by Lee Child
“How do you know all this?”
Loretta brought her eyes to his now. There were tears streaming down her cheeks. “Kept me out there for nearly a year once.”
Earl felt his heart cave in. The anguish in her eyes was born of deeply guarded pain. Melon stirred on the seat next to him.
“Why didn’t you just go to the police?”
Loretta’s eyes were pleading now. “Daddy, they is the po-leece!”
Earl stared at the daughter he’d never known. He recalled that his estranged wife’s grandmother was named Loretta. He couldn’t take his eyes off her, off the pained, crippled expression on her face. “Can you take me to this boys’ club?” he said.
“I was so hopin’ you’d say that. I had no one else to call; I got no one. And I wouldn’t get two steps inside ’fore Tarvis would put a bullet in me and drop me in the bottoms someplace.”
“I understand,” Earl said. “The world can be a hard place. Just take me to her.”
Loretta wiped at her tears and turned back to the wheel. In minutes, they were on the freeway headed east.
There was nothing left to say between them. Earl sat quiet in the back, Melon dozing next to him. Loretta kept her eyes on the road.
By the time they reached the outskirts of civilization, the moon had risen full above them. Loretta exited the interstate and followed back roads into the piney hillscape. Soon, she pulled off onto the gravel shoulder and brought her taxi to a stop.
“I don’t see anything,” Earl said.
“It’s through those trees. I’d like to go, but they see me, they’ll deal with both of us the same way, no questions.”
“Get the car off the road, out of sight,” Earl said.
Loretta produced a handgun. “You want to take this along.”
“No, I’ll handle it my way.”
“There’ll be a guard out front.”
“Don’t worry,” he said.
Earl opened the door and stepped out with his cane and dark glasses in hand, his camera still strung around his neck. “Jump!” he called to Melon. And together, they set off through the trees—blind dog and seeing-eye master—to face whatever fate held for them.
“You stay close now,” Earl said to Melon, putting his dark glasses on.
Melon gave him a whimper in return.
In minutes they arrived at a cabin set deep in the woods. There was a single light over the porch. A muscled young white boy in blue jeans and a tank top stood guard outside the door.
Earl came out of the trees, tapping with his cane, Melon at his cuff.
“The hell you doing, old man? You lost?”
“Come looking for Masta Tarvis,” Earl said, laying it on thick.
“Yeah, well, you got the wrong place. This here’s private property, so just turn your black ass around and head on back the way you came.”
Earl never stopped walking. He continued tapping his way forward, ignoring the threatening glare, until he was face-to-face with the man.
The young guy was a good head shorter than him, Earl now realized, and probably half his weight. But Earl was also a good fifty years older. He couldn’t let this boy get the first strike.
“Nigger, you deaf as well as blind—”
In one swift move, Earl came up with a right and drove a huge fist into the young man’s face. It caught him square on the nose and dropped him like a loose sack of grain onto the porch decking. The force of the blow also drove pain up Earl’s arm and into his shoulder, and for a second he thought he might cry out.
He rubbed at his shoulder until the pain subsided. “Stay,” he said to Melon. Then he dragged the boy off the porch, letting his head bang on its way down the steps. He found a section of the telephone line leading up the side of the house and used a switchblade he found in the kid’s boot to cut a long section of it free. He wired the kid’s feet and hands and cut a slice of his shirt away and used it to gag him. Then he dragged the still-limp body into the trees and dumped it there. All the while, Melon remained on the porch.
Earl returned to him and let them both quietly inside.
The cabin was dark but for a wedge of light that spilled from a room at the end of a long hallway. He could hear men’s voices, bawdy laughter and crude talk, over the wash of southern rock. He crossed down the hallway, the switchblade closed but cupped in his right hand. Melon followed.
Through the open doorway, Earl saw what he had feared the most. His granddaughter was on the bed naked and spread, tied to the bedposts. Four men were ganged around and over her. All were in their late fifties to early sixties; flabby white bodies, hairy backs and legs. They spouted crude epithets as they worked, prodding and jabbing with implements to coax some life into their crippled prey.
This was the Atlanta boys’ club, minus one—Ray Tarvis—and they were preparing for another round.
Earl stepped into the room and tapped his cane hard on the floor twice. It brought four faces swiveling toward him.
“Jesus Christ!”
“What the fuck?”
“Who the hell are you?”
The protests came in unison.
Earl didn’t respond. He raised his camera and clicked off a series of auto-shots in quick succession, capturing the men, their naked bodies, the implements in their hands, and the girl tied spread-eagle on the bed.
“Now, wait a minute,” one of them said, stepping away from the bed, a bottle of Southern Comfort in his grip. The other men came to join him, the gang of them standing there, genitals dangling.
Earl snapped another shot.
There was a stunned moment in which no one moved. Earl was broader and at least a foot taller than any man in the room. But there were four of them. He no longer felt the need to keep his eyes distant. He slipped his glasses off and leveled a steely gaze their way.
Just then, Melon began to bark. Another man had entered the room behind Earl. “The fuck you doing here?”
It was Ray Tarvis, come to join his club mates for the festivities.
