Poisonfeather (The Gibson Vaughn Series Book 2)

by Matthew Fitzsimmons

  Gibson stopped him. “What do you think will happen now?”

  The fisherman considered the question for a moment. “In Mandarin, the word ‘crisis’ is composed of two characters. One represents danger and the other represents opportunity.”

  “Is that true?”

  The fisherman shook his head. “No, not exactly. It is just something that John F. Kennedy repeated because it sounded inspiring.”

  “Then why did you say it?”

  “Because he said it, and people believed him.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You will.” The fisherman inclined his head toward Gibson and left him to his thoughts.

  In his bathroom, Gibson ran the shower until it was hot enough to strip paint and stood under it until he couldn’t feel the van on him anymore. By the time he stepped out, he knew he didn’t want to be in Niobe come morning. The fisherman—he still didn’t know the man’s name—was right: something bad was coming. Call it a crisis, call it an opportunity, call it what you will—it would be bloody, and he didn’t trust the fifth floor to exhibit much trigger control.

  Gibson climbed into bed, wrestled with the covers until he was comfortable, and then got up again. Satisfied it looked like the bed had been slept in, he put out the “Do Not Disturb” sign, repacked his bag, and climbed out the fire escape. He dropped down lightly onto the parking lot, listened to the night, and disappeared into the shadows.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  In the morning, Gavin was gone. Lea had lent him a pillow and a blanket, pointed him toward the couch, and promptly passed out in her clothes. When her alarm went off at five a.m., she felt stiff, as if she hadn’t moved a muscle all night. She poked her head out her bedroom door to check on her guest; the pillow and blanket were stacked exactly where she’d left them. No note or indication of where he had gone, but the message was clear enough—she was on her own now. To her surprise, she found she missed Gavin. She didn’t quite know what to make of that—missing people wasn’t something she did anymore.

  The wardrive had been devastating for her, but she felt grateful for the clarity it had brought. Up until now, her father’s victims had been an abstraction, a meaningless number. So to meet Gavin and learn firsthand of the damage done by her father made her ashamed not to have understood the true impact of his crimes before now. So intent on her own personal revenge that she’d made her father’s crimes all about her. What a child she had been. The memory of telling Gibson that the money belonged to her family made her cringe. The money belonged to the Swongers and the Birks.

  Could there still be a way?

  Lea made coffee and took stock of what needed to be done. Partnering up had been a bust—time for plan B, or rather, the old plan A.

  It took her only twenty minutes to pack her things. She opened a suitcase and a garbage bag. When she was done, the garbage bag was stuffed to overflowing, while all her worldly possessions totaled only three-quarters of the suitcase. It made half of her sad to be such a vagabond, the other half proud that life had taught her economy. Her life was a Bob Dylan lyric. What little else remained, she left for Margo’s next tenant, if there ever was one. People weren’t exactly flocking to relocate to Niobe.

  A single garment bag hung in her closet. She unzipped it and laid the yellow dress out on her bare mattress. She remembered the way her father had surprised her with it, draped casually over the back of her chair when she’d come down for breakfast that morning. His nose in the Wall Street Journal, pretending not to hear her squeals when she discovered the jewelry box where her breakfast should have been. The necklace inside had taken her breath away. What a lucky girl she’d felt that morning to have such a generous daddy. Poor, spoiled, foolish Chelsea Merrick. The dress matched the tie he’d worn that day. She’d thought that a wonderful touch but now saw what she’d been—an accessory to complement his big moment. They’d driven into his offices together, and she’d stood proudly at his side while he’d announced the launch of Chelsea—his third and final fund, named in her honor. The one that had spelled his downfall. She smoothed the dress with her hand and plucked a stray black hair from the sleeve. She’d worn it only that once, a lifetime ago.

  She got to work in the bathroom—not bothering to read the instructions on the bottle; she’d been dying her hair for years now. Afterward, she took her time putting on her makeup and went through a roll of toilet paper before she was finally satisfied. Her seventeen-year-old self would have been horrified at the results, but it was the best Lea could manage now. It had been years since she’d worn anything but lip gloss.

