by Tim Green
“Everything with Frank is shaky,” she said. Her hands were cold and damp and she slid them between her legs and the leather seat. The murmur of conversation around them was interrupted by a woman’s high-pitched cackle.
“Not you, though,” he said. “You’re not shaky. You’re just the mystery.”
“There’s nothing so mysterious,” she said, biting the inside of her lower lip and raising her chin.
“I didn’t mean anything,” he said, raising his hands before he took another drink.
“Of course I can help you,” he said.
Lexis drew in a breath and let it out slowly. When she was finished, she spoke in a rapid burst of words.
“There was a man we all knew. Frank. Bob Rangle. Me. It was twenty years ago. He got life without parole for killing a woman. A stripper. I want to find out what happened to him. Where he is. If he’s still even alive. Can you do that and tell me?”
“That’s it?” he said.
“Yes. That’s it.”
“What was his name?” Ricks said.
“His name was Raymond White,” she said. “It was 1984. Up in Syracuse.”
Ricks shrugged and said, “That’s not even hard. If he got life without parole, he’s sitting in a jail somewhere.”
Lexis pinched her lips and nodded. “Just make absolutely sure-”
Ricks held up his hand and said, “Please. The governor trusts me for a reason. Any information I get is just for you.”
43
UPSTATE NEW YORK in the summer is beautiful in many ways. Its waterfalls and the cool clear water of its lakes. The ancient mountains that make up the tail of the Appalachian chain. Rolling fields of yellow wheat, emerald alfalfa, and rustling stalks of corn. Vineyards. Stone mansions. Lonely farmhouses with ancient shade trees and towering views. But to me, none of it is more impressive than God’s view.
As my G-V banks to the north in its approach to the Syracuse airport, I can see the glimmering copper strips of the Finger Lakes stretching west toward Buffalo as they reflect the setting sun. I can see Ontario, the big lake with its oceanlike tides and its icy depths, perfect for cooling the nuclear reactors that pump out plumes of white steam into the blue sky. And from here, through the sleepy orange haze, the quilted farm fields and the carpet of hardwoods in full bloom look like the perfect place for a giant-or God himself-to lie down and nap for a century.
I turn to Bert and see him craning his neck for a view of something outside the window on the other side of the plane.
“What are you looking at?” I ask.
“Home,” he says. “I think.”
“It’s out there,” I tell him.
“Like a rabbit pen,” he says, shifting his massive frame in the leather seat and wrinkling his nose. “We used to own it all.”
“You’re talking like a white man,” I tell him. “Maybe you shouldn’t have cut your hair.”
Bert feels the blunt ends of his black hair that now falls no farther than his collar.
“You know what I mean,” he says. “I know no one can own the land, but if anyone is going to say they own it, it should be the Akwesasne.”
“Speaking of our people,” I say. “Tell me about our brave friend Andre and the reformed Russo. You said you had news about the two of them, but we never talked about it.”
“Because you were busy,” he says, slitting his eyes, “like a chief getting ready for war, a chief who keeps no counsel but his own.”
“Bert,” I say, “I think you’re jealous.”
Bert scowls and says, “I just liked it better when it was you and me and not all these white men in suits with briefcases and sunglasses and those wires sticking out of their ears.
“That’s how we lost all this,” he says, stabbing his big nose toward the window. “Our chiefs took counsel with the white man’s spies.”
Bert talks like this when he gets worked up. Sometimes I think he’s playing the part of a culture he only knows through old whispering voices.
“I thought you said I’m keeping no counsel but my own,” I say, fighting back my smile.
“Well, you’re not keeping mine,” he says with a sharp nod, folding his thick arms across his barrel chest.
“Okay, medicine man,” I say, “tell me the tale of Andre the dog leg and give me your counsel.”
Bert looks at me from the farthest corners of his eyes and says with a note of satisfaction, “Your plan to reform the white snake you call Russo was like a fart in the wind. He took the money you gave him and did he fix his hotel or pay his loan? No, he did just what you asked him not to. He put together a drug deal to get every kid from the Thruway to the Canadian border high for the life of a crow.”
