Blood in the Water

by Michael Prescott

  On tiptoe she advanced down the hallway to the closet, mentally counting the seconds.

  One hippopotamus … two hippopotamus …

  She reached the closet. Tugged at the door. It didn’t budge. She pulled harder. Nothing.

  Locked.

  Shit.

  Victoria hadn’t said anything about that. Maybe she forgot. Maybe the closet usually wasn’t locked. Maybe something else, but it didn’t matter now. What mattered was getting the damn door open before she ran out of time.

  Six hippopotamus …

  She dug into her burglar’s kit again. Couldn’t worry about making noise now. It was lock bumping time.

  From the kit she pulled out a bump key she’d filed herself, using a downloaded template. She pushed it into the keyhole and struck it with the bolt cutter, the closest thing she had to a blunt instrument.

  The rap of metal on metal sounded painfully loud to her, but she didn’t think it would be heard upstairs.

  The first bump didn’t work. She hadn’t struck hard enough, probably.

  Thirteen hippopotamus …

  She gave it a harder whack. This time the knob turned under her hand.

  She was in.

  Stepping into the closet, she looked for a metal box mounted on the wall.

  Another unwelcome surprise.

  There were three boxes.

  Okay, keep it together, you’ve got plenty of time.

  Nineteen hippopotamus …

  She snapped on the closet light and checked the first box. It carried a Danger High Voltage sticker, which meant it was probably some kind of junction box. Not what she wanted.

  The second box was full of circuit breakers. A fuse board.

  Which left number three, a featureless gray rectangle. That had to be the one.

  She grabbed hold of the thing with both hands and gave a hard yank, ripping it free in a powdery shower of drywall plaster.

  The wires were still attached, though. They extended from the back of the box into a hole in the wall.

  Twenty-six hippopotamus …

  She closed her fist over the wires and tore them loose.

  Twenty-eight hippopotamus.

  She’d beaten the clock with two hippopotami to spare.

  For a long moment she remained in the closet, letting her pulse return to normal and listening to the voices in the house. They were coming from upstairs, and though they’d been audible the whole time, she hadn’t had the luxury of paying attention to them until now.

  “We can go at this all night.” That was Frank.

  “I’m telling you the truth.” Victoria, exhausted, hopeless. “I don’t know anything about this—this Bonnie Parker.”

  “Quit fucking lying to me!”

  A meaty smack, a groan from Victoria, and the babies started crying.

  Bonnie took out the Walther. She didn’t have a silencer for it; she’d planned to use a pillow or something to muffle the shot. Now silence wasn’t an issue.

  She could make all the noise she wanted when she killed Frank Lazzaro.

  Moving fast, she climbed the staircase and started down the upstairs hall. The voices were coming from the far end, the last door on the left. The door hung open, the door frame limned by a strange flickering light.

  She checked the gun as she proceeded along the corridor. The safety was off, a round already chambered. This had to be a quick kill, nothing fancy, a double tap in the chest and one in the forehead. She couldn’t allow Frank time to think or react. Though she’d taunted him in the hotel by calling him old and slow, in truth he was a stone killer, and she could give him no quarter.

  She was alongside the doorway now. From inside the room came the sound of another blow. She didn’t think it was a fist. More like a whip. A strap.

  It was a bad idea to peek around corners, but in this case she risked a glance. She needed to know what she was walking into.

  Her glimpse lasted a half second, and she didn’t process it until she’d ducked back out of sight. Then she focused on the image that was frozen like a screen capture in her mind.

  Victoria on the hardwood floor, topless except for a blood-smeared bra, her back scored with thick red welts and bleeding gashes. Frank looming over her, his back to the doorway, in a suit jacket, his necktie loose and flapping around his neck, a long leather belt in his hands. Behind them both, a semicircle of candles on the floor, lighting up a skeleton idol.

  It was a picture of raw insanity, something out of a medieval dungeon or a Black Mass. She’d known Frank was a bad man, but what she’d just seen was beyond ordinary evil. This was nightmare fuel, torture porn.

