he put weight on his bad leg. “While they beat and tortured him?”
“What was I supposed to do?” Smitty wailed, the sharp peak of his voice carrying down the quiet hill. “You think I should have run upstairs and called the cops? Nox has a fixer in the Boston Police Department—a dirty cop on his payroll who smoothes everything over.”
It had only been twelve hours ago that I was in the precinct, going toe-to-toe with a detective who’d taken a sudden interest in my brother’s case. Could Detective Grimshaw be Nox’s inside man? “Dirty how?”
“Rumor has it that this detective put money on the wrong horses at Suffolk Downs and got in deep with a local Armenian bookie named Georg. Now the cop and Nox have an agreement: Nox keeps Georg from coming to collect, so long as the cop makes sure Nox’s name stays out of the police ledgers. Who do you think falsified that report? Who do you think coerced me into signing it?”
All day, I’d figured Grimshaw was being unhelpful because he thought I was suffering from delusions. What if he was actually trying to sweep the murder under the rug for the drug dealer who was paying off his gambling debts?
“You have to believe me!” Smitty pleaded, sounding like he was trying to convince himself as much as he was me. “Nox’s guys are roughnecks, but I had no idea they were going to kill him.”
“What did you think, that they were going to throw him a birthday party?” I asked.
Smitty bowed his head. “Later that night, once I got home to my wife and my baby daughter, I woke up to a scraping sound. It was Aries, sharpening a knife at the foot of my bed. Sharpening them on the horns sprouting out of her skull.” The fear had returned to his voice twofold. “Aries told me, very calmly, that they’d caught me on security camera, eavesdropping on the staircase. That a witness report would appear at the police station the next day with my name on it, and I better corroborate everything it said. Then she was gone.”
“Aries,” I repeated the name, letting it sit bitterly on my tongue. It tasted like bleach.
There were so many people who needed to pay for Jack’s murder. Nox for ordering it. Whatever goons held my brother down in that basement. Detective Grimshaw for covering it up.
But Aries was the one behind the wheel of the Mustang.
For that, she was going to pay most dearly.
“That’s all I know,” Smitty said. “Do I feel shame for not trying harder to save your brother? Words cannot even describe. I liked the guy, a lot. Smart as a whip, and I learned more from his historical babble in two months than I learned in four years at Salem State. But I have a family to think about. I risked my life and theirs to share this information with you, because you at least deserve the truth.”
Smitty rattled off a string of apologies and excuses, but I was lost in thought as I gazed out over the harbor at Thacher Island, its outline dark against the indigo sea. Its two lighthouses winked at me with each sweep of their lights. The last time I’d been to Rockport, I had tagged along with Jack for a research project he was doing. Standing on the pier next to a buoy-covered boathouse, he’d pointed animatedly at Thacher. During the Revolutionary War, the colonists had decided that the lighthouses were inadvertently helping guide the Redcoats to safe harbor, so a group of minutemen stormed the island and extinguished the twin lanterns.
So much knowledge trapped in Jack’s head, so much verve for life, and he hadn’t lived to see his nineteenth birthday.
“What are you going to do?” Smitty was asking when I snapped out of my reverie. “As long as he has his inside man, going to the police is a death sentence. And if you try to cross Nox, he will filet you like a cod and stew you in his chowder.”
I didn’t dare tell Smitty that I had the journal page Nox was looking for. Smitty had helped me so far, but only under duress. He would clearly do anything to survive, or at least to protect his family, and if Nox turned his interrogation techniques on this fragile bartender, he would crow like a rooster.
I let my fingers close resolutely around the edge of the riddle. “I’m going to find what Nox is looking for,” I said.
“And then what?” Smitty asked.
My eyes narrowed with cold fury. “Retribution.”
When I opened my eyes the following day, it took several moments of confusion to figure out why I wasn’t in my own bed.
I’d fallen asleep in Jack’s old bedroom.
It was the blue flannel sheets I recognized first, followed by the smell of Jack’s citrusy cologne, which still lingered on the unwashed pillowcases. Jack hadn’t been home since he’d left for college, but the “old-man scent” that he generously spritzed himself with had always clung stubbornly to fabrics like moss to a stone.
Without looking at the alarm clock, I knew that I’d slept right through the morning and into the afternoon. Jack’s room faced west, and I’d woken up because the low October sun had been streaming onto my face, through the window over Jack’s bed. Even now my cheek felt warm to the touch.
I leaned out the window, gazing out over the endless clusters of triple-decker houses that made up Dorchester’s Savin Hill neighborhood. The Boston skyline looked like a miniature on the horizon. My hometown was one of the last bastions of true diversity in the city. Irish, black, Vietnamese, Cape Verdean—you could find a little bit of each coexisting on every street in Dorchester. Sure, we had our problems like any other city, but at the end of the day, we all shared one common thread: Everyone here was just trying to get by.
Now, however, I had far greater concerns than breaking into the middle class.
