Wicked Fix (12 page)

even he wouldn't go anywhere near Paddy's IRS filings.

So my threat carried weight.

Paddy sighed irritably. "All right. I guess it can't

do any harm talking about Tate now." His face still

said different, though, and I couldn't help wondering

why.

"But you'll have to come along with me," he went

on. "I'm going over to Deer Island to get some more

sketch work from one of my freelancers, and I'm picking

up my car there."

He grabbed a portfolio case, a sweater, and his

wallet. "And Terence is coming, too. Aren't you, Terence?"

A look of surprise crossed Terence's jutting features,

but he put away his papers and got up obediently.

Publicly, Paddy was the up-front, bossy one of

the pair, but I got the sense that in his quiet way, Terence

was the strength of the duo.

"Oh, do hurry up, Terence," Paddy called as I

went out onto Water Street. Glancing back, I stepped

straight into the path of someone who obviously

hadn't seen me coming, either. The resulting full-body

collision slammed me against the brick building; for an

instant I saw stars.

"I'm so sorry. Are you all right?" The woman I'd

run into reached out to steady me, concern on her face.

"Fine." I laughed, a little shakily. She was my size,

with pale curly hair and wide violet eyes, wearing navy

slacks, a knit shirt, and running shoes. But she'd been

hitting the gym regularly, to judge by the punch she

packed; there was a lot of muscle mass hidden in that

petite-looking body.

She assessed me closely as if to make sure she really

hadn't injured me, then flashed an apologetic grin and

went on her way. By then, Paddy was on his way out

the door, still frowning over his shoulder, and I wondered

if maybe this trip to Deer Island with him was a

mistake.

But by the time we got to the ferry dock, his mood

had lifted, buoyed as always by his unquenchable enthusiasm

for Eastport. He was a New York refugee like

me, veteran of SoHo and Greenwich Village, but unlike

me he'd been born in Eastport, gone away to school

and to get his career started, then had come back.

"When I was a kid," he recalled nostalgically as we

strolled down the tree-lined lane to the dock where the

ferry was just now approaching, "you could stand at

the end of the pier there and catch your dinner of codfish.

Or sell them. I had a little red wagon. I'd go

around to the housewives. Of course," he added, a bit

less enthusiastically, "they'd want me to clean them,

first."

"Nowadays," Terence put in dryly, "Paddy likes

his fish to be broiled with butter and garlic, preferably

by someone else. Whatever happened to the little red

wagon, though?" he asked Paddy affectionately, dropping

his arm over the other man's shoulder.

"Never mind," Paddy retorted, letting Terence's

arm linger a moment. But then he stepped away. "The

boat's coming in; let's go."

Terence looked crestfallen, covered it smoothly,

but not before I caught the look of deep hurt on his

face. The ferry slid aground with a scrape of its metal

ramp on the beach gravel. Then we were boarding,

climbing the metal ramp while cars and sports utility

vehicles--most with out-of-state license plates, filled

with tourists--went alongside us onto the bargelike

vessel.

The grumble of diesel engines propelled the ferry

back out onto the water, and we were away, the island

town receding behind us and an onshore breeze gusting

freshly.

"Great day," Terence called over the engine noise,

putting his face into the wind. The tide was running

hard, so the ferry pilot skirted the edge of Old Sow, the

largest whirlpool in the Western Hemisphere and a

navigation hazard even to bigger boats. At the moment

its turbulence was like water in a washing machine

when the agitator is churning, the difference being that

this was millions of gallons of water.

Below us, it hammered like fists through narrow

channels and slammed against granite ledges, assaulted

the tall, precipitous cliffs of underwater islands and

gouted up in unseen geysers, in a maelstrom that was

mostly not visible from the swirling surface. If you happened

to fall into it, though, it would suck you down in

a frigid heartbeat and deposit your body miles away.

"It might not," Terence said startlingly, seeming to

read my thought, "be a bad way to go. Quick. Decisive."

Paddy was busy paying our fares. "You don't

really mean that," I told Terence. "It wouldn't seem

fast while you were doing it. Drowning, in that cold

water."

He shrugged, glancing at me. "I suppose it depends

on your alternatives."

Which was another very odd remark from the usually

cheerful Terence; he suffered from hypochondria

but in an interested way, not a glum one. Then Paddy

approached and Terence's warning glance made me

change the subject.

