Speak Ill of the Living (21 page)

Chapter 28

The Late Chuckie's rat bike glug-glugged over the bridge. Eddie looked downriver, where the Merrimack widened and became shallow. Patches of yellow-green grass sprouted from little almond-shaped islands where the water parted around sloping mounds of muck. The morning was bright, cloudless, hot. The wind from his slow ride failed to dry the sweat that dripped from under Eddie's helmet. The perspiration came from a mix of nervousness and too much caffeine.

The Post Office was a modern building with a sleek design that suggested computer-age efficiency. Eddie left the bike between two yellow lines, patted his pants, felt the key again—still there—left his helmet and goggles on the seat and walked inside.

The building's air conditioning had been set lower than
cool
, lower than
cold
, somewhere near cryogenic sleep. Sweaty after the ride, Eddie felt a deep-bone chill. He was afraid to ask for help finding the P.O. box—why would the rightful owner need help finding it? He browsed the little metal doors until he found the one with a number that matched the stamp on the key.

Looking both ways, feeling suspicious—probably looking suspicious—Eddie inserted the key and opened the box.

A manila envelope had been folded and stuffed inside.

Eddie wrestled it out.

It was nine by twelve, a half-inch thick, obviously containing paper of some kind. The address printed in green pencil was to Lewis Cuhna, at this post office box, Lowell, Massachusetts.

Cuhna had mailed this envelope to his own P.O. address.

Eddie checked the postmark and raised an eyebrow. Dated last spring…six months ago. He double-checked the box. No other mail inside. Weekly newspaper editor Lew Cuhna had taken the trouble of renting this post office box for the single purpose of stashing this envelope.

Eddie stuck the packet in his waistband, pulled his polo shirt over it and walked out, toward the bike. He felt like he was moving in slow motion, almost like he was not moving at all; it was as if the bike were simply getting bigger, until Eddie was standing over it, helmet strap cinched beneath his chin, his shoe stomping the starter. He revved the engine, blasted the coughs from it, and then drove off.

There was no need to think about where he would open the envelope.

***

There was one car parked beside the Grotto shrine, a twenty-year-old green Oldsmobile the size of a tugboat. A plastic St. Christopher statue stood on the dash. Eddie left the bike beside the car.

Nearly all of the two dozen white candles on the shrine's altar had been lit. Somebody had strung Christmas tree lights around the statue of the Virgin. The lights shone feebly under the bright sun.

A car horn blared from the street. Two men argued loudly. Eddie blocked out their conversation and looked to the top of the shrine. He saw no one. For a moment, he thought he was alone.

He pulled the envelope from his waistband, and then walked to the stairs.

An old woman in a long black dress and white Adidas tennis shoes—a nun, Eddie quickly realized from her black habit—knelt on the staircase, halfway to the top. The nun clutched pink rosary beads. Eddie watched her. She grunted in pain as she stiffly climbed on her knees to the next stair, and then began mumbling her prayers.

Eddie held the iron handrail and climbed past her.

“Excuse me, sister,” he said gently.

The nun smiled up at him. Her face was wide, tanned and deeply creased with channels that flowed from around her eyes to the corners of her smile. Her skin was shiny in the sun. She was maybe eighty years old, and beautiful.

“
Bonjour
,” the nun said in a high, trill voice. “It is a joy to love in His name.”

Eddie smiled and nodded. “
Oui
.”

He climbed to the top of the shrine and sat on the bench there. Through the willows he could see the windsurfers tugging their bright sails over the river. Eddie wondered if Lucy Orr was among them.

He held the envelope and looked over the river. The sun was hot on his face, hot enough to burn his cheeks if he wasn't careful. He could hear the old nun murmuring her prayers, groaning as she dragged arthritic limbs up each stair.

He hesitated, because the envelope from Lew Cuhna was his last hope.

There are no more leads.

If the envelope did not hold answers, then Eddie would have failed.

