Citizen’s Arrest
It turned out that Ed kept all the money from his drug deals and petty thefts in a steamer trunk buried in the sand near Second Bend. “Like a pirate,” Lonnie said.
“Yeah, well, those fucking pirates knew what they were doing. Delavane can’t put this dough in the bank, he can’t fence the jewelry on-island, and keeping the stuff at home is too risky. It makes so much sense that Toland started hiding his drug money there, too. It’s an easy score. And tomorrow night we’re going to take it all.”
—From Todd Fraker’s deleted blog
Billy Delavane and Mitchell Stone were standing twenty feet up on a staging plank, replacing a rotten window casing on a Surfside Road hospital-housing saltbox when Mitch noticed the boy with the duffel bag.
He touched Billy’s shoulder. “Did you hear that?”
“What?”
“That clanking.”
“I heard the staging creak, I heard your hammer, and somebody’s got WACK playing around the corner, but—”
Mitch held up a hand to silence him. “Just look. Down there, the kid on the bike with the duffel bag.”
Billy squinted. “I see him. What about him?”
“Who brings a duffel bag to school? I had one just like that when I shipped out for Afghanistan. Where’s he going this morning?”
“What are you saying?”
“He’s got a gun in there, Billy. Probably some kind of assault rifle. With extra magazines. That’s what I heard clanking.”
“How could you possibly know that?”
Mitch gave him a humorless little smile. “That’s a long story. And it’s mostly classified.”
“Debbie’s in there.”
“So is Ricky.”
“What do we do?”
Mitch unclipped his tool belt and set it down on the plank. “What we always did. I take the lead. You back me up.”
“Okay, only shouldn’t we call—”
But Mitch was already halfway down the ladder. He jumped the last few feet and started jogging easily up the sidewalk. By the time Billy had dumped his tools and scrambled down, Mitch was dodging through the stalled traffic, angling for the main entrance of the high school. Billy put on a little speed to catch up. Someone honked at them. Then they were sprinting across the wide pavilion, under the overhang, through the glass doors, and inside.
The scene was nightmarish—utterly unreal, sickeningly familiar. Billy’s first thought, his animal impulse, was to turn and flee. But Mitch must have sensed it; Billy felt the iron grip of his friend’s fingers on his forearm. And the gritty whisper, “Hang in there, buddy.”
Two dozen students were flat on the floor of the big lobby. Through the glass panels that walled off the administrative offices, he saw secretaries and a janitor cowering. Bissell’s door was closed. Maybe he’d had the presence of mind to dial 911. Billy had read somewhere that in an emergency the body went into self-destructive overdrive—people’s hands shook so badly they couldn’t even poke the digits into their phones. Sometimes they dialed 411 by mistake.
Billy threw a thought like a football at the superintendent, tucked away behind the doors and partitions that would allow him a momentary sense of security, a hard, short screen pass, mind to mind.
Take it easy, Mr. Bissell. Get it together. Breathe.
Twenty feet ahead of them, standing in front of the glassed-in basketball court, a scrawny, pimple-faced kid held what even Billy could tell was an AR-15 assault rifle with its slim barrel extending from the wider cylinder and the evil horn of its ammunition clip jutting down a weapon of war. In an ordinary American small-town high school, it was as frightening as a bomb, a vest of dynamite wrapped around the torso.
Billy could feel his pulse spiking.
“Bring me every spic in this fucking school!” the kid shouted. “Every one of ’em. I want ’em standing in front of me right now, or I start killing everyone!”
To punctuate the threat, he tipped the rifle up to squeeze off five shots into the ceiling. The recoil knocked him back a step and spun him in a half circle. He stumbled against the glass wall of the gym and leveled the barrel again. “Do it now!”
Billy had time to think, I hope no one’s upstairs.
Then he heard the first sirens.
So Bissell had made the call! Or someone had. There had to be a thousand cell phones in this place. It didn’t matter.
Help was on the way.
