Lifeguard - James Patterson [4]
My father was that kind of guy. Spent more time up in the Souz in Shirley than he did around our dinner table. Every Sunday we’d throw on a tie and pile into the Dodge and make the trip up to see him in his orange prison suit. I’ve known a hundred guys like that. Still do.
Which brings me to Mickey, Bobby, Barney, and Dee.
I’d known them as long as I can remember. We lived within about four blocks of one another. Between Leyden and Edson and Snell. We knew everything about one another. Mickey was my cousin, my uncle Charlie’s son. He was built like a wire hanger with curly red hair, but as tough a sonuvabitch as ever came out of Brockton. He was older than me by six weeks but made it seem as if it were six years. Got me into trouble more times than I can count—and got me out of it a whole lot more. Bobby was Mickey’s cousin, but not mine. He’d been like a big brother to me, ever since my own big brother died—in a shoot-out. Dee was Bobby’s wife, and they’d been together since before anybody could remember. Barney was about the funniest human being I had ever met; he’d also been my protector all through high school.
Every year we’d spend the summer working the Vineyard: tending bar, waiting tables, doing a “job” now and then to pay the bills. Winters, we came down here. We parked cars at the clubs, crewed tourist boats, bellhopped, joined catering teams.
Maybe someone who lived a conventional life would say we were a bad lot. But he’d be wrong. You can’t choose your family, people always say, but you can choose the people you love. And they were more of a family to me than my own. Proved it a hundred times.
There are two types of people who come from Brockton. The ones who try to make it by putting away pennies every week. What the government doesn’t take, the church will.
And the ones who keep on waiting, watching, keeping their eyes peeled for that one big score.
Once in a while they actually came around. The one you couldn’t pass up. The one that could get you out of the life.
And that’s where I was headed when I left Tess’s suite at the Brazilian Court.
My cousin Mickey had found it.
The perfect score.
Chapter 5
AS SOON AS Ned left, Tess threw herself back on the bed with an exhalation of joy and disbelief. “You must be crazy, Tess! You are crazy, Tess.”
Crazy, to be opening herself to someone like Ned, especially with everything else going on in her life.
But something about Ned wouldn’t let her stop. Maybe his eyes, his charm, his boyish good looks. His innocence. The way he had just come up to her on the beach like that, like she was a damsel in distress. It had been a long time since anyone had treated her that way. Wanted. And she liked it. What woman didn’t? If only he knew.
She was still cozied up on the sheets, reliving every detail of the delicious afternoon, when she heard the voice.
“Next.” He stood there—leaning, smirking—against the bedroom door.
Tess almost jumped out of her skin. She never even heard the key open the door to the suite.
“You scared me,” she said, then covered herself up.
“Poor Tess.” He shook his head and tossed the room key in an ashtray on the desk. “I can see the lunches at Boulud and Ta-boó have started to bore you. You’ve taken to going around to the high schools, picking up guys after SAT practice.”
“You were watching?” Tess shot up. That would be just like the bastard. Thinking he could do that. “It just happened,” she said, backing off, a little ashamed. And a lot ashamed that she had to justify herself. “He thinks I’m something. Not like you . . .”
“Just happened.” He stepped into the bedroom and took off his Brioni sport jacket. “Just happened, like, you met on the beach. And