by Brian Hodge
“Keep your head tucked down.” Justin took a handful of hair and pulled forward, folding Todd chin to chest, then shoved the chair over backward. It slammed down hard, balanced on its rear legs and upper backrest; a few degrees less angle in the chair’s curvature and Todd’s forearms would have cushioned the landing. His eyes popped wide and now he was staring up at Justin from an entirely new vantage point, infinitely more helpless.
Justin looked toward the back of the loft, saw April pop into view. Amnesty International, right here under their own roof. He smiled at her, feeling like a creep, gave her a double thumbs-up, hey, everything’s under control. Didn’t know what else to do, but it calmed her. She merely scowled — he could live with that — and lowered out of sight again.
Ajax was sacked out in a feline curl atop a sofa cushion, and Justin scooped her into his arms. Blew a gentle breath into her face, and she drew her head back, eyes shut as she stirred in his grip. Let loose another of those purrs to which he was too well accustomed. He carried her back to where Todd lay, knelt beside him with the luxuriously twisting cat.
Todd was looking at them both, sideways, with furrowed brow. Small noises escaped his throat, and it was clear things had veered away from whatever he’d expected.
“This cat’s in heat most of the time, seems like,” Justin told him. “It gets really creepy sometimes, watching her. Came home one day, found she’d knocked over a broom and she was wrapped around the stick. She’s not really particular. And the noise? Whoa.” He shuddered.
Todd blinked in wary suspicion.
Justin tweaked his nose.
And draped Ajax across his face.
She found the nub of Todd’s nose easily enough, gray fur ecstasy and supple undulation, tail swishing in jerky spasms. Todd’s eyes bulging aghast as he let loose a muffled roar, and he tried to jerk his head and dislodge her, but couldn’t manage to shake her off. Ajax unleashed a piercing yowl, and the chair was jittering on the floor. Matchmaker, matchmaker, it was a pairing of genius, and Justin grinned down at the sight.
Footsteps from behind, still distant, and Justin yanked the cat from Todd’s crimson face moments before April appeared on the scene. He stood, the picture of innocence with the cat clamped in his arms.
“What the hell’s going on?”
“Nothing,” he said, but April was nothing if not conceptual in orientation, and divined the truth on her own.
“You didn’t.” Eyes wide, horror in her voice.
“Well…” He nudged the prisoner with his foot. “How about it, Todd? Ready for another roll in the hay?”
If looks could kill…
“Give me my cat, this is the sickest thing I’ve ever heard of!” April came forward, guardian of feline chastity. Justin held her off with one hand, give me another minute here.
He knelt again, peeled Todd’s gag aside so he could talk. “Was it good for you too?” If he couldn’t work with pain, then maybe humiliation was the next best bet.
Todd was ready to cry, face scrunched in disgust, a pastiche of red, maroon, other unhealthy flesh tones. It appeared that a breakthrough of some sort was imminent.
“If you still want to do this all night, then, okay.” Justin readied to yank the gag back into place with one hand, proffered the cat aloft in the other. Lowered her dangling legs into Todd’s field of vision, and he finally screamed enough.
April made another sound of revulsion, snatched Ajax away from him and spirited her away, across the loft. Staying close enough to hear what Todd had to say, though, he noticed.
Todd, nearly sobbing, composing himself, spat a little hairball off to one side. “I got a call from Mr. Mullavey early this afternoon. He said he wanted me to find a disk that should be in Leonard’s office. He said he … he wanted me to keep quiet about it, and I told him I would.”
This guy, such a lapdog. “And this didn’t strike you as more than a little odd? You’re not even involved with the account anymore.”
“He told me they thought somebody was leaking their marketing information. That they thought they’d traced it to someone at the agency.” Todd snuffled, wrinkled his nose. Twisted around enough to wipe it against his shoulder. “He said they thought … they thought it might be you.”
Justin felt dizzy for a moment. Slowly, then, went to pull his chair closer. Divide and conquer; Mullavey wasn’t dumb. He looked back to April, saw that she had taken a few rapt steps closer.
“So what about the disk?”
