by Brian Hodge
“I’m thinking now that I may go back. To Haiti. I think I will.”
It was the last thing she had expected to hear. His homeland was all the rage in the news lately, duly elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide having been ousted by the military two months before. Living in exile while fleeing boat people — called economic refugees — were being sent back home, to a government that the United States refused to even recognize. Only the naïve would believe Washington’s claims that the returned Haitians were, in effect, being welcomed with open arms.
And Christophe wanted to return to this?
“Why?” was all she could say.
“I’m no longer of use to anyone here. Perhaps there, I can still be.”
“You could be killed. How can you go back now?”
The way he smiled in that moment made her aware of her ignorance of such matters as words never could. “Because I could be killed. Knowing it’s like that again, when they were so close to ruling themselves … how can I stay away any longer?”
St. Peter, a few blocks toward the river from their hotel of last Friday. The rain had thinned the streets and sidewalks of tourist traffic, and Justin hung back to watch as Moreno was first to enter. Justin counted five minutes, then left the shelter of an overhang halfway down the block.
The Creole Pot had been built into one of the courtyards so prevalent throughout the French Quarter, most never visible from the street. Tables at ground level from wall to wall, plus two floors of balcony dining as the restaurant rose like a brick well, with railings of heavy wood, and greenery twining out of every corner. With a sloping roof of Plexiglas, the place was open to a slab of dismal gray sky.
Justin sat, Moreno to his back on the second level, at a railing table. He declined food, couldn’t help but order a beer when he saw one of the local brands on the menu. The appeal to irony was irresistible.
He nursed it while waiting for company, watching as a couple came in, roughly his and April’s age. They were seated at the next table, dripping water, laughing about the day, such crummy weather for a vacation. So few cares. Had the maître d’ done this to him on purpose? Insult to injury, these melancholy hours of feeling like a fraud, when every ambition had proven to be hollow mockery.
When Andrew Jackson Mullavey joined him, ten minutes late, it seemed the perfect capper for the afternoon.
“Find out what a fairy godmother is?”
Mullavey nodded with flushed cheeks. “I take it to mean you have a hidden gunman here. Should anything happen to you, there’s a bullet for me, too.” He glanced around the ground floor, above. Moreno would never give himself away, and Mullavey would peg him only by lucky guess. “I was told that’s a military intelligence term. Just what kind of friends have you been making, Mr. Gray?”
“Cleaner than yours.” Justin turned his bottle on its rim so Mullavey could see its label, a dark blue rendering of a midnight swamp. Dixie’s Blackened Voodoo Lager. “I thought you might appreciate this. Remind you of anything?”
Justin watched him gather his thoughts and betray nothing but a tiny tick of irritation. He hated the man for it, for the elaborate network of defenses of his ivory tower.
The waiter returned, accompanied by a suited man whose hands fidgeted and who wore an eager smile. “Mr. Mullavey, this is an honor,” he began, and Justin dropped his throbbing forehead to one hand while waiting for the show of adulation to subside. Mullavey was in his element, warmly shaking the manager’s hand. Might he pose for a quick picture later, for the wall? Mullavey was smoother than a politician when he turned the manager down.
“What’s my brother to think, he finds out I’ve seen the inside of another restaurant?” Mullavey winked, and the waiter and the manager went away charmed, not the least bit perturbed that they had both refused to order food.
Now, more than ever, Justin understood why this man could not be beaten. People wouldn’t allow it.
“You done campaigning?”
Mullavey’s eyes frosted over. “I’d like you to get to the point.”
Fine. “We both know why I came up here. We both know the kind of luck I’ve been having trying to get anything done about it. But even if I can’t prove it, we both know what you did to Christophe Granvier.”
“And what, precisely, is that supposed to be?”
