Iron House

by John Hart

  “There’s nothing I can tell you,” Elena said.

  “Of course there is. Where he’s staying. What weapons he has. Security issues. People around him. Where he sleeps and when.” Jimmy smiled, but it was small. “Little things.”

  He licked his lips, pale skin flushed, and Elena had an epiphany. She realized what she’d seen in his eyes.

  “You’re scared of him.”

  She didn’t know where the certainty originated, but it was real. Jimmy’s talk of pride and fatherhood was bluster. He was frightened, and now that she’d said it out loud, it was all over him. His posture. His face.

  “Don’t say that again.”

  He made the words a threat, but Elena had been electrocuted and taped up, tossed in the back of a trunk and terrorized. This knowledge was the only power she had, and as small as it was, it was seductive. Her mouth opened, and Jimmy’s eyes went dead before the words had formed in her mouth. He caught a fistful of her hair and pulled her off the bed, the same deadness on his face as he dragged her across the floor.

  “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”

  The words were glass in her mouth as he dragged her into the living room and across the filthy carpet. Men rose and stared. Skin burned off the backs of her hands and then she heard hollow thumps as Jimmy’s shoes landed hard on the boards of the porch. Sunshine struck her face, and he dragged her down the stairs and onto the soft, pungent dirt.

  “Please…”

  He hauled her to the back of the car, rolled her with a foot. Someone said, “What’s going on, Jimmy?” But Jimmy ignored him. The trunk popped with a small sound and Jimmy leaned in, pulled out a gasoline can and emptied it onto Elena. The smell hit some primal part of her, so that even as her eyes burned and her mouth filled with the bitter taste of it, she tried to crawl away.

  “Who’s scared, now?”

  His voice had an inhuman quality, an indifference that was too studied to be real. When he lowered the gasoline can, she saw nicks in the bright, red plastic, fine stitching in the seams of Jimmy’s leather shoes. Elena blinked against the burn in her eyes, saw the lighter in his hand. It was brass. He spun it between his thumb and four fingers, opened it, closed it. Bright metal winked and she saw the charred, black wick inside.

  “Don’t.” She curled around the baby in her stomach.

  “Don’t what?”

  The lighter spun, clicked open.

  “Please…”

  Jimmy looked up, squinted at the high, blue sky. “Hot out today.”

  Elena began to cry.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Julian disliked drugs, in general, but when he needed them that changed. When he was scared and cold in the darkness of his mind, he liked everything about the drugs. He liked the intensity of the doctor’s face as the needle went into the little bottle, the way light shone through the glass. He liked the sound of a fingernail tapped against the syringe and the sight of the narrow stream shot out into the air. His eyes went very still when the needle came out.

  The needle made the voice in his head go quiet.

  The needle helped Julian hide.

  It started as a burn where the needle slipped in, but the burn was brief and faded to warmth that spread from his arm into his chest, then down his legs and into the metal of his skull. Into the giant, dark space from which the voice descended when the world was too big or Julian too scared, when Julian knew he was being weak.

  That’s the right word, isn’t it?

  Julian shied from the sneer. He was frightened of so many things: of his life and of life’s expectations, of the threat of failure and how that failure would ripple into other parts of his soul. He was afraid people would see too deep, that twenty years of illusion would simply implode and everyone would know he was a shadow man. But that was a big fear—a lifelong terror—and those fears were not always the worst. There was the fear of minutes and seconds, the fear of a coward’s million tiny degradations. The voice saw all that fear. It was why Julian hated the voice, and why he needed it. The voice hurt, but kept him strong. And, Julian needed to be strong.

  You need everything I have …

  It was loud, in spite of the drugs, angry after so many months of absence. Julian tried to remember what had happened to bring the voice back, but his mind wasn’t working right.

  Something bad …

  He tried to remember. He imagined fingers squeezed on the gray coils of his brain.

  Something bad …

  He squeezed a little harder.

