The Pinebox Vendetta Read online

  What could she want? Why the urgency? Had he left something behind? He swiveled his head and confirmed he was wearing the rucksack.

  Could she have thought of something important she’d meant to tell him?

  Feelings she wanted to discuss?

  “I need to go,” he said.

  Charlotte clearly took this as being about the Yoders. “Lighten up, big brother. It’s just a phase. If it wasn’t politics, if they were in another family, they’d be wild about Nascar or Pokemon Go—”

  “I get that,” Jamie said. “I do, Char. I just need to go.”

  She smiled and made a point to help him put the NetHuman card in an outer front pocket of his bag, closing and snapping the flap.

  “Use it, okay? Log in and join a project. Start a project—it’s easy. Promise?”

  Jamie smiled, too, hitching the rucksack over his shoulder.

  “Sorry,” he said, and left.

  Jamie saw Sam from the sidewalk, through the chic, spider-cracked window of the Daily Cafe. Even from a distance, she looked frazzled—hunched forward on a black bench, face taut, sitting across from her daughter with elbows jutting out like protective spikes.

  He had never seen Sam Lessing like this. Not when they’d been busted painting horns on the stone Puritan pointing a musket at the Native American outside Sterling Library, nor at any point during Sam’s mother’s chemotherapy.

  The daughter kept peeking at the bathroom.

  Jamie pushed through the cafe’s heavy door and weaved his way to their corner table. His strides felt too light, as though his feet might either keep flying up to the ceiling or drop through the floor. A psychedelic wall clock—numberless with concentric circles of primary colors spinning opposite each other—was scrambling his thoughts.

  What am I about to hear?

  After having confirmed he could meet at the Daily, Jamie had gotten back “ok” by text. Only those two letters to guess at. He couldn’t imagine some large relationship news like divorce would arrive like this. If there had been an accident, surely she had closer friends she would’ve called first.

  Also, that: she’d texted instead of called.

  Before Jamie’s neurotic speculation could go further, he arrived at the table.

  “Jamie!” Sam pulled his sleeve, slamming him onto the bench beside her.

  He started to ask what all the intrigue was about when his eyes found an object in a Ziploc bag on Sam’s far side, against the wall.

  “We found something.”

  With painstaking delicacy, Sam pulled the object onto her lap. She peeked past Jamie to make sure no other tables were spying—paranoia that was, again, totally out of character.

  The Ziploc had frost print on its front, a labeling space that obscured its contents. It looked brown or maybe deep red, and was heavy judging by how it sat upon Sam’s thighs.

  Something about this moment—the energy, the secrecy—made Jamie wish he’d stayed at Charlotte’s dry-run.

  He asked, “What is it?”

  In racing whispers, urged on by her daughter’s bugged eyes, Sam explained they had found a brick in the God Quad—where Rock Pruitt and Derek Dickerson had lived freshman year. They’d pried a board loose in the fireplace. The space had appeared to be undisturbed from twenty years ago.

  As Sam spoke, she kept her fingers off the bag as though scared to contaminate it.

  “I—we put it in plastic. I stayed in the room and Joss ran to RiteAid…we’d moved it already, or touched it I guess, and I didn’t know what the police or whoever would—er, how to preserve it…and Henrik Schumer saw us leave but I—but hopefully he didn’t notice the bag…”

  She seemed to want Jamie to take over the thread, trailing off, looking at him earnestly.

  Jamie shifted to keep her lap obscured from other customers. “You’re thinking it’s relevant to…” How to call it? Crime? Murder? “…to Derek Dickerson?”

  Sam nodded. Her daughter was biting her nails.

  He asked why.

  Sam bent to the tabletop and spoke into her sleeve.

  “Blood.”

  Jamie shrank involuntarily.

  She continued quietly, “It’s streaked with blood, and look at these ridges…maybe fingerprints.”

  Joss said, “I think they are prints, there’s a pattern!”

  All three looked into Sam’s lap at the brick. Through the frost print, Jamie saw one end was caked black.

  He felt like an anvil had landed on his head.

  He was right back in the feud.

