Friday
Cranky Agnes column #12
“Coke Would Like to Teach the World to Cook”
Some people are critical of Coke, pointing out that when you drop a nail into a Coke, and leave it there for four days, the nail dissolves completely; imagine, they say, what that same Coke does to your stomach. Those who are fans of Coke Ham point out that when you pour Coke over a ham and bake it in a 300-degree oven for two and a half hours, the ham tastes delicious. But anybody who has put a nail in a can of Coke and waited four days knows that it doesn’t dissolve at all. Why do people believe everything they hear? On the other hand, Coke Ham really is good. Better than that, it’s criminally easy.
The next morningfelt eerily calm to Shane, sitting at Agnes’s kitchen table in the sunshine with Rhett underneath it draped over his feet and Garth across from him, resplendent in a brand-new shirt and jeans, which he was endeavoring not to get maple syrup on. Shane’s life was crumbling at the edges, but in the middle was Agnes, making love and breakfast, wanting him to come home to her, and a big old dog, keeping his toes warm. Screw the edges, he thought, and poured himself a mug of coffee brewed from fresh ground beans as Agnes put his plate of pecan pancakes in front of him. Still he knew that it wouldn’t work in the long run. Casey Dean was out there, determined to kill somebody after the wedding, and somebody else was out there, determined to kill Agnes. Agnes’s coffee and pancakes were good, but they could only hold off reality for so long.
“I have to go to work today,” he said, trying to prolong the illusion that it was a normal breakfast between two normal people who had just made love until they’d both collapsed and were now smiling at each other in a sunlit kitchen, giddy with mutual approval.
Garth nodded, his mouth full of pancake.
“Selling insurance,” Agnes said, going back to the grill for the bacon she had crisping there.
The pancakes were golden, the butter he slathered on slid off the tops in fragrant melting rivers, and then Agnes reached across the counter and handed him the syrup pitcher Garth had left up there, and he absentmindedly watched her breasts move under her T-shirt as he took it.
“Right, insurance,” Shane said, and poured the syrup, its scent reaching deep into his brain.
Garth gave them both the fish eye and shoveled the last of his pancakes in.
“To get that gold watch,” Agnes said.
“Yep.” Shane cut into the pancakes and forked up a bite: light, tender, nutty, sweet, and buttery, just like Agnes. Home cooking.
The phone rang and Agnes answered it. “Good morning, Reverend Miller. What is it this time?” She listened for a moment and then said, “What? No, she’s not pregnant. Jesus wept, man, are you insane? Do you know what Evie Keyes would do to you if she knew you were calling people and insinuating that her son is going around knocking up girls?” She listened again and then said, “Yes, that is exactly what you just implied, and I am shocked, just shocked that you’d spread gossip like that about a Keyes. And you a man of the cloth. What the world is coming to, I do not know. God must be listening to you right now and reaching for the bottle, that’s all I can say.” She hung up and said, “That man needs medication.”
“They should just put it in the water here, medicate the whole damn town.” Shane said, but he said it without venom—Keyes was what it was and a lot of it was good, the breakfasts, for example—and took another forkful of pancake.
Agnes filled a plate with bacon and came around the counter with it, as Garth got up to go. “I’m gonna go pick up that ground cover for the bare spots around the gazebo,” he said.
“Let me give you money,” Agnes said, but Garth said, “Nah,” and went out the back door as she called after him, “You look really nice in that shirt,” and got a grin through the screen door in return. “Please don’t steal plants from people,” she yelled as he went down the path and he waved without turning around.
“I wouldn’t ask any questions about the landscaping,” Shane said when Garth was out of earshot.
Agnes nodded. “I’ll deal with that later. Listen, I know this has probably been screwing up your job, babysitting me and the wedding?—”
“No,” Shane said. “It’s part of my job. The wedding is my job.” He watched the warmth fade from her face and the wariness creep back in. “I didn’t know that when I came here. The Don set up a hit here, at the wedding. I’m here to take the hitman, named Casey Dean, out, to stop it.”
Agnes drew a deep breath. “At the wedding.”
The phone rang and she went to answer it. “Yes, Butch, you bastard,” she said, her eyes on Shane, “that was me who left you the message. I know who you are and I know the zoo where you work. If you don’t get Cerise and Hot Pink back there today, I am going to turn you in. I don’t care about your three children or your grandmother with the operation.” She listened for a minute and then she said, “No, two is not enough for a flock as you well know. You take them back today, Butch, or your ass is grass and I am a John Deere super-classic riding lawn mower with a V6 engine and a double cutting blade, do I make myself clear? Good.” She hung up and went back to the griddle and flipped the second batch of pancakes, perfect golden pancakes, while the coffeemaker brewed its second fresh-ground pot.
