Hard Aground

by Brendan DuBois

  The larger of the detectives crisply said, “No. Now, your name, sir, and how long have you been living here?”

  So I stood out there in the cold and gathering darkness—one by one, sets of red and blue lights from the parking lot started to wink out—answering their questions. At one point, one of them knelt down and gently pried the bullet from my door, slipping it into a little clear glassine bag. The questions went on until they didn’t, and when the smaller of the detectives said, “I think we’re through, Walter,” I was pleased indeed.

  Still, I had one question of my own to ask. “Detectives,” I said. “With no disrespect, don’t you think this should be a Tyler case?”

  “Yeah, in a perfect world, it should,” the larger detective said. “But the governor’s gone ape over the opioid epidemic, and what she wants, the AG and the state police try to deliver. There was heroin found on this character that just went up the driveway, and in one of the cars that got shot up.”

  The smaller detective added, “It’s a statewide crisis, and the state’s gotta respond. Can’t have a dozen jurisdictions squabbling over who did what and who gets what evidence. Besides, the OT is damn sweet.”

  His companion passed over a business card. “Just in case you think of anything else.”

  “Sure,” I said, pocketing the card.

  “Nice place you got here,” the detective said. “Remote. Out of the way. Bet you got one hell of a view when the sun comes up. And you know what? That nasty white powder can reach anywhere, touch anyone. You have a good rest of the night.”

  The detectives turned and went back up the driveway, their flashlights bobbing along as they went up to the Lafayette House parking lot.

  Back inside, I put the flashlight on the counter, shook off my jacket, and went into the kitchen to wash my hands and get a long swallow of orange juice. My poor house had a bullet wound on the front door. It still hadn’t been put back together properly since the arson, and a couple of months ago, another bullet had gone through two of my bedroom windows.

  I slapped an exposed beam as I made my way out of the kitchen.

  “Jesus, sweetie, you’ve been one roughed-up gal over the years.”

  Out in the living room I switched off more lights, and I stopped.

  Wood was creaking.

  In an old house like mine, over the years you get used to the creaking of wood. It’s like one’s old bones and tendons, you know when they stretch and strain. So you know that this certain creak is from the stairs, that little moan is from the roof, and the little tap-tap-taps are the hot water pipes expanding when the oil furnace kicks on.

  I didn’t recognize what I was hearing.

  I waited.

  The creaking noise returned.

  I slowly rotated as I stood in one spot, like one of those old-fashioned radar dishes, trying to pick up a ghost out there.

  A ghost. How cheerful. A thought I never really wanted to consider much over the years, but considering this was once a lifeboat station, I’m sure a number of drowned or nearly-drowned seamen had spent their last moments under this roof.

  More creaking.

  I stopped moving my head. The noise was coming from outside. The rear deck.

  I moved a hand forward in the near darkness, slid open a drawer by the telephone, took out my .32 Smith & Wesson semiautomatic pistol, clicked back the hammer.

  No children in the house—I kept all of my weapons loaded.

  I lowered my hand and limped back to the kitchen, taking my time.

  Another creak, louder.

  By the counter and cabinets was a set of light switches that I rarely use. One was a floodlight that lit up the entire narrow strip of rocks that was laughingly called my rear yard, and the other were two smaller lamps that illuminated my rear deck.

  What the heck, I thought. Let’s go for it.

  I slapped them both on, stepped back, and nearly stumbled as a man came into view, standing right up against the sliding door, blood streaming down the side of his face, holding something in his right hand, aiming right at me.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  I dropped my cane and nearly dropped my pistol too, but I managed to bring it up in a two-handed stance, aiming right at my trespasser. “Freeze! Hold it right there!” I yelled.

  The guy looked shocked and dropped what he had, lifted up his hands. We stared at each other through the glass. “Keep your hands up and stand still,” I said.

  He was in his late twenties or early thirties, wide-eyed and disheveled, his brown hair wet with blood. I stepped closer to the glass so he could hear me better.

