Deadout

by Jon McGoran

  “These people are loaded,” he said, as if reading my mind.

  We walked into the kitchen and he took two beers out of the fridge.

  “So what’s your deal?” I asked as we stood in some rich guy’s kitchen, drinking some rich guy’s beer.

  “Me? I don’t have a deal.”

  I gave him a look.

  He opened the door from the kitchen to the garage and motioned me to follow.

  The garage held a black Tesla Roadster, plugged into the wall. I made a sound in my throat.

  Jimmy smiled and disconnected the plug. “Sweet, ain’t it? I have to take it out every now and again so it don’t get lonely.”

  “And that’s electric.”

  “Crazy, ain’t it?”

  We got in and put our beers in the cup holders. He pressed a couple of buttons. The garage door opened, and we silently surged down the driveway.

  “So you were telling me your deal,” I reminded him.

  He laughed, turning onto the road and rocketing forward. “Okay. Grew up in Tisbury, left the island to seek my fortune. Joined the Boston P.D., but didn’t like it. Realized that just because my fortune wasn’t on the island, didn’t mean it was off it, either. Figured some folks don’t get a fortune. Met an island girl. Married for six wonderful years, then another four after that. Been on my own a year and a half.” He took another swig of beer, then looked at the bottle. “Had my eye on being chief, but things got a little bumpy when Diane left.”

  He raised his bottle, like a toast, and winked at it. “So, if Dr. Paar isn’t the issue, what did you do to get yourself in the doghouse?”

  “With Nola you mean?” I shrugged. “I think at this point me just being here is annoying her.” I paused. I didn’t really know the guy, but I felt like I could trust him. At least a little bit. “We’ve been living together eight months or so, and it isn’t always easy. I found a little work up here, too. A side job. So I could stay up here while she’s here. I thought she’d be happy I was staying.” I took a drink. “She wasn’t.”

  He smiled. “That work have anything to do with Renfrew senior?”

  I’d like to think I didn’t show any reaction.

  He leaned toward me conspiratorially. “I saw you going over to his humble abode.”

  I nodded.

  “Well, that whole family’s a pain in the ass,” he said, “but if you’re working for senior, he’s probably paying you well. Most likely you’re going to earn it.” He took a deep drink of his beer. “My instincts tell me you’re a stand-up guy. You’ve been on the right side of two bad situations, and I feel I can trust you. Plus I have my sources, and not everyone’s as tight-lipped as you are about what went on up in Dunston. Hero might be a little much, but from what I hear you’re one righteous badass.”

  I laughed and started to protest, but he put up a hand to stop me.

  “So I’m going to give you a little background on these Renfrews.”

  He waited to see if I had any objections.

  I raised my beer: have at it.

  “Renfrew family has roots here, and they’ve been coming up summers for generations. They’re not real old money, not for up here—no whaling money. But they’re plenty rich. You ever hear of Thompson Chemical Company? They sell lawn care and garden products?”

  I nodded.

  “That’s Renfrew. Big, established, family-owned company. One of their first locations was up here, but worth millions now. Anyway, Renfrew senior is running the family business, selling fertilizers and weed killers and pesticides, and your friend Teddy, he’s running around with these eco-warrior knuckleheads, pulling stunts like putting red dye in the chemical in the lawn trucks, so when the trucks spray the lawns, they’re painting them red.”

  I laughed. I couldn’t help it.

  Jimmy did, too, shaking his head. “I know, almost makes you like him, right?”

  I shook my head and said, “Not even close,” earning me a clink of our beer bottles.

  “Some of the stuff is not so harmless, either. He seems to love tweaking the old man. Him and some of his friends hung banners from one of Thompson’s regional headquarters, embarrassed the hell out of them. But he’s also been arrested for some other stuff that was more serious. They set off the sprinklers at a biotech lab in Atlanta, protesting pharmaceuticals in the water. Short-circuited a bunch of equipment and actually started a fire. Three people got pretty badly hurt, trampled by folks trying to get out of there. He was also involved in a group that was spiking trees. I don’t know if he was directly involved, but someone lost an eye.

