A week later, he took me to Nick and Tony’s and picked out a three-hundred-dollar bottle of wine that he barely touched. He kept filling mine though, and on the ride home, when I could barely sit up, he made what he called “a modest little proposal.” I should leave the high school kids to the amateurs and instead help him take over the whole Hampton drug trade. “It’s nothing but funny money to these assholes,” he said. “Besides, we’ve been staring at rich people our whole lives. It’s time to join the country club.”
I was all of seventeen at the time, a high school junior. What did I know? But the Boy Wonder knew exactly what he was about, and with him doing the thinking and me the heavy lifting, it wasn’t long before the money arrived in sacks.
Boy Wonder was smart about that too. Said that if we started living like pimps, the cops would be sniffing around us in months. So for eight years we lived like monks, nothing changing in our lives except the number in the bank accounts he’d opened in Antigua and Barbados.
Since then, it’s just been a matter of hanging on to what we took, or what Boy Wonder calls “our franchise.”
That’s been no problem either. Ruthlessness is one of Boy Wonder’s strong suits, right up there with cagey thinking, and I guess I’m no slouch in that department either. But I’ll tell you, it’s impossible to figure out what BW is thinking-always has been.
It’s coming down in buckets now, but BW ambles through the rain like it’s exactly what he needs to wash him clean. Maybe it is. I know better than anyone what he is capable of doing and living with. I stood next to him as he put a bullet in Feifer, Walco, and Rochie, them bawling for their moms until the last second.
And for what? Stealing a thousand dollars’ worth of crack. Doing some small-time dealing. That’s all it was. More of a prank than stealing, since the next day Feif and Rochie came around with the cash, plus interest.
But BW wouldn’t let me take the money. He said we had to send a message. A strong message. It was psycho but cunning too, because he waits until after that fight at Smitty’s court where Walker pulls his piece on Feifer. That way we can pin the whole thing on the brothers, and I think, okay, maybe we can get away with this just like everything else.
But as Boy Wonder opens the door of the car, he seems so transformed and remote, his old name doesn’t seem to fit anymore. And when he slides behind the wheel and gives me his chilly “What’s up?” I fall back on what I called him for fifteen years before he showed up that night at the police station.
“Hell if I know,” I say. “What’s up with you, Tom?”
That gets his attention. Never using real names is even stricter with us than not spending money, and before he can catch it, he flashes the same hard look he gave Feifer, Walco, and Rochie right before he shot them through the eyes. Then he covers it with a smile and asks, “Why you calling me Tom, Sean?”
“Because the party’s over, Uncle. We’re done.”
Chapter 108. Tom
“MAYBE WE CAN still figure a way out,” I say, starting up Kate’s Jetta and carefully backing out of the muddy driveway. With every neighbor within miles celebrating at Marie’s, the street is deserted, and in the heavy rain, it looks more desolate than usual. “What makes you so sure it’s over, Nephew? What happened?”
“Raiborne happened,” says Sean. “Soon as the verdict came down, I bolted out of there, but when I get to my car, Raiborne is standing right next to it. The son of a bitch is waiting for me. He must have sprinted to get there first, but if he was breathing hard, he didn’t let me see it. He introduced himself. Said that as of three minutes ago the murder cases of Eric Feifer, Patrick Roche, Robert Walco, and Michael Walker were wide open again, along with the never-solved murder of Señor Manny Rodriguez. Then he smiles and says the only suspect he’s got for all five is a psychopathic drug dealer named Loco.
“When I ask him why he’s telling me, Raiborne looks at me cute and says, ‘Because I’m pretty sure you’re him, Sean. You’re Loco!’”
I’m on Route 41 now, but it’s raining so hard, I’m doing less than thirty. I slow down even more when I see the boarded-up Citgo, and just past it, I turn off onto another depressed little street.
I look over at Sean-and I smile. “Well, you don’t have to worry about Detective Raiborne anymore.”
“Really?”
“Really. He came to see me too. This afternoon at my place, just after Clarence picked up Kate and took her to Marie’s. He said he couldn’t figure out how I knew so much about the murders-that the gun was a plant, the prints and the call from Feifer staged, that Lindgren was dirty. Then he realized I must have been involved too.”
“So what’d you do?”
“I was going to ask if he’d ever been to Antigua, any of the islands. Had he ever thought of taking early retirement? But I knew it would be a waste of my time.”
“So what’d you do?” asks Sean, looking away because he already knows the answer.
“What I had to. And I’ll tell you, the guy’s an easy two hundred thirty pounds. I barely got him in the trunk.”
“Now you’re killing cops, Tom?”
“Didn’t have much choice,” I say as we hear the siren of an East Hampton cruiser racing north on Route 41 toward Marie’s place.
“How about letting Dante find his own lawyer? Or if you had to be the big star again, be in the spotlight with your girlfriend, how about letting him lose?”
The road, barely visible through the pounding rain, climbs past an abandoned trailer home.
“I guess you never heard of something called redemption, Nephew.”
“Guess not.”
“A chance to undo mistakes like mine comes once in a lifetime, Sean.”
“Isn’t it a little late for that, Uncle?”
“What do you mean?”
“To undo the past? Start over?”
“Oh, it’s never too late for redemption, Sean.”
Chapter 109. Tom
NOW IT’S RAINING so hard that even with the wipers flapping on the highest setting, I can hardly see the road. If I thought I could risk it, I’d pull over and wait for the rain to let up.
“So what are we doing with Raiborne?” asks Sean, trying not to look at me, the way I’ve seen people look away from born-agains.
“Bury him,” I say. “At that old nigger cemetery up on the hill. Only seems right.”
The paved road becomes a dirt one. I know it well. Somehow I make out the half-grown-over opening in the bushes and beside it what’s left of a sign for the Heavenly Baptist Burial Grounds.
I push through the opening, the bushes flailing against the car windows, and up a dirt driveway. It’s rutted and soft, but going real slow and avoiding the worst parts, I get the car to the top of the rise, where it opens on a clearing lined with dozens of modest limestone headstones and markers.
I park beside a rotting bench, nod to Sean, and we step reluctantly into the downpour. With the soggy mud sucking at our shoes, we walk to the rear of the car. Heavy drops ping off the roof and trunk as Sean pushes the chrome lock and then steps out of the way as the chipped blue lid slowly lifts open, but of course, the only thing inside is Kate’s bald old spare and some gardening tools she uses around Macklin’s place.