The Portal

by Russell James

  This was crazy. He was an adult now, married, divorced, a business owner and selectman. Yet he felt as nervous as he did the first time he asked her out, certain that rejection awaited at the other end of his question.

  “You free for dinner tonight?” he said. “The chowder is still good at Mackey’s.”

  Her face fell. He held his breath. What had he been thinking? She’d dated Hollywood stars. He was her high school boyfriend. He prayed her refusal would be polite.

  A hint of a smile crossed her lips. “Sure. That would be great.”

  Scott had to stop himself from pounding the roof of her car in jubilation. “Okay. I’ll pick you up at six.”

  “I’m staying in a house near Goose Point.”

  “I know. We all know. It’s Stone Harbor.”

  “Well, duh. Then I’ll see you at six.”

  Scott returned to his truck as Allie drove off. He wondered what kind of strange circle life was completing for him.

  Scott had secretly fallen in love with her at first sight in eighth grade, and by tenth grade had mustered the courage to ask her out. They became classic high school sweethearts, culminating in a dual graduation party and the senior prom.

  But after their senior summer, she went to UCLA and Scott to RPI. Somehow, he thought that the separation wouldn’t change a thing. But the drift apart was inevitable. They were both home for Christmas break, and it seemed a little strained. Allie looked subtly different. Her hairstyle, makeup, and clothes were a little more West Coast. (Scott had to admit some of it was an improvement.)

  But she also acted differently. Her eyes no longer reflected the magic Scott still felt. She wasn’t unhappy to see him, or cruel or anything. She just didn’t seem to be Allie Cat anymore. She had come back as Allison. By the end of the year, her calls and emails had stopped, and that summer, only Scott returned to Stone Harbor. The harsh reality that romance could end hit him pretty hard.

  Later, Scott had been aware of her success, but only peripherally. He knew that she was on a soap opera, but wasn’t home during the day to watch that stuff. Sure, she had been tabloid fodder the last year or so, but he didn’t read that checkout line trash. At least those were his excuses. In reality, he went out of his way to stay in the dark about her. Since age 13, there had only been one person that made his heart race and his breath come up short (yes, including Anita). He wanted to remember Allie that way. He wanted to remember his Allie Cat. Not whoever that was in the tabloid headlines.

  He wondered which of those two he was going to have dinner with tonight.

  Chapter Eight

  All the way home, Allie muttered to herself, dumbfounded. Just this morning she had been content to be on her own, sorting things out in her head. Now she had a dinner date with her high school boyfriend. What the hell?

  While the weeks on the island had calmed her down, something still didn’t sit right. She was feeling more in touch with Stone Harbor’s real Allie, and further from California’s artificial Allison. But all of the good things: the sea, her music, and her growing insight about herself; all these things still felt peripheral.

  When Scottie peeked into her car window, he released a flood of memories and emotions for which she was unprepared. It might have been nostalgia, maybe just wishful thinking, but she felt that same spark from years ago, that unique flash only first love delivered. She remembered how feeling unconditionally and completely loved gave her strength and self-assurance. She also remembered how giving love unconditionally and completely gave her a sense of being whole. That was the part of being Allie Layton she missed the most, and it had felt better than anything cocaine had ever done for her. So she said yes to Scott’s invitation on total impulse.

  Now driving home, she felt like an idiot. She thought about how stupid she must have looked running out of gas. She was twenty-eight, for Christ’s sake. She had been on network TV and nominated for a Daytime Emmy. Scott must have thought she’d gone California ditz.

  He was being polite to ask me to dinner, she thought. Probably feeling sorry for the tabloid disaster who limped home from rehab. Either way, she should never have accepted. An evening of being treated like a mended piece of china would be unbearable, not to mention being on public display in a restaurant. She’d barely left the house since her return, but every time she’d been the subject of the pitying stares or the whispered innuendo.

  She pulled up in front of her house. She grabbed her bags, two of food and one envelope of sheet music from Mercer’s Music, and got out of the car.

