The Last Kind Words: A Novel Read online

  “The kiss,” I said.

  “I hate to tell you this, Terrier, but just in case you haven’t realized it yet, your brother is out of his goddamn mind. Anytime you get too curious about what was going on in his head, remember where that kind of thinking leads. You really want to start down that road?”

  Gilmore stood. I could tell he wanted to shake my hand or give me a hug. His eyes were full of regret and remorse and a hope toward friendship. He walked away and took his fucked little grin with him out the door.

  Like the last lone soldier defending a fort, my father stood guard on our house. He leaned against the veranda railing. Backlit by the porch light, he was lent a kind of mythic presence. He had the grave bearing of someone thinking hard on a particular subject. He showed no sign of restlessness at all, but I knew it was there. Maybe his tension was merely calling to my own.

  Pinscher Rand had become a criminal for the same reason that I had. Because he’d been born to it. I wondered if he ever pulled a cheap score nowadays just to keep the old skills sharpened and to remember how exciting and awful it had once been. I imagined him picking a wallet and not pulling the money, just poking around the contents, looking at the driver’s license photo, the credit cards, the carefully folded sheets of paper that rarely made any sense. A note from an ex-girlfriend that the mark valued, a frayed motto or private joke that had gone through the wash a couple of times. He’d pass by a mailbox and dump the wallet in. He’d feel some strange sense of accomplishment, knowing his fingers were still supple enough to get the job done.

  He should’ve been a carpenter. It was the only other skill that was in the Rand blood. Maybe I should have been too. I imagined us razing the house and building another one, a smaller one, without the hidden caches, maybe with a nursery.

  I wondered what he did with himself now that he’d quit creeping houses. What shit he wasted his time on. He and my mother should be out enjoying themselves, making the most of life. Except that I knew the burden of the murders tore him up with guilt in a way that none of his own crimes ever had. My father hid himself away out of shame.

  JFK lay across the top stair and I had to jump over him. My side hurt so badly that I almost flubbed it. He gave me a resolute eye roll and coughed out a small belly bark.

  I lit a cigarette and sat in a chair, trying to hide my discomfort. It was too late. My old man had already noticed.

  “Someone worked you over,” he said.

  “I’m okay.”

  “Not Dale’s boyfriend?”

  I frowned. “Hell, no.”

  “Didn’t think that one would get over on you.”

  “Not likely.”

  He nodded, took a step toward me, and looked me deep in the face like he was checking for bruises. “That’s not what’s on your mind, though.”

  “No, Dad, it’s not.”

  My father sat, opened his cooler, and handed me a beer. I shook my head. He dug around in the ice chest until he came up with a small carton of orange juice. I drank and felt a little better.

  We relaxed and watched the road and the black brush beyond it. JFK had picked up on my mood. He came over, circled and pawed and collapsed. His ears kept snapping up and he let loose with a deep-throated whine. I wanted to do the same.

  We nodded. We sipped. We smoked. We took turns patting the great beast at our feet who’d once been young and fierce and was now only well muscled, noble, and old. The immense topic of our lives loomed between us.

  We’ve failed. We’ve failed to hold our family together. We’ve failed to protect one another.

  My old man started to clear his throat like he wanted to say something but couldn’t find the proper words. I turned and watched him until our eyes met.

  He said, “You want to talk about it, Terry?”

  I sat up like someone had just lobbed a grenade. It was a question that my father never asked. I thought, Christ, I must look really bad.

  Or maybe it was just his way of getting me to start a conversation that he himself needed to have.

  I listened to my mother inside murmuring to Gramp, the way new parents talk to infants. She sounded elated. I waited for her to say, “Look at these chubby cheeks. Who’s got such chubby cheeks? So big!” I thought about the toll it must be taking on her. If ten years ago Gramp had been able to see himself in this state, he would’ve put one in his head. Another one, that is.

  Clouds swarmed the moon. JFK got up and wandered down to the lawn, parading back and forth like a fitful ghost.