  “Who the hell are you?” I demanded.

  He shook his head, mouthed the words “I can’t hear you.” I cursed the new energy-efficient glass doors and stepped closer. Even though I had told him to stand still, he did the same, and this time, he beat me to it.

  “Are you Lewis Cole?” he asked.

  Usually in the movies or books, this is when the hero says, “I’m the one asking the questions here!” But the guy looked so scared and dopey, and all I said was, “Yeah, I am.”

  “You’re friends with Felix Tinios?”

  “Yeah.”

  He nodded, attempted a smile. “I’m Rudy Gennaro. I work for Felix.”

  Well. He glanced around. “Hey, can I come in?” he asked. “There’s a lot of cops running around out there, they’re making me nervous.”

  “Step back a few steps,” I said, and the bleeding young man did just that. I unlocked the door, took out the wooden stick, and slid the door open. A blast of salt air and cold came in, and he came in, hands still up, like this was a routine he was very familiar with. I traded outdoor illumination for indoor illumination by slapping some more light switches, and stepped back, keeping a good distance between us.

  “You armed?” I asked.

  “Shit, no, not with the record I got. That’s a first-class ticket right back to the joint. Hey, can I lower my arms? They’re getting tired.”

  On the deck he had looked deranged and dangerous, looking to break in and cause me harm, but inside, under the warm glow of my interior lights, he looked sad and a bit pathetic. It was like going to your high school reunion ten years later and seeing that the once-admired high school quarterback had gained twenty pounds and was now working as a greeter for Walmart.

  I went around the kitchen counter, lowered the pistol, but made sure he saw me slip it into a pocket. “Okay, lower your hands, but I’m jumpy tonight, with all the shooting going on up at the parking lot. You stay over there and I’ll stay over here. Okay?”

  Rudy lowered his arms with relief. “Yeah, thanks.”

  I got some paper towels. I wet a bunch and kept another bunch dry, then passed them over to him. “Your head’s bleeding pretty bad,” I said. “You get caught up in that shooting up there?”

  He wiped the blood away with the wet towel, winced. “Shit, no.”

  “You mean you weren’t part of it?”

  He wiped and wiped and most of the blood came away, and I saw an ugly gash on the left side of his forehead, just under his hairline. “Didn’t you hear me earlier? No guns, don’t even want to be near ’em. Nope, I was trying to sneak around that whole shit-show up there when I fell in your rocks. Damn nasty things, sharp and slippery.”

  “You think you’re okay?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” he said. “I got dinged up in my scalp, and believe you me, those cuts bleed like a bastard. Won’t kill you or nothin’, but boy, it just won’t stop bleeding.” He dabbed and dabbed at the wound, and the helpful homeowner part of me wanted to grab my first aid kit—but later.

  “All right,” I said. “Then why are you here, at this time of the night?”

  “I didn’t plan it that way.”

  “What did you plan, Rudy?”

  “Well, I wasn’t sure at first, but you see, I heard Felix was looking for me, and I got scared. There’s looking, and then there’s … looking. One means kicking back and having some be
ers at a strip club in Salisbury, and the other means digging a hole in the ground and being told to step inside. You got it?”

  “I got it.”

  “And I heard you were his friend, a magazine writer who lived in this remote cottage on the beach. That’s you, right?”

  “Right.”

  “And you being his friend and all, well, I hoped you could, what’s that word? Inter … inter …”

  “Intercede.”

  He nodded his head with pleasure. He might be bleeding out in a stranger’s dining area, but at least the conversation was making progress.

  “Not sure if I can do that, Rudy, when he gets into one of his moods. You know why he’s looking for you?”

  Rudy nodded. “He thinks I have something that belongs to him.”

  “Okay, and—hold on a moment.”

  I remembered what I saw, not more than two minutes ago, when he had first shown up at my place. I said, “Is it on the deck?”

  Another nod.

  “You sure?”