“Is it a coincidence that all of this is happening at once?” she said. “That Brenda is using the wedding to take the house back, and that your hitman is using the wedding for his hit, and that somebody was in the vault for the first time in twenty-five years just this week?”
Shane put his fork down. “I don’t know. I don’t like coincidences. But I don’t see how they connect, do you?”
She frowned, thinking hard, and he just looked at her for a minute. Agnes. On his side. In her kitchen full of life.
“Who does the Don want dead?” she asked.
“Don’t know.”
She smiled at him weakly. “I don’t suppose there’s a hope in hell that it’s Brenda?”
He smiled back. “I wouldn’t count on it.”
The phone rang again and she answered it. “Kristy. Hi. I wondered what happened to you yesterday. Yeah, probably a smart thing to do, leave when Brenda starts killing people. No, she swears it was an accident. Right, tonight. Rehearsal dinner’s at six, bachelor and bachelorette parties right after that. Pictures at the beginning only, please. Right. Mother and father of the groom, mother and grandmother of the bride. No father of the bride. Yep. See you then.” She hung up and looked at Shane. “So. Life goes on. Unless you’re Four Wheels.”
Carpenter came in from the hall. “Good morning, all. Pancakes?”
“Just in time,” Agnes said, and loaded a plate for him, adding enough bacon to feed a family of four.
Shane nodded to him. “Any ideas on who could have broken into the shelter and put that frying pan and the money wrappers there?”
Carpenter sat down and frowned at him over the plate Agnes put in front of him. “Good morning to you, too.” He picked up the warm maple syrup. “Have some respect for fine cooking.” He took the syrup and poured it over the cakes and breathed in the sweet maple perfume.
Agnes got him a mug of coffee, looking worried, and Shane felt like hell for having unloaded the hit and the Don on her, but she had to know. Keeping her in the dark wasn’t fair, either. Although lately the dark was the place they were both happiest, so maybe that wasn’t such a bad plan after all.
Carpenter cut into the pancakes and tasted them. “Marry me.”
Hey,Shane thought, and it must have shown on his face because Carpenter grinned.
Lisa Livia yawned in the doorway and said, “So this is what happens when I sleep late.”
“Damn fine pancakes,” Carpenter said, and kept eating as she came into the kitchen, patting his back as she sat down.
“You up for pancakes?” Agnes said, and Lisa Livia nodded and Shane watched Agnes serve up more food, round and warm and flushed, happy again, looking very pattable.
Too many people in this kitchen.
He was wondering what the chances were of luring her back upstairs, when his phone buzzed and he pulled it out. He glanced at the identifier, which indicated that it was a message from Wilson. He was surprised to see it was in plain text, not encrypted:
dock. five minutes. bring carpenter
He looked up at his partner, who was wolfing down breakfast. “We have to meet the boss.”
Carpenter nodded and spoke around pancake. “When and where?”
“Five minutes on the dock.” He watched Agnes, wondering how she felt about her dock being used for his business meetings. Probably not as upset as her wedding being used for his hit.
Carpenter’s eyebrows were up a notch. “Let’s get moving, then.” He scooped up another forkful of pancake and got to his feet. “That was an elegant breakfast, Miss Agnes,” he said. “Simply wonderful,” he added, smiling at Lisa Livia.
“Thank you,” Agnes said, and smiled back, but she watched Shane, worry in her eyes.
Shane got to his feet, too, displacing Rhett, who snorted and then slept on. “That was my line,” he said to Carpenter. “The breakfast one. Except in the movie it was dinner.” He paused, realizing both Agnes and Lisa Livia were looking at him blankly now. Apparently they didn’t watch the classics, either. “Okay. Yeah. Great breakfast.” He tried a smile for Agnes, which didn’t really work. “Sorry.”
“No,” Agnes said, catching his meaning, another good thing about her. “It’s good to know.” She drew a deep breath. “I sure am looking forward to Sunday.”
“What happens Sunday?” Lisa Livia said.
“With any luck, not a damn thing,” Agnes said, and when Lisa Livia still looked blank, she said, “The wedding will be over, the house will still be mine, we’ll all be alive, and Shane and Carpenter will have sold that life insurance policy.”
“Life insurance policy?” Carpenter said.
“To Casey Dean,” Shane said. “Who will have cashed it in.”
“Ah,” Carpenter said, looking surprised at the security breach.
“It was on a need-to-know basis,” Shane told him. “She needed to know.”
