Bad Blood (34 page)

I put bourbon in the coffee and made the coffee strong. After it was gone I showered, tried to soothe my aching shoulders under the rhythm of the pounding heat. I shaved, inspected in the mirror the shiner ringing my left eye, blood under the skin from the bullet that might have killed me. I was a mess. You could read the week’s accumulation of trouble on my face.

Still, I didn’t have to wait long on 30 before a pickup, heading south, stopped for me. Antonelli’s was north of my place, and Eve Colgate’s house north of that, but before I did what I needed to do today I had to eat.

“Thanks,” I said as I climbed into the truck. “I wasn’t sure anybody would stop for someone who looks like this.”

The driver, a big, unshaven man, laughed a big, friendly laugh. “You kiddin’? Safest guy in the world to be with is a guy who’s finished makin’ trouble for someone else.”

We shared a smoke and some idle talk about the nearness of spring. He let me off at the Eagle’s Nest, a small, shiny diner that still had most of its original aerodynamic chrome.

At the counter I ordered steak and eggs, homefries,
toast
, and coffee. I took the first mug of coffee to the phone, called the hospital. I asked them how Tony was and they told me he was better, out of danger now. Then I asked for Lydia’s room.

The phone rang five times and I was about to give up when a groggy voice answered in slurred Chinese.

“English,” I said. “It’s me.”

“Oh, goody, it’s you,” she said. “Where are you?”

“At a diner, having breakfast. How do you feel?”

“Sleepy, and I have a huge headache. Is this what it’s like when you have a hangover?”

“No, a hangover’s worse because you know it’s your own fault, too. Listen, I’ll be up to see you later. I just wanted to know how you were.”

“I can’t wait. Bill, is Jimmy all right?”

“He wasn’t hurt. I haven’t seen him since yesterday, but he’s okay. Go back to sleep.”

“Wait. You don’t really have Eve’s paintings, do you?”

“No. That was for Grice. It was all I could think of. But now I know where they are. I’m going to get them after I eat.”

“You do? Where are they?”

“I’ll tell you about it when I come up,” I said, and I knew I would. The part I hadn’t told anyone, I would tell Lydia. “Hey, Lydia?”

“Umm?”

“You want me to call your mother, tell her what happened?”

She sighed, but just before the sigh I thought I heard a stifled giggle. “You,” she said, “are an idiot.”

“Yeah,” I said, “I know. I’ll see you later.”

I hung up, went back to the counter, where my breakfast was waiting. I ate, filled with immense gratitude toward chickens and cows, offering a prayer of thanks for grease and salt. The homefries especially were almost unbearably good, burned in the pan, flecked with onions and peppers.

Finally finished, I lit a cigarette and worked the room, found somebody who was headed north on 30. He turned out to be a weekender, like me, and as we sped past my driveway and the empty parking lot at Antonelli’s we talked about the city and, again, the approach of spring.

He dropped me on 30; I caught another ride into Central Bridge, walked the mile and a half to Eve’s house. It felt good to walk, even in the dullness of a late winter day that made the promise of spring seem like just another damn lie you’d let yourself be suckered, again, into believing.

I was halfway up the drive when Leo came charging around from the back, barking, growling, yipping, and wagging all at once. I gave him the jelly doughnut I’d brought from the Eagle’s Nest, scratched his ears, looked up to see Eve standing on the porch.

“Hi,” she smiled. “How are you?”

“Much better, thanks.”

“Come in. There’s coffee and cake.”

I shook my head. “Later, Eve. I want to finish this.”

She gave me the keys to her truck and I headed back south. I pulled into the gravel lot at Antonelli’s, slowed to a stop close to the door. I let myself in with the keys I had taken from Tony’s hospital room.

I was steeled for an eerie silence, a sense of something ended, lost. But inside, the tables were set and a strong smell of garlic and oregano came from the kitchen. The jukebox was playing Charlie Daniels. As the door slammed behind me a voice yelled from the kitchen, “Marie?”

“No,” I called back. “Bill.”

The kitchen door swung open and Jimmy came through wiping his hands on a towel. “Hey, Mr. S.!” he grinned. “You okay? I called the hospital. They said you went home. What’re you doing here?”

“I came to pick something up. What are
you
doing here?”