Mitch started walking toward the kid, slow careful steps, like a firefighter moving across a compromised floor into the smoke, toward the flame. Billy wanted to call out, to stop Mitch, but his voice snagged in his throat.
The kid spun the rifle, pointing it at Mitch’s chest. Mitch raised his hands.
Outside, the sirens were getting louder. There were more of them. Three? Four? The chilling thought slithered through Billy—What if the cops panic the kid, tip the situation out of control? They were close to the line already.
“Are you going to shoot me?” Mitch asked quietly, taking another step closer. “I’m no cop. I was banging nails across the street ten minutes ago. I’m no Hispanic. I’m German Irish, both sides. I was a Marine, two tours in Afghanistan. MOSCOM—you know what that is? You do, don’t you? Marine Corps Special Operations Command. The Raiders. Was your dad in the Corps? I bet he was.”
“He was in the Army.”
“Sorry to hear that, kid.”
“He hates you fucking jarheads. He says you’re not even a real branch of the military. Just part of the Navy.”
Mitch grinned. “Yeah. The men’s department.”
“He could kick your ass.”
“Maybe. Where did he serve? Panama?”
“Seventh Infantry Division. Operation Blue Spoon. He beat you Devil Dogs there.”
“He deployed first, that’s all. Marines cleaned up the mess.”
Mitch was just a few feet away from the kid now. Outside, the sirens stopped. The sudden silence meant the cops would be storming inside any second. Would the kid freak out?
But Mitch had the boy’s undivided attention.
“I’ve seen men lose their shit in combat, kid. I saw a boy not much older than you machine-gun a camel. He just shredded the fucker. He caught a movement in the corner of his eye and cut loose. My best friend over there shot at a ten-year-old girl, thought she was carrying an IED. It was a frying pan she picked up from a bombed-out café. She was taking it home to her mom. He winged the kid and hit the pan. Kid recovered, but one of the ricochets killed our bomb dog. A little Kelpie named Rags. Forty-two missions, saved our ass a dozen times, and Jimmy takes him out with a stray round for no reason but nerves. He was hugging that dog in the dirt, sobbing like a baby. You kill a kid today, that’ll be a thousand times worse. You never come back from that shit, kid. Trust me.”
There it was—the clatter of the cops charging into the lobby.
Mitch shouted over his shoulder. “Stay back.”
The voice behind Billy answered. “It’s Chief Kennis. I have ten officers with me.”
“Tell them to stand down!”
Kennis gave the order.
Mitch took another step toward the kid, and Billy could sense something about to snap, like the moment before that German shepherd had bitten him, years ago. Saturday morning, the customers out for the day, the big dog guarding the house, tracking his every move, every muscle flexed to a violent stillness. Billy watched Mitch, undivided attention shrilling behind his eyes, waiting for the moment.
“Pack it in, kid. Nothing’s happened, yet. You can still salvage this. Put the gun down, and we can talk. That’s all you have to do, just—”
Mitch’s left hand lashed out like a striking snake. He knocked the rifle aside, twisted his wrist to grab the barrel. The kid squeezed the trigger as the gun dipped toward the floor, and Mitch sent him stumbling into the glass wall with a single back-fist strike to the nose.
Mitch had the rifle now—the kid was stunned and bleeding. But it wasn’t over. Some dumb macho football type was on his feet charging the kid. Mitch wrapped him up with one arm, but the move put his back to the shooter, and Billy saw the boy yanking a gun from his waistband. Billy was charging before his conscious mind had even registered the movement or recognized the weapon. He tackled the kid just above the knees. The big automatic discharged into the glass wall, shattering it, and they hit the linoleum in an avalanche of shards, deafened by the shot. Below him, the kid’s sweater was stained with blood. Billy smelled wet wool, fear, sweat, and the stink of cordite.
“Ham will get you for this,” the kid snarled at him.
Then the cops were grabbing the boy and dragging him away.
Mitch helped Billy up. “Nice work, buddy. You saved my ass back there.”
“Gotta have backup.”