He traced the Sign of the Cross—seemed like the thing to do on top of the shrine—and then opened the envelope.

Inside, Eddie found three editions of Lew Cuhna's newspaper,
The Second Voice
.

Eddie recognized one of the papers immediately: it was the edition Roger Lime had been holding in the first photograph released by the kidnappers. The front page had a cliché in a banner headline:

SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL OFF WITHOUT A HITCH

“So what, Lew?” Eddie muttered. “So
what?”

Then he noticed the gray text under the headline.

It wasn't a real story.

“Dummy text,” Eddie said aloud, running his finger up and down the columns.

It was all computer-generated nonsense, random letters grouped into unpronounceable words. Dummy text, such as this, was created by publishing software to permit a page designer to experiment with the page layout without using real news copy. Once the page design was set, the real news copy would be flowed into the columns to replace the dummy text.

Eddie turned the page—nothing but dummy text, and fake headlines, too. Not one real news story in the entire paper.

He stared at the top half of the front page and tried to make sense of it.

The page looked
just like
the edition that Lime had been holding in the kidnapper's photo, except that this edition wasn't dated;
this
wasn't a real newspaper.

It's a mockup
.

Why did Lew want Eddie to see it?

He put it aside and looked at the next paper Cuhna had left in the envelope.

It was another mockup—all dummy text. The front page had been designed to look
identical
to the first mockup, except that the headline was different:

SHAKESPEARE FESVITVAL IS MARRED BY RAIN

That made no sense.

The weather had been ideal for the Shakespeare festival. No rain at all.

Eddie set that paper aside, too, and inspected the last one—also full of dummy text, and identical to the first two mockups, except that its banner headline read:

CANCELLED: NO SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL THIS YEAR

That headline was just idiotic. The Shakespeare festival had been held the same weekend in late July every year for the past two decades. The outdoor festival was a Lowell tradition.

Eddie's head snapped up with a sudden revelation.

He stared blankly at the river for a moment, thinking, thinking. Then he flipped through the papers again, re-reading the headlines.

The nun had reached the top of the stairs. She was a dark figure at the periphery of Eddie's vision. She was mumbling the Hail Mary.

Eddie understood everything, who was doing these killings, and why.

Roger Lime. Dr. Crane. Jimmy Whistle.

“Holy fuck,” he said under his breath.

Then the larger truth of his revelation thundered down on him. “Oh, God! Noooo!” he wailed. He crushed the papers in his fists and pressed his palms to his eyes.

The old nun appeared in an instant on the bench beside him.

“
Qu'est-ce que se passe?
” she asked.
What is happening?

Her fingertips touched lightly on Eddie's shoulder. He turned to her, grit his teeth, buried himself in the old nun's loving embrace, and wept.

Chapter 29

The message on the answering machine that evening was from Durkin:

“Eh? Bourque? Tony at the garage says that shitty Chevette is ready and he wishes you'd come pick it up so he can use the parking space for his new Dumpster. So, if that bike ain't killed you yet, give Tony a call. Oh, and he wants his money. Cash.”

Eddie smiled. He had made peace with The Late Chuckie's rat bike.

It won't be the bike that kills me.

Eddie had spent all morning at the Grotto, on his knees, wounded inside, as if a little boy.

He had spent the afternoon on the bike, a man, deciding how he would end the drama of the past six days.

On a whim, he had wanted to see the ocean. Eighty-five miles per hour on The Late Chuckie's rat bike was like doing mach-three on hockey skates; it required unbroken focus to stay alive. The bike had taken Eddie to New Hampshire, up the Hampton Beach strip. The strip smelled like fried food, coconut sunscreen and seawater, as it did in Eddie's earliest recollection of a family weekend there, in a two-story drive-up motel with a view of the backside of a three-story drive-up. Eddie had been five years old. That was before his parents realized that Eddie was not his brother, and that they could not erase Henry's murder conviction by starting over.

