Retribution (#3)

by M. M. Mayle

  He’s read those parts a dozen times by now and they still don’t ring true. He still smells a rat in there someplace. The cops must have found his knife by now. How could that not be considered a lead? The new wife must have got over being distraught by now and remembered at least one thing about what he looks like. And nothing’s been said about the death of her father—about the dope put in the old man’s water jug. Wouldn’t somebody have figured that out by now? Are they playing dumb or are they playing him for a jackassed-fool?

  He slides the Styrofoam container his supper came in to one side and pushes back in the rickety replacement desk chair like he needs extra room to decide if they do take him for a fool. But till he comes across good reason to believe they don’t, his best bet is to lay low and do whatever else he can to change his appearance.

  The gash on his chin has blood-stiffened black threads sticking out of it like prickers and an oozing crust along its length that’s ugly enough to make most people forget anything else about his face. His hacked-off hair would be the attention-getter if it weren’t for his chin, and when his chin’s healed up some, that’s the area he’ll have to work on. For now, the damage done with the bent scissors is mostly hidden from questioning eyes by the Yankees baseball cap and by avoiding people as much as possible.

  Keeping to himself is no big deal; he’s had lots of practice, after all. The hardship is going without television—that, and the freedom to come and go when he wants. Like now, when he should be on the way to the storage yard to tell Audrey everything he couldn’t bring himself to tell her earlier in the week.

  But it’s not dark yet. He leaves his seat at the desk, leans over the heating-cooling unit to peer out the window. Although the days are getting shorter with August more than half gone, there’s still too much light left at seven-thirty in the evening to risk the walk along Route 22. And it would have to be a walk because the damaged bike is too wobbly to ride next to a busy highway.

  He stays put for a while, taking what relief he can from the recirculated air blasting out of the air conditioner. He can be glad the fan works even if the cooling part doesn’t, and be glad he’s got a roof over his head and food in his belly. Things could be a lot worse. He could be living in a truck inside a storage unit.

  Later, when it’s full dark, he pays a visit to the supply room, again on the lookout for left-behind items that might come in handy. A jug of mouthwash would come in handiest right about now; the medicinal taste could be tolerated for the good it would do his nerves. All he finds along that line are a few sample-sized tubes of toothpaste and a small bottle of cough syrup missing just a swallow or two. He grabs the cough syrup as better than nothing, takes another look around and then leaves without the plain ordinary bandages he was also hoping to find.

  He waits till he’s back behind closed doors before he downs the cough syrup in one gulp. There wasn’t enough of it to produce a real kick, just enough to make him want more of the ingredient that would.

  He stretches out on the unmade bed and wrestles with the urge for a while. When he feels like he’s losing, he takes the urge into the bathroom, where he stares at his reflection without mercy—without the baseball cap, without the salvaged sunglasses, without anything covering the stitched-up wound on his chin that makes it hard to keep his mouth shut. For the first time in his grownup life he’s sorry his kind can’t grow beards. Not that a hairy face would do much good. Even if he had a beard and mustache to hide behind, he still wouldn’t be white.

  In the end, he gives in, puts on the cap and sunglasses, sticks a couple of the cartoon-decorated Band-Aids on his chin and sets out for the Chink watering hole down the road a short piece. On the way there, he walks tall and proud like he’s got nothing to hide. The same goes for inside the place, where slinking along in a secretive way would make him a standout instead of the regular he’s been since the motel bar and restaurant were placed off-limits to motel employees.

  He needn’t have worried about being noticed. At the bar, all the stools are filled and standees are lined up two-deep in places. They’re all fixated on a baseball game on TV with no eyes for any oddities in their midst. The tables are full, too, and the people there are only interested in what they can grab with their eating sticks. If anyone looks up when he passes, it’s to signal one of the busy waiters.

  Hoop takes a position at the less crowded end of the bar near where he sits on quieter nights. Without being overly pushy about it, he shoulders close enough to the bar to ask for a shot of rye whiskey. He takes encouragement that the usual bartender doesn’t seem to recognize him. But that could be because the bartender’s too busy to say hello. Or it could be because Hoop didn’t order a beer with the shot, an order that always brings a scold for requesting two drinks at once.

  Now that he bothers to notice, he sees that the bartender’s not scolding anybody tonight. People are getting whatever they ask for without any backtalk, making him wonder for the first time if backtalk’s just an act, a queer kind of entertainment brought out when things aren’t so busy.

  Hoop downs three shots at sensible intervals before the ballgame ends and the crowd thins out some. He keeps a sharp eye on the TV and the nightly news wrap-up following the game. The same sharp eye notices that the bartender’s still not serving scolds with the drink orders and that one of the remaining barflies is a Chink, the one that’s always here and always nursing a single draft beer for most of the evening.

  In all of Hoop’s eight or ten visits to the restaurant bar he’s never heard the draft beer guy say anything or seen him mix with any of the other Orientals. Tonight’s different, though; every time the bartender comes within range, the formerly silent guy’s got something to say. Even though he’s saying it in that squawky high and low-pitched talk they use, it’s easy to tell there’s a problem. And the bartender’s hand motions say it’s a big problem.

