B009XDDVN8 EBOK

by Lashner, William

  “Some favor.”

  Just then the car door opened and Shelby stuck her head out. “Mom’s showing a house by Remnick Pond.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Good. We’ll head there as soon as Eric gets in the car.”

  “Don’t be a dweeb,” said Shelby. “Get the hell in.”

  “He’s kidnapping us,” said Eric.

  “God, I hope so,” said Shelby. “Anything to get out of that fricking school.”

  Eric thought about it for a moment longer. “Shotgun,” he said.

  “Fat chance,” said Shelby.

  Caitlin’s black RX10 was parked in front of a Prius and right beside the FOR SALE sign stuck into the lawn. The tidy little development house was not far from the lake and in a desirable neighborhood, though not as desirable as Patriots Landing if you were keeping track of those things, though who was? Certainly not me. Anymore. The house’s front door was open, with a little lockbox for the key hanging from the doorknob, and the garage door was raised to show off its two-car spaciousness. From the look of the house’s curtained windows, its sparse landscaping, and the completely empty garage, the place had been unoccupied for quite a time. It would sell one of these days, but probably not today.

  I stopped behind Caitlin’s car and, with the engine still idling, told the kids to get into their mother’s car.

  “Just do it,” I told them when they started jabbering their complaints. There must have been something in my voice; they did as I said, and right away, too.

  When they were out, I pulled the BMW around Caitlin’s car and drove down the driveway into the empty garage. On my way out of the garage, with my briefcase in hand, I pressed the button. The door lowered behind me as I walked up the driveway.

  We waited in the SUV for Caitlin to give her little tour, to point out the stainless-steel appliances in the kitchen, the porcelain in the bathrooms, the natural light in the master bedroom, the wonderful backyard space for entertaining.

  “Can I go get her?” said Shelby.

  “Just wait.”

  “This is so boring,” said Eric.

  “What class would you be having now?” I said.

  “Social Studies.”

  “That sounds fun. What are you studying this year in Social Studies?”

  “You’re right,” said Eric.

  “Maybe I should homeschool you both.”

  “Maybe you should get a grip,” said Shelby.

  “I know, let’s sing show tunes.”

  “Here she comes,” said Eric.

  “Thank God,” said Shelby.

  Caitlin stepped out of the house, trying to walk down the front steps in her high heels without tripping, all the while talking to a young couple, unbelievably young, with their whole lives before them, a lovely house, a backbreaking mortgage, ungrateful children, unsatisfying sex, lawn mowers, ridiculous cable bills. I had the urge to run up to the couple like a mad prophet and warn them of all the impending disasters that would inevitably befall them. But then again, they probably wouldn’t screw it up as badly as I had. I wished them well and hoped they fell flat on their faces at the same time.

  Caitlin, ever the professional, kept up her sales patter even as she noticed the three of us inside her car. She tilted her head quizzically as she finished detailing the advantages of the neighborhood, the quality of the schools, and the motivation level of the sellers. Then she stood on the steps waving as the lovely young couple drove away in their Prius. When they were gone, her hands went aggressively to her hips.

  “What the hell is going on, Jon?” she said when I got out of the car to talk to her. “Why did Shelby call, why are the kids here?” She stared at me for a moment, trying to figure something, anything, and then her jaw started trembling. “Oh my God, what happened? Who died?”

  “No one.”

  “My father?”

  “No, Caitlin. Everyone’s fine. Calm down.”

  “Then why are the children out of school? And what the hell happened to your face?”

  I took her by the arm and led her away from the car so the kids couldn’t see us. “We have a problem.”

  “Jon?”

  “I screwed up,” I said, catching a sob in my throat. “I screwed up so badly.”

  I didn’t want to cry, I wanted to stay strong, I needed to stay strong, but here, now, face-to-face with my wife, I couldn’t help myself. One of my jobs as a father, perhaps my most important, was protector of the family. How had that turned out? My bruised face collapsed slowly, like a building imploding from the bottom up.

  “Jon?”

  “They’re after us.”

  “What?”

  “They’re after me.”

  “Who?”

  “And they won’t hesitate to go after you and the kids to get at me.”

  “Have you gone crazy?”

  I lifted my glasses to wipe at my eyes and she saw the full extent of the bruises and wounds and she took a step back.

  “Augie didn’t just die of his addictions,” I said. “He was murdered. For something we did when we were kids, long before I met you. I never told you, I wanted to protect you—”

  “Protect me?” she said, catching me in a lie. “What did you do?”

  “Something. Something stupid.”

  “And all this time you held it apart from me? For my own good, you selfish son of a bitch?”

  “We thought they didn’t know who did it. We thought we had thrown them off the track. That’s what the tattoo was all about. We each got one, like a defiant kick in fate’s face.”

  “Still Here,” she said. “Now I get it.”

  “But fate just kicked back. When I found Augie murdered, I realized they had finally figured it out.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know how. But they knew me only by my mother’s maiden name, so I thought we were maybe still safe. I thought it would pass. I hoped, I prayed. But I was wrong. They found me. Today.”

  “Is that what happened to your face?”

  “There was an accident. Not really an accident. With the BMW.”

