The Evil That Men Do

Synopsis:

Even generations later, you can't escape. . . the evil that men do.

Stripped of his private investigator’s license and slumming it as a night security guard at a Jersey storage facility, Jackson Donne thinks he’s finally hit rock bottom. Then the bottom really falls out: The sister he hasn’t seen in years shows up, needing help.

Turns out Donne’s Alzheimer’s-stricken mother has begun hinting at long-buried family secrets from her hospital bed, suggesting a sinister — even murderous — past. Meanwhile, Donne’s relatives are suddenly being greeted by blackmail, car bombs, and bullets to the back of the skull.

All Donne wants is to disappear — preferably into a nice frosty pint glass — but he soon realizes that his only chance at saving his family, and himself, is by solving a mystery more than sixty years old. Now he needs to figure out how a hit man, crooked cops, corrupt politics, a kidnapping, and the city of Bayonne all fit together. He’ll discover that old family secrets still have the power to kill in this razor-sharp PI story that makes classic noir new again.

To my grandparents,
Mimi, Martin, Harriet, and Paul

The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones.

—William Shakespeare,
Julius Caesar

1938

Joe Tenant tied the barge to the dock. The water licked its sides, and the boat swayed back and forth. The chill of the morning air made him shiver, and he wished for the sun to rise a little faster. He pulled the knot tight, made sure it was secure, and stepped onto the wooden planks.

A few men sorted through their lunch boxes, looking for a quick breakfast before starting the day shift. Tenant always thought that odd, because, as long as he’d worked the night shift, the morning had always signaled dinner to him. Working nights was difficult, adjusting to the schedule, keeping a wife happy, but Tenant enjoyed the silence.

“Hey, Tugboat, how’s the water today?” one of the daymen asked. “They’re transferring me to nights next week, so I want to enjoy it while I can.”

Tenant smiled at his nickname. He hadn’t liked it at first, thought the men were mocking him, but he’d soon learned that everybody had a nickname on the water.

“How are you, Sops? Water’s kind of rocky, might be a storm later in the day.”

“Fantastic,” Sops said.

Tenant wished them a good day and headed toward the parking lot. The warehouses that surrounded the lot expelled smoke and steam, doing their best to spur the economy. The air smelled like fish and soot, and Tenant would be happy just to get home.

He reached his car and was reminded how lucky he was. In these days, it was good fate to have a car when hardly anyone did. Meanwhile those guys down in Clifton were trying to build that dog park, and doing whatever the hell else FDR wanted them to do. And all that shit out in Europe, he was living a blessed life.

He unlocked the door and got in. And as he sat down, he realized he’d left his lunch box on the barge. He sighed, got out of the car, and started the trek back to the boat. The water slapped against the dock, and it wobbled a bit. He knelt down and reached for his lunch box.

“We warned you.”

The voice was loud, rising over the water. Tenant looked to his left toward the source of the sound. About thirty feet away, two men slouched along the shore, staring downward. A thin stream of light reflecting off the river illuminated them. The light came from a docking boat farther down the river.

Tenant could tell the men were out of view to anyone in the parking lot. He’d gone down to the shoreline to fish out his shoe when a coworker played a joke on him. He knew you could be seen only from the dock he stood on.

“No, please.” Another voice. “It was only business.”

Between the two men, a hand rose out of the water, as if the person needed help standing. One of the men slapped the hand away.

“Don’t worry, Maxwell. This is only business too.”

The second man raised his arm over his head. In the light Tenant saw a thick shape, probably a blackjack. The man swung it downward, and it landed with a sickening thump. Water splashed around his arm. The man repeated the move three more times.

Tenant should have just turned and run away, but his muscles wouldn’t move. His eyes wouldn’t look away.

The other man kicked at the body in the water until the current took it. He turned his head to watch it float away, and his pale face faced Tenant, his features caught momentarily in the thin light off the river. Joe Tenant tried to memorize them. The reddish hair, freckles, the crooked smile.

If the man saw Tenant, he didn’t react. He just turned back toward land and walked off.

Tenant peered over the edge of the dock. Dark waves ebbed and flowed, and the water was deep enough here that he couldn’t see the bottom. The dock rocked again, hard enough that Tenant had to brace himself. He crossed to the other edge and peered over.

At first he didn’t notice it, he looked too far left. But once the dock rocked one more time, he looked to the right. Bile rose in his throat.

Facedown in the water, the body of a man in a pin-striped suit bobbed in the current, sleeve caught against the pier.

Tenant closed his eyes and swore.

Maybe he wasn’t as lucky as he thought.

JACKSON DONNE HADN’T TALKED TO HIS SISTER IN
years. So when Susan buzzed his apartment, he wasn’t really expecting it.

“You closed your office,” she said as she entered.

“Court ordered.”

She didn’t respond, save for brushing a strand of her short auburn hair over her ear. Susan had cut her hair since the last time he’d seen her and it was boyish in style, though thick and brushed back. It didn’t fit her.

“How are you, Jackson?” she asked.

“Why are you here?”

She stalked past Donne and sat on the couch. Dropping her purse on his coffee table, she said, “No small talk?”

He didn’t respond.

“It’s Mom,” Susan continued. “She’s sick, real sick. She doesn’t have much time left.”

He couldn’t help asking, “What’s wrong?”

“Alzheimer’s, dementia. We put her in a nursing home last year, now she’s in a hospice.”

“Why didn’t you call me?”