  Maybe dinner would be okay, she thought. Maybe Scottie was the bit of normal that would help the rest of her come together.

  Not after a month, the reasoning half of her brain responded. You’ve barely got yourself together. Scottie’s just some symbol of youth enhanced by hormone-shaded teenage memories. And you have some significant baggage, girl. Unemployed addicts are not in high demand. And what if he finds out about the Dark Thing? The Dark Thing is more than baggage. It’s an anchor.

  The Dark Thing chilled her. Always lurking in an unseen corner, never quite out of mind. There was no sharing that with anyone. She was looking at Scottie with the simplicity of a sixteen-year-old. That girl disappeared on the West Coast a long time ago.

  She put away her groceries and went out to the patio overlooking the sea. In the moonlight she could see the breeze lick the waves’ tips into whitecaps. The crisp wind through her hair and scent of the sea felt good. She had always done her best meditation like this. Just her and the ocean to iron out life’s wrinkles.

  She thought about how many times through high school Scottie had rescued her on the side of the road, a victim of her woefully unreliable Mustang. Today was just déjà vu. Her life was way beyond needing a flat tire changed. Her life had a blown engine.

  She’d call Scott and cancel. No good was going to come of this dinner. Better to dash this dream here in private instead of elsewhere with an audience.

  Only one problem. She had no phone.

  “Dammit,” she said as she slapped the deck railing. Looked like she was going to have dinner after all. She’d make it quick and casual. No big deal.

  Chapter Nine

  Responsibility weighed heavy on the little shoulders of Natalie Olsen. For the first time, her mother had trusted her with something very important to do on her own. Dinner hung in the balance. She had to bring home rolls.

  She and her mother had gotten home late from the Brownies meeting. Two traffic lights seemed to never to turn green, then a stalled truck blocked one street. During the rush to get dinner together, her mother discovered the rolls were hard as a rock. Natalie volunteered to go get some more. Instead of the usual, immediate no, after a pause, her harried mother had said yes.

  At a month shy of eight years old, she’d never been allowed to walk to the corner market alone. It was only a few blocks away, where West Street met Main. She walked there with her mother every morning to her school bus stop. But this evening, she got to do it alone.

  Her mother had handed her money. Real cash money. Five dollars with President Lincoln looking all solemn at her. More than a month’s worth of her allowance. A fortune.

  Natalie hadn’t let her mother down. In the plastic bag on her wrist were the three things she had to bring home: rolls, receipt, and change. She stood outside the corner market, still wearing the brown beret and Brownie vest that made her feel so official. Her long blond hair reached her skinny waist and her green eyes blazed with pride. Natalie got a little chill at the responsibility of it all, the grown-up feeling of buying something on her own, something her family needed.

  She set off on the uphill sidewalk for home. She thought about the things that might happen to the rolls on the way, like birds flying off with them, dropping the bag in a puddle, the bag splitting open and spilling everything onto the ground to be run over by a car. She whipped the bag aroun
d and clutched it to her chest. She reached the intersection of Spyglass Street, one block away from home.

  “Hey, Natalie!”

  She looked to her left. Spyglass Street was just a block long and ended at a steep, wooded cut into the hill. The businesses on either side were closed for the day. A windowless primer-gray van parked across the dead end. The back doors hung open. A man knelt behind the van, bent over a storm drain in the curb.

  “Hey, Natalie!” He smiled and motioned her forward. “C’mon and give me a hand!”

  The man wore blue jeans and a button-down Western-style shirt, like the ones she saw men wear on old TV reruns. A stripe of white skin ran along the border between his fresh haircut and the rest of his tanned face. His ratty shoes carried a liberal sprinkling of thick blue paint, like the paint on the bottom of Mr. Greeley’s boat next door. The man smiled, but Natalie thought it was a fake smile, like the one the dentist gave before he stuck that big needle in your mouth.

  “Natalie,” the man called again, “I’m a friend of your mother. You have to help me get Mr. Boots. He’s stuck down here. The poor kitty can’t get out.”

