North of Boston (37 page)

The bullet catches him in the shoulder. He stops, puts a hand over the wound, takes it away, sees blood, looks up at me with murderous hatred, and lunges at me again. This time I get his thigh, and he slumps to the ground, crying out in pain.

The sound of the gunshot reverberates, fades away.

“Put down the gun,” Johnny says calmly. He's standing up now.

The tall Russian has Parnell in a one-armed headlock. His other hand is holding a handgun that is pointed directly at me.

Parnell's face is pasty white. The way he's slumped against the Russian makes it clear that he doesn't have much strength. He was probably well on his way to hypothermia when he made his charge.

“Come on, Pirio. Give me the gun,” Johnny says. He is walking toward me slowly, his arm extended, palm up. In a few seconds, he'll be at my side.

Parnell's body may be weak, but his voice is clear and strong. “Don't give it to him,” he says. His strange weapon is lying on the ground at his feet, broken in two. It's not a weapon, I realize. It's a narwhal tusk.

“Come on now, put it down,” Johnny cajoles, continuing to approach me without apparent fear. Like he's talking to a little girl.

I raise the Colt, take careful aim, and shoot.

The bullet hits him in the throat. It leaves a hole that immediately fills with blood. Johnny falls to his knees, clamps his hands together over the hole. He starts gurgling, swaying on the short pillars of his upper legs. It looks like he's strangling himself.

The crack of a firearm fills the air. In a dim way, I know it's a bullet intended for me. But I'm watching Johnny die, in shock and horror, and it takes a few moments—during which everything that's happening seems slow, vivid, surreal, and fated (painfully, irrevocably fated)—to realize I'm not hit. Most likely, Parnell pushed him off balance somehow.

I hold the gun with two hands, and fire at the right side of the Russian's body, as far as possible from Parnell.

The bullet hits the Russian somewhere; Parnell is twisting free. He shouts “Behind you!” and I quickly step aside. The hand of the short man grabs thin air where it meant to grab my ankle. He had pulled himself along the floor on his elbows, leaving a trail of blood.

Johnny is rolling from side to side on his back, clutching his neck. Blood is spurting up forcefully between his fingers from the hole in his throat. I stare without comprehension, unable to think or move.

Parnell is next to me. He grabs my hand, and pulls me out of the processing area, up a flight of stairs, onto the deck, where a cold wind blows. The ship is ten times bigger than I thought it was. We run to the side. It's docked at a pier, but there's no gangplank—no way to get off. There's got to be a way, of course, but right now I don't feel like asking for directions. At the end of the pier, there's a ladder into the water. I recognize the low buildings of the Conley Terminal, the Boston skyline shrouded in a far-off western haze. I grab Parnell and pull him after me. We get to the flat, open back of the ship, where the nets are hauled and the catch is dumped. Parnell understands what we're doing. His eyes show no fear. We clasp hands and jump.

T
he heavy tasseled curtains are drawn tight against the bright sunshine. There's a sour smell in the room. Unwashed sheets, meals brought on trays and left for hours uneaten. Milosa himself, unbathed. Only one lamp is on—a Tiffany on the night table, ornate and magical, with an amber shade. The walls are crowded with oil paintings—landscapes—in gilt frames. Mostly shallow, unpopulated hills rolling under heavy, variegated skies, they cast a suffocating, melancholic spell.

I go to throw open the curtains, but he waves me away. “No light,” he says.

“Fresh air?”

“No, no. When did you get back?”

“Two days ago.”

“You should have come right away.”

Does this means he's failing rapidly? I can't bring myself to ask.

“How did it go?” he asks.

“It wasn't what I expected. It was worse.”

He snorts. “It always is.”

He's propped up in the king-size bed, against pillows that are arranged against a massive antique headboard. It's the bed he shared with my mother, in which Maureen slept briefly until his thrashing limbs, she said, drove her to a room down the hall. He hasn't moved to the middle, still keeps to his half, although no body has depressed the other side of the mattress for many years.

I'm standing near the foot of the bed. There's no place to sit.

“Come,” he says, patting the mattress. “I'm not dangerous at the moment.”

I've never sat on Milosa's side of the bed before. I perch.

“Tell me what happened. I could use a good story,” he says. He neatly folds the sheet over the top of the blanket and smooths it out, making himself a more presentable audience.

“You might end up being proud of me.” I can't believe I've said something so tender to Milosa Kasparov.

“I'll be the judge of that.”

It's a relief to get it all out. And I do. Beginning, middle, and end. I leave out Martin, though, and Roger, and the small brown vial, which sits in my pocket as if it's only a small brown vial.

“Is that it?” he says when I'm finished.

“Isn't that enough?”

