A Matter of Mercy

by Lynne Hugo

  Rid thought maybe he’d had too much to drink. He felt his mouth open in surprise. “What?”

  “What don’t you get?”

  “You’re doing what?” Anything to slow this down, give himself time to figure it out. The paper remained on the bar. No way he was going to pick it up.

  “Me? I’m taking care of your problem.” The man put quotation marks in the air around the word.

  “Huh? How? Who the hell are you?”

  “You’re on the slow side, know that? You ain’t gonna be makin’ no monthly payments. Okay? Your part’s small potatoes compared to that.”

  The scene had taken on a surreal quality. Later, that was Rid’s only explanation to himself, that he was over the edge of drunkenness and a weird stranger with a pushed-in face dressed like a cartoon—dressed like a cartoon! he kept saying to himself—had come into Rid’s everyday place and said things so bizarre he couldn’t conjure up the right reaction. At the time, Rid had started to say “What’re you—what do you mean?” as if he really were slow-witted. For God’s sake, was he being threatened? Monthly payments?

  The man had downed his beer then and swiveled his barstool toward the door. “You stay outta the way, y’hear? There’s the name and address. I expect you’ll do your part. Y’hear? I’ll figure it out if you don’t.” And the moon face had loomed over Rid as he stood and picked up piece of pocket notebook paper, folded and shoved it in Rid’s shirt pocket. He resettled his belt, and walked out the door with Rid staring after him. On the way out, he lifted a jacket from the hooks by the door in an unhurried motion, without breaking stride. There was something bulky in his hip pocket. Did anyone carry a pistol in a pocket? Rid shook his head and blinked, his mind unable to work fast enough.

  “Wait a minute,” he called, a good ten seconds after the restaurant door had opened and closed. He got up, tripping himself, and stumbled in a lurching run for the door. The air was heavy, wet and black, fuzzy around the lights of the marina. Few cars were in the lot. One set of tail lights took the sharp curve in the road that headed back up into the village. A truck pulled out of the lot across the street and headed the other way, toward Great Island. Rid ran ten yards, squinting, trying to focus on the license plate. He thought he had it. Was that a M or an N, MI 1 B, was that it? Or MIL 8? Massachusetts plates, for sure. But he didn’t even know if that was the right vehicle, though the truck wasn’t immediately familiar, as the fishermen’s were. Decals in the back windows, but he couldn’t read them, and didn’t even know for sure what color the body was. It could have been dark anything. Not too new, not too old, a Ford. Across the road, the shellfish warden’s shack was scarcely outlined. Behind it, the sea was one shade one more black, unfathomable, deceptively quiet tonight.

  He hadn’t even gone back inside to settle his tab. Billy would be pissed off, but he’d also know that Rid would make it right tomorrow and he’d get over it. In dank December cold, Rid stood staring after the truck, repeating aloud—twice—what he’d thought he’d seen on the license plate, hurrying to his truck to write it down on a paper coffee cup he scrounged off the floor. He’d never even gone back to pick up his jacket, just left it in bar, a couple of hooks down from where the stranger had been.

  He’d gunned his truck engine to life; he had to do something, but then couldn’t think what. He got to second gear following the truck that had gone toward Great Island, but stopped before he got up the hill. Was it a pistol? Maybe just a cell phone. How’d the guy know his name? Rid’s mind raced to every dead-end of a maze.

  Finally, he’d driven to Tomas’ house, a small Cape Cod, similar to his own, except that Tomas’ was smothered in Christmas lights and wreaths. Marie must have hit a K-Mart going-out-of-business sale.

  The pavement was getting slick, and so were the stones from Tomas’ driveway to the front door. The fog was turning crystalline, like so much spilled skim milk. Rid stood on the front step, shoulders hunched up around his neck, pocketed hands drawn up tight against his body, a good minute before knocking trying to compose himself. He hadn’t decided whether to tell them.

  Marie swung the door open just as his knuckles were moving for the second knock. She stepped back to avoid being hit in the face.