  And it ended now.

  She pivoted into the room, the gun in both hands, ready to open fire and send Frank Lazzaro to hell.

  But she couldn’t.

  In the space of a few seconds, everything had changed. Frank no longer stood with his back to the hallway. His belt lay on the floor like a discarded snakeskin. He had pulled his wife to her feet, using her as a human shield. In his hand was a hunting knife, the blade laid across her throat.

  “Hello, Parker,” he said, his face half hidden behind the tangled mess of Victoria’s hair.

  Bonnie trained the gun on him. She didn’t know how he could have known she was there. Maybe he really did have supernatural powers, as his wife had said.

  She almost believed it, until she saw the oval mirror that backed the shrine. It must have picked up her reflection when she’d looked in.

  God damn it. It was always the little things that tripped you up.

  “Shoot me,” Frank said, “and I’ll rip open her throat like a paper bag. Unless you think you can drop me so cold I won’t have time to twitch. Is that what you think, Parker? Are you that good?”

  “Do it, Bonnie,” Victoria whispered. “It doesn’t matter. Just do it.”

  “Sure.” Frank was smiling fiercely, his eyes as dark and crazy as they’d been in the hotel lobby. “Go ahead, Parker. Save the fucking day.”

  Bonnie steadied the gun. She almost had the angle she needed. If she could direct the bullet just past Victoria’s left ear and ding Frank in the temple …

  Down the hall, the babies were still crying. Babies who would be orphaned if she messed this up. Losing a dad like Frank would be no tragedy. But they’d be left without a mom also.

  “What are you waiting for?” Frank said. “Prove how good you are.”

  “Go ahead,” Victoria said. “Whatever happens, it’s all right.”

  “See how noble my wife is? She’s a fucking saint, Parker. You can help send her to heaven.”

  The babies were what decided things. It was stupid, probably, but she couldn’t risk the shot while they cried for their mother.

  Bonnie let the Walther drop from her fingers, then kicked it across the polished floor.

  An inarticulate noise was dragged out of Victoria, a cross between a sigh and a groan. It was a sound that belonged at a funeral. It seemed to fit the moment.

  “Well, what d’you know.” Frank’s mouth was a mirthless smirk. “Looks like my prayers have been answered.”

  CHAPTER 36

  Frank was feeling very damn good about things. He didn’t know how he could ever have worried about giving himself to the animal within him. There was no danger. Even now, though the black beast was loose, he remained in control. He had not surrendered his identity or self-mastery. He had surrendered nothing. He and the beast were one.

  He released his hold on Victoria and stooped to retrieve Bonnie Parker’s gun from the floor.

  He’d been right about the girl. She didn’t have enough hate in her, or enough ruthlessness. At the crucial decision point, when it counted most, she’d proved herself soft, weak. She’d traded her life for another’s.

  Frank intended to make her regret that trade.

  “Okay,” he said smoothly, the pistol riding light and easy in his hand. “Here’s how we play this. You and me, Parker—we’re taking a trip.”

/>   “I’m guessing it’s not to the Bahamas.”

  “Funny girl.” He slid the knife into the sheath on his arm. “Turn around. Face the wall.”

  “If you wanted a look at my ass, all you had to do was ask.”

  “Just turn.”

  She obeyed. Frank pulled off his necktie and tossed it to his wife.

  “Tie her hands with that.”

  Victoria stared at the coil of fabric as if she’d never seen a necktie in her life. “Frank …”

  “Just do it. Parker—hands behind your back.”

  The PI put her wrists together. She wore black leather gloves, Frank noted. They went with the rest of her outfit. Ninja clothes.

  “Nice outfit,” he said. “You’re dressed to kill. Which I guess was the plan.”

  “You got it all wrong, Frank. This is my Halloween costume. I’m a day early.”

  He grunted. “Yeah, you’re a comedian. You’re right about one thing, though. Halloween’s coming early for you.”

  He watched closely as Victoria wound the blue-striped tie around Parker’s wrists.

