Blood Ties (15 page)

The other man spoke. “Hamlin, I don't know who these people are and I don't give a damn what they want, but I'm going to talk to my son.”

“Then you're taking him home, Macpherson. You know the rules.”

“Christ, Hamlin,” I said. “This petty tyrant bullshit may play to the parents, but you can't—”

“Shut the fuck up,” Macpherson ordered me. My fists clenched and I felt the heat in my face; but as I started to move Lydia touched my hand. I stopped: she was right. I was bluffing. I had nothing to offer and nothing, really, to threaten with. But Macpherson was a parent. He was much more likely to be able to breach Hamlin's wall than we were; and once it was breached, maybe we could slip through the gap.

Macpherson kept his eyes on me just a second longer. His expensive suit, his silk tie, his Italian shoes would have told me, if his derisive half-smile hadn't, that he was used to people getting out of his way. Sure I was no more trouble because he'd told me not to be, he turned back to Hamlin. “Warrenstown raised fifty thousand dollars to send these boys here,” he said in a voice like a ton of concrete. “A significant part of that money was mine. You're supposed to be improving my son's game, not holding him prisoner.”

“He's not a prisoner, Macpherson. You can take him home any time. You signed a contract and you knew what was in it.”

“We have a situation here that's different—”

“Different?”
Hamlin shouted, startling us all. I looked at his eyes. They were as calm and cold as his voice was loud and raw. I thought, for effect; he did that for effect, planned and deliberate, not out of control at all. “I'm not coaching football here, Macpherson. I'm building men.” He waved his hand around his office, showing us the citations, the awards, the photos of boys in uniform, alone and in teams, posed and in action. On his desk was a photo of two skinny kids with glasses, in tee shirts and shorts, laughing. I couldn't imagine they were his sons; no sons of Tom Hamlin would be scrawny, loose, like that. Whoever they were, they were probably there to remind him what his raw material was like, how hard he had to work to mold this unlikely clay.

Hamlin dropped his arm, looked at Macpherson. “You think this situation is different?” he said quietly. “Let me tell you something, Macpherson: every situation is always different. There are a million goddamn excuses. An excuse, Macpherson, that's like an asshole: everybody has one and it's full of shit. Either you do what you need to do, or you don't. At Hamlin's we teach boys to give everything they have. All the time. Every time. Not except when the situation is fucking
different
!”

He rested his eyes on each of us, one by one, and I thought again how cold they were, how unmatched to the heat of his words. A corner of his mouth turned up like a knife blade. “You can take him home,” he said to Macpherson, “or you can let him stay. And you two”—he threw Lydia a glance, dismissed her, turned to me—“you can get the hell off my property before I call the cops myself.” Hamlin reached for the phone. “You want him, Macpherson? You want to take him home?”

Macpherson, in his classy suit, was beet-red, the tendons in his neck bulging above his collar. He stared at Hamlin. “Fuck you.” His voice was throaty, low. He turned and pushed past me to get out.

I looked at Hamlin, at Lydia. I lifted my hands, said to Barboni, “I'm leaving. No hard feelings. See you around.” I walked past him, no sudden moves, followed Macpherson down the corridor. Barboni threw a glance at Hamlin. If he'd been given the signal he'd have charged, tackled me, probably with his nightstick already out. I half expected it, was ready for it. But I made it out the doors without hearing a sound behind me. After all, I was leaving, which is what they'd told me to do. What Hamlin and Barboni had to figure out was why Lydia was still there.

I wasn't sure, either, unless it was just to keep them off-balance, get me clear. I'd find out later; now, coming out into the chill twilight, I broke into a run, covered the yards to Macpherson's Mercedes SUV. I reached it as he was closing his door.

Yanking it back open, I said, “I need to talk to your son.”

He hit the ignition. The big engine growled, as ready to leave as he was. His mouth was twisted around a cigarette. “Yeah, well, good fucking luck. Who the fuck are you anyway?”

“I told you. I'm an investigator.”

“What the hell do you want with Randy? If this is about that girl, just forget about it, he doesn't know anything.”

“I don't give a shit about that.”

Which wasn't true, but it got his attention.

“What the fuck do you mean?”

“I'm looking for Gary Russell.”

“Who the hell's that?”

“A new kid at Warrenstown. He's a friend of Randy's.”

“Oh, fuck, yeah,” said Macpherson, looking through his windshield to the lights of the roadway. “Scott Russell's boy. That's his name, Gary? I heard: he ran away.”

“That's right. He's been gone since Monday.”

“Scott's an asshole. His kid's probably an asshole. Maybe he killed that girl, that's why he ran away. But my boy doesn't know anything about it and if I catch you near him I'll break your neck.”

“How do you know what Randy knows?”

Macpherson made a move, as though he was going to climb down out of the car and break my neck right there. Then he dropped back on the seat, threw the car into gear. I let go of the door and jumped back. His tires spat gravel as he took off. It was clear he wouldn't have minded dragging me along, or rolling right over me.

I watched his taillights speed down Hamlin's long driveway, pull sharply into traffic when he reached the road. I couldn't argue with Macpherson's assessment of Scott. But I wondered whether it came from the last few months, or was something he'd remembered over the decades, from the days when they were boys together, in Warrenstown.

I sat in the passenger seat of my car and smoked, waited for Lydia to come out. I checked for messages but I had none; I thought of calling Helen but I didn't. Twilight dropped into night, quickly the way it does as the year winds down. Lights in the windows of the buildings in front of me went off, came on, in a pattern that seemed random to me but had reasons, meanings, though anyone who knew them wouldn't be out here watching and anyone seeing it, like me, would be too much on the outside to understand.

