by Neil Mcmahon
He lunged forward and threw a punch, a wild roundhouse right. It glanced off Harold’s raised shoulder with the feel of hitting a slab of beef. Monks pulled in his elbows, fists beside his chin, ready for a desperate effort to keep the terrific body from bludgeoning him to the floor and crushing the life from him.
But Harold only made that strange panting sound again, and turned away.
“I had to, man. I couldn’t lie to Naia. She’d kill me, too.” Harold’s hands opened as if to grip the empty air. “With those other men—it was not wrong. I never thought it would come round to Alison.”
Monks moved away, trying to even his breathing. In the small room there was no place to go.
“Pretty soon Naia’s crazy about Alison, man,” Harold said. “Wants to know everything that happen with her.”
And you kept adding up that five thousand dollars a pop, Monks thought.
“I told her about the fight with Garlick yesterday. She told me go back and get him.”
Monks said, “Get him?”
“I said no way. You know what she did? She silent, man. She just stay there on the phone, not saying nothing. I wait ten seconds, twenty seconds, chinking about those men. Finally I say I’ll try, and she just hang up.
“You understand, man? I didn’t want to do this, but I got to. I went back late last night, pushing a laundry cart. Wedged open the fire door and waited till the nurse take her break. Told Garlick, ‘I’m going to get you out of here, man,’ so he’d come willingly. Put him in the trunk of my car.”
“What did you do with him?”
“Parked my car where she told me. Dark parking lot. Gave him another shot of droperidol and left him. Come back a hour later and he’s gone.”
“And there was money instead?”
Harold’s head did not move, either in assent or denial.
“I’m trying to add up the felonies, Harold.”
“What I told you.”
“You knew what Naia was doing to those men.”
“Didn’t know, but when you close to the ground, you hear things. Grapevine, you understand? Somebody catch a rumor in Sacramento that Prokuta drowned hisself, man who’d cut a baby’s throat to stay alive. Kurlin gets caught in a fire, just like he used to do. Nobody puts it all together. Except Harold.”
“Did you ever see Naia?”
The great head shook no.
“Could she be Jephson?”
“Got reasons why it could or couldn’t be anybody.”
“How did you get in touch with her? A phone number?”
“We just talking right now, Monks. Nobody can prove nothing about this. If I give you something, that’s different. That’s jail.”
“This is about Alison, Harold. Alison, who treated you right.” He leaned into the averted face. “Alison, who you sold out.”
Harold walked behind the bar. He held up an old-fashioned glass, offering it. Monks shook his head. Harold filled the glass to the brim with Chivas Regal and drank half of it.
“One day I come to my car and there’s a extra five thousand. When I talk to her, she tells me she wants me to do something else this time. Man about to be released, Prokuta. Take him aside and tell him when he needs money, call Harold.
“He came around, couple months later. I gave him two hundred dollars and set up a place for Naia to meet with him. Never saw him no more. Did the same thing with two others.
“That’s all I know till Hogface Foote calls me one night.”
Monks searched his mind for the name and found it: the San Jose biker who had stabbed a college boy for sitting on his Harley.
“Motherfucker was scary, man,” Harold said. “I give him four hundred. Few nights later he call me and he’s scared. He says, ‘Bitch knew it wasn’t real. She wants a photo, man.’”
“I’m not following you, Harold.”
“She was buying something from them, man. You understand? Something’s been on somebody a while.”
Monks said, “On somebody?”
“Trophy, you know? Ring. Hair. Something that’s like pan of them.”
Monks stared in disbelief.
“I didn’t want to know that and I wouldn’t of, except Foote came by here that same night. High on crank, white all round his eyeballs. I wouldn’t let him in. He shows me a picture through the door. Man lying in a alley in his own blood. Got a earring on, except now Foote got the earring in his hand, with a piece of ear still on it. Says, ‘This is real, motherfucker.’ I give him another hundred to get him gone, and tell him take it to her. Never see him no more neither.”
Monks said, “Why?”