  “Hell, yes, I’m sure. I brought it all the way down here, and then tried to walk across all those slippery fucking rocks, so yeah, I’m sure.”

  “Why did you drop it?”

  His eyes glared at me. “Hey, you told me! You said, ‘hands up,’ and I saw you were pointing a piece at me, so I put my hands up. What else was I going to do?”

  Sure, I thought. What else could he have done?

  “Okay, Rudy, not that I don’t trust you, but we’ve just met. I want you to slowly go out on my deck, retrieve what you were carrying, and bring it back inside. Hold it with one hand, no sudden moves. You got it?”

  His eyes still glared at me. “Okay, but you better know this, Mr. Lewis Cole.”

  “What’s that?”

  “If it’s broken, it’s your fault.”

  It took less than a minute and he came in, carrying something a couple of feet long, covered in what looked to be bubble wrap and a black piece of cloth. He put it down on my kitchen counter and took two steps back without waiting for me to ask. I passed over a fresh collection of paper towels and he squeezed them against his forehead.

  “Like I said, if it’s broken, it’s your fault.”

  I took my time removing the black cloth, which was just a torn T-shirt, and the bubble wrap. Sure enough, Felix’s silver serving set came into view. I put it down on the counter on its four little legs and rubbed the tarnished silver, trying to make out the archaic Sicilian lettering on the surface.

  “It doesn’t look like much, does it,” he said. “I was gonna get some silver polish and really give it a good scrub.”

  I winced. “Good thing you didn’t. Silver this old and tarnished, if it’s going to be cleaned, needs to be done by an expert. Using store-bought polish would ruin the value.”

  For a few seconds I was entranced with the feel and the look of the old ornate piece. Hard to believe that something made for some long dead and forgotten King of Sicily had now ended up at my home. The currents of history sure run wide, and often drop off the most unexpected pieces.

  “How did you get it?”

  Rudy got defensive. “Well, I think that’s what you call, you know, trade secrets and—”

  “You stole it from Maggie Branch’s antiques shop, just up the road from where you were conducting surveillance on a house. Do tell me, Rudy, how did you end up stealing it?”

  He looked confused and angry, and it was late and I was tired. I took out my .32 Smith & Wesson and said, “Rudy, do you really want to go sit on the couch over there and have a seat as I call Felix and have him come over? He’ll be in a real rotten mood, no matter what. Or do you want to answer me and then get the hell out of here, while I turn this over to Felix?”

  Rudy still wasn’t saying anything, so I nudged him. “Was it before or after you saw that car race out with the Massachusetts license plates?”

  His shoulders sagged. “After.”

  “How much longer?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe ten, fifteen minutes. Then I heard something.”

  “What was the something?”

  “A woman screaming, and then a gunshot. Sounded like a shotgun.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “Shit, you can tell. The sound, it echoes right in your chest.”

  “But you said you were in your car, watching. How did you hear a scream and the sound of a shotgun?”

  He took the paper towel off, looked at the blood, put it back up against his forehead. “I was outside, taking a leak. Okay? That’s the damn thing about watching a house you never see on the TV or the movies. At some point you gotta piss.”

  “All right,” I said. “Did you see another car go up the driveway?”

  “Nope.”

  “Just the scream and the shotgun.”

  “Yeah.”

  “No car anywhere?”

  “Well …”

  “Rudy.”

  “Well, when I was in the woods with my pecker out, there was this car that went by the driveway, slowed down, and kept on going. It might have pulled over a ways up. The woods there are thin. Easy to walk through if you need to.”

  By now things seemed calm enough that I put the .32 back into my pajama bottoms. “Okay. You’re doing a surveillance, you just saw a car zip out, you’re outside urinating, and you hear a scream and the shot.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And then you decided to go over and check things out?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why?”

  “Huh?” Rudy asked.

  “You heard me. There you are, outside draining your bladder, you hear a woman scream and then a shotgun being fire. Most people would leave the area. Why didn’t you do that?”

