The Shadow Box (52 page)

Like Moon said, too many companies had “American”
in their names and it got confusing when you went to the yellow pages. He changed the name to the Eagle Chemical
Company and had an offshoot called Eagle Sales and also
a printing company for making labels and such, a shipping firm, a couple of warehouses, and they bought a maker of
veterinary products over near Philadelphia. Drugs meant for livestock didn't get the same scrutiny as drugs meant
for people so, before long, they were regrinding those
medicines to stamp out counterfeit pills.

Tom Fallon knew it. Maybe not from the start but he
knew it and he found a way to justify it.

“How?” asked Johnny G. He looked away when he
asked.

“The pills were good, they were doing good, and the
company was making money. Add to that, the bigger com
panies were trying to drive Eagle out of business by low-
balling their prices and claiming Eagle's goods were
tainted. That wasn't right either because Tom says they
weren't.”

“Up to a point.”

“Yeah. Up to a point.”

To back up just a bit, Annie Fallon worked at Eagle,
too. It's where Tom met her. She married Tom, stayed for another five or six years, and quit when she was pregnant with Michael. Another ten years went by. Then one day,
Annie took some painkillers made by Eagle and gave them to one of her aunts who had sciatica. The aunt went into
convulsions and died. She told Tom. Until that minute,
she might not have suspected the pills but she saw how
stunned and sweaty he got and she knew that something
was wrong. The same night, Tom says she must have been
listening in when he called his boss to ask what they put
in those pills. Long story short, they were only supposed
to be for export and Tom had no business taking a bot
tle home.

Moon couldn't recall what was in them. And no one
put poison in them on purpose. Tom said they were just
cutting corners and someone got careless with this one
batch and they used a kind of solvent that was meant
for cleaning machinery. Rasmussen said they'd caught the whole shipment and dumped it in the New Jersey marshes
but Tom knew better from the shipping records.

Annie, meanwhile, with her husband not able to look
her in the eye, decided to do some detective work. On a
hunch, she went out to the New Jersey printing plant and
bluffed her way in because they knew her. She spotted
printing proofs of labels for drugs that she knew were made by other companies. She swiped some. Then she
saw cases of animal drugs, all made by Eagle, but they
were being relabeled for humans.

Right then, she got caught. The security chief back t
h
en
was another German named Brunner. He came down,
r
ipped her coat off, began searching her. When she fought
him, he slapped her. Being Annie Fallon, she slapped him
back. He knocked her cold.

Rasmussen, of course, called Tom Fallon in. Brunner
was there. Rasmussen reminded Tom that if his wife ever
opens her mouth, his son will have a jailbird for a father.
He pointed to a photograph of his own wife and children
which he kept on his desk.

We all have families, he said, and all of them are inno
cent. We will not let them suffer just because one woman
can't keep her nose out where it doesn't belong. Control
your wife or this man—he's pointing to Brunner—will do
it for you.

He made it clear that going to the authorities in hopes
of getting favorable treatment would be a serious mistake.
Brunner would not stop with his wife. The boy would
also pay.

“So Mike's mother never ran off,” said Johnny G.,
frowning. “Brunner killed her?”

Moon was silent for a long moment. That was a reason
able suspicion. He was tempted to let it stand. But he
decided to try not to lie. He shook his head no.

“She . . . lost all respect for Tom,” Moon told him.
“Shouldn't surprise you that she'd want to leave him.”

“It doesn't. But she would have taken Michael.”

Moon shrugged. “When love turns to hate,” he said,
“who knows what a woman will do?”

Part of the hate was that her husband, who fought in
the ring, was in the same room with the man who broke three of her teeth, threatened her life and that of her kid,
and did nothing about it. She told him that she'd be no
wife to him. She said he was no husband, no Catholic,
not even a man. That's when Tom took real hard to the
bottle. But it was a good while after that before Annie
was gone. They lived together, for Michael's sake, though
it didn't do any of them much good. And, after a time,
Annie started to crack.

She wasn't a drinker herself. Just wine on holidays. But
all this time she was pretty sure that other people, some
where, had to be dying from the pills that killed her aunt
and from God knows what else Eagle was making. By her
lights, knowing that and not stopping it was the same as
murder or at least it was a mortal sin. But she couldn't
tell anyone except her priest and all he was telling her
was to pray for guidance. She got close to a breakdown,
went to her doctor, her doctor prescribed Valium.

A while after that, she and Tom took Michael out to the house on Fire Island. They were hardly speaking except to
fight but they went out for Michael's sake. After they
came back home she got this feeling that someone had
been in the apartment. Tom said it's just her nerves. Noth
ing was missing or out of place. Well, her nerves were certainly part of it and she needed another Valium to set
tle down.

She went to the medicine cabinet and again she sensed something was wrong. Even her Valium didn't smell quite
right. She checked those in the cabinet against those she
had packed and brought with her to Fire Island. They did
smell different and they even felt different. She was sure
that someone, maybe Tom, was trying to poison her.

She waited until the next morning, until Michael went
off to school, to confront him about the bogus Valium.
Tom was working at home now, partly to keep an eye on
his wife so she didn't go blabbing to her cousins. She told
him she's had enough. She was going to call her mother
and ask if she and Michael could move in for a while.
She'd give him twenty-four hours to make this right or
she'd tell her mother everything. And then her cousins.
The chips can fall where they may.