  Natalie caught her breath. She had a cat, Whiskers, a good cat who sat on her lap all the time. Once he got stuck in a tree, and the neighbor had to help get him down. If there was a poor kitty like Whiskers in trouble, she should help him. If she was old enough to go shopping, wasn’t she was old enough to help a kitty like her neighbor did?

  A danger signal flashed through her mind. Her mother said not to talk to strangers. Anywhere or anytime.

  But he must not be a stranger, Natalie thought. He knows my name. Strangers don’t know people’s names. Only friends know each other’s name, and he said he knows my mom.

  She took a few cautious steps forward. The man’s smile widened. His teeth were kind of yellow.

  “That’s it, Natalie,” he said. “I need someone to help Mr. Boots. He sounds so scared.”

  A faint noise came up from the storm drain. She listened harder.

  A cat’s cry. Just like Whiskers cried when he was up that tree. But the storm drain was a worse place, dark and wet. What if it rained? Would Mr. Boots drown in there?

  “Can’t you hear him, Natalie?” The man had the saddest look on his face. “He’s very afraid. Can you be a big girl and help him out?”

  Natalie gave the rolls in her arms a squeeze.

  I got the rolls, didn’t I? she thought. I can help the kitty, and then go right home. Mom would want me to help this man get the kitty.

  She thought again about his yellow teeth.

  But he must be a nice man if he has a kitty.

  Natalie ran to the storm drain. Mr. Boots’ echoing cries from below grew louder. The man in the painted shoes smiled, a tighter, edgy grin. The muscles in his arms tensed.

  Natalie dropped to her knees at the drain’s edge. She bent and peered into the dark opening. The man leaned closer.

  “He’s right down there,” the man whispered.

  He smelled strange, like a lot of perfume, like when she dropped her mom’s bottle in the bathroom and it broke. Another smell poked through the perfume’s heavy cover, a sour smell, like something rotten in the woods. A tremor of fear raced up her spine and out to her fingertips.

  Mr. Boots cried again. Between her knees, a misshapen coat hanger hung on the grate. Duct tape held a digital recorder to the wire. A cat’s meow wailed out of the tiny speaker. Natalie sucked in a breath to shriek.

  The man’s right hand shot out and crushed her throat, stifling her scream. She choked. The dinner rolls hit the grate. Her beret flew from her head as he pinned her to the cold, rough pavement. She transformed into a panicked whirlwind of arms and legs.

  His left hand whipped a dirty cloth from his pocket. He clamped it over her mouth and nose. The sharp, tangy smell of the damp rag overwhelmed her.

  “It’s all right, little Natalie,” he cooed. “Relax. Uncle Carl will make everything okay. We are going to play lots of fun games.”

  Natalie’s pulse raced faster than she’d ever felt. She beat at his arms, kicked at his chest. He didn’t flinch. Each blow she landed came weaker than the last. She started to unwind. Her head twirled, and she felt like she was floating. Her eyes closed, and the bad man and the drain without a cat all went away.

  Carl Krieger scooped Natalie’s limp little body into his arms. He stepped on the dropped bag of rolls and crushed it into the storm grating. He slid Natalie into the back of the van.

  “Good girl, Natalie,” Krieger said. “Uncle Carl’s going to make a big girl of you tonight.”

  He slammed the van doors shut. The street was clear, just like Joey Oates had promised. Oates’ instructions had been perfect. The stupid cat recording was a touch of gold Carl would have never come up with. He climbed into the driver’s seat. He pounded the steering wheel with excitement about the upcoming night, when more of his fantasies would come true.

  Chapter Ten

  Chief of police Greg Scaravelli sat alone in the three-room station on Main Street, feet propped up on his desk. His wrinkled uniform stretched out a bit over the belly earned through twenty years of Nathan’s Famous lunches. His graying hair was longer than he’d ever worn it as one of New York’s Finest. His bushy moustache covered both upper and lower lips, making him look a bit like a walrus.

