“Why didn’t you check it out on the Internet?”
“Didn’t you tell me once that nobody knows you’re a dog on the Internet? Same idea. Unlike you, I didn’t have the time nor patience to scroll through lots of pages, trying to figure out what’s what. Which is why I went to Maggie.”
“She say anything to you at first?”
“Maggie was busy looking for a cat hiding somewhere in that barn, told me she’d get back to me, and just drop it on her desk. Which is what I did.”
Out on the ocean a sailboat was doing an expert job, beating against the wind, nearly tipping over in the process but always moving on.
“Do you think that gang might have it?” I asked.
“They just might at that,” he said. “And I’m not going to stop until I retrieve it.”
“Especially since you found out its real value.”
He shook his head. “No.”
“No?”
He paused, held the wineglass in his two strong hands. “It doesn’t matter if it’s worth a half-million dollars or fifty cents. It’s mine. It belongs to me. And I won’t allow anyone to steal it and think they got away with stealing anything from me.”
“Where do you go from here?”
The sound of vacuuming and more yelling came through the sliding glass doors. I turned and the two Greek brothers were at work in my living room, one working the vacuum, the other with a bunch of books under his arms, both yelling at each other.
Felix said, “Once the Spic ’n’ Span lads wrap up, it’s a visit to my own personal doc to see how my arm is doing, and then it’s back to work. These guys, they tend to be bold and brave when they scamper off or go to ground, and for a couple of days, it’s hard to track them. But at some point they loosen up. They go back to their hangouts, their girlfriends, their social clubs. And once you find one, that’s all it takes.”
“You got friends down there in Lawrence and Lowell?”
“No,” Felix said, finishing off his wine. “But I have people I pay money to. In the long run, that’s more important.”
The sun felt good, and with the wine and big meal, I dozed off in the comfortable wooden chair, not minding the gentle scrape of the sliding glass door opening and closing, and some other sounds back there; I just slept some outside—for the first time in months, I was sure, and that’s how the rest of my afternoon went.
A screeching seagull nearby woke me up; I yawned and stretched, careful not to disturb my drains. I got up and spent an extra few minutes folding the blanket, which gave me a nice small sense of accomplishment. Last week I would have dumped it on the chair and left it there for Paula or Diane to fold up, or for any renegade seagulls to use as a bathroom.
I opened the door and went inside. In the kitchen, everything had been washed and put away, and the counter and stovetop had been wiped down. I washed my face and hands, thinking this was the best I had felt in some time. I limped out into the living room with cane in hand, and I saw the two brothers had done a great job. I have bachelor sensibilities and can go a long way without cleaning, but even I could tell how things were clean, how furniture and shelves had been dusted.
All in all, things looked pretty good, though I would probably shift some things around and put those two bookshelves over there and—
Something was odd about my books.
I gimped forward and couldn’t help myself.
I burst out laughing, for the two young men had carefully shelved every book—and it looked like each volume had been dusted beforehand—placing them not according to subject, title, or author. Nope, the hundreds of books I owned and displayed down here had been shelved according to the color of the book cover. Yellow, sliding into blue, sliding into gray.
“Well done, fellas,” I said. “Well done.”
Even though it looked like I was standing in the middle of a paper-made kaleidoscope, I had to give them credit for taking the time and puzzling it out.
A knock at the door.
I recalled what Mia, the nice waitress from across the street, had said. Maybe one of these days I’d install a doorbell. Lord knows I was getting tired of people knocking here.
But then again, I was here 24/7, so that meant when I could be mobile, I could stay away from my lovely home and the lovely beach for hours at a time, disappointing my visitors but cheering myself up.
Back to the front of the house, as the door knock was repeated.
I spared a glance through one of the windows. Young, dark-haired woman, standing by herself, holding what looked like a map or brochure in her hand.
Lost tourist or sightseer?
I’ve had my share of them before, but usually in the three months we laughingly called summer in this chilly state.
I opened the door and the woman, who looked Hispanic and about sixteen or seventeen, smiled at me, holding up a brochure from the Tyler Beach Chamber of Commerce.
“Excuse me, sir,” she said shyly, her voice having just a trace of a Spanish accent. “Do you think you could help me?”
“Sure,” I said. “What can I do for you?”
Then two large Hispanic men quickly walked around from the corner of my house; the larger of the two came up to me and punched me solidly in the face.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I was on the floor, chin aching, two dull spears digging into my back, staring up at the wood beams and dull white plaster of my ceiling. The two men came in and spoke Spanish, and then the young girl departed, and the door was closed. The bigger of the two men, the one who had punched me, looked down at me. He had on a short leather jacket, white T-shirt, jeans, and a Boston Red Sox cap worn sideways. I had been generally aware for the past few years that the latest fashion trend was wearing caps backward, but when did this sideways trend start?
His thick neck was seemingly secured by a number of gold chains, and he had a thin, almost two-inch-wide beard that ran to his chin and from ear to ear. He rubbed at his hand and said some words in Spanish.
The other man came over to look down at me. He was dressed nearly the same—his T-shirt was blue and his baseball cap was for the long-maligned Chicago Cubs. His face was clean-shaven and it seemed each ear was fitted with a diamond stud.
