by Mike Stewart
Savin shuddered a little, worked his jaw up and down, and spat a mouthful of blood and saliva onto the Oriental carpet at our feet. When he did, a broken tooth shot out in the thick red spray. “Get ’em outta here.”
Kai-Li pointed at the door we had come through. “There are two or three hundred people out there. There’s nothing you can do here. We’re not leaving.”
Savin moved faster than I thought he could. His hand shot out to backhand Kai-Li across the mouth.
She also moved faster than anyone thought. Savin missed, lost balance, and I kicked a knee out from under him.
My nose and cheekbones exploded in pain. Some sort of caveman noise tumbled out of my mouth, and I reached up to catch the blood flowing from the half-healed cut across my nose. Chuck had administered a pinpoint pistol-whipping with the silencer.
“Billy! Take care of the judge.” Chuck shoved me stumbling toward the outside door. He glanced back at Kai-Li. “You want me to, I can beat this dickhead to death right here in front of you.” I glanced at Kai-Li, and Chuck slashed me hard across the eyebrow with the barrel of his gun. I stumbled again and felt viscous heat running into my eye.
Then I felt Kai-Li’s hands on me. “No.”
She said, “Go, Thomas. We have to go.”
Kai-Li twisted the doorknob, and we stepped out into bitter cold. As she and I reached the bottom of the flagstone steps, I heard Chuck step outside and close the door behind us.
Thirty-two
Getting slapped in the skull with two pounds of steel pistol messes with your equilibrium. Dark ground bumped and swayed and moved like a treadmill beneath me. My feet moved, but the earth moved faster. I stumbled. Kai-Li’s strong hands held my right arm. I concentrated on breathing. The cold helped. The world slowed.
“Up ahead, turn left at the path.” Chuck’s voice came from just behind us. “Move, goddamnit! Move!” He seemed to whisper and yell at once.
A huge vehicle rose out of the darkness. It had wood grain along the side. It was Dr. Adderson’s Grand Wagoneer.
“Up by the hood.”
We moved. I leaned on the cold metal. Kai-Li stood next to me, watching Chuck’s every move, tensed and ready to run. I could feel the energy in her muscles when she brushed against me.
Chuck switched the gun to his left hand, reached into the hip pocket of his formal trousers, and pulled out a set of keys.
He glanced up at us, and something moved over his shoulder. I felt Kai-Li startle. I bent forward and let her catch me. As she did, I wrapped my arms around her. I whispered. “Keep your eyes on Chuck.”
She nodded as I straightened up.
Chuck grinned. “Ain’t that cute.” Then he stopped as still as death.
“Jus let dat gun fall.” Zion Thibbodeaux’s bony features appeared over our captor’s left shoulder. Chuck arched his back, jutting his chest forward. Zybo had something uncomfortable stuck in the man’s back.
“Now!”
Chuck dropped his handgun in the soft dead leaves beside the Jeep.
Zybo nodded at Kai-Li. “Tommy Boy, he look like shit. You go watch de way you came. De other one’ll be comin’.”
Kai-Li asked if I’d be okay. I nodded, and she trotted down the pathway.
Zybo lifted a short shotgun in the air and gently thunked Chuck on the head with it. “Take tree steps over to de left.” The young man did as instructed. “Okay, now you take off your clothes.”
Chuck objected without explanation. He said only two words.
From my position by the hood, I saw Zybo lean down behind Chuck. Zybo’s hand shot up between Chuck’s legs from the rear; he grabbed a handful of breeding equipment and twisted.
Chuck yelped, and Zybo bumped him on the head again with his shotgun. “You gonna get naked, boy?”
Chuck nodded. Zybo released his grip, and the young legal clerk fell to his knees and mumbled, “I’m doing it. You’re crazy sonofabitch. I’m doing it, okay?” And he did. The young man pulled off his white tie and his tails, and began pawing at the studs on his shirt.
“Jus somethin’ I learn on de beach one day.” Zybo looked up at me and winked. “You in shape to go check on your lady?”