  “Opportunity, man,” Rudy said. “I mean, things like this, a shotgun going off, a woman screaming, it means something somewhere’s gotten in trouble, there’s a screwup, things are a mess.”

  “And you were going to swoop in and take advantage.”

  “Yeah, whatever. I could see the lights of the place from where I was pissing. So I went through the woods, went up to the barn next to the house, the lights on and bright and shit, and I poked my head in.” He paused. “Now, with me giving up this silver without getting a dime, I wish I hadn’t. It was a real bloody mess. I mean, I’ve seen shit over the years, I’ve done shit over the years, and blood don’t bother me none. But I got there right after the old broad must have gotten shot. I could still smell the gunshot.”

  “What did you see?”

  “What the hell do you think I saw?” Rudy said, grimacing either from the memory or the blood still trickling down his wrist. “The poor broad was dead. Practically falling out of her chair. Everything up from the chest … I gave it a quick look and that was that. Then I saw that piece of silver, resting right out on the open on her desk, and I grabbed that and got the hell out.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Shit, besides her wet blood and brains still on the wall behind her?”

  “Yeah, besides that.”

  Rudy wiped at the blood on his wrist. “Papers. There were papers all over the floor and a couple of cabinet drawers were open. Shit, I don’t know what they were. I had the silver, ran out, happy I hadn’t touched a goddamn thing besides that.”

  I picked up the silver plate, slowly moved it around, and put it back on the counter. “All right. Tell you what, I’ll give Felix a call in the morning. Tell him that you were remorseful—”

  “What’s remorseful?”

  “I’ll tell him you were sorry for everything. I’ll say that you couldn’t find him or call him, and you did the next best thing, you left the silver with me.”

  “But I know where he lives. He might think that’s a bullshit story.”

  “All right, I’ll tell him that you—well, it was late. And you didn’t want to disturb him. But you knew he and I were friends, so you thought of dropping it off with me, someone you could trust, and that you’re still sorr
y about the whole thing.”

  “Fresh paper towel?”

  “Sure.” I moved back into the kitchen—still facing him, for even though we were doing all right, I didn’t want to turn my back to him—and I tore off another few sheets of towel.

  He bunched up the dry sheets against the sodden ones. “Sounds okay. I’m just worried he’s still going to come after me and tune me up.”

  “I’ll take care of that.”

  “How?”

  “I’ll ask him not to hurt you.”

  “C’mon, for real, how can you take care of me?”

  “I just told you,” I said. “I’ll ask him not to hurt you, and he won’t.”

  “The hell you say.”

  “I just said it twice, so let’s leave it at that, all right?”

  “Okay but … what do you have on him? Some photos? An affidavit hidden somewhere? You got a brother who’s a cop or FBI agent or something? What’s the deal?”

  “The deal is friendship, Rudy.”

  He snorted at that. “You don’t say. Then I’m glad I got what I got with him, which is pretty much lined out straight. Boss and worker. You say you’re friends? Okay, but you’re like one of those survivors on a zombie show, you decide to keep some decaying zombie as a friend and pet. That zombie will leave you alone at first, but one of these days, when you least expect it, that bastard will turn around and rip out your guts and eat ’em in front of you.”

  “That’s some analogy.”

  “Some what?”

  “Forget it,” I said. I picked up the silver plate on its four tiny legs, slid open a nearly empty drawer, and put it in, closed the drawer. “I think we’re through here. You all set?”

  “Yep.”

  “All right.”

  I started out of my kitchen and Rudy stood still. “Where are you going?” he asked.

  “To the front door,” I said. “You can walk up my driveway and you’ll be all set.”

  Rudy shook his head. “Christ, no. There’s a lot of cops still up there.” He went to the sliding glass door and opened it up. “That’s how I came in, and that’s how I’m going out. Later, bud.”

  He closed the door, and that was that. I spent a few minutes cleaning up, locking the door, putting the wooden stick back in, and then went upstairs. I had to pause halfway up.