Gravewriter (21 page)

“Objection!”

“And you'd say anything to get that deal, wouldn't you?”

“One question at a time, Mr. Smothers,” the judge ordered. “Anything to say on this objection?”

Martin was confident he had made the point. “I'll move on, Your Honor.”

The judge leaned back in his chair.

Martin paused to allow the jurors to process the testimony, and then he looked over his handwritten scribbles. Discrediting Home had been easy—Home was a natural-born asshole. The next part of his cross would be harder, and more important for Peter's defense. Martin would try to carve a refuge for Peter within Garrett Nickel's notorious reputation.

“Let's go back to the night you escaped,” Martin said.

“Weren't just me who escaped,” Home said, nodding at Peter. “He did, too.”

Horne was pissed and trying to be difficult. Martin ignored him and plowed ahead. “You were first out the window, is that correct?”

“Yeah.”

“When you went out, did you expect Peter Shadd to join you that night?”

Horne shifted in his seat. “I didn't know.” He looked at Dillingham, who pretended to be fascinated with his note taking and didn't look up.

Martin feigned surprise. “You didn't know?” he echoed. “Well, it seemed that the details of this planned escape were exquisite. A cell mate who had been expressing doubt for weeks seems like a significant loose end, wouldn't you say?”

“I don't know what you mean.”

“Mr. Home,” Martin said, trying to sound like he was beginning to lose his patience, “are you saying that after months of preparation, you and Garrett Nickel never thought about what to do about your cell mate? Were you just going to leave him in the cell, to call the guards the moment the two of you went out the window?”

Horne tugged at a one shirt cuff and then the other, seemingly oblivious that every person in the room was staring at him, waiting for an answer. He looked up suddenly and said, “Garrett was going to take care of Peter.”

“Take care how?”

“Like you said, Garrett didn't want to leave Peter in the cell—he never trusted the little bastard, and with good reason.” He glared at Peter.

Martin let the curse slide. Why not let the jury hear what was in Home's heart?

“He was going to give the little bastard a choice that night,” Home said. “Either he tagged along or Garrett would cut his throat.”

Jurors gasped. Dillingham fumbled his pen out of his hand. The revelation stunned even Martin, who had intended to
suggest
Nickel had intimidated Peter, but had never imagined …

“Right there in the goddamn cell,” Home added without a prompt. “Let the cops clean him up in the morning.”

The words hung in the courtroom a few moments.

“Nickel told you this?”

“When Peter was in the shower.”

“He threatened to kill him?” Martin said, restating the answer to buy a few moments to collect himself.

“He planned to slit his throat—usually fatal, wouldn't you say?”

The point
had
to be clear to the jury—Peter had no choice but to escape or die. Under those terms, who among them wouldn't have slipped out that window?

Martin moved to his final point. “You testified that after Mr. Shadd marooned you in the lake, you waited hours, is that right?”

Horne gave Martin a hard cyclops squint, as if he suspected a trap. “Yeah.”

“Hours, you said.”

“A few hours.”

“Did anybody see you out there?”

“Doubt it.”

“It's fair to say, isn't it,” Martin said, “that if anyone had seen you on that island, they would have called the cops?”

“Maybe.”

“They would have called
somebody,
don't you think?”

“Probably.”

“I mean, a man in an orange jumpsuit, stuck in a lake, is something a citizen reports.”

“Yeah, fine,” said Home. “They probably would.”

“But nobody did.”

“Nobody saw me.” Home wiggled in his seat and grinned, as if he had won the argument.

“So there's no proof you spent
hours
on the lake?”

“Huh?”

“No proof at all, is there?”

“It was hours.”

“You could have spent twenty minutes out there before you paddled to shore and then hunted down Garrett Nickel yourself, isn't that true?”

“Objection!” Dillingham yelled.

“Mr. Smothers,” warned Judge Palumbo.

“That ain't what happened,” Home said bitterly. “I wouldn't.”

“Objection!”