  “Anyway, we got all sorts of rich assholes up here, even in the off-season, all different orders of magnitude. The Renfrews are among the richest and the assholiest.”

  “Do you think young Renfrew is one of the reasons your higher-ups are so nervous?”

  “Probably. But I think they would be anyway. My sense is this thing is just big.”

  I nodded. “What about Johnny Blue? What’s his story?”

  Jimmy laughed and shook his head “You seen him on TV, you know his story. He ain’t that rich, but he is for sure a big asshole.”

  “Not that rich? What’s he doing with that big farm, then?”

  Jimmy shrugged. “His investors are rich. I don’t know what he’s doing, and I doubt he does, either. But I wish he was doing it somewhere else.”

  He held up his bottle and looked at it again, maybe checking the level, maybe just admiring the bubbles. Then he put it to his mouth and tilted it back. We came to a stop, and I realized we were next to my car.

  “Anyway,” he said, “you be careful around these rich motherfuckers. They don’t call them that just because they’re rich, you know what I mean? From what I hear, Renfrew’s been on a bit of a tear, bringing in lots of VIPs, buying back shares in the company, and leveraging himself to the hilt to do it. He’s up to something.”

  “Seems to be doing something right, living in that massive house.”

  “Yeah, it’s big, ain’t it? It actually belongs to the company.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, but he owns most of the company. It’s all the same in the end, I guess. They’ve got everything twisted this way and that, avoiding taxes over here and sheltering assets over there. It’s crazy.”

  “I guess that’s how they get to be so rich.”

  “Yeah, and a lot worse stuff than that. Like I said, you’ve been on the right side of two bad situations. I’d just as soon not see you on the wrong side of the next one.”

  26

  Driving back down island at a reasonable speed, I realized I still didn’t have a good excuse for staying. Part of me wanted to stop in and see Nola, try to patch things up. Part of me wanted to stop in and get my stuff, maybe fire off a few choice words, something stinging that would even us up a bit. A growing part of me just wanted to get off this damned island. I thought about telling Renfrew I’d changed my mind, giving him his money back and going home. Then I pictured my apartment.

  For years it had been just right, and for months it had felt too small. Picturing it without Nola now, it seemed cavernous, empty, and lonely.

  The part of me that was sitting on the gas pedal decided to just keep driving, but while my right foot was decisive on the matter of acceleration, it hadn’t communicated anything to my hands regarding steering. Not only did I not know what I was doing, I didn’t know where I was staying, either.

  An image of Annalisa flared in my mind’s eye, but I snuffed it out, smothering it with a damp cloth until it was gone.

  It might have taken longer than I thought, though, because by the time I’d stopped thinking about her, the sky was dark and I was pulling up at the Wesley Hotel.

  It was like a different place from the week before—bustling like it was the height of the season, people coming and going through the lobby, heading up and down the steps. Everyone was moving with a kind of crispness, a sense of purpose, but there was something else that stood out.
>
  The guests were all men. All young, in their twenties and thirties. A tiny bit of salt sprinkled over one or two forty-year-olds. I stood in the middle of the lobby, looking around, but there were no women, no children. And no seniors except for the old guy at the desk, who observed the buzz of paying guests with a satisfied smile.

  “You’re back,” he said, looking to my right, then my left, before settling back on me.

  “I need a room.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Just you?”

  I nodded.

  He nodded back, like he understood, a muted smile on his craggy face reflecting both commiseration and maybe a glint of excitement that Nola was now unencumbered.

  I laughed despite myself.

  He looked up at me and shrugged, like he knew why I was laughing and he didn’t care. Maybe he liked his chances.

  The room didn’t feel quite so claustrophobic this time. Maybe because it was just me, or maybe compared to that tiny cabin nothing would feel claustrophobic. But in the dark, and without Nola brightening it up, it seemed a lot more depressing.

