No Sleep till Wonderland

by Paul Tremblay

  “I heard it as he can’t trust you. Ekat says you hired Jody and Aleksandar without either of your two high school sweethearts knowing.”

  I’m real interested to hear Gus’s response as I’m thinking about my time sitting on a Broadway bench next to Charlton Heston–loving Rita. As long as her well-dressed man in the big sunglasses is who I think he is, then Carter had been visiting Aleksandar’s apartment prior to my fraud surveillance and the fire. Which means Ekat’s timeline doesn’t jibe with Rita seeing Carter entering Aleksandar’s apartment. Something tells me his visits weren’t just teatime social calls, either. If Rita is right, Carter knew about the bagmen, Aleksandar at least, all along.

  Gus says, “I didn’t think it was a big deal. I was just trying to make us a little more money and help a couple of people who were really struggling.”

  I say, “You’re a regular Robin Hood,” but he isn’t listening to me.

  “It was a risk, but I certainly didn’t think it was anything sinister, like Carter did. He really thought I was trying to set him up. I had to grovel, get on my knees and kiss his Italian loafers before he would even listen to me. Then all of a sudden he hits me with a crazy scheme to burn down the building and take those guys out.”

  All right, so Gus and Ekat are both lying to me. I think. It’s possible that they’re telling the truth, and maybe Carter knew about the bagmen and was completely playing them. Maybe Rita was wrong in her month timeline, and Carter’s visits to the apartment occurred only after Gus confessed to using bagmen. Maybe the person Rita saw wasn’t Carter. I assumed Carter by her description. Could’ve been anyone. Could’ve been Gus.

  I say, “You could’ve stopped Carter, but you didn’t.”

  “We tried, Mark.” Gus sings their song about the failed blackmail scheme, hitting all the same notes that Ekat did. I’m getting sick of that tune. He adds, “I screwed up, Mark. What can I say? I fucked up, big time. I never thought Carter would really do it. Why would I ever think he’d go through with something like that? I mean, shit, I’ve known him forever. To be honest, initially I was more worried he would do something to hurt himself with all of the talk about his new career being his life.”

  “You could’ve gone to the police. Aleksandar would still be alive if you did.”

  Gus drops his head into his chest, soul searching. I don’t think he’ll find one. His voice goes soft, presumably in honor of the dead. “If I had known any of this was going to actually happen, I would’ve. I’m going to make it up to Aleksandar’s family, somehow.”

  I laugh. I don’t think he takes it well. “You almost believe your own bullshit, don’t you?”

  Gus wisely doesn’t respond.

  I say, “You thought Carter was enough of a threat to have me follow Ekat home.”

  Gus shakes his head. “Well, yeah, in the aftermath of our botched blackmail scheme and Carter’s phoned-in threats to knock out our teeth, I thought Carter might be a threat to me or Ekat. I know it’ll sound corny, but I also felt really guilty about using you the way we did, and I wanted to make a restitution payment of sorts. Give you an easy, paying gig to ease my conscience and help your wallet. You don’t know how close I came to telling you everything about Carter and the fake surveillance that morning in your office, but you seemed a little on edge and I chickened out.”

  “I’m not buying any of it. Including your putting a price tag on pity.”

  “What do you think we were doing, then? Really, Mark, why would I have continued to involve you if I actually thought Carter would set the fire? It makes no sense.”

  “A lot of stuff you and Ekat have done so far makes no sense.”

  “Touché.”

  “Why not go to the cops after the fire?”

  “Would going to the cops after the fact have changed any of it? I wasn’t about to send me and Ekat to jail for Carter.”

  “But you could let the fire be pinned on an innocent man, right?”

  “We’re going to fix that, Mark. You tell the cops everything tomorrow. Give them Carter on a platter. And not for nothing, Eddie is a lot of things, but innocent isn’t one of them. He’ll be fine.”

  “Eddie isn’t fine, won’t be fine, never was fine.” I pause to breathe and pull the plug on my fine perseveration. “Eddie’s in jail right now. Did you know—”

  Gus interrupts and points out the windshield. “Hey, here they come.”

  The king and queen of Wonderland promenade arm in arm across the lot. Their smiles sparkle like shattered glass on asphalt.