“He gave me a list of file names on it, to find the one that corresponded. He wanted it back, said he’d Fed Ex another one with some phony information on it, so they could try to trace the data flow.”
It made sense. Todd, ever eager to please, and reinstate himself in Mullavey’s good graces, would never even think to enter the disk any deeper than the first level of folders. Justin sagged head-on-hands against the table. Had to believe Todd, too much desperation in his voice, too much broken dignity. He was past the point of dissembling.
“You’re a fucking errand boy, Todd, that’s all you are to him. He was using you. You don’t think he’s got a good memory? He needs somebody he can lie to, somebody who wants to be lied to, and I bet he remembers every moment of that meeting in July when he took you out of play.” Justin shook his head. “You’ve got no idea what’s on that disk. What’s on there would put this motherfucker in prison, maybe on death row. And you were going to give it back to him.”
Moments, ticking, with no other sound in the world. Todd’s face was flushed and haunted, and he turned away to stare at the wall. Lower lip curled in, biting hard on it. Justin tipped the chair back upright, started to unfasten the belts. April came forward, without a word, and did likewise. She then untied the dish towel from around Todd’s neck, and he was free. Wet, and free. And not moving. Crushed. As if everything he had ever believed in had been proven false.
And the pity was there, in Justin’s heart, something to which he could pay no attention. No weakness. He’d wanted to scare Todd? Perhaps he had. Maintaining the upper hand was imperative.
Justin grabbed his shoulder, firmly pulled him up from the chair. Led him a few steps toward the door, then shoved him against the wall, and Todd was beyond protest. Justin moved to the kitchen counter, got a felt pen from a drawer. Scrawled on Todd’s smooth forehead the numeral 3.
He then led Todd downstairs, outside, until they were on the street. Traffic up on Kennedy was desultory this late. A thick-clouded night sky overhead, and streetlight shadows of palm trees falling across their path.
To look into the heart of night, concrete and grit underfoot … it took him back to last year, when the days burned with a flame all their own and nights were as incandescent as his soul. These streets were the same, but a colder season had come, and in a way he missed the pure simplicity of the fire.
Justin had never thought he would have a need to resurrect that image of himself those days had inspired in people who’d met him since. But it was there for the taking, and had been all along. Image was everything. If nothing else, their careers had taught them that. The trick to lying was conviction.
He was hoping he could make a terrified believer out of Todd. If not, what would be the price of failure? For that matter, what would be the price of success?
He grabbed Todd’s shoulder, hard, forced him to stop. Looked him full in the eyes and kept a hard jaw, an unwavering gaze.
“You’ll talk to Mullavey tomorrow,” said Justin. “And you’ll tell him the disk wasn’t there. You looked all over and the disk wasn’t there. You looked in my stuff, too, and the disk wasn’t there. You won’t say a word to anybody about what happened between us tonight. When somebody asks about your face, you got drunk and fell down.”
Todd was blinking, just enough soggy irritation to know he was still alive.
“Last year?” Justin went on. “I killed two guys. I’m not proud of it, but I did it. The important thing for you to remember is, I never saw two minutes of
jail time over either of them. So if you fuck me up with Mullavey, or anybody else … well, you know what they say. After the first one, it gets easier.” He patted Todd’s cheek, gently, brotherly. “So after you walk back to your car, and you drive home, and you’re in your bathroom scrubbing that number three off your forehead, you think about me. All you have to do is keep our secret.”
He spun Todd around to send him on his way.
“Now go home.”
He followed Todd up to the corner at Kennedy, stood under the streetlight, and watched the guy’s back as he trudged east, toward downtown, swallowed deeper and deeper into the canyons. Two blocks later, Todd turned around, just a peek, and Justin was still under the light.
Watching until Todd disappeared.
He held off the worst of the tremors until he got back to the stairs.
Chapter 17
Archives
April was first to awaken the next morning. With Justin still asleep, she sat on the edge of the bed to watch him for a few moments. Touching his hair, less tousled than most mornings, as if he had shifted less during slumber, sleeping deeper to escape the night. It occurred to her that a lot of troubled marriages might be saved if each partner would just take time to watch the other while asleep. To see the remnants of innocence, to respect the vulnerabilities.