  Within ten minutes I was headed back downstairs, struck once more by the strange homogeneity of the other guests. It wasn’t just the demographic that they shared; they all had a certain hardness and efficiency, like ex-military. A few looked up at me as I walked through, but more striking than the eyes that were on me was the strange tension of the averted gazes, as though other eyes were intentionally not looking at me. Maybe I was being paranoid, but stepping out onto the porch, I could feel glances exchanged behind me.

  Given my situation, the Mustang was only slightly less depressing than the room. It felt weird to be sharing an island with Nola against her will, and I found myself driving toward Teddy’s farm. Maybe I’d slip in and apologize, grab my things and go. Maybe I’d get a peck on the cheek as a peace offering. Maybe she’d miss me when I was gone. Maybe, down the road, we could salvage things between us.

  I slowed as I approached the entrance to the farm, but I didn’t stop. Instead of turning in, I coasted past it, drifting onto the shoulder a hundred yards beyond.

  It was a conversation I wasn’t looking forward to, and I probably would have wussed out anyway, but I was rescued from that fate by a pair of headlights knifing across the road in my rearview. It was Teddy’s vintage Chevy turning out of the driveway, its taillights receding into the darkness.

  Technically, I was still on the clock, so I swung the car around and followed, back the way I had just come. Teddy sped up as we approached the Wesley, and turned a few blocks later, making a right onto Circuit Avenue. Traffic was light, and I knew the bright yellow Mustang would be easy to make, so I hung way back. Several blocks later, I saw Teddy’s brake lights as he swung into a parking space on the side of the road.

  I quickly did the same, keeping as much space between us as possible. I got out and caught a glimpse of him as he slipped between two storefronts, looking both ways as he did, like a schoolchild crossing the street.

  As I hurried along behind him, I thought about how sure I was he was up to something. I had to ask myself how much of it was real and how much was the fact that I didn’t like the way he looked at my girlfriend. Or more to the point, the way she looked at him.

  I crept up to the gap where he had disappeared and looked around, the same guilty way he had. Then I followed after him. The shadows between the stores were the kind of black that gives you vertigo. I emerged onto a narrow lane that was only marginally brighter. In the dim light, I sensed motion across the street and a few houses down: Teddy, doing the same guilty scan as he ducked between two darkened houses. I pulled back so he wouldn’t see me, then I followed once more.

  The houses were tiny but elaborately ornate. We were in the Campgrounds, the maze-like village of gingerbread houses. Even in the darkness, I could make out the multicolored paint on the scrolling wood trim.

  The deeper we went into the Campgrounds, the narrower and darker it got. A couple of times I lost Teddy, but each time I found him again, a shadow among shadows, walking in a brisk tight gait, like what he really needed was a bathroom.

  When I emerged onto the next street, the spire of the big open-air church, the Tabernacle, was looming in front of us, illuminated in the sky. Teddy was headed across the grassy area surrounding it, looking increasingly suspicious the farther we went. He knew the island and its layout better than I did, and it made no sense for him to have parked where he had unless he didn’t want anyone to see where he was headed.

  I wondered for a moment if he was checking in with God and he didn’t want his ironic hipster farmer friends to know it. But he didn’t go into the Tabernacle. He went around it.

  Just past the Tabernacle was another building, an old white clapboard that looked like a church. Teddy walked toward the back door and stopped abruptly, looking around him yet again. I hugged a tree, peering around it as he checked his watch. He stayed there for five minutes that seemed to stretch on forever. I could feel the nervousness coming off him. I would have felt bad for him if I didn’t dislike him so much.

  Finally, he jumped like a startled cat as a dark figure appeared at the edge of the shadows under a clump of trees. Light fell across a pair of boots and lower legs, then hands, beckoning Teddy closer. Teddy hurried over, his legs looking wobbly beneath him.

  The other guy stepped forward, but his face remained in the shadows. He said a few words, and Teddy blurted out a hundred, his hands jittery and nervous. They went back and forth a few times like that.

