Pearly straightened his shoulders. He was ready to let her have it with both barrels. “There was one hitch.” He saw her face instantly tighten. “Ludenmere can’t bring the money until one o’clock on Friday mornin’. He said he couldn’t get hold of—”
“Bullshit,” Ginger interrupted, and her eyes were fierce. She leaned in so close their noses nearly touched. “Bull…shit.” Her teeth were clenched. “You’re tellin’ me you let him off the hook for an extra day?”
“It was all I could do. He—”
“Oh, fuck that! Are you fuckin’ crazy? You let him off the hook! Goddamn it, I told you…if he poor-mouthed about not bein’ able to get the dough, you strong arm him! Tell him we’re gonna cut the brats’ ears off at five minutes after one if he doesn’t show up with every fuckin’ penny on schedule! Oh, no…oh, no…don’t tell me you’ve fucked this up!” She put her hands on her hips and began to walk in circles from the car through the wet weeds and back again. She kept shaking her head, staring at the ground and saying “No, no…no, no,” as raindrops speckled her hair.
“Okay, it’s not the end of the world,” Pearly said.
She ceased her circling and suddenly came at him almost at a run, and with such a rictus of rage on her face that the sharp point of a blade of terror pricked his throat. He balled his fists up, thinking that he might have to actually fight the bitch off.
She stopped short of attacking him. The champagne-colored eyes were full of fire. “Do you think this is a summer camp?” she asked through her gritted teeth. “Do you think we’re gonna sit around the fire tonight and sing songs? You fucked up, Pearly. I thought you were a professional!”
“I’ve never kidnapped anybody before,” he said. “Have you?”
“I know better than to give anybody time to think! Too much time, and he’s gonna be thinkin’ he ought to call the cops in! And now we’ve gotta babysit those two for a whole day and take care of that damned chauffeur!”
Pearly said, “I sweetened the deal by fifteen thousand bucks. Doesn’t that count for anythin’?”
“No, it does not.” Ginger looked up at the clouds as if trying to find an answer to her frustrations in the sky. When she returned her attention to Pearly her face was cold and the rain ran down her cheeks. “You just sit in the car. Donnie and I’ll take care of the rest of it. Gimme the gun and the bag. Put the knife in it.” She took the .38 and the Rexall bag when Pearly offered them, and he shrugged his shoulders and got back behind the Ford’s steering wheel to gladly stay out of her way.
Ginger walked back to the Oldsmobile. She opened the left rear door and aimed the pistol at Hartley. “You. Out. Donnie, come on and help me.”
“Either of you two move,” Donnie told Nilla and Little Jack, “and you’ll wish you weren’t never born. Understand?”
“We understand,” Nilla answered. She had just finished hearing from Curtis that her daddy said he was going to get them out of this and not to worry. She was near tears but she was not going to let herself break down, if only to be strong for her brother. She was tired and her head throbbed; she had never talked to Curtis like this for so long and so intensely, and she felt drained.
It was a blessing to know that Curtis could be reached—and through him her father—but she thought that much depended on her too because the mind-talking could only go so far and she was running out of strength.
“We’re gonna be all right,” Hartley told the children before he got out of the car. He faced the two guns and the two kidnappers, and he lifted his chin in defiance and said, “What now?”
“Take your shoes off and throw ’em in the woods,” Ginger said. He did. “Open your coat,” she ordered. When he obeyed, she told him to take his belt off and also throw it away. “Wallet,” she said, and he gave that up to Donnie. She took his wristwatch and frisked him but left the small change in his pocket. Then Ginger said behind the unwavering pistol, “Stand real still, Hartley. Donnie, go ahead.”
Donnie plucked the chauffeur’s cap off, exposing Hartley’s close-cropped gray hair, and put it on his own head at a rakish tilt. He opened one of the boxes of cotton. “Open your mouth,” he demanded, and he forced a handful of cotton in. He cut a length of electrical tape with the knife, pressed it to Hartley’s lips and wound it around the man’s head. Then came wads of cotton pushed into the eyesockets and more tape around the head securing them. “Hands in front of you and clasp ’em,” came the following command. The tape was wrapped tightly and securely around Hartley’s wrists and hands. Though his fingers did have a few inches of freedom, his thumbs were trapped. He was then guided back to the car. Next out was Nilla, who was also made to throw away her shoes, have cotton stuffed into her mouth, pressed into her eyesockets and taped up, and her wrists and hands bound as Hartley’s had been.
