Black Tide (23 page)

Somehow we ended up down by the harbor, at Walker's Park, a place famous in Porter for its flowers, landscaping and theater shows during the summer, and this evening was no exception. Families and lovers and friends were on blankets among the trees of the park, watching some Broadway show on a stage in the middle of the grass lawn. I spared it a quick glance as we walked by, and then Felix and I were on a wooden pier extending out to the waters of Porter Harbor. Before us were the lights of the Porter Naval Shipyard. Off to our left was the Memorial Bridge, a drawbridge going into Kittery, Maine, and the smell of the water and the fuel oil and the sharp memories proved too much. I knelt down by the pier and threw up into the harbor.

I got up after long minutes, rubbing my face with my handkerchief, feeling salt tears run down my cheeks. Off in the distance the sirens had finally started.

Felix said, "Did you see anybody you knew at the restaurant?"

"What?"

His voice was insistent. "Did you see anybody there who recognized you, who knows Lewis Cole of Tyler?"

"No, nobody at all."

"Good. By the time the cops get there, our dishes will be in the kitchen and probably will be washed. No prints. The reservations were in a fake name, and the hostess doesn't know you or me at all."

"Felix ---"

He said, "We can't go to the cops, Lewis. I want to get that out first and straight. There's no way you and I want to be connected with what happened back there."

I was clenching my fists and twisting the handkerchief. "Considering this little meet went off with the good humor and grace of a lynching, I can see why you're not proud, Felix."

Felix leaned on a pier railing, grabbing it with both hands, shaking his head. "Christ, what went wrong, what went wrong…" '

'A lot of things went wrong," I said sharply, balling up my handkerchief and shoving it back into my pants. "Where should I begin? Like you saying this was going to be quiet and diplomatic? Well, sometimes you know shit, Felix, and thanks a lot for taking me along for the lesson."

He kept shaking his head. "Tony Russo. Someone just whacked out Tony Russo. Man, that takes so much balls ---"

"Stop it!" I nearly yelled, conscious that we were near a family park that had a lot of cops working in it tonight. "Will you for once in your life start speaking in English, and leave that damn slang back in Boston?"

Felix turned, glaring. "English? You want English, Lewis? Okay, here it is. Straight English. Someone just murdered Tony Russo tonight, murdered him in a public way, in a goddamn it restaurant parking lot. You and me were his guests. Word will be getting back to Boston pretty quick that Felix Tinios was with Tony Russo when he got killed. You think his friends in Boston aren't going to believe that I was involved, that I knew the shooter, that I set the whole thing up? And how long before his friends start coming up here, looking for me and looking for you for good measure?"

There was some laughter coming from the people in the park, people sitting in lawn chairs and on blankets, sipping wine or cola, eating from picnic dinners. It seemed too peaceful to be true.

"No danger, you said," I pointed out to him. "Remember that day, the day they found the diver and you tried to get me to help you out? You said no danger. You were going to be the lightning rod, I was just going to be an adviser. No problem. Just lies, right, Felix? Jesus, you couldn't even tell me something straight about your cousin."

His voice was dull. "What do you want to know?"

"Why in hell he got picked as a message would be a good start. "

He shook his head and said in a sharp tone, "My cousin Sal is from Boston. He was up for a week, wanted to get away from the big city. Slept on my couch. Did some drinking and screwing and he was into diving, so he did that, too. Then one day he was gone. I didn't think much about it. Sal wasn't one for making big departure scenes. Even when the body came ashore, I didn't put it together, until his mother started calling me, saying he never came back home, and I got that call this morning."

More laughter came from the park. It seemed like a foreign sound. "Felix. Your own cousin? You knew that the diver --- God, the diver I hauled in to shore --- was your own cousin, and you still came here tonight? All that stuff about family and honor --- I'd think the first thing on your agenda would involve firearms, not the paintings. Why didn't you give up the paintings after your cousin was killed?"

His hands still gripped the wooden railing of the pier. "There's a time and place for everything. Those paintings are one matter, and my cousin Sal is another. Tony and his friends probably thought that by taking care of Sal they would impress me and scare me into giving everything up without a price. It didn't work. I just agreed to talk, that's all. Sal is personal, and one of these days I'll take care of it. But the paintings are business."

I was walking in a tight circle on the pier, trying to work off the nervous energy, the artificial high that had come from all of the chemicals being dumped into my bloodstream at the sights and sounds of Tony Russo being shot. "Oh, that sounds so nice and logical, Felix. So continue with your logic. What in hell just happened here tonight? We were meeting with Tony Russo, trying to work out a deal to get the safe house to him, and someone else jumps into the picture with a pistol and silencer. Who the hell was that? Competition? Or the buyer trying to cut Tony out of the deal?"

He bent his head for a moment, as if he was checking on the condition of his shoes. "Probably the buyer. Tony's job was to get me on board, and now that Tony's job was done, he was killed. No percentage for him. Now it's just me and the buyer."

Felix stood up, rubbing his face with both hands. "Or maybe it was someone trying to move in on Tony, who found out about the paintings and wanted to take the matter away from him."

I took another deep breath, trying to control the trembling in my chest. "Don't be so fancy, Felix. The man was set up by the buyer. Tony came with the buyer and when we got out to the car, the buyer was gone and the shooter was waiting for him."

Felix looked over at me. "Remember the old story about the farmer and the mule? Before he went to work, the farmer got the mule's attention by hitting him over the head with a two-by-four. The same has just happened to me. Remember, the shooter said he’d be in touch. This isn't over, Lewis. There's still work to be done.”

Another siren wailed away in Porter, and I felt sorry for the cops and detectives and reporters whose Saturday night had just been ruined. "Maybe so, but you're going to be doing it alone for a while, Felix."

