North Harbor Read online

He’d fix the bike. Later.

  Right now he had more important things to think about.

  Katie lived with her father in a double-wide trailer on a dirt lane off Airport Road in Stonington. This was the part of Stonington that the tourists never saw. And never wanted to.

  Jake drove in carefully, mindful of the ruts.

  “Better stop here,” she told him, when they were one hundred feet from the trailer. “My dad goes to bed early and I don’t want to wake him.” She touched his cheek. Her hand was very warm. “I had a nice night, Jake. Thank you.” Then she leaned forward and gave him a kiss that would keep him smiling for hours. A warm kiss, with a little tongue and lots of promise.

  Then she was gone, with the door to the trailer closing behind her, leaving Jacob a little stunned and thoroughly smitten.

  “Hot damn!” he muttered. He started his bike, slid it into low gear and, as quietly as possible, drove back to Airport Road.

  ______________

  Katie walked into the dimly lit kitchen. She could hear her father snoring softly in the master bedroom. She slipped into her tiny bedroom and carefully shut the door. Then she reached into her purse and withdrew one of the five glassine bags of Dragon – heroin laced with fentanyl – that LeBlanc had given her. She carefully tore it open, then packed the contents into a clay pipe. Then she lay on the bed with the lights off, put on some quiet, lonely, Spanish guitar music and lit the pipe.

  She drew in a deep lungful of the lovely smoke, and released it very slowly. The music seemed written just for her, deliciously melancholy. She took in another breath, then another. Within minutes a wave of warm ecstasy rolled through her body, starting in her belly and spreading north and south. It moved slowly at first, but then, as the fentanyl kicked in, with deceptive speed. She felt it penetrate her core like a gentle lover, deeper and deeper and all-consuming. She sighed deeply and groaned in pleasure. The crest of molten ecstasy built higher and higher, then higher again, like a rogue wave towering over a tiny sloop in the far reaches of the ocean.

  She had been craving this all day.

  Her head sank back and her entire body softened. As she drifted off, a corner of her mind thought briefly of Jake. She genuinely had a wonderful time with him, which was a surprise because she hadn’t expected to like him. But the thought was fleeting, ethereal. It detached and spun off into the roiling spume of the chemical tsunami that sped towards her.

  The tsunami reached her brain, enveloping it. Devouring it.

  She sank into delicious oblivion.

  Nothing else mattered. Just this.

  The Nothing.

  ______________

  Jake drove home slowly, reliving the taste of her kiss and the feel of her lips on his, blissfully unaware that he was the end result of a million years of human evolution, which assured he would fall head over heels with the first attractive female who showed sexual interest in him.

  He rode west out Airport Road, turned south on Rte. 15 and then west again on Oceanville Road, which took him all the way into North Harbor. He killed the engine halfway down the last little hill leading to their house and rolled the bike silently into the driveway. He didn’t have a chain to lock it up. Have to get one tomorrow.

  Quietly, he crept into the dark house and up the stairs to the room he shared with Calvin. Calvin was still awake, reading some book in a foreign language.

  “Somebody give you a ride home on a motorcycle tonight? Thought I heard one just before you came in.”

  Jacob smothered a grin. “Nope. That was me, on my new bike.”

  “What!” his brother exclaimed in a whisper “You got a motorcycle! Oh, God, Mom’s gonna have a cow!”

  “Shows you how little you know,” Jacob teased. “Dad used to have one when they first met. Mom told me once they went everywhere on it.”

  Calvin crinkled his nose. “Mom and Dad riding around on a motorcycle? Hard to believe.”

  “Believe it, brother.” Jacob undressed and slipped into his bed.

  A grimace flickered across Calvin’s face. “Jacob, I should have told you, I had a fight yesterday with Little Guy and the LaPierre brothers. Gave Guy a bloody nose and knocked Martin into the harbor. Watch yourself today; Guy’s got a mean streak.”

  “Wish you’d told me last night,” Jacob said ruefully. “He came after me when we docked at Cadot’s, but it worked out all right in the end.” He pointed a finger at Calvin. “I don’t have to worry about Guy, but you sure do. He was really pissed, so watch yourself. And don’t turn your back on him, he’s a sucker-punching little weasel.”

  Calvin looked glum. “Yeah, I sort of figured.”

