Shotgun Opera

by Victor Gischler

  Nikki said, “Get the furnace going, Althea. I’ll help you put in the bodies when it’s ready.”

  She went back to the library, cleaned the sword on her shirt, and put it back on the mantel. “Thanks for lending me your sword, Daddy.”

  She looked back, and saw her footprints in blood leading into the library. At some point during the fight, she’d stepped in a puddle of somebody’s blood. She grabbed the rum bottle, tossed the coffee into a nearby fern, and refilled the mug with rum.

  Her hands shook.

  Nikki had made countless enemies, but who could know she was here? Who had the means and motive to find and eliminate her? Only the man with the voice. She tossed back the rum. It burned. She coughed, wiped her mouth.

  But these men had been no threat. Now that Nikki had the chance to think about it calmly, she realized the men had been laughingly easy to kill. Did the man with the voice really believe these third-rate thugs had a chance to take her? It didn’t make sense.

  Still, somebody wanted her dead, and maybe the next hit squad would be more confident. Nikki decided she needed help, somebody to watch her back. And it had to be someone she could trust. Family. But Middle Sister wasn’t answering her phone.

  She poured another drink, considered her options. Could she possibly, did she dare, give Baby Sister a call?

  Baby Sister was family, but she was also a loose cannon. Baby Sister frightened Nikki sometimes. There was something in the eighteen-year-old hellion that delighted in pain and cruelty. Baby Sister was the reason they’d given up on family pets.

  But there was no alternative. Nikki needed a sidekick, and Baby Sister was the only choice available.

  Tomorrow morning Nikki would call the asylum.

  24

  Mike Foley didn’t get far. He didn’t know where he was going.

  He couldn’t drive the Caddy with one eye closed anymore. One side of his face was cramping. Both eyes open didn’t work either. Everything went all fuzzy. He hadn’t recovered from the whack in the head Enrique Mars had given him.

  So Mike had pulled into a Wal-Mart an hour south of Tulsa, purchased gauze and surgical tape, and taped his bad eye closed. Now it would stay shut without him having to think about it. He didn’t like the way the tape looked, so he bought a black eye patch to go over the tape. He also bought a tube of Bengay.

  Back on the road, he caught sight of himself in the rearview mirror. Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum.

  He drove another hour but had to give it up. His shoulders were tight, and he was finally feeling the hike to the helicopter and back. His knees and lower back were screaming. He pulled into a La Quinta Inn and got himself a nonsmoking room. He rubbed the Bengay into his neck and knees and lay flat on the bed in his boxer shorts for an hour and a half.

  He got up and dressed, his knees only marginally better. He went across the street, purchased a meatball sub and a Pepsi and took them back to his room. While he ate, he went over what he’d taken from Meredith Cornwall-Jenkins and Enrique Mars.

  Mike had trouble with what he found in the woman’s purse. Was he reading this right? Was she a schoolteacher? The contact numbers for her school and principal were in her purse. Also, a list of substitute teachers and home numbers in case she was absent. A teacher’s union card. Parent-teacher conferences penciled into her schedule book. Was this some kind of cover identity?

  He set the purse aside and picked up her cell phone. He scrolled through the recent calls, jotted the numbers down on a La Quinta notepad.

  Enrique Mars’s possessions were less revealing. Two credit cars, Visa and Discover. No cash. No business cards. No personal photos. The appointment book didn’t at first seem any more helpful. Names and dates and phone numbers, none of which stuck out as significant.

  He showered, let hot water strike his back until it turned cold. He looked at himself in the bathroom mirror while he was drying off. Dark circles under his eyes. His white stubble came in like a light coat of frosting. He wished he’d thought to buy a razor at Wal-Mart. He sat on the bed and rubbed more Bengay into his knees.

  He spread Mars’s and Meredith’s belongings across the bed. It took about an hour to find it. But after comparing all the phone numbers, Meredith and Enrique had only one in common. A man named Louis Ortega. And Mars’s appointment book even had an address listed.

  Mike turned out the light and got a good night’s sleep. In the morning, he checked out of the La Quinta Inn and pointed the Cadillac toward Oklahoma City.

  25

  Elizabeth “Lizzy” Cornwall was a real piece of work. Clear, Goth white skin, a shock of hot pink hair sticking out in all directions. A silver ring in her nose connected to another near her eye by a thin silver chain. Deep burgundy lipstick. A tattoo of a thorny vine around her neck. She wore a black T-shirt, ripped jeans, and combat boots.

  She sat at a table, popping potato chips into her mouth and crunching loudly.

  The table and two chairs were the stark white room’s only furnishings. A second later, a man entered, bland and sallow, thinning, sandy hair. A brown suit. Round glasses. He sat in the chair across from Lizzy with a felt tip pen and a clipboard.

