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 t emdsho 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 grand 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.
16
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. Iting00A0; D 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.
I stopped in Gramp’s room and found him snoozing. It was a relief to see him that way. He looked like he’d just lain down after pulling a particularly exhausting grift. I had the intense urge to wake him up and talk with him. I had the irrational feeling that if I caught him at the right moment I might be able to sneak past his disease. Distract, divert, and charm it. He’d yawn and look at me the way he used to and say,
I stepped into Collie’s room. It hadn’t been changed either. I wondered how difficult it was for my mother to come in here and dust and revisit his belongings. I looked around and tried to spot any sign of madness. I slid a finger across the spines of the books on his shelves. At least half of them were mine. I could almost feel Becky Clarke’s breath on my neck. I checked his caches. They were all empty.
I drove over to the address listed on the police report as the Clarke house. It had rained during the night and a mist rose off the streets in the growing morning heat. The family hadn’t moved from Brightwaters village. That surprised me. After a tragedy like the one they’d suffered through, I’d assumed they would have wanted to get as far off Long Island as possible. But they’d stuck it out. I wondered if they’d left Rebecca’s bedroom untouched the way I’d heard some families did when they lost their children too soon. The way my own parents hadn’t changed a
