by W E DeVore
The image of Sanger lying in the ICU alone covered her eyes at the same moment as the panicked voices of the EMTs saying they were losing him filled her ears, and she was overcome by rage. “Yes, I want to know that kind of peace.”
“This, I can fix for you,” he said, turning back to his stove.
“What’s the plan?” Q asked.
“Simple,” Urian said. “I meet Multer tonight, at the Athenian. He pays me to kill you. I tell him I don’t do murder. Drugs, yes. Gambling, sure. Sex, sometimes. But not murder.”
“So, you record him saying he wants to kill me?”
“Stop thinking like a cop, beautiful girl. He’s a rabid dog. We need to trap him. I tell him that I will arrange for him to kill you himself. Bring you to a remote location. Provide him with the gun. Provide him with the clean-up. And he has the satisfaction of pulling the trigger himself.” Urian grinned at her over his shoulder. “But I’m not doing this for him, am I?”
Q felt unsure. “You’re not?”
“No. I do this for you. See? This makes the story better because it has the benefit of being mostly true. The only difference is who has the gun.”
“I hate to say it, but how do I know you’re not setting me up?” she asked hesitantly.
Urian stopped stirring his dinner and turned back to look her in the eyes. “You have to trust that I am your friend, beautiful girl.”
She swallowed the lump in her throat and nodded.
“I’ll tell him to park his car in long-term parking at the airport and rent another. Drive it to Whiskey Bay, where he will meet us at an abandoned gas station I know of.”
“You’ve been there before?”
“Once or twice…He might get suspicious at this point, wondering if I can really deliver the goods. So, what I need from you is to call me at 11:15, just for a friendly chat. Maybe you tell me about your detective. Maybe you ask me to hide you. Maybe I tell you I know a place outside of Whiskey Bay where you’ll be safe.”
“And then?” she asked.
He stretched out his arm and pointed his imaginary finger gun to the side, firing it into the distance. “Peace.”
◆◆◆
Q paced nervously on the cement floor, intermittently staring up at the stars through the holes in the roof, itching in her borrowed scrubs.
“He’s late,” she finally said.
“Stop worrying, beautiful girl. He’ll be here.” Urian shook out a large sheet of Visqueen, laying it on the floor before setting a rickety, wooden chair in the middle. He looped two small exercise bands over his shoulder.
“What are those for?”
“To hold his arms behind his back. Won’t even leave a mark, if you don’t take too long.”
“How long is too long?”
“Ten, fifteen minutes, tops. Depending on how much he struggles.” He walked over and placed a gun in her hands and she gripped it through her latex gloves. “Take the safety off as soon as he walks in the door.”
They heard tires on the gravel outside. A flash of light traveled over the stained cement just before the engine of a car was silenced. A car door slammed, and Q held the gun at her side, listening to steady footsteps scattering gravel as they drew nearer.
Gus Multer strolled through the doorway. His eyes locked onto Q and he flashed a predatory smirk. “Mr. Galanos, I compliment you. You, sir, are a man of your word. Your reputation does not disappoint.”
“Urian.” Q feigned fear. “What is going on?”
Multer leered at her, his teeth bright in the moonlight. “What’s going on, you little bitch, is that I am finally going to kill you. You have terrible taste in friends…”
He took two steps forward and Urian quickly looped his arms through Multer’s, trapping them behind his back.
“On the contrary, Senator, Ms. Toledano has extremely good taste in friends.” Urian prison-walked Multer to the chair and forced him down hard, quickly tying his arms behind the back of the chair.
Q released the safety on the gun and strode onto the Visqueen. She stopped in front of the chair and squatted down to look up at him, regarding his hunting, black-on-black eyes. As she studied his face, a white-hot rage flooded her veins, scorching her from the inside out. She closed her eyes to calm the adrenaline and saw her son’s tiny purple fingers resting on her thumb. Fury filled her and she opened her eyes, resolute.
“Hey there, Gus. Rape any little girls lately?”
He glared at her. “Tell your attack dog to let me go.”
She shook her head. “Afraid I can’t do that.”
Urian nodded at Q and walked outside. Multer struggled in the chair. “Where is he going?”
“He can’t testify about what he didn’t see, now can he?”
“What do you want? You ruined me. Isn’t that enough?” he glowered.
She heard a strange gurgling sound in stereo, filling her ears, remembering Ben’s jagged breath as he lay dying just out of her reach. She winced and tilted her head to the side in an attempt to drain the sound from her eardrum. She tightened her grip on the gun, feeling the beating of Sanger’s blood against her palm as she held his wound closed.
Veronica Denton’s lifeless body tumbling out of a hardware case flashed inside her mind and she said, “Ah, that’s where you’re wrong. You ruined you, when you raped a thirteen-year-old child and had her killed.”
