Chapter 4
A Man Called Teddy
The truck that pulled into the marina lot at half past eleven on Thursday was a rusted brown Ford with a Port Merrin dealer sticker in the rear window, and Damen knew who was driving it before the engine stopped.
He knew from the sound. A bad valve on the left bank, a sick clatter that had been getting worse for as long as he'd known the man, and a muffler held up by a coat hanger. He knew from the way the truck came in: too wide, too fast, braking late, then overcorrecting, as though the driver had told himself a dozen times on the highway that he would arrive calmly and had forgotten everything but the road. He stood at the open door of the shed with a wrench in his hand and watched the Ford roll to a halt in the shade of the willow, shudder, and die.
Nobody got out for almost a minute.
Then the door opened, and a very large man climbed down and stood with one hand on the roof, looking at the lake. He was fifty-two and looked sixty. He had a shaved head sunburned to the color of a ham, a gray-flecked goatee, a Harbor Rats baseball cap pulled low, and a belly that strained the buttons of a Hawaiian shirt he had clearly slept in. He turned slowly, taking in the docks, the shed, the white boats rocking in their slips. Then his eyes found the door, and the tall figure standing in it, and a huge uncertain smile broke across his face, as though a child had walked in on a surprise.
"Well, I'll be damned," said Teddy Calloway. "It's true. They said you built boats. I said, no way. Not the Dame."
"Teddy."
"In the flesh." He spread his arms. They were enormous arms, tattooed from wrist to elbow with faded anchors and a name. "Don't just stand there. Come and hit me. I've been driving four hours."
Damen put down the wrench. He walked across the lot, not quickly, and stopped a yard from the big man, and for a moment neither of them said a word. They looked at each other. Nine years lay between them, like a river, and a good many things that were not mentioned: a wet road in the dark, an engine idling, a long drive north with the lights off. A wheelman does not forget the man he waited for.
Then Teddy laughed, a loud, rough, cracked bark, and seized him in a bear hug that took his feet an inch off the gravel.
"God," said Teddy, into his shoulder. "God, you look good. You look like a man who's slept. When did you last sleep? I've forgotten what it looks like."
"Put me down."
"Not on your life."
"Teddy."
"Okay, okay." The big man released him, wiping his eyes with the heel of his hand, unashamed. "Look at me. Fifty-two years old and I'm crying in a parking lot. It's the allergies."
"It's not the allergies."
"It's the allergies, Dame, it's the pollen, you don't have pollen where I live." He sniffed, hugely, and looked at the shed, the dock, the sign. "WHITLOCK MARINE REPAIR. Advice. That's good. That's very good. You always had a sense of humor, nobody believed it. Did you get a dog?"
"No dog."
"You should get a dog."
"What are you doing here?"
The question came out flatter than he'd meant. Teddy's grin flickered, like a bulb on a loose wire. His eyes dropped to the gravel and came up again, bright and wet and a little too fast.
"I missed you," he said. "Can't a man miss you?"
They had lunch at the Blue Moose.
It was Teddy's suggestion. He said he hadn't eaten since Tuesday and would die if he didn't get a burger, and he walked into the diner with his shoulders hunched and his cap in his hand, as if he expected the place to resent him. The waitress, a tall middle-aged woman named Josie with a pencil behind her ear, took one look at the two of them and led them to a booth in the corner by the window without being asked.
Damen sat facing the door. Teddy sat facing him, and spent the first five minutes ordering, apologizing for ordering, and ordering more.
"Pie," he said, at last. "Whatever she's got. Two slices. Don't tell me what kind, I'll love it." He turned back and grinned.
The pie came, carried not by Josie but by a girl in an apron, with round glasses and a pencil stuck through her bun, who set the plates down with a flourish and said, "Two slices of the cherry and one bad attitude, on the house."
"Sofi," said Damen.
"Dad. Hi. I'm on my break in ten, can I sit—" She stopped. She had seen Teddy.
Teddy had gone perfectly still, with his fork in his fist, staring up at her with an expression that Damen could not name, a kind of stricken wonder, as at a ghost. He seemed to forget to breathe.
"This is Teddy," said Damen. "An old friend. From Port Merrin."
It was out before he could think. He saw his daughter's face change. "Port Merrin," she said, with great interest. "You know Dad from—"
"Work," said Damen. "Another time."
She looked from one man to the other, and went away slowly, glancing back; and he felt the weight of her look on the back of his neck for the rest of the meal.
"She's got your eyes," said Teddy, hoarsely, when she had gone. "God help her."
"She works here. Everyone knows her."
"That's the thing, isn't it? Everyone knows everyone." Teddy leaned back and the booth groaned. "Nine years. Nine years, Dame. You didn't even send a postcard."
"That was the point."
"I know it was the point. I'm not complaining." The big hands came up in surrender. "I'm only saying, I wondered. At first I kept thinking someone would find you and I'd hear about it. A body in the harbor. A car on fire. Every time the phone rang I thought, that's it, that's him. Then after a year or two I thought, no. He's done it. He's really done it." He shook his head slowly. "You pulled it off. You're the only man I ever heard of who walked."
