The Simple Truth (26 page)

“We are at war, Frank.”

“The killing never did bother you, did it, Vic?”

“All I care about is the success of my mission.”

“Do you mean to tell me that right before you pulled the trigger on Fiske you didn’t feel anything?”

“Mission accomplished.”
Tremaine put his palms down on Rayfield’s desk and leaned forward. “Frank, we’ve been through a lot together, combat and otherwise. But let me tell you something. I’ve spent thirty years in the Army, the last twenty-five in various military prisons just like this one when I could’ve gotten a civilian job that paid a lot more. We all made a pact that was supposed to protect us from a stupid thing we did a long time ago. I’ve kept my end of the bargain. I’ve baby-sat Rufus Harms while the others went on with their lives.

“Now, in addition to my military pension, I’ve got over one million bucks sitting in an offshore account. In case you’ve forgotten, you’ve got the same little nest egg. That’s our comp for all these years of doing this crap. And after all the shit I’ve been through, no one and nothing is going to keep me from enjoying that money. The best thing Rufus Harms ever did for me is escape. Because now I’ve got a bulletproof reason to blow his sorry ass away and nobody’ll ask any questions. And as soon as that sonofabitch has breathed his last, this uniform I’m wearing goes into mothballs. For good.”

Tremaine straightened up.
“And, Frank, I will destroy anyone who even remotely tries to mess that up.”
His eyes became black dots as he said the next word.
“Anyone.”

On the drive to the trailer, Fiske stopped at an all-night convenience store. Sara waited in the car. A rusty Esso sign clanked back and forth from the force of a semi sailing past and made her jump. When Fiske got back in the car, Sara stared at the two six-packs of Budweiser.
“You intend to drink your sorrows away?”

He ignored the question.
“Once we get down there, there’s really no way for you to get back by yourself. It’s really in the middle of nowhere; sometimes
I
get lost.”

“I’m prepared to sleep in the car.”

About thirty minutes later, Fiske slowed the car, turned into a narrow gravel drive and drove up to a small, darkened cottage.
“You’re supposed to check in here and pay the guest fee before going into the grounds,”
he explained.
“I’ll do it before we leave tomorrow.”

He pulled the car past the cottage and into the middle of the campground. Sara looked at the trailers, which were laid out in a street grid style. Most of them were brilliantly outlined with Christmas lights and had flagpoles either attached to the trailer or porch, or sunk into concrete. With the strings of lights and the moonlight, the area was surprisingly well illuminated. They passed late-blooming flower beds of impatiens, and red and pink mums. Clumpy vines of clematis gripped the sides of some homes. Everywhere Sara looked were outdoor sculptures of metal, marble and resin. There were a number of cinder-block grills and a large smoke pit; the commingled smells of cooked meat and charcoal lingered tantalizingly in the hot, humid air.

“This place is like a little gingerbread town built by gnomes,”
Sara said. She eyed the numerous flagpoles and added,
“Patriotic gnomes.”

“A lot of the people are from the American Legion and VFW crowd. My dad has one of the tallest flagpoles. He was in the Navy in World War II. The all-year Christmas lights became sort of a tradition a long while back.”

“Did you and Michael spend much time here?”

“My dad only got a week’s vacation, but Mom would bring us down for a couple weeks at a time during the summer. Some of the old guys taught us to sail, swim and fish. Things Pop never had time to do. He’s made up for it since he retired.”

He stopped the car in front of one trailer. It had bright Christmas lights and was painted a soothing, muted blue. His father’s Buick, with a SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL POLICE bumper sticker, was parked next to the trailer. Fronting the trailer was a bed of bulky plantation hostas. Next to the Buick was a golf cart. The flagpole in front of the trailer went a good thirty feet into the air.

Fiske eyed the Buick.
“At least he’s here.”
Well, this is it, John, no more reprieves, he thought.

“Is there a golf course nearby?”

Fiske glanced at her.
“No, why?”

“So what’s with the golf cart?”

“The owners of the trailer park buy them secondhand from golf courses. The roads are pretty narrow here and, while you can drive your car to your trailer, you can’t drive it around the grounds. And the people down here are elderly, for the most part. They use the golf carts to get around.”

