Port City Black and White Read online

  “So you don’t think he’s dead?”

  “I think they’re trying to put him in a new life and he’s still partly in the old one, with his mom.”

  “Who’s a ghost, too?” Brandon said.

  “Yes. It would just be her spirit that’s left. But I think it stays close to the baby. Like a memory, you know?”

  A pause, the two of them standing close. In the quiet a new awkwardness coming over them.

  “If you’re through with your questions, you can go,” Fatima said.

  “No,” Brandon said. “I like talking to you.”

  Fatima looked at him.

  “You shouldn’t say things like that if you don’t mean them.”

  “I mean everything I say,” Brandon said.

  Fatima looked away, her expression hardening. “Sometimes things mean more than you know,” she said, and with a swish of her hijab, was in the door and gone.

  The marina was dark at 1:30, lights showing on a few boats like campfires by a caravan stopped on a desert trail. The image popped into his head because of the spices at the Ottos, Brandon knew. The highlight video played in his head: Fatima. The ghost that turned out to be a DVD. Maybe. Crazy old lady and her weirdo daughter. The girl on his back, knees in his ribs. Dever, the son of a bitch.

  He looked out as he walked through the boatyard, saw the lights glowing on Bay Witch.

  “Shit,” Brandon said.

  He went aboard quietly, slipped below and stowed his gun and gear. Stripping off his uniform, he stepped into the tiny shower, ran water on his back, got washed, shampoo rinsed before the water began to run cold. He stood in the cool water, too, stayed until it was icy, cleared his head.

  Stepping out, he heard their voices above him, Winston’s bass, Mia answering, Lily louder.

  “Shit,” Brandon said again.

  He put on shorts and a T-shirt, slipped into flip-flops, and climbed to the lounge by the helm. They were on the settee, candles burning, a table of food set up, wine and beer bottles all around, mostly empty.

  “Hey, baby,” Mia said, sliding off the couch, coming to give him a kiss. “Oh, my God. What happened?”

  “Oh, just another Saturday night in the Old Port,” Brandon said.

  “Brandon, your poor face,” Lily said, a little loud, a little drunk.

  “I think you need a cold beer, my friend,” Winston said.

  “So are you okay?” Mia said, touching his cheek.

  “Just a flesh wound,” Brandon said, smiling. Mia led him to a place on the settee. Winston got up, handed him a bottle of Red Stripe from the cooler.

  “Winston brought all this great food from the restaurant,” Mia said.

  “My friend, you worked up an appetite, looks like,” Winston said.

  He was up, fixing a plate from the dishes on the side table. He brought it to Brandon. “We’ve got red snapper, Cajun sauce. Some Vietnamese couscous. It’s bigger than the regular couscous, much better. Fresh green beans sprinkled with feta. These scallops, we sauté them in white wine and garlic. Then chill them.”

  Brandon sipped the beer.

  “Thanks, Winston,” he said. “Would have come home early if I knew about all this delicious stuff.”

  “We were just sitting, talking,” Mia said, slipping between Brandon and Lily.

  “While you were out wrestling drunks,” Lily said. “I don’t know how you can do that awful job.”

  “Well, thank the good Lord that he does,” Winston said.

  “Oh, I know,” Lily said, pouring Mia another glass of wine. “I just can’t imagine it. Coming home from work all cut up.”

  “It’s not every night,” Brandon said.

  “And I’m sure Mia takes good care of you,” Winston said.

  “Do you have a little nurse outfit, Mia?” Lily said. “Some of those white fishnets?”

  They laughed. Brandon smiled, sipped the beer, thinking he’d come in way too late for this party.

  “So tell us, Brand,” Lily said, tucking her legs underneath her, her feet bare. “Any news on the baby?”

  Brandon took another swallow, a deep breath. Told them about Lance and Toby, Fatima and her brothers, Annie and her mother. When he came to the part about the DVD, Lily sputtered. “It was a freakin’ movie?” she said.

  “Fatima says no,” Brandon said. “But that’s what we found.”

