Bedbugs (52 page)
“Fine,” Bill said, nodding, his stomach tightening. “This shouldn’t take long.”
Sidney Wood Jr.—Woody—looked up from where he had been lying, face down on the blue and gray striped county mattress. His thin blond hair stuck up in several places like oily flaps—”rooster tails,” Bill had called them when Kip and Marty were young. His eyes, at least the small amount that
wasn’t
bloodshot, had a yellow tinge, like sour-milk.
“I hate to disturb you so early,” Bill said, hooking a chair with his foot and pulling it over so he could sit down. He wanted to keep his distance from Woody. Glancing at his watch, Bill saw that it was past
. He had already picked up Kip, who was waiting in the car. Bill wanted to be done with this as quickly as possible.
“You ain’t disturbin’ me none,” Woody said. He lurched into a sitting position, letting his feet hit the floor with a heavy clomp. With an angry scowl, he said, “Anything to break the boredom of this fuckin’ place.”
Bill tried to restrain his smile. “Gee, I don’t know, Woody. I thought you were getting to like jail. From what your father tells me, you’ve been in them often enough.”
Woody was silent for a moment, the scowl never leaving his face. “I didn’t do nothin’.”
Bill refrained from pointing out that his use of a double negative could be construed as an admission of guilt, but what bothered him even more was the echo he heard of his own son, Marty, in Woody’s defiance. Sure, maybe Marty wasn’t as far down the road as Woody was, but Bill felt a stab of guilt thinking that, since Lori died, he hadn’t carried the weight of the family as well as he might have.
“We can cut through the crap here, okay Woody?” Bill leaned his elbows onto his legs. “Your girlfriend—Suzie—is in Maine Med. with some fairly serious lacerations on her face and scalp. She’s decided to press charges, and—”
“That lousy bitch!”
Bill shook his head. “This isn’t going to get us anywhere. Look, my boy—”
“I’m not
your
boy!” Woody snarled, folding his arms across his chest and leaning back against the pitted cement wall. The institutional green wall paint gave his skin a sickly white cast. Underneath it all, he looked frightened and nervous, but Bill knew he’d never let it show.
Bill nodded. “No, you’re not my boy, and for that, I thank God. I’m here because your father asked me to do him a favor and get you out of here, but before I can do that, before I even go see the district court judge, I want to have your word that
this
time you’ll make it for your court appearance.”
Woody stiffened and looked at Bill with a narrow squint.
“You’ve been charged with aggravated assault. This isn’t something you should take too lightly, and unless you cooperate with me, you’re going to see a lot more of these bars.”
Woody covered his mouth with his hand. His eyes darted back and forth but never locked onto Bill’s steady glare.
“Look,” he finally said, “my old man’s got enough money to get me outta here, so why don’t you just spring me? Tell the judge and the piggies that I’ll be a good little boy from now on. Tell you what. I’ll even start going to church on Sunday. Will that satisfy ‘em?”
Bill rubbed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. “Woody, how old are you now?”
“Twenty-two,” Woody replied, frowning.
“Twenty-two. And do you have any idea what will happen to you if you’re convicted on this charge?”
Woody glanced at the ceiling as if nothing mattered to him.
“I’ll tell you what. You could end up doing some
hard
time in prison—and maybe not here, maybe in
Warren
. Do you want that?”
Woody shrugged like he could just about care.
“So if you don’t get your head out of your ass, someone in
Warren
is gonna be putting something else up there, and you ain’t gonna like it. Am I getting through to you?”
A hint of fear had crept into Woody’s expression, but still he maintained his facade of not caring. “My dad’ll put up whatever money he needs to get me out of this.”
Bill sighed and shook his head, positive he wasn’t getting through to him.
“You’re right, Woody,” he finally said. “Your dad has the bucks to get you out, but one of the reasons he asked me to help out is so I could tell you he isn’t going to pay this time.”
“What—? What the fuck are talking about?” Woody’s face had suddenly drained of color.
Bill could see this slight stretching of the truth was helping, so he decided to push it a little further. “Your dad told me this morning that, if I can’t get you out on your own personal recognizance, he’d just as soon let you spend a few days or weeks here. You can see what it’s like in case you
do
end up in
Warren
.”
“You’re full of shit. My old man would never say that.”
Bill shrugged, pushing the chair back as he stood.
“I’m just telling you what he told me. He lost the money he posted for your bail last time—five thousand dollars. Even for someone as rich as your dad, that’s a healthy chunk of change—a lot more than he’s paying me. So if you can’t guarantee you’ll show for the hearing
and
cooperate with me on every step of this, I’m not even going to try to get the judge to reduce your bail. Your father doesn’t
want
me to do it.”
“You’re so full of shit your eyes are brown, you know that?” Woody snapped, his upper lip curling into a sneer.
“Woody, my boy,” Bill said. He could see he had him, and he knew this time Woody wouldn’t say
I’m not your boy.
“It’s a beautiful day out there. A gorgeous June afternoon. Of course, with no windows here, how are you going to tell what kind of day it is. But do you know what I’m going to do?”
Woody clenched his fist and pressed it against his mouth. He didn’t say a word.
