The Cove (21 page)

When he got closer to shore, he’d call the number Richie had given him on his cell phone. Chances were, he’d be dropping off the bales with Mark “French Fry” Payne and Silas “Chuckles” Weaver, a couple of local reprobates who hadn’t worked an honest day in their lives.

If that’s who he was meeting and those two
numbnuts
had already started drinking today, like they usually did, he’d be lucky if they found their way to the rendezvous point without bringing a parade of cops and DEA agents.

T
om Marshall was feeling good … better than good …
damned
good as he drove the narrow, winding back roads from The Cove to Boothbay Harbor. It was a little past noon. The dense fog that had blanketed the town all morning was finally lifting. The sun was peeking through, and the air was thick with humidity, more like July than May. A warm breeze slipping through the open car windows blew his hair back. He had the radio tuned to WPOR, the country-western radio station from Portland, but the volume was down low so he could run through some of the various possible scenarios that might occur once he got to where he was going.

He had to be ready for anything.

It had taken only two phone calls and a quick meeting down at the wharf with Danny “Puppy” Lawrence, a local carpenter Tom knew from high school, to arrange to sell the cocaine he had stolen from the evidence locker.

Tom had insisted on no questions asked, but he had no doubt that Puppy, who fronted for Anthony Gillette, the biggest and best-known dealer in the area, knew perfectly well where the drugs had come from. When the bust happened last winter, it had been in the local news for weeks on end. That had been about six months ago, and what with backups at the courthouse and legal delays filed by the defense attorneys, it still hadn’t gone to trial. Chances were the defendant — Randy “Cutter” Pitts, the only person actually charged — would walk. Even if he didn’t, Gillette and his boss, Richie Sullivan, were so well insulated from the case they would never be tied to it. Of course, everyone in town had no doubt The Crowbar was running the operation.

Not that any of that mattered.

If Puppy or Gillette started any trouble, the police department had a file several inches thick on both of them. Tom was confident Gillette would pay him off to keep his mouth shut. Besides, Tom reminded himself, this was a once in a lifetime deal. It wasn’t like he was going to make a habit of fencing evidence. Once he had the cash in hand, he was going to give Julia one last chance to come away with him, and then — with or without the bitch — he was going to get the hell out of Dodge.

“Fuck Louise and the horse she rode in on,” he said, glancing at his reflection in the rearview mirror. The skin around his eyes crinkled like broken porcelain when he smiled.

Once upon a time, he might have loved his wife … maybe back in high school when she first started putting out for him under the high school stadium bleachers. But that had been years ago, and then she went and got herself pregnant. In the year since they’d been married, after she miscarried, she’d packed on at least ten pounds … maybe more, and in all the wrong places.

If only Julia had moved to town a year or so sooner … before he agreed to marry Louise.

But fuck Julia Meadows, too!

She couldn’t treat him like he was some
numbnuts
fuck buddy she could use and dispose of on a whim just because Ben Brown was after her ass.

Who the fuck did she think she was?

He might have started out more interested in the money she would eventually inherit from her father once he
kacked
off than her pussy, but now that he had a shot at getting some righteous bucks on his own — as sweet as her pussy was, he didn’t need her so much.

A tingle of expectation tightened his belly as his car zipped around curves, rising and falling over the gentle crests in the road. He remembered riding on this road as a kid, pretending it was a roller coaster. Realizing he was going a good fifteen to twenty miles per hour over the speed limit, he eased up on the gas. Not that it mattered. If a cop pulled him over for speeding, even someone who didn’t know him, all he had to do was flash his badge and he’d be let off.

Being a cop had certain advantages. He was going to miss some of those advantages once he lit out, but he had a better, brighter future planned.

Especially if Julia came along …

“But even so … even so,” he muttered as he stared for a second at his eyes in the rearview. They looked as hard as steel.

When he was honest with himself, he had to admit he knew all along that she was going to dump him. Guys like him didn’t end up with women like her. It only made it worse, knowing she was dumping him for that
jerkoff
Ben Brown.

He tried to keep that particular thought in the back of his mind, but he was determined, before he blew town, to have a little up close and personal with ’ole Bennie.

Tom eased his speed down to the limit once he hit downtown Boothbay Harbor. He was still running through all the possible scenarios that might happen as he pulled into the parking lot of The Galley Restaurant, like he’d arranged on the phone.

The parking lot was crowded. Sunlight gleamed like flames from an arc torch off mirrors and chrome, leaving squiggly afterimages across his retina, but it didn’t take long for Tom to spot Gillette’s car. It was parked at the far end of the lot under the shade of a large oak tree.

Gillette and another guy Tom didn’t recognize immediately were leaning against the side of his car, smoking and casually surveying the parking lot. They were dressed like tourists, both of them wearing mirror sunglasses, brightly colored golf shirts, khaki shorts, and sneakers. Gillette looked like a doofus with his white socks pulled halfway up to his knobby knees. Shadows danced like little waving hands across their faces.

You ask me,
he thought,
they look like a couple of fags.
His smile widening as he nodded a greeting, but his stomach tightened like the skin on a drum as he pulled to a stop beside the parked car and killed the engine.

“Afternoon,” he said, groaning as if from the effort as he got out and walked around the back of his car and over to them.

“Howdy,” Gillette said, raising his sunglasses and perching them on the top of his head. The other man nodded but didn’t speak. He took a last drag on his cigarette and snapped it out across the parking lot. It hit the asphalt, sending up a tiny shower of sparks before it rolled under the tire of someone’s car.

Tom took a good look around as if he half-expected to see someone else — like maybe a couple of town cops or undercover DEA agents — lurking in the shrubbery, waiting to take them all down.

