by Saul Black
“All right, all right,” Eugene said. “Slow down, you’re almost on the Chevy. And yes, I’m tracking the phone.”
Once they’d changed cars, Eugene directed them northeast. He was keeping them off the freeways. Roads without cameras.
“I realize you’ll accuse me of cliché or something here,” Valerie said. “But how exactly do you think you’re going to get away with this?”
“Oh, Valerie, come on,” Katherine said. “Seriously?”
“We’re smuggling ourselves out in specially designed giant cans of tuna,” Eugene said.
“Valerie’s thinking that even if we kill her, and poor handsome cowboy Nick, our faces are all over the news. We’re known. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.”
“Yeah,” Valerie said. “I’m not as bright as you two, so I still think in the old-fashioned ways.”
“Don’t knock the old-fashioned ways,” Eugene said. “They’ve stood the test of time. They still apply, ninety percent of the time.”
“But not this time?”
“Not this time,” Katherine said quietly.
“Take the next right,” Eugene said. “Head toward a town called Cobb. But you’re looking for a turnoff to your right, half a mile before you get there.”
“The thing is,” Katherine said, “you underestimate the power of resources. Of money.”
“His money,” Valerie said. “You must be worth it.”
“Trust me, Val,” Eugene said. “She’s worth it.”
“Thank you,” Katherine sang, as if she were receiving her change from a cashier.
“So you have an out,” Valerie said. “I have to assume you’re leaving the country.”
“Valerie,” Eugene said, “no one can take your necessary assumptions away from you. They’re your right as an American. The trouble is we love this country. We’re suckers for the life. I’m not talking about democracy and Guantánamo. I’m talking about Tylenol ads that tell me when pain strikes I deserve the best drug on the market. I’m talking about cheerleaders with missed periods and the dirty-sweet smell of McDonald’s. Born-again Christian porn stars and biological warfare. Texas. Texas, glorious Texas. A pocket full of down-home maxims and a shotgun over the shoulder. This is a country that always says more than it means. Giant, glamorous, and inane. It’s irresistible. It’s our element.”
“This is all great,” Katherine said. “But you know, I would really fucking appreciate these cuffs coming off.”
“Not while I’m driving,” Valerie said. “And by the way, I’d like to hear Nick’s still alive.”
“He’s alive,” Eugene said.
“Prove it, or I’m pulling over.”
“Jesus, Valerie,” Eugene said. “We still doing this?”
“Like I said: I’m old-fashioned. That was a dandy speech, but it doesn’t alter the math. Let me talk to him.”
Eugene made a noise akin to a teenager finally giving in to the umpteenth demand that he get off the fucking Xbox and tidy his room.
“Nicholas,” he said. “Wake up your ideas, man, you’re a shambles. Your lady’s on the horn. Talk to her. Tell her you’re peachy.”
“Shoot her,” Nick said. “You know the way this goes.”
“Hey!” Eugene cried. “Don’t say that! Fuck. We’re cooperating here. What’s the matter with you, for Christ’s sake? You’ll have to excuse him, Valerie. He’s had a rough day. The important thing is he’s still with us. Unmolested. Pretty much fresh as a daisy, in fact. Or a globe amaranth, if you prefer. Now, heads up. You’re about fifteen minutes away. Take a left at the road marked ‘Amner Lane.’ I’m hanging up for a moment, but I’ll call you back in five. Valerie, don’t do anything insane.”
47
Nick’s arms were blood-locked and his ribs ached. He suspected at least one of them was broken. It hadn’t taken long for the struggle reflex to burn through. The cuffs were solid and the ceiling and floor bars to which they were attached were bolted to the concrete floor. There was nothing he could do. His face felt like a hot skin mask. His immobility was terrible. It worked continuously in him like an insatiable fever. As far as he could tell they were in a domestic basement, long since set up as Eugene’s tech HQ. Aside from the workstation and swivel chair, monitors, two desktops, three laptops, and a stack of slimline devices Nick couldn’t identify, the room contained only the expected boiler and utility connections. Bare brick walls and the tarps on the floor. A small electric fan heater nestled under the desk.