  I said, “Collie says he didn’t strangle the girl. He says someone else did it and that they’ve racked up at least four or five other murders before and after he was arrested. He says the killer is targeting young women of the same description. He wants me to look into it with his wife.”

  My father waited. The information sank in. “His wife?”

  “He got married in prison.”

  “To a guy?”

  It almost made me smile. “No, to a pen pal.”

  “One of those,” my father said with a disgusted nuance. “Celebrity stalkers, but they only like the mass murderers. They’re just as psychotic.”

  “He says she’s been trying to help him. Gathering evidence, I suppose.”

  He waited. “If it was anybody else I’d say it was a ploy to get a stay of execution, an appeal, or a new trial.”

  I shook my head. “He doesn’t want any of that, he says. He just wants me to find out who’s killing these women. He doesn’t even want his own name cleared of that one killing.”

  “So why’s he care? Why now?”

  “He says it’s because he wasn’t certain if he’d killed the girl or not, but now his wife’s been bringing him information and he knows for sure there’s someone else out there.”

  “He’s manipulating you.”

  “I get that feeling too, but I can’t see any reason for it.”

  “Your brother doesn’t need a reason to do things anymore. Maybe he never did.”

  “Does Fingers Brown still sell clean pieces?” I asked.

  “Haven’t heard much about him in a while. But I can’t picture him retiring and doing a lot of fishing.”

  “Still got the bowling alley?”

  “As far as I know. You’re going to pay him a visit?”

  “I want to ask him a few questions.”

  My old man finished his beer and took another, held the bottle to his chest. “You’ve decided to help Collie?”

  “It’s for me. I want to figure out as much as I can about what happened.”

  He went to the porch railing, stood against it, and looked at the moon. “Can you let it go?”

  “No.”

  He was a sensitive and astute man, but I was still surprised that he was able to slice to the heart of the matter.

  “You’re not him, Terry.”

  I got up and took my place beside him. We watched JFK sniffing around the yard, lumbering across the grass, chasing moths. I said nothing because I had nothing to say.

  “I’m sorry I put the call through, son.”

  “You were only doing what you had to do.”

  “I should’ve let you stay out west on your ranch.”

  “It wasn’t my ranch. And it’s all right. I never should’ve left. The last five years were a waste, Dad. I’m sorry I went. I’m sorry I left the family. I never should have gone. It was a mistake to run.”

  “Because of Kimmy.”

  “Because of everyone.”

  He put an arm around me and ruffled my white patch. It was a caricature of what your average American father might do to his son, but I appreciated the effort he was making. I only wished I could make more of one myself.

  He whistled and opened the screen door. JFK galloped out of the brush and up the porch stairs, made sure he licked at my hand as he passed, and then rushed into the house.

  I said, “Good night, Dad.”

  “Good night, Terry.” My old man followed the dog inside. But my father, wh
o wasn’t a talkative man, who had lost one son forever and another for five years, who was worried about his teenage daughter, who had a phantom of a father waiting for him hunched in the corner as a constant reminder of what the future might make of him, still wasn’t done speaking his mind. He hovered in the shadowed entranceway and turned back to me. I couldn’t see his eyes. Silhouetted like that, silent as stone, he seemed more myth than man.

  “Finish whatever it is you have to do,” he said. His voice was hard, stoic, and indignant. “And let him go forever. Don’t allow your brother to take you with him.”

  Then I was alone in the night.

  Part II

  BEAST

  ON THE

  LOOSE

  Out of sheer exhaustion I was able to catch a couple hours of sleep, but the pain in my kidneys woke me in the deep darkness. I was slathered in sweat and spurred on to the bathroom. I gritted my teeth, pissed blood, and popped five aspirin.

  I took a shower and let the cold water wash over me.