When it came time for Little Jack’s binding, the boy had to be forcefully pulled out of the car by his legs, kicking and screaming. “Take those fuckin’ Buster Browns off,” Donnie said as he held Little Jack by the hair, and even though he had the gun in his hand he got a kick to the left shin that rattled his teeth and drew the water of pain to his eyes. For that transgression, Donnie released Little Jack’s hair quick enough to give the boy a stinging slap to the face and then jammed a fistful of cotton into his mouth to swell Little Jack’s cheeks. The tape went on and then Little Jack got the eye treatment, as rough as Donnie could give it.
“Easy with him,” Ginger cautioned. “Don’t break the merchandise.”
“I ought to break his fuckin’ neck. I’m gonna have a knot on my leg for a week.” Donnie grabbed a handful of the boy’s hair again, violently shook Little Jack’s head back and forth and hissed in a taped-up ear, “Oh yes…you and me are gonna have some real fun, kid.” He nearly jerked the boy’s arms out of their sockets, and Ginger held Little Jack still by the shoulders while Donnie taped the hands.
Sitting in the car next to Clay Hartley with her mouth full of cotton, her eyes blinded and her hands bound, Nilla tried as hard as she could to focus on speaking to Curtis through her terror. :Curtis, are you there?:
He didn’t respond. :Curtis? Please answer.: She felt a sob rise up in her throat; the sticky black tape had gone around her head and over both ears and all she could hear at the moment was the roar of her own blood rushing through the veins.
Then, after what seemed an agonizingly long time…:I’m here, Nilla. You’re soundin’ weak…real far away.:
:I’m so tired…my head aches something awful. Are you still with my daddy?:
:Yes. He’s takin’ me back to your house. I’m gonna stay with him ’til you get home.:
:They’ve put cotton in our mouths and over our eyes. They’ve got us taped up, I can’t see anything. Oh, Curtis…my mama…she’s going to be so worried.:
:Your daddy told me so. He said he doesn’t know how she’s gonna take this, but he has to tell her as soon as we get there.:
:I’m about to start crying. I can’t do that…I just can’t. If I start…I don’t know if I can stop. Tell me something good, Curtis…something good so I won’t cry,: she said.
:Well…I never asked you that question, about what you wanted to be when you grow up. How come you’d like to be a nurse?:
She had to make herself swallow the sob, and it went down like a lump of coal. :I like studying health,: she sent to him. :It’s my best subject in school.:
:That’s a fine ambition,: Curtis replied. :Always need good nurses, I suspect. Who knows? Maybe along the way you might decide to be a doctor.:
:Being a doctor…seems like it would be awful hard to…OH!: she said, with an intensity that caused her head to ache even worse. :The car door slammed! Now…they’re getting in…the engine’s starting. We’re moving again!:
:All right, Nilla. I’m gonna tell your daddy what’s happenin’. You’re soundin’ kinda weak and I think it’s ’cause you’ve go
t all this in your head. Just remember…I’m here and your daddy’s here, and he’s told me he’s workin’ on gettin’ those people the money they want, then it’ll all be over and that’ll be real soon.:
:All right,: she said, and she nodded but again the storm of tears was threatening. :All right, I’ll remember.:
“What’d you nod your head for?” It was Donnie’s voice, harsh and loud. “I didn’t ask you anythin’. You! Girlie! I’m talkin’ to you!” She felt something hard prod her shoulder and realized it must be the gun’s barrel.
“She can’t answer,” Ginger said quietly. And added: “Fool.” She was following Pearly in the Ford ahead, as they turned to the right onto the rainswept main road.
“Oh. Yeah. Well, hell…she nodded like she was…I don’t know…listenin’ to somethin’. Weird.”
