Nerve Damage

by Peter Abrahams

  But Westie’s blood, not his. Roy scrambled up on all fours. Westie, on his back, his chest wide open, was watching Roy. His lips moved. “Venue,” he said, and then went still.

  “Hands up,” said Lenore.

  Roy didn’t put his hands up. Instead he dove for the nearest stall, unhooked the gate—meaning he’d picked the only occupied one—and rolled inside. Another crack of Lenore’s gun: wood splintered behind Roy, very near. The horse—up close so huge—neighed that wild neigh and stomped around, jamming Roy against the side of the stall.

  The horse froze like that, wouldn’t budge, muscles bulging, its strength enormous, and that one eye, only a couple of feet from Roy, wide with terror. He could smell its sweat and feel it, dampening his shirt.

  “Come out,” Lenore said; very close now, not more than a few yards from the gate. “We need to talk. This can still have a reasonable play-out.”

  Roy turned his head, could see her through a narrow space between the gate and the side of the stall. Lenore had the rifle raised, the stall’s exit point in her sights, play-out obvious.

  Roy twisted around, fighting the weight of the horse, a massive life-form. He squeezed his arms between their two bodies, got his hands right next to one of the horse’s ears. A massive life-form, but at the same time that big, pointed ear was so soft and sensitive. It twitched. Roy clapped his hands, a single, sharp sound.

  The horse reared up, filling the barn with a wild equine scream, and burst from the stall. Roy’s hope was that the horse might cover his escape. That didn’t quite happen. Instead one great forehoof, pawing the air in panic, struck the side of Lenore’s head, caving it in. She fell. The horse ran from the barn in three or four springing strides, disappearing in the rain.

  Twenty-eight

  A stranger coming with dangerous questions.

  Roy awoke with that phrase in his mind, and the feeling he’d been turning it over and over in his sleep. He sat up, which took a lot of effort for some reason, and found a bright light shining in his eyes—as though an interrogation was about to begin, dream leaking into life.

  “Roll down that window.”

  Roll down the window? Where was he? Not asleep in the truck again? But yes. Shielding his eyes, Roy turned the key, slid the window down. Outside, a cop leaned closer.

  “What’s up, bud?”

  “Nothing,” Roy said.

  “Been drinking?”

  “No.”

  The cop’s nostrils twitched. He shone the light around the cab; it came to rest on three objects on the seat beside Roy: Paul Habib’s pay stub from Verdadero Investments; the Operation Pineapple photo; and the photo of Habib and Calvin Truesdale. “What’re those pictures?” the cop said.

  Evidence of a horrible crime. That response came to Roy immediately, some big truth starting to dawn in his mind. But all he said was: “Just photos.”

  “Yeah? Let’s have a look.”

  Roy handed over the photos. The cop glanced at them, handed them back; he wore a D.C. Police patch on his sleeve. “Can’t sleep here,” he said.

  “Okay,” said Roy.

  “You feelin’ all right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Sweating like a pig, man.”

  Roy felt his forehead: dripping wet. “I’m fine,” he said.

  “You don’t look fine,” said the cop. “Using?”

  “Using?”

  “Drugs.”

  “No.”

  The cop shone the light around again, maybe looking for drugs. “Can’t sleep here,” he said.

  “I don’t have time anyway,” Roy said.

  “Huh?”

  I don’t have time anyway—that had just leaped free, on its own. Roy peered out, saw he was in a convenience-store parking lot, the neighborhood not good. “I’m leaving,” he said.

  “Do that,” said the cop.

  Roy drove out of the parking lot, down an ill-lit street he didn’t know. A freeway appeared to his right. He headed for that. The cop followed him for a block or two, then veered off. A sudden pain burst up in Roy’s chest, sharp and powerful, like a living thing in there come to hurt him. For a moment, he thought he couldn’t bear it; then he found a position—chest stuck so far out his shoulder blades touched—that made things a little better. He drove onto the freeway, drops of sweat falling from his chin.