  “Good morning, Elizabeth.”

  “Good morning to you, Dr. Bryant.” She popped another chip into her mouth. Crunch.

  “And how are you?” Bryant asked. “I’m told you assaulted one of the orderlies and took his cigarettes.”

  “Yup.”

  “Uh-huh. Uh-huh.” Bryant scribbled on the clipboard. “I mean, it’s just that I thought we were making progress.”

  “Did you?” Crunch.

  “You broke Brad’s jaw. I mean, that’s just uncalled-for. Honestly. If you’d asked, I’m sure he’d have given you a cigarette.”

  “If you’re going to have an entire ward for patients with violence and anger problems, you really should have tougher orderlies.”

  “Brad is six-foot-four. He wrestled for Louisiana State.”

  “He smokes menthol cigarettes,” Lizzy said. “He’s a sissy.”

  “Are you unhappy here? Is that it? Is there anything you want?”

  Lizzy said, “All I want, Dr. Bryant, is to eat Lay’s Kettle Cooked Jalapeńo chips and to kill you.” Crunch.

  Bryant squirmed in his chair, tugged his tie loose. “Yes, well.” He cleared his throat. “You might not have to worry about me or the institute any longer. Your sister is here to sign for your release.”

  Lizzy froze, a potato chip halfway to her mouth. “I’m getting out?”

  “Possibly,” Bryant said. “Your sister wants to have a word with you first.” He stood, tucked the clipboard under his arm and the pen into a shirt pocket. He backed toward the door, reached behind him, and knocked, always keeping his eyes on the ferocious girl with the pink hair.

  “Personally, I think you should go. I’ve really tried my best, you know? Honestly. You don’t want to get better.” He scuttled through the door and shut it quickly behind him.

  Lizzy wasn’t listening. She was thinking about getting out. It had been eight months since her sisters had dumped her into this cushy, overpriced loony bin. Admittedly, she had been blind with rage and out of control. Eight months of therapy had told her what she already knew. She hated her dead father, resented her addle-brained mother, and absolutely despised her sisters.

  Lizzy Cornwall was eighteen years old. Mother and Father had decided to have her late in life. A feeble attempt to bring something warm and familial to a marriage that had gone cold and platonic. It hadn’t worked.

  Father had nearly always been gone, off somewhere, subverting a Third World government or pulling the plug on uncooperative dictators. When home, he seemed to regard her as this thing always underfoot, this eating, sleeping, playing obligation. His perfunctory attentions were stiff and formal. Hello, Daughter, how was school today? What? A problem with a teacher? Ask your mother about that.

  And if Father was cold and distant, then Mother smothered her. With Lizzy’s sisters grown and gone from the house, and Father off to unknown corners of the globe, Mother
had made Lizzy her twenty-four-hour-a-day project. It somehow became Lizzy’s job to fill Mother’s time and mute her heavy gray loneliness. When Lizzy should have been playing dolls with the neighborhood kids, she was instead learning to throw knives or listening to her mother cry long into the night.

  The Garden District mansion was the real asylum, dark and eerily quiet except for her mother’s sobs echoing through the cold halls. She was a little girl. It hadn’t been fair. She wanted to run in the park. She wanted to play dress-up and get into Mother’s makeup.

  Her mother’s crushing loneliness became her own.

  Lizzy pushed the bag of potato chips away, sat in the white room. The quiet was so heavy, it pushed at her from all sides, squeezed her, mashed the air out of her. She recognized what was happening, fell into the breathing exercises she’d learned the first weeks in the institute. She closed her eyes, searched for her safe place.

  The sound of the door creaking open jerked her from her reverie. She opened her eyes.

  Big Sister walked in, sat in the chair across from her, arms crossed. They didn’t say anything for a few seconds.

  Nikki pulled a pack of cigarettes out of her purse. Unfiltered Camels. She slid them across the table to Lizzy. “I heard you had some trouble getting smokes.”

  Lizzy opened the pack, shook one out, and popped it into her mouth. “Got a light?”

  “Nope.”

  Lizzy sighed, stuck the cigarette behind her ear. “Am I getting out or not?”

  “That depends on you, doesn’t it?”

  “You mean, will I keep my hands to myself and play well with others?”

  “That’s exactly what I mean.”

  Lizzy cocked her head, looked at the ceiling, and bit a thumbnail. There was something going on here. It didn’t seem likely that Big Sister was suddenly lonely for her company. “What do you want?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Lizzy made a don’t jerk me around face. “I’ve been safely out of the way for eight months. Crazy, pain-in-the-ass Baby Sister under lock and key in the booby hatch. Nobody in the family need get their hands dirty. The polite doctors in the white coats will handle everything. But now here you are. You need me for something.”

