Iron House

by John Hart

  “How could I have been so wrong?”

  The words slurred; her face fell into a blur. All those years of faithfulness to the senator, and she’d been so proud. Of what? Her fortitude? Her moral character? Always determined to do the right thing, to make the good choice. What a joke! What a sad, tired delusion!

  Her reflection laughed a bitter laugh.

  Jessup didn’t want her anyway.

  She picked up the gun he’d given her all those years ago. For two decades it had ridden with her in the Land Rover, and yet she’d never fired it. It was heavy, cool, and she thought of his face when he’d first pressed it into her palm: a hint of smile, but serious, first touch of white in his hair. It’s a dangerous world, he’d told her. You should keep this close.

  Had she been wrong even then?

  Had he ever loved her?

  She dropped the gun on the bed, stood and paced. She had brief thoughts of Julian and Michael, of the horrors she’d seen in the barn. But mostly she thought of her life, of choices made and opportunity missed. She thought of things she could not forget, and of failures she could not unmake.

  To do and do and make oneself replete with change …

  She wondered if she’d managed to change at all. All the tough decisions, all the sacrifices and lofty ideals. Had they made any difference? Or was she still the same person she’d been thirty-seven years ago? The same girl who swore she could do better? The very thought depressed her. The bottle emptied, and at some point she heard a light knock on the door.

  “Abigail?”

  She moved to the door and stood, silent.

  “I can hear you breathing.”

  Pressure built behind her eyes, but no one could help her. “Go away, Jessup.”

  “Are you sure?”

  His voice was soft; she touched the door and tried not to cry.

  * * *

  Michael left the guns in the hotel room. He wouldn’t get them through security, and didn’t need them anyway. That was the thing about knowledge.

  It was full dark when he arrived at the estate. Reporters were still camped out: vans and gear and talent. They rustled when he slowed. Lights came on, then somebody yelled: “It’s nobody.”

  Cameras went down; smokers lit up.

  He gave his name at the gate, and a uniformed guard leaned in at his window. He wore a sidearm, carried a clipboard. Michael tried to read his face, but it was blank. “Identification, please.”

  “You know who I am.”

  The guard measured him with a stare that lasted fifteen seconds. “Any weapons in the car or on your person?”

  “Is that a normal question?”

  “We’ve received unspecified threats.”

  “No,” Michael said. “No weapons.”

  “Straight up to the house. Someone is waiting to take you to the senator.”

  Michael drove through and the gate swung shut. Gas-burning streetlamps lit the drive; far in, the house glowed as if on fire. Michael rolled slowly, and saw two men waiting for him on the steps. One opened his door. The other was Richard Gale. “I’ll need to pat you down,” he said.

  “Is that how the senator greets all his guests?”

  “We’ve received—”

  “Yes, I know. Unspecified threats.”

  Gale smiled tightly. “If you would?”

  “Careful of the leg.” Michael lifted his arms and let Gale pat him down. The talk of threats was just that, but they needed an excuse, and Michael let them have it.

  “Will you follow me, please?”

  The senator was right about one thing: his study was spectacular. Wood panels gleamed like honey; the rugs were handmade silk and at least a century old. Vane rose from a leather chair and opened his arms expansively. “Was I kidding?”

  “It’s very nice.”

  The senator wore a three-piece suit with French cuffs and a pink tie. He took big strides and offered a big hand. Behind him, French doors opened to formal gardens that were lit with colored lights. “What’re you drinking?”

  “I’ll have what you’re having. Thanks.”

  “What happened to your leg?”

  “Nothing really. Not important.”

  “If you say so.” Vane turned his back, selected a bottle and poured. When he turned, he looked like every politician Michael had ever seen, all smiles and twinkle and subtle dark. He handed over the glass, sipped his own, then pretended his question had not been ignored. “You’ve met Richard Gale.”

  Michael knew this could play two ways: long or short. Either way, the end would be the same. “Sure.” Michael limped across the room and sat in one of the big leather chairs. He held up the glass, let light shine through the liquor, and decided to make it short. “He and a couple of his buddies smashed in my hotel door last night.”