“I’m sorry,” he had whispered last night, after coming back from having taken Todd outside. He’d been visibly trembling. “I didn’t know what else to do.”
Could she blame him because he cared enough to find out the truth? No. She had known liars enough in her life, prone to situational ethics. And if, in bending his own ethics last night, Justin had gone further than she’d been prepared to accept, he at least had done so for no benefit to himself.
His hand, now loosely curled on the pillow beside his stubbled cheek … she took it in her own, interlocking with the pliant fingers, until he woke. Blinked against the shock of morning with a soft groan, and their eyes found each other.
“What time is it?” he said.
“Promise me something.” She spoke with such quiet urgency he could never miss its importance, and he said he would. “Promise you won’t keep anything from me. No matter what it is. I have to know. Promise me.”
Justin nodded, drew her hand to his cheek. “You owe me the same.”
And the vow became mutual.
Later, Justin called in sick to work, and they grabbed a couple more hours of sleep. Message lights blinked on her work line when she arose for good, and she wrapped up in a robe to return the calls. She satisfied all. How ordered everything seemed from this chair.
Justin fixed breakfast, scrambled eggs with mushrooms and salsa, fried slices of Canadian bacon. Tumblers of orange juice, fresh squeezed. Ten-thirty, and at the dining table, he stretched in his chair and smiled his lazy rogue’s smile.
“This feels good,” he said. “It’s like convincing your mom to let you swipe a sick day from school.”
“Nothing one way or another about Todd, when you called?”
Justin shook his head. “And I didn’t ask. All told, I’d say that’s a good sign.”
“And how’s your head, inside?”
He smiled. “Better.”
“Another good sign.” She looked skyward, mock drama with reverently clasped hands. “Thank you, God.” Back to earth, then, and matters mortal. She pushed at the computer disks, the printout, between their place settings. “These … what now?”
He touched them, shuffled them. Arranged them off to one side in a neat stack. “I report it, I guess. I’m thinking I’ll go to New Orleans in a day or two. That’s where it all came out of.”
She nodded, and supposed it would have to be done. Still, “I said last night that it didn’t make sense, and you know, Jus, it still doesn’t. Why would they risk it, do something that terrible, just to destroy a competitor? That Caribe brand wasn’t even a national competitor. If they were that concerned about market share, why not go after Folgers?”
Justin shrugged. “I don’t know, I can’t figure it either. Mullavey, he never really seemed to look at Caribe as much of a market threat. To beat it onto the shelves, with Mullavey it was more a matter of local pride, something like that. Guy that owns the other company, Caribe, he’s black, I think Mullavey said he’s Haitian. He’s sort of a low-key bigot, Mullavey, seems to have this racial superiority thing. He’s got a houseful of Haitian servants, and seems to get off on that. Like he’s some kind of antebellum land baron. He’s a screwy one, all right.”
“But to go to the lengths of poisoning people at random?” April said. “It’s not like you’ve got actual proof of that.”
He picked up the disks, let them spill back to the table. “What do you think? Can you come up with a reason why those production schedules should be on here? Why the almond flavor is the only one pulled out by itself? Because I sure can’t.”
She waved her napkin, white flag, peace. “I’m just playing the devil’s advocate,” and he smiled, nodded. She went on: “How much do you know about Mullavey? Anything at all?”
“Only what I’ve seen, and that’s not a lot. You know about as much as I do.”
“So why don’t we try to find out more, first, today. Someone like that, with his kind of public profile, there’d have to be a lot of press clippings accumulated over the years. You’d think so, wouldn’t you?”
Justin couldn’t argue, so after their late breakfast, April went to work on it. Phoned a couple of former coworkers at the Tampa Tribune, back from the days she’d spent in the ad department before striking out solo. Advertising and Editorial were, in terms of office space, oil and water, and did not mix. Socially, though, interdepartmental gravitations were inevitable.
Her question was simple: Was anybody there acquainted with someone in Editorial at the New Orleans Times-Picayune? Personal or professional basis; via telephone, even? She had to leave her number and hope; present newsroom staff was crapping out, although not all were accounted for. A couple hours later, Elaine Sharp, a reporter whom April did not know — a newer arrival since her days there — phoned back.