“Yo,” he said, speaking with a faint trace of a Spanish accent. “What are you doing down there, man?”
“Looking up at my ceiling,” I said. “It was replastered a few months ago, and I’m seeing where a few spots were missed.”
He said something to his larger friend, and they both laughed, but I failed to see the humor in the situation. I was trying to recall where my weapons were, and I ran down the list in my mind: 9mm Beretta upstairs on my nightstand, 12-gauge Remington pump-action shotgun on a foam pad underneath my bed, and .32 Smith & Wesson semiautomatic pistol in a drawer in the kitchen.
Oh, and there was the stainless-steel Ruger .357 magnum revolver that had been seized some time ago by the Secret Service, and which they still hadn’t returned.
If I got out of this current predicament, perhaps I would write a stern letter to the Boston office of the Secret Service.
Perhaps.
The smaller man—smaller only in comparison to his massive friend—squatted down next to me and said, “Hey, for real. What are you doing down there?”
“Your friend put me here.”
“Not my friend, my cousin.”
“Sorry,” I said. “Missed the family resemblance.”
“You comfortable down there?”
“Not really.”
“Ramon!” he shouted, followed by a quick Spanish phrase—once upon a time I could read Russian and understand it spoken, if spoken by a five-year-old child and who was droopy and about to fall asleep, but that was the limit of my language skills—and Ramon came over and picked me up. I mean, he didn’t help me up, or drag me up off the floor by grabbing my arms.
No, he picked me up and put me down on the couch.
I let out a breath.
My back was
still aching and my jaw was right there with me. Not-Ramon pulled up a chair and stared at me, and stared. “What’s that, running from your back?” he asked.
I twisted and saw both tubes were visible. “Drainage tubes,” I explained. “I had surgery and the tubes are draining out blood and fluid, going into those little plastic pouches.”
He nodded seriously. “Shit, yeah, I should have known that. A friend of mine, not a cousin, his name was Julius, he got shot in his junk, you know? Had this tube running out of his Johnson, draining blood, piss, and every other liquid imaginable.” He leaned forward, peered some more. “You get shot, bro?”
“No,” I said, now having an idea of who these two gents were. “Surgery. Cut out two tumors.”
He whistled. “That sucks. You gonna get that radiation, that chemo shit, make your hair fall out?”
“Don’t know yet.”
“Uh-huh.” He rubbed his hands together. “Sorry, I was rude back there. The name’s Pepe.”
Neither of us offered each other a hand. “Oh, I thought the rude part was when Ramon slugged me.”
Pepe shrugged. “Wanted to get your attention, bro. Heard some old guy say that years back. When you get a stubborn mule and you wanna communicate with it, you start off by whacking it in the head with a baseball bat or something. I wanted your attention.”
“You certainly got it,” I said. “So what can I do for you?”
“I’m sure you can think of something … am I right?”
“Sorry, I’m not in the market for your little bluebird heroin.”
He grinned at that. “Our business plan sure is working, if an old guy like you knows our brand.”
“Why a bluebird? I thought a hawk or an eagle would be more appropriate. Bird of prey, something like that. Show how tough and rough you guys are.”
“No, no, no,” he said. “You got that shit all wrong. We’re not selling violence, man, we’re selling stuff to help you through the day, help you through the night. Bluebird of happiness, you know what I mean?”
“I guess I do now,” I said. “Tell me, Pepe, I’m enjoying this cross-cultural exchange we’ve got going on here, but what are you looking for?”
He smiled. “I think you know.”
“Felix Tinios.”
“Yeah, that’s right,” Pepe said.
At the sound of Felix’s name, Ramon rumbled over to the couch and spoke loudly at me, face coloring. He looked like one of those trained Russian bears who never went beyond his first lesson on the tricycle because he tore off the head of his trainer.
Pepe spoke sharply and Ramon shut up. “Sorry ’bout that,” he said. “Ramon … he got something personal going on with that Felix guy.”
“I can see,” I said. “Well, if you were here about an hour or so ago, you would have met him, face-to-face.”
Pepe shook his head. “Not yet,” he said. “Not yet. You see, I don’t know much about the man. Can you help me with that?”
“For real?” I asked. “I thought you knew him pretty well, back the last time you and your … associates met up with him.”
“Nah, I wasn’t there for that particular meet and greet. I was down in the D.R., doing some business.”
“D.R.?”
“Dominican Republic.”
“Scouting for the Sox?”
His eyes flashed at me. “No, man, not scouting for the Sox. Can we get on with this shit?”
“Sure, Pepe. Whatever you say.”
By now the pain in my jaw and back was easing, and so was my tension. Having these two men in the house was one hell of a disturbance, and I didn’t like it. They were young, big, muscular, and utterly confident they could force their way in and do and say whatever they wanted. And based on my own condition and the location of my weapons, there was nothing I could do about it.
He nodded. “All right then. Who is this Felix guy?”
“Why are you asking me? I’m sure other people in your … field of interest would have the same kind of information.”