“Think about it, Monks. They all predators, man, they taking life. Most go after the weak, but she’s going after the strong. Them. They stronger still if they just taken another life. Fatter.”
Collecting human beings as trophies.
Creating a food chain of death that thrived on killers who had recently killed. Grown fat.
Harold filled his glass again. He replaced the bottle, opened a drawer, and laid a slip of paper on the bar. Then he walked to his chair and sat heavily.
Monks picked up the paper. On it was a nine-digit number, beginning with the 01 code of a foreign country.
Without turning, Harold said, “You going to use that number, Monks? Cause if you do—we not talking prison for Harold.”
Monks glanced back as he closed the door. The huge body remained seated, unmoving, facing the blank television screen.
Monks slid into the Bronco and gripped the cell phone that Larrabee had given him. He punched the numbers, making sure each one beeped, imagining electronic impulses like tiny streaks of light flashing thousands of miles through a network of connections, scramblers, blinds.
There came a series of clicks, a pause, and then a tone, short and harsh like a foghorn.
Monks said, in a voice that trembled with rage, “I found a track. If you come near my family again, I’ll spend the rest of my life hunting you down.”
Chapter 15
The cell phone rang immediately, still in Monks’s hand.
“Was it a big track? A black one?”
It was the same voice, high-pitched and arch, but with a subtly different quality this time: a faint distortion or echo. Perhaps a nontransmitting environment: basement, concrete room, freezer.
A place where a man could be hamstrung and forced to crawl.
Monks said, “Let me talk to her.”
“I’m afraid she’s not accepting calls just now.”
“It’s only a matter of time until this number’s traced.”
“If I thought that, I’d never have given it out.”
“If you weren’t worried, you wouldn’t have called back.”
“You’re an unwelcome distraction to me, Dr. Monks, I admit it. I didn’t expect to be hearing from you again. Nothing personal. What did happen to the snake?”
“It’s dead.”
“You know, I’m rather starting to like you. And here we both just want what’s best for her. Shall we try to work this out, between us?”
“I’m listening.”
“You want her back. But what makes you think she’d give me up? I’m what she’s wanted all her life. What do you have to offer that can compare, in your grubby little world?”
Monks gazed around him at the bland houses and dreary streets, and it finally came to him that he had been wrong all the time. Alison Chapley’s life was not the rich fest of pleasure and achievement that he had imagined, but an empty existence in a world that was going nowhere for someone who craved mystery, thrills—or perhaps, at the heart of it, escape.
She was not so different from him after all.
He said, “I could get a hundred thousand dollars within a few hours.”
“Ransom?” the voice said thoughtfully.
“If you want to call it that.”
“Interesting approach. I’m a firm believer that people should earn what they get. Don’t you think?”
“In general. Yes.”
“But let’s not talk about money. That’s too easy. Let’s talk risk. I’ve risked rather a great deal, to bring her to me. I think that gives me a certain right. How much are you willing to risk?”
Monks hesitated. “I don’t know.”
“Another honest answer. Let’s say I propose a duel. A way to keep this between you and me.”
“What weapons?”
“Brains. Nerve.”
“Go on.”
“I’ll give you a challenge. A task. If you perform it, then you and I are quits. I’ll give up my efforts to persuade our little friend.”
Monks said, “What’s the task?”
“I hold the prize,” the voice said, edged. “I’ll make the terms.”
“That’s one-sided. You have to ante up something, too. A reason to trust you.”
“The task will provide another track. You’ll have the chance to take it and walk away. Then I win. But if you cheat—take the information and stay in this— I’ll be the one following tracks.”
Monks finally said, “I accept.”
“Be in San Francisco in exactly two hours. I’ll call you at this number.”
The connection ended.
He started for Larrabee’s apartment.
The video was less than two minutes long. The first part showed Caymas Schulte, tethered by the neck to what looked like a warehouse rack. Caymas’s finger touched and sank into the white plaster mound at his place. A row of oval masks, bearing the grimacing features of the dead NGIs, stretched into the room’s darkness.