Justin rolled his eyes. “You know, we could dance around like this all afternoon, and you wouldn’t admit a thing.” He turned up the lapels of his jacket, then undid a couple more buttons of his shirt and parted it so Mullavey could see his chest. “FYI, I’m not wired. That’d mean this little tête-a-tête, and the lives of my wife and me, depend entirely on you being stupid enough to admit to something. And I’m not about to gamble on that.” He buttoned up again. “So we’ll just take Caribe as a given and go from there. Blink twice if you understand.”
Mullavey glared with flaring nostrils. “I’m listening.”
“Get your brother to call off his dogs, and you win.” From his shirt pocket he withdrew a folded photocopy of the Caribe Almond production schedule, run earlier in the motel’s office. He held it open so Mullavey could see what it was, and when he tore it in two, out ripped another sliver of his soul. He dropped the halves before Mullavey, like an offering, a sacrifice. “You win.”
Mullavey hurriedly wadded them up, thrust them into a pocket of his topcoat, then shrugged out of it and left it draped over the back of his chair.
“Let me spell out some particulars for you,” Justin went on. “Whoever took our hotel room apart Friday night found all the duplicate disks I’d left there, I’m sure you know that. But I had one with me, and they copy so easy, if you miss one, might as well miss them all. It’s like trying to get rid of roaches.
“I’ve got a disk with someone in the media who understands the situation, and who, God bless them, turns out to be a real humanitarian. Let’s call this person M, why don’t we. M will be expecting to hear from me, or my wife, oh, once a week, I’d say. Now, if it appears to M that either or both of us has met an untimely end, or just up and disappeared, M is in a position to do you a lot of harm … because M suddenly has even more fuel for a speculative fire. There’s this industrial espionage thing, and the way it relates to the Caribe poisonings. There are the deaths that circle around your coffee account. Ty Larkin, my wife and me … and with the creepy shit I’ve heard about your brother — let’s not forget him — and some of his associates, I wouldn’t be surprised if you had something to do with Leonard Greenwald, too. There’s the stuff that just doesn’t fit very well with accepted belief about that dead Haitian pulling off a burglary at the jewelry store. And there’s probably more that I’m forgetting about at the moment. But you get the idea, don’t you?”
Very measured, very even: “This is all so very flimsy, I don’t even think it’s strong enough to be called circumstantial.”
“I know that. But circumstantial, you’re talking court of law with that word. I’m talking media exposure. Journalism. Yellow journalism, if it comes to that, I’m not particular. I don’t care if M craps out and has to go to Geraldo Rivera before anyone pays attention. It’ll come out, I guarantee you that, we’re just splitting hairs if we debate where.” Justin leaned in until he could smell the unhealthy taint on Mullavey’s breath. “People love a good conspiracy. It sells papers, boosts ratings … it delivers a bigger advertising share. And if you think you can kill me and still keep this one quiet, then you’re a bigger fool than I was for thinking I could do something about it in the first place. Oh, it’ll sell. It’s just too fucking juicy for someone not to bite.”
Justin leaned back and took stock, damage assessment. The moisture around Mullavey’s hairline could not have been rain.
“One thread is all it takes to start unraveling you,” he said, couldn’t let up now. “Next thing you know, 60 Minutes shows up at your office. Federal agencies start sniffing you out. People start thinking twice about picking up one of your products in the grocery store,
because there’s some unpleasant association about it they can’t put their finger on.
“Now, you can beat it all. You can stonewall the media, you can bribe or threaten or blackmail whoever it takes to keep it out of a grand jury’s hands, and I sure as hell won’t be around for the satisfaction of tuning in to watch you squirm the whole time … but the point is this: Do you really want to chance letting it get that far? Because if you do, go ahead. I figure right now you have somebody outside waiting for you to give him some sign, so he can follow me and kill me later. So give him the thumbs-up and see if I’m bluffing. I came here too far up the creek to bluff.
“Or … we can go our separate ways, and I go back to Tampa and keep this all a festering little secret, and I’ll have the ulcers over it instead of you. It’s your call.”
It may have been the most persuasive pitch he had ever delivered. At the motel he’d made notes, studied and rehearsed them. But there was no way he could ever feel good about having delivered it.
