Black Tide (37 page)

Justin raised up his coffee cup, as if he was about to throw it at me, and instead he did something that was even more disquieting. He began at the top of the cardboard cup and started gently shredding the container into tiny strips, using only his fingernails. They must have been sharp.

"Leaving aside your insults regarding my professionalism and my personal life, I've got something to tell you."

"Then tell me."

As he worked on stripping the coffee cup, his voice lowered and took on a narrative quality, as if he was telling a story he had told many times before. "I must imagine you are single, Mr. Cole, for I'm not sure if you will understand what I say here and now.  But give it a try. It will make a difference in everything else."

I looked around the plastic booths and chairs of the McDonald's, and out of all the people there, eating and drinking and smoking --- the kids, the housewives and the truckers  --- not a person was smiling. Not a single one. Maybe they were all secretly concerned about the fat they were pouring into their veins and arteries. None of those fantasy McDonald's commercials would be filmed in this restaurant anytime soon, and it was probably a good thing, because what was going on between Justin and me would probably soil this place for some time to come.

"Elaine and I have been married for nearly twelve years," he continued, "and one thing that they never mention in the women's magazine articles or in the marriage books is the hard fact that marriage is a series of battlefields. There are contests to be fought and won over jobs, chores, sex, relatives and damn near everything else. In good marriages, the fights are just words. No violence, no furniture or dishes thrown. Just words. And you learn about yourself, and your partner. You learn about what battles are worth fighting, and which ones should be given up after a few minutes. Pretty soon you know which territory belongs to which partner, and which territories can change hands over time."

“You make it all sound very attractive, Justin," I said. "Ever think of becoming a marriage counselor?"

He looked up from his work with the coffee cup, ignoring my comment. "The weak ones are those who give up after a couple of battles, who can't stand the battle of words. The strong ones keep on going with the fight, and sometimes, well, sometimes they come across a battle that's just damn near impossible."

"Like finances," I said.

Justin nodded. "Finances. Money. That's the territory, the Alsace-Lorraine, the Danzig Corridor, the favorite place for all battles. Money. Who earns it, who controls it and who spends it."

"Were you the only wage earner?"

"Hah." He looked around at the mid morning crowd and said, "There was a time in this fat and wonderful country when one man could support a family and a house on one weekly paycheck. That time's dead, my friend, and won't ever come back, even if they do put tail fins back on cars. No, Cole, she worked. As a mid-level manager over at the Manchester Mall. Whatever money she made would come in and would go right out the door, Mr. Cole. Right out the door. Clothing. CD player and disks. Redecorating the house. At first I didn't mind, because I was doing well at the museum, but things started getting tighter and tighter. Bill collectors started calling, at home and then at work. You see, my name was also on the charge cards. Then I had trouble making my own payments, and one day I had my car repossessed. Ever have a car repossessed, Cole?"

Justin held a piece of cardboard in his hands, and instead of tearing it in half, bent it back and forth, over and over again. "In this state, they don't even require the repo men to come see you. They can take your car anytime after the bank warns you that repossession is possible. So one day at work, I go out at lunch, and my car's gone. First instinct is that it was stolen. You don't want to believe that it got repoed. So I called the cops, the Manchester cops I deal with regularly, and I have to go through the humiliation of having them tell me that my car was picked up by repo men. Then I have to go over to their grungy office--- by begging for a ride --- so I can pick up all of my belongings from the car in a paper bag. That was it, that was the one thing that put me over the edge, and Elaine and I have been in counseling, and still go every now and then, because there's something in that marriage I want to save."

He looked up at me, his eyes still bleak behind his glasses. "So I have a credit report that looks like it belongs to someone who's spent time in the county jail, and each time I check the mailbox, I look for those dunning letters and the envelopes with pink slips in. them. But Elaine and I have stuck together, and it's been worth it. I grew up alone most of the time, Cole, being a single child and all. I hate being alone. So I did what I could to stick with my wife. Last time I checked, that's no crime."

“That's some story," I finally managed to say.

"No," he said. "That's some truth. And here's another truth, Mr. Lewis Cole, columnist for
Shoreline
magazine. You put a stop to whatever you're up to, or by God, if I see a magazine article with my name in it, you'll regret the day that you walked into the Scribner Museum."

"You seem to know your art history, but I don't think you're doing well on your constitutional history, Justin," I said. "You ever hear of something called the First Amendment?"

He managed a smile. "You ever hear of something called the FBI?"

That I had. "Go on."

"I still have contacts with the FBI over the Winslow Homer thefts, Cole, guys I became friends with," he said, now smiling confidently. ''All I need to do is to say a few words about you harassing me, and then bad things will start happening to you. Like a tax audit, perhaps. Everybody else may think that the FBI became a Boy Scout troop after Hoover died, but I know better, and so should you. There. Do you get the point now, Cole?"

"I do," I said, feeling fairly vanquished but wanting to know one more thing before skulking away. "I just have a single question, and then I'm gone."

"One question, then." I tried not to look at the tiny scraps of cardboard littering the plastic tabletop. "It's about Craig Dummer. Last time you and I talked, you said that you were keeping close tabs on Craig Dummer. You told me he lived in Bainbridge, but when I got there, he had left, weeks ago. Disappeared and it took me the longest time to find him, but you thought he still lived in Bainbridge. Why’s that? Were you protecting him?"

He dismissed my question with a wave of his hand. "Please, Cole. Look, first of all, that's two questions. Second, I was just trying to show you that things were in control. Truth is, Craig Dummer was never a suspect."

"He wasn't?"

