Tom Piccirilli - The Last Kind Words

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.

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, Terry, we’ve got a good day ahead of us. A damn good day. Tight cooze and big coin . He’d chuck me under the chin and give a wink. His hair would be mussed from a night of tossing and the hole in his skull would be on display, black and beckoning. You with me?

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 thing in my room.

I parked up the road and watched the house. It was two-storied and gabled, painted a charming yellow.

The dream had begun to wear away. It felt distant and unknowable. I didn’t know why I was here. I was trying to reconnect to something I didn’t want to be connected to in the first place. But the only way to learn what might have been going through Collie’s mind, if he had smoked Becky, was to start with her. I wanted to look at home photos. I wanted to get a sense of her. I didn’t know what I wanted to do.

“Jesus, what the fuck?”

I started my car. I felt like an idiot. I was about to pull away, when the mother came out of the house, followed by the father. Their names were in the file but I didn’t feel the need to check. They were both professionals, dressed in proper business suits, holding briefcases. He had oned рowe a power tie and she wore a skirt that emphasized her lovely legs. He was eating a cruller and trying not to get any sugar on his lapel. She sipped coffee. He finished in three bites and popped the code into the garage keypad. The door slid up. Inside was a two-year-old Lexus. The Clarkes said a few words to each other and climbed into the car together. She was behind the wheel. The train station was ten minutes away. They probably both worked on Wall Street within a block of each other. They’d take the LIRR into the city and sit side by side doing the Times crossword puzzle or double-checking yesterday’s stock figures.

The front door slammed again. A nine- or ten-year-old girl carrying a backpack hopped off the tile stoop, followed by her teenage sister. Sixteen or seventeen and tall, nearly six foot. They walked over to the car and spoke to their parents but didn’t get in. Mom and Dad waved and pulled out. The garage door closed. The sisters started walking together toward the corner bus stop. The teenager had no book bag, which made me wonder if she was a troublemaker at school, sitting in the last row, popping gum and sneering. Her little sister ran ahead, and she put an extra step in her stride. They both had black hair, shoulder length when it wasn’t splayed and hooked by the breeze.

The Clarkes had a first-rate security system. I had the right tools for the job but it would take me a while to trip the system. It looked like I wouldn’t need them. The back door was ajar.

Even after losing one daughter, they left the door open. She might’ve been killed in a park but they should’ve learned something about safety precautions. I shook my head.

I moved fast through the house. For the first time in my life I felt like an intruder. Scoring a place was one thing, but nosing around, being a snoop, hunting through the belongings of the dead, it somehow felt more corrupt.

I hit the master bedroom. Clarke had a.45 in his nightstand drawer. It was loaded. I thought that was a good thing. He might not have time to unlock the piece from a safety box and snap in the clip if someone tried to take his other daughters from him. My respect for Mr. Clarke went up a hair, even if he was a stupid bastard for leaving the door open.

There were three other bedrooms in the home. One was clearly the little girl’s. It looked like a holdover nursery. There were block letters around the mirror, spelling out SHARON. Pink walls and white bookcases full of dolls. But she was getting old enough to assert herself. There were posters of the latest movie stars and a couple of boy bands. Beside her bed was a shelf full of paperbacks. She liked those ’tween vampire romances that I used to read to Dale. I recognized several of the titles.

Branching off from the end of the hall were the other two bedrooms. They were damn near identical. I couldn’t tell which was Rebecca’s and which was the other sister’s. The parents not only kept Becky’s room the same, they still dusted and sprayed air freshener.