I nodded and went in search of Kai-Li. I found her twenty-five or thirty yards down the path, hiding behind an ancient magnolia with a three-foot trunk. “Heard anything?”
She whispered. “No. Are you all right?”
I nodded. “I’ll live.”
Kai-Li’s eyes flashed back and forth from the direction of the Mandrake Club to the direction of Zion Thibbodeaux and his naked captive. “What should we do? Run? Go for help?”
“I don’t know.” I stopped to listen, then went on. “The guy just saved our lives.”
Kai-Li ran her hands along my shoulders and looked hard into my eyes. “I’m scared.”
“So am I.” I searched her face. “Do you have any feel for where you are?”
“I think so. We made one turn.” She pointed with her open hand, like a karate chop in The Avengers. “So I guess the club is that way.”
“That’s right. On further off to the right are the stables. Go to the left of the club and you’re going to hit the shooting range.”
The whites of her eyes expanded. “I can’t leave you here with these people. You’re hurt.”
“It’s okay. Somebody’s got to stay. Zybo just saved our lives. We can’t both run off and leave him after that. But,” I said, “no one wants to rape me. You need to get out of here. I can do more … do better if I don’t have to worry about Billy Savin drooling over you.”
Kai-Li’s head snapped around. The muted crunch of shoes on dry leaves floated on the night air. I lowered my voice again. “I’ll warn Zybo. Wait here until Billy passes. When you hear me whistle, take off.” I reached into my coat pocket and handed her a white parking stub. “Get to the club. Get in a group of people. Get the Safari out of valet parking, and get the hell out of here.” I handed her my cell phone. “I’ll call you.”
The footfalls on leaves grew louder. I slipped away to join Zybo at the Jeep.
He would drive Dr. Adderson’s Jeep. I was instructed to follow in his rental. “Where are we going?”
Zion Thibbodeaux shrugged. “Don’ worry ’bout it.” He hadn’t mentioned Kai-Li’s absence. It was as if he had expected me to get her away from the violence.
Inside the Jeep, both Chuck and Billy lay naked in the backseat, their formal clothes wadded on the floorboards beside them. Zybo had used the pair’s undershirts to tie their hands. “Soft cotton. Don’ leave marks.” I just nodded.
The Cajun produced a black sports bag, from which he pulled two clear-plastic face masks with attached canisters. He pulled the straps of the masks over the heads of his naked prisoners, leaving each man with a canister dangling like a metal dong between his eyes.
Zybo told me to get ready. He stepped into the Wagoneer and started out slowly, without headlights. Soon we hit blacktop, where he switched on high beams. A few miles, and he led me onto a red gravel logging road where he parked and, once again, cut the headlights.
Up ahead, through the Wagoneer’s back window, I could see Zybo reach into the backseat and do something to Chuck and Billy. He moved back and forth several times, leaning first over the passenger seat and then twisting to lean into the back. His movements weren’t violent. They were precise.
Minutes passed.
The Cajun stepped out onto the shoulder of the road and walked back to my window. I rolled it down. He said, “Just a couple more minutes.”
“What are we waiting on?”
He looked up through a crisscross of limbs at the moon. “Don’ worry ’bout it.”
“Well, I am worried about it. What’s going on?”
Zybo turned and walked away. He stood beside the Wagoneer and waited. Too noisy, I guessed, back standing with me.
Very little time passed before he opened the back passenger-side door and pulled out the two masks he had strapped onto Chu
ck’s and Billy’s heads. He closed that door, walked around and opened the other back door. After reaching inside his pocket, he tore something with his teeth and once again bent over the men in the backseat. Finally, Zybo opened the driver’s door, cranked the engine, and pushed the door shut.
He walked back and climbed into the passenger seat of his rental. “Let’s go.”
I was getting angry. “What happened?”
“Tommy Boy? Believe me. You don’ wanna be hangin’ round this fuggin place.” He paused and then added, “Stay off de shoulder.”
I drove forward fifty yards before finding a side road and turning around. Back out on the blacktop, I asked, “Now what?”
“Go home, if dat where your lady supposed to be waitin’.”
