Inside Passage. Burt Weissbourd

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СКАЧАТЬ ignored him, hugged Billy and looked anxiously at her friend Jamie, who sat on Billy’s far side. She asked her son, “Where’s dad?”

      “We couldn’t find him anywhere.” Billy frowned. “It’s really weird.”

      “We called everyone we could think of,” Jamie explained. “Even the Bainbridge police. They can’t find him either. No one knows where he is.”

       The pieces of the day’s puzzle were coming together for her.

      She remembered stepping away from them. “Who posted my bail?” Corey asked, afraid of the answer.

      “I did.” Nick took her arm, plainly concerned. “Let’s talk privately.”

      “Wait here,” she told Billy as Nick led her outside. He took her down Jefferson to a door stoop.

      She felt like she was underwater, drowning.

      Nick used his handkerchief to clear a place for Corey to sit on the stoop. He sat beside her. “Perhaps I can help,” he offered.

      She studied Nick’s handsome face, his perfect black eyebrows, his sure black eyes. “Where’s Al? What happened?”

      “Al’s gone,” Nick said, as if talking to a slow child. “He’s not coming back.”

      “Who did this? Did you—”

      “Listen carefully, please,” Nick interrupted softly. His voice was calm. “Here’s what happened: You and Al were selling confiscated drugs that Al stole from the evidence locker. You hid them on your boat. Twenty kilos went missing. You sold ten already. Someone found out. Al ran with the money. He just disappeared. You’re going to jail.”

      “Like hell.”

      Nick squeezed her arm. His grip was like a vice. “You’re not listening. Here’s the point. I don’t want you to miss the point.” His voice was still soft. He gave her a second. She saw the veins in his neck throbbing. “I like your son. Nice boy. I’m worried about him though. A young fella without his dad.” Nick leaned in, so close she could smell his cedar-scented aftershave. “He could disappear too.”

      She slapped him hard enough to leave a handprint on his cheek.

      Expressionless, Nick tightened his grip. Then he pulled her up the stairs to the dark entryway. With his right hand, Nick freed his brass belt buckle. A thin, icepick-like instrument was attached to the buckle, housed under his belt. In one fluid motion, Nick had the pick through her lower jaw, piercing the roof of her mouth.

      Corey gasped. She stood on her tiptoes, head back, leaning against the brick wall. Blood was pooling in her mouth. The way the muscle in his jaw was working, she thought he might kill her.

      “Remember this,” he went on, his voice raspy and cold. Her toes hurt, and she could feel the pick working its way deeper. “Tomorrow. During your trial. When you’re in prison. Remember this one thing.” He raised the pick, like punctuation—if she came off her toes, it would impale her brain—then he spoke into her ear, enunciating each word. “You plead out. You do your time. You cross me…you say one word…I’ll kill your boy. Sure as sunrise.”

      Nick slid the pick out. He stepped into a shadow, then he was gone. She huddled in the corner where the door met the brick wall. She held her arms tightly, trying to stop shaking. Then she was on her knees, biting down on her knuckle, tears running down her cheeks. Blood trickled from the corner of her mouth.

      Corey held her arms that same way now, watching Lester drive his Mercedes up her steep dirt drive.

      At 11:30 p.m. she was back in the same worn leather chair. Her neck was tight, like a coiled spring, and her muscles, even her bones, ached. If she tried to talk about Billy now, who knows what could come out of her mouth. So she told the doctor that she would talk about Billy next time, since she hoped to see him for the first time later that day. He said that was fine and that he hoped her visit would go well. He was nice about it, and she wanted to offer something. So Corey told him, truthfully, that she loved her son and that she had let him down. She had to fix that, she explained. She didn’t tell him that Billy had missed their first meeting. Nor that she planned to find him this afternoon for an unauthorized visit. It bothered her that she was deceiving this man, though she wasn’t sure why.

      Corey glanced at the quiet doctor. He was back in her file, puzzled, trying to figure who knows what.

      “So you were arrested for smuggling marijuana once before,” he eventually noted.

      She put on her game face. “That’s not right. I was nineteen years old. I had this great souped-up wooden cruiser. It was easy to bring a little bit down from Canada. Make some extra money. We’re talking hundreds of dollars here. That’s not smuggling. That’s a hobby.”

      “I see.”

      He didn’t, though, she could tell. “All I got was a warning, and I had to do community service.”

      “But then they found…what…ten kilos on your boat?”

      “A set-up. Seventeen years later. I hadn’t sold dope in years. For christsakes, I was living with a customs agent.”

      “A customs agent?”

      “Is there an echo in here?”

      “Tell me about that.”

      “Years ago he worked Roche Harbor. I used to stop there. I was just twenty-one. We both had family from Greece. One thing led to another. Then he got moved to L.A. Seven months later Billy was born. When I told him about his son, he was angry at me for having the baby. He didn’t want the responsibility. I told him that Billy was my responsibility, that I expected him to stay in L.A. Maybe three years ago, Al shows up again. He had grown up. We got together. Billy had just turned twelve.” And for almost a year, they tried to be a family. They had done all right too. Billy, especially.

      “Where is Al now?” he asked.

      “He disappeared the morning I was busted.”

      “Just took off?”

      Dead. Nick Season’s inhuman work. She hadn’t thought about it when Al told her Nick owed him money. She didn’t ask questions when Al said it was for some favor he had done years ago. It never occurred to her that Al, a small fish in any big pond, was about to brace a great white shark. Corey looked over at Dr. Stein. He was waiting, not in any kind of hurry. She didn’t think she ever really loved Al, but he was Billy’s dad. “I guess so,” was all she could think to say.

      “Was Al selling marijuana?”

      “Al? Al Sisinis?” she asked. But before he could answer, she said, “No.”

      He was back in the file. “It says here that the marijuana they found on your boat was from an evidence locker at Customs.”

      “That doesn’t mean Al was selling it.”

      He looked up. “Did you keep marijuana on your boat?”

      “Okay, we kept some dope on the boat—never more than an ounce—for personal use. And maybe Al was skimming off a bust СКАЧАТЬ