The Whisperers (11 page)

‘Not enough, or that would be my take on it.’

‘So you figure he might be doing a little work on the side?’

‘He’s crossing the border. The thought had struck me. And, with respect, I don’t think squirrels cross the border without you knowing it and taking ten percent of their nuts.’

‘Fifteen,’ said Jimmy. ‘And that’s the friends’ rate. This guy have a name?’

‘Joel Tobias.’

Jimmy looked away, and clicked his tongue.

‘He’s not one of mine.’

‘You know whose he might be?’

Jimmy didn’t answer the question. Instead, he said: ‘What’s your interest in him?’

On my way to Portland, I had debated how much I was prepared to tell Jimmy. In the end, I decided that I was going to have to tell him most of it, but I wanted to leave out Damien Patchett’s death for now.

‘He’s got a girlfriend,’ I said. ‘A concerned citizen thinks he may not be treating her right, and that she’d be better off away from him.’

‘And what? You prove he’s smuggling and she tosses him aside and dates a preacher instead? Either you’re lying, and I don’t believe you’d come in here and do that, or this concerned citizen needs a lesson in the ways of the world. Half the girls in this town will jump on a guy with a nickel in his pocket and wear him down to a stub, and they won’t care where the money came from. In fact, you tell them you got it illegally, and some of them will call their sisters to join in as well.’

‘What about the other half?’

‘They’ll just steal his wallet. Short-term goals, short-term gains.’ He rubbed his face with his hand, and I heard the crackle of his stubble. ‘I know you’re not the kind to take advice, but maybe you’ll listen to me for the sake of your grandfather,’ he continued. ‘This one isn’t worth it, not if it’s just about some domestic situation that’ll resolve itself one way or the other. Let it go. There’s easier money out there.’

I drank some coffee. It tasted like sump oil. If I hadn’t watched him pour it, I’d have said that Earle had gone in back and dipped the mug in the bay before giving it to me. Then again, maybe he just kept a couple of really nasty mugs and glasses to one side, for special visitors.

‘It doesn’t work that way, Jimmy,’ I said.

‘Yeah, I figured I was talking to the breeze.’

‘So you know about Tobias?’

‘You first. This isn’t just about a girl dating the wrong guy.’

‘I’ve been hired by someone who figures he’s dirty, and may have a grudge against him.’

‘And you came to me because you figure Tobias is augmenting his cargo illegally to make ends meet, and I’d know about it if he was.’

‘Jimmy, you know about stuff even God doesn’t know about.’

‘That’s because God is only interested in his own cut, and we all pay that, eventually, so God can afford to wait. I, on the other hand, am always seeking to expand.’

‘So, Joel Tobias.’

Jimmy shrugged. ‘I don’t have much to tell you about this guy, but what I do have you won’t like. . . .’

Jimmy knew the ways of the border. He was familiar with every road, every inlet, every secluded cove in the state of Maine. He worked for himself largely in the sense that he was an agent for a number of criminal organizations who were often happy to remain at one remove from the illegal activities that funded them. Booze, drugs, people, money: whatever needed to be transported, Jimmy would find a way to do it. Longstanding bribes were in place, and there were men in uniform who knew when to look the other way. He used to say that he had more people on his payroll than the government, and his jobs were more secure.

The events of 9/11 changed things for Jimmy and others like him. Border security was tightened, and Jimmy was no longer able to guarantee deliveries without a hitch. The bribes grew larger, and some of his inside men quietly told Jimmy that they couldn’t take the risk of working for him anymore. A couple of shipments were seized, and the people whose goods he was transporting weren’t happy about it. Jimmy lost money, and clients. But the economic downturn had also helped some: cash was scarce, jobs were disappearing, and under those circumstances, smuggling seemed like a pretty good option to men who were struggling to weather hard times. But even though Jimmy was always in need of good help, he was careful about those whom he employed. He wanted people who could be trusted, who wouldn’t show signs of panic when the dogs began sniffing around their trucks or their cars, who wouldn’t decide to take a chance on ripping Jimmy off and making a run for it with the proceeds. Only newbies did stuff like that. The older ones knew better. Jimmy might have seemed like a genial guy, but Earle wasn’t. Earle would break a kitten’s legs for spilling its milk.