“It
was
poison this time?”

”Yup.”

“Brunner?”

”Yup.”

“And Mike's father still didn't do anything?”

Moon hesitated. “He finally went to see Jake. Jake
called me.”

Johnny G. waited.

“We listened. Heard all of it. Then me and Jake went
back to get Annie. She was packed and gone and she
wasn't at her mother's.”

Johnny G. made a face.

“What?” Moon asked him.

“She ran off with her boyfriend. That's the story, right?
Some guy who used to be a priest.”

“That's the story.”
  

“Came out of nowhere, didn't he?”

“Johnny . . . who else would an Annie Fallon run away
with? Me?”

The younger man didn't press it.

“
Jake picked up Michael at school, told him his mother
got a little crazy and took off. Michael couldn't believe it
either but I'm not sure he was real surprised. Jake took
him home, left him with Jake's housekeeper, said he and
his father would go out looking for her.”

“Where were you?”

”I had Tom stashed at Brendan Doyle's place—it's just
up the street—until Jake could come over and ask him
more questions.”

Jake, he explained, had supposed right along that Tom
had some kind of sweetheart deal at Eagle. He was living
too good to be a Boy Scout. But Jake figured it was just
a bookkeeping crime like helping the owners do a little
skimming. Counterfeiting drugs never crossed his mind.

Anyhow . . . that evening, with Tom passed out at
Doyle's, he and Jake drove over to New Jersey to pay a
call on Rasmussen. Jake caught him just as he was leaving
his office, walking to his car. No mistaking him. Big man,
bigger than Jake, and his license plate says, “Eagle I.”

Jake says, “Mr. Rasmussen. A moment of your time.”

Rasmussen looks down his nose. Says, “Tomorrow,”
Figures he's a salesman.

Jake says, “The name is Jake Fallon, you fat tub of
shit.” Jake threw a right hand that near to popped his
eye out.

Jake went at his kidneys, whaled on him a few more
times. Hit a man's kidneys just right and there's no need
to tie and gag him for a while. Moon brought up Jake's
car and they stuffed him in the trunk. Drove him back
across the bridge and up near Westchester County Airport.
Took an hour. Jake aimed at every pothole he saw.

The woods are thick up around that airport. And there's plenty of noise from planes taking off and landing, noise
from cars on the parkways. He, Moon, began digging a
grave. They left Rasmussen in the trunk where he could
hear the digging and hear them discussing what was
deep enough.

By the time Jake opened the trunk, dragged him out, Rasmussen was a gibbering idiot. He saw the grave and
squealed. Jake says, “That's right, pal. You're going to
die.” Then Jake reaches into the backseat and pulls out a
Louisville Slugger. He says, “But it's not going to be
quick.”

Jake tells him he's going to start at the ankles and work
up from there. But not the head because after he gets done
busting everything below it, they're going to bury him
alive. He's going to be lying down the bottom of that
grave, he's going to be conscious, and he's going to watch
the dirt come in one scoop at a time.

Rasmussen had already fouled his pants. He starts
whimpering and begging, blurts out that the Valium was
none of his doing, says this Brunner did it on his own.
Jake had never mentioned the Valium.

Rasmussen tried offering them money. He started at ten
thousand. Jake wasn't offended, exactly, but he spends
that much on a single congressman. He stood over Ras
mussen and took aim. Now the German screamed that he
had over a hundred thousand dollars in his office safe and
another hundred at home. Jake said this was more like it.

Jake had figured on at least two safes because he said
there'd be two sets of books. The combinations to those
safes were what he really wanted. The German blurted
them out. Jake waited ten minutes and asked him again,
just to make sure he wasn't making them up. Jake took
his keys and told him to go sit in the grave and shut up.
Jake would keep him company while he, Moon, drove
back to New Jersey.

“You were never going to kill him?''
asked Johnny G.

“Only if I never got back.”

”I would have. Either way.”

“No, you wouldn't. Julie maybe, but not you.”

Johnny G. glared at him. “Let's hear the rest,” he said.

Megan was at Woods Hole, alone on her boat. Michael
was in Edgartown. But she could feel him all the same.

he felt that now, at this moment, he was whistling.
That he was happy. And that he was thinking about her.
She did not feel that he was wondering. Only thinking.

She had made a promise to herself. She would not spend
another minute of another day worrying about how long
this might last. It will end when it ends.

The day will come, she realized, when being mysterious
starts to get a little old. He'll want to know more about
her. Her choice will be to lie or to tell him.

He would probably believe the lie. She felt sure that she
could concoct a plausible past history, and then rehearse it,
load it with details such as places and dates. She could
even, if she concentrated, make it true in her mind. There's a technique for it. It's sort of like that trick she showed
Michael. But she knew that in the end she would blow it
because she can't stand herself when she lies. She would
tell him the truth. And then he'll be gone.

Not right away, perhaps, but it will never be the same.
He's such a gentle man; he'll tell her that what's past is
past, and that it doesn't matter. But it does and it will.
Michael will start to back away, he'll stop wanting to stay
over quite so much, he'll find that running an inn takes
more and more of his time. But she won't let that hurt
her. As long as she knows it will happen, as long as she
expects it and is ready for it, she should be able to handle
it. It shouldn't break her heart.