  I say, “They seem to be getting along swimmingly.” I watch Gus and wait to see if that designer coolness of his is ever going to melt away.

  He says, “She’s doing fine, supersleuth.”

  Carter and Ekat untangle and separate when they reach the Lexus, but no one bows to their left. Ekat pulls a black bag out of the trunk, ducks inside the already started car, and they’re off.

  Gus starts his obnoxious engine but leaves the headlights off. He says, “Let’s give them a twenty-second head start. Do you want to count?”

  I don’t say anything. That’ll learn him.

  Gus leans across my chest and opens the door. The déjà vu makes my muscles hurt all over again. He says, “You can leave and go to the police now, if you really want to. I won’t stop you. Or you can stay with me and we’ll make sure our friend Ekat is okay, and if nothing else you get a ride back to Southie.”

  I dig under my shirt sleeve and find our friend’s rubber band and snap it. Then I shut the passenger door. I say, “Drive. You’ll talk about me behind my back if I don’t come with you.”

  We’ve established that he and Ekat are lying to me, but I don’t know to what extent. I’m staying to find out. I’m not staying because he said the word friend. Really, I’m not.

  Gus rolls across the lot, lagging a few hundred yards behind the Lexus. Optimum distance achieved, Gus turns into a narrator. “I don’t need to be right on his tail. He’s just going to drop her off at her apartment.” He looks at me, and his confident veneer cracks momentarily, showing off a worried, oh-shit-I-can’t-stop-what-was-started face. It’s the first time tonight that I can almost believe any of what he said might be true.

  I relaunch into the ballad of Eddie. I tell him about Detective Owolewa finding my amphetamines and concluding that I was a drug-buying client of Eddie’s. I tell him about Eddie staking out Gus’s place, Eddie thinking the two of us were somehow setting him up to take the fall for the fire, and Eddie pounding me into shape with a few well-placed but lucky sucker punches and then dumping me on the Zakim Bridge like I was pothole filler.

  “Jesus, Mark. I had no idea.” Gus takes off his hat and runs his fingers through his not-thinning hair. I could say that I hate him, but I’d be lying to myself again. “I couldn’t be sorrier about what he did to you. But I don’t care about Eddie. I’m sorry if that sounds callous or if I’m rationalizing, but he isn’t a good guy. He’s dangerous. Clearly, he’s always been dangerous. He treats Jody like shit. I’ve seen him hit her in the middle of the bar, man. He’s no good. It was why I was trying to help her out financially and let her use the cards and IDs. She kept all that ID stuff from Eddie, too. She never told him.”

  “I know. I already got all that good stuff from Jody.” I blush even though Gus has no idea why I would.

  “Did you? Nice show. Man, you’re good.” He laughs, and goddamn me, now I might be blushing at his praise. He adds, “What Eddie did to you is further proof of how dangerous he is.”

  Gus pays a toll, and the Dart descends into the gullet of the Ted Williams Tunnel. The engine roar echoes off the walls, and it sounds like the tunnel clearing its deep throat. Carter’s Lexus is about a quarter mile ahead of us. We’re all headed back to Southie. Wonderland is already a million miles behind us.

  Gus says, “I know that I’ve been saying Carter started the fire this whole time, but I don’t really know that. He’s responsible, don’t get me wrong, but who knows? Ma
ybe he went and actually paid Eddie to do it. Carter knew Eddie, talked to him a few times at my bar. Carter knows what Eddie is. For all I know he paid off Jody’s crazy friend Rachel. I remember reading somewhere that she was first at the scene, right? Fuck, I don’t know. I wouldn’t put it past any of them. But that’s not up to me to figure it all out. Give the cops Carter, and let them sort out the rest when we’re long gone.”

  Gus’s story is evolving, growing, getting harder to keep track of, the words mixing and meshing with what Ekat, Eddie, Jody, Rita, and everyone else said and with what I thought I knew. I’m a sap because it’s working. I remember how I felt when operating under my earlier assumption that Eddie lit the fire. I remember the safety of righteousness, and I want it back. So okay, maybe Carter paid Eddie to light the fire and Jody survived because he knew she was at Rachel’s place. He got cold feet, he couldn’t go through with killing her, but what about her son, JT?