Earlier today, the beach had been carpeted with reddened blobs of sizzling beach flesh. You could have walked a mile without touching sand—stepping only on the edges of other people's towels. Eddie had stopped the bike and climbed onto the seawall. The tide was low. Four white-haired men, their leathery bodies tanned so dark that they approached purple, had been playing bocce on the hard sand below the mid-tide line.

Behind them, two small sailboats, probably twenty-two-footers, cut silently along the water.

Eddie had sipped Pellegrino water and watched the boats. They gave him an idea, and he understood what he needed to do.

He had gotten home at dusk, his face chapped from the wind and the sun.

His first call was to Bobbi's hotel. The clerk put him on hold for five minutes, playing Sinatra's “It Was a Very Good Year'' in Eddie's ear; the wait wasn't too bad.

Sinatra clicked off, the call was transferred, and Bobbi got on the line. “Hey, little brother!” she said. “Was thinking about the best way to reach Henry about getting a good lawyer. You could write him a note—”

“Won't work,” Eddie interrupted.

“Oh, don't be modest,” she chided. “I've seen your writing. Henry loves the way you express yourself on paper.”

Eddie's words came out hoarse: “I've found something, Bobbi. It's…bad for Henry. The court appeal, the new trial…” He trailed off.

She waited, waited. “Christ, Eddie,” she said finally. “What have you done?”

“I'm afraid I've wrecked everything,” he said. “Before I tell the police about this, I thought I should tell you. You're his wife, and you need to hear it first. Can you meet me tonight?”

“Where? I'll meet you right goddam now.”

“No, later. Say, midnight? I've got stuff to do before I can see you.”

Her voice softened. “You're scaring me, little brother. What is all this?”

“There's a place off the river, near this religious school. They call it the Grotto. It's secluded. Nobody will be around late tonight. Let me tell you how to get there.”

He told her. They hung up.

Eddie's next call was to Detective Orr's cell phone.

Orr must have recognized Eddie's number on her caller ID, because she answered: “I hope you've smartened up.”

“I'm afraid that I have.”

“You don't sound like yourself, Eddie.”

“I've made a plan,” he confessed, “and I need your help—but only you.”

“I don't like that,” she told him. “We could have a dozen uniforms on this case with one phone call. Why only me?”

“Because the plan involves murder.”

She said nothing for a few seconds. If she was surprised by Eddie's admission, she didn't let on. She said, calmly: “You can't expect me to help you.”

“I expect you to stop me.”

The telephone conversation with Lucy Orr went on for hours, interrupted several times so Orr could make other calls, to verify Eddie's facts. When they had finished, Eddie hung up, rubbed his ear, and checked the clock. Ten-thirty.

Eddie brewed a pot of Columbian. But as he went to fill a mug, he impulsively dumped the coffee down the sink.

I need steady hands.

He put on a Sinatra CD, turned it up loud enough to drown out his thoughts, then reclined on the couch and closed his eyes. At the last note of “All Or Nothing At All,” Eddie turned off the music, went into the bathroom, and fished Jimmy Whistle's heavy black gun from the toilet tank.

Chapter 30

The pink figurines seemed to levitate inside their wooden boxes, surrounded by black night, lit by their own ruby lights. Eddie released the throttle and let The Late Chuckie's rat bike glide past the Stations of the Cross. He remembered words Kerouac had written about this place:

“The roar of the river, mysteries of nature, fireflies in the night flickering to the waxy stare of statues.”

Eddie was fifteen minutes early. Bobbi was already in the parking lot, waiting behind the wheel of an old Lincoln, a pocked and dented sedan rusting around the wheel wells. She checked her wristwatch as Eddie arrived. She had parked the Lincoln facing away from the river. The waxing moon, still a crescent, lit the parking lot gently with distant streetlights and the red glow of the twelve Stations. A breeze swept silently over the hulking shrine, ducking into its shallow cave to tease the candle flames on the altar.

