“When will you know?” Ben said, still sounding snappy. At least he was no longer threatening violence.
“We have your cell phone number. We’ll call you at home,” Dr. Robbins said. He pushed away from the desk as if he was going to stand, but he remained seated.
Julia noticed how the doctor still had a difficult time making direct eye contact with her. Her only hope was that his medical skills were much better than his social skills.
“Thank you,” she said, although the words rang hollow in her ears. She didn’t know anything more than she had when she first came in, and the single, clearest thought in her mind was that her father was going to die.
There was no way around it.
And as this horrible thought echoed, another, even more disturbing thought began to gnaw at the back of her mind. She tried to deny it, but she experienced a disquieting sense of relief … of liberation at the prospect of her father’s imminent death would give her. As much as she loved him, once he was gone, only then would she … finally … be able to start living her own life.
And then another thought occurred to her.
Would Ben be a part of that new life?
Chapter Fifteen
Goin’ Down
It was late in the afternoon. The storm had passed, and the sun was setting, lighting the thin, bright band of clouds on the western horizon. The air was warm and moist, more like summer than spring. The wind coming off the ocean carried a bracing, salty tang. Puddles on the street and sidewalk glistened from the recent downpour.
Tom Marshall was nervous as he sat behind the steering wheel of his car, which was parked across the street about fifty feet from the front door of The Local. His window was rolled down, and he was taking deep breaths, filling his lungs to capacity and exhaling slowly to relieve his tension.
He told himself he didn’t have to be this nervous.
He could always try to fly the excuse that he had simply been doing his job. Jerry Lincoln, the new DEA guy, had asked him to investigate anything and everything about the local drug traffic. If worse came to worst and he had to kill Gillette, he had a throw-down in his glove compartment he could drop beside the body and claim that the dipshit had drawn on him first. He had every right to shoot him in self-defense.
But the truth was, Tom had never killed a man in the line of duty or otherwise.
Sure, he had seen enough dead people. Murder victims and suicides … car accidents … medical emergencies. But he had never sighted down the barrel of a gun and pulled the trigger to end a man’s life.
He wondered if he really had the balls to do it.
If anyone deserved to die, though, it was Tony Gillette. The bastard should never have shorted him on that deal. If he’d been honest, Tom would have been long gone by now, and Gillette wouldn’t be a walking dead man.
The problem was, getting Tony Gillette in a situation where he could bring him down without any witnesses would be difficult if not impossible. It was no use demanding the rest of the money. Gillette would never give it up. He had Tom by the short hairs, and both of them knew it. Tom couldn’t very well go to the department and complain, now, could he?
Tom tensed when the front door of The Local opened, and Danny “Puppy” Lawrence stepped out into the gathering evening gloom. His face looked pasty white in the dimming light. His eyes were twitching back and forth as he looked up and down the street until he saw Tom’s car.
Tom gripped the steering wheel with both hands. Then he raised his forefinger in greeting, a gesture he doubted Puppy even saw, but the man started walking toward the car. He looked unsteady on his feet, weaving from side to side until he got to the car. He stopped on the driver’s side.
“Get the fuck in the car,” Tom said, glancing around to see if anyone was watching. He didn’t see anyone, but that didn’t mean someone wasn’t watching.
“Oh … yeah … sure,” Puppy said. He belched as he staggered to the passenger’s side, opened the door, and got in.
“Are you fuckin’ coherent?” Tom asked, wrinkling his nose in disgust as he studied the man for a moment. Puppy’s dirty blond hair was disheveled, and his eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot. The corners of his mouth were edged with a thin coating of yellow mucous.
“’Course I am … I’m sharp as a tack” Puppy punctuated his statement with another belch that filled the car with a sour stench. Tom waved his hand in front of his face to drive away the smell.
“Christ, man! You ever hear of Listerine?”
Puppy stared at him like he’d spoken Swahili.
“So …” Tom said, “you talk to him?”
“Him … Who’s ‘him?’”
Tom shook his head, thoroughly disgusted. It took great restraint not to open the door and shove Puppy out onto the street.
“Gillette, you moron. You talk to him for me?”
“Oh, yeah … yeah, I tole ’im what you was thinking.”
“And?”
“Whadda yah mean, ‘and?’”
“For Christ sakes. What did he say?”
When Puppy didn’t answer him immediately, Tom lowered his gaze, puffed out his cheeks, and shook his head sadly.
“Jesus Christ,” he said. “How the hell do you get by?”
“I dunno … Lucky, I guess.”
“I should bust your sorry ass right here ’n now, and drag you down to the station. You gotta be holding.”
Puppy jerked his head back and belched again.
“Aww … You wouldn’t do that, Tommy,” he said with a casual wave of his hand. “’Sides, you wouldn’t know where you’re spozed to meet ’im if you did.”
“Are you gonna tell me, or do I have to beat it out of you?”
Puppy’s eyes lit up and he said, “How ’bout you buy me a drink first?”
“How ’bout you suck my dick?” Tom said.
Puppy belched again and shook his head.