I tried to think it through. “I hit Judge Savin. Knocked out a tooth. He’s not going to let that go.”
Zybo laughed. “Fug ’im. I got your back.”
I motioned over my shoulder with my chin. “What happened back there?”
“You don’ wanna know.”
“Yeah, I do.”
He turned in the seat to look at me. “De boys, dey dead.”
“What?”
“What de fug you tink I was doin’?”
“I thought you were leaving them tied up naked in an embarrassing position to teach them a lesson. I thought your damn specialty was not killing people.”
“Fug it. Dey were gonna kill you, prob’ly rape your lady, and den kill her too.” He reached into the glove box and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. He poked one between his lips, fired the end with a lighter from his pocket, and pulled in a chest full of smoke. “Judge Savin’s boy, Billy, and dat Chuckie prick—dey’re lying naked in de backseat of a Jeep belongs to de judge’s girlfriend. One of ’em he even got a condom on his little pecker.” I remembered Zybo tearing something with his teeth and then bending over the bodies.
“What was in …” I knew the answer. “There was carbon monoxide in the canisters. It’s why you left the motor running.”
“I heard you were smart. ’Bout time you figure out sometin’ on your own.”
I looked over at him. “You’re an asshole. You know that?”
Zybo sucked hard on the cigarette. The ash cast a red glow across his features. “You better believe it, Tommy Boy. You better fuggin believe it.”
A long shower helped. Half a bottle of good scotch helped too. None of it helped enough. I lay in bed trembling. Kai-Li lay beside me, her arms wrapped around my shoulders. She’d insisted on sleeping with me. It wasn’t romantic. It was only vaguely sexual. I was freaking a little. Not crying or climbing the walls, but just a case of your basic what-the-hell-have-I-gotten-into heebie-jeebies.
Morning washed away the irrational fears but left the rational ones right where they were. I still hadn’t told Kai-Li what had happened to Chuck and Billy. She wasn’t happy about not knowing.
“Why is it better?”
I sipped hot coffee from an earthenware mug. “Look, this is the deal. You collected the car and picked me up along the driveway. We saw both Billy and Chuck at the ball, but they either left early or we just didn’t run into them again after eight-thirty or so.”
She raised an eyebrow. “And what’s Judge Savin telling his dentist this fine Saturday morning?”
“Some bullshit story that won’t connect him in any way to our deaths.”
“But we’re not … oh.”
“Oh.”
“And he can’t really change his story later.”
“Well,” I said, “he could. But it’d look suspicious. And the judge’s trying not to look suspicious these days. He’s been fixing jury trials.” I tried to smile. “You may have heard about it.” I changed the subject. “Did you call Sunny when you got back last night?” I tried to sound casual, like I was only interested in a friendly way and not the least bit worried. “I hope she’s having fun up north. I guess they’re having a white Christmas.”
Kai-Li smiled an indulgent smile. “Sunny’s fine. I call every day. And, yes, I called last night. Unless they’re tapping your phone, I don’t think we have to worry about anyone bothering her.”
She thought she was being facetious. I decided not to tell her that Joey had been regularly sweeping the phones in my home and office since I returned from Auburn.
Ten minutes later, when Kai-Li had gone for another cup of coffee, I wandered into the bathroom and looked at an old man in the mirror. Pockets of fluid puffed beneath my eyes. Plain exhaustion loosened skin and muscles and pores.
I stood bent over the sink, brushing my teeth, when Kai-Li knocked and walked in. I rinsed and spit. “A man in his thirties should not look like this.” I pointed at the mirror.
Kai-Li smiled. She opened the shower door and turned on the hot water.
“You going to take a shower?”
Her hair was looped into a circle on the back of her neck. She reached behind her head with both hands, undid some sort of tortoiseshell clasp, and a shining black curtain fell nearly to her waist.
I turned to face her. I told her she was beautiful, and she smiled.
She worked her fingers under the tail of my red T-shirt and pulled it up and over my head; then she lifted the jazz festival T-shirt I’d loaned her over her own head and stood before me in nothing but a pair of pale blue panties. She looked like a dream, like everything I desired and maybe even needed.
