Cornered

by Brandon Massey

  “I hope you catch him. He shouldn’t be on the streets.”

  “We would appreciate your cooperation in bringing him into custody.”

  Corey swallowed. That word, cooperation, stuck in his mind like a thumbtack. What else did they know? Or did they know anything?

  If I see a cop on my tail, if I even suspect. .

  Suddenly, the phone rang: the house landline. Nevertheless, Corey jumped as if pinched.

  Falco raised an eyebrow. “You going to answer that?”

  “I’ll be right back,” he said.

  The nearest phone was in the kitchen. Caller ID displayed his office number.

  It was Todd. “Hey, partner. Are you coming in today? We’ve got a conference call in fifteen minutes, nine A.M. sharp.”

  “I’m in the middle of something, Todd. Can you handle it?”

  “No problemo. Everything okay? You sound stressed.”

  Corey choked back a laugh, thinking Stressed? You can’t even imagine.

  “It’s cool. I’ll be in shortly.”

  He hung up and returned to the living room. Falco had picked up one of the photographs of Simone and Jada that stood on an end table, and March was checking out another picture, one of Jada at a ballet recital.

  Such a powerful bolt of anguish struck him that he almost broke down and told them everything. The old, terrible thing Leon was holding over his head, what Leon had done to his family. Corey almost spilled it all, almost gave in to the urge to let these people shoulder his burden and do the tough, dirty work of somehow bringing his family home safe.

  But his knowledge of Leon’s ways kept his lips sealed. If he confessed to the agents, he would, in effect, be signing his wife and daughter’s death certificates.

  The agents looked up at his return.

  “That was someone from my office,” he said, standing behind the chair. “I have a meeting I need to sit in on.”

  “Of course, you’re a busy person, as we all are.” Falco returned the photo to the table. “You have a beautiful family. Your little girl looks a lot like you.”

  Corey pinched the bridge of his nose, hiding his pain. “Thanks. But I really need to get to work.”

  “In a minute, sure. What does your wife do for a living?”

  “She’s a therapist.”

  “Is that so? Where?”

  “She has a private practice on Roswell Road.”

  “I was a psych major at NYU. The education comes in handy out in the field.”

  “I would imagine it does,” he said. “But listen, I haven’t seen or spoken to Leon since last night. If I knew where he was, I’d tell you.”

  “Was he driving a vehicle?”

  “A blue Ford pickup. Looks brand new. It’s probably stolen.”

  “Stolen?” She cocked her head. “Why makes you say that?”

  “I. . I just know how he is.”

  “You know a whole lot about your old friend.” She smiled thinly.

  “Apparently not enough, or else he’d be in your custody right now, wouldn’t he?”

  Falco laughed sourly. “Anything else?”

  He shook his head. “That’s everything I can remember.”

  She rose. Her silent hulk partner stood, too.

  She passed Corey a card. “If you have any more information that might help us, Mr. Webb, please give me a call.”

  “I’ll be sure to do that.”

  “We can’t do our jobs without the cooperation of honest, law-abiding citizens like you,” she said. “We’re all on the same team.”

  “We sure are, at the end of the day,” he said.

  She glanced down the hallway. “Oh, remember to take care of that vase before the lady of the house arrives. Otherwise, she might pitch a fit-oh, pardon that little pun again. I can be repetitive sometimes.” She smiled.

  He smiled back, but inwardly, he felt sick. “I’m on it.”

  The agents left the house. He stood in the doorway and waited until their sedan had driven off before he closed the door.

  He went to the shattered vase.

  Oh, pardon that little pun again. I can be repetitive sometimes.

  Damn. Falco’s message was as clear as the pottery shards on the floor.

  She knew he was lying.

  20

  I’m the man, Leon thought.

  Puffing on a cigarette, wraparound sunglasses perched on his nose, he rode shotgun in the white Ford van while Billy drove and James Brown sang “The Big Payback” on the radio. All he could think about was how impressed he was with himself. He was frequently flattered by himself, of course, was dazzled daily by his own brash brilliance, but this fine morning of all fine mornings, referring to himself as the man wasn’t mere braggadocio-he deserved all the lofty accolades that he was heaping upon his crown.