Ben’s face yelling for her to get down covered her vision. The terror in his eyes as his neck exploded made the world turn red for a moment.
She blinked hard against it and said, “You ruined you, when you hired two kids to shoot my husband and me on our front porch.”
Turning her face to regard the stars and escape Multer’s strange voracious eyes, she saw Audrey’s smile as she started the car. Her voice broke and she whispered, “You ruined you, when you had a bomb planted in my car and killed an innocent woman.”
Multer scoffed at her. “What are you talking about?”
“Shut the fuck up,” she snapped.
Q tightened her fingers around the gun’s grip and her finger moved to the trigger.
“You ruined you, when your gunman shot an NOPD detective. So, you see, I had nothing to do with your ruin, Gus,” she kept her voice relaxed. Wrath roiled in her stomach and her heart pounded with animalistic bloodlust, being so near to the man who had taken so much from her.
Multer suddenly looked nervous and she sneered in satisfaction.
“Then, you dickless piece of shit, you hired my friend outside to bring me here so you could murder me,” she said through gnashed teeth.
“You weren’t supposed to survive the first time, let alone the second,” he muttered.
“Who said I survived, Gus? I died when my husband’s heart stopped beating and again when I held my dead child in my arms. You killed me, just like you wanted. But that little bomb of yours? Woke me the fuck up.”
“What bomb?” he asked.
She punched him in the face with the barrel of the gun and said, “I told you to shut the fuck up.”
Multer’s head bounced back and his lip split. He spat, but didn’t say anything.
“Thank you,” she said. “You see, Gus. I was dead, but then, yesterday morning, some motherfucker shot my best friend while we were eating pancakes, and that put a great big jolt of life back into me. Started my heart right back up. Gave me a reason to want to live. You know what that reason was, Gus?”
He didn’t answer.
“Revenge. I decided to avenge my husband’s death and protect my family and my lover, just like in an old spaghetti western. You’re not going to hurt anyone ever again.” She tilted her head from side to side, examining him with curiosity.
“I’m a rich man, Ms. Toledano.” He struggled in his chair. “I could give you anything you want. Just name your price.”
Q stood up and slowly circled him. “No, I don’t think that’s true. I want my husband alive and in our home. I want to feel my son’s sweet breath on my face. I wa
nt my cousin alive and beautiful and whole. I want my best friend to not be in a hospital bed, fighting for his life.” She leveled the gun at his forehead. “Can you make any of those things happen? Because I don’t think that you can.”
“Please,” he begged. “I’ll give you anything.”
She lowered the gun and forced it inside his mouth. Multer’s eyes went wide with terror and he screamed against the metal in his mouth.
“Good, you monster,” she whispered. “Because I’m going to take everything from you, right now.”
She pulled the trigger and a rapport rung out, momentarily disturbing the steady cicada song on the bayou. Gus Multer slumped in the chair, brain matter and blood splattered the plastic behind him.
Q took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, breathing in the sickeningly sweet smell around her. She looked at the gun in her hand as if it had suddenly appeared, dropping it on the Visqueen. Her heart was racing. She turned her face up to the rotting ceiling to regard the night sky.
She took a deep breath in the quiet and whispered, “Peace.”
Glancing over the ruined remains of Gus Multer’s skull, she realized the enormity of what she had done. A wave of remorse turned her stomach. Not at the dead body before her, but because somehow she was going to have to lie about it to the one person from whom she’d never kept a secret.
Urian came back into the garage. He handed her a disinfectant wipe. “Clean your face, you have some splatter. We don’t have much time.”
He removed Multer’s restraints and put them into the trash bag he was holding. He snapped his fingers at her. “Gloves and clothes.”
She removed the scrubs Urian had given her and placed them, the gloves, and the wipe inside the bag before walking back to the corner of the room to put her own clothes back on.
“I could imagine better ways of getting to see that lovely ass of yours, beautiful girl.”
“Enjoy it. It won’t happen again.” She pulled on her jeans and t-shirt and slipped back into her shoes. “What now?”
“We make a fire. Don’t touch anything.”
Q put her hands in her pockets to be safe and followed him back outside. The night was cool, but she still felt warm. Urian put the garbage bag into a large oil drum and doused it in gasoline before lighting it. As the flames erased her involvement in first-degree murder, she wondered how Urian would to erase the murder itself.
“What are you going to do with the body?” she asked, staring at the fire.
“My men will go hunt alligator,” Urian replied. “And I’ll take you home. Get in the car and lay down on the floor in the back seat. They’ll be here soon. There’s a blanket for you to cover up with. Stay out of sight.”
“What about the gun?”
He unceremoniously unloaded it and dropped it in the oil drum. A flair shot up as the gunpowder residue and oil caught fire. Q jumped back.
