Lamentation (17 page)

“Brody?”

“He ran with them back in the day, if I recall.”

My stomach sank. I’d known Brody was in a motorcycle club. Just didn’t think it was
that
kind of motorcycle club.

As if he could hear the panicked thoughts racing through my head, Turley did a quick about-face. “A long time ago. Like years and years. Sorry I said anything. I’ve been working too many hours straight. Should’ve kept my big mouth shut. You’ve got enough on your plate.”

“What do you know about it, Turley?”

A fist pounded outside my door.

I automatically gripped the phone like a hammer.

“Open up! It’s me, Charlie.”

Charlie looked like a giant freeze pop, chunks of ice in his hair, skin tinged an unhealthy shade of blue, entire body convulsing with a teeth-chattering shiver as he cupped his hands and huffed into them.

“What the hell happened to you?

“Dude, you have no idea,” Charlie answered, blowing past, searching my claustrophobic kitchen, scatterbrained.

“Did you walk here?”

“You have any beer?”

“Fridge,” I said. “You sure you wouldn’t rather have some hot coffee?”

He waved me off with a dismissive flick of the wrist.

I blasted the radiator, cranking the dial as high as it would go, old pipes sputtering before unleashing hot, hissing steam.

Charlie swiped a cold one from the top shelf, leaving behind the empty plastic rings beside the borderline edibles—a crusted wedge of Cracker Barrel cheddar, a questionable hardboiled egg at least two weeks old. He popped the tab and took a good long glug. A rosy glow returned to his cheeks. He dropped into the chair, kicking out his big, booted feet. Dirty snow water pooled underneath.

“Where did you run off to?” I asked. “You couldn’t at least text me you were okay? I actually called Turley.”

“Lost my phone.”

“When? I’d talked to you, like, five minutes earlier.”

“I ran into this guy who said he knew your brother.”

“Where?”

“Coke machine at the motor lodge. Tweaker. Trucker cap, fuzzy little mustache. Never got his name.” Charlie peered up. “You have any cigarettes?”

I reached for my coat on the table before remembering I’d given the whole pack to that girl at the Maple. “Sorry. All out.”

“This kid swore he knew your brother, said he was supposed to meet him, in fact. That’s when I phoned you.” Charlie drained another swallow. “What’d Turley have to say?”

“A lot.” I decided to hold off on motorcycle gangs and real estate deals for the time being. “So what happened? I take it you didn’t find my brother?”

Charlie rolled his eyes and shook his head. “After I hung up with you, we’re standing outside the door. Kid’s jumpy as hell, flinching practically every time a snowflake lands. He’s staring into the storm. A pair of headlights pulls into the gas station. Suddenly he says, ‘We’ve got to go now.’ And I’m, like, ‘to meet Chris?’ And he says, ‘Yeah, Chris.’ I told him I have to wait for my friend first. He says I can wait but he’s leaving, and he takes off running toward that little parking lot—you know, not the main one, but the one for the motel.”

I nodded.

“I thought, fuck, what if this is our best chance to find your brother? So I bolt into the blizzard, slipping and sliding, ’cause the snow’s really coming down, and the tiny lot is up that hill. I’m barely able to catch up with him. I get in his car, this piece of shit from, like, 1984. Greasy, balled-up McDonald’s bags, vending machine wrappers, scraps of scorched tinfoil on the floor, half of it eaten away by rust. I mean it, Jay. You could totally see the ground.

“Kid tears up the Turnpike. He’s constantly checking his rearview, side view—like he’s expecting someone to be behind us. He starts ranting about the DEA and other covert government organizations, how they’re tailing him, tapping the phone lines, trying to scare him.”

“Sounds like my brother.”

“I know, right? But he’s getting really worked up about it, all the time speeding faster and faster, and it’s icy as hell out there. This kid is
coming unhinged and we’re about three seconds from careening off the Turnpike and joining that crane in Duncan Pond. I’m doing my best to calm him down. No use. He’s talking about how the government’s been sending agents to the motor lodge, roughing up everyone, slapping them around. I know he’s high. I tell him it’s all in his head, and that’s when he reaches over and pulls up his sleeve. Welts and bruises, wrist to biceps. Like a goddamn eggplant, Jay.”

