End of Story

by Peter Abrahams

  Below the fingerprints were two black-and-white photos, full face and profile, cop-show style. There was even a number around his neck—RG17859. Harrow looked a lot different in the photos. Younger, for one thing, his face—now slightly grooved between the eyes—still completely unlined. Plus his hair had been much longer and straggly, and he’d worn an ugly goatee. He was a lot better-looking now, kind of counterintuitive, since he’d spent the last—her eye roamed down the page—seven years in prison. Who got better-looking locked up?

  Evan Vance Harrow. Born: New York City, thirty-one years before. Arrested: at seventeen for assault, not prosecuted; at eighteen, car theft, six months probation; at twenty, possession of burglar tools, one year, sentence suspended; at twenty-three, second-degree murder and armed robbery, twenty-five years without parole.

  She paged through a few sheets of onionskin paper with not much on them.

  At Dannemora: written up for fighting, week one; fighting week two; fighting week three. Week four to present: clean.

  Psychologist’s report: No diagnosable malady. The prisoner has adjusted to prison life.

  Not a word about a girlfriend with bad judgment, a daughter with bouncing curls, glass on glass. Ivy went through Harrow’s jacket again, felt in some weird way she knew less than before. She tried to read something in his eyes, but he had shown the camera only absence: of fear, anxiety, anger, acceptance, defiance or any other emotion you might expect. What had he been thinking? The unexpected: that was already clear from his writing.

  Outside, the wind was starting to rise, puckering the water. Kind of like goose bumps, as though the lake felt cold. Ivy took out her cell phone and called Sergeant Tocco.

  “I’ve been going over Harrow’s jacket.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Why is it called jacket, by the way?”

  “Beats me.”

  “It says he’s serving twenty-five years for second-degree murder and armed robbery.”

  “Correct.”

  “But it doesn’t give any details.”

  “Details?”

  “Exactly what happened, where, when, all that.”

  “What difference does it make?”

  “It might help me understand his writing a little better.”

  “His writing’s hard to understand?”

  “In a way, yes.”

  “Like he uses big words?”

  “It’s not that,” Ivy said. Out the window, Jean Savard, now wearing pajamas, walked down to the shore and tossed an empty bottle in the lake. “Did his crime have anything to do with a car accident, maybe running down a little girl?”

  “Nope,” said Sergeant Tocco. “But for every one where they get caught you can bet there’s three or four others that stay unsolved.”

  “What was his crime?”

  “Tell you what,” said Sergeant Tocco. “I’ll dig up something, have it for you next time.”

  A whole week. “I’m actually still in the area,” Ivy said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  Jean gazed out at the lake. Her pajama pants billowed in the wind. “If it’s not too much trouble,” Ivy said, “maybe I could swing over now.”

  “Swing over?”

  “And collect whatever you dig up. I can be there in half an hour.”

  “No good,” said Sergeant Tocco. “I’m off in twenty minutes.”

  “It would be a big help.”

  “Not to me.”

  “How about tomorrow?”

  “My day off.”

  “Maybe you could leave it on your desk.”

  A pause. Then Sergeant Tocco laughed, a quick bark. “That a writer thing?” he said. “Not taking no for an answer?”

  “Yes,” said Ivy, recognizing the truth of it as she spoke.

  “Writers are a pain in the ass,” said Sergeant Tocco. “That’s one thing I learned from this program. Might as well come on over to the house.”

  “The prison?” said Ivy, thinking big house.

  “Hell no,” said Sergeant Tocco. “Think I hang out here one second longer than I have to? I mean my place.” He gave her directions. “See you in an hour.”

  Ivy looked out the window. Jean was no longer there. Ivy had a crazy thought: She’s in the lake. Then she heard Jean’s voice: “Rocky!” And a big dog went bounding by, like food was waiting in the bowl.

  Sergeant Tocco lived on the north edge of town, about three miles from the prison. He had a little house, newly painted white with lima-bean-green trim, an actual picket fence, also white, and a lawn completely cleared of leaves, although they were all over his neighbors’ lawns and the street. None of them had picket fences, or fences of any kind.