  Jacob tried for nonchalance, but couldn’t quite pull it off. “Met a girl tonight.”

  Calvin grinned wickedly. “Blind girl, maybe? Can’t see your ugly puss?”

  Jacob made a rude gesture and Calvin laughed. “How’d you meet her?”

  ‘Well-l-l-l, either she immediately recognized what an incredible stud I am, or she just needed a ride home,” Jacob grinned.

  “Is she nice?”

  Jacob considered it. Katie was sexy as hell, and a little sad. But nice? “Yeah, I think so.”

  “Gonna try to see her again?” Calvin asked, grinning. It was fun to see his older brother gobsmacked.

  Jacob grinned back. “Absolutely.”

  They talked inconsequentially for a few more minutes, then crawled into their beds and doused the lights, Calvin still reading by the light of his Kindle and Jacob staring at the ceiling, reliving his evening with Katie. Then Calvin put down the Kindle and propped his head up on one elbow.

  “Hey, did you know that Pépé fought in Vietnam, at the battle of Khe San?”

  Jacob rolled over to look at him. “Pépé? Mom told me he had been in the Marines, but I didn’t know he was in any big battle. What was Khe San?”

  Calvin, who had looked up the battle once he was home, told his brother all about it. The forward outpost, being surrounded, the shelling and the rushed attacks, the desperate hand-to-hand fighting. All of it. “Then today when we were coming back with the body, I heard Pépé and Dad talking about it. Dad said something like, ‘Well, I guess you do know how to use the shotgun.’”

  Jacob sat up in his bed. “Wait! Back up! What body? And why did Pépé have his shotgun?”

  Calvin looked at him, thinking furiously. That man, Mr. Honeycutt, had told them not to tell anyone about it, but this was Jacob! His brother. Family.

  He took a deep breath. “This morning I was out kayaking with Gabrielle and we found a body washed up on Enchanted Island,” he told his brother solemnly. “But you’ve got to keep this quiet. I promised the guy from the DEA.”

  DEA? Jacob wondered. “Of course I will,” he said. “So tell me already!”

  Calvin did. All of it.

  Chapter 20

  Friday

  Calvin woke up at 5 a.m. sharp. To his surprise, Jacob got up at the same time and followed him downstairs to the kitchen. Calvin put on the coffee while Jacob washed up in the tiny bathroom. Jacob came out ten minutes later, drying his face with a towel.

  “Forgot to shave, champ,” Calvin told him.

  “Growing a beard,” Jacob grunted, making himself a bowl of oatmeal and pouring a tall glass of orange juice.

  “Another early day?” Calvin said in a low voice, mindful of his parents’ room above them.

  “Yep, going out to the twenty-mile line again. Mr. LeBlanc’s convinced the lobsters are coming into shore through there. Laid a bunch of traps couple of days ago.”

  “What’s it like out there?” asked Calvin, who had never been farther than a few miles offshore.

  “Big. No land in sight most of the time.” Jacob drained his juice glass. “Little eerie, to tell you the truth. Get some big ocean rollers that lift the boat really high, then just set it down again in the trough. Don’t think I’d enjoy being caught out there in a storm.” He glanced at his younger brother. “You’d love it. Really pretty.�
�

  Calvin nodded thoughtfully. Jacob stood up, put his dirty dishes in the sink, then picked up his black motorcycle helmet and put it on, trying to look casual.

  Calvin wasn’t having it. “Darth Vader on a bender,” he proclaimed.

  “Up yours!” Jacob laughed, and was out the door. A moment later there was the sound of a motorcycle starting up and revving, then the sound receded.

  ______________

  Finley sat up at 5:30 a.m., rubbing at his eyes to force the sleep out of his mind. Tonight would be a late night, but first, breakfast and make sure Jacob got to work on time. He padded down the hallway, wooden floor cold underfoot, then peeked in the boys’ room. Both beds empty, again.

  He walked downstairs to the kitchen, but there was only a note from Calvin that he was swimming to Sheep Island, and two sets of dishes in the sink.

  Danielle came down the steps wrapped in a bathrobe, her hair combed out and spilling over her shoulders.

  “Jacob has already gotten up, had breakfast and gone,” Finley said in wonder. “Two days in a row.”