And if Earle couldn’t handle the situation, which was rare, Jimmy had friends everywhere, the kind of friends who owed him and knew where to look for anyone dumb enough to cross Jimmy Jewel. And since newbies only got consignments to transport worth a low-five-figure sum at most, there was a limit to how far any of them could run, assuming they could access the ‘traps’, the hidden storage compartments, to begin with. Even those who did run inevitably ended up back where they came from, because Jimmy also made sure that he employed people who had friends and family within easy reach. Either the offending parties would return of their own volition, largely because they missed the company, or they would be encouraged to return in order to avoid trouble for those close to them. Then a beating would follow, and a sequestration of assets or, in the absence of any such assets, a couple of risky, dirty jobs done for little or no payment as a gesture of atonement. Jimmy resisted punishments that were terminal as they drew unwanted attention to his operations, but that wasn’t to say that people had not died for crossing Jimmy Jewel. There were bodies buried in the Great North Woods, but Jimmy hadn’t put them there. It was just that, sometimes, clients emerged who resented the disruption caused to their affairs by someone running off with their cash or their drugs, and who insisted upon an example being made
pour décourager autres
, as some of his Quebeçois contacts liked to put it. In such cases, Jimmy did his best to plead for leniency, but if his pleas fell on deaf ears, Jimmy had always made it clear that he wasn’t about to cap anyone, because that wasn’t the way he worked, and the finger on the trigger wouldn’t belong to any of his people. Nobody ever complained about Jimmy’s position on this matter, mainly because there were always men who were happy to dim some unfortunate’s lights, if only to keep themselves fresh and in the game.

Jimmy never put pressure on anyone to work for him. He was content to make a delicate approach, sometimes through a third party, and, if that approach was rebuffed, to move on elsewhere. He was patient. Often, it was enough to sow the seed and wait for a change in financial circumstances to occur, at which point his offer might be reconsidered. But he kept tabs on the local truckers, and he was always listening up for rumors of excessive cash being thrown around, or someone picking up a new rig when common sense would suggest that he should barely have been able to maintain the old one. If there was one thing Jimmy didn’t care for, it was competition, or smart guys trying to run independent operations, however small in scale. There were some exceptions to that rule: he was rumored to have a sweet deal with the Mexicans, but he wasn’t about to try to reason with the Dominicans, or the Colombians, or the bikers, or even the Mohawks. If they wanted to avail themselves of his services, as they sometimes did, that was fine, but if Jimmy Jewel started questioning their right to move product, he and Earle would end up tied to chairs in the Sailmaker with pieces of themselves scattered by their feet, assuming their feet weren’t among the scattered pieces, while the bar burned down around their ears, assuming they still had ears.

That was how Joel Tobias had come to Jimmy’s attention. He had a rig, a truck, a house, but he wasn’t making the kind of runs that would enable him to keep them all for long. The figures didn’t add up, and Jimmy had begun to make some gentle inquiries, because if Tobias was smuggling drugs then those drugs had both to come from somewhere and to go somewhere, once they’d crossed the border, and there were only a limited number of possible options in either case. Booze was unwieldy, and didn’t bring in enough dough for the risk, and as far as Jimmy could tell Tobias was using the monitored crossings, which meant that he’d be subject to regular searches, and unless he was being provided with some very high-class documentation his career as a booze smuggler would be short. That left cash, but, again, large dollar amounts had to come from somewhere, and Jimmy had cornered the market in that particular specialty. Anyway, the actual physical movement of cash was also a very minor part of his operation, as there were easier ways to transport money from place to place than in the trunk of a car or the cab of a truck. So Jimmy was very curious indeed about Joel Tobias, which is why he decided to approach him directly one day when Tobias was drinking alone over at Three Dollar Dewey’s after making a legitimate delivery to a warehouse on Commercial. It was four in the afternoon, so the evening rush hadn’t yet hit Dewey’s. Jimmy and Earle joined Tobias at the bar, one on either side of him, and asked if they could buy him a drink.

‘I’m good,’ said Tobias, and went back to reading his magazine.

‘Just trying to be friendly,’ said Jimmy.