By the time Eddie had shut down the bike and stowed his helmet and goggles, Bobbi was sitting cross-legged on the Lincoln's hood. The car looked tan in this unnatural mix of light. His sister-in-law had worn black jeans and a ruffled scoop-necked top. Most of her hair was tucked under a small leather hat with a thin brim. A few misbehaving wisps hung down over her face. She had the presence of a really good country music singer—attractive, yet beaten around by life. Eddie scanned the parking lot, squinting into the shadows, seeing nobody.

“I got sick of the bus,” Bobbi announced, banging a fist on the hood. “Borrowed this thing from the stock-boy at the CVS. This is a test drive. Looks like hell but runs good. He wants six hundred. I might make him an offer.”

“It's all bullshit, Bobbi.”

She cocked her head and smiled at him, curious but not upset with his language. “What's eating you?” she said.

Eddie stared at her. “From the day I met you, you never stopped saying that the Bourque boys were gullible,” he said. “You were right.”

Still curious, like she was waiting for the punch line, she asked, “What's this about?”

“Your husband.”

“Henry?”

“I should say your ex-husband,” Eddie said. “The most recent one.”

She shifted on the hood, uncrossed her legs and let them hang down the side of the car. “What do you know about that cheating asshole?”

“More than I had thought,” Eddie said. He looked toward the shrine, breathed deep. “But I'll get to that.”

She gave him a clenched smile and then a little rat-a-tat laugh. “I'm not following,” she said.

“Ralph V. Nicolaidis,” Eddie said, studying her face. Her cheek quivered. Eddie smiled. She was a superb actress, but not a perfect one. “He was the driver in the Solomon armored car holdup thirty years ago—the guard who escaped.”

“A history lesson?” She shrugged. “So what?”

Eddie sighed and rolled his eyes, a little overdramatic. “The heist was an
inside
job,” he said. “Jimmy Whistle planned the robbery with Ralph Nicolaidis—that's how the robbers were able to take the car to the middle of nowhere and open it without anybody radioing for help. The driver was in on it.”

She shrugged again. “It's an okay theory, I guess.”

“It's more than theory,” Eddie continued. “Jimmy brought in Henry to be the muscle, in case Dumas and Forte, the other two guards, put up a fight. I'm pretty sure that Henry didn't know that Nicolaidis was in on the heist—Nicolaidis probably acted like a hostage, letting Jimmy and Henry tie him up in the basement of the old farmhouse in Dunstable, where they held the guards after the robbery.”

“Henry's never mentioned that guy—Nicolaidis,” Bobbi said, stumbling over the pronunciation.

“Nick-oh-LAY-dis,” Eddie corrected, with a wink.

He said, “We may never know for sure, but I assume that Jimmy and Nicolaidis planned to kill Henry as soon as the heist was complete. Why split the dough with the rented muscle? But Henry proved smarter than Jimmy had figured. Maybe he suspected a double-cross. Maybe he was just being greedy. Whatever the reason, Henry hid the gold.”

“Your brother did
what?
” she said, gamely sticking to her script.

Eddie ignored her. He felt his excitement building.

“No honor among thieves, ay?” Eddie said, realizing instantly that he had slipped into the French-Canadian accent he had learned as a boy from his aunts. It snuck into his speech sometimes when his mind raced ahead of his mouth.

“Why are you telling me all this?”

After a deep breath to slow himself down, Eddie said: “When the cops were closing in, Nicolaidis faked an escape, hiked through the woods until he was suitably dirty and tired, and then rejoined society, passing himself off as a victim of the crime.”

Bobbi frowned. “Not a chance,” she said. “If this was true, then Jimmy Whistle knew the driver was in on it. Whistle never said a word about it at Hank's trial.”

Eddie rubbed his chin and thought it over some more.

“That bothered me for a while,” he admitted. “Then I rationalized it this way—Jimmy had already reduced his sentence by testifying against Henry. Giving up a third suspect wasn't going to help him.”

