The Barbed-Wire Kiss (28 page)

“Those names you gave me on the phone this morning. Were they the ones at the Rip Tide?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, let’s take a look.” Ray picked up a sheaf of faxes, took a pair of reading glasses from his shirt pocket, put them on.

“Between the first names you gave me and the registration of that Buick, my friend at OC was able to come up with a couple probables. No pictures, though, so we won’t know for sure.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“Vincent Perna, known as ‘Vincent the Bear,’ also known as ‘Big Vince’—I love this shit—also known as ‘The “V,” ’ Forty-eight years old, did three years in Rahway in the seventies for a truck hijacking at Port Newark. He’s been with Paulie’s crew since he got out of prison. A handful of arrests since, no convictions.”

“How about the other one?”

“Thomas Anthony Rego, otherwise known as ‘Tommy T.’ Twenty-six. Two arrests, one in 1994 for drunken driving, one in 1996 for aggravated assault and terroristic threats. No convictions. He and Perna are both on the books as employees of Christo Waste Hauling.”

“Andelli’s ambassadors to the private sector,” Harry said. “Keeping an eye on their new partner.”

“That’s what I’d guess. Paulie’s not stupid, he knows he’s at risk dealing with someone like Fallon. Loan-sharking, gambling, is one thing. Moving weight through an amateur is another. That’s thirty years in Marion on a federal pop, maybe more. It’s got to make him nervous.”

“Maybe he’s not so smart after all.”

“Dope has always been Paulie’s thing—heroin, coke, whatever. It shifts. Whatever’s making money at a particular time, Paulie’s there. But when the Scarpettis were around, they always kept him in the back room, even though he was making them rich. Now, with the brothers out of the picture …”

“The back-room business is in the front room.”

“Practically out in the street. Paulie’s experience is paying off. He has a taste for the business and he’s not going to let anyone scare him away from it. But I’m betting he has a short reign.”

“Why?”

“Anybody who lets himself be photographed hugging somebody he’s selling drugs to isn’t going to be around very long. There are too many people watching him, waiting for him to fuck up. In the meantime, of course, he’s making money hand over fist.”

“That’s what he needed Fallon for, I guess. A new outlet.”

“More than that. With somebody like Fallon, who’s a halfway legitimate businessman, it opens up other avenues of opportunity. They can move cash into the clubs and the restaurant, launder money back and forth. A man like Fallon would be very attractive to somebody like Paulie Andelli. They’re made for each other. Fallon gets a steady supply of cash and a little muscle behind him. Andelli gets an outlet for his drugs and a place to hide the profits. Everybody makes out.”

“Until Andelli starts pushing Fallon to move more stuff than he can handle.”

“I think that’s where your friend came in. You want to tell me what happened there?”

“Bobby’s broke. He’s barely getting by on what he makes. He finds out his wife’s pregnant and he’s worried whether or not they can afford it. Then somebody he works with comes to him with a deal: help him raise some front money, get a big payday at the back end.”

“Cortez?”

“They’d done some business in the past, little stuff. But Cortez was the one with the connections. He was the one who was hooked up with Fallon. Then, one day, Fallon wants Cortez to up the ante. He wants him to take a lot at once, a whole kilo.”

“The pressure from Paulie is rolling downhill.”

“So he goes to Bobby, who starts to think that maybe it’s not such a bad idea. He can make this one deal, earn enough money to start over.”

“I’ve heard that before.”

“In the meantime, Cortez has worked out a way to get rid of the whole thing at once, through a cousin who’s a biker. They come up with the front money, give it to Fallon, get the smack. Then Cortez and his cousin wind up in a car trunk.”

“Bikers?”

“Maybe. Could be them, could be somebody else who realized he was dealing with a bunch of fuckups who were in over their heads. Bobby and Jimmy were easy targets. Anybody could have taken them off.”

“So your friend gets left holding the bag?”

“Suddenly he’s out his front money, he’s lost the dope, and he owes Fallon the balance, which he most definitely does not have.”

“Is that what all this was about? From the beginning?”

Harry nodded.

“I hate to say it, Harry …”

“I know, I know.”