"I didn't walk. I was let go."
"Let go," Teddy repeated, softly, and for a second the big, ruined, good-humored face went quite blank. "Yeah. Yeah, I suppose that's right."
The burgers arrived. The waitress poured coffee. Outside the window a pickup went by with a dog in the back, its ears blown flat. Damen ate, slowly, watching the man across from him, and understood after a few minutes what it was that he was looking at.
Teddy was frightened.
It was not in what he said. He told stories, rolled his eyes, did a long and funny impression of the barman at the Anchor Tavern, and it was all as it had always been, loose and generous and loud. But he was eating too fast. His left leg was jittering under the table. He kept looking at the door, then at the window, then at his hands, and every few seconds, with a small, fluid, habitual movement that he'd never in his life noticed, he lifted his right hand and tugged on the lobe of his ear.
A tell, thought Damen. He's got a tell. I taught him to stop it. He never could.
It had been in the old days, in a car, a cold night, parked outside a warehouse on Pier Nine. Teddy, nervous, had been tugging and tugging at his ear until Damen said, without turning his head, You're doing it again. And Teddy had said, What? And Damen had said, You lie with your ear. Every time. I've never met a man who told it so loudly. And Teddy had gone red and then laughed, and sworn he'd quit, and he never had.
"You've lost weight," said Teddy now.
"Have I?"
"You look thin. It suits you. Makes you look more dangerous." The grin came again, very brief. "So you got married. Josie told me. I asked her where the new guy lived, and she said, oh, Dean? He's got the house on Birchwood with the porch. Wife's a nurse. Two girls."
He had said it lightly. He did not look up from his plate.
Damen set down his fork. "You asked Josie."
"I asked around. Ten minutes. It's a small town, Dame. A guy can't go for a pee without someone telling the minister." He wiped his fingers on a napkin. "Don't look at me like that. I'm happy for you. I wouldn't hurt a hair on your head, you know that. You're the only family I got."
"What are you doing here, Teddy?"
"I told you."
"No," said Damen. "You said you missed me."
The ear, again. Tug. Tug.
"Okay." Teddy put down the napkin. He pushed his plate an inch away and clasped his hands on the table, and when he lifted his head the clowning had gone out of his face, leaving it heavy and raw and old. "Okay. I'll tell you. I got some news, and I figured you ought to hear it from a friend before you hear it from a stranger."
"Go on."
"It's the old man." The voice dropped. "Strand's sick. Real sick. They say it's the pancreas. He went into the clinic in the spring and came out thin as a rail, and he's been in that tower of his ever since, with the nurses and the clocks. Four months, six, nobody's sure. He's putting things in order. Selling bits. Writing letters to people." Teddy swallowed. "Closing the books."
Damen did not move.
"I thought you'd want to know. Because when a man like that is getting ready to die, he starts to think about what he leaves behind. He goes looking for the loose ends." He rubbed his face. "Mercer's running things now. You remember Mercer?"
"I remember."
"He's not the old man. He doesn't have the old man's patience. He's got a list, and he's working down it, and I heard, I heard that your name's on it somewhere." The ear. Tug. "Not at the top. Not yet. But there. And I thought, I'm not letting them just walk into his house. So I came."
It was a good speech. It was nearly the truth. He could see the shape of it, the careful stitching, the place where something else had been cut out and sewn over. A man tells you most of a thing and holds the last piece in his lap. He had interrogated enough men to know the look. It was the look of someone who has rehearsed a confession in a car for four hours and, at the last moment, decided on a smaller one.
"Who told you my name was on the list?"
"A guy."
"What guy?"
"A guy at the bar. You don't know him." Tug. "Dame. Please."
"You're lying to me."
Teddy flinched as if he'd been slapped. For a long time he did not answer. The air conditioner rattled. At the counter somebody laughed, and a cash register chimed, and a child at the next table dropped a spoon, and the little bright ordinary noises of the diner went by like a train going by outside a room where someone is dying.
"Yeah," said Teddy Calloway, at last, very quietly. "Yeah, a bit."
He told him a story about a son.
It came out in pieces, between sips of coffee, with the cap crushed in his fist. He had a boy. He'd mentioned Joey, years ago, once; a good kid, nineteen now, tall, skinny, with a talent for mechanics and a terrible gift for trusting people. The kid had been working at the shop with him. The kid had run up debts, gambling, small stuff, a few thousand, to the wrong people. The wrong people had a way of making debts into something larger. It was a thing Damen understood perfectly well. He had been one of the ways.
"I'm not asking you for money," said Teddy.
"How much?"
"Dame."
"How much?"
"Twelve thousand." The big face crumpled. "By the end of the month. It's nothing to some people. It's the shop, it's the house, it's everything. I don't know where else to go."
"You could have called."
"You'd have said no."
"I'd have said yes," said Damen. "I'd have wired it. You didn't need to drive four hours and cry in a parking lot." He took out his wallet. Then he stopped, because he saw the way Teddy's eyes dropped, quick and ashamed, to the wallet, and then away. "That's not why you came."
"It's one reason."
"What's the other?"
"There isn't one."
"Teddy."