“I guess she did,” Carpenter said, and Agnes smiled at him, a damn good smile this time.
“I miss a lot when I sleep late,” Lisa Livia said, looking from one of them to the other.
“Yeah,” Shane said, wishing for the first time in his life he could take the day off. He nodded to Carpenter. “Let’s go meet the boss.”
He wasn’t supposed to tell me that, Agnes thought, watching Shane and Carpenter walk down the path to the dock. He broke rules to tell me that. That made it better, that she was special enough that he’d break rules for her. And he was coming back to her, too. Maybe this time, she thought. Maybe?—
“So today we sink my mother’s boat,” Lisa Livia said.
“I really don’t have time.” Agnes put more cakes on the griddle for her. “I have to decorate a wedding cake and a groom’s cake because your rattlesnake of a mother did something to the baker, remember? There’s a wedding tomorrow.”
“Oh, right.” Lisa Livia sat down in Carpenter’s chair. “Maria’s bridesmaids come in today, don’t they?”
“Bachelorette party is upstairs on the second floor, which is also where they’re staying tonight. Bachelor party in the barn.” Agnes watched the pancakes bubble. “Taylor talked Palmer into it so he could get the money for renting it twice. Rehearsal dinner first Joey’s taken over the catering, so that’s something, and Kristy just called and said she’ll be here tonight to take the pictures, and Butch swears he’ll get Cerise and Hot Pink out of here as soon as he gets his work done at the zoo and can sneak a truck out. This afternoon, I have to get the bows on the gazebo, but Garth is a fast learner so he can help, and most of the real prep will be early tomorrow morning. The rental stuff’s all here, so that’s not a worry. Really, as long as Maisie gets her daisies here and I get the cakes done and Joey gets the catering done ...” She felt her stomach cramp as she thought about all the ifs between now and the wedding. “... we’ll be fine. Plus, you know, my column.” My career. Mother of God, I have to get my priorities straight. Once I figure them out.
“I believe you.” Lisa Livia picked up Carpenter’s fork and began to finish off his breakfast. “My plan for today is just to get the mildew off Venus, so I have time to help with whatever you need. When do you plan to switch out the flamingo theme for the daisies-and-butterflies theme?”
“I don’t know.” Agnes flipped the cakes. “I’m trying to take my cue from Maria because she doesn’t want to upset Evie after all the good flamingo work she’s done, but?—”
Lisa Livia’s cell phone rang, and she pulled it out and answered it. Her face went rigid while she listened. “What? I can’t be—” She listened again. “Give me your number.” She held out her hand and Agnes grabbed a pencil and her To Do List off the counter and handed it to her and she wrote a phone number down. “I’ll call you back.” She hung up, sheet white, and said, “Where’s your laptop?”
Agnes pointed to the end of the counter and LL went and got it. “Internet?”
“Wireless,” Agnes said. “Through the phone lines. What—” Lisa Livia shook her head, her breath coming faster, and began to hit the keyboard, typing fast She stopped and looked at the screen and said, “No,” and then typed again and looked at the screen and said, “No,” and typed again, and Agnes came around to see what she was doing.
Bank accounts. One after another until it looked like there were ten open windows on the screen. “Jesus fucking Christ,” Lisa Livia said under her breath.
“LL?”
“She look it all,” Lisa Livia said, her breathing short and shallow. “All what?”
Lisa Livia shook her head and Agnes looked at her and said, “Put your head between your legs. Now,” and forced her head down, just as LL started to slide.
“Brenda took your money,” Agnes said, her hand on LL’s neck, keeping her head down until she got some blood back in her brain.
“Not just mine.” LL’s voice was muffled. “Let me up.”
Agnes stepped back and Lisa Livia straightened, some color in her face.
“She must have gone onto my laptop,” Lisa Livia said. “When I was staying on that fucking boat, while I was asleep or out here, she used my laptop and somehow she figured out my password. She didn’t just take everything I own, she looted the accounts I manage for my clients. She did it because I was working with you, fighting her on this house. Because I said you were family, not her. She cried all over me that night about that. I told her she should have thought ahead before she killed my daddy.” She nodded at the laptop. “This is her payback.”
“Oh, God,” Agnes said, and sat down hard. “How much?”
Lisa Livia swallowed hard. “I’ll have to ...” She drew a deep breath. “In a minute when I can do this without passing out, I’ll add it up. But somewhere around eight or nine hundred thousand.”
“Dollars?”Agnes swallowed hard, too. “We’ll get it back. We’ll go out to that damn boat and?—”
Lisa Livia closed her eyes. “She’ll have it in the Caymans by now. I can’t even kill her to get it, that bastard Taylor will inherit.”