“We asked around, that’s why. Wanted to know who this clown’s friends or acquaintances are. Got a bunch of names but lots of them were women, which I don’t want to deal with, ’cause they get all emotional and shit, and the guys … well, they were too much like him. Or us. And then there’s you. Even found out that you got him freed a while back on a murder charge.”
“He did that pretty much all by his lonesome.”
“Not what I heard.”
“Should I feel honored, then?”
“Dunno. Learned you were a writer, that true?”
“Yes.”
“What do you write? Newspaper? Video games? TV?”
“Magazine columnist.”
He laughed. “Good luck with that, bro. Last time I held a magazine was ten years ago, and it was a whack-off mag, you know? Now, who needs it.”
“Thanks,” I said. “That’s encouraging to know.”
“Look,” he said. “Me and Ramon, we’re thirsty. You got any beer?”
“Maybe in the back of the fridge.”
He spoke to Ramon, who came back with two bottles of Sam Adams Ale. I wasn’t offended that he didn’t offer me one, because I was pretty sure there had only been two in there before. They drank for a couple of minutes and Ramon belched when they had emptied the bottles.
Pepe sighed and said, “This Felix guy, why is he gunning after us?”
“He’s gunning after you because he thinks you have something that belongs to him.”
“Really? Like what?”
“Like an antique piece of silver.”
“A … what?”
“Old silver.”
Pepe looked confused. “Silver, like little bars? Coins?”
“No, like a serving platter. The sides curved up. With four little feet made to look like tigers.”
A pause, then. Ramon still there, Pepe staring at me. “He thinks we got his platter, is that the case?”
“Yep.”
“What? We supposed to have gotten this from some wedding reception he was at, his daughter or something, and we jacked it?”
“No,” I said. “It was at an antiques dealer here in Tyler. Maggie Branch, on the Exonia Road. He had left it there for an appraisal, and it appears to be missing.”
“So why does he think we nabbed it?”
“Because it was there before she was killed, and it was gone after she was killed. And some of your guys were there. A car with a license plate traced back to you, plus a packet of yours was left behind.”
Pepe scratched behind his right ear. Ramon stood so still I wondered if his boots had accidentally stepped into some form of superglue and he couldn’t move.
“That’s bullshit, man,” he said.
“What? That you weren’t there? That your heroin was left behind? Oh, and the fact the cops from New Hampshire and Massachusetts are after you?”
Pepe shook his head. “Didn’t kill the old lady. She was alive when we got there, alive when we left.”
“Witnesses said they saw you leaving in a hurry.”
“’Cause the old bitch was threatening to call the cops on us, that’s why. We don’t need that heat in this part of the world.”
“Did she catch you, then?” I asked.
“Huh? Catch us, what?”
“I mean, did she come across you guys breaking in, trying to steal jewelry or cash.”
“Wasn’t like that, bro,” he said, shaking his head.
“I’m not your bro,” I said. “Then what was it like?”
He shrugged. “Pure business deal, that’s all. And we couldn’t reach an agreement, she got pissed, and that’s that.”
“A business deal? You guys were set to sell her stolen antiques? Or jewelry?”
Pepe grinned. “Shit, no. We were going to sell her smack.”
I stared at him. He went on. “You know. Horse. White.”
A pause. “Heroin.”
That took me aback, and I couldn’t say
anything for a moment or three. Ramon was still standing like a carved piece of wood, and Pepe had a wide grin on his face. “What, you think our customers aren’t all ages, all places?”
“Uh, let’s just say I’m surprised.”
“Shit, you shouldn’t be, being a magazine writer, somebody who’s supposed to know stuff. All this heroin epidemic people keep on talking about, it didn’t mean shit when it was just brown and black people turning up dead in restrooms or parks, am I right?”
“Pretty much,” I said.
He reached over, gently slapped me on the knee. “Man, an old white man who knows when I’m talking sense. You’re one rare bird. So yeah, nobody gave a crap when it was those people keeling over and dying. Then some years back, the doctors, the big-pharma companies, they started pushing stronger and stronger painkillers, right? And the docs wanted to take care of their patients complaining their knees hurt, their hips hurt, so they wrote script after script. And what happened, then, huh?”
“A new class of addicts were created, and when they couldn’t get the straight stuff, they went to the street stuff.”
“That’s right.”
“And you don’t mind doing it?”
“Doing what?”
“Poisoning people. Killing them. Ruining their lives.”
Pepe held out a hand, ticked off finger by finger. “Let’s see. Like cigarettes, like booze, like politicians who cut deals so kids drink water filled with lead. Yeah, I’m real broke up about my business.”
“You say Maggie had pain problems, she wanted to score from you?”
“Score,” he said, repeating my word. “Funny word. You watch a lot of gangster movies when you were younger?”
“Some.”
“Nah,” he said. “She didn’t want to score for herself. She wanted it for some friends who were hurting, hurting in their joints or back, hurting because they had a little monkey on their backs and they needed help. Their family couldn’t help, their docs couldn’t help, so they went to Maggie, and she came to me.”
I nodded. “All right. You guys went to see her for … what, negotiations?”
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