“When the fire burns down, I’ll take it out. We’ll drop it into a bayou somewhere between here and New Orleans. Now, go get in the car.”
Q did as she was told. Just as she had hidden herself in the backseat, another vehicle pulled next to the garage.
Urian barked orders at his men in Greek. She listened to them work for a long while, loading Multer’s body and chatting jovially with each other. After about an hour, the van drove away and Urian got into the car. When they’d been driving for twenty minutes, Urian said, “You can come out now, beautiful girl.”
She uncovered herself and climbed into the front seat. “Why did you hide me?”
“No witnesses. My men won’t betray me. A wealthy woman with a wealthier grandmother, now that I might not be able to control. Criminals.” He spat and winked at her.
“What did you tell them?”
“I tell them this rich prick owes me money. I tell them this rich prick he refused to pay and threatened to have me and my crew go to prison.”
“You’ve done this before,” she said, confirming what she had always known about him.
“Perhaps,” was all he would say.
As they drove down I-10 towards New Orleans, Q gazed at her reflection in the darkened window, calculating what she could and could not telling Sanger, hoping that she’d have some time to figure it out. When they were halfway across the Bonnet Carrè spillway, Urian pulled to the side of the road. The water was almost to the highway.
“Open your window and throw it out.” He handed her the charred gun he held in a latex glove. She took it from him and rolled down her window, tossing it over the side of the railing with a splash. He pulled back onto the road.
As they took the exit for her home, she turned her phone back on and it immediately dinged with a voicemail from the hospital. She eagerly put it to her ear and pressed play. Sanger was awake and asking for her.
Urian came to a stop at the red light and turned to face her. “There’s one more thing you have to do, beautiful girl.”
“What’s that?”
“Leave town.”
“What?” Q started to argue and he silenced her.
“Listen to me,” he said. “The police will find the man responsible for shooting one of their own. It won’t take long to trace it back to Multer and the cops will go after him.”
“Fuck.” Her heart sped up, realizing that she would be at the top of any suspect list regarding Gus Multer’s mysterious disappearance.
Urian continued, “But they won’t find him. Because Senator Multer just skipped town. He ditched his car at the airport and rented another that they’ll find abandoned at a bus stop outside of Biloxi. Maybe he gave up his hunt. Maybe he was scared he’d get caught. But you don’t know, you see? So, you can’t go live happily ever after with your detective. Not now. You need to stay afraid. You need to run, so that they can’t question you when they put it together.”
Q blinked back tears. She knew Urian was right. She also knew that she probably couldn’t lie to Sanger, at least not for long. She couldn’t bear him worrying that she was in constant danger. And Sanger would never cover up a murder. Even for her.
“What will you do if the police question you?” she asked.
“Tell them the truth, beautiful girl,” he said. “You came to me. Terrified. Begging me to help you find a name. The name of the man trying to kill you. I made some calls, but nobody knew. Just that this man, he was crazy. He wanted to kill you. Kill your detective, too. So, I used some of my influence to protect you both for a few days. Enough for you to leave town. I tried some more to find a name, but there wasn’t one to be found. I didn’t like that someone came into my territory and tried to kill a member of the NOPD,” he said. “So, I need to know now, can you tell the truth?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Then you need to leave and you can’t come back until you can. Your father lives on an island somewhere, yes?”
She nodded.
“Go there,” he said. “Grieve for your husband, your son. Come back when you know the truth and then you start again.” Urian looked at her and continued, “It would be a shame for you to go to prison for the rest of your life. A thing like that, especially if one of your friends went to prison as well, might make you… unstable. How do you say… suicidal. You understand?”
She understood that she had just made a deal the devil and if she broke her end of it, she’d pay for it with her life.
“I’ve got it. But I can’t just leave. It’ll be suspicious. I have to see Aaron. He woke up hours ago and I wasn’t there.”
“If you don’t leave, I won’t protect you.” He stared straight ahead at the road.
“I know that,” she said. “Just drop me off at Tulane Hospital. I’ll book a flight this afternoon.”
“You’ll book it now for this afternoon or we turn around and you disappear, too.” His gaze intensified. “And if you tell your detective, he’s not going to recover from his shooting. Do you understand?”
Fuck.
Q pulled out her phone and begged Expedia
to not have a single flight to Grand Cayman for three weeks. No such luck. “There’s one that leaves at six tonight.”
Urian pulled up next to the hospital entrance and watched her book the flight. “I’ll pick you up at your house for three. Not a word, beautiful girl.”
After he pulled away, exhaustion crashed down on Q like a physical burden she dragged behind her through the quiet corridors and darkened rooms. As she made her way through the halls of identical walls and nurses stations to the ICU, she felt as if the building were twisting in on itself, intentionally hiding Sanger away from her, shielding him from the monster she’d just become.