Hell Bent Page 3

  “Sit down, Doug,” I said.

  He nodded. “Right. Sorry.”

  “So how did your conversation with this Delaney guy end?”

  Doug smiled. “I told him he’d be hearing from my lawyer, and I slammed down the phone.”

  “When was this?”

  “When did I call you for this appointment? A week ago?”

  I nodded.

  “Then. I hung up with him and called you.”

  “And you haven’t heard anything from AA Movers since then?”

  “No. Nothing.”

  “I’m sure you won’t,” I said. I leaned back in my chair, looked at Doug, and shook my head.

  “What?” he said. “You won’t take my case?”

  “Of course I’ll take your case,” I said. “I love your case.”

  “You think we can win?”

  “I didn’t say that,” I said. “I just love it when I’m clear on who are the good guys and who are the villains. That happens less often than you might think in my profession.” I paused. “You’ve told me the absolute truth of this, I hope.”

  He nodded. “Absolutely.”

  “You didn’t sign any waiver about the antiques, didn’t even agree orally that they were absolved of risk?”

  “No. The subject never came up.”

  “You signed a contract agreeing to the sixty-cents insurance, though.”

  “Yes. Well, Mary did. Sixty cents per pound per article liability. There were other options on the contract, but Delaney just told her to initial that one, and she did.”

  “Too bad.”

  “You mean that’s all we can collect?”

  “Didn’t say that. You’ve got to—”

  At that moment Julie knocked on the door and then opened it. She put a sheet of paper on my desk, smiled at Doug, and said, “Can I get you something? More water?”

  “I’m good,” said Doug. “Thank you.”

  “Me, too,” I said.

  Julie smiled and left, easing the door shut behind her.

  I glanced at the printout she had brought in, then said, “I was saying, it would’ve been better if Mary hadn’t signed off on the sixty cents, but if it’s true that they hire roofers off the street, pay them under the table, use the wrong size vans, lay the paintings out on the lawn, all that, we’ve got a lot going for us. You’ve got to do some due diligence, though, okay?”

  “Sure. What?”

  “I want good photos of the damaged items,” I said. “You might want to hire somebody to do that for you, make sure they show the gouges and punctures and scratches and whatever clearly. And if you’ve got any before photos, showing what the damaged stuff looked like before the move, that would be great.” I looked at him. “Do you?”

  He nodded. “We photographed everything for our homeowner’s insurance. Don’t know if I can find the negatives, but I’m sure my insurance agency has the prints.”

  “You should talk with them, too,” I said. “Your homeowner’s policy might give you some coverage.”

  “I’ll check it out.”

  “I also want two estimates for the cost of repairing all your stuff,” I said. “They’ve got to be reputable outfits. I also want two estimates from antique and art experts on the market value of all those items, both as is, with the damage, and as they would be if they hadn’t been damaged. Check around, make sure these are well-established people. Tell them what you’re doing, what it’s for, make sure they’d be willing to testify in court, if it ever came to that, which is unlikely. Don’t quibble about paying them. Okay?”

  “Unlikely why?”

  “Because the last thing your movers’ll want is a court case. They’ll want to settle.”

  “Sure. Publicity. Sounds good.”

  “I assume somebody came to your house, looked at everything, when they gave Mary the estimate.”

  He nodded. “That Delaney fellow himself. He had a clipboard and some kind of clicker he used to total up the estimated weight, she said. He was such a nice, personable young man, she said.”

  “And he didn’t make a list of damaged items.”

  “There were no damaged items,” said Doug. “They’re the ones who caused the damage.”

  “Good.” I looked at the sheet Julie had brought in. “AA Movers,” I said. “A Massachusetts corporation, incorporated in August of 2002. Office on Clark Street in Lowell. Another office on Outlook Drive in Nashua, New Hampshire. President and CEO, Nicholas Delaney.” I arched my eyebrows at Doug.

  “That’s them,” he said.

  “You get me everything I asked for,” I said. “I’ll take it from there. You got any questions?”

