The Last Kind Words: A Novel

by Tom Piccirilli

  “You’re asking the wrong questions.”

  “Tell me or you’ll never see me again.”

  His icy eyes softened. Not out of shame but out of fear that I would leave him forever. He licked his lips, and his brow tightened in concentration as he searched for a genuine response.

  “I was making ghosts,” he said.

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “I appreciate you showing up. Really. Come back tomorrow, Terry. Okay? Or the day after. Please.”

  I thought of a nine-year-old girl standing in the face of my enraged brother. I knew what it was like to be caught in that storm. I imagined his laughter, the way his eyes whirled in their sockets as he made her lie down on the floor beside her parents and brothers, pointed a .38 at the back of her head as she twisted her face away in terror, and squeezed the trigger.

  I made it to my car and threw up twice in the parking lot. I drove through the prison gates and waited on the street until I spotted the guard who’d made me repeat my name three times.

  He eased by in a flashy sports car so well waxed that the rain slewed off and barely touched it. For a half hour I followed him from a quarter mile back, until he turned in to a new neighborhood development maybe ten minutes from the shore.

  The rain had shifted to a light drizzle. I watched him pull in by a yellow two-story house with a new clapboard roof and a well-mown yard. There was an SUV in the driveway and the garage door was open. Two six- or seven-year-old boys rolled up and down the wet sidewalk wearing sneakers with little wheels built into them.

  I drove to the beach and sat staring at the waves until it was dark. I’d been surrounded by mountains and desert for so long that I’d forgotten how lulling the ocean can be, alive and comforting, aware of your weaknesses and sometimes merciful.

  Five minutes off the parkway I found a restaurant and ate an overpriced but succulent seafood dinner. I’d been living on steak and Tex-Mex spices for so long that it was like an exotic meal from some foreign and romantic land. The lobster and crab legs quieted my stomach and loosened the knot there. I listened in to the families around me, the children laughing and whining, the parents humorous and warm and short-tempered.

  The wind picked up and it started to rain harder again. Streams of saturated moonlight did wild endless shimmies against the glass. I drank a cup of coffee every twenty minutes until the place closed, then I sat out at the beach again until the bluster passed.

  It took me three minutes to get into the screw’s house. I stood in the master bedroom and watched as he and his wife spooned in their sleep. She was lovely, with a tousled mound of hair that glowed a burnished copper in the dark. One lace strap of her lingerie had slipped off her shoulder, and the swell of her breast arched toward me.

  I found his trousers and snatched his wallet. He had a lot of photos of his children. I left the house, drove to the water, and threw his wallet into the whitecaps. I didn’t want his money. I didn’t want to know his name. I didn’t even especially want to hurt him. I was testing myself and finding that I’d both passed and failed.

  I was still a good creeper. The skills remained. My heart rate never sped. I didn’t make a sound.

  I hadn’t broken the law in five years, not so much as running a yellow light. My chest itched. My scars burned. The one where Collie had stabbed me. The one from my broken rib. And the largest one, made up of Kimmy’s teeth marks from the last time we’d made love. She bit in so deep under my heart that she’d scraped bone.

  I drove home through the storm, thinking of the ghosts I had made.

  My old man was waiting for me on the front porch. The rest of the house was dark, and the wet silver lashed the yard with dripping, burning shadows. Gutters pinged and warped wood groaned like angry lovers.

  He had a twelve-pack on ice and had already killed off eight bottles. He wasn’t drunk. He never lost control, not even when he was tugging bone slivers out of his own kid.

  John F. Kennedy sauntered out from his usual position at my father’s feet. JFK was an American Staffordshire terrier, a second cousin to the pit bull. He was nine now and I could see the gray of his muzzle lit up in the moonlight. He recognized me immediately and met me on the top stair, got up on his hind legs, and greeted me with savage kisses. He remained muscular and his breath was just as bad as I remembered. I hugged and patted him until he eased away, returned to his spot, circled and dropped. Besides Collie, JFK was the only member of the family to ever kill a man.