  “Yes,” she nodded, “and on his new motorcycle. I heard him start it up and leave the driveway.”

  Finley frowned in annoyance. “Motorcycle? Where the hell did he get the money for a motorcycle? And who gave him permission to buy one.”

  “Well, I don’t know,” she answered a little defensively. “I saw him drive off on it, but never had a chance to ask him about it.”

  “Dammit,” Finley fumed. “I hope he had enough sense to get a helmet and some protective clothing. And insurance? Does he even have health insurance?”

  Danielle pursed her lips. “Actually, he is still on our family health plan. And before we jump down his throat, let’s at least find out what the facts are.” She started to turn away, but then turned back. “And, yes, he does have a helmet. He was wearing it as he drove out. He may be nineteen, Frank, but he’s not stupid.”

  “All nineteen-year-old boys are stupid. I was nineteen once; believe me, I know. A motorcycle! Christ, at work we must have to clean up after three motorcycle accidents a week. Dammit, what possessed him to get a motorcycle?”

  She leaned into him seductively, hands warm on the skin of his chest. “Speaking of motorcycles, I seem to recall that we had a lot of fun on yours.”

  “I never gave him permission to buy a motorcycle!” Finley sputtered, feeling the argument turn against him, and not liking it. “He’s only nineteen, for Christ’s sake!”

  “Almost twenty, old man,” she reminded him. “And if memory serves, that first time you took me on your motorcycle down that trail under a full moon, weren’t you just nineteen?” She made a look of surprise. “Why, my goodness, that made me just seventeen! And you, Frank Finley, you took my innocence and my precious virtue.” She smiled as she thought of some of their teenage make-out sessions prior to the motorcycle ride. “Well, such as it was,” she laughed.

  Despite himself, Finley had to grin. They had been dating about two months when he had purchased that motorcycle. And he certainly did not have a helmet. Her parents would have had a fit if they had known he was giving her a ride on it, so she had to sneak out of the house. He had blasted down the highway under a full moon, with Danielle sitting behind him, her arms tight around his waist. Finally, she whispered – or perhaps had hollered – that she wanted to stop. In the glow of the moonlight, Danielle had looked bewitching as she dragged him off the bike and into the woods. They’d found a little clearing, threw the blanket on the ground and tore off their clothes in record time.

  Every minute of it was burned indelibly into their memory.

  “Loss of innocence? Is that what you’re calling it? Innocence?” he asked dryly.

  She leaned into him, cheek against the skin of his chest. Truth be told, the memory of that first erotic lovemaking with nineteen-year-old Frank Finley was turning her on a little. And if she was right, it was turning him on more than a little. She closed her eyes, savoring the sensation, then sighed – Calvin would walk in the door any minute now.

  Suddenly, she laughed, a full-throated belly laugh. “Oh my God, do you remember the poison ivy?”

  “It wasn’t my fault the blanket had holes in it,” he protested, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her close. “My mind was on other things.”

  “I had the most embarrassing case of poison ivy,” she exclaimed. “Mom had to take me to Dr. Sweeney and I thought I’d die when he asked me how I got it. Dirty old man. How else could you get it there?”

  Finley shook his head. “At least you didn’t have to deal with your mother! When she saw me, she told me in no uncertain terms that they had a perfectly good, clean barn in the back of their property, and next time the two of us fell into heat we should use that, not copulate like wild animals in the bushes.”

  “She put me on birth control the next week,” Danielle said. “No big lectures, no scolding. Just said that if I was old enough to be intimate, I was old enough to take precautions.”

  “Your mother is something else. We were lucky.”

  Danielle shrugged. “She knew you’d make a good husband. She used to tell me that nothing is certain in this world, but if the two of us stayed together, we’d be happy.”

  “Of course, now we’ve got a nineteen-year-old with a motorcycle,” he reminder her, some of his former annoyance flaring up again.

  His wife grinned up at him, eyes alight with mischief. “What do you think, should we give him a blanket as a present?”

  Calvin walked in then, water dripping from his wetsuit onto the kitchen floor. He stopped when he saw his parents with their arms around each other.

  “You guys hear Jacob’s motorcycle?” he called out.

  “Why, no,” his mother answered, straight-faced. “Does he have one?”

  Then they both burst out laughing.

