“Good Enough for Nantucket”
They airlifted Mark Toland’s and Ed Delavane’s bodies to the coroner’s office in Barnstable and his brother Billy to the new, oversized Nantucket Cottage Hospital, along with the other captives. Apart from Billy’s leg and the abrasions on Jane’s neck, they suffered little more than cuts, scratches, and dehydration. Cindy Henderson jumped out of the lead state police SUV—they must have picked her up somewhere near Great Point—and watched as the bodies were loaded into the chopper.
She walked hesitantly up to me, reached out to touch me, then withdrew her hand. “He’s—gone?”
I nodded.
“I don’t feel anything. Why don’t I feel anything?”
“You will. Right now, you need to take care of yourself. You need to get yourself checked out at the hospital and then get home to Mike and your little girl. Nothing else matters.”
David Trezize had emerged from the shack, rubbing his sore wrist, and stood beside me.
“I know you’re going to write about this,” I said, “but—”
“Hey, I’ve known Cindy since before either of us came to Nantucket, Chief. I’m not going to wreck her marriage for an extra column inch of news story.”
Haden limped up to us. “Nice work, Chief. I need a drink. But I’m not going to take one.”
“Good to hear.”
He would need to know about our suspicions and the raid on his house. But all of that could wait.
After the last helicopter took off, I had orders to give, people to thank, suspects to mirandize and take into custody, inter-departmental rivalries to defuse, and a crime scene to secure. The rest of my afternoon was taken up with getting a cast on my wrist, dealing with the press from New York and Boston. I was short with them, impatient, rattled, and exhausted. Charlie Boyce touched my arm at one point and said gently, “Time to delegate, Chief.”
He was right. I left them and their trusted officers to deal with the Fraker brothers and their lawyers, the families of the kidnap victims, and the press corps, which was swelling by the moment. All I wanted to do was track down my family and let them know I was okay. Miranda and Joe Arbogast had the kids in his ’Sconset house.
Miranda’s response was typical. “Jesus, Henry, I thought we came to Nantucket to shield our children from shit like this. But it just follows you, wherever you go. We’re keeping the kids out here tonight. They need some stability right now.”
I gave them each a long hug and headed back to town. Miranda could be a bitch, but she was a good mother, and she’d feed them a good meal and make sure their teeth were brushed before they went to bed.
Jane was waiting for me when I got home with a necklace of gauze wound below her chin. She gave me a long hug and said, “My knight in shining armor.”
“Well…nothing so important. Maybe…your squire in blue serge?”
She laughed. “I like that so much better! Less clanking.”
But that afternoon on the beach continued to trouble me. I couldn’t get to sleep. My mind kept pinballing through the same cones and columns. They dinged and lit up, and I racked up the points until the ball was back on the flippers and I sent it up into the maze again, and again.
And again:
I was no knight. I was no squire. Could I really claim to be better than the criminals I chased, better than Todd and Sippy, better than corrupt cops like Roy Elkins and Ham Tyler?
I still wanted to kill Fraker. I still wished I had.
Not a good feeling. I worked my way through it. The incident on Coatue beach had been a uniquely extreme situation. Who wouldn’t give in to their blood lust at a moment like that? What kind of man would I be if I had calmly taken Todd Fraker into custody, as if he was nothing worse than a shoplifter? That would have been bizarre, deviant, dissociative. That would have been the real craziness.
And what if I had killed him? The world would not have been in any way diminished. It was like putting down a rabid dog—a public service.
But that was bullshit, and I knew it.
Where did the killing stop? Who made the decisions?
At three in the morning I gave up trying to sleep and went downstairs. My mom was having a cup of tea at the kitchen table.
She glanced up. “Chamomile tea is good when you can’t sleep. I have a pot going.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
I walked to the counter and poured myself a mug of the pale yellow brew, awkwardly, one-handed. My wrist still ached under the brand-new cast. I sat down at the table across from her. We were silent for a long time, sipping.
She spoke first. “You’re only human, Hanky. And none of us are down too long from the trees.”
“I would have killed that guy.”
“And it’s keeping you up at night. That’s a good sign.”
We sat and sipped. She reached out and put her hand over mine. “No one is just one thing.”
When I went back up to bed, Jane was awake. She slipped under my arm when I got under the covers, nuzzled my neck. “Give yourself a break, Chief.”
“Not my specialty.”
