The Car Bomb (The detroit im dying Trilogy, Book 1) (16 page)

There had been only one thought at that point: don’t let Marci see this. He had grabbed Bobby roughly by the arm and dragged him to the foot of the dock where he caught Marci running at full tilt, stopped her and with Bobby turned her back toward the house, yelling at them, “Call 911. The cops and EMS.”

Moving back down the dock he had found Jen on her knees, her terrified screams animal-like, trying to push the blood and tissue back into that gaping wound and close it somehow. For a moment he had thought he was going to vomit.

But he did not. And he did not disintegrate into a thousand pieces or stop breathing, or any of the things he had always thought would happen if something truly awful struck down one of his beautiful, precious kids. Instead he lifted his daughter to her feet and held her, weeping and shaking, in his arms.

So why in all these shit-caked days since had he never understood that Bobby, sitting here trying to feel strong, needed the same thing? Maybe not hugs, with our phoney masculine insistence on stand-alone strength, but surely, at the very least, an insistent effort to find the right moves to comfort and console.

Parked in front of Cleveland’s main post office, he waited behind the wheel of his sister’s Civic and watched the stream of postal workers, so many of them black, leaving the building. When he spotted Vanessa smiling goodbye to a girlfriend, he shoved his arm out the window and waved. Spotting him, she waved back and seconds later slid onto the seat next to him.

“
Hey, baby.”

“
Hey, Ness.” He turned the ignition. “How was it today?”

“
Well, put it this way. Any day with no paper cuts, letter bombs, vasoline-smeared envelopes, or crazed co-workers is a blessed day. How about you?”

Getting a break in traffic, he pulled the Civic away from the curb and headed for Glenville. He had decided he might as well just go ahead with it now.

“
Ness, I been thinkin’ about goin’ back.”

She gave him a worried glance. “Back where?”

“
Back. You know, go back and do the right thing. Lay it all down. Show ‘em the tape and expose their asses.”

As he drove, Vanessa stared at him. “‘Expose their asses.’ And just what do you think they’re gonna do if you try to expose their asses? They’re gonna kill you, Anthony. They’re gonna destroy you, just like they destroyed that prosecutor who was stupid enough to think he could mess with them. They’re too powerful, Anthony. They got too many connections. They’ll squash you, like a bug.”

“
Maybe, but I got that TV guy, and I just feel I gotta do it for Nita and the babies.”

“
I thought you said you got no trust in the TV guy.”

“
Yeah, well...”

“
And Nita and those babies would want only one thing. For you to live. To be real smart and live your life. That’s what Nita always said, ‘Be smart, Anthony. Do the smart thing.’ I can still hear her sayin’ it.”

He stopped the car for a red light and looked at his sister. Those big eyes were even wider with concern. “And what I hear her sayin’ is, ‘Do the right thing, Anthony. Always do the right thing.’”

She closed those eyes for a few seconds then opened them, looking even more determined.

“
Then all this is simple, ‘cause the right thing sure as hell ain’t gettin’ your ass murdered. And that’s exactly what’s gonna happen if you go back there, my beautiful little brother.”

In a light blue golf shirt and navy slacks, Frank reached down to check the moisture in the soil around the bougainvillea climbing high on the front porch of the big frame house. The dirt, sand really, was powdery dry in his hand, but the mass of red flowers was flourishing.

It was not always easy to know how things worked on this island, but if you found and paid the right people, it usually turned out all right. The Dominicans would arrive soon to trim and water sufficiently until next week when they’d come again after the family departed.

“
You ready?”

Marci was coming out the jalousied front door, and his quick surge of affection surprised him, even after last night. Sans make up, her blond hair up in a rubber band, she wore a thin white tee over a little pair of khaki shorts and sandals. As always her tanned legs looked great, but the rest of her 43-year-old body was trim and sexy as well. He had felt that same little surge a few minutes ago when he woke her to ask if she wanted the Pathfinder while he was playing golf. She opened one eye and said, “Yes, I’ll take you. Just give me five minutes.”