Elaine Sharp had, last winter, attended a regional editorial conference in Atlanta, and paired off with a guy from the New Orleans paper, name of Ron Babbet. A time-passing fling, let’s cut short these bullshit sessions and check out the local drinkeries; it had led to a few weekends afterward, little beyond that. Civil enough, though, after the fact, and Elaine told April that calling him and mentioning her name should buy her more than a click in the ear.
April called New Orleans next, had to sit tight and wait for a return call. It was nearly four o’clock by the time Ron Babbet phoned back.
“Did she sound like she missed me?” Babbet said hopefully when he learned where April had gotten his name. She hadn’t gone into many details. For all Babbet knew, she and Elaine Sharp could be sharing the same desk.
“There was, ummm, a little nostalgia in her eyes,” April said, and winced. Ah well, couldn’t hurt to grease the wheel. Before she could get dragged into this any deeper, she made her request. “I was wondering if you might do me a huge favor, send some faxes my way if it’s not too much trouble. Do you have a clip file on a local businessman by the name of Mullavey?”
Ron Babbet said they did, that he supposed he could, and his next words hit her like a slap: “Which one?”
April frowned a moment. “Excuse me?”
“Which one? What, you didn’t know there were brothers?”
“Apparently not.” She looked over to find Justin, across the loft trying to juggle cat toys. No doubt his briefing on this matter was more limited than even he knew. “I’m looking for the one who runs the food company. Just how many of them are there?”
“Only two,” Babbet said, matter-of-fact. “Common knowledge around here, it’s kind of funny running across someone who knows about one but not the other.” He laughed, clearly delighted. “You’re interested in Andrew Jackson Mullavey, then?”
“Right.”
“He’s a twin, though they don’t look that much alike. A. J., he looks a little more well fed, if you will. He’s the legitimate one. His brother…?” More laughter, with a cynic’s tone. “He’s supposed to be pretty shady, and it’s my opinion that’s correct. That being the case, he’s also pretty slippery. Racketeering, extortion, none of it’s stuck to him. According to him, he’s just a quiet restaurant owner and maritime importer. His name’s Nathan Forrest Mullavey, but he dropped the Mullavey from use years ago, some kind of falling-out with their father. That’s the rumor, at least.” Babbet chuckled. “Andrew Jackson and Nathan Forrest. Their daddy really had a thing for Looziana history, didn’t he?”
April exhaled a long, pent-up sigh. “Just for curiosity’s sake you better send me stuff on both of them.”
They started coming through after half an hour, copies of clippings from the New Orleans newspaper archives. Ron Babbet said he would send enough to give her a good overview of Andrew Jackson Mullavey, an introduction to his brother Nathan Forrest. To the inevitable question of why, April answered with partial truths: Her husband worked on a Mullavey Foods advertising account and was interested in whom he was writing for, since it was his biggest client.
“No kidding?” Babbet had said. “Tell him I love those coffee bag commercials. About time someone picked clean the carcass of that old movie.”
She couldn’t tell if he’d been serious or sarcastic.
Once the final fax had crept from the machine, with a quick sketch of Porky Pig along for the ride, stuttering Th-th-that’s all, April gathered them together, took them to the kitchen table where she and Justin began to read.
She wasn’t sure what she’d been hoping to turn up on the man. Perhaps a hint at darker elements in his life in New Orleans, some scandal, any indication that he was the sort of man who could order the casual death of unsuspecting patrons of his competitor. Nothing of the kind, in any of this. The closest thing to scandal was his brother, Nathan Forrest Mullavey, and even that had to remain at the level of hearsay. Four indictments for alleged mob activity and conspiracy over the past dozen years, but the man’s record was Teflon. You got the idea, reading the articles, the quotes, that most everyone in the Big Easy regarded Nathan Forrest, crooked or not, with a discreetly sidelong wink of indulgence. He had history on his side, piracy and decadence dating back more than 250 years. He was merely upholding tradition. He was a character. He was local.