The Hanged Man

by T. J. MacGregor

  Jesus, Indrio just didn’t get it. “I guess you didn’t hear me the first six hundred times I said this, Vic. I’ve never able to reach into Fletcher or Steele. You couldn’t read them, either.” Never wasn’t quite true. He’d managed a few times.

  Indrio pointed his cigarette at Hal. “We’re talking about you, man, not me. Your ability has always been stronger than what Ed and I do.”

  Manacas, peacemaker, held up his large, powerful hands. “That’s it, amigos. You want to argue, fine, do it on your own time. I’m outta here.”

  He pushed back his chair, but before he could rise, Indrio grabbed his ann. “Okay, no arguing. Go ahead with what you were saying.”

  “The only point I’m trying to make,” Manacas said, “is that whenever I looked for Steele or Fletcher, I located them by the static. So I couldn’t—can’t—read them either. Except for the other night. When I scanned the penthouses, I found her easily enough. Weird.”

  “Maybe because she was sleeping,” Hal said. “Her guard wasn’t up.”

  Manacas shrugged, unconvinced. “I don’t know. Let’s talk about now. About how our calling card is going to do major damage.”

  Indrio snickered. “For sure.”

  Manacas plucked a large canvas shoulder bag off the floor. “Out where I live, Hal, buildings go up overnight and the wildlife is scrambling to find new places to live.” He set the bag on the table, unzipped it. Hal peered inside.

  The snake, coiled in a small wire mesh container, reared its head and hissed. Hal wrenched back. “Jesus,” he whispered. “A coral snake?”

  Manacas looked pleased with himself and quickly zipped the bag shut. “Its bite is fatal within minutes. The closer the bite is to the heart, the quicker you die. I figure we’ll just leave it in her bed.”

  “What the hell do you need me for?”

  Indrio’s face tightened. “We agreed we’d do this together. That’s what.”

  “I did my part,” Hal snapped. “And I did it alone. You two do Fletcher.”

  “Bullshit.” Indrio stabbed out his cigarette and leaned so close to Hal he could smell the smoke on his breath. “The only reason you did Steele alone is because of his wife. But she doesn’t have squat to do with Ed and me. So you’re either in this or out of it completely, Hal. What’s it going to be?”

  Indrio, hothead asshole. Hal glanced at Manacas. “You agree with what he’s saying?”

  “Look, man, I don’t give a shit one way or another about you and Steele’s wife, okay? If it was me, I’d probably have done the same thing.”

  Yeah, Hal thought. Manacas, rapist.

  “But Vic’s right about our original agreement. We’re in it together or forget it. You pulled out of the heist; you owe us, Hal.”

  “I’ve already risked my ass.”

  “So you’re out? Is that what you’re saying?”

  If he said yes, then he would be out for good. He wouldn’t be able to change his mind and go back. Indrio and Manacas, he knew, would vanish as completely from his life as they had before. Although he didn’t need them to carry out his own plans, he knew that his new life with Rae, whatever shape it took, would be easier without the specter of Fletcher hanging over him. So why not go along with it? Why the fuck not? “Okay, I’m in. How do we get into the suite?”

  Indrio patted his jacket pocket. “That’s my department. Once I get the door open, I’ll watch the elevator and stairs. You and Manacas deal with the snake.”

  Hal pushed to his feet. “Then let’s get going.”

  None of them spoke once they got in the elevator. But Hal felt a brief, insistent nudge inside his skull as Indrio tried to worm his way in. It pissed him off.

  Ever heard of knocking, Vic?

  Indrio grinned. Just checking to make sure you’re all here. No hard feelings, huh? About what I said earlier?

  You said what you had to say.

  Manacas couldn’t eavesdrop on the exchange, not unless he’d learned some tricks over the years that Hal didn’t know about. He sensed it, however, and knew them well enough to figure out what it concerned. “Hug and make up, amigos, we’re almost there.”

  As the elevator slowed, Indrio tucked an unlit cigarette behind his ear and removed a leather pouch from his jacket pocket. “I should have this door open in about sixty seconds. But in case it takes longer, watch the stairs, the elevator, and the doors to the other suites.”