  Doug Epping shrugged. “Just one, I guess. You think we can win?”

  “I never promise anything like that. But I wouldn’t take the case if I didn’t think we had a good shot.”

  He smiled. “Good enough for me.”

  I stood up, and he did, too. I steered him out the door into the reception area. “Julie has some paperwork for you,” I said. “Soon as you get everything I asked for, let me know, we’ll get together again, okay?”

  “Sure. Meanwhile …”

  “Meanwhile,” I said, “I’ll put them on notice, write them an official-type lawyer letter, try to find out who their lawyer is, have a conversation with him, see if he might want to have a talk with Mr. Delaney, make things easier for all of us.”

  “Sounds good,” said Doug.

  “You feeling better?” I said.

  He smiled and shrugged. “Sure.”

  “No more talk about murder, okay?”

  “Arson, maybe,” he said.

  “I’m serious,” I said. “Jesus.”

  “Sorry,” he said. “Just kidding.”

  We shook hands, and Doug left. I turned to head back into my office.

  “Hey, Brady?” said Julie.

  “What’s up?” I said.

  She waved a piece of paper at me. “Alex’s message.”

  I took the paper from Julie, went back into my office, sat at my desk, and looked at it. Julie had written: “Ms. Shaw called. It’s about her brother. Call her cell.” She’d written down a phone number.

  I leaned back in my chair and closed my eyes. I remembered how the previous night Alex and I, with Henry’s help on the crusts, had sat at the picnic table in my back yard and polished off a large pizza and a bottle of chianti. Alex had got me talking about Evie, and I’d finally told her that when she left for California, Evie had urged me to live my life, by which she meant I should feel free to “see other people,” as she put it. I told Alex how thus far I’d had no particular desire to see other people and how, in spite of what Evie said, I did not feel very free. I still felt committed, probably because I still loved her, although it might’ve just been out of habit or inertia, I hadn’t really analyzed it. I was pretty sure that Evie didn’t feel committed to me and didn’t want me to feel committed to her.

  It was complicated, I told Alex.

  All the time I talked to her about Evie, Alex watched me solemnly, her eyes holding mine, and I couldn’t help remembering how she used to look at me out of her big round glasses, and how sexy I used to think she was … and, I admitted, how sexy she still was, even with contact lenses instead of glasses.

  Between the Rebel Yell and the wine, Alex and I both ended up a little drunk, so I brewed a big pot of coffee and we moved into the living room. Alex tucked her legs under her and sat in the corner of the sofa, and I sat in the easy chair across from her. We sipped from big mugs of coffee and our conversation shifted to the old days—our old days—how we met when she was a reporter chasing me for a story she was working on, the years we’d been together, and how we finally split. I remembered having the distinct impression at one point—a certain way that Alex looked at me out of the tops of her eyes with a little half smile playing around the corners of her mouth—that if I’d asked, she would have agreed to spend the night, and I admitted to myself that I found the idea pow
erfully tempting.

  After a while we decided she was sober enough to drive, so I walked with her across the Common to the Park Street T station so she could take the train to Alewife, where she’d left her car.

  At the top of the stairs she turned and hugged me close against her, thanked me for agreeing to help her brother, said it was really nice to see me, touched my cheek with her fingertips, kissed the side of my throat, then turned and walked quickly down into the subway station.

  When I got back home, I wanted desperately to call Evie.

  But I didn’t. That was our deal. She might call me, but she didn’t want me to call her. She had to focus on her father. She didn’t want to feel torn. She didn’t want to miss me, miss our home, miss our life together.

  I guess I understood. But there were times when it didn’t seem fair.

  THREE

  I pulled into the Rib ‘n’ Fin in Acton a few minutes after seven on Saturday night. It had rained all day, but in the afternoon a sharp northerly wind blew the clouds away, and now a skyful of stars peppered the October heavens. Black puddles glittered on the pavement in the parking area. I guessed they’d be skimmed with ice in the morning.