  Maybe it had been too much—coming back to the States, showing up at this reunion. He’d thought it could only be positive, seeing Sam and reconnecting with his family beyond his mother and sister. He hadn’t returned for vengeance or to seek a position of power.

  But then there’d been the pomp and circumstance of Gallagher College. And now a bloody brick in a fireplace.

  “The police searched that suite up and down,” he said. “And—and the media, even that long ago, the scrutiny was intense. How would they miss a thing like that?”

  Joss deflated at this. Immediately, he wished for the words back.

  Sam said, “I know, it’s weird. But remember when they boarded up those fireplaces. Freshman year? Maybe it got done right after the crime.”

  Jamie still hadn’t regained his equilibrium. “Even so, the police—”

  “The police were being controlled!” Joss said. When her mother made a dial-it-down gesture, she continued, lower, “The master said the Pruitts influenced the investigation—they probably bribed them not to look!”

  As Sam and her daughter waited for his reaction, Jamie steepled his fingers. Right and wrong chased through his mind. He recalled the pressure and emotions of freshman year, when Dickerson’s death had dominated the news.

  Sam said, “Rock could’ve even done it himself. He knew the fireplaces were getting boarded up—maybe he did it that night. Maybe he saw an opportunity.”

  The cafe fell into a quiet moment, other tables apparently sipping or taking a collective breath. One barista polished his gleaming espresso machine while another read off her phone.

  Jamie wished he was doing that—polishing, or reading, anything at all but this.

  “Sam, I don’t—er, I want to stay out of this.”

  “But we have him nailed! Did you hear he’s running in Virginia? Who knows what awful things he’d do in the Senate? We could stop him. We could put him in jail!”

  “I used to think about it like that,” Jamie said. “It feels good—you feel like you’re stopping the other side, thwarting them. But it’s just not me right now.”

  He stood and inched away from the brick as though it were glowing hot—as though it were one of those ancient pinebox relics people believed in.

  “God. I want every good thing for you, Sam.”

  Her face soured. Jamie realized at once he’d said another wrong thing. She was either taking it to be condescending and paternalistic, or as an insult—implying she was dumb for thinking the discovery would amount to anything.

  Neither had been his intention.

  The words had simply been in his heart, so he’d said them.

  Chapter 11

  Rock woke up solid. Having favored coke over booze last night, he had only a minor hangover. He breakfasted on eggs and hash browns from his favorite campus grease pit. He stalked up and down Elm Street with chest out manfully, daring anyone to tell him he wasn’t the baddest hombre in the land.

  He’d owned the Choosing. Theresa Velasquez was toast. She had rushed from the Grand Hall after the mass text and peeled out in her driver’s car. Someone said she’d punched her husband, too, but that was unconfirmed—and when Rock had crossed paths with him later in the inner courtyard, he’d seen no mark.

  Bryce seemed to have guessed who’d done him in. “Auditioning for North Carolina, huh?”

  Rock had tittered. “Aw, you got the lay of your life. Big wins all around.”

>   Bryce had looked ready to fight, but when Rock flinched and chomped his teeth, the paunchy house-husband slinked off.

  Later, Rock had found Jonathan Pruitt pacing in the library, talking heatedly with an adviser.

  He’d whistled his entrance. “Then there was one.”

  The former president had smiled thinly.

  Jonathan hadn’t guaranteed Rock the clan’s support in Virginia, but hell, the writing was on the wall like “redrum” in blood at the Overlook Hotel.

  One more coup, like the very one he was planning for this evening, would seal the deal.

  Rock knew whatever he pulled for the Gallagher College ceremony would be huge, but he didn’t quite know the shape of the hugeness, the way you know a porn video is going to absolutely annihilate from the preview image, even if you aren’t sure of the precise acts inside.

  It would involve Owen Gallagher.

  It would involve intense humiliation of the Gallaghers.

  Political blows usually come from an angle, Rock knew. Campaign apparatuses are girded for those fraught news-anchor questions, but it’s the veteran’s elderly mother at the town hall who blindsides them. You need mud bubbling up all sides, a splash here for misdirection, a smudge there to make the coming slop-bucket-to-face credible.

