Old school bones, p.24
Old School Bones, page 24
She steps back from the embrace, still holding Danny’s right hand. “Walk with me. Let me see P-town through a girlfriend’s eyes.”
So they walk. Arm in arm. West. Past the fudge shops. Past the army surplus place. Past the boy bars. Past the skateboarders hanging in front of Spiritus Pizza.
Until they hit the Pied Piper.
“Let me buy you a drink,” says Danny. The old tennis-pro handsomeness starting to stiffen and color her cheeks, chin.
They get mojitos and take a table where they can look out at the harbor. Sip. Hold hands.
“I’m not a fool. I know you want something from me.”
She’s not ready for this. Not yet. Danny’s tough shell growing back so quickly. The imperious, take-charge, no-bullshit Amazon just minutes away from total regenesis.
Great Spirit, what a little hand-holding can let loose. Michael … I think I need you!
And now, she’s without the right words, feeling off balance. But Wonderwoman is on the move. Leaning across the table. Putting a strong hand behind her neck. Drawing her face close. Kissing.
Mashing her. Crushing her lips. Sliding a hot tongue between her teeth. And, fuck, her own tongue’s rising to tango. The old larceny of stolen moments.
Her thighs are starting to sweat, when she suddenly hears Gracie howling in her head.
Did you see the blood? A barrel of wine poured out of Liberty. Poured over Liberty … Her head, her black hair, her long braids … She was sticky with it. Her nose and mouth buried in it …
Aaserah whispering. You cannot come back here again, Nippe Maske. The isabaat musallah has been here …
And Michael. Sweet Michael touches her. It is the first time all over again. She pulls him tight against her hips, slides her hands over the lobes of his buns. Knows the ecstasy of seals.
She breaks the kiss. Searches Danny’s eyes. Just inches away from those gray-diamond teasers. Clears her throat with a little gasp.
“I need you to be honest with me. I need you to tell me what you know about Roxana Calderón. Or … Or Michael’s going to tell the police that he has proof you were driving the Singleton’s car the day it ran him off the road.”
A fire flares, fades in Danny’s eyes. “You met my half brother, didn’t you? You get a sense what a bastard he is, baby?”
“Jean-Claude used Roxy to get at those assholes in Red Tooth.”
“How?”
They are sitting on the Long Point dike now. Talking, watching the sunset, the last of the flood tide rushing through a culvert beneath the massive granite blocks into the salt pond.
“She was a Latin bombshell and a flirt. Loved attention … And they were a bunch of privileged, arrogant, horny boys who thought the world was their oyster, that pussy was their prerogative.”
“Jean-Claude used her as a spy?”
“A prep school slut. She would fuck anything that moved … for a price.”
“A price?”
“Information she could use in trade with Jean-Claude.”
“Trade for what?”
“Roxy liked her drugs.”
“So I’ve heard. But couldn’t she get it from her lover boys in Red Tooth?”
“Jean-Claude had some kind of nearly magical control over her.”
“He was blackmailing her maybe.”
Danny shrugs. “I don’t think so. It was a chemistry thing. She craved him, for some sick reason. What a total fucking waste of her time!”
She feels the heat in these last words. Actually leans away.
“What?”
“The little bitch loved playing his secret agent games. Sucking his cock. Taking it up the ass for him.”
“But he’s gay.”
“He kept that in the closet, honey … ‘til later.”
“Because he wanted that power over her. This was all about controlling the gambling and drug profits at the school? About Club Tropical trouncing the Red Tooth boys?”
“That was part of it, for sure. And controlling Roxy. Feeling superior over females. He likes that. They made her an HONORARY member of their stupid-ass little club in the attic of Hibernia House. The only girl they ever let in.”
“Their pet?”
Danny gives another shrug, stares at the green and red afterglow of the sunset lacing the clouds on the horizon. “Roxy was handling this dweeb from Red Tooth, the winter before she died. Went to the Tolchie Snowball with him, spent an illegal night in a Boston hotel with him. Just to get information about a drug deal Red Tooth was working.”
