Vineyard Shadows

by Philip R. Craig

  I felt a great coldness inside my soul. The world was suddenly without form and void, and as I stared out at Nantucket Sound, there was darkness upon the face of the deep.

  Time must have passed; then I heard her step on the stairs and she was there again. She kissed me and took my hand. “And I love you, too,” she said. “The way a woman loves the only real man in her life.”

  And it was evening of the very first day.

  Something was in my eye. I brushed it away.

  “Pa!”

  I looked down at Joshua. “What?”

  “Can we come up?”

  How could I say no? “No,” I said. “This is big-people time. We'll be down soon.”

  “Pa?”

  “What?”

  “Can't we have a dog?”

  “No! No dogs! We have cats at this house.”

  “A dog might be nice,” said Zee.

  Three against one, but I stood firm. “No dogs,” I said. “You have to take them for walks, you have to clean up their shit, and they're like damned slaves: they always want to know what you want them to do. They slobber and wag their tails and pant and say what do you want me to do? What do you want me to do? Tell me and I'll do it! Pant, pant, slobber, slobber, wag, wag. I don't like slaves. Give me cats every time. Cats don't give a damn what you want; they only want what they want.”

  “You're given to long speeches today,” said Zee.

  “No dogs. Period.”

  “Ma!”

  “What?”

  “Can we come up, now?”

  “No.”

  “Can we have a dog?”

  “Your father says no.”

  Oliver Underfoot and Velcro sat beside the catnip in the garden and looked up at us. They didn't want a dog either; that was obvious. That made it three to three, not three to one. I wasn't in a minority after all.

  The evening sunlight cast our shadows on the lawn. My glass was empty. I ate my olives. I wished Tom Rimini had never gambled his first dollar. I looked at my watch.

  “I'll give Rimini a call to let him know I'm coming over. I'll be back in time to make supper.”

  “I took the liberty of rinsing and bagging the clams you got yesterday. They're in the fridge, waiting for you to decide what to do with them.”

  “Thanks. I had in mind eating them.”

  “A good plan, but right now I've got bluefish and veggies marinating. All you have to do is slap them on the grill.”

  “Bachelors are idiots.”

  “You won't get any argument from me, McGee.”

  We went downstairs and were met by the little ones.

  “Can we go up, Pa? Can we go up, Ma?”

  “Oh, dear,” said Zee.

  “Be careful,” I said. “If you fall, you'll break your necks!”

  “Just for a little while, then,” said Zee. “And no climbing on the railing! Joshua, you make sure that Diana doesn't climb on it, and don't you climb on it either! Diana, don't climb on the railing! Do you understand me?”

  “Yes, Ma.”

  They galloped up the stairs, with Zee's frown following them.

  “I think I'll stay out in the yard and keep an eye on them.”

  I, too, had learned that being a parent meant being worried about your children a lot of the time. You couldn't stop worrying, but at the same time you had to let them go, you had to let them grow away from your arms.

  “Okay,” I said. “I'll call Rimini.”

  But when I dialed John Skye's number I got a busy signal.

  It was more than irksome, it was dangerous. One traced call and Rimini's safe haven was no longer that.

  I hung up, waited, and dialed again. Still a busy signal.

  I went out into the yard where Zee, eyes shaded by one hand as she looked up into the setting sun, was watching her children enjoy their rare visit to the balcony.

  “I'll be back,” I said, and drove away.

  John Skye had bought his old farm years before when prices were a lot lower than they had been since. Zee and I had been married in his yard, between the house and the barn, and I knew the place well, since I opened it in the spring, closed it up in the fall, and kept an eye on it during the winter. My favorite room was his library, which was filled with books most of which I had never read. It had seemed the perfect place to hide Tom Rimini, but no place is perfect for people who won't stay hidden.

  Rimini's green Honda was in the yard when I pulled in. The barn would have been a better place for it, but Rimini apparently hadn't thought of that.

  I knocked on the door and when Rimini opened it even I could hear the anger in my voice: “I thought we had a deal. You agreed to make your calls from somewhere else! Every time you make a call from here you take a chance on having it traced!”