  He sipped scotch in the dead silent room.

  “I don’t—”

  Vane offered false confusion. Michael said, “You need better men.”

  The senator put his own glass down. “That’s how it is?”

  “I think we both know I’m not here to talk about Julian.”

  The moment held, then Vane nodded. “Very well.” He looked at Gale, who opened the door and let three more men enter the room, probably the same three who’d been with him at the hotel. They fanned out, each of them discretely armed.

  Michael held up his glass. “Can I get another one?”

  The senator smiled and sat. “You’re flip. I like that. It won’t help you, but I like it. And I apologize for what has to happen tonight.”

  Michael put his glass on a table by the chair. “Let me save you some trouble.”

  “You’re no trouble at all.”

  “And yet you plan to kill me.” Michael looked at Gale. “That is the plan, isn’t it?”

  “Kidnap,” the senator said. “Not kill. Deliver might be a better word.”

  “To Stevan Kaitlin.”

  His eyes hardened. “What do you know about Stevan Kaitlin?”

  “He’s blackmailing you—I know that much. He’s been doing it for some time, too. Years, I should think, based on the numbers I’ve seen.”

  “Numbers?”

  “More like a ledger, a record of what started a long time ago with Otto Kaitlin.”

  Michael pictured the file that Otto had given him for his seventeenth birthday. Information on Julian’s new family. Pictures of the senator with various prostitutes. He’d assumed it was just for him, but realized now that Otto would have never let that kind of information go unused. “You paid a half-million dollars a year for five years, then three years at six hundred thousand. You’ve been at seven-fifty a year for a while, now. I’m guessing you’ve shelled out thirteen million dollars over the past sixteen years.” Michael let that sink in, then smiled. “Give or take.”

  “Where did you see those numbers?”

  “Same place I saw the pictures.”

  “Pictures?”

  “I have the file.”

  Vane paled, suddenly still. “Get out.” He waved a hand at Richard Gale.

  “All of us?” Gale asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sure that’s wise?”

  “Get the hell out!”

  “Very well.” Gale and the other men left.

  When the door closed, Senator Vane picked up Michael’s glass, slopped in some scotch and handed it back. He poured one for himself and knocked it down, color coming back to his cheeks. “How do I know you’re not lying to me?”

  Michael pulled a photograph from his back pocket, unfolded it and handed it over. “I picked one of the good ones.”

  “Son of a bitch.” The senator studied it for a long time. “Who are you? And don’t give me that Julian’s brother shit. What do you have to do with Kaitlin? How’d you get that damn file?”

  He was furious, embarrassed; Michael understood. Like a lot of public figures, the senator had unfortunate tastes. Prostitutes. Pages. Cocaine. “Stevan offered you a trade,”
Michael said. “My life for the file.”

  “Actually, he wanted you alive. He was very specific.”

  “Whatever. The trade is off. I’ll keep the file, and you keep your toy soldiers to yourself.” Michael stood, put down his glass. “Thanks for the drink.”

  “What? You’re leaving? Just like that?”

  “I’ve said what I came to say. I plan to be here until I know Julian’s okay. In the meantime, I don’t want any more late-night visits.”

  “What about the file?”

  “What about it?”

  The senator struggled. “What are you going to do with it?”

  Michael smiled darkly as he thought of the phone call he was about to make. “Whatever I please.”

  * * *

  Michael was gone; the room was empty, door closed. Randall Vane stood in a raw, blind fury. Those Kaitlin fuckers had blackmailed him for sixteen years, the threat so personal and damning that he’d had no choice but to pay. Some of the worst pictures went back years, to a time when very few people knew about pinhole cameras and fiber optics. God, the shame! If the pictures came out, he would never survive it. Politically. Socially. Suicide was a real possibility.

  He pulled the photograph from his pocket.

  Shuddered.