  “Tighter,” he ordered.

  “I’ll cut off her circulation.”

  “Her circulation won’t be an issue for long. Tighter. Now tie a knot.”

  His wife’s hands were shaking. Parker’s, he noted, were steady. Cool customer. Cooler than some made men he’d known. Leo Rambaldi, for one. That sad little pussy had been weeping and begging at this stage of the dance. The PI, at least, was facing the end with dignity. For now.

  He’d see how dignified she was when Virgil went to work on her.

  “Knot it again,” he instructed Victoria. “Even tighter.”

  “I’m sorry, Bonnie.” His wife’s voice was a whisper, blurry with tears. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Not your fault,” Bonnie said evenly. “Shit happens, Murphy’s Law, you know the score.”

  Victoria finished knotting the tie. Parker’s hands twisted uselessly, the necktie binding her wrists like rope. Victoria had used only half of its length; the other half hung down like a lolling tongue.

  “Good enough,” Frank said. “Now where’s your ride?”

  Parker turned. “The woods.” Her face was calm and blank, but he thought he saw a glitter of moisture at the edges of her eyes.

  “Where in the woods?”

  “Just off the footpath, not far from the rear gate.”

  “She give you the combo of the lock?” His gun nodded in Victoria’s direction.

  “No. I cut the chain.”

  “Alarm system?”

  “Crash ’n’ smash.”

  “Motion sensor?”

  “Jammed.”

  “Impressive. You’re fuckin’ James Bond, you know that? Except 007 never loses.”

  “I haven’t lost yet, Frank.”

  “Optimism. That’s good. I like it when people have hope.” He gestured toward the door. “Start walking. We’ll take your wheels. I don’t need your fucking DNA in my car.”

  Victoria stepped in front of him. “Where are you taking her, Frank?”

  “You don’t need to know.”

  She stretched out her hands. In her tattered bra, with her bloodied arms and haggard face, she looked like a victim in a war zone. A lost soul.

  “Frank. Please.”

  With his free hand he slapped her smartly across the face, hard enough to send her stumbling backward. She fell on the floor and didn’t get up. Her hair hung over her face in a shapeless snarl.

  “Stupid bitch,” Frank said.

  He pushed Parker through the doorway, into the hall. A few doors down, the twins were squalling as usual.

  “Your kids don’t seem to like it here, Frank,” she said as they went down the stairs. “Can’t say I blame them.”

  “Yeah? What’s the matter with my house?”

  “It’s the atmosphere. Let’s just say you and your wife aren’t exactly a match made in heaven.”

  He shrugged. “No marriage is perfect, but we make it work.”

  They reached the ground level. He steered her toward the back door, thinking about the Jeep in the woods, the short drive to the warehouse, and Virgil in his cage.

  “You shouldn’t have gone off on me in the hotel, little girl,” he said. “I was gonna kill you quick, until you made me mad. All that stupid shit you said—it gave me other ideas.”

  “Care to share?”

  “You’ll find out soon enough.”

  “Can’t wait.”

  “Oh, I think you can. One of Chiu’s boys got the treatment just last night. He didn’t like it. And he got off easy. With him, I was just playing around.”

  As they reached the back door, he tugged her by the hair, whipping her head back so he could look into her eyes.

  “And Parker … I’m not playing anymore.”

  CHAPTER 37

  Bonnie spent the ride into Jersey City twisting her wrists behind her back, trying to loosen the damn necktie. She made no progress. Under Frank’s watchful eye, Victoria had been obliged to do too good a job.

  “Scared, Parker?”

  That was Frank, at the wheel of the Jeep. He was studying her as she squirmed in the passenger seat, where he’d strapped her in with lap and shoulder belts so she couldn’t leap from the vehicle.

  “Just pissed off,” she said. “I don’t like other people driving my car.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about it. When the ports reopen, this piece of shit goes on a cargo ship. It’ll end up in Jordan, with a new VIN and phony paperwork. Completely untraceable. Just like you.”

  “I’m going to Jordan?”

