Nantucket Sawbuck

by Steven Axelrod

  Bissell was sitting stiffly behind his desk when I arrived. The tightly combed hat of hair was obviously a wig. The blue blazer and red bow tie was his standard uniform. His face was all thin sharp lines, pulled down into a disapproving scowl. He looked like someone had just offered him a big plate of something messy—crabs in the shell and a wooden hammer.

  “I want to make an example of this Jared Bromley boy,” Bissell said. No greetings or preliminaries. “He hid ten ounces of cocaine in the engine compartment of his car. Clearly he was planning to sell it on the schoolyard to other children. Unfortunately for him, he chose to do that on a day when the school system’s illegal substances canine task force was conducting a surprise inspection.”

  “I understand,” I said. “But right now I’d just like to get all the facts straight. See the car, talk to the boy and…”

  “The facts are not in dispute, Chief Kennis. The question is, what are you going to do about them? This boy must be punished to the full extent of the law. This is not the moment for leniency. We must send a strong, clear message to the deviant element in our school community. This behavior will not be tolerated.”

  I let the words jostle past me like a crowd of commuters pushing out of a subway car. When they were gone, I took a breath and stepped inside. “The case is a priority for us, Mr. Bissell. That’s why I’d like to see the car as soon as possible.”

  Bissell sighed dismissively: this incompetent policeman didn’t understand the gravity of the situation and he never would. Bissell flicked his wrist at the door. “It’s at the side of the building, next to the maintenance shack. A bright red pickup truck. One of your men is there. I’m sure you’ll have no trouble finding it.”

  Bob Coffin was leaning on the fender, arms crossed against the cold. A heavyset ex-high school linebacker, Coffin looked stoical standing in the snow. This was his life. At least he wasn’t a crossing guard.

  “Hey, Chief,” he straightened up.

  I nodded. “Coffin.”

  Coffin popped the hood and braced it. We leaned in toward the engine. “It was all right there, Chief. Two eight balls, tucked right behind the battery.”

  “Was the car locked?”

  “No one locks their car on Nantucket. You know that.”

  “Even the drug dealers?”

  “I guess not.”

  “That doesn’t strike you as odd?”

  Coffin shrugged. “This ain’t L.A., Chief.”

  “Has the car been printed?”

  “About half an hour ago.”

  “OK. Close it up and get back to the station. We’re finished here.” I stepped away from the car as Coffin slammed the trunk and paused a moment. “Thanks Bob,” I said. “See you later.”

  Coffin nodded and trudged off toward the slant-parking in front of the school. I watched him go, looking past the beige, ground-hugging building to the cars passing on Atlantic Avenue, almost invisible through the screen of snow. The cold air was tight on my face. I stuck my hands in my coat pockets. How many years it was going to take before I got used to winter? I might never get used to small-town life. It was a miniature world. Superintendent Bissell behaved with an arrogance comically disproportionate to his job. But maybe he was right. In this isolated, painfully inter-connected island world, you didn’t need much real authority to do a lot of damage, and that was how true tyrants measured their power.

  Still, maybe you could do some good in a place like this. That was the flip side. Maybe you could apply some big city experience to a questionable drug bust. Maybe you could stop bureaucratic preening and lazy police work from wrecking a kid’s life. Maybe. I was way ahead of myself. Guesses were useful, until you refused to part with them. First I had to talk to the kid, check the forensics on the car. It was getting late. I started for the front lot, following Bob Coffin’s tracks in the new snow.

  Driving back out to the station, I saw that the snow had abolished the ordinary civic landscape. Sidewalks, back yards, even the normal boundaries of the streets themselves, vanished. You crept along, exploring the new wilderness. It was like the roads had never been built, or had fallen to ruin under the packed white powder. The mounting blizzard meant that school would be closed tomorrow. Miranda was off-island at some business guru’s real estate seminar (called, all too appropriately, “Love What You Sell, Sell What You Love”), which meant I’d be taking the day off with the kids. The long-promised sledding at Windmill Park, slightly marred by the pager at my waist, but still fun. Hot chocolate at The Bean, and then lunch together, and leisurely homework in the afternoon. The fist of tension behind my chest from the long morning started to unclench.

