She swings the book at his elbow, giving it a sound whack, and the book falls on the street.
“Catherine!” Mrs. Chrisolm yells in a lady-like whispery voice. “Stop squabbling in the streets! Come in, you two. I’ll make cocoa.”
Grayson bends down to pick up the book and realizes he is barefoot and wearing only a tee shirt and pants.
“Mum, I’ll be right in,” Catherine says. She waves her mother inside without looking away from Grayson. “Have you been drinking? I thought you were going to quit?”
“No. I haven’t.”
“What the hell are you doing?” she asks.
He looks down at the book in his hand. Doctor Spock’s Book of Baby and Childcare.
“What’s this?” he says.
She has to refocus. She looks at the book.
“Suzanne Darwin gave it to me.”
“What for?” he says.
“Take a wild guess.”
“I thought you were in New York?”
“So? I got back this afternoon. I had to go to work.” Her face softens, and she touches his forearm. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here when you came over. When my mother told me, I called you. I guess you were at work, so I went over to see your father--”
“What, did you just go see your sister in New York?” he says.
“Yes, I ---”
“Then you went to work?”
“Are you going to let me---”
“Sorry,” he says.
“---Answer? I wanted to see your mother. Did you tell her yet?”
“What do you mean?” he says.
“What do you mean, what do you mean?”
“What do I tell her?” he says.
She blinks, then closes her eyes a few seconds.
She says, “Well, even if we don’t get married, we still have a baby to tell her about. And we should tell her soon, don’t you think?”
Grayson pounces. “Yes,” he says, nodding. “Yes, let’s tell her in the morning.”
Now Catherine sighs. “Oh, I can’t tomorrow morning. I’m leaving at 6AM. For a couple of days, probably. I told my Uncle Greg I’d drive the equipment van up to Vermont for their high school hockey tournament. Chaperone the kids. If they get eliminated I’ll be back sooner.”
“With Sully?”
“No, behind him. He’s driving the player bus, and I’ll follow him. I’ll be back the next night. We can tell her then.”
Her repeated use of the two-letter word “we” land on him like a soaking rain on a parched field. Something has changed, her attitude has shifted, favorably it seems, but he doesn’t want to press her for fear of finding out he is wrong. The bleeding has stopped, the wound has been bandaged, and to tear it off too soon was to beg for trouble.
“What happened at your sister’s?” he asks.
“What? Oh.” Now she looks pissed off again. “I went because I thought New York might be a good place to live after the baby comes. Close enough but far away enough, too.”
“I don’t want to live in New York.”
“Yeah, well, that was the idea. Did you know John Webster has been sober in AA? I didn’t. He hasn’t had a drink in over a year. Maura says he is like a new man. She gave me hope. I might never forgive her for it, but she did. So, maybe it does work. Sometimes. For some people.”
At the top of the street, a white Chevy van passes by slowly, and then comes to a stop. Catherine has her back to the van, but he sees it clearly. Indeed, from this perspective and distance, it looks almost like the van had driven through her head. Grayson takes involuntary step toward the van, brushing Catherine to the side, and positioning himself so that he was between her and the van, and the van rolls away.
Catherine pushes back, and says, “What the heck are you doing? Why are you shoving me around?” She looks at him like he’s nuts.
“Well, okay, then,” Grayson says. He stretches his arms over his head, and groans, a fake full body yawn. “Oh, boy, I’m tired. Good night.”
“What?”
His nerves are shot, and now he gets mad. “Never mind asking me what. Just go in the house. It’s dark out and you’re pregnant.”
He bent to kiss her, and as he leaned in, she broke up the attempt and pushes him away. “Not yet, Buster.”
“Just go in,” he says.
He jumps in the car, wriggles it out of the tight spot, then backs all the way up the street, then onto Newbury Ave, turning every so often to watch her go into her house. He guns it after the van. He cannot screw around anymore, can’t take the chance that things might work out okay, not now. He has to wrap this up, he has to make sure nothing happens to Catherine and the baby. Or his brother, if he’s not dead already.