  Calvin looked at first one, then the other of his parents, mildly chagrined. “I’m sorry, but have I missed something?” he demanded.

  They laughed harder. They were still laughing when he stomped upstairs to change for school.

  Chapter 21

  Friday Afternoon

  Bruno Banderas met Mateo at the boat. “Be sure it’s all gassed up and everything is running smoothly. I don’t want anything to go wrong tonight.”

  Mateo nodded silently. He had already gone over the entire engine, cleaning it, tuning it and checking all the lines and hoses. But Banderas was a thorough man, and he meant well. So, he nodded.

  “And the radio? I’m sending Pablo and Arturo with you, but I want to be in contact with you at all times, understood?” The radio was a military-grade encrypted, single-sideband, frequency-jumping radio that was bought from a Navy supply contractor. Amazingly, the sale was perfectly legal. America was wonderful.

  Mateo nodded.

  Banderas thought about what else he should tell him, but then saw Mateo’s patient, bemused expression and realized there was nothing he could tell this man that he didn’t already know. “Okay, my friend, you know what to do. The ship will be at the drop-off point at 9:20 p.m. It will be full dark, with no moon and a low cloud cover.” Low clouds meant the Americans could not easily use their drones and helicopters.

  Mateo nodded.

  “Godspeed to you. No fuck-ups, eh?”

  Mateo nodded.

  ______________

  At his desk in North Harbor, Chief Corcoran contemplated how good it was to be in charge.

  So many things come to the person in charge. Title and the automatic respect that goes with it. Responsibility, of course, but with that responsibility, power.

  And with that power, opportunity.

  And with that opportunity, money.

  So much money.

  Michael Corcoran had been a police officer all his life, rising slowly, slowly to this, the lofty pinnacle of his career: Chief of Police of a small, dirt-poor, grungy town in the armpit of Maine. He was fifty-eight years old, earned a pittance for a salary and repo
rted to a Town Council made up of local businessmen whose biggest concern was how to make North Harbor more attractive to the tourists who flocked to neighboring Stonington.

  Michael Corcoran had almost no savings and he was going to die poor unless he did something.

  But what?

  Then, one summer day one year earlier, a man had delivered an envelope to his house. A thick envelope, an envelope with some heft to it. When Corcoran opened it, $100 bills spilled out, one hundred of them. Ten Thousand Dollars on his kitchen table. Ten Thousand Dollars.

  But why?

  For three days, nothing. No one came to claim the money. No one called. Corcoran could have turned the money in, but to whom? He was the Police Chief, after all. He stuffed it back in the envelope and hid the envelope under the pots and pans in the kitchen.

  Michael Corcoran may have been a small-town Police Chief, but he wasn’t an idiot. He knew there would be a phone call. And he had a pretty good idea what the phone call would be about.

  The call came on the third day. A modulated voice, smooth and unhurried. Oddly, an American voice, no trace of an accent.

  “I trust you enjoyed our little present to you, Chief Corcoran?” the voice asked.

  “Who are you?” Corcoran demanded.

  “Someone who wants to be a friend. Someone who values people who are friends to us. Someone who shows appreciation when people do small favors for us.”

  “What sort of favors?” Corcoran was wary. Wary of a trick. Wary in case it was not a trick.

  “Oh, this and that. Small favors for a man in your position.”

  “I’m listening,” Corcoran said. And he was. Intently.

  “A man will come to see you soon. With another little gift. No strings. The gift is simply to pay you for your time in listening to our…proposal.”

  “How do you know I won’t just keep the money and throw your guy in jail for attempted bribery of a police officer?” Corcoran asked, half threatening, but partially out of genuine curiosity.

  The man on the phone chuckled appreciatively. “Well, Chief, two reasons. If you do that, there will not be any more little presents. Ever. There are other police departments in Maine we can approach. And we know that your ex-wife lives in Burlington, Vermont. Such a beautiful woman. She lives in the brown house on Elm Street. Teaches at the middle school on Wilbur Lane, doesn’t she? And your two daughters! You must be very proud of them. The older one, Cynthia, am I right? She’s due to have a baby soon? That’s a very special event for any family, Chief. And the younger one, Nancy? Getting her Master’s degree in engineering at Rochester, correct? Lives in that cute little apartment on Maple Avenue, near the Mall. You are a lucky man to have daughters like those.”