Mitch grinned. “Fuckin’ A.”
Mitch caught sight of his ward—was that the right word?—Ricky Muller, and jogged over to help the kid up. The boy looked dazed but unharmed—just like everyone else. Mitch had managed to close the incident down without injuries, but Billy was still reeling. The white-water wall of events, a classic big-wave wipeout, was still tumbling him along, as he clawed for the surface, gasping and sputtering when he got his head clear, his nervous system trying to play catch-up, failing and overloading. A three-wave hold-down was nothing compared to this.
But Mitch was fine. A closeout set at Mavericks might drown Mitch, but here? He was in his element, relaxed and calm as he shook hands with the police chief.
“That was a risky move, Mr. Stone,” Kennis was saying. “That could have gone sideways in a heartbeat.”
“Yeah, well. It’s like Louis Pasteur liked to say—”
Kennis finished for him. “Fortune favors the prepared mind.”
“Something like that.”
“I need you to come into the station after work today to give a complete deposition on what happened here this morning.”
“A debriefing.”
“If you like.”
Mitch made a small but unironic salute. “Yes, sir. I’ll text you my number, also. It might come in handy someday. Speaking of work…Billy?”
“Give me a second.”
“Sure thing. See you out there.”
Mitch moved off through the crowds of tense but listless police and baffled students.
Kennis clasped Billy’s shoulder. “You okay?”
“Yeah, I guess. I don’t know.”
“You did great back there. You’re a hero.”
Billy felt a crooked smile crack his face. “My dad always used to say that about people. ‘He has to be the hero! Look. I put up all that crown molding!’ That’s what you’re supposed to do! Anybody would have done that.’”
He felt Kennis’s kindly stare—sunlight breaking through clouds on an autumn day, unexpectedly warm on his face. “You think anyone would have done what you did?”
“Well, I mean…”
“You think any of the police officers here would have had the presence of mind to tackle that boy? While he was holding a loaded gun?”
“My dad would have.”
“But he wasn’t here, Billy. You were.”
“Thanks, Chief.”
“No. Thank you.”
“Listen, about these cops…” Billy looked around nervously.
“What?”
“The kid said something to me when I took him down. ‘Ham will get you for this.’ That’s Ham Tyler, gotta be.”
“You know him?”
“We went to high school together.”
Kennis sighed. “Of course you did.”
“Nasty little prick. He got suspended for spraying a Star of David on Vicky Fleishman’s locker. I bet he had something to do with this shit show, too.”
Kennis frowned. “I’ll be talking to him. As soon as I get back to the station.”
“Good. You know his pedigree, though, Chief. So be careful.”
“Sometimes being careful is the worst possible tactic, Billy. You proved that today—you and your friend.”
Billy made a weighing-the-scales gesture, seesawing his two open palms. “Town politics? Kid with a gun? I don’t know.”
Kennis smiled. “I’ll keep it in mind.”
Billy liked the chief; they had history. The man had taken his side when Billy was falsely accused of a series of bombings a few years before. Kennis was a straight shooter, but he was an off-islander. He didn’t really understand Nantucket, and he probably never would. Getting Hamilton Tyler off the police force would be like pulling an embedded tick from the inside of your ear, tricky and painful—and you couldn’t do it alone. But you couldn’t just leave it, either, and let it pump babesiosis and Lyme disease, ehrlichiosis and God-knows-what infections they hadn’t even discovered yet into your body.
Ham Bone, they used to call him. He was poison, but some random, hearsay evidence connecting him to a school shooting wouldn’t dislodge him.
Billy could imagine the conversation:
“Some crazy kid dropped my name? So what? Maybe he hoped I’d stick up for him. Maybe he thinks I have some grudge against Delavane. The guy’s an asshole, but I couldn’t care less. I’ve talked to him, like, twice since high school. He thinks my uncle messed with him on some DUI twenty years ago, that could be it, though how that Contrell kid knows about it, you got me. Maybe they’re pals. Maybe Delavane put him up to the shooting. Fuck do I know? His brother’s in the slammer for life, the dad was a nut job, so who knows? This shit runs in the family. DNA is destiny, man. Science proves it.”
