“Yep.”
“How’s Boynton?”
“Not dead.”
“The prick had it coming.”
“Yeah,” I said. Soupy watched while I pulled out my pen and notebook. “What about Coach, Soup? Did Coach have it coming?”
“You sound like Dingus. Man, he doesn’t quit.”
I doubted now that Dingus really believed Soupy killed Blackburn. It was looking as though he’d arrested Soupy to shake him down.
But I was going to ask anyway.
“Did you kill Coach, Soupy?”
He laughed. “Jesus, Trap, I asked you here, man.”
“Did you or not?” I didn’t usually start by asking the biggest question, but I’d wasted enough time already with Soupy and his shenanigans.
“Trap,” he said. “Don’t do it. Don’t even try.”
“Try what?”
“To save me.”
I knew what he meant. “I’m not trying to save you,” I said. “You can save your own sorry ass.”
“Right,” he said. “Look, either I don’t need to be saved or I’m beyond saving. So just forget it. I asked you to come because I want to tell you something.”
“Why don’t you just tell me the goddamn truth?”
Soupy laid his manacled, bandaged hands on top of the table. “No,” he said. “All right? I did not kill Blackburn. But I’ll you what. I wish I had. I should have.”
“So it was Leo?”
“No, no. Leo was protecting me. Leo-”
Soupy suddenly bowed his head. He was gathering himself. I decided to change the subject. “Boynton blackmailed you, didn’t he?” I said.
Soupy shook his head, embarrassed. “The bastard,” he said. “I should’ve let him. Maybe I’d be sleeping in my own bed now.”
“That’s what the other night was about, right? When you came over to my place shitfaced?”
“Trap, this ain’t what I asked you here for. But since you asked. Remember me and Boynton bitching at each other the other night at Enright’s? Sunday morning, he shows up at my place. Remember now, everything is about his goddamn marina. He says, look, we got to work this out, blah blah-”
“I know. He was going to give you a piece of the action, and you were going to tell the zoning board to go ahead with the new marina.”
“How’d you know?”
“Doesn’t matter. So Boynton comes over Sunday morning…”
“He brings buns from Audrey’s, for Christ’s sake. He wants coffee, but all I got is Blue Ribbon, so we drink a couple with the buns and he says I got to reconsider and I tell him to basically go to hell. I know I’m not so hot at running the marina, but it’s all I got. And Boynton says, well, maybe you ought to consider some new information.”
I added it up quickly in my head. By then Joanie had talked to Boynton, and Boynton had talked to Darlene, or tried. An echo chamber in the service of blackmail. I told Soupy, “He said the Pilot was going to run something bad about Coach.”
“Yeah. About…” He stopped. “I ain’t going to talk about that.”
I didn’t need him to talk about it just yet.
“So eventually you told him you’d do the deal, right? You were supposed to go to the zoning board and tell them the marina was fine and dandy.”
“Something like that.”
“Did you tell Boynton anything else?”
“About what?”
“About anything, Soupy. About Blackburn or Leo or whatever the hell happened in those billets you tried to burn down.”
“I don’t remember.”
“Fuck you. Did you hear the prosecutor say she’s got testimony from somebody who spoke with you recently? Who the hell do you think it is?”
“Sorry.”
“Why didn’t you show up at the zoning board?”
“I was planning to, I was. But I go to get my skates sharpened, like I always do, and Leo’s gone. The Zam shed’s cleaned out. I figure he hit the road because Boynton went to the cops with…with what he knew. So I go to Boynton and blow a gasket. He swears he didn’t talk but says I better have my ass at the zoning board or he will. But now I’m like, fuck him, it’s over, so I blow off the zoning board. And then…” All the blood went out of his face. “Fucking Leo, man.”
“Soup,” I said. “Leo was my friend, too. I hate what happened to him. But do you think it’s even remotely possible that he killed Blackburn? Is that why he killed himself? You said he was protecting you. From what? What did Teddy know? Why did you let him bail you out?”
“So I could burn down that goddamn building.”
“Soupy.” I reached across the table and grabbed his shoulder. Then I spoke as slowly and evenly as I could. “I know, OK?” I said. “I know what happened in the billets. I know about Coach and Tillie and what you meant the other night about the whiskey.”
“What whiskey?”
“Gentleman Jack.”
“Oh, fuck,” Soupy said, yanking his shoulder back.
“It’s all right, Soup. You were just a kid.”
He looked away for a while. Then he wiped a sleeve across his face and propped his elbows on the table. “All right,” he said. “Put the pen down a minute.”
“Why?”
“Just put it down.”
I obeyed. Soupy told me what he saw that night with Blackburn and Leo in the woods between Starvation and Walleye lakes.
twenty-seven
On that March night in 1988, the pistol felt cold against Soupy’s palm. He gripped it loosely, nervously, in his coat pocket as he emerged from the trees at the clearing’s edge.
“Hello,” he said.
Jack Blackburn and Leo Redpath barely heard him over the crackle of the fire in the rusted oil barrel. The glow of the flames played across their faces where they sat on their snowmobiles.
“Look who’s here,” Blackburn said. “Old Swanny.”
“The returning soldier,” Leo said, waving a flat, clear glass bottle. “Welcome home, Mr. Campbell. Come toast the Ides of March. We’re celebrating early this year.”
The knee-deep snow felt like mud as Soupy stepped toward the men. He was sweating. He’d been building up courage at Enright’s.
“What’s up, Jack?” he said.
“What’s up, Jack?” I said. “You’ve got a gun in your pocket and you’re saying, ‘What’s up, Jack?’”
“I know,” Soupy told me. “I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. I almost bolted right there.”
“Almost?”
