The Evil That Men Do (7 page)

He hung up the phone. This whole business venture might actually be fun.

1938

Joe Tenant sat with two police officers. Cigarette smoke layered the air, and the sweet smell made Tenant wish he hadn’t quit. But when he’d gotten back in the boxing ring to spar with a friend a few months back, he realized he couldn’t breathe as well anymore. This was the first time he’d had a craving since then, even though the thickness of the smoke caused him to wheeze a bit.

“So, since you found the body you’ve had a knife held to your throat, you’ve been followed in a car, and been threatened by phone?”

Detective Lacey was heavyset. Too many snacks, too many drinks. Tenant could take him easily, a jab to the gut, right cross to the chin. And the guy’s condescending tone was causing Tenant to seriously consider doing just that.

“That’s what I said.” Tenant balled his fists at his thighs. The detective wouldn’t be able to see that under the table.

“And you just decided to contact us now. The last time you saw us, you didn’t say anything.”

“I was worried before. About my family.”

“Why aren’t you worried now?”

“He threatened my family anyway. He said he was going to kill me.”

Lacey nodded and wrote something on a piece of paper. “Can you describe the man?”

“There were two of them. One I only saw from behind on the docks.”

“What did the other one look like? The one in your car?”

Tenant described the pale man he had seen on the docks the other night one more time. Said the one from the backseat had an Irish accent but he didn’t see his face. And then he talked about the crowbar incident.

Lacey rubbed his face. Took a deep breath.

“You smashed his car? Why?”

“He threatened my family.”

The detective referred to the paper. “I thought he threatened your family by phone.”

“Following me in a car while I’m walking my daughter home from school is a threat.”

Tenant’s nails were digging into his palms. This guy Lacey was the kind of guy who’d get his ass beat if he didn’t have a badge. And a gun.

“Did you know the deceased?”

“If I didn’t see the guy getting the shit kicked out of him, I would have thought it was just a body floating in the river. They show up from time to time. Sometimes someone decides to commit suicide. I’ve never been threatened over it before.”

“Does the name Maxwell Carter mean anything to you?”

“No. Never heard of it.”

Lacey tapped his pen on the table. “That’s the man whose body you found the other day. You’ve never heard the name before.”

Tenant spread his hands. He wondered if Lacey could see the nail marks on his palms.

“You don’t read the newspapers? Listen to the radio?”

This was infuriating. “What the hell are you getting at?”

“Maxwell Carter is — I should say was — probably the richest businessman in Northern New Jersey.”

Tenant smiled. Then he started to laugh.

Lacey waited. Didn’t say a word, but Tenant could tell the detective didn’t understand.

“Well, then,” Tenant said, “I wish I hadn’t found him dead. If he was alive, I could have asked him for a loan.”

He stood up. The cops weren’t going to help. All they were going to do was throw the names of the dead at him.

Like he wanted a hand in any of this.

It was all being forced on him. He just wanted protection for his family.

But what was it his old boxing trainer had told him? The best protection is a good attack?

Yeah. Tenant liked the sound of that.

JACKSON DONNE WOKE UP IN A BED AND IMMEDIATELY
asked where he was.

“You’re an asshole. And you’re at Mountainside Hospital. You have a knock on the head, but they want to check you out, make sure it doesn’t get worse. Plus you were drinking, so they want to hydrate you.”

The white room came into focus. Donne was in a bed, slightly inclined. Then he realized he wasn’t in a room at all, but instead a cubicle-like area enclosed in a white curtain. Iapicca was the only one with him.

An IV tube extended from Donne’s left forearm. It pinched his skin, and pain stabbed up his arm into his shoulder. He didn’t want to move it.

“Gotta be honest,” he said. “I’m starting to believe you.”

“What are you talking about?”

Donne’s head throbbed, and he wanted to go back to sleep.

“I think there really was another guy in there with your aunt and uncle. We found some fingerprints that aren’t yours. The lab guys found tire tracks by the curb that aren’t matched up with your car.”

