Jack Harley opened the door of the Crandel house. He eyed me with neither rancor nor affection.
“Nobody home but us chickens,” he said. “Everybody else has gone to the beach. Place they call the Inkspot or some such thing. Is that a racist name, or what?”
“You can probably get an argument about that, but you won’t get it from me.” I felt a frown on my face. “I don’t know if it’s smart for you guys to split up like this.”
Harley didn’t share my concern. “Well, smart or not, the rest of them are at that beach and I’m the housekeeper today, just in case the house needs keeping.”
“Keep it carefully, then. Alexandro Vegas is in a very bad mood and just might decide to take it out on you if he comes this way.”
“I get paid to handle guys like him,” said Harley in a tough-guy voice.
Spoken like someone who’d never seen Alexandro. Even as I was being irked by his naïveté, I was pretty sure I’d said things just as dumb.
“I hope it’s a good salary,” I said, “and that the deal includes insurance.”
Then he gave a little smile. “Don’t worry. I was a trackman. He can chase me, but he won’t catch me. And if he does, I have six friends who’ll help me out.”
I felt instantly better about him. “You’re dressed.”
He patted his hip. “Part of the uniform.”
“Good. But don’t let him get too close to you. He’s very quick.”
“I’ll keep distance between us.”
A good idea. Every year cops get killed, sometimes with their own pistols, and usually at close quarters: in doorways, in small rooms, in cars. In fact, I’d once read a study of cops fatally shot while on duty that indicated that none of them had been killed at distances over twenty feet. The best protection against being shot to death was the same as that for avoiding pregnancy: several yards of air between participating parties.
I got back into the Land Cruiser and drove to Sea View Avenue, where I parked and walked down onto the part of the beach that’s known as the Inkwell, because of its popularity with the locals of African descent. I’d been told that the people who frequented the spot had given the location its name, so it was up to linguists and social commentators, and not to me, to decide whether it was a racist term.
In the summer, the Oak Bluff beaches are full of sound and bright colors, as visitors and home owners alike loll under beach umbrellas or sop up sun and surf and suds in air filled with laughter, shouts, and the music from boom boxes. Although it’s a convivial place and seems to suit OBers just fine, it’s too crowded and noisy for Zee and me, so when we want a beach, we drive out to the far shores of Chappaquiddick, where we can be alone with the sand and sea.
Now, in September, most of the summer people had gone back to America, and it wasn’t hard to spot Mills, Ivy Holiday, and the cousins. The last three were stretched on bright beach towels, were clothed in minimal, bikini-style bathing suits that revealed more than they concealed, and were shiny with tanning lotion, as they lay in the early-fall sun. They were an eye-grabbing trio, without a doubt, and I ogled Ivy and Julia appreciatively as I approached.
Is there anything more appealing to the eye than a beautiful woman? Well, maybe; Zee would no doubt argue that a hunky man was more interesting, and there were those who favored members of their own gender. But I was male and heterosexual and had no doubt at all about where beauty lay. Right now, it lay on two towels on Inkwell beach.
Mills wasn’t in the running for the glamour title. He was sitting in an aluminum beach chair, wearing regular clothing, sans shoes, which were hung around his neck as a concession to the soft, yellow sand. He, too, would be armed, I figured and was glad. As I came up, he watched me.
“What’s up?” he asked, and his voice roused the others, who rolled their heads toward me, then sat up.
“Just reporting in,” I said.
“Hi, J.W.,” said Julia. “How’s your arm? You never said how you hurt it. I hope it’s better.”
I squatted on my heels. To my left, the blue waters of the sound reached toward Cape Cod, and overhead the lighter blue of the sky curved down to the eastern horizon. The bluffs cut off the southwestern wind, so it was warm and summerlike there on the beach, and there was no hint of Elmer even occupying the same earth. What had the weather been like when Cain killed Abel, or David had done in Goliath? Had the days been as fair and beautiful as this one? Or had the winds been raging and the rain blowing flat and cold, and the oceans roaring?
“The bone is cracked. Nothing serious, I’m told.” Then I looked at Ivy. “But I think I should bring you up-to-date.”
“That sounds pretty heavy,” said Ivy, who looked like an ebony naiad.
“You can decide how heavy it is.” I told them about how I’d been attacked and what had just happened in Alberto Vegas’s office. When I was done, I said, “Alexandro is in a bad mood, so I think you should all be especially careful, just in case you bump into each other.” I offered them my view that they should stick together for safety.
“That’ll be the day,” said Ivy. “No man is going to keep me from doing what I want to do!”
Buddy Crandel’s face was angry. “You’ve made a fine mess of things! Goading those men like that! My God! Are you trying to cause trouble?”
Ivy looked at him, then at Julia. I could barely see her eyes behind her dark glasses.
“You’re not the only people who have trouble,” I said to Buddy. “I have it, too. The Vegas brothers are trouble for a lot of people. We all have to be careful.”