Eugene had just hung up from the call to Valerie. He took another cell phone from his pocket and dialed.
“Melody, where are you?” he said wearily, to what was obviously voice mail. “This is the fourth message and you’re now two hours late. I’m worried about you. For heaven’s sake please call me back. I need to know you’re okay.”
Eugene hung up and returned the phone to his pocket. He moved to reattach the tape to Nick’s mouth.
“Logistics, logistics,” he said. “But for want of a nail, best-laid plans, et fucking cetera. Jesus, there’s no end to it.”
“Don Lewis?” Nick asked. “The nightclub. Bullshit?”
“I’m afraid so,” Eugene said. “It’s amazing what failed actors will do for cash. I needed a little rationale for my cry for help. Now, what sort of gymnastics do you think Valerie’s contempl—Ah! Wait. Fuck.” He’d noticed something on one of the monitors. “Melody, you shopping bag of a female … Christ. Finally.”
Nick could just—barely—discern the image on the screen. A dark-haired woman in jeans, denim jacket, and ridiculously high red heels, tottering toward the house. Eugene had cameras angled out into the grounds.
“Excuse me a minute, Nicholas,” he said, reattaching the tape. “I’ll be right back.”
He returned, a few moments later, with the young woman. Her dark hair was in a tight French braid. Her short nails were deep red. He was back on the line to Valerie.
“… Stay on Amner Lane until you hit the fourth turn on the left. Take that, then another mile you’ll come to a gravel track on your right. There’s a ‘deer crossing’ sign directly opposite, so you can’t miss it. Over two cattle grids, fifty yards, you’ll come to a metal five-bar gate, which is open. Through that just follow the track between the trees until you see the farmhouse. I’ll be watching for you. Instructions to follow when you’re through the gate. Katherine? All well with you?”
“Yes. Apart from boredom. Valerie’s sulking.”
“Good. I’ll see you shortly. Hanging up now. Back on the line in two shakes of a lamb’s tail. Be good, girls.”
As soon as he’d ended the call, Melody said: “It’s my goddamned phone. I don’t understand it. The home screen button’s been … You know, like for weeks now I have to press it like five or six times before it comes up. And then I get this fucking thing, you know, like the red lightning flash thing? That just means charge, but I tried charging it and nothing. Just nothing. I don’t know if it’s on or off or what—”
“I told you,” Eugene said. “It doesn’t matter. You’re here now.”
“And then when I left I realized I’d forgotten the shoes. You know you said to bring the red shoes?”
“I did,” Eugene said. “I’m a victim of my own erotic whimsy. But you know how fucking hot you look in them? It’s your fault.”
Melody’s face looked pouchy. She was staring at Nick.
Eugene went to the desk and picked up a large military knife. A seven-inch blade, bottom edge serrated. He stood behind Melody and reached around to put his hand between her legs. “Girls later,” he said, kissing her ear. “This one’s a necessary exception. Do you want to start?”
Melody was trembling, breathing hard through her mouth. Eugene undid the buttons on her jacket. Smallish breasts in a red lace bra. A slight ripple of fat over the waistband of her jeans. A deep navel holding a well of shadow in the room’s bare bulb light.
“Shouldn’t we wait?” she gasped, as Eugene’s hand popped the butto
ns of her jeans and slipped inside her panties. Nick observed the panties were black, didn’t match the bra. In the mad clarity of his state, he had a sense of her as someone who would always get something wrong, some detail that spoiled a strove-for effect. Her whole life was like that, Nick thought. It was there in her eyes. “I mean for Katherine?” she said.
“Oh no,” Eugene said. “She won’t mind a little foreplay. She won’t mind us getting warmed up.”
It seemed a long time to Nick that the two of them stood there, Eugene caressing her, Melody opening and closing her eyes, going in and out of some darkness in herself.
“What do you want?” Eugene said. “Tell me what you want.”
“Oh, God,” Melody said, closing her eyes. “I want … I want to…”
“Yes?”
“I want to—”
She didn’t get to finish. Eugene flicked his arm out and drove the knife deep into her bare abdomen. Hard, fast, buried all the way to the rubber-grip hilt.
