by Joe Clifford
“I mean . . .”
I put my beer down and stepped into her. She stopped talking when I pulled her to my hips and kissed her, lips soft like warm vanilla sugar. She fumbled to set her beer on the table, but the bottom clipped the edge, toppling over, suds spilling onto the floor. She reached up for my face, kissing me back violently. Twirling around, our faces still mashed together, she tried to steer us toward the bedroom, but I redirected us to the couch in the living room. We fell down together, me on top, her tongue in my mouth, breath growing hotter, groins grinding as she lifted her ass off the cushion, friction pressed hard against my jeans. I didn’t bother with unbuttoning, just jammed my hand down the front of her pants, sliding over the smooth, tight belly. Over the silky panties, already damp with anticipation, I wrapped a finger around the elastic, slipping slick inside her, probing as she ground her hips and moaned, bucking. Nicki let go of my face and unbuttoned her own jeans, tugging them down, allowing me better access, ass rising, pushing my fingers deeper.
She felt for my belt, unfastening the buckle, slipping a cool hand over my hard cock.
“Fuck me, Jay,” she hushed in my ear. “I want you inside me.”
“Stop.”
“What?”
“I said stop.” I pushed off her and stood up, trying to stuff myself away.
Nicki lay on the couch, jeans tugged halfway down her thighs, panties peeled off her ass, legs parted, willing and aching, staring up at me. Her expression caught between shell-shocked and wounded, she didn’t bother to cover herself up.
“What the hell?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I can’t.”
Nicki’s eyes locked on my dick, which wasn’t going along with the change of plans.
“I’m pretty sure you can.”
I left her half naked, and walked into the kitchen.
I guzzled my beer, keeping my back turned.
A few moments later, I felt Nicki glide up behind me, slipping arms around my waist, cooing in my ear. “What’s going on?”
I tried to pull away.
“We both want this, Jay,” she said, rubbing her hands over my abs, back down my pants. “We’re not doing anything wrong.”
I jerked her hand away, holding up the back of my hand and the wedding band.
“Yeah. You’re married. I know that.” Nicki panned around my empty home. “Where is she, huh? She moved out a week ago.”
“She didn’t move out. We’re taking time apart. That doesn’t mean I can have sex with other women.”
“No, just make out with and fingerbang them? Get a handy?”
“Stop. Please.”
“That’s why you called me today. You didn’t need me to run errands with you. You wanted to fuck me. I want to fuck you. What’s the problem?”
“You’re the one who got this shit started. Because you cared so much about what was happening with Roberts and his bullshit sentences—”
“I still do care.” Nicki stepped around to face me. She hadn’t bothered to button her jeans all the way and I could see the top of the pink panties, low cut to reveal bare pelvic bone. “Doesn’t mean we can’t be together.”
She reached out to touch my face. I caught her by the wrists.
“You have to go,” I said.
She didn’t listen, letting me bind her as she moved in to kiss me again. It felt so good to be wanted like that, and Christ knows I didn’t have much to feel good about lately.
I turned away, and could feel the heat of her stare intensify, desire and passion giving way to stronger emotions like anger and hate, until she surrendered.
“Fine. Have it your way, Jay.”
I let her wrists go. She buttoned up, grabbed her coat, bag, and keys. Didn’t say anything else as she walked out the door, taking with her the last ally I had in my make-believe war.
I tried to get some work done, take my mind off sex. Which meant beer and chain-smoking cigarettes, poking around the Internet, scanning the State’s webpage again, its HUD program and assorted social services. But it’s pretty hard to concentrate with blue balls. My eyes glassed over the mind-numbing details—contact info for Manchester, application forms, vouchers, home equity conversion. I logged off. This is what I had turned down getting laid for.
Don’t be crazy, little brother. You’ve never been the kind of guy to sleep around. That was never your game. Oh, shut the fuck up.
Out of beer and smokes, I grabbed my truck keys and was halfway out the door when the landline behind me rang. No one ever called with good news. No one ever called with answers. Every single phone call I’d received over the past week had been crammed with lousy news, bad results, and the promise of worse returns.
I jammed my keys in my pocket. I didn’t recognize the caller on the ID. Who cared? Telemarketers be damned, I picked up anyway.
“Do not go outside,” relayed a man’s voice, cool, reserved.
“Who is this?”
“Go to your front window. Look down the block. See that car?”
Phone in hand, I walked to the window. I’d turned off my lights on the way out. I didn’t turn them back on. I peeked through the shutters. A car idled down the street. Same car as the other day. I could see the shadows of two people sitting inside but little else. I let the blinds fall, and returned to my front door, shutting it softly and slipping the deadbolt.
“Who is this?” I repeated.
“Erik Fingaard. We met last year.”
“I don’t know anyone named Fingaard.”
“I think you know me better by the tattoo I have on my neck.”
Bowman.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
I DRAGGED A kitchen chair to the window, watching the car at the end of the road.
“What do you want?” I said.
“To help you.”