At dawn, I’d taken the earliest train home from Rockport, after waiting two hours, curled up on a bench at the commuter rail station, digesting everything Smitty had told me. Treat the story like the riddles Jack used to leave you, I told myself. Start simple, and let the answers reveal themselves to you as you go.
But for every conclusion I reached, two more questions took its place.
My first conclusion: It was no coincidence that Jack ended up working at the Nightingale. Twenty-four hours ago, I might have convinced myself that the allure of extra pocket cash had drawn Jack to a job at a seedy nightclub. But it was a little too much to swallow, given Jack’s obsession with American history, that he’d arrived at the Nightingale with no ulterior motives, when the bar’s owner happened to be in possession of a priceless journal page from the 1800s.
So Jack had planted himself in Nox’s organization in the least suspicious position possible. Some place where Nox might not even notice he existed, washing dishes and the floors. He’d bided his time and listened to the whispers around him.
And then he’d stolen the journal page from Nox.
Then there was the artifact itself. Jack’s interest in it made sense, but what significance could it have to Nox? I didn’t want to stereotype, but I couldn’t imagine that an ex-commando drug kingpin could be interested in it strictly for its historical value. Maybe it was old enough that it was worth a fortune. However, Nox owned a nightclub and reigned over the Blyss drug ring. He had enough money that he didn’t need to
sell some journal page at the Antiques Roadshow.
So if Nox wasn’t interested in it for the sake of history or monetary gain, then why had he killed my brother for stealing it?
This question still haunted me as I wandered over to Jack’s cluttered mahogany desk. I rubbed the residual sleep from my eyes and idly flipped over my brother’s antique hourglass.
Something happened as I watched the white sand slowly filter through the timepiece. My mind went still for the first time since I could remember, as I listened to the gentle hiss of the grains collecting in the lower glass orb.
“Time,” I whispered.
Nox had power and money. But if he was truly dying, then what he didn’t have was time. Neither power nor money could buy that back. And Nox had already proven in the past that he was willing to go to extraordinary lengths to stay alive.
Jack, on the other hand, hadn’t been dying himself, but his youngest sister was on the losing end of a battle with cancer. Just as Nox would do anything to survive, Jack would have done anything to give Echo her childhood back.
Then there was the runaway slave from the journal, who was convinced that the “Serengeti Sapphire”—some sort of mystical gem?—would save his son.
My next thought was so crazy that I almost stopped myself from thinking it, but the idea bubbled up anyway.
What if Jack and Nox were both after something that could restore health to the ill?
What if they were both after the Serengeti Sapphire?
The idea was preposterous, yet it filled me with such hope that the concept began planting roots in my brain as soon as I thought it. I felt those roots slithering deep into the soil of my consciousness, and the more they grew, the more I felt like I’d stumbled upon something that finally made sense.
When I’d first examined the books that Jack had hoarded in his dorm room, I struggled to identify any common themes among them, but now a few titles jumped out in my memory: The Lazarus Myths. Alchemy and the Quest for the Philosopher’s Stone. La Fontaine de Jouvence—French for “the Fountain of Youth.” All legends concerned with prolonging human life beyond natural means. Regeneration. Resurrection.
Immortality.
Beyond the telltale book titles, Jack’s actions in his final hours had completely contradicted themselves. He’d instructed his roommate, who I didn’t even know, to prevent me from following his quest. Then, mere hours before he died, he’d secretly left me with the very object that had gotten him killed, and sent me a cryptic postcard to guide me to it.
Maybe he’d been torn between the prospect of saving one sister and the possibility of endangering the other.
Of course, my theory about my brother searching for some sapphire with healing properties could be completely off-base. Even if he had been, even if both Jack and Nox believed in it, it didn’t mean it was real.
However, one thing my brother and I shared in common was this: If there was even a fraction of a chance that something could cure Echo, we’d follow that lead to the ends of the earth.
Despite all these revelations, one question still fiercely bothered me. Jack had concealed the journal page within that Greek mythology book, yet he’d dropped it off in Echo’s hospital room, instead of leaving it at our house in Dorchester. Why?
That’s when I noticed little details I’d missed before. Jack’s tightly packed bookshelves were all arranged alphabetically by author, exactly the way he liked it. However, the thin layer of dust on the shelves, which had accumulated since Jack went to college, had recently been disturbed. Then there was my brother’s chair, which was tucked neatly into his desk, flush against the wood. The thing was, one of Jack’s favorite historical figures was General George Patton. Patton’s statue at West Point, where he’d attended college, faced the library, because it had been said that Patton never felt like he’d done enough reading. Jack had found this so novel that he always left his desk chair facing his own library, away from his desk.
One of Nox’s people had been here recently, searching for the journal page.
Here. In my house.
I instantly felt violated at the thought of one of the men responsible for Jack’s death pawing through his things, through all of our things, while we weren’t home.