"What happened to your hand?" I gestured at the

Ace bandage. "Looks like you gave your first-aid talents

a real workout."

Terence frowned uncomfortably. "Took a fall. It's

nothing."

But the remark brought to mind again his unsteady

episode in La Sardina. And the look on his face was

guarded; an unhappy idea struck me. "Terence, are you

all right?"

"Never better," he replied shortly, turning away.

Clearly, he didn't want to talk about it. His business;

I decided to concentrate on Paddy.

"Why were you so upset that Reuben had come

back?" I asked. "I mean, I wouldn't think you and he

would have much to do with each other, in the normal

course of things."

Paddy's brow furrowed as he leaned on the ferry

rail, gazing down into the now-serene water; we'd

rounded the whirlpool margin and were on course for

the little harbor at Deer Island.

"First of all, there was nothing normal about him.

See, that's what most people don't understand: Reuben

was pathological, and he was smart. Too smart. If he

wanted you, he found you. And ..."

He hesitated, considering. "Well, it'll be common

knowledge. In Eastport, everything is. Reuben came to

see me the other night. Jittering around, hopped up on

tequila. Said he wanted my help on something, offered

me a deal he said was surefire."

Listening in silence, Terence chuckled bitterly as if

the term were an unpleasant private joke, but said

nothing.

"What did Reuben mean?" I asked. "What kind of

a deal?"

Paddy shook his head. "It doesn't matter. What

matters is, I didn't go for it. Told him to get out. When

he left, he had that grin on his face, and he was laughing.

You know the laugh?"

The high, strangled whinny, like a cross between a

cough and a man's last breath; I knew.

"Scared me pretty badly, I'll admit," Paddy went

on. "That Reuben could freeze your heart up."

The impatience I'd been restraining since the night

before overcame me. "Oh, for Pete's sake. He was just

one guy. I don't care how bad he was--how'd he get a

whole town so petrified?"

Paddy turned slowly to me. "Right. That's what

anyone would think. Anyone who didn't know him.

But let me tell you a story."

He lifted his eyes, letting his gaze wander past the

high promontory of Deer Island to the passage beyond:

blue water all the way to Nova Scotia, which lay like a

strip of autumn gold on the far horizon.

"Reuben wasn't just a bully," Paddy said. "He was

a criminal: burglaries, arson. If he wanted money, or he

just wanted to hurt you, he would do something. And

once he had done it, he would get away with it, too;

Reuben always did."

"Which," I came back at him, "is what I don't

understand. Why was he walking around? Seems to me

Bob Arnold could put a guy like that in jail, double

quick."

"That," Paddy replied, "is what I'm telling you

about."

We were crossing the international boundary between

the United States and Canada, an invisible line

down the middle of Passamaquoddy Bay. To our left

rose Deer Island, sloping to pebble beaches and finally

to sand. On our right lay the island of Campobello,

long and low, its little towns toylike along the shoreline.

The ferry adjusted course for the final approach to

the Deer Island dock.

"Once upon a time, a man from town complained

--it's not important about what. A charge was

brought against Reuben, and the man promised to testify

against him."

Paddy recited tonelessly. "A week later, the fellow

who brought the charge was found in his cellar.

Slipped and hit his head on a foundation stone, everybody

said."

He looked at me. "But they all knew." The ferry

slid against the wooden dock pilings, her ramp scraping

bottom.

People and cars began moving toward the shore as

the deck hand lowered the chain at the bow of the

ferry, but I hung back. "They thought Reuben killed

him, to stop him from testifying?"

"Not thought," Paddy corrected. "Knew. Reuben

would kill your house pets or poison your well. He

would terrify your wife and menace your children. He

would terrify anyone. Which is why," he finished, "nobody

ever told on Reuben. As for testifying against

him, well, that was a joke. You might as well kill yourself."

We got off the ferry. Uphill stood a small log-cabin

snack bar and souvenir shop, a drinking fountain, and

some rough frame buildings containing sanitary facilities.

Paddy's old green Peugeot was parked beside the

snack bar where his mechanic--the only Peugeot man

in five hundred miles--had apparently left it for him.

"But not you," I said as we drove down the narrow,

paved two-lane leading out from the dock area. It

curved immediately into scrubby, second-growth evergreen

forest dotted here and there with modest homesteads:

cottages and trailers. A mountain of sand

loomed beside a public-works barn, ready for winter.

"Not me," Paddy agreed grimly. "I stood up to