  “Okay, sure. I need you for something.”

  “At least you admit it.”

  Nikki said, “Let me sign you out, and I’ll fill you in on the way home.”

  “You just toss me in here to rot, and now I’m supposed to be grateful that you’re going to get me out so I can do some dirty job for you?” Lizzy wanted out. Desperately. But she had some pride too. She didn’t like being shoved around. That’s always how it had been. Shut up and toe the line, Baby Sister. You’re the youngest. Don’t ask questions. Don’t sass back.

  Fuck that. Somehow, she was going to get some control over her life again.

  Nikki sighed. “Better in here than in jail, Lizzy.”

  “The judge said six months of therapy,” Lizzy said. “You kept me in here another two months for some extra help.” Lizzy made air quotes around the words extra help with her fingers.

  “You killed a man.”

  “It was self-defense.”

  Nikki nodded. “Yes. That’s right. I know it was. But you stabbed him twenty-two times. The police thought it excessive.”

  “H-he put his hands on me.” Lizzy’s hands balled into fists. Something savage flashed in her eyes. “He got what he deserved. Filthy little—”

  “You were running away from home,” Nikki reminded her. “You were running away and down a dark alley, then suddenly this man is dead at your feet with a knife sticking out of him.”

  “I was not running away,” Lizzy flared. “When you’re ten you run away. When you’re an adult it’s just leaving. I was leaving. What did you think? Did you think I was going to stay at home forever, sitting there looking into Mother’s vacant eyes and watching her knit until hell froze over? I had to get out of there. I had to find some kind of life. And you and Meredith just left me there. You left me. Alone in that house with Mother. Even Dad got to die!” She realized she was standing, fists so tight her fingernails dug into her palms, drew blood. She trembled all over.

  “You see?” Nikki said. “Look at you. You fly off without warning. You remember doing that in court? Remember what the judge said?”

  “Fuck you.”

  “It was the institute or jail. We were looking out for you.”

  “Just get me out of here,” Lizzy said. “Get me out and I’ll do whatever you want.” But when your back is turned, you can kiss my ass good-bye.

  * * *

  The institute was in a wooded area on a small lake in Slidell, and the drive back to New Orleans was wet and gray. Nikki drove her mother’s Bentley. The windshield wipers slapped a hypnotic rhythm. The radio weatherman assured listeners that the real heavy stuff was still stewing over the Gulf but would arrive soon.

  The weather seemed to match the mood of the girl slumped in the passenger seat. Baby Sister was a brooding enigma. What sort of disturbed thoughts lurked behind those dark eyes, Nikki could only guess. But Lizzy had been right about one thing. Nikki and Meredith had left her alone to look after Mother. They’d ditched her. Why worry that Mother was knocking around in a great, empty house? Lizzy was there. Lizzy would keep her company. As if Baby Sister were some sort of accessory they’d purchased online as a companion for an old lady. That alone might drive the girl bonkers. It certainly explained— at least in part— the anger.

  Apologies would have to come later. Sometime in the unknown future they might go on some women’s get-in-touch-with-your-feelings retreat and Nikki and Lizzy could have some sort of warm and fuzzy moment of healing and they could go on Dr. Phil and everything could be candy and roses.

  But not today.

  Today they had to shove their differences aside. They had to watch each other’s backs. It was time for family to come together. There was a bond. A family bond of blood, and such a bond superseded any petty differences she and her sister might have had in the past. Now Nikki just needed to explain all that shit in a way that seemed believable.

  She told it to Lizzy like a little story, didn’t rush it, left in all the gory details, didn’t try to embellish or gloss over anything. The job she’d taken to erase these guys in New York, how one had fled to Oklahoma, the wrist injury, Nikki’s own nagging doubts about her place in the world and how she needed a life change. The only part that was hard to tell was about Meredith. Nikki felt guilty she’d bullied Middle Sister into doing her dirty work, felt frightened that there had been no word from Meredith since Nikki had sent her into the line of fire.

  The more Nikki tried to tie up these final loose ends so she could get on with her new life, the more the loose ends frayed and unraveled and became a tangled mess.

  Nikki ended her account with the break-in by the thugs who’d tried to kill her. “That’s why I came to get you. I needed somebody I could trust.”

  “I’m not interested in being your bodyguard,” Lizzy said.

  “I don’t need a bodyguard,” Nikki said. “I need a sister.” A sister who can hack a man’s heart out with a shrimp fork.

  The silence stretched. The gray sky deepened to black. A storm was coming.

  “I guess I should get out to Oklahoma then,” Lizzy said.

  Nikki blinked. “What?”

  “Somebody should find Meredith,” Lizzy said.

  “No, that’s not— you can’t just run off to—”