Tobias had glanced at Earle in response. ‘Yeah? Your buddy has friendly written all over him.’ Earle had friendly written all over him the way that a plague rat had ‘Hug Me’ emblazoned on its fur.

Tobias didn’t appear disturbed or frightened. He was a big guy; not as big as Earle, but better toned. Jimmy knew, from asking around, that Tobias was ex-military. He’d served in Iraq, and his left hand looked chewed up, missing the little finger and its nearest neighbor, but he was in good condition, so it appeared that he’d maintained the habits that he’d learned in the army. He’d also kept up with his old buddies, from what Jimmy could ascertain, which concerned him slightly. Whatever scam Tobias was running, he wasn’t running it alone. Soldiers, former or otherwise, meant guns, and Jimmy didn’t like guns.

‘He’s a pussycat,’ said Jimmy. ‘I’m the one you should be worried about.’

‘Look, I’m having a beer and reading. Why don’t you take Igor here and go scare some kids? I’ve got nothing to talk to you about.’

‘You know who I am?’ asked Jimmy.

Tobias took a sip of his beer, but didn’t look at him. ‘Yeah, I know who you are.’

‘Then you know why I’m here.’

‘I don’t need the work. I’m doing okay.’

‘Better than okay, from what I hear. You drive a sharp rig. You’re making your payments, and you got enough left over to buy a beer at the end of a hard day’s work. You ask me, you’re rocking and rolling.’

‘Like you said, I work hard.’

‘Seems to me that you’d need thirty hours in the day to make the kind of money that you’re pulling down in these difficult times. Independent operator, competing with the big guys. Hell, you mustn’t ever sleep.’ Tobias said nothing. He finished his beer, folded the magazine, and took most of his change from the bar, leaving a dollar tip.

‘You need to let this go,’ he said.

‘You need to show some respect,’ said Jimmy.

Tobias looked at him with a degree of amusement.

‘Nice talking to you,’ he said as he got up. Earle reached for him to force him back down, but Tobias was too fast for him. He spun away from Earle, then kicked him hard in the side of the left knee. Earle’s leg buckled, and Tobias grabbed Earle’s hair as he went down and banged Earle’s head hard against the bar. Earle slumped to the floor, stunned.

‘You don’t want to do this,’ said Tobias. ‘You mind your own business, and I’ll mind mine.’

Jimmy nodded, but it wasn’t a conciliatory gesture, merely an indication that a suspicion had now been confirmed for him.

‘Drive safely,’ he said.

Tobias backed out. Earle, who was nursing his knee but had recovered his composure, seemed inclined to take matters further when Jimmy put a hand on his shoulder to quieten him.

‘Let him go,’ he said, as he watched Tobias depart. ‘This is just the beginning.’

Back in the Sailmaker, Earle was doing a good job of pretending not to listen to our conversation.

‘Tobias hurt his professional pride,’ said Jimmy.

‘Yeah, well, I’m all torn up about that.’

‘You should be. Earle doesn’t forget a hurt.’

I watched the big man cleaning the bar, even though there were no customers, and the Sailmaker wasn’t about to get any cleaner without dousing its surfaces with acid. In that way, it had a lot in common with the Blue Moon.

‘He didn’t do a day’s time for what happened to Sally Cleaver,’ I said. ‘Maybe a couple of years in the can might have made him a little less sensitive.’

‘He was younger then,’ said Jimmy. ‘He’d handle it differently now.’

‘Won’t bring her back.’

‘No, it won’t. You’re a harsh judge, Charlie. People got the right to change, to learn from their mistakes.’

He was right, and I wasn’t in a position to point the finger, although I didn’t like admitting it.

‘Why do you let that place stand?’ I said.

‘The Moon? Sentimentality, maybe. It was my first bar. A shithole, but they’re all shitholes. I know my place, and I know my customers.’

‘And?’

‘It’s a reminder. For me, for Earle. We take it away, and we start to forget.’

‘You know anything about Jandreau, the state trooper who died there?’

‘No, and I already answered all the questions the cops had to throw at me about that. Last time I looked, you weren’t wearing a badge, not unless it read “Inquisitive Asshole.”’

‘And Tobias?’

‘It looks like he decided to keep a low profile after I spoke to him. He didn’t make any runs outside the state for a month. Now he’s started again.’