Bad Men (2003) (27 page)

He saw in her eyes not lust or need, not even curiosity, but merely the prospect of the temporary alleviation of her boredom with herself and her own desires. She took a last drag on the cigarette before she stubbed it out in the ashtray on the nightstand and pulled back the sheet, inviting him to join her. As he climbed into bed beside her, he heard the springs creaking beneath his weight, smelled the stale odor of smoke upon the pillows, felt her nails already raking five white trails along his thigh as her hand moved toward his sex.

He left her snoring, the china dolls watching him impassively as he slipped through the house, his shoes in his hands. He tugged them on as he sat on her porch steps, then called a cab from a pay phone and returned to the Old Port. On a bench by the Casco Bay Ferry Terminal he waited until light dawned, then walked down to Becky’s diner on Commercial and ate breakfast with the fishermen, working his way methodically through a plate of eggs and bacon, keeping his head down so that he would not catch the eye of any other diner. And when Thorson’s ferry drew toward the dock, carrying those who had jobs in the city, Joe Dupree was waiting for it, barely nodding at those who disembarked, until at last the boat was empty. He took a seat at the back of the ferry and when no further passengers appeared, Thorson started the engine and carried Joe Dupree away from Portland, the wind wiping the smell of perfume and booze and cigarettes from his clothes and hair, cleansing him of the proof of his sins.

Since then, he had not returned to the bars of the Old Port, and now drank little. He could see the surprise in the faces of the wait staff and in the smile of Dale Zimmer when he rose to greet the woman who now sat across from him. He didn’t care. It had taken him the best part of a year to work up the courage to ask her out. He liked her son. He liked her. Now she was saying something, but he was so lost in himself that he had to ask her to repeat it.

“I said, it’s hard to do anything in secret here. Seems like everyone knows your business before you do.”

He smiled. “I remember Dave Mahoney—he was heading on for seventy years of age, the old goat—got himself all worked up over a widow woman named Annie Jabar, who lived about half a mile down the road from him. Nothing had happened between them, nothing more than glances over the bingo table at the American Legion, I guess, or hands almost touching across the shelves at the market, but she was coming on to him, without a doubt. So one day Dave takes it into his head to do something about it. He puts on his best jacket and pants under his slicker, and heads out in the rain to walk down to Annie Jabar’s house. When he got there, she was waiting for him.”

He shook his head in amusement.

“Who?” asked Marianne. “The widow woman?”

“Nope. Dave’s wife. Don’t know how she did it, but she got there before he did. I figure she must have sprinted through the woods so that she’d be waiting for him, and she wasn’t much younger than Dave. She had a gun too, Dave’s varmint rifle. Dave took one look at her, turned around on his heel, and headed straight back home. Never again looked at the widow woman, or any other woman except his wife. She died a couple of years ago, and I heard tell that Annie Jabar might have hoped that she and Dave could get together now that his wife was gone, but far as I know he’s never gone next to near her since that day his wife confronted him and made him look down the barrel of his own rifle.”

“He loved her, then.”

“Loved her and was scared half to death of her. Maybe he figures she might still find a way to get back at him from the next world if he steps out of line, or maybe he just misses her more than he ever thought he would. I talk to him sometimes and I think he’s just waiting to join her. I think he realized how much she loved him when he saw that she was prepared to shoot him rather than let another woman take him, even at seventy years of age. Sometimes maybe you have to love someone an awful lot to be prepared to kill them.”

His attention was distracted momentarily by movement close to the door, so Dupree did not see the look that passed across Marianne’s face. Had he done so, their evening together might have come to an abrupt end, for he would have felt compelled to question her about it. Instead, he was watching a bulky man in a red-checked shirt, accompanied by his equally bulky wife, approaching the exit. As they left, the man gave Dupree a nod that was part acknowledgment, part dismissal. Marianne glanced over her shoulder, grateful for the distraction, and the man smiled at her before his wife gave him a sharp nudge in the ribs with her elbow that nearly propelled him through the door.

“Tom Jaffe,” said Dupree.

“His father runs the construction business, right?”

