The Inn Read online

  I was drawn out of my reverie by a gentle knock at the basement door. I shoved the cash and the backpack under my bed. At the top of the stairs, above the labyrinth of unpacked boxes and stacks of paint cans, ladders, and toolboxes, Susan opened the door. She hadn’t been at breakfast, but she had showered and changed and looked fresh and ready to work. She didn’t usually wear her hair up, so I had never noticed how perfect her ears were. Or maybe I had. Maybe in the fog of the past couple of years, I’d always known how beautiful Susan Solie was but had simply shut my mind to it, and all the trauma of the past few days had thrown open that door.

  “I knew you’d be down here in your dungeon,” she said, rubbing her arms. “I don’t know how you stand it. It’s freezing!”

  “It’s easier to sleep at low temperatures,” I said.

  “Come here,” she said. “I want to show you something cute.”

  I followed her to the laundry room, where she pointed out the window. Angelica was sitting on a picnic table by the edge of the woods; Vinny was in his wheelchair on the other side. Vinny was describing something, maybe a scene from his past, pantomiming throwing open a door, pointing a pistol. Angelica’s face had an unfamiliar expression—rapture and intrigue. She was actually laughing at the story.

  “Man,” I said. “Are those two interested in each other?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m glad to see her smiling. She can’t write with her right arm in a sling and her left finger broken, and she’s been totally miserable, like she’s being starved or something.” Susan grinned. “The two of them? It’s crazy,” she said, watching the couple. “But it could be great.”

  In the closeness of the laundry room, both of us leaning toward the window, I could feel Susan’s body beside mine, the warmth of her hand by my thigh. I was struck by the same feeling I’d had on the beach, as if I were enclosed in a protective sphere, sealed off from the chaos of the world. My mind was twitching with temptations. I suddenly wanted to drag her to me, squeeze her, push her against the wall. I wanted to lie in bed with her and tell her everything—how lonely I felt in the dark hours without Siobhan beside me and how guilty I felt when I looked at Susan and hope and happiness flooded through me. I wanted to let it all go and admit to Susan that I liked her and that I didn’t know what that meant. The two of us—it would be crazy. But I wanted to know if she thought it could be great. I was just about to ask her if she was still thinking about that kiss on the beach when I heard Doc Simeon clearing his throat behind us.

  “Can I have a word with you, Bill?” he asked. Susan left us, and the doctor put his hands in the pockets of his immaculately ironed slacks, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly.

  “I work for Cline,” he said.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

  “YOU …” I SHOOK my head, tried to clear my mind. “You what?”

  The old man walked past me and out onto the porch. I followed, and we sat together on the wicker chairs there, his back bowed as though under the weight of his confession.

  “I’ve been retired for eighteen years,” he said, staring down at his wrinkled hands. “That’s a long time to feel like you have no purpose. Sure, it was my decision to retire. I couldn’t keep up with all the new developments and the paperwork, and sometimes people would come to me with problems and my mind would just go blank. I’d have to look up treatments in medical journals. It wasn’t right. But I’ve had nothing to work for in my life for so long now. No dreams. I went into a real depression maybe a year back and for a long time I wasn’t able to shake it. I used to watch the clock all day just waiting for it to be a reasonable time to go to bed.”

  Vinny and Angelica had disappeared from the picnic table in the distance. The wind had risen, and the pines by the water stirred as the doctor talked.

  “Mitchell Cline and his guys approached me at the town library,” he said. He laughed a little bitterly. “I think perhaps they were prepared to threaten me. But they didn’t need to. I accepted their offer. I was happy to do it.”

  “What do you do for them?” I asked.

  “I write prescriptions for painkillers,” he said. “Though I’m retired, my DEA license is still active. That’s an identifier that the pharmacies need to distribute controlled substances, and the Drug Enforcement Administration uses it to keep an eye on narcotic prescriptions. Cline probably has plenty of physicians and pharmacists on the payroll.”

  “But who do you prescribe the pills to? Cline and his crew?”

  “No,” the doc said. “He brings me names and details. I don’t know who the people are. They’re probably stolen identities. Homeless people, maybe. I’ve never seen anyone in person. I prescribe whatever they want. Oxycodone. Vicodin. Fentanyl. Sometimes I just get a prescription pad, sign my name on every page, give it to them, and let them do the rest.”

  “You let them prescribe whatever they want?” I turned, clenched my fists, tried to resist the urge to scream. “This is why you wanted me to back off them.”

  I took a step toward the doctor, telling myself not to hurt him. I felt my resolve failing.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

  I GRABBED THE air right in front of the doctor’s face but held myself back. I growled with fury and turned away.

  “You’ve got every right to be angry with me,” he said.

  “Angry?” I snapped. “You acted like it was the people of this town you cared about when you asked me to walk away from Cline. You were just trying to save your own skin!”

  “I still think you should look at the people who go to Cline for help,” the doc said. “You don’t understand what they go through.”

  “You would know,” I said. “You’re a part of all this!”

  “I am.” He nodded. “I’m a fundamental part of Cline’s business. He and his crew take the pills they get through me and mix them and cut them with other things, then that goes into those little colorful capsules they sell.”