  Worthless …

  “Stop it.”

  Palms pressed the sides of Julian’s head. When had the voice come back?

  He didn’t know; it was too much.

  We don’t need him …

  The voice was a thin wire this time.

  Say it with me …

  “No.”

  We don’t need Michael …

  “No.”

  Say it!

  Julian rolled into a ball even as a faint noise stirred in the world outside his mind. It was a familiar noise, a murmur of words that had power of its own, because the voice turned away. It grew high and faint until Julian was alone in the dark. He huddled on an island in the blackness, watched as Michael and his mother came through the door and spoke with the doctor. He saw them stop by the bed, and he heard the questions they asked. He wanted to speak to them, but was unable. They heard what he heard, a voice that sounded like his own, but was not.

  The voice was laughing at them.

  And the sound was insane.

  * * *

  Michael stopped at the bedside, and felt Abigail slip into the hollow place beside his right arm. Beneath them, Julian lay on his side, his hair matted, his skin like wax. His arms were pale under a summer tan, his fingers curled beneath gauze dotted red at the knuckles. Michael leaned closer as a faint sound slipped past Julian’s lips.

  “Julian?”

  The sound welled into brittle, ugly laughter. Michael straightened. “Why is he laughing?”

  “I have no idea,” the doctor said. “He’s been talking a bit. This is the first laugh I’ve heard.”

  “What has he said?”

  “The same thing, more or less. I suspect you’ll get a taste soon enough.”

  Michael squatted next to the bed and put his hand on Julian’s forehead. “No fever.”

  “No.”

  “Then what?” Abigail’s voice showed a mother’s fear.

  The doctor clasped his hands, and titled his head so that soft flesh rounded out beneath his jaw. “Perhaps you can tell me.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning, the senator still won’t release his medical records. That makes my job difficult. Frankly, I’m becoming angry. Clearly, there is more I need to know.”

  “My husband has worries most men do not.”

  “Medical records are confidential. There is no conceivable way I would betray a patient’s trust. The very thought is insulting.”

  “Yet, mistakes are often made.”

  “Not in my practice.”

  Abigail paled at his anger, but did not back down. “His medical records are sealed.”

  “Sealed?”

  “By the courts.” She cleared her throat. “As part of a juvenile matter.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Abigail was torn, Michael saw. Her eyes flicked from Julian to the doctor, then found Michael’s face. Whatever she was afraid to discuss, it was serious; the doctor seemed to understand. “Let me phrase this a different way.” Cloverdale stepped closer, his voice calm. “Have you ever heard of chlorpromazine? It’s a drug.” He waited, eyebrows lifted, but Abigail was frozen, mouth half-open. The doctor nodded, sadly. “How about loxapine or haloperidol? Clozapine?” No reaction. “How about ziprasidone or olanzapine?”

  Abigail looked away, and Michael said, “Those drugs are antipsychotics.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Why are you asking about antipsychotics?”

/>   The doctor pointed at Julian as the laughter came again. “Look at him.”

  They all looked, and Julian’s eyes went wide and black, the laughter suddenly frozen in the cavern of his mouth. “We don’t need…” Julian spoke in a reedy voice.

  “He’s been saying this quite a bit,” the doctor said.

  “Saying what, exactly?”

  Julian lifted his chin, eyelids slipping down to half-mast as a wicked smile cut the planes of his face. “We don’t need Michael.”

  Julian’s words sucked the air from the room, and just as quickly as the venom had arisen, slackness overcame his face. His eyes rolled white. His breathing deepened and slowed. The doctor shook his head, then found Michael’s troubled eyes. Sadness touched the doctor’s face as he spoke. “I think Julian may be schizophrenic.”

  Michael glanced at Abigail, and the moment crystallized as she stared at a spot on the floor, her face so rigid a hard word might shatter it. “I need to talk to him,” Michael said. The doctor looked a question at Abigail, and when she hesitated, Michael hardened his voice. “Alone.”