  The Washington Monument rose in the distance. The sight disturbed him, although he couldn’t have said why. He’d never seen anyone die, not until today. Today he’d seen violent death up close twice, even been complicit in one of them, perhaps both. His mind cleared; he remembered it all, some parts sharply defined—like everything that happened in the barn; and some not—like how he’d run away, surely not in a panic, and the details of the drive that had ended in the convenience-store parking lot—but at least now he knew where he’d been going. Roy took the next exit.

  The tidy white house with the black shutters was dark, not a light showing. That gave Roy a bad feeling, like he was too late. He got out of the truck, hurried toward the front door. Hurried only about halfway: at that point he had to stop and lean against a tree, just breathing. Roy, in no way a tree hugger—he’d grown up in sawmill country—felt the great living strength of this tree, a feeling that reminded him of the feng shui room, being on the IV. But this, this leaning, this time-wasting, this softness, was no good. Delia was out there, in the world, alive. Something had gone wrong with Operation Pineapple, whatever that was, but she had survived, come back, been seen in a limo outside 919 Eliot Street in Cambridge. She had a bandage around her head. He needed time.

  Roy sucked in a deep breath—not deep at all, air hardly reaching the tops of his lungs—and pushed away from the tree. He took a few more steps, banged the elegant silver knocker up and down.

  No answer. Roy put his ear to the door, heard nothing. He knocked again, harder. “Jerry,” he called. “Jerry.” A light went on in a house across the street. Then came a voice from the other side of the door. “Who is it?”

  “Roy. Are you okay?”

  The door opened. Jerry stood there in dark pajamas, the top buttoned to the neck: undamaged. “I was sound asleep for the first time in weeks,” he said.

  “Sorry,” Roy said. “But things are happening out there. I didn’t want them happening to you.”

  Jerry blinked. “What things? I don’t understand.”

  Roy stepped into the house, closed the door, slid the bolt in place. “People are dying.”

  “Like Richard?”

  “Yes,” Roy said. He moved to the nearest window, checked the street. Nothing stirred, and the house across the street was dark again.

  “Did you talk to the blond guy?” Jerry said. “Tom Parish, Ned Miller, whatever his name is?”

  “No,” Roy said.

  “Why not?” said Jerry; he sounded petulant.

  “I couldn’t find him,” Roy said. “It went wrong.”

  “What did?” Jerry said. Then his expression changed. “Are you not feeling well?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “We should sit down.”

  Jerry switched on lights, led Roy into the kitchen. Roy sat at the table. Jerry made tea. Roy folded his hands. He noticed they weren’t the same color. The right hand was normal; the left much paler.

  “Milk and sugar?” Jerry said.

  “Plain,” Roy said.

  Jerry came to the table with two mugs, added lots of milk and sugar to his own. Roy remembered that plain wouldn’t do him any good, and did the same.

  “Better with milk and sugar,” Jerry said.

  Roy drank. The tea felt good going down, even cooling him off, which made no sense at all. Milk and sugar from now on.

  “How does Verdadero Investments fit into all this?” Jerry said.

  “Did you look into it?”

  “Yes,” Jerry said. “Not my kind of work, the investigative side, although I did help Richard out from time to time. There was one particular—”

&nbs
p; “Did you find anything?” Roy’s voice sharpened; he couldn’t help it.

  Tea slopped over the side of Jerry’s mug. He set it aside. “Nothing useful,” Jerry said. “Verdadero Investments no longer exists. It was a limited partnership registered in the Cayman Islands, but dissolution papers were filed almost fourteen years ago.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It was dissolved, closed out, terminated as a corporate entity.”

  “Who were the partners?”

  Jerry shook his head. “They’ve got all these secrecy laws,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  “What did they do?” Roy said.

  “Do?”

  “Verdadero Investments—their purpose.”

  “Oh,” said Jerry. “I can tell you that—it was a holding company.”

  “Holding what?”

  “Various investments.”

  “Like?”

  “Mostly shares of common stock in blue-chip firms,” Jerry said. “Plus some real estate in the Caribbean—at least that was what the names suggested—and one or two other things. I made a list, if you want to see it.”

  Roy hesitated. Was there any point in checking lists of blue-chip firms and Caribbean resorts? The names of the partners were what he needed. Private money means actual people.

  “It’s no trouble,” said Jerry. He went upstairs. Roy breathed. Jerry returned with a printout.

