Retribution (#3)

by M. M. Mayle

  “Because, you see, at the time Rayce came up with the reading scheme, it was taken for granted I’d eventually resurface wanting to blame myself for . . . her death.”

  “But you didn’t, did you?”

  “No. Never. It’s like the inevitability of it reached me whilst I was supposedly unreachable. But these others I can’t shake off. With David and your father it’s different, and I can’t quite ignore the other three deaths that could have me guilty by association. So maybe you can see why I wouldn’t mind having some strong sentiments to prop me up, actually.”

  He relieves her of the archive; she makes the decision that will cause her heart to skip a beat at all future mention of Rayce. “I’ll help you,” she says. “Together we’ll find the right set of words.”

  — FIFTEEN —

  Late afternoon, August 28, 1987

  “What do you mean unglued?” Nate gets comfortable on the chesterfield in his study, takes grateful sips of wine after a long tedious day. “Rattled? A little addled? A lot addled? Temporary or something more serious?” he responds to Amanda’s announcement about Laurel’s current condition.

  “I want to say temporary, but all things considered . . .”

  “You think she’s having some kind of delayed reaction?”

  “Could be.”

  “Ironic when it’s Colin we were keeping an eye on.”

  “Doubly ironic because it’s her concern for him that’s clouding her judgment and screwing with her common sense.”

  “I’m relieved she spilled the beans to you about the way Rayce must have died.”

  “I’m not. I’d just as soon not be part of that conspiracy.”

  “You see that as a conspiracy?”

  “Well yeah. It is a conspiracy, a conspiracy of silence that could land you both—land us all in jail.”

  “Now don’t you come unglued. If I gave much chance to that happening I never would have entered into the so-called conspiracy. Come here. Bring the wine, come sit beside me.” He motions to her with his recently freed up left arm, pats a place on the sofa.

  She brings the bottle of Barolo from the drinks trolley, refills his glass and ignores his other request. Returned to the chair behind his desk, she looks smaller and more determined than usual, if that’s possible.

  “What if when they catch the Jakeway creep he confesses to switching coke for aspirin and planting it in Colin’s luggage?” she says.

  “What if he does? Unless Laurel or you or I supply the missing link, who’s to know the chain of events? Let’s face it, Amanda, Jakeway doesn’t know he killed Rayce Vaughn and—”

  “Omigod, I never thought of that. I wonder if that’s crossed Laurel’s—”

  “Leave Laurel out of it for now. I was saying that Jakeway has no idea he killed Rayce, and anyone else who thinks he did has to be projecting. Unless they know what you and I and Laurel know, they’re purely projecting—projecting the way Brownie Yates was projecting when he first hit us with the idea.”

  “And the way Emmet Hollingsworth was projecting when he got Laurel all stirred up today. Did I think to tell you it was Hollingsworth who sent her into a tizzy with his belief that Jakeway’s somehow responsible for Rayce’s death?”

  “No, but I’m not surprised. Brownie will have heard that Emmet’s slated to become Colin’s next lawyer. They’ve probably talked by now. They were thick as thieves when we all were in school together and Brownie can be very convincing.”

  “That’s what I told Laurel when I was trying to drum some sense into her. But back to the projection thing . . . Scotland Yard wouldn’t mount an investigation based only on some fast-talker’s projection, would they?”

  “I seriously doubt it. And don’t think I haven’t given a lot of thought to that very thing—to wondering just how much concrete evidence is needed to initiate an official investigation—so that makes me doubly anxious to know what sparked this one. But before I start calling around I’d like to hear about the rest of your day.”

  “You’ve heard the most significant part.”

  “I wouldn’t call your conversation with Laurel the most significant, not if you followed through with what you said you’d be doing.”

  “I did. Follow through, I mean.” She frowns a little, stares at a spot somewhere above his mended shoulder. “I sublet my apartment and brought my clothes and personal things here as promised.”

  “You want to tell me which of those activities is making you avoid eye contact?”

  “You know.”