  The station had a main lobby, an office with two desks for himself and his officer, and one cell. The whole dump could have fit in one corner of one floor of an NYPD precinct. Still more than enough space for a town where nothing happened. Retiring here from the force last year was a great move.

  The clock hit 5 p.m. His sole officer, Milo Mimms, walked in through the front door. Scaravelli sighed. Only Milo would show up early for a twelve-hour shift. Scaravelli was the only person to impress in the department, and Mimms had failed that task on the first day.

  The scrawny little guy couldn’t get a uniform that fit, and he always reminded Scaravelli of a kid in a Halloween cop costume. Hell, at nineteen years old, he was a kid. The NYPD wouldn’t have touched him for three more years. If then.

  The weight of Milo’s gun belt always seemed moments away from buckling his knees. His heavy, outsized peaked cap always looked ready to snap his neck at any second. Scaravelli knew tougher preteen gang members.

  “Milo.” Scaravelli tried to contain his disgust. “You know you don’t have to be in this early.”

  “I want to make sure you have time to summarize today’s events.”

  “Zero events, Milo. Stone Harbor was quiet and peaceful. Not even a stray dog call.”

  “That’s good news, Chief.” Milo broke into one of his idiotic smiles that made Scaravelli want to punch him.

  Scaravelli waved him off like shooing a fly. “Check your equipment and get out of here, then. Keep an eye on the boatyard. Now that everything’s up out of the water, kids have a bunch of new places to make out.”

  “Got it, Chief.” Milo came to attention and departed.

  Scaravelli sighed. Chief of police with a department of one. The upside to having Milo was that employing a real cop instead might have made Scaravelli actually work.

  He couldn’t complain though. Seven months per year, he didn’t do squat. The infestation of tourists subsided, and the place lay cemetery-quiet. He and Officer Mimms took twelve-hour coverage to answer any calls and show a presence around town. Having Mimms on the opposite twelve reduced the time he had to spend in the moron’s presence. The five summer months, a few mainland part-timers helped keep the tourists in line. The worst crime was a bit of drunkenness every now and then. He was pretty sure that he and Mimms had the only guns on the island. This wasn’t policing. This was babysitting.

  That left Scaravelli with no respect for Stone Harbor’s inhabitants. He was used to New York City, where there was real crime. People there knew to suck up the small s
tuff, and just call the cops for the major malefactions like murder and arson. These people’s worst complaints were unscooped dog shit and double-parking. But his moustache hid his grimace and he pretended to take their concerns seriously. This was just an easy paycheck. He’d had enough of earning the difficult ones.

  Scaravelli heard the door to the police station open. He cursed under his breath. Who the hell was coming by after 6 p.m.?

  He pulled his feet off the desk and went to his office door. A man met him at the threshold. Scaravelli didn’t recognize him, but he did feel familiar. The bald, stocky man sported a goatee. He was dressed all in black, with a thick gold chain around his neck. He radiated cold, like an open freezer door. Scaravelli suddenly felt out of breath. The man was more than just unnerving, he was…viscerally frightening.

  “Chief Scaravelli,” the man said. “How ya doin’? I’m Joey Oates.”

  Scaravelli could not think of anything to say. There was something very disturbing about this guy, something that said getting on his bad side might be fatal, or worse. He had seen guys with this aura in the maximum-security side of Riker’s Island. Scaravelli might have thought that he was lord of the manor at Stone Harbor, but the king had arrived. All hail the king. Scaravelli stepped back behind his desk as an excuse to put some distance between himself and Oates.

  “We’ve done business before,” Oates continued, following Scaravelli and ending up in front of his desk. “Back in the day in the city.”

  “We have?” Scaravelli said, trying and failing to exude the confidence of a chief of police.

  “Lots of times. I got records of many transactions. We been partners a long time. A very profitable relationship it’s been. Our transactions always paid me dividends.”

  Scaravelli thought hard, trying to remember this guy. He smelled a setup. He’d retired a few steps ahead of Internal Affairs flipping over some rocks he’d hidden things under. The IA bastards would hound you well into retirement if they had something they could stick their teeth into and tear.