  “Hey, Rid. I see you’ve already had a few and you’re even early! It’s okay, though, we’re just finishing up. Mario’s here.” Tomas’ wife had put on weight since they were married, but she clung to her high-school style, which had been considered pretty. Rid found her intimidating. Now she wore a bright red sweater with a reindeer emblazoned on the front, and her earrings were little blinking Christmas lights hooded by long brunette hair.

  “I know,” Rid said after a moment, disoriented by the earrings.

  “You look like a deer caught in the headlights,” she said merrily. “If you drink any more, I’m taking your keys. The guys’re down in the basement.”

  “I better not.” Then, needing it, “well, yeah, a beer, thanks.” He put his truck keys into her outstretched hand.

  “Hold up, you can carry it down yourself. I’m not wearing my little white apron just now.” She went into the kitchen while Rid stood at the top of the basement stairs. He heard the refrigerator door open and close, the sound of a church key on a beer, and Marie reappeared with a brown bottle.

  “Thanks,” he muttered, brushing the wall with his hip as he walked.

  “You okay?” she asked. This was more solicitude from Marie that he’d had in the past five years. She didn’t appreciate it when Tomas went out for a beer, not that he ever stayed all that long. Rid wished her eyes weren’t so narrow, close together. She always looked like she was accusing him of something, no matter what her tone.

  “Yeah.”

  Marie reached around him and flicked on the light illuminating the basement stairs. “Watch your step.”

  “That you, Rid?” It was Tomas calling from downstairs, in the rec room Tomas had finished himself in knotty pine. It made Rid dizzy.

  “Coming.”

  At first he hadn’t said anything, mainly because Mario was there and he couldn’t sort out if it would be a mistake. Then, because the two of them kept asking him what was wrong and because he had another beer after the first one Marie had given him, he tried to describe what had happened, taking pains to be exact.

  “No shit,” Mario said. “I say we go blow up Pissario’s fuckin’ house once and for all.”

  “Knock it off,” Tomas said, his parental voice. “Settle down. Think about it. You don’t carry a pistol in your hip pocket unless you want to blow your own nuts off. What’s this thing about monthly payments? What’s this about? Where’s the paper he put in your pocket? What’s it say?”

  “Dunno.” Rid said.

  “Is this about that chick at your grant?” Mario said. “You got her in trouble? She Pissario’s daughter or something?” His voice was an accusation.

  “What?” Tomas demanded. “Who?” He slid forward, moving his beer aside, as if it were blocking his view of Rid. As always, Tomas was stone sober. Rid knew he himself was sheets to the wind, speaking too deliberately if anything, trying to hide it.

  “What’s Mario talking about?” Tomas demanded again. His curly hair and beard—gray starting to mix in—needed cutting; he looked like some sort of wild mountain man, especially backlit as he was by an old floor lamp Marie had stuck by the kids’ foosball game.

  Rid put his face in his hands, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees. He’d only meant to take a moment to put some words in coherent order, but his partners leapt to another conclusion.

  “Man, you sold us out!” Mario shouted. On his feet, of course. The bozo hadn’t an ounce of patience. History counted for nothing with him.

  Annoyed, defensive, apologetic. His mind was a mixed drink. “No way. No way. I didn’t know she had anything to do with Pissario. I slept with her once, way before the lawsuit, back in September. Never saw her after that. She just told me she’s pregnant. That’s the whole story
. That’s the chick that was waiting for me on the grant the other day, Mario. She’s from over on the horseshoe beach, not up on the bluffs, but she owns property. That’s all I know.”

  Tomas’ voice was a blade. “Let me see the paper in your shirt pocket.”

  Rid pulled it out and handed it to Tomas still folded.

  Tomas read it. “Is Terry DiPaulo the one you’ve knocked up? On Bradford Street in P-town?”

  Rid’s face probably answered before his word did. “Huh?” Even Mario dropped back down into his chair, but Rid was too far gone to take much satisfaction in it.

  “Terry DiPaulo. Is that her?”

  “Never heard of her.”

  “Well, that’s the name and address written here. The one he said you’re supposed to ’look out for.’ Goddammit, Rid, sober up. What did this guy say?” Tomas got up and went to the foot of the stairs, calling up. “Marie! Put on a pot of coffee, will you, honey? Make it strong.” He came back and paused at Rid’s chair, a beaten-up wicker piece, before continuing back to his place back on the threadbare tan couch, speaking to him the way he occasionally would to Mario or one of his children. “Rid. What exactly did he say?”