  My father proffered me a bottle. Our hands touched briefly but it was enough. I could still feel the power within him. He barely came up to my chin, but he was wiry and solid. By the yellow porch light I could see that he still had all his hair and it was still mostly black. I had more gray in mine. I had more gray than even the dog.

  I sat beside my father and took my first drink in five years.

  I knew he wouldn’t ask about Collie. We hadn’t discussed the murders when my brother was brought down and we wouldn’t talk about them now. The urge would be there but my old man would keep it in check, the way he kept everything in check.

  He wouldn’t ask me about my life away from home unless I brought it up. I might be married. He might have grandchildren. I could be on the run from the law in twelve states, but he’d never broach the topic. We were a family of thieves who knew one another very well and respected one another’s secrets. It was dysfunction at its worst.

  Still, I knew what would be bothering him more than anything else. The same thing that filled me with a burden of remorse that wasn’t mine to carry. It would eat at him the way it ate at me. We’d flash on the little girl a couple of times a day, no matter what we were doing. Step through a doorway and see her on the floor of the mobile home, intuit her terror. We would suffer the guilt that Collie either didn’t feel or couldn’t express.

  My father had never been comfortable as a thief. He was a good cat burglar but wasn’t capable of pulling a polished grift. He couldn’t steal from someone while looking him in the eye. He disliked working with the fences and the syndicates that the Rand family had always worked with. He stole only to bring home cash to the family, and so far as I knew he hardly ever spent a dime on himself. He didn’t live large, had no flash, preferred to be the humble and quiet man that he was by nature.

  After I took my thirty-foot fall, my father slowly withdrew himself from the bent life. He pulled fewer and fewer scores until he was no longer a criminal. I knew it was my fault, as much as having a busted rib pulled through your flesh can be your own fault. But having my blood on his hands eventually forced him out of the game. He played the stock market frugally, took three or four trips down to Atlantic City a year and sometimes hit big. He wrote his travel expenses off on his tax forms. So far as the IRS was concerned, my father and uncles were professional gamblers, and they each paid out a fair hunk of cash to Uncle Sam every year to keep the feds off their backs.

  I finished the beer and he handed me another. We could go on like this for hours. The silence was never awkward between us. I sipped and listened to JFK sputter and snore.

  My father said, “I wish he hadn’t put out the call to you.”

  “You didn’t have to pass it on, Dad.”

  “Yes, I did. He’s my son. You didn’t have to answer.”

  “Yes, I did. He’s my brother.”

  “I thought you hated him.”

  “I do hate him.”

  That actually got my old man chuckling. I knew why. He was thinking about how he’d lived in the same house his entire life alongside his father and two older brothers, Mal and Grey. The four of them under the same roof for more than a half century and a sour word had never passed between them. They were partners, trained to function as a gang on the grift. My father had once taken a bullet meant for my uncle Mal. It had done little more than clip the top quarter inch off his left pinky. The wound had been sutured closed with three stitches. He’d lost maybe a squirt of blood. But none of that altered the fact
that Mal owed his life to my dad. He recognized the truth of it every day since the incident had occurred more than twenty years ago.

  And here I’d despised my brother since I was old enough to walk and get knocked down by him. And here we’d never had a kind word for each other. And here we’d slugged it out and crashed through the porch railing together. And here I was home again, answering the whistle.

  The rain overloaded the gutters and poured over the edge of the roof in vast sheets. It never rained like this out west. I’d forgotten how much I missed it. The chill spray felt good against my face.

  My father said, “You doing okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You look healthy. Fit. Your hair’s a little longer. Suits you. Hard to tell out here but you seem tan.”

  “I work on a ranch.”

  “When you were a kid you always said you were going to own one someday.”

  “I don’t own it, but I help run it.”

  He nodded. “Herding sheep? Breaking broncs? Moving cattle through rivers, like that?”

  I held back a sigh. When I first got out west I thought I’d be busting broncos too. Sitting around campfires eating beans. Being a hero of the rodeo. What the fuck did I know. I’d ridden one bronc and he threw me off in half a second and gave me a concussion.

