Shattered Shell (44 page)

Then he pulled the handkerchief to his mouth and bawled again. "God, I couldn't help it. ... He made me come with him and we went upstairs and I had the key to her place, one I copied from my parents last year. ... He went in and did it and I could hear her screaming and I stood there and I was in the living room, and I don't know, I had to have something in my hands. So I grabbed that damn dragon sculpture... I just held it and stared out the windows, and then Nick came back, grinning, zipping up his pants, and he said, 'Whaddya say, Dougie ... you want a piece, too?'"

That was enough. I stood up and walked out of the house and stood in the snow, staring up at the cloudy sky. I was staring up, hoping that some flakes would begin falling, and quickly, for in looking up at the gray sky, I was working too hard at imagining what it must have been like that night in Kara's place, and to hear the voice after such an assault and know your brother was behind it.

"Snow," I murmured. "Damn it, start snowing..."

A while later I was back inside. Doug had put on a gray sweatshirt and I said, "I want Nick's home address, where he hangs out, and his business interests."

"Christ ---"

"That wasn't a request, Doug. Start talking."

"You don't know ---"

"But I do know this," I said. "He just tried to kill you an hour or so ago, so don't tell me you can't do it. You want to keep on breathing, start talking."

He sat in the couch, hands in his lap, then looked down at the floor and said, 'When we was kids, Kara would always look out for me. Mom and Dad, they weren't much parents. Kara would put me to bed and make me lunch and make sure I did my homework. When the parents got to drinking and started fighting and yelling at each other, we'd hide upstairs and pretend not to hear them. We pretended we were far away and happy."

Doug looked up, face red and puffy, eyes still moist. "Will you for God's sake look what I've done?"

"No, I won't," I said. "I just want those addresses."

He sobbed and then started talking.

Hours later I was in my rented Ford in a parking lot near the Merrimack River, having a quick dinner in the front seat, half-listening to the radio. I had gone back to my rented room and had emptied everything out, and had also picked up some extra supplies.  Now I was eating a chicken sandwich, not really tasting what was going into my mouth, just looking out at the lights of Salisbury, watching the cold waters of the river surge out into the Atlantic. At my side, among my possessions, was a handwritten list that I had made back at Doug's house, of various places that Nick Seymour might be at. Most were bars or roadhouses, and it took some time for me to find them, for they were scattered along the narrow back roads of the Massachusetts North Shore. It had been a strange journey, of traveling into a world that I didn't belong to, of Ilion and women working and living out there on the margins, drinking and partying and smoking after another mind-numbing day of work, and feeling that little gnawing fear in the pit of your stomach that the next day will bring nothing new, nothing wonderful, just the same dull stupor of being trapped and knowing of no way out.

I had searched the parking lots for Nick's Trans Am and had found nothing at all, but I had also entered each place to make sure. I pretended to use the pay phone as I scanned the bars and stools and pool tables, and I was tired and my head ached from the cigarette smoke, the loud music, and the same flat stares that came my way every time I opened a swinging door. A stranger among us, was the feeling I received, and now with everything still ahead of me, I was scared. No backup tonight, not at all. Felix was probably sunning himself and chasing airline attendants across warm sands, and I couldn't bring Diane into what I planned to do. Not yet, anyway, and I looked out at the lights and finished my sandwich and recalled the story Doug had told me, and I remembered seeing that jaunty confidence of Nick's a few weeks before, back at Felix's.

Nick and Felix. They knew each other, and as before, I was keeping my feelings toward Felix locked up and placed deep in a compartment inside me. I had to focus, and I couldn't waste time or energy wondering what Felix knew, and what he might be hiding.

On my own again, I started up the Ford and left the parking lot.

The last address on the list was Nick's home, out on the southern outskirts of Newburyport, and I drove there, trying to think of what I would do and how I would do it if I met him. And as I thought of those little strategies, I also knew if Nick wasn't home, I would start again at the list of pubs and roadhouses and resume my little journey along the back roads of Essex County.

Nick's neighborhood was Branson Drive, a quiet residential area with ranch-type houses and well-plowed driveways, and the snow-covered lawns were littered with sleds, plastic toys, and half-melted snowmen. An odd place for a bad man to live, and it made an eerie sense. The man was smart. Live in a rough neighborhood and you get plenty of attention and plenty of cruisers stopping by. Live in a place like Branson Street and the neighbors can all eventually repeat the same refrain: A quiet fella, no trouble at all, usually kept to himself.

Nick's house was a white ranch, set up a bit on a rise of land, and on a lot bigger than his neighbors Unlit Christmas lights were still in the shrubbery, and the shutters of the house were painted a dull black.

A nice, quiet, and sober-looking house.

With a Trans Am in the driveway.

I drove slowly by, trying to see what I could through the well-Iii windows, but I saw no movement. Not a thing. Doug had told mo that Nick lived alone, and with no other vehicles in the driveway, well, it was possible that he was here tonight by himself.

What to do?

My hands slipped a bit on the steering wheel as I made a U-turn and came back up Branson Drive, and with a sudden impulse, I turned again and went up the driveway, my heart seeming to swell up right against my chest. Crazy, but it just might work. I checked on a few things before I got out of the Ford. My .357 Smith & Wesson went into a coat pocket, while a pair of police handcuffs went into another. A joke gift from Diane on my birthday last year, but they worked just fine, and I was sure they would work well tonight. Two more items --- a clipboard with some blank sheets of paper and that day's
Boston Globe
--- and I went out on the driveway of Nick's house. My heart seemed to want to burrow right out of my chest and through my heavy winter coat. I was in enemy territory, and for a quick moment, before I walked in, I looked up at the stars and they were so bright and beautiful I imagined they almost gave me solace,

Might work. Could work. I doubt he had noticed me much, sitting in the Range Rover back at Felix's house, and besides, tonight I was driving the rented Ford.