“You want to know what I was feeling? Right then, when you were about to shoot him?”
I lifted my head a little to take in her face, sober and wide awake in the moonlight. “Sure.”
“When I heard the gun go off, I was screaming in my mind, ‘YES!’ And then when I realized what Mitch had done and knew you hadn’t killed Todd, I sighed and almost fainted, but it was the same word: YES. I desperately wanted you to kill him at that moment, and I desperately wanted you not to…and Mitch let us have it both ways, both of us. You know? You did it, but it didn’t happen. I watched it, but I didn’t have to see.”
“And now you know I’m a killer.”
“And I’m glad.”
“You take me as I am?”
An amused little squint. “Well. You’re not perfect. But you’re good enough for Nantucket.”
“So sentimental.”
“And I love you.”
Then she rolled on top of me and proved it.
On Saturday night, the gallows on Coatue burned, a vivid torch across the harbor, sending a dense throbbing column of smoke up to the full moon. There was no way to extinguish the blaze, so the fire department just let it burn out. Half the town gathered along the shore to watch, from Dionis to Jetties Beach to the decks of the big houses in Monomoy and Shimmo, Polpis, and Pocomo. The fire was laid carefully and didn’t spread. The investigation was cursory and short-lived. No arrests were made. The blaze remains a mystery.
When Jane came home at dawn on Sunday, I said, “Feel better?”
She eased beside me under the covers. “Much.”
I sniffed her breath. “Who brought the Jameson’s?”
“Billy had a flask.”
“And David’s not going to write about it?”
“Well—just that it happened.”
“Scooped by the Inquirer and Mirror. Amazing.”
She snuggled against me. “It’s over. That’s what matters.”
I was making pancakes the next morning when Mitch Stone appeared at my door. He stood on the little deck at the top of the front stairs.
“Any idea who might have set that fire last night, Chief?”
I smiled. “We suspect Muslim terrorists. Or possibly, disgruntled immigrants. Those are some bad hombres.”
“I was thinking of guerilla real estate brokers. A gallows across the harbor really tanks the property values.”
“I’ll look into it.”
We stood just breathing the morning air for a few seconds. A gardener’s truck drove by, with a trailer full of riding lawnmowers. We’d be getting the complaint calls as soon as those big engines started up. Mitch made some joke about roasting marshmallows, but I brushed it aside.
“They told some stories, put out some grass fires, passed around a flask, and went home. The Staties wanted to know if I was pressing charges against the individual who broke my wrist.”
“What did you say?”
“I told them I was going to call your girlfriend, find out what kind of beer you drink, and buy you a case of it.”
He shrugged. “I like Kronenbourg. But it’s hard to find on Nantucket.”
“There’s a lot that’s hard to find here.”
Mitch nodded. “Big Macs, fountain pens, ammunition.”
“Among other things.”
Mrs. Penniston from number 6 strolled past with her two waddling pugs. Dervish was an Olympic athlete by comparison. Billy Delavane referred to his pug as “the sports model.” I couldn’t see these two dogs chasing rabbits or deer—or the moon. Dervish had been known to chase the moon when he caught sight of it. I nodded to Mrs. Penniston. She smiled and lifted a hand.
I turned back to Mitch. “So what brings a world traveler like you to Nantucket?”
“What brings an LAPD cop to Nantucket?”
“My ex-wife’s family were summer people for years.”
“Summer people.”
“You say that the way I say ‘shoplifters.’ So I assume you grew up here.”
“You don’t assume anything, Chief. After the school shooting, you did your research. You know everything there is to know about me. You know my father was an abusive drunk. You know I was suspended from fifth grade for throwing snowballs at police cars. You pulled my Marine Corps service record. You have my whole life on your computer.”
“Until 2009, when you disappear off the face of the earth.”
Mitch shrugged. “Well, I’m back.”
We studied each other. I could see there was no point in probing any further. Whatever Mitch Stone’s secrets were, he was keeping them. In nosy, small-town Nantucket that was actually refreshing. I lifted my wrist from the sling. “Thanks for your help.”
“We have a saying in the Marines, Chief. ‘Two is one and one is none.’ You gotta have backup.”
Some kids on bikes rode by on Fair Street, shouting and laughing. When they were gone Mitch said, “You think their parents know what they’re up to today?”
“I certainly hope not.”
Mitch squinted up at the cloudless early autumn sky. “Beautiful day.”
