Junior could want to kill Alvin.
But someone definitely wants to kill Junior.
Craver has flipped the shop sign to CLOSED when I arrive. I rattle the door until Alvin opens it.
“We’re—oh. What do you want?”
“I thought I was helping you out,” I say, pushing my way inside. Alvin jumps back before I can get close enough to touch him. I raise my eyebrows. “But it seems you have something to hide.”
“Did you want to speak with me, Davey?” Craver has removed his dust-stained apron and run a comb through his thin gray hair. The keys in his hand open the churchyard as well as the convenience store.
“Going to the graveyard?” I used to accompany him to clean the church and the graves. A penance, like everything he did.
“I doubt I’ll have much more time with them,” he said. “That pair of Herods on the hill are planning sacrilege. The gravest.”
Alvin snickers. Craver stops him with a look.
“There’s nothing else you can do to stop them? The town council?”
“Approved it with one dissenting vote. I’ve appealed to the county, but you know as well as I they’ll make sure to lose the paperwork. One of the Astor sons is a principal investor.”
That would explain Mayor Bell’s grand visitors.
Craver turns from me and walks to the window. “They tell me the old church cross will be part of a permanent exhibition of town history they’re putting in the basement of the new resort. I think they meant it as a favor. The cross my ancestors brought from Aachen more than a hundred years ago, squatting next to Edwin Bell’s fishing rod. By God, I’d rather see that place burn than give him the satisfaction. If I were younger, if I were as strong as you, or Alvin here—”
His back spills rage like a furnace.
There are people who don’t have killing in them. Put a gun in their hands, they’ll shoot their own foot to get out.
Tamara’s like that. I used to pretend that I was. But Craver? Alvin? They only need a very good reason.
“Been thinking about hurting someone, Mr. Craver?”
“Why? Did you touch something with those hands of yours?” He laughs as if it were a real joke.
“Hey, Dev,” Alvin says, “he won’t hurt no one. Don’t look at him like that.”
I wonder, idly, how I looked. Has Pea been rubbing off? “You told me that Junior wants to kill you, Alvin, but now I wonder if it’s not the other way around.”
“What’s this? Alvin, now I told you—”
“If Junior don’t have a dozen men wanting to kill him, it ain’t Wednesday. I got my family to protect.”
He seems genuine, but genuine men lie. I hold up one hand. Make no motion toward him. We could answer the question easy enough, and he knows it. He eyes my open palm, flinches, and shakes his head very slightly.
“If you find some proof, let me know,” I say. “But until then, I’ve got my own business.” I could try to keep following this trail, but Alvin’s right, men like the Bobbys make plenty of enemies. I need a way out of the draft. Right now Finn and Valentine are looking like a marginally better prospect than exploiting Alvin’s murky relationship with the Bells.
I let myself out and leave Craver’s pious lecture to mix with the open air. Birdsong. The slush of trees tossing their hair in the wind. Clean air that carries, for a moment, the aroma of bone broth and meat dumplings.
I loved Tamara for her innocence—a good enough substitute for purity.
But I would never have killed for her. And Pea, sweet Pea, Phyllis LeBlanc, Phyllis Green, Victor’s angel? For her, my sins are without price.
6
Trent Sullivan was a big man, muscular and heavy. He’d been a wrestler in his college days, made a few championships, but he threw out his back in practice and it never quite came back to him. He left school and went to work for his father. Eventually his father retired and he started working directly with Victor.
He was not the best-connected man in Victor’s little empire, nor the cleverest, nor the one with the least to lose.
I guess you could say Trent Sullivan had a conscience. Not that I cared at the time. He was just a gangster to me, a stoolie in it for his own reasons. I didn’t have to understand these criminals, I thought, just bring them to justice.
I was—this is not a defense—very young.
I’d been looking for him since my meeting with Finn at the diner. I found him a week later. He was nursing a draft beer one Thursday night in a dark corner of the Pelican. Unremarkable, except for the way his eyes followed Pea. I don’t believe in jealousy, but like the devil, it doesn’t require my approval. She was five feet away from me, laughing and flirting, shining like a sharpened knife. She pretended she didn’t notice me, but at unexpected moments she would turn, her skirt spreading like a fan, and catch my eyes. I know you, they said.
In the Bible, that meant sex. But in my grandmother’s stories, that meant love.
And somehow, this big man with a long mustache and tired sheep’s eyes watched her, too, with some knowledge. He gave me a slight nod when I leaned against the wall beside him.
“You’re the one, then?” he said, softly.
I twirled my cocktail glass in my left hand. The pieces snapped together, no room for hesitation. Some part of me must have already guessed. “Trent, I take it. What did they tell you about me?”
“Just that you’re with the angel. And that you’re colored.”
“Christ,” I said, “what else, my address?”
Trent laughed softly. “Could use some lessons in subtlety, your folks.”
“My name’s Dev. I’m supposed to find out what you can give us.”
He kept his face neutral, but his hand clenched around the mug. “You wacky? See where we are?” His voice was barely a whisper.
“No one’s paying us