“That so?” The last time I’d seen Erik Bowman, Fingaard, whatever his real name was, he’d been flexing muscle as Adam Lombardi’s right-hand enforcer, swiping a CD that contained incriminating photos from my truck. This a few weeks after sucker punching me in the dark, roughing up junkies at the Maple Motor Inn, and in all likelihood killing Pete Naginis. In other words, about the last guy I’d expect help from. Or be willing to take at his word.
“I get it,” he said. “You’re leery. I would be too. But you’re going to want to hear what I have to say. It’s about Lombardi.”
“Which one?”
“Both of them.”
I watched the car down the block. “I’m listening.”
“This isn’t something we can do over the phone. We have to meet. In person.”
“Yeah, I’m doing that, Erik. Tell you what. Head over to the McDonald’s on Addison. Grab a Big Mac and fries. Order a shake too. Wait for me. Even if it takes twelve, eighteen hours, I swear I’m coming.”
“We can pick somewhere public, if you want. I have nothing to hide. But I ain’t coming up to your house.”
“Good. ’Cause I’m not letting you in.”
“I’d be more worried about the men in that car. You don’t have any choice right now other than to trust me.”
“I’d think I have a lot of other choices. The first being to tell you to fuck off.”
The car down the block didn’t move. I could feel its attention fixate on me.
“Whatever choices you think you have, you won’t have them long.”
“And why’s that?”
“You remember that other night up in Longmont? That was a warm-up. You don’t want those two cops getting another crack at you.”
I thought about the timing of the phone call, how I’d had one foot out the door. “How did you know I was walking out of my house?”
“I’m parked in the cul-de-sac behind your place. Past the vacant lot. I can see your house.”
I walked across my kitchen, into the half bathroom, peeking through the window. Too many branches on dead winter trees. “Flash your headlights or something. I can’t see you.”
“Can�
�t do that, Jay. Then they’d see me. And I don’t want them finding me any more than you do you. I don’t work for them anymore.”
“Them?”
“Adam and Michael.”
“Falling out?”
“Something like that. Listen, we’re wasting time. I’m telling you, you’re not safe. I’m not sitting here much longer. You’re going to have to make the call, and you’re going to have to make it fast. So what’s it going to be?”
Like going to Atlantic City and laying it all on black. Or walking out on a good-paying job you hate. Never the smartest bet, but “fuck it” always feels freeing. And I didn’t see anyone else offering answers.
“What do you want me to do?”
“Flip on your kitchen and living room lights.”
I turned on both.
“Good. Go switch on the TV, and then kill the lights in the living room. Like you’re settling in for a long, quiet night in front of the tube with easy access to beer and the bathroom. It’ll buy you a few minutes.”
How long had he been watching me? I did what he said. “Now what?”
“Grab everything you have on Lombardi—”
“How do you know—”
“Grab everything you have on Lombardi, including anything your buddy Fisher and the girl gave you. Especially the girl. Don’t make any judgment calls, Jay. If it pertains to Adam or Michael, bring it. Got it?”
“Yeah, I got it.”
“Good. Then sneak out the side door of your garage. Stealth. Don’t let them see you. They see you, we’re both dead. You’ll see my car once you get on the other side.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“Those two hung me out to dry. I’m not taking the fall. I’m going to help you nail the sons-a-bitches.”
He clicked off.
Peering out the kitchen window, I didn’t see Nicki’s Jetta, just the empty spot where it had been. She must’ve gotten away free, unless there had been a second car. What would they want with her? What did they want with me? What were they waiting for? I called to warn her. She didn’t answer. No surprise. I didn’t even know where she lived. I left a quick message telling her to be careful.
I stood in the glow of my television. Was I really about to trust the same guy who’d broken into my apartment last year and knocked me out cold, the same thug who murdered my brother’s friend? I stared at the car lurking down the block.
The devil you know is always better than the devil you don’t.
Moments like this I wished I had a gun. After last year, I’d thought about getting a permit for one. But I wasn’t going to be that moron whose son accidentally blows his brains out.
I slinked back into the kitchen and gathered everything I had on the Lombardis, sweeping all the intel into a paper bag, a sacked lunch for the late shift. When I was sure no window compromised my position, I slipped a knife from the cutting block. Then I crept outside through the side door of the garage.
Our house rested at the bottom of a shallow dale, submerging the lower half from street view. Peering over the hill, I could still see the car, engine swirling fumes into the fog that drifted in. On this side of the house, you couldn’t see much through the woods. Once I got far enough across the cul-de-sac, whoever was in that car would have a clean shot. If they were looking to take it. The set up, a real possibility.
I inched along the outside of my house and took a deep breath. It was now or never.
I took off through scrub brush, kicking at the pricks and dead, tangled weeds aiming to ensnare me, hold me captive until whoever wanted me most could claim his prize. Spiny branches from winter-starved oaks stabbed me; prickers snagged my coat, hooks holding up the carrion. The more I thrashed, the more entangled I became, which only made me thrash more. I had to rip roots from the soil to break free from their grasp, hauling a couple small trees with me into the clearing on the other side, where a car and the devil I knew waited.
* * *
“Smart move,” Bowman said when I ducked inside blowing on my fingers, scraped and bleeding from the thorns. He didn’t say anything more as he started driving, checking his rearview. I kept one hand on the paper bag containing the research and the other tucked inside my coat.