No, to take down Ham Bone Tyler, they were going to need real evidence, facts he couldn’t argue his way out of. And nobody was going to snoop around trying to find it. Boner—another nickname, derived from the first—hadn’t committed any crimes yet, and if he was planning to do so, that wasn’t police business. The police showed up after the fact. No knock on them; that was their job. And it made sense. You start arresting people for what you think they’re planning to do, you might as well starting building the Gulag.
Billy understood that.
If anyone was going to investigate Ham Bone, it would have to be a regular person, working on their own. You could hire a detective—there was a good one on the island now—but Billy had the native islander’s hatred for spending money, especially giving it to someone else for a job you could easily do yourself. You rewired your own lamps, changed your own oil, snaked your own toilets. That was common sense. That self-reliant Quaker practicality explained why Billy Delavane, without mentioning it to anyone, even Mitch Stone, and especially not to the police chief, started following Ham Tyler the next morning.
He called in sick, but he didn’t fool Pat Folger. The wiry old contractor had launched his own adventures into vigilantism a few years before, when his son got hooked on opioids.
“Do what you have to do, kid,” Pat told him. “Just stay safe.”
Ham was easy to follow, it turned out, lodged firmly in his own world, no doubt starring in his own cable-ready movie—Ham Tyler: Crime Patrol, perhaps, or just Danger Cop. He cruised the island, pulled people over for minor infractions, mostly Hispanic people, disappeared into the new fortress police station for paperwork or a quick workout—then back home to his family’s paint-peeling ruin of a house in Tom Nevers. Billy owned quite a few properties in similar condition, though set in far better locations—Eel Point Road, Polpis Harbor, Long Pond, Squam—and he grudgingly admired Ham for not selling out and collecting the million or so dollars his crumbling homestead could have reaped in the island’s overheated real estate market. Billy occasionally sold an acre here or there, himself, to pay the taxes on the rest of his family’s holdings. He had donated some harbor beachfront to the Land Bank, but that was it. Real islanders held on, at least until the next generation cashed out. He thought of the Larrabee place in Cisco—a hoarder’s labyrinth of broken cars and trucks, piled tires and leaking carburetors strewn about in the weeds—the acres of automotive rubble now cleared for one more multimillion-dollar subdivision. The Larrabee property had always been slightly disturbing, but it was old Nantucket, a rusting kingdom of objects saved for the moment they might be needed on a scrap of sand too far away from the rest of America to allow the luxury of relying on mainland strangers. The Larrabees’ property was an oddball remnant of Billy’s childhood, and he hated to lose it. So, good for you, Ham Bone. Hang in there. Replace a few windowsills and repair that roof so your kids can afford to live here, if you ever have any.
Billy sat in his truck and estimated the renovation costs for the Tyler house. He worked out the dimensions of a stairway he was supposed to be building for Pat Folger, and in the course of that solitary week, he learned one of the primary, inescapable realities of police work—done correctly, it’s mind-numbingly tedious. And his mind wasn’t the only body part that started to lose all feeling. He had never sat so long in any vehicle doing nothing, paying attention to an unused driveway or a closed front door. It was like a staring contest with a stuffed deer head, as he had seen his father attempt once in a drunken stupor.
His father blinked first.
But Billy kept his eyes open and peed into a jar and lived on granola bars and bottled water, and three days into the vigil, he finally got his reward.
He had followed Ham from home to the Chicken Box and slipped into the seedy mid-island bar behind his quarry. At five thirty in the afternoon, no one was drinking but the hard-core regulars. John Fogerty sang “Run Through the Jungle” over the chatter of conversation and the clink of pool balls. A silent TV showed guys in suits talking about the new football season.
Billy almost fled. Everyone knew him here. Someone would call out to him, maybe even the bartender, who had done a stint as a plasterer years ago. What was his name? Danny something. He’d been up on those crazy stilts spreading the blue diamond halfway across a forty-foot living room when he paused and told Billy, “This is a little too much like work.”
