He drags her back toward the van, gasping for breath, heart beating not just in his chest but thrumming in his neck and pulsing in his head.
“Come on,” he says, and gets her turned around. “Come on, elf, come on, come on, c—”
One flailing elbow connects with his cheekbone. Sparks flash in front of his eyes. He loses his hold on her but then—thank God, thank God—her knees buckle and she finally drops. He turns to Emily. “Can you help me?”
She gets partway up, winces, and plops back down. “No. If my back locks up all the way, I’ll only make matters worse. You’ll have to do it yourself. I’m sorry.”
Not as sorry as I am, Roddy thinks, but the alternative is jail, headlines, a trial, cable news 24/7, and finally prison. He seizes Bonnie under the arms and drags her toward the ramp, his back groaning, his hips threatening to simply lock up. Part of the problem is her pack. He gets it off. It has to weigh at least twenty pounds. He hands it up to Emily, who manages to take it and hold it in her lap.
“Open it,” he says. “Get her phone if it’s in there. You have to…” He doesn’t finish, needing to save his breath for the job at hand. Besides, Em knows the drill. Right now they have to get out of here, and with any luck, they will. If anyone deserves some luck after what we’ve been through, it’s us, he thinks. The idea that Bonnie has had even worse luck this evening never crosses his mind.
Em is already taking the SIM card out of Bonnie’s phone, effectively killing it.
He drags Bonnie up the ramp. Emily reverses the wheelchair to give him room. She’s already unzipped the backpack and started rummaging inside. He’d like to pause and catch his breath, but they’ve been here too long already. Far too long. He kicks Bonnie’s legs away from the door. It would have hurt her if she was conscious, but she’s not.
“The note. The note.”
It’s waiting in the back pocket of the passenger seat, in a clear plastic envelope. Emily has printed it, working from various notes Bonnie has made during her brief term of employment. It’s not an exact replica, but printing doesn’t need to be. And it’s short: I’ve had enough. The note probably won’t matter if the bike is stolen, but even then it might if the thief is caught. Roddy puts it on the seat of her bike and wipes the sleeve of his sportcoat across it, in case paper takes fingerprints (on that the Internet seems divided).
He gets into the driver’s seat, whooping for breath. He pushes the button that retracts the ramp and closes the door. His heart is beating at an insane rate. If he has a heart attack, will Emily be able to drive the van back to 93 Ridge Road and get it in its garage bay? Even if she can, what about the unconscious girl?
Em will have to kill her, he thinks, and even in his current state—body aching all over, heart speeding, head pounding—the thought of all that meat going to waste gives him a pang of regret.
8:18 PM.
July 27, 2021
“Just look at this,” Avram Welch says. He’s wearing cargo shorts (Holly has several pairs just like them) and pointing at his knees. There are healed S-shaped scars on both. “Double knee replacement. August 31st, 2015. Hard to forget that day. Cary was at the Strike Em Out the last time I came, in the middle of August—me there just to watch, my knees were too bad by then to even think about throwing a ball—and gone the next time I went. Does that help any?”
“It absolutely does,” Holly says, although she doesn’t know if it does or not. “When was the next time you went back to the bowling alley after your op?”
“I know that, too. November 17th. It was the first round of the Over Sixty-Fives tournament. I still couldn’t play, but I came to cheer the Oldies on.”
“You have a good memory.”
They are sitting in the living room of Welch’s third-floor Sunrise Bay condominium apartment. There are boats in bottles everywhere, Welch has told her that building them is his pastime, but the place of honor is held by the framed photograph of a smiling woman in her mid-forties. She’s dressed in a pretty silk dress and wearing a lace mantilla over her chestnut hair, as if she’s just come from church.
Welch points at the picture now. “I ought to remember. It was the next day that Mary was diagnosed with lung cancer. Died a year later. And do you know what? She never smoked.”
Hearing of a non-smoker who’s died of lung cancer always makes Holly feel a little better about her own habit. She supposes that makes her a poopy person.
“I’m very sorry for your loss.”
Welch is a small man with a big potbelly and skinny legs. He sighs and says, “Not as sorry as I am, Ms. Gibney, and you can take that to the bank. She was the love of my life. We had our disagreements, as married people do, but there’s a saying: ‘Don’t let the sun go down on your anger.’ And we never did.”
“Althea says you all liked Cary. The Golden Oldies, I mean.”
“Everybody liked Cary. He was a Tribble. I don’t suppose you know what I mean by that, but—”
“I do. I’m a Star Trek fan.”
“Right, okay, right. Cary, you couldn’t not like him. Kind of a space cadet, but friendly and always cheerful. I suppose the dope helped with that. He was a smoker, but not cigarettes. He puffed the bud, as the Jamaicans say.”
“I think some of the other members of your team might also have puffed the bud,” Holly ventures.
Welch laughs. “Did we ever. I remember nights when we’d go out back and pass a couple of joints around, getting stoned and laughing. Like we were back in high school. Except for Roddy, that is. Old Small Ball didn’t mind us doing it, he was no crusader, sometimes he even came along, but he didn’t do pot. Didn’t believe in it. We’d smoke up, then go back inside, and do you know what?”
“No, what?”
“It made us better. Hughie the Clip especially. When he was stoned, he lost that Brooklyn hook of his, and he’d put it bang in the pocket more often than not. Bwoosh!” He flings his hands apart, simulating a strike. “Not Roddy, though. Without the magic smoke, the prof was the same one-forty bowler as he ever was. Isn’t that a riot?”
“Absolutely.”
Holly leaves the Sunrise Bay having learned just one thing: Avram Welch is also a Tribble. If he were to turn out to be the Red Bank Predator, everything she’s ever believed, both intellectually and intuitively, would fall to ruin.
Her next stop is Rodney Harris, retired professor, one-forty bowler, also known as Small Ball and Mr. Meat.
Barbara is reading a Randall Jarrell poem called “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” and marveling at its five lines of pure terror when her phone rings. Only three callers can currently get through, and since her mom and dad are downstairs, she doesn’t even look at the screen. She just says “Hi, J, what do you say?”
“I say I’m staying in New York for the weekend. But not the city. My agent has invited me to spend the weekend in Montauk. Isn’t that cool?”
“Well, I don’t know. I have an idea that sex and business don’t mix.”