Retribution (#3)

by M. M. Mayle

  “Ode father come next week,” the bartender announces. “Thanks you.” He bows to Hoop. “And thanks you.” He bows even deeper to the contact. “Go caw taxi airport now.”

  The bartender scuttles away before Hoop can explain that he planned on taking a bus to the airport. And that would only be after he went by the storage facility, double-checked on everything there and had a talk with Audrey.

  The contact motions Hoop to leave by the deliveries door. He’s barely gone three steps into the outside when a taxicab comes roaring around the side of the building and skids to a stop. The driver leaning out the window could be the bartender’s twin, right down to the skimpy hair, tobacco-colored skin, and squared-off snaggleteeth.

  “Hop in,” the driver says. “Awe yours. Free ride airport. Goodbye present him.” He waves an arm in the direction of the restaurant and motions Hoop to get in.

  Assuming at least one set of eyes is still watching his every move and testing his worthiness, Hoop shrugs and climbs into the back of the taxi with his valise. He’ll ride till the restaurant’s out of sight and have the driver let him out at the first bus stop they come to. Then again, maybe not. The one worry he’s without is that any of those involved with supplying the phony papers are going to rat on him. To rat on him is to rat on themselves and the guy driving the rattletrap taxicab is clearly one of them. So why not go along with the free ride? Why not see this as a boon and maybe even a sign his luck is finally changing for the better?

  He tells the driver to take him to the storage yard, right here on Route 22, before they go to the airport. For reply the driver only grunts, but shows he understood the request by daredeviling across three lanes of traffic to get to the first crossover they come to. They arrive at the storage facility in record time and the Chink driver again shows understanding when told to wait at the gate.

  “Yah, yah, yah, wait at gate no meter run,” the driver squawks, bobs his head around like it’s loose and pats the place on the dashboard where a meter would be in a real taxicab.

  Hoop laughs for the first time in weeks. Months, even. His spirits are still high when he reaches his unit, works the locks, and lifts the overhead door with the purpose of stocktaking his possessions one last time and having a few more words with Audrey.

  After last week’s sorting-through there’s not a lot left to take stock of. And there’s not much to say to Audrey he hasn’t already said during the nighttime visits that got more frequent after the setback in the Glen Abbey garage. She’s already been told he can’t take her with him—same as he can’t take the dope or the entire supply of money. And he’s already told her the rental fee for the unit has been paid a full year in advance, so she won’t be evicted while he’s away. He assured her of that the same night he told her about braving himself to go to a dry goods store and outfit himself for his new identity.

  He shuts himself into the unit, flicks on the light and opens the rear compartment of the El Camino. He climbs onto the load bed, taking care not to snag his new clothes, and raps on the lid of the paint can to let her know he’s there. In a low voice he tells her that the paid-up rent doesn’t mean he’ll be gone a full year. It only means he’s taking no more chances than he has to. He reminds her that he wouldn’t have dipped into the supply of dirty money if there had been any other quick way to pay for the trip.

  He doesn’t say anything about what using that money could do to his luck. He doesn’t say anything about luck at all, as he looks at the plastic bins holding the stuff he didn’t get rid of last week. He doesn’t look too close or ask himself why he’s hanging on to those things wrung dry of whatever luck they once possessed. He doesn’t give a reason for selecting a couple of those things to take with him. But if he had to give a reason, he’d say the stolen diary and pocket photo album were going along as make-do amulets.

  Hoop maneuvers the bins into a more secure arrangement around the paint bucket and says a hurried goodbye to Audrey. What would be the point in dragging this out any longer? What would be the point in making more promises when so many have been broken? He can’t guarantee success and he was a jackassed-fool for ever thinking he could. He can’t even tell her when he’ll be back, for gosh sake.

  The El Camino could present another parting wrench if that hadn’t already been felt when he took it off the road as too attention-grabbing and sapping of luck. He locks up the back and checks that the cab is secure with about the same amount of feeling he’d show a rundown Jimmy.

  On the ride to the airport he has plenty of time to load his pockets with only what’s needed to get through the checkpoints and onto the plane. Everything else he stows in the valise that he’ll carry on the plane with him.

  He’s fighting off another case of nerves when they cross a bridge that must be as big and long as the Mackinac Bridge back in Michigan. As if he needed a reminder of how poorly he does with heights—of how just thinking about the height planes fly at could turn his bowels to water.

  The driver grunts when traffic comes to a standstill and grunts again when it breaks loose. This goes on the rest of the way to the airport, where Hoop grunts at one of the queerest looking buildings of all time.

  “This it,” the driver says and jerks the taxicab with no meter into the curb lane. “This tee-dubbow-ay,” he says maybe three times before Hoop catches on that this building that looks like a science fiction bird of prey is where he’s supposed to go—the TWA terminal leading to his last chance to settle the score.

  — SEVENTEEN —

  Late night, September 13, 1987

  Shortly before midnight, Colin begins closing down the studio. He goes about it as would an oaf unfamiliar with the procedure. But the slow bumbling approach doesn’t work as intended; the frustration that’s been building all along fails to dissipate through long drawn-out process.

