But as I pulled into my driveway, I rejected all those schemes. Why help Taylor one more minute? Why give anything to Lolly? G.G. was dead. Spider was dead. My practice was never going to come back. The money from the suitcase might as well be mine. The hell with legalities. Take the cash and run. That seemed a realistic possibility the more I thought about it.
As I entered my front door, however, I was shocked to see that my house had been ransacked. The leather chairs had been cut open, their stuffing flung on the floor. All the shelves had been pulled down and their contents scattered everywhere. My desk had been rifled and its drawers broken. All the file cabinets were on their sides, folders pouring out of each disemboweled metal container.
As I was trying to absorb what had happened, I was grabbed from behind by an iron grip. I was forced back into the hall and then into the conference room and slammed into a chair.
While I was still being restrained by rough hands, a wire was wrapped around my neck. It began to tighten, not enough to cut off my air supply, but enough to keep me fearful that if I moved or struggled, it would tighten more.
The man behind me wrenched my right arm and, slipping a loop of wire over my wrist, bent it behind me. I was shoved forward and then pulled back. My arm was now jammed between my back and the slats of the chair.
He attached the wire around my wrist to the one around my neck so that when I tried to move my right hand down, the noose around my neck tightened.
I endeavored to use my left hand to reach behind me to hit the man holding me, but I was not quick enough. A large, calloused palm shoved my face down against the top of the table. My left hand flailed in the air helplessly.
“Do I have your attention?” a deep voice asked.
I grunted. That was all I could manage with the wire around my neck.
“Good,” said Deep Voice. “Now, I’m going to ask you a few questions. I know you’ll want to be completely truthful with me, won’t you?”
I was yanked back upright. My right hand was crushed against the wooden back of the chair.
“We found the paperwork you had done for G.G.’s new companies, and boxes of Camellia Industries’ shit, but where’s the rest of it?”
I shrugged my shoulders to indicate that I didn’t know what the man behind me was talking about.
“Wrong answer.” The wire tightened. The cold, cruel strand cut into my neck. My breath was immediately cut off as the wire constricted the airway above my Adam’s apple.
I struggled but I couldn’t move.
I tried to twist my body, but I couldn’t.
I could feel my heart pounding and the veins pulsing in my neck. I was in good shape. I could jog for miles without being winded, but after a minute or so of unsuccessfully writhing to free myself, it was no use.
I couldn’t extricate myself from the man’s grasp or from the wire. I couldn’t breathe and my lungs began to burn, becoming a vast center of an unquenchable desire for air. Then everything – the need to breathe, the will to resist – started to recede, and I knew I was blacking out.
But, when I had almost lost consciousness and had started to slump down in the chair, the wire around my neck suddenly loosened.
I frantically inhaled, filling the void that just a moment ago gripped my lungs.
I couldn’t seem to get enough air. I coughed and could feel the blood ooze down my neck from the wire’s cut.
I was panting hard and just beginning to collect my thoughts when Deep Voice spoke again.
“Once more,” he said. “The rest of the things belonging to Camellia Industries? Where are they?”
I tried to turn toward Deep Voice, but the wire tightened. “Don’t move – Just answer the question.”
I said nothing, frantically trying to think of a way to escape.
“You are fuckin’ gonna die, you know that?” Deep Voice said it not as a threat but as an inevitable fact.
Deep Voice momentarily loosened the wire, but before I could do anything, he brought it under my chin and yanked down so hard that my neck was bent backward. All I could see was the ceiling. Deep Voice remained out of my line of sight.
My right arm was still pinned behind me, and a second man, whom I couldn’t see, grabbed my left arm and pulled it taut across the top of the table.
Out of the corner of my eye I caught the glint of a knife blade wielded by Deep Voice. A moment later, I felt the blade as it carved a line from my forearm to my wrist in one swift motion. The sensations came in three waves. First, the cutting. Then warmth where the blade had sliced. Then pain. Excruciating pain. I tried not to scream, but I couldn’t help moaning from the torment.