As if the gods had been watching, a nurse came through the partition in the curtain, holding a clipboard. She smiled at him, then turned to the detective.

“Would you mind excusing us for a moment?”

He grinned back at the nurse, then shot Donne with his thumb and forefinger.

“We’ll talk about this later, buddy,” he said, and disappeared through the partition.

They wanted to hold Donne overnight, just to keep an eye on him. What choice did he have?

Franklin Carter turned off the lights and locked the door. Being the last to leave the restaurant was a rarity for him, but today he found it to be a refuge. He didn’t have to talk to Susan about what had been going on. He didn’t have to worry about paying off anyone. The FBI wasn’t bothering him. He could just sit and count bills and reflect on how this restaurant was something he’d built, something he created. And it wasn’t a pile of rubble in New York City.

After he finished tallying tips, checking time sheets, and calculating expenses, he put all the receipts back in the register, checked all the silverware was put away, and made sure the oven was off. The last thing he needed was a gas explosion here.

Carter noticed the irony of the thought and stepped through the door onto the sidewalk. It was after midnight and the street was nearly empty. A few college kids spilled out of the bar up the street. To his right, on the corner of Church and Bloomfield, a homeless guy eyed him up and started to walk toward him. The last thing Carter wanted to do was hand out money.

So he turned his back to the homeless guy and headed toward the college kids. He whistled a John Mayer song to himself as he walked, then stopped and cursed the song. It was stuck in his head after Kate made sure she put the CD on the restaurant stereo. On repeat. The worst part was that the speakers were turned so low you didn’t even know you were listening to it until three hours later, when all you could think about was how her body was a fucking wonderland.

The waitresses didn’t understand music. There were good bands out there, smaller bands that played the same type of music as John without the overdone radio play. Amos Lee, Band of Horses, The Format — Christ, anything but John Mayer.

He turned into the parking garage, thinking that tomorrow he’d bring his iPod. The music would be much more eclectic.

Carter paid the parking fee, a measly two bucks, and started up the stairs to the second floor. He heard footsteps descending above him and thought he’d stay as far to the right as he could when he reached the first landing. The person coming down was definitely moving quickly, maybe one of the college kids late in meeting his boys for shots.

Turning on the landing toward the next flight of stairs, Carter kept his head down and saw only the black boots of the person he was trying to avoid. The feet were coming directly for him, and he looked up much too late.

Pain erupted from the side of his head, and like he was a spectator in his own body, Franklin Carter felt himself slip to his knees. Another shot to the head; the world didn’t go completely dark, but Carter was dazed. He wasn’t sure what was going on, but he knew he was being dragged along the concrete steps.

He fought to stay conscious and to focus on what was happening, but everything was fuzzy and muddled. He couldn’t think clearly. Hearing sliding doors close and feeling rope being tied around his wrists didn’t mean much to him. He couldn’t put it all together, no matter how he tried to fight through the pain in his head.

The only thing he could think about was John Mayer waiting on the world to change.

God damn John Mayer.

As she typed the code into the lock, Susan Carter decided she was going to have to get used to it. With all the shit that was going on in their lives, there would be nights when Franklin wouldn’t come home. And they definitely wouldn’t be able to visit her mother together. He was a busy man.

So when he hadn’t come home last night, after his late night earlier in the week, she’d just figured this would be par for the course.

That hadn’t kept her from almost being sick in the bathroom when she noticed his side of the bed hadn’t been disturbed.

She also found it odd that she hadn’t heard from Jackson yesterday.

But Susan put it all aside and plastered a smile on her face when she entered her mother’s room.

The nurse smiled at Susan and said, “She’s awake today. And she seems to be pretty aware.”

“Is she getting better?”

The nurse frowned. “No, but it’s encouraging that you might be able to talk to her for a while. It can’t hurt.” She left them alone.

