“Just all right?” Charlie scoffed. “I’d have thought you’d be on top of the world by now—or at least on top of Angie Dobbs.”
That was just the kind of remark that got Harley so confused. On the one hand, his brother went around claiming to be a man of God, all pure and everything, and on the other he was exactly the same mocking asshole he’d always been—at least when nobody else was around to hear him.
“You make any money off of it yet?” Charlie asked. “I saw that article in the Barrow Gazette, and I bet you gave ’em the interview for free. You did, didn’t you?”
“You don’t charge to be in the paper.”
“That’s what they tell you, but you think movie stars and singers and baseball players don’t get paid every time they open their mouths?”
“I’m not a movie star.”
“No,” Charlie said, “that’s for damn sure.”
Rebekah, Charlie’s wife, came in with a tray of tea and some muffins that would probably taste just as bad. Harley had never been asked to any wedding, and he strongly doubted there’d been one, but then his brother had probably claimed to have channeled the Holy Spirit directly. Rebekah was a scrawny woman, and his brother had found her on the Internet, when she responded to his online ad for a “helpmeet.” She’d brought her younger sister Bathsheba along, too. She poured out the tea, made from tree bark or anything else that contained no caffeine—all stimulants were against his brother’s religion now—and served up the muffins that were sure to contain no sugar or spice of any kind. Harley figured she made them from sawdust left lying around the wood chipper out back.
Harley said hi, but Rebekah, in her usual long dress with its buttoned-up collar, just nodded. On her way out, she said to Charlie, “We’re almost out of fuel oil.” She had a thick New England accent—she was from some hick town not much bigger than Port Orlov—where she’d been living in a so-called Christian commune that had been broken up by the state. Still, Harley often wondered what had made her, and her sister, do something so stupid as to come all this way to Alaska.
Charlie grunted and, once she was gone, picked up where he’d left off. “Maybe you oughta let me handle the press from now on.”
“There’s not much left of it. Nobody’s called me today, except the Coast Guard. They want to know more about that coffin top that came up in the nets.”
“What’d they say, exactly?”
Harley knew that his brother would be intrigued by that. “They want to be sure that’s all that came up.”
“That’s what you told ’em, right?”
“What do you think?” Harley said, looking steadily into his brother’s dark eyes. “Of course I did.” He sipped the hot tea, which tasted like it was made from boiled leather.
Charlie met his gaze and didn’t blink.
Screw it, Harley thought; it was now or never. “You came to the hospital,” he said, pointedly, “and you left with my anorak.”
“What about it? You want your coat back, it’s in the hall closet.”
Harley put the cup down on a stack of old newspapers, went out into the hall, and came back with his coat. He sat down and began rummaging through the various zipped pockets, and apart from a packet of throat lozenges, came up empty-handed. “Okay,” he said, “where is it?”
“Where’s what?” Charlie answered, but with that malicious glint in his eye that told Harley he knew perfectly well what he was talking about. It was like they were kids again, and Charlie was holding out on him.
“You know what. The cross that was in the inside pocket.”
Charlie’s face slowly creased into a grin, revealing a row of crooked gray teeth. “What cross?”
Harley put out his hand and said, “Give it to me, Charlie.”
“Or what? Are you gonna beat up your own brother—your own crippled brother?”
Nobody ever milked a wheelchair the way his brother did. “If I have to, I’ll turn this whole goddamned house upside down.”
“Oh, I don’t think Rebekah and Bathsheba would let that happen,” Charlie said, and Harley knew he was right. The two sisters might be bony as skeletons, but they were tough and, though he hated to admit it, scary as hell. Their eyes were black as little pebbles, set in dead-white, pockmarked faces, and he’d once seen Rebekah wring a fox’s neck without even looking down at it. Even scarier, he had the impression Bathsheba kind of had a crush on him. It was one more reason he’d had to move out.
Before the stalemate went on much longer, Charlie seemed to have tired of the joke, and gesturing at the gun rack below the window, he said, “It’s in the ammo drawer.”
For a split second, Harley wondered if the ammo drawer was booby-trapped, but then opened it and found the cross, wrapped in a clean rag. It looked like Charlie had shined it up a bit, and the stones—emeralds, for sure—glistened in the light from the computer screens.