Slapping the dust off his hands, he got into the Nissan and rolled them out of the drive and past several large, well-kept homes overlooking the sea. Turning onto a heavily rutted dirt road, he knew there’d be a couple miles of weaving around washed out pot holes, bumps and ripples until he hit the smooth relief of the old two-lane black top that would get them to the golf course 15 minutes away.

Glancing down at those tanned legs next to him, he marveled again at last night. Where had that come from, all that quick heat, passion, lust and, yes, perhaps even love? For a week, each night, he had kissed her goodnight and hoped, waiting for something more than her usual roll-away in that king-sized bed and her affect-less “Sleep well, Frank.”

Then last night, after the kiss and the roll-away in the dark, nothing, not a word, until, finally, after maybe five seconds, her voice had come softly, “Hey, can a girl get another one of those?”

Turning back to her under the sheet he had known as soon as he touched her hip, everything would be different. The incredible warmth of her skin under his hand had melted all doubts, fears and hesitation. With her eager mouth turned to him, he had kissed her with everything he had, and they had been off on the best ride he could ever remember with her, better even than those sex-crazed days when they were just kids, and he was still at the radio station.

And when they had finished, saying nothing she had fallen asleep in his arms, and he had thought, “Where has that been all these years?” And “So it seems there may still be hope.”

As he pulled into the lot at the course, he wanted to say something like, “Well, what got into us last night?” But he was afraid if he talked about it, he would only underscore its sad rarity in their life together and perhaps make it disappear on the breeze wafting through their open windows. So wordlessly, he leaned over and kissed her lovely mouth.

She smiled at him. “I’ll be back to get you at 2. I’m having lunch with Diana at the Grace Bay Club.”

“
Okay, thanks for the lift,” He started to open his door, then felt her hand on this forearm. Her face had a strange look that suddenly scared him.

“
Frank, I don’t want you to be surprised when we get back in a few days. You’ll be getting a call from Ben Hartzell about financial statements. You might want to collect anything we might need from here on the island, before we leave. I’m sure it’ll be a lot easier to get the stuff here and carry it back with us than try to get it from home later.”

Stunned, as if he’d been wacked in the head, he nodded silently, got out of the Pathfinder and moved to the back hatch to get his clubs.

“
Ah,” said Fay softly, “here comes Queen of.”

At a 4-top, finishing a late lunch in the WTEM cafeteria, she, Dennis, Francine and Eddie were the last ones in the room when Mary Scott came through the line, picked up an ice tea and dug in her purse to pay.

Dennis with a glance: “Yeah, the smile switch is stuck on huge lately.”

“
What’s she so happy about?” asked Eddie.

Francine offered, “I hear she’d dating that Lion running back.”

“
No,” said Dennis, “she’s just ecstatic that Frank’s been gone for a week.”

Francine began to wave. “We should ask her to sit with us.”

Fay grabbed her hand. “Don’t you dare.”

Mary was standing there now with her smile. “Hey, how are the troops?”

Eddie piped, “Doin’ great, babe.”

The others said nothing, and the co-anchor took her tea and left.

As if the past 30 seconds had never happened, Fay announced, “So my guy in the prosecutor’s office says Gant has been officially ruled a suicide. They’ll have a statement this afternoon.”

Dennis: “Frank won’t be happy.”

Fay: “Frank won’t be happy about a lot of things. You saw Barnes today.”

Dennis: “That guy gets away with murder. Quoting his un-named police source, saying the department is re-doubling its efforts to find Anthony Peoples, that he must now be considered a fugitive…”

“‘
A fugitive from justice,’” added Francine.

“
Right, quoting some jerk in homicide supposedly off the record, saying that Peoples is certainly acting like a guilty guy, and that he’s either skipped town and on the lam, or is ‘perhaps permanently indisposed.’”

Fay shook her head. “And that tease for Sunday at the end of his column. ‘Stay tuned, folks, for a major expose involving one of the Motor City’s favorite media stars.’”

Francine said, “Maybe we should tell Frank. I could give him a call.”