I thought about that junkie girl telling me how thugs had been coming around lately, intimidating the riffraff to clear out the motor inn. These tenants didn’t sign leases; you could kick them out with little due process. Then again, why bother? You could do whatever you wanted to these people. It’s not like they were going to file a complaint with the police.

“We’re tooling down the Turnpike,” Charlie continued, “and he’s pointing at everything—telephone poles, fire hydrants, goddamn icicles—and it’s all some form of undercover surveillance. I went to call you and that’s when I realized I’d lost my phone. Must’ve fallen out of my jacket when I ran to the car.

“We’re driving through Ashton, and then we’re out in the sticks, getting farther and farther from the center of town. I ask where we’re going. He starts in about his wife he’s gotta find, how she’s the only one who’s ever loved him and how he knows he fucked up, but he’s gonna win her back and get it right this time, and it’ll be like before, she’ll see. I ask, ‘What about Chris?’ Kid stares over like he’s seeing me for the first time. He doesn’t even know what planet he’s on, Jay, irises the size of nickels, and he’s all, ‘Who’s Chris?’”

“Jesus, Charlie, what are you doing getting in a car with someone like that?”

“He swore he knew your brother.”

With the heat blasted, Charlie had started to melt. I grabbed a towel from the bathroom shelf and tossed it to him to dry off.

“We ended up way out by that cemetery on 23,” Charlie said. “You know, over by Eagle Ridge, before the 23 turns into the 12 on the way to Middlebury? The really old one with those crypts from the Civil War. He parks at the gate and kills the engine. I’m trying to talk sense into
him, but really I’m thinking of ways I can wrestle away those keys. That’s when he reached under his seat.” Charlie panned over. “He had a gun, Jay. Put it right on his fucking lap.”

“Jesus.”

“Finger on the trigger, hand twitchy, he busts out sobbing—chest-heaving, snot-bubbling, like a little kid who can’t catch his breath. Full-on waterworks.”

“What’d you do?”

“What do you think I did? I got the fuck out of there.”

“You walked all the way here from the 23?”

“Ran is more like it. Your place is before the Dubliner and a helluva lot closer than my house. I nearly froze to death.”

“Had me worried sick, Charlie.

“Sorry, man. I knew you’d be worrying.” Charlie kneaded the back of his neck, clearly frazzled over his midnight adventure. “I never knew this town was so fucked up. There’s this whole world I didn’t know about. That I don’t
want
to know about.”

I phoned Ashton PD and let them know Charlie was all right. I also mentioned the kid with the gun by the cemetery, not that I expected he’d still be there.

“You want me to give you a lift to your truck?”

“Mind if I crash on your couch and we grab it tomorrow?”

“Don’t you have to be to work at like seven?”

“After tonight, I think I deserve a sick day, don’t you?”

I pulled a pillow and blanket from the closet.

“Almost forgot,” he said, peeling wet layers of clothing and setting them on the radiator to dry. “Got a call from Fisher before I lost my phone. Remember that whiny guy who called you wanting his computer back? The restricted number? Fisher did some digging. Goddamn pay phone on Archer and Black Spring.”

I dropped the linens on the table. “Archer and Black Spring? By the old Armory?”

“Think so. Why? Mean anything?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Who even uses pay phones anymore?”

I didn’t say anything. But I knew the answer.

People who don’t want to be identified.

I heard Charlie kicking around the kitchen in the morning and shouted where he could find that coffee I figured he’d be wanting by now. I rolled over and checked my cell. A little after eight. It was strange having so much time off work, waking up without an alarm, though I was hardly getting a vacation from all this.

We made a pit stop at Miller’s for coffee and smokes. The storm had cleared and trucks were back out on the road. I filled Charlie in on my portion of last night. The junkie girl. The new condos and ski resort. The Commanderoes. Although in the gray light of a new day, I couldn’t say the picture was any clearer.