  And yet I somehow pined for my own ignorance. “Like that.”

  He continued drinking and the grin never left his face, but I could feel his brisk inspection of me even though he didn’t turn his head. This was as playful as he was likely to get. We danced around any important topics. Stepped to them, rejected them. The silence was full of our unvoiced conversations.

  He understood that I’d never gotten over Kimmy and never would. He consoled me without a word. In the darkness I could hear his fierce heart stamping in his chest.

  “Reporters hassling you much?” I asked.

  “A little, with Collie’s, with his”—he couldn’t say execution—“with all the hustle and activity surrounding him again. They come in groups. Channel 3, Channel 7, Channel 21, all these vans pulling up out front. And then they stand around whiling the time away, eating bagels, drinking coffee. They put the prettiest girl with the microphone out in front, let her lead the charge. And she stands at the door and says, ‘How does it make you feel?’ She asks it like it’s a real question, with her eyes full of false sympathy. Licks her lips like she’s waiting for an answer.”

  “They bother Ma?”

  “No, I don’t let it get that far. The lawyers say I shouldn’t slam the door in their faces, but if I try to respond I sound like an idiot. Mal and Grey handle it better, so they field for us.”

  “Cops?”

  “Same as usual, no more or less. You remember Gilmore?”

  I remembered Gilmore.

  “He still comes sniffing around. Sits in and plays cards, has a beer or two.”

  “How much do you let him win?”

  “We rob him blind. He doesn’t much care, figures he’s learning something trying to spot the four-card lift, the third-card bottom deal. He hardly even questions us about stolen goods anymore.”

  “He thinks he’s rattling you just by showing up, reminding you that someone’s always watching.”

  “That’s something I’ll never forget.”

  “He’s making sure.”

  “We all have to spend our time somehow. He’s a detective now.”

  I nodded. Gilmore had always wanted the gold shield. It made sense that he’d still come prowling around even now. If Collie could cross the line then so could I. It must keep him up, wondering if I was out there, going shitstorm crazy.

  “How much pressure does he put on you to tell him where I am?”

  “A little in the beginning, right after you left. Not so much anymore. He asks in passing, tries to get someone to confess something out of turn. ‘So, how’s Terrier holding up? You get a Christmas card from him this year?’ It doesn’t amount to anything. I think he’s genuinely curious. He always liked you. He’s different now. Has no real edge to him anymore. His wife left him and took the kids. He’s got too much time on his hands. I don’t know what he does with it all.”

  “How’s everybody else?” I asked.

  “Old Shepherd is worse.” My father’s grief was under control but it still hung heavily in his voice. “Most days he can’t recognize anyone. He doesn’t really talk anymore. He watches a lot of TV. It’s what fills his days now. He likes cartoons. If you get the chance, I hope you’ll sit with him. He might rouse a bit.”

  I knew my dad’s subtle nuances. He had more to say, but he was superstitious. He didn’t want his words to give life and form to whatever he was holding back. I waited. It took him a few more minutes. JFK whined in his sleep. The rain started and stopped again. “I think your uncles have a touch of Alzheimer’s too. I’ve found them out in the yard in the middle of the night a couple of times, looking dazed, like sleepwalking.”

  I had to move. I got up and put my hands on the rebuilt rail and hung my head over enough so that the rain fell against the back of my neck. I couldn’t imagine Mal and Grey watching cartoons, drooling, unable to crack wise or shuffle and cut a deck eighteen times in ten seconds and still pull four aces from the bottom. Or would those skills last long after they couldn’t form a cohesive sentence anymore?

  As much as I loved my grandfather and uncles, my reaction was as selfish and full of fear as it was anything else. I didn’t want to think that in my DNA I had a predisposition to losing my mind. I didn’t want to believe I might one day end up like Gramp, just as I didn’t want to believe that I might one day end up like my brother.