  “Jesus, I was hoping we were through with the crap about your thinking you shouldn’t live with me unless you contribute in some way. Simply by being here you’re contributing. Can’t you accept that? Can’t you just accept that I want you here?”

  She’s looking at him again. Skeptically, but she is looking.

  “I missed you today,” he says. “A lot. I would’ve taken you with me if there’d been something for you to do in Philadelphia. I wouldn’t have made the trip at all if courtesy wasn’t owed the other board members. Bad form to resign in absentia.”

  “Then you did go through with it.”

  “Yes. And that’s the last one. No more board meetings unless I convene them.” Nate sets down his wine, starts to get up.

  “I’ve got it.” Amanda anticipates him and reaches for the phone. “You want to try for Agent Bell or start with Grillo?”

  “Grillo.”

  Detective Grillo’s evidently chowing down at one New Jersey diner or another because he’s not answering his direct line. Amanda tries his pager number and leaves an urgent request for him to call.

  “You might not want to overdo the urgent thing,” Nate says.

  “I’ll dial down from urgent the minute they have the Jakeway scumbag behind bars.”

  “Urgent it is, then.” He helps himself to more wine, offers her some that she refuses. “How did things stand when you left off with Laurel?” he continues.

  “Hard to say. On one level she’s completely in touch with what she’s obligated to do, and on another level she’s paralyzed with fear—this almost irrational fear—about how Colin will react.” Amanda takes a tiny sip of the scant amount of wine in her glass. “How do you think he’ll react? You know him best.”

  “He’ll go off on her for shielding him, that’s guaranteed. Then it’s anyone’s guess. He may want to become the fourth member of the conspiracy once he realizes the role he played in the tragedy. Or his stronger motivation may be to clear Rayce’s name. He may want to make public that it really was an accident—that Rayce neither slipped back into drug use nor destroyed himself in a fit of despair, the way they’re saying now.”

  “But you don’t think Colin will slip back—”

  “Into self-imposed oblivion? Hell no. When I finally—belatedly—got around to making comparisons, I realized nothing that’s happened recently is anywhere near as traumatizing as the shit that rained down on him before. When I let myself imagine what went on in that truck after he caught up with Aurora . . . Jesus, what could be worse than that confrontation? There she was, with all signs indicating last-stage heroin use and a bad end to the pregnancy. She was way out of control—that part I don’t have to imagine. I actually saw her take a swing at him and I saw him have to reach across the truck cab and restrain her when she continued flailing at him. I saw that much, and knowing Aurora, it wasn’t difficult to imagine her flaunting the needle tracks on her neck and bragging that she’d sold the baby. She was fully capable of telling Colin the baby wasn’t his whether that was hard fact or not, and she wouldn’t have had a problem telling him she’d turned to porn when he cut off the money supply.

  “Nothing that’s happened since—not even David’s murder or the attack on Laurel—can hold a candle to Colin’s final clash with Aurora for sheer debilitating potential. And don’t forget, the assault on his senses didn’t stop there. He still had to deal with the fucking deer, the other truck, and the crash that damn near killed
him. I’m leaving out the very good possibility he witnessed Aurora’s beheading and it didn’t register because he was already down to his base metal. Can you come up with anything worse than that? Where would learning that he may have unknowingly played a part in Rayce’s death rank when compared to being left alone in pitch dark with a headless body while his lungs filled—”

  “O-kay. C’mon, honey, that’s enough. You’re preaching to the choir,” Amanda cuts in.

  “Wait, I’m not finished. One more thing . . . It strikes me that Colin has a powerful defense mechanism in place. He has a great deal to remain viable for, more than he’s ever had before. A wife who adores him for himself, a baby on the way, a resurrected career set to skyrocket, and once the Jakeway threat’s removed, things’ll get even better. He won’t withdraw from that.”

  “Did you mention those specifics to Laurel when she swore you to secrecy?”

  “I didn’t think I had to. I didn’t think it would take her this long to come to the same realization.”

  “Saying she has.”

  “I think we should proceed as though she has and move on. May we please?”