He isn’t cracking up. They are being followed by Stan and his confederates and flunkies. He has to meet with Stan and put an end to this for good.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Still barefoot, and in his tee shirt, without cigarettes or money, Grayson drives to Port Norfolk looking for the shitty house. He remembers driving by it before, but Charlie gave the directions, so Grayson hadn’t been paying attention. But he doubts there’d be more than one with motorcycles parked outside, or maybe even inside. The house would have to be shitty if the bikers had been living there longer than ten minutes. They converted good things to shitty things like fire converted wood to ash.
He rounds a corner, heading toward the river and hears a rumble in the distance. Further down the street, some sort of chopped hog zips away into the dark. Grayson takes his foot from the gas and rolls down to the area the motorcycle came from. More hogs lean on kickstands which dig into a bald lawn, and in the driveway is the van he’s just seen go by Catherine’s house. This is the same van that was on the bridge when Charlie had been launched into the night sky. It certainly looks like the same one, anyway. It has to be it. He comes closer to it, rolling alongside the high curb, clutch depressed, and the engine murmuring. The back doors of the van are open and a big guy is looking into the cargo space. He doesn’t turn as the GTO goes by, probably because he didn’t hear it, since many bikers are almost deaf from years of riding.
There are large shadows moving around on the porch of the house, and loud, incoherent shouting that seems to be coming from inside. Grayson keeps rolling, not touching the accelerator until he is well by.
Most motorcycle clubs had vans that followed behind the procession on road trips. The vans carried tools, replacement parts, gas and sundry items like firearms and bail money that would be needed in the event of a breakdown or other mishap.
Grayson kicks the GTO up and shot over to Tenean Beach, pulls into the double wide entry way to the beach parking lot, makes a U-turn, drives up to the sidewalk, so that he faces the street and is hidden by one of the two large bushes that flank the entry way. He kills the lights. Now what? He has to do something. He sits for a few minutes; no fidgeting, no smokes, no radio. Not really thinking, but imagining what could be done. He needs a gun and knows where to find one.
Charlie had stuck Donny’s .22 down the back seat of the GTO, which Grayson had forgotten, until right now. Grayson jumps out, then into the back seat. He fishes his hand around in the seam between the seat and the seat back. He pulls up a pistol but it is not the .22 he had jammed in Donny’s neck, the gun that Donny later gave to Charlie.
This is a short-nosed revolver, a .38, if he had to guess. It looks much like the gun Bird used to shoot William Hawthorne. Or, is he, or Charlie, mistaken about the gun Donny handed over? Grayson had been driving, so he didn’t see what Donny had handed Charlie. Did Charlie say when he was getting out the car, ‘I hid the gun,’ or did he say ‘the .22,’ and if he did, did he know a .38 from a .22 or a Tommy gun, for that matter. Grayson sticks his hand back down there and gropes around some more. He feels another gun barrel in his hand and when he retrieves it, he recognizes the .22. What the hell?
Okay, so now the question is who planted the .38 in his car?
He leaves the car unloc
ked in his own neighborhood, like most people do. Maybe he’ll have to start locking it up, because the times, they are a’ changing.
He sits and after a while, the white van bounces by on shot springs with two large figures in the front. Grayson isn’t able to see if Stan is one of the entities in the van. Most importantly, the van is headed away from North Quincy.
CHAPTER FORTY
At 6 A.M. Grayson is still awake and slumped down in the front passenger seat of the car, parked behind a big Grand Prix but with a sight line that took in Catherine’s front door. His view of her place is fuzzy and clouded since it has to pass through his windshield, and the rear window and windshield of a Grand Prix. All that rounded glass at different angles is bad for clarity. He wants to go down there, ring her bell and tell her to stay in the house and be safe, but he couldn’t tell her why, or that would be the end of the flickering “we” she’d floated last night. Something changed and the possibility of a joint future now teases him. He didn’t want to screw it up. It would really aggravate her no end if he told her that her life was in danger. That would lead to a series of questions, and the answers to those would cast him in an unflattering light, and he’d have a whole big thing on his hands. At their easiest, women are tough to please; tell one you’re doing your best to keep her from getting kidnapped by a motorcycle gang, and you still end up in hot water. He smiles to himself. No wonder guys drink.