  Rid tried to look around Tomas to the motley collection of posters, school pictures, and plaques lined up like uneven teeth on the wall behind him. Tomas stepped to the side to block his gaze. “Rid! Pay attention!”

  A deep sigh. Oh God! Lizzie! He hadn’t fed her, he hadn’t gone home to feed her or let her out. He’d meant to go get her, and then been so upset he’d just come straight here. “My dog. I’ve gotta go. I can’t do this now. I forgot. She hasn’t been out in—”

  “You’re not going anywhere.”

  “No, you don’t understand. She’s been in too long, I can’t.” Rid flashed back to the last time he’d done this, the night he’d spent with CiCi when this disaster was set in motion. He was humiliated by the memory and by the tears that came into his eyes.

  “Rid, you can’t drive. Look….” Tomas’ voice eased off. “Give me your keys.”

  “Marie already took ’em. I gotta get outta….” He started to stand, wobbled, and Tomas put a hand on his shoulder pushing him back down into the chair but not unkindly. Opposite him, on the couch, Mario muttered something under his breath.

  “I’ll take care of it,” Tomas said, already lumbering up the stairs. Rid sat, faintly nauseated, his head developing a pain on the top and back.

  The paper with Terry DiPaulo’s name lay on the nondescript coffee table, partly retaining its folds, like a white flower just ready to bloom or release its toxin.

  Mario, for once, said nothing for a few minutes, then, “Look, man, sorry for what I said.”

  “S’all right.”

  Tomas reappeared with two mugs and a pot of coffee. “Marie’s gone to your house to get Lizzie.”

  “Food?”

  “She can have some of Copper’s.” Copper was Tomas’ beagle, an obese little barker the family doted on.

  “Thanks.”

  Tomas set a mug in front of Rid and Mario, each with a dull thud. He filled them with coffee and set the pot on a magazine. He picked up their half-consumed beers and set the bottles up on the window ledge, a clear message. Mario started to object, wanting his, and Tomas silenced him with a raised hand.

  “Okay, Rid. Have some coffee. What does this Terry DiPaulo have to do with Pissario?”

  “I don’t know what anything has to do with anything. I’m telling you, none of it makes any sense to me. I’ve never heard of that woman. The one who’s in trouble is a girl I knew in high school—named CiCi Marcum. Caroline. She didn’t even talk to me then, for God's sake. She does have a house on the horseshoe beach like I said. Lorenz said the landowners might get together. Maybe.…”

  “That doesn’t explain the Terry DiPaulo thing.” Tomas said.

  “Hold up! I got it. This Caroline chick is offering to trade. No support payments if we back off the lawsuit. Drop our opposition! The bitch is with Pissario.” Mario weighed in, excited, tangling words in his hurry to show that he’d figured it out.

  “That … might make some sense,” Tomas said slowly, eyes half closed as he thought it through, one big hand on each thigh as he leaned back in his chair, “for your part, I guess. That you’d give up and get out.” He sat forward again. “Doesn’t really put any leverage on us.”

  “Maybe it’s divide and conquer,” Rid offered weakly.

  “Or he’s got some other goons with plans for us. Just haven’t shown up yet. Bastard,” Mario spit the word. He was agitated, his face reddening as it had since grade school when he wanted to fight. His eyes glowed red-black, as if caught by a camera’s flash, a combination of the strange lighting in the room and his excitement. Rid’s own eyes were burning and irritated, as if the room were dense, although only Mario was smoking. That was why they were downstairs. Marie’s rule. Rid wanted to lie down. He laid his head back against the top of the chair, dared to close his eyes.

  Upstairs there was a cacophony of barking and a scrabble of feet. The basement door opened and Lizzie took the stairs in a series of implausible leaps. Rid almost couldn’t grasp that she was there before she was on top of him, knocking him backward, the comfort and familiarity of her long-tongued kisses, wide, hard tail swings that would have cleared the table of beer bottles had Tomas not already done so. Copper followed in his waddling run, baying.