  Amanda relents, accepts a generous portion of wine and joins him on the chesterfield. They’re making a game attempt at avoiding weighty subjects and mellowness is within reach when the phone rings. Amanda jumps to get it, Nate follows her to the desk, where she hands over the receiver and mouths Grillo’s name.

  “You wanna know what livened up the Yard’s interest in the Vaughn drug death. Right?” The detective gets right to it and continues without waiting for an answer. “Remind me who it was pushing the idea of Jakeway’s involvement in the Vaughn overdose.”

  “Brownell Yates, one of my sources,” Nate says.

  “Yeah, that’s him, the writer guy. Anyway, that crackpot theory of his did get me thinkin’. Thinkin’ about the high quality of the coke Vaughn ingested and the high quality of the coke fed to the old guy at the nursing home. So I appealed to agent whassisname—”

  “Special Agent Bell.”

  “I prevailed upon his holiness to requisition a copy of the Vaughn toxicology report and once I got a look at it, my interest went straight through the roof.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because traces of that acid that makes aspirin taste so bad, you know . . .”

  “Acetylsalicylic acid.”

  “Yeah, that’s it. According to the full lab reports from the medical examiner’s office over there in London, trace elements of that acid were found in Vaughn. Nothin’ much was ever made of it because nothin’ says Vaughn didn’t dose himself with legit meds before he took on the verboten stuff. But the fact it did show up rang all my bells and whistles because we’re talkin’ about the exact same substance that showed up in the old Chandler guy’s labs. I didn’t bother Bell with this discovery. Went straight to one of the brotherhood at Scotland Yard where, to their credit, they’re considerin’ this more than a coincidence.”

  “Holy shit! You’re saying the acetylsalicylic acid found in both bodies was the same? Jesus, that means the coke came from the same source as well, and Yates’s theory wasn’t crackpot after all,” Nate says in order to keep Amanda in the loop and further Grillo’s perception that this all comes as a huge surprise.

  “That’s the way it stands. The Yard’s gonna establish the coke match—that’s a sure thing, the match and them establishing it—but I wouldn’t hold my breath when they do.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because it’s gonna take a lot more than the combined forces of the FBI and Scotland Yard to establish how Vaughn came by the stuff that killed him if it wasn’t by his own doing. That’s gonna require some breaks and some outside resources, unlike the Chandler case that was a piece of cake, relatively speakin’. There, you had an old man unable to do for himself, a sittin’ duck when it came to the willful administering of an overdose by an outside party. But Vaughn’s another story altogether. Even with this fresh info, there’s still a lotta missing pieces to that story and it’s gonna take time and superior police work to uncover ’em. So, like I said, I wouldn’t hold my breath.”

  “I hadn’t planned to,” Nate says and prepares to end the call.

  Grillo’s not through, however. “While I’m at it,” the tedious detective says, “I better warn you not to hold your breath about the Floss thing either. With nothin’ more to go on than your pretty little sidekick’s intuition or whatever you wanna call it, I can’t justify wasting manpower on review of that case. Not now, not when I’m already shorthanded and catchin’ no end of flack because Jakeway’s still at large. Yeah, and before I forget, the lid’s still on—one of the few things me and the Bureau agreed about—so continue to treat everything you know as privileged info. Remind your cohorts of that too. No casual talk about any aspect of this investigation or any related investigation till further notice.”

  Nate restates his and his cohorts’ compliance with the gag order and ends the call before Grillo can add anything more.

  Upon supplying the details she hasn’t already deduced, he leads Amanda back to the chesterfield. They pour more wine and silently absorb news that’s both unsurprising and unsettling.

  “Question,” Nate breaks the prolonged silence. “Can you be ready to leave by tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow? I thought I had two weeks at the very least. What about all the loose ends? It could take that long just to—”

  “Don’t worry about it. I’m only cutting back on the North American operation, not shutting down. The office here can take care of anything that can’t be handled by phone or fax.”

  — SIXTEEN —

  Midday, September 13, 1987

  On a Sunday, midway through September, Hoop takes a last look around the motel room. With two exceptions, he’s leaving behind the exact same kind of trash he used to pick through in the lost and found cartons in the supply room—soap, shampoo, toothpaste, a comb, a dulled plastic razor. The exceptions are the battered bike and the cheap coffee maker.

