by Jack Getze
Someone’s running toward me on the same trail, coming from the bird tower. Light feet, short strides—stopwatch clicks between the washing of surf and my own clomping. I drop into a car-sized patch of tall phalanx grass by the trail, then recognize the panting: It’s Patricia, her fast, anxious breathing a familiar and usually happy sound. My heart swells knowing she’s alive.
I stand and wave. “Patricia. It’s Austin. Over here.”
She freezes, takes two beats to trust what she hears and sees. Her hands are still bound, but not her feet or her mouth. She’s wearing the same leather skirt and halter top she wore this morning in my condo.
She hurries to me, pulls me down with her beside the phalanx grass. “Mallory is right behind me,” she whispers. “Can you get this off?” She pokes her hands at me. Duct tape binds her wrists. I find the edge with my fingernails and unpeel her. My lover sighs.
The closeness of her body arouses a tenderness I’ve only experienced before with Beth and Ryan. A hormonal cause for giving protection. Does that make any sense? I’m kind of new to this love thing. I think before, with the ex-wife Susan, what I thought was love was probably lust. You’d never understand now, looking like the old rhino she’s become, but before she had two kids and went health food skinny, my ex-wife had a body I lost myself in. What I’m saying, these feelings I have for Patricia are new, akin to my instinctive attachment to my children.
A branch or a twig snaps close by. I know the sound belongs to Mallory. The time for battle has arrived—the reason I came, the reason a man is part of the team needed to raise children. I have to fight and protect this woman, my potential new family. I paw the ground for a suitable rock. There are dozens to choose from beside the trail. I whisper for Patricia to meet me at my Camry she’ll find in the big lot, then point out how to cut across to the main trail by leaving through the phalanx grass.
She kisses my cheek and slips away.
The minute I came home today, the afternoon’s events assumed dream-like qualities—Patricia’s kidnapping, the chase to Sandy Hook—but the world now borders on fantasy, hallucination. The night wind and hissing surf become something larger in my head, a disturbing buzz that explodes in grand daydream, a highlight film of Patricia: Flaming red hair catching light from the beach sun...freckles glowing in the candlelight of a dark restaurant...her fleshy breasts dancing above me.
“Hey, asshole.”
Mallory’s voice blacks out my daydreaming. The back of my neck stiffens. The venom I hear in his voice wraps my fingers tightly around the rock, a fist-sized chunk of broken concrete. When I rise to face him, Mallory looms closer than I imagined. He’s already coming at me from the back side of the phalanx grass. But near targets are bigger targets, so I throw, the rock flying perfectly off my fingertips—a strong, well-aimed fastball.
Mallory ducks my missile and keeps coming.
I figure Mallory expects me to back up in fear, so I charge low—dipping my shoulder and hurling my weight at his legs. I earn a double-scoop of fudge-ripple good fortune by surprising him. I take a punch on the back of the head, but my momentum remains, my shoulder landing hard against the leg Mallory planted weight on. Pain rips my collar bone when we make contact. But the telltale pop of snapping piano wire shudders through me. Pretty sure one of his knee ligaments broke.
Mallory and I both go down, him cursing as I roll away. Sand flies inside my mouth and nose. My shoulder burns with pain, but the ex-cop is down. Did he think I am completely helpless? That I’d freeze like some...stockbroker? The man failed to understand how the growling monsters we face each day—
“Put your hands behind your head.”
Against the phalanx grass, Mallory sits with a drawn gun. I clasp my fingers behind my neck, elbows pointed out like bird wings. I feel like a pink, fuzzy hatchling, too.
“Where’s the Willis woman?” Mallory says.
“I don’t know. What do you guys want with her?”
Mallory points the weapon at my face, his lips spreading into a grin, the creep enjoying my fear. I’m a frozen snowman, waiting for the arrival of eternity, wondering what happened to my old T-ball coaching friend, the cop with a knack for teaching kids to hit. “Watch the ball hit the bat,” Mallory would say. Over and over came the mantra—until they smacked it, which they always did, soon as they watched the ball hit the bat.