  “You’re going into a Jersey City landfill, where you’ll be as untraceable as your ride.”

  “Right, right. You got a drum of cement with my name on it.”

  “No one’ll ever know what happened to you. You’ll just disappear.”

  Her hands were slick with sweat inside the gloves. She could feel her heart jumping in her chest.

  “How about your wife, Frank? Does she come out of this alive?”

  “She’s the mother of my children.”

  “Is that a yes?”

  “I won’t kill her. I’ll just make her wish she was dead.”

  “You’ve been doing a good job of that already.”

  “I can do better. My wife will be taught a serious lesson. That comes later. First I’ll put you in hell.”

  “Looks like I’m the one who’s been putting you through hell lately.”

  “Yeah, you made things rough on me. But now you’re all done, little girl. When the sun comes up, I’ll still be here, and you won’t.”

  She didn’t know what to say to that.

  - — -

  He guided the Jeep into an industrial district, all the streetlights dead. An eerie darkness surrounded the vehicle. Bonnie had never realized how accustomed she was to the reassuring glow of electric light.

  The Jeep pulled past a windowless two-story brick warehouse, a place so nondescript there was no name displayed above the front door, and turned into an alley at the side of the building. Frank parked by a loading dock, then unlocked the huge freight door. With the power off, he had to raise it by hand. The door moved on tracks with counterbalancing springs, but it still must have weighed a ton; he handled it like it was a sheet of tissue paper.

  Strong as a goddamn ox. Psychopathic, sadistic, happy to beat his own wife half to death in front of a voodoo altar while his babies cried. Oh yes, she was in the very best of hands.

  She corkscrewed her wrists, fighting to work free of the knots. This might be her last chance. And she couldn’t do it.

  Then Frank was back behind the wheel, shifting the Jeep into gear and rolling up the concrete ramp into the warehouse.

  The place was lit only by the twin cones of the headlights. He cranked the wheel to slant-park the Jeep, and the beams blurred across tall shelves rising to a distant ceiling, and behind them, a wall with a door that must lead to the front of the
building. She glimpsed a steel drum standing upright, its sides streaked with dry concrete, and wondered if Chiu’s guy, the one Frank mentioned, was inside.

  Frank killed the engine and lights. Darkness thumped down, solid as a casket lid.

  She felt his hands on her, unbuckling the lap and shoulder belts, then pushing open the passenger door. The dome light should have come on when that happened, but she’d unscrewed it a couple years ago to customize her ride for surveillance work.

  “Out,” Frank said.

  “I don’t know about you, bright eyes, but I can’t see for shit.”

  A flashlight snapped on, held in his left hand, balancing the gun in his right.

  She swung her legs off the seat and found the floor. The urge to take off and run was almost overpowering. The freight door stood open, yards away. If she could get outside …

  She couldn’t. He would gun her down before she reached the door. Wouldn’t kill her, though. He’d take out her knees so she couldn’t run, then drag her across the smooth concrete floor—she could picture the long snail trail of blood—and finish her off at his leisure.

  The gun prodded her between the shoulder blades. He had come around behind her.

  “Move.”

  One part of the warehouse looked the same as any other, but if he wanted her to move, she would move. As long as she was in motion, she wasn’t being tortured to death. Hell, she would walk all night if he wanted her to.

  “That’s far enough,” he said as she reached the middle of the room.

  Something was there, an item she hadn’t seen in the gloom. A straightback chair, old and battered, with peeling strips of duct tape on the arm rests and a spatter pattern of dried blood on the floor.

  “You know that Monty Python routine about the comfy chair?” Bonnie asked.

  “What about it?”

  “I’m pretty sure this ain’t it.”

  He snorted, a sound that might have been laughter, and she made her move.

  Pivoting, she snapped a sideways kick at his midsection. She connected. She heard a grunt of surprise as he dropped the flashlight. She closed with him, ramming his chin with the top of her head. His jaws clacked. She felt a fierce exhilaration—she’d hurt him, hurt him—but it didn’t last.