“I’m going to take the rest of the afternoon off. I’m going back home to
Thornton
and take my boy out canoeing on the river. I may even drop a fishing line over the side of the canoe; I may not. But one thing I’ll try not to do is think about you while I’m sipping a cold beer and paddling down the
Saco
River
. I won’t even think of you until Monday morning, when I
might
make it over to the courthouse to ask the judge to reduce your bail.”
“You’re a prick, you know that?” Woody’s voice was barely audible from behind his clenched fist.
“I’ll just tell your father you needed the rest of the weekend to think things over.”
“Hey! Wait a minute.” Woody jumped to his feet and raced over to Bill, who was at the cell door, about to signal the policeman to let him out.
“I’m ready to go now,” Bill called. The policeman came over, twirling the ring of keys in his hand.
“Yeah, so am I,” Woody said. The smirk instantly returned to his face, but it looked somehow weaker, deflated.
“See you on Monday, Woody,” Bill said. “In the meantime, you think about how sincere you can be when you tell me you won’t jump bail this time, okay?”
Woody said nothing as Bill walked free, and the heavy, barred door swung shut with a clang. The tumblers fell into place as the policeman turned the key in the lock.
J
ust like every other Friday night,
The Wheelwell
—a working man’s bar just up from the docks in Cape Harvest, Maine—was filled with rafts of drifting cigarette smoke. It hung, suspended in the air in several clearly defined strata—some charcoal gray, some as blue as the ocean at dawn. Glenn Chadwick had always suspected that on any given night, with a careful analysis of the layers of smoke, you could tell which of the locals was there without even looking around or listening for any particular voice. On this chilly, late-September night, however, such ruminations were the furthest thing from his mind when he burst through the barroom door a half hour before closing time.
Perched on stools in their regular place at the brass rail were his buddies, Tony Miller and Jake ‘Butter’ McPherson. Tony nodded and raised his forefinger, which was pretty much the extent of his “good to see yah” greeting for anyone. Even if he did smile, you never would have seen it behind the thick tangle of his salt ‘n pepper beard. Butter, who was clean-shaven, spun around and smiled widely, exposing the single large front tooth of his which was stained yellow from nicotine and internal decay. It was the bright yellow color of that damaged tooth that inspired his nickname “Butter Tooth”—or “Butter” for short.
“Where the hell you been, boy-o?” Butter said, his voice slurring from the numerous beers he no doubt had already consumed. “Marsha was by an hour or so ago, looking for yah.”
“I’ll catch up with her later,” Glenn said, waving his hand dismissively. He barely smiled as Shantelle, the barmaid, slid his usual—a twenty-ounce Shipyard—across to him. Glenn noticed that his right hand was shaking a little as he clasped the ice-rimmed glass and raised it to his mouth. The first gulp made him snort and shiver, but it felt damned good going down.
“What’s that you got there?” Tony asked, indicating the black leather carrying case slung over Glenn’s shoulder. His voice was raw from a lifetime of cigarettes. “You ain’t started carrying a purse around, have yah?”
A few of the locals nearby burst out laughing, but Glenn hardly noticed or cared. Shaking his head from side to side, he eased up onto the vacant bar stood next to Butter.
“I’ve been out to the Nephews,” he said.
Although he tried to sound casual, he could hear the slight tremor in his voice and wondered if his friends noticed it, too.
“You don’t say,” Butter replied, raising one gray, bushy eyebrow. Glenn saw Tony’s posture stiffen a little as he leaned away from the bar railing and cast a sidelong glance at him.
“What the hell you wanna be doin’ out there?” Butter asked. “‘Specially this time of year.”
He took a pack of Luckys from the breast pocket of his denim work shirt, shook one out from himself, then offered one to Glenn. Again, Glenn noticed that his hand was trembling as he slid the cigarette into the corner of his mouth and accepted a light from Butter’s Bic butane before he lit his own.
“Remember that writer fella up from
Portland
who was in here a day or so ago, asking about the lighthouse out on the Nephews?” he said, exhaling noisily. The smoke flattened out and joined the blue reef above their heads.
Both Butter and Tony grunted and nodded.
“Well, he wanted me to take him out there today. I just got back.”
Butter inhaled deeply, then tipped his head back and blew a stream of smoke up at the ceiling before responding.
“Wanted to see the haunted lighthouse, did he?” he said with a wide smile. Glenn had always thought Butter would be sensitive about how that big yellow tooth of his looked, but he never seemed to mind. And Butter still did all right with the ladies, which wasn’t bad for a suntanned, weathered man in his late fifties.
“You gotta admit,” Glenn said, shifting uneasily on the barstool, “there’s some pretty weird stories about that place.”
“‘N all of it’s horse-pucky, if you ask me” Tony said, craning his head around and looking Glenn straight in the eyes. “There’s nothing on that island but a derelict lighthouse ‘n the keeper’s old house that’s gone to shit.”
“That’s pretty much what I told this guy,” Glenn said, noisily exhaling smoke, “but he was determined to see it for himself. He wanted to see if he could see a ghost or at least hear the music.” “There’s no ghosts on that island, and there sure as hell ain’t no music,” Tony said. “Ain’t nothin’ there ‘cept a couple of old buildings ‘n rocks covered with seagull shit.”
“Yeah, but lemme tell you what happened, ‘cause I’m gonna need one or both of you guys to go back with me in the morning to find him.” Tony moaned softly as he carefully placed his half-empty glass on the bar, then shifted all the way around so he was looking past Butter and squarely at Glenn.