Fay again grabbed her hand. “No way, Francine. Leave the guy alone and let him finish his vacation in peace. Anyway, there’s not a damn thing he can do about any of this.”

There was something about an island, he thought, at least this island, that made you feel wonderfully separate, no longer touched by the world beyond, with all its cares, woes, wiles, passions, pressures, confusions and contra-indications.

For more than a week now, nearly every day, he had walked naked, except for sunglasses and his wedding band, on this deserted beach. Long Bay Beach was wild, raw and empty, though certainly not untouched by the crazy, careless hand of man.

Here and there the beautiful white sand offered strewn signs of humanity: a sunscreen tube, pop cans, half a rowboat, several feet of frayed rope, a few yards of bright green fishnet, most of a straw hat, the bones of a fish released too late and picked clean by gulls, a ripped seat cushion with a family of crabs living inside, three quarters of an empty picture frame, bottles of many shapes and sizes, and even more numerous conch shells, big, pink and gleaming in the brilliant sun.

The shells had been swept slowly around a nearby point from a conch farm he had read about but never visited, the slimey creatures inside harvested and their homes released to the sea to be washed up along with everything else on his favorite beach by the predictable tides.

He walked naked on this beach because it felt good, right and reasonable. The lovely warmth of the sun and the cool tingle of a light breeze on all of his skin made wearing a suit here seem silly. Beyond that, everything he had ever come up with to explain the experience had seemed clichéd. Yes, he was more than a bit of an exhibitionist, but not on this beach. No one had ever seen him here. Certainly this place made him feel totally free, open, unguarded and strangely innocent. All clichés.

A few homes stood at the far western end of the beach, maybe three miles away, but the last access road cut through the scrub to the sand was a mile and a half away, and he had never encountered a soul at this end.

Actually, though, he had a relationship of sorts with someone else who loved this beach enough to walk it as far east as he did. From the shallow, narrow sneaker prints he occasionally found in the sand, he imagined an older woman, small and trim who lived in one of those houses on the west end, and who walked in the morning with her dog. Judging by the prints, it was probably something with size, maybe a shepherd or a retriever. He always left his suit and towel on a bush about a mile away, fair warning for the old gal should she break with habit and take her walk later in the day. Anyway, he would see her coming from a long distance and could take a dip until she moved on.

On most days the sea on this leeward side of the island was like glass, shimmering a bit with the sun and breeze, but at the shore not even lapping. The hungry gulls and industrious little pipers seemed in perpetual motion. But everything else here spoke a warm, soft language of peace, fostering the fanciful notion that if he stored enough of all this before leaving, there would be nothing back home he could not face.

And that thought suddenly prompted unguarded speculation on what in fact might be waiting back there.

A call, perhaps, from Anthony Peoples? What had happened these last few weeks since Peoples had broken it off and said he was leaving town for good? Had time somehow produced enough reassurance to bring him back?

Did he really want to go after his old pal Billy, with everything that would certainly entail? Or would life really be easier if he never heard from Peoples again? Of course there were other journalists in town the guy could go to. How would he feel if somebody else got the story? He knew the answer and felt frustration rise with the realization that there was not a damn thing he could do about it anyway. There was no way he could contact Peoples, other than more pleas on the newscast, and if the fellow was really no longer in town, he would not even hear them.

And what about Sherie? What in the world was he going to do about Sherie after that night they had? “I love you.” Those magic words had spilled from his sorry mouth before he had left that evening. Had they been for her or because of Barnes? And what about that little prick, so clearly out to destroy him and with enough column space to do it three times a week? What was he going to do about Barnes? He could be a boy scout for the rest of his life, and Barnes could still produce shit to blow him up.

And then there was Marci. How did he really feel about his wife and what did he really want from her? Why had he felt suddenly so bereft when she had announced the divorce? Hadn’t he fantasized often in the past year about leaving his marriage and getting together with Sherie? Maybe the question was, how did Marci really feel about him? And what, if anything, did she really want from him? And if they could figure that one out, was he truly capable of giving it?