“Listen, I—”
The man hung up.
Sam held the phone in his hand for a long moment, and depressed the receiving hook and dialed a number. After three rings Terry picked it up.
“Where are you?” she asked. Her voice was cool. He had not liked the look she had given him that morning, after her night on the couch.
“I’m at work, I, uh, I got some things to do tonight. Business. I’ll be home late.”
“How late?”
“About eleven, maybe later.”
In the silence the faint static was deafening.
Sam cleared his throat. “Can I ask you something?”
“Ask away.”
He looked out the window, remembering a time when he had once enjoyed the view of downtown Devon.
“It’s just this,” he said. “Am I a good person, Terry?”
He could hear her breathing. “Of course, Sam. What kind of question is that?”
“So I am a good person?” he said, pressing her.
“Yes, yes, you’re a wonderful person.” She paused, and the ice tone in her voice melted away. “What’s wrong?”
He let out a long, shuddering breath. “Oh, damn, I can’t tell you. Not right now. Maybe later. Maybe a long time later.”
After he got off the phone he sat at his chair, letting his fingers glide across the bundles of bills. So much money. Better take it out, count it, just to be sure. He reached down and opened the bottom drawer, pulling out the revolver. Carrying all that money, you might need protection, he thought. He slowly started to remove the bills from the attaché case.
A cool night in Maine, a married man only four days, Sam sat on the cottage porch swing, watching a thunderstorm approach from over the gray Atlantic. Terry was next to him, sharing a blanket over their legs. The calendar said it was August but the weather insisted on being October. The blue-black bank of clouds was reaching up to the sky, and Sam admired the way the lightning burst through the clouds, flaring them up like a flashbulb. After each burst of lightning, it took long seconds for the low rumble of thunder to reach them.
“Tell me something?” Terry asked, one hand on his arm.
“Sure. What do you want?”
“Your brother. Derek. Tell me about him.”
Sam said carefully, “Well, what do you want to know?” She smiled. “Anything. You’re so secretive about him. He wasn’t at the wedding — you just said he couldn’t attend, that he was in some sort of trouble.”
The Atlantic hissed and boomed against the rocky beach below the cottage, and Sam tapped his fingers against the wooden armrest of the swing.
“When I was growing up,” Sam said, “I collected airplane models. I must’ve spent hours making them. One day Derek got mad at me for squealing on him, and he smashed all of them. I can still see him standing there, the broken plastic pieces at his feet. He got into a lot of trouble for that, but for him, I think it was worth it.”
“And for that, he didn’t come to the wedding?”
He tapped his fingers again on the armrest. “I tell you, I don’t want you coming up to me later, saying, ‘Gee, hon. You shouldn’t have told me.’ ”
“Oh, come on,” Terry said, laughing. “How bad can it be?”
“I won’t bore you with the other scraps, the reform school. Let’s just say Derek has always been the bad one.”
“Sam,” she said, running her hand up his arm. “He’s your brother, your own flesh and blood.”
Sam said, “Three years ago my flesh and blood was in Indiana. He was working for a drug dealer out of Chicago. One night, I think it was winter, Derek and another man went to work. A man by the name of Duncan had just cheated the boss out of a deal. The boss told my brother and the other man what to do. They did it. And as they came out of the house, some troopers were waiting for them. Someone had heard the screaming. Inside the house they found Duncan, his wife, his eleven-year-old daughter and nine-year-old son. They were all dead. Two had been shot. Two hadn’t. Derek got life plus twenty. That’s my flesh and blood.”
Terry was silent. Sam said, “When I do think of him, I’m just glad he’s there and away. No more broken airplanes.”
Out over the ocean the lightning flared again. “My God,” Terry whispered. “How horrible.”
Yes, he thought. Quite so. And that’s just the beginning. When I heard the news reports and followed the trial, I could see how it happened. I could see Derek swaggering into the house, gun in one hand, knife in the other, smiling all the time the blood was being ripped out and spilled. That was Derek. That’s the way he was and always will be. And God, the dreams, sometimes I dream I’m there, there in the house with Derek, and I’m holding something cold, sharp, and sticky in my hand. And I’m smiling, too.
“Yes, horrible,” he said.
His headache was much worse. Even the low throb of the BMW’s engine seemed to pound at him like a sledgehammer to the base of his skull. The road was dirt and rough — twice he had scraped bottom — but he was at the sand pit. The cool green numbers on the dash clock said it was nine fifty-nine. He stepped outside, a tan raincoat on, a lumpy weight in one pocket. Sam stood by the door and decided to leave the parking lights on. The amber light sent out a soft, yellow glow.
Resting against the fender of the car, he tried not to think of anything but what was going on right there. The cool feeling of the metal under his hand. The chirping of crickets over on the other side of the pit, and the wind rustling a piece of cardboard across the gravel.
And whistling. Someone whistling, better times than these, Garry Owen.
“Derek?” he called out.
“The same. Where is it?”
“In the trunk.”
“Get it.”
The trunk lid popped up with no problem and there was the attaché case, resting against a shovel. He lifted the case up and turned, leaving the lid open. The trunk light lit up a small area around the car.
“Here it is,” he said.
From the shadows he saw someone move, and his brother slowly walked into the light. Derek smiled, and Sam’s first thought was, Jesus, look at his teeth. Blackened and rotten. His long hair was stringy and he had a thin, sallow look about him. Too long behind concrete, he thought. Derek wore a long leather jacket and jeans, and the clothes seemed two sizes too large.
“Hello, little brother,” Derek said.
“Hello yourself.”
Derek nodded to the car. “Not bad. Payments must be something, though, hunh? After all, you could never afford airfare out to Indiana.”
Sam said, “The cost wasn’t the problem. The destination was.”
“Fine,” Derek said. He reached out and Sam handed the case over to him. On Derek’s hand a spider had been tattooed on the pale skin.
He hefted it a few times. “Hard to believe there’s fifty in here, you know? And it’s hard to believe my little brother’s done so well. This is going to help. A lot.”
Sam put his hands in his coat. “You said something about a first installment.”
Again the grin, again the rotten teeth. “Yep. Mom told you, just before she croaked, for you to take care of me. Promises are still promises, ain’t they? So here’s another promise — I get through this set, I’ll be back for more. Or maybe I’ll ask your wife for the second installment.”
Sam scuffed the dirt with his shoe. “I’ve never been able, even on my best days, to understand what makes you tick.”
“You do, that’s what. You and I are kin, bro, and you’re more like me than you’ll care to admit.”
He tried to think but the pounding at the base of his skull almost made him wince. “Open the case, why don’t you.”
Derek chuckled and flipped open the two locks. His eyes narrowed and he turned the case over, and a bunch of legal pads tumbled out, falling to the ground like pieces of wood.