7. Snitches Get Stitches

Snitches Get Stitches (7 of 10)

Dec 22, 2025

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-7:32

(“Snitches Get Stitches” is a novella following Billy, Jack, and Tommy. It is the third segment of a larger collection/novel called Milestone Road. If you interested in more of Henry Coffin’s Nantucket, the stories begin with The Boat at the End of Lover’s Lane. Maria DeSalvo, the woman who was assaulted, gets her own novella)

Hey, If you are just catching up with Henry Coffin’s Nantucket, I am re-recording the first book inhale hour chunks. The Boat at the End of Lover’s Lane. )

The next night, at two in the morning, Danny drove at a sedate 45 miles an hour down the Milestone Road. Deer hopped alongside the car but remained in the woods. After a few minutes, he eased the car to the right, onto the Tom Nevers Road.

This time, they left the lights off in front of the Kelly house. Coffin, on his way to the door, sniffed the air and smelled the gunpowder.

Danny knocked on the door with the butt end of his flashlight. They heard nothing.

He knocked again.

Still, no sound.

They heard a landline ring upstairs.

“Let’s find him.”

The front door remained locked, so they climbed the stairs to the second-floor deck.

Henry led. Unarmed, he announced himself before he came into view of the windows.

He needn’t.

Big Mike sat on the floor of the kitchen, holding two large bags of frozen carrots to his face. His clothes were covered in blood.

The porch door opened at a touch.

“Mike, this is Henry Coffin. Danny and I are here to see if you are all right.”

“You can go away. I’m fine.”

“Yeah, you look it,” said Danny. “Where’s the gun?”

“There’s no gun.”

“No gun?”

“My hunting rifles are locked up downstairs.”

Henry squatted next to the big man.

“Let’s get you an ambulance.”

“No, I’m fine.”

“You’re in shock.”

“No, I’m fine. I am going to stay right here in my house.”

The phone rang in the kitchen. The landline was green and hung on the wall.

Mike ignored it.

It was an odd conversation. Danny stood in the living room, looking for the weapon. Mike was talking with both bags of frozen vegetables covering both sides of his face. Henry squatted next to him. The light from the open refrigerator washed over the two.

“Would you like us to call you a doctor?”

“No.”

“You are going to need some work, judging from what I am looking at.”

“I’ll be fine.”

Danny shrugged.

Big Mike declared, “I’m not leaving this house.”

“You won’t.”

“I’m not going.”

“Fine.”

Henry didn’t ask him anything for two minutes. He stood out of his squat, and then sat on the floor next to Big Mike. Both of them had their legs out straight.

Danny shook his head.

“Mike, what happened?”

“I had to stop to avoid a deer.”

“You did?”

“Yup. Banged my face against the steering wheel. Hurt something bad.”

“You did?”

“Yup.”

Henry sighed. He locked eyes with Danny, but Danny didn’t know what he wanted, if he wanted anything.

“Snitches get stitches?”

“Hell of a thing for you to say.”

Anger seeped out.

Henry looked at the Birdseye bags.

“Because I made your boy snitch?”

“Didn’t say that.”

“Mike,” Danny said. “We have these kids. We’re building evidence and lining up statements. We will be putting them away.”

“When?”

Danny looked at him. “Soon.”

The landline rang in the kitchen.

“That’s them. You can charge them now.”

Coffin stood and picked up the phone. The phone clicked.

“You know that those boys drive up and down Tom Nevers Road and wait for my boy to leave this house. You know what they will do.”

“Mike, you can’t run away. You can’t hide. My God, you were the father asking his son why he did nothing?”

Mike was silent.

“He might have been right,” the man muttered. “Maybe you have to walk away from some fights.”

“Don’t walk away from this one. Don’t do that to your boy.”

Henry Coffin turned to the big man sitting on the floor. “You know what you should do?”

“Do tell.”

“Let us file charges. We’ll leave the assault out of it,” he said. “Have Tommy give a statement.”

“Oh, that would be great,” the big man said with a sarcastic laugh. “You need to keep drinking, Henry, because you don’t make any sense sober.”

“How’s that?”

“So, let’s charge these little bastards, right? They will just take that and smile. They will go hire a lawyer and prepare a defense. Right? Look at me. Do you think they go for lawyers? And,” he continued after a pause. “I can hear the testimony on the stand. ‘Did you rape Maria DeSalvo? No, sir.’ Then, their lawyer will make Tommy out as if he raped girls in the elementary school. Then they will show the picture from Tommy’s phone. Good idea, Henry. Great. That should really solve the problem for all of us.”

The big man snorted.

“There’s a point in a man’s life when he’s got to speak the truth,” Coffin answered.

“What point is that?” Mike said. “Is it before or after they get Tommy in the woods? Or after they rape him with flashlights? That’s their new threat. When do I allow that to happen?”

“It would be right now.”

The phone rang.

“Fine, Inspector. Fine. Allow me to speak the truth. I braked to avoid a deer.”

Henry stood up and walked away.

He called an ambulance. They could work on Big Mike in his kitchen.

Henry stood outside on the deck. His partner came out to him.

“What’s happening to us, Danny?”

“You and me, or to the island as a whole.”

“Everyone.”

“Going to hell, one step at a time, I suppose.”

Henry didn’t smile. He continued to look over the bruised eastern sky. “I remember, years ago, when Sam Sylvia was murdered, we got the story right away. Johnny Harrington called me from the Angler’s Club and told me Sam got pushed off a fishing boat. Then, even when we had so much evidence, the lawyers were rolling their eyes. Johnny still wants to testify. Put some words to it. He says.”

“They say Harrington was a first-class pain in the ass.”

“He was. And he drove drunk and he hit his wife when he got in the mood. But when the time came for him to stand up, he stood.”

Danny looked at the old man. He knew, from painful experiences, that the most outrageous lies begin with “I remember when…”

This was gnawing at the Quaker.

“They all want to live in the shadows. They want to scurry and mumble and stand on their hind legs with their whiskers in the air.” Coffin said.

“They are afraid.”

“What are they afraid of?”

“Themselves.”