  * * *

  The door opened, closed, and people left the room. Michael sat by the bed, and for Julian, it was as if a black cloud, after many years, had slipped from the face of the sun. His brother’s hands were strong, and even though lines creased the skin at his eyes, Julian felt the same connection, like they were boys, still, and Michael had the strength to see him through another night of hell. Relief welled so strongly that Julian thought he might cry, and maybe he did, because he heard Michael say, “It’s okay.”

  One of his hands touched the back of Julian’s head.

  Such worry in his eyes.

  “Talk to me, brother. It’s just us. You and me. Whatever has happened, I can fix it. I can make it right.”

  Julian was so happy, then. All the years he’d been alone. All the years he’d wondered about his brother; worried and missed him. Now, Michael was back, and there were so many things to say, so many words they built like a tide in his throat. Eyes bright, Julian nodded and opened his mouth.

  “We don’t need you.”

  No …

  A steel door crashed in Julian’s mind, and from far off, he heard the sound of laughter.

  His voice.

  No!

  But Michael was already standing. Julian tried to call out, but could not. He stood on the shore of a falling island, and laughter burned in the blackness that took him down.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The lighter spun at the end of Jimmy’s long fingers. It snapped open and closed, bright metal against the pink skin of his palm. Sun beat down as Elena tried to crawl away.

  Jimmy said, “Uh-uh.”

  He put a foot on her neck and pressed her face into the mud. She tried to stop crying, but her hair reeked where it clung to her lips, gasoline on her tongue.

  Jimmy lit a cigarette.

  “Jimmy…” a man’s voice broke in.

  “What?”

  “Stevan’s coming.”

  Elena heard tires on raw dirt, the sound of an engine. Jimmy stood and flicked the cigarette far away before looking down the drive and sighing deeply. “Typical,” he said, and slipped the lighter into his pocket.

  Elena watched the hand come back empty, and her relief was so intense that when the car rolled to a stop she was as curled and still as a beaten child.

  “What’s going on, Jimmy?” A door closed. Feet rounded the car and Elena saw an attractive man in a snowy shirt and crisp suit. Dark hair framed a tanned, even face. He wore no tie, and no smile.

  Jimmy raised his palms. “It’s all good.”

  Stevan’s gaze settled on Elena, and his curiosity descended into stone cold anger. “Is that who I think it is?”

  “No reason to get upset.”

  Elena clenched her stomach, trying to hold still, but she knew she was begging with her eyes. “Please, don’t let him burn me.” The words croaked from her throat.

  Jimmy nudged her with a shoe. “She pissed me off.”

  “What’s she doing here?”

  Jimmy shrugged. “She was running, so I followed her. I thought maybe she could tell us something.”

  Stevan glanced at her once more, grunted. “Well, get her inside. And clean her up, for God’s sake. We’re not animals.”

  Stevan disappeared inside, people stepping out of his way. “Do it,” Jimmy said, and two men hoisted Elena. They carried her down the same hall, but when they reached the bedroom door, Jimmy said, “Uh-uh. Bathroom.” They squeezed into the small bathroom at the end of the hall. It was not much larger than a closet. No window. A small bulb that protruded above the mirror. “Put her in the tub.”

  They eased her down, and Jimmy cut the tape from her wrists and ankles. She tasted blood, and realized she’d bit down on her tongue. Her hands burned as circulation returned.

  “Get me some clothes,” Jimmy said to one of the men.

  “What clothes?”

  “I don’t care. Whatever.”

  The man came back with some rumpled men’s clothing and stacked it on the sink. Jimmy turned the shower on, then squatted by the tub and watched her shake in the bottom of it. “I can cut you, burn you, kill you. I’ve got seven men here who would love to screw you senseless. The only reason they’re not is because I don’t allow that kind of behavior.” He moved hair from her face. “Do we understand each other?”

  Elena said nothing.