“Oh,” he shrugged. “Well, you know. Tony’s gonna be in the hospital a long time. That kind of stuff costs a lot. The hospital, they said Miss Colgate was taking care of everything, but that ain’t right. You know? I mean, he’s my brother. Hey, you want a drink?” He started to move behind the bar.

“No,” I said. “No, thanks. Does Tony know you’re doing this?”

“Nah. He don’t want to talk to me.”

“Did you go up to the hospital?”

“Uh-uh. He’d just tell me to get lost. That’s what he always told me. You know.”

I knew. I gestured around the bar. “You think you can manage here?”

“Sure. No problem. I called Marie and Ray. And Allie’s coming in later, to help.”

“Alice? Hey, Jimmy, that’s great.”

“Yeah, well, she says just to help. For Tony. The rest of it, she says we’ll have to figure it out.”

We stood looking at each other, suddenly awkward. Then Jimmy said, “So—what’d you come to get?”

“Jimmy,” I asked, “how much did Lydia tell you yesterday?”

He grinned, a little color seeping into his face. “I was scared, man. Real scared. She just sorta kept talking, you know, until you guys showed up.”

“What did she say?”

“Well, about what happened.” He told me what Lydia had told him. It was the same story I’d given Brinkman: the truth, except for details of what it was Ginny had stolen from Eve Colgate.

And except, of course, for the part Lydia didn’t know.

“Well,” I said when he was through, “here’s what comes next.” I pulled a chair out from the nearest table, sank into it. I got a cigarette going before I went on. “That stuff Ginny stole that turned out to be so valuable? It was also big. Too big for her to take home and hide, and she didn’t trust Wally with it.”

“Wally?”

“Wake up, Jimmy. He’s who she left you for. He was a lot closer to Frank than you were, and that’s what she wanted.”

“
Wally
?” He shook his head in disbelief. “Fuckin’ Wally?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Anyhow, she needed someplace safe to store this stuff for a while.”

Light dawned in his eyes. “Here?”

“She had your keys. She must have known about Tony’s basement. She probably figured no one would ever notice.”

Jimmy flushed. “I told her. About downstairs. I was, like, goofing on Tony one day.”

“So she hid it there. And she showed it to Frank Monday night. She’d already told him about it, and he was already figuring the angles. At the very least, he could frame you for the burglary and shake down Tony. That’s what the fight was about.

“But when Ginny and Wally took him down here and showed him what they had, he acted cool. He wasn’t impressed. Ginny was just a stupid kid, an amateur, he said. He told her to go home, back to daddy.”

“She must’ve hated that, being treated like a kid. Like she wasn’t tough.”

“She did hate it. She hated it so much she showed how tough she really was by killing Wally, on the spot.”

“Yeah,” Jimmy muttered. “Yeah, that’s what Lydia said. Jesus.”

I didn’t say anything. After a moment Jimmy asked, “Mr. S.? Why did Frank kill her?”

“She was in his way. She had just gotten to be too much trouble.”

Jimmy rubbed his hand along his forehead.

Neither of us spoke for a long time. The jukebox moved from Charlie Daniels to Crystal Gayle. Finally Jimmy said, “Where is this—this stuff?”

“In the basement. Come help me with it.”

We went down the creaking stairs. The basement still had the same dank smell, the same decades of dust covering things that once mattered to someone. The disturbances made by the finding of Wally Gould were already aging, rounding, fading.

Jimmy found his way to the middle of the room with
an
unconscious familiarity. He pulled the chain hanging from the bare bulb and in the light I searched the room from where I stood.

I found it immediately, a plywood crate about six by six, partially hidden behind other boxes. It was carefully made, fastened with screws at the corners, and it was practically dust free.

Jimmy and I carried it up, maneuvering carefully through the basement door, past the tables and barstools, out into the lot. I let down the back gate of Eve’s truck and we hefted the crate onto the metal bed. My sore shoulders ached, my arms trembled a little as I closed the gate again.

Jimmy had been silent since we’d entered the basement. Now he turned to me, asked, “What’s in it?”

“Eve asked me not to tell anyone, Jimmy. I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s okay. I sort of—I don’t want to know, you know?”

I started around to the cab. As I put my hand on the door handle Jimmy said, “Mr. S., I don’t get it.” He frowned, rubbed his hand over the back of his neck, Tony’s gesture.

“Don’t get what?” I asked, but as I said it, I knew.