  He had never attempted a kidnapping, but he had performed like a champ.

  The wifey had fought him like a lioness, to be sure, had almost cracked open a jumbo-size can of whip-ass on him in her mad motherly frenzy to save her little deaf girl, but a vase upside the cranium had slowed her roll, and a haymaker to that smooth tummy had cowed her, and while he hadn’t wanted to hit her-she was so fine that he would have been happy simply basking in her luscious loveliness-she had forced him to do it to get things back on track.

  His throat and nut sack still ached, though, and her nails had left a jagged trail of red scratches on his face that had swollen up like tribal scars and made him look like goddamn Shaka Zulu.

  Fuckin’ bitch, he thought.

  He’d hit her again if she pushed him.

  He’d do worse things than hit her if she tested him again.

  It had been three weeks since he’d had sex, an eternity, and the prolonged period of celibacy made him jumpier than usual, reduced his tolerance for bullshit-one of the most difficult things about being on the lam, in addition to cash shortages, were pussy shortages.

  A tumble in the hay with the foxy wifey might be just the thing he needed to unwind.

  He twisted around. The wifey and the munchkin were snuggled together like war camp refugees on the shabby cloth bench seat, the wifey in a rumpled Minnie Mouse T-shirt, gray sweats, and Reebok sneakers, the cute little crumb snatcher in her pajamas and fluffy pink house slippers.

  They were restrained at the wrists, the wifey with handcuffs, the munchkin with duct tape. Tape had been applied to their eyes, too. Do no evil, see no evil, and in the case of the deaf girl-hear no evil.

  Earlier, the wifey had asked him where he was taking them. He had told her Shangri-la, and she had shut the fuck up ever since.

  But as he looked at them, damn, his mind jumped back to how utterly amazing he was.

  He’d stolen the van ad hoc and painted it to make it appear to be a service vehicle for a local HVAC company. Summoned home by Leon’s call, Corey had swerved into his driveway and hadn’t paid any attention to the van parked halfway down the block that happened to be holding his family. It had given Leon a good belly laugh.

  Now, here they were, about to arrive at their safe abode, right on time, and he wasn’t much of a guy for schedules, plans, boring things of that nature-man proposes, God disposes and all of that-and that was partly why he was so impressed with his performance, too.

  “Damn, I’m good,” he said to Billy. “I’m rapidly becoming the enfant terrible of the whole world, you dig?”

  Beefy hands guiding the wheel, Billy took his gaze off the rearview mirror-he glanced in the mirror every few seconds to adore the munchkin-and gave Leon his dull-eyed look.

  “Yeah,” he said in his rumbling voice, like a grizzly bear that had laboriously learned to speak.

  “This kind of stuff is outside my modus operandi, but I think I’m good at it.” Leon exhaled a ring of smoke. “We might have another career opportunity opening up for us, amigo.”

  “Sounds good,” Billy said, his response to most of Leon’s suggestions. He slurped from the sweaty bottle of Nesquik chocolate milk he k
ept braced in the juncture of his tree-trunk legs, and checked out the munchkin again with a lick of his lips.

  Billy being Billy, he didn’t care much about money or the finer things in life. All he cared about was his chocolate milk and candy bars and perv kiddie pictures. Hey, to each his own.

  Leon had met Billy a year ago on a house painting gig in Memphis. He knew virtually nothing about the guy’s background, but he suspected that Billy was a registered sex offender and had been forced to leave behind his hometown, wherever the hell that was, for a nomadic existence on the highways and byways of America. In that sense, they were like peas in a pod.

  Billy had never asked why Leon was running, either, and Leon hadn’t told him. Their partnership was based on the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy. Leon would dispatch Billy into convenience stores, where they usually had surveillance cameras tracking visitors, and whenever they had to go through highway toll plazas Billy would drive and Leon would duck in the backseat of whatever vehicle he had boosted. But Billy never complained, never posed a problem. He was easy to control, and that made him a perfect partner.