The plan was to get some breakfast at the Olympic, where we could fuel up on coffee and pancakes, clear our minds, and try to brainstorm what the hell this new influx of information meant in the grand scheme of everything. That is, if it meant anything at all.

We were driving over to the Dubliner so he could pick up his truck, and had just pulled in the lot—dank fog descending the mountaintop like an inappropriate fairy tale—when we heard the sirens, and I saw the flashing lights in the rearview mirror. A squad car hopped the curb, screeching to a halt behind us.

Pat Sumner stepped out of his cruiser, donning his fancy, wide-peaked sheriff’s hat, touching the brim like a cowboy on his way to church.

I unrolled my window and leaned out. Charlie, who had started toward his truck, stopped and turned around.

“Thought that was you, Jay,” said Pat, cheerfully. “Good timing. Hi’ya, Charlie.”

“How you doing, Pat?”

“You know what they say about complaining. Eighty percent of the people don’t care, and the other twenty are glad it’s happening to you and not them.” Pat chuckled before shifting his gaze back to me. “Say, Jay, I need you to follow me.”

“Where to?”

“Got a call this morning from Adam Lombardi. Seems someone hopped a fence and broke into his construction site last night.” Pat let go a deep sigh. “Any guess who?”

“They sure it was Chris?” I asked.

“Video surveillance,” said Pat. “Apparently, Lombardi’s security has your brother climbing the wall like Spider-Man and mugging for the camera.”

The relief I felt that Chris wasn’t dead was instantly replaced by agitation. Mugging for security cameras? Here I was, freaking out and running ragged, and he was treating this goose chase he had me on like a joke.

“Why do you need me—isn’t that a job for the cops?” After my brother had broken into his father’s house and now his family business, I couldn’t imagine Adam Lombardi would be itching to see me any more than I would him.

“Normally,” Pat said, drawling his words. “Except Adam requested that I bring you along.”

“He did?”

“Adam’s a good guy. He doesn’t want to press charges against your brother. Like the rest of us, he’s concerned. We got to put a stop to this, Jay, or someone’s going to get hurt. Real soon. Real bad.”

I turned to Charlie. “Go home. I’ll call you when we’re done.” Then added, quietly, “Why don’t you give Fisher a buzz?”

“Okay,” I said to Pat. “I’ll meet you there. You got an address?”

“Yup. Site of the new condos they’re building. Up by the old Armory. Archer and Black Spring.”

Five portable trailers crowned the hilltop behind a tall, chain-link fence that walled in the construction zone like the borders of a miniature military city. Thick, intersecting black tubes ran from each trailer to a clump of bulky power generators that thrummed relentlessly at the middle of the site. Bobcats and bulldozers, perched at odd angles on the slopes, tore off tundra and ripped up roots, dumping mounds of frozen earth, stone, and wood into towering piles for other big, bucketed machines to scoop up and haul away.

The scope of activity was surprising, since I’d known plenty of guys who’d worked construction, and the chief knock against the gig was how work dried up in the winter. Not unlike estate clearing, the coldest months usually spelled layoffs, leaving employees scrambling to pay bills until the thaw of spring. Yet here was this site, kicking it in high gear. Appeared to be a massive project too. Must’ve been three dozen workers toiling about.

The wind kicked up as Pat and I trudged up the hillside. Loosened snow clods fell from evergreen branches arched high above the footpath and exploded at our feet, unleashing the pungent aroma of pine needles. For as aggravated as Turley could make me, I was sorry he hadn’t made the trip. I found it easier talking to him than I did Pat. And I had more questions than ever.

Like we’d entered a war zone, felled trees and blasted shale spread outward in concentric waves from points of detonation, big bombs dropped from the sky. Not all was laid to waste, however; lingering traces of the man-made remained. Chewed-up sidewalk. Crumbled brown-stone.
Telephone lines threading the grove. Over the ridge, I spotted the shell of a pay phone booth. The Armory Building hadn’t been functional in years; it was more a memento, a piece of history harkening back to the Revolutionary War. Didn’t matter now. The Ashton landmark was gone—blown up, bulldozed, and buried to make way for some shiny new luxury condominiums.