“Let’s try that answer again,” Deep Voice said, “or the next time Ribeye cuts you,
I guarantee it will be worse. Where is it?”
What could be salvaged at this point by keeping silent? Only my life. There was no reason not to give Deep Voice what he wanted. I had run out of options. “Up above the ceiling.”
I clenched my jaw and gritted my teeth, trying to not give Ribeye or Deep Voice the satisfaction of hearing any further moans from me. “Really,” I managed to get out, “there’s a crawl space. I’ll show you.”
“This house ain’t got no attic,” said Ribeye. “We already looked.” He twisted my left arm, turning my palm up and opening the fingers of my balled fist. Deep Voice said, “Feel that?”
I could. Ribeye was tapping a knife blade on the tips of my fingers.
“Now, if you’re not telling the godawful truth, Ribeye will first cut your balls off and then remove each finger, one at a time. So, I’m going to let you get up, very slowly, and you’re going to take us to where the stuff is hidden.”
The wire was removed from my neck and wrist. My neck, now no longer craned backward, ached as my eyes focused.
Sitting across from me was the one called Ribeye, a guy in his fifties. A slab of muscle with a keg of a chest and a pylon of a neck. A broad, broken nose. A face as flat as a cheap carnival mask.
When I looked down at my left hand, which was pulsing with pain, I almost passed out. My shirtsleeve, which had been white, was maroon, split open from the elbow down. Blood was pouring from my arm, spreading over the top of the table and dripping onto the floor.
Deep Voice pulled my chair away from the conference room table and swung it around, me in it, facing the fireplace. He had maneuvered it so that I still couldn’t see him.
I tried not to show how much pain I was in, but I involuntarily groaned.
“Shut up!” commanded Deep Voice, giving me a painful whack on the back of my head.
“Ribeye, go get something so he doesn’t bleed all over the goddamn car.”
Why were they mentioning a car? I was going to give them what they wanted.
I heard Ribeye go toward my bedroom and then return. He threw the sheet from my bed on the floor at my feet.
Deep Voice came around from behind me and picked up the sheet. Now I saw him. Like Ribeye, he was also in his fifties. At least six foot eight. Linebacker’s build. Thick mane of salt and pepper hair pulled back into a short ponytail that hung over his collar. Eyes that showed no mercy. Swarthy complexion.
Deep Voice picked up the bloody knife from the table and wiped the blade clean on my slacks. He used it to cut the sheet into long strips and bound them tightly around my arm. The first layers turned red immediately, but by the time the fourth strip was wrapped, it was a dull pink. When he had finished, my now useless left arm was wrapped from biceps to palm.
“OK. Now where’s this fucking attic?”
He helped me to my feet and I showed them the access panel in the slatted hall
ceiling.
“Well,” said Deep Voice to Ribeye, “what are you waiting for?”
Ribeye grabbed a chair from the conference room. Standing on the chair, he punched the panel loose. With an effortless, acrobatic move, he pulled himself up into the opening. “Where is it?”
Deep Voice tapped the bl
ade against my cheek.
“Under the insulation. Garbage bags.”
A stream of insulation poured through the hole, followed by the trash bags, which hit the floor with a thud. Ribeye leapt down from the opening and landed lightly on his feet. He peeked in each plastic bag. “It looks like it’s all here. Sure is a hell of a lot of it.”
“Get the bags and all the other stuff we found in the car first,” said Deep Voice.
“Then come back and take this piece of shit. You may have to carry him out.”
I guess he did, because the next thing I remember was being in a car in the middle of nowhere.
Chapter 41
SATURDAY
At first, I became aware of my arm. My exquisitely painful, aching, burning arm. Then I became aware of the hum of the engine and the wash of the tires on the roadway.
I opened my eyes.
I was propped up in the back seat of a large sedan. Ribeye was driving. Deep Voice sat next to me. When he saw I was awake, he put the flat of the blade of the knife on my ear. “Sit still and there won’t be any problems.”