  He locks the door to the ancient building that may as well revert to being a dairy for all the good it’s done lately as a state-of-the-art recording studio. Squeezing milk from cows is a dead sure thing compared to extracting music from keyboard or guitar—especially when you’re not giving it much of a go.

  Frustration is now a full-fledged black mood that shadows him along the graveled path leading to the terrace and the manor house beyond. If he’s honest, he’ll admit his frustration predates tonight’s halfhearted attempt to bring order to a chaos of chords and riffs. He’ll also admit that the black mood’s been threatening for a fortnight at least—for however long it’s been since Laurel took on the task of helping him find just the right words, as she put it the day she came across the archive of Rayce’s self-styled lecture series.

  Colin mounts the steps to the terrace, grimaces in the glare of mercury vapor lamps that were part of the latest security mandate. He quick ducks into the arcade as though the lights might reveal uncharitable thoughts massing in the name of honesty. To enter the house, he’ll have to walk the length of the arcade because the casement doors are bolted this time of night. When he does reach an accessible door, he’ll have to enter a code on a keypad and repeat the bothersome process on the other side before an alarm can sound.

  One of the hounds catches his scent and lopes after him, ever alert to an opportunity to slip indoors, score a handout and a soft spot to sleep. Colin crowds him out of the way, gives his massive head a scratch. “Could be worse, couldn’t it Angus? If I’d agreed to motion sensors you and your mates’d be holed up in the barn for the duration.”

  The usual lights are burning in the kitchen and at either end of the first floor hallway when he reaches that level. The dim glow coming from the winter parlor is standard, and on the second floor the similar glow coming from the boy’s bathroom is a regular sight. So are the little puddles of illumination—the nightlights Laurel insisted on—that mark the distance between the children’s suite and the master suite.

  Within the master suite, the lamp in the far corner of the bedroom is on, draped with a sheer scarf the way it always is, but his attention is dra
wn to the dressing room and the bath beyond. Lights are on in both rooms and both rooms look like they’ve been ransacked by professional raccoons. Drawers and cabinets are left open, trailing all manner of contents.

  He turns back to the dimly lit bedroom with every intention of waking Laurel and demanding an explanation. The bed, when he approaches it, is in complete disarray and unoccupied.

  “What the fuck,” he mutters and takes another look at the dressing room and bath, as though he may have overlooked her in the jumble. She never stays up past eleven now that she feels more and more pregnant every day. If she was hungry, he would have seen her in the kitchen; if one of the lads needed her she would have alerted him when he passed their rooms. If she—a noise from above interrupts his reasoning. It sounded for all the world like someone just slammed shut the heavy door to the attic. At this hour of the night that sound is more disturbing than anything else taken in so far.

  Without considering that someone other than Laurel could have made the sound, he sets off for the third floor at a run. He takes the stairs two at a time, virtually collides with Laurel at the top.

  “What in hell were you doing in the attic at this hour?”

  Laurel tries for nonchalant, fails to achieve it with arms held behind her, hands hidden from view. “I . . . I was looking for something,” she says.

  “No shit. I rather got that idea from the areas laid waste in our bedroom. I hope the attic fared better. And I hope you found whatever you were looking for so we can be spared further disturbance and—”

  “There is absolutely no need for you take that tone with me. I didn’t disturb your precious attic so you—”

  “My precious attic? You’re the one that goes up there every chance like it’s your own personal bolt hole.”

  “I do not. I’ve been up there exactly once since we returned from the States and you’re hardly the one to talk about personal bolt holes when you run off to that goddammed studio every chance you get.”

  “That goddammed studio’s my workplace in case you haven’t noticed.”

  “Oh, I’ve noticed all right. I’ve noticed when you go off to supposedly work there when you’re trying to avoid something—”

  “What are you hiding behind your back?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Let me see.” He reaches for her, she twists away.

  The top of a staircase is no place for an argument to become even remotely physical, so he backs off, backs down a few steps. With great reluctance she relents and lets him see what she was so desperate to find at half after midnight.

  “My sponge bag? My bleedin’ sponge bag?”

  Laurel sits down on the top step, gathers the skirt of her long nightgown close round her ankles and hugs the well-traveled bag to her breasts.

  “You going somewhere you need to take shaving gear? What’s going on? Is this some side effect of pregnancy I don’t know about? I don’t get it, Laurel, I don’t get it at all.”

  “I . . . I just wanted to be sure the bag had been wiped out after the last trip. I got to thinking that something might have spilled . . . that you might not have noticed . . . and put it away damp . . . mildew, you know and—”

  “And the mildew police could’ve paid a surprise visit and there would’ve been hell to pay, not to mention the fines. Hand it over, then.”

  After a weighty moment she complies. He unzips the bag to show her that it was indeed wiped out after its last use; he holds it out to her, demands that she sniff the odorless mold-free interior that was properly aired before being stowed in the attic.

  “When am I gonna hear what this is really about? I rather doubt it’s my hygiene habits and now you’ve got me doubting all this . . . this excessive solicitude you’ve been showing me lately is strictly about finding words to live by from the vast supply Rayce left behind. Maybe you’d better tell me what’s behind all that shit while you’re at it.”