Nick watched her face open into shock. Her eyes were soft and dark. With her suddenly yawning mouth they formed three portals of darkness, as if someone had shot three huge holes in the moon.
Eugene’s other arm locked around her throat as he drove the knife in a second, third, fourth time. She barely moved. The red of the blood and the white of her flesh was terrible, the colors of a stale Christmas. Nick wondered who she was.
Eugene released his hold and Melody’s body slumped to the floor in front of Nick. Her collapse released the slightly sour smell of old denim and the tang of blood. Someone’s daughter. Someone, somewhere, would have this news brought to them, eventually. In spite of everything it gave him a small, distinct feeling of the open American spaces, hours of television, pointless arguments and festering bitterness, the unknownness of millions of lives, all their crammed repetitive details shrunk to nothing by the scale of death. Strange thoughts, given his own death, so close, so close.
He looked at Eugene.
Eugene wasn’t, at that moment, looking at him. He was staring at the body at his feet, with its slowly expanding puddle of blood. To Nick it was as if a mask had gone from Eugene’s face. There was a new, essential nudity to it, revealing something basic, a delight that, however briefly, blotted out everything else, all the play, the intelligence, the nuances of character. Eugene looked like a child mesmerized by something wonderful. This, Nick thought, this was who Eugene was. It gave him an understanding of all the architecture required to protect it, the elaborately and meticulously constructed personality. It gave him a glimpse of the effort that it must require, for Eugene to appear so easy in his skin. It seemed impossible to him, and yet here Eugene was, revealed. All the games of squash, the cold beers, the tales of sexual conquest and mishap. All of that was wrapped around this center, like a galaxy around a black hole.
Eugene looked up at him. “Phew!” he said. “Thank God that’s out of the way. Can you imagine fucking her? I deserve a medal. Well, not me, but the boys at Viagra.” He went to the workstation and opened a drawer. When he turned back to Nick he was holding a pair of night-vision goggles. “Okay,” he said, with the generous smile Nick knew so well. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go and kill your lady.”
He was dialing as he left the room.
48
When Katherine undid her seat belt Valerie took her right hand off the wheel and reached for her sidearm.
“Relax, Valerie,” Katherine said, wincing and clutching her belly. “Thanks to you I’ve got fucking stomach cramps. You really shouldn’t have done that.” She leaned forward and rested her head on the dash. “If I throw up in here, it’s your fault.” She breathed through her mouth, from which a little saliva fell. She looked, Valerie was forced to concede, as if she might be about to throw up.
“Holy moly, Valerie,” Eugene’s voice said, “you’ve got a lead foot, woman. Look where you are already! Were you trying to get pulled over? Oh, wait—maybe you were. That’s you, you minx: always thinking. It’s no wonder Nick loves you.”
Valerie was at the “deer crossing” sign. She hung a right into the gravel track. The first of the cattle grids rumbled under the wheels. She thought: one more cattle grid, fifty yards, gate, house. The trees on either side came right up to the edge of the track. If Eugene had lied … If there was another vehicle swap …
“I have a confession to make,” Eugene said. “I wasn’t entirely honest with you about the fair warnings.”
“You didn’t send the postcards?”
“I sent empty envelopes addressed to the gals,” Eugene said. “I dropped the postcards in the trash by hand. I can only imagine your hours of dreary rigmarole with the dear old U.S. Postal Service. I’m dreadful, I know. My sincere and shamefaced apologies.”
Katherine was doubled up now, her hands moving up and down from her knees to her ankles in a rhythmic self-soothing gesture. “I suppose this is what getting kicked in the nuts is like if you’re a guy,” she said. “Except I bet this is worse. Guys have a much lower pain threshold.”
“Stay focused, Val,” Eugene’s voice said. “There are potholes.”
Katherine groaned. As if on cue the car dipped into and out of the warned-of potholes—and suddenly Valerie’s instinct tightened. She couldn’t say why. There was only the slightest shift in Katherine’s aura, a minute adjustment to her bent posture and a suspension of her breath—but it was enough. Simultaneously it flashed in her mind that she hadn’t checked either vehicle before they’d gotten in. The whole operation had been designed by Eugene. Predesigned. For Katherine. Which would mean—
It happened fast. Katherine’s hands came out from under her seat holding a gun.
