December Boys (5 page)

“Hi, Daddy.”

I knew Aiden was only visiting his grandma in Vermont, but the boxy connection made his voice sound tinny and a million miles away. I got the sudden, aching feeling I’d never see my son again.

“You miss Daddy?”

“Yes.”

“How much?”

“Um. Infinity plus forty-six plus seventy-two.”

“Wow,” I said. “That much? That’s a lot.”

I loved my son’s twisted understanding of mathematics.

“Daddy?”

“Yes?”

“Bye-bye, Daddy. Grandma has cookies.”

I heard the phone drop and tap dance off tile. I waited for my wife to come back on the line. But she never did.

I stood in the kitchen listening to a dial tone for ten seconds before I finally hung up. I searched for relief from the conversation. That had been good news, right? I replayed what my wife said. She’d been clear this was temporary, a brief vacation, no splitting up. She called me “baby.” But she also got her point across, loud and clear: I needed to get my shit together.

Coffee in hand, I retrieved the Marlboros from my glove compartment, and then headed to my workshop in the garage. I packed the smokes against my wrist and wedged the side door ajar. Until my wife came home, I might as well enjoy the thing I’d missed most about smoking: that first one in the morning.

In a dusty, dark corner I unlocked the top drawer of the gray filing cabinet, and dug around back, extracting the thick, rubber-banded binder. I fanned my collection across the workbench, the curious cutouts and clippings from last year that had been my preoccupation. Or obsession was more like it.

Right after the shooting, the
Herald
ran a series on my brother’s death. Not as much about the person as the addiction that defined his life, highlighting how a former star athlete had fallen from grace, an angle the media loves, culminating with the raid on the farmhouse where he died, which the paper parlayed into the push for drug reform. That was the real reason behind these stories. No one gave a shit about a dead junkie.

Chris’ passing came to represent what had become of our hometown. Even if I now lived fifty miles west in Plasterville, a very real part of me would always be in Ashton. Drugs had infiltrated much of northern New Hampshire, but Ashton remained ground zero because of the seedy Desmond Turnpike.

I’d cut out every article I could find pertaining to the scandal last December and January. Except no one had the real story. Chris’ assertion, that Gerry Lombardi had molested little boys, couldn’t be proven, the pictures he’d copied from that hard drive blurry and inconclusive. But what Charlie, Fisher, and I had stumbled onto last winter couldn’t be denied either. The computer
had
come from Adam Lombardi’s construction site, and there
were
pictures of little boys on it. Even if we couldn’t be sure it was Mr. Lombardi in those photos, there had to be a reason Adam and
Michael were so nervous. Of all the bizarre things that happened last winter, perhaps most damning of all was a man named Roger Paul, who had masqueraded as a Concord detective, infiltrating Ashton’s hick police force. He ended up snatching my brother, bringing him up the mountain with plans to bury him beneath the ice of Echo Lake. And if I hadn’t arrived on the scene, running them off Ragged Pass, he would’ve gotten away with it. Of course none of this could be proven. My word against theirs. And nothing could be tied to the Lombardis.

The cover story that the car crash and Roger Paul’s death was the result of a drug deal gone bad was bullshit. I could see why the local PD wouldn’t want that egg on their face. But the rest of the story was whitewashed, too. Not one word about incriminating hard drives. The name Gerry Lombardi appeared nowhere. The only bad guy in any of this: drugs. Not money. Not greed. Not the luckless bastards foraging in squalor on the Turnpike. Drugs.

Once Gerry Lombardi was in the ground, what was the point of digging any further? Even before he kicked it, I’d asked Charlie and Fisher to back off the investigation. The Lombardis were too big a local institution to take down, the photos pure conjecture. I had a wife and child to think about now. I needed to leave this behind.

Still, most nights I ended up in that garage. Long after Jenny and my son were asleep inside our warm home, I’d drink beer in the cold garage alone, rehashing the past and reliving the nightmare. My wife was right. So was Charlie. I needed to move on.

I closed the book.

Sweeping the remains, I cradled the entire sordid mess in my arms, turned one-eighty and dropped it all in the trash bin.

