The Guardian (4 page)

Ross shared his father’s dark hair and regular features. Greg had their mother’s coloring, high cheekbones, and fair skin.

There had been a time when Ross had hung on his father’s every word, a time when he’d swelled with pride when people said he looked just like his father. Maybe it was that earlier bond that let Ross see even more clearly what his father had become—a man who couldn’t leave the house without taking
something
before going off to work. Pills, sometimes. Coke, if he could get it. Something to make him preen, check his mustache in the mirror, smooth his long hair. Apparently oblivious to the fact that alcohol had bloated his features.

For years, he had had a series of declining jobs after he lost his antique store in Marblehead. Nothing was ever his fault. Someone was always out to screw him. He always had a plan to get them first, but the plan inevitably backfired and Ross and Greg would come home to his petty rage. He had acquired hundreds of blues records, and when he was in a good mood, he’d pull Ross and Greg in to listen while he held forth on one musician after another … and then become furious, down to smashing the record itself, if he didn’t get the reaction from his sons that he wanted.

Months would pass before he’d get another job and the whole process would start all over again.

He’d talk about how he didn’t
need
to work, as if he’d earned a fortune himself. Instead, he dipped into the principal of an ever-shrinking inheritance and cursed his father and grandfather. “Greedy bastards, the both of them,” he’d say. “Ripped the guts out of me.”

Weekends and evenings, he’d go from near catatonic to hyperactive depending upon what he was taking.

Ross and Greg would escape into the cove and the woods surrounding it. They’d sail, go rowing, diving … just hang out in the woods for hours at a time. Greg came home with a tent one day, announced with a false cheerfulness that he wanted to do some camping. The two of them slept out in the tent overlooking the cove many a night when their father was really in bad shape. Without discussing it, they covered for their father, letting no one in school know what was going on.

At age forty-eight Brody had declared himself retired, that there were no jobs equal to his creativity. Ross had been just under fifteen.

Greg had taken everything onto his own shoulders. Getting Ross off to school, keeping the house reasonably clean, helping the old man up to his bedroom when he couldn’t make it himself. He had eventually started losing weight, turning into a gray shell of a man with watery blue eyes and a red flush of broken blood vessels across his nose and cheeks.

And he’d begun hitting more and more often.

Greg was no coward. He was strong and would take care of himself in schoolyard fights. But when the old man had started swinging over the coffee being too cold or that Ross was out too late, Greg would take the blows, pleading for the old man to come to his senses.

One night when Ross was fifteen, he threw himself at the old man. He woke up minutes later with one of his teeth chipped. Greg was pushing his father back, shouting, “Look what you did, for Christ’s sake!”

His father had looked at Greg and touched the blood on his own mouth and said, “Shut up, you little shit. He understands me. He and I are just alike.”

That had chilled Ross then, and he’d thought of it often behind prison bars.

When Greg had decided to commute to a local community college even though he’d been offered a scholarship at Cornell, Ross had objected. “Go, for God’s sake.”

“I can’t leave you here.”

“The hell you can’t. Go.”

Finally, they had compromised, with Greg going two hours away to Amherst College and planning to come home on weekends.

Ross had watched his brother’s car roll away with the blackest despair. He’d tried to keep the peace for almost a month, making the meals, taking care of the old man.

But one night after a trip to Laconia Speedway in New Hampshire, Ross came home to find the old man waiting with the very gun Ross was now oiling. He’d raged that Ross had damn well better learn to behave—whatever specific infraction Ross had committed was unclear.

Ross had simply turned on his heel and walked out.

He’d gotten back into the car, and on the way out of the Sands, he’d done a quick assessment. Saw that he’d grown up in a place that he loved, with a father he’d learned to hate. That with Greg in school, his family life was on hold. That he might as well do what he most wanted to do—learn to race a car so fast there was room for nothing else in his head but the speed, the upcoming turns, the win ahead.

For if he stayed at home, he and his father would very likely kill each other. It took Ross a few days to land a job on a pit crew for a stock car driver named Bill Cobb. Ross had quit school on his sixteenth birthday and hit the road.

Six years later, Greg had walked into Ross’s hospital room and told him their father had overdosed on cocaine and died of heart failure.

Already Greg looked older than his twenty-four years, wearing a trench coat and a sport jacket underneath. Ross was recovering from a crash during a rally race in Washington’s Capitol State Forest. His knee was in a cast; they said the surgery had been successful. But his knee still hurt like hell, and his sponsor had just informed him that they wouldn’t be renewing their contract. “Are
you
going to live?” Greg had asked.

Ross had nodded, unable to speak. He was shocked at how much it hurt to hear his father was gone, even though they hadn’t even talked since Greg and Beth’s wedding two years before. “Yeah,” he’d said, finally.

“Good. You finish the high school equivalency?”

Ross nodded.

“Then come back and help me start something. A business I want to tell you about. You can make some money, go back to college nights, maybe.” Greg had put his hand out. “Come on back home. Stay alive.”

Ross wiped the gun off with a cloth. It was clean now, but he still wasn’t sure of how well it would shoot. And while there was no doubt in his mind that he owed his brother, Ross still had no idea how far he was willing to go with that gun.

Chapter 6

Ross watched Greg talk on the phone, trying to make the deal happen. Sweat beaded his forehead, and Ross wished he could close his ears to the edge of panic that was coming through.

He asked Allie if they’d had any success.

“Not really. Geiler’s out of town and won’t be back in the office until early afternoon. They won’t give us his number. The general manager of CableTech Systems is on vacation; ditto with him. We’ve gotten through to only three of the other people who’d made offers in the past, and none of them were in a position to commit so fast.”

“Not surprising.”