  The dress still fit, snug in the shoulders and hips, but not so anyone would notice. She’d been tall at nine and average by fourteen, never growing another inch. She checked herself in the mirror and wondered at the ludicrous girl looking back. Had she really once dressed like this on purpose? The pretentious ballerina collar, the cinched waist, the overly structured skirt—she felt like someone else’s idea of a princess. Which, she supposed, she had been. Someone really ought to have slapped some sense into that girl. The whole getup was way, way over the top . . . and hence, perfect. After all, over the top was Charles Merrick’s lingua franca.

  But not if she looked like a war refugee . . . She forced a tight, jagged smile that wouldn’t do much except scare small children. Not attractive, Chelsea, she heard her mother’s voice say. She didn’t want to be Chelsea Merrick again, but she would this one last time. For him. She practiced in the mirror until the smile radiated warmth and love. Her parents had fought over her acting classes when she was in high school. She’d harbored fantasies of becoming an actress, performing someday at the Public, Cherry Lane, Minetta Lane. Her mother, never the warmest of women, considered it a foolish, impractical hobby, but her father encouraged it. Clearly, he’d always been playing a part himself—upstanding member of the community, charitable donor, loving husband, doting father—so perhaps he saw the value in it. Or maybe he knew it would bedevil his wife.

  Lea still didn’t have a relationship with her mother. Veronica Merrick had struggled with pills and alcohol in the years since the scandal. They’d had a disastrous reunion in Miami six years ago, and since then Lea had stayed away. But she’d never forgotten her father’s words the day of his arrest, on the phone with one of his shady accountants, moving money around in an effort to hide it from the government. And his family, as it turned out.

  The bitch gets nothing.

  Lea slipped the thigh holster into place. Hopefully, her father would appreciate her performance today. At least up until the third act. In the mirror, she studied the rigid swing of the skirt; its structure had one advantage—the holster was invisible. She checked her Walther PPK .380 one last time. The men at the gun range had spent the last year trying to convince her to upgrade to something with more stopping power and a larger magazine. But she valued its small size, which made it easier to conceal. The .380 felt comfortable in her hand, and her groupings were tight out to twenty-five feet. If she needed more than eight shots, then she was dead anyway. Plus her father had always loved James Bond movies; she hoped he would appreciate the homage.

  A little before noon, Lea left the apartment above the Toproll for the last time. She locked up, went down the back stairs, and loaded her suitcase into her trunk. Then she walked up to Tarte Street. The hotel parking lot was mostly empty for the first time in weeks. It was checkout time at the Wolstenholme. Two men in dark suits stood on the steps of the hotel. One of the men ignored her entirely, his eyes fixed down the street, but the other watched her from the moment she turned the corner until the moment she went into the Toproll. Not the leering way a man ogled a passing woman, but a cold assessment of her threat.

  Inside, Margo stood behind the bar, restocking the reach-in coolers. Old Charlie, alert at his post, stared down his first beer and shot of the day, communing with whatever voices that wouldn’t let him be. Margo did a double take when she saw Lea. Old Charlie gave her the once-over,
saw nothing that interested him, and went back to the matter at hand.

  “Didn’t know it was Cinderella day,” Margo said.

  “Hi, Margo.”

  “Look at you, you really are a Gilmore Girl.”

  “You know, I’ve never actually seen that show.”

  “Oh, it’s really good; you’d hate it. So what’s with the hair? Since when were you a blonde?”

  “It’s actually my natural color.”

  “I don’t like it. People will be confusing us now.”

  “Take more than hair to confuse y’all, you evil harpy,” Old Charlie muttered and threw back the shot.

  “Did you bust up with your partners?”

  “Have you seen them?”

  “No, but one of them came and got the van last night.”

  Lea smiled. Gibson . . . pain in the ass didn’t know how to quit. Well, she hoped he found what he was looking for. She put the apartment key on the bar top. Margo looked at it and came out from behind the bar, wiping her hands on a bar rag.

