Suspicion Read online

  He wished he could be open with Abby, tell her the truth—that her father had gotten involved in some very scary stuff, that her best friend’s father worked with people who murdered without hesitation. That he couldn’t allow her to be a hostage.

  But he couldn’t say anything about it. He didn’t trust her to keep a confidence. Certainly not from her BFF.

  Lucy came into the bedroom after almost an hour in Abby’s bedroom. She looked tired. He could see dried traces of tears on her cheeks.

  He looked up, raised his brows.

  She shook her head. “She’s still upset. I told her to forget about homework, and she didn’t fight me on it. She basically cried herself to sleep.”

  “Oh, Jesus.”

  “I think the nose piercing looks kind of cute on her.” She slipped out of her jeans, then pulled her shirt over her head.

  “Oh, come on. She can mutilate her body after she turns eighteen.”

  “Whoa, what happened to Cool Dad?”

  “I never claimed to be Cool Dad.”

  She unlatched her bra and her breasts swayed. “She did it. Okay? That was her little act of rebellion. Believe me, there are far worse ways for kids her age to rebel.”

  “She could have pierced her septum and had one of those little horseshoes coming out of her nose.”

  “Worse than that. But that’s not what pissed you off, really.”

  “That wasn’t the only thing. She went off the grid for three hours. This girl, who sleeps with her phone in her hand and probably posts things on her Facebook page during math class. She just went dark. How would you have felt?”

  She settled onto the bed. “You overreacted, okay?”

  “I was scared something might have happened to her. She knew I was picking her up at school, and she just vanished.”

  “When we were kids, we could go for almost the whole day without talking to our parents, right? On a summer day, you’d go out in the morning, the screen door would slam shut behind you, and you spent the day riding bikes or hanging out with your friends, and there were no cell phones. You didn’t have to check in.”

  “It’s a different world. There’re abductions and child molesters and sickos with chloroform driving panel vans.”

  “There’s no evidence that kids are more endangered these days. That’s a media myth. Anyway, that’s not even the point.”

  “Which is what?”

  “You know, I always resented it when people tried to tell me how to raise Kyle. Especially when I was a single mom. Everyone always had advice. Don’t be so strict, don’t be so lax. Don’t let him watch TV, don’t make TV the forbidden fruit. Don’t let him play computer games or video games. I mean, it drove me crazy. Even when people were right. From the very beginning, when you and I first started seeing each other, I told you I was never going to play shrink. Never going to tell you how to be a dad.”

  “I asked you to go in there.”

  “And I’m flattered she wanted to talk to me. It means a lot. I mean, it’s complicated, navigating our relationship. I’m not her mom, and she doesn’t want that.”

  “So tell me what she said. How bad is it?”

  “Look, Danny, you’re a terrific father.”

  “But?”

  “But nothing. You are.”

  “And?”

  She shrugged. “Why are you doing this, Danny?”

  “She’s over there too much. Let’s not you and me argue, too.”

  “You’re cutting her off from her best friend.”

  “It’ll be good for her.”

  “I don’t get it. You don’t mind if Jenna comes over here, you just don’t want Abby going over to the Galvins’ house?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Why?”

  He exhaled, frustrated at his inability to tell her the real story. “Spending all that time over there is just giving her unrealistic expectations. It’s warping her.”

  “But that’s not what you told her. You said she can never go over there.”

  “Well, for the time being.”

  “You need to think about why you’re doing this.”

  He reached over, stroked the silky skin of her breasts, gave a nipple a gentle squeeze. She folded her arms.

  “What?” he said.

  “There’s something you’re not telling me about the Galvins.”

  He shook his head, didn’t hesitate, and came right out with the lie. “Not true.”

  “There’s something. Something about them you don’t like. What is it?”

  “That’s not it at all.”

  “Cut the crap, Danny. I know you. I can read you like a book. That time when you claimed you went to the Wellesley College library and you so clearly didn’t?”