Well, pulling beers for his old pals had to be easier. As for the fine points of cocktail mixology, he wouldn’t get much demand for that skill set at the Chicken Box.
Billy ducked his head and continued inside. This was crazy. He should have just waited in his car. No one had recognized him yet, but—
Ham paid for his beer and headed toward the bathroom. As he walked, he pulled his cell phone out of his pocket. Going into the bathroom to make a phone call? This could be it.
Danny glanced up and grinned. “Hey—”
Billy threw out a flat palm to silence him. It only bought a second, but that was enough.
“Hey, Billy, what’s goin’ on?”
Ham was already out of sight.
“Later.”
“But—”
“Shhh.”
Billy moved fast, head down. He stopped at the swinging door to the men’s room. Would Ham use a stall? Probably, but, if not—
Billy pushed the door open an inch.
Empty.
But he could hear Ham’s voice behind the metal partition.
Billy slipped inside.
“Anybody there? Hello? No, no, I thought I heard something, that’s all. Yeah? Well, I have a right to be jumpy! This isn’t exactly my thing, all right? Which, I was thinking—you should maybe stick around for a while. You know—after. We could use a guy like you. Like a hired gun.”
Billy moved closer. Anyone could walk in at any time. He needed to get into one of the stalls, but that was impossible. Ham would hear him and shut the phone call down instantly. No, he had to stand here, play the odds and hope. He breathed shallowly, through his mouth. The tile walls amplified every sound.
Ham went on: “If I learned anything last week, it’s that you can’t do ethnic cleansing with kids and punks and amateurs. Sure, sure, but the Hitler Youth got ’em early, man. You gotta get ’em early. Some sixteen-year-old with a bug up his ass…forget it. And speaking of cleansing—you should see the way these fuckin’ people live. Makes you puke. Anyway, what I’m saying—there’s this surf-bum nail banger doing the neighborhood watch dance, fucking things up. Dude’s been a prick since high school. Oh, yeah, we go way back. Anyway, I was thinking…one well-placed round to the back of the head, and—”
Billy felt an actual chill go down his spine, a trill of fever. His fists were clenching at his sides. He relaxed them and drew in a silent shuddering breath, listening. There were steps outside the door.
They moved on.
“—Okay. Okay, I get it! Be cool. I was just—fine, whatever. I didn’t mean that. No, no, I was just saying—Good, fine, great. Okay. I can handle this asshole myself anyway. What? Don’t sweat it. I took care of that already…what do you care? Anyone can do it. Check it out on YouTube or wikiHow, or who the fuck knows where, anywhere, just go online…yeah, that’s what I’m saying. But, anyway, it’s done. The what? What the fuck is a dactylogram?”
What was a dactylogram? What the hell were they talking about? Billy cursed himself. Why didn’t he have a tape player, or at least a pencil? A carpenter without a pencil! What did Pat always say? “You’re a soldier going into battle without your weapon!” Was the pen really mightier than the sword? Maybe this afternoon it would have been. Billy would just have to remember.
“Jesus, sorry, Einstein. I don’t have a dictionary stuffed up my ass. Okay, okay, so I got it, all right? Don’t worry about that stuff. That’s my end. Okay, whatever, fine—I broke into the house and used a chunk of Play-Doh. What difference does that make? From the school, okay? The elementary school, yeah. I grabbed it when I was in there checking out the new alarm system before the school year. No one was around, don’t worry. I’m telling you, nobody saw shit! Nobody sees shit, that’s the great thing about people. You told me that yourself, remember? That line about Clark Kent fooling ’em with the glasses. And you were right. Anyway…oh, yeah, so I got—what? No, no…well, I thought I heard somebody moving around in the house, but it must have been the wind or something. Or maybe the dog, they have a dog. I was in and out fast. I used the chloroform, like you told me. That spic musta felt like he had a bad night in Tijuana when he woke up next morning. So anyway…you don’t need any fancy equipment. All you do is, you freeze the putty, get a batch of gelatin, nice thick gelatin—you have to microwave it a few times to get the bubbles out. Then you pour it on, refreeze the whole thing, and you’re done. Fuck you! You asked me! Sorry to waste your precious time. Yeah, well, this is the part I care about, okay?”