  I turned and my father said, “Dale is doing good in school, spends a lot of time performing in plays. She’s always practicing around the house, puts on a southern belle accent and acts out Cat on a Hot Tin Roof or Streetcar. Your uncles help. Mal does Newman, Grey does Brando. They walk around asking for lemonade and patting their foreheads, talking about how sultry the steamy south is. She’s a natural. She’s always taking the train into the city to see something on or off Broadway. Has a fondness for Albee and Ibsen. Williams. Surprising for her age, I’d say.”

  Ibsen and Albee and Williams. Jesus, it had been a long time since I’d read her little vampire fairy tales to her.

  “You must be tired. Your room’s the same as you left it.”

  I hadn’t expected anything else. “I’ll see you in the morning, Dad.”

  “Good night, Terry.”

  I started inside but turned before the screen door closed behind me. “Have you ever gone to see him?” I asked.

  “No. None of us.” I could hear the steel in his voice. “I wouldn’t allow it. You understand that, don’t you?”

  I understood my own reasons but I wasn’t sure his or anyone else’s were the same. But I said, “Of course.”

  I stepped in and moved through the darkness of my own home the way I’d crept the prison guard’s. With the same strange sense of quelled excitement and personal dominion. I slipped up the stairs into my bedroom.

  My old man hadn’t been kidding. My room was the same, untouched except for maybe the monthly sweep of a feather duster. I checked some of my stash spots and found my old burglary tools and a couple wedges of cash that totaled three grand. I counted the bills. Most were fresh, printed within the last year or two. Somebody had discovered my money, taken it as needed, and then later replaced it. For all I knew, every one of them had riffled through it.

  It was good to know that a few rules still hadn’t been broken. Chief among them was that we didn’t steal from one another.

  I laid back on the bed and listened to the rain and tried to empty my thoughts, but there wasn’t a chance. I turned over and opened the nightstand drawer. It was too common a place for anyone to look for anything of value.

  I took out the last photo of Kimmy and me together. We’re at Jones Beach. I’m grinning because I’m with her. I’m grinning because the latest set o
f burglary charges against me have been dropped due to insufficient evidence. I’m grinning because the night before I scored over a grand from Gilmore’s house while his wife and kids were out at the movies. He thought he was slick, keeping a chunk of skimmed cash at the bottom of an old cereal box. Always check the dates.

  In the photo we’re happy. We’d been talking about getting married. Most of the hardness was out of Kimmy’s eyes by then. It would be another couple of weeks before she miscarried and the grief brought it back and shoved us apart. Another month before Collie would be found drinking beer at a corner dive called the Elbow Room, a trail of fire and blood behind him.

  I woke to see my mother on the edge of the bed, staring at me with her hand pressed to my heart. She had a bad habit of doing that kind of thing.

  Dawn sliced through the blinds. I blinked twice into the glare and she was there with the barest lilt to the edges of her mouth, hazel eyes intense and a little solemn. When I was a kid this had felt comforting. When I got older it started to spook me a bit. Right now it felt somewhere in between.

  The pulse in her wrist beat back against the snap of my heart. The wash and pound of our blood made for a strange internal music. She shifted and with two fingers plied my gray patch.

  “You get that from my side of the family,” she said. She shook out her auburn hair. She was using some kind of dye that brought out the red highlights.

  I’d never met anyone from her side of the family. Apparently, after she and my father started becoming serious, her parents asked what kind of a boy he was. She told the truth. They ordered her to stop seeing him immediately. She showed up one last time to pack her belongings and found the pictures of her turned to the wall. She never went home again.

  Except for that one story, she never spoke of them.

  I realized with some surprise that I didn’t even know her maiden name. I always wondered why she hadn’t just covered and lied about my father’s occupation. Was it because she knew that the truth would eventually come out anyway? Because she had imagined Thanksgiving dinner at her parents’ house, everybody sitting down to the turkey and, just as the mashed potatoes were being passed around, the cops raiding the house? Her parents with their mouths half full of corn and yams being shoved up against the wall, frisked, billy-clubbed in the kidneys, cuffed, Freeze, dirtbag.