“Stop wavin’ that gat around and sit tight. In about three minutes I want Hartley’s head pushed down. Nobody’ll see the kids. You listen for when I tell you, and do it quick.”
“Yes, master sergeant ma’am,” Donnie said, and he gave both a salute and a blast of a forced laugh that blew a flying tendril of snot out of his right nostril.
****
In the Ford leading the kidnap parade, Pearly was still burnt up over taking a shellacking from the enraged woman. Sure, he knew he’d given Ludenmere an extra day and that could be a dangerous thing, but the added fifteen thousand meant something…didn’t it?
“Hell with it,” he said, and watched the community of Kenner come up through the woods.
They were on Sawmill Road, the main road into town. Other dirt and gravel roads led off to the right going to various cabins and fishing camps. About a half-mile from where they’d pulled off to bind up the kids and Hartley—an act that Ginger had said they needed to do to assert their control over the victims and keep them docile driving through town—was a wooden board on a pole indicating Sandusky Road, and at the end of that would be the fishing pier they’d scouted out as the money-drop location.
Here and there along Sawmill Road stood rustic cabins, some so rustic they looked as if they’d been uninhabited since the Civil War. Pearly thought that Kenner might be a town with a future, as the sign back there had said, but the future was yet a long ways off. The thick pine and scrub woods gave way to a railroad siding on the left where a few worn-looking boxcars languished waiting to be called to service, followed in a hundred yards by a small gas station, then a cemetery, a white stone church, a few brick or wooden houses, and a business district of about two blocks. A couple of other cars passed and a haywagon was on the road, but other than that Kenner was asleep in the drowsy rain. Pearly passed a cafe, a hardware store, a place with a sign that said Evie’s “Everything” Shoppe, a brick structure that was half-finished and had a wheelbarrow of bricks out front but no workers visible, a squat little building that might have served as the town hall next to a so-called park where grass was as sparse as hair on a bald head, a few more houses and that was Kenner.
Again the woods closed in. Here and there another road led off to the right, heading to more fishing cabins on the Pontchartrain. Pearly was a little more than a quarter mile from crossing over Jefferson Parish into St. Charles Parish when he slowed at a road marked only by four round and rusted cannonballs piled up and sealed together in the chickweeds. Cannonball Road, they’re gonna name it soon as they get the papers done, the man at the rental office in Metairie had said. Yep, the fishin’ is real good out that way but the swamp’s your nextdoor neighbor so keep your snakestick handy, you go out strollin’.
We’ll do that, Pearly had told the man, as Ginger and Donnie had waited in the car outside.
Hope to catch some big fish the next few days, but the point is to scout this area and look for investments. Time seems to be right to put some money down on land up in there.
Sounds like a plan. Sorry I can’t rent you a cabin with indoor plumbin’ and electricity. Then again…none of ’em’s got any of that. If you’re interested, I got a marina for sale at Boar’s Head Point…took some damage in that last blow we had, but for eight hundred bucks you could clean it up and call y’self an admiral.
I’ll get back to you on that, Pearly had said, wanting to finish the business of renting the cabin for two dollars a day—cash in advance, three day minimum—and get out of there as fast as possible.
He took the right turn onto Cannonball Road, drove between pine forest through several mud puddles, and pulled up alongside a cabin with wood so weathered it had turned nearly black and as shiny in the wet as fresh tar. The tin roof looked like it had barely survived a hailstorm of boulders. Weeping willow trees overhung the place and the broken remnants of scraggly pines nearer the lake showed that the last blow had indeed been a whopper. An outhouse stood behind the cabin and a path led over a four-foot-high mound of earth to the fishing pier, which Pearly had already seen had a precarious lean to the left. Beside the pier was a waist-high oak stump where the fish were cleaned, and nearby a firepit to cook up the finnies. The place was a far holler from the Lafayette Hotel and it made the King Louis look like a dreamboat…but they were alone out here in the sticks, and that was all that mattered.
Ginger pulled up in the Olds. She and Donnie got out and then began the task of herding Hartley and the children out of the car and marching them to the cabin. On the way, Little Jack fell down and Donnie jerked him up by the collar and gave him a shake before shoving him on.