  I shake my head and pull out of the tailspin. I say, “It wasn’t Eddie. There’s no way.”

  “You’re probably right. I don’t know; I’m just so scared, to be honest. After it happened, I thought that Carter would’ve been caught within twenty-four hours and that he would take me down with him. I didn’t know what to do, and I needed to figure a way out, so I went hedgehog.”

  “Hedgehog?”

  “Yes, a member of the rodent family. I’m not familiar with the scientific name of their phylum, but, you know, they live underground.”

  “I thought they lived in hedges.”

  “Regardless, I found out I was pretty good at being gone. I could’ve stayed gone, too. I didn’t have to come back, Mark.”

  I say, “I believe you,” which is a lie. I don’t feel bad about it either.

  The Dart emerges from the tunnel, and we navigate an on-ramp labyrinth—no minotaurs—and head toward the developing waterfront area and South Boston. We stop at the D Street intersection light.

  There’s a new and giant hotel on the corner of Summer Street, all lights and glass. I wonder if anyone is looking out one of those windows and sees me in this car. I slide into a comfortable slouch in my seat, roll down the window, and let a cool breeze play with my beard. An embarrassingly large part of me wants to indulge in a fantasy where Gus and I are just cruising in his Dart, with no particular place to go.

  Gus says, “Hey, see their car anywhere?”

  I fix my slouch. “No.”

  “I didn’t think I was that far behind them. No biggie. We all know how to get to Ekat’s place, right?”

  I whistle “Do You Know the Way to San Jose?” Sitting in the seventies car, wind blowing in my face, I think it’s appropriate.

  The light goes green. Gus starts straight onto D Street but changes his mind, squealing wheels left and onto Summer Street. He doesn’t use his blinker. He says, “Like I said, I could’ve stayed gone, but I had come back to help Ekat and you.”

  “You’re a regular Albert Schweitzer.” I rub my eyes and try to remember more of my parking lot conversation with Ekat. It’s an itch between my shoulder blades, and I’m having a hard time reaching it. “How did you know Ekat and Carter would be at Wonderland?” Now that we’re moving, the wind is too much, threatens to steal my hat, so I roll up the window. The fast lane isn’t for me.

  “Ekat left voice-mail messages and texts, telling me some of what was going on with the both of you, but I didn’t return any of those messages until today. She texted me this morning that Carter wanted her to go with him to Wonderland for one last score. I broke my radio silence. We decided that she’d go with Carter, that I’d be there too and would be watching just in case, and then we’d go away for a long while.”

  “She told me that she hadn’t heard from you.”

  “She was trying to protect me, I guess. You surprised her, and she panicked. I wasn’t surprised, though, pal. You’re good at what you do, and that you somehow found your way to Wonderland tonight isn’t the upset of the century as far as I’m concerned.”

  “Aw, shucks. You sure got a pretty mouth.”

  Summer Street is now L Street, and we pass through the East Broadway intersection. We’re only a cupful of blocks away from Ekat’s apartment, but it doesn’t feel like we’re any closer to the end of this. Whatever this is.

  Gus says, “All that said, to be brutally honest with you, buddy, maybe Ekat didn’t lie to you. You might not have heard her right. You might not have been all there. I know you pretty well, Mark. It happened during our magnificent bender, right? Maybe you were asleep while you were talking to Ekat. Your firsthand accounts aren’t exactly reliable. When I found the two of you, Ekat was pacing, wearing out a patch of the parking lot, and you were snoozing up against the post with your big hairy gob drawing flies.”

  “Keep it up, and I’m gonna smack you in that pretty mouth.”

  “I’m not saying any of that to be mean. I’m just trying to be straight with you.”

  “That would be a first.”

  It’s our first fight, and I don’t think we’ll ever be the same. We don’t speak during the final leg of our jaunt. Gus turns right onto East Sixth, and we park at the corner of I instead of in front of Ekat’s place.

  I say, “You’re really going to make me walk?”

  Gus shuts the car off and says, “Carter could still be hanging around. He shouldn’t be, but you never know. We need to play this safe.”

  We creep up I Street like a couple of creeps. If Ekat is home alone and if this is really the end, I don’t know what I’m going to do. Will I call the police and have the wonder twins picked up, or will I do nothing, stand on her doorstep, get pats on the head, then blow kisses and breathlessly scream, Bye-bye, bon voyage, don’t forget to write?

