The Last Whisper in the Dark: A Novel (23 page)

He still held my hand firmly in the center of the table. I supposed we were well beyond the point of using first names. But he waited for me to respond. His handsome face was filled with the question.

“Sure,” I said.

“Thank you. And I am Walton.”

“All right, Walton.”

“Why not?”tp">The rain whipped against the glass like it wanted at us. Endicott took his time formulating his next thought. It clearly meant a great deal to him. He looked at me deeply. A lot of people had gone deep
within me, seeking out answers, responses, truth, love, even hate. But nobody had gone quite as deep as this, in this way.

Number eight. The expression on the face of the beautiful man who is holding your hand.

“Do you know what the downfall of society is due to primarily, Terrier?”

It seemed a big jump from what we’d been talking about, but maybe my perspective was skewed. Endicott tightened his grip just a hint. Twenty minutes ago I would’ve laughed at the question. But twenty minutes ago wasn’t now.

I took the question seriously. I set my soul against it.

“The dissolution of the nuclear family?” I said.

His eyes flared with joy. “Oh, very good. That’s most certainly a part of it. I’m glad you took the question seriously. Some men I talk to, they don’t think it’s worth answering. But you, you had, in fact, an answer already prepared, because you dwell on these types of matters too. Because these issues, they have significance. They’re not merely rhetoric. They hold weight for us and have meaning. These beliefs give us purpose.”

My family included killers of children and women. Our dissolution had begun long before I was born.

“We’re getting off point.”

“No, Terrier, we’re not,” he said, and finally he released my hand. I’d been so overtaken by his odd vehemence that I was almost upset when he broke contact. I drew my hand back and rubbed it. The waitress appeared again. Endicott ordered tiramisu for dessert and asked if I wanted anything. She mentioned the cheesecake was yummy. I shook my head.

Endicott flashed teeth too perfect to be real. They didn’t look like crowns or bridges, but a full set of dentures. I suspected he changed his teeth as a way of accessorizing. Not only couldn’t he be identified
by them, but certain teeth might be betterI said it agai

The storm roared on. The bay crested the canals.
I had trouble seeing and crawled through flooded roads and highways. Headlights splintered in the burning white raindrops. I kept looking at the hand that Endicott had held as if it had betrayed me. I rubbed my fingers as if my circulation the only one I had leftedor had gone bad.

Washed-out cars lined the Sagtikos Parkway down to the Southern State as I headed to Wes’s place. I jockeyed around them like they were traffic cones without slowing. The Challenger handled the desperate conditions perfectly. I kept pushing the pedal. Small whitecaps crossed three lanes and washed into the woods bordering the parkway. The wind reared. I turned the radio on and spun the volume until the speakers were pulsing.

I pulled up outside of Wes’s house as the storm reached its peak. The rain slammed down so hard that there was no way to even reach his front door. The waves burst over the pylons and swept across his lawn.

I made a dash for his door. The water was mid-calf deep. We could’ve talked on the phone but I felt the need to speak to him directly when discussing Walton Endicott. I slid on the walk and nearly went down. There was a very good chance that if I fell I’d skid right into the bay.

Em opened the front door as I hit the first stair of the stoop. She asked, “Are you all right, Terry?”

“Yeah.”

“Who were you talking to?”

“I wasn’t talking to anybody.”

“I thought I heard your voice.”

“How could you hear anything over this storm?” I asked.

“You were really loud.”

“It was the wind. Or that creaking dock. It sounds like a crying woman.”

“No, it was you—”

I was dripping on the floor. Wes stepped out of the bathroom with three fluffy fancy guest towels. I knew I was breaking social convention again. You never use the nice fluffy fancy guest towels. My mother would have a fit if any of us ever tried. I was hesitant to take them at first as Wes thrust them at me. They were pink. I did my best to wipe myself down.

He said, “You look half-past dead. You starting to pick up on the fact that you’re taking too many risks?”

“What else am I going to do? Work on my stamp collection?”

Em asked, “Coffee or hot chocolate?”

“Hot chocolate, baby,” Wes answered.

“Mini marshmallows?”

Wes looked at her like it was an insane question. “Of course.”