  The doc fell silent. I couldn’t respond. It felt as though Cline himself had reached inside me and was twisting my organs, laughing in my face. He had done more than send his guys to pepper my house with bullets, execute my people in their beds. He had been in my house the whole time. In Siobhan’s house. His evil stink lingered in the halls, billowed through the rooms.

  “Did he tell you to confess to me?”

  “No,” the doc said. “I don’t think he knows I live here. I can’t be sure. He hasn’t mentioned it, and I saw him only two days ago. I have always dealt directly with the youngest member of his crew, a boy they called Squid. He’s gone now.”

  “I can’t believe this,” I said, rubbing my eyes. I was suddenly exhausted.

  “Neither can I,” the doc said a little sadly. When I didn’t respond, he opened his hands, trying to make sense of it. “I wish I had some reason to give you for doing it. Some understandable justification. But I don’t. I’d been bored and lonely for almost two decades. I had enough money to survive comfortably but soullessly. And then someone came to me and said he’d pay me seven thousand dollars a week to sign meaningless little slips of paper. That first night, my head was filled with all kinds of dreams. I’ve been saving for a boat. I’d like to try to sail to Italy. Maybe see the Greek Isles.”

  I went to the corner of the porch and breathed slowly and evenly, trying to dissuade my body from reacting as it wanted to. I felt like punching the wall. Picking up the chair I’d been sitting in and smashing it to pieces.

  There was also a burning for violence against the doctor himself slithering like poison in my veins. He’d been dreaming of sailing around the Greek Isles while doling out the drugs that had helped kill Marni and countless others. But when I turned back to look at him, all I saw was a good, kind old man who’d done a terrible thing. The same guy who had leaped in to help a would-be assassin bleeding to death on my driveway, a man who had been a slave to his loneliness and purposelessness, just like me.

  “What’s your plan?” I asked. “You’ve told me the truth
, and you must know I can’t have you living here and doing what you’ve been doing.”

  “I’m going to leave.” He nodded. “If Cline doesn’t know I’m with you now, he’ll find out soon enough. I’ll be in danger. I’ve got plenty of money. Give me a couple of days to make arrangements, and then I’ll be out of your life.”

  He started to leave, and I turned away, not wanting to watch him go. All that I wanted to say was left unspoken, just like it had been with Marni. Another person I cared about had been stripped from me by Cline’s hand. I made a silent promise that he would be the last.

  I’d thought the doc had gone inside, but then I heard his voice behind me as I stood looking out at the water. “For what it’s worth,” he said, “I’m sorry about your friend Malone.”

  “What do you mean, you’re sorry about him?” I turned, and the old doctor looked surprised, uncertain. He shrugged a little sadly.

  “If you don’t know yet, I shouldn’t be the one to tell you,” he said. He left me standing there, my head full of questions I wasn’t sure I wanted the answers to.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT

  CLINE WAS POSSESSED by a level of rage that was so hot and wild, he felt like his brain was swelling, like his eyes were bulging from their sockets. He stood in his office looking out over the water, trying to calm himself. Below him, the gardener was just wrapping up for the day, throwing tools into the back of his truck with heavy clunking sounds. Downstairs, some of the clingy idiots drawn in by his money and power were blaring their lazy rap music. The pressure in his skull collected at the top of his spine.

  Four of his best men were in the hospital. Bones and Simbo had apparently been beaten silly by the moronic local sheriff. Cline couldn’t believe that. Unless the man had cornered his soldiers unexpectedly and sat on them, Cline didn’t know how to account for Bones’s ruptured kidneys and Simbo’s skull fracture and broken arm. Then there were Turner and Russ, who had approached a houseful of dead-beats and dropouts in the middle of the night and somehow wound up in the back of an ambulance, even though both of them were experienced killers. They’d been foiled by washouts and crazies sleeping in their beds. It was unthinkable.

  Cline tried not to let his mind linger on what he had lost on the lobster boat. The fury was making his jaw ache. Between bursts of anger, he had tiny moments of fear, the unmistakable fingers of panic flicking and stroking wires inside his brain. News of a loss this horrendous, this complete, would get around. If Cline didn’t recover quickly, someone would come for him. Cline had men, territory, respect, and he had built his business carefully, but now others might assume he was all fluff, easy prey; everything he had was lying exposed, one of his kingdom’s walls shattered.

  Cline walked down the stairs to tell the idiots in the yard to turn off their music. He was going to send them away, this little posse of sycophants Squid had brought to the house months ago who never seemed to leave. There were two girls who were always there, high-school dropouts like Squid most likely, wannabe gangsta bitches Instagramming themselves in his Jacuzzi while drinking his champagne and flashing gang signs. Cline liked having easy pussy around, but he hated their music. In Cline’s day, rap had been about something. The song they were playing as he walked toward the French doors was just a sonic squealing and the word juice whispered over and over.

  He stopped just outside the doors when he heard what the girls were discussing.

  “ … he was like nothing, man. Like some old cop dude from down Boston way. I seen the fool out here. He was the one put a plant through Cline’s windshield, yo. The crew at his house is all like homeless people and women and retards and shit.”

