Thriller 2 Page 18

  Robert Stagg, a high-level county official, sat in the front row and suffered through the sentimental twaddle about the “historic Acton legacy.” Both New Jersey U.S. senators and the governor were on hand. Up at the podium was that moron Denny Shaughnessy, blathering about how Brad was “the best freeholder this county has ever seen.” A few seats down from Stagg was Denny’s wife, crying bitterly. Brad had been screwing her for years.

  “Brad would’ve been our next congressman from the First District,” Denny was saying. “Then a year ago, at midnight, some son of a bitch gunned him down. On his own doorstep. In Haddonfield, for God’s sake.” Denny, a fellow freeholder from the suburbs, was offended that a crime would occur in wealthy Haddonfield. Violence was too gauche to be permitted there. It was as if Haddonfield had become Camden.

  To Stagg’s right was Brad’s widow, who still looked great if you didn’t look closely. She wore a Donna Karan suit that needed dry cleaning. Her knees were spread like a schoolgirl’s. She chewed her brunette hair.

  Everyone had been dismayed that Stagg had married Diana Acton, so soon after Brad’s death. But since Brad’s murder had devastated her, they got used to the idea.

  “Take me home, Robert,” Diana said in that little-girl’s voice she had adopted lately. “This is all stupid.”

  “If they ever find the coward who murdered Brad,” Denny ranted, “I want him to swing from the highest tree.”

  “This will be over in a moment,” Stagg whispered to his wife, containing his exasperation at her, at Denny, at the whole idiotic ceremony. He wanted it to be over, too.

  “There’s no need for it,” Diana went on. Stagg shushed her gently. He had always treated her gently, even when he shouldn’t.

  “I played football at Haddonfield High with Brad, and thanks to him, we won the state championship two years in a row,” Denny said, calming down some.

  With rancor, Stagg recalled his service as team manager, when he waited on Brad like a servant, when he was the target of the team’s jokes and pranks, when even Brad called him “Stagg the Bag” for his shapeless body.

  “Once Brad became a freeholder, he started to turn around our county seat,” Denny said. “If he’d lived, Camden would be cleaned up. Brad always kept a promise.”

  The county’s white, bucolic suburbs surrounding Camden pretended to be impressed by that pledge, Stagg remembered ruefully. The truth was the wealthy suburbanites didn’t care about blighted inner-city Camden, the county’s shameful dark heart, a drug-ridden, gang-run hell. When Brad agreed to back Stagg for the Board of Freeholders, the county’s governing body, Stagg bravely said he’d campaign on resurrecting the city of Camden, too. Brad told him not to bother; he had that covered.

  So Denny Shaughnessy nattered away, Sheila Shaughnessy sobbed and Diana Acton—she insisted on keeping the name from her first marriage—twiddled her thumbs in her lap. Robert Stagg wished she had taken a bigger dose of Halcion.

  His attention wandered around the lobby, transformed nauseatingly into the Saint Brad Cathedral. He knew almost everyone in the crowd. And he liked that they gazed at him with respect, much as they had with Brad. He had been asked to speak, of course, yet had demurred out of concern for Diana. He needed to be at her side constantly.

  Stagg’s eyes bugged out.

  There. In the crowd, by the elevators. Standing tall. The blond hair over his forehead. Smiling as if every day was his birthday. Staring at Stagg.

  Stagg whimpered involuntarily.

  “What’s wrong, Freeholder Stagg?” asked Jimmy Sparacino, the Democratic Party’s county chairman, who sat to Stagg’s left.

  “Nothing, nothing, nothing.” The vision of Brad had vanished in the throng.

  “I wish you’d spoken today,” Sparacino whispered. “You were Brad’s best friend. I understand about poor Diana, but…”

  Sparacino liked to refer to Brad’s widow as “poor Diana.” Luckily for her new husband, Diana was far from poor. She had inherited a load from her rich family, and Brad’s fortune had passed to her, also. Now it was Stagg’s.

  Stagg thanked the chairman for his concern. “This is a rough day for her,” he said in a low voice she couldn’t hear. “All the memories rushing back—it’s hard to handle.”