I walked up to the house, hand in the coat pocket and carrying the clipboard and newspaper, and up the steps I went, heart roaring along, my head almost shaking in the disbelief of what I was going to do, and I was seized with a brief triumph of joy, that in a very short few hours, I would be rid of this awful task.

I rang the doorbell and looked into a near window, and there was Nick Seymour, standing in front of a stove, stirring something in a saucepan. He had on jeans and black sweatshirt, sleeves rolled up to his muscled forearms. His ponytail looked freshly washed, and as I watched him I reached over and rang the doorbell again.

Nick looked over in my direction and I gave him a half-wave, and he returned the favor with a friendly nod. He put down the wooden spoon, wiped his hands on a towel, and ambled over. Then the door opened up and he said, "Yes?" in a quiet voice.

I froze. His eyes. They reminded me of smiling concentration camp guards, of a merry Ted Bundy sitting in a courtroom, and the joy of a Ku Klux Klansman setting fire to a large wooden cross.

"Yes?" he repeated, still friendly, and I said, "Hello, sir, my name is Aaron Shaw and I'm from
The Boston Globe
." I passed over the newspaper and he took it and looked up and shrugged.

"Sorry, if you're here to sell me a subscription, I really don't have time to read."

Don't stare, I thought. "No, that's not it," I said. "I'm conducting a readership survey, that's all, and I'd like to ask a few questions."

Nick shook his head. "I don't want to be rude, but I'm kinda busy with dinner."

Inside, I've got to get inside. Too many people could be watching from the other houses, and I don't want them to see me pulling out my .357 on their neighbor.

"I know you are, but for answering the survey, you'll get a free subscription for a month and a fifty-dollar gift certificate to the area restaurant of your choice."

He looked at the newspaper again. "Really? That's not a bad deal." Nick's smile got wider as he opened the door. "I sure as hell hate to cook. Tonight is spaghetti, and I had that twice last week, and I'm getting sick of that crap. C'mon in."

I walked into the warm and clean kitchen and self-consciously wiped my feet on a mat that said WELCOME FRIENDS, and Nick went over to the stove and turned off the burner and said, "If you'll excuse me for just a sec, Mr. Shaw. I've gotta make sure my VCR is set to record something tonight. I'll be right back."

"Sure."

I looked around for a second. The kitchen was small but well scrubbed, and before me was an entryway into the living room. Nick walked into the living room, heading over to the television, and I looked over at the stove and put my hand into my coat pocket, and when I looked up again, Nick wasn't smiling anymore.

He also had a shotgun in his hands.

"This is the way it's going to be, Lewis Cole," he said.  “I’m going to start asking a few questions. You say something I don't like, you argue with me or you lie, and then I'm going to shoot you in the left knee. Then we'll keep going --- right knee, right elbow, and left elbow --- and we'll keep going until I'm done or you can't go on anymore. Do we have an understanding?"

Dear God. The kitchen was suddenly sweltering, and HI heart seemed to deflate and start to settle toward my backbone.

"Yes," I finally said. "We have an understanding."

"Good." He stepped closer, shotgun at his shoulder, pointing down at my left leg. "Are you armed?"

"Yes."

"Where?"

"Revolver, in my right-hand pocket."

"Take your hand out of that pocket, real slow. I see anything else but fingers, you lose your left knee. Understand?"

"Yes," I said, hating what I was doing as I took out my hand. When my hand was out, Nick said, "Good. Now unbutton your coat and let it fall to the floor. That clipboard, too."

In another minute or two, my coat was around my ankles, Nick moved closer, shotgun unwavering. "Tell me, what kind of stupid fuck do you think I am?"

"You're a lot of things, but I've never thought you were stupid."

"Well, ain't you the bright one, Try this one on for size. Doug called me almost five hours ago, telling me that you were coming," I couldn't speak, couldn't move, could not believe what was happening. Nick was grinning. "You nitwit, you should know better than to trust a junkie, especially one who's so hard up. Hell, I tried to kill the little shit earlier today, and he dimed you right after you left, just for a few grams of magic powder. That make you feel good, author-man, knowing that little sniveling Doug thinks your life is only worth a few toots?"

Another step closer. "I asked you question!" he said, voice rising. "And you know what I said I'd do if I didn't get an answer. So tell me, you fool. You feel pretty good?"

I was honest. "No, I don't."

A quick nod. "Well, I'm glad to hear that, and I'm glad you finally showed up."

He moved rattlesnake fast, slicing up the shotgun stock to my jaw. The sudden bone-shock of being hit made me snap my teeth up and I fell backward and to the floor, the hard tile no comfort at all, my eyes bugging out with the pain, my hands moving up to my face and feeling the slickness, and I was almost throwing up as I curled up on the floor, everything dim and rolling, and Nick came over and said, "And I had to wait, and I hate waiting!"

Then he stomped on my head.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Months of long and dark hours later, I was weaving on my feet in the kitchen, my clothes a mess, my eyes nearly swollen shut, my ribs on both sides throbbing with a burning pain. My hands were cuffed behind me and Nick had a hand on my elbow as he opened up a door.

"Time for a break, before I decide what to do with you next," he said.

He then shoved me down a flight of stairs into the cellar. I fell down, everything a rolling motion of pain and impact, tumbling and sharp digs into my elbows and knees, and then I crumpled up on the concrete floor. Far off I heard the sound of Nick coming downstairs, and he grabbed my handcuffed arms and dragged me across the floor. I was breathing through my mouth, blood and saliva dribbling down my chin. My wrists ached where the handcuffs dug in and there didn't seem to be a joint or bone that didn't hurt.