A yellow school bus appears in the side view mirror with her uncle, Greg Sullivan, at the wheel. The half-sized bus rolls by the GTO and up to the curb at Catherine’s duplex. The bus, marked with the name of the Catholic high school where Greg coached hockey, is called the midget bus by the kids. Inside the bus, the high school team slept with the abandon of teenage athletes. The kids seated beside the windows had their faces smeared against the cold, fogged glass. Catherine came out and got on, and the bus drove away. They’d stop at the school to drop her at the equipment van. She’d be safe driving in tandem with a hockey team.
Grayson drives back to his apartment. He is on the sidewalk when Kerr came out and passes by him, on the way to his job at the Mug and Muffin. Kerr did not appear surprised to see Grayson coming down the street barefoot and in a tee shirt.
“Morning,” Kerr says, as he passes.
“Yeah, finally,” Grayson says.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Grayson sits on the Wollaston Beach seawall in the adequate light of the five o’clock sun, and watches the traffic pass by thirty feet away. If Stan shows up in the van, that would mean bad news for Grayson. They’d kidnap him, like they kidnapped Hugh.
Around 5:30, Stan pulls his motorcycle into a parking space at the beach, close to where Grayson sits on the wall. Stan undid the chin strap on his helmet, designed to look like a military pot, swings his leg over the bike and walks up to the wall about ten feet on the other side of Grayson. Stan puts a hand on the wall and leans over to look at the beach, probably checking for an ambush. He walks over, close to Grayson, raises a foot and puts it on the wall and rests his forearm on his thigh. There he stood, like General Washington crossing the Delaware, except Stan looked demonic, not heroic. He’s smirking as he takes off the helmet, and shakes his head and fluffs his hair, like The Breck Girl.
“First, where’s my brother?” Grayson says.
Stan says, with a smile. “The already dead one? Or the soon-to-be-dead one, if you don’t cooperate.”
Grayson pats the wall beside him with his left hand.
“Come on, sit,” Grayson says. “I said I’ll drive the hijack, but first, I need you to answer my question. Where is Hugh?”
He pats the wall to his left again. Stan looks at him, and then sits on the other side, the right side of Grayson.
“I’m having some trouble figuring you out right now,” Stan says.
“Is my brother okay?” Grayson asks.
“Do the hijack, and you’ll see him soon after,” Stan says.
“Okay. I don’t like that answer. Is my brother all right?”
Stan laughs. “You know what you have to do to find out.”
“Well, yes, but I’d rather not.”
“Rather not what?” Stan asks. “Drive the hijack?”
“Go to the cops.”
Stan shakes his head. “Listen to me, youngster, if you expect you and yours to get out of this unscathed......” Stan had seen something that took his attention.
Grayson turns his head to see what has alarmed Stan.
“Yeah,” Grayson says. “A police cruiser rolls by about every ten minutes. I can always stop them.”
“I wouldn’t if I were you.”
“Come on. Let’s close this out. Tell me where Hugh is or I stop the cops and let the chips fall where they may. The clock is officially ticking.”
He nods toward the Metropolitan District Commission prowl car rolling along the main drag in their direction. Grayson stands as if to hail the cops, but the police car stops about a quarter mile away, when five pre-adolescent boys run over and flag it down. The kids went to the window of the cruiser and are telling the cops something that requires the kids to point at each other.
“Tell me where my brother is or else,” Grayson says.
“Are you that stupid?” Stan asks. “No, you’re not that stupid. You deliver us the load of guns, and you’ll see him again. If you don’t, he’s gone, your little honey is gone, along with your spawn, and then we go after your father.”
Stan is trying to play it cool, but Grayson detects some rapid eye blinks.
Stan continues to blink and looks away. “It’s simple. You do your part, and we’ll do ours.”
“You mean you’d shoot me? Like you shot Amy’s husband?”
“First off, if you think I’m carrying while driving my bike, you’re stupider than I thought. The cops are prejudiced against us, they stop me at least once a week.”