  Teamwork, Hal thought. If he’d resorted to teamwork that night five years ago, Mira’s husband would still be alive and maybe his life would have veered in another direction. A saner direction.

  The elevator stopped. Hal pressed the HOLD button to keep the doors open and stepped out into the corridor after the others. Fletcher’s energy drifted through the air like a faint residue of stale perfume.

  He pulled it deeply into his lungs. An image took shape in the upper corner of his right eye: Fletcher dancing the merengue one night in a Latino bar in Miami, her hair long and loose, whipping around her head as she snapped her hips this way and that. She’d had too much to drink and there had been a primal wildness about her that he’d liked. It was the night they’d become lovers. Lifetimes ago. The image disturbed him, but he didn’t know why.

  Manacas had identified the right door, and Indrio went to work on it. Hal positioned himself where he could keep an eye on the elevators, the stairs, and the doors to the other penthouses. It took Indrio about forty seconds to get the door open, then he motioned them inside, his small, dark eyes darting nervously about.

  “If I whistle, that means get out fast,” Indrio said, and stepped out into the hall without shutting the door all the way.

  Hal and Manacas snapped on latex gloves as they crossed the main room of the suite. Fletcher’s energy felt much stronger in these rooms, intense, irritated, unpleasant. It reminded Hal of all the reasons why he’d split from Fletcher’s world and obliterated whatever nostalgia he’d been feeling out in the hall. The bitch deserved a coral snake, a fer-de-lance, a goddamn python.

  Manacas set the canvas bag on the floor next to Fletcher’s bed. A king-size bed. Too much room for a snake to move around in. They had to narrow the parameters. “Let’s put it in a pillowcase,” Hal suggested. “A bite to the face will kill her faster.”

  Manacas grinned, a malicious glint in his eyes. “Good idea. He’ll stay where it’s dark and warm.” He pulled on a pair of heavy-duty gardening gloves and tossed Hal a pair. “The fingers are lined in lead. Get that pillow ready, man. I don’t want to hold this sucker any longer than I have to.”

  Hal put on the gloves. They made his hands feel large and clumsy. He picked up the middle pillow, pinched the pillowcase between his index fingers and thumbs and held it out to Manacas.

  Manacas unzipped the bag, unlatched the wire mesh cage, and reached in for the snake. When he brought it out, he had it clasped behind the head, making it nearly impossible for the snake to bite him. Good thing, too. The snake hissed and thrashed like a live fucking wire, its tiny bright eyes possessed of a malign intelligence. Manacas kept his arms extended well in front of his body as he positioned it over the open pillowcase, then dropped it inside.

  The snake fell to the bottom of the pillowcase and whipped wildly about. Hal’s heart sprang into his throat. He cast the pillow between the other two and wrenched away from the bed. He yanked off the heavy gloves, stuffed them into Manacas’s bag. “I’m gone.”

  “I can just see it,” Manacas said, excited. “Fletcher gets back, she’s bushed, she flops into bed, and feels this burning sting at her neck. By the time she gets the light on, she’ll be on her way out.”

  “And if it doesn’t happen that way?”

  “Then it’ll happen some other way. The snake’s going to get her.”

  Hal hoped so, but he, better than anyone, knew just how lucky Lenora Fletcher could be.

  They slipped back into the hall, where Indrio had worn a path in the carpeting with his
incessant pacing. The hall stank of cigarettes. He didn’t stop moving or puffing on his cigarette even when he saw them. He simply moved faster, toward the EXIT sign.

  “We take the stairs, get off on different floors, then take the elevator the rest of the way down.”

  “Fuck the elevator,” Hal said. “The stairs are safer.” Indrio grabbed his arm. “It’s not just you involved in this, Bennet.”

  Hal wrenched his arm free and flung himself into Indrio, reaching so hard and suddenly that Indrio looked as if he’d been kicked in the balls. His eyes bulged, he gasped, his hands flew to his head, and he stumbled into Manacas.

  Squeeze till it bleeds. Steele’s voice, then Fletcher’s, then the voice of that Agency spook Evans, all three voices merging into one.

  Manacas slammed into him, knocking Hal against the stairwell door. It flew open and Hal fell through it and struck the concrete landing on his back. His breath whooshed out of him. He just lay there wheezing like an asthmatic, Manacas looming over him, his bald head reflecting the dim light like a mirror.