“There's no honor among thieves,” she reminded him, sharply.

“But there is practicality,” Eddie argued. “When I saw Whistle at his apartment, he told me he had arranged to have somebody look after his kid, Jimmy junior. I'd bet that Jimmy agreed to keep his mouth shut if Nicolaidis promised to keep an eye on junior—the only thing in the world that mattered much to Jimmy.”

Eddie thought about it a little more. “It could also be that Nicolaidis threatened to throw junior in the river if Whistle blabbed,” he said with a shrug. “Either way, Jimmy and Henry took the fall, and Nicolaidis got away with it.”

Bobbi fidgeted and then whined impatiently, “What does this have to do with Henry? How can we get him out of prison?”

“Ralph Nicolaidis went to the police academy,” Eddie said. “And became a police officer—a cop friend of mine checked the records tonight.”

“So?”

“So he worked his twenty-odd years, maybe grabbed a little cabbage off the poker table when he and his buddies busted an illegal game,” he said. “He probably shook down crack dealers for payoffs now and then. Before he knew it, thirty years had gone by, and James J. Whistle was getting out of jail.”

Eddie raised an eyebrow at Bobbi and said in a low voice, “Ralph and Jimmy wanted the gold, didn't they?”

She stared at him. “How would
I
know?”

“Six
million
dollars in gold, un-fucking-traceable after it's melted down,” Eddie said. He smiled, turned his palms up. “Problem was, the man who hid the gold is in the federal pen—unavailable for comment, as we say in the news business.”

“Henry has never said anything about gold.”

Eddie laughed. “That was the problem!” he shouted. “And that's where
you
came in.” He jabbed a pinkie in her direction. “You got to know Henry, molded yourself into the woman he wanted, and even married him—if only on paper—to get him to spill the location of the gold.”

Bobbi slid off the car and stood. Her jaw clenched, she seethed, saying: “I
don't
have to listen to this.”

Eddie reached behind his back and drew Jimmy Whistle's gun from his waistband. He leveled the weapon at Bobbi. “Yes,” he informed her, “you do.”

She leaned unsteadily against the car, lips parted but saying nothing, unable to look away from the weapon pointing to her face.

The gun was cold in Eddie's hand, and even heavier than he had remembered.

“You had studied Henry's case,” Eddie said. “You knew the evidence was circumstantial, except for the blood on his shoes. Get rid of the blood and the case would turn to vapors.”

Fright stirred in Bobbi's eyes.

“But you never wanted to get Henry out of prison,” Eddie said quietly. “You only wanted to give him
hope
. If you could convince Henry that he was just a few good attorneys from being free, then he'd want you to hire the best lawyers money could buy, ay?”

Again with that goddam accent!

Eddie continued, more slowly, “That kind of legal dream-team would cost a fortune. But if Henry
truly had hope
, wouldn't he tell his dear sweet wife where to find the gold?”

Eddie waited in silence.

Bobbi moved her lips to begin to speak, but nothing came out. Her eyes went from the gun, to Eddie's eyes, to the gun.

The weapon grew heavier. Eddie's throat dried out. He coughed and spat on the tar.

“What amazed me,” Eddie said after a minute, “is the patience the three of you showed in discrediting Dr. Crane—you, Ralph, and Jimmy Whistle.”

She smiled blandly—just muscles flexing under skin, nothing more. “You're crazy,” she sputtered.

Eddie had hoped Bobbi would have broken by now.

He would have to push harder to get a confession.

“You kidnapped Roger Lime,” he shouted at her. “Then you went to Lew Cuhna—Mr. Small Time Newspaper Editor. You bribed Cuhna, or you threatened him, or probably both, to create
mock newspapers
for Roger Lime to hold in the ransom photo. That first mock paper had to mention an event in the future that was sure to be in the headlines. The outdoor Shakespeare festival was perfect—it's an annual tradition. You had Cuhna print up a few different headlines, to cover yourselves in case the event got rained out or canceled, and then you photographed Lime holding each paper.”