  Looks like I don’t need to know the answer to that question just yet. The outdoor lights (both front door and back door) are on, but the interior is dark and lonely. Her apartment is in mourning. Gus peeks in the front window, roughs up the glass with his knuckles, and nothing. No one’s home.

  The Lexus isn’t parked out front, and there are plenty of open spots up and down I Street. Carter and Ekat are not here. I pull out one of my own cigarettes, no cloves or other nonprocessed ingredients, the way nature intended.

  Gus takes off his hat and looks around. He wears incredulousness quite well. He says, “There’s no way I beat them here, is there?”

  “Maybe Carter took her on the scenic route, the long-cut. Maybe they stopped at a bar first. Maybe they wanted to play Keno, pick up a few scratch tickets.”

  “No, no, no. She was going to have him drive her straight home. We must’ve beat them here. Maybe they went down D Street.” Gus spins around three times, a dog looking for a spot to lie down, and then jogs across the street and back toward the Dart.

  Down on the corner instead of out in the street, we wait. Gus leans on a city-planned tree with his arms outstretched, palms flat against the bark, like he’s trying to push it over and block off the road. I stand behind him, relegated to the background, a lowly subordinate to his commander. I tend to my personal fire and smoke. A few cars go up I Street. The cars don’t stop and they don’t drop off passengers wearing blond wigs.

  I decide to throw something out there at Gus and see what sticks to his slick old self. I say, “You know what else Ekat told me?”

  “What did she tell you?”

  “She said that you were in on it. That you helped Carter plan and set the fire. Tonight was her last score, and then she was running away from the both of you. Maybe she’s on her way to some remote island right now. She’ll build a house on the beach with teakwood and live off coconuts, fish, and clams. I like her plan better than yours.”

  Gus keeps watch on I Street, like it might run away. He says, “Not funny, Mark,” but there’s something there, a microsecond of hesitation and doubt, and if I were able to pick up that moment and stretch it out like pizza dough, I’d find the holes.

  “You said I was funny earlier.”


  “I was wrong. You need to work on delivery and timing.” Gus still hasn’t turned his head, talks in a monotone, and keeps contact with his tree. He doesn’t look like a man happy with the way things are working out. That makes two of us.

  I throw my dead and used smoke at his foot. I have good aim. “Why did you get mixed up in any of this?” It’s a painfully earnest question, one I don’t expect will be answered.

  “You mean: What’s a sweet boy like me doing in a place like this? Well, I’ll tell you, but only because it’s you, Mark. It’s because my parents were just awful to me, didn’t kiss me enough, and they yelled at me when I wet the bed.” Gus laughs, and it goes on for far too long. Nothing is that funny. He says, “Come on, what do you want me to say? I stole credit cards and made the IDs because I could. It was easy in a very casual way, and I was good at it. Because getting away with it was a rush. Because the money was real good. There are no deep dark secrets here. You know me, Mark.”

  I do know him, now. We wait another few minutes. A cab and a lopsided minivan drive by, and that’s it.

  “Shit, shit, shit…” Gus stands up and stretches his arms out wide to give the world a hug. “They’re not coming here. Something happened. What are we going to do?”

  I say, “Call her. Ask her what’s taking so long. Have her pick up a pizza, with sausage. I’m hungry.”

  Gus takes out his phone, then stops. “I-I can’t. I can’t risk Carter knowing that I’m back and that she and I have been communicating.”

  “I’ll call.”

  “You can’t call her either. He doesn’t know that you know about any of this.”

  “I’m calling.” I take out my phone. It needs to be charged and is almost dead.

  Gus reaches for my phone, but I dodge him. He says, “We can’t. Either of us calling could put her in danger, Mark. Carter…”

  Gus stops, looks up and down I Street again, eyes spinning free in his head. He says, “All right. Let’s think. We lost their car coming out of the tunnel, right? I didn’t see them on D Street or on Summer.” He pauses, rubs his chin like there’s a genie in it. “Did they go onto 93? There’s a ramp there, right at the end of the tunnel. They did. Fuck, Carter took her to his house.”