Finally Hamlin's double doors opened, and Lydia walked down the drive, not looking back at the figure of Barboni looming in the doorway behind her. If we had to come back here, Lydia and I, we might have to find a way to do it on someone else's shift.

I didn't get out, hoping Barboni wasn't counting parked cars, would think I'd gone already. Lydia walked past her own rented Taurus and up to the driver's side of my car. She opened the door and got in.

“You think we're fooling him?” I asked while she pulled the door shut.

She shrugged, nodded toward the entrance. “He's gone.”

I looked; he was. I'd have been willing to bet the doors were locked, too.

“You didn't have to hit him,” Lydia said.

“I know.”

“You're twice his size, he's not armed, and there were two of us.”

I nodded, said nothing. For a while she said nothing more, either. After a few minutes she shifted to look at me. “Where's the music?” she asked.

“What?”

“You usually have music on while you're in the car.” She pointed to the box of CDs between the seats.

I shook my head. “I've been wanting to listen to the Bach since morning, but every time I put it on it gets on my nerves.”

She gave me a strange look, or maybe it was just the way the light fell from the high poles around Hamlin's entrance, casting odd, multiple shadows. She picked up the Bach CD, looked at it, sifted through the disks under it. She asked, “Did you try something else?”

“No.” I wasn't even sure what else was in the box.

Carefully, she put the CDs back in the order she'd found them, saying nothing. Looking at me again, she asked, “Learn anything out here?”

“Macpherson thinks Scott's an asshole.”

“This is not news.”

“That Macpherson thinks so?”

“Macpherson strikes me as a man who probably thinks that about a lot of people. And from what I've heard, Scott is one.”

I tamped my cigarette in the ashtray, smiling a little. “You can't say it, can you?”

“I could,” she answered breezily. “But I don't intend to be dragged into the mud with all the other Neanderthals on this case.”

“Me included?”

“Of course.”

“Anything happen in there after I left?”

“Barboni asked me out again. It seems he gets excited by girls with guns who push him around.”

“Here's a secret about men: We all do.”

“Here's a secret about women: We all know you do.”

“So why don't more of you carry guns?”

“So more of us can get asked out by guys like Barboni?”

“Or like the rest of us. I get your point.”

“Anyway,” she said, “I apologized for your thuggish behavior, and told Mr. Hamlin I understood how important it was for him to maintain discipline, and assured him I agreed he couldn't be expected to set a bad example for the boys by breaking his own rules.”

“You'd better be going somewhere with this.”

“No, I just didn't want to be associated with your approach. In case they ever need another security guard out here. It seems like kind of a good job. I like the ambience.”

“And you could work the night shift with Barboni.”

“Another plus. What I did was to ask Mr. Hamlin if the boys would be likely to have heard about Tory Wesley.”

“And?”

“He carefully explained to me again that they're not allowed outside contact while they're here, so no, they wouldn't have. So I smiled and thanked him and asked him to keep his ears open, and to please let me know if he happens to hear any of the kids saying anything that might mean they know. Because if they do—”

“—it'll be because they knew already, before Sullivan and I found her body. You know, you really are a genius.”

“You wouldn't just be saying that?”

“Sure I would. But you'd kill me if I didn't.”

“That's true.”

“You think he will? Let you know if he hears anything?”

“Fifty-fifty. He doesn't think very highly of me. But he'd love to prove to me how much more he knows than I do. He'd especially love to prove to me how much more he knows than
you
do. It's that male gorilla thing.”

“Any gorilla knows more than I do, male or female.”

“But that was strange, that thing.”

“What was?”

“Well, usually, when a guy does that male gorilla thing and chases the other gorilla away—”

“Me?”

She gave me a silent look, went on, “—usually he follows it up with more chest thumping and a bad come-on line. To collect his prize.”

“You?” When she didn't answer I asked, “Hamlin didn't?”

“As soon as you guys left and it was just the two of us it was like a switch turned off. He sat in his chair like nothing had happened and answered my questions patiently, as though he had all night.”

“It looked to me like that was at least partly an act,” I said. “All that yelling. And maybe more for Macpherson than for us.”

“I had the same feeling. Well, I'm just as glad he didn't come on to me.”

“Why? So you don't have to choose between him and Barboni?”

“A tough choice,” she confirmed. “So, what do we do now?”

I thought. For a while in my car it was just silence and odd shadows, Lydia's leather jacket and the faint freesia scent of her hair. The wind came up, shifting the shadows around; Lydia zipped up the jacket.

“Cold?” I asked her.

“A little,” she admitted.

“You know how to start a stick shift?”

“You'd let me start this car?”

“When you put it that way,” I said, “no. Anyway, we'd better get out of here. Before Sullivan gets here.”

“Can Mr. Hamlin really keep the police from questioning the kids?”

“Sure. Cops have no right to talk to anybody without a warrant. It'll piss the cops off, but Hamlin doesn't seem like a guy who cares about that.”

“He seems to me like a guy who likes it. Bill?”

I looked at her, waiting.

“Mr. Macpherson's a parent paying a lot of money to send his son here. You and I are just PIs who Mr. Hamlin doesn't know from Adam.”

“Or Eve. And?”

“Well, wouldn't a parent be someone you'd want to at least try to keep on the good side of, even if you weren't going to let him have what he wanted? But Mr. Hamlin was going way out of his way to be unpleasant to Mr. Macpherson, much more than to us. He really seemed to be enjoying it.”

“Because Macpherson's a lot more obnoxious?”

“You'll excuse me if I say I don't think, in terms of the events of this evening, that he was.”

“You could be right.”

“Then why?”

“I don't know.”

“And another question: What was Mr. Macpherson doing here?”

“I assume he thinks his son knows something about Tory Wesley's death and he wanted to find out what.”

“So why didn't he take him home, if that's the only way to talk to him?”