I pulled the journal page out of my pocket. I traced my finger along the jagged edge where the paper had been ripped from the binding of the actual journal. If Nox was after this page as though it belonged to him …
Then maybe Nox was in possession of the rest of the journal as well.
In the past twenty-four hours, I had done my fair share of stupid reckless things. I’d badgered a dirty detective. I’d snuck into a nightclub to interrogate a bartender. I’d agreed to meet a complete stranger who had ties to my brother’s killers in the dead of night on an empty golf course.
The plan formulating as I watched the sand in the hourglass trickle down put all of those to shame.
My brother had stolen one page from the journal.
I was going to steal the rest.
I sat down at Jack’s desk and powered on his old desktop computer. When the dusty relic finally opened a web browser, I ran a search for “Horace Nox” and began reading through public records until I found what I was looking for:
His home address.
I smiled and ran my fingernail down the orb of the hourglass. “You break into my house,” I said, “I break into yours …”
Cohasset, Massachusetts
Apparently, the Blyss trade was more lucrative in New England than I initially realized.
Because Nox lived in one of the most colossal mansions I’d ever seen.
Not a mansion, I corrected myself as I studied the house from the obscurity of the trees across the street. This is a fortress.
Between the high brick-and-mortar wall that ran the perimeter of the grounds, the wrought-iron gates monogrammed “HDN,” and a single lookout tower reaching up into the sky, Nox’s residence looked like it had been built to withstand a siege. Hell, throw in a drawbridge and a moat with a few crocodiles and it would be downright medieval.
Once again, I’d boarded one of the commuter rail’s many tentacles to escape the city, this time to the town of Cohasset, southeast of Boston. The idea of a gangster living in plain sight here of all places was especially amusing, since Cohasset had a reputation for being one of the most cookie-cutter hamlets in Massachusetts. Nestled on a quiet stretch of coastline, the town was named for a Native American word meaning “rocky shore,” but the lifestyle here was anything but rocky. With its quaint little town green, complete with a duck pond and a cutesy white church, it was a far cry from the neighborhood in Dorchester where I was born and raised.
In short, it was not the place where you’d expect a high school student to be breaking into the mansion of a murderer.
Yet here I was, lying at the edge of the trees within viewing distance of Nox’s estate. I hoped that the brown hoodie that I was wearing might camouflage me with the bed of leaves to anyone driving by.
I lurked there for an hour before the gates parted. A silver Cadillac with tinted windows rolled out onto the main drag, and I flattened myself to the ground, pressing my face into the dew-covered leaves. The rumble of the engine grew louder, and for a paranoid second, I felt certain that Nox would spot me. That I’d hear the screech of the car’s brakes, then feel the cold barrel of a gun against the back of my head.
I exhaled with relief as the Cadillac zipped by me.
Instinct took over in the seconds that followed. As I lifted my head and peeled a wet leaf off my cheek, I noticed that the front gates to Nox Manor were lingering open. There were plenty of things I should have considered then. Was his fortress equipped with surveillance cameras? Did he have private security or attack dogs waiting on the other side?
Rather than weighing any of these questions seriously, I staggered to my feet and ran.
It took several strides to shake the stiffness from my knees, after all that time lying on the r
oadside, but I channeled my inner Olympic sprinter and barreled toward the gates. They had already begun to swing mechanically closed, and in a matter of seconds, I would be back to square one.
I wasn’t about to let that happen. With one last dash of speed, I angled my body through the remaining gap, my arms brushing the metal gate on each side as I threaded the needle.
I landed hard on the gravel entryway right as the doors clanged shut behind me.
I rose to my feet, brushing off the gravel pebbles embedded in my scraped knees. Now that I was inside the compound, I could see that I hadn’t been far off calling the mansion a “fortress.” Its walls were constructed of massive stone blocks and the narrow windows were latticed with steel, which meant that the “smash the glass” method of breaking and entering was a no-go. The metal-plated front doors looked like they could withstand an all-day assault from a battering ram.
The landscaping was no less intimidating. A collection of thorny botanical sculptures leered over me as I made my way around the house. A horse’s head, a castle tower, a shapeless body with a crown—the topiaries were all giant chess pieces. It was a fitting garden for someone who probably viewed life as a game, a man willing to watch all of the pieces fall around him, so long as the king still stood victorious in the end. Had Nox seen my brother as just another pawn to be sacrificed?
By the time I reached the backyard, I was close to giving up. How easy had I thought this was going to be? I wasn’t a jewel thief. I had no tools with which to successfully break into a house. The windows were reinforced and if I even attempted to scale the stone walls, I’d probably slip and kill myself.
I stopped at the end of the yard, where the Kentucky blue grass ended abruptly at a cliff’s edge overlooking the rocky shore below. I was staring off over the restless sea, feeling like a total failure, when a light breeze coursed through the yard. It carried with it the odor of something pungent, something stronger than the salty aroma of the sea.
Nightingale, Sing Page 7