“Wouldn't you?” Martin shouted over the cross talk. “You'd let Nickel knife Peter Shadd in cold blood—because you're just as much a monster as Garrett Nickel!”

“Fuck you!” screamed Home.

“We can't trust a thing you're saying!”

“Objection! Your Honor!”

Palumbo rapped the gavel four times, hard enough to drive nails into concrete. “Enough!” he roared. When all was quiet, he rapped three more times. His face glowed crimson. “Do you have any more questions for this witness?” he demanded.

“No, Your Honor,” Martin said merrily. “We all have better things to do.”

T
he coffee shop called itself a “shoppe” and seemed the kind of f place that used hand-pumped milk from free-range holsteins raised on kosher diets grown from seed blessed by the College of Cardinals. Franklin D. Flagg didn't care if the farmers read Milton to the cows before tucking them into bed; he just wanted a cup of coffee.

The shoppe's staff dressed in nothing but black. Always scowling, they looked like constipated ninjas.

Signs all over the shoppe promised that a percentage of the profits would go to this or that good cause. Maybe that was why the employees were cranky. If you donated something like 162 percent of your profit to feeding the tree slug and educating the octopus, there wouldn't be much left to pay your staff.

Flagg used pocket change he had panhandled to pay the anorexic android with the skin tone of skim milk. He took his coffee outside. Traffic moved like an advancing glacier. Pedestrians—laughing, chatting, flirting in person and on their cell phones—outpaced the cars down the neighborhood's main artery. Flagg had walked half an hour from downtown to this enclave of hip bars and mid-scale ethnic
restaurants, where you could browse for modern art made from car mufflers, get acupuncture from a senior citizen fluent in Mandarin, pick up some bisexual company for the evening, and get sloshed on thirteen-dollar martinis—all within sight of your parking space.

Flagg had come for none of those things.

He had come to use the phone.

He could not risk being spotted by anyone from the shelter, nor anyone from his former life, before prison, when Flagg had made book, fenced on the side, and directed the thrashing of deadbeat gamblers, all from the back room of a newspaper and magazine store on Federal Hill. That was a long time ago—so long ago that Flagg's memories of that era were sepia-toned.

The pay phone at the corner gas station was outdoors, at a utility pole in a small parking lot, at the edge of a handsome redbrick sidewalk. Flagg jammed a Rhode Island state quarter into the machine, the coin with the sailboat on the reverse, and dialed a number he had already looked up and memorized.

The phone rang five times.

Flagg didn't want to reach an answering machine. This was not the kind of message he could leave on tape, and if he had to hang up, the phone would keep his quarter.

“Well, hello,” Flagg said as somebody finally answered. “You know who this is, eh?”

Flagg listened a few moments and then interrupted. “No, you listen to me. I'm scheduled to testify this week in the murder trial of Peter Shadd. The son of a bitch lawyer who subpoenaed me thinks I'd make a good defense witness because of an assault claim I filed against Garrett Nickel for serving me a bacteria cocktail.…”

He listened.

“What?” Flagg said. “No, it's bacteria in a bottle—oh, shut the fuck up and pay attention. We both know what I saw when I was in the joint.”

Flagg waited, heard nothing, and finally meandered to the point. “I can make this easy on you, or I can make it tough.”

He listened some more, and then he got annoyed. “I'm telling you how goddamn much,” he said. “Don't interrupt me, or this conversation will end and the next time anybody hears from me, it'll be from the witness stand. I'll sing like an opera star.”

He listened again.

“Fifty thousand,” Flagg offered. “I'm hungry, not greedy.” He listened and then said, “Of course in fucking cash. Do you think I got a MasterCard machine in my backpack?”

Flagg sensed he was about to close the deal. “You'd hardly miss the money,” he said, “and you'll never, ever hear from me again.”

T
he headlights on the car behind Billy looked like cat's eyes.

Christ, it's three in the morning.… Who's following me?

