The Last Whisper in the Dark: A Novel (13 page)

My father was a driver.

the only one I had leftndor
I tried to picture him racing down Ocean Parkway out by the closed tollbooths near Jones Beach. It shouldn’t seem so weird. All Long Island teenagers looking for a little action or gamble eventually wound up racing down one strip or another. I did it. Of course my dad did it. I had a flash of him as a young man, in his glory, winning a race, and my mother rushing over to him and falling into his arms, the tailpipe hissing. My head was full of movies. Girls in a bikini and high heels. I just couldn’t see my mother in a bikini and high heels.

“Your father,” Will continued, “he was quiet. Shy really, and very reserved despite the family reputation, which I knew, of course. So I didn’t want Ellie anywhere near the Rands. I told him no. I was scared doing it, actually. You didn’t talk that way to a Rand.”

He kept smoking.

“My fear presented itself as anger. I got in his face. I shouted. I shoved him. I was showing off a little in front of the beach chicks standing around. My father was successful. We had money. I wasn’t going to be intimidated by a guy who didn’t come up to my shoulder, except that I was. I reacted badly. I was too nervous and stupid to even appreciate the fact that I might have to fight all three brothers.”

“They’d never team up on you,” I said. “Unless you were playing cards.”

“Yes, Grey and Mal only laughed at my little display. The ugly one working under the hood on that three-niner-six. The handsome one with a girl on each arm.”

It still wasn’t noon yet. Will hadn’t offered me a drink, but I reached over and got myself a glass and poured two fingers of rye. I slugged it down and let the heat burn out the image of Grey as a youth surrounded by petite brunettes, the kind of woman whom decades later he’d be driven to kill.

Will lifted his cigar and drew on it. I poured another glassful and tried to sip it and couldn’t. I threw it back.

“So Pinscher, he just patted me on the shoulder, smiled, and said,
‘All right, friend.’ Then he walked away. I was stunned by that. All right? All right,
friend
? Who speaks like that? Who backs down from the kind of jerk I was being? It threw me off completely. It was more embarrassing to have that happen in front of the girls than if he’d punched me or threatened me. Then I would have been the victim. Then I would have gotten sympathy. I called him back. I asked, ‘Don’t you want the money? I still owe you the forty bucks.’ He didn’t answer, he just kept walking.”

“He’d snatched your wallet,” I said.

“So you have heard this story before.”

“No. But the pat on the shoulder was to distract you while he went through your pocket. His mind was set. All he needed was her name and an address.”

Will chuckled, showing warmth in his eyes, but there was something else in that laughter. An old admiration refined by the sharp-edged years, and a little burr of anger at having been one-upped.

“He stole a photo of Ellie with her name written on the back. And he had my driver’s license. He stepped over and introduced himself to her. She was smitten from the first. He took her out to a pizza joint that night, she and her friends, and paid the bill with my money. I had over a grand in my wallet. I was foolish carrying that much but I thought I’d get a chance to show off, wave“It wasnplas some cash around. All I had going for me was my father’s success and wealth.” The cigar smoke boomed from his mouth. “Sharp, your dad. Very sharp. When he wanted to be.”

My old man, who could give me the slip night after night, in and out of the house even when I was watching for him, listening for any sound, my will wired to the darkness, and him graceful and silent, sharp.

I vibed that Will’s piece was full of fudging or embellishment. For one thing, even in his story he hadn’t actually introduced my parents at all. For another, I couldn’t picture him going up against my father
no matter how much he wanted to protect his sister’s virtue or show off for the chippies. Especially not while Mal was around. Nobody would go up against Mal, no matter how angry or stupid they might be. And considering Will came from cash, I didn’t quite understand why he didn’t just pay the forty bucks and be done with it. Guys must’ve hit on his sister all the time.

But whatever the truth was, I liked that he was trying to impress me with a part of my own history.

Will reached for the liquor cart, poured himself a short scoe deserved. Th

Perry Crowe sat up in bed wearing black silk
pajamas, a stack of pillows behind him. The bedspread was folded down to about mid-thigh. His hands hung loosely in his lap. They were big and covered with thick navy blue veins. They looked strong.

