Bloodline (35 page)

I found a pay phone up the block and dialed Maine directory assistance. They gave me Clair's number and I charged the call to my home phone.

“Is there anyone there to verify the charge?” the operator asked.

“Just the bats, and they're shy with strangers,” I said.

She thanked me for using AT&T.

I punched in the numbers. The phone rang and Clair answered.

“Jack,” he said. “You in jail?”

“Not yet, but I'm trying.”

“And you want me to have the bail money ready?”

“And a file in a cake,” I said. “How's everything there?”

“Well, they're talking about a killing frost tonight.”

“Cover your tomatoes.”

“They're all tucked in. How 'bout you?”

“Me? I'm outside a bar in Providence, Rhode Island.”

“They toss you out, or did you leave peaceably?”

“Never went in. The place is filled with children.”

“Life's like that,” Clair said. “Time, it marches on.”

I could hear Mary in the background and what sounded like music from an off-Broadway musical.
The Fantasticks.
She asked Clair if it was me and he said yes, and she told him not to forget to tell me something.

“Well, your place has been busy,” Clair said.

“Bats having company?”

“Yeah. The police, for one. Your detective buddy stopped and then he came over here. He asked if we knew your whereabouts. I said I didn't even know your shirt size.”

“He liked that.”

“Oh, yeah. No, he seemed like a nice-enough fella. Said he just needed to check with you about something.”

“Probably needs some help with a case,” I said.

“Right. And if it works out, you could get on full-time. Maybe they need somebody to chalk tires in Belfast.”

“I can only hope. Who else came by?”

“Well, let's see. I was almost ready to start charging you for a goddamn message service. The next one was another good friend of yours. That kid in the four-wheel-drive.”

“Kenny.”

“Yeah. He drove by here twice, around five o'clock. Come by real slow the first time, and the second time I stood out by the road and stepped out and surprised him.”

“What'd you do, shoot him?”

“Oh, no. Worse than that. I made him stop and talk to me. And weren't he a jumpy little bastard. I would've almost said that boy was wired on something, but I don't think so. Think he was just scared.”

“You do that to people. What'd he say?”

“Said he was just looking for you. Said he needed to talk to you.”

“Smoke a peace pipe?”

“I think he already smoked the peace pipe. No, but he said he needed to talk to you. Wasn't belligerent or anything. Seemed pretty nervous.”

“That's funny. Last time I saw him, he pulled a knife on me.”

“I hope you told him that wasn't a good idea.”

“He's just lucky he didn't pull a paper plate.”

“You got that right,” Clair said. “You'd be hell at a picnic.”

“Thanks to you.”

“Don't thank me.”

“Okay, I won't.”

A motorcycle went by and I covered the receiver. When I uncovered it, a kid in a Jeep leaned on his horn.

“You in the middle of the road or what?” Clair asked.

“On some issues,” I said. “So is that it for my message service?”

“Hell, no. I saved the best for last.”

“The place burned down?”

“Nope. But this lady was looking for you.”

“Story of my life.”

“Good-looking, too.”

“You sound surprised.”

“Hell, no. She wasn't a knockout or anything. She was just sort of pretty. In a wild sort of way. Dark curly hair. Lots of it. Nice smile. Sturdy little build.”

“Jeez, Clair. Sounds like you gave her the full inspection.”

“Just so I could report back to you. I told her I'm took. She looked disappointed, but I think she'll get over it.”

“Maybe not. Maybe she had her heart set on a father figure.”

“Father figure?”

“Okay. Grandfather figure. She tell you her name?”

“Yeah,” Clair said. “She said her name was Janeese. Or Janeesh. Something like that. Sounded foreign.”

“From the high school?”

“Right. She said to tell you she stopped by. So you been doing some extra research on that baby story or what?”

Janice Genest. Stopped by. To do what? Slash my tires? Serve me with a harassment notice barring me from school grounds?

“Jack,” I heard Clair's voice say. “You still there?”

“Yeah. I'm here. So what'd you tell her?”

“I told her you were away. Said you'd gone south to do some research on a story, but you'd be back in a day or two.”