I folded one of the towels up and laid it on the leather couch and sat on it so I wouldn’t ruin the furniture. Wes sat across from me. I realized just how much I’d come to rely on him for friendship, guidance, advice, loyalty, all the things that he was supposed to be giving the Thompson syndicate boss.

“I met Endicott,” I told him.

Wes flung his arms up. “Jesus, I told you to stay away from that psycho. You met him? Really met him, face-to-face? Or met him, like you crept around behind him from a very safe distance?”

“We sat together at Hilliker’s. He held my hand.”

“Held your …? What do you mean?”

“I mean he held my hand.”

Wes couldn’t get his head around it. “Like … like …”

“Yeah.”

“Like couples do? Romantic couples do?”

“Yeah.”

“Wait.” Wes made a stop motion. “He held your hand in the restaurant?”

“Yeah.”

Wes drew his chin in. He looked over his shoulder for Em so he could share his disbelief, but she wasn’t there. “Why the fuck did he hold your hand?”

“I don’t really know. I think he likes me.”

“He likes you?”

“I think so.”

“He’s a mechanic. A total machine. He doesn’t like anybody.”

“And you were wrong. He talks. He talks plenty.”

“You talked to him and held his hand?”

“I didn’t think I had much choice in the matter.”

“Fuck no, you didn’t, not if it’s what he wanted. Why did you go after him? I told you to let it go.”

“I couldn’t. Kimmy asked me to save Chub. I promised her I would. I promised her.”

“You shouldn’t have,” Wes said.

Em entered with the cocoa and a dish of cookies on a tray. She put it down in front of me. She sat beside me and handed me a cup and helped me to raise it to my mouth to take a sip. I hadn’t realized I was trembling so badly from the cold.

I leaned forward over the table in case I spilled. She took one of the towels and dried my hair with it. Then she combed through my curls with her fingernails to make me presentable again.

She put a hand to my back and rubbed in semicircles, shushing me gently. “It’s okay, Terry. It’s all right. You’re fine now.”

I sipped and began to loosen.

“You’re safe now,” she said.

“I know.”

“He put the shits up you,” Wes said.

“I guess he did,” I admitted. “Not so much at the time, at the table, but the more I think of the guy, the more weirded out I feel.”

“You’ve never met anyone like that before. A real iceman.”

I shook my head. “It wasn’t that. Well, maybe it was that, but it was more. It’s how accessible he was. Just sitting there having dinner. Unimposing. More than that. He—”

“What?”

“He makes you want to like him.”

“That’s bad, Terry. That’s really bad.”

“I know.”

“But you knew,” Em said. “You knew all the while he could kill you whenever he wanted. And there was nothing you could do about it.”

“Yes.”

I drank my cocoa. There were a ton of tiny marshmallows. She’d overloaded the cup the way my mother used to when I was a kid.

“And what did he say when you asked him not to kill Chub?” Wes asked. this many times beforeit himself

“We discussed the downfall of society.”

“Uh-huh,” Wes said. “That’s what you talked about?”

“Among other things.”

“You’d rather take fifty goombahs on than a nut like that.”

“You’re right,” I admitted.

“How did it leave off?”

“He gave me his phone number. He asked me to call him anytime. He hopes we meet again under more pleasant circumstances.”

It got a bark of incredulous laughter from Wes. “Like what? Going to the fucking circus? Taking a Caribbean cruise? You guys going to take in a ball game? For the love of Christ stay away from him.”

“I intend to.”

Wes went to the kitchen, came back with a bottle of Dewar’s, and poured a little into both of our cups.

“He’s not the only hitter out there, Terry. It’s getting sort of crazy. The feds are flipping out chasing their own tails, all the snitches are ratting each other out hoping to turn up something on the crew, and the cops are running everybody ragged.”

“Anybody got anything on them yet?”

“Feds got their names. It was only a matter of time before the dead driver led the feebs back to accomplices.”

It was bound to happen. “Do you remember what they are?”

“I didn’t recognize any of them. Driver was McCann. The three others were … Dunbar, Edwardson, and Wagstaff. No records. They’re old school, been off the grid their whole careers.”

“Off the grid and out of prison. They’ve never been nabbed.”

“No. They’re that good. Like you.”

“Not like me.”

I’d spent overnight in lockup. I’d been fingerprinted. I had a jacket. These guys, though, they were ghosts.

“Do the feebs know Chub was involved in any way?”

