Kingston Pier. Easttown. About ten miles following the canal. Go straight out east another fifty miles or so and you’ll hit Bar Harbor, just south of Bangor. Then Nova Scotia, and finally Greenland. Those are your bearings.
There’s a general rule of thumb for hitmen, mob men, and anyone who’s organized in highly illegal crime, that if you’re going to do anything you do it at the Pier. The thing hasn’t been used in thirty years, maybe even longer. Used to be the main docking grounds all the skippers used for their boats. The only problem was that the original architects of the place didn’t take into account the rising tides and water levels or any of the stuff you see over at the Docks on a Saturday morning.
Meaning that every Winter, when the winds went crazy, and the water tipped its banks, you have to fight your way through bitter-cold scrappy waters just to get yourself and your catch out of the ocean. And then next morning, when you’ve got to go untie your boat and do it all over again, you might discover the thing is twenty feet up a hill you don’t remember setting it down at.
If I have all this right, thirty years ago the city of Portsmouth hosted some big-shot young beautiful actress who’d just done a movie with… Lawrence Olivier… or some legend. They took her out on a boat to show her a good time. Then out of nowhere these fifty-mile hour winds come up and start swinging the boat so violently the whole thing ends up capsizing just outside the docks and everyone ends up in freezing waters for the next ten minutes or so until the Coast Guard sends out their boats, with blankets and thermoses of hot coffee. No one died, but the outcry was loud enough the government ended up shelling out money for the new Docks. Fishermen were awfully happy about this. They’d been trying to find a way to get new docks for years, and the solution had just dropped into the water right in front of them. According to the guys who were around then, just a year after the Docks were finished and everyone jumped ship, the Pier looked like it’d been abandoned half a century ago. Which is why it’s opened up for business to the kinds of guys who don’t want anybody else knowing about their business.
“Is this really where we’re going?” Maya asks me in this ultra-high hope-it’s-not-what-I-think-it-is voice. She’s definitely got a point. Easttown, especially in early winter, has a teen slasher film look to it. Rickety houses set up outside the canal are painted the color of vomit. Chimneys still throw up soot. Snow the color of boots and broken noses. All the lights busted out long ago, and the city is too cheap to buy new lamps.
“We’re not the hotel type. Here we’ve got privacy.”
“And all of this—” Her tone includes the sewage canal and run-down houses “—is what you’re waging your territory wars over?”
“It’s the idea, not the place.”
“The idea of absolute garbage? Seems like the best thing that could happen to this place is if somebody set it on fire.”
I slam on the brakes—there’s nobody else on the road with us anyway. Maya is thrown forward in her seat. I dig my fingers into her skin, but I make sure that when I speak I sound calm.
“We grew up here. You understand? Guys lost their Moms, Dads, and baby sisters in places like this. Easttown’s not the center, but it’s our home. You got that?”
She gives me a look like she wants to slap me, but she doesn’t. She turns away and yanks her arm away from my fingers and starts to rub it.
“Sure,” she murmurs. “Can you just get us out of here?”
The Clubhouse is on the northern side of the Pier. That’s the name the guys have come up with for the giant warehouse they reconstructed into a functioning office space for people to drop in if they need to not be seen, or for others to swing by and see the guys they do want to see. Basic rules go that if you’re on the street, you’re with another Stitch. I’m the exception because I’ve been living in high rises and going through shopping malls. Add to that the fact that my much bigger shadow is Portsmouth’s premier mob boss, and that makes me sort of a hands-off.
It pretty much goes without saying that my rules don’t apply to the majority of the other guys. We learn when we’re young that if you’re on the street, assume you’re a target. And in the majority of the cases, that’s true.
Clubhouse—safe house. We’ve even got the docks behind us, and these big searchlights Crash lifted from I couldn’t even guess where to spot any nighttime attacks. The place was built as a fortress, but for the last ten years or so it’s gotten to be a mix of business and home more than anything else. You come to the Clubhouse when you pick up your contracts. You come to the Clubhouse to get briefed on your contracts, so there’s no error of judgment. You pick up your tail or tails—other guys to spot you—when you come to the Clubhouse. You get paid in the Clubhouse. You pay out in the Clubhouse. You hide from guys out for your blood in the Clubhouse. Hide out from cops in the Clubhouse. This is our nucleus.
I park in the shed and open Maya’s door for her. She steps out like someone with four glasses of beer in them about to take a sobriety test.
