I had trouble getting bent out of shape over that.
The cops had found a diary in Bloomquist’s apartment. A real Unabomber job, Lima’d called it: tiny, precise block printing all about Brad’s unquenchable love for Gus. And what would befall anybody who came between the two of them.
Brad had smelled trouble when Gus finally agreed to spend a month in rehab. He’d moved to Framingham from the Cape to set up stalker headquarters.
As Brad had feared, the Gus who came back from Hazelden wasn’t sure where he was at in a hundred ways, including sexually—but he knew for sure he wasn’t with Brad.
Brad went nuts. Betrayed by his one true love, he filled a dozen pages in the journal that night. Revenge plans, mostly.
Step 1 of his revenge: he knocked on Teddy Pundo’s door and offered to lead him to the slow-pay who’d cheated him for a year and laughed about it.
Teddy, prodded by Boxer, was interested.
When Brad ponied up a fancy shotgun from Peter Biletnikov’s well-hidden gun safe, which he’d learned about during his Three Musketeers days with Gus and Rinn, Boxer (and therefore Teddy) was even more interested. A major statement was needed if they were to show the world, especially the New York Mob, that weak old jazzman Charlie Pundo was no longer the boss of Springfield. The shotgun looked like a low-risk way to make the statement.
Boxer never asked if the ridiculously expensive shotgun had a twin. Hell, who would?
Per Brad’s diary, it was Boxer who blasted away at Almost Home. It went pretty much the way I’d figured: Boxer had a decent description of Gus and he knew which room to look in, so poor old Brian Weller got it. Not to mention the others, who were just standing on the stairs at the wrong time.
The snafu rattled Boxer. Even a pro—hell, especially a pro—will think twice after taking the wrong three lives for no reward.
Brad Bloomquist’s revenge plans: hit by a big-ass setback. He took it out on his diary and played for time.
The shotgun went back in the gun safe until the night Brad, already setting up Donald Crump for the frame job, swiped a pair of Donald’s boots, trimmed nearly all the leather away, and wore them like flip-flops while he killed Gus.
Unlike Boxer, who had his own supply of heavy-gauge shot, Brad had to scrounge through Peter’s ammo. That explained why lighter bird shot was used to blow Gus open.
Back went the shotgun into the safe—until Brad talked Boxer into completing the frame on Donald by killing the con man and hiding the shotgun in his spare-tire well.
Boxer the consummate pro, who was getting uneasy because of me, jumped at the chance.
But Brad slipped him the wrong shotgun, the other shotgun. Was it an intentional move by a guy who’d gotten hooked on lies and scams? Or was it a mix-up on Brad’s part because he didn’t know much about firearms?
His diary didn’t say.
Boxer didn’t know there was a second gun, and the two looked identical.
The frame-job shotgun, it turned out, was frozen from disuse and lack of cleaning.
Which was the only thing that prevented the frame from being perfect.
A bicycle bell is one of the last old-fashioned sounds.
I heard one and smiled, knowing it belonged to Sophie.
She covered my eyes with her hands and said, “Guess who?”
“Bad breath, dishpan hands, cheap ring. It could only be…”
It was an old gag by now—we visited every few days—but she laughed and came around the bench and sat next to me. “Who goes first today?” she said.
“You, of course.”
“Davey’s asleep, as usual. Dale spends every waking moment missing you, as usual.”
“And your mom?”
“Your name does not pass her lips.”
“As usual.” We said it at the exact same time. And both tried to smile. And almost did.
“How’s the new shrink?” I said.
“Better than the other one. Much better, actually. She’s so young I forget she’s a shrink. We just … talk.”
“Does it help?”
“It helps more than counting down the minutes while listening to the first shrink suck cough drops. He was a dud.”
I started to speak. My throat went tight. I forced my way past it. “The things you saw that day. Nobody should … if I could take it back…”
Sophie patted my arm.
“Question,” I said. “Did you ever tell Charlene about the baby? About how I used Emma in Chicopee?”
“No.” She stretched the word. “I can’t decide whether that would make things better or worse.”
“Same here. Best not tell her.”
“Would you really have…”
“Don’t ask it again, Sophie.”
“Sor-ry.” She folded her arms.
I said, “Anything on Jessie?”
She slumped against the bench. “Still nothing.”
In the days of chaos, with Randall in the hospital, me scrambling to stay out of jail, media hyenas everywhere, and Charlene somehow coordinating everything without slacking at work, Jessie had gone on a paper-hanging spree in Worcester County, forging checks to the tune of nearly six grand and withdrawing the maximum on her mother’s bank card each day.
Then she’d split for parts unknown.
I’d spaced. Sophie was saying something.
“What?” I said.
“I said your son seemed sad when I told him. He had no idea Jessie was gone. I’m sure of it. In case you thought they’d run off together.”
“You spoke with Roy? Just like that?”
“He returned my call in fifteen minutes.”
I closed my eyes. “How’d he sound?”
“He sounded like you,” Sophie said. “Only lighter.”
“I was a beanpole myself at his age.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
We were quiet.
“I know,” I finally said. “I’m glad he sounds that way.”