“What’s the life of a crow?” I ask.
“Seven years,” he says. “Don’t interrupt my Native American clichés. Anyway, it gets better. He brings Andre into the deal.”
I smile.
“Andre?”
“Yeah, and they set up a buy from some downstate Haitians, but the deal goes sour and Andre ends up blowing away both of the Haitians. Well, the police know Russo isn’t the shooter because Russo took a bullet from the same gun in the leg himself, but they’ve got him for the drug deal and an accessory and he’s out on bail until the trial.”
“And Andre?”
Bert shrugs and says, “He’s up on the reservation. He’s fine so long as Russo keeps his mouth shut. The Akwesasne is a sovereign nation. You know that. He won’t get sold out by our people. We only sell out when it comes to our mountains and our lakes and streams.”
I nod and pour myself a can of seltzer over some lime and ice while I digest this news.
“See,” Bert says, “your own counsel. That’s all.”
“I want to see Andre,” I tell him. “I think I have a job for him. See if you can get a hold of him and have him come down to New York.”
“I don’t know if he’ll leave.”
“Send him some money and promise more. Andre always wanted to be rich and famous,” I say, looking back out the window as we begin to descend. “He wants to be a rock star, remember? Tell him what I did for Helena. Tell him I have a deal for him… He’ll come.”
As we approach the airport, I can’t help myself from searching out the quarry my father worked for so many years. It’s there. A gaping wound in the earth. Small yellow machines crawl in and out, like maggots except for their trails of billowing dust that glimmer in the late-day sun.
There is a black rental Cadillac waiting for us on the tarmac. I drive to an office building in downtown Syracuse. Instead of going in the front, we walk around back into the shadows of the building by the Dumpsters. Mr. Cooper, the agent from Vance International, is middle-aged with dark wiry hair, a crisp white shirt, and a dark blue suit. He is standing and waiting outside by the door in the glow of a single halogen light. He flips shut his cell phone and shakes our hands.
“He should be-” the agent starts to say, but before he can finish, the door swings open and a wiry old Mexican appears with a bag of trash.
“This is Mr. Orroyo,” Cooper says.
I extend my hand. The old man looks up at me and blinks before taking it. His hands are small and gnarled.
“Thank you for talking to us,” I say. “Mr. Cooper says you worked for Dean Villay at his lake house.”
Orroyo shifts the bag of trash from one hand to the other and nods.
“He knows he’s not going to get into any trouble, right?” I ask Cooper.
“He’s fine,” Cooper says. “I talked to him.”
“Mr. Orroyo?”
“Sí,” he says looking down at his feet. He lets go in Spanish and Cooper begins to translate.
“He worked for Villay,” Cooper says. “And saw him that night.”
“The night his wife drowned?”
Orroyo looks at me and nods.
“He hit her?”
Orroyo nods and winces and lets it fly.
“He heard her scream,” Coo
per says. “He hit her many times. With a baseball bat. Then he put her in the sailboat and dragged it out with the powerboat. When he came back, the sailboat was gone.”
“And he wasn’t alone?”
Orroyo talks and Cooper says, “No. She was with him.”
“His new wife?”
Cooper talks to the old man, listens, and says, “Then she was the girlfriend.”
“And you’ve got the bat?” I say to Cooper.
“It was buried in the garden right where he said,” Cooper says. “The blood type matched. We’ll have to exhume her body to do a DNA.”
I turn to the gardener and say, “I’m not blaming you, Mr. Orroyo, but can you tell me why you didn’t tell this to the police?”
Orroyo looks puzzled and Cooper translates.
He nods at Cooper and looks up at me with his small dark eyes and rattles the bag as he talks.
“He told me already,” Cooper says. “He wasn’t there to talk. He was there to work. Cut grass. Plant flowers. Work, not talk. That’s what he does now. He works. He doesn’t like this talk…”
Orroyo lifts the top off the Dumpster and heaves his bag in, letting the top fall with a crash.
