Bloodline (29 page)

“So what is it you do?”

“Go to school,” he said, grinning and spitting on the gravel. “Can't you tell? I'm on a field trip.”

“What's the class? Backshooting 101?”

Kenny's grin dissolved. I held mine tautly.

“You got something to say, Mr. Article Writer?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I'm gonna say only a coward shoots windows out and runs. Only a coward burns a man's truck and runs. Only a coward runs away and hides like a little baby.”

“You calling me a coward?”

“You tell me.”

“No, you tell me,” Kenny said.

“Okay. I'll tell you. I'll tell you you're no good. A backshooting little wimp. You ought to have your name on your back, because you're always running away. You don't have the balls to do what I'm doing right now, which is to tell you right to your face that you're a worthless piece of garbage. And you owe me for one window and one Chevy truck.”

I waited. Kenny kept his eyes on mine but his expression wavered. Enraged, but then a flicker of amusement. Disdain, but then anger again. As if nobody had told him quite how to play this part.

“And dumb as a stump, too,” I said.

So anger it was, eyes narrowed to slits, rocking ever so slightly on the balls of his feet, big hands hanging and ready. For the first time, I noticed he had a clasp knife in a leather case on his right hip. Too late to back out now.

We stood there like disarmed gunfighters, too close to look away, too far apart to swing. A car approached from behind me and slowed as the old couple in the front seat stared, then turned away as the old man sped up.

“So what's your problem?” I asked.

“I don't got one,” Kenny said, the grin trickling back onto his face. “But man, you sure do. Little candy-ass pussy.”

“You say that to all the guys.”

“Talking's over, man.”

“And just when you were getting a command of the language.”

“Write about this, you little pussy.”

“Where should I send the bill for my truck and the window?”

“Send it—”

He was on me in two quick steps, quick as a wrestler. I threw up my arms and he shoved me back with his left hand and followed up with a burst of quick rights, close compact punches that hit my forearms, grazed the top of my head. I set myself and drove back against him, low, until my head was against his belly and my arms locked around him. I spun and threw him off me. His hat flew off, but he didn't go down, and instead, he came back at me again, like we were tied with elastic cord.

There was the same shove, but when he grunted and pushed, I pulled him close with my left arm and drove my right fist into his face. I got nose and lip and then we spun again and Kenny fell on his back and rolled and popped back up. There was blood on his chin and he wiped it with his hand and grinned.

He was on me again, no punches this time, locking his arms around my neck as I hit him with short punches to the neck and chin and winced at the pain in my wrist and knuckles. Kenny's leg intertwined with mine and he tripped me and we went down in a thrashing pile in the gravel. The side of my head was pressed against the ground and a sharp stone and I felt a sudden surge of claustrophobia and, with it, the strength to throw him off. On my back, I brought my elbow
down blindly, as hard as I could, and caught him under the chin. The elbow got windpipe, too, and Kenny gasped and gagged for a moment, long enough for me to flip over on top of him and raise my fist.

So what did I do now? Just drive his head into the ground? Grab a big rock and crush his skull? End the fight and do five years for aggravated assault? Grab a bigger rock and do fifteen for manslaughter?

I hesitated and Kenny's hand went down and there was a snap as the sheath opened and the knife came out. Before he could open it, I grabbed his right arm with both hands. He didn't let go and I could see his fingers trying to work the blade open, could see the blade slide out, then slip back into the slot. Then it came out a third of the way and stayed there, so as he kicked my legs and punched the side of my head with his free hand, I bent down and bit his forearm hard just above the wrist, tasting salt and feeling hair in my mouth and then the odd sensation of my teeth breaking the skin and sinking right into him.

“Aaaaah,” Kenny yelled, and his grip loosened. Lifting my head from his arm, I scuffed at the knife and it skidded five feet away. He punched me some more, a flurry against my head, in my eyes, a hard numbing shot to my ear. I backhanded him across the face with my right, and, still on all fours, jumped up until one knee was on his right arm and the other across his neck. I pressed with all my weight and he thrashed his legs to try to flip me off but couldn't, and the next thrash was weaker, and then he was gasping, an awful rasping sound that almost made me get off.

