Empire Falls (78 page)

Minty might have fought this had another problem not presented itself simultaneously. Bright and early one morning, before he’d even finished shaving, the county sheriff arrived at his door with a search warrant and a team of uniformed officers who apparently knew exactly what to look for. In record time they found several items—expensive stereo speakers, a new microwave, a VCR—for which Minty could provide no proof of ownership, and from which the identifying serial numbers had been expertly removed. He claimed he’d paid cash for the items in question down in Portland and hadn’t saved receipts, and he was highly insulted by the suggestion that items of identical description had disappeared in a series of nocturnal thefts from several local merchants. This story might’ve worked if he hadn’t missed one I.D. number on the inside of a laser printer, the very one stolen from Knox Computer a couple of months earlier. Investigators also confiscated the key-making machine they found in his basement, along with a key ring bristling with what were described as master or skeleton keys. While he hadn’t been indicted, the allegations turned up in the newspaper, after which he resigned from the force. According to David, he’d put his home on the market in hopes of covering his legal fees and was presently living as a caretaker at the Whiting hacienda.

“He came into the tavern a couple of weeks ago, actually,” David added. “Said Zack had written wanting to know how Tick was. He also said to tell you no hard feelings.”

Again Miles had to smile. “That’s awfully good of him. He kicked the shit out of me.”

“True,” David conceded. “His nose didn’t heal right, though. He looks like he misplaced his own and borrowed the one he’s got now off a corpse. It’s kind of gray. Still, I think if you were to lie and tell him you’re sorry, that’d be it.”

“I
am
sorry,” Miles said, though he had reservations about Jimmy Minty’s capacity for forgiveness. “I keep telling you, it’s not Minty. I
know
her, David. Maybe it’s taken me a lifetime, but I do.”

“Okay, then,” David said, “explain it to me.”

Miles had no intention of doing so, well aware of how paranoid it would sound. Among the other clippings he’d received from his brother was a story about the purchase of St. Cat’s by a Massachusetts investment group, which planned to convert the church into four three-story condominiums. The most extravagant of these featured a Jacuzzi in the steeple Miles had never worked up the courage to paint. Architectural plans illustrated the future purpose of the building where Miles and his mother had attended Mass, and there were small photos of Father Tom (pre-dementia) and Father Mark, both of whom were now residing at Sacré Coeur. Perhaps there was no justification for Miles’s belief that the real buyer of the church was Mrs. Whiting, or that she would maintain a residence in one of the condos, so as to spend at least part of the year living in the heart of something he’d loved before she managed to seize and corrupt it. Power and control, again. And no matter how little basis he could claim for this belief, he truly did believe it.

“Look,” David said, “I’m glad Tick’s getting better. But has it occurred to you that you’re getting worse?” When Miles didn’t respond, he continued. “It’s not going to be much of a victory if you save her and destroy yourself.”

“It’s a trade I could live with,” Miles told him, aware that it was this precise bargain that his mother had made, or attempted.

“And I could understand that—if you had to. But what if this martyrdom
isn’t
necessary? Tell me who’s won then—you or her?”

“I’m not trying to be a martyr, David.”

“Really? You wouldn’t shit a shitter, would you?”

“David—”

“Because I’ve been down that road, brother, then off the road and into the fucking trees, and all I have to show for it is a busted flipper.”

“Actually, you’ve come out of it rather nicely,” Miles pointed out, meaning Charlene, and knowing his brother would catch his drift. The silence on the line suggested he was right, and Miles immediately felt bad about the low blow. “Look, can we leave this alone?”

“Fine.” Then, after a pause: “Bea wanted me to say hi. Also to remind you that you’re still a fully vested partner in the new Callahan’s.”

“Tell her thanks for me.”

“You’re missing out, Miles. That’s all I can say. You wouldn’t believe what’s going on down by the river. The new brew pub’s going to open by the Fourth of July. The credit-card company’s sunk millions into renovating the old mill. The shirt factory’s going to be an indoor mini-mall. Even a few houses are starting to sell.”

“You sound like a real booster.”

“Well, there’s no law says good things can’t happen every now and then.”