Kai-Li leaned inside the shower to adjust the water.
When she turned back, I said, “I’m sorry. This is the wrong morning.”
She nodded and slipped her panties down and tossed them into a corner with her toes. She slipped the cool tips of her fingers inside the waistband of my shorts.
“Listen to me, Kai-Li. I’m glad to be alive. And I’m glad you’re here with me. But this, what you’re doing, would seem … I don’t know … almost like a celebration of what happened last night.
“It’s not that I mourn for their fates. Hell, they were going to kill us. It’s the way it happened. It wasn’t violent or vengeful. What happened was cold and … I don’t know what, and I need to get the stink and the filth of it out of me before …” My voice trailed off. I’d just told her more than I’d ever intended her to know.
Kai-Li slipped her fingers out of my waistband and placed the pad of her index finger against my lips. “It’s just a shower, Thomas.”
Stepping over the raised lip of the ceramic stall and leaving the door open, she stood with her back to the showerhead. She arched her back and let the steaming spray slick her hair against her shoulders and back.
She looked at me and smiled. “I promise not to ravish you.”
I pulled off my shorts and stepped inside, closing the door behind me.
We stood together in the heat and steam, the hot spray washing over us, and held each other. And, right then, that seemed like enough.
Thirty-three
The rest of the day passed at a slow and smooth pace. I built a fire in the hearth and cooked chili for lunch. Kai-Li liked the fire. She tasted the chili and quietly retired to the kitchen, returning with a large spinach salad.
She volunteered to make dinner.
That was about it. People die every day. Nothing changes. Not usually.
I awoke Monday morning beside Kai-Li, having retained my newfound chastity. She was still sleeping when I exited the bathroom, freshly showered and shaved, and dressed by the dim light coming through curtained French doors leading out onto the deck.
Joey was due at 9:00 A.M. but arrived early. His blue Expedition was in the driveway before I finished my bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch. He came in and poured himself a cup of coffee.
He nodded at my cereal. “How can you eat that shit?”
I wasn’t in the mood.
Joey said, “Nice eye. Kai-Li finally get enough of you?”
“Judge Savin knows we’re trying to set him up.”
“How?”
“Just smart, I think. He got me and
Kai-Li in a back room at the Mandrake Club last night. Said he knows I’m screwing around with him. The plan was for his two gophers …”
Joey raised his coffee cup. “The two hip-hop rejects who tried to waylay you in Montgomery?”
“That’s them. Or, more accurately, that was them.”
“Huh?”
I explained what the judge had wanted them to do. I ended by saying, “And so Zybo killed both of them.”
“That was nice of him.” Joey drank some coffee. “How much time you figure we got before Savin finds somebody else willing to pop a cap in your head?”
“Pop a cap?”
“The Sopranos.”
I nodded. “Not much. What have you got for me?”
Joey stood and retrieved his waterproof, dustproof, blastproof aluminum briefcase from the doorway. He placed it on the tabletop, popped the clasps, and opened the lid. “Here.” He tossed a manila file folder in front of me. “We got financial reports on Baneberry-Cort Construction. Copies of building permits for that stack of steel they’re puttin’ on the beach in Gulf Shores. Even got the probate papers on Kate Baneberry.”
I flipped open the folder. “She was a full partner.”
“Yep.”
“Damn.” I quickly flipped through the rest of the documents. “What about life insurance on the partners? It’s pretty common among small partnerships. One of them dies and takes their expertise with them …”
Joey shook his head. “No way to know. Now if it was a public corporation, we could find out just about anything …” His voice trailed off. He knew he was telling me things I already knew.
I stood and walked into the living room, where I picked up the phone and punched in seven numbers.
“Loutie? Good morning.”
She said, “Morning.”
“Joey’s here. We were wondering, has your new employer filed suit in the Baneberry case?”
“Not yet.”
“They prepared any pleadings?”
She was in the kitchen. I could hear her washing dishes. “Sure. They’ve got some first-year associate cobbling something together. What do you need to know? I can get you copies, if you need them.”