“What'd she say?”

“Well, she gave me that big smile and said she'd be back. Nice girl. Mary thought so, too. She says it's about time you settled down with a nice girl like that.”

Nice girl? I thanked Clair and hung up and stood there for a minute on the sidewalk, like somebody looking to buy drugs. Nice girl?

That wasn't the Janice Genest I knew. She'd been cold and sharp as an icicle, and now she was coming on to Clair like my best friend. What had happened to change her mind? Had something sent her over to my side? Or someone?

Something had to have changed for her to seek me out. To find my house. To drive out and knock on my door. With a smile, no less.

Maybe it had just hit her all of a sudden. I was single. I was cute. I drove a pickup truck with a gun rack.

Best investment I'd ever made.

Things were a little off kilter now. In my head, I'd divided people up. On my side there was me. And Clair. Roxanne, long distance. Missy, in spirit. Missy's assorted family, maybe. My girlfriends in the truck, double maybe.

On the other side was Kenny. What had he wanted? Why was he there in broad daylight? Was the prospect of jail time softening him up, making him think maybe it was time for a truce? Or maybe he'd finally seen the error of his ways. Found Jesus. Was doing grocery runs for shut-ins. Needed me to help him with a term paper.

And Poole, too. Heck, if I'd known they were all coming, I would have been home. Would have made finger sandwiches. We could have stood around the backyard discussing Millie's sculptures. Yes, Kenny. I do think rusting iron symbolizes the decay of our industrial society.

And then there was Gary Putnam, whom I'd never met but was ready to hate. The Flanagans, whom I'd met only once but already hated me. Janice Genest I'd put in a neutral zone. She'd liked Missy but she didn't like me. One emotion nullified the other.

So I was having trouble fitting the smiling, warm Janice Genest into the scheme of things. But then, standing there on a sidewalk in a city full of strangers, I was having trouble maintaining any scheme at all.

I got in the truck and sat for a minute. Five minutes after that, I was at the bottom of College Hill, looking for the entrance to the interstate. In an hour, I was in Boston.

The Hyatt Regency was somewhere in Cambridge, and Cambridge was somewhere west of the center of the city. I drove up Route 3 to where the highway threaded through the glittering canyons of downtown Boston. It was like a miniature New York, a movie-set city without the sprawling desolation beyond the skyline. As I drove, I stared up at the lights like a bumpkin. The city seemed strange and unreal and foreign. But then, what didn't?

I fought my way through three lanes of traffic to take Storrow Drive West. The road wound past nameless, half-dark buildings and under the highway and emerged along the Charles River and the riverfront park where runners, bundled in sweat suits, were jogging in a slow, bounding procession, fending off the inevitable. Somewhere behind them, running just a little bit faster, was the Grim Reaper. Even in a two-hundred-dollar warm-up suit, you can run, but you can't hide.

I thought of Missy, in the road in her Nikes, and then I tried not to think of Missy, in the road in her Nikes, but it wasn't that easy. I thought of Roxanne, instead, and even that was unsettling. Would it be the same? Would it be different? Would it be over?

The Hyatt was beyond the river, past the sprawling complex of the Museum of Science, where knots of people were strung out forlornly along the sidewalk, like refugees who had come to an embassy to seek asylum. Cities were places where many strangers lived together. The country was where acquaintances went to live apart.

I didn't find the hotel so much as drive right into it. It was big and modern and glassy, and to the parents who stayed there while visiting their kids at Harvard and MIT, it probably was reassuring. Like a McDonald's.

There was a drive to the front entrance and I pulled the truck up to the front door. A kid in a dark-blue uniform came out and around
to the driver's door and gave the truck and me a very skeptical onceover.

“It's a loaner,” I said. “The BMW is in the garage.”

He looked at me harder.

“I'm a loner, too,” I said, and looked at him hard right back.

I grabbed my duffel from the truck bed and handed the kid my keys.

“Keep it under a hundred,” I said, and walked to the big double glass doors, through a red-carpeted hallway, and into the foyer, feeling more nervous than I had in a long, long time.