  He backed away, his eyes worried and wary. “What . . . what do you mean? I haven't called anybody.”

  “I just tried to phone you. The line was busy. Twice!”

  “What? When?”

  “Just now. Ten minutes ago!”

  “Oh. Oh, that wasn't me calling out. That was someone calling your friend John Skye. I told them he was in Colorado.”

  “It took you quite a while to tell them that. I tried to get through to you twice.”

  He licked his upper lip. “Sorry. We chatted a few minutes. You know . . .”

  “Who was it?”

  “Oh, gosh. I . . . I don't remember. He said he'd get in touch with your friend later in the summer.”

  “And who did you say you were?”

  “I said I was doing some work on the plumbing. It was the first thing I could think of. I figured old places like this always have problems with plumbing.”

  I felt the anger ease out of me. I gave him the cell phone and told him to use it when he called Carla between six and seven. “She'll be out of the house and waiting for your call.”

  “Why should she be out of the house?”

  “In case the place has been bugged.”

  His eyes widened. “Bugged?”

  “Yeah. Your car, too. We should have it checked out. It may have a homing device of some kind on it, too, come to think of it.”

  “I don't know how to do that! And who . . . ?” He paused. “You mean . . . ?” A worried look appeared on his face. I thought it was overdue.

  “That's right,” I said. “There are several possibilities. Whelen and Graham are two of them. Pete McBride might be another. I know a guy who can check out your car. He's an old hand at such stuff. I'll see him tomorrow.”

  Rimini eyed me uneasily. “Pete McBride? You know about him?”

  “I know he's another player. I just don't know his game. Let's sit down.”

  We sat at the kitchen table and I told him about my day in Boston. I didn't tell him about my feelings for his wife or the kisses we'd exchanged, but I told him the rest. He listened without comment. When I was through, he was chewing on his lower lip.

  “What can I do? I don't want anything to happen to Carla and the boys.” He darted a glance at me. “You say you think that Pete McBride wants Sonny's job. What if he gets it? Will that get me off this hook? I owe Sonny money, but I don't owe any to Pete McBride.”

  I was pretty sure that in the unlikely event Pete managed to depose King Sonny, he would no doubt lay claim to any money owed to Sonny, but I saw no point in troubling Rimini with that thought. A false hope was, for the moment, probably better than no hope at all.

  “I want to get in touch with Graham,” I said. “How do I do it?”

  He rubbed his hands together as I'd seen him do before. “I don't know.”

  I didn't believe him. “You must know. You had to be able to get in touch with him.”

  “No. Really. He always got in touch with me. He'd call and we'd meet someplace. In a café or a bar. Never the same place twice in a row.”

  I stared at him, sure he was lying, but not knowing why he was doing it. His eyes shifted away, then came back. His hands rubbed some more.
>
  “I'm telling you the truth,” he said. “I wouldn't lie to you. Why should I?”

  I couldn't guess. I got up. “Use the cell phone to call your wife between six and seven, but don't use this phone for any reason. I'll be back tomorrow and we'll check out your car for bugs.”

  I drove home full of doubts and questions.

  — 12 —

  Joe Begay, who grew up near Oraibi, out in Arizona, and claimed to be of mostly Navajo and Hopi blood, had been my sergeant in the long ago Asian war in which I'd participated so briefly at age seventeen, when I still thought combat might be an adventure. By the time I'd been released from the VA hospital weeks later, he was out of my life and had not come into it again until he married a Vineyard girl who happened to be a friend of Zee's. Toni, his wife, was one of the Vanderbecks who lived up in what was then Gay Head but is now officially Aquinnah, hometown for most of the island's Wampanoags. Their daughter, Hanna, had been unofficially engaged to Joshua since both were babes in arms. Hanna was an older women, having emerged into the outer world two weeks earlier than Josh, but both Zee and Toni agreed that it was good for a woman to have a younger man, so she could raise him the way she wanted him to be.