Susan had to fight to keep the smile on her face. The woman in bed wasn’t her mother anymore. It was a facsimile. The body was the same, albeit thinner and more pale. But inside it wasn’t Isabelle Donne. Even though her mother blinked and smiled when Susan sat, there was a void behind the eyes. There wasn’t the same recognition. It wasn’t the woman who yelled and grounded her when she took the car without asking. It wasn’t the woman who wept in front of her and Jackson when their father ran off one morning.

“Hi, Mom,” Susan said.

“Hi.” The voice wasn’t even the same. There wasn’t any strength or conviction behind it.

“Did Jackson come by?”

Her mother nodded. “Jackson looks good.”

“When? This morning?”

The question clearly confused her. She squeezed her eyes shut and frowned.

Susan didn’t want to push. “I saw him the other day too, Mom. You’re right. He does look good.”

If you consider the stench of alcohol on him and the lines at his eyes that shouldn’t be there good.

The strain on her mom’s face disappeared. “I miss him. I miss Daddy.”

“Daddy’s long gone,” Susan said.

“This is his fault. Everything is Dad’s fault. I remember. The car outside. The water.”

Her mother’s voice trembled and the strain reappeared. A tear appeared at the corner of her eye.

Susan kept fighting to keep her composure. Her eyes burned. She put a hand on her mother’s arm.

“It’s okay, Mom. It’s going to be okay.”

“Dad should have stayed away. I told him. We told him.”

Susan let her own tears flow. Nothing made sense, and it hurt to watch. She wanted so desperately to just be able to have one more normal conversation with her mother. Just some time to say good-bye and have her mother know she was loved.

But that wasn’t going to happen. Her mother had disappeared months before.

“Maxwell Carter,” her mom said. “Maxwell Carter.”

The name sounded so familiar. Was it a relative of Franklin’s? Why had she heard it before? “Who are you talking about, Mom?”

But her mother just shook her head slowly and leaned back against the pillow. The grip she’d had on Susan’s hand relaxed. There wasn’t much more to talk about today.

“I love you, Mom,” Susan said, and kissed her gently on the forehead. “Just hang on a little longer. I know Jackson wants to tell you too. You need to hear it. And he needs to say it.”

Susan left the room, then reached into her bag. Taking out her cell phone, she checked it to see if Franklin or Jackson had called. She’d had it on silent so she could talk to her mother without interruption; now she turned the ringer back on. No one had called, but the phone rang almost immediately. It was a number Susan didn’t recognize.

She answered anyway.

“Listen to me carefully,” a voice said. “I have your husband. He is safe. For now. Instructions will follow. No police.”

And like that the line went dead.

JACKSON WASN’T PICKING UP HIS PHONE. SUSAN
Carter dialed again and got his voice mail again. Where the hell was he?

The parking lot closed in on her, or at least that’s how it felt. The cars were too close and she couldn’t see her own. She was wandering in circles. Her BMW had to be here somewhere. She had gotten here somehow.

“This is Jackson Donne. I can’t get to my phone right now. Please leave a message.”

Beep!

“Jackson, this is Susan. Where are you? Call me, please.”

Her hands shook hard and she couldn’t close her cell phone. It was getting hard to breathe. The corners of her vision started to fade. She called Jackson again.

“This is Jackson Donne. I can’t get to my phone right now. Please leave a message.”

Beep!

“Please, Jackson. This is an emergency. Call me back.”

His cell phone wasn’t on. Where was he? She was getting light-headed now. They’d taken her husband.

They? Who was they?

And now Jackson was missing. Had something happened to him too? The sounds of traffic from Berdan Avenue rattled in her ears. Tears flowed from her eyes. She couldn’t breathe. It felt like an elephant was standing on her chest.

Beep!

“Jackson! Pick up your goddamned phone!”

She hadn’t even realized she’d called again until she heard the beep. Susan didn’t know what else to do. Now she felt the asphalt tilt beneath her, and her vision clouded completely. She couldn’t fight it anymore. She was going to pass out.