“That’s right. He’s near sixty-five himself now, but still won’t hand over the running of the business to Tom. Doesn’t trust him. Tom still believes he’s the Great White Hope. He was valedictorian the year I graduated from high school. Liked to think of himself as an orator.”

“How was his speech?”

“Terrible. It was basically an extended ‘Screw you’ to everybody he’d ever known. Somebody tried to run him over in the parking lot afterward.”

“Maybe it was just a misunderstanding.”

“Nope. I went around for a second try after I missed him. He could run, I’ll give him that.”

She laughed then, and for the first time, Dupree began to relax. The little restaurant filled up as the evening progressed, but there was never anybody left standing, waiting for a table. They talked about music and movies, and each spoke a little of the past, but not too much. In Joe’s case, his reticence was a result of embarrassment, shyness, and a feeling that his life on the island would seem somehow parochial and isolated to this woman with a soft southern accent, a young son, and a firsthand knowledge of places far from this one.

But the woman? Well, her reason for silence was different.

She spoke little of her past, because all that she could give him in return was lies.

They were on dessert when the restaurant door opened and Sally Owen entered. She was one of the bartenders at the Rudder, and had been for as long as Dupree could remember. Rumor was that, when she was younger, she once dragged a guy across the bar for not saying “please” after he’d ordered his drink. She was older now, and a little calmer, and contented herself with shooting dark looks at the ruder customers. Now she walked quickly up to their table and spoke to Joe.

“Joe, I’m real sorry to be disturbing you, but Lockwood is dealing with a possible burglary over on Kemps Road, and Barker is out with one of the fire trucks tending to a car fire.”

Dupree couldn’t hide his displeasure. He’d asked the cops on duty to try to give him a little space tonight, even if they were snowed under, which seemed unlikely at the start of the day. Still, it wasn’t their fault that cars were burning and houses were being burgled, although if they found the people responsible for either event, Joe Dupree was going to have some harsh words to say to the culprits.

“What is it, Sally?”

“Terry Scarfe is in the Rudder, and he’s not alone. He’s got Carl Lubey in there with him and they’re thick as thieves. Just thought you should know.”

Marianne watched Dupree’s expression darken. There was sorrow there too, she thought, a reminder of events that he had tried to forget. She knew the story of Carl Lubey’s brother. Everybody on the island knew it.

Ronnie Lubey had been a minor-league criminal, with convictions for possession with intent and aggravated burglary. On the night that he’d died, he had a cocktail of uppers and alcohol in his belly and was spoiling for a fight. He’d started shooting out the windows of his neighbor’s house, yelling about tree trunks and boundaries, and by the time Joe and Daniel Snowman, who had since retired, arrived out at the house, Ronnie was slumped against a tree trunk, mumbling to himself, puke on his shirt and pants and shoes.

When the two policemen pulled up, Ronnie looked at them, raised the shotgun, and shot wildly from the hip. Snowman went down, his left leg peppered with shot, and after an unheeded warning, Dupree opened fire. He aimed low, hitting Ronnie in the thigh, but the shot busted Ronnie’s femoral artery. Dupree had done his best for him, but his priority had been his partner. Snowman survived, Ronnie Lubey died, and his little brother, Carl, who also lived on the island, had never forgiven the big policeman.

Marianne didn’t know who Terry Scarfe was, but if he was keeping company with Carl Lubey, then he wasn’t anyone she wanted to know. During her first month on the island, Carl had tried to come on to her as she sat with Bonnie at the bar of the Rudder. When she’d turned down his offer of a drink, Carl called her every name he could think of, then tried to reach for her breast in the hope of copping a consolatory feel. She had pushed him away, and then Jeb Burris had climbed over the bar and hauled Carl outside. The young policeman Berman had been on duty that night. Marianne remembered that he had been kind to her and had warned Carl to stay away from her. Since then, she had endured only occasional contact with him when he came into the market. When she passed him on the street or saw him on the ferry, he contented himself with looking at her, his eyes fixed on her breasts or her crotch.

“I’d better go take a look,” Dupree said as Sally nodded a good-bye and returned to the bar. “You excuse me for a couple of minutes? I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

He rose and laid his hand gently on her shoulder as he passed by her. She brushed his fingers with her hand, and felt his grip linger for a moment before he left her.