“It’s possible,” said Mullavey, weighing his every word, “that I may be able to intercede on your behalf.” He took out a handkerchief and dabbed at his brow.
“I can’t use possibilities. I need guarantees.”
Mullavey put the handkerchief away and studied the tabletop, frowned at the condiments. “Have a healthy life, Mr. Gray.” The sincerity fell flat, but there was a resigned honesty in his voice. “It’ll no doubt be a long one.”
“The same deal extends to Christophe Granvier. Leave him the fuck alone, and no more work for Luissant Faconde. It’s finished.”
“He’ll not be a problem. Mr. Faconde has … taken his leave.”
Mullavey didn’t look up, and apparently had no more to say, for there was apparently no more that could be said. This is it, we walk out of here and it’s all over, and I don’t think I can ever feel clean again. Perhaps it was humanitarian to end a war by truce, but there was something unsatisfactory about it.
Justin leaned back in his chair to finish the last of the bottle of lager, he and Mullavey like two strangers who happened to be seated at the same table. The couple at the next table over had been brought their food sometime when he hadn’t noticed, and for a moment he was mesmerized by them. Crabs. They had ordered crabs, and with a joyous abandon sat cracking open the shells with wooden mallets. Such messy work to get to the tidbits inside, not a meal for the lazy.
God have mercy upon sellouts great and small, and for these two who sat cracking shells for crabmeat, he wished all the innocence and naïveté they could harbor, before becoming victims themselves. He wished them the survival of ideals, at least a few, and that they might never know the bitterest taste of compromise.
Justin knew he could never leave this place without asking Mullavey one question. “That day in July, when we came up for that meeting in your conference room? I actually respected you then.” He held the mouth of the empty bottle below his own lower lip, leaning in wide-eyed so Mullavey might have a better look through the windows of the soul. “You fooled me. I really thought you cared about the public that day. You reeled off those unemployment stats, and I really thought they mattered to you.” He set the bottle down. “Twenty-six million in charity last year. I just want to know: Why bother?”
Justin hoped for at least a fleeting glimpse into this foe, who sat like a monument on a pedestal of clay. He longed for anguish, and wondered if it was but wishful thinking when he thought perhaps he saw it.
Gruffly, Mullavey cleared his throat and finally looked up. “Were you rebellious in your youth, Mr. Gray?”
“I guess I was. And … I guess my youth lasted longer than it should’ve.”
“And did you ever take a good look at your father, and swear you would never end up being like him?” Mullavey didn’t wait for an answer. “Of course you did, all rebellious young men do.” He cleared his throat again, shifted in his chair beneath a bitter mist of nostalgia. “My brother was a splendid rebel. He turned it into a career. I loved him and I hated him for that, because he … he had the balls to go just the way he wanted. He threw our father’s name right back into his face. And he left me to be the good son.”
Mullavey sat silent for moments, elbows on table, studying his fingertips as he pressed them together. “Fathers are terrifying things to their sons. Especially when there’s so much to live up to … and not much to look up to. When I think of my daddy, I see this stubborn old bastard who refused to die, with more money than the Vatican. I don’t believe he ever gave a nickel to anybody that was not earned.” Then a grin upon Mullavey’s lips, he who laughs last. “Can you imagine the look on my father’s face were he to find out how I spent twenty-six million dollars of his company’s money? Some nights I lie awake and dream about that.”
He allowed himself quiet laughter, until he began to cough. Justin almost liked it better when he had been more of an enigma.
“You might want to keep that story handy, next month,” Justin whispered.
Mullavey looked at him, clearly not understanding.
“Man of the Year,” Justin reminded, then stood, ready to walk out that door and let Moreno catch up as he reclaimed his life. “They expect speeches at those things.”
He took one step, another, was between Mullavey and the young dining couple when the man called him by name. First name, this time, and Justin knew he should keep going, yet knew he would always wonder.
He stopped.