“You forgot the most important part!”

“What do you mean?”

“What about the boat?”

“What boat?”

“The one that sank the
Molly Jones
!” he roars.

“Oh, that. I'm pretty sure it was the Russian factory trawler
Kapitan Yolkov
owned by Yevgeny Petrenko
.
It's the biggest damn boat I've ever seen, short of a cruise ship. A dark gray color, just like I thought. Petrenko was using it to transport the narwhal tusks to European ports. When Ned Rizzo wanted out of the hunting operation, Dustin Hall tried to buy his silence with a lobster boat, but that wasn't good enough for Petrenko. He wanted Rizzo dead. So he crushed the
Molly Jones
with the
Kapitan Yolkov
. And then Hall and John Oster had to cover it up.”

“He must have put a location tracker on the lobster boat,” Milosa says, with the smug authority of a veteran schemer.

“I guess. We'll never know the exact details.”

A sly glint comes into his eyes. “So it
was
murder.”

I manage a thin smile, prepare to choke on humble pie. “Yes, Milosa. It was murder. You were right.”

“Ahhh.” His lips come together gently as he savors his moment. But he's not one to rest for longer than that on his laurels. He shimmies his spine a bit higher on the bank of fluffy pillows. “And now, I assume, you are busy congratulating yourself.”

“Why shouldn't I?” I say warily, realizing too late that this is exactly the question he wanted me to ask.

“Because you're not done!”

“Why not? What else is there?”

“What else is there?”
His voice rises on ascending notes of mocking incredulity, and thuds back to flat earth with the next question. “Tell me, what do you know about the black market for narwhal tusks?”

“Not much, I guess. Parnell said there were hundreds of tusks tied together in small bundles in the ship's freezer. But I don't know if there were more tusks on board, or where they were headed, or how many other trips there had been.”

“Let me tell you something that you should have figured out yourself by now: Petrenko couldn't have gotten that many tusks from Jaeger's group alone. He had to have had other sources as well.”

“Oh, and I suppose you want me to find them,” I say in a mockingly wooden tone.

“Someone ought to.”

I cross my arms over my chest and bite back my impatience. The way he's sitting up in bed like that, with his hair sticking out, makes him look like a crazy old man. For the first time in my life, I wonder whether Milosa is, in fact, a little crazy. I try to sound reasonable. “The authorities will take it from here.”

In fact, Parnell and I were at the police station from late Monday night until Tuesday morning, when Johnny's body and the tusks were carried off the
Kapitan Yolkov
. After a few hours of rest in my apartment, we went back to the station to give statements and descriptions, and to answer endless questions. It was all quite exhausting. I was glad to get it behind me, and to curl up on the couch in the evening with Parnell, eating Thai takeout. On the eleven o'clock news—local, not national—there was a story about Ocean Catch's alleged involvement in a Canadian whale-poaching ring. It was less than a minute long. Johnny might have been right when he said that no one would care.

“By the authorities, you mean the Coast Guard and police, I assume?” Milosa says drily.

“Uh-huh. Maybe some federal agency as well,” I say, resisting his implications.

His watery eyes drift to the middle of the room and find something to fix on, perhaps one of his somber paintings, as if I have simply ceased to be of interest. “I see what's happened. You had a little adventure, a little victory, and now you're getting soft again. Giving up.”

“I don't have to listen to this, you know.”

“It takes so little to satisfy you Americans,” he continues vaguely, gambling that I won't walk out. “You put a few facts together, and congratulate yourselves that you've uncovered the truth and told your story right up to the end. But truth doesn't have an end. It just keeps going, and if you don't have the guts to follow it, you start to die. Still, you comfortable people—you think you know it all.” He nods with slow judiciousness, accepting my weakness, as his eyes return to my face. “I say it again, Pirio: Nothing's over. You're not done. You're simply tired and want to rest your feet.”

My spine straightens, and I lean forward. For once, just once, I want him to give me credit for something good I did. “What's this about stories? What are you even talking about? I'm not telling a story. Almost drowning—was that a story? How about a sweet old woman murdered? Or a meth addict? Or all the whales? I've done plenty, in fact—more than my share. I just blew open a poaching ring and solved two murders. I don't
have
to do anything more. You want to know why? Because I live in a civilized country where there are judges and courts and a legal system and environmental protections in place. Sure, it's not perfect here, but in this country, this America, which you so revile though you've chosen to make it your home, some things actually work. Once in a while, the truth
does
come out. People can depend on each other. They can
trust
.”

He sits up, leans toward me until our noses are only a foot apart. “Is it possible, what I hear? You lecture me about life?
You
lecture
me
? What you know could fill a thimble!”

