Club got the records through a contact at a regional bank. PICE used them to imply Whitfield had been misappropriating funds. Whitfield couldn't disprove a negative fast enough lost the race. Sully paused and from there Pierce's career went upward. Every election after that, every council vote, every development deal built on what he bought from us in 1919.
Boon was quiet. This was the part he'd been sitting with since the phone call. The part that made this more than just a powerful man feeling threatened by someone from his past. We gave him his start. Boon said the club did.
Sully said through Dutton without knowing what it would become. Doesn't matter who knew what Boon said. We handed him the first step. Sully looked at him. That's why you're not leaving.
That's part of why Boon said they sat with that a while. The radio in the bay played something slow and certain. Conway Twitty, one of the old ones, a song that knew exactly what it was. Dutton told me something years later. Sully said before he died.
He mentioned that a man named Walt Callahan had been asking questions around town. Said Callahan was becoming a problem for Pierce. He looked at Boon. I didn't know what that meant at the time. Walt Callahan, Boon said, was Ruth Callahan's husband.
Ran the diner on Main Street for 31 years. He died 9 years ago on a county road he'd driven everyday for 20 years. Car accident officially. Sully looked at him for a long moment. Boon, we don't know anything yet, Boon said.
Not yet. No, Sully said, "Not yet. " They both understood what not yet meant. It meant the question was being kept open rather than being answered, which was a different thing from not asking it. Sully looked at his hands. Hands that showed their history the way all working hands did.
Now, the other thing he said, Boon looked at him. Portland, Sully said. Portland, Boon said, 22 years ago. A situation requiring a decision made in seconds with consequences that had lasted considerably longer than either of them had calculated at the time. Boon had made the call.
He'd believed then and believed now that it was the right call for the people he'd chosen to protect. But the cost had fallen on Sully's side of things. Sully's daughter had gotten pulled into the aftermath in a way the decision had made worse before it made better. The worst part had lasted 3 years. The better part had taken longer to arrive than it should have.
She's all right, Sully said. She's in Portland still. Good life. She figured out most of what happened eventually. She doesn't hold it against you.