  Taken fifteen years ago, it showed him with a seventeen-year-old page named Ashley, a beach girl from Wilmington with blond hair and an all-over tan. They were naked in a Washington hotel room, the bed a puddle of wrecked sheets. She was laughing as he snorted cocaine off the smooth swell of her right breast.

  “God…”

  He burned it in the fireplace, stirred the ashes until they were dust. When he’d heard that Otto Kaitlin was dead, he’d dared to hope. But the son called a day later, Stevan Kaitlin, who wanted Michael dead. The senator didn’t even know who this Michael guy was. He’d never heard of him. Didn’t know. Didn’t care.

  But Stevan did. And Stevan still had the file.

  He’s coming to you. And when he does, you bring him to me.

  Why?

  That’s none of your business.

  And the file?

  Yours, if you do as I say.

  It should have been so simple. Bring in some hired guns, people he could trust. The guy was a dishwasher, for God’s sake! But now …

  The senator poured another drink, spilled it as his hands shook. In spite of what Michael had said, the photograph with Ashley was not nearly the worst. Otto Kaitlin had sent copies years ago: photos of him with prostitutes and attractive young lobbyists, some hard-core, graphic stuff. But the sex was not the worst of it—hell, he could survive a good sex scandal. There were financial records, too, a paper trail of payoffs and sold votes. Not all of them, but a few. It would only take one, and he had few friends on the ethics committee. “What do I do, what do I do, what do I do…”

  It would start over. The payoffs. The worry. The fear. He would be forced to yield, forced to bow. Another puppet master would take the strings, and the great Randall Vane would be made to dance.

  Again!

  Again, again, again!

  The fire tool came alive in his hands. It smashed vases and crystal, tore great, white streaks in all his lovely wood.

  “Shit!” He threw the heavy metal against the wall. “Shit, shit!”

  “Senator?” The door opened a crack. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes. No. Get in here.” Richard Gale entered warily, eyes moving over the damage. “I want you to follow that motherfucker. Find out where he is, where he’s staying. I need that file.”

  Gale kept his distance. “You told us to let him go. He’s already through the gate. He’s gone.”

  “Gone? You stupid idiot.”

  “That’s uncalled for, Senator. The instructions were yours—”

  “Get out. Just get the hell out. No, wait. Where’s my wife?”

  “Your wife?”

  “Are you deaf?”

  “No, but—”

  The senator grabbed his lapels. “Where’s my fucking wife?”

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  Abigail sat in an antique chair before a Victorian dressing table. She felt disconnected from a day that was too big. From the past week. From her life as she’d made it. So, she sought comfort in the familiar. She applied makeup with a deft touch. She kept her shoulders square, but felt the shame of her weakness. She was drunk, and she was needful. Her heart was breaking as her lips moved in a low, fierce whisper.

  Survival, strength, perseverance.

  It had been her mantra since childhood. She closed her eyes, and said it again.

  Normally, it centered her, gave her the balance to drive her life with the precision it required. But when she opened her eyes, she saw the face of a child, a small girl beaten bloody and trying hard not to cry as she dabbed and cleaned and wondered why her mother hated her with such passion. It was a terrible image, and terribly real: the bruises and torn skin, the raspberry dimple where pale, blond hair had been ripped out at the roots. She closed her eyes before the tears could find her, swayed in the narrow chair as the room faded to a bare, cold shack, and she heard a baby cry.

  Survival, strength, perseverance.

  Her hands spread on the table, eyes squeezed tight as her fingers touched a silver brush, a comb with ivory teeth. She tried to find herself, but could not. Julian would be arrested, and Jessup didn’t love her. The past was rising up.

  Survival, strength, perseverance.

  Survival, strength—

  No.

  * * *

  The comb was pink plastic, tears hot on the girl’s face as she tried to comb wisps of hair over a weeping, wet bald spot the size of her mother’s fist. Her feet were cold and bare under a cheap print dress stained black from lack of soap. The mirror was cracked through, large streaks of silver gone so that in places it was like staring into nothing. But where there was silver, there was fear, raw and fresh and caught in wide, green eyes. She tried to blink the world away, but the room smelled of fatback and collards; she heard her mother’s step in the door, the call of that precious child …

  “What’re you waiting for, you little shit monkey?”