“The one that went sour. The one where Red Tooth got jacked by some guys from the street.”
“You know about that?”
“Jean-Claude set up the hijack, right?”
“After Roxy came through with the details. Where. When. Who.”
“It was quite a victory for Club Tropical.”
“Those assholes were elated. Jean-Claude thought he was king of the world.”
“How about Roxy?”
“She was impossible to be around.”
She hears something in Danny’s voice. Not bitterness. Something else. Something raw. “You two were friends?”
“She lived right next door to me for two years at Coates.”
“You introduced her to your brother?”
“How stupid was I, huh?”
“Did you have a crush on her?”
“Please.”
“How did she die?”
Danny looks at her with vacant eyes. The gray diamonds now flat, shadowy pools. “You think those are Roxy’s bones you found in Hibernia House?”
“Don’t you?”
“Those stupid little shits! When we came back for our senior year at Coates, the school told us that she had disappeared. On her flight home.”
“You never thought Red Tooth or the Club Tropical had anything to do with it?”
She has tears in her eyes. Stands up. Turns to walk back across the dike toward town. There’s a deep purple cast to the air now. And a chill. “My heart hurts. It just fucking aches!”
She watches Danny start to weave her way over the collage of the dike’s granite boulders toward the lights of town. “Hey!”
“Yeah?”
“I have to know. Why did you borrow the Singleton’s car and run Michael off the road?”
Danny turns, faces her. Bites her lip. Doesn’t answer.
What seems like minutes pass.
“I was jealous, OK?”
64
WHEN he and Gracie finally find Awasha, she is wandering along the edge of MacMillan Wharf, staring vacantly down at the fish boats rafted alongside.
“Are you OK?” He sees waves of emotion surging over her face. Feels her trembling as she pulls him into a hug.
“Do you guys need to be alone?” asks Gracie.
He nods.
“Give us a couple of minutes.” Her voice is wet, broken.
So they are alone. As alone as any couple can ever be in P-town. Locked in an embrace on the end of the wharf. Fog drifting in off the bay. The boats, the piles of nets, just shadows. Red light flashing from the end of the breakwater. A warning horn groans at long intervals from the lighthouse at Long Point. Or maybe Wood End. He can’t tell.
He wants to ask her what happened, wants to know whether that witch hurt her. Or whether she’s suddenly missing the love of women. Whether their night in the bait shack, the hours of love the next day, were just some kind of rebound. Whether those hours rocked her heart the way they rocked his. Or is she going to leave him when this quest for the killer is over? Leave him like Cassie left him. Like Filipa left him. Cristo, even Tuki, the drag queen client from hell, left him.
Where do we stand? His heart wheedles for an answer. His tongue aches to pose the question. But his soul tells him to just hold her until she stops shivering. His dead mother’s voice counseling as always. You have a good hug. Don’t be cheap with it, Mo.
Cristo, I’m trying. But is it enough to quiet the dead?
Her lips press against the tender spot below his Adam’s apple. The rose tattoo.
I seen bitch-bit a thousand times. But you something special, mon.
He’s not sure when he first feels her tongue on his throat, his chest. Or when she spreads her legs and pulls him down with her onto a mound of old fishing nets.
“Don’t say anything,” she says. “Just kiss me.”
And he does.
A long, desperate kiss. The air heavy with the musty scent of scallops, fish. The thick night. The oboe calls of seabirds. Almost as before in the shack.
When they went down like seals.
She unbuttons his shirt, tastes his breasts. His neck again.
His arms cradling her as she slips out of her thong. Releases the belt on his jeans. The fly. Kisses him until he sees lightning behind his eyelids.
And then she raises her dress and guides him to the place where they meet, join.
“Let me feel you. Good god, let me feel you.”
Her legs, short as they are, stretch, wrap around his waist. Rock him.
He hears himself moan.
All his blood burning out through his pores.