  “Jesus, Jon. Where is it?”

  “In that garage there.”

  “Are you crazy?”

  “Yes, no, I don’t know. But I do know we’re not safe, any of us.”

  “What have you done, you son of a bitch?”

  “I screwed up.”

  And then she slapped me, right there on that suburban street, in front of the kids, on my bruised face, she slapped me.

  “Oh, stop crying,” she said when the tears started again. “So what are we going to do, Jon? Sit here until they come for us?”

  “No,” I said, wiping my eyes again. “It’s my problem and I’m going to take care of it, one way or the other. But you need to be safe while I do it. I can make a deal, I know it, but I can’t make a deal if they have a gun to your head.”

  “Is this real?”

  “Look at me,” I said, and she did, carefully, like she hadn’t looked at me in years.

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ll deal with you later. Right now we’ll go back to the house and pack up. I’ll take the kids to my parents’ for a few days.”

  “We can’t go back to the house. They might be there already.”

  She looked at me and blinked a couple of times. “Then we’ll just go, right now. We’ll drive up right now.”

  “They’re going to look for you to get to me. You can’t go to your parents. You can’t go to your sister or to anyone they can connect with you.”

  “Then what the hell are we going to do, Jon? Hide out in a cave?”

  “I have someplace.”

  “Where?”

  “You have to trust me.”

  “Why the hell should I trust you now?”

  “Because no one cares about you or the kids more than I do. I love you, Caitlin.”

  “Screw you, Jon,” she said.

  24. Kitty, Kitty

  I’M IN A fight, Harry,” I said.
/>   “I can tell that by your face.”

  “The fight of my life.”

  “There ain’t ever any other kind, when you’re in the middle of it.”

  “And I don’t know if I’m up to it.”

  “Oh, you’re up to it, all right, Johnny.”

  Harry and I were together belowdecks in his boat while my family waited on the dock outside. Water sloshed beneath the floorboards as the boat stirred in the water. The cabin smelled of gasoline and sewage.

  “I don’t know much in this world,” said Harry. “Never had no use for formal schooling, waste a time for a guy with a brain the size of mine, but I do know a little bit about fighting. And what I know is this. When you’re looking for the difference between victory or being swept off the canvas with the blood and dust of the world, there’s only one thing that matters.”

  “Heart.”

  “Heart?” Harry snorted. “Where’d you get an idea so stupid as that? Heart.”

  “It’s what they say. It’s in the song.”

  “Yeah? Who’d the song ever beat? Tell me that.”

  Harry’s boat was tied up at a commercial marina in Hampton, Virginia, just south of Williamsburg. Caitlin’s eyes had widened a bit as the four of us wended our way through the marina’s docks with their spacious yachts and grand three-tiered fishing boats, all tied up one next to the other in a pretentious display of wealth and privilege. But her eyes had narrowed again as I led her to the battered blue boat waiting for us at the farthest dock. Next to the sleek fiberglass beauties we had passed, the Left Hook was an old washtub.

  “Don’t tell me we’re going in that,” she said.

  “It’s Harry’s boat,” I said.

  “Where’d you find him, anyway?” she said, eyeing him from a distance, his filthy clothes, his rough-hewn countenance. “Passed out on the floor of a bait shack?”

  “Actually, yes. But he’s a good friend. He’ll take you someplace safe.”

  “If we don’t sink first.”

  “Harry’s boat has been floating longer than you’ve been alive,” I said. “I’ll be right back, I have to take care of something on board.” I gave the children what I hoped was a comforting smile before I climbed onto the deck.

  I had hopped into the boat before my family specifically to retrieve the toolbox. I wouldn’t have been surprised if Clevenger’s thugs were already at our house, slashing cushions, turning over bookshelves, trashing whatever they could trash to find my stash. I was grateful I had thought far enough ahead to give the box to Harry for safekeeping; it wouldn’t have lasted the first five minutes of a search. But I needed it now if I was going to negotiate my way out of this mess. As I cleared out the box’s upper levels so I could get to the hidden compartment, Harry yabbered on about boxing.

  “You could see it in their eyes,” said Harry, “the ones that was already beaten. It wasn’t so much fear as it was common sense. They’d put up a good show, bobbing and jabbing, but if they went up against a bruiser with the right look in his eye, well, they melted like a pat of butter on the griddle. It was them others, the raw winners, that knew what was what. And that’s what you need to know there, Johnny. That’s what…Oh my sweet heaven.”

  This last was in response to my wedging out the false bottom of the toolbox. Even in the dim light of the cabin, the stacks of money glowed.

  “My nest egg,” I said.

  “If I’d have known what was in that thing, I wouldn’t have come back with it.”

  “Sure you would have, Harry. Because you might drink too much, and you surely talk too much, and you might have taken one punch too many to the head, but in spite of everything, you’re a man of honor.”

  “You don’t know me good enough,” said Harry.

  “Take this,” I said, tossing him a stack of bills. “For expenses.”

  As he caught the stack his tongue slipped out and licked his lips. “I’m not no good with receipts.”

  “I’m not expecting change.”

  “Good, ’cause you ain’t getting none.”