  “A duppy,” Winston said, “he could will those people to watch that movie, throw you off the track.”

  “Oh, Winston, you’ve got to be kidding,” Lily said.

  “It’s true,” Winston said, a trace of irritation creeping in.

  “I think the supernatural is very real,” Mia said.

  “Oh my God, I’m living with a witch doctor,” Lily said.

  She guffawed. Quite a recovery after shooting a man dead, Brandon thought.

  Lily, as though reading his mind, sagged and said, “I don’t want there to be ghosts. I don’t want him coming back.”

  Mia put her hand on Lily’s shoulder, bare in her tank top, patted. “It’s okay,” Mia said. “He’s not coming back.”

  “Not everyone who dies turns into a duppy,” Winston said.

  “Probably professional criminals don’t get to be ghosts,” Brandon said.

  “Is that what he was?” Lily said.

  “I don’t know. I haven’t heard. But he wasn’t some local junkie, scoring cash for the day. He was delivering drugs from New York.”

  “Oh, then most def he don’t get to be a duppy,” Winston said.

  “You’re just saying that,” Lily said, and she wiped away tears. She looked to Brandon, said, “When will they know?”

  “Soon,” he said. “Maybe they know now. I didn’t see Smythe tonight.”

  “I just need to know. It will give me some—”

  “Closure,” Mia said. “You need to finish this chapter and move on to the next one.”

  “You think I should write about this?” Lily said.

  “It may help you, not let it stay bottled up,” Mia said.

  “Good to air things out,” Winston said.

  “What do you think, Brandon?” Lily said. “Is it better to talk about something like this?”

  She looked at him, a hint of flirtation in her plaintive voice, her wide eyes. The wine, Brandon thought.

  “You’re asking the wrong person,” Mia said. “Brandon carries everything around inside him. Thinks therapy is for sissies.”

  “That’s not true,” Brandon said. “It helps a lot of people, I’m sure.”

  “My mom went every week for years,” Lily said. “I think it just didn’t let her forget she was screwed up.”

  “What was her issue?” Mia said.

  “Oh, do you have a few hours?” Lily said, and she reached for her glass, drank.

  The short version of the story took twenty minutes: growing up in Greenwich, Connecticut, her mom’s brothers running the family company, an outfit that made valves for heating systems. “Kajillions of them,” Lily said. Lily’s uncles not letting her mom into the business, even her dad ending up with a job there, her mom tracing it all back to her father, Lily’s grandfather, who never empowered his daughter to stand alone, kept her subordinate to men who supplied the money and left her dependent.

  “Even now,” Lily said, still drinking. “The company supports me, but I have no real say. My little brother, who was a total fuckup, got kicked out of, like, five prep schools, he’s the heir apparent. In my family it’s like women don’t have brains.”

  Brandon was quiet, his bruised back stiffening in the cool salt air. When it seemed the conversation was winding down, he got up, said he was going to check the docklines, take a walk around the marina. He put on a fleece, grabbed a flashlight, and made his rounds. The gate was locked. The yard was still except for the storm of bugs swarming the lights. The ice machine was running. The freshwater hoses turned off. Even the city across the harbor was quiet.

  He came back to Bay Witch to
find the lights dimmed, everyone gone to bed. Winston and Lily had the forward stateroom, the cabin door closed. Brandon got out of his clothes, slipped into the berth beside Mia. She turned her back to him and he snuggled close to her.

  “You okay?” she said.

  “Yeah. Just tired.”

  “Me, too,” Mia said.

  “Nice of you to help her,” Brandon said.

  “She has some issues. The family.”

  “Shooting somebody isn’t going to help,” he said.

  “I know. But I think she’ll work her way through it.”

  “She seems pretty well adjusted to it,” Brandon said. “Con-sidering.”

  “And I can talk to her,” Mia said. “Her therapist, I’m sure will—”

  She paused. They listened. There was a faint rhythmic thumping. A muffled cry, a pause, and the thumping resumed.

  “Oh, my God,” Mia whispered. “Are they having sex?”

  “Sounds like it.”