“Not that I’ve heard. But who knows with those tricky sonsabitches?”

“Right.”

We stared at each other and I could almost hear him saying what he’d told me the other day, that if I just let things go their natural way Kimmy could be mine again. It was my worst secret thought that wasn’t a secret at all. The underneath wanted to draw me down to that dark happiness, and I didn’t even have to do anything but stop fighting and just go with it. I could lie back and achieve my own awful ends.

I looked around at the framed photos propped on the tables and
hanging on the walls. Em continued to rub my back with careless strokes. I spotted Wes and Em together in various poses, in gardens, standing before ruins, on beaches. They’d done a lot in the last two months, gone to a lot of different places. They had a habit of making funny faces at the camera. Em grinning a touch wackily, or her lips pursed, kissy kissy, tilting her head. Wes wearing shades in a lot of the pictures, guffawing. It was a touch too cute, but they had a right to be annoyingly adorable. As much of a right as anybody.

I said, “I’ve He saw the look on my face h M been so wrapped up in my own action I never asked how the two of you met.”

Em checked Wes, a little bemused, silently asking permission to tell the tale. Her hand withdrew and she reached for her cigarettes. She snatched one from the pack but didn’t light it. I thought she must do it out of habit, the same as Haggert with his cigar. Wes appeared uncomfortable. Em turned to me. She found a wild curl on my head and flipped it back into place with her fingers. “They sent him to break my legs.”

“Not exactly,” Wes said. “More like fracture. Hairline fracture.”

“Can you believe it?” she asked. “A thug like him? Beating up a sweet little thing like me?”

“I’m an imposing figure,” Wes said. “Not a thug. Not anymore. I’ve been promoted. Besides, I wouldn’t have actually had to smack you around much. That’s the whole point of sending someone like me in the first place.” He sipped and added more whiskey. He met my eyes. “She has a bit of a gambling problem.”

“I’m a junkie,” she said. There was no shame in her voice. “Used to work as a dealer on the gambling boat off Orient Point. They’d sail into international waters and we’d do sixteen-hour tours at a time.”

“And the Thompson family takes its slice,” I said.

The cigarette Em hadn’t lit hissed. The tip was ember red. I looked more closely. It wasn’t a cigarette at all. It was one of those fake
mechanical smokes where the tip lights up and it makes a sound just like you were taking in a draw. It even released a puff of white vapor that had a flavored smell to it. This one was minty.

“You ever go on one, Terry? A gambling cruise?”

“No,” I said. “My uncles used to hit them on occasion and pick up some pocket change. But being trapped out at sea scared them too much to make any big plays.”

“Big Dan practically started that run,” Wes said.

“And you were skimming, Em?” I asked.

She held her fingers up about a half inch apart. “Just a pinch.” Her smile dropped. She sucked at the faux cigarette again, and the thing hissed, the smoke poofed. “At first. Then a bit more. And a little more. I couldn’t stop. And it wasn’t just about the money.”

“It was the excitement of getting away with it.”

“Yes. I’m in recovery now, but—” With a wag her golden tousled hair swayed and framed her face. “You know all about that.”

“I don’t get too excited about stealing. Not like it’s fun. It’s just what I do. But if I don’t do it for a while I feel an edge coming on.”

“You don’t get juiced?” she asked. “Not even a little?”

“Maybe a little,” I said.

“Well, that’s all it takes for some of us.” Her eyes swirled with need. Just talking about it was getting her back in the mood for risk, for the bad dare. “For me it’s all about pushing the limit. My limit, their limit, any limit. I nudge and prod, and I keep right on pushing until I crash. There’s no other way for it to end. I’m hardwired to it, even in small ways. LikeIt took me aplas … I hardly ever fill the car with gas. I love watching the needle pointing toward E. I get a buzz when the ‘low fuel’ gauge light goes on. Because it’s then that I realize
I’m there
, pressing my luck. Every gas station I pass I think, Can I make it just another half mile farther down the road? Can I winbility in ours

It took over an hour to get across town. Most of
the traffic lights were out or blinking yellow. Emergency crews were set up in camps on roadsides, waiting until the winds died down before climbing up into the tree line. I kept the pedal down halfway, gliding like a street shark through the dark waters, knowing that if any car could make it through the storm it would be one that Chub had worked on.