  Joe was supposedly retired from whatever never-explained international work he had been doing for the previous quarter of a century, but still occasionally went away somewhere for short periods of time to deal with business affairs he never described and about which I never asked; which was, perhaps, one of the reasons we had become friends.

  He was a big V-shaped guy with wide shoulders, a thick chest, and narrow hips, and was, in my opinion, the second most dangerous man on Martha's Vineyard, the first being Cousin Henry Bayles, who lived in retirement in Oak Bluffs and who was old enough to be Joe's father and half his size. Cousin Henry's edge was that he looked frail and elderly, but was a onetime Philadelphia gangster who knew how to kill you in a variety of ways, and who was totally without fear of death. I liked them both, although I did not socialize with Cousin Henry as I did with Joe and Toni Begay.

  When I needed certain technical assistance or information having to do with government activities, I went to Joe, who, if he didn't already have the information on hand, could generally find out what I needed to know. In spite of being retired, he had both a lockjaw memory and endless contacts.

  Since the Jacksons en masse hadn't seen the Begays lately, and since normally bright and shiny Zee was in a somber, postshooting mood and, I thought, probably in need of some woman talk, I prevailed upon her to come with me the next morning. She smiled, and we all got into her little Jeep, and drove to John Skye's house, where Tom Rimini uneasily gave up his car and promised to stay put until I brought it back. Then I followed Zee and the sprats up to Aquinnah, the Vineyard's westernmost town.

  Usually, in the United States, probably because of the historic march of the European conquerors of the land, citizens go up North, down South, out West, and back East; but on Martha's Vineyard we go up West and down East. The most popular explanation for this, and for going down to Maine and up from there to Boston, is that the prevailing southwest winds usually obliged sailing ships to beat upwind when going to the west and vice versa. This day we didn't sail to Aquinnah but we went up there anyhow.

  Aquinnah, famed for its cliffs of colored clay, is one of the Vineyard's best places for fishing, particularly for bass. It's a lovely, hilly, windswept place, offering fine views of the Elizabeth Islands and Noman's Land, but was and is my least favorite town on the island because of its politics: its roads are lined with no-parking, no-stopping, and no-pausing signs that keep fishermen from its beaches, and its parking lot charges its victims a fortune and a half. Worse yet, while it caters to buses full of often elderly tourists with equally elderly bowels and bladders, it offers only pay toilets to its visitors, a practice that is clearly an abomination in the eyes of man and God.

  Fortunately for me, I have friends there who have yards to park in and toilets they let me use for free. Joe and Toni Begay are two of them. The Begays live in a neat house not far from the beach north of the cliffs, and it was there that our small caravan parked and unloaded.

  Toni, new babe on her hip and Hanna by her side, greeted us with kisses. Joe limited his kisses to Zee, and then held her and looked down at her battered face.

  “How are you doing?” he asked.

  “I'm okay. I think.”

  He nodded. “It takes time to get over the kind of trouble you've had. Now, tell me, did you come up here to talk with me, or to visit with my wife?”

  She managed a smile. “Do I have to choose?”

  He was not quite old enough to be her father, but he acted the part. “Go talk with Toni. She gets tired of wasting her voice on my ears.”

  “I do not,” said Toni. “But come on, Zee. Let's leave these guys alone so they can bond.”

  “I don't know if we want to bond,” said Begay.

  “Try. Come on, Zee. I'll pour us some coffee and we can discuss Hanna and Joshua's marriage.”

  The women and children went into the house. Begay's eyes followed them. “How's she really doing?”

  I didn't know, but I said what I believed. “Her brain knows she did what she had to do, but it goes against her training and her feelings about how people should live. She's a nurse, and nurses cure, they don't kill.”

  “You any help to her?”

  “I don't think so, but I plan to keep on trying.”

  He nodded. “Do that, and she'll probably be okay. People fight wars and see and do terrible things, but then come home again and mostly are just fine, normal folks afterward.”

  “I know. But some don't get over it. I don't want her to be one of those. Especially since she did the right thing.”