But not quite.

A car approached and passed but I didn't look up. I took a little of the weight off his neck but not all of it, and his face turned red and he still gasped for air. The blood from my face dripped onto his
right bicep, still pinned by my left knee. It dripped once, twice, three times, until I turned to look at him and the drip moved to his chest. Once. Twice. Three times. I took a little more weight off and watched him take a real breath.

It was an odd situation, kneeling there in the gravel on the side of the road. I was on top of him, in a position that, blood and all, was strangely intimate. Physically, it was the closest I'd been to anyone in years, with the exception of sex, and I wanted to back off, get away, but couldn't. Not yet.

“You're a dead man,” Kenny gasped.

I pressed my knee down on his neck.

“You could be, easier than you know,” I said.

I waited and then let up.

“What's it all about?” I demanded. “What the hell's this all about?”

“You tell me.”

I pressed down, let up.

“What's it all about? What the hell are you doing to me? Why are you doing this stuff to me?”

Kenny stared up and managed a grin.

“I ain't done nothin',” he rasped.

I pressed. The grin left. Kenny's face hardened. I let up.

“Now talk.”

Kenny wheezed.

“You came to me, man. You came in and looked at us, mister hot-shit writer. What are we, some kind of friggin' test case? Monkeys at the zoo, right? Come here from New York or some goddamn place, gonna come in here and put us in some magazine for these rich bitches to friggin' gawk at when they're sitting on the can.”

“I didn't come here. I live here.”

“Yeah, right,” Kenny said hoarsely, staring up at me with undisguised, unvarnished hatred. “Until you get bored, man. Until we're used up and you need somebody else. I friggin' hate you bastards. Go back to friggin' New Jersey where you belong.”

“I'm not writing about you.”

“You're writing about my people.”

“Your people? Who are your people?”

“All these kids. The kids at the pit.”

“I'm not writing about kids at the pit. I'm writing about girls with babies.”

“I know those girls.”

“You know the girls in the pickup.”

“This is Prosperity, Maine, man. Thorndike. Searsmont. Us kids all know each other. We stick together.”

“And you shoot out people's windows. Burn people's trucks.”

Kenny shrugged, as well as he could under the circumstances. The blood on his face was coagulating.

“Why don't you admit it? You picked me out as some kind of target.”

Kenny looked up and, for a moment, didn't say anything.

“I didn't pick you out,” he said slowly, his voice drained of its cockiness. “You picked me.”

As I thought about this, kneeling on his neck, the knife in the dirt, there was the sound of a car approaching, slowing, then stopping. I looked up and saw a familiar dark brown Chevy. The door opened and feet in boots stepped out.

“Bargain,” Poole said. “Two birds. One stone.”

Poole considered calling a rescue unit but decided, instead, to give each of us a couple of envelopes of premoistened paper towels from the dusty first-aid kit in his trunk. I dabbed at my nose and mouth and a scrape that ran from just in front of my left ear all the way to my left eye, which already was puffing out. Kenny looked better, but as he stood there, picking the dried blood out of his nose, rubbing the bite on his arm, he kept swallowing hard and grimacing, like a kid with a very sore throat.

Mess with me, I'll bruise your trachea.

Standing there by the side of the road, I felt a little silly. A farm truck came by, pulling a big John Deere tractor on a flatbed trailer, and the tanned farm boys in the cab stared at my face. I stared back, the first hardened public enemy to have once had his byline in the
New York Times.

If the crew on the metro desk could only see me now. But then everybody had said freelancing was a rough business.

Poole waited by his car as we prettied ourselves up. After a minute, a Waldo County patrol car pulled up and he went over and spoke to the deputy behind the wheel. The deputy, a young kid, listened for a minute, then saluted and drove away. As he passed, the deputy stared at my face, too.

I was beginning to get a complex.

“You boys feeling better now?” Poole said, grinning.