Fiske got out of the car with the two six-packs. Sara didn’t move to join him. He looked at her questioningly.

“I thought you might want to talk to your dad alone.”

“After everything we’ve been through tonight, I think you’ve earned the right to see it through. I’ll understand if you don’t want to.”
He looked over at the trailer and felt his nerves slowly disintegrate. He turned back to her.
“I could sort of use the company.”

She nodded.
“Okay, give me a minute.”

She flipped down the visor mirror and checked her face and hair. She grimaced and reached for her purse, doing the best she could with lipstick and a small hairbrush. She was sweaty and sticky too, her dress clingy, her hair beyond salvation thanks to the rain and humidity. As trivial as worrying about her appearance seemed under the circumstances, she felt like such a fifth wheel that it was the only thing she could think to address.

With a sigh, she flipped the visor back up, opened the door and got out. As they headed up the wooden porch, she smoothed down her dress and fiddled some more with her hair.

Fiske noted this and said,
“He’s not going to care how you look. Not after I tell him.”

She sighed.
“I know. I guess I just didn’t want to look like too much of a disaster.”

Fiske took a deep breath and knocked on the door. He waited and knocked again.
“Pop.”
He waited a moment and knocked again, louder this time.
“Pop,”
he called out, and kept knocking.

They finally heard movement in the trailer and then a light came on. The door opened and Fiske’s father, Ed, peered out. Sara looked at him closely. He was as tall as his son, and very lean, although he had vestiges of the powerful musculature shared by both his boys. His forearms were enormous, like thick pieces of sun-baked wood. Sara was able to observe this because he had on a tank-top shirt. He was deeply tanned, his face lined and starting to sag, but she could see he had been handsome as a younger man. His hair was thinning and curly and almost totally gray except for small flecks of black at the temples. She fixed for a moment on his long sideburns, a holdover from the seventies, she guessed. He had on a pair of pants halfway zipped up, the clasp unbuttoned so that his striped boxers were clearly in sight. He was barefoot.

“Johnny? What the hell you doing here?”
A broad smile cracked his face. When he registered Sara, he looked startled and quickly turned so his back was to them. They watched him fumble with his pants until they were right. Then he turned back to face them.

“Pop, I need to talk to you.”

Ed Fiske glanced over at Sara again.

“I’m sorry — Sara Evans, Ed Fiske,”
John said.

“Hello, Mr. Fiske,”
she said, trying to sound both pleasant and neutral at the same time. She awkwardly held out her hand.

He shook it.
“Call me Ed, Sara, pleased to meet you.”
He looked back at his son curiously.
“So what’s up? You two getting married or something?”

Fiske glanced at Sara.
“No! She worked with Mike at the Supreme Court.”

“Oh, well, hell, where are my manners, come on in. I got the air going, sticky as the damn devil out there.”

They went inside. Ed pointed to a worn sofa and Fiske and Sara sat down there. Ed pulled a metal chair from the small dinette and sat down opposite them.

“Sorry I took so long. Just nodded off to sleep.”

Sara looked around the small space. It was paneled with thin plywood stained dark. Several stuffed fish were mounted on plaques and hung on the wall. Slung across a rack on another wall was a shotgun. In the corner she saw a long, round container with one end of a rod and reel poking out. A folded newspaper was lying on the dinette table. Next to that was a small kitchen area with a sink and a little refrigerator. There was a worn-out recliner in one corner, a small TV across from it. There was one window. Mounted on the ceiling was an air conditioner that was making the room deliciously cool. She actually shivered as she adjusted to the temperature. The floor was cheap, uneven linoleum with a thin rug covering a portion of it.

Sara sniffed and then coughed. She could almost see the cigarette smoke lingering in the air. As if in response to her thoughts, Ed pulled a pack of Marlboros from a knicked-up side table and deftly popped a cigarette in his mouth, taking a moment to light up, then blew the smoke to the nicotine-coated ceiling. He grabbed a small ashtray off the same table and tapped his cigarette in it. He put his hands on his knees and leaned forward. She noted that his fingers were abnormally thick, the nails cracked, and blackened in spots from what looked like grease. He had been a mechanic, she recalled.