  Whatever’s wrong is still wrong when the draft beer drinker makes threatening motions of his own and stomps out of the place. Hoop returns his attention to the newscast. When it ends without mention of Saturday’s doings in Glen Abbey, he whiles away the rest of the evening with another couple of shots. Wondering what the two Chinamen were arguing about takes the place of wondering if his changed appearance is fooling anybody.

  At closing time he walks out to the bus stop with the bartender the way he always does. They’re not three steps into the smothering August night when the bartender demands to know what happened to his chin and his hair, like curiosity’s been killing him as well.

  “Bike accident,” Hoop says. The haircut he blames on the muggy weather and hurries with the question his quick answers earned him the right to ask. “What was goin’ on back there when that guy started givin’ you a hard time?”

  “Take long time find ghost ID. Want more money forge ID papers bring ode father Taiwan USA.”

  “What’s a ghost ID?” Hoop says and gets an explanation that’s not easy to understand at first. When he does grasp that ghosting is the term for stealing the identity of a dead person, a dozen more questions come to mind right off. Up front is a question about why the old father needs fake ID in the first place. That one he doesn’t ask out loud because he thinks he already knows the answer. Either the father or the son has something to hide and that makes them related to him beyond the racial ties scientists say they have.

  The next most important question he does ask out loud and he does get the answer most hoped for: With enough money, it seems that nearly anything can be bought from the Chink barfly.

  After the bus wheezes off carrying the stretched-thin hard-up bartender to his other job, Hoop is too roused to return to the motel. Never mind that it’s like a sweat lodge out here and he’ll have to walk to the storage yard—that’s the direction he takes.

  He rehearses what he’ll say, how he’ll speak his regrets even though it’s been done more than once before. He’ll list his failures and spell out what’s been learned from them. He’ll admit to the mi
stake made when he didn’t look before leaping. He’ll accept the shame of having been bested by a woman and then tossed off his bike with such force that he lost his weapon.

  After that, he’ll remind Audrey and himself of the times when he did succeed, how he did eliminate several of the worst offenders and one of the surest threats to his freedom. He’ll tell of how he thought to put an old man out of his misery as a means of reeling in the very worst offenders. Then he’ll talk a little about the stick-to-itiveness that had him willing to await opportunity for hours, if not days, in attics and garages, and the chances he’s now willing to take to see this mission through.

  By the time he enters the yard, he’s dizzied by the plans forming up in his head. After he shuts himself into the unit, lifts the cover on the load bed of the El Camino, and crouches down next to the paint bucket, he’s unminding of the heat and airlessness. He might even stay the night if it takes that long to explain everything to Audrey.

  — THIRTEEN —

  Morning, August 28, 1987

  Two weeks after her dream wedding and nightmare follow-up, Laurel approaches the first real task she’s been allowed since. She selects Colin’s newly completed studio as the site for the meeting with Emmet Hollingsworth. The converted dairy is distant enough from the main house to be considered neutral territory and austere enough to discourage socializing, making it the ideal setting for a job interview.

  That she’s conducting the interview at all is concession to an informal committee headed by Colin and including all present staffers and social acquaintances. Or so it seemed when they ganged up on her, arguing that as a former member of the profession she is best qualified to pass final judgment on Emmet, who’s in line to become Colin’s next legal advisor.

  Nate has taken himself out of the selection process for having known Emmet when they were both undergraduate students at Penn. On that basis she perhaps could recuse herself for having had a nodding acquaintance with Emmet when he was one of David Sebastian’s protégés and burning up the fast track leading to junior partner and a plum London assignment.

  But too late for that now; the crunch of footsteps on a gravel path announces his punctual arrival at the studio.

  Emmet’s unruffled exterior belies the relentless energy and ambition that got him where he is at a relatively young age. She’d compare him to a duck—smooth and sleek on the surface and paddling like hell underneath—if she were in the habit of employing tired old metaphors.

  She greets him at the open door, where they exchange pleasantries almost as clichéd as duck comparisons, and welcomes him into the distraction-free environment—distraction-free unless he has undeclared interest in the standard furnishings of a professional recording studio.

  At the large work table, she hopes to get down to business without delay, but no, he has to make consoling noises about “that dreadful business in the States,” as he puts it.

  Beyond sick of consoling noises, she’s ready to shut him down when she sees an opportunity, a fresh brain to pick.

  “Yes,” she says, “the dreadful business . . . over there. What have you heard about it that I might not have? What’s the official buzz over here?”

  Without deviating from duck mode, he responds with what he calls the loudest buzz—that the assailant has been identified. “Some are saying that those close to the situation have known his identity for quite some time.”

  “I see.”

  “The second loudest buzz centers on the rumor that David was not the random victim of a madman, but rather the mistaken victim of a cunning assassin out to get your husband.”

  That’s what she was afraid he’d say. If she reacts at all, he’ll know how much truth there is in that rumor.