“Are you alright?” I try taking her arm, but she shakes me away.
“I’m fine—no, thank you.” She rights her purse over her shoulder and pushes me away.
I shrug. “Suit yourself. But there’s broken glass everywhere.”
She looks down and sees that I’m right. I can feel her reluctance when she takes my arm. I know what this is all about. She’s trying to be strong, and I just made her admit defeat.
“It’s like you guys live in a frat house,” she says.
“These aren’t our beer glasses. We keep the place clean.”
Maya doesn’t say anything else, but I can feel her trembling through the thin sweater she has on. It might be cold, and it might be nerves, and it’s probably both.
I lean in to whisper, “Once we’re out of this, I’m going to pick you up and take you to the back seat and fuck you until your eyes pop.”
She stays quiet, but I see her smile. Her hand comes over mine and commences rubbing.
The entranceway looks like a barn except that the front door is a giant steel contraption like on a safe, with turning wheel and combination, plus a bearded guy in cargo pants standing in front shouldering a Kalashnikov like a kid with a baseball bat. He looks like a Navy Seal and not long ago.
“Quinn Tolliver. And I was just betting with Crash that you wouldn’t be coming back at all. Dropped a grand on you, boy.”
“Nice to see you too, Bolt.”
I take Bolt’ arm and pull him in for a hug. He points the Kalashnikov in the air, which makes me a little more comfortable.
“This your girl?” He pulls away from me. Maya looks from him to me, then back to him.
“You’re going to want to be polite with her,” I’m saying but it’s already too late. Out comes Maya’s hand faster than you can blink. It smacks Bolt square in the right cheek with a sound of wood hitting the ground.
“Young lady would have been fine.” Maya shakes out her hand. “I’m Maya Butler. Kirill’t call me ‘girl’ again.”
There’s something surreal about watching a girl barely above five feet and thin as a sapling talking up to Bolt—a monster with a submachine gun and eyes like fire. There’s also something intensely rewarding about how amusing it all is, but I don’t make any of this clear to Bolt. He gives me a look, then her, and then bursts out laughing.
“Whatever you say, Miss Maya Butler.”
“No.” She literally wags a finger at him. I never thought anyone except for nannies did that. “Kirill’t be disingenuous about it. That’s being an asshole. Say ‘Maya’ and be done with it.”
“Sure thing,” Bolt says. He’s getting as much out of this as I am. Probably even more.
“Quinn—you got a password for me?”
I whisper it: stitch and tatter. Bolt nods, plugs in the combo for the door and opens wide. A cold, sterile smell comes out, like an ice chest filled with medicine.
“You know Palmer’s been all over your ass?”
“He called me twice.”
“Then you know the score.”
“Enough of it to come back.”
“Alright. Good seeing you Quinn man. And Maya.”
The door slams shut behind us. This is the entrance room where they filter people through before deciding to let them continue on into the Clubhouse. We’re supposed to wait here until someone collects us and takes us further in.
Maya’s shivering again. There’s no heat in this place, and it’s at least freezing point outside, considering the snow. I pull her into a hug, and she doesn’t resist. Wonder where I’m going to leave her. There’s a café on the first floor where she can stay and get warm. It kills me, but it’s got to be done. There’s no way I can bring her in with Palmer and the other boys. There’s no way I can just let her listen to these guys—a bunch of hitmen deciding the next score. Far as I know, she must think we’re a club of petty mobsters. Vigilantes, even. Not hired professionals. Not guys who’d kill anyone for money.
We wait ten minutes. Palmer hasn’t shown up yet.
“When we get inside, you’re not going to be allowed into the meeting. That’s just how it works. So I’m going to leave you in one of the rooms we have. You’ll be safe and warm.”
“Okay.”
“I’d bring you with me if I could.” I bring my hand up the back of her neck, beneath her hair. She closes her eyes. “I’d bring you anywhere you wanted to go if I was free enough.”
“I know you would. But you’ve brought me far enough. You’ve told me everything.”
I wince at those last words. If only she knew everything - the whole truth. What would it even mean if she knew what I’d done? Would she call me a monster? A murderer?
I don’t get any further in my thoughts than this because at that moment the door opens. A tall, thin guy—thinner even than Maya—walks in and looks at me, one hand rooted at the hip.
“Well hello there, stranger,” Palmer Glass says.