We hushed up as two men and two women, none of them younger than seventy, set their gear on the next bench over and hit the court for mixed doubles, the four of them chattering away.
“Your turn,” Sophie said.
“It looks like the insurance company will pay off on the shop. They’re pissed about it, but they’ll pay.”
“You still haven’t dimed out Andrade, have you?”
I said nothing.
“Conway!”
“Like I said, they’re paying off. If I had to dime him to get the dough, I would.”
“Bullshit you would.”
I smiled.
Sophie said, “Job prospects?”
“I’ve got a standing offer in Springfield. Trouble is, I can’t spell consigliere.”
She gasped. “You wouldn’t!”
“I wouldn’t. But it was nice of Pundo to ask.”
The foursome warmed up. They could really play. They all liked creeping up to the net. Sometimes the ball went back and forth a half-dozen times without touching the ground.
“Everything’s going to be different,” I said. “You know that.”
“It doesn’t have to be.” But her voice told me she knew what I meant. How could she not?
“Got no shop,” I said. “Got no Charlene. Not sure where I stand with the Barnburners. Different. Just warning you.”
We were quiet awhile.
When Sophie finally spoke, I knew what was coming before she said it. “Are you sleeping?”
“Here and there. Not really.”
“And you won’t see someone about it, and you certainly won’t take a pill.”
“No and no.”
Rinn had been Brad Bloomquist’s final kill. And, judging by the diary, the one he’d most looked forward to.
He’d planned to kill her baby while Rinn watched.
See, by the time Peter and Rinn and Gus and Pundo did their sick little sleight of hand over who fathered Emma, Brad had been frozen out by the group—he’d let his true
colors show here and there, and nobody trusted him.
So Brad was in the same club as Peter, thinking Gus was the proud pop.
And that, more than anything else, drove Brad around the bend. To be tossed aside by his one true love, who then switched over to girls, of all things, was good for a couple of spittle-flecked diary pages every night. The diary told the cops that Brad had high hopes for his meeting with Gus in the apartment—Brad had big plans to convince Gus to rekindle.
When things didn’t play out that way, Brad killed him instead.
The day I’d interrupted Brad and Rinn in the guesthouse, just before I left to meet Charlie Pundo, Brad had been threatening the baby, telegraphing his plans to Rinn. He’d scared her enough that she didn’t dare say anything to me.
I’d felt the bad vibe.
I’d ignored it.
And Rinn had died.
And that was for me to live with.
When I tried to sleep lately, when I got down to that place where you either doze off or don’t, I always felt her blood on my elbows and knees. The blood I’d crawled through.
I didn’t doze off much.
Roy, Jessie, Gus, Sophie.
Emma.
At night, in bed, I thought about them all. Pasts and futures. I tried pushing words and facts around to make things better for any of them. All of them. When sleep finally drew near, I could damn near convince myself I’d pulled it off, had done something differently that changed everything.
I always woke up sweaty and sheet-tangled.
A tennis ball took a wild hop and came over the fence. Sophie rose, underhanded it back to the oldsters, and sat again.
She’d been reading my thoughts. “Emma is the only winner,” she said. “Relatively speaking.”
“Relatively speaking.”
Pundo had put the squeeze on Peter Biletnikov. Had strong-armed his way to a private paternity test, which proved what everybody already knew. Pundo gave Biletnikov a simple choice: give up the baby quietly and never hear about it again, or fight the process and find himself in court and on TV for a very long time.
It was a bluff, and a good one—Biletnikov didn’t want a trial any more than Pundo did.
So Biletnikov was long gone, and Emma was with Pundo.
As was Haley. She wouldn’t let the kid out of her sight. Charlie was fine with that.
Sophie said, “Do you still think Charlie will stay with Haley?”
“I’d bet a paycheck on it. When I visited, Pundo was shopping for a big house in Longmeadow, the ritzy suburb out there. And Haley’s got a good heart. Emma will make out like a bandit.”
“Good for her.”
We were quiet awhile.
Finally, I said, “Remember we talked about little kids remembering things?”
“I know what you’re thinking,” Sophie said. “Emma’s about seven months old. You’re wondering if that’s too early for memories. You’re hoping it is.”
“Is it?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You think Emma will have her echoes.”
“Emma will have her echoes,” Sophie said.
Also by Steve Ulfelder
Purgatory Chasm
The Whole Lie
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Steve Ulfelder, author of the Conway Sax mysteries, is an amateur race-car driver and co-owner of Flatout Motorsports, a Massachusetts company that builds race cars. He was a business and technology journalist for twenty years. His first novel, Purgatory Chasm, was an Edgar Award finalist. Connect with Steve online at www.ulfelder.com, on Facebook, and on Twitter (@SteveUlfelder).
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
A THOMAS DUNNE BOOK FOR MINOTAUR BOOKS.
An Imprint of St. Martin’s Publishing Group.
Cover design by David Baldeosingh Rotstein
SHOTGUN LULLABY. Copyright © 2013 by Steve Ulfelder. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.thomasdunnebooks.com
www.minotaurbooks.com
ISBN 978-1-250-02808-2 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-250-02809-9 (e-book)
e-ISBN 9781250028099
First Edition: May 2013
Shotgun Lullaby Page 28