Beneath passing streetlights, I could see Bowman wore his hair longer than he had last year, and there was the start of a beard, but I’d recognize him anywhere. No mistaking that tattoo on his neck. Giant yellow star. Thing was huge. Was he really offering to help? How big of an idiot was I to trust him? Like poking a dead dog with a stick, I was desperate to believe.
“Where you taking me?” I asked.
“Somewhere we can talk.”
I contemplated where that somewhere might be. Secluded, out of earshot, a permanent resting spot where bodies aren’t found until the thaw of spring?
“Don’t worry,” Bowman said. “You can stab me with that knife you keep patting in your pocket if you don’t like where this goes.”
“If you don’t shoot me first.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Guess there’s always that chance.”
We drove east, veering off the main road, venturing farther into the unchartered wilderness. Dead blackberry plants brambled quiet country ponds. All the natural cover you’d need. Cut a hole.
Drop in the fish food. Call it a day. Nothing I could do but sit and wait.
Soon a soft glow illumined in the distance. As the light grew brighter, I saw the familiar logo.
“I don’t know about you,” Bowman said, “but I could use some coffee and donuts.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
THE TWENTY-FOUR-HOUR Dunkin’ Donuts was part of a Mobil gas station on the side of the Merrick Parkway, extra small with only a few booths and tables. Butted against the base of the Lamentation range, the mountain rose up, overhang of bedrock so steep even snow couldn’t stick.
I stood outside the car a moment, looking through the donut shop glass, weighing luck against providence.
Bowman held open the front door.
“Come on, Jay. What do you think I’m gonna do? Cap your ass and dump your body in the cruller batter? Let’s go. I’m freezing my nuts off.”
Besides the acne-riddled cashier, who also wouldn’t be getting laid anytime soon, the only other person inside the donut shop was a hobo who’d wandered in from the forest. Wrapped in a padded puffer, duct-tape-stuffed at the seams, he sat at a table and sniffed his fingers, a gooey white substance I prayed was egg.
Bowman ordered two coffees. I reached for my wallet.
“On me,” he said, unwrapping a thick roll of rubber-banded cash from his jeans. “How you like your coffee?”
“Light and sweet.”
“A real man’s man. And a half dozen donuts,” he said to the clerk. “I’m fucking starving. Mix ’em up. Anything but Boston Cream. I hate Boston.”
At the table Bowman clamped down on a jelly. He pointed at the donuts in the bag. “Eat up, Jay. They’re good for you. Fried sugar and bread. Everything a growing boy needs.”
Bowman kept his back to the wall so he could keep an eye on the door. I’d never seen him this up close before. Deep crags and crow’s feet rivered his face, the burden of a hard-lived life etched and unforgiving. Forty-eight or fifty-eight, neither would’ve surprised me.
I snared a glazed and gobbled up half in one bite. I was running on fumes.
“Okay, let’s see it,” Bowman said, licking jam off his thumb.
“What?”
“You got in a car with me, drove the darkest dirt roads, and now you want to play it safe? You’re clutching that paper bag like a purse.” He held out his hand. “Come on, man, let’s have it.”
“First, tell me what’s in it for you. No offense, but I have a tough time buying you’d want to help me do anything.”
Bowman leaned back. “You’re right. I don’t give a shit about you. But I do care about breaking free of Adam and Michael. More like the enemy of my enemy. I know for a fact you’ve been poking around
.”
“Poking around?”
“Xeroxing courthouse documents. Visiting former guests of North River. Hanging around construction sites. Asking too many questions. You’re making the Brothers nervous. This Roberts thing is no joke.”
“Judge Roberts?”
“Whatever your little girlfriend—”
“She’s not my girlfriend.”
“I give a shit. She made a photocopy up in Longmont. They want it back.”
“They send you to break into her apartment too?”
“If I wanted to fuck you over, I’d pick a better spot than a donut shop.”
I passed the bag, which comprised everything I had—my own clippings, charts and graphs from Fisher, Nicki’s contribution to the cause. I couldn’t imagine what he was looking for. Even the supposed classified court documents were part of a public archive.
Bowman stacked it all on the table, licking a thumb, perusing page by page.
“You and the Brothers Lombardi aren’t seeing eye to eye these days?”
“You could say that.”
“What else could you say?”
“A guy like me is dead weight—and the first thing that gets cut when criminals go legit.”
“How so?”
“I did a seven-year stretch at NH Correctional. Back when I was a kid your age. Breaking and entering horseshit. Prison ain’t nowhere you want to spend a night, let alone seven years. But I tell you this. I met more mensch in NHC than I ever did in the construction racket. It’s a business filled with liars and crooks, every last one of them. And Lombardi is the worst.”
“I’m guessing you’d know.”
“Not a lot of employment opportunities for ex-cons.” He pointed at the Star of David tattoo on his neck. “Bit of a hiring deterrent.” Bowman kept leafing through the stack, carrying on a conversation in between slurps of black coffee. “You have no idea what you stumbled on last winter.”