“So what brings you two down here so late?”

Fiske handed his father a six-pack.
“Not good news.”

The elder Fiske tensed, and he squinted at them through the smoke.
“It’s not your mom. I just saw her, she’s okay.”
As soon as he said this, he shot a glance at Sara. The look on his face was clear: She
“worked”
with Mike.

He looked back at John.
“Why don’t you tell me whatever the hell it is you need to tell me, son.”

“Mike’s dead, Pop.”
As he finished saying it, it was as though he were hearing the news for the first time. He could feel his face grow hot as though he had leaned too close to a fire. Perhaps he had waited to see his father, to join his grief with his. He could believe that, couldn’t he?

Fiske could sense Sara looking at him, but he kept his gaze on his father. As he watched the devastation wash over the man, Fiske suddenly found he could barely breathe.

Ed took the cigarette out of his mouth and dropped the ashtray, his fingers shaking.
“How?”

“Robbery. At least they think so.”
Fiske paused and then added the obvious, since he knew his father was going to ask anyway.
“Somebody shot him.”

Ed tore off one of the Buds from the plastic holder and popped the tab. He drank it down almost in one swallow, his Adam’s apple moving up and down.

Ed crushed the beer can against his leg and threw it against the wall. He stood up and went over to the small window and looked out, the cigarette dangling from his mouth, his big hands closing and opening, the veins in his forearms swelling and then diminishing.

“Have you seen him?”
he asked without turning around.

“I went up to identify the body this afternoon.”

His father whirled around, furious.
“This afternoon? Why the hell did you wait so long to come tell me, boy?”

Fiske stood up.
“I’ve been trying to track you down all day. I left messages on your answering machine. I only knew you were here because I asked Mrs. German.”

“That should’ve been the first damn place you started,”
his father countered.
“Ida always knows where I am. You know that.”
He took a step toward them, one fist balled up.

Sara, who had risen along with Fiske, shrank back. She glanced over at the shotgun and suddenly wondered if it was loaded.

Fiske moved closer to his father.
“Pop, as soon as I found out, I called you. Then I went by your house. After that I had to go up to the morgue. It wasn’t any fun identifying Mike’s body, but I did it. And the rest of the day has been pretty much downhill from there.”
He swallowed hard, suddenly feeling guilty that his father’s angry reaction was more painful to him than his brother’s death.
“Let’s not argue about the timing, okay? That’s not going to bring Mike back.”

All the anger seemed to go out of Ed as he listened to those words. Calm, rational words that did nothing to explain or reduce the anguish he was feeling. They hadn’t invented the words that could do that, or the person to deliver them. Ed sat back down, his head swinging loosely from side to side. When he looked back up, there were tears in his eyes.
“I always said you never had to chase bad news, it always got to you faster than anything good. A helluva lot faster.”
There was a catch in his throat when he spoke. He absently crushed his cigarette out on the carpet.

“I know, Pop. I know.”

“Do they got whoever did this?”

“Not yet. They’re working on it. The detective in charge is first-rate. I’m sort of helping him.”

“D.C.?”

“Yes.”

“I never liked Mike being up there.”

He glared at Sara, who completely froze in the face of that accusing look.

He pointed a thick finger at her.
“People kill you for nothing up there. Crazy bastards.”

“Pop, they’ll do that anywhere these days.”

Sara managed to find her voice.
“I liked and deeply respected your son. Everyone at the Court thought he was wonderful. I’m so, so very sorry about this.”

“He was wonderful,”
Ed said.
“He damn sure was. Never figured out how we turned out such a one as Mike.”

Fiske looked down at the floor. Sara picked up on the pained expression on his face.

Ed looked around the trailer’s interior, memories of good times with his family nudging him from all corners.
“Got his mother’s brains.”
His lower lip trembled for an instant.
“Least the one she used to have.”
A low sob escaped from his mouth and he slumped to the floor.