She got it to perhaps the level of Valerie’s knees before Valerie jumped on the brakes.
Katherine’s pitch forward jammed her up against the dash. Valerie’s hearing filled up with the sound of the shot, as if sound were a solid mass surrounding her.
But she wasn’t hit. Even in the blur she’d felt the bullet’s impact in the driver’s door. Katherine still had the gun in her hand. There was no time. Valerie—still restrained by her seat belt—lunged and grabbed the pale wrist, wrenched and slammed it against the dash. A second shot went through the Chevy’s roof. Valerie smashed Katherine’s hand harder—and the weapon dropped from its grasp. It hit the hand brake and slid down next to Valerie’s foot. Katherine was trying to get her feet under her. Valerie’s free hand flailed for the seat belt release. It seemed a long time before it popped free—but when it did it was a blissful liberation. It let all the adrenaline flow free.
Valerie punched Katherine in the throat. Grabbed the back of her head and slammed it into the dash. It was very satisfying to hear Katherine trying to force breath through her windpipe. The cell phone had fallen in Katherine’s footwell and, since the jolt had lost the open connection, was ringing again.
Valerie retrieved the second gun and got out of the car, raced around to the passenger door. Katherine, dazed, was trying to do something with her arms. Valerie opened the door and pulled her out by her collar, choking her further. It seemed almost comical that Katherine was still in the Red Ridge inmate fatigues. She was making small sounds, her mouth opening and closing, her beautiful face crimped into confusion. It looked to Valerie as if Katherine had bitten into a delicious-looking cake—only to discover it was filled with something rotten. The smell of the trees was rich around them. Dust kicked up from the track swayed in the headlights. In spite of herself a moment passed in which she looked Katherine in the eye. Pain was there, yes, but outrage, too. Fear. Valerie could see the woman trying to fight off the idea that this was her death. It gave her a shot of euphoria, to see that for all her talk, for all her fireworks, Katherine Glass was terrified of dying.
She took out her Glock.
Shoot her. You know the way this goes.
It would be so easy. Shot trying to escape custody. Katherine Glass, gone, forever. The world would not mourn. The world would be r
elieved.
The gun felt so simple in her hand. A small, pure, heavy instrument, a one-dimensional personality with a single, disinterested function. Valerie’s finger tightened on the trigger.
Was it only the thought that Eugene might be close enough to hear the shot that made her hesitate? Was it the desperate calculation that there might still come a moment (in the nightmare of moments swirling ahead of her) when Katherine alive would be more useful to her than Katherine dead? Or was it the smear of dirt Katherine’s white hands had picked up in her fall and the lock of hair that had come loose from the ponytail? Was it nothing more than Katherine’s status as a living human being she had it in her power to kill?
She kicked her, hard, in the side of the gut, and as Katherine doubled, dropped to her knees, flipped her over, adjusted her grip on the Glock—and smashed the weapon into the back of her head.
The cell phone was still ringing. Valerie picked it out of the passenger footwell and laid it on the ground.
Come what may, Nick, she thought. I love you. I love you.
Then she hammered the phone’s screen with the butt of the gun until it was silent.
* * *
She dragged Katherine’s unconscious body into the trees. The physical contact—Valerie’s hands under Katherine’s arms—was, if anything, even more bizarre without the woman’s kaleidoscopic chatter. Her weight surprised Valerie. Katherine had the short upper body and long legs twenty-first-century women craved, but the suppleness wasn’t without density. She unfastened the restraints, wrapped Katherine’s arms around a tree, refastened them. She had thought of putting her in the Chevy’s trunk, but her inner logistician said otherwise: if Eugene got past her (if Eugene killed her, she rephrased—no fucking nonsense, Valerie), that would be the first place he looked. She tossed the car keys deep into the darkness. She wanted a gag—but there was no time. She would have to bank on Katherine not coming to and making a racket anytime soon. As an afterthought, she threw the keys for the restraints even farther into the darkness. Let Eugene deal with that if he killed her. She supposed he would shoot through them. Ah, well.