  “Get you something to drink?” said Sergeant Tocco, out of uniform now, almost like a different person in sweatshirt and jeans.

  “I’m all right.”

  They sat in his front room, small, immaculate. A photo of a white-haired woman stood on the mantel, next to a basket of lacquered ears of Indian corn.

  “I like your house,” Ivy said.

  “Bought it last year,” said Sergeant Tocco. “Day I turned thirty.”

  That shocked her: not his pride of ownership, but the fact that he looked ten years older, maybe more.

  “What’s your place like?” he said.

  Ivy told him.

  “Own or rent?”

  “Rent, of course. It’s one of the most expensive parts of Brooklyn.”

  “You like living in the city?”

  “Yes.”

  “Writers ever live in the country?”

  “Sure.”

  “Never been there myself.”

  “Where?”

  “New York.”

  “Never in your whole life?”

  “Nope.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “Originally?” said Sergeant Tocco. “Schenectady, but I grew up in Plattsburgh.”

  Plattsburgh—where Taneesha had been forced to move after she didn’t get the Sing Sing job. “What’s that like?” Ivy said.

  “Right on the lake,” said Sergeant Tocco. “Went fishing practically every day when I was a kid.”

  He gave her a quick sideways glance, a surprising glance that had nothing to do with inmate programs, jackets, their professional relationship. Ivy caught it and he looked away. She noticed he’d shaved off his end-of-day stubble.

  “I got this off the net,” he said, and handed her a printout.

  An article from the Albany Citizen, seven years old, almost to the day.

  Guilty in Casino Murder

  BY TONY BLASS

  Evan Vance Harrow, 24, late of West Raquette, was found guilty today of second-degree murder and other charges resulting from last winter’s robbery of the Gold Dust Casino on the Mohawk reservation in neighboring Raquette. Casino security guard Jeremy Redfeather died of gunshot wounds sustained in a shoot-out during the robbery. Also killed were two of Harrow’s associates, Marvin Joseph Lusk and Simeon Carter. Ballistics tests confirmed that the bullet that killed Mr. Redfeather came from Carter’s gun.

  Harrow, who wore a ski mask during the robbery and fled after the shooting, was identified by a fourth gang member, Frank Mandrell. Mandrell was not present during the robbery and received a suspended sentence on conspiracy charges in an earlier trial. Harrow’s wife, Betty Ann Price, is still being sought by police. A sum in the neighborhood of three to four hundred thousand dollars, believed to have been carried from the scene by Harrow, has not been recovered. Harrow’s lawyer, Mickey Dunn, Esq., denied that his client had any knowledge of the whereabouts of the money and maintained his innocence in a brief statement after the verdict.

  Harrow will be sentenced tomorrow. Under federal guidelines, he faces a minimum sentence of twenty-five years without parole.

  Ivy looked up. Sergeant Tocco was watching her, his professional gaze back in place.

  “That what you needed?” he said.

  “I don’t know,” Ivy said. “And it’s not a q
uestion of needing…” Her eye was drawn back to the article, so strange to her, so complicated.

  “That casino’s only a couple hours from here,” Sergeant Tocco said. “I remember the case.”

  “And?” Ivy said.

  He shrugged. “Same old story. Some guys think they’re smart, like Hollywood types in one of those heist movies. But they always turn out dumb.” He met her gaze. “Which is what they are.”

  Ivy felt Sergeant Tocco’s will, trying to get into her brain, form her opinions. “Was this wife of his”—she checked the copy—“Betty Ann Price, ever caught?”

  “Not yet.”

  “And what about the money?”

  “Ditto.”

  “So maybe someone wasn’t dumb,” Ivy said.

  “A man died,” said Sergeant Tocco.

  Ivy felt herself blushing, and she wasn’t a blusher. “Sorry,” she said.

  “Nothing to be sorry about,” said Sergeant Tocco. “You didn’t do anything wrong.” He spotted a fleck of something on the arm of his chair and brushed it off.