  Roy found he was slumping in his chair. He sat up straight and took the printout. Yes, a long list of big holdings in blue chips—like Microsoft, Bank of America, Honda, Exxon, Home Depot; in property development companies in the Dominican Republic, St. Lucia, Guadeloupe, the Grenadines; and in resorts and hotels in Barbados and Jamaica; and under Jerry’s heading Odds and Ends, ownership of a few small companies—Leather and Suede Imports, Toys for Baby, Lone Star Office Services…

  Roy turned to the next page to read the rest of the list, but there was no next page. Jerry glanced over. “There were only a couple more,” he said. “I guess they didn’t print.”

  Only a couple more, and Roy’s legs felt suddenly and deeply weak for some reason—as though never getting up again would suit them fine—but he pushed himself erect. “Maybe I could just read them off the screen,” he said.

  “Sure,” said Jerry. “It’s the computer in the office. But I’m not exactly clear on—”

  Roy went up the stairs, into Richard Gold’s old office. He sat in front of the computer, rubbed his eyes and read the last items on Jerry’s list of Verdadero Investments’ holdings: Bagels and Buns; Vrai Transport.

  Vrai Transport?

  Whap-whap-whap.

  Roy printed it out. The page shook in his hands. He went downstairs. Jerry, stirring his tea, looked up.

  “What did you say verdadero meant in Spanish?” Roy said.

  “‘True,’” said Jerry.

  “It’s vrai in French,” Roy said, setting the page on the table.

  Jerry read that last entry. “So Verdadero Investments owned Vrai Transport,” he said, “and they both mean ‘true,’ but other than that—?”

  “Vrai Transport still exists,” Roy said. “They own helicopters. At least one, anyway—I’ve seen it.”

  “And this relates to the Hobbes Institute how?” said Jerry.

  “By hooking into the present,” Roy said. He remembered something Sergeant Bettis had said: There’s nowhere to hide in this country, not anymore.

  “I’m not sure I—”

  Roy felt strength returning to his legs, slowly and not to their cores, but it was something. “Verdadero Investments paid the checks at the Hobbes Institute.” For sure? He’d seen only one check. But Roy pushed past that. Were they in a court of law? Far from it. Everything about this was lawless: a decision that had been made long ago, and not by him, a decision made so there wouldn’t be fiascoes. “They also owned Vrai Transport.”

  “So now you can work backward?” Jerry said.

  “I hope so.” But in fact Roy knew it, knew it because of that black-and-white photo, Exhibit C, and also because of who’d climbed down out of that helicopter and onto the snowy meadow behind his house.

  Jerry licked his lips. “Is that what Richard was doing, too, working backward?”

  Roy nodded.

  “What did he find out?”

  “Maybe nothing,” Roy said. “Asking questions might have been enough.”

  Jerry’s eyes moistened. “To kill him?” He shook his head. “I still have a hard time believing things like that can happen, Roy.”

  Roy had been that way, too, all his life. But no longer: When you see how things really happen, the fun goes out pretty quick. Were there two kinds of people—a tiny group of those in the know, and then everybody else? If so, why had Delia kept him in the dark with all the rest?

  He got up, went to a window, drew the curtain aside. The street was quiet, the pavement shining black. Nothing moved except a drop of rainwater zigzagging down the windshield of a parked car.

  “Did your Verdadero Investments search leave any tracks?” Roy said.

  “Tracks?” said Jerry.

  “Evidence of what you’d been doing.”

  “I don’t know,” Jerry said. “It’s all public information of one kind or another. There must be thousands of inquiries like it every day. Who could sift through all that?”

  Roy closed the curtain. “You’re probably right,” he said. “But maybe you should still—”

  Jerry interrupted. “Frankly, Roy, that’s my problem with all of this. It’s so…so conspiratorial.”

  “What are you saying?” Roy said.

  Jerry looked embarrassed. “It’s just that so many simpler things could explain why—”

  Roy’s phone rang. He took it out of his pocket.

  “Hello?”

  “Ah, Roy. Calvin Truesdale here. How’re you doing?”

