We drive for an hour and pass enough exits that’ll take us just about anywhere in the continental United States. Twenty, thirty, thirty-five miles since we left the city I count off the odometer. What the hell or who the hell does Maya know all the way out in the boondocks?
I can’t ask her because she’s been asleep for the last thirty minutes. She’s taking these deep, wet breaths and snoring slightly through her nose and through the whistle between her lips, sort of like a kitten. It’s cute but also weird when I think that, for jobs like this, I’m getting paid two-and-a-half grand a day. Even running around with the Stitches making hits doesn’t pay the kind of dough I’m getting to watch this kitten purr.
The road begins to twist and soon enough we’re up on the Gulf of Maine. It’s mid-afternoon, and the sky is a mash of clouds. The water’s gray as concrete and whipping up a spray from the wind, while the beach is a gnarly twist of sand with so much driftwood sticking up through the surface that it looks like the ocean rose up and accidentally drowned a forest.
I turn on the windshield wipers when the air gets dewy. I take a look out over the water - haven’t seen the beach in ages. Maybe not even since I first arrived in this state. There are a few guys with waders and large salt-crusted peacoats tossing in their lines and lures from the pier, and it looks like the most boring, most miserable thing you could be doing on a day like today. I never understood the whole fishing craze or the whole seaside craze in general. But then again, I’m not much of a seaside guy, or a vacation guy come to think of it.
The road curves on alongside the water for another five miles. I open the window a crack to get a smell of the rain and the brine and to catch a bit of the fresh air. Maya stirs and opens an eye.
“We’re by the water?” she says sleepily.
“Take a look out the window.”
She takes a look but seems unimpressed.
“How long have you been driving along the beach for?”
“Six or seven miles. You want me to pull over?”
“Not yet. We’ll go for another ten minutes.”
“Okay.”
I roll the window back up. Maya looks thoughtful.
“In three miles you’ll take Hammond’s. You’ll get in the right-hand lane and just follow that road for a little while. We’ll be there in ten minutes or so.”
“It might help if you told me where we’re going.”
“The complex is called Sunrise Apartments. I’ll point it out to you when we get nearer, though I doubt you can miss it.”
“Okay.”
Hammond’s exit is three miles to the dot. Something pretty obvious tells me that this girl’s been to these parts before and Christ only knows what for. She doesn’t much seem the sea-scrounging fisherwoman type or the kind who’d drive an hour out of town for a drug deal. She might be a mobster’s daughter, but she looks pretty clean to me.
And then all of a sudden it’s like we’re back in colonial America, and all the houses are three-storied mansions with yards big enough to hold circuses. Least that’s my impression when I see the houses. There are dozens of them, stately wooden things with huge archways, porches, and honest-to-God towers: the kinds that look like you’d keep birds in them. Aviaries those are called.
“These are fancy,” I say.
“It’s called Queen Anne.”
“You mean the house?”
“The architecture. Kind of old-fashioned, right? And with those big circular windows and those winding steps and the towers. I love this kind of building.”
“You come here often?” I cringe because it sounds too much like a bad pickup line.
“Whenever I’ve got a spare minute.”
“Just to come look at the buildings?”
“Sort of.” She points to the right. There’s a big wooden sign with the words Sunrise Apartments painted in green before a wrought iron gate and guardhouse. I stop next to the tiny pavilion while an old man in a creased white shirt and gray mustache waddles out with a clipboard to take my name.
“Afternoon, folks,” he says, looking inside the car and dipping his hat to Maya. “Pleasure to see you again, Stella.”
“And you, Jerry dear. Just here for a visit—we won’t be in your hair any more than an hour.”
“Take as long as you want. You know the place is always open to you.”
The old guy goes inside and presses the button for the gate and walks back out all smiles. Maya gives the guy a wave and then we’re driving on through, passing row after row of luxury apartments that all look like they’ve been dragged out of turn-of-the-century Netherlands. Gives me a weird feeling like we’re traveling back in time or something like that.
“Kirill’t ask.”
“About what?”
“You know what,” Maya says and directs me down to the left. “Far as you’re concerned, you’ve never known anyone named Stella Smith in your life. Got it?”
“Far as I’m concerned, unless you’re coming out here to shoot up without your daddy knowing, it’s none of my concern.”
“You think I do drugs? I can’t even smoke a joint without my lungs practically caving in on me.”