  “It says here that he didn’t actually fire the gun,” Ivy said.

  “Makes no difference under the law.”

  “That doesn’t seem right.”

  “The hell it doesn’t.”

  “And there’s no mention of a daughter.”

  “Why would there be?”

  Ivy took out Harrow’s Car Wreck story, just the half he’d written down, and handed it to Sergeant Tocco. He read it.

  “So? Maybe he has a daughter. Guys like that leave a trail of kids.” He looked down his nose at Harrow’s story. “You actually think this is any good?”

  “I do.”

  He handed it back. “You’re the writer.”

  The days were getting shorter. Outside, it was night already.

  Nine

  Ivy opened her eyes, sat up in the brass bed, looked out the window at Wilderness Lake. There was an island about halfway across. She’d taken no notice of it before—still so much work to do on her observational skills—but now she saw how strangely proportioned it was, like a weird detail in the background of some German medieval painting. The island had a small footprint, if that was the word, but rose steeply to a rocky peak, four or five hundred feet high, topped with a black cross.

  Ivy got dressed and went outside. Jean was lifting a suitcase into the side door of the minivan; Rocky waited in front seat.

  “Morning,” Jean said. “Sleep well?”

  “Great,” Ivy said. “I was thinking of staying another day.” Thinking it right that moment, in fact, as she spoke.

  “I’ll be in Plattsburgh till the end of the week,” Jean said. “After that, I’m closing for the season.”

  “Oh.”

  Rocky thumped his tail on the seat.

  Jean gazed at her. “But you look like an honest person,” she said.

  “I’m good at impressions,” Ivy said.

  Jean laughed. “Tell you what. Can you remember to lock up the cabin when you go?”

  “Of course.”

  “And leave the key under the mat?”

  “I promise,” said Ivy. “Plus I owe you for another day.”

  “Oh, don’t—”

  But Ivy did.

  Fifteen minutes later, she had Wilderness Lake to herself. She walked along the shore, felt a cool breeze on her face, dipped her hand in the water: icy cold. There was a stretch of sandy beach in front of the cabins, and on it lay a rowboat, upside down. Ivy read the name on the stern: CAPRICE. She flipped it over. The oars lay under the thwarts or whatever you called them; why was her terminology about so many things so sketchy? At that moment, Ivy resolved to learn the complete meaning of some technical thing every day; maybe even two. And while she was resolving, she was also dragging Caprice down to the water, stepping in, pushing off, fixing the oars in the locks, rowing.

  The little boat skimmed across the lake. Rowing felt great. The sun rose over a tall stand of spruces on the eastern side and the day turned polychromatic. The Wilderness Lake cabins grew smaller and smaller, became a part of nature. The oar blades made cream-colored whirlpools that drilled down into the water and disappeared. Ivy took a satellite view of things: New York down there, Dannemora over there, her by herself right here. Clusters of people had magnetic power, the bigger the stronger. She felt close to the edge of both their reaches, that with one or two more strokes she’d break free of their pull and enter a brand-new world. Then the bow bumped up against the island, almost knocking her off her seat.

  Ivy pulled Caprice onto a gravelly shore, tucked the oars safely inside. She stepped around some thorny bushes and into the woods. The ground, covered with crisp dry leaves, started sloping up right away. She found herself on a sort of path—rocky in places and crisscrossed with tree roots—that corkscrewed around the island, up and up. The trees got more stunted and the rocky core of the island came thrusting to the surface. Ivy had to go down on all fours a couple times, and was huffing and puffing by the time she reached a ledge just below the top.

  She checked out the view. All wild nature except for three things: the cross, rising above her head from a crag that topped the peak; Jean Savard’s cabins and a red fragment that had to be the Saab between the trees; and herself, Ivy Seidel, Queen of the Hill.

  But she wasn’t at the top yet, not the tip-top. She climbed over a boulder, got a foothold, wriggled up the crag, rose to her feet. Not much room at the tip-top, barely enough for the two of them, the cross and her. Maybe because of the lack of foot room and how high she was, the sun glaring off the lake way down below, Ivy got a little dizzy. She reached out for the cross.