If what David had described was an unalloyed blessing, then Miles would be glad. For his brother, for Bea, for Charlene, for all of them. He didn’t expect anybody to share his resentment about the way it was coming about, that once again the lion’s share of the wealth generated would never reach the citizens of Empire Falls. The houses they couldn’t afford to sell last year would be houses they couldn’t afford to buy the next. And it was Francine Whiting, of course, who’d pulled it off, in essence selling the same thing twice, first the mills themselves, then the parcels of riverfront land she’d cleverly retained. And, too, there was an irrational feeling he couldn’t quite dismiss, that all of this new hope and confidence was built on the foundation of a loss everyone was far too anxious to forget. His friend Otto Meyer was a large part of that loss, and the dead boy, Justin Dibble, and, yes, even Doris Roderigue. If Candace Burke survived, perhaps a few years down the road she’d be grateful for a job doing phone solicitation for the credit-card people, a job she could handle from her wheelchair. And there was John Voss, now returned, in a sense, to the dark closet he’d been forgotten in as a child—a loss no one would ever wish to recall.

But his brother was right, of course. Mrs. Whiting hadn’t shot anybody, and all of the world’s ills could not be laid at her doorstep.

“You okay for money?” David wanted to know.

“For now.”

“What about for later?”

“Later, David, will just have to take care of itself.”

M
ONEY WAS THE ONE THING
he’d promised himself early on that he wouldn’t think about. His debts were mounting, naturally, and had been since the afternoon they’d fled town. They hadn’t stopped at either Janine’s house or his own apartment. It would’ve been smart to pack a hasty suitcase, but Miles was afraid that even a brief delay would result in their detention, so they’d left with nothing but the clothes they were wearing, bound for a destination that Miles was able to define only as “away.” And since Tick hadn’t asked where they were headed, there was no need to explain.

By the time they’d gotten onto the interstate at Fairhaven, heading south, her convulsive weeping had stopped and she’d retreated into herself again, her blank silence ghastly, frightening. By the time he pulled over in Kennebunk to gas up, she’d stopped responding to his questions, and he’d had to go around to her side of the car, open the door and forcibly turn her head toward him while he explained that everything was going to be okay, that he was taking her away from that place, that she had to trust him. When he finished, she had nodded, but she looked like she was concentrating as hard as she could just to remember who he was, and her nodding in agreement had the appearance of a guess.

Back on the highway, it occurred to Miles that they were headed to Martha’s Vineyard, to Peter and Dawn’s summer house. Being able to replace the word “away” with “Martha’s Vineyard” buoyed his spirits irrationally, and so did the notion that the two of them would be hiding out on an island, as if anyone who pursued them would have to swim there. Thinking that the idea of the Vineyard might also improve Tick’s spirits, he told her, but again he suspected it hadn’t truly registered, and when they reached the New Hampshire tollbooth and he looked over at her, she was crying again. A moment later he understood why. She had released her bladder onto the seat.

Just over the Massachusetts line he pulled off the interstate at one of the Haverhill exits and drove around until they found a strip mall with a Kmart. Only when he told her he’d be inside for just a minute and Tick began to shake in terror did he finally understand. She’d had to use the bathroom all the way back in Kennebunk, but she’d been afraid to go inside by herself, afraid for Miles to be out of her sight. “It’s okay,” he reassured her. “You can come with me.”

And so they’d gone inside together, Tick clutching his hand. The store was nearly empty, an hour or so from closing, but they still attracted considerable attention, what with Tick reeking of urine and Miles with his bruises and one eye still swollen completely shut. In addition to a package of underwear and a pair of cheap jeans—he made sure of the size by checking the tag on the back of the pair Tick was wearing—he also picked up a roll of paper towels, a package of sponges, some upholstery cleaner and a big bottle of generic ibuprofen. Since leaving Maine, his head and body aches had returned with a vengeance, and he knew he wouldn’t make it all the way to Woods Hole without some relief. He chose the men’s room over the women’s, found it to be empty, and locked the door behind them. Inside, he opened the package of underwear, bit the tags off the jeans, opened the paper towels and wet a handful, instructing Tick to use one of the stalls and clean herself up as best she could. He promised to stand right in front of the door where she could see his feet beneath the partition, and he talked to her the entire time, stopping only to chew a disgusting handful of the ibuprofen.