And her lips, teeth, feast on his neck.
Like before …
Their torsos surging, plunging.
Spiraling creatures,
diving through schools of silver
fish. Racing the currents into
the planet’s molten core. A place
of bones and no bones. Back
to his vóvó’s breast, his mother’s,
the driving rhythms of Africa. Until
they break the surface. Whole
once more. Together.
“Could you ever love me?” Her voice a breathless whisper.
“Could I ever not?” he says.
Then he opens his eyes. Sees Gracie standing on the other side of the wharf, just now turning her back to them.
What you gone tell you mama now?
65
NINJA Girl has a theory. She thinks Denise Pasteur is covering for her half brother. Thinks that Red Tooth is not the only villain in this mess. That they haven’t found Liberty’s killer yet. She says, like here we are in P-town, somebody ought to talk to that welder again.
Not me, says Awasha. She’s way past burned out. And you can’t send a high school kid in there, not to that cruel and arrogant man. “He’s a world-class bastard.”
So … at ten o’clock at night … it falls to Michael to put Gracie’s theory to the test. Alone, a refugee of love. Solo. While Awasha and Gracie vanish into the mardi gras of the weekend crowd on Commercial St.
The blue flame, the sizzling torch, draws him into the studio. He thinks about those dead girls. Thinks, maybe if I just flat-out shock this dude, he’ll crack.
So he goes in firing. Not so much as a howdy-do.
“You want to tell me why you murdered Roxana Calderón?”
“I beg your pardon.”
“Your half sister says the Red Tooth boys didn’t kill Roxy Calderón. You did. May 31, 1975.”
The welder shoots him a cock-eyed look. “I don’t have to talk to you. You’re not a cop. You’re not even a real lawyer anymore. I know all about you. You’re a fisherman, Jazzbo. And you can tell Danny she can go piss up a rope for all I care.”
“She’s ready to go to the U.S. attorney with a story about how you used Roxy to spy on Red Tooth and knock them out of the drug trade at good old Tolchie.”
“Like hell she is!”
“She’s not the only one who has fingered you. I know all about how you cut off Roxy’s hair, dressed her …”
The welder turns his torch on Michael. “Get the fuck out of here. I already told your switch-hitting girlfriend Red Tooth plays for keeps. Go knock on their doors.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means they got Roxy. It was revenge for her helping me, the club. OK, got it? Now they’re at it again. That black girl who died. She probably found out something she shouldn’t have. Something they couldn’t let her live with.” There’s a big grin on Jean-Claude’s face.
“Bullshit.” He lets fly with more of Gracie’s hunch. “You really enjoy pinning it on the Red Tooth boys, don’t you? It’s such an easy way to slither out of this mess … I just don’t see where killing Liberty Baker fits into this all. But I’m …”
The welding torch pointing again. “Out! Go back to your twisted little harem, Romeo.”
“You and Snyder and Su and Merriweather. You had a plan. The ultimate turning of the tables on your arch enemies. You faked that Red Tooth graffiti in your club room in case anybody ever found Roxy. You really hated those bastards.”
“You’re out of your mind!”
“After all these years, you’re still at war with Red Tooth, aren’t you?
“You haven’t a fucking clue.”
“I think Roxy realized that you were using her, maybe that you prefer boys. She finally had enough. I think she was going to tell Red Tooth how you set them up to get hijacked. And I think you killed her to keep her quiet.”
“In your dreams!”
“And maybe Liberty Baker figured it out. After all these years. So you had to eliminate her too. Red Tooth is the fall guy here. Not you.”
The welder turns off his torch. Pulls the goggles off his forehead, sits down on his rocket/bomb sculpture. Suddenly it looks like a giant dick to Michael.
Jean-Claude throws back his head and laughs. “Fuck. You’re cute … but you’re dumber than a post!”
He feels a well opening inside his heart. The blood just rushing out into his chest. His vision going blurry.