  “Backing up a moment . . .” She pauses until composure is a certainty. “What constitutes ‘quite some time’ and who are those considered ‘close to the situation?’” She limits her body language to air quotes around the pertinent phrases.

  “I’ve never heard a specific timeframe mentioned and can only assume those close to the situation would be you, your husband, Nate Isaacs, and his brilliant little assistant.”

  “By brilliant little assistant you mean Amanda Hobbs.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Only a bit of speculation about your father’s death.”

  “In what respect?”

  “That he didn’t die of natural causes.”

  “Where did you hear that?”

  “Chiefly in New York. At David’s funeral. You must have picked up a bit of it yourself.”

  “I heard very little other than the crackle of walkie-talkies. Keep in mind that Colin and I and my American family were three-deep in cops and bodyguards at the time. We had zero opportunity to socialize at the funeral service and abstained from the funeral luncheon rather than turn that into a circus as well.”

  “I feel certain your sacrifice was appreciated once it was understood. But there was no misunderstanding the fantastic courage you showed by appearing at all.”

  He refers to the media blitz and crowd frenzy outside a Fifth Avenue mortuary that made her maiden experience with the mob scene outside Royal Albert Hall seem as nothing. She shudders to recall either one.

  “I couldn’t not attend. I couldn’t not eulogize David, could I?” She falters; she’s revealing too much.

  “From what I’m told of your shared history with David, I can see how that would have been an absolute requirement . . . absolute.”

  “What were you told?”

  “That David was an executor of your grandmother’s estate and for a time functioned as unofficial guardian to you and your siblings. I believe it was also mentioned that he mentored you through Columbia Law.”

  “That’s all? Are you sure that’s all you were told?”

  “Yes.”

  If he’s not telling the truth he’s either very good at not telling the truth or very good at not assimilating gossip. “Very well, but I’ll hazard a guess that you were aware David and Colin had come to a parting of the ways before . . . before David’s tragic demise.”

  “Yes, I was. That had been discussed earlier, so I was indeed aware that the need for a new retainer was not imposed on Mr. Elliot. I fully understood that I would not be picking up dropped reins, so to speak, but would instead be issued a fresh set of reins if I were tapped for the position. That said, I’m relieved to know the resistance I feel from you is unrelated to any accidentally cast impression that I’m attempting to usurp or inherit.”

  His little burst of candor rates high marks, causes her to take an actual look at his resume and pretend she doesn’t already know he comes with strong recommendations from Penn, Harvard Law, and equivalent institutions on this side of the Atlantic. From the several other sets of papers brought to the table, she chooses a rough outline of what his initial duties would entail, slides it across to him, inadvertently including the latest report from Special Agent Bell of the FBI.

  She moves to retrieve the report. Too late. Emmet has already summarized the opening page and is verbalizing what’s known about the five murders allegedly committed by Jakeway. He then displays the page as though introducing evidence; he points at each victim name and eyes her as he might a presiding judge.

  “Shouldn’t Rayce Vaughn’s name appear here?” he challenges.

  Laurel clears her throat to cover the gasp that escapes her. “What . . . what makes you think so?” She hesitates so as not to stammer again. “I can’t imagine where you got an idea like that.”

  “From whatever element in an international chain of command that’s caused the Yard to take another look at the Vaughn matter. They’re not saying precisely where the nudge came from, but it was obviously enough of a nudge to refresh interest in the stalled investigation and draw attention to similarities amongst a series of cases the Bureau’s currently working on in the States. These cases.” He flags the page again. “But regardless where the nudge origina
ted, I’m to understand the renewed Vaughn investigation was put in motion yesterday.”

  “Where did you get that idea?”

  “Direct from Scotland Yard by way of today’s broadsheets. Official release, it was.”

  “I see.” This time she coughs to cover her mounting concern. “I fail to see the connection, though. What is the connection?”

  So far he’s reading her reaction as natural reluctance to pin her hopes on the suicide ruling being overturned. At least that’s how it seems, going by the way he responds to her question.

  He presents a dizzying string of theories and what-ifs that are no less compelling than the ones she and Nate formulated with good reason. But Emmet doesn’t have good reason, does he? And if he does, where did he get it?

  “It all comes down to the drug match-up, doesn’t it then,” he says, satisfied that he’s made enough of a case to go forward with.

  “No, it doesn’t. Even if the cocaine that killed Rayce is from the same batch that killed my father and was found at two other murder scenes, you still have to establish that Jakeway had opportunity and that’s . . .”

  Emmet’s sudden grin is broad and confident.

  “What?”

  “My sources were right. Your father did die of questionable cause and you do know who the assailant is.”

  “Shit!”

  Emmet laughs. So does she, releasing tension and easing the way to a less guarded exchange. She nevertheless limits her contributions to a form of verbalized boilerplate that justifies her business here and isn’t apt to produce any more surprises.

  “I’ll leave those proposals with you,” she says at the end of their hour together. “But I prefer to keep this.” She retrieves Agent Bell’s report and adds it to the other papers she’ll be retaining. “Colin will be in touch,” she assures him even though they both know that’s only a formality, that Emmet is a shoo-in.