At the register he got an extra plastic bag for Tick’s soaked jeans and then paid for everything, having had the presence of mind to save the wrappings so they could be run through the price scanner. This foresight didn’t seem to impress the checker, who regarded Miles with unconcealed disgust and Tick with heartfelt sympathy, as if to suggest that she understood what
this
was all about.

Out in the parking lot again, Miles half expected the cops to arrive before he could finish sponging urine out of the passenger seat. He was about to pull away when he noticed a bank with an ATM kiosk. There he took out three hundred dollars, the maximum allowable for one day. That left about another three hundred in the account. After that, who knew?

T
WO DAYS AFTER
the phone conversation with his brother, Miles found himself nursing a cup of coffee in a window booth at a chowder house in Vineyard Haven. Thanks to a teachers’ in-service, Tick had only a half day of school, and when he looked up from the dregs of his coffee, he was visited by a startling hallucination. Stumping up the street toward him, looking for all the world like a man who knew where he was headed, was Max Roby, who couldn’t possibly know anything of the kind, since Miles knew for a fact that he’d never set foot on the island. His father was on the opposite side of the street, but when he was about half a block away, the old man suddenly tacked across the street, giving the impression that he knew his son was not only on this island (improbable) but in this building (impossible). Since there was no way he could’ve known, it followed that he didn’t, but Miles was still surprised when Max passed by the chowder house entrance. In fact, his father stopped only when Miles rapped on the window.

A moment later Max Roby, late of Key West, Florida, slipped into the booth opposite his son, late of Empire Falls, Maine.

“You’ve
got
to be shitting me,” Miles said, staring at him.

“I figured I’d run into you,” Max said, looking pleased with himself.

“You did?”

“Maybe not this quick,” Max allowed, though he seemed not to fully appreciate, as Miles did, the long odds involved in the present circumstance.

“We’re staying on the other side of the island, Dad,” Miles explained, exasperation already creeping into his tone in a conversation not yet one minute old. “Most weeks I don’t even come into town except to buy groceries. This is the first time I’ve ever been in this restaurant, and I just happened to be sitting in the only window booth.”

“I’ve been lucky lately,” Max said, as if to suggest there was no reason he shouldn’t be, given the general tenor of his life to this point. “I tell you I won the lottery down there in Florida?”

This was the kind of question Max loved to ask, one for which the answer was obvious to both parties, and one it was best just to ignore—a trick Miles had never mastered. “No, Dad. We haven’t spoken in six months. You didn’t know where I was. So, how could you have told me?”

“Oh, I knew where you were,” Max assured him. “Just because I’m sempty doesn’t mean I’m senile. Old men got brains too, you know.”

Miles rubbed his eyes with his knuckles. “You’re telling me you actually won the lottery?”

“Not the big one,” Max admitted. “Not all six numbers. Five out of six. Pretty good payoff, though. Over thirty thousand.”

“Dollars?”

“No, paper napkins,” Max said, holding one up. “Of course dollars, dummy.”

“You won thirty thousand dollars.”

“More. Almost thirty-two.”

“You won thirty-two thousand dollars.”

Max nodded.

“You personally won thirty-two thousand dollars.”

Max nodded, and Miles considered whether there might be yet another way to ask the same question. Usually, with Max, phraseology was crucial.

“Me and nine other guys from Captain Tony’s,” Max clarified after a healthy silence.

“You each won thirty-two thousand dollars.”

“No, we each won three thousand. Ten guys go in on a ticket, and you have to divvy up the winnings.”

Now, it was Miles’s turn to nod. Wheedling the truth out of his father was one of the few pleasures of their relationship, and Max took equal pleasure in withholding it. “How much do you have left?”

Max took out his wallet and peered inside, as if genuinely curious himself. “I got enough to buy lunch. I’m not cheap, like some people. I’m not afraid to spend money when I got it.”

Which was why he so seldom had any, Miles might have pointed out. Instead he said, “So, Dad, what are you doing here?”