Anger and reason vie for control of my mouth, and anger wins. I reduce the space between our noses to about six inches. “Really? Is that so? Just because you grew up in a fucking gulag or whatever it was, hacking off chicken heads and puking your vodka, doesn't give you the right to criticize my worldview!” At this point I hardly know what I'm saying. The words are just debris in a flood.

“Criticism,” he sneers, leaning back into the pillows. “Is that what Pirio fears?”

“You're maddening!” I rise from the bed in a gust of fury. I actually stomp my foot. “No one can get along with you. You'd drive Mother Teresa insane. No wonder Isa was always storming out!”

His jaw tightens. “Another subject you know nothing about.”

“Oh, don't push me on this one, Milosa. Because I know plenty, in fact.” And I'm ready to fling it at him—Isa's affair. It would be so satisfying to see the pained expression on his face.

But a ray of sense holds me back. I see him sitting there, propped up like a feeble grandmother, wearing cotton pajamas with a food stain dribble down the front. He's alone in that empty bed, in his life. Dying. The blue of his eyes will never be brilliant again. His once-broad shoulders droop. Maureen's down the hall in her office, doing whatever she does when she's not in a theatrical whirlwind of put-upon impatience, scolding him like he's a child.
Mercy
is the word that comes to me.

I bite back my anger with difficulty, and to my surprise, tears form. “Can we stop? Can we please just stop?”

“Why?” His eyes taunt me. He wants a good fight. Maybe needs it in some way.

But I don't. I sit on the bed again, scoot closer. “Milosa, you're dying. Look, you're dying, OK? You're
dying
.” I don't know why I need to keep repeating this. “Your choice to go fast, right? No meds, no dialysis. That's what you want. OK. I'm fine with that. But let's not waste the time that's left, saying all the shit we've said a hundred times before. Let's try something new. Let's be fucking nice.”

His eyes widen. “
Nice
, you say. All right, then, if that's what you want. I give you
nice
.” He folds his hands on top of his blanket primly. Lets his face go slack, and lights it with a beatific smile. He could pass for a Titian cherub were he not old, smelly, and bitter.

“Funny. Ha-ha. But I'm warning you: I'm not going to fight anymore. You'll have to find someone else.”

“Who?” he pouts. “Maureen's no good at it. Not like Isa was. Or you.”

I pick some lint off the sleeve of his pajamas. “Maybe you can hire someone. There must be people who will verbally abuse you for a fee. Now pay attention. I have something to give you. You'll know what it is right away, I think.”

I produce the small brown vial. His eyes narrow as he takes it and unscrews the top. He knows it's perfume, of course, and brings it to his nose with a practiced blend of indifference and discrimination. The moment of recognition is visible on his face. You can almost see the molecules streaming into his brainstem, finding their special receptors, and, like tiny keys in tiny locks, opening long-closed doors. At first he's startled. Then a mysterious expression appears, a glimpse of a younger Milosa. Stronger, more supple, hopeful, warm. A young man who played piano, who fell in love. This expression passes quickly. Next he's agitated, clenching his jaw against the unexpected experience, quickly screwing on the top of the vial and handing it back to me.

“Where did you get it?” he asks tightly.

I halt in confusion. What should I say? “A man in Labrador had it. A man who knew Isa.”

A pause. His fingers curl tightly around the edge of the sheet. “Oh, yes,” he says in a casual tone. “That would be her lover. Her favorite one.”

“You knew about him?”

“How could I not know? Seeing her come back at the end of every July, a changed woman. A peaceful, beautiful woman. I knew she'd been well loved.” He pauses. “Where is the man now?”

“He passed away a year ago.”

“What a shame,” he says with a hint of satisfaction. “You must remember him yourself. I'm sure you met.”

“I do remember him, actually.” I'm about to say that even though I was so young, I could see that he made Isa happy. But I close my mouth firmly before the words are out because I don't want my father to be hurt anymore.

“His name?” Milosa asks.

“Roger Naggek. A native.”

Milosa nods thoughtfully. “A good name, I think.”

“I was wondering whether . . . I might be—”

“His child?”

“Yes.”

“Why would you think that?”

I swallow, hard. “I have black hair. I'm not as tall as you or Isa. And . . . you never loved me like you should have. You sent me away when all I wanted was to be with you. And there's not a single picture of me in this house.”

“You're mine, Pirio. You were conceived in this bedroom, on the bed you're sitting on now. I didn't love you like I should have because I . . .”—he squeezes his eyes closed and inhales sharply through his nose—“because I didn't love anyone like I should have. Not even your mother. I adored her, but I didn't give her what she needed. Only my obsession, my jealousy. I drove her away. Then you. And I failed at loving Maureen.”