“… but he had it coming. He’s a
dope
dealer, for Christ’s sake. First time, last time, doesn’t matter. He’s a dealer.”

“I couldn’t leave him in that situation if there was something I could do to help him.”

“You should have cut him loose, let him solve his own problems.”

“Maybe. But I couldn’t.”

“And look where it got you.”

“We all make our decisions,” Harry said. “For better or worse. Then we figure out ways to live with them.”

“Sometimes we don’t get the luxury.”

“The luxury?”

“Of living with them.”

Harry shrugged. There was nothing to say to that.

On the way home, he stopped at a pay phone, called Wiley’s number. On the sixth ring, a voice that wasn’t Wiley’s said, “Yeah?” He hung up.

A full moon that night and no sleep. He tossed and turned, the ache in his arm weak but constant. He thought about the Percocet in the medicine cabinet.

When pale light filled the windows, he wrote off the night as a lost cause. He pushed away the sheets and lay there, listening to the fan creak above him, the singing of the birds outside. He could smell her perfume, taste her on his lips. He rose, tired and aching and hopeful, to meet the day.

He spent the morning and afternoon in a post-insomnia fog. Around three, he went into the backyard and did one-armed push-ups in the grass, trying to clear his head. But the movement only made him dizzy and, after the fifth one, he lost his balance and fell painfully onto his left arm. He rolled onto his back, looked up at the sky, feeling his heart thumping in his chest.

By dusk, his arm was throbbing with a deep, damp pain that seemed to stretch to his shoulder. He finished the TV dinner he’d heated up, went up to the bathroom, and got the bottle of Percocet from the medicine cabinet. He took it downstairs, broke a tablet in half, washed it down with a glass of tap water.

Stretched out on the couch, the TV on, he thought about the heroin in the well shaft, why he had taken it and what he would do with it now. In the back of his mind, he had considered it a bargaining chip, a trade-off to help get Cristina clear, to force Fallon to choose one or the other. But it felt strange having it here, in this place. And he knew there was no way he could turn it over to Wesniak without raising more questions than he wanted to answer.

He thought about just slicing open the bags, shaking them empty into the well, then putting the hose in there, running the water and leaving it on. Washing it all away forever.

Halfway through the national news, he was drifting, his limbs heavy, his eyelids fluttering. Vaguely aware of the remote control slipping from his fingers, he closed his eyes and let the waves take him.

The sound of footsteps on the porch.

He woke instantly, instinctively. The room was dark except for the TV’s blue glow. A shadow passed by the front window.

He sat up slowly, reached over to the end table, and slid open the drawer. The .38 was there, loaded now. He took it out, eased off the safety. The remote fell from his lap, clattered to the floor.

There was a loose floorboard on the porch, directly in front of the door, and he heard it creak now. He got up, the .38 at his side. There were two hard raps at the door.

He crossed to the side window and parted the curtains. In the light from the barn, he saw a red El Camino parked in the driveway.

Another knock, then a familiar voice called, “Harry, you there?”

He put the .38 in the sling, went to the door, unlocked and opened it. Bobby was standing on the porch.

“Hey, slick,” Bobby said, and then he saw the sling and cast. “What the fuck …”

“Come on in. Don’t stand there on the porch.”

Harry shut and locked the door behind him.

“You shouldn’t be up here,” he said.

“What happened?”

“It had nothing to do with you. It was a personal beef between me and Fallon. I got stupid.”

“Personal beef? What are you talking about?”

“I fucked up. That’s all. It’s over. Go on, sit down. Let me turn on a light.”

Bobby stayed where he was. When Harry switched on the end table lamp, he stepped closer, looked into his face.

“I can still see the bruises,” he said. “Tell me what happened.”

Harry shut off the TV, sat down in the chair.

“Everything’s like I told you on the phone,” he said. “We’re settled with Fallon. This was something else. Sit down, for Christ’s sake.”

Bobby hesitated, then perched on the edge of the couch.

“Who did it?”

“Drop it. It’s over. What are you doing here?”

“I didn’t like the way you sounded on the phone. I thought something was up. I guess I was right.”

“You drive that thing all the way up here?”

“It belongs to Rich, my brother-in-law. I couldn’t get a flight.”