“Is this about the money, Jim? The ruby?” I ask. “Are you desperate since—you know, the hotel murder tape disappeared and you got fired?”
“Everything’s about money,” he says, “and nobody knows it better than you. I should blow your head off, bury you out here for the hawks to crap on. You prick.”
He presses his weapon close, like he’s going to shoot.
My mouth opens to say something—anything—when there’s a swishing sound of moving air, followed by a thump and the simultaneous sight of Mallory’s head jumping six inches sideways.
He topples onto the sandy dirt, blood oozing quickly from a gash behind his temple. A human shape walks out of the dark phalanx grass. It’s Patricia holding a piece of driftwood.
Ms. Aguave Spikes and I hold hands as we run to the parking lot. I owe this woman for being brave, sticking around for the battle, but I can’t stop worrying Mallory is right behind us. Maybe Vargas. How does he play into this? They mentioned his name. I have something everyone wants apparently, a redhead with important information.
I wait to ask questions until we’re inside my Camry, the engine running, a way out of the parking lot in my high beams. “Do you know why Mallory brought you out there?”
“That old bird platform scares me, and Mallory knew it. He wanted me tell him and that man Rags what I knew about the ruby. And I think maybe Vargas was on his way...Mallory said he was coming.”
“Do you know why?”
“Just that it was about the ruby,” she says. “Rags or Mallory must have been the one who shot Vic, right? They had it. They told me the ruby was a fake. They asked me what I did with the real one, and what happened to the money that was inside.”
“Rags overhead Vic making arrangements for delivery, no doubt. But I wonder what Mallory has to do with it.”
“Mallory brought Vic the Las Vegas connection. He must have talked Rags into a cut.”
The two of us ran on pure adrenaline minutes ago, shocked by the nights events. Now, in the darkness of the steady straight drive, my Camry purring, we’re crashing like drug addicts. “I think it’s risky going back to my condo or your apartment,” I say. “How about a hotel?”
“Whatever you think.” Patricia throws her head back, tries to breathe deeply. “Think I killed Mallory?”
“No, but I wish I’d checked. How about Rags? It sounded like someone threw him off the bird platform.”
“Mallory and Rags started arguing, so I ran,” she says. “Mallory must have pushed him off. I wonder if he has the ruby.”
Mama Bones, Gianni and captive James Mallory are in Mama Bones’ basement kitchen, Mama Bones kicking at the dirt floor with her shoe, her fingers tight around the stag-bone handle of her twelve-inch carving knife. Mallory is tied to a chair near the stacked barrels of olive oil.
“It was me, I’d start with his left forefinger,” Gianni says. “Show him the pain and let him think for a while about life without his thumbs.”
Mama Bones makes a face. “Oh, that’s too mean for my old friend Jimmy Mallory. He’s already hurt. Look at the side of his head, huh? I’m only gonna cut off his finger—if he refuses to talk. First we try my special tea. No use spending all that money on peyote and Bolivian bat testicles if you’re not gonna use them.”
She reaches for the Fed-Ex package.
EIGHTEEN
While Mama Bones waits for her truth potion to work on the ex-cop, she and Gianni play head-to-head poker at the table in her basement kitchen. None of that sissy Texas hold ’em stuff either. Five card stud. In forty minutes, Mama Bones wins more than a thousand dollars.
“H
ow come you always know when I’m bluffing,” Gianni says.
“You gotta tell, smarty pants.”
“What is it?”
“I’m not gonna say. Not for nothing anyway. How about two thousand?”
“You’re kidding?”
“A thousand?”
Gianni’s head stops shaking when Mallory groans. Both her nephew and Mama Bones gaze carefully at their prisoner. Mallory’s eyelids flutter like little bug wings. Sweat drips from his pink forehead.
Mama Bones pulls a chair close to mister hard-ass Mallory. The chair rakes the soft dirt floor. She wets her lips, drops her rear end on the seat and waves at Gianni. “Turn down the lights.”