  You need a range of initiatives. You need agents acting with vigor and malice, programmed to go until the desired damage is inflicted.

  You need tools.

  Rock found tool numero uno eating a late lunch at Commons: Jamie Gallagher.

  “Chicken Cordon Bleu—you’re joking!” Rock said, tapping Jamie’s plate on his way to the chow line. “Can you still squeeze the patty and make it squirt juice? Ah, they probably backed off the breading, the commies.”

  Before Jamie could make sense of this, Rock had nabbed a tray and moved into the cafeteria flow. He shot back a thumb-forefinger gun through the salad’s transparent sneeze guard, assembled a plate, and returned to Jamie’s table. To make space for himself, he bounced a few nobodies to the next bench.

  “How’re you finding civilization?” Rock asked, spearing his chicken. The fork penetrated clear to the plate without making a drop of juice. “See? Told you, everything gets ruined.”

  Jamie was eating with the same two he’d been with earlier, the bohemian chick and the younger, inky-haired hottie. All three were about done with their lunch.

  They were looking at him…funny. Weren’t they? Rock was used to sidelong and even hostile looks, like the ones these very three had given him yesterday.

  But something was new. In their careful eyes, there was restraint—almost like a buddy could be standing behind him with a whipped cream pie, finger raised to his lips, urging them not to spoil the prank.

  Rock’s instinct was so uncanny that he reconsidered last night.

  Let’s see, the Choosing…then home on Marshall’s chopper…then straight back to the room, right?

  He felt 93 percent sure he hadn’t gone anyplace else.

  Jamie Gallagher said, “What do you want? We’re eating here.”

  “I see that, so am I.” Rock waggled a forkful of broccoli. “We’re two classmates having lunch, chewing the fat.”

  “You’re after something.” Jamie’s scarred forearms leaned into the table, taking all his torso’s weight. “What?”

  Rock gagged on his broccoli, which tasted like drywall. “Blecht! I’m done eating on campus. I’m taking the rest of my meals at Mory’s.”

  He spun his tray away, kept looking at Jamie.

  “I’ve told you,” his adversary said, “I’m out. I don’t want to debate you, or box you. Or anything.”

  Rock guffawed. Boxing or debating Jamie Gallagher—which would be easier?

  Tossup.

  “I’m just here for camaraderie,” he said. “As you know, it’s not easy finding peers when you’re a Pruitt or Gallagher—people who understand what you’ve been through, faced the pressures you’ve faced.”

  Jamie downed the dregs of his milk. Nearby tables were looking, ignoring their food to see what had brought the two pinebox principals together.

  Rock stood and yelled, “Quit staring, people! Have you never seen your betters divvying up the spoils of the planet before?”

  To a few titters, he sat back down.

  “Listen,” he said, back on Jamie. “You’re sick of your clan, I’m sick of mine. We’re both outcasts. Let’s bury the hatchet. Let’s just exist as a couple of dudes who’re done sweating the past.”

  The phrase felt so self-helpy off his tongue. Rock grabbed himself hard under the table to keep a straight face.

  Jamie Gallagher did seem to soften, sighing ponderously.

  Before Rock could capitalize, the bohemian chick said, “Rumor is you got picked to run for the Senate in Virginia. Doesn’t sound like you’re exactly on the outs with the family.”

  Piss.

  “Where’d you hear that?” he said. “Virginia blows. Did you know Virginia accounts for 10 percent of the country’s vanity plates? I have zero desire to represent those doofs.”

  The three of them continued to look at Rock like he was slime on the bottom of a shoe.

  Time to face facts. This wasn’t going well. Maybe he should abandon the mission, save further embarrassment. Sometimes you swung and missed—that was the nature of these forays.

  He could return to Gallagher College and scout around for weaknesses. He could ping Marshall’s guys and see if any of them were up for a flash operation—

  “You two should go,” Jamie said to his companions. “Joss shouldn’t be around for this. Go ahead to the art gallery, okay? I’ll catch up.”

  The bohemian chick and her daughter—Rock finally noticed the family resemblance, there in the mouth shape—left to bus their trays.