“Does he know we found him because of the ten-thousand-dollar check Villay wrote him after the wife died?”
“Sorry, Mr. Cole,” Cooper says with a shrug. “He’s sticking to that story. Says it was a bonus for good work. He says it’s the American way.”
Cooper slips Orroyo an envelope that I know is full of cash, and without looking at me the old man goes back inside.
“Here’s the lab report on the bat along with the police report and the coroner’s,” Cooper says. “Says she was caught up in the rigging. There was a strong south wind that night and it banged the boat and the body up against the stone break wall there in town for quite a while. Could be why they didn’t suspect anything if he caved her head in.”
I take the envelope from him and pull out the reports, examining them under the bluish light.
“I don’t know what kind of a witness he’d make,” Cooper says, jerking his head at the door. “I think you’ll need him, though, to make the connection to the bat, but it was tough just to get him to do this.”
“Don’t worry,” I say. “He won’t have to testify.”
“Oh,” Cooper says. “The way you had us put this thing together, I thought you were going to try to have it prosecuted.”
“It’ll be prosecuted,” I say, stuffing the papers back into the envelope. “He’ll prosecute himself.”
Cooper gives me a funny look. I thank him and we leave.
44
I GET ONTO 690 West and we leave the city, skirting Onondaga Lake. When I was young it was the most polluted body of water in the world. If you stood on top of the soda ash cliffs you could smell the raw sewage swirling in the shallows. The worst part was what you couldn’t see. A lakebed festering in a stew of mercury- and PCB-contaminated muck.
I read they’re rehabilitating it. Dredging. Capping. Treating the sewage. Sucking out the poison with wells and pumps like it was a big snakebite.
The sun is well gone and the pink-and-burgundy glow in the west reflecting off the choppy water makes it blood red. I roll down my window and sniff the air. Nothing.
Bert looks from the water to me and says, “They say you can fish in it now.”
“Not me,” I say.
“Me neither,” he says. “Not to eat. Hey, you missed it.”
We drive under the overpass that leads to Skaneateles.
“There’s a place I want to see on the way,” I tell him.
We get onto the Thruway and off at Weedsport, then drive into Auburn. The prison glows in a bath of halogen light, and I crane my neck as we roll past. I cross the bridge and pull into the parking lot across from Curley’s Restaurant. When I get out, Bert follows me. I walk toward the grim fortress, crossing the bridge where Lester was killed. Below, the water babbles through the rocks. I can smell the weeds growing thick on the banks. Above the sheer forty-foot wall, the shape of a guard shifts from one side of the glass tower to the other. He puts one foot up and leans out over the yard with his arms folded on the railing.
It could easily be the same guard who killed my friend. Lester’s words ring out in the warm night.
You could have a nice life for yourself. Isn’t it enough to be free?
I listen to the water and feel the open night all around me. I have a beautiful woman who loves me and I’m rich beyond reason. I run my hands along the top of the broken wall, my fingers finding the cool smooth stones pushing up through the irregular concrete.
Lester’s words repeat themselves in my brain and in a whisper I say, “Yes. It should be.”
“You do some time here or something?” Bert says in his low rumble.
I nod, staring at the wall. Then I look at him and say, “And why would I take the chance of doing more?”
“What are you talking about?”
“You want a drink?”
“Sure.”
We cross the street, hustling out of the way of a sagging pickup with a bad muffler, and duck into Curley’s. The hostess-a heavy young blonde with Viking braids and thick lips-smiles and nods to us as we push past toward the bar. People are three and four deep, but Bert muscles in and reaches over several heads to take a pair of Molson Golden bottles from the bartender.
The beer fizzes in my mouth. My stomach is empty and it goes straight to my brain, easing the tightness in my chest. I repeat Lester’s words to myself and shake my head. When I feel someone’s elbow in my back, I move closer to Bert. Whoever is behind me takes up the space I gave and I get another elbow amid an eruption of laughter.