  “Is it in good shape? I’ll take it out of your security deposit if it isn’t.” Margo’s voice was thick with feeling.

  “Better than when you rented it to me.” Lea handed Margo two envelopes, one for her and one marked “Parker.” “I’m sorry it isn’t more. Things haven’t gone the way I’d hoped.”

  “It’ll do.” Margo tossed the envelopes onto the bar. “You sure about this, Gilmore? You know you could just let whatever this is go.”

  Lea’s felt her own throat tighten, and her eyes felt heavy and wet. She remembered why she’d stopped wearing makeup in the first place. There wasn’t time to redo it now so she couldn’t afford tears, but then Margo drew her into a fierce hug, and Lea knew it was a lost cause.

  “Let it go,” Margo repeated.

  Lea choked back a sob, shook her head.

  “All right, then,” Margo said, conceding defeat. She let go of Lea and took a step back.

  “I need a damn drink after all that,” growled Old Charlie.

  Lea agreed entirely.

  Merrick lay in his bunk and thought about the future soon to come. He rubbed his coarse blanket between his fingers and dreamed of four-hundred-thread-count sheets. Of course, they made sheets with thread counts in the thousands, but that was just a marketing gimmick for rubes who thought more meant better; counts of more than four hundred meant using thinner, weaker thread to fit it on the loom.

  He would sleep well tonight.

  When the lights finally came on, Merrick waited by his bunk while the guards took the morning count. He expected one of them to pull him aside, but the guards passed by without a glance and blew the whistle that signaled inmates were free to move around. He asked a large white guard with more tattoos than most of the inmates if there was somewhere he should go.

  “Out my sight would be a good start, inmate.” The guard refused to make eye contact. “Don’t know nothing about no re-lease.”

  Perplexed, Merrick got in line for the showers and then headed to chow as if it were any other morning. He accepted his daily dose of breakfast and took his tray to an empty table, where he picked at it moodily. The table soon filled up around him with inmates talking among themselves. No one spoke to him or even acknowledged his presence. He’d never exactly endeared himself to his fellow inmates, and they were happy to see the back of him. There would be no congratulations or fond farewells.

  A tall black guard came into the cafeteria and scanned the room for someone. Merrick made himself tall in his seat and looked his way.

  “Merrick! What are you doing just sitting there?”

  The room fell silent, then the guard continued before Merrick could answer.

  “Get your ass moving, or did you go and fall in love? I can come back in another year, you need more time.”

  That elicited much merriment from the assembled congregation, and Merrick heard wolf tickets being thrown his way. That he was soft. That he was a punk. That he was a stuck-up bitch. Maybe I am, he thought, but this stuck-up bitch is going and you’re staying. He hustled over to the guard and apologized profusely. The guards were ontologically incapable of mistakes, so it was always safer to act sorry. Merrick followed him back to the dormitory.

  “Collect your shit,” the guard said and stood aside while Merrick gathered his possessions, such as they were, in a plastic tub. The guard was still angry about earlier and muttered under his breath. “Making me look for you like it’s my job.”

  Shit collected, the guard escorted Merrick to a holding cell and cuffed him to a bench alongside two other inmates, each with tubs filled with their possessions: priceless artifacts on the inside, worthless junk in the real world. His compatriots passed the time engaged in the time-tested ritual of good-natured one-upmanship, trading stories about where they were headed, first meals, first drinks, the parties, and all the fine, fine ladies they had lined up. They tried to include Merrick, but he ignored them. He’d spent eight years humoring idiots like these two, but those days were behind him.

  After an hour, a guard came and collected one of the inmates. A few minutes later, a replacement inmate was led in with his plastic tub, as if three were the room’s maximum occupancy. Another hour passed before they came back for the next inmate. Then another. By the time it was Merrick’s turn, his stomach was growling for lunch, and he was sorry he hadn’t eaten more of his breakfast. He was taken to an office, where a guard filled out his release paperwork while Merrick answered questions. They asked if he wanted anything from the tub; he said no. Then they searched it for contraband anyway and tossed it in a dumpster. He was ordered to strip for a cavity search.