Billy chanted to himself: Play-Doh, gelatin, chloroform. Play-Doh, gelatin, chloroform. Some Hispanic guy’s house. Someone with a dog. Fuck—everybody had a dog.
Ham was still going: “Do your thing—just make sure that my guy goes down for it. I sent you the picture. She’s gonna be off-island for the day. I checked with the Hy-Line. She has a reservation on the three o’clock fast ferry back. You just follow her off the boat. No, no, no—that’s what I’m trying to tell you. She has an office on North Water Street and the rental house, and sometimes she house-sits for people, too. She could wind up anywhere, and you can’t afford to be waiting around in the wrong place. People notice strangers around here. You got a narrow window and it closes fast. Wait till she’s inside, so you can leave—right, right, sorry. I’m used to dealing with retards around here. You know what to do. Just do it. You’re welcome.” There was a pause. Then: “Asshole.”
They were done. This was the moment!
Billy lunged toward the stalls, unlatched the one next to Ham’s, and pushed in just as the other door opened.
“Who is that?”
Billy lowered his voice. “Unngh.”
“You okay in there?”
“Unngh, yeah.”
“Don’t forget the mercy flush, skipper.”
Then he was gone.
Billy waited ten minutes and then ten minutes more. Ham was shooting pool when Billy finally eased out of the men’s room, across to the door, and outside.
He took a long breath of the chilly night air—autumn was finally coming—skirted the dirt parking lot, and climbed into his truck. He pulled out, cruised into the rotary, and let it fling him like an Olympian’s discus, true and level, due east to Quidnet and the Stone family house, perched above the pond.
He had urgent questions, and only Mitchell Stone could answer them.
The house on Sesachacha Road looked like a museum of the 1970s, with the Danish Modern furniture and fake-wood floor-to-ceiling paneling untouched for decades. The hooked rugs on the scuffed strip oak floors, the glass-top coffee tables, the knotty-pine kitchen cabinets beside the avocado-green refrigerator and rusting four-burner gas stove teetering on the sloping pebble-pattern linoleum, the white-glass dome light fixtures on the cracked plaster ceilings, bought straight from the old Sears outlet store, prized because they were the cheapest ones Bessie Stone could find… It all brought Billy back to his childhood, the days of roaming the island with Mitch and Mike Henderson, building forts in the national forest, surfing the autumn swells, driving battered SUVs on Coatue, raking the first scallops when family fishing season started.
That was a different Nantucket, a smaller Nantucket.
Billy missed it. Fuck it. Nostalgia was like boozing—it felt good, but the next morning nothing was different except you had a wicked hangover. It was like Mitch always said—“People who live in the present stay alive.”
In the present, dirty cops were planning murders with off-island hired guns, and Billy was one of the targets. Who were the others? And why?
Inside the old house, Mitch and his sister, Susie, were cooking dinner, while Ricky worked on his homework at the kitchen table. The food looked good—pan-fried arctic char and new potatoes, mesclun greens and tomatoes from Bartlett’s. Vicky Fleishman was sipping a glass of red wine, supervising. It was good to see them together again. It felt like the old days—except for those early streaks of gray in Vicky’s hair, Susie’s heavy-framed glasses, and Mitch’s proprietary comfort in a kitchen where he had always felt like a hostage or a prisoner. And, of course, the kid. They all had kids now.
The parents were gone, though. The ghosts of Joe and Bessie Stone had been scrubbed away—no more framed paint-by-number watercolors on the wall, and the gun cabinet that used to hold Winchester and Weatherby hunting rifles now housed Susie’s collection of Nicholas Mosse pottery. The fresh coat of pale off-white paint on the kitchen walls made the room seem twice as big as it used to be, and the smell of the pan-seared fish, garlic, and olive oil beat the aromas of canned peas and stale bacon that Billy remembered from the old days.