Then a chalk-faced, dark-haired figure with blood-ringed eyes leaped onto the screen. A slashing movement of its arm severed the tether. Caymas backed away, with the figure following, holding a curved knife.
The film cut abruptly, showing only blank frames for another several seconds. Then came the image they had first seen: Caymas, hanging upside down, his blood pooling on the stone floor.
“She already tried to kill you once.” Larrabee said. “You can’t believe in that trust bullshit.”
It was 10:32 A.M. The phone call was due at 11:07.
“I’m going to keep the connection open as long as I can. She might slip,” Monks said.
Monks waited in the Bronco, parked along the Panhandle of Golden Gate Park, Larrabee was a block behind, driving the inconspicuous Taurus again.
Precisely at 11:07 A.M., the cell phone rang. The sound sent a rippling convulsion through his body. He clicked the phone on with his left hand, his right poised with pen and pad.
“This is Monks.”
The high-pitched voice said, “You’ll find what you’re looking for in the parking lot of Mercy Hospital. Instructions are included. When you’re finished, call.”
“How will I know what it is?”
“Oh, you’ll know. Convincing photographs will serve as proof. I’d advise haste, Dr. Monks. The clock is running.”
He accelerated into traffic, fighting the urge to floor it. He took his Beretta from the glove compartment and slipped it inside his belt under his sweatshirt. His gaze caught the antique straight razor that Alison had bought for him, the gift mocked by Naia’s grim offerings. It fit neatly beside his wallet in the hack pocket of his jeans.
Monks wheeled into the Mercy parking lot and drove through the sections, scanning the rows of vehicles.
Naia had been right: when he saw what he was looking for, he knew.
Alison’s Mercedes, parked at the far west end.
He got out and trotted the last fifty feet, stomach queasy with fear at what he might find. Another deadly snake. A bomb or shotgun in his face.
Alison herself.
The car was empty. He stepped around to the trunk, inhaled deeply, and jerked it open.
The first thing he saw was scorch marks on the inside walls. The metal struts holding the backseat in place had been cut through with a torch. He gave the seat a push. It fell inward, opening a passage into the car.
Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to create a hiding place that would allow access to the interior.
His gaze moved to the trunk’s well, neatly covered with a blanket. He pulled it off and stared down at a smallish figure, lying with back turned, knees drawn up toward the chest. He gripped the chin and pulled the face visible.
It was a white male, in his fifties, with fine features and light hair, wearing an expensive suit of dark wool.
Dr. Francis Jephson.
There was no sign of blood or a wound but he reeked of gin. Monks touched two fingers to the throat and felt a slow, strong pulse, leaned close and pried an eyelid open to reveal the small, sluggish pupil.
Alcohol and something else: a narcotic or benzodiazepine, like Valium.
A slip of paper that at first looked like a handkerchief was tucked into Jephson’s breast pocket. Monks pulled it free.
CERTIFICATE OF DEATH
STATE OF CALIFORNIA
USE BLACK INK ONLY/NO ERASURES,
WHITEOUTS OR ALTERATIONS
NAME OF DECEDENT-FIRST (GIVEN)
FRANCIS
MIDDLE
SEWELL
LAST (FAMILY)
JEPHSON
DATE OF DEATH MM/DD/CCYY
11/14/1997
HOUR
12:11 P.M
PLACE OF DEATH
MERCY HOSPITAL
IF HOSPITAL, SPECIFY ONE
ER/OP
ATTENDING PHYSICIAN’S NAME
CARROLL MONKS, M.D.
The space labeled DEATH WAS CAUSED BY was left blank.
But Monks’s fingers had felt something else in the pocket, about the size of a film can, smooth and hard. He tugged it free. It was a multi-dose glass vial of potassium chloride.
His hands gripped the car frame. Thirty milligrams in solution, injected IV, would freeze the heart instantaneously, with the only trace a slight electrolyte imbalance in the blood. Death attributed to a coronary or stroke, a secondary complication of the presenting overdose.
