Exact Revenge Read online

  My point is this: I may very well be crazy, and maybe it’s just crazy for me to believe that I know what happened all those years ago when I wasn’t even there. But there were scraps of things I later heard. Before the trial. And for the rest… Well, I’ve had plenty of time to think.

  These things are never clear during the night. It’s during my one hour of daylight that they come to me. I don’t want to know them. They just come, intruders lurking in the woods around the cabin of my boyhood Adirondack vacations.

  And when these intruders commandeer my thoughts, what really happened comes to me in a way that leaves me as certain of the truth as if I were there myself. Listening. Seeing…

  “That was cute,” Frank said, his bulk shifting forward, his olive skin reddening. “I hope you enjoyed yourself, asshole.”

  The smell of spilled beer and laughter and smoke whirled around them. Rangle leaned across the table with his cigar stuck deep into the corner of his mouth and said, “I mean, how does a guy like you lose that girl to a guy like him?”

  “Yeah,” Russo said.

  “Shut up.”

  Russo scratched the stubble surrounding his bald head and looked away with his ears sticking out from the sides of his head like two hunks of cauliflower.

  “Who understands pussy?” Frank asked. He upended the rest of his old pint and started in on the new one.

  The shadow of the building had shifted with the sun. They were in darkness now and their metal table was cooling rapidly. Only the smoke from Rangle’s cigar drifted toward the street and into the sunlight, a twisting shimmering cloud.

  “Hey,” Rangle said, raising his hands, palms up. A strand of slicked-back hair had fallen from its ranks, and it hung limp from his high hairline. “No problem. We’re friends.”

  Frank’s thick fingers were clamped around the glass. His knuckles pale. His cigar lay there in front of him, untouched. Russo held his between his thumb and forefinger, caressing the Montecristo between his upper lip and the overhang of his nose. Sniffing it. Rangle leaned forward again, his silver cuff links clinking against the metal tabletop.

  “How much do you hate him?” he asked. “What does it feel like in your chest and in your crotch… when you think about him fucking her?”

  Frank’s jaw went taut. He shoved the glass away from him with waves of beer sloshing up and over its rim. He picked up the cigar, crushing and twisting it until small brown flecks of tobacco fell to the table like snowflakes.

  “That could be you,” he said. His mouth was pulled down at the corners and his pale eyes bored into Rangle. The veins in his bull neck bulged. “I’ll buckle down all over your ass, mayor or not.”

  “Hold that thought,” Rangle said, showing Frank his sharp teeth without the smile. “But now think Raymond. It’s him, not me. What if we did something about him?”

  “Someone could find his head in a Dumpster with three slugs in it,” Frank said. He was leaning forward too, speaking barely above his breath.

  “Arrogant bastard,” Russo said. “Guy thinks I’m his personal fucking banker.”

  “No one asked you,” Frank said.

  Russo frowned and said he was sorry.

  “What if you could do something even worse than that?” Rangle asked, slicking back his thin hair. His eyes glittered. “Would you?”

  “What’s worse?”

  “What if it was Raymond that had to think about you fucking Lexis?”

  Frank’s hand darted across the table, latched on to Rangle’s tie, and yanked him across the table until his face smashed into the cluster of empty glasses. Frank’s thick lips brushed up against Rangle’s forehead.

  Overhead, Bryan Adams sang “Cuts Like a Knife.”

  “You don’t ever talk about her,” Frank said in a throaty whisper. “Never ever again. Her name doesn’t come out of your filthy mouth or I’ll beat you to a fucking pulp and throw you in jail for assaulting an officer. You got that?”

  “Yes,” Rangle said, choking and blinking the fallen hair from his eyes.

  Frank let him go and Rangle collapsed back into his seat, tugging at his tie, loosening the collar and sucking in his breath.