“Jesus,” Agnes said. “Can’t we go ransack the boat and find the numbers or something?”
“She’ll have them hidden in one of the millions of places the Real Estate King had built into that damn thing. I wouldn’t even know how to look for them.” She shook her head, keeping her jaw set, fighting tears. “Pretty ironic. I spend my whole life working, neglect my kid to build up this safety net for us, and then because I want to be there for her at her wedding, I lose everything, including my future. And then I screw up her wedding by sticking her with flamingos.”
“Lisa Livia, it’s not?—”
“I am such a fuckup.”
“No, you are not.” Agnes put her arm around her. “You don’t even believe that. I have no idea how to fix this, but we will. We’ll get your money back. We’ll do your daughter’s wedding, then we’ll sink your mother’s boat, and then we will get your money, Shane and Carpenter and I, we’ll help you get it back. I swear to you, we will.”
Lisa Livia looked at her. “You don’t even know how to sink a boat”
“I am learning many new skills this week,” Agnes said. “Eat your pancakes.”
To Do List, she thought. Throw Maria’s wedding. Return stolen flamingos. Clean up the Venus. Get Lisa Livia’s money back. Kill somebody named Casey Dean. She looked out the window to the dock where Shane and Carpenter were conferring with their boss. Sink Brenda’s boat. Write my goddamn column. Believe in Shane when he tells me what I’m dying to hear.
She went to the pantry to get the wedding cakes.
“I didn’t explainthings to Agnes very well,” Shane said when they’d started down the path to the dock.
“You have to speak from the heart,” Carpenter said.
“The heart.”
“Yes. You have to open up to the world and learn optimism, and the words will come to you, and you’ll tell Agnes how you feel.” Shane stopped. “What?”
Carpenter looked at him, serene. “Contentment with the past, happiness with the present, and hope for the future. Learned optimism.”
“Oh.” Shane frowned. “I told her I wanted to come back here. She seemed pretty happy.”
Carpenter nodded. “That’s a start. Once you open yourself to the world, my friend, good things will come to you.”
“I don’t think going to meet Wilson is the best time for me to get optimistic and, uh, open my heart.”
“Indeed not. In some ways, your heart opening up is causing a lot of trouble and, I believe, precipitating this meeting.”
He nodded down the dock to where Wilson was already sitting on one of the benches, dressed impeccably in his suit. Shane felt like he was walking the gangplank as they made their way down the long dock to him. Brenda’s yacht bobbed on the water, but there was a sleeker, much newer and larger boat just off the low dock: Wilson’s mode of transportation. A dark figure was on the bridge of the boat running the engines, keeping it in place against the tide. The jet boat Carpenter had driven the last time Shane met Wilson was tied down on the front deck next to a small crane.
“I’m disappointed,” Wilson said as they arrived at the high dock.
Cerise and Hot Pink chorused their disapproval, too.
Without being asked, Shane sat down across from his boss while Carpenter took a seat beside him.
Wilson looked at Shane, his eyes as sharp as ever. “You’ve had two opportunities to take out Casey Dean, and not only have you failed in both, you have allowed Don Fortunato’s consigliere to complete down payment for the contract.”
Shane didn’t say anything, because he knew there was nothing he could say.
“There has been another death here at the house, and the local police were involved once more. This is not the performance I would expect of the man who would replace me. One thing we have always prided ourselves on in the Organization is our discretion.”
“I think you know much more than you’re telling me,” Shane said.
Wilson looked at him without reaction. “Of course I know much more than I tell you. That is the nature of my job. To know, to give orders, and to take responsibility.”
“I take responsibility—” Shane began, but Wilson cut him off.
“You are answerable to me. I am answerable to many others and you are my responsibility. This is something you need to understand about my job.
“The FBI is not pleased we took their information regarding Casey Dean and squandered it,” Wilson continued. “I do not like having to explain myself to the FBI. I am tempted to pull you from this operation. Casey Dean has been a thorn in our side for years, we gave you the two best opportunities we’ve ever had, and you fumbled both of them.”
Carpenter leaned forward. “Third time is the charm.”
“Unfortunately,” Wilson said, “I don’t?—”
“We’ve got a line on Casey Dean,” Carpenter said.
Wilson stared at Carpenter in silence for several seconds then turned to Shane, who had used all the self-control he had to refrain from also staring at Carpenter. “And that is?”
“Carpenter developed it,” Shane said, “so it would be best if he explained it.”
Wilson folded his arms. “I’m waiting.”