I spin around with my hand up, ready to repel whoever it is with a shove until I see three uniforms. Guards from the prison blowing off steam. The blue stubble on the cheek of the one who elbowed me makes my stomach sick. He turns to glare and my whole body goes numb. Bluebeard.
He says, “You got a problem?”
“You do,” Bert rumbles, pushing past me and bellying into Bluebeard, “if you don’t get some manners.”
When Bluebeard’s eyes leave me I realize he doesn’t know me and the fear eases. To him I’m just a tourist, someone soft who can be intimidated.
“This guy’s shoving me,” Bluebeard says, his voice now more of a whine, and he steps back from Bert looking up.
Bert shakes his head and turns away. Under his breath he says, “Asshole.”
Even when Bluebeard and his friends melt back into the crowd I can see his dark eyes and feel the stubble of his face against my ear. My sickness turns quickly into hatred, then boils to a rage, and I have to leave. I burst through the doorway into the night and suck in the air and the weedy smell. Lester was wrong. It’s not enough to be free. Exact revenge is every bit as valid on the outside as it was on the inside.
By the time Bert and I get to Skaneateles, it’s dark. People in shorts with sweaters tied around their necks stroll down the sidewalks. Wrought iron streetlamps glow much the same way they did when this place was a stop on the Pony Express. Ahead is Shotwell Park on the tip of the lake, a narrow green lawn between the street and the water. People have their blankets spread under the big hardwoods so they can listen to an old-fashioned brass band that’s set up in the big white gazebo. Boats filled with families bob on the water, anchored up close for the show.
Just before we reach two-hundred-year old Sherwood Inn I slow down and make a right on West Lake Street. Bert shifts in his seat.
“Aren’t we staying there?” he asks, nodding at the inn.
“Up here,” I say.
Bert goes silent.
Gingerbread houses and tall turn-of-the-century clapboard mansions line the street. Ahead, the road darkens and bends to the right. I slow down and a small groan escapes Bert when I make a left between two stone posts whose wrought iron gates stand open to welcome us. While the other homes on the street are illuminated with accent
lighting, we drive up a winding way under the black shadows of soaring maple trees with only the murky hint of a mansion up ahead.
“It’s his house, isn’t it?” Bert says.
“Whose?” I say calmly as I stop the car and turn out the lights. Its crested mansard roof and Second Empire tower cut a jagged silhouette against the night sky. The ancient trees, gnarled and rustling, lean over us and the windows. Empty pools of darkness stare down. The porch sags at one end, and even in the night you can see the peeling white paint on the trim.
“My grandmother used to tell me about the Wendigo,” he says. “You ever hear of that? The bird spirit that swoops down on people at night and carries them off? The Wendigo drags his victims across the tops of trees until their legs are nothing but bloody stumps.”
On the side of the house a loose screen door raps its frame in the gentle breeze. Its rusty springs softly groan.
“It’s a lake house.”
“It’s too dark,” he says. “If you don’t believe in spirits, man, I do.”
Bert leans my way in the dark front seat. I can see the big round surfaces of his cheeks in the green glow of the digital clock.
“This is where he killed her, right?” he says.
“So?” I say.
Bert exhales loud and slumps down in his seat. A firefly blinks across the pitch-black space in front of the windshield, and I’m conscious of the smell of new car leather and carpet shampoo.
“I can feel her,” Bert says.
Bert is breathing heavy now, and in the clock’s glow I can see the growing patch of fog on the windshield. The loose door’s hinge continues to squeak.
“Good,” I say, opening my car door. “Come on. We’re spending the night. You need to get over it.”
“Why is that?” Bert asks, his hands braced against the dashboard as if we’re going to crash.
“Tomorrow morning, I have a contractor meeting us at seven and another guy to put in some electronic equipment. We’re going to fix this place up,” I say, “and I want you to stay here and make sure it gets done fast. A month at the most. I want a staff and a good cook.”