“Would you have come help?”

It was a good point. He had separated himself from his family, just as his father had. Unlike his father, however, Donne had good reasons. At least he thought so.

“There’s a reason I’m coming to see you now. Mom, she’s been talking about stuff I never knew about. I’m not sure if it’s rambling truths or she’s making things up, but I need your help. You’re a detective.”

“Not anymore,” he said.

“Whatever,” she said. “I want your help.”

“To do what? You want me to sit by her, read her stories, talk to her?” He shook his head. “I’m busy, Susan. Not going to do it.”

“Come on, Jackson. You know how much we mean to her. She had us so late in her life. Please, she should have been in menopause and she was having kids. We should both be there for her.”

Donne shook his head.

“Damn it, Jackson. It’s time to grow up. Be a son. Be a brother. What else are you doing with your life?”

“I’m starting school at Rutgers in the fall. I’m working.”

“I want you to find out about Mom’s dad. She’s been talking about him.”

“What does it matter?”

She grabbed her purse and moved toward the door. Finally.

“Peace of mind,” she said as she turned the knob. “Doesn’t that matter?”

“What kind of purse is that?” he asked. “Coach, one of those expensive kinds?”

She looked at the purse, then at Donne, confused.

“Franklin buy that for you? Drop a couple hundred on you to keep you happy?”

Her face turned red, and she took a deep breath before speaking. “Think about it, Jackson. You need to see her again before she dies. Peace of mind. I don’t think you’ve ever had it. Not with Jeanne, not with me, not with Mom. Hell, not even with Dad, and you were, what, eight when he left? Maybe you could use a little closure. Help us out.”

“No.”

“Please, Jackson. She said that our grandfather murdered someone. It’s all she’s been talking about. I need to know if it’s true.”

She pulled the door open and stepped into the hallway.

He never should have allowed her up.

Donne worked nighttime security at a storage facility in Piscataway. It was a great job. He got in about eleven and off at seven. No one bothered him, and he could come in a little buzzed after a few drinks at the Olde Towne Tavern. He could even catch a little West Coast baseball on satellite radio or take a nap.

Which was what he was doing when Franklin Carter approached him. “Wake up, asshole,” he said, banging a fist on the desk.

Jackson sat forward, his eyes shot open, and he stifled a yawn.

Carter looked like he’d just come from work, dressed in a pin-striped suit, pale blue shirt, and striped tie. Even his loafers were polished. His dark hair was combed back, his mustache neatly trimmed.

“What do you want, Franklin?” Donne asked. His tongue tasted like leather.

“Your sister came to you for help and you turned her down.”

“Yes, I did.”

“Why?”

“You know why.”

The silence hung in the room. Behind Carter, through the swinging glass door, headlights passed. It had to be earlier than Donne thought for there to be that much traffic.

“I want you to help her,” Carter said. “She came home the other day in tears. She had just been with your mother, watching her fade away. She said she went to see you and you two argued. You’re hurting her. I won’t have that.”

Donne shrugged. “It’s not my problem.”

Franklin Carter slammed his fists on the desk again and leaned in so close Donne smelled his breath. “It is your problem! This is about your mother and your sister. Don’t you have any sense of family?”

Donne thought about Jeanne. About what he knew about her now.

“No,” he said.

Carter stood back up and reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a pen and checkbook.

“What’s it going to take?” he asked.

“I don’t do investigative work anymore.”

He took a deep breath, then said, “Everyone has a price.”

Donne sat back in his chair and closed his eyes. He didn’t have any college scholarships coming in. He hadn’t been paid a salary in a long while. The storage facility was an hourly wage and it wasn’t much more than rent and drinking money.

“You always were a rich prick,” Donne said. “Even in high school. I couldn’t stand you. I never understood why our parents were friends.”

“What’s the price?” Carter said, his voice unbearably confident.

Donne gave his brother-in-law a price. Carter scribbled out a check.

When Carter came through the door, his tie was loosened and his hair was out of place. Susan got off the couch and wrapped her arms around him.

“How was work?”

He pressed his hand against the small of her back and pulled her close. Susan smelled the faint remains of his sweet cologne.

Carter didn’t answer her question, so she moved her head away from his neck and looked at him.

“Work?” she asked, nudging his shoulder with her chin. “You know, meals, plates, table settings, schmoozing with customers on the Upper East Side? Or at the very least in Montclair? I asked you a question.”

Carter leaned in and kissed her.

“Jackson’s going to help.”

“You’re kidding. He told me he didn’t want to see Mom. He seemed pretty adamant.”

Carter shrugged. “He’s going to help.”

“Thank you.”

He smiled and kissed her again. “Anything for you, babe.”

BUSINESS AT THE OLDE TOWNE TAVERN HAD BEEN
booming in the last few months. Donne didn’t know what it was. Even with school out, people would pack the place on weekend nights to the point where you couldn’t sit at the bar and couldn’t move your elbows when you stood. On weeknights, you had to get there before seven to get a table. Maybe the new chef Artie hired had stopped overcooking the burgers.

Or maybe Artie had finally cleaned the taps.

Either way, Donne made sure he was there at six P.M. on the dot, Molson in front of him, a grilled chicken sandwich on the way. He placed his cell phone on the bar next to his pint glass. It wasn’t until Artie approached him that Donne realized he was staring at the phone.

“Waiting for a call?” he asked.

Looking up, Donne said, “No, deciding whether or not to make one.”