To our left, the black of the night sky was giving way to dark blue streaked with luminescent crimson. In either direction, marsh stretched out to the horizon. The water in the ponds and canals reflected the gathering light. The asphalt road we were traveling on was only three or four feet higher than the water level, built up on a mound of dirt dredged from either side of the macadam trail.
The sky lightened some more. White egrets flew gracefully in the early morning light, flapping their wings slowly.
The marsh grass was a pale green. Lilies spread out, choking the open water. Spindly horned beaksedge and delicate lizard’s tail rose in clumps from spots along the edges of canals.
I was taken by the beauty and the remoteness, and then I realized that, for a moment, my misery had lessened. I had to concentrate on something other than my arm.
I forced myself to focus not on what I felt but rather on what I could determine.
If they were going to kill me, why hadn’t they done it at the house? To avoid leaving a body?
Who were they? I figured they wanted the money, but they also took all of the boxes with the Camellia Industries documents. For what purpose?
Were they the ones who killed G.G.?
Were they the ones who killed Spider?
Were they now going to kill me?
The sky was getting brighter, although the sun still wasn’t up. The eastern horizon was turning a crimson red. Above that, blended by the gentlest of palettes, were mauves and pinks which mixed into azure as the stars slowly disappeared.
The car slowed and swerved to the right onto a dirt road. I groaned again from the pain as we lurched and bumped toward the still-dim western sky, my arm radiating agony with each jolt.
The swamp grasses had given way to low-lying land. Palmettos gathered at the feet of cypress trees and formed green islands out of which rose scrub hardwoods.
The car stopped at the end of the spit of land. The marsh stretched out beyond us, severed in two by a wide canal that passed by the edge of this little peninsula. Ribeye got out and, holding a gun on me, motioned where I should go.
I was directed to a small dock on the edge of the canal. My left arm was raw and stiff beneath the strips of bedsheet. Each movement made the cloth feel like sandpaper against my torn flesh.
Deep Voice positioned himself where the dock met the land. I followed his instructions and walked to the end of the dock. Meanwhile, Ribeye removed the garbage bags, the five boxes, and the folders containing the paperwork I had done for G.G. from the trunk, along with both my iPad and laptop.
Ribeye backed the car far under the trees and emerged carrying a machete. He sliced down dozens of broad palmetto leaves and covered the car so that it was almost impossible to see if you didn’t know it was there. Then he made several trips to bring the machete and everything that he had taken from my office and placed them all next to the dock.
Then . . . nothing.
Ribeye sat on a box. Deep Voice stood his ground, watching my every move.
I was tired and lay down on the dock. If they hadn’t killed me by now, then at least I could rest a bit.
We were there for a long while.
When I opened my eyes again, the sky was all blue. The sun was above the horizon, the heat was oppressive, and dozens of mosquitoes were swarming above my arm, attracted by the bloody bandages. I tried to swat them away, to no avail.
“There it is,” Ribeye said.
I struggled to get into a sitting position and turned to look in the direction Ribeye was pointing. For a few minutes, I couldn’t see anything, but then I heard the sound of an engine. After a moment more, I could see the tip of a slanted pole moving through the marsh.
I managed to get to my feet, my left arm hanging down, even more painful than before.
The pole in the marsh was the antenna of a boat. A man was at the wheel, although I couldn’t see him distinctly because the sun’s glare was reflecting off the windshield.
As it got closer, I realized that what I had seen was the third deck of a large vessel – maybe fifty or sixty feet long. Sleek. White. Clean. On the bow were coiled ropes and a shining brass anchor attached to a thick metal chain that disappeared into a brass-covered hole.
Ribeye helped tie up the boat. I was directed to get on board. I struggled to do so.
Ribeye impatiently grabbed me around the waist, hoisted me over the gunnels, and dumped me onto the deck. My head pounded. My arm was afire. It was almost unbearable. I could barely think.
