Джеймс Паттерсон - The Inn

“My plan for right now is to try to stop this train before it leaves the station,” I said, watching Dr. Mayburn. Nick followed my glance. I was surprised he hadn’t caught on to the danger already, but once he did, he sat bolt upright. Dr. Mayburn had risen out of his seat and seemed on the edge of making a bad decision about the loud, annoying group at the end of the bar. He took a steak knife from a place setting on the counter and held it by his side, moving the blade up and down.

“I wouldn’t do it, friend,” Nick said, sipping his drink. Dr. Mayburn was shaking with rage as he turned to us.

“Do what?” he snapped.

“It’s not worth it,” Nick said. “They’re just loud losers. Ignore them.”

Mayburn was walking toward them even before Nick finished speaking. Nick and I rounded the bar to intervene just as Dr. Mayburn thrust himself into the group, brandishing the knife at the small, lean man, whose expression was a mixture of surprise and delight.

“I’ve had enough,” Mayburn said, sneering. “I’ve had enough of you and your filth. You remorseless … cowardly … ” His rage was making it impossible for him to find the right words. “Having another baby, are you? You should be ashamed of yourself!”

Nick and I went in to pull Mayburn back but we were stopped by the thick arm of one of the men in the group; it came down in front of us like a tollbooth barrier. Someone shoved Mayburn in the back, almost toppling him, but he got his balance and flailed around with the knife, inches from bewildered faces.

“What you gonna do, you old prick?”

“Go for it, bitch. Let’s see what you’ve got!”

The men had the knife out of Mayburn’s withered grip before he even realized it. They started pushing him around like a child. Nick glanced at me, and I could almost feel his body engage, harden, go into fight mode. A switch flipped, and the machine was unleashed.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

NICK GRABBED THE arm blocking him and yanked it down, then used the momentum to drag the big guy to the floor and sink a knee into his ribs as he went. I heard bones crunch. I thought about the gun in my pocket but grabbed the wrist of the guy with the knife instead and palmed him in the face with my other hand; the shock of the blow caused him to drop the knife. I slid it to the side with my foot, pushed Mayburn out of harm’s way, grabbed one of the losers by his flannel shirt, and threw him into the bar, knocking stools over. Nick and I backed the remaining trio into the corner by the men’s room.

“He came at us, the asshole!” The shrimpy guy gestured at Mayburn while keeping an eye on Nick, who stepped over the big guy he’d winded like he was a deer shot down in the woods. “We’re just trying to have a party here!”

“The party’s moving on.” I pointed to the doors to the parking lot. “Better catch the bus before it leaves.”

The little guy had a chest full of swirly tattoos peeking through his sweat-stained shirt. There were rosy red sores around his throat from a cheap razor. His friends seemed happy to leave, edging toward the door, but it was the shrimp’s party and he wasn’t giving up without a tantrum. He grabbed a glass from the table behind him and threw it at me.

I wasn’t ready for that and I flinched, but Nick caught the glass an inch from my nose and then smashed it on the countertop, leaving a jagged edge to fight with. I imagined myself doing the same thing but ending up with a fistful of useless shards. Nick didn’t even have to brandish the weapon. The big guy dragged himself up, and the party of losers walked out. There was a promise in the shrimp’s eyes as he glanced back over his shoulder at Mayburn.

The doctor was clutching his chest and gasping as he went to the bar. I helped him onto a stool while Nick went to smooth things over with the bartender before she called the cops.

Mayburn was not a fighting man. His face and neck were flushed, and his hands were shaking. I felt him examining my face.

“Don’t I know you?” Mayburn asked.

“Nope,” I said.

“You sure?”

“I think I’d remember a crazy old-timer who goes around waving knives at punks in bars,” I said. I took the stool beside him, showing him only my profile. “You know that guy, do you?”

“That small one. That’s Rick Craft.”

“Who’s Rick Craft?”

“Google it,” he said, too tired to explain.

I took out my phone as Mayburn recovered. The story I read from the Gloucester Chronicle , the newspaper Susan worked for, made the hairs on my neck stand up.

“‘Two girls, ages three and five, were taken to Lawrence General Hospital in North Andover for suspected poisoning,’” I read. “‘They were pronounced dead on arrival.’”

“They weren’t poisoned,” Mayburn said. “They were Craft’s kids. He’s a long-term addict. Rick and his wife got high and passed out. Left a bunch of pills on the table. The girls took one each, thinking they were candy.”

Nick returned to my side as Mayburn collected himself.

“I’m the medical examiner at Lawrence,” Mayburn said, something I knew but Nick didn’t. “I was there when the girls were brought in. The pills they took were loaded with fentanyl. It’s fifty times more potent than heroin. They never had a chance.”

“Jesus,” I said.

“That bastard”—Mayburn jerked a thumb at the door through which Craft and his cronies had left—“did just ninety days in prison. Pleaded to child endangerment. Ninety days . Can you believe that? I saw the pictures from his house. There were needles all over the floor. He gets child endangerment? It should have been murder.”

Mayburn wiped his face with his hand. I now understood his distress at Craft’s claims that he and his wife were trying for another child. I felt the rage rising fiery and hard, like a heated steel ball stuck in my throat.

“The drugs even looked like candy,” Mayburn said almost to himself, staring into his glass, defeated. “The capsules were bright and colorful with faces printed on them.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CLINE COULDN’T UNDERSTAND it. Gloucester was crawling with seafood. Every morning he suited up head to toe in Nike and ran along the empty gray beach, and everywhere there were crab, lobster, and tuna boats returning from predawn runs. He saw the slippery black heads and flippers in the boats’ wake, seals that trailed the vessels for scraps and throwbacks. And yet despite that, there was only this one sushi place in town, and it was a dump.

He sat at the windows of the restaurant with his men, gazing at the fading light on the water, his nose wrinkling at the smell from the kitchen. Unchanged industrial fryers, the tang of tartar sauce and lemon. The wine, at least, was passable. He’d certainly been less comfortable than this for much longer in his life.

Attempting to spread the business in the north, Cline had done all he could to make himself comfortable in seaside Shitsville until he could get boys on every corner, a morgue full of bodies, a police force under his thumb, and a steady population of clients buying his product. As soon as Cline was satisfied, he would be out of here, taking the virus north to cities that better suited his tastes. He had his eye on Portland next. There was great sushi in Portland.

Town by town, higher and higher, Cline planned to spread his business. He was building a franchise. He established control of a town, trained his managers, handed over the reins, and then moved on. Gloucester was a prize Cline had wanted for quite a while. It was untouched territory. Terra nullius . A couple of times in Boston, Cline had had to squash local competition and deal with the problems they’d left behind. Resentful cops who were impossible to bend. Burned politicians and judges. Old junkies with high tolerances who couldn’t be fed economical, low-percentage product. But Gloucester would be Cline’s jewel. His chance to establish things just the way he liked. He’d thought about opening a sushi place here, just to make it tolerable.