To further soothe her drugged and hog-tied subject, Mama Bones gently washes Mallory’s forehead with a cool, damp cloth. She made a bowl of water and ice right after he drank his tea, so the water is good and chilly on Mallory’s sweaty face. He groans with relief.
“Hello, my friend Jimmy Mallory,” she says. “It’s your fairy godmother.”
He groans again. Probably having some weird distorted vision.
“Do I get a wish?” he says.
Or maybe not. This is very good, though. Mister tough guy here thinks he’s in control of himself. Giving her lip. “Of course you get a wish,” Mama Bones says. “That’s what fairy godmothers are for, right? What would you like, huh?”
“How about untying my hands.”
Ha. This is why fresh bat testicles are worth so much money. They have a calming effect on your victim’s overall sense of well being, and sometimes—like today—they make people think they are completely normal, unaffected by the potion. Mallory is going to tell Mama Bones everything she wants to know, all the time thinking he’s not.
“Oh, that’s a very good wish,” Mama Bones says. “I’ll be very happy to grant that one. Untie your hands. Sure, no problem. All you gotta do first is tell me what kind of business you were doing with my son Vittorio.”
“Vittorio?”
“Vic. Vic Bonacelli. What were you doing for him?”
“I ran an errand,” Mallory says. “Made arrangements.”
“Arrangements?”
“Talked to some people for him. Sell something.”
“Sell what? To who?”
“Vic had some good info—inside information about stocks. I told him I knew some people in Vegas who might pay for that kind of thing.”
Mama Bones grins at Gianni. She knew Vic would not mix himself in her official family business, not without asking. She knew it had something to do with the redhead’s information.
“How much did Vic sell it for?” Mama Bones asks.
“The deal I made him was a hundred fifty grand,” Mallory says, “but it got switched up along the way somehow, Vic ended up taking a ruby instead.”
“A ruby ring?”
“No, a stone. A pretty big one, too. Had a name.”
Mama Bones takes her time, pours herself a glass of Gallo Bros. Paisano. “What were you doing out on Sandy Hook with that redhead tonight, huh?”
“Trying to find out if she knew the ruby was a fake.”
“What?”
“A fake. Rags and I had the ruby checked out by a pro.”
“Wait. How did you two get the ruby?”
“Rags shot Vic, took the briefcase. I followed him, got the drop—”
“Rags shot my Vittorio?”
“Pretty sure. I heard a gunshot, saw Rags come running out of Patricia’s apartment with Vic’s briefcase.”
“You were there, too?” she says. “You see my nephew Gianni?”
“Sure. In that ragged Jeep.”
“Okay, so Rags runs out with the case, then what?”
“I followed Rags home, got the drop on him later and cut myself in. I could have shot him, taken it all, so he agreed we’d sell it together, split the money, sixty-forty, me taking the lower share because all I wanted was what Vic promised me for introducing him to Las Vegas. He said he was going to stiff me. Maybe you’d like to make it up for him, you being my fairy godmother and all?”
“Make it up why? You got the ruby. Oh, no, that’s right. It’s a fake. So it sounds like you had more reason to shoot Vic than Rags.”
“I’m not stupid enough to shoot your son, Mama Bones.”
“You’re stupid enough to cut yourself in on a fake ruby deal. Maybe the stone’s real and you’re lying to me.”
“That’s why Rags and I wanted Patricia out there on Sandy Hook. Find out what she knew about it.”
“Why the tower?”
“She fell off the old one in high school,” Mallory says. “One night during a wild party. She was always afraid of it afterward.”
“You’re kidding. You knew the redhead in high school?”
“Didn’t everybody?”
“Okay, so how did Rags fall off the tower?”
“I pushed him.”
“Why?”
“I wanted the ruby. Like you, I was thinking maybe Rags tricked me, set up the dealer we went to see—the guy who told us the rock was bogus.”
“You just happened to think of this then, on the bird watching tower?”
“Yeah, because Rags kept bringing up Vargas, saying maybe Vargas gave Vic a phony ruby in the briefcase. I thought he was over-doing it, you know?”
“Sounds maybe true.”