  The girl held herself very still. Her mother moved into the room, brought the smell of hairspray and sweet tobacco.

  “No, Momma.”

  “Do it before I do the same to you.”

  “Please don’t make me—”

  “Do it!”

  “No, Momma. Please.”

  “No-good ingrate.” Fingers twined in her hair. “Worthless, selfish brat.” Face slammed into the table. “Do it!” Slammed again, nose bloody.

  “Please…” The girl saw broken teeth on checkered wood.

  “Do it!” Face against wood. “Do it! Do it! Do it!”

  Until another lump of hair came free and the world went black. The next thing she remembered was sitting wet on the bank of the creek, blue with cold and blinking in the flat, winter sun. The dress clung to her narrow chest, water in her nose. Her hands were shaking, and strange noises came from her throat. On the bank beside her, her mother was hard-faced and satisfied. “Now you’re mine forever.”

  The girl looked down.

  And saw the thing she’d done.

  * * *

  Abigail jumped when she heard the doorknob rattle. A small cry escaped, and she cast a worried, guilty look at her reflection. Her eyes were still wounded, but the mirror was flawless and the comb in her hand worth eighteen hundred dollars. She dabbed at her eyes, and smoothed herself.

  “Yes?”

  “It’s me.”

  “Randall, what?”

  “Open the door.”

  “Give me a moment.”

  The knob rattled harder, wood vibrating in the frame. Abigail crushed the past, as she had so many times, then opened the door for her husband. He stood large and winded, his hands so fisted that bone showed at the knuckles. He came into the room and shut the door.

  Abigail stepped back, wary. Her husba
nd had never been truly violent toward her, but there was something in his eyes like a hot, cherry glow. “What is it, Randall?”

  “Where’s Michael?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Don’t play with me, Abigail. I need to know where to find him.”

  “I’m sure I don’t know.”

  “That’s a lie. You two are thicker than thieves.”

  He stepped closer, and Abigail gauged the impatience and suppressed rage. She knew her husband’s moods, and this was a bad one. “I’ve answered your question,” she said carefully. “I don’t know where he is. You should go.”

  “It’s not that simple this time.”

  “I don’t know—”

  “Bitch!” He struck a table hard enough to crack wood. “I don’t have time for games or lies or your misplaced, overprotective nature. This is important, so I’ll ask again. Where is he staying? What hotel?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “He has something I need, Abigail, something very, very important. Do you understand? I need him. I need you to help me.”

  “Why?” She stepped back, got her hands on the desk chair.

  “Because he wants to hurt me, so I have to hurt him first. Because if he hurts me, he hurts you. Because if I don’t find him, it’s over. Everything. You get it? Everything I’ve worked for. Everything I am.”

  But Abigail had stopped listening. “You want to hurt him?”

  “He’s a threat.”

  “You want to hurt Michael?”

  “Where is he, Abigail?”

  She was at the desk, one hand spread as her vision constricted and a low, dull thrumming rose in her skull. The room dimmed, but the senator was oblivious. Abigail’s head tilted, and her neck creaked. The thrumming in her skull grew louder, a hive of bees that swarmed until her skin prickled. Her hand found a letter opener on the desk, a gift from Julian. The handle was bone, the blade sterling. “You want to hurt my Michael?”

  “Hurt him. Kill him. Whatever.”

  She blinked and felt a swirl of dark current, a cold, wet blackness that rose up and roared into her skull.

  Her eyelids closed, then opened.

  Abigail went away.

  * * *

  Jessup made it outside and under the stars before he realized that walking away from Abigail would not be that easy. Something in her voice sounded broken, and she was not a woman to easily break. But she did not tolerate impertinence, either, and rarely appreciated help that came unasked for.