“I don’t know what you do, and as long as you don’t wind up killing yourself, I don’t care either.”
Maya goes thoughtfully quiet. Whatever she’s got running through her brain, I betcha right now she’s considering whether or not to tell me about it. Please, no. The less I know about her, the easier this will be.
“Daddy’s got connections a hundred miles in every direction outside Portsmouth,” she says. “Sometimes, you just want a little privacy.”
“You don’t think your father would understand if you just told him you wanted to get away every once and awhile?”
“He hired you, didn’t he? What do you think that says about what he thinks?”
“What he told me is that he wants you safe. That’s not the same thing as keeping you in a prison.”
I slow the car at Maya’s direction and stop in front of one of the Queen Anne-style apartments. The paneling is the color of salmon, and it sprouts these little turrets like smokestacks you see in pictures of London in the 1800s. A big porch sits out in front like a second house, raised up by these big Roman pillars. I bet ten grand a piece for those pillars, just judging by their handiwork.
“You think that now. Get to know my father a little longer than three days, and you’ll see they’re one and the same for him. Stop here.”
I stop behind the black BMW, the only other car on the street.
“You can turn it off. I’m not going to be gone long.”
I don’t like the sound of this, and so I keep the door locked so that she can’t jump out on me. “ ‘Not going to be gone long’ is too vague. You need to tell me something better before I let you out.”
“I’ve told you enough already.” She tries to unlock the door, but I reach over and smash the knob back down.
She rounds on me, strands of her bottle-blonde hair whipping about her face. “Have we got a problem?”
“That depends. I’ve already told you who I work for. Now you’re trying to act like it’s a choice.”
“You’re gambling, Quinn.” It’s the first time she’s used my name, and I do not like how she said it, like a curse. “All it takes is one word from me, and you’ll be out on the street. You’re not in a position to demand anything.”
“You’ve already threatened me once today, Miss Butler.”
“It’s my birthday. I can damn well do what I want.”
“Then do what you want,” I say. “Just know that if at any point I think you’re in danger, it’s my job to make sure you have as much protection as possible. That may include calling your father. And if you’re hiding out an hour from the city in a place I’ve never even seen before, how am I supposed to know you’re safe?”
That’s a risky mouthful, but it gets the job done. She takes her hand from the door. Her mouth curves into the shape of a pout. When she talks again, her voice is quieter: “This is where I used to come when I was younger. Six-seven years ago. None of these apartments existed back then—they were just a bunch of abandoned buildings. Big fire twenty years ago. They only just got around to cleaning up everything and making it all nice again. I used to come here with my old boyfriends to fool around. Now I like walking around so I can get a moment’s rest. That’s everything. Happy?”
“I don’t see why you couldn’t have just said something in the beginning. I still don’t get why you have to keep this a big secret.”
“Because the only reason I ever came here in the first place was to get away. How do you think he’d take it if I told him that?”
“I don’t think he’d care. He’s got to let you go at some time.”
“Right.” She smears a hand over her mouth. The gesture’s rougher than anything else I’ve seen her do. Usually, she’s such a princess. “Like I said, wait more than two days, and you’ll see what kind of man he really is. I’m his little princess, and he wants to keep me locked up in his tower for the rest of my life. He’d kill me if he found out where I was right now. And he’d kill you if he found out you took me here. So you’d better not breathe a word if you know what’s best for you.”
I can’t decide if that last sentence is supposed to sound like a corny mobster’s threat or a legitimate one. I spend a whole second waiting before I unlock the doors.
“As long as you don’t get yourself killed, no one has to know anything. Far as I’m concerned, your father has better things to worry about than the fact you were walking around in some old apartment.”
Maya gives me a look that is half doubtful and half relieved. Then she opens the door. But there’s one more thing I’ve got to say before she leaves. “I’m not an expert or anything like that, but have you tried just telling your father you want to live away?”
She hangs her elbows on the door and gives me a stare like I’m some kind of indescribable moron. “You think after everything I just said, if he thought I was even considering it, he’d let me out of his sight another moment? Does a mob lord—one of the most feared and respected men in New England—strike you as the kind of person who’d let the most precious thing in the world to him just slip away and do what she pleased? Are you an even bigger idiot than I took you for?”
“So you’ve never even mentioned it? You’ve snuck around for six years and never said a word.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“It is that simple, far as I can see. You’re making it more complicated than it needs to be,” I say, getting bold. “And I’ve got a feeling that the longer you do it, the more you’re putting yourself in danger.”