  The restaurant was a giant A-frame with lots of glass and a wide deck all around. In the Route 2A strip mall, it looked like an orphaned ski lodge. Inside, it was Saturday night and just about all the tables were occupied. Young families with children, mostly. A few couples. The Rib ‘n’ Fin was a local chain. New ones kept popping up like toadstools in the Boston suburbs. Blond pine paneling, tables and chairs to match, booths upholstered in rust-colored vinyl. Soup or salad, marinated steak tips, fries or baked, vegetable of the day, all for fourteen dollars. Many of the fish dishes were cheaper than that. The waitresses bustled around in their short black uniform skirts and black tights and white T-shirts with the big cartoonish red lobster on the back.

  I stood on my tiptoes and spotted a hand waving at me from a booth against the back wall.

  I weaved my way among the tables. Alex was sitting across from a bulky man about my age. He had an unkempt reddish beard and thinning hair. He was peering at a menu, and he did not look up at me.

  I slid in beside Alex. She angled her cheek to me for a kiss, which I gave her, quickly and chastely. “Gussie,” she said to the guy sitting across from us, “this is Brady.”

  “How’re you doing?” I said to Gus. I held my hand across the table to him.

  He put down his menu, nodded at me without smiling, then took my right hand with his left one, and we shook awkwardly. I noticed that he’d dropped his right hand into his lap, and I remembered that he didn’t have a right hand.

  “So you’re the old boyfriend,” he said.

  I nodded.

  “She dumped you.”

  “She did,” I said. “I deserved it. My loss.”

  “Fucking around on her, were you?”

  I glanced at Alex beside me. She was frowning at her menu.

  “It was more complicated than that,” I said.

  “She can be a bitch,” he said.

  I studied his face and saw no hint of humor or irony in it. “It was me,” I said. “Alex was never a bitch.”

  “Shall we have a drink?” said Alex. “Gussie? Want something?”

  “Nobody calls me Gussie anymore,” he said. “I can’t drink. You know that.”

  “I meant a Coke or something?”

  “If the damn waitress ever comes back,” he said.

  “To me you’re Gussie,” said Alex. “Always will be. Deal with it.”

  He frowned at her for a moment, then shrugged and looked at me. “She always was a bully. I’m not sure what this is all about, are you?”

  “What?” I said.

  “This.” He waved his hand around the restaurant. “This, I don’t know, reunion? Me getting to meet you finally, now that your relationship’s over with.”

  “I just thought you guys would like each other,” said Alex. “I like both of you, so …”

  I arched my eyebrows at her. She gave me a little roll of her eyes that asked me to just go with her flow.

  Gus pointed his finger at me. “You’re not back together again, are you?”

  I smiled. “No. Alex and I are old friends. We’ve been out of touch for a few years.”

  “So what’s the point? Why are we here, us three?”

  I assumed that Alex would remind him that I was the lawyer who’d agreed to help him with his divorce. That was the point. That was why she’d called on Friday and asked me to meet her and Gus at the Rib ‘n’ Fin on 2A in Acton tonight.

  Instead, she said, “Don’t be hostile, okay? Let’s just have a nice dinner.”

  “I wasn’t being hostile,” he said. “I just like to know what you’ve got up your sleeve.”

  “What makes you think—”

  “Everybody’s got something up their sleeve,” he said.

  “Come on, Gussie,” said Alex. “Lighten up.”

  “Sure,” he said. “That’s my problem, all right. Too heavy all the time. All I’ve got up my sleeve is a stump.” He smiled quickly. “You’re right. Sorry.”

  At that moment a waitress appeared at our table. Alex ordered a Coke, and so did Gus. I asked for a mug of coffee.

  When the waitress left we picked up our menus—Gus held his awkwardly in his left hand—and debated whether we should order appetizers. We decided we wouldn’t.

  The waitress returned with our drinks, took our orders—the rib eye medium-rare with a baked potato for me, the shrimp scampi with French fries for Gus, and the halibut with rice pilaf for Alex—and left.