  I always felt better when Miranda was gone. It had taken me a long time to understand her, in part because I was reluctant to accept the truth. It had been dormant during our years in Los Angeles. A slim shy girl with the face of a Titian Madonna, she had called herself a “seeker” in those days. When people like that actually find what they’re seeking, the results can be dispiriting. I had watched Miranda’s odyssey of self-discovery move through Sufi-ism, Scientology, Torah class and even a very expensive set of Tony Robbins Personal Power tapes. Those tapes should have been a clue, but I couldn’t help being startled when the self that Miranda finally discovered turned out to be a Nantucket real estate agent. There had been clues, I realized. She had never been interested in the movies I loved, but she always kept track of the grosses. She knew how exactly much each star made, and how much they received in their divorce settlements.

  After the move to Nantucket, money and all the details of its loss, transfer, and acquisition took her over completely. She was working for Elaine Bailey, the ultimate land shark.

  Miranda had known Elaine most of her life—Elaine had sold Miranda’s parents their first house on the island—but their affinity ran deeper. Miranda had lost her groping connection to the poetry of things; Elaine had never had one to begin with. Neither of them could appreciate the evening light on the moors or the sight of a redwing hawk gliding on the thermals above Madaket Road. They didn’t read, not even the newspaper (except the real estate section). They didn’t go to plays or movies. They didn’t watch television, except sports channels and CNN. They didn’t fish or sail or even walk the beaches. They drove around in giant SUVs, showed houses, closed deals, gossiped, drank white wine, and went out to dinner. That was it. That was life.

  That was the life my ex-wife had been seeking.

  Miranda was in her element at last, and it made her supremely boring. No matter what subject she was talking about, she wound up talking about real estate. Deforestation of the Brazilian Rain Forest? That makes it the perfect spot for a gated community! Jungle View homes, a perfect real estate broker’s idea of a name, since there was no jungle to look at anymore.

  I feared it was all rubbing off on the kids. Both of them were pushing me to buy a place, which was an economic impossibility. They didn’t care about that. They were relentless. Tim had used the phrase “investment opportunity” the other day. Caroline was alarmingly knowledgeable about which parcels of land were subdividable and which houses had deed restrictions. A day of non-commercial play on stubbornly public land would do both of them a world of good.

  David Trezize was waiting outside the police station when I pulled up. Stumpy and forlorn, standing bundled in the snow, David looked like the public defenders I had dealt with in Los Angeles. He had the same slouch. It came from delivering bad news to an ungrateful world for not enough money. That was actually a pretty good description of police work, too. I stood up a little straighter as I approached the editor. I hadn’t dropped by the newspaper office in a while.

  “Chief Kennis,” David called out. “Do you have a second?”

  “Just about. I’m running late.”

  “I wonder if you have any comment on a story I’m going to be running this week,” David was saying. “It reveals that h
ard drugs are being sold in the Nantucket schools. And the police are involved.”

  I felt the first sizzle of anger behind my eyes. “Which policemen are you talking about?”

  David smiled. “Well, that’s the question, isn’t it?”

  “Who’s your source on this?”

  “Come on, Chief. You know I can’t tell you that.”

  “So some anonymous person says cops are selling drugs. And you print it. I have an anonymous source that says newspaper editors are having sex with farm animals. Will you print that, too?”

  “Absolutely, Chief. If I trusted the source. And I do trust this source. Actually, I was almost scooped on this one. Veritas was going to run the story, but Bissell spiked it. He doesn’t believe a student newspaper should report a story like this. Which leaves it up to me. Apparently the Inky Mirror wasn’t interested.”

  I squinted down at the little editor. “Who wrote that story?”

