Authors: Philip R. Craig
It was a bloody scenario, if I was right, and there wasn't much time for me to verify my suspicions or to do anything about them.
“Pa, get the ball!”
“You kids play together for a few minutes.”
I went into the house and phoned Helen Fonseca.
“You're here more than my husband is,” she said. “Sure, bring the kids down.”
“Thanks. It'll be the last time for a while.”
“Nonsense. I love having them around. Keeps me young.”
“Me, too, but I need a couple of hours without them.”
I cleaned up the kids, grabbed a phone book, and drove to Helen's house. Josh and Diana were glad to go, having fond memories of her cookies and milk and her willingness to spoil them.
“I'll be back,” I said to her. “I'm going up-island to Howie Trucker's house.”
“Howie Trucker? I don't think I know him.”
“He works out of Boston. Some of his business associates are staying up there and they need to talk with me.”
That was true, although they didn't know it.
I drove up the West Tisbury Road. A half mile past John Skye's driveway I pulled off to the side and parked. I got my field glasses, stuck my old .38 under my shirt, and went into the woods. After a while I could see John's
south pasture in front of me. When he and his family were there, the twins' horses ran in that pasture. Now, the Skyes were out West and their horses were being boarded on a farm up-island.
There was a stand of scrub oak and trees along the edge of the pasture leading up to the back of the barn and the corrals. I put the glasses on the yard and house. Rimini's green Honda was parked in its usual spot and beside it was the Ford Explorer.
No people were in sight. I watched for a while and saw no one come out or go into the house. Then I moved back into the woods and worked my way toward the barn, pausing now and then to study it though the glasses. No eyes seemed to be upon me. I made it to a small storage shed, took a final peek around a corner, saw no one, and sprinted across a small corral to the back of the barn.
I knew John and Mattie's place well, having cared for it for years. There was a back door leading into the tack room, and I went to it and listened. No sounds. I eased the door open and slipped inside. The tack room smelled of oil and leather. There was harness on the walls and there were saddles and blankets and tools in their places. I crossed to another door and listened again. Nothing. I opened the door a crack and peeked through.
There, where Grace Shepard's Explorer had once been secreted, was a blue Lincoln sedan.
A ladder to the loft was to the right of the car. I waited and listened, then cat-footed across to the front of the barn. I put an eye to the crack between the big double doors. The yard between the house and barn was empty. I turned back and went up the ladder.
There was still some baled hay in the loft, left over
from last summer. I went to the loft door. There was a narrow mattress on the floor a yard back from the door. The door was slightly ajar, just as it had been when last I'd looked at it. Now I saw why: a new hook and eye held it that way. I looked through the opening and had a perfect view of the yard and the front of the house. I remembered the uneasy feeling I'd had when I'd last been down in that yard and now knew why I'd had it. Someone had been watching me from this very spot. Possibly over the sights of a rifle.
Suddenly the door of the house opened and Rimini and a man I recognized as Graham came out and walked toward the barn. I didn't hesitate, but trotted back to the ladder, climbed down, and went back out through the tack room. When I thought the two men were near the front of the barn, I sprinted across the yard to the shed, then, ducking, moved away through the scrub oak and trees until I was well out of sight. There I turned and put the glasses on the barn. No one. I turned and walked through the woods until I reached the Land Cruiser.
I was sweating and my hands were shaking, but I didn't have time for a case of nerves. I started the truck and drove to West Tisbury, then took South Road to Chilmark. When I got to Howie Trucker's driveway I stopped, put the .38 under the seat, then found Howie's telephone number and dialed it on the cell phone.
A voice I didn't recognize said, “Yeah?”
“This is J. W. Jackson. Tell Sonny that I'm coming up to the house in an old Toyota Land Cruiser. I have something to tell him, I'm alone, and I won't be armed.”
“What . . . ?”
But I'd rung off before he could finish the question. I put the phone away and turned up the driveway. I felt almost ethereal. I saw no one until I reached the grassy yard in front of the house, then I saw two men on the porch. One of them was Todd, and the other was the man who'd patted me down in the rest room of the Green Harp. Todd's hands were behind his back.
I got out of the truck, spread my arms, and walked toward them.
“That's far enough,” said Todd.
I stopped and the other man came off the porch. “Just stand still, Mr. Jackson.” I did and he patted me down just as thoroughly as he had done before. “I see you still have that pocketknife, Mr. Jackson. Just leave it be. You can put down your hands.”
I did that.
“Go inside, Mr. Jackson.”
I went up the stairs and into the house. Todd came after me. Sonny Whelen was in the living room.
“So we meet again,” he said. “The last time it was on my ground. This time it's on yours, more or less. What was it you wanted to tell me, Mr. Jackson?”
He didn't offer me a chair, so I stood.
“You're walking into an ambush,” I said. “You think that you're going to surprise and nail Tom Rimini, but it's a setup.”
Behind me, Todd made a primitive sound. Whelen studied me.
“I don't know what you're talking about,” he said.