The registration desk was across the lobby. The lobby was ringed by Naugahyde chairs and couches and a few of the chairs and couches were occupied. A handsome, moneyed-looking couple with two teenage kids stood near the door, speaking a language that sounded like French but wasn't. A chunky balding guy in a gray suit sat on a couch, talking to a much younger woman who did not appear to be his daughter. He was leering. She was holding herself back. I figured he must have money or she would have kicked him in the groin and gone to play with someone her own age.

I went to the desk and stood there until somebody noticed that approximately three feet away there was a man with cuts on his face and a black eye. This took several minutes. Finally a woman wearing a navy-blue skirt and a white blouse with a gold name tag looked up. She looked like she worked on an airplane. She looked at me like I'd just fallen from the sky.

“I need to speak to a guest,” I said.

“Anyone in particular, sir?” the woman said.

This was not getting off to a great start.

I told the woman I wanted to talk to Roxanne Masterson. I didn't know the room number. She went to a file and flipped plastic sheets and then came back and picked up a phone on the counter. Covering the receiver so I wouldn't pick up the number, she dialed and waited. I could feel myself tighten as we waited. Was Roxanne there?

“Your name?” the woman asked, startling me.

“McMorrow,” I said. “Jack McMorrow.”

“This is the front desk,” the woman said into the phone. “There's a Jack McMorrow to see a Roxanne Masterson.”

The woman listened, then looked disappointed, as if she had been hoping she would be told there was a warrant out for my arrest.

“She'll be right down,” the woman said.

“Better luck next time,” I said.

I sat in a Naugahyde chair next to the family that wasn't French. They talked and I stared straight ahead at the elevator doors. The doors were dark maroon and closed. The light over one was going up. The light over the other was coming down. Eight, seven, six. It stopped. Started again. Five, four, three. Stop. Start again. Two, one, lobby. Like a drumroll, the doors rumbled open.

She stepped out and started toward the desk, then saw me and stopped. There was a moment, just before she turned to me, when she hung in midstride, motionless and still and beautiful. Then she smiled and, for the first time since she'd left, I felt like I was home.

“Hi,” Roxanne said.

“Hey, there,” I said.

“You look like hell,” she said.

“Cut myself shaving,” I said. “But you look fabulous.”

I stood and she took my left wrist in her right hand and pulled me toward her. We kissed gently but she squeezed my wrist hard. I
swept my hand quickly through her long dark hair. It was pulled back loosely and my hand pulled out the comb thing and it fell to the floor. The family that wasn't French stopped talking and stared.

“So you want to have a beer?” Roxanne said.

“Gave it up for Lent.”

“Lent's not for six months.”

“All right, then. But just this once.”

“There's a bar on the top of this place. It's one of those bars that goes around and around.”

“All bars go around and around,” I said. “Eventually.”

Roxanne smiled.

“Let's go up,” she said, her dark eyes fixed on mine.

“Let's,” I said, and I picked up my bag. We stood in front of the elevators, holding hands like school kids, and waited for one of the doors to open. One did and we stepped in, and two businessmen walked on behind us. They smelled of wine and their ties were loosened, and one was talking about a restaurant on the west side of some city, somewhere. While they talked, we stood side by side and waited silently as the elevator, like a rocket ship inching away from the launchpad, made its interminable climb to the fourth floor. After several eternities, the doors wheeled open and we stepped out.

Mercifully, room 412 was only a few steps away. Roxanne fumbled with the key card, got the door open, and we practically tumbled inside.

“Baby,” Roxanne said.

“Don't leave me again,” I whispered.

“Oh God, no,” she said, kissing my face, my neck, my mouth.

“And I won't leave you,” I said.

“I'd die,” Roxanne said. “I'd just die.”

We left a trail on the carpeted floor, from the door to the bed. Roxanne's little leather shoes, my shirt. Her wool slacks, my boots. Her blouse, my jeans. Our underwear, flung aside as we rolled onto the bed, turning over and over like we'd been swept underwater by some giant wave.