  “Good,” he said, slicking his hair again and clearing his throat. “I want you angry. I want you sick with fucking hatred. Now, you dumbass, think Raymond, not me. I know a secret, and we have a chance to change everything. All three of us…”

  The three of them leaned close and spoke in whispers that no one could hear. Russo’s pink-rimmed eyes shifted around the sidewalk and he gulped his beer. Frank wore a scowl. Rangle’s eyebrows were knit tight, but his teeth shone in a jackal-like smile. It was a simple plan. Quick and easy. Effective.

  In less than a minute, the three of them sat back in their chairs and raised their drinks. They brought the rims of the thick pint glasses together with a clink that rang out loud and clear.

  I hear that clink. I can smell their smoke. And I see those arrogant smiles every day of my life.

  7

  MY DAD’S PLACE was in the opposite direction of mine, half an hour east of Syracuse. The home I had recently bought was half an hour to the west, out in Skaneateles. I don’t like to think of myself as running from my roots as the son of a rock man and a displaced Native American mom. Yeah, I heard my share of red man jokes in school, but I had only two real fistfights in my life.

  I prefer to think that I’m in Skaneateles not because it’s the priciest real estate in upstate New York, but because I’m actually closer to nature there. I put out nest boxes for bluebirds, martins, and swallows, and usually fill half of them in a season. Lots of my neighbors are farmers. They let me roam their woods during hunting season, and I can throw a fishing line in the water about a hundred feet from my back door.

  From the law office, it was easy for me to hop on the interstate and get out to my dad’s spot of countryside between Fayetteville and Chittenango. I kept the windows down, inhaling the cool smell of cut hay and trees and the soil of farm fields that were buzzing with insects. The letter sat on the passenger seat beside me, jammed into the crack between the seat and the backrest. In my rearview mirror, I could see the oblong orange sun settling into a blanket of glowing clouds. By eight o’clock, the long shadows made the woods surrounding the driveway nearly dark.

  My father lived alone in the house where I grew up, a small brown ranch nestled in the woods. I could see its lines, even through the trees. The place once belonged to my grandfather. Like my dad, he operated the small quarry out back his entire life, blasting stone from the backbone of the earth, constantly struggling to survive in a world ruled by international conglomerates.

  As I pulled up alongside the house, I heard a blast rebound over the lip of the hill that loomed in the near distance. I shook my head and kept going along the gravel drive, past the house, out of the woods, around the towering escarpment of jagged stone, and up over the hill into the purple shadows of the quarry.

  In the headlight beams of a faded old dump truck, my father stood talking with another man. Dust from the explosion swirled in the glow of the light. I pulled right up beside the battered dump truck and hopped out.

  “Dad,” I said, raising my voice to account for his loss of hearing. “It’s practically dark out.”

  That was as far as my complaint about blasting after dark could go.

  “I can see that,” he said. He wore the faded jeans, white T-shirt, and the jean jacket of a teenager, but the skin on his hands as well as his face was craggy and weather-beaten.

  I walked up with my back straight and shook his granite hand the way he taught me that real men do. A bat swooped down from the shadows, flitting softly into the beam of light.

  “Tried calling you last week,” I said, ducking. “What happened to the phone? They said it was disconnected.”

  “Don’t need no damn phone,” my father said.

  “Everyone needs a phone, Dad.”

  “Money-sucking corporate monkeys.”

 
“What about business?”

  “You do yours, I’ll do mine. A rock man don’t need no phone,” he said. “The trucks keep coming and I keep giving them their stone. Been at it for two weeks without a phone.”

  “It’s summertime, Dad,” I said. I doubted he could carry on like this when things got slow.

  “You ain’t said hello to Black Turtle.”

  I turned and said hello to the ancient Onondaga Native American who had worked on and off for my dad since I was a boy. We shook hands and I was jolted by a clap on the back from my dad. He asked me if I cared for a man’s meal. He and Black Turtle had their sights set on some venison steaks and a game of nickel poker.

  “I’m having dinner with Lexis, Dad,” I said. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay and tell you that you’ve got to get a hold of that guy Paul Russo at the bank and get that loan set up. I saw him today. He said you were trading calls.”