  “Fine,” Roy said. But all at once, his lungs were tied off, almost to the top, and the edges of everything were turning yellow.

  “Sounds like you’re fighting a bit of a cold,” said Truesdale. “Not feeling well?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Good to hear. I won’t keep you, Roy. Just calling to let you know I looked into that Hobbes business of yours.”

  “You did?”

  “I like to follow through, Roy,” Truesdale said. “An old rancher’s habit. Any event, it turns out much as I’d suspected, with one or two little twists.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Financial shenanigans at the bottom of it, as I thought,” Truesdale said. “Mix in some mean and nasty lawsuits involving a snake pit of Asian investors, and then everything gets sealed up as per the settlement agreement—which explains why you can’t find reference to the Institute.”

  “You’re saying that Asian investors owned the Hobbes Institute?”

  “As a nonprofit,” Truesdale said, “in partnership with a UN agency that folded in that oil embargo scandal.”

  “The UN?”

  “But their records are so chaotic it’s not easy to see through all the layers,” Truesdale said. “I’m happy to go over the details in person, if you like, at your convenience. You at home right now?”

  “Why?” said Roy. “Are you in the area?”

  Truesdale laughed. “I can be anywhere in a matter of hours.”

  “In your helicopter from Vrai Transport?” Roy said. Jerry’s eyes widened.

  A brief pause. “That’s one way,” Truesdale said.

  Roy paused, too. Then he said: “What about Delia?”

  And then a very long pause, so long Roy wondered if the conversation was over. But he kept his own mouth shut, and finally Truesdale said, “Delia?”

  “Yes,” Roy said. “Specifically the last time you saw her.”

  “You’re losing me, friend,” said Truesdale. There was a new tone in his voice; Roy heard a slight buzz underneath.

  “The sculpture, Cal,” Roy said. “Up at my place. I wondered wheth
er you still wanted it.”

  “Well, ’course I do,” said Truesdale, voice back to normal. “More than ever. Thought you knew.”

  “I’ve decided to sell,” Roy said. All at once he was breathing free and easy.

  “Hallelujah.”

  “At the offered price,”

  “Deal,” said Truesdale. “I’ve already got a spot picked out down at the ranch.”

  “Why don’t you come up?” Roy said. “We can make shipping arrangements and you can walk me through the Hobbes business at the same time.”

  “How’s tomorrow?” said Truesdale.

  “Around four?”

  “On the dot.”

  Roy clicked off.

  “What was that?” Jerry said.

  Roy smiled. He felt pretty good—that momentum-change feeling that made the blood flow: he knew it from the rink. “Got to get going, Jerry,” he said. “I’m in your debt.”

  “But—”

  “And one more thing—stay somewhere else until you hear from me.”

  “Somewhere else?”

  “A hotel. With a friend.”

  Jerry glanced around his kitchen, paused on the corner where the broken chair had lain. “You really think—?”

  “Promise me,” Roy said.

  Twenty-nine

  At first everything went well. Momentum was shifting, and taking Roy with it. Every time he checked the speedometer, he saw he was going too fast—seventy-five, eighty, even more—as though some force was pushing. He thought of that goal he’d scored against Harvard—not the physical details, although he remembered them exactly, most clearly of all how the Harvard goalie had looked back to see if the puck was in the net—but the way that goal had lifted his whole team. Which was what he felt now: that lift. The most important goal he’d scored, and much more than that, he now realized, one of the most important events of his life. If he hadn’t wondered aloud to Turk about its possible inclusion in his obituary, then he would never have known—what? What he was about to learn. A plan was forming in his mind.

  A few miles from Baltimore, Roy stopped for gas. He had some notion of calling Freddy Boudreau, step one in the plan, while he filled the tank, but from how he was parked that meant operating the pump with his left hand, which for some reason didn’t seem to have the strength to pull the lever. Roy ended up spilling gas on both hands. He went inside and washed them in the restroom sink. That was when he saw his face in the mirror. The sight froze him for a moment or two. It might have been his portrait, painted by one of those expressionists Roy had never warmed up to, the kind who went in for asymmetry, dark outlines, and skin tones unseen in real life, like purple under the eyes, green on the cheeks, chalk white everywhere else.