  Rock watched them off. “Hot, right?”

  Jamie started gathering napkins and silverware on his tray. “I won’t talk about Sam like that.”

  “Good, me neither,” Rock said. “I meant the daughter.”

  Jamie frowned. Rock slapped the table grandly.

  “But the mom’s not half bad herself,” he said. “And you have an art gallery date with her? That’s nice work, brother.”

  Jamie bristled. “Have you ever seen a female and just thought, ‘Wow, a person. Another person just like me, with hopes and fears?’ Instead of going immediately to the gutter.”

  “Nope,” Rock said, “and neither has any other red-blooded male who’s honest about it. But you keep on fooling yourself.”

  Jamie rubbed the corners of his eyes. “How did this happen to you? When did women stop being mothers and sisters to you? Is it just grade-school us versus them you never outgrew? Did you watch too many Porky’s or American Pie movies?”

  Rock started to answer, but the dweeb was rolling.

  “I saw enough overseas to know the West doesn’t have a monopoly on chauvinism,” Jamie said, “and neither does the ideological right. And maybe all you are underneath the bluster is a small, scared, insecure boy? Who think it’s funny? But that doesn’t make the harm you inflict upon the world any less horrific.”

  Rock laced his fingers together primly. “Are you done yet?”

  Jamie closed his eyes.

  Rock said, “You realize she’s in a crap marriage, don’t you?”

  Jamie stiffened like a kid whose parents had just found his sock-drawer candy stash.

  “Ah, don’t pretend,” Rock said. “It’s all right there on the front cover. The skirt, the attitude. Fact that hubby stayed home.”

  “Plenty of spouses skip the reunion,” Jamie said. “They don’t know anybody, it’s all Yalies. Doesn’t mean anything.”

  Rock liked this: a genuine verbal response with no discernible revulsion. By telling Jamie exactly what he was dying to hear, Rock had gotten his foot in the door.

  “It means plenty,” he said. “You’ve been living with Bushmen for a decade—you’ve lost your feel for First World social cues. She’s on
the market. I promise you that.”

  Jamie’s expression turned inward, in what could only be a consideration of how to bag her.

  Stray concepts floated through Rock’s brain. Could the chick be leveraged? Made into bait of some sort? How quick could he get Marshall’s guys here? Ah, but that’d be messy…

  He tabled the ideas. “Have you had a chance to meet Owen Gallagher yet? I’ve heard he’s impressive.”

  Rock watched closely for Jamie’s reaction, and was pleased to detect ambivalence—a curdling of the face.

  Still, Jamie said nothing.

  Rock continued, “Great on the environment, isn’t he? Wants solar buildings, solar transit! Why not? I’ll bet he understands the developing world up and down, coming and going.”

  Jamie kept quiet, but Rock could tell he wanted to talk. He had something to unburden himself of.

  Rock said, “I’m only farking you. He’s a dolt, isn’t he?”

  Jamie’s mouth kept a straight line. “Politics today doesn’t reward thoughtfulness. It’s not what elevates a candidate.”

  “Amen.” Rock ate a fingerling potato whole and said with his mouth full, “They want the loudest and the worst. It’s amazing I haven’t been elected president yet.”

  They bemoaned the degradation of civility. Rock played it soft, reading Jamie’s body language, agreeing often but mixing in enough profane dissent to be believable.

  Rock returned again and again to Owen Gallagher. Wasn’t it stunning he’d risen as high as he had on zero substance? Didn’t Jamie think he oughta come down a peg or two?

  Despite his best efforts, Rock began to sense he was playing a losing hand. He wasn’t going to convince Jamie Gallagher to act against his own clan. To join some kind of sabotage. Rock had come in with half a hope Jamie’s marbles were scrambled, that somehow Rock’s superior intellect could bend Jamie to his will and make him do a rash thing.

  Rock saw now that was a bridge too far. Jamie wasn’t nuts. He wasn’t going to be hypnotized by a swinging pocket-watch.

  As the discussion petered out, both their plates clean and departure imminent, Rock cast about for a plan B.