  When Brad chose Stagg to run, Sparacino had objected, saying, “Stagg’s fat, he’s bald, he’s ugly. The only reason to vote for him is he’s your gofer.” Since Brad’s death, Sparacino had changed his mind and come to value Stagg’s brains. As he should, having none himself.

  At long, painful last, the ceremony ended. The dignitaries stood up to greet, gab and guffaw. Smiling is to politics what dribbling is to basketball. But Stagg wasn’t in the mood to play the game today. He took Diana’s arm and led her out.

  He passed the U.S. Attorney, Javers, who was flanked by his young Dobermans in their Brooks Brothers suits. They regarded Stagg hungrily. “We’ll see you tomorrow morning at nine, Freeholder Stagg,” Javers said from somewhere above his bow tie. “Sharp.”

  Stagg couldn’t meet the man’s eyes and instead looked to the side, toward the crowd. “Talk to my lawyer, Mr. Javers, not me.”

  As they reached the crowded door, Diana said, in her nursery school cadences, “What did that mean-looking man in the bow tie want?”

  “Some nonsense Justice Department fishing expedition about the widening of Salem Turnpike in Lindenwold. I pushed it through the board.” Stagg didn’t mention to her that the road project benefited a monster shopping mall that went in a year later. Or let on who owned the mall.

  Diana walked like her old regal self. Perfect posture, proud stride. Too bad she didn’t talk like her old self. “The ceremony was stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid.”

  “Whatever you say, Diana.” In fact, this was Diana’s only sensible utterance in a long time. “I know this was difficult for you.”

  “It’s stupid because Brad is alive.”

  “Alive?”

  Her laugh was one he’d never heard before, almost like a crow’s cawing. “He was here today. I talked to him. Why have a memorial ceremony when he’s alive?”

  Stagg grimaced. “You’re mistaken, Diana. I myself saw someone in the crowd who looked a lot like Brad. But Brad is dead. We’re all on edge today.”

  As they reached Stagg’s Volvo, parked in his designated spot, his cell phone rang. The display read Homey the Clown. He groaned and flipped it open. “Freeholder Stagg,” he said, full of entitlement and self-assurance.

  “Brad’s come back for me,” Diana said, getting into the car.

  A Barry White–deep voice came on the line. “Hello, neighbor.” The gangster got a kick out of his recent move to a Haddonfield mansion from his old Camden row house. “Are we good for tomorrow? Or are we bad?”

  The confidence in Stagg’s voice faltered. “The U.S. Attorney has nothing to link you and me and Salem Turnpike. This is a crock. Javers can’t—”

  “Enough, neighbor,” Mister Man said. “I be checking, is all.”

  “While you’re at it, check where my money is. My banker in Luxembourg says not one red cent has arrived this month from you.”

  Like Brad, Mister Man was ruffled by nothing and no one. “Always with you and the money. Brad Acton never mentioned the money. He had class up the ass. Neighbor, you not just a freeholder. You a freeloader.”

  “Well said. Brad the classy guy. What an original viewpoint. Now if that will be all, I need to take my wife…”

  “I got me another reason to call. We got us a problem.”

  “Where’s Brad?” Diana called from the passenger seat.

  Stagg sagged. “Oh, no. Now what?”

  “That crazy-mother white-trash boy of yours, the one with the no-show job on the county road crew.” The drug lord sounded angry. “That drunken hunk of human garbage named Joe Dogan. He be in one of my bars in H Town today, Skanky’s, pointing his piece at my peeps like he the Frito Bandito. Customers and bartender went running. Then he aimed the gun at two li
ttle kids. Can you believe that?”

  “Oh, Lord. Not Dogan.” Stagg shook his head. “Fine. I’ll give him hell. Again.”

  “I know Dogan took care of our problem with Brad Acton, neighbor. But I am sick of his presence on this earth. I’m not gonna give him hell, I’m gonna send him to hell. I mean, little kids?”

  “Do what you want with him. I’m tired of Dogan, too.”

  When Stagg settled his copious behind into the driver’s seat, he saw that Diana was smiling and humming.

  “I’m glad you’re back in a good mood, Diana.”

  “He said he’d come to the house tonight.” Diana’s strange grin widened. “He looks wonderful. Brad is back. I am very, very happy.”