  He takes a last look in the dimly lit bathroom mirror and wouldn’t recognize himself if it weren’t for the color of his skin and the ridged scar on his chin. He runs a hand over his shaved-bald head and adjusts the bought-over-the-counter eyeglasses he has actual need for. Both will take some getting used to, as will the tight collared shirt and the clip-on necktie he’s wearing under the jacket that matches his pants. He may never get used to the slip-on shoes and lightweight black socks that reach up to his knees.

  Because a backpack wouldn’t look right with this getup, it’s an imitation leather valise he hefts when he starts out on the journey that will take him to the Chink restaurant and the storage unit before the worrisome part begins.

  By prearrangement, he goes in the deliveries door of the restaurant. The bartender’s contact is waiting for him in the kitchen, where Hoop tries not to gawk at crates of strange-looking cabbages, cellobags of worm-like sprouts, and trays of raw meats he can’t identify. He tries not to scowl overmuch at the din made by a half-dozen or so Orientals shouting their annoying squawk-talk and clattering knives and cleavers against queer round-bottomed cooking pans. He tries not to gag at the stink of old grease and old sweat that makes him want to stay near the outside door, and he pretends not to feel like he’s being tested when he sees how close the contact is watching his reactions.

  The contact stays glued to a spot next to a pallet piled waist-high with huge bags of rice. Hoop has no choice but join him there.

  “Cash money,” the contact says in a soft voice that barely carries above the cooking noises.

  “Documents,” Hoop says without making a move to open the valise.

  For some reason this makes the contact giggle—giggle without cracking a smile. But it also makes him bring out a thick envelope from inside his suit coat and hand it over on faith.

  Hoop takes his time examining the set of papers that say he’s now Hector Sandoval, a carpet salesman from Albany, New York, inst
ead of Hoople Jakeway, a part-time meat cutter and supermarket worker from Bimmerman, Michigan. This isn’t one of those ghost identities the bartender told him about a few weeks ago; this is a made-up identity that was agreed upon when the contact said it could take weeks or months to find just the right dead person to ghost. This set of papers cost more because forgers and other behind-the-scenes experts demanded a lot. So did the photographer, the contact, and the bartender, who called his hefty share a finder’s fee.

  Hoop holds the social security card up to the light. It looks like his real one except it isn’t as wallet-worn. The driver’s license looks real enough, and so does the certified birth certificate with the raised seal on it. Because he’s never seen one before, he can’t judge if the passport will stand close inspection. But the picture inside will; he holds open the page showing him as he appears now, with the difference he wasn’t wearing a necktie when the picture was taken.

  The contact brings out the plane ticket thrown in as part of the deal. “Jenwin articaw,” he says and hands it over like Hoop would know a fake plane ticket if he saw one. Truth is he wouldn’t, so he takes only a quick gander, mainly to check that the departure date is Sunday, September 13, 1987—today—and stuffs the stapled set of cards inside the passport like he’s done it dozens of times before. Like air travel is old hat and so is forking over large amounts of money to enable it.

  He stays with the casual relaxed pose—good practice for later—as he dips into a pocket for the balance owed. But when he hands over the cash, his insides tense up and something tells him he won’t see any of it again—or see the contact again—if $5,000 worth of phony documents aren’t good enough to fool the experts.

  Money’s not the big worry, though; it’s the chance he’s taking. He’s just hours away from taking the biggest chance of his whole entire life. Bigger even than the drive across the country that came to nothing. And a lot bigger than the chance taken in the lawyerwoman’s attic when things didn’t turn out quite right, or the chance taken in her garage when nothing turned out right. Thought of those failures join with worry about what will happen if an airport gatekeeper sees through his ruse and combine to wet the underarms of his new shirt. He’s so stirred up he’s unaware of the bartender’s arrival till he’s thumped on the back and shown an uneven row of tombstone-like teeth bared in a wide grin.