  “It’s not shit,” she says in a small voice. “None of it’s shit. You’ll see.”

  She steps past him without a word, dutifully grasps the handrail and descends the stairs at a sensible pace rather than by the headlong dash that might seem more natural in the middle of a row.

  “Where’re you going now?” he calls after her when she doesn’t stop at the second floor as expected.

  “To get that decanter of whiskey you were working on before you hid out in the studio.”

  “You’re not wanting a drink are you?”

  “Of course not, the whiskey’s for you,” she says and moves beyond earshot.

  The need for strong drink aside, he can gauge the dread he should feel for what’s coming by the way she distances herself from him when she returns with the decanter and a tumbler. She won’t look at him directly and she won’t sit with him at the small table in front of the fireplace where they sometimes take their evening meals—where he’s now expected to drink the whiskey. She won’t even sit on the small couch she favors on other occasions, but instead retreats to a straight back chair that normally functions as a catchall next to the hallway door.

  She clears her throat, flickers her gaze over him before fixing on a spot somewhere above his head. “The day Nate went to my house in New Jersey to get my father’s burial clothes,” she begins, then interrupts herself to say that Nate got a lot more than bargained for. “We both got a lot more than bargained for that day,” she warns before launching into an account of that day that soon has him reeling in his chair.

  When she gets to the hard parts—the worst parts—her delivery goes flat like she’s told the story before or maybe rehearsed telling it. When she reaches the inarguable conclusion about how Rayce died, he motions for her to go quiet while it hits him—sweeps over him in a suffocating wave of grief.

  To her credit, she doesn’t ask if he’s all right—any bloody fool could see that he’s not—or wonder aloud if he’s about to lift off for another visit to inner space. She waits a decent interval before resuming with the obvious—that the investigation has already established an incontrovertible link between Rayce’s death and her father’s.

  “I’ve known since that link was made that my days were numbered—that I was going to have to tell. I’ve known that I was going to have to tell you, but lord knows I didn’t want to. I didn’t want you to suffer any more than you already have. I was wrong to keep this from you—from you and from the authorities, but I couldn’t help it. No minute has gone by that I didn’t want to do the right thing, but I was weak. I was weak, Colin, and I’m terribly, terribly sorry.”

  He watches her literally brace herself for his reaction. Does she think he’s going to strike her, for fuck sake? Does she think he’s going to mount a verbal attack? Does she actually believe he’s capable of speech at this point? Does she have any idea how disappointed he is in her for holding out on him, for shielding him, for pampering him?

  Facing this disappointment is almost as bad as facing his undeniable complicity in Rayce’s death. He would say exactly that to her if he could find his voice—if he could ignore how impossibly excruciatingly fucking lovely she looks at the moment.

  Laurel, in her simple nightdress with her hair fallen loose about her shoulders, her dark eyes gone wide with apprehension, and that indescribable pregnancy glow upon her, is lovelier right now than the day he first laid eyes on her, lovelier than she was on their wedding day. But this is a different sort of loveliness she’s wearing now. This is a pared down sort of loveliness lacking the protective hauteur of the first encounter and the joyous confidence she brought to the marriage ceremony and he’ll be goddammed if he’ll let it get to him.

  “And this!” He finds his voice, lofts the whiskey decanter and slams it down so hard the stopper pops out. “You further insult me by implying I can’t bear up without a crutch of some kind,” he says as though he’d actually enunciated all the other ways she’s insulted him. He picks up the one object on the table that’s safe to throw, thinks better of it and only drops the spong
e bag to the floor. “I’ll assume you were gonna get rid of that in case it still contained a few telltale grains of coke.”

  “No, quite the opposite. I was going to—”

  “Save it, I don’t want to hear anymore. And don’t wait up. I won’t be back. Not tonight, at any rate.”

  “Very well.” She abandons her seat next to the hallway door, saving him the bother of brushing past her as he would one of the hounds. She disappears into the bath, robbing him of the chance to say a lot of shit he’d probably regret at some point.

  On the way back to the studio he debates to what extent Nate will be held responsible for this major sin of omission. No matter what Laurel said about the cover-up coming at her behest, he’d still like to have Nate’s arse for going along with it. And what of Amanda, whom Laurel confessed only learnt of the plot by accident? Does she deserve to suffer for not coming forward? Do any of them deserve to suffer if he accepts the tiresome reason Laurel swore first Nate, then Amanda, to silence?

  Can anyone justifiably be blamed for giving him the rubber glove treatment—to use David Sebastian’s coinage for the way skeptics to his recovery thought he should be handled? But when has understanding ever made that treatment more tolerable?

  “Sod it! Sod ’em all!” he bellows at the door to the studio and goes inside without any pretense of working. He drops down on the couch he had installed for trysting with the muse and attempts to process what he’s learned.

  “Rayce died instead of me, Rayce died because of me,” he repeats like an ostinato from Hell—like the similar chant taken up when David was killed in his place—like the variation on a theme intoned upon learning how and why Laurel’s father died.