“Yeah. Looks like things are back to normal finally.”
“Let’s hope.”
My kids were still talking about the weekend events when I picked them up from school the next day. Carrie gave me a solemn hug. Her friends were watching, but she didn’t seem to care. And she had some news of her own. “I made friends with Judy Gobeler. I apologized.”
“That’s great.”
“She tried out for The Grace Notes. She really can sing.”
“There you go.”
“She and Debbie are friends again, too, Dad.”
“Wow.”
“So Judy’s not going to come back years from now and try to kill us all.”
“Well, that’s taking the long view. In the meantime, you needed another soprano.”
“And she’s letting me borrow her Levi’s Wedgie icon jeans.”
“So it’s all good.”
At home, Tim found me starting dinner in the kitchen.
“I was thinking about that poem you wrote, about you and your dad and me and all the generations and everything and the dead guy and the whale.”
“Maybe I bit off a little more than I could chew there.”
“No, it’s a great poem!”
“Well, thanks.”
“I wrote one, too. I did it today in Social Studies.”
“You couldn’t wait for study hall?”
“No! Remember what you told me about poems?”
“Uh…”
“They’re like visits from the Royal Family. You said you have to drop everything and go outside to wave, or pay homage or whatever.”
“I do remember that. It’s true. Poetic Prerogative.”
“Right.”
“Can I see it?”
“It’s not that great. Too many rhymes.”
“What’s it about?”
“Uh…you. You and me. And maybe Grandpa, too, I don’t know. I couldn’t get the whale in there, but it feels like he’s in there, anyway.”
I stuck out a flat palm and beckoned with my fingers. “Show me.”
He dug his spiral notebook out of his book bag, opened it to a page of cramped but legible handwriting. Was it in the genes? It looked a little like my own scrawl, and a lot like my father’s.
My dad is strong and good
At least he knows he should be
He’s not a bad man
But he knows he could be
He chooses every day
When he has to choose, he’s alone
We’ve both always known
But neither of us say
I’m not him
He’s not me
I’m free, I’m no clone
But he’s everything I’d like to be
When I’m grown.
I handed the notebook back. “Nice. But it’s a lot to live up to.”
He grinned. “Yeah, Dad. Don’t blow it.”
They were moving Lonnie Fraker to Barnstable the next afternoon, and I wanted to see him before the transfer. I caught him just after his breakfast and buzzed the cell door open as he sipped the last of his coffee.
“Hey, Lonnie.”
“Chief.”
He sat down on the hard mattress of his concrete-slab bed, “Never thought I’d wind up in here.”
“Then you weren’t thinking.”
Lonnie shrugged. “No, just feeling.”
“I was thinking about something you said to me the other day, in the Darling Street attic, when you made your case against Haden Krakauer. That maybe we’re all strangers.”
“Maybe we are.”
“I thought I knew you.”
“I showed you the good stuff. No one shows the bad stuff.”
“Well, it’s all out now. You and your brother are going away for a long time.”
“Don’t worry about me, Chief. I’ll be fine. And Todd’s used to the lockup. He’s an institutional man.”
I studied him as he drained the last of his coffee. “Why? Why do this? I don’t get it.”
“Sure you do. I saw you with Toddie. You would have blown his brains out if not for Mitch. You were feeling it, all right.”
“So that’s it? Just—rage and hate?”
“And a dash of bitters. Gotta have the bitters.”
“It’s been twenty years, Lonnie.”
“Yeah. I thought the feeling would go away, but it didn’t. Not for Toddie either. Maybe it never goes away for anybody. I thought the law would take care of those assholes, you know? Justice would prevail! And it seemed that way for a while. You arrested Ed. But he wound up king of the prison like some Mexican drug lord.”
“He was happy to escape, though.”
“He went for the better deal. Getting his stash and getting away. Ed always went for the better deal. And nothing happened to Toland! He got rewarded! That little movie he made about all of us? It was his ticket to Tinseltown. I mean, come on.”
“No one could have proved he killed your stepmother.”
“My point exactly. Waiting around for our legal system to do its job…you could wait forever. I thought I was going to.” He set his cup down on the floor and leaned back against the cinderblock wall. “You know how they say revenge is a dish best served cold?” I nodded. “Well, that’s bullshit. Take it from me. Life is a long, cold night. You want roast chicken, you want beef stew. Comfort food, not some cold dinner. Who eats sushi in a blizzard?”