“What I heard is what you’re not saying,” Grayson says.
“Man, you talk gibberish,” Stan says.
“You didn’t deny it. The whole plan was about killing her husband.”
“I wasn’t there. You were.” Stan grins. “You’re the one the kids can identify, not me.”
“Okay,” Grayson says. “Bird was going to kill the other kids, too.”
Stan motionless, says nothing.
“And then, once we were away from there, we would have been killed, too. Me, Hugh, Donny, Charlie.”
Stan says, “Why? We need you for the hijack.”
“Yeah, that’s right. You would have let us live until we hijacked the guns.”
Stan shook his head. “‘Look, let’s start fresh. You have your complaints about us and vice versa. I say let bygones---”
The cop car starts rolling and Grayson stands back up and waves it down.
“Hey! Over here!”
Stan, excited and nervous, jumps up next to Grayson and grabs him by the arm and pulls him close. He speaks into Grayson’s ear as if the cops in the approaching vehicle can hear him.
“Good work,” Stan says. “The gun that killed Billy Hawthorne is in your car. And, if you say one word to them about anything, I’m gonna enjoy telling them where it is.” It was only then that Stan notices the GTO is nowhere to be seen. “Shit! Where’s your car?”
While Stan’s attention is otherwise engaged, Grayson lifts the .38 from his right jacket pocket, and slips it into the left-hand pocket of Stan’s Army jacket. He pushes Stan away and at the same time removes the paper towel he has around the gun. Between the push, the jostling and the excitement of the approaching squad car, Stan didn’t notice the gun has been dropped on him. Meanwhile Stan’s head swivels between scanning the beach parking lot for the GTO and the oncoming police car.
Grayson smiles and looked at Stan. “You’re not quite so smug now. Let’s see what happens.”
Grayson waves again and pulls away from Stan. The cops didn’t seem to notice them, until Grayson waves and hollers some more at the police cruiser.
Stan says, “You’re going to be sorry, you and your family. If I get arrested, you’ll have to deal directly with the big boss. Much worse for you and yours.”
The cop car slows and pulls into the lot, and backs up. Grayson steps toward the car and points at Stan.
“This guy here has a gun,” Grayson says. “He just drove up on his bike and threatened to shoot me, if I didn’t give him my money.”
The cops look at Grayson and at Stan as they get out of the cruiser.
Stan shrugs and displays a friendly smile. “This man is insane. I don’t have a gun.” He slaps around his torso, and when he gets to the area of his jacket pockets, a sharp look of consternation lodges in his eyes.
Grayson shouts, “It’s in his jacket pocket. He showed it to me when he demanded my money.”
“Not so,” Stan yells. “He planted it in my pocket. It’s the gun he used to kill Billy Hawthorne.”
“Who?” Grayson says.
Now they had the cop’s full attention, as is made clear by their drawn weapons.
“All right,” one cop says. “Everybody freeze. Nobody move.”
Stan fidgets and continues to shout.
Stan says, “He’s a liar. He’s the devil.”
“All right,” one cop demands. He has his firearm up and at the ready. “Both of you, down on your knees, now. Hands on top of your head. Now!”
Grayson kneels down on the asphalt, and puts his hands on the top of his head. But Stan must have seen he was in a bad situation, and came to a quick decision: He’s going to make it way worse. What is two more dead cops in Stan’s world?
Stan turns toward the water, puts a hand on the wall and vaults over to the other side, onto the sand. In a nifty show of athleticism, he removes the gun from his pocket in mid-flight and lands facing the street. He is, however, clearly dismayed at how low the wall is; it only came up to his chest. Stan drops out of sight behind the wall. One cop hollers, ‘Halt,’ while the other screams ‘Stop.’ As they advance toward the wall they spread out, and then the gun barrel appears on top of the wall about five feet from where Stan had disappeared. Stubborn Stan stuck his head up behind the gun barrel and a mere half a second later a burst of police gunfire opens up. The first shot takes an ear off Stan, and the next one peels back his haircut, and with it, a good-sized chunk of his head. Stan is propelled backward and out of sight so fast he’s gone before Grayson can duck.
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