  “Don’t you ever pull that shit on us, Bennet.”

  Indrio limped up behind him, holding a handkerchief to his bloody nose. His weird, insectile eyes met Hal’s, then flicked to Manacas. “Told you he was a motherfucker,” he muttered, and headed down the stairs.

  Manacas held out a hand, Hal grasped it, and pulled himself up. He rubbed at the center of his chest, coughed. Manacas suddenly looked remorseful. “Look, man, Vic’s uptight.”

  “He’s had a hair up his ass since I told him about Rae.”

  “Shit, he’s probably jealous. Let’s get outta here.”

  They didn’t say a word during the first two flights. Hal heard Indrio somewhere ahead of them, smelled the smoke from a fresh cigarette. Manacas stopped on the seventh floor. “I jump off here,” he said and flung an arm around Hal’s shoulders. “Call me in the next day or two. There should be news on Fletcher by then. Don’t worry about Indrio. He won’t do anything stupid.”

  “He’s a wild card, Eddie. More than either of us.”

  Manacas’s smile smacked of prison camaraderie, resigned, maybe even a little sad. “He says the same thing about you, amigo. Talk to you soon.”

  With that, Manacas the pragmatist, the peacemaker, vanished through the doorway to the eighth floor. Hal couldn’t shake the certainty that he wouldn’t see him again, that he had chosen sides the instant Hal had reached into Indrio.

  Smoke. Fletcher smelled smoke as soon as she stepped off the elevator. It wasn’t real strong, but it didn’t have to be. To an addict, the barest whiff smacked of paradise.

  But as of this evening when she’d left, the only other smoking suite on this floor, the one next to hers, had been vacant. That bothered her. It bothered her even more when she unlocked her door and realized the odor of smoke in the hall smelled stronger than the smoke in her suite. More recent.

  Fletcher shut the door and stood for a moment with her back to it, listening for noises. Nothing, not even a hiss of air from the vents. She opened the door again, sniffed at the hall, shut the door and sniffed at the air in the front room. Definitely stronger out there.

  A hotel employee was up here sneaking a smoke. So what?

  She threw the dead bolt, the security lock, tossed her purse in the nearest chair. After Sheppard and the psychic had left, Fletcher had gotten into Rae Steele’s cabin for a look around. The only item of interest she’d found was an unsigned love letter to Rae that had been hastily scribbled and filled with flowery prose. Not Andrew’s style at all. She wondered who Rae had been seeing, if Andrew had known. One more loose end to worry about.

  She turned on a lamp in the living room, shrugged off her jacket, and flung it onto the couch. Scotch, she thought. She needed one of those little bottles of Scotch from the bar and a long, hot bath.

  She noticed the blinking light on the bedroom phone. Krackett, she thought. Or Hood and Laskin. Or perhaps Evans. She didn’t want to talk to anyone.

  She started the water for her bath, then went into the bedroom and stripped off the rest of her clothes. She unclipped the ELF from her belt, but didn’t turn it off. Didn’t dare. She set it on the bed, then switched on the lamp and turned to rummage in her suitcase, which rested on the floor against the wall. Something moved in her peripheral vision, her head snapped toward it.

  Shadows, just shadows. Christ, she was jumpy.

  She gathered up her toiletries, clean clothes, and the ELF device, and went into the bathroom. She dropped everything on the bath mat, turned off the faucet, opened a fresh bar of soap. She spent several minutes at the sink, brushing her teeth and applying a face mask that she used religiously once a week.

  Hal used to poke fun at her about it, called it one of her “little vanities,” like her penchant for nice clothes, for quality makeup, for certain creature comforts. He’d given her a facial one time as she’d soaked in a hot bath and because she hadn’t been wearing the ELF, he’d been able to reach into her while he was doing it. He had reached so deeply that she had come without him ever touching her in a sexual way. She missed that. She hated to admit it, but there you had it.

  She stepped into the bath with the mask drying on her face, tightening her skin, and sank down into the water. She shut her eyes, drifting in the luxurious heat, and dozed off. She came to suddenly, listening for whatever had awakened her.