  I took out the hunting knife, put it in my pocket along with another stack of bills, and then closed the box. When I was back on the dock, with the rusted green thing in my hand, Caitlin looked down at the chest. “What’s with the tools?”

  “I lent them to Harry so he could get his engines ready for the trip.”

  “Where is he taking us?”

  “To his sister in Kitty Hawk. She’ll preach at you a bit, but she’ll take care of you, too. She has a house not far from the beach.”

  “What are we going to do in Kitty Hawk?”

  “Frolic. Just don’t tell anyone where you are. You can call your parents from the boat to say you’re okay and that maybe they should take a quick trip somewhere just to be safe, but that’s it. And keep your phone off so they can’t trace you.”

  “What about clothes? What about food?”

  “Here,” I said, pulling the bundle of hundred-dollar bills out of my pocket and trying to hand it to her on the sly. “That’s more than you’ll need.”

  She took the money and held it out and stared at it for a bit, heedless of what anyone else saw. She riffed the bills, smelled them even. And then she gave me the strangest look, as if I were someone she had never seen before. As if I were suddenly someone worth seeing. It’s funny what cash can buy.

  “You can’t use your credit cards,” I said. “They’ll trace those, so use the cash for everything.”

  “They have outlet stores in Nags Head.”

  “Buy some clothes for the kids.”

  “How long will it take?”

  “I’ll get it over with one way or the other as quickly as I can.”

  She stared at me for a moment longer. I reached out to give her a kiss, but she pulled away, as if I were indeed a stranger. I supposed then that the pretending had all ended. Ignoring my offer to help her onto the boat, she turned to Harry, who reached out a hand to pull her aboard. She looked at his weathered face, at his proffered hand black with grease, back at his face, which was now awkwardly smiling, and then put her hand in his and climbed into the boat.

  “That was quite a slap Mom gave you in front of that house,” said Shelby quietly, after Caitlin was safely aboard.

  “She’s right to be upset. I’m an idiot.”

  “What did you do, really? Why are you sending us away?”

  “When I was your age, I did something, something a little brilliant and a lot stupid, and I’ve been dealing with the fallout ever since. Let that be a lesson, young lady: choices matter.”

  “Oh, so that’s the way it works. You screw up and then start lecturing me.”

  “Yes,” I said. “That’s the way it works. But I’m going to handle it once and for all.”

  “While we go for a cruise,” she said, gesturing toward Harry’s boat.

  “Exactly. Be sure to try the rock-climbing wall.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “You’re going someplace safe. With a beach. But I’m not going with you. And neither is your phone.”

  “What?”

  “Give it to me.”

  “No. It’s my phone. It’s personal.”

  “They can trace these things now, Shelby. Every second your phone is on, it’s sending a signal telling anyone who cares enough exactly where you are. Normally it doesn’t matter, but right now it does.”

  “It’s not fair.”

  “It’s not about fairness.”

  “I’ll turn it off, okay? And promise not to use it. Promise.”

  “Sweetie? Give me the damn phone.”

  She looked at me and saw something in my bruised eyes that caused her to take out her phone, turn it off, and hand it over.

  “What will I do?” she said.

  “Talk, read, think.”

  “This is so not fair.”

  “Take care of your mother, please.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Are you going to be okay?”

  “I h
ope so.”

  “Okay, see you,” she said with a quick wave.

  Her back was turned to me and I expected her just to tromp off to the boat, but she did something strange instead. She backed into me and turned slowly so that, before I knew it, I was hugging her. She didn’t hug back, that wasn’t her way, but she did bow her head into my chest, as if she were giving me permission to kiss her on the crown. Which I did.

  And then she was gone, reaching out and letting Harry pull her up onto the boat to join her mother.

  “Are we going fishing?” said Eric.

  “Do you want to go fishing?”

  “Please God, no.”

  “Then good news: no fishing. Harry’s just taking you on a little trip.”

  “Where?”

  “Kitty Hawk.”

  “The Wright brothers?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Cool. Maybe I’ll build my own plane.”

  “And fly where?”

  “Back to school. Didn’t I tell you about the Science Olympiad?”

  “I’m sending you off with your mom and sister on a beach vacation. What kid doesn’t want a beach vacation in the middle of school?”

  “Me.” He looked down at the wooden dock. “Why don’t I come with you?”

  “You can’t. It’s too dangerous.”

  “I’ll be your Robin.”

  “My what?”

  “You know. The Boy Wonder.”

  It took a moment for the implication of that comment to sink in, and when it did, something cracked in me and the emotions flooded. Is it too pathetic for such a throwaway moment to be one of the greatest of my life?

  “I’d like that,” I said. “And you would be a wonder. But you know how when you go up to bat in baseball, you can’t bring anyone with you? This is like that, something I have to do myself. For you, not with you.”

  “Is it as bad as Little League?”

  “Worse.”

  “Wear a helmet.”

  “What I need you to do is take care of Mom and make sure you all stay safe. Can you do that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Now give me a hug.”

  “Okay,” he said, and he did, a hug so quick and furtive, it was as if he wanted no one to notice, not even us. And then my boy wonder hopped onto the boat.