  Billy turned off the tree-lined road and into a subdivision. The big stacked stone sign at the wide entrance announced ARCHER LAKE in gold calligraphic letters. A blue-and-white sign standing nearby in the grass proclaimed: FROM THE 300S. NEW HOME SITES AVAILABLE!

  It was a community of twenty-one upscale properties, gigantic brick houses on rambling islands of land. Corey’s McMansion would have fit right in there, and the irony of it made Leon grin.

  Unlike Corey’s neighborhood, however, every one of these homes stood empty. None of them had even been fully built. They missed windows, doors. Others plots had no houses at all standing on them, were nothing but parcels of red clay cordoned off by orange construction cones and black plastic silt fences.

  Leon could surmise what had happened there because he was abreast of all the business news, skimmed The Wall Street Journal and various mags just about every day. When the real estate market had tanked a little while ago during the subprime mortgage catastrophe, communities across metro Atlanta had fallen apart. Record foreclosures. Spiraling property values. People kicked out on the street like stepchildren with their furniture dumped on the curb. Housing subdivisions like this one stood vacant and incomplete for want of qualified buyers.

  Too bad, so sad.

  Such calamitous economic events were a strong argument in favor of the lifestyle he enjoyed. He wasn’t bound by a mortgage or a lease or a car note or furniture, not him. He walked the Earth like Caine from Kung Fu, came and went as he pleased, where he pleased, when he pleased. He didn’t owe anyone anything, not a damn thing; he was as free as a falcon in the great blue sky.

  After this job was over, after his home boy paid what he owed him-and he was going to pay him, of that Leon had no doubt-he would be set for a long time, living back in the plush and putting on the Ritz, free to do whatever he wanted.

  Billy backed the van into the driveway of a four-bedroom, two-story home in a cul-de-sac. They’d visited late last night to organize things there, another bit of planning that wasn’t in Leon’s nature, but which was required this time around, hey, sometimes you did what you had to do when the payoff was worth it.

  Inside, everything was in place.

  All he had to do was take the Webb ladies in, hunker down, and wait for his money. He had a stack of stolen library books he could skim to pass the time-he was especially looking forward to a new text of Latin phrases-plenty to eat and drink and smoke, and his Glock nine. Everything a growing boy needed.

  I amaze myself, I really, really do.

  “Open the garage door,” he said to Billy. “Let’s get ready to herd ’em in.”

  Billy looked longingly in the rearview mirror once more, and climbed out of the van.

  Leon extinguished his cigarette. He pulled off his sunglasses and hooked a glance over his shoulder.

  “We’re here, ladies,” he said. “Welcome to Casa de Sharpe.”

  21

  Simone had earned a doctorate in clinical psychology, had counseled hundreds of individuals, couples, and families over the years through crisis situations, but here, in her hour of need, all of her training, education, and experience deserted her.

  She was more frightened than she’d ever been in her life.

  The vehicle in which they were traveling had ground to a stop, and Leon had announced that they were home. They had been driving for fifty or sixty minutes, she estimated, which meant they were somewhere in metro Atlanta.

  Given her fearful state of mind, they might as well have landed on a different planet.

  She was not frightened for herself-she was hardly thinking about herself-she was frightened for Jada. She’d overheard Leon when he’d spoken to Corey on the telephone. Leon had said a lot to her husband, had spewed hundreds of words that had troubled her, but one remark above all the others had sliced through her heart like a hot stiletto blade.

  I’ll let my partner do whatever he likes to your little munchkin. .

  At home, before they had taped her eyes shut, Simone had seen Leon’s partner. He was a mammoth of a man, with a disconcerting gaze that betrayed a low IQ, and possibly mental illness. She’d seen how he’d looked at Jada.

  Please, Lord, keep my baby safe, she prayed. Let no harm come to her.