“And stop it with the fucking burping. Christ!” Tom said. “I don’t want you hurling in my car. Damn!” He wrinkled his nose and had to stick his face out the side window to catch a breath. “You sure you’re not fuckin’ dying inside.”
“’F I am, it’s prob’bly the cancer,” Puppy said as he stared straight ahead with a glazed look in his eyes. He had one hand on the dashboard, as if that would steady his spinning world.
“I sincerely hope it is,” Tom said. He heaved a sigh. “So is Gillette gonna meet me or what?”
Tom’s rising anticipation was almost too much to handle. All he wanted was to get Puppy out of his car and get down to business.
Puppy nodded and said, “He says you know where to meet s’long as you got the stuff.”
“When?”
“Said at nine.”
“Tonight?”
Tom glanced at his watch. It wasn’t eight o’clock yet. He had plenty of time to prepare.
“No. Last night.” Puppy belched but tried to hide it behind his fist. “A’ course tonight.”
“And he’s not gonna cheat me like he did last time?”
“I don’t know nothin’ ’bout any o’that,” Puppy said, but there was a sudden shift in his tone of voice that made Tom think he knew all about it. Gillette would never have said a word to him about it, and neither would Zimmerman, but that’s how small towns are. Somehow — even when there’s a secret between two or three people and no one says a damned thing — word gets around.
The truth was, it didn’t matter anymore because Tom didn’t have a goddamned gram of coke on him.
“Okay,” Tom said. “Now get the fuck outta here.” He would have reached across in front of Puppy to open the door for him, but he didn’t want to get that close.
Puppy needed a few seconds to focus before he caught hold of the door handle, pulled it, and pushed the door open. He almost fell onto the sidewalk, but somehow he caught his balance and started walking away in a zigzag path. By now, the streetlights had come on, their harsh sodium glare illuminating Puppy as he made his way
home or, more likely, back to The Local or over to a friend’s house to keep the buzz going.
Tom was satisfied, though.
He knew where and when he’d meet up with Gillette.
He glanced at his watch again, reassuring himself that he had plenty of time to drive out to the dirt road out of town and case the area. He wanted to be absolutely ready for anything by the time Gillette got there.
And then …?
Well, he thought, let’s wait and see how this all plays out.
If he had to kill the son-of-a-bitch, that would teach Gillette once and for all not to fuck with him.
“You still haven’t explained what that was all about,” Julia said.
He and Julia had stopped at Judy’s Clam Shack, a little place out on Route One a mile or so outside of Bath. They were the only customers. Night had fallen, and they were sitting side by side at a picnic table under a striped green and white canvas awning. A string of overhead lights caught them in a warm, yellow glow that pushed the darkness back. Moths flapped around it and bumped into it, making faint ticking sounds. In the marsh behind the shack, frogs and crickets sang. Occasional gusts of wind made the canvas awning snap like a flag in a stiff breeze.
They were sipping Coke from paper cups that were beaded with moisture. They had ordered a half-pint of clams and some fries, but Judy, the cook, was taking her sweet old time getting the food to them.
“Explained what … when?” he finally said.
“At the hospital.”
Ben shrugged innocently and said, “I was trying to get some straight answers from the guy if that’s what you mean.”
“And you thought yelling at the doctor who’s taking care of my father … that trying to intimidate him was going to accomplish … what exactly?”
“He wasn’t being straight with you, is all,” Ben said. He realized he was clenching his fists in his lap under the table and consciously relaxed them, resting them on the table on either side of his drink. “I wanted him to talk to you honestly and acknowledge we were real people, with emotions and … and friggin’ brains. I didn’t want to hear a bunch of medical and legalistic jive. I’m sick to death of it!”
He clenched his right hand into a fist and pounded the tabletop hard enough to make their cups and the plastic-ware rolled up into napkins jump.
Julia pulled back and looked at him, surprise and fear lighting her eyes. Ben realized she was afraid of his anger, but if they were going to make a go of this relationship, then she was going to have to accept that sometimes he got angry. The problem was, and he wasn’t sure why, lately — especially the last few days — he was feeling like he was on a short fuse. Pretty much anything would get on his nerves and set him off … and it was getting worse.
“I’m just saying … You know, my ex-husband was — is a recovering alcoholic.”
“And?”
“And … and he was always talking about how if you’re pissed about something and you won’t admit it, your anger can come out sideways.”
Ben couldn’t help but sneer at that and think, Oh, great … Here it comes … More Dr. Phil crap… More touchy-feely bullshit instead of talking honestly about shit.
“I really don’t give a damn about your ex- or any bull he may have spouted.”
Julia looked genuinely hurt by his reaction, and it bothered him, but he couldn’t unsay it now. He wiped his face with the flat of his hand and then took a sip of Coke. Before either of them said anything else, Judy dinged the bell at the counter to let them know their food was ready.
They both got up and walked to the window. Judy, whose long, gray hair was tied up in a knot at the back of her head and covered with a net, slid the red and white striped boxes of clams and fries onto a tray and handed it to them. She had the bored expression of someone who had been doing this job or one exactly like it her entire life and knew nothing better was ever going to come along.
“There’s ketchup and tartar sauce in the cooler,” she said, nodding to her left. “Refills on the soda are free.”