  I’d dreamed of Kimmy. I was surprised and bothered by the clarity of the memory. We were in the Commack Motor Inn, one of several pay-by-the-hour motels we used to duck into so we could be together. Intimacy and privacy weren’t among the benefits of living in a large house with an extended family. The backseat of a car got old quick. We were catching our breaths, lying back in each other’s arms. Her hair was wet and scoured my cheek. She pressed her lips to my ear.

  “Terry, I’m pregnant.”

  It was dark. I couldn’t make out her face. Her voice was steady and I couldn’t tell if she was glad or terrified or excited or indifferent. I knew that was why she’d chosen this precise moment to tell me. She wanted my own honest reaction not influenced by her own.

  I said, “We’re not naming her after a fucking dog.”

  It made her giggle, a sound that transformed me and lightened me and always seemed to make me float to somewhere safe. “Her? You want a girl?”

  “I suppose I do.”

  “Why?”

  “I like the idea of saying, ‘I’m going home to my girls.’ ”

  She let go with a relieved quiet laughter that soon turned into tears as we muttered our sweet somethings and made love again. I thought of the child growing inside her, and we were gentler and somehow more generous than we had been in a while. Afterward I looped my arms around her and kissed her belly. Our breathing was in sync, which meant our breathing was in sync with the baby’s. I’d never felt quite so significant or so vulnerable.

  “We’ll get married tomorrow.”

  “No,” Kimmy said. “I don’t want to rush it. We can take our time.”

  “This summer? On the beach? We can rent the Montauk Lighthouse, have the ceremony at the top.”

  “You’ve been thinking about this?” she asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since I met you,” I said. It was the truth. “We can buy a house out east. Something nice and affordable, but private, maybe near the Hamptons.”

  “You don’t have that kind of money.”

  “Not too near. But, you know, nearby.”

  “Don’t I get any say in the matter?” she asked.

  “No. I’m going to take care of my girls. You just sit back and let me run the show and love you both. This summer, at the top of the lighthouse. I’ll carry you up the steps.”

  “There’s got to be two hundred of them, Terry. I’ll be fat by then. You’ll get herniated.”

  “I’ll carry you very slowly,” I whispered. “My girls.”

  I climbed out of the shower and held a towel to my face and stifled a moan, a groan, I don’t know what, but it wanted out, and I wouldn’t let it. After a minute the force of it began to lessen and finally subsided. I got dressed.

  The sun wouldn’t be up for another two hours. I got in the car, drove over to Chub’s garage, and crept the place.

  It had the innocuous name of Wright’s Automotive Repair, with a logo that was a touch overdesigned. He’d apparently established a nice, legal business. Three rebuilt classic muscle cars were parked out front with FOR SALE signs in the windows. Four bays in the garage, two of them filled with soccer mom mini-SUVs, another with a Honda Accord in need of a new transmission. The last bay had a complete smashup laid out in it. I could barely make it out as a Dodge. It must’ve been towed there by some insurance company. That meant Chub didn’t mind cops and insurance investigators sniffing around. Another sign that he’d gone completely straight.

  I checked through his office cabinets and desk drawers and came up empty. Nothing that proved he was still souping cars for heisters and helping to plan their getaway routes.

  I booted up his computer. It wasn’t password-protected. The wallpaper was a photo of Chub, Kimmy, and Scooter all wearing Santa hats and smiling in front of a Christmas tree. Chub was on the verge of cracking up, his head tilted back, face slightly out of focus because he was already beginning to quiver. Kimmy stood there beaming, eyes crimped into an elated squint. Scooter had her mouth wide open in a guffaw, two tiny teeth poking up from her bottom gums. I could almost hear her wild baby giggling.

  I was a head case. Jealousy ripped through me. That angry child’s cry of I want, I want. Mine. Mine. Mine. Thieves were a covetous lot by definition, but I wondered if anyone in my family had ever been as green-eyed and greedy as I was now.

  Did I want Chub on the narrow or was I hoping to find he was still in the bent life? Either way, what did it really mean to me?