  “Ow.”

  A quick biting pain: she’d grasped a rusty jagged edge of the vertical iron bar and cut her palm. Ivy licked up the dribbling blood. Just a little gash, not deep, nothing really. She climbed back down to the ledge.

  And that was when she noticed, almost hidden in a cleft in the crag, a hole in the rock. A hard-to-spot hole, but big enough for a crouching person to enter without difficulty. Ivy crouched and entered.

  Inside lay a shadowy space, not too much smaller than some Brooklyn apartments she’d been in, including her own. It had a dusty smell, a bit like old books, but there were no books around, no objects of any kind. Except for this red-tipped thing, practically at her feet. Ivy reached for it, thinking, Lipstick. But no, not lipstick. It was ammunition, one of those shotgun shells, just the brass casing.

  Ivy looked around, saw no more of them, and not even a footprint on the dirt floor, but it was easy to imagine a hunter holed up here during a storm or something like that. She stepped out into the sunlight. A cave: she’d discovered a cave, just like a character in one of those adventure stories she’d loved when she was a kid. Ivy crossed the ledge and flung the shell with all her might. It cleared the treetops, barely, and spun on down, glinting and glinting, then vanished in the water with a splash too tiny to see. But totally satisfying. Ivy lowered herself off the ledge and made her way down, sucking the blood off her palm once or twice. Maybe distracted, she forgot about the key to cabin four until she was miles away. Ivy stuffed it in the glove box.

  She stopped in Albany on the way home—almost no detour at all—and went into the office of the Citizen.

  “I’m looking for Tony Blass,” she told the receptionist.

  The receptionist cracked her gum. “Whom,” she said, “shall I say is askin’?”

  “It’s about a story he wrote.”

  The receptionist spoke into her headphones. “Got a visitor here about a story you wrote.” She listened for a moment, looked at Ivy. “He says what story?”

  “The Gold Dust Casino robbery,” Ivy said.

  “She says Gold Dust Casino robbery,” the receptionist said. She listened again. “He says go on through. Last cubicle at the back.”

  She buzzed Ivy through the glass doors of the newsroom. Ivy walked down a row of cubicles, past a man typing quickly at a keyboard, a woman
on a phone saying, “Spell that,” and at the end, a man in a short-sleeve yellow shirt and bright red tie, poking a fat finger into a can of Almond Roca. He looked up.

  “Tony Blass?” Ivy said.

  “Tony B, in person,” he said. He handed her a card imprinted with a flattering caricature of himself and the words The World According to Tony B—Monday, Wednesday, and Friday in your Citizen.

  “Ivy Seidel,” Ivy said.

  He wrote her name on a notepad. “Got something for me?”

  “Got something for you?”

  “On the Gold Dust story.” Tony B plucked a piece of Almond Roca shaped like Great Britain from the can and popped it in his mouth; a tiny flake of brittle sticking unnoticed to his mustache. “News doesn’t get much older than the Gold Dust saga—been six years at least since I filed anything on it. So it figures you’ve got something.”

  “Sorry,” Ivy said. “I don’t know any more than this.” She held up the “Guilty in Casino Murder” printout Sergeant Tocco had given her. “I was hoping you could fill me in.”

  “On what?”

  “The whole story.”

  “Why?” said Tony B.

  “I thought you might have more details than made it into the article.”

  “Oh, I do,” said Tony B. “Yes indeedy. And I suspect a hell of a lot more. But my question”—he glanced down at the notepad—“Ivy Seidel, is, what’s it to you?”

  “That’s hard to explain,” Ivy said.

  Tony B licked his fingers, dipped them back in the can. “Take your best shot,” he said.

  “Well,” Ivy began, “I’ve been teaching writing at—”

  “Whoa,” said Tony B. “You’re a writer?”

  That question again, still without a yes-or-no answer, unless it really was no. “Not exactly,” Ivy said. “But I am teaching the—”