  The moon was a tight, white fist overhead. By nightfall, Joe Dogan was getting very frustrated, not to mention very drunk. He sat on a bench in a deserted park by the Cooper River. A full six-pack of beer was beside him, sweating, still cold. The other six-pack was almost gone. Only one can remained in its plastic yoke.

  Cursing, he fished his phone out of his pocket, and for the umpteenth time, stabbed redial. He got Stagg’s cell-phone voice mail, as usual. “Call me back, you fat sack of crap,” Dogan snarled. He’d left the identical message the time before, and the time before that.

  Stagg had told Dogan never to contact him unless there was an emergency, like the cops asking about Brad Acton’s death, or if Dogan got into a jam that would interest the law. And Dogan was never to go to where Stagg lived. A year ago, that had been in a garden apartment in Cherry Hill. Now, Dogan knew from the scuttlebutt, Stagg lived in Acton’s palatial house and was married to the widow. What a babe like Diana Acton saw in a piglet like Robert Stagg was beyond Dogan.

  “Must have a wart on the end of it,” Dogan muttered as he popped open the last brewski in his first six-pack.

  Wait. In his wallet. He had a scrap of paper with Brad Acton’s home phone number. It was unlisted. Stagg had given him the number a year ago, so he could call and be sure Acton was home.

  Dinner was a horror show. The latest cook refused to set a place for Brad. When Diana screamed at her—for not whipping up Brad’s favorite dessert, peach cobbler—the woman stormed out.

  Stagg tried to settle Diana down in front of the TV in the cinema-large entertainment center. A Discovery Channel show on hunting was playing; a deer fled through the woods with baying hounds in pursuit. But she wouldn’t stop chattering about Brad’s miraculous return to life.

  Stagg tried to watch the show. But her comments grew more and more irritating. “Brad was the loveliest man” and “you have no money, really.”

  “I make plenty of money.”

  “How? All you ever did was puppy-dog behind Brad.” She gave a brittle laugh. “Oh, I know. You are taking bribes. From that gangster who moved to Haddonfield. That’s why the mean man in the bow tie wants to put you in prison.”

  Slumping even deeper into the huge, overstuffed chair, Stagg said, “Diana, maybe you should go to bed. Have you taken your meds?”

  This behavior was new. She’d been mostly lethargic in recent months. The doctor said to be careful if she became delusional. The risk of suicide was small, but couldn’t be shrugged off. Stagg kept the kitchen knives locked up. Ditto the German Luger, which Brad’s father had brought back from World War II.

  “Since Brad is back, we should get our marriage annulled. I can’t be married to you. You aren’t Brad. I only married you because I needed someone to take care of me. But you are nothing.”

  “How thoughtful of you to say. I’m going outside.”

  “Brad will take care of me again.”

  Stagg fetched a large sweater and poured himself a modest measure of Chivas. It was a bit chilly on the patio, but better than listening to her insanity.

  He sloshed scotch around in his tumbler, standing next to the empty pool with its dead-leaf-coated bottom. The plastic rope with the floats, which divided the deep end from the shallow, lay coiled on the greening lawn like a dead snake.

  Stagg’s memory fell back to high school days. Brad always had a pool party here for the football team. Stagg, as team manager, was also invited. Senior year, to everyone’s delight, Brad and Denny swung little Stagg by his ankles and wrists, and tossed him into the pool. Stagg couldn’t swim. That was even funnier.

  The night after that party, Stagg stayed hidden among the trees and spied on Brad and Diana, the virgin queen of Haddonfield High. It was the apex of his life up to then, seeing Brad deflower lovely, naked Diana, poolside.

  Another big, world-beating memory: how, tending to the stunned Diana in the wake of Brad’s death, he brought her groceries in on a night as starkly moonlit as this one. How Diana rose from the swimming pool, water glistening on her bare skin, her forty-year-old body as taut as a teenager’s.

  How under that hunters’ moon, she had smiled at him. Diana, naked for him. That night was the true apex.

  Diana’s shrill cry broke the reverie. She stood in the French doors to the study. “You have a phone call.”

  Stagg trundled inside. The landline phone display read Joe Dogan. Wonderful. That dirtbag must have kept the unlisted number from a year ago. “What do you want?”

  Diana was climbing the stairs. “I’m tired. Wake me up when Brad comes.”