  “You’re not still on that, are you?”

  “There’s something going on. Something about Galvin. Why don’t you tell me?”

  “There’s nothing to tell,” he said, and he rolled over and switched off the bedside lamp. “Nothing to tell.”

  She looked at him for a long time, but she left it there. The conversation was over. He awoke some time later, realizing he’d forgotten to send a text message to the DEA confirming that he’d done the deed. He got out of bed as quietly as he could. The floor creaked, and Lucy stirred in her sleep.

  In the living room he switched on the lamp on one side of the couch, opened his laptop, and waited for it to join the wireless network.

  He signed in to the [email protected] account and began composing an encrypted text message, when he saw there was already a message waiting for him:

  Nice work, it said. Meet 10 a.m. tomorrow morning to return equip. location tbd.

  He wondered how they knew he’d managed to upload the contents of Galvin’s BlackBerry. He’d only told them he’d try. How did they know he’d succeeded? Maybe it had been uploaded automatically; was that possible? Probably.

  How much did they know about him? How closely were they watching?

  And when, he wondered, would they finally leave him alone?

  34

  During the ride to school, Abby gave him the full-on silent treatment.

  “Let me guess,” Danny said after a moment. “You’re pissed about this Galvin thing.”

  She stared straight ahead.

  “Abby, talk to me.”

  Silence.

  “I hate seeing you like this, Boogie. Let’s talk.”

  She opened her mouth, looked like she was about to let loose a stream of invective. Instead, very carefully, she said: “No.”

  But he kept at it. His working assumption was that she’d tell everything to Jenna anyway, so he had to be mindful of what he told her. “Look, the Galvins are great people. A totally great family. And Jenna is terrific.” He was willing to exaggerate for the sake of family harmony. “But sometimes people just need to take time off, even best friends. I want us to spend time as a family again. You and me, or you and me and Lucy. Okay?”

  She stared straight ahead and didn’t reply. When they reached the drop-off point in front of the school, she hefted her backpack, opened the car door, jumped out, and slammed it without saying good-bye.

  Have fun, Danny thought.

  Five or six cars ahead in line he saw Galvin’s Maybach limo. Just seeing the car made his stomach clutch. Galvin knew something, suspected something, about him. He had to. Danny prided himself on being a careful observer of people—most writers were—and he’d seen the suspicion dawn on Galvin’s face when he found his BlackBerry in the wrong pocket. It wasn’t exactly subtle.

  Though that didn’t mean Galvin would connect Danny to the DEA. That was a logical leap even a highly suspicious person wouldn’t easily make. Galvin had brought Danny into his orbit; Danny hadn’t wormed his way in. And Danny didn’t have the profile o
f a man working with the Drug Enforcement Agency.

  Unless Galvin had other sources. That was possible. Assume Galvin had protection, people working for the cartel who watched out for him. People who stayed in the background and kept an eye on whoever he came into contact with, as Yeager had said. Was that such a stretch? Galvin was an important player for the cartel. Of course they’d take care of him, keep an eye on him. Make sure he wasn’t being compromised in some way.

  Maybe Galvin had other sources. Maybe, finding that his BlackBerry had somehow moved to the wrong suit pocket, he’d asked around. Maybe the cartel’s people had turned their scrutiny on Danny and found out—somehow—what Danny was up to.

  That wasn’t impossible at all, was it?

  As he rounded around the circular drive, he saw that Galvin’s limousine was parked on the shoulder of the road by the school gates. Right by the exit. As if waiting.

  Danny was tempted to gun the engine, get the hell out of there. But then Galvin’s new driver—what was his name, again?—stepped out of the car and waved him over.

  Keep going? Ignore the guy?

  He couldn’t. He couldn’t just drive by. That in itself would have been suspicious. He slowed, pulled over. Lowered his window.

  “Mr. Galvin he like talk to you,” the driver said.