  There. A rustling sound, the noise palm fronds make in the wind. She sat straight up, her heart thumping, and reached down to the bath mat for her towel. She whipped it up and stood, wrapping it around her. She brought one foot over the side of the tub and, as it brushed the top of the mat, a snake’s head poked out from under the folds.

  Fletcher shrieked and jerked her leg back into the tub just as the snake struck the side. It whipped away from the tub, across the floor. The red, yellow, and black bands around its body seemed to blaze, visible long enough for her to identify it as a coral snake. Then it vanished through the door, into the bedroom.

  She scrambled from the tub to the lid of the toilet and looked frantically around for a weapon. But her gun lay in the bottom of her purse in the bedroom. Just the thought of stepping down to the floor terrified her.

  If she could get to the doorway, if she had a clear view of the bed, if she could run fast enough … Do it, just do it. Fletcher reached across to the counter, to the pack of hotel matches in the ashtray, then plucked the nail polish remover from her makeup kit. She set them on the back of the toilet, grabbed a towel from the stack on a shelf behind her, and paused, trying to steady her hands.

  Get it right the first time, Lenora. You may not get a second chance.

  She saturated most of the towel with the polish remover, lit a match, held the flame to the end. It caught fire and burned like money, hot and furiously, emitting a putrid smoke. She climbed down, darted to the bathroom door, paused.

  Her eyes swept through the room. Too many places to hide, not enough light, too damn far to the bed, sweet Christ… She slammed her fist against the door, it banged against the wall. Now.

  Fletcher lurched for the bed, her bare feet slapping the carpet, the flames hissing and climbing up the towel, closer and closer to her hand. Her eyes watered from the smoke, the room blurred. The bed seemed to move farther and farther away from her, like an object in a dream. Then she saw it, the coral snake whipping toward her from the left. She flung the burning towel at it and leaped onto the bed.

  She dropped to her knees and grabbed wildly at the spread, gathering it to the center of the mattress so it wouldn’t touch the floor. The rug where the towel had fallen had begun to smolder. She didn’t see the snake. She couldn’t reach her purse.

  She scrambled back, scooped up the phone, punched 0 for the operator.

  Three rings, three long and endless rings, then a soft female voice said, “How—

  “Snake!” she screamed. “A snake’s in my room! Ten-oh-two! Penthouse! Hurry, please!
”

  Seconds passed, seconds in which she stood with her back plastered to the headboard, smoke thickening in the room. Her eyes fastened on the door, the locked, dead-bolted door and the continent of space between it and the bed, between the bed and her purse, the gun inside it.

  I can’t I can’t…

  Banging at the door. Someone shouting.

  Leap to the chair. Yes, she could make it.

  She leaped, the chair tilted, and she tumbled over the back of it. She landed on her knees and sprang forward, her panic like some terrible curse, hurling her forward, forward. She stumbled toward the banging, the shouting. She coughed and wheezed from the smoke that rolled thickly through the room. She didn’t see the door until it practically reared up and smacked her in the face.

  She fumbled with the locks, her head whipping around again and again, trying to see the floor around her. She threw the door open and charged into the hall, a hysterical woman wearing nothing but a white facial mask.

  Chapter 21

  At nine Wednesday morning, Sheppard went to the property room and signed out the baggie that contained what he’d found at Rae’s secret cabin. The nub of a smoked cigar, a charred photo, a few other odds and ends. To this he added a copy of his report concerning the cabin, which noted that the forensic results would be available in a day or two. Then he searched out Gerry Young.

  Sheppard found him in the fax room, his eyes ringed with circles, his fatigue as obvious as chicken pox. “Gerry? You got a minute?”

  “About that.”

  It suddenly occurred to Sheppard that Young’s personal stake in this investigation exceeded his own. He had five dependents—two ex-wives and three children between the ages of seven and sixteen—who each got a cut of his paycheck. In contrast, Sheppard didn’t pay alimony, had never paid alimony, and there had never been any kids to support. For some reason, though, he had the distinct impression that Young’s fatigue could be blamed on more than just the specter of unemployment.

  “Sure, what’s up?” Young asked, poking his finger toward the ceiling, then gesturing to the hallway.