He turned and looked at me sharply. "What do you mean by that?”

I held up a hand and started walking off the pier. "I mean this has gotten too weird and too complex. I'm taking a break."

Felix said, his voice straining with disbelief, "What do you mean, you're taking a break?"

I turned. "Just what I said. Some time off, Felix. You're dealing with familiar territory. I'm not. And 1 need to catch my breath.”

So I walked off the pier, half expecting Felix to come after me  or to stand there and yell Italian curses my way, but it didn't happen. I gave him one more glance and I saw him standing at the end of the pier, hunched over as in concentration or despair, looking out into the rolling waters of the Piscassic River and Porter Harbor. There was a twinge of sorrow there, and maybe a bit of regret. Felix looked quite alone, with some very bad things out there for him. I almost walked back.

But I thought again of Tony Russo, slumped against his car, the spray of blood like a red-brown peacock's tail on the car's windows, and I thought of how dark and huge the silencer looked as it stared at my skull, and I kept on walking.

Just a break. Honest.

I got home about a half hour later and got a bad case of the shakes once the locked door closed behind me. I took a long shower, letting the hot water race across the sweat and stench of fear on my body, and it took a great effort of will to leave that glass-and-tile cocoon. When I got dressed I went back downstairs and disconnected the phone, and then made a quick survey of my weapons. Not that I expected anything untoward to happen within the next several hours, but it was comforting, even for a small moment, to have the weapons within easy reach, and I was taking any moment I could get.

After unlocking the sliding-glass door to the deck I went outside and breathed deeply of the night air. I looked up at the stars. In less than two weeks the mighty Perseids would start, three or four nights of great meteor showers, with meteorite trails racing almost halfway across the sky. It was something I had never seen before, because of the weather or the lack of a great night sky where I lived before, back in Virginia. But it would be different in two weeks' time.

On this night, before me was the great constellation of Pegasus, the winged horse, rising up into the dark sky. Within Pegasus are four stars that form a rectangle, and as I gazed up at them I named them in sequence with a whisper, ''Alpheratz, Scheat, Algenib, Markab." Four stars, named by Arab astronomers centuries ago, during the Dark Ages of Europe, when Arabs were known for their culture and their learning, and before they were defamed as being nothing more than ignorant car bombers and oil drillers.

Usually the stars give me a sense of peace, of belonging, but in looking up at those lights on this evening, so soon after seeing Tony Russo snuffed out, the stars weren't working. I felt no peace.

I went back inside and reconnected the phone and dialed a number from memory, and when she answered, I said, "I need to see you tomorrow."

There was a pause, and then she said yes.

On a late Sunday afternoon the sun was beginning to sink beyond the marshes and low buildings of Tyler Beach, and I leaned back against the gunwale as Diane Woods maneuvered her sailboat, the
Miranda
, to catch the breeze. The boom snapped back and the wind filled out the mainsail, and we were off, heading to the west, back to the safety of Tyler Harbor. It had been a long and good day, leaving Tyler Harbor soon after a stand-up breakfast at Diane's condo and getting the
Miranda
underway for a run out to Cape Ann in Massachusetts. We both wore T-shirts and shorts and slathered a lot of sunscreen on each other, and even with the slippery goop on my skin, I felt the familiar tightening and coolness on my skin that signified sunburn on its way. Lunch had been sandwiches and lemonade, balanced in our laps, and Diane was promising me a steak dinner when we got back to the harbor. The only foul part of the day was a stretch when we tan through a mini-slick of oil, and though it was possible that it wasn't left over from the
Petro Star,
the reminder of that past disaster didn't help matters.

"Damn mess," she had cursed. ''And you know what's going to happen. Whoever did it will just pay a fine or do a couple of weeks in the can --- if that --- and next summer the dumping will still be going on."

I just nodded, not wanting to talk about the
Petro Star
. In fact, we hadn't talked much during the day, just worked in unison in keeping the
Miranda
underway and on a good tack. I'm not up on the nomenclature of what types of sails do what, but I can take orders and know when to draw in a line or just to sit down and shut up. Diane, however, could probably sail the
Miranda
to Dover, England, and back, and she delighted in heeling the
Miranda
over so far that the water was kissing the gunwales, which made me clamber up on the other side and gently inquire about what to do if she were to roll over.

As we settled in a steady run, I sat next to Diane and she looked me up and down and said, "You've got things bothering you today, Lewis."

I know better than to try to be the strong, silent and steady type around Diane. She knows me too well.

''A lot of things, I guess. You're a good one, Diane."

She stuck out her tongue for a moment. "That's my job. Being a cop and being nosy. What's the bother?"

The bother? A variety of items. Tony Russo, slumped against his car. Paula Quinn, bitter about me and what I can't do. And dead Sal Grillo, in the morgue at the county hospital in Bretton, and me not wanting to tell Diane a single word about it, though she would be happy to have progress on that case.

"Secrets," I finally said. "Secrets that are running things, I guess. "

She nodded and made an adjustment to the tiller. "Something about you and that reporter, Paula Quinn?"

I was surprised. "You know?"

She smiled. "I guessed. You just confirmed. A couple of times, down at the station, when she's been doing a story about something, Paula would stop and just look at me and say, 'How's Lewis?' Or 'What do you know about Lewis?' Very casual, but in a self-conscious way. So. What happened?"

"Stuff happened," I said. The boat heeled over and some spray slapped up on the deck, hitting my bare legs with the water. "The night I learned I was sick, back in June, she was with me. I was upset and she was concerned and I couldn't tell her anything, Diane. Couldn't tell her a single thing. She was mad. Who could blame her? Since then, it just hasn't been that right between us, and I'm not sure if! want it to be right. I think I want it back before, before it went that far."