even he wouldn't go anywhere near Paddy's IRS filings.
So my threat carried weight.
Paddy sighed irritably. "All right. I guess it can't
do any harm talking about Tate now." His face still
said different, though, and I couldn't help wondering
why.
"But you'll have to come along with me," he went
on. "I'm going over to Deer Island to get some more
sketch work from one of my freelancers, and I'm picking
up my car there."
He grabbed a portfolio case, a sweater, and his
wallet. "And Terence is coming, too. Aren't you, Terence?"
A look of surprise crossed Terence's jutting features,
but he put away his papers and got up obediently.
Publicly, Paddy was the up-front, bossy one of
the pair, but I got the sense that in his quiet way, Terence
was the strength of the duo.
"Oh, do hurry up, Terence," Paddy called as I
went out onto Water Street. Glancing back, I stepped
straight into the path of someone who obviously
hadn't seen me coming, either. The resulting full-body
collision slammed me against the brick building; for an
instant I saw stars.
"I'm so sorry. Are you all right?" The woman I'd
run into reached out to steady me, concern on her face.
"Fine." I laughed, a little shakily. She was my size,
with pale curly hair and wide violet eyes, wearing navy
slacks, a knit shirt, and running shoes. But she'd been
hitting the gym regularly, to judge by the punch she
packed; there was a lot of muscle mass hidden in that
petite-looking body.
She assessed me closely as if to make sure she really
hadn't injured me, then flashed an apologetic grin and
went on her way. By then, Paddy was on his way out
the door, still frowning over his shoulder, and I wondered
if maybe this trip to Deer Island with him was a
mistake.
But by the time we got to the ferry dock, his mood
had lifted, buoyed as always by his unquenchable enthusiasm
for Eastport. He was a New York refugee like
me, veteran of SoHo and Greenwich Village, but unlike
me he'd been born in Eastport, gone away to school
and to get his career started, then had come back.
"When I was a kid," he recalled nostalgically as we
strolled down the tree-lined lane to the dock where the
ferry was just now approaching, "you could stand at
the end of the pier there and catch your dinner of codfish.
Or sell them. I had a little red wagon. I'd go
around to the housewives. Of course," he added, a bit
less enthusiastically, "they'd want me to clean them,
first."
"Nowadays," Terence put in dryly, "Paddy likes
his fish to be broiled with butter and garlic, preferably
by someone else. Whatever happened to the little red
wagon, though?" he asked Paddy affectionately, dropping
his arm over the other man's shoulder.
"Never mind," Paddy retorted, letting Terence's
arm linger a moment. But then he stepped away. "The
boat's coming in; let's go."
Terence looked crestfallen, covered it smoothly,
but not before I caught the look of deep hurt on his
face. The ferry slid aground with a scrape of its metal
ramp on the beach gravel. Then we were boarding,
climbing the metal ramp while cars and sports utility
vehicles--most with out-of-state license plates, filled
with tourists--went alongside us onto the bargelike
vessel.
The grumble of diesel engines propelled the ferry
back out onto the water, and we were away, the island
town receding behind us and an onshore breeze gusting
freshly.
"Great day," Terence called over the engine noise,
putting his face into the wind. The tide was running
hard, so the ferry pilot skirted the edge of Old Sow, the
largest whirlpool in the Western Hemisphere and a
navigation hazard even to bigger boats. At the moment
its turbulence was like water in a washing machine
when the agitator is churning, the difference being that
this was millions of gallons of water.
Below us, it hammered like fists through narrow
channels and slammed against granite ledges, assaulted
the tall, precipitous cliffs of underwater islands and
gouted up in unseen geysers, in a maelstrom that was
mostly not visible from the swirling surface. If you happened
to fall into it, though, it would suck you down in
a frigid heartbeat and deposit your body miles away.
"It might not," Terence said startlingly, seeming to
read my thought, "be a bad way to go. Quick. Decisive."
Paddy was busy paying our fares. "You don't
really mean that," I told Terence. "It wouldn't seem
fast while you were doing it. Drowning, in that cold
water."
He shrugged, glancing at me. "I suppose it depends
on your alternatives."
Which was another very odd remark from the usually
cheerful Terence; he suffered from hypochondria
but in an interested way, not a glum one. Then Paddy
approached and Terence's warning glance made me
change the subject.
"What happened to your hand?" I gestured at the
Ace bandage. "Looks like you gave your first-aid talents
a real workout."