“Peachy,” I said. “But I think my friend here is suffering some emotional trauma.”

Kenny gave me a hard stare and said nothing.

“Well, they say these things should be gotten out in the open,” Poole said. “Maybe we should talk about this. Who wants to start?”

Neither of us jumped in.

“Okay. How 'bout we drive into Belfast and get to work on a disorderly charge. I could use the overtime, and I'm sure you boys didn't have anything planned. If I hadn't come along, you'd probably still be scrapping in the dirt here. Kind of reminded me of my boys at home. They're always tackling each other over some nonsense or other.”

He grinned.

“They're eight and ten. So what's your excuse?”

Still no comment. A couple of tough nuts, we were.

“Kind of out of your line of expertise, isn't it, Mr. McMorrow? I mean,
New York Times.
That's pretty big-time journalism, isn't it? I don't know much about it, but I never pictured these big-time reporters wrestling around in the gutter. And is that a bite mark on Kenny's arm? Seems like one of you should get a tetanus shot, but I'm not sure which one. What do you think, Ken-Bob? Been a while since you got in one of these face-to-face go-arounds. I figured you liked to work behind the scenes, where your pretty face doesn't get all beat up, you know what I'm saying? I think you do.”

I looked at Kenny. He looked at Poole. I balled up my wipe and put it in my pocket.

“So what'll it be, boys?” Poole said. “You want to go for a ride?”

I shrugged, not sure how to handle this new Poole. This one was less earnest Boy Scout leader, more wise-ass tough cop. I wondered if this was the side he usually reserved for the Kenny types—if I no longer merited the polite treatment.

“I don't,” I said.

“So start talking.”

“I don't know. I guess we just agreed to disagree.”

“About what?”

“I don't know. His extracurricular activities. My journalistic ethics. Sort of highbrow stuff.”

“I can see that,” Poole said. “And by the way, you missed some blood in your left highbrow.”

“Not bad,” I said.

“Thanks. I kind of liked it.”

The police radio in Poole's car crackled. Kenny looked restless.

“Can I go?” he said, fingering the brim of his Ford hat.

“You haven't contributed to the discussion,” Poole said.

“Got nothing to say.”

“I've got an afternoon to kill.”

He looked at me.

“Excuse the pun.”

Jesus, I thought. A reminder. For Jack McMorrow, murder suspect.

“So kill it with him, 'cause I didn't do nothin',” Kenny said. “The guy comes up on my bumper, gives me the finger. I pull over and get out and he friggin' starts going on about his house and his truck, and I don't know what he's talking about, and then he really starts going on about me, calling me this and that, and I tell him, lighten up, man, you know, get out of my face, and he friggin' takes a swing at me and tries to choke me. I want to file a complaint.”

“And I'm trying not to laugh,” Poole said. “And the only reason I'm not laughing is I'm sick of your games.”

He looked toward me.

“And yours too, Mr. McMorrow. I don't know what this is all about—coke or girls or what—but it's all gonna come out. And when it does, somebody's gonna go down for this piddly stuff. The burnt truck. Shooting up the house. And somebody's gonna go down for killing Missy Hewett.”

“One would hope so,” I said.

“I'm not done, sir. Let me give you some advice. Both of you. Like I said, I don't know what's going on here. But the longer you bullshit me, the deeper you get. And the deeper you get, the more you lie, the more the judge is gonna want to put you away. And we're talking a long time. None of this chickenshit five-all-but-three-suspended stuff. You hear me, Kenny? No nice little probation chitchat this time. This is heavy duty. So if you want to save yourself some serious trouble, now's the time to start talking. Get out of here. Go think about it, but not too long, 'cause it's gonna be too late.”

We looked at him and then walked to our trucks like a couple of chastised kids. Poole opened his car door and got in. Kenny's big Ford started with a roar and spun gravel as it lurched onto the pavement and headed down the road. I pulled the Toyota up next to Poole's car and unrolled the window.

He did the same.

“Question,” I said. “Which one is the real you? This one, or Mister Rogers?”