As he entered the cabin with the bag of groceries, Pearly thought the fishermen who rented this dismal hole either liked punishment or were too cheap to buy a fifteen-cent French Quarter trout. The front room was furnished only with a few wicker chairs, a knife-scarred table and on the floor a worn-out brown throwrug made of coiled rope. In what passed as a kitchen there was a small wood-burning stove, a green formica-topped table and four chairs, some cabinets holding plates, cups and saucers, a tarnished coffee pot and a tray of silverware. The bare-mattressed cot and pillow that Donnie had slept on last night was beside a door at the rear of the place, which led to a screened-in porch, a screened door and a couple of wooden steps going down to the yard. Two other rooms were behind closed doors on the right and the left, both of them little more than good-sized closets. In the room on the right was a bunkbed and a small desk. The room on the left had been prepared for the new arrivals. A pair of oil lamps sat on the scarred table, along with a bull’s-eye lantern and a regular flashlight. The windows were curtained with a pattern of sea anchors and leaping marlin, cutting what light there was to a gray haze. The whole place smelled to Pearly like the lake had more than once flooded over the pitiful levee and left its brackish mud between the rough floorboards, which was likely true.
“Keep movin’,” Ginger said, and pushed Hartley when he stopped. “Donnie, open the door for ’em. Pearly, bring a flashlight in.”
He put the grocery bag on the table and did as she asked. The room they were being herded into was completely bare except for a wooden bucket in a corner. The single window had been boarded up both inside and outside, the nails sunken deeply so no fingers however desperate and bloody could work them out.
“Take their blindfolds and gags off,” she told Donnie. “Do it easy, don’t tear anythin’. Pearly, keep that light in their eyes.”
Donnie tucked the chauffeur’s pistol into his waistband and went about the work, which turned out to be such a mess that after the cotton was removed the wads of tape had to be cut out of their hair with the kitchen knife, a process that made Hartley and the children stand as still as statues and Little Jack’s eyes widen with terror in his mud-streaked face.
“Leave the wrist-bindin’s on,” Ginger directed when Donnie had finished. Then, to Hartley: “Welcome to your new home for the next couple of nights. It’s not what you’re used to, I’m guessin’, but it’s all we got. If Mr. Ludenmere is a good boy you’ll be out of here soon, and we’re figurin’ he’ll be
a real good boy.”
“It stinks in here even worse than that man’s breath,” said Little Jack, who had regained some of his fire. Nilla nudged him with an elbow to keep his mouth shut, but she knew that was like trying to put a cork in a beehive.
“It likely won’t smell any sweeter,” Ginger answered, with a soft and heartless smile. “Your bucket over there is what you get. There won’t be much light in here during the day, and none after dark. You’ll sleep on the floor, if you care to sleep. Hartley, you see this door?”
“I see it,” he said.
“There’s no lock on it. Now…we didn’t expect you to stay overnight…so…we’re gonna up-end that table and prop it against the door, and any little wiggle we see or skreechy noises we hear, we’re not gonna like.”
Hartley said, “The children are worth money. You won’t hurt them.”
“Well, you’re right and wrong about that. We won’t kill ’em, is what you mean to say. Now you…you’re not worth a motherfuckin’ dime, is what I figure. In fact, you’re just dead weight already, aren’t you?”
Hartley didn’t reply, because he knew how true the woman’s words were.
Nilla spoke up, though her heart was beating hard and she felt like she might fall down any minute and curl up into a whimpering ball. “Mr. Parr, I thought you were my daddy’s friend.”
It took him a few seconds to formulate an answer. “Kid, my friends are in your daddy’s wallet, and I want all of ’em I can get. It won’t be too long ’til I’ve got a load of new friends in my pockets. Then it’ll all be over and you can go home.”
“Sure,” Ginger replied, in a voice that sounded listless. “Like he said.”
“Put that light on the fucker’s face,” Donnie said, and he reached over to grasp Pearly’s wrist and aim the flashlight’s beam. “Look at how that damn eye shines! Weird…he squints with the good eye but the other one don’t flinch.”
“We’ve done enough,” said Ginger. “Let’s leave ’em be for now.”
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