Charlie's Key (22 page)
“But you can’t, can you?”
The smile drops off his face.
“No. I can’t. A few words. My address. And my aunt’s. I knowed enough letters to write them out.”
“But you can’t read this writing,” I say, holding up the map. “And you couldn’t twenty years ago.”
“No.”
I’m falling now, into the hole, and I hear a voice echoing around in my head as I go. It’s my own.
“It wasn’t you.” I hear what I say like I’m a different person, like I’m looking down at myself from somewhere up above, seeing how small I look. How stupid I am. How much I don’t know. “It wasn’t you who stayed alone with Sullivan, in that room, was it?”
We’re both quiet, both waiting for that strange voice to come outta me again.
“It was my father, wasn’t it?”
“Jesus, Charlie,” says Nick. “Why don’t you leave it, b’y? Leave it at what I told ya.”
“Because it’s not the truth, is it? About what happened.”
“Listen to you,” says Nick, “going on about the truth, and you all of eleven years old.”
“I am not eleven,” I shout. “I am thirteen. I been thirteen for seven months.”
“So enjoy being thirteen for another eight months or whatever it is,” says Nick, shouting right back. “Enjoy being thirteen and not knowing the truth about a few things. There’s a lot to be said for not knowing the truth, specially when you’re a kid—with all them nice things like Santa and the Easter Rabbit and all that other crap.”
“I know there’s no Santa Claus,” I say. “And no Easter Rabbit and no Tooth Fairy and no elves out in the woods or wizards off in some other place I can’t see. You think I believe in fairy tales? I can’t even believe in a mom or a dad—all that stuff got torn away. But I gotta believe in something.”
All of a sudden the anger just kind of drips outta me, like it’s pouring outta my boots, and a heavy sadness I feel bending my shoulders seeps in to replace it.
“Do you know what I’m talking about, Nick? I know I’m thirteen, and you’re forty-whatever you are. And I’m just some kid from out in Alberta, and you’re a tough guy who lived in prison. But I hope you know what I’m talking about—how I gotta have something to believe. Something that’s the truth. Something to stand my feet on.”
After a long while he nods. “How’d you figure it out?”
“Because a this,” I say, holding up the map. “If you could read, you never would have gone to that first church—you’d a kept going to Natches Road, like we did today.”
“So I can’t read. So what?”
“So whoever was in the room with Sullivan—whoever wanted him to put more details about where the money was— they could read.”
“How’d ya figure that?”
“Because the map’s the first thing Sullivan did—the first thing he put on the paper, at the top. But it wasn’t good enough, so whoever was there wanted more details. And if that person was you, you wouldn’t have got him to write out a bunch of directions you couldn’t read. You’d a gotten him to draw more stuff on the map so you could figure out what he meant. But the person in Sullivan’s room, they made him write it out. And when Sullivan’s writing got too messy to read, they made him write it out again, neater. Which somebody who couldn’t read would never do, because how could they tell if something made sense or not?”
Nick’s smiling a sad smile, which he sticks a cigarette into.
“Your old man wanted it that way, you know,” he says, putting his head down to light the smoke. He makes one of those old-man growls in his throat and shoots a big spit out onto some bushes.
“Wanted to be the tough guy on this one—do it all himself. ‘It’s my idea, and I’m doing it,’ he says. Tired of me being in charge. So that’s how we played—just like he wanted. He goes right into Sullivan’s room, he gives him a poke or two to soften him up, he sends me off to look for Weasel.”
“But you never brought Weasel back to the room,” I say.
“Couldn’t find him. He were probably off hiding some-wheres. So I had a smoke, stopped off for a piss and come back to Sullivan’s room.”
“And you went back in.”
“And I went back in and found ’em—Sullivan on the floor, blood coming from his head and his mouth, yer dad standing over him, white as new sheets on the line.”
“So my dad…he killed him.”
“Just what I thought when I opened the door—said it too.”
“Jesus, Mikey, what’re ya after doing—giving him a crack on the head?”
“No, I gave him a smack or two,” says Mikey, “but nothing too fierce,” he says, holding up the map. “Just some encouragement to keep him going with the directions.”
“When he were done,” says Mikey, “he started to stand up, so I gives him a good shove to set him back down. He spun round and fell, smack into that table there.”