  “Jared Bromley. The only one there who can write.”

  “It’s a lost art, David. I have to read crime reports every day. But if you want my comment…I believe the story is false. And I know there has to be a better way to sell newspapers than libeling the police force.”

  “Are you going to sue me, Chief?”

  “Don’t worry, David. I have real work to do.”

  I turned and walked around the corner to the front door of the station. Maybe it was impossible to be friends with a reporter. We were natural adversaries, and neither of us could afford a conflict of interest. I knew I had offended David, but there was no way around it.

  In the interview room downstairs, Jared Bromley sat at the Formica-topped deal table with his lawyer, Charlie Hastings. They could have been brothers: two tall, thin, pasty, disheveled guys. Their heads were too big for their bodies; their noses were too big for their heads. Jared had his dirty hair in a pony tail; Charlie needed a haircut.

  Charlie didn’t even look that much older than Jared, but he was a good lawyer. I had seen him in court. He was quick and funny. One of the judges had teased him about his youth during a court date last Halloween, asking him what costume he would be wearing this year.

  “I’m going to really scare people,” he had responded easily. “I’m going as a lawyer. What do you think?” He did a quick turn to show off his pinstripe suit. The judge laughed, and Charlie got his client’s sentence reduced to time served and a year’s probation. He was wearing the same suit today, and he looked just as uncomfortable in it, as if he’d been dressed up for a family photograph.

  Jared was wearing jeans and a torn Whalers T-shirt. Their coats and gloves were in a dripping pile on the table. They stopped talking when I walked in.

  “Hi, fellas,” I said. “Thanks for waiting.”

  “This is ridiculous, Chief,” Charlie said. “I’ve got appointments backed up and Jared’s missing his AP English class. Come up with a charge or let us out of here. And how about a few pictures on the wall? This place is depressing.”

  I took a breath. “I’m not charging anyone with anything, Charlie. I want to clear a few things up. It won’t take long.”

  “All right, here’s the first thing: My client will gladly take any drug test you care to administer. He doesn’t even eat poppy seed bagels.”

  “Jared, what I wanted to know was—”

  “There’s nothing he can tell you, Chief. That’s the point.”

  “Still, I’d like to talk to him directly. If that’s okay with you, Charlie. I know he can speak for himself. I log onto Sharkpool a couple of times a week.”

  Jared perked up. “You read my blog?”

  I smiled. “I liked what you said last week about the superintendent’s hiring practices. Let me get this right. Oh yeah. ‘No wonder they’re flat on their faces. They set the bar so low they tripped over it.’ In September you said Bissell’s assurances about curriculum changes were ‘as meaningless as the nutrition facts on a candy bar wrapper.’ Good one.”

  Jared shook his head, looking down. Was he blushing a little? “You sure know how to get on writer’s good side, Chief Kennis,” he said. “Direct quotations.”

  I hooked a chair and sat down. “The last time our paths crossed, you called in a complaint about a beach party that was going on in front of your family’s house. Nonantum Avenue, right?”

  “Why would you remember that?” Charlie asked.

  “I was driving around that night. I took the call. I wound up doing a little bullfight number with one of those kids. Toby Grimes, that’s his name. Jack Grimes’ boy. He wound up face first in the ocean. I never had to touch him. Funny thing is, he wasn’t mad at me.”

  “Even Toby’s not dumb enough to go off on the police chief,” Jared pointed out.

  “My point is, Toby was mad at you, not me. That’s all he talked about on the way in to the station.”

  “Well, he’s even madder at me now.”

  “Care to discuss that?”

  “Not really.”

  “It’s common knowledge around the school that Toby is selling drugs, Chief,” Charlie put in. “He should be sitting in here with you now, not Jared.”

  “Is that true, Jared?”

  The boy shrugged.

  “Did you write a Veritas article about this?”

  “Why would you say that?”

  “Because the other editor is Heather Logan and her last couple of editorials were about the poor showing at the last pep rally and a passionate defense of dress codes.”