“Think about this, hot stuff. Just for starters. How could I have killed Roxy Calderón when I was off campus for more than a day while someone was killing her? I just got back to school a half hour before we found her in the club.”
“You expect me to believe that?” He can’t hide the strain in his voice.
“Ask Marcus or Tom. I know you’ve been hounding them. Or ask Jason. Yeah, send your little China girl in to talk to Cousin Jason again. Let Chop open her innocent little eyes. He was with me.”
“What? Where?”
“We took the bus and the ferry to the Vineyard. Chappaquiddick Island, actually. There’s a place Jason liked to camp. We were probably fucking each other on South Beach when Roxy died … She was one stiff little piece of fluff when we found her.”
So much for Gracie’s theory.
J-C is beaming that arrogant grin of his again. But why is his hand shaking as he lights a cigarette?
66
“THERE’S something he’s not telling us,” Awasha says when she hears what just went down with Jean-Claude. Michael has her on the cell phone as soon as he’s ten steps out the studio door. “Don’t leave there, Michael. Watch that bastard!”
“Watch?”
“I got a really bad feeling about this guy. I think you spooked him, and he’s going to bolt. Gracie and I will get my car and meet you!”
Suddenly flames are surging through her fingers, toes.
Nooshun kesukqut. Our Father. Wuneetupantamunak kooswesuonk. Who art in Heaven …
The Saab’s rolling slowly toward the Rausche Studio, its headlights off, when she spots Michael. He’s hiding in a shadowy garden outside an Italian restaurant across the street from Jean-Claude’s.
When she pulls to the curb, cuts the engine, he slips into the back seat. Gracie has shotgun.
“What’s happened?” Her voice a husky whisper. “He just turned out the lights.”
“Hey, is that him?” Gracie asks.
A shadowy figure emerges from the gate in front of the wharf/studio. Tall, slender. Jeans and a white T-shirt. Carrying something bundled in his right arm. Maybe a jacket or a hoodie. He crosses the street, unlocks the door on an Eighties, black Porsche 911. Gets in. Starts the engine.
“That’s our boy.”
She’s pumped. Images of street racers from The Fast and the Furious, screaming through dark city streets, flick through her head. The flames from her fingers, toes, now rising behind her eyes as she slips the Saab into first gear.
But even before J-C has the Porsche out of P-town, she sees that there will be no Hollywood chase scene. This is worse. Despite the hot Porsche, Jean-Claude is a slow, steady driver. He drives less than the posted speed limit as he heads west down Route 6. His taillights are so easy to follow, she wonders whether he knows she’s back here. Whether he’s making it easy for her to tail him. Leading them all somewhere.
The Saab’s low beams barely cut the darkness as Gracie quizzes Michael about what happened in the welder’s studio.
But she can’t listen. Doesn’t notice the car behind her. Something else, other sounds, are filling every corner of her head. And she can’t tune them out. An approaching army.
Tribal drums. Then Flutes. Dulcimers … Beating. Again.
And Aaserah’s voice, after three weeks of no contact, pleading from the cell phone she gave Ronnie. “Do you still love me?”
He tells her yes, beyond all reason.
“Would you leave everything you know and love to be with me?”
In a heartbeat!
For a long time she says nothing, as if she is trying to feel his love rising from her phone.
Finally, she speaks. “Then, Allah akbar! I have found a way, Nippe Maske. When all is ready for us, I will come to you. Wait for the call. It will be soon.”
He pictures the internet images he has seen of Dubai, its high-rises, streets of gold, discos, banks. With his skills he can get a job in security. Or, maybe there is lobster fishing in the Persian Gulf. He wonders how much a boat would cost. Wonders if he is fortune’s fool.
67
IT’S not until she has followed the Porsche down a winding road near Wichmere Harbor in Harwichport, sees it stop in front of a shingled summer mansion, that she realizes she’s in a driveway. There’s a car rolling up behind her, its quartz headlights glaring. She can’t turn around, or back up. Like Ronnie that day in Baghdad. Shit!