I see the table plain enough: a low one, with a sharp edge Sullivan musta hit when he fell.
“And he ain’t moved since?” I say.
“Nope,” says Mikey. “But there’s no way what I done was enough to kill him. Maybe he’s just knocked out, or he’s after having a heart attack or something.”
I feel around his neck for a heartbeat, but there’s nothing. No more blood pumping out either, which I know from the fights I been in is a bad sign.
“Well,” I say, “it don’t much matter what killed him. What matters is he’s dead.”
“Should we call somebody?” says Mikey. “The cops, the ambulance?”
“Sure, he’s dead, b’y,” I says. “What are the cops going to do except stick it on us? Screw that. We’ll be in the lock-up five minutes after they gets here. No—better to leave him where he’s to and let whoever finds him call it in.”
“And that’s just what we done, Mikey going out the door, me out the window. And it woulda a been fine, too, ’cept for that kid what seen me leaving.”
“But after you were arrested,” I say. “Why didn’t you tell the police what happened?”
“What?” says Nick. “That we gone to Sullivan’s room to grab the cash he got from blackmailing the Brothers? That’d look good in court.”
“But you never killed him—you could prove it—that he banged his head or had a heart attack or something. They can do tests.”
“Jesus, Charlie, you’re watching too much
TV
, b’y. This weren’t
CSI New York
. This were St. John’s,
1989
. Sure, the cops had their list of suspects all drawed up before they even arrived to a murder. All they had to do was find a bit of evidence to make it stick.”
“But you still could have told them the truth—how it was my dad who was with Sullivan when he died.”
“Could’ve,” says Nick. “But then what woulda happened? They’d a banged Mikey around, pushed him about what he was really doing in Sullivan’s room. And Mikey—no offence to your old man, Charlie—he woulda cracked. He woulda told em everything, bout how we was putting the squeeze on Sullivan, how he drawed the map out for us, where he told us the money was to—everything woulda come out. And they still wouldn’t believed Mikey about not laying a hand on Sullivan. Fact, they’d a figured he had it all planned out before he ever went inside Sullivan’s room, and having a plan makes it first-degree murder—twenty-five years the hard way at Dorchester.”
Nick lights another smoke off the first one.
“He wouldn’t a lasted a month. Better for me to take the blame—to get Mikey to make up some story what gives me the motive, makes it look like I did it outta revenge. I gets the short sentence, the map stays secret, and five years later when we’re still a couple of lads, we find the stash and live happily ever after.”
“But what about what people thought?” I say. “How they figured you were a killer?”
Nick gives a snort that builds up into a long belly laugh.
“What people thought?” he says when the laugh finally turns to a cough. “About me?”
He flicks the smoke away and comes close enough to lay his good hand on my shoulder.
“What they thought was that I were murdering, evil Cook Street scum, soon as they heard the cops was looking for me. And even if I had the best lawyer in town, and even if he got me off. And even if the judge stood on them stone steps to the courthouse on Water Street and called out for all the town to hear—called out to all them reporters and gawkers and do-gooders—that I were an innocent man. Even if all that happened, people still woulda thought I was a murdering, evil Cook Street scum who was lucky enough to get away with it.”
I look at his eyes; they’re angry, but not at me.
“It just seems like…I don’t know…it seems like a lot to pay for something you didn’t do,” I say.
“I didn’t just pay, Charlie.”
“Twenty years locked up seems like paying to me.”
“But I got something out of it too. I got to do right by my brother, which I wanted to do, because he were the smart one in the family, the good one. Like with Weasel. When I heard his story, all I thought of was the money and how to get it. But yer old man, he were mad—it got him angry, what them Brothers was doing. Don’t get me wrong, Mikey weren’t no saint. He wanted the money too. But he wanted something more. Something like…I don’t know…justice, I’d guess you’d call, though neither the pair of us woulda used that word. But I think that’s what he wanted when he gave Sullivan that last shove, the one that sent him to the floor. A bit of justice for all them little kids what never had a chance to fight back. And even me, stupid as I was back then, even I knowed that was something worth having—that feeling that ya should stand up for something, that ya should find a way to do some good. Growing up, I never felt it meself—not when I was beating on some kid who owed me money, or when I was trying to feel up some girl I took a liking to. I always just took what I wanted, not a thought about anybody else.”