W
HEN
I
WALKED
into the office Monday morning, I could tell right away something was up. Coworkers I seldom talked to made eye contact, nodding approval. I got two thumbs-up and one handgun salute. Another—I think his name was Marc, or maybe Ron, some bald guy—raised his coffee mug in a toast. A hero’s welcome.

They started coming up one by one. Took me a moment to realize why they were congratulating me. Even without filing my report, I had been credited with cracking the Olisky case. NEI investigated potentially fraudulent claims all the time. Finding incontrovertible evidence to refute those claims was rare. Nabbing a confession, almost unheard of. The only problem: I hadn’t said a word. The emphatic response shocked me. The reality of the situation was far less glamorous. An overwhelmed, emotionally distraught sixteen-year-old boy had admitted lying. I hadn’t done anything but be in the right place at the right time. How had DeSouza even found out?

A little after ten, the boss’ door swung open.

“Porter,” DeSouza called from the doorway. “Get in here.” I’d heard those words before, but never with the warmth and smile that accompanied them now.

“A helluva job, Jay,” DeSouza said, closing the door after me, pointing to take a seat. “Helluva job.”

I’d hated my boss from the first day I met him. Andy DeSouza embodied every douchebag characteristic I’d grown to despise, the kind of short, slick man who shakes your hand extra hard before finding an excuse to tell you what he paid for his new hot tub.

“I’ll admit, Porter, there were times over this past year when I questioned your motivation. Started thinking you may not be cut out for the insurance game. But this Olisky investigation, you really delivered the goods. Came up big when we needed it most.”

“Didn’t realize it was such a big case.”

“Are you kidding me? Do you know much an insurance company loses to fraud every year?”

I shrugged.

DeSouza’s face pinched up. “Well, I don’t have an exact number. But I can tell you it is a lot.
This
is the sort of case that gets a claims man noticed. I noticed. Trust me,
Concord
noticed. Speaking of which . . .” He left those words dangling there. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do with them.

It was nice getting praise for a change, but I was still curious how this information had made its way to DeSouza in the first place. “How did you—I mean, how could you deny the claim without my final report?”

“When you didn’t return to the office Friday afternoon, I called the Olisky house. Brian admitted he’d been driving. Sounded like you grilled him pretty hard, eh? I’m proud of you.”

“Thanks,” I said, even though if DeSouza called the Oliskys directly, he’d been checking up on me because he didn’t trust me to do my job.

I glanced around at the motivational posters plastering the walls. Hands covering hands, skydivers forming a circle, a single snowflake testifying how special we all are. The worst part was the
cloying platitudes stamped underneath, all variations of Believe in Yourself, Work Harder, Take No Shortcuts. Loose translation: keep selling your soul to the company store and don’t ask what your company can do for you. I had more in common with the Oliskys of this world than I did the DeSouzas.

I must’ve made a face, because DeSouza launched into the party line.

“We are in a war, Jay. Every day. Against criminals trying to defraud NEI with their scams. Swoop and Squat. Drive Down. Two-Lane Turn Sideswipe. These crooks are always cooking up new schemes, trying to screw us. We have to stay one step ahead of them. Be willing to go that extra mile. And do you know why we do this?”

I shrugged.

“Because we fight for the little guy.”

The way he said it, I half expected him to leap on his desk and rip his shirt open, Big S advertising truth, justice, and quarterly profits.

“We advocate for those who play the game the right way. That is what you did, Jay. You helped keep premium rates lower for the honest Joe, the guy who busts his hump at the factory every day, the mother who pays her bills on time—the folks who don’t think rules are just for ‘other’ people, that exceptions should be made for them. Insurance is a safety net, not a ladder to come up. Scammers like the Oliskys—”

“It wasn’t like that,” I said. Donna and Brian weren’t bad people. A mother and son who didn’t have much money tried to pull a fast one. I could understand that. “I don’t think the Oliskys were trying to deceive—”

“What do you call lying on an official claim?”

Hard to argue with that one.

“I’ve been in conversation with HQ down in Concord,” DeSouza said, picking up the thread from earlier. “The Big Office needs a call up. Been in the works for a while, and I’ve been trying to decide who deserves it most. Not an easy decision. I’m sure it comes as no surprise, last year wasn’t the greatest for claims.”