  “And they fought off Russ and Turner? How did they do that?”

  “Yeah, man. I don’t know! I heard Russ’s leg was, like, disconnected. Like detached. Some fucked-up cripple, one of the cop’s guys, blew it off with an Uzi.”

  “You’re shittin’ me.”

  “Nah, man! Doctors had to sew it back on and all.”

  “Fuck. This old cop dude sounds ripped.”

  “Hell yeah. He some badass motherfucker.”

  Cline opened the door and saw the two girls on the couch, curled up together, their knees up and their feet on the cushion. One of them had shoes inset with lights that flashed different colors. He grabbed that one by the neck.

  “What’s that you were saying?” Cline asked as he marched the girl toward the fountain in the middle of his yard. She managed a squeal before he thrust her head under the water. Her friend followed them but she didn’t know what to do; she stood nearby pleading and crying, wanting to reach for Cline but not having the courage. Tough little gangsta bitch, huh? he thought. Cline let the girl in his hands up for a second and then plunged her back under. He pressed her against the edge of the concrete fountain, his crotch against her cute little ass, pushing her head down hard until he could feel it scraping against the bottom of the structure.

  He let her up. “The old cop, what did you say he was?”

  “Nothing. Nothing! I didn’t say—”

  Cline plunged the girl under the water again. Her flashing shoes twisted on the pavement; her fingers clawed at his hand. He looked at the friend and counted the seconds off, the pain in his head easing considerably. The friend kept begging, but he couldn’t hear her—there was only a warm, pleasant humming in his ears. He let the girl up and she coughed and vomited.

  “What did you say?”

  “He’s nothing!” the girl blubbered. “Please! Please, man! I said he’s a loser! He’s … he … he ain’t—”

  Cline dunked her head. Lifted it. “What did you say?”

  “A badass. I said he was a badass.”

  Cline dunked the girl again, held her under until she was spasming violently against him, urine mixed in with the water soaking them both, staining her white jeans. When he thought she was just about to go limp, he released his grip and let her slither down the side of the fountain. After a moment, she crawled away from him, a loathsome, soaking-wet creature, shivering and whimpering. He watched the girls hugging each other and sobbing, and he stretched his neck until he heard a crack, the tension and pain melting like butter.

  “Who’s the badass now?” he asked, and he turned back toward the house.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

  I NEEDED TO get away from the Inn, from the house where my friends were recovering from their wounds, where blue and red lights had flashed in the night and gunshots had shattered the windows. It was too emotional there for me to properly plan my next move. I invited Malone, Nick, and Susan out with me to the Greenfish and sat with them at a high table near the windows looking out on the street.

  Nick and Malone went to order at the bar, and Susan sat close to me, turning a coaster over and over. I had told them about the doc on the way here, and it weighed heavily on everyone’s shoulders.

  “I just can’t see that in him,” I told her. “He’s someone I thought I knew, and that scares me. It makes me feel like I don’t know anyone in my house—that my house is full of secret keepers and liars.”

  I thought of Nick’s words on the boat, of his claim that he had done bad things on his deployment. How bad were we talking? Why hadn’t he, my best friend, ever confided in me?

  “The doc’s been in the house maybe … a year and a half?” I said. “He told me he hit a crisis point in his life a year ago. He was that low, low enough to accept Cline’s offer, and I couldn’t see it.”

  Guilt and rage picked at me. The words of fury at Doc Simeon rolled off my tongue so quickly and easily, and yet under my bed there was a bag of Cline’s cash that I had not yet disposed of. I was one of the liars too. One of the secret keepers.

  “Maybe Doc didn’t want you to see it,” Susan said. “You ever think of that?”

  “But why not?” I asked. “I’m a good listener. I could have talked him through it.”

  “That’s just the thing. You would’ve wanted to help him.” She put a hand on mine. “Y
ou know how difficult it’s been for you to let people help you with your grief over Siobhan.”

  I thought of Marni, of the memorial she had organized with the others only days earlier. Marni had poked a hole right through the cone of silence I had erected around myself about Siobhan. I’d thought that if I simply closed my ears and my mind to the memory of my wife, the pain of her loss might go away. But it turned out that Marni’s intervention had been exactly what I needed. Cline had come into Doc Simeon’s life when he was low, breaking through his inactivity and loneliness with sudden promises of purpose and adventure. The master of pain had offered to take the hurt away, and the old man had accepted.

  Nick put a beer down in front of me and he and Malone sat down. “This guy is going to come at us again,” Nick said. “We need to be ready.”

  “I don’t know.” Malone looked at me. “What can he do now? I mean, how many guys can he have? We put two of them on stretchers, and your local sheriff took care of two others. His little running boy Squid is under a rock somewhere in Augusta. Cline has got to be feeling threatened, at least for now.”

  “He’ll have other guys,” Susan said. “He might have to reach out to other distributors to get them, but there are always soldiers who are willing to make a name for themselves by doing the dirty work for a boss as powerful as Cline. The guys we took out just leave open spaces for these men to prove themselves. If you ask me, the first order of business for Cline will be getting rid of those men who are holed up and injured.”