“It’s been here for more than a hundred years!”
He shrugged. “A hundred or a thousand, it’s still nearly burned to the ground.”
There were a few more words exchanged, with him getting calmer and cooler as I got angrier and hotter, but after a while I just gave up and he drove off, still smiling and in a good mood, in his company car, which I no doubt had had a hand in buying for him.
Another day, this time with drinks at the Lafayette House bar with Felix in attendance. We both had Sam Adams beers and overpriced appetizers, and after munching through scallops wrapped in bacon and some jumbo shrimp, he said, “Confession time. Let it out.”
“All right,” I said. “For the first time in my adult life, I didn’t vote in the presidential election. Couldn’t get an absentee ballot at the Grafton County Jail.”
“Not much of a confession. What do you think of the results?”
“The American people have spoken. Who am I to disagree?”
“Even with one bum leg, you’re dancing pretty good. So. Confession time. Let it out.”
I got another Sam Adams, another round of jumbo shrimp, and I let it all out. From the time I left Manchester in Felix’s borrowed pickup truck, to my surveillances in Osgood, to the encounter with the pheasant hunters, my later encounter with Professor Knowlton, and my raid of the house, the shootings, my wounding, the arrival of the Gurkha soldier, and the subsequent fire.
Felix said nothing, but grunted at some high points — or low points, depending on one’s point of view — and then he seemed quite impressed with what had happened to my aborted transfer from the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Hospital to the Grafton County Jail.
When I was through and took another long swallow of beer, he asked, “Feel better now?”
“Just a bit.”
A manicured thumbnail of his worked the edge of the Sam Adams label. “From the two hitmen receiving orders not to bag you and tag you, and the fact that all the evidence connecting you to the fire in Osgood has disappeared, it seems to me that I sense the cool clammy hand of the federal government at work.”
“Or at least a dedicated retiree.”
“True enough. I guess the Gurkha’s arrival with three heads impressed him enough that he went out of his way to help you.”
I lifted my nearly empty bottle of beer. “Here’s to federal retirees.”
Felix clinked my bottle’s neck with his own. “Why not?”
After he took a swallow and put the bottle down, he said, “Speaking of retirees, what are you up to now?”
I kept my mouth shut for a minute or so and then leaned over the table. “Don’t rightly know. I’m at the proverbial loose ends. I have no job. My savings are being drained on a daily basis with my room here and my car rental. Plus I’ve also dropped a hefty deposit on some nineteenth-century lumber that I’m going to use to rebuild the house, and my contractor is pushing me to start work right away, before the first snows come.”
I took a moment to fold a spare white napkin that was on the table. “But if I do that without the insurance company’s approval, they’ll be so pissed they might turn down my claim.”
“Go on.”
“What? There’s no more on.”
“The hell there isn’t. I’ve known you for quite some time, my friend. I know you’ve been down some dark trails before, but this is the first time you came up to a man, face to face, and shot him three times. Three times in the chest. You weren’t meaning to wound him, or scare him. You meant to kill him.”
“I didn’t succeed. Most I did was break a few ribs and maybe his sternum before he encountered a man who brought a knife to a gunfight.”
“A very big knife, I know, but no matter who put him into the ground, at that very moment, you were a killer of men. And that’s bothering you, that’s troubling you, no matter how many wisecracks you make or how many beers you drink.”
“When did you become such a sensitive soul?”
“I’m not, as a number of law enforcement officials will attest. But I know what it’s like to be you, at that moment. Me, I had the upbringing, the experiences, the training. But what got me through, the very first time and since then, was the thought that I was doing right. I was making some sort of rough justice, outside of the cops and courts, but that whoever encountered me deserved what happened.”
I slowly nodded. Felix said, “What you did, can you honestly say that it was the right thing to do? That justice was done for Diane and that CIA retiree’s son?”
“I can,” I said, thinking some more. “I can… but sometimes I think it was all futile. Diane is still in a coma, Lawrence Thomas and his wife are still mourning their son, and in my goal to seek justice, I lost my house, my savings, my job, and nearly my life.”
“But justice was done.”
“Yes.”
“And you know it, and I know it, and Lawrence Thomas knows it, and I’m sure Kara Miles suspects it. So take what you can, Lewis. You’re here with me, enjoying a cold beer, fine food, and even finer conversation. Those particular bad guys have been put away. And tomorrow, you’ll plug along, and day after day, it will get better. Promise.”
“But no guarantee for Diane.”
“None, sorry to say. But none of us have guarantees. A rogue tidal wave could come up here and snatch us away, or that Renzi detective might decide to come in here and arrest us both. You just do what you can.”
His words were making sense, and would probably make better sense tomorrow, but I wanted to change the subject, so I did. “What’s new with your second cousin, Angela? She fitting in?”
“Hah,” Felix said, finishing off his Sam Adams. “Oh, yes, I sense some family blood in her, because she is, in fact, not an astrophysicist. Poor dear appears to be confused about the difference between astronomy and astrology. But I’m sure she’ll fit in somewhere.”
“So she lied to you, but she got here to the States, probably on a green card you helpfully arranged. Mission accomplished for the young lady.”
“Nicely put.”
“Plus she got to meet you,” I said. “What an extra benefit.”
“Some days we all win.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
The next day started off with me feeling like a winner, but ended quite differently indeed.
I came down to the lobby, trying to decide if I was going to have breakfast in the Lafayette House’s fine dining room, or go get something a bit more basic at one of the local diners that are scattered along Route 1 and Route 1-A. I was tired of eating fine breakfasts that not only clogged my arteries, but also made me feel heavy and bloated for the rest of the day. Besides missing everything else about my burned-down home, I also missed just grabbing meals from there and cooking for myself.
I was thinking through what to do when the decision was made for me: Lawrence Thomas was waiting for me at the entrance to the dining room.
I went over, still using my cane, leg still aching, and he smiled and nodded at me.
“So good to see you,” he said. “Buy you breakfast?”
“A deal,” I said, and the helpful hostess gave us a corner spot that had a great view of the ocean, the Lafayette House’s parking lot, and a bit of blue that marked the tarpaulin that was still nailed and secured to the collapsed roof of my house.
We made some chit-chat about the weather, about travel, and after our respective meals were ordered, he said, “A few words of appreciation before we eat.”
“The appreciation is all mine,” I said. “If it wasn’t for you sending Suraj to tail me, I’d be a dead man.”
An appreciative nod. “You bear no ill will, then, for my having you followed?”
“Absolutely not. It worked out… he seems quite the soldier.”