“Not if you know the people Vargas works for. They make a deal, it’s a deal. Vargas wouldn’t dare cheat their client.”
“I know people like that, too,” Mama Bones says. “In fact, I kinda am people like that.”
“I know.”
“So where is the ruby now,” she says.
“In the trunk of my car.”
This Irish ex-cop knows how to make Mama Bones smile. This is turning out to be a special day for Mama Bones. First the news from the hospital that Vic is out of serious danger and recovering. Now Mallory leads her right to the treasure someone stole from her son. Vic isn’t dumb enough to pay for a fake ruby.
From a lonely pay phone, I make an anonymous call to the Branchtown police. Rags could be in need of medical attention. Mallory, too. But I don’t do the right thing, step up and identify myself, tell the cops everything I know. I mention mayhem and injuries near the bird tower on Sandy Hook, leave it at that. Instinct tells me to talk first with Luis.
I walk to my car and Patricia, both of which I’ve parked a block from the phone booth, then navigate toward the center of Branchtown. It’s barely nine o’clock when we park at Luis’ Mexican Grill. The hotel can wait.
Luis Guerrero pours a draft beer for a customer as we walk inside. A heavily male crowd watches overtime football—the New York Giants versus the Dallas Cowboys. Takes me eight minutes to tell Luis the story of Sandy Hook, how Patricia and I ended up at his horseshoe bar. While listening, he offered Patricia and me something to drink. Now, he’s down to business.
“Is it possible James Mallory is alive and followed you here?” Luis asks.
“I don’t know if he’s dead or alive,” I say, “but he couldn’t have followed us. He wasn’t moving, and we would have seen the headlights of anybody who followed us out.”
“And you are certain Santo Vargas—the man who attacked you at my wedding and at the hotel that night—was not there as well?”
“Positive,” I say. “I didn’t see him. Only heard Rags mention his name.”
Luis walks away to pick up a short stack of bills from across the bar. Each step, every hand movement is flawless, his body repositioning itself with perfect efficiency. To me, he’s like watching a wild animal perform. Beneath the quiet walk, you can see the athleticism, the natural savage.
“Where’s the lady’s room?” Patricia says.
I point. “Head toward the kitchen, but make a left down the hall before you get there.”
Watching Patricia’s hindquarters pitch and roll away from me, I wonder again at the lovely chemistry we had right from the start—that kiss at the wedding, the
first day on the beach, our sexy bodies in my bed.
Luis returns. “I am about to close the restaurant—as soon as the football game is over. I think it would be wise if you and Patricia stayed with Solana and me tonight. There is an unused bedroom in our new house.”
“I was thinking more like Mexico,” I say.
“It will not solve our problem to run,” Luis says. “Santo Vargas must be dealt with. He should have gone away after failing to hurt you on the night of the wedding, so he stays for a reason. I believe he and this Mallory must be working together, perhaps to acquire the ruby you mentioned. Or more likely to challenge me.”
“Why does Vargas want to challenge you?”
“Come stay at my house tonight,” Luis says. “We will make plans and Solana will tell you about Santo Vargas. It is more her story than mine.”
This sounds interesting. Plus having Luis protect me sounds like a nifty idea, maybe what I’ve wanted since the day Vargas assaulted me after the wedding. Then again, I’d hoped to get lucky tonight, and who knows how agreeable Patricia will be to my advances under Luis and Solana’s roof.
Speaking of Patricia. The sore place on my forehead itches, and I remember where Vargas attacked me. The bathroom.
“Luis!”
He catches on immediately when I mouth the name Patricia. He has to lift a flap on the bar and adjust a patron in his stool, but Luis still beats me to the hallway.
“She left you to use the rest room?” Luis says.
“Ten minutes ago. Something’s wrong.”
Luis calls to a passing waitress. “Estelle, mi amiga, come here, please.”
His hands reach out to take her tray of food. “Please go into the ladies bathroom, por favor, and see if there is a woman with pointed, silver and black hair.”
Luis stares at me while we wait. “Remain calm.”
Estelle comes back and reports there is no sign of Patricia.