  Throughout this ordeal, she’d kept her attention and energies focused on Jada. She’d whispered words of reassurance in her ear, trusting that Jada would feel her love even if she couldn’t hear what Simone said. She pressed her lips to Jada’s warm cheek. Buried her nose in Jada’s soft hair.

  Cuddled as closely together as their restraints would allow, Jada had been crying when they’d first been placed in the vehicle, but she’d soon quieted, drawing in deep breaths, soothed, Simone hoped, by her presence.

  If she could stay close to Jada, they could get through this together. Jada gave her the best reason in the world to stay strong.

  Although she had no clue how Corey would raise the staggering amount of money Leon had demanded, she would not let herself think about it. It was out of her control, she and her daughter mere pawns in this deadly match between Corey and this mad man. She would concentrate everything she had on Jada, and pray that Corey would somehow come through for them as he’d promised he would.

  The engine cut off. She heard doors clatter open.

  Cool air swirled inside. The air carried woodsy scents and the songs of chirping birds, none of which told her anything definitive about where they had been taken.

  A damp hand grabbed her forearm, fingers digging like hooks into her flesh. She hissed in pain.

  “Let’s go, ma cherie,” Leon said.

  He wrenched her off the seat, away from Jada. Jada let out a terrified squawk.

  “It’s okay, baby,” Simone said. “Mom’s not going anywhere. We’re staying together, we’re only going inside the house.”

  Jada’s protests quieted to a whimper.

  “I thought she was deaf?” Leon asked.

  “You’d never understand,” she said.

  He grunted and jerked her outside the vehicle. She swayed on her feet, her abdomen tender from when he’d punched her, her head aching as if she’d suffered a mild concussion when the vase had struck her. She wriggled her fingers. Her hands, chained in front of her, were numb from restricted blood circulation.

  Leon pinched her butt. She flinched away.

  “Keep your damn hands off me,” she spat.

  “My, my, my, so much junk in the trunk.” He snickered. “All right, all right, let’s go in, yeah, let’s go.”

  Grabbing her by the bicep, he ushered her across a dank, echoing space that sounded like a garage, and through a doorway. The air was cool and stale. She smelled drywall, dust, paint. Her sneakers tramped across what felt like a hardwood floor.

  “Where are we?” she asked.

  “The love shack,” he said, and giggled in his weird way.

&nb
sp; He shoved her through another doorway. She stumbled forward and tripped over something, losing her balance with a small shout, and landed atop a large, cushioned surface. A mattress?

  A door slammed behind her. She heard plodding footsteps in another part of the house, wood creaking. It sounded like someone climbing a staircase.

  At the realization, fear clenched her.

  “Where’s my daughter?” she said.

  “Sit up,” Leon said, “and hold still.”

  “Where the hell is that sick bastard taking my baby?”

  “Do you want me to remove the tape from your eyes or not? I can leave it on. I’ve got no problem with that, and I’ll let you sit here blind as Stevie Wonder if that’s your choice. Perhaps that would be poetic justice, your daughter deaf, and you blind, what do you think, huh?”

  She was almost hyperventilating. She sucked in her bottom lip, tasted blood from when she’d bitten it earlier, and willed her heart rate to slow.

  “Okay. . okay,” she said. “Please. . take off the blindfold. Please.”

  He ripped the tape from her eyes, tearing away a thin layer of skin and hair in the process.

  “You bastard!” she screamed, face burning.

  “There we go now, there we go.” He knelt in front of her. “Now I can gaze into those big, pretty brown eyes.”

  Wincing, she blinked her sore eyelids, and looked around.

  They were in a master bedroom. It had plain white walls, crown molding, a dusty hardwood floor. A large fireplace with a marble mantelpiece. Two long windows barred with thick planks of plywood, bands of gray light filtering inside. A tray ceiling. Overhead, where a fan would have been installed, a bundle of wires dangled like a severed umbilical cord.

  There was no furniture except for the full-size mattress on which she sat, and a plastic folding chair a few feet away. A door at the other end of the room led to a shadowed bathroom.