  He stood and looked down. “I’ll be right outside if you need anything. Scented soap. A fresh robe.”

  There was no humor in his voice. He closed the shower curtain, closed the door. Elena was alone and alive, cold in the shower as she spit blood, and watched red water circle the drain. She curled tight, breathing hard and trying to hold onto herself. It wasn’t easy. This terrified person shaking in a cold shower was strange to her. She spit more blood, then tugged her robe open and put a palm on her stomach as she pictured the scars on Michael’s body, his strong and capable hands. She saw him differently, saw him the same, and for the first time since running she prayed that he would find her, that he would kill Jimmy while she watched. It was a new feeling, this rage that spread out from beneath her palm. It was maternal, fierce, and in the cold wash of her helplessness, it offered the first real taste of hope.

  * * *

  Jimmy found Stevan outside the bathroom door. The hall behind was empty, and the house had a powerful, vacant feel.

  “I asked the men to wait outside,” Stevan said. “We need to have words, and I don’t want them confused. They need to know where we stand, you and me.”

  “There’s no confusion, Stevan. When the bitter end comes, I’ll be standing behind you. The men know that.”

  “That’s good, because…” His voice trailed away. “Why are you smiling at me like that?”

  “Sorry.”

  “Well, stop it.”

  “Fine. Done.”

  Stevan gave a hard stare, then said, “Do you know what my father told me before he died? What warning he gave?”

  Jimmy almost laughed. Stevan was using his entitled voice, which had come to mean very little since the old man died. Stevan was smart enough, but he was weak and the street knew it. Bookmakers were already taking odds on how long he would last and who would be the triggerman to take him out. The smart money was on “not long.” The really smart money was on Jimmy. The only reason he was still breathing was because of certain considerations, sixty-seven million of them at last count. That was the rumored amount of the old man’s cash holdings at his death. Not business interests or future cash flows, but cash. Hard dollars in a dozen offshore accounts.

  Only Stevan had the account numbers, the passwords.

  Otherwise, he’d already be dead.

  Stevan lowered his voice and stepped closer. “My father said I should kill you in your sleep, and count myself lucky. He wanted me to do it before he died.”

  That got Jimmy’s attention. “Really?”
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br />   “He thought you were crazy.”

  “Bullshit. We respected each other.”

  “He respected your skills; there’s a difference.”

  “Fuck off, Stevan. Your father and I worked together for twenty-five years. Since before you had hair on your pecker.”

  “That doesn’t change what he said. He told me you were inherently unbalanced, that the only thing keeping you on an even keel was fear of him and fear of Michael.”

  “I’m not afraid of Michael.”

  “He said you would deteriorate with him and Michael gone. He said you would go off the tracks, said you were a risk.”

  “Your father was in decline.” Jimmy kept his sudden fury in careful check. “I understand.”

  “Look, Jimmy, I’m telling you this because I think he was wrong, because I want you to trust me and because I want us to be a team. You understand? I want this to be the beginning of something new, of you and me.”

  “Sure, Stevan. ’Course.”

  “Then what are you doing?”

  “Is there a problem?” Jimmy asked.

  “We’re here to kill Michael right?”

  “Yes.”

  “We lay low, and we kill him for what he did to my father.”

  “And for being an arrogant, self-righteous—”

  “You took his girl, Jimmy. You don’t think he’ll notice?”

  “You’re the one who told him we were coming after his brother.”

  “That was bait. And hypothetical. Now he knows!”

  Jimmy waved a hand. “That’s irrelevant, and eventually to our advantage.”

  “You may feel good about going head-to-head with Michael, but I don’t. He could blow through this house in thirty seconds.”

  “Your house. Not mine.”

  “Forty seconds, then. With you standing in the middle of it.”

  Jimmy’s eyes narrowed. “I think it’s you who’s fearful.”

  “You take that back.”

  “No.”

  Seconds spooled out, and Stevan blinked first. “You can’t beat him, Jimmy.”