  Jared laughed. “’We’re being pressured painfully into a predatory pressure cooker of peer group pressure.’ She’s so right. Not to mention…alarmingly alliterative. I wish she could have used the word ‘pressure’ one more time in that sentence.”

  “Can I see a copy of your editorial?”

  “Sure. I’ll bring it by the station tomorrow.”

  I let a little silence settle between us.

  “So. You leave your car unlocked?”

  “Like everyone else.”

  “Which means anyone could reach in and pop the trunk.”

  “But that’s not the interesting question, Chief. Anyone could…and we both know who did. The motivation’s obvious. That covers who, what, where, and why. The interesting question is when. Because on any other day, it wouldn’t have really mattered.”

  “What are you trying to say?”

  “It’s like the Spanish General, Golz, tells Robert Jordan in For Whom the Bell Tolls: To blow the bridge is nothing.’”

  We all looked at each other. The only sound was the big electric clock on the wall ticking. I stood up. Jared Bromley had gotten my mind working. I looked down at the boy. “So you’re not selling crack.”

  “No.”

  “Well, that’s good. Keep walking that straight and narrow, Jared. And get out of here. You’re late for AP English.”

  I walked them out of the station and watched them drive away. Something was bothering me.

  Jared had picked one of my favorite books to quote from, and the rest of Golz’s speech was banging around in my head. Merely to blow the bridge is a failure. To blow the bridge at the stated hour, on the time set for the attack is how it should be done.

  What had Bissell said? “He chose to do that on a day when the school system’s drug illegal substances canine force was conducting a surprise inspection.”

  To blow the bridge is nothing.

  For Toby Grimes’ plan to work, he had to know the exact time of the task force inspection. And no one had that information except the police. Which meant that David Trezize was right—cops were involved. Even Jared Bromley knew it, if his article was as sensational as Bissell seemed to think. Once again, everybody on the island knew more about what was going on than I did. Maybe I hadn’t been looking closely enough. Well that time was over. No more secrets in the locker room
, no more small-time criminals in the blue uniform I loved.

  Things were about to get nasty. That was fine with me.

  Chapter Eleven

  The Editorial

  David Trezize wrote:

  “Last week, Preston Lomax, one of the new owners of our island, choked a waiter at Topper’s in front of almost a dozen witnesses.”

  He paused. The cursor blinked at him. He was right on the brink of something uncontrollably bad. He knew he should delete Lomax’s name. People would know who he was talking about, anyway. Did he really want to declare war so openly? Yes…he did. Besides, the incident had happened. That much of the piece was news. It was the least he could do for the devoted readers of The Nantucket Shoals. David grinned and went on.

  “Apparently there wasn’t enough ice in the master’s ice water. No one in the restaurant came to the young man’s aid, and he knew better than to expect them to. A few days later he did what a peasant would have done in Europe four hundred years ago, to protect his family from a rogue prince’s droit de seigneur: he fled.

  He wasn’t the only one. People are leaving every day.

  My friend Richard came to Nantucket in 1983, intending to stay for the weekend. He’s been here ever since. He’s leaving now, too. He can’t afford to stay, but he’s no longer even sure that he wants to.

  He’s been complaining for years, summer complaints mostly. The old familiar litany: the mopeds, the crowds, the fleas, the ticks and the parking tickets; the traffic, the prices, the noise. But in the last few years a new gripe has started to overshadow all the others, the sum of all his other complaints.

  The rich people.

  They’ve been driving him crazy. “Leather pants!” he’ll say out of nowhere one day. “Why are they wearing leather pants in July?”

  “They just wander around…eating ice cream,” he told me last summer, so comically aghast that I had to laugh. But I know how he felt. I’ve felt the same way. Part of it is simple envy. I’m no Marxist. I want their stuff, their Mercedes and their house and most of all their leisure, their free time—their freedom. They flaunt the things I may never have, so I’d be nuts not to resent them.