The big man looked at him. He looked for a long time. And in his eyes, behind the mortification and the fear and the faint sick hope, Damen saw something that he had seen only once before, on a night nine years ago in the front seat of a car, in the reflection of a windshield: the look of a man standing at the edge of a drop, calculating what it would cost to jump.
"I wanted to see them," said Teddy, in a whisper.
"Who?"
"Your girls. I wanted to see if they were real."
The booth was very quiet.
It took Damen a moment to understand it. When he did, nothing in his face changed, nothing in his hands, nothing in the long still line of his shoulders. But a thing went through him, slow and cold, like a draft through a house with a window left open.
Them, the voice said. Not he. Not the boy. Them.
"What did you say?" he asked softly.
"I mean your daughters. The big one and the little one." Teddy's hand went to his ear and came away. "Josie said you had two girls. I wanted to know they were okay. That's all. That's all it is." He reached for the coffee. His hand shook so badly that the cup rattled on the saucer. "You think I'm up to something? Me? Dame, for God's sake, it's me."
Both, said the voice. He means both.
He looked at the big sunburned hands, the stained cuffs, the cap crushed on the table. He had known this man for twenty years. He had been godfather to the boy. He had stood on a dock in the pouring rain and held an umbrella over a funeral. He tried, with a kind of detached curiosity, to find the exact place where the friendship ended and the other thing began. There wasn't one. There never is. It's a gradient. It runs down through the years like a shadow, until you are standing in the dark and cannot say where the sun went.
"I'll give you the twelve," he said. "In cash. Tonight. I'll bring it to your motel."
"You don't have to—"
"I'll bring it to your motel, Teddy. And in the morning you'll go home."
"Dame..."
"And you'll stay there." He didn't raise his voice. "Whatever you were going to do. Whatever anyone's told you. You'll drive home and you'll stay in your shop, and if you ever come near my family again I will not ask you why."
It was said so evenly that for a second Teddy did not seem to hear it. Then something collapsed in the big face, a slow terrible crumbling, and he put both hands over his eyes. His shoulders began to shake. He wept with his whole body, without sound, there in the corner booth of the Blue Moose with the sunlight on his bald head, the great ruined clown. And Damen, who had not touched another man in comfort in twenty years, sat with his own hands flat on the table and did nothing at all.
"I'm sorry," said Teddy, into his palms. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
"For what?"
"For everything."
"Tell me what you've done."
"Nothing." The head came up. His eyes were red and streaming, and in them was a plain animal terror that Damen would remember for the rest of his life. "I swear to God, Dame, nothing yet. I haven't done a thing."
"Yet."
"Take her and go." It came out in a rush, hoarse and low, with a glance at the door. "Take your wife and both girls and go. Tonight. Don't pack, don't say goodbye, don't ask me why. I can't tell you. I want to. I can't." His hand shot out and seized Damen's wrist, hard enough to hurt. "Please. I've never begged you for anything. I'm begging you. Go."
The diner went on around them. A fork rang on a plate. Josie came with the coffee pot and saw the two men's faces and silently turned away.
"Tonight," said Damen.
"Tonight."
"And you'll tell me nothing."
"I can't." The big hand let go. "They've got Joey."
It was out before he could stop it. Teddy's mouth stayed open for an instant in the stricken shape of the last word, and then closed, slowly, and his whole face went the gray of ash.
"Dame," he said. "Dame, I didn't—"
"Who?"
"I didn't mean—"
"Who has him?"
But Teddy Calloway was already on his feet. He went over the table in a heave, knocking the cup, scattering the cutlery, and was out the door with his cap in his fist and the bell jangling behind him. Through the window Damen saw him stumble across the gravel, wrench open the door of the brown Ford, and lurch into the seat. The engine coughed. It caught. The truck bounced out of the lot and onto the county road, its muffler rattling, and vanished in a spurt of dust in the direction of the highway.
Damen sat in the corner booth with the cold coffee and the two untouched slices of pie.
They've got Joey.
He put a twenty on the table. He stood. He walked to the door and out into the glare, and stood on the step, with the hot sun on his neck and the smell of tar and cut grass in the air, looking at the empty road.
Tonight, said Teddy's voice in his head. Take her and go.
He thought of Ivy's face, in the light of the moon lamp, saying I'd like it tested. He thought of the party on Saturday, the cake, the balloons, the twelve candles that Mrs. Okafor was baking in the shape of a lighthouse. He thought of a woman in the kitchen with her hair coming loose, saying, there's never a catch with you. And he thought, with a cold precise practicality that he'd spent nine years learning to switch off and that came back as easily as a coat taken from a hook: If they wanted us dead tonight, we'd be dead. They wouldn't have sent Teddy to warn me. They'd have sent him to count the doors.
Unless, said the voice, he wasn't sent to warn you at all.
Unless he was sent to look.
He stood on the step of the diner for a long time, looking at the road. Then he went back to the shed, and told Cody to close up early, and drove home.
He decided, somewhere on the way up the hill, to wait.
Saturday was the party. Sunday they would go.
It was, though he did not know it, the last real decision he would make about his life for a very long time.