  I clicked through a few files. Spreadsheets of accounts and orders and inventories. If there was anything sneaky, I couldn’t see it.

  I searched for a safe. It took me two minutes to find it in the corner, tucked away under a set of shelves partially obscured by racks of motor oil and transmission fluid. It was a small, old, simple model that I probably could’ve cracked in a half hour. But I didn’t even have to bother. Chub was a bit sloppy. He’d left the dial just a couple of numbers off, and the tumblers fell immediately into place.

  There was nothing much inside. A few pink slips to junkers out back, some sales receipts, invoices, other old paperwork from before he’d bought the place. Copies of tax returns.

  No, I thought, he wasn’t sloppy. This was meant to be found by the cops or by thieves.

  Chub had overplayed his hand. I knew now that there was another safe hidden somewhere on the premises. A sigh escaped me, maybe consolation or perhaps discouragement.

  I walked the bays. There were a million nooks and crannies. The workbenches were covered with tools. In my own house there were hidden stairwells, crawl spaces, drop shafts. I knew I could hunt for his hiding spot all night long and never trip over it.

  My thoughts cleared.

  He wouldn’t keep his real cache in the bays. He had legit employees working for him. He’d need a place all his own.

  That meant the office. I scanned the area. Checked the ceiling, the vents, the air-conditioning ducts.

  That wasn’t how Chub would do it.

  I bent to the safe again. It was heavy but shifted relatively easily. I shoved it aside and touched the boards of the floor. It took only a few seconds for me to figure out the proper way to lift them. When I did, they came loose without any effort.

  The second safe was a lot newer and more compact. I could probably jug it with the right tools, but there was no need. This time Chub really had gotten sloppy. He’d played the same game as with the decoy safe. He’d left the combination only a couple numbers off.

  I yanked the handle and the door popped open. Inside were maps of towns all over the island. Port Jefferson, Bayport, Bay Shore, Bridgehampton, St. James, Glen Cove, Bethpage. Different sets of charts and diagrams covered Brooklyn and Queens. There were notes about roadwork, detours, traffic buildup, and rush-hour congestion, likely spots where state troopers might be hiding on the parkways. Chub was expanding his operation, at least so far as the planning went.

  There was ninety gr
and in thick slabs of cash. I knew this would be only one of his caches, escape-route money in case he ever needed to make a run for it.

  “Goddamn it, Chub.”

  My voice was loud in the empty room.

  I wondered if Kimmy would stand beside him the day he got pinched. Take the baby with her to visit him in Sing Sing, the little girl putting her hand up to the glass partition, Chub holding his up on the other side.

  His girls.

  I had made another ghost. I thought I might be one myself, revisiting a life that no longer wanted me.

  I drove home, went to my room, and listened to JFK’s powerful rhythmic breathing as he slept at the foot of my bed. I managed to shove him aside enough to crawl in under the blankets, and when I finally fell asleep I dreamed of Rebecca Clarke. When I awoke, my hands flashed out like I was trying to keep from falling. It spooked JFK and he barked once in my face.

  I sat up and ran my hands through my hair. I needed to start taking sleeping pills, something that would put me out so I could wake up refreshed. Becky seemed so prevalent in my mind that I thought I should visit her, talk to her. Collie had been right. I’d always had extremely vivid dreams. I wondered if I’d sleep better or worse after my brother was dead.

  The sun warmed my face. It was a little after dawn. I expected my mother to be up but she wasn’t. I slipped through the house, going room to room and checking on everyone. I stood before the bed of my parents and watched them sprawled but still hugging each other. Mal was out. I hoped he wasn’t scoring them at the Fifth Amendment. Grey slept like he always did, curled up in apparent great comfort as if he were spending the night at the Waldorf. His handsome face took on an even greater beauty in sleep—slack and innocent and genuine. Dale’s teen anger and exasperation were gone from her face, and there was almost a small smile on her lips.