I didn’t bother responding that I hadn’t much thought about it. “Your work on the Olisky case helped make my decision for me.”

He paused for drama’s sake. “I’ve decided to recommend you.”

“No shit?”

“No shit.”

DeSouza waited for me to jump through his hoop. When I didn’t hop fast enough, he sweetened the pot. “Of course, the Concord position comes with greater responsibility. Which comes with a bump in salary.”

“A bump?”

“A big bump.” He smiled wide. “So, you ready for the majors?”

I couldn’t wait to call Jenny with the good news. This was the break I needed. The break
we
needed. Concord, a promotion, a raise—I could finally deliver on the promise I’d made to my wife when I’d asked her to marry me. For the first time in a long time I could see light at the end of the Turnpike tunnel.

My boss came around the desk.

“It’s not a done deal yet, of course,” DeSouza cautioned. “But if I were you, I’d start checking out the housing market down south.”

DeSouza patted me on the back, leading me to the door. Hand on the knob, he extended a firm paternal handshake.

“Don’t waste another minute worrying about the Oliskys,” my boss said. “They knew what they were doing was wrong. Which is why the son confessed. You did the right thing. You leaned on him until he cracked. And that effort is about to pay off for you. Big time.”

Back at my desk, guilt still gnawed at me, even though I hadn’t done anything wrong. I hadn’t said a word to DeSouza. Brian Olisky confessed all on his lonesome. What was so wrong with taking the credit? I couldn’t do anything to help the Oliskys now.

I hadn’t been sitting there five minutes when I heard someone shout above the floor chatter, “Porter, line one.”

The only person who ever called me at work was Jenny. I took the call, anxious to share the good news. Only it wasn’t my wife.

“Mr. Porter?” A woman blubbered on the other end.

“Yes. This is Jay Porter. Who is this?”

The woman sobbed, sputtering illegible gibberish without vowels.

“Ma’am, calm down. I can’t understand what you’re saying—”

The woman inhaled slowly, forcing composure. “This is Donna Olisky. We met last week? We talked at the copy place where I work? About the accident?”

“Yes, Mrs. Olisky. I remember you.” In fact, I was just basking over having denied your claim a few minutes ago. I glanced up from my desk to make sure no one could hear the conversation. “Why are you calling me?”

“They arrested my son this morning.”

Across the room, DeSouza stood in his doorway watching me. When our eyes met, he gave me a double-barrel thumbs-up.

I returned the corny gesture, and told Donna I’d call her back.

“Going for a smoke,” I said to no one, grabbing my Pats cap and slipping outside with my cell to the parking lot, where a winter’s worth of snow remained piled high on islands.

I wasn’t sure why I felt the need to hide a work call while I was at work, but after DeSouza’s speech, just talking to Donna Olisky felt like fraternizing with the enemy. Why was she calling me? I didn’t have any pull with the police. What kind of trouble could
a dork like Brian Olisky have gotten into, anyway? Returning a library book late?

I fired up a Marlboro. Tasted so damn good I wondered how I ever quit in the first place. Donna Olisky picked up on the first ring.

“I’m sorry to bother you, Mr. Porter. I didn’t know who else to call—”

“Yeah. Okay.” Flurries drifted. I stomped my feet to keep blood flowing. Ground so frozen, every time I touched down I could feel the cold penetrate my sole. “What happened?”

“The police picked up Brian this morning,” Donna said, still battling to contain the sniffles.

“What for?”

“For leaving the scene of an accident.” She said it so calm and matter-of-fact, like I was the moron for asking. I hadn’t considered the possibility.

“I’m not blaming you, Mr. Porter—”

“Call me Jay.” I’d met that kid. Cops didn’t arrest boys like Brian. “They probably need a statement. You don’t get arrested for lying—” I stopped myself, thinking about what I’d said. Lying on an insurance claim was textbook fraud.

“We were having breakfast. They hauled him off like a common criminal.”

“Did they actually
arrest
him?”

“Huh?”

“Did the police read him his rights?”

“I don’t know!” she snapped. “But they weren’t very nice.”

“Cops can be like that.” I’d been through this drill before with my brother. An actual arrest meant paperwork. Police hated unnecessary paperwork. I started to feel better. “I’m sure they just want to talk to him.”