  “Oh man, here’s a headache announcement,” Mario said irritably, plugging his ears. Rid leaned forward and let Lizzie wash his face, his hands caressing and scratching behind her silky earflaps as she did, their ritual of mutual affection.

  “Okay, okay. Copper, shut up. Rid, you’ve got to focus. Both of you. We have to figure this out, you hear?” More than anything else, the desperation that crimped the edge of Tomas’ voice frightened Rid. Tomas, smart, educated Tomas who never lost control. It wasn’t what he was saying. It was how he was sounding, just like Rid himself. Like he had no idea what to do.

  Chapter 17

  The third time she called them in two weeks, the police took thirteen minutes to get to Caroline’s house. They called her “ma’am,” and the younger one pointed out that she likely was mistaken as the windows were hard to see through just now. They looked like throwbacks to summer, trellised with blowzy white roses of salt and ice. “Maybe even it was a deer. They won’t hurt you,” he’d patronized, infuriating her. The older one rolled his eyes and adjusted the brim of his cap. “We’ll be taking off now,” the young one finished, adding, “just call us if you see anything else and we’ll swing by.” They were starting to act like she was a charity case: pathetic, alone, hormone-driven to lunacy and someone they simply had to humor as a part of their regular rounds.

  “I know deer won’t hurt me,” she’d said sharply. “People hurt deer, though. They track them, and then they put them in the crosshairs of guns and pull triggers.” She sounded hysterical, even to her own ears. Shut up, just shut up she said to herself. You’re making it worse. “All right. Thank you for coming by.”

  The older one, a five o’clock shadow extending to eight o’clock now, and puffy bags under his eyes that made him look hung over, took mercy. “Ma’am, we’ll keep an eye out, you know. Patrol. We’ll cruise the area.”

  Was he mocking her? “Thank you.” She kept her tone neutral in case he wasn’t. The porch and yard lights were on, as was the light over Eleanor’s studio door. She knew—or thought she knew—that someone was stalking her, if stalking was the right word, but the police never arrived in time. There were noises on her telephone line as if someone were listening, thumps against the side of her house, footsteps on the porch. Someone ran up her driveway, she was sure of it, but the police asked if it might have been a neighbor, and it could have been, how would she know it wasn’t? One morning, someone had scrawled something on the windshield of her car in the frost, but by the time she got out there, the sun had melted enough of it that she couldn’t read the words.
r />   The police didn’t come for over a half hour. By then, there were only circles of clear glass with long wet droplets running from them like tears down cheeks. “Shoulda moved it into the shade,” a cop she’d not seen before said. He looked to be in his late twenties. Were they all babies? Caroline could tell he was disappointed. Maybe he’d hoped to find her dead next to the car, his chance to break a big case and make a name for himself.

  “You said you’d be right here,” she snapped, “and not to touch anything.” She must look like a wild woman, she realized, brushing her hair back off her face, on which she’d put no makeup. She wore a makeshift, mismatched, uneven maternity getup topped by a field coat of her father’s, and her mother’s boots because the driveway was a mess of mud and slush where the gravel was too sparse. She really needed to have a load delivered in the spring. A lot needed doing. Not that she was doing much herself right now. She had a hard time keeping her thoughts in a straight line these days. She was terrified, dead tired from paranoid wakefulness, and didn’t recognize her own body. Just yesterday, a clear liquid had leaked from her breasts and she’d panicked until she remembered she’d read something about that.

  I am losing my mind, she told her mother after the detective left and she drank a cup of tea at the kitchen table. The sun that had made a fool of her, erasing evidence while she cowered in the house, streamed benignly through the kitchen window onto the dishes in the sink, hardening egg yolk remains to an impenetrable crust. She was making herself eat well, but cleaning up after it, not so much as her mother used to say.

  “I know it,” she said aloud, answering Eleanor as she often did. Just then her mother had told her, You can’t go on like this, CiCi. To get through Christmas—where she had to make an appearance at both Noelle’s and Sharon’s, neither of whom would hear of her being home alone, was going to require a major pull-together effort.