  Danny parked the Honda behind the Maybach and got out. He approached the limousine, trying to appear casually curious. The rear passengers’ door came open.

  “Get in,” Galvin said, looking grim.

  35

  “Something wrong?”

  “We have to talk,” Galvin said.

  Danny’s mind raced, trying to compose a plausible-sounding explanation. But nothing came. Only a flat-out denial. You serious? You think I took your BlackBerry? Why the hell would I do that? How? Come on, man, get real. Jesus.

  “What’s the problem?”

  Inside, it was even more luxurious than he’d imagined. It looked like a private club and smelled like expensive leather. The passenger compartment was large enough to contain two big, comfortable-looking seats in back, facing forward, and three facing rear.

  Galvin, sitting in one of the two rear seats, patted the one next to him. He was wearing another one of his very expensive-looking suits, this one a nailhead worsted. Clambering in, Danny could smell Galvin’s cologne, something subtle and peppery, and he realized for the first time that this smell made him anxious. It smelled of power. It smelled vaguely toxic.

  “I don’t have a lot of time,” Danny said. The seat was deep and comfortable, the leather buttery.

  Between the rear seats was a console, its surface some kind of tropical wood veneer. Galvin touched it and it popped open. He pulled out two cold water bottles and handed one to Danny.

  “Diego,” he said with a quick motion of his left hand, and a glass divider slid up between the passenger compartment and the cockpit.

  “Come on, let’s take a quick drive. Just leave your car here for a while. We can talk, and I can show you my boat.”

  “Your what?”

  “My boat. My yacht. I’m heading over to the harbor now. Check out my new nav system.”

  “I really should work.”

  “Come on—take us half an hour. I’m launching it early this year so we can sail down to Anguilla over spring break.”

  “Where is it, down in Quincy?”

  “Boston Yacht Haven. Right here. Come on.”

  Danny nodded. He unscrewed the cap from the water bottle and took a sip. “Okay. Sure.”

  Ten minutes later they were pulling over a series of speed bumps and into a private marina in the North End, on Commercial Wharf on the Boston harbor. Danny waited for Galvin to bring up whatever it was he wanted to talk about, but he just chatted away, small talk.

  “You can just wait right here, Diego,” he told his driver. “Shouldn’t be more than ten, fifteen minutes.”

  “Si, señor.”

  Danny could barely keep up as Galvin led the way around the side of the rambling, angled clubhouse and along a dock. The air was crisp and clean and tinged with salt. A gentle breeze came off the water. Moored to the pier were several yawls and a small boat—it was too early for most people to put their boats in the water—and on the other side of the building was what had to be Galvin’s boat. It was a big, beautiful, streamlined thing, cream and white, all swooping lines and aggressive angles. Painted on its bow was EL ANTOJO.

  “That yours?” Danny said.

  “Yep,” Galvin said. He stopped at a black-painted security gate on the dock and swiped a key card and pulled it open. Danny followed Galvin down a gangway to the slip.

  “El Antojo?”

  “It’s sort of an inside joke in our family. It’s one of those Spanish words that’s impossible to translate. It means ‘whim’ or ‘craving,’ something like that. When I bought it, Lina and I had a big fight—she said she couldn’t believe I’d dumped millions of dollars on an antojo—a caprice, a whim.”

  “It’s a beauty, though. For an antojo.”

  “Thanks. The Italians know how to build them.”

  Standing on the slip, watching the yacht bob gently in the water, Danny experienced the momentary illusion that the dock was rocking, not the boat.

  “What kind of boat is it?”

  “It’s a Ferretti. Their Custom Line—the Navetta 26 Crescendo. Took almost three years to build.”

  “It looks fast.”

  “Not especially. Cruising speed is twelve, thirteen knots. She’ll get up to fourteen knots. But she’s sporty. And she can go all the way down to Anguilla without refueling. And she’s smooth. Semidisplacement hull. Know anything about boats?”