“Good point.”
“I got my meal, Chief. Piping hot the way I wanted it.”
“You know, they also say if you want revenge, dig two graves.”
“I’ll let you dig mine. I’m good with that.”
We were quiet for a minute or two, listening to the noises of the booking room, the phones ringing, and the muted conversations. “You still haven’t told me,” I said finally. “Why get involved with this whole crazy scheme in the first place? Why not just hire a couple of hitters from Southie to take Toland out?”
He smiled. “That’s a little cold, Chief. And anyway…Todd is my brother.”
“Half brother.”
“No such thing. Not with us.”
“Okay, but what about all the other people? Jane never hurt you. You had no problem with David Trezize. And Monica Terwilliger?”
“I wasn’t going to let anything happen to them.”
That was too much for me. I charged forward, lifted him off the bed, and slammed him into the wall. “Jane was hanging from your gallows when we hit the beach!”
His eyes were wild. “I didn’t want that! I feel like shit about that!”
I pushed him back down onto the mattress. “No, you don’t.”
A long silence raged between us, cold and uncrossable as a snowmelt river. We stood on opposite banks, with the white noise and the rapids between us.
Lonnie spoke first. “This was a war, Chief. All right? Civilians die in a war. It’s called collateral damage.”
“No. It’s more than that.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I read your brother’s blog. High School Military Tribunal dot blogspot dot com. It’s on the net—anyone can find it. Sippy Bascomb did.”
“Yeah.”
“And that’s when this whole thing started.”
I pulled out my phone, went online, and tapped in the URL for Sippy’s blog. I wanted to read the words verbatim. Sippy had to start his own blog just to comment on Todd’s, because he went on for so long, and they have a 4,200-character limit. “Here it is. Fish Face and Mr. Peanut dot blogspot dot com. I guess those were the nicknames the mean kids gave them. What did they call you?”
“Pumpkin Head. Squeaky. After Toland spread the word, they left it at faggot, basically.”
“Here it is. Listen to this. He’s talking about the Nazi government. ‘It would have been unthinkable without the agreement of the ordinary people, each ordinary person. Everyone who participated with a secret smile, everyone who could have helped a single Jew and decided it was safer not to, everyone who looked away—they all deserved to be put on trial and convicted along with their overlords.’ A little later he tells Todd, ‘You understand the culture of cruelty that tormented us. So I respond. You’ve earned it.’ The culture of cruelty. You believed in that, too.”
Lonnie looked up at me. “It was real.”
“So they all deserved to die? David, Monica, Billy…Cindy and Jane? All of them.”
He grabbed his face with his hands and shook his head. “What do you care what I believed? Or Todd or Sippy. You never knew us. And you won. It’s over. Let it alone.”
“I will. I’m done here.”
I called for the cell door to open. I was on the other side, and the bars slid shut again when Lonnie stood up and approached them. “Chief—”
I turned. “What?”
“You can fix this.”
“Enough, Lonnie.”
“You can tell them I was working undercover, helping you from the inside. That Bulgarian punk won’t say a word; he doesn’t want to get deported. And Mitch Stone knows how to keep a secret. They’d go along. And it’s a good story. I’m the hero. I tipped you off. I saved the day. There’s no scandal. The state police look good, everybody’s happy. Wait a second! I’m not asking for favors! There’s plenty in it for you, Chief. I still know where Ed’s stash is buried. You can have it all. Those kids of yours are gonna be going to college soon. That ain’t cheap.”
I watched him closely, more sad than angry now. “You know, Lonnie…my mother always says liars think everyone is lying, and thieves think everyone’s a thief. She’s right. You think everyone’s just like you. But they’re not. Apart from everything else, you’ve just violated Massachusetts General Law 268A Section Two ‘corrupt gifts, offers or promises to influence official acts.’ That’s another five years on your sentence. Looks like you’ve found a home.”
He had no answer for that, and I left him there, climbed the stairs to the main lobby, and walked out into the bright, cold autumn sunshine. Patty Stokes and Jill Swenson were walking across the parking lot about to start their shift. Two tough, smart young women, one white, one black, first in their classes from the Academy, highest scores on our own aptitude tests, and I heard they had rented a house together off of First Way with a couple of other female officers to save money. They waved happily at me and returned my salute. It felt good to see them at this moment. I badly needed a dose of their high spirits and their optimism. They had a mission, and so did I. We were all struggling toward a better world. We were making progress. It was slow and irregular and incremental. But we were getting there.