Justin shook his head. "Nope. We and the FBI and the Manchester cops looked at both Craig Dummer and Ben Martin pretty closely, and it just wasn't there for Craig. He was just a kid, still in college. No record, no nasty relatives, nothing driving him at all. And Ben had retired and was finding things rough out on his own, and we knew that he was trying to buy some land up at a north lake, for a retirement home, but the financing fell through. Plus the fact of the two cops coming in and Ben saying he recognized them…. well, Ben was number one on the suspect list from that first day."

"His sons dispute that little history lesson. One told me their father had nothing to do with the theft, that Craig Dummer let in the fake cops."

He looked smug, as if he had just won a free Big Mac for lunch. "What do you expect him to say? That they thought dear old Dad did it, and they wish he had been arrested before he died?"

"Speaking of which, he did die rather strangely, don't you think?"

Justin looked a bit surprised. "Oh, come on. He was a retired ex-cop with heart problems. He was found dead in his car. Heart attack."

"But no autopsy was done."

"None needed. Look, Cole, it's done with. Someone hired Ben Martin to look the other way when the hit went down, and for all we know, the paintings are in a basement in Sao Paulo or Tokyo. So forget about your conspiracy theories, leave everything else to the FBI and the cops, and forget about me. Got it?"

With that and without waiting for an answer from me, he got up and left me there in the booth, with the mess of cardboard scraps before me. I thought for a moment and then swept them up in my palm, and tossed them in a bin on my way out.

It was the least I could do, since I hadn't spent a penny there.

I left the McDonald's in Rayburn feeling as if I had spent the previous half hour hovering over their deep-fry vats, being wreathed in a noxious cloud of steam and grease. I had backed down before Justin Dix and had turned over on my back and opened up my stomach and throat to his sharp claws of an argument, and all without a whimper, because he had uttered those three magic letters. FBI. Guys and gals I definitely did not want to get interested in me, in a man who knew some dark secrets that could raise holy hell in a lot of newspapers and magazines.

And which would end my current non-career and take me away from my home at the beach, my den and nest of safety. 

So I drove back on Route 51, heading east to the ocean and Tyler, feeling foul and grumpy, and for no good reason at all, I look an early exit, which led me into Exonia. 

I guess I wanted to spread my bad mood around.

I found Craig Dummer sitting in a lawn chair at the side of his trailer, but instead of raggedy jeans, this time he was dressed in gray sweat pants and a stained tank top, and he was only working on one beer.

“Are you on a liquid diet?" I asked when I stepped out of my Range Rover.

Craig eyed me for a moment and then held up his Budweiser can. "Can do worse than this, I suppose. Least this has calories and carbohydrates in it. What do you want?"

I stood in front of the Rover. "Information, as always."

“Didn't you get enough the last time you was here?" His light brown hair was still shoulder length but looked like it had been freshly washed, and his eyes seemed brighter behind his round, wire-rimmed glasses.

“A writer's work gets done here and there, but never gets done in the first try," I said. "I'm interested in you and Justin Dix."

"You are, are you? And why's that?"

"Because you two have some things in common," I said. "You both worked at the museum when the Winslow Homers got stolen. You both had financial problems. And it seems you both spend a lot of time dancing around the truth."

"Mmm," he murmured, taking a swallow from his beer. "You've been spending some time talking with Justin, then?"

"I have."

"What do you think?" I shrugged. "Except for one glaring example, he seems fairly competent. "

"Competent," Craig said, repeating the word, almost as if he was savoring the syllables. "Competent. Yeah, that's not a bad word. I'd have picked reserved, or centered, but competent will do. You want to know something interesting about Justin?"

A stupid question, but I let it pass. "I'm sure you know the answer to that, so why don't you go ahead."

He rested the Budweiser can on his soft gut, and I made another resolution never to let myself sag that much. "If in the year I worked at the Scribner, if Justin had more than one sentence to tell me at one time that wasn't work-related, then I must've slept through that day's worth of work. He was always quiet and aboveboard, and he sent me and Ben and the other guards out on our training sessions, and he did some of his own training, but that was it. No talk about baseball, football or our families. Strictly business."

Craig nodded, as if he was remembering a touch, a scent, a lost memory. "The only time I ever saw him lose it was the day after the paintings were stolen, when Ben and I were being interviewed by the Manchester cops and the FBI. He was shaking and crying and trembling, like he wanted to grab us both by the ears and start chewing on our throats. I think he impressed the cops and the FBI agents, but he didn't impress me. And later, Ben told me that he didn't impress him either."

I thought for a moment and said, "You think it was an act?"

He winked at me and lifted the beer again. "I think it served its purpose."

"What purpose?"

He held his arms out. "Think about it, man. There he was, responsible for the most important museum in this state, responsible for its security and to make sure everything was covered, that he didn't have crazies working as guards, and in one night, it’s over. It's over. He looks around at the cops and the FBI and he has to play the act, has to act like he's loony, though he was always one for having a real cramped way of looking at things." He swallowed again from his can of beer. "You know, Ben and I had a few minutes together after that, and he said what went through Justin must've been like what happens to a woman who gets raped. You're not the same person. Nothing's the same anymore. Look. You've talked to Justin, right?"

"That I have."

He leaned forward a bit in the lawn chair. "Don't you think strange that he's still at the museum five years later?"

"You think he's being protected?"

Craig shrugged. "Maybe, maybe not. But I think it's strange that he'd go back there, to the scene of his biggest screw-up ever, every day, going to the same place and going into that room, knowing that's where the three paintings used to be. Man, that's a level of pain and hurting yourself I don't think I understand.  It'd be like getting in a car accident that kills your wife, and then driving the same car after wiping her blood off the upholstery. That's morbid, don't you think?"