  “I grew up in Wellfleet, remember?” Somewhere a distant ship’s horn sounded. A jet passed by low overhead, taking off from Logan Airport.

  “Right, right.” Galvin climbed a short ladder onto a wide main deck. Danny followed him up another set of stairs to a spacious sky lounge.

  “Do you drive it yourself, or do you have a crew?”

  “Depends. For long trips I usually hire a captain, but most of the time I take it out myself.”

  “It’s gotta be more exciting to drive it yourself, right?”

  “Exciting? Lemme tell you something. Exciting is the one thing you don’t want when you’re at sea. Exciting is when you hit an iceberg or sail into a hurricane or have your bilge pump fail. Or hit a rocky shoal. I’ll take boring anytime.”

  “Ever come close?”

  “To what, sinking?”

  Danny nodded.

  “No. Not that I know of.”

  Danny looked down at the water, green-tinged black with a surface that looked like velvet. “When I was a teenager, I helped scuttle a ship.”

  Galvin looked at him, head tipped, half smiling, unsure whether this was a joke.

  Danny could hear the hum of the fuel barge nearby. The pilings underneath the marina were exposed, like the mouth of a cave. It was low tide.

  “Remember when they sank this big old navy warship in Cape Cod Bay to use for target practice?” Danny said.

  “Sure, like twenty years ago or something.”

  “The demolition guys hired to do it were one of my dad’s subcontractors. So when I was sixteen, I got a job helping place the explosive charges along the hull.”

  “Really? Cool.”

  “It was nasty work, actually. We had to put all these shaped charges on the hull below the waterline so when they went off, it was like cutting a line all the way around. And a twenty-thousand-ton ship went down like a rock in less than two minutes.”

  “Must’ve been cool when it all went boom.”

  “A bunch of little thuds, actually. They time the explosions. The trick is to keep the boat upright as it sinks so it’ll settle straight down onto the ocean floor.”
>
  “Blowing shit up is fun no matter how old you are. It’s a primal instinct. Legalized violence.”

  “Sure. Instead we watch hockey or football or boxing and compete in business. We don’t actually take part in the violence ourselves anymore. We’re civilized.”

  “Yeah,” Galvin said, but he sounded like his thoughts were somewhere else. “Yeah.”

  They both fell silent for a moment, peering at the horizon, the scudding clouds, the seagulls diving and swooping and cawing. “You know,” Galvin said, “sometimes when you’re out on the boat in the middle of the ocean, with nothing around for miles, nothing in sight, nothing but water, you realize how insignificant we are, in the scheme of things. You find yourself thinking, you know—O Lord, be good to me. Your sea is so wide and my boat is so small.”

  “Hmph,” Danny said. “Not all that small, actually.”

  “Okay, asshole,” Galvin said, feigning annoyance but visibly pleased. “I guess it’s all relative. The big fish doesn’t look so big to the even bigger fish.”

  “Guess so.”

  “Danny,” Galvin said. “So this thing I wanted to talk to you about?”

  “Yeah . . . ?”

  “Look, you told Abby she can’t come to our house anymore. I want to know why.”

  So that was it. Not what he’d expected at all.

  “It’s complicated, Tom.”

  “They’ve become close. Best of friends. Does that concern you?”

  Was Galvin onto him, somehow? Did he know why Danny wanted to keep Abby away?

  “It’s not the closeness that concerns me.” Danny said. “It’s . . . I want her home more often.”

  “That all?”

  Danny felt his guts constrict. “That’s all,” he said. “Nothing more than that, really.”

  “Be straight up with me. This isn’t about that nose piercing, is it? I mean, yeah, Jenna never should have taken Abby to get her nose pierced. That was wrong. Celina shouldn’t have just assumed that Abby had permission. Just because she said so doesn’t make it true. I know how angry you were about that, and hell, if I didn’t have the two older boys, I’d probably be freaking out, too. But—”