That was a good thought to remember.
I married Jane Stiles the next Saturday, after Sam’s first full week at Cyrus Pierce, where he had already made two new friends and gotten his first A on a book report. I took the week off and left Haden Krakauer in charge of the cop shop. Jane and I worked on our vows together, organized the reception (Spanky’s raw bar and all the booze anyone could drink at the Admiralty Club in Madaket), found rooms for Franny Tate, my brother Phil, Jane’s sister and her dad, plus Chuck Obremski, who took some of his bereavement leave from the LAPD to come east for the wedding.
We held the ceremony on the beach at Madequecham under the steep sand cliff in the lee of the sharp north wind with the rest of our families and friends—my ex-wife, Jane’s ex-husband, our kids, a few friends like David Trezize and Kathleen Lomax, Mitch Stone and Vicky Fleishman, Mike and Cindy Henderson, Billy Delavane, on crutches, with Karen Gifford—so they really were a couple now!—Sam and Claire Trikilis—with my father’s ghost muttering, “All the world does not love a lover. All the world is in fact bored to tears by a lover,” and my mother presiding over the ceremony from her wheelchair at the top of the bluff. There was no whale on the beach, but the porpoises in the water put on a fine show for the occasion. Bethany Starbuck, the new town clerk, presided, while Dervish and Bailey chased each other and tussled over pieces of driftwood and an abandoned flip-flop sandal.
I recited my vows first:
“I will clean the toilets when you least expect it, step on the edge of the rug when you vacuum, and always be on the other side when you’re making the bed.
“I will bring you flowers for no reason.
“I will read to you from books that are exactly the right amount of boring when you cannot get to sleep.
“I will listen to you working out the plot points of your books and comfort you when you hit page one hundred and nothing makes sense and you want to throw the thing away and remind you that you always feel that way on page one hundred.
“I will swim in the ocean with you late in the afternoon in the late summer when the tourists have gone back to their rental houses for cocktails, even though the water is cold and the air is chilly.
“I will make your first cup of coffee in the morning and let you add the milk.
“I will let you navigate when I drive off-island and enjoy all instructions, even, ‘Oh, my God, turn left, I mean right!”
“I will hug your son all the time until he’s old enough to hate it and then again when he’s grown up and doesn’t mind again.
“I will not tease you about losing your glasses, even when I find them in one of your boots or the vegetable drawer of the fridge.
“I will edit your books and always say exactly what I think.
“I will tell you that you’re beautiful and argue the point like a high-school debate-team star when you disagree.
“I will kiss you when these vows are done just long enough to make everything absolutely clear to everyone.
“I will plan amazing trips to Europe and China and the Maldives with you, and I swear we will take one of those trips before we’re too old to enjoy them.
“I will grow old with you. You are my favorite person who doesn’t share my DNA.
“I will choose you, every day, forever.”
Bethany said, “Jane?”
She took my hands.
“I will laugh at your jokes and smile at your puns and enjoy your plays on words. ‘Be it ever so crumpled there’s no plate like chrome’ isn’t exactly funny or even witty, it’s just awesome.
“I will watch the Godfather movies and Chinatown as many times as you like.
“I will scratch your back even when I’m exhausted.
“I will dance with you whenever we hear good music, especially Creedence.
“I will do the dishes after every meal you cook and only have you in the kitchen to keep me company.
“I will fall in love with you again a tiny bit every time you volunteer to pump the gas.
“I will always listen with adoring, undivided attention when you tell me your police stories and thrill at your courage and admire your patience and love your doubts. And then I’ll steal all the good parts for my books.
“I will try to be the best stepmother ever to your kids and hope I can hold out long enough for us to be friends.
“I will stupidly break every nice wineglass we ever buy.
“I will accept your compliments with no argument.
“I will kiss you as long and deep as you want in a minute or so in front of all our friends and family, despite the fact that I hate public displays of affection.
“I will walk our fabulous dog alone when you’re too busy and will walk him together with you when you’re not, and I will show you every great secret walk on the island before we’re too old to enjoy them.
“I will grow old with you.
“You are my favorite person over the age of eleven.
“I will choose you, every day, forever.”
Bethany pronounced us husband and wife and told me, “You may kiss the bride.”
But I was already doing it.