Only after Ribeye had loaded everything else onto the boat did Deep Voice loosen the lines and jump aboard.
The boat backed away from the dock and proceeded down the canal. The vibrations of the huge engines flowed through my body, further aggravating my bandaged arm.
I longed for an end to the pain. I longed for sleep.
I closed my eyes.
Chapter 42
It was the change in the engine sound that awakened me. I was stiff. The sky and air were ablaze with light. Sweat poured off my forehead. My clothes were damp with salt spray and perspiration. My arm was throbbing uncontrollably.
Ribeye was nowhere to be seen. Neither was Deep Voice.
Using my good right hand, I steadied myself and slowly stood up, looking aft. I could see nothing but deep blue water with gentle swells humping across its surface from horizon to horizon. No land. No boats. No ships. The sea moved slowly in gelatinous undulations.
I turned around to see what was in front, and, grabbing the ladder to the second deck, I stared in amazement at a forest of tremendous stanchions, each ten feet in diameter or more. They were encrusted with green and blue eruptions, glistening barnacles that climbed fifteen feet above the surface of the water that continually grabbed at them, then ebbed, dripping away. The metal trunks stretched high above the boat, dwarfing it, a grid of beams and crossbars, terminating twelve or more stories up. Far above I could see a platform reaching beyond the edge of the supports, and above that a multi-story metal building as well as cranes, and pulleys. I realized we were miles from shore, among the deep-water oil rigs.
Ribeye was standing on the bow of the boat, rope in hand, tossing it at one of the thick metal pipes that formed the lower cross bars. On the second try the rope looped over the top and the end fell into the rising and falling water. He took a long pole with a hook on the end, retrieved the damp portion from the waves, and fastened it to the cleat on the deck. The engines stopped and there was an immediate quiet. The boat slowly bobbed up and down while moving away from the oil rig, pulled by the current, until the rope was taut.
The ladder in my hand shook. A pair of tennis shoes appeared on the topmost rung above me.
I backed away. I was weaker than I thought. I grabbed the wooden railing with my one good hand and leaned against it, half sitting, half standing.
A man climbed down the ladder from the upper deck. He wore
a New Orleans Saints cap, dark hair protruding from its sides and back. His red polo shirt – it had to be an XXXXL – flowed over vast rolls of fat. His cheeks, lips, and jowls were overfull. His face – a pie made with too much yeast. His skin was smooth and tanned, with a faint olive tone.
He appeared to be shocked by my appearance, by my neck scrapped raw from the wire, and by my bloody bandaged arm. Apparently, it was the first time he had come down to look at me. He called out peremptorily, “Frankie! Ribeye!”
Ribeye came from the bow, edging his way along the rail. Deep Voice – Frankie, now I had a name for him – climbed down from the upper deck.
“What did you do?” The fat man clearly was used to giving orders and having them followed. “I told you to retrieve Guidry’s things, not to cut someone up. You’re not working for Paolo. You’re working for me. You do it my way.”
They didn’t say anything, but I noticed that Ribeye and Frankie threw a knowing look at one another.
“Where is it?” the fat man said, looking around the deck.
Frankie pointed to a hatch next to the ladder.
“The galley? Let’s go.”
The fat man took my good arm and helped me through the opening. The Camellia Industries’ boxes I had gotten from Spider were on a table that was attached to the wall, surrounded on two sides by wooden benches with high backs and red cushions. The plastic trash bags were on the floor. On another counter were the files I had prepared for G.G., along with my iPad and laptop.
The fat man sat me down on one of the benches and settled heavily onto the other. Frankie and Ribeye did not take a seat, and the fat man didn’t offer them one. They stood at the foot of the table.
The fat man looked quickly through the boxes until he found the Camellia Industries corporate binder. He licked his index finger and flipped through the pages slowly. He didn’t rush. No one spoke. Finally putting these to one side, he picked up the files on the five corporations I had drafted for G.G. and followed the same procedure.
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