Earl put his glasses back on and stepped to one side, his shoulders in line with his flanking opponents’.
“Who the hell is this asshole? What’s he doing with the camera?” the man with the bottle wanted to know.
“He’s fucking blind!” Tarvis said. “He ain’t seen a thing!”
“He sees enough to take pictures!”
Tarvis studied Earl more closely now, trying to peer beyond the lenses of his dark glasses.
Earl tipped the glasses forward on his nose and looked across them, let the man see the truth of the matter for himself.
“You’re going out in a fucking box!”
Tarvis started forward, then—
Chick!
—the sound of the switchblade clicking open stopped him in his tracks. The other men had closed a step. They also halted.
“I see you all understand the language of the streets,” Earl said. “I took it off your boy.”
Earl pointed the knife alternately at Tarvis and at the gang of men.
Tarvis grabbed a heavy ashtray from a nearby dresser and hurled it in Earl’s direction. It whizzed past Earl’s head, missing by inches. Tarvis followed with a charge. “Give me the goddamned camera!” Tarvis cried, rushing Earl, head down like a bull.
Earl let the cane drop and caught the man about the neck with one big arm. The momentum of his charge rocked Earl back a step, but he used his size to quell the force. He wrenched Tarvis’s head upward so he could see the bed, the girl, the savage damage that the men had inflicted. He still had the knife pointed toward the men.
“Take a good fucking look!” Earl said.
There was nothing but hate in the man’s eyes. “Fuck you!” Tarvis said. “And fuck the little whore!”
Earl brought the blade around in a swift arc and buried it deep in Tarvis’s stomach, just below the rib cage.
There was an expression of startled disbelief on Tarvis’s face. Earl let it linger there a moment. Then he shoved
the knife up hard beneath the ribs and held on until the light in Tarvis’s eyes flickered and died.
Earl let him drop to the floor. Melon let out a chuff.
The others had remained fixed in place, unsure of Earl’s prowess, perhaps, or just insecure in their naked vulnerability. But now they started forward as a group.
Loretta suddenly burst into the room. She had her gun out. Her eyes were wild with fear.
It halted their advance.
“Cut the girl loose!” Earl said to them.
A couple of the men moved to carry out his orders; the other two glared at him as if trying to say We will remember you and there will come a time.
Loretta handed the gun to Earl and rushed to her daughter’s aid. The girl-child lolled, made dopey by the weight of Rohypnol or some other rape drug. But her eyes were aware and shifting between Earl and her mother.
Loretta dragged her to her feet, gathered her clothing, and dressed her as best she could.
When they were at the door and ready, Earl popped the small memory card from his camera and held it for the men to see. “You try to fuck with me or my family ever again, not only will this go to the media, but I’ll come looking for each of you myself.”
There was little of what could have passed for shame on the four white faces. Earl considered for one brief moment the idea of opening up on them with the gun. But the priority for now was to get his daughter and granddaughter to safety. “Are we clear on all this?” he asked, fixing his eyes on each of the men in turn.
“What about him?” one man asked, motioning to Tarvis lying on the floor in a pool of his own blood.
“I understand you’re all members of Atlanta’s finest,” Earl said. “I’m sure you got ideas how to make a body disappear, make a crime as though it never happened.”
Earl could see by their eyes they were already considering the possibilities. He backed his way to the doorway with Melon at his cuff. And with his daughter and granddaughter, he fled off into the moonlit Georgia night.
AT THE GREYHOUND bus terminal at four in the morning, Earl bought two one-way tickets to Los Angeles. His granddaughter was still docile and quiet, but she was starting to come around.
Loretta had managed to clean her up and get her properly dressed for the trip. And India herself had managed a smile.
“Take good care of our little girl,” Loretta said. “See she get a good education.”
“You sure you don’t want to come with us?” Earl asked.
“It’s too late for me,” she said, pride overriding the sadness in her eyes. “Will you be all right?”
“I’ll let you know. But I don’t think the mystery of what happened to Ray Tarvis will ever be solved. A Jimmy Hoffa kinda thing. Still, I wish the rest of the bastard boys’ club could receive some evens.”
Earl studied his daughter, feeling a certain sense of guilt-layered pride. She was a survivor, at the very least. And though he couldn’t change the past, he could give her some justice for the pain and humiliation both she and India had suffered.
Earl took Loretta’s hand and folded the memory card from his camera into it. “What’s this?” Loretta asked, looking down.
“It’s a bit of justice,” Earl said. “Put it in an envelope and send it anonymously to the Atlanta Journal.”
Loretta brought her eyes back to his. “It’ll stir up a hornets’ nest that could come back on you.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Earl said. “I’m an old man with an old dog and just as blind as I need to be. I’ll take what comes.”
Loretta gave him a strong hug and wished him and her daughter well. Then she turned toward her taxicab parked at the stand.
Earl put his arm around his granddaughter. And together they watched Loretta gather a waiting fare from the curb and drive away.
“Been some kind of visit, eh, Melon?” Earl said to the dog at his feet. “And we got a new member of the family to share our house with.”
Melon chuffed and nuzzled India’s ankle to show his approval.