“I'm talking about you and your men going to the place were Rimini is staying, thinking that you've got the element of surprise and the guns, and probably thinking that Rimini is a wimp to boot. I don't know how you found out where he is, but I wouldn't be surprised if it
was a call from Grace Shepard with some tale about needing to be saved from Tom Rimini's clutches.”
His pale eyes hardened. “You're an imaginative man,” he said. “Go on.”
“You know your reasons for coming here better than I do, but I'd guess they have a lot to do with the woman. I'd guess that you don't like her being down here with Rimini.”
“You keep her name out of your fucking mouth!”
White fire blazed in those eyes.
Fear ran up and down my spine, but I only nodded. “That'll be hard to do, but I'll try. I don't really know or care why you came, but I want no more bloodshed here where I live, and I can tell you for sure that if you go charging in after Rimini you won't come out alive.”
His lip curled. “You know that, do you? Todd, here, is an army in himself. And Sean only looks mild and sweet. I don't think we have to worry about a womanizing schoolteacher.”
I kept my voice level. “You may need more than two one-man armies. Your womanizing schoolteacher is an expert rifleman, and he's got an army of his own waiting for you: an exâDEA agent named Willard Graham, your old pal Pete McBride, and that thug of his, Bruno. And there's a pistol-packing woman who brought Rimini a shotgun and a 30.06 when she moved in with him. Maybe that's not enough firepower to make you careful, but it would be enough for me.”
Whelen studied me. “You told me once you didn't know where Rimini was. That was a lie. Maybe you're lying again.”
“When we talked before, I thought Rimini was just a small-time gambler who deserved a break. If I still thought that, I wouldn't be here.”
“If this bum lied once, he'll lie twice,” said Todd. “Let me have him.”
Whelen ignored him. “How do you know all this you're telling me? Why should I believe you? Maybe you're working with them.”
“Yeah,” said Todd.
“A cop saw Graham come off the ferry in a blue Lincoln. I saw McBride in a car like that when I was talking with Rimini's wife just after I talked with you. Two and two equals four. I didn't know whether McBride was working for you or for Rimini or for himself, but just now I scouted the farm where Rimini's staying. Rimini's car and the woman's Explorer are parked in front of the house, right where you'd expect them to be. But the Lincoln is in the barn, out of sight. Upstairs in the loft, a door has been fastened open just a crack. There's a mattress on the floor just inside the door. A man with a rifle can lie there and have a clean shot at anybody in the yard or in front of the house. That's where you and your two-man army would park if you were after Rimini.”
Ice replaced the fire in Whelen's eyes. I went on.
“I figure that you've been suckered, Sonny. When you and Todd and Sean climb out of your car, you won't take ten steps before the three of you are Swiss cheese. And then Rimini and the others will all plead self-defense, because the cops will find your corpses with guns in your hands. You'll be dead and the shooters will all walk, and . . .” I paused.
“And what?”
“And Pete McBride will finally get to take over in Charlestown. Graham will work with him and keep on supplying narcotics in Jamaica Plain, Rimini will get the woman and a chair at Pete's right hand, and everybody will live happily ever after. I think they've been planning
this for a while. It was going to happen somewhere, but then Rimini ran to my place and I put him in a safe house that was perfect for them. All they had to do was get you to come down, and that wasn't too hard because you like to handle personal matters yourself. You're famous for it.”
“Why that bitch,” said Whelen, almost to himself. “She set me up.” He thought for a while, then looked at me. “You know a problem I got? I got nobody to tell me when I'm being stupid. Nobody wants to tell me something they don't think I want to hear. Ain't that right, Todd?”
“It ain't for me to tell you anything, Sonny.”
“That's what I mean,” said Whelen. “I read somewhere once that every king needs a fool to keep him from being a fool himself. I got no fool. Somebody should have told me about Grace, Todd.”
“You weren't gonna get it from me, boss.”
“Would you have believed it if somebody'd told you?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Probably not.” Then he eyed me again. “I still don't get why you're talking to me about all this. We're not what you'd call friends. Especially not after Logan being stupid like he was.”
“It's simple enough. This is a nice, quiet island most of the time. I want it to get that way again and stay that way. I don't want any gangland massacres here, and I especially don't want one on the farm where Rimini is staying. That farm belongs to a friend of mine, and when he comes back later this summer, I don't want him to find the house full of bullet holes and wrapped in yellow tape. Tomorrow I'll be going down there and moving Rimini out. I'll get help from the cops, if I need to, but he'll be leaving the island one way or another. After that, none of this is my problem.”
The corner of Whelen's lip curled up. “You don't care who gets killed as long as it doesn't happen on Martha's Vineyard.”
I thought of Carla and her sons and of the sorrow they would bear if Tom Rimini died.
“I care,” I said, “but a long time ago I decided I was tired of trying to make the world a perfect place. I came down here to be a fisherman and to live a quiet life. You and your kind have made my wife a killer and given me bad dreams, so I want you and all the other people in this sorry affair to finish your business some other place. The farther away, the better.”