  I sipped my coffee. Gus was sitting across from me with his arms folded across his chest, looking up at the ceiling, avoiding both Alex and me. He was wearing a long-sleeved flannel shirt. The cuff on the end of his right sleeve was empty.

  Beside me, Alex was watching her brother. I could almost feel the tenseness in her neck and shoulders.

  I leaned my shoulder against hers. “Henry sends his love,” I said. “He says thanks for all the pizza crusts.”

  She turned to look at me. “Dear old Henry,” she said. She looked at Gus. “Brady has a dog named Henry David Thoreau. He’s a darling.”

  Gus looked at her and nodded. “A dog. Nice.”

  “He’s a Brittany,” she said. “Isn’t that right, Brady?” She turned to look at me. Her eyes seemed to be pleading with me.

  “Right,” I said. I turned to Gus. “Henry’s a Brittany. They used to be called Brittany spaniels, but now they’re officially called Brittanys. They’re not, technically, spaniels, I guess. Brittanys are pointing dogs. Great bird dogs. I don’t hunt birds. Sometimes I think I should, just so that Henry could fulfill his destiny. All dogs have something in their genes that gives meaning to their life. Retrievers have got to fetch ducks. Terriers need to dig rats out of holes. Pit bulls need to rip your throat out. Like that.” I smiled.

  Gus didn’t.

  I shrugged. “Brittanys are bird dogs. They’re not meant to lie around a house in the city eating pizza crusts.”

  I was rambling around filling the silence, boring Gus, I was certain. I was watching him as I talked. He sat there solid and unmoving, holding himself together with his two big arms crossed over his chest. His jaw muscles were bulging and his eyes were fixed on some place over Alex’s head, and I had the powerful impression that he was struggling against the urge to scream.

  We fell into a silence, and then Gus lowered his eyes and said, “That’s interesting. About the dogs, I mean. People are like that, don’t you think? Destined to do something? Genetically programmed? Like me. I was made to take pictures. And you, you’re—” He frowned at me. His eyes had softened, and I sensed that for some reason, he had relaxed a little, dropped his guard. “What are you, anyway? What do you do?”

  “I’m a lawyer,” I said.

  “A lawyer.” He nodded. “So do you feel like you’ve got the law in your DNA? You think this is what you we
re born for?”

  “My old man was a lawyer,” I said, “and I guess that’s why I became one. I think what I was born for, my destiny, is trout fishing. Fishing is what’s in my blood. Not the law. The lawyer in me was made, not born. It was a choice. I don’t think I had any choice about fishing.”

  Gus nodded. “You are what you are,” he said, “and there’s no getting away from it.” He put his right elbow on the table and folded back the cuff. Where his hand and wrist should have been was a stump with a flesh-colored plastic cap over the end of it. “My new destiny,” he said. “This is how I’m made now.”

  “You’re a photojournalist,” said Alex.

  “Yeah,” he said, “like the marathon runner I knew over there who got both of his legs blown off. You saying he’s still a runner?”

  “You could still take pictures,” she said softly.

  “No,” he said, “I really couldn’t. My group keeps reminding me I’ve got to accept who I am now, which is to say a guy with one hand, and it’s nothing but frustrating when people like you keep pretending that I’m still what I used to be.”

  Alex blew out a breath and leaned back in the booth. “People like me,” she muttered. “I’m sorry. Jesus. I’m your sister.”

  “Everybody’s sorry,” Gus said. “It’s no fucking help, people being sorry. It doesn’t make the pain go away.” He looked at me. “My hand hurts all the time. Which is quite a trick, since I don’t even have a hand.”

  “Phantom pain?” I said.

  “Phantom like hell,” he said. “It’s real, believe me.”

  We lapsed into silence. I sipped my coffee. Alex twirled her glass of Coke around on her place mat. Gus looked down at the table.

  A few minutes later our waitress arrived with our meals. We began to eat, and after a minute, Gus said, “I almost ordered a T-bone. What a joke, huh?”