  “I don’t need a loan.”

  “Dad,” I said, “your phone was turned off.”

  “I called that asshole anyway, and he never called me back,” he said, as he worked on a quid of tobacco in the side of his cheek.

  “Well, he probably couldn’t get through, Dad.”

  “If he tried, why didn’t he tell you that?” he said. “I called him for two weeks before that phone got turned off. His secretary always told me he wasn’t in. Bullshit.”

  “Well, you’ve got to try again, Dad,” I said, thinking that Russo was a lot more likely to shake a stick now that he knew I was going to be a congressman. “I spoke to him today and he said it’s all set.”

  “How about tomorrow night for venison steaks?” my father said, stroking his mustache. “Black Turtle and I can save ’em and go get us a plate of spaghetti and meatballs at Angotti’s.”

  His drooping mustache and his blue Buffalo Bills cap were white with dust from blasted rock, making his dark blue eyes seem almost black.

  “I’ve got a political thing tomorrow night, Dad,” I said. “A fund-raiser. How about Sunday night?”

  “Political shmitical,” he said, taking off his hat and slapping it against his leg before putting it back on.

  “They want me to be the next congressman.”

  “To Washington?”

  “I’ve got to win a special election, but with the Republican endorsement…” I said. Everyone knew that in this district that’s all you needed. “I imagine I could help get you some good road contracts…”

  My father put his hand on my shoulder and gave it a squeeze.

  “I know you want to help,” he said, his voice sounding choked. “But I got all the work I need. You just do like I taught you. You don’t take any favors, you don’t owe any…”

  I turned to Black Turtle and said, “Don’t you two blast at night anymore, will you?”

  He shrugged at me the way he always had, knowing as well as I did that my words were meant for my father.

  “I appreciate it,” I said. “Otherwise, I worry.”

  My father held up a small blue blasting cap in the waning light. It was no bigger than a cigarette.

  “You wouldn’t think a little thing like this could destroy twenty tons of hard rock,” my father said, “but it does. The well-placed little things are the ones that can move mountains.

  “All right, Black Turtle,” he said, gripping my shoulder, then letting go. “We got work to do. Sunday night it is.”

  My dad climbed up into the cab of the dump truck. Black Turtle faded into the darkness and fired up the cranky old payloader. The two monster machines rattled off, leaving me in a fresh swirl of dust, the blue-white lights of the Supra, and a low rumble that continued on like thunder.

  I got into my car and wound my way through the rocks, past the stone crusher and the sagging office trailer, and back to the main road. My hands turned the wheel without thinking, taking me back to deliver the envelope that sat beside me. In the scheme of everything that was happening in my world of business, love, and politics, it was undoubtedly a very little thing.

  8

  THE ORANGE SKY in the west had faded to russet. It was after eight-thirty by the time I got back to the city and the north end of Lodi Street. Pinpoints of light, stars, planets, and airplanes winked overhead as I rolled down the dusty street with my windows open. People in broken porch chairs and others who slouched in rusty cars along the curb craned their necks for a better look at my gleaming car and its sparkling silver rims.

  The homes were crammed together and in need of repair. Screens, bent and torn, hung loose from open windows. Roofs sagged. The leprosy of peeling paint and rotted gray wood had stricken every post, step, and shingle. The broken driveways and crumbling sidewalks were peppered with weeds, and the hush of dusk was disrupted by the thumping of boom boxes.

  House numbers were a luxury and only a few had them. Celeste Oliver’s place was missing the first two, but I could still see the faded images of where the one and the eight had once been. I pulled up into the driveway behind a red Honda Civic with a crushed rear quarter panel and got out. The envelope was in my hand. In the fading light, I saw the curtain drop and a face disappear.

  I climbed the steps and knocked.

  The door opened almost immediately and she stood there, pouting. I had to take a breath. She was tall enough so that even in bare feet she was almost eye-level with me. She wore tight stonewashed jeans and an aqua blue halter top that showed off breasts that were neither too big nor too small. Her midriff was honey-colored and molded with curves. Her lipstick was pink. Delicate eyebrows matched her straight blonde hair. Her eyes were powder blue.