The car was a sedan, black or dark blue. It had been on Billy's ass since he had left the newsroom annex, hanging back several hundred feet and matching Billy's speed. He had tested the tail with a few-turns through downtown Providence, into the financial district, rumbling over cobblestone intersections, and zipping down dark alleys that during the day would be blocked with delivery trucks. Several times he had thought he had lost the sedan, or that he had just imagined it had been following him, only to see again the cat's eyes in the mirror.

Was a collector following him? Did another broken nose await when he finally stopped at home, or ran out of gas? That didn't make sense. Why would a collector follow him to his house just to bust a tomato stake across his knees? Leg breakers were not known for brains, but if one was smart enough to find Billy at work, why not jump him in the annex parking lot? Who would have been there to save him? Not the unarmed security guard with the munchies.

He considered briefly that Maddox was coming to get him, before he could get Maddox. But that was silly—unless Maddox had discovered mind reading.

Billy pushed the accelerator and bounced the van over potholes, past former jewelry factories made from red brick, now crammed with nightclubs trimmed in pink neon, and twenty-four-hour tattoo parlors. The licensed bars had let out hours ago. The drunks had finished their fistfights, and everyone had staggered home, except for small bands of twenty-something kids from out of town, who couldn't find the all-night raves but who were too high to be discouraged.

He aimed the van onto the highway and floored the gas. The engine moaned in surprise. The steering wheel pulled hard left and Billy battled to keep the old van under control. His sudden burst of speed had gained some space on the sedan. He zoomed south, watching the mirror as much as the road ahead.

The little sedan must have been a turbo, because the cat's eye headlights appeared at the top of the ramp, less than a quarter mile back.

Goddamn that little thing.

There could be no doubt: The car was following him.

Billy felt a hot flash as adrenaline juiced him for survival. The steering wheel stuttered in his hands like a living thing. He briefly let go with one hand and wiped sweat from his eyes. A motorcycle screamed around him, startling Billy. The wheel slipped. The van screeched into the middle lane.

“Cripes!”

Billy wrestled the car under control and watched the little sedan gaining in the mirror.

Got to get off this highway.

Light filled his mirrors. The sedan closed on his bumper; a tractor-trailer pressed close to the sedan.

Billy was passing an exit. It seemed too late to take it.

On impulse, Billy wrenched the wheel to the right.

The tires screamed. The van swerved across an empty lane of highway, strafed a road sign with a thundering clang and a metallic screech. Billy hugged the steering wheel. He listened to his own hoarse howl and then straightened the van down the ramp.

With a trailer truck on its tail, the little black sedan could only drive on. The next exit was a mile south. No way the driver could double back and find Billy.

At the bottom of the ramp, Billy drove into a village thick with two- and three-family apartments, markets that advertised in Spanish and Portuguese, and small clumps of kids on the streets—even at three o'clock in the morning—smoking, talking, kicking beanbags back and forth. Billy turned down streets at random and lost himself deep in the neighborhood.

He panted and felt his heart drumming double time in his chest. Sweat from his palms had matted the shag-covered steering wheel. The van's shaky wheel alignment had grown worse; even at twenty miles per hour, the machine fought over who was in charge.

Billy pulled over, shifted the transmission to park, and wiped his shirttail over his face. He thought about the people he owed money, and who among them would have bothered to scare him on the highway.

That's when a darker notion slipped inside his skull and slithered between the folds of his brain. What if somebody had killed Alec Black, and now they were after him?

Did they think they could kill the whole jury?

Or just those jurors who still had some reasonable doubt?

The kitchen light was on when Billy got home.

Bo and the old man were at the table. The old man smeared apple jam on toasted Wonder bread. Bo plopped chunks of margarine into a steaming bowl of Cream of Wheat.

The old man had pulled the hanging lamp low over the table, illuminating the late-night breakfast like an illegal poker game.

“What the hell are you two doing?” Billy demanded. “It's three-thirty in the morning.”

Neither Bo nor the old man looked up.

“I told you he'd be mad,” Bo said. He used a teaspoon to carefully excavate the Cream of Wheat around three globs of melting margarine.