  “Maybe Toni will be some help.” He tipped his head to one side. “You just come up here into Indian country so our wives can chat, or did you have something else in mind?”

  “Well, as a matter of fact . . .” I gave him the short version of Tom Rimini's troubles and my concerns about his car.

  “In this country, bugging cars and phones is usually government work,” said Begay. “The most the bad guys manage, generally, is listening in on police radio calls and stuff like that, so while they're robbing the liquor store or knocking off an armored car, they'll know where the cops are. But let's have a look.”

  I watched as he looked under the hood, inside the passenger area, in the trunk, and finally, under the car.

  “Well,” he said, standing and dusting himself off. “Unless somebody took an awful lot of time to hide his work and used some gimmick I never heard of, I'd say your Mr. Rimini owns an unbugged car.”

  “Good. That's one thing I don't have to worry about, then.”

  “Why are you worried at all?”

  “His wife was my wife.”

  Begay's craggy face could be as expressionless as stone. “Ah,” he said. Then, “But she isn't anymore.”

  “I know. It's difficult to explain.”

  “Not so difficult,” said Begay. “Old loyalties die hard.”

  A troublesome truth.

  “While I've got you in my clutches,” I said, “there's something else. I have a couple of other people working on this, but one more won't hurt. In your travels did you ever meet a cop named Graham?”

  “Now that's some question. I've met a lot of people in my life. Can you narrow it down?”

  “A guy with a badge. I don't have a first name. He's got his hooks in Rimini. According to Rimini, Graham wants him to rat on Sonny Whelen. Rimini's wife, Carla, didn't know much about him, but told me she thought he was in vice or narcotics. Quinn—you know him?— reporter for The Globe ?”

  “You take him fishing sometimes.”

  “That's the guy. I've got him looking for Graham and I've asked a cop I know in Boston to look, too. So far, no luck. Now I'm asking you.”

  Begay stared into space. I wondered why we do that when we're thinking, or why we put hands to
our chins or foreheads or rub our skulls.

  “RICO,” said Begay. “If Graham's a fed, he's probably trying to nail Whelen for racketeering. He isn't really interested in your friend Rimini at all. He just wants to use him to get at Whelen.”

  “That's how I figure it, but . . .”

  “But what?”

  “Carla thought he might be in vice, which would make sense if he's interested in gambling and small-time bookies like Rimini, but she also thought he might be a narc.”

  “She's a schoolteacher. She probably doesn't know a narc from a nasturtium. It's just a word she's heard people use.”

  “Probably, but maybe not. What if he is a narc? What does that mean?”

  “It means that your pal Rimini may be up to more hanky-panky than taking bets from schoolkids.”

  I tried to picture it: Tom Rimini, drug dealer. All things are possible, of course, but I actually had trouble seeing Rimini as a bookie, let alone a dealer. “He's not my pal,” I said.

  “I'll tell you what,” said Begay. “I'll make some calls and see if I can get a handle on this guy Graham. If he's in Justice and is working around Boston for the Criminal Division or the DEA or whatever, I might be able to track him down. What do you want with him?”

  “I want to talk with him. I want to see if there's a way out of this mess for Rimini and his family.”

  “Like what?”

  “Witness protection, maybe. Something like that.”

  Begay dug into a shirt pocket and came out with tobacco and papers. He rolled a neat cigarette and lit it. I could roll a cigarette just like that, even though I'd long since given up smoking. I'd learned the art during my youthful marijuana days. Cigarette rolling is like bicycle riding; once you know how, you never forget. I sniffed Begay's exhalation. Prince Albert, for sure. Crimp cut, for a good roll. I missed my pipe. Do we ever get over our addictions?

  Was Carla one of mine?

  “Don't treat Zee like she was made of glass,” said Begay, catching me quite off guard. “Treat her the way you would normally. I don't think that tiptoeing around hurt people is good for them. I think we should treat them the way we treat anybody else.” He finished the cigarette and ground the butt into the dirt with his shoe. “Bad habit, but I can't quite shake it. Come on. Let's go join the ladies.”