“What about you?” Earl said to his granddaughter. “You ready for a new life?”
India gave what passed for a smile and boarded the bus ahead of him.
The driver was waiting to close the door against the heat.
Earl pulled his dark glasses from his inside pocket and slipped them on. He adjusted the camera around his neck, extended his cane, smoothed the front of his poplin jacket.
He was making a show of it. And why not?
Even a blind man could see he was seventy years old and a black man back in the South.
THE GENERAL
BY JANICE LAW
Even after he went into a comfortable, if still bitter, exile in the north, the General hired only men from his own country. He trusted the loyalty of those who had been comrades and subordinates and the poverty of the others. Of the two, he regarded poverty as the surer thing, but the General was never without a sidearm, and the inner recesses of his handsome house—a glossy, glamorized version of the old stucco mansions of his homeland—held a small arsenal. He had enemies, some persistent, who had fled north a few years ahead of him. That political power was fleeting was a basic tenet of the universe.
Power of other sorts—the power of money, influence, personality—had proved more durable. Overseeing his silent, well-trained indoor staff and the ever-changing retinue of gardeners, pool attendants, and chauffeurs, the General felt as close as he was ever going to be to his old life of unquestioned authority. Dismissing a gardener for an ill-raked path or sacking a cook for a soup too cold or too hot satisfied impulses that he’d feared he was leaving behind when he boarded the plane, late and secretly, on the night the government fell.
But the north, with its labyrinth of immigration laws, had given him new levers to control his employees, and the General used them all, partly to avoid familiarity and partly for pleasure, because the General had loved only two things: power and his young son, Alejandro, a slim, dark boy of eight who reminded the General strongly of his late wife. Not that there was anything effeminate about the child, who played noisy soccer games at St. Ignatius and who could set the kitchen staff laughing the moment he returned from school, but from his earliest years, Alejandro had been thoughtful, and what he was thinking was not always transparent to his father.
Like his mother, the boy kept his own counsel, and he could be as quiet as he was noisy, spending hours reading in his room or playing one of his squeaking video games or frolicking in the far reaches of the garden and learning ungrammatical Spanish from the gardeners. He looked like his mother too, being rather pale, with eyes neither brown nor green, but a speckled amalgamation of the two. He had her nose, already quite large and angular; her full mouth; her thick, glossy black hair.
Watching him run joyously about on the playing field, the General had moments when some angle of jaw or cheek or hairline brought Maria back with a sharp, unwelcome ache. Aware of her own innocence, she had been as fearless as the boy, and she had paid for her carelessness when a motorcycle roared up to her limousine and the pillion rider loosed a burst of fire. The assailants had expected the General to be in the car, and though he’d escaped, he had known that his days were numbered.
Eventually, he fled north, where he had contacts, protection, assistance of useful kinds, and money. He hadn’t gone into either the army or politics to remain poor. Now he lived in luxurious retirement; in exile, true, and with greatly diminished powers, but with vastly enhanced safety and comfort. Alejandro would grow up to be a citizen of this new and often enigmatic country, where power of many sorts would be available to him. The General had no doubt of that.
So he was as content as a man of his past and temperament could be. He raged sometimes—though never at Alejandro. The General was known to strike his kitchen staff and even his young and pretty mistress, who lived in an apartment a mile away from his home, but he did nothing worse. The past was gone and buried, and all that he had done and seen and ordered�
��for the good of his country and his party—was put to rest.
With wealth, a gated acreage, state-of-the-art alarms, and armed guards, the General could be confident that his life would run smoothly. It was therefore surprising that he allowed one irritant: Manuel, the gaunt, silent head gardener whom it had pleased the General to hire after precipitously firing the last one for burning the perfect turf with a carelessly placed glass tabletop.
Manuel was, naturally, one of the General’s countrymen, an old, dark, sad Indian without papers. The General preferred illegals, whom he could pay next to nothing. But although his salary was minimal, the elderly gardener was permitted to live in the shed at the back of the yard.
Why the General arranged this is unclear, since he was cautious to the point of paranoia. Yet to save a few dollars on Manuel’s salary, dollars that the General could well have afforded, having left the capital with a suitcase full of gold bars, he allowed a stranger, and a mysterious one at that, to live within his gates and beyond his immediate oversight.
There was no physical danger, of course. The General’s two bodyguards, Hector and Jesus, were always vigilant. One or the other was perpetually on duty, and at some point, it would surely please the General to throw the old man into the street. Yet from a strict security standpoint, Manuel’s residence in the garden, even briefly, was unwise.
If asked about this, the General would have said that Manuel was a wonderful gardener who would get the place into shape. The orchids, the lilies, the flowering cacti, the bananas, the bamboo, all the various ornamentals and tropicals thrived under his care. Every time the General went into his garden, he was reminded of his patio back in the capital and of evenings sitting with friends under the palms.
But, as with so many aspects of the General’s life, the situation with Manuel was complex. Even in retirement, the General had considerable business dealings and still retained influence back home. He was absent a good deal, and Alejandro, who was lonely, had taken a great liking to Manuel and a great interest in the operation of the garden.