  “Huh.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Maybe they’re feeling better,” Mia said.

  “I’d say so, at least for the minute,” Brandon said.

  They lay there, tried not to listen. Lily cried out, the words garbled like she was covering her mouth.

  “Maybe it’s a way for them to stay close, after everything that’s happened,” Mia said.

  “Could have gone for a walk,” Brandon said. “Held hands.”

  They lay there, didn’t move. Winston grunted and Lily moaned.

  “Is this bad boat etiquette?” Mia said.

  “To have wild sex ten feet away from your hosts, separated by a quarter-inch sheet of plywood?”

  “So the answer’s yes?”

  “Unless you’re on the Love Boat.”

  They lay on their backs. The thumping continued, then turned to creaking, and then the creaking stopped.

  “Was it good for you?” Brandon said.

  “Ssshhh,” Mia said.

  “And that’s with a vee berth. If they’d been in here—I don’t even want to think about it.”

  They were quiet, heard Lily or Winston get up and go to the head. Brandon decided it was Winston.

  “I don’t get them,” he said softly.

  “They’ve been through a lot,” Mia said.

  “I don’t mean right now. I mean in general.”

  “You don’t like them?”

  “They’re fine.”

  “You don’t like anybody.”

  “That’s not true. You like them?”

  “Sure. She’s fun and smart and funny and he’s a nice guy.”

  “Just seems like they don’t belong together,” Brandon said.

  “People probably say that about us,” Mia said.

  “That’s just your parents.”

  Brandon smiled in the dark, squeezed her hand.

  “So this company, she just gets a fat check in the mail every month?”

  “I guess.”

  “Must be nice.”

  “I don’t know. Sometimes I think it just lets her drift. Money is a big enabler.”

  “What’s the name of the company? Acme Valve or something?”

  “I have no idea. That’s the most I’ve ever heard her talk about it.”

  “Sounded pretty bitter.”

  “Wouldn’t you be?”

  “If I had a paycheck coming in, never had to work?”

  “You’d hate it,” Mia said.

  “A lot of boat time.”

  They lay still, listened to the water lap the side of the hull.

  “He works his butt off,” Brandon said, “and she doesn’t work at all.”

  “Suits them, I guess.”

  “Weird about the New York guy.”

  “Awful.”

  “I would think he’d want to make the drop, get the hell out of Dodge,” Brandon said.

  Mia didn’t reply.

  “Instead he does a home invasion robbery thing. All by himself. No mask. Pretty much has to kill two people to pull it off. For the night’s take at a restaurant with what, ten tables?”

  “Must’ve been a pretty horrible person.”

  “Pretty stupid, too,” Brandon said.

  “Aren’t there stupid criminals?”

  “They don’t live long.”

  “Well,” Mia said, “he didn’t.”

  The baby liked the toys well enough. He squeezed the rubber duck, smiled when she said duckie over and over. He threw the plastic rings, though it wasn’t really throwing. It was more like he held them and then waved his arms and the rings flew off. Collect them, give them back, he’d do it again. Red was his favorite. He always picked red first.

  But it was paper he most loved to play with. Crumple up the tissue paper from the toy boxes and hold it out to him and he’d grab the paper ball and tear at it like a puppy, grinning his toothless grin. He’d fling the paper, tear at it, fling it again, chuckling to himself.

  It was the sound he liked, that was clear, so he must have very good hearing. The idea was to sit with him, talking for as long as he’d listen, as long as he was awake. The mom probably hadn’t been much of a talker, on drugs the way she was. But maybe that was good because the books talked about imprinting, and maybe that hadn’t happened yet.

  It was a wonder he was as healthy as he was, growing up with druggies and drunks. But he was active and happy and seemed to enjoy the company, all the attention. Playing catch with the ball (though he didn’t catch it as much as push it), hitting the floor with the rubber hammer (he was a typical boy, wasn’t he?), ripping his paper.

  He didn’t even mind when they changed him, grinning up at them, sometimes peeing straight up into the air, like one of those cherubs in a fountain. And the whole time, his name was repeated to him, over and over.