There’s a dewy rain coming in from the direction of the bay. Briny winds. Salt that sticks to the roof of your mouth and stays there like a glob of peanut butter. I’m wondering if Maya feels cold standing there without a coat, giving me the blackest look I’ve ever gotten from anyone before. It’s amusing but also unsettling. That’s a new experience for me.
“No, Quinn. It’s not.” The car door slams shut with a sound like thunder. Maya takes a few steps up towards the enormous porch, stops, faces me again, and comes back to the car, planting her elbows on the frame of the open window. “Kirill’t you ever talk to me about this ever again. We’ve never had this conversation, you understand?”
She turns around before I’ve got a chance to say anything and whisks up to the porch. Then the door of the black BMW opens and a man gets out, tall and lanky, with a long blue coat that goes down to his knees and a sweep of feathery-light, blonde hair combed all to one side. He doesn’t turn around when he climbs the steps, and I don’t have a chance to see his face. Then, Maya embraces him for a second, and they walk up the steps together and disappear into the house like two happy newlyweds.
I unbuckle my seatbelt and open the door. Then I close it right back again. It’s obvious enough she knows the guy. There isn’t any need to go chasing after them. And some of her spiel has sunk in, enough that I can understand if she wants a few moments privacy. Hell, I couldn’t imagine what it’d be like to have a mobster watching over me all the time.
The man already keeps all his birds cooped up in his house like he’s running his own private zoo. He’s probably got Maya stuck right in the middle of all that, like she’s his prize pig or something. It doesn’t help either that she’s short as a runt and helpless as a newborn.
More cloud mash overhead. Thunder is rolling in, heavy but in the wet, thick sense of thunder. The rain patters a few times against my windshield, but these are just the scouts. A few seconds later the clouds open up, and the next thing I know, the Mercedes and I are swimming in a hail-fire of cold rain pellets. That’s a thing about these New England storms. They come down hard and heavy for about ten minutes, throwing nothing but punches, but any more time than that and the only reminder of a storm you’ll have is the smell in the air and the wet smear near the gutters.
Early Talking Heads are on the radio, but I turn it down so that I can hear the storm better. Maya’s on my mind, but weird as it is to say it, not the same Maya I started out the day with. Ditzy, small, and Barbie-like, sure. But not just that. The more I think about it, the more I see that image being replaced by another. Not the spoilt brat that I met the first day or the one I was towing around the whole morning buying a whole new wardrobe she’d probably never have enough events to wear to. Not just the spoilt brat. Daddy’s trophy. His pride and joy. His property. Christ. She’s practically a grown woman, and here she is sneaking around like a freshman scared stiff she’s gonna get caught and grounded by her parents. That was no kind of situation for a girl her age to be in.
Something else I’m thinking, too. All those guys that surrounded her at the shopping malls… What the hell kind of guy problems is she experiencing in that she needs to surround herself with an army to keep them away? Plus me to protect her as well?
The rain goes on pounding for another ten-twenty minutes. Then, it just stops. Like someone shut off the power. Simple and quick. The clouds unstick themselves and from over the gable of one of these Old Dutch houses the sun peeks through with heavy, late afternoon light the color of pages from old books, burnt, and dense.
I spend so much time watching the sun I don’t even hear the tap on the window. “You gonna let me in?” Maya is holding her designer coat in both arms instead of wearing it for some reason. There are goosebumps all over her shoulders.
I start the engine and crank the heater and get out to open her door. She slides in without a word, keeping her eyes locked in front of her like she’s watching a tiny, private T.V.
“Where to?”
“Home.” It’s like a worm has edged down her throat and sucked all the power out of her voice. She sounds lifeless, weak and tired. What the hell went on inside that apartment?
I consider asking her, but common sense tells me that’d be a terrible idea and I shut my mouth. We pull out of the Sunrise Apartments Complex, swing a left and chase the shore of the gray-slate bay, away from the sun. Maya makes a quiet, choking sound and begins to breathe harder. I think I hear a sob, but I don’t break eye contact with the road.
There’s no mistaking the second sob. Maya doesn’t even try to hide it, just scrubs away at her eyes like she has shards of glass in them. She doesn’t say she’s fine, like every other girl who has ever cried in front of me. She’s the kind of girl who’ll deceive everyone else, but not herself. Finally. Something about Maya Butler that seems genuine.