There was no indent beside him on the mattress. My mother hadn’t sat.

I was surprised there wasn’t a couple million bucks’ worth of machinery crowded into the room. I expected tubes, heart-rate monitors, oxygen tanks, defibrillator paddles, all of that. But it was just him. No nurses, no panic button near his hand to alert his wife or son or doctor, no bottles of medication on the nightstand. Only a little silver bell for him to ring.

I could almost hear the tinkling sound of it. I imagined hearing it ten times a day for weeks, months. It was things like that tinkling bell that drove people to murder or suicide.

There was a slight tilt to his mouth, the only lingering aftereffect of a stroke that I could see. He had icy eyes. They regarded me intently but dispassionately, the way you watch a movie you’re not enjoying that is only slightly less boring than everything else there is to watch.

His shoulders remained broad. I got the feeling he was very proud of them, and that he only sat up so straight to affect an assertive position. He looked good for his age, and healthy too. I vibed another scam at work. He wasn’t dying. He’d set the grift up just to get me here so he could dupe me, explain his scheme, embroil me in his plot, turn me into a part of his string. Maybe he’d promise me big money. Maybe he’d pledge to write me into his will. Maybe he’d fork over red
carpet tickets to Grauman’s or let me dance with a movie star. I thought of Darla on the red carpet.

John had said that the strokes had taken it all out of old man Crowe. That he’d become a paralyzed scarecrow with mostly empty eyes. That he cried a lot, and was scared like no one he’d ever seen before.

John had either been lying or had misinterpreted his grandfather’s condition. Maybe he saw fear only because he wanted old Crowe to reach out in need. Maybe Perry had faked him out.

I did my thing. I memorized the layout and likely hiding spots for cash, jewelry, and other valuables. Dresser drawers, armoire, back of the closet, under the mattress. Which paintings might cover a safe, the thickness of the carpet so I’d know how heavily I could tread without making a sound.

Then he started to cough. It was a rough ugly sound that shook him violently, rippled up into his chest, and just kept going for his throat. Every muscle and tendon in his body knotted. His face turned red as a stoplight and the cords and veins in his neck stood out as thick and well defined as sculpted marble. I thought he might be having another stroke and started to break for the door to get help.

Crowe reached for a box of tissues on the nightstand but couldn“It wasnplas’t make it. I moved and handed him a bunch. He covered his entire face as the cough continued to wrack him. He spit black into the tissues, balled them, and threw them into the wastebasket.

His face showed strain and weakness now as he lay back against the pillows, sucking air heavily. Sweat covered his prominent forehead. His eyes rolled for a second before he was able to refocus through a massive assertion of will.

Considering his current state and that of Old Shep, I didn’t exactly have a positive feeling about my impending old age.

“You,” he said. “Come nearer. Let me look at you.”

I stepped closer.

“Gray already. You get that from me.”

“I get it from my mother.”

“She got it from me.”

It was a small distinction but an important one, I thought. He was a presumptuous prick, ordering people around, crafty and cranky on his deathbed. I owed him nothing. He had treated my ma badly.

“Which one are you?” Crowe asked.

“Which one am I?”

“Your breed. You’re all named after dogs, aren’t you?”

I could see him trying to hike his bloodless lips into a smirk. A thin sneer managed to crease his face. It tickled him to think I’d be embarrassed by my own name.

“You like making people feel like shit, don’t you, old man?” I said. “Puts you in the power position, in control of the situation. But you can’t humiliate me with my name. I’m Terrier Rand.”

I was lying. I’d pretty much always been embarrassed by my name. I’d once crept a death row guard’s bedroom while he and his wife slept because he’d made me say my name aloud.

“Tell me something about yourself, Terrier,” he said. “Have you ever been in jail?”

“No.”

“How did you avoid it?”

“The answer is no, I’m not going to tell you anything about myself.”

Crowe’s ashen face firmed up. He scowled. “You’re a real hard case, kid.”

“Why did you want to see my mother?”

“That’s between her and me.”

“You’ll explain it to me anyway.”