“Frank was framing me for killing Wally, right? And Ginny too? That’s what Lydia said.”

“That’s right.”

“But you told that trooper Ginny’s body was in the quarry. Why would he, like, ditch her body, if he was setting me up? Is that who came up that night in the rain? To drop her there?” We looked at each other in the dull afternoon light. “Mr. S., that wasn’t Frank, was it?”

I looked around me, the gravel lot, the tin sign swinging
against
the graying sky. The air had gotten colder since I left the cabin; there was a bite to the wind.

And suddenly I thought, tell him. Maybe something can be salvaged out of what happened here, if he knows. And so I told Jimmy what I had kept from everybody else. “No,” I said. “That wasn’t Frank. That was Tony.”

It took him a minute to answer, and when he did his voice was shaky. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Tony’d heard what Frank had to say about you. When I found Gould’s body, Tony came down to the basement. He knows every inch of it, every broken piece of trash there. He must’ve spotted the crate right away, knew it didn’t belong. Then your keys, the whole frame. He bought it all.

“Wednesday night he went looking for you. Marie would probably tell us, if we asked. Maybe he closed up early, maybe he just left her in charge. He was on his way to the quarry, I think. I’d told him you were there; I wanted him to know you were safe.

“But he saw your truck, on the road. He followed it. He didn’t know it was Frank and Ginny; how would he know that? He thought it was you.

“He followed them to Eve Colgate’s shed. He stayed back, to see what was going on. He’s lucky he did that; Frank would have killed him. But what he saw was two people going into the shed, one coming out. Re member how dark it was that night, Jimmy, right before it rained.

“The truck drove away, but Tony stayed. Frank must’ve driven right by Tony’s car, never saw him. I checked that
road
up from the valley. You could pull off and hide in the dark, lots of places.

“Tony went to the shed. The lock had been cut through; it was easy to get in.

“And he found Ginny, in a pool of blood on the floor. Your glove beside her. Your truck driving away.

“He bought this frame, too. Just like the other one.”

“He thought I did that?” Jimmy spoke slowly. “Ginny, like that? He thought I did that?”

I waited before I went on.

“He took her body to his car. Her body, and the glove. He tried to clean up the blood, but there was too much. So he did something else: He covered it up. With paint, which Eve—which she stores there. With anything else he could find. That mess in the shed? It was only the floor. The windows weren’t broken, the walls weren’t scrawled on. Only the floor.

“But just as he started—probably even before he moved the body—I came along. He heard me coming; he couldn’t let anyone see. Couldn’t let anyone know what you’d done. So he waited, and he hit me, knocked me out.”

“No, man,” Jimmy said. “Uh-uh. If that was Tony, even if he thought it was me, he’d’ve told you. You, man. You saved my butt that other time, he knew that.”

“I also gave your keys to MacGregor. Tony and I had fought about that. He didn’t trust me to protect you, Jimmy. Not when it came to hiding a murder, a fifteen-year-old kid.”

Jimmy started to speak, but I stopped him.

“Just before he left he came back to check on me. To
make
sure I was alive. There was paint on my chin, on my neck, when Eve found me.”

“No!” Jimmy burst out. “This is crazy! Tony don’t even like me! Why the hell would he do this? He thought I did something like that? Hide her body and shit? And you, man, he wouldn’t hurt you. You’re his best buddy, man.”

“Someone called Eve Colgate that night to tell her I was in trouble. And Tony called her place in the morning.” I said quietly. “Looking for me, to tell me nothing: I’d gotten a phone call, someone wanted me. He said he’d closed up, gone to my place to find me; when I wasn’t there he started calling places I might be. Eighteen years I’ve been getting phone calls at the bar, Jimmy. When I come in Tony hands me scraps of paper. Did you ever know him to go looking for me before?”

Jimmy shook his head, back and forth, back and forth. “No, man. You’re crazy. You coulda died out there. Tony wouldn’t do that shit to you.”

“I’d’ve been all right, if it hadn’t rained. Tony called Eve; then he went up to the quarry, to dump Ginny’s body. He may have seen your light; anyway he knew you were there, but probably the last thing in the world he wanted was to talk to you.

“And then what could he do? He couldn’t come back and find me. What would he have said? All he could do was wait, and wonder if I was all right. And think about you, and what he thought you’d done. It must have been a hell of a night.”