“Thank you,” Julia said in a pleasant voice as she took the tray. Without a word, Ben opened the small cooler and took a handful of condiments.
“It wasn’t bull,” Julia said once they had sat back down under the awning. This time, they sat on opposite sides of the table, facing each other.
“What isn’t?”
“The whole ‘anger coming out sideways’ thing.”
“Bullshit,” Ben muttered.
Julia raised her hands in exasperation and gripped the edge of the table.
“You’re doing it right now.”
“I am not.”
“You are too. You know what your problem is? You —”
“I don’t need you to tell me what my problem is. That’s what the AAs in the Army call ‘taking someone else’s inventory.’”
“You’re not dealing with what’s really bothering you. You get upset about other things — things that have nothing to do with the real issue.”
“So it comes out sideways,” Ben said. He took a sip of Coke, thinking how good the carbonation felt on the back of his throat. It gave him a moment to let what she had said sink in.
“Exactly,” Julia said, her expression softening. “You’re acting like you’re mad at me, and you know you’re not. What did I do?”
“Okay. I get it.”
“So why’d you get so angry at the doctor?”
“Because he wasn’t being straight with us.”
“Maybe, but you didn’t have to lash out at him.”
Julia leaned forward, her breasts pushing the tray forward as she slid her hands across the table and clasped his. Their eyes met, and a sudden wave of inexpressible sadness swept through Ben.
He knew she was right, but he didn’t want to get into it.
Not now. Not when they were trying to have a nice evening out to forget their worries if possible. His day had been stressful enough, and she was worried sick about what was going to happen to her father.
“You’re right,” he said at last. “There’s some … some crap going on with my family, is all, and I —”
He stopped speaking suddenly when it felt as though someone behind him had wrapped powerful hands around his throat and was strangling him. He hunched his shoulders forward and, shaking his head, gasped for breath. The alarm in Julia’s eyes was obvious, and as an oily tension coiled up inside him, his first thought was that what had happened to him to other night at her house was happening again.
“Just relax,” Julia said, but her voice seemed to be coming to him from miles away.
Ben looked at her, his vision telescoping crazily. He was terrified to see how far away she appeared even though she was still reaching across the table, holding his hands and squeezing them reassuringly. Her arms were impossibly long, stretching out and sagging like long tubes of rubber.
“You’re safe with me,” she said in an airy whisper. “Right now … it’s just you and me, and everything’s fine. There’s no need to —”
“Can I see your cell phone?” Ben spoke so suddenly Julia let go of his hands and pulled back.
“My cell phone?” she said, her voice twisting into a high note.
“Yeah. Your cell phone.”
He held his right hand out, palm up, and shook it demandingly. Obviously confused by his sudden shift in attitude, Julia slowly reached into her purse and pulled out her phone. She looked curious as she handed it to him.
Ben took the phone from her and sat back. He frowned with concentration as he snapped it open and glanced at the buttons as he tried to figure out how to use it. He pressed the round black button in the middle of the dial, and a menu popped up. After a few clicks, he found the “Calls Received” file and opened it. As he ran down the list of displayed numbers, his frown deepened.
“What the hell are you doing? What’s this all about?” Julia asked, her voice tight with worry.
“I’m making sure nothing’s coming out sideways,�
� he said.
What’s she sounding so worried about? Ben wondered. Is she afraid she’s been found out?
“Who do you think you are?” she asked, her voice high-pitched and full of irritation. “Give me my phone back right now! That’s my private property.”
She made a grab for the phone across the table and knocked into the tray, spilling fries and clams all over the table. Ben twisted to one side, fending her off as he scrolled through the list he had brought up.
“Ben … I mean it.” Her face was beet-red now. She cast a quick glance around to see if Judy was watching them from the order window. “You’re really starting to piss me off.”
“Am I?”
But as he scrolled through the list, he saw nothing. Certainly no calls from Pete.
He loosened his posture and looked at her as a feeling of satisfaction ran through him.
He handed her cell phone out to her. Glaring at him, Julia snapped it from his hand it and stuffed it back into her purse.
“Do you mind explaining what that was all about?”
“I found your number on my brother’s speed dial today,” he replied.
“Wha...” Julia’s voice trailed off.
“So I had to see if you’ve been talking to Pete.”
“You could have asked me, you know. That might have been less dramatic than grabbing my phone and snooping.” Julia’s eyes were dark with anger.
“I don’t know what to think anymore,” Ben said, lowering his gaze. He took a long gulp of Coke, letting the sugary carbonation burn against the back of his throat. “I feel like the whole world has gone crazy ever since I came home.”
“You really are a jerk sometimes, you know that?” She huffed her breath, trying hard not to yell. Ben sat there and watched her. Finally the pain he was causing her registered, and it cut deeply.
“You have absolutely no consideration … no concern for what I … what I’m going through, do you?” Julia said.
“Yes I do.” Even to his own ears, Ben’s words sounded false.
“You have a hell of a way of showing it, then,” Julia said. “But as for your brother … I think he’s been interested in me since I moved here. He’s never called or anything, but he always seems to turn up wherever I am. And he’s watching me.”
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