Would have been hard to forget.
It took less than ten minutes to get there. I’d driven along here many times in the last seven years, and not because I wanted to remind myself of my encounter with Vince Fleming. East Broadway was simply a Milford street I often used to get from one part of town to the other. It was also one of my favorite areas, this strip along the beach that looked out onto Long Island Sound and Charles Island, which was officially part of the Silver Sands park. Rumor had it that Captain Kidd had buried a treasure there hundreds of years ago, and I was betting if anyone had found it, it was Vince.
This wasn’t quite the idyllic part of town it was two years earlier, before Hurricane Sandy swept through, laying waste to many of these beach houses, dropping trees, devastating countless home owners and their families, dumping tons of sand hundreds of feet inland.
We’d gotten off relatively easy at our house. We had a tree come down in the yard, one window blew in, and some shingles were ripped off the roof, but it was nothing to complain about compared with the destruction so many of our neighbors endured.
East Broadway was coming back. The street had been lined with contractors’ trucks for more than twenty months. Not all homes could be repaired. The storm leveled many, knocked others off their foundations. Some houses that looked relatively unscathed still had to be torn down because they were structurally unsound.
Vince’s place fell into the repairable category. I walked down here several times in the days after Sandy came through — cars weren’t allowed as crews worked to clear the streets of sand and debris. Part of the roof was missing from Vince’s two-story residence, windows had shattered, some of the siding had been ripped off. But compared with the houses on either side of him, he’d been lucky. Those two places looked as though they’d been dynamited.
Jane drove ahead of me, thinking maybe I couldn’t find the place without help. Her brake lights flashed and I could see her pointing to the house, Grace barely visible in the passenger seat. She brought the Mini to a stop and I parked behind her.
As I walked up to the passenger side, Grace put down her window. “If you have any kind of problem or you hear anything about Stuart,” I said to her, “you call me, okay?”
She nodded.
The lower level of Vince’s place was mostly garage. A place for two cars, or boat storage. A set of stairs went up the left side of the house to a small landing. Looking up, I could see lights on. I mounted the stairs. Not too slow, but not too fast, either. I figured Vince would be listening for me, and I didn’t want to go charging up there like I was some dog who came whenever you whistled for it. You try to preserve your pride in whatever small ways that are available to you.
I reached the landing and rapped on the screen door.
“’S’open,” he said.
It had been a long time since I’d heard that voice. Still recognizable, but more gravelly. Maybe even less forceful. But I knew better than to estimate this man based on his vocal abilities.
I pulled open the door and stepped in. The living area was on the beach side, the kitchen at the back. I glanced out at the sound, but there wasn’t much you could see this time of night beyond a few stars and the faint lights of some boats out on the water.
The room hadn’t changed any since I’d been brought here by Vince’s henchmen seven years ago. Kidnapped, really. I’d been asking around town for him, thinking he might be able to help me find Cynthia, who, along with Grace, was missing at the time, and when he got wind that someone was snooping around looking for him, he had his employees scoop me up and deliver me to him.
At least, this time I’d come under my own power.
He was sitting at the kitchen table, putting down a cell phone, making no effort to get up and greet me. He’d lost some weight and his hair was peppered with more gray. The word that came to mind was “gaunt.” I wondered whether he was sick.
He pointed to the chair opposite him.
“Siddown, Terry.”
I walked over, pulled out the chair, and sat. I kept my hands in my lap, off the tabletop. Didn’t want Vince to play any knife games with me this time.
“Vince,” I said, nodding.
“Long time,” he said.
“Yeah.”
“You don’t call, you don’t write.”
“Last time I saw you, you didn’t exactly encourage it.”
He waved a hand in the air. “I was feeling kind of cranky. Getting shot will do that to you.”
“I suppose,” I said. “We tried to tell you then, and I mean it when I tell you now, Cynthia and I remain grateful to you for your help and we regret the price you had to pay in offering it.”
Vince stared at me. “That’s nice. That’s lovely. The truth is, I think about you most every day.”
I swallowed. “Really.”
“That’s right. Every time I empty my bag.”
I blinked. “I’m sorry. What?”
Vince placed his meaty palms on the table and pushed himself back in his chair. He came around the end of the table, stood about two feet from me. I started to get up, but he raised a hand. “No no, just sit. You’ll get a better view from there.”
He undid his belt, lowered his zipper, pushed his pants down about six inches, and lifted up his shirt to reveal a plastic bag attached to his abdomen. The lower half contained dark yellow liquid.
“You know what that is?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“That’s good. I’m impressed. Before I got shot, I’d never even heard about these ostomy bag things. But the bullet fucked up my interior plumbing so I can’t piss out my dick anymore. Had to get used to wearing one of these twenty-four/seven. So now, every time I go into the can to drain this bag, I think of you.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know.”
“It’s not the sort of thing you put on Facebook.”
I hadn’t given up trying to be nice. “And I’m sorry about your wife, too. I ran into Jane a while back and she told me.”
Vince tucked his shirt back in, did up his zipper, and buckled his belt. He sat back down across from me.
“You didn’t ask Jane to get me here so you could update me on your health,” I said.
“No,” he said. “It’s about your kid.”
I felt a shiver run down the length of my spine.
“What about my kid?” I asked slowly.
“She’s stepped in the shit, that’s what.”
Twenty-two
Bert Gooding was running the Buick’s headlights off the battery. He wasn’t too worried about anyone noticing the lights out here in the country on a farm, but thought leaving the engine running might attract some attention. It was a big V-8, sounded like a tractor, and pumped out exhaust like a coal plant.
But he needed to see what he was doing. So he positioned the car just right.
He’d brought an ax along, given the kind of job it was, and a change of clothes. It was hard to do something like this and not make a mess of yourself. When he was a kid, his dad used to take him twice a year to a cabin up in Maine, where they had a woodstove, and Bert always volunteered to split the already cut firewood into smaller pieces. He loved the feeling that came from making a perfect swing, blade meeting wood, forcing its way through cleanly without getting stuck. That satisfying sound of cracking wood. Using sufficient force so that you didn’t have to hold the wood down with your boot to pry the blade free. It was all physics.
Not quite the same as what he was doing now. But the principle remained the same. You wanted to take a good, strong swing, connect in just the right place, make as clean a cut as possible. But there wasn’t much chance of getting your blade stuck, and the sound wasn’t nearly as satisfying.