  I heard a twig snap behind me, and simultaneously an open hand connected on the side of my head, smashing it against the tree.

  It wasn’t a knockout blow, but it dazed me enough that I couldn’t evade the hand that grabbed me by my throat and slammed me back against the tree, cutting off my air.

  He was big, with a flat face, like a pug, but angry. I hadn’t done anything to him, and I wondered if maybe it wasn’t about me. Maybe he was just an angry person.

  He locked his elbow, holding me in place, and pulled his other arm back, like an archer about to send an arrow or a meathead about to flatten someone else’s skull. I was thinking of my gun, safely locked away on the mainland, as I swung my forearm as hard as I could against his elbow. I was rewarded with a popping sound and a lungful of air.

  His face was all pain now instead of anger. But I knew the anger would return, and I didn’t want to be there when it did. I didn’t want him coming right up behind me either, so I punched him in the throat. Not hard enough to crush his larynx, I hoped, but enough to get him off his feet. He went down hard, his left arm flapping, like maybe he was trying to break his fall with it and had forgotten his elbow was dislocated.

  I rubbed my throat, coaxing the circulation back as I looked around the tree. Teddy and his friend were gone. I decided I should be, too. I could hear voices not too far away, and I knew it was only a matter of time before someone came upon us. The guy on the ground was gurgling and groaning, but he was also getting up. And he looked angry again. It occurred to me that maybe I should have been a little less worried about his throat and a little more concerned about my own.

  My natural inclination was to cuff him and read him his rights, start asking questions. But I didn’t have cuffs and I wasn’t acting in an official capacity, and the only answer I was likely to get out of him was to the question, “Could this guy kick my ass with only one arm?”

  I suspected the answer was yes, but I didn’t need to know for sure, so I kicked him in the stomach, hard, and I took off running.

  I zigzagged across the grass, keeping to the shadowed areas as much as possible. I was rounding the Tabernacle when I felt a gentle breeze near my neck. I heard a whine like a large insect and what sounded like a single, expertly struck blow of a hammer on wood. As I rounded the Tabernacle, I looked back.

  Pug-face wasn’t on the ground anymore.

  I heard the insect sound again, then the hammer sound, much closer, and accompanied by a spray
of splintered wood across the side of my face. A gouge had appeared in the tree next to me.

  Pug-face was shooting at me. My eyes darted around, looking for movement, but finding only shadows. As I took off again, I heard another whine and a distant ping. I turned and saw a stop sign half a block away, the dim light flashing on it as it wobbled back and forth.

  I cut across the road and darted between two of the gingerbread houses and made a left, away from the Mustang. The last thing I wanted was for Pug-face to put two in my head while I was getting into the car, or for him to see what I was driving. Half a block later, I was thinking I’d lost him when a pair of intricately carved ducks on the house in front of me exploded into dust and a light came on inside the house.

  I abandoned my evasive maneuvers and took off running, fast as I could. I could hear heavy footsteps getting louder and closer. Picturing how angry that Pug-face would be attached to a dislocated elbow helped me run faster, but I could still hear him gaining on me. I knew I had to slow him down before he got into sure-thing firing range.

  The air was thick with the scent of lilacs, but behind it I caught a whiff of something definitely not floral. I looked up and recognized the big pink house with the tulip flag. In the darkness, I could just see the wetness on the surface of the lawn.

  There was caution tape across the gate and I pulled it down and pushed the gate open, eliciting a loud squeak. I left the gate open and vaulted over to a raised garden bed surrounded by stacked fence rails, trying not to think about the smell or what would happen if I fell. The rails wobbled and made a wet sucking sound as I made my way along them toward the back of the house. A holly bush blocked my way, but I forced my way through it, staying on the rails and ignoring the cuts and scratches.

  When I reached the backyard, I hopped over the fence and onto the street beyond. As I started to run, I heard a sound like a cross between a splash and a splat, and another one like a cross between a yelp and a growl. It might have been my imagination, but the smell seemed to grow suddenly stronger.