“We’ve got Casey Dean’s cell phone number,” Carpenter said. “And Casey Dean has called a blind number on Shane’s phone that he set up. Dean seems to enjoy taunting us. We can turn that against him. He’s using a bounce signal with his cell phone, so we can’t use towers to track his exact location. But I can set up three receivers in the area and triangulate his location.”
“If he answers his phone,” Wilson said.
“He’ll answer,” Shane said.
“Why do you think that?” Wilson asked.
“Because we’ve suckered him into being overconfident.”
“Good plan,” Wilson said with a bland look on his face. Cerise and Hot Pink picked up some volume in their vocals, and Wilson’s eyes went past Shane. “We have company.”
Shane looked over his shoulder and saw Joey ambling down the dock, dressed in his usual black slacks and red shirt.
“How you guys doing’?” Joey asked as he arrived.
“Mr. Wilson, this is my uncle Joey,” Shane said, getting to his feet to do the introductions. “We’re having a meeting, Joey,” he added pointedly.
Joey nodded at Wilson and sat down on the bench. “You’re Shane’s boss.”
“Yes. And you’re Joey Torcelli who used to work with Frankie Fortunate “
“That was long ago.”
“The past catches up to us.”
“Something catching up to you?” Joey asked.
“Time,” Wilson said, “catches up to everyone.”
Shane glanced down at Carpenter, who raised his eyebrows. At any minute, Shane thought, one of them is gonna say, “The crow flies at midnight,” and then I’m gonna shoot them both.
“Sometimes things come full circle,” Joey said.
“Sometimes,” Wilson said.
“What the hell are you guys talking about?” Shane asked. “And sometimes things change for the better,” Joey said. “People get a second chance.”
“People don’t change,” Wilson said.
Shane tensed as Joey leaned toward Wilson. “I think they do.”
“Gentlemen,” Carpenter said. “My friend Shane and I have a job to do.”
Joey stood. “I’m going with you.”
“I don’t think—” Shane began, but Wilson nodded.
“Some experience might be helpful.”
What the hell?Shane thought.
“We need the jet boat,” Carpenter said.
“All yours.” Wilson stood. “A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Torcelli.”
“I bet,” Joey said.
Wilson moved off to his boat, Carpenter with him to claim the jet boat, and Shane watched Joey’s eyes follow them. “What the hell was that?” he asked the old man.
“Nothin’ good,” Joey said, looking away.
Shane stepped closer. “You’re fucking with my life here, Joey. If you know something about this, anything about this, you tell me now. This is life and death, not some old mob game.”
“It was always life and death, Shane,” Joey said as Carpenter pulled up in the jet boat. “Guys like Wilson, they ain’t no different than the Don.”
“Damn it, Joey?—”
“We’ll talk in the boat,” Joey said, remnants of authority in his voice that told Shane something of what he’d used to be.
“You’re damn right we will,” Shane said, but he followed Joey onto the jet boat.
Carpenter stayedat the wheel in the center console of the jet boat. Shane locked down an M6o machine gun on the front pole mount and loaded a band of ammunition into it. Along one side of the jet boat, Joey was securing an orange coast guard logo. He’d already put one on the other side of the boat as they pulled away from Wilson’s cabin cruiser. Carpenter pushed the throttle forward and they picked up speed until the boat planed out and they were cruising out of the Blood River onto the Intracoastal. “Why am I doin’ this?” Joey said.
“It explains the machine gun mounted in the prow of the boat to anyone stupid enough to ask questions of a boat with a machine gun mounted in the prow,” Shane said, and then called to Carpenter. “Where are we putting the first receiver?”
Carpenter pointed at the GPS screen on the console in front of him. “On the eastern tip of Barataria Island. Second one, here on Middle Marsh Island, southern tip. Third one to the south, on Bull Island. That will give us good coverage.”
“Why are we looking on the water?” Joey asked, finished with his task.
“Casey Dean was on a boat the last time we saw him,” Carpenter said. “I think it makes sense he’s probably living on a boat. Makes him mobile in this area, and he can hide among the thousands of barrier islands and waterways.”
“This Wilson guy,” Joey said. “You like working for him?”
“I might not be working for him much longer,” Shane said.
Joey smiled. “You going to stay here?”
“No, I’m in line to get his job.”
The smile disappeared. “You want that?”
“It’s a step up,” Shane said.
“To where?” Joey asked.
Shane glared at his uncle. “You’re the one who sent me away twenty-five years ago to military school. This is the path you put me on. Why are you asking me questions about it?”
“I sent you away to protect you,” Joey said.
“From who?”