“Hey, Billy,” Mitch said as he flipped the char. “You want some dinner? We’ve got plenty.”
“There’s beer in the fridge,” Vicky added.
Ricky looked up. “Hey, Mr. Delavane.”
“Hey, hi. No, no—I didn’t mean to interrupt. I just—I need to talk to Mitch for a couple of minutes.”
Mitch picked up a fork and stabbed one of the red potatoes in the pot of boiling water, then turned to Vicky. “We’re five minutes away. Can you take over?”
“Go talk to Billy.” She lifted her head to him. “You sure you won’t stay?”
“I wish I could.”
“You okay, Billy?” Susie asked.
“I’m fine. I’m good. This won’t take long.”
In the living room, Mitch stood at the picture window while Billy paced the carpet describing Ham Tyler’s phone call.
When he was done, Mitch sat down in a leather armchair beside the cold fireplace. He pulled his fingertips down over his face and then back across his temples, thinking. Billy took a seat on the matching couch that faced the hearth to wait.
Mitch expelled a long breath. “Okay, first of all, it’s obvious Ham Bone is hooked up with the Contrell kid. They’re up to their asses in some white supremacy bullshit, which is why Ham Bone wants to pin this murder they’re planning on Sebastian Cruz. That’s what the Play-Doh and the gelatin stuff was all about. Making a fake fingerprint. A dactylogram’s a fingerprint, for what it’s worth, if you’re a dumb guy and you want to use a big word to sound smart. All Ham has to do is get Cruz out of the way with no alibi while his hit man takes out the woman. Two birds with one stone. Which is doable, by the way, if the birds are close enough together.” He caught Billy’s confused look. “Killing two birds with one stone. I’m saying it can be done. You bounce the rock off the first one’s beak, like a bank shot in pool.”
He wasn’t sure Mitch was serious, but Billy believed him. If anyone could pull off a crazy trick like that, it was Mitch Stone. “The question is—who’s the woman?”
“Rental house, office in town, house-sitting gigs. Obviously a local. You tell me. I’ve been away for a while. The good news is the hitter obviously has no interest in coming after you. You gotta watch out for Ham Bone, though. But, I mean, you know…Ham Bone.”
“Yeah. So what do I do?”
“Call it in to the cops. Anonymous tip. Stay out of it, but get them the information. Then you’ve done your duty and you’re not involved. And watch your back. More to the point…check your house and your car for drugs. And lock everything. I know that’s not the Nantucket way, but it would be the easiest thing in the world for Ham to plant a bag of weed in your glove compartment, pull you over, and call it in, just like his uncle—remember?”
“Jesus Christ. Toad Tyler. The original state police brownshirt.”
Mitch shrugged. “Keep an eye out.”
Vicky called from the kitchen. “Dinner!”
Billy hugged the women, squeezed Ricky’s shoulder, grabbed a new potato off Mitch’s plate, and left them to their meal.
A few minutes later, he pulled off Polpis Road onto the grass beside the bike path and called the NPD crime tip line. He recited Ham’s phone call as best he could, put his truck in gear, and drove home to his beach shack in Madaket, thinking he had done well.
In fact, he had made two serious mistakes. The first one was not pushing through the computer menu to speak with a live human being. Hamilton Tyler was monitoring the tip line, and he deleted Billy’s call the moment it ended. That only delayed the message—deleted calls could be retrieved if the sabotage was detected. But delay was crucial in this case, marking in minutes and seconds the difference between life and death.
The second mistake was worse. He failed to watch his back. He put off acting on Mitch’s dire precautions until the morning. He was feeling relaxed and resolved when he climbed out of his truck and started for his little house, lulled by the low boom of the surf and the prospect of a good night’s sleep.
He never made it to the door.