  “Sam. Your name is Sam. My name is . . .”

  A text at 5:10 a.m. Brandon rolled off the berth, checked the message. It was from Kat: LOOK AT THE PAPER BUT DON’T WORRY ABOUT IT. He opened the cabin door, heard Mia say, “Oh, my God.”

  She was on the stern deck, sitting in a canvas chair with her laptop and coffee, a blanket wrapped around her, writing pads on the deck. Brandon came out in his boxers, carrying his jeans, T-shirt.

  “You’d better see this,” Mia said.

  He pulled a chair up beside her. Mia held the laptop up and Brandon shaded the screen, read the headline:

  DEATH FOLLOWS ROOKIE COP

  A year after hotel shooting, Portland police officer Brandon Blake has brush with two more fatalities

  By Matthew Estusa

  Staff Writer

  “I’m a cop,” Brandon said. “Of course I’m gonna have brushes with death.”

  “I know,” Mia said.

  “Who do you call when somebody gets killed? The police.”

  “You don’t have to tell me.”

  “What is this crap?”

  “Brandon.”

  “That son of a bitch.”

  The story was a sidebar to a bigger article about the home invasion, Lily and Winston and Renford Gayle, the dead guy. There was a photo of Lily being consoled by Mia. The caption said,

  Empathy: Lily Lawrence, 28, of Portland, is comforted by Mia Erickson, 24, of South Portland, after Lawrence reportedly shot and killed a man during a foiled robbery at Lawrence’s Eastern Promenade home early Sunday morning. Erickson was the victim of a kidnapping-extortion plot last year that also ended with a fatal shooting, by her partner, Brandon Blake, 24, now a Portland police officer.

  “Did he call you?” Brandon said.

  “He left a message. I never called him back.”

  “You didn’t tell me that.”

  “You weren’t around.”

  Brandon read quickly: the Gayle shooting, Chantelle’s death, him being first on the scene, no mention of Kat. . . .

  Portland PD hiring him eleven months after he’d killed Joel Fuller, twenty-nine, of Portland, who had murdered another Portland police officer, Sergeant
David Griffin. Some “expert” from the UMaine psychology department saying someone who had killed as a civilian would have the potential to carry that trauma into his work as a police officer.

  “Bullshit,” Brandon said.

  “Honey,” Mia said.

  The chief was asked if Brandon had gotten preferred status because he’d killed a cop killer. Garcia said that a candidate who had shown coolness in high-stress situations would be looked upon favorably. “That’s why police departments often hire from the military,” Garcia said.

  O’Farrell said Brandon was a hardworking young cop who took his job seriously. The fact that he was connected to investigations of the deaths of Ms. Anthony and Mr. Gayle was purely coincidental.

  Did O’Farrell feel indebted to Blake after Blake had killed the man who killed O’Farrell’s colleague and one-time partner, Griffin?

  “In the sense that I’m glad Mr. Fuller is not able to kill another police officer?” O’Farrell said. “Yes.”

  No charges were filed against Blake in that shooting.

  But Estusa went on to quote one unnamed officer who said Blake was “more gung-ho than most young cops,” and that, “he’d have to learn to tone it down.”

  “We’re here to do community policing,” the officer said. “The days of busting heads are long over.”

  That officer was asked about Blake’s off-duty arrest in the Old Port domestic violence case. Was it common for officers to make arrests while off duty? “Not really.” In this case, the incident prompted a complaint of excessive force.

  “We were having a disagreement, a private conversation,” Louis T. Duguay, 31, of Westbrook told the Tribune. “This guy, no uniform, comes out of nowhere and knocks me down, sprays me with Mace, slams my head on the pavement. My fiancée was screaming at him to stop.”

  “He was slapping her in the face, punched her in the head,” Brandon said. “And he came after me.”

  “I know,” Mia said.

  Duguay said he had contacted an attorney and was considering legal action against both Blake and the police department. “The guy is out of control,” Duguay said.

  Chief Garcia said complaints of excessive force are taken seriously and are investigated internally.