  “Do you seriously believe I plan on sneaking anything out of prison?”

  “Shut up, inmate. Spread ’em and cough.”

  Long is the way, and hard, that out of hell leads up to light, reflected Merrick as he assumed the position, heard the snap of the latex glove, and squeezed his eyes closed and thought of sandy beaches.

  With that indignity complete, he was permitted to dress and wait in a different holding cell, where he rejoined his compatriots. They shared a pitiful lunch—a granola bar, a cup of water, and a brown banana. For entertainment, the two inmates treated him to a graphic replay of how they would celebrate their impending releases, only with more steak, more parties, and many, many more hot women who just couldn’t resist a penniless ex-con.

  Merrick put his head back and dozed.

  Gibson pulled the van to the side of the road and spread the map out on the steering wheel. It was noon, and in the last twelve hours, he’d covered the smallest two remaining grids. Hungry and tired, he felt as though he’d driven every highway, byway, and alleyway in West Virginia. So it was discouraging to see how much of the state remained.

  He looked at the map again, studied the remaining grids without a red cross through them. There were no more educated guesses left to make. It would be dumb luck or nothing at all. Quitting seemed a reasonable option. Merrick might already be a free man for all he knew. He hated to fail the judge, but he’d taken this thing as far as could reasonably be expected. Far past reason, if he were being honest, but honesty lay bleeding in a ditch a ways back.

  So pick another grid, and get back on the road.

  But which?

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  It was late afternoon before a guard finally came for Merrick. He felt half inclined to complain. Should it really take this long to let a free man go free? A ludicrously inefficient system, but he bit his tongue and followed the guard. It would all be behind him shortly. At a steel-caged door, he signed for his belongings. He changed into his suit and returned his prison blues. As he suspected, the suit needed to be tailored—loose at the waist, tight in the chest and shoulders. It offended his sartorial sensibilities, but at the same time it pleased him. As if it might come apart at the seams if he flexed. He looped his tie in the supercilious full Windsor that he favored and plucked a piece of lint from his lapel. He was al
ready feeling more himself. Perhaps the clothes did make the man.

  The custodian returned his wallet, a fountain pen, and the cheap Rolex knockoff that he’d been forced to wear in court—his Vacheron Constantin Tour de I’lle having long since been confiscated. God, how he missed that watch, but the knockoff would suffice until he got where he was going and could find a suitable replacement. He asked the time, then wound and reset it. It was almost five p.m.—how is that possible? He flipped through his leather billfold, empty apart from an expired driver’s license. He slipped it into the breast pocket of his suit nonetheless. Squared away, he moved to a final station, where he attempted to sign his release papers with his fountain pen, but its ink had long since desiccated. They handed him a bus ticket for New York City, twenty dollars in cash, and a check for fifty-seven dollars and twenty-three cents—the remaining balance on his commissary account. He endorsed the check and slid it back.

  “Keep it,” Merrick said. “You need it more than I do.”

  It felt right to tip them, and he wished he had more to give. The average man tipped to show his appreciation; the exceptional man overtipped to remind the world of its insignificance. After eight years, if Merrick had learned anything, it was that insignificance was the defining characteristic of everyone associated with this place. Imparting that lesson to them felt, in a small way, like repayment for all their many kindnesses. The guards looked dumbfounded, so he thrust his hand out and shook each one’s hand, clapping them on the shoulder as he did—a formality perhaps, but that was what one did at the conclusion of a business transaction.

  “Farewell, gentlemen,” he said with a wave.

  And with that, ten-plus hours after his exodus had begun, Charles Merrick finally stepped through the doors of Niobe Federal Prison and walked to the front gate, a free man.

  For the last hour, each new road had been categorically the absolute last Gibson would drive. This was it, he’d tell himself, and then turn the corner and start down another. He was talking to himself at this point, an incoherent monologue about futility and stubbornness. Merrick was probably already out by now. But he didn’t stop. He drove leaning forward now, to rest his chin on the steering wheel. He would finish this one road, pull into a parking lot somewhere, and sleep in the back. After this one last road.