Terence frowned uncomfortably. "Took a fall. It's
nothing."
But the remark brought to mind again his unsteady
episode in La Sardina. And the look on his face was
guarded; an unhappy idea struck me. "Terence, are you
all right?"
"Never better," he replied shortly, turning away.
Clearly, he didn't want to talk about it. His business;
I decided to concentrate on Paddy.
"Why were you so upset that Reuben had come
back?" I asked. "I mean, I wouldn't think you and he
would have much to do with each other, in the normal
course of things."
Paddy's brow furrowed as he leaned on the ferry
rail, gazing down into the now-serene water; we'd
rounded the whirlpool margin and were on course for
the little harbor at Deer Island.
"First of all, there was nothing normal about him.
See, that's what most people don't understand: Reuben
was pathological, and he was smart. Too smart. If he
wanted you, he found you. And ..."
He hesitated, considering. "Well, it'll be common
knowledge. In Eastport, everything is. Reuben came to
see me the other night. Jittering around, hopped up on
tequila. Said he wanted my help on something, offered
me a deal he said was surefire."
Listening in silence, Terence chuckled bitterly as if
the term were an unpleasant private joke, but said
nothing.
"What did Reuben mean?" I asked. "What kind of
a deal?"
Paddy shook his head. "It doesn't matter. What
matters is, I didn't go for it. Told him to get out. When
he left, he had that grin on his face, and he was laughing.
You know the laugh?"
The high, strangled whinny, like a cross between a
cough and a man's last breath; I knew.
"Scared me pretty badly, I'll admit," Paddy went
on. "That Reuben could freeze your heart up."
The impatience I'd been restraining since the night
before overcame me. "Oh, for Pete's sake. He was just
one guy. I don't care how bad he was--how'd he get a
whole town so petrified?"
Paddy turned slowly to me. "Right. That's what
anyone would think. Anyone who didn't know him.
But let me tell you a story."
He lifted his eyes, letting his gaze wander past the
high promontory of Deer Island to the passage beyond:
blue water all the way to Nova Scotia, which lay like a
strip of autumn gold on the far horizon.
"Reuben wasn't just a bully," Paddy said. "He was
a criminal: burglaries, arson. If he wanted money, or he
just wanted to hurt you, he would do something. And
once he had done it, he would get away with it, too;
Reuben always did."
"Which," I came back at him, "is what I don't
understand. Why was he walking around? Seems to me
Bob Arnold could put a guy like that in jail, double
quick."
"That," Paddy replied, "is what I'm telling you
about."
We were crossing the international boundary between
the United States and Canada, an invisible line
down the middle of Passamaquoddy Bay. To our left
rose Deer Island, sloping to pebble beaches and finally
to sand. On our right lay the island of Campobello,
long and low, its little towns toylike along the shoreline.
The ferry adjusted course for the final approach to
the Deer Island dock.
"Once upon a time, a man from town complained
--it's not important about what. A charge was
brought against Reuben, and the man promised to testify
against him."
Paddy recited tonelessly. "A week later, the fellow
who brought the charge was found in his cellar.
Slipped and hit his head on a foundation stone, everybody
said."
He looked at me. "But they all knew." The ferry
slid against the wooden dock pilings, her ramp scraping
bottom.
People and cars began moving toward the shore as
the deck hand lowered the chain at the bow of the
ferry, but I hung back. "They thought Reuben killed
him, to stop him from testifying?"
"Not thought," Paddy corrected. "Knew. Reuben
would kill your house pets or poison your well. He
would terrify your wife and menace your children. He
would terrify anyone. Which is why," he finished, "nobody
ever told on Reuben. As for testifying against
him, well, that was a joke. You might as well kill yourself."
We got off the ferry. Uphill stood a small log-cabin
snack bar and souvenir shop, a drinking fountain, and
some rough frame buildings containing sanitary facilities.
Paddy's old green Peugeot was parked beside the
snack bar where his mechanic--the only Peugeot man
in five hundred miles--had apparently left it for him.
"But not you," I said as we drove down the narrow,
paved two-lane leading out from the dock area. It
curved immediately into scrubby, second-growth evergreen
forest dotted here and there with modest homesteads:
cottages and trailers. A mountain of sand
loomed beside a public-works barn, ready for winter.
"Not me," Paddy agreed grimly. "I stood up to