“But you’ve made it worse!”
“You may be right.” I stood up. “It’s spilled beans, in any case. Just be careful. I don’t think Alexandro is too stable.”
Buddy was on his feet. “I think it would be best if you just get out of our lives, Jackson. You’re more trouble than good.” He looked at Julia. “You hired him. Fire him before he does more damage. I’m here, and Mills and Harley are professionals. We don’t need Jackson.”
Ivy was studying me. “Maybe you’re right,” she said. “Is he right, Mr. Jackson?”
“You have two problems,” I said. “One is Alexandro Vegas, and the other is the stalker who seems to be trailing you around. I really didn’t get hired to take care of Alexandro, I got hired to try to track down the stalker. I’ll be glad to give back Julia’s money anytime she wants. But as long as I keep the money, I’m also going to keep my nose in this mess.”
“And if Julia fires you, are you going to take your nose out?”
I heard a siren somewhere on the far side of town. Someone else with troubles and someone else trying to help out. Trouble is sure, but often succor follows. “If you fire me,” I said to Julia, “I won’t owe you anything one way or the other. I’ll do as I please.”
A little smile played on her lips. “You do as you please anyway, it seems to me, whether I pay you or not. I can keep my money and still get the same results.”
“Maybe it’ll work out like that. Maybe not.”
She made up her mind. “Stay on the job a little longer. That way I’ll at least get reports about what you’re up to.”
“You’re making a mistake,” Buddy said to her.
“It won’t be the first one I’ve made,” said Julia, lying back down on her beach towel.
I looked at Mills. “Keep in touch. And be careful.”
“Sure.”
Sure. I walked away, feeling the sand grab at my feet as I went.
I drove through Oak Bluffs and went out along Newton Avenue. I approached the still smoldering ruin of Pete Warner’s house and could smell the sour odor of smoke as I passed. An ambulance was coming up the driveway toward the road. Now I knew why I’d heard the siren. I pulled over and watched it go by me, headed for the hospital. A fire truck was still down by the blackened remains of the house, and a couple of firemen were hosing down a pile of rubble that was still smoking. I drove down and got out. The firemen looked tired.
“Where’s Pete?” I asked.
“Hospital.”
My heart beat a bit faster. “I just saw the ambulance. That him?”
“His wife collapsed. They just took her out of here. Pete’s riding with her.” The fireman tapped his chest. “Too much for her. Bad ticker, I guess. We kept her breathing.” He shrugged. “Not good, though.”
“I’ll get out of your way.”
If Pete’s wife died, Alexandro would have taken another step down his steep road. As far as I knew, he’d done a lot of damage to people and property, but up to now he hadn’t succeeded in killing anybody. I wondered if it would make any difference to him if she died and guessed that it wouldn’t. He struck me as one of those people who never figure that they’ve done anything wrong. They go to their graves thinking their victims deserved what happened to them because we’re all animals in a jungle, and that the law of the jungle is that the strong shall devour the weak, and you only get to possess something—life, property, whatever—as long as you’re strong enough to defend it. When a stronger animal comes by and takes it away from you, it becomes his for as long as he wants it or can hold it against the next predator.
It is a popular theory among the criminal and the powerful classes, and what is called civilized behavior is a thin shield against it.
I drove back to Barnes Road and went on until I came to the newish dirt roads leading off to the left. I took the one that I remembered from my map reading. It led past houses on either side until it made a turn and headed off at a ninety-degree angle. I turned the corner and was pleased to see a summer house sitting amid the trees on the right. The grass was long and there was that feeling of disuse about the place that empty houses have. Better yet, there wasn’t another house in view.
I parked in the driveway and knocked on the front door, just in case I was wrong about the owners of the place having gone away for the winter. But I knew I wasn’t wrong. I take care of several houses during the off-season, and I know what they feel like. I got back into the Land Cruiser and drove around to the back of the house, where I parked out of sight of the road.
There, I got out the map again and studied it. I was about a half mile from the back of Alexandro’s house. I got out of the car and walked through the trees and underbrush until I could see the house ahead of me. I scouted to the left and to the right, just in case some house was nearby that I hadn’t noticed when I’d driven by earlier.
When I was sure that there wasn’t, I eased closer to Alexandro’s place and studied it from the deep shadow of a large oak.
The house was as disreputable from behind as it was from in front. An expensive-looking but rusting barbecue grill and a round plastic table with an umbrella opened over it were in the backyard. Plastic lawn chairs were here and there, one or two with broken legs and others lying on their sides. Beside a heavy wooden lawn chair was a wooden table with a large ceramic ashtray on it. Alexandro’s chair, for sure, since no plastic chair would hold his weight. Beer bottles were scattered on the lawn, and a plastic rubbish barrel overflowed by the corner of the house.
As I looked, the back door opened and a woman came out. She had a beer bottle in one hand and a cigarette in the other. She sat down by the table and looked right at me.