Dupree walked down Island Avenue and made a right. Straight downhill on the left was the island’s ferry terminal and across from it was the Rudder Bar. It had an open deck at its rear, which filled up with tourists during the summer but was empty now that winter had come. Inside, he could see lights and a half dozen people drinking and playing pool.

He entered the bar and saw Scarfe and Lubey immediately. They were sitting at the bar, leaning into each other. Lubey raised his glass as Sally came out from the small kitchen behind the bar.

“Hey, Sal, you got any shots that taste like pussy?”

“I wouldn’t know what pussy tastes like,” said Sally, glancing at Dupree as he drew closer.

Lubey lifted a finger and extended it to her.

“Then lick here,” he said, and the two men collapsed into laughter.

“How you doing, boys?” said Dupree.

The two men turned in unison to look at him.

“We’re not your boys,” said Lubey. His eyes were dull. He swayed slightly as he tried to keep Dupree in focus.

“It’s the Jolly Green Giant,” said Scarfe. “What’s wrong, Mr. Giant? You don’t look so jolly no more.”

“We don’t usually see you over here, Terry. Last I heard, you were doing three to five.”

“I got paroled. Good behavior.”

“I don’t think your behavior is so good tonight.”

“What’s your problem,
Off-fis-sur
?” said Lubey. “I’m having a drink with my buddy. We ain’t bothering nobody.”

“I think you’ve had enough.”

“What are you going to do?” asked Lubey. “Shoot me?”

Dupree looked at him. Lubey held the gaze for as long as he could, then glanced away, a dumb smile playing on his lips. Dupree returned his attention to Scarfe.

“I want you off the island, Terry. Thorson has a crossing in ten minutes. You be on that ferry.”

Scarfe looked at Lubey, shrugged, then slid from his stool and picked up his jacket.

“The Green Giant wants me off the island, Carl, so I got to go. I’ll be seeing you.”

“Yeah, be seeing you, Terry. Fight the power.”

Dupree stepped back and watched as Scarfe headed unsteadily for the door, then turned back to Lubey.

“You drive here?” he asked.

Lubey didn’t reply.

“I asked you a question, Carl.”

“Yeah, I drove,” said Lubey at last.

“Give me your keys.”

The other man dug into his pockets and found his car keys. As Dupree reached out for them, Lubey dropped them to the floor.

“Whoops,” he said.

“Pick them up.”

He climbed from the stool, bent down gingerly, then toppled over. Dupree helped him to his feet, picking up the keys as he did so. Once he was upright again, Lubey shrugged off the policeman’s hand.

“Get your hands off me.”

“You want me to put you in cuffs, I will. We can get a boat over here and you can spend the night in a cell.”

Lubey reached for his coat.

“I’m going,” he said.

“You can pick up your keys from the station house in the morning.”

Lubey waved a hand in dismissal and headed for the door. Behind the bar, Jeb Burris took off his apron and said: “I’ll give him a ride back.”

Dupree nodded and gave him Lubey’s car keys.

“Yeah, do that.”

Back outside, he watched as Terry Scarfe and two other people, tourists who’d been eating at the restaurant, climbed onboard Thorson’s ferry and headed back to Portland.

Scarfe kept looking back at the island, and Dupree, until the ferry faded from view.

Marianne had enjoyed a couple of glasses of wine at dinner, Dupree a single beer. He offered to drive her back to her house and said he would arrange to have her car dropped at her door before eight the next morning. She sat in the passenger seat of Dupree’s own Jeep and stared in silence through the side window. Dupree wanted to believe that it was a comfortable silence, but he sensed her sadness as he drove.

“You okay?”

She nodded, but her mouth wrinkled and he could see that she was near tears.

“It’s been a long time, you know?”

He didn’t, and he felt foolish for not knowing.

“Since what?”

“Since I had a nice evening with a man. I’d kind of forgotten what it was like.”

He coughed to hide his embarrassment and his secret pleasure.

“You always cry at the end of a nice evening?”

She smiled and wiped at the tears with the tips of her fingers.

“Hell, I must have snail trails running down my face.”

“No, you look good.”