Eddie felt sweat gathering on his brow. He kept watch on Bobbi, kept the gun pointed at her, and quickly swiped his forehead against his shoulder.

“That's why the headline was a little off—you couldn't have predicted a drunk driver would have driven into the stage set. The second paper was easy. Cuhna drew up another front page showing Roger Lime holding a story about
his own kidnapping
.

“Once you had the film you needed, one of you
killed
Roger Lime and burned his body beyond recognition.”

“No,” she said in a tiny voice.

Eddie rubbed his throat. “I'm guessing that Nicolaidis did the actual deed, though you're just as culpable.”

Tears gathered in her eyes. Was she acting again?

“Six months later, after the Shakespeare festival, Lew Cuhna completed the scam by designing his real newspaper
exactly like
the mockup,” Eddie said. “It's not hard. He probably used the same templates and simply typeset actual news copy in place of the dummy text. After the real paper was on the streets, you sent the cops the six-month-old picture of Roger Lime holding the mockup, and a bank president appeared to miraculously come back from the dead.”

“No, Eddie.”

“Everybody thought Dr. Crane had fucked up the dental identification of Lime's body. He was discredited. Nicolaidis silenced Crane with that phony suicide, and there was nobody left to vouch for the blood evidence against Henry.”

Bobbi looked around, as if waiting for help to arrive.

Why won't she just crack?

Eddie had no choice.

He had to push her some more.

“You were in on this, Bobbi, you had to be,” Eddie said, giving her a glum frown. “You were at my place when Lew Cuhna called with something important to tell me. That afternoon, Cuhna got whacked. And it was you who found my photo in Jimmy Whistle's apartment. The police didn't miss that picture—you brought it in your purse to make sure I stayed good and confused. When did you snap the photo? When you were preparing to scam me?”

She said nothing. Eddie screwed up his courage and flexed his hand around the gun. “My cop friend checked the marriage records, Bobbi,” he said. “The day before you married Henry Bourque, you got divorced from Ralph V. Nichols.”

Eddie had to guess at this next part, but he felt good about his chances: “How long will it take the police to figure out that Mr. Nichols long ago Americanized his name from Nicolaidis?”

A single tear ran down her left cheek. She whispered, “I don't know that man. Why are you saying these things? When will you let me go?”

Goddamit, she had called his bluff.

Eddie had to take the ruse to yet a higher level.

“I wish it didn't have to be this way,” Eddie said, blinking rapidly. “But you and Ralph Nicolaidis are the only other people who know the truth about Dr. Crane's death. I can't take the chance you'll tip the cops before Henry gets out of prison.”

Eddie spread his feet for balance, gripped the gun with both hands and stared down it at her.

Bobbi's eyes widened with a sudden revelation.

She blurted, “You're not going to
kill
me out here!”

“I said I would do anything to get my brother out of prison, and I meant it,” Eddie said. “You and Ralph Nicolaidis are killers. You deserve whatever you get—it's justice. Why shouldn't I get my brother back?”

She shrank against the car and slid to the pavement. Against the front tire, she huddled like a frightened animal. Softly, she said, “You need to put the gun away, Eddie. I'm your
family
.”

She's not going to break.

Bobbi wasn't buying Eddie Bourque as a vigilante killer. Eddie couldn't blame her. He wouldn't have bought it either—not yet.

“Put down the gun, Eddie!” a voice called out.

Eddie whirled.

Detective Orr, prompt as always, stood beside the shrine. She wore a Lowell police department sweatshirt, gray sweatpants, wet below the knees, and her gunbelt.

“I've been tailing you, Eddie,” she said, walking toward him, shooting a quick glance toward Bobbi. “When I saw your bike coming this way, I took the bridge to the boathouse, and then rode my windsurfer here. I came up the riverbank and hid behind the shrine. I heard everything.”