Easy. And much easier still for Naia to have killed Jephson herself.
There was a reason she had set Monks up to do it, and the reason that reverberated in his brain came in the words of Harold Henley: They stronger yet if they just taken another life. Fatter.
Monks heaved Jephson up into a fireman’s carry and headed for the Emergency Room in a lurching run.
The emergency staff at Mercy Hospital were not easily impressed, but the sight of one of their own doctors staggering in with a man over his shoulder caused a flutter. Aides came fast with a gurney. Monks leaned against a wall, fighting for breath
The on-duty physician, Jim Parrish, strode over to Monks.
“I found him outside,” Monks said. “Somebody must have dumped him.”
They moved along with the gurney, Parrish automatically checking vital signs. “What the hell are you doing here, Carroll?”
“I’m scheduled at noon. Aren’t I?”
“I didn’t think so.” Parrish was in his unities, competent and unimaginative. Although he had never said so, it was clear he was aware that Monks’s reputation was not pristine.
Not the man Monks wanted in on this.
But he had seen, with a jolt of hope, that Vernon Dickhaut was here.
“Christ, I must have got my calendar wrong,” Monks said. He had already read the ER: there were no visible crises, but it was crowded, and this being Friday, it would get more so.
They paused, both aware that Jephson’s condition was serious but not critical. The aides wheeled the gurney on into a cubicle, a nurse following to start a workup.
Parrish said, “Alcohol and drugs?”
“Plenty of both, is my guess.”
“He doesn’t seem the type.”
“Maybe a suicide attempt. You look busy, Jim. This might be a good one for Vernon. I could keep an eye on things. I mean, I found the guy.” He hardened his gaze a notch. It was Parrish’s ER, but he was senior.
Parrish shrugged, and
waved his clipboard in a gesture of assent.
Monks caught Vernon’s gaze and nodded him toward the cubicle. They met just outside the door. Monks blocked it casually, trying to look like an older doc giving a word of advice.
Very quietly, he said, “This isn’t what it seems. I can’t explain now, but in a few minutes I’m going to ask you to look the other way. Will you help?”
Vernon’s sky-blue eyes widened to the point of goggling. For ten seconds, the two men looked into each other. Then Vernon nodded.
Monks said, “First guess is morphine or Demerol. Let’s start with one milligram of Narcan, a five-second push, IV. Start lab, blood sugar, and do a urine-tox screen. He’s drunk, too, so watch his breathing. If that doesn’t start him around within two minutes, it might be Valium: try point-two milligrams of Romazicon. I’ll be back in five.”
Monks walked to the physicians’ room, deliberately not moving too fast. Inside, he put on his lab coat, transferring the pistol to its pocket. It was 11:47 A.M.
He called Larrabee and said, “That was Jephson in the trunk.”
“I saw you carry him in. Is he dead?”
“Not yet. That’s the task.”
There was a short but pointed silence, while Larrabee did not ask the question: Is he going to be?
Larrabee said, “She’s got something in mind. Following you, waiting to pick you off.”
“Let’s let her follow. With you watching.”
“I don’t know how close I can stay.”
“I know this hospital, Stover. And I’ve got a gun.”
Another pause. Monks pictured Larrabee passing his hand over his hair.
“Where do they keep the janitor carts, all that stuff?”
“Basement,” Monks said. “I’ll be leaving the ER in ten to fifteen minutes, heading for the elevators. Up to the sixth floor, north wing, for five to ten more, then down to the morgue. That’s in The basement, too.”
The connection ended. Monks picked up the house phone and punched the extension for the morgue.
“Roman. Get rid of everybody down there. I need you alone in twenty minutes.” He kept talking, trying to voice the flow chart taking shape in his mind.
When Monks came back to the ER, Jim Parrish was not in sight: presumably he was with another patient. Vernon was inside the cubicle, alone with Jephson. Monks stepped in and closed the door.