  “I’m a friend of Roger’s,” I said, when I could speak.

  She moved aside and I stepped in. When she turned and walked into the small living room, my eyes followed a perfect bottom. The hammering in my chest and the current running through my center triggered a pang of guilt.

  “You can sit down,” she said, plopping down on the couch and picking up a pack of Newports off the glass coffee table. She slipped one into her mouth.

  I laid the envelope down on the table in front of her.

  “That’s from Roger,” I said, straightening. Unable to sit, but unable to get my feet moving toward the door.

  “Did he tell you about me?” she asked, squinting up from the flame of her Bic.

  “No.”

  “I belonged to Roger,” she said, blowing smoke toward the curtained window. “Not for money. I’m not like that. I dance, but I never fucked a man for money. I loved being with Roger. Do you know he took me inside the White House? I met Reagan.”

  I shook my head no.

  “And now you’re going to have everything that he had…” she said, looking directly at me with a small smirk. “You’re the one who’ll get to vote on the Star Wars bill this fall. You’ll have the swing vote on the Appropriations Subcommittee on Highways. They want to redo the interstate bridges between here and Canada. Did you know that? The governor will be calling you on that one and you can get him to come do a fund-raiser for you. There’s a real nice bunch around here who’ll pay a thousand a head to have lunch with the governor…

  “Anyway, you’ll have me too,” she said, sitting back on the couch and placing her arms along its back with her legs crossed and a little arch in her spine. “If you want that…”

  I glanced at the envelope. The feeling in my legs was beginning to return. The smoke from the cigarette helped. I started to back toward the door.

  “I kind of have someone,” I said.

  “Yeah, that’s standard,” she said. “A wife?”

  “Maybe.”

  She dashed her cigarette into an ashtray and hopped up off the couch. She came toward me with a bubbling giggle and took hold of my hand, pressing it up against her breast before I could react.

  “Yeah, well, this is politics,” she said, her voice dropping into a husky whisper, her fingers tracing up the inside of my thigh. “So she’ll get used to it. They all do…”
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br />   I pulled my hand back. Her other hand groped my crotch.

  “You’ll need a release,” she said, her pink lips barely moving. “It’s a brutal job. I can keep your mind clear. We all need to clear our minds.”

  I knocked her hand away and pushed her harder than I meant to. She tripped and fell to the floor, her head thudding up against the wall.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, reaching out to help her up. “I didn’t mean to.”

  “Asshole,” she said, swatting at me, then pushing a long strand of the blonde hair from her face.

  I turned, yanked open the door, and jumped down off the porch, skipping the steps. I edged past the wreck of a Honda. My suit pants caught and tore on a wild metal shred protruding from the smashed bumper.

  As I climbed into my Supra, I looked around. Halfway up the block was an unmarked police car. In the shadows of the front seat, a nickel-size ember-about the size of a cigar-glowed then faded out. That didn’t seem unusual to me. In a neighborhood like this, the police probably knew everybody by their first name.

  I never thought much of it back then.

  9

  I NEVER HATED MY MOTHER for what she did. Maybe it was because my father refused to blame her. “I knew what your mother needed,” he once said, “and I knew I didn’t have it.”

  My mother was a pretty woman who liked to laugh and read books. She was a Mohawk raised on the Onondaga Indian Reservation. That meant that even among the disenfranchised, she was disenfranchised.

  As loving as she was to me and to my father, my mother had an insatiable desire for things. I can still remember the one trip we took to Florida over a winter school break. We stayed at a cheap motel across the street from the beach in St. Petersburg. One day, the three of us took a long walk and found ourselves in an exclusive neighborhood on the bay. I can still see the glimmer in my mother’s dark eyes and hear her delicate gasps at the size and intricate architectural detail of the homes. The shiny cars in their driveways. The yachts moored to the docks that jutted out from the swimming pools in their backyards.