“How long did it take you?”

“About nine hours, straight through. We’re not going to talk around this, you know.”

“The state police were here yesterday, asking questions. It’s not a good thing for you to be around right now.”

“Fuck that. What happened?”

Harry didn’t answer.

“Was it that woman?”

“Like I said. It had nothing to do with you.”

“Then it was that woman?”

“You could say that.”

“You were seeing her?”

“Yeah.”

“And he found out?”

Harry nodded.

“That son of a bitch.”

“Enough. It’s over. Everybody’s square. Forget about Fallon, forget about Jimmy, forget about this whole mess. What happened to me was my own fault, no one else’s.”

“Are you still seeing her?”

“Yes.”

Bobby shook his head slowly, looked at the floor.

Harry got up, went into the kitchen. He put the .38 in a counter drawer, got two Coronas from the refrigerator. He opened them, brought them back out.

“I wasn’t kidding about the state police,” he said.

Bobby took a beer.

“Do they know about me?”

“Not yet. And if we play it right, they never will. They’ll lose interest in this eventually, if enough time passes without anything new coming up. That’s why I wanted you away from here.” He sat back down.

“There are some things I need to do,” Bobby said. “I have to get some papers from the house, pick up some more clothes.”

“You can do all that. But you should get yourself back on the road as soon as possible.”

“You’re not going to tell me what happened, are you?”

Harry shook his head, drank beer.

“And it’s really over?”

“Except for the investigation into Cortez’s death. And after they’ve hit the wall enough times on that, they’ll put it on the back burner, shove it into a cold case file. That’s how it works.”

“I don’t know what to tell Janine.”

“Don’t tell her anything. In a while, when this thing is healed, I’ll come down to visit. Like I said, what happened to me was my fault, not yours.”

“You expect me to believe that?”

“You should, because it’s true. Someday I’ll tell you about it. But not tonight.”

Bobby drank beer, watched him.

“One of the things I was planning to do was take you out for a drink.”

“Not a good idea. It’s better if no one sees us out in public together for a while.”

“Well, shit …” Bobby thought for a minute. “Then the least we can do is get a six-pack, go for a night run, see what’s biting. Might be the last time for a while.”

“We could do that.”

Bobby got up.

“Then come on, slick. Move your ass. The fish are waiting.”

They were trolling slowly, two lines out and baited for blues. Bobby was at the wheel. A mile away, the shore was an unbroken string of lights.

“So just what is it you’re doing down there?” Harry said.

“Rich is a foreman with a construction crew out of Durham. He’s agreed to take me on for a while. The pay’s good and there’re houses going up all over the place. If you know how to swing a hammer, you can get a job. Everything’s new down there. Up here, it’s over.”

“You might be right.”

“That beer cold yet?”

Harry ducked into the cabin, got two Coronas out of the small galley refrigerator. He looked for a bottle opener, opened and closed drawers in the sink unit. In the third one was the Glock, half hidden by a nautical chart. He looked at it, closed the drawer again. In the fourth one, he found an opener.

He popped the caps, carried the beers back up. Bobby took one, drank from it, and nestled the bottle into the cup holder beside him.

“Thanks.”

Harry sipped his own beer, looked out the windscreen. Their bow wave was luminous in the moonlight.

“You should stay at the farm tonight,” he said. “It’ll be better. In the morning we’ll go over to the house together, get what you need to get.”

“All right.”

Bobby took a box of Marlboros from the pocket of his denim jacket. He got one out, lit it, cupping his hand around the lighter. He blew smoke out, the cigarette dangling from his lips, adjusted their course slightly.

“We may need to go farther out.” He gestured at the lights of a party boat on the horizon. “They’re still moving. When they hit a school, they’ll stop. That’s how we’ll know. When that happens I’ll swing around behind them, see what we can get.”

He touched the throttle and the noise of the engines changed pitch almost imperceptibly. They chugged on, the lights of the shore at their back now.

“This woman,” Bobby said. His face was bathed in the green glow of the instrument panel.

“What about her?”

“You took a lot of chances for her, didn’t you?”

Harry didn’t answer.

“She worth it?”