His eyes shifted left and right, as if he was searching for a witness, like he needed to confirm that this conversation was happening.

“What is this?” he asked. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“You’ll tell me. Because if you hurt my mother in any way I’ll—”

“You’ll what? Kill me?”

That wasn’t much of a threat to a guy who would be dead in a couple weeks. “No. But I’m sure I could think of some way to ruin your last days, if you make me prove a point. Somebody like you with money and position must have a lot of secrets. I’m a thief. I can find them. I crack the vaults where your dirty shame is kept. I can hand them over to Will or John or Granny in there. Or just my mom. Or the media. this many times beforeetp”

His face tightened again and a hint of fear gleamed in his eyes. I let him do the work of scaring himself.

But after a moment I realized it wasn’t fear at all. It was pride.

“I’m glad she brought you,” he said.

“Why?”

“I was hoping she’d bring one of you.”

“There’s only one of me.”

He showed his teeth. They were white and perfect and fake as Washington’s. “I meant one of her sons.”

“There’s only one left.”

“I wasn’t sure.”

“You didn’t care enough to find out.”

He had something else to say but couldn’t get it out fast enough before the cough hit him again. It was like the aftershock of an earthquake. Not quite as bad as earlier but it rumbled on even longer. I handed him tissues and he spit up and tossed them in the trash. When the spasm finally ended he lay back, more drained than before, pale as hell with powdery traces of salt on his cheeks.

With that weird look of arrogance and conceit still in his eyes he watched me. His smile was a little more honest this time. I felt that neediness rise again. I glanced away from him.

“What if my father had shown up instead?” I asked.

“I knew that wasn’t going to happen. Ellie wouldn’t have allowed
it. She loves him too much to subject him to me again after all these years. She wants to protect him. But you. You can handle yourself, Terry. You’re trouble. And you like being trouble.”

I noticed he’d called me by my common name. So he’d known it all along. “What makes you say that?”

“I can read it in your face.”

“I look like my mother. I look like my cousin John. I look like you.”

“That’s how I know you’re trouble.”

He was a feisty old fart. The strokes hadn’t done much to lessewas the real r

“No,” I said.

“You can’t handle it?”

“No, I won’t do that. I don’t do that.”

All the talking was definitely causing him some strain. His gaze was unfocusing more and more. The cough shook through him almost continuously now. “You’re a Rand,” he hacked out. “You’re a born criminal. That’s what you do. That’s all you do. That’s all you’ll ever do.”

He gasped for breath and I handed him more tissues and he spit red. I wondered if my mother achieved some kind of closure. I hoped it had been worth it, for her sake.

“You have something better to do?” he asked me.

I thought about what else I needed to do. I needed to help Chub get out of the bent scene so that he could lie in the arms of the woman I loved and live a life I coveted. I needed to fight with my sister and try to turn her away from a mogul who made a fortune on the stupidity of kids. I had to drink beer with my father while we stood together staring off into the night wondering what to do next with our lives. I had to find out where my dad went at night. I had to think about Darla some more.

I thought about the thrill of creeping. I thought of snatching loot, any kind of loot at all, plunder that might bring in a little cash or none at all. It didn’t really matter. I had one talent.

“There’d be significant money in it for you,” my grandfather said. “I’ll pay you twenty thousand.”

“Is that significant money to you?” in a bikini and high heels."> l

“All money is significant. And we’re not talking about me.”

“Yes, we are.”

There was a knock at the door. Crowe glowered a few more seconds. He called, “Come in.” Gramma entered. She was either extremely polite or they had separate bedrooms. I couldn’t imagine knocking on the door of the room in which you slept. Maybe that’s what happened after fifty years of marriage.

She said nothing. She didn’t turn her head a half inch to look at me. She carried a glass of water and two pink pills in an open palm. She presented the meds to him and he examined them before plucking them from her hand and swallowing them. He took the proffered glass and managed to sip from it without choking. He gave it back without saying thank you. She left without a word but at the door hesitated a moment. I read potential love in that instant. I thought she wanted to offer me advice or warn me away. Or ask for my help.