“It is a pity the way this has turned out,” Mullavey said with quiet regret. “I … I really did think the work you did for me was brilliant. Really quite exceptional. Please know that.”
Justin’s head felt too heavy, and he rolled it back atop his stiffened neck, knowing he could have kept walking after almost anything but this. Mullavey just had to remind him about that bit of legal plagiarism, didn’t he, the asshole?
Justin looked at the couple to his right, and their table, littered with crab shells. He reached.
“Excuse me,” he said to them.
And knew, just knew, that he was about to do something very stupid.
Chapter 26
Loss
The apprehension hit even before the motel room door swung open. She heard the slamming of car doors out in the lot, then the approach of loud voices. Justin, Moreno … arguing? April looked at Christophe, sat tight as the door opened and they stormed in
And it was the most peculiar sense of relief she’d felt in years. Had things gone badly, wouldn’t they have come in and begun to prepare for evacuation? Perhaps made a frantic phone call, in advance? But Justin merely looked at her and rolled his eyes, fell back on one of the beds and didn’t move.
“Where’re those cigarettes I had you keep?” Moreno asked Christophe, who frowned in puzzled surprise, then pointed to a dresser drawer.
April stood. “What is it? What happened?”
Moreno waited until he’d lit up and waved out the match. He exhaled a nervous cloud and flicked the dead match across the room, at Justin, like a smoking little comet. “Ask him. Ask the resident fucking genius what he did.”
“Justin.” She looked down at him on the bed, and he appeared so very remote, detached. She knew that look; that sometimes it meant he’d figured something out beyond what anybody else had, and other times it meant she would have a good reason to strangle him.
“We’ll be fine,” he said.
“What did you do?”
He cleared his throat, sat up, rubbed his chin in sheepish reluctance. “I, uh … I let my temper get the better of me.”
April tottered back a step, sat down. Shaking her head in vague denial, and how fortuitous it seemed, all at once, that her body didn’t produce much testosterone, that she was spared its lunkheaded excess. At least firsthand.
“Tell me.” An open demand, for either of them.
Moreno tired of waiting. “He broke Mullavey’s hand with a crab mallet.”
Her voice a hush. “You didn’t.”
Justin, glu
m and flip at the same time. “Guilty.”
April heard herself laughing, there was a certain ludicrous folly about it all. Then she was out of her chair and after Justin, whacking him on the shoulder. Every question at this point was sadly moot — was he crazy, what could he have been thinking — but she asked anyway, and Justin bore it all with such aloof nonchalance that she wanted to slug him harder. How dare he. How dare he.
It was Christophe that pulled her away, hands on her shoulders and steering her back toward the chair, holding her in place until she quit struggling, yes, yes, I’ll stay put, and when she looked at Moreno, he was massaging the bridge of his nose as if laboring the birth of a migraine. Oh, how must they look to him, what a couple of undeserving losers.
“You never think, do you?” she cried at Justin. “Do you?”
“I can recall a time or two a year-and-a-half ago when your own thinking wasn’t too clear.”
Gritting her teeth, surging against the sudden press of Christophe’s hands back on her shoulders, tears in the corners of her eyes like clear bile, and he really knew how to wound her, didn’t he? One lash of the verbal whip and its crack was a complete negation of every Saturday session and ounce of effort she’d exerted to rise above. The strength suddenly fled, and she felt herself tremble. Someone else’s shoulders, a weaker pair, so eagerly left behind to the ravages of the past.
He promised, she thought. A crumpled sound only she could hear. He said he’d never … use that … he promised.
Did he say he was sorry then, and if he did, did he mean it? Or was it merely some convenient white flag, raised and waved, when it might be put to better use as a tourniquet? Women could bleed so much more freely from identical wounds, hearts beating so nearer the surface.
And she fell quiet. Still. Just get rid of it, for now. Find that ash heap of scorched memories and bury this moment until it too smoldered, or the wound festered at a more convenient time. She would at least listen to Justin’s line of reasoning. Looking at him … my husband, my bitter half.