“How’s it hanging?” Tom said with a beaming smile.

He held his hand out for Gillette to shake. As they did, he nodded at the other man.

“Low ’n loose, and full of juice,” Gillette said tonelessly. “You?”

“High and dry, and
waitin
’ to die.”

The man Tom didn’t know smiled and grunted but said nothing. His smile was devoid of any humor, his thin lips as white as marble. His eyes were unreadable behind his reflective sunglasses.

“You got the shit?” Gillette asked without preamble.

He was a short man with dark hair clipped into a crew cut. His eyebrows met together over his nose in a
uni
-brow. The spiky bristles of his hair kept his sunglasses firmly in place. His eyes looked as cold as chips of gray ice.

“You got the money?” Tom asked.

“
What’da
yah think?” Gillette raised the left side of his eyebrow so it looked like a dark comma.

Tom kept eyeing the silent man. If anyone had the attitude of a stone-cold killer, it was this guy.

“Care to introduce me to your friend?”

“Not really,” Gillette said as if that was the end of it.

Tom shot him a quick look; then he turned and started walking around his car to the driver’s side.

“What the fuck?” Gillette said. He sounded upset, but he made no move to come after him.

Tom stopped at the back of his car, turned around, and then said, “I don’t do shit with people I don’t know. Have a nice
fuckin
’ day.”

They locked eyes for a long moment of silence. Then Gillette said, “Tom. This here’s Marcus Zimmerman. A friend of mine from Providence.”

Zimmerman smiled as if for the first time in his life. When Tom walked back to them, Zimmerman held out his hand. Tom leaned forward, and they shook hands. He noticed how dry and cold Zimmerman’s grip was — and strong.

“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Zimmerman,” Tom said, making a point of not repeating his name. “How’s Bobby doing?”

Zimmerman either didn’t get or chose to ignore the Bob Dylan reference. Maybe he’d heard it too many times. There was no way Tom could tell which way he was looking behind those mirrored shades, but he felt the man’s gaze boring into him.

“So,” Gillette said, rubbing his hands together. “You got the shit?”

“I can get it easy enough.”

“
Oww
, man. Now you’re twisting my
cojones
.
You said you’d have it with you.”

Realizing it was foolish to act like some big league dealer on some bullshit TV cop show, Tom nodded and then walked to the back of his car. When he started opening the trunk, Gillette pushed off his car and, glancing left and right, said, “For fuck’s sake. Not in public.”

“Where, then?”

“Get in your car. Follow me.”

Gillette and Zimmerman turned to get into their car.

“Where to?” Tom asked.

“You’ll see,” Gillette said, and without another word, they opened the doors and got in. Gillette was driving. He started up the car, letting it idle as Tom got into his car and started it up. They both backed around and drove out of the parking lot. In their wake, they left a faint trail of blue exhaust that hung, suspended in the still air.

Tom followed Gillette out onto Main Street. After going a short distance, he took two quick turns, first right and then left, heading out of town. They went a mile or two down the main road until they came to a turnoff leading onto an unmarked dirt road on their right. Tom recognized it but couldn’t remember ever driving down it. Without using his turn signal and barely tapping his brake, Gillette took the turn going a little faster than was safe. Dust kicked up from his rear tires like the ass-end of his car was on fire.

Tom followed them, keeping a few car lengths behind in case he wanted — or needed — to make a quick U-turn. He was on alert because although he didn’t know Gillette all that well — he lived in nearby Lewiston — Tom knew his reputation for pulling crazy shit. He wouldn’t put it past him to try something stupid — even with a cop …
especially
with a cop.

Going off to some place out of the public eye was one of the scenarios he’d tried to think through. If Gillette was leading him out there so he could take the coke, maybe at gunpoint, Tom wanted to be ready. Leaning across the seat, he reached into the glove compartment for the pistol he kept there for insurance. Leaning closer to the steering wheel, he rolled his hip to the left and slipped the gun under his belt into the small of his back.

Less than a mile down the rutted dirt road, Gillette pulled over into a narrow turnaround and stopped. Tom parked behind him, automatically angling his car behind Gillette’s like he would his cruiser when he was pulling someone over for a routine traffic violation.

He remained in his car, taking the time to look around while waiting to see what they would do next. Trees lined both side of the road — scrub pine and second-growth maples. To his left, the ground sloped down, and there were ferns mixed in under the trees. To the right was a sloping hill covered with denser growth strewn with moss-covered granite boulders.

After a long moment, in which the two men appeared to be discussing or arguing about something, Zimmerman got out on the passenger’s side and approached Tom’s car. He was no longer wearing shades, and the sunlight washed the side of his face with a bronzed glow. When Zimmerman was standing next to the car, he motioned for Tom to get out.

As far as Tom could tell, the man wasn’t packing. Both of his hands were in plain sight, and the pockets of his shorts weren’t sagging as if he had a gun in one of them. He might have a small piece behind him, but Tom didn’t think so. Maybe ole’ Zimmerman here was better at
looking
tough than really
being
tough.

Tom rolled his window down and stared up at the man, trying his best to give him back a blank, expressionless stare.

“So where’s the shit?” Zimmerman said, his tone of voice echoing Gillette’s.

“I know your name, but I still don’t
know
you,” Tom said. “I only do business with people I know.”

Zimmerman looked momentarily flustered as he glanced from Tom to the waiting car and then back at Tom. After staring at each other in silence for several tense seconds, Zimmerman visibly relaxed his shoulders and then walked back to Gillette’s car. He leaned down to the driver’s window and had a brief conversation with Gillette that Tom couldn’t hear. Then Zimmerman stepped back, and the driver’s door opened. Gillette got out and came over to Tom’s car with Zimmerman a few steps behind him.