Greg slammed the phone down. “No one can comprehend the idea of moving so quickly! And who can blame them? This isn’t how it’s done.” Greg began pacing. “Maybe we can give this guy something down. Get the ten thousand and tell him it’ll just take some more time; give him that tonight.”

“And let him keep her?” Beth said.

“What’s the choice!” Greg rubbed the back of his neck. “The guy can’t understand what he’s asking! Maybe it’ll appease him.”

Ross went out to the truck and got the postcard Crockett had sent him months before, when he first got out on parole. Ross sat on the open tailgate and dialed Crockett’s number. The receiver was picked up at the other end, but no one said anything.

“It’s Ross,” he said.

“You finally getting around to answering your mail?” Crockett said.

Ross thumbnailed the situation quickly, and asked Crockett for an introduction.

Crockett sighed, hearing what Ross had to say. “That sucks. It really does.” He hung up, and then it was Ross’s turn to wait for the phone. Crockett got back after a long ten minutes and said, “Yuh. He’ll see you. Bring the deed, pictures of the place, but don’t get your hopes up. Guys like him don’t make their money on vacation homes.” He gave Ross an address on Hanover Street in the North End of Boston.

Tommy Datano looked at the pictures. He looked at the deed, the property assessment, the property lines. He listened to Ross’s story about the previous offers.

He listened to why they were selling the property now and shook his head sadly. “Ugly business. No wonder you’re so desperate.” He was a small, dark man, with wire-rimmed glasses. “Believe me, with your being a friend of Crockett’s I’d help you recover your niece directly. But none of my associates are involved, this sounds like someone just making a grab.” Behind Ross, there were half a dozen people waiting in chairs, waiting as Ross had done, agonizing over the hour he’d wasted so far.

Datano called over his accountant, a white-haired man with a suit covered with cigarette ash. The accountant wheezed slightly as he went through the documents, his blunt finger sliding over each of them carefully. Finally, he said, “You already got a nice summer place, Tommy.”

“But this gentleman’s got trouble. I’d like to help him out.”

The man shrugged. “So help him out. Five hundred K.”

“That’s not enough,” Ross said.

Datano looked up. “You got no other money?”

“It’s worth five million—but at the very least we’ve got to have one million-five.”

“
You
say it’s worth five million,” the accountant said. “We don’t know that.”

Ross pushed the assessment forward. “It’s not just my word.”

He shrugged. “You think we’re Century 21?”

Datano said, “Look, we don’t have that kind of cash sitting around either. It’s all tied up. Either take the five hundred and go make the balance some other way … or come back to see me before it’s too late.” He jerked his head toward the door. “Good luck with your little niece.”

The interview was over.

Ross had never been to Crockett’s apartment in South Boston. Although Crockett had been Ross’s best friend inside, he’d never planned to be looking for anyone from Concord again. And he felt a little guilty about that, standing outside Crockett’s building.

The place was an old brownstone that had been renovated years ago; the foyer walls were cheap wooden paneling, the floor littered with takeout-food paper bags and cigarette butts. There was no answer when Ross sounded the buzzer. But a moment later, he saw Crockett standing on top of the landing looking down through the glass.

Crockett opened the door. “Any luck?”

“Not enough.”

Crockett grunted. “Little bastard.” They went up to Crockett’s apartment, a spartan clean room overlooking the street. Crockett went right to the stove. “I was just fixing myself a late breakfast. You want some?”

Ross said no.

Crockett nodded at the phone in Ross’s hand. “Any word?”

Ross shook his head.

“So tell me what happened to her, in detail.” Crockett shifted his false teeth as he listened. He was in his midforties, with prematurely white hair. He showed no emotion throughout the story, but when Ross mentioned the eight o’clock deadline, Crockett checked his watch. He served himself breakfast, and before he began to eat, he said, “So what do you want from me?”

“First, do you have any ideas … do you think someone we knew in Concord might’ve coming looking for my family?”

Crockett chewed his toast. “I dunno. It happens sometimes, extortion. You knew about that guy, Gilchrist?”

Ross frowned. “Vaguely.”

“This was over in Walpole, not Concord. About a year ago, a guy was telling me about it. Gilchrist’s wife was a looker. Used to show up to visit him wearing tank tops, tight jeans. Guess they sent her away a few times, not wanting her going in like that. But she came back, dressed a little quieter, but still, she couldn’t hide herself that much, you know? Real pretty—blond hair, blue eyes, right out of a magazine. Gilchrist was in for embezzlement, and they started hitting him up, saying they’d hurt her.”

“Who’s ‘they’?”

“Got me. Just the word around. Gilchrist went around whining that he was broke; he didn’t have anything to give. He’d tell that to whoever listened. He didn’t know for sure who else was in on it. Word was they got to her. Rape, battery acid. She didn’t come around no more.”

Ross shook his head, trying to clear the image. “I keep thinking about Teague.”

“Yuh. I got a note a while back from Reece. He said you had some problems. And that was for the way Teague was running on and on about your niece, right?”

“That’s right.”

“How big was the guy, did your brother say?”

“He was taller and thinner than Teague.”

Crockett shrugged. “Guess he could’ve sent someone else in if you want to look at it that way. But this snatch you described, it sounds random, right?”

“It does. But like you said, things like this do happen sometimes. And Teague and I got into that fight over what he’d said about Janine. That’s enough for a conversation with him now, I figure.”

Crockett snorted. “A conversation, yeah. Well, he and I don’t exactly work the same circles, you understand.” Crockett grinned. “Guys like him are dog shit to guys like me. He
does
do stores, liquor and milk stores. I’ll ask around, but there’s no guarantee I’ll be able to find out today.”