“Except for my dad.”
“Except for yer dad,” says Nick. “And it felt good, doing right by him. That’s what I mean about me not just paying— that I got something too. I got to stand up for my blood, to help somebody what might be able to do a bit of good in the world, ’stead of harm.”
Nick looks at me for a bit.
“But I don’t know if that’s something you could understand, you being a thirteen-year-old from Alberta, and me being forty-whatever I am and a tough old bastard who spent years locked up.”
I take a look behind him. The sun is out from behind the clouds now. It’s just starting to go down, turning the green hill gold.
“I figure it is,” I say, swinging my crutches toward the hill. “Guess we better find the path before it gets too dark.”
It’s not much of a path when we find it, just a steep brown squiggle running up through the little trees.
“Tuckamore,” Nick says, giving them a kick. “Don’t look like much, but it’s tough—lives for hundreds of years on not much more’n fog and salt air. Wind blows so hard out here most of the time it can’t grow up straight because it gets blowed over. So it grows sideways, along the ground.”
I see what he means about the wind when we get higher. It’s like walking toward a giant fan that never shuts off. It slows me down, because I have to bend into it. With my cast dragging along, it takes us close to an hour to get to the top, but we finally crest the hill and in front of us is ocean, blue and white and green and black all the way to where it touches the sky. Bigger than anything I’ve ever seen, a million tiny mountains moving like one giant muscle. Behind us there’s the tuckamore that ends at the cliff. And below the cliff, sixty meters down, there’s a line of white foam running down the coast on either side where the waves hit the rock. I hear them rolling in,
boom
,
boom
,
boom
.
“Got a blow comin’,” says Nick, looking out at the whitecaps. I expect to see him frowning, but he’s got a big smile on.
“I dreamed about this,” he says, looking out to sea. “Night after night after night. I dreamed about this.”
“About the wind?”
“The wind.” He nods. “There’s no wind in prison. Ever. Just pissy little breezes, carrying someone else’s stink. Not even out in the yard, when a gale blows. The big brick wall— it breaks it up ’fore it can find your face.”
He stands still for a long time, breathing in and out. I watch his cigarette burn down in his claw, glowing in the wind. It burns to ash, and still he keeps looking out at the sea.
“I’ll not go back inside,” he says at last. “I’ll do no more time sitting in stink, counting days.”
He remembers the cigarette and goes to flick it, but it’s burned itself out, the ashes gray in his fingers. He brushes them off and turns to me. His eyes are glistening—tearing up in the breeze—and he gives them a wipe with a finger so black I think it’ll leave a stain on his cheek.
“Now you see why that tuckamore grows like it do,” he says, wiping the other eye before he turns to the ocean again. He says something else, something about the mainland, but I can’t hear.
“What?” I say, reaching out to tug his jacket.
“Nothing,” he says. “Nothing. Now, what’s Brother Sullivan tell us to do next?”
I read, “Turn right at the top of the hill and follow the path another hundred yards. Foundation stones to old chapel are on right, fifty feet back from cliff. Family crypt is underneath, through cellar door.”
“Let’s go,” says Nick. He gives a nod over his shoulder at the sun. “Light’ll be gone soon.”
The foundation is right where the letter says, a stone square of rocks on the ground with a rotten old roof on top. Off to one side there’s a busted-up wooden door set in the stones—I guess the only way down into the crypt. Nick walks over to it and sets down his backpack, pulling out a flashlight and a pry bar.
“This is it, Charlie, b’y,” he says. The smile leaves his face as he clicks on the light. “Do the letter say anything about where to look once we’re down there?”
I read the last paragraph, “Go down steps—cash box is in coffin closest to door.”
Nick takes a deep breath and looks at me. “Coming?”
“As far as the door. Then I’ll keep watch.”
“Fair enough,” says Nick, pushing on the door. There’s a creak when it opens; then he’s inside, the flashlight pointed down the steps. He swings a hand in front of his face, brushing off cobwebs that run from the doorway up to the wooden beams on the ceiling. He moves farther down, and I stick my head in far enough to see where he goes. It smells old and moldy, like cardboard boxes going black in a basement. Where the light shines I see rough stones and moss, water sparkling when the beam catches it dripping. Everywhere else is black. Nick takes a last step and he’s onto a mud floor.