  Dogan had ingested his usual royal portion of spirits. “You gotta help me out.”

  Had Dogan heard that he was on Mister Man’s priority boarding list for evacuation from the planet? “I’m getting sick of this, you idiot.”

  “You think you’re smarter than everyone,” Dogan slurred. “Well, I’m not the idiot. You’re the idiot.”

  “Brilliant comeback,” Stagg said. “Repartee worthy of Dorothy Parker.”

  “Never met the bitch,” Dogan said. “We got a problem,”

  “We do, huh? Let me guess. You got another drunk-driving arrest on that stupid motorcycle, and I have to fix things with the cops. No, your supervisor on the county road crew called, and you told him you’d kill his children if he didn’t back off. No, you were drunk and groping women at T.G.I. Friday’s happy hour, and one called the cops. I’ve bailed you out so many times for so much asinine behavior that I’m losing track.”

  With a moan, Dogan said, “Have you seen him?”

  “Who?”

  “Brad Acton came to me in a bar in H Town this afternoon. He said he wanted to see us. Both. Tonight.”

  Stagg sighed. “My wife had the same hallucination. Her, high on meds. You, high on booze. Astute observers, the two of you.”

  “He was real, man. I mean, not like a ghost. I couldn’t, like, see through him.”

  “I can see through you. You are a serious alcoholic. Go get dried out.”

  “He knew how much you paid me to do him. Plus, the no-show job on the county roads. How could he know that?”

  “Because it is in your drink-addled head. Today is the anniversary. It brings back the trauma, makes you imagine things. You don’t have to be Freud to understand that.”

  “He knew you are gonna get a barbed-wire enema from the feds. Mister Man pays you off, Stagg. Everybody knows it.”

  “You know nothing,” Stagg snarled. “Brad was ten times as dirty as me. He came from family money, but wanted more. He introduced me to Mister Man. Then when Javers came sniffing around, Brad wanted me to be the fall guy. He wanted me to take Mister Man down, too.”

  “I remember every minute from a year ago.”

  “Meantime, King Brad stays simon-pure. Well, ha-ha, Brad. For the first time in your pampered life, you lost.”

  Dogan didn’t seem to be listening anymore. “I tell you, he seemed like flesh and blood. Like you and me. I bet I could put another bullet in him, and that’d be that.”

  “Check yourself into rehab, you cretin.”

  “I don’t want to face him alone tonight, man.”

  Stagg slammed the phone down.

  A wind came up and blew about the budding branches of the ghostly trees
. Winter and summer warred in the sudden draft off the river, and Dogan shivered. What was he doing sitting here like a frozen pond toad?

  Dogan got on his bike and blasted away from the riverfront park. In a jiffy, his Harley’s loud engine was invading the smooth, quiet roads of Haddonfield, Brad Acton’s hometown. In Haddonfield, trees flower first, and their perfume seeped down from the elegant mosaic of branches that covered the old lanes.

  The Harley brayed down King’s Highway, the town’s main street, where subtly lit colonial storefronts displayed chic clothing and leather goods. Tomorrow, the slender, blond women of the marvelous men of Haddonfield would float past those storefronts, browsing, blasé.

  A year had gone by and beer had fuzzed his thinking, hence Dogan took a while to find Brad Acton’s house. He clattered through the lovely streets until he saw the right landmarks. Left at the three-century-old church, right at the giant white-board mansion, left onto Cypress Avenue.

  Front yard carriage lamps shed soft glows on the brick and flagstone walkways flowing from the smooth road to the fine wood doors that guarded the aristocratic stone houses. Through the latticed windows of those handsome homes came the lamplight of the Haddonfield elite, who ran the world.

  Acton’s house, though, lay in darkness. Girded by vigilant firs, watched over by towering oaks, it seemed almost uninhabited. Then Dogan saw the two cars parked to the side: Stagg’s Volvo and Diana Acton’s Jaguar. He killed the bike’s motor and dismounted.

  It had been a year ago, around midnight. About now, his watch said.

  He couldn’t stand there forever, hypnotized by the house, the night, the clock. Dogan walked cautiously up the sloping, well-barbered lawn, bathed in intense moonglow. The wind, a devilish mix of warm and cold, made small gasps among the trees’ flowers.