by Robert Lane
“It will help establish him as a credible witness against Mendis.”
“I see.” She paused and said, “You think they’d go for that?”
“I think you can sell shit to a farmer.”
She turned to Escobar and bent over. “You got that, Raydel? We’ll have a few minutes after these Rangers leave to go over our story. But I like you, Raydel. Your stiff dick has no conscience, and lord knows Sophia bent way over when she picked you out of the bottom of the barrel, but somewhere, in your more important organs, you’re not half bad.”
Binelli came back to me.
“You got a chance?” I asked.
She hesitated before she answered. Her skipped beat told me more than her words. “I got it. They gave me the pension team. They’re not too much into questions.”
Her false sense of bravado clunked when it hit the floor. She was a tough woman and made the right decision, but we both knew she had a tall tale to tell her superiors. But she had Elvis and Escobar hog tied, four young girls safe and sound in the garage, and two dead henchmen—one who was wanted in three states. She had enough hero attributes to carry her out of here with her career intact, perhaps even enhanced. There were holes in her story, but she was a wrecking ball, and they couldn’t deny that.
“Thank you for indulging us,” I said. “You weren’t bound to help in any matter. You made the right decision, Natalie, you—”
“Leave,” she said.
I strolled over to Maria and Rosa.
“Let’s go, girls.” Rosa stood on her chair and I put my arm out. She stepped forward onto my right hip. Home position. Maria didn’t move or take her eyes off me.
“Where are we going, Jacob?” she asked.
“Do you want to go back to your home?”
“No. Our parents sold us. That is what happened, is it not?”
She wasn’t going to hear that from me. “I know a place for you and Rosa. A place where you can go to school, a place where you can live, and a lady who will love you and take care of you.”
“Is it here in America?”
“No. You cannot stay here. They will send you home. It’s an island, but a better island than where you came from. I go there often and like the place very much.”
Maria looked at me as if considering whether to believe me or not. I wondered if she would appraise people like that for the rest of her life. I couldn’t blame her, but it seemed a heavy burden for someone so young. She reached out and took my left hand in her right hand. The feel of her hand flashed my mind back to when I struggled to get into the runaway boat and I had found sound footing. What would be protruding out the side of a boat?
I started to leave, but heard Binelli from behind me.
“Cowboy,” she said. I twisted back around. She held my eyes and waited a measure. “If you moral crusaders ever need any help, call me. Leave a message at the Hoover building.”
“We just might do that. One question.”
“Shoot.”
“How long were you standing in the hall outside Escobar’s study?”
“Long enough to see what you did.”
“Why did you come up?”
“Didn’t believe for one second that crap you shoveled about them not canceling the hand-off. The gunfire and Cruz’s brain matter splattered on the sunset of the aluminum picture confirmed my suspicion. Figured if we were to have a chance to save the girls on the water, it would be on the coattails of some idiotic hotshot like you.”
She looked like the same woman I met an hour earlier, but you never know.
“Here, in the kitchen before we knew the transfer was on,” I said, “why did you trust me?”
“You said one question.”
“Indulge me.”
“That’s easy, slim. You gave me my six-shooter back.”
Lord, could this girl ever rumble. And I bet her parents thought she’d never get a job with a major in theater.
She staged a smile that would buckle any man’s knees, and I knew then that Raydel Escobar was screwed beyond his imagination the day Natalie Binelli waltzed into the Welcome In. Somewhere in his life, between the music and Sophia, Raydel Escobar got a glimpse of the shadow of good, but it eluded him, running one step ahead, as he stumbled in the dense.
I remembered it just as I was about to depart the kitchen. The collateral damage of war. I turned one last time to face Escobar. “Look at me, Escobar,” I said. He glanced up. “Delete the picture. Keep Kittredge out of it. You understand?” He nodded.
“I got one for you,” Binelli said. “What’s with that envelope?”
“It’s my job.”
“That’s not what I saw.”
“I owed someone.”
I walked out with Rosa on my hip, Maria holding my hand, and the letter rubbing against my sore rib.
CHAPTER 36
I stuffed the letter into the radio box.
“As we planned?” Morgan asked when we boarded Impulse. He had taken Rosa from me and placed her in the bow where she clutched her Annie doll even tighter, which I would have thought to be impossible. I don’t think she trusted boats. Maria sat next to her.
“Straight to Kathleen’s. Give her a couple of days to clean them up, buy clothes, and requisition whatever’s needed for the journey.”
We idled out of the shallow and dark waters of Raydel Escobar’s front yard for the final time. I heard a dolphin blow a few feet off the starboard bow.
“Nevis,” Morgan said. “Amazing that she followed us in the Intrepid. She’s not familiar with that boat, which shows her loyalty is to us. Like a dog, she wanted to come on our journey.”
“They can’t exceed much over twenty miles per hour for a short burst,” Garrett added. “She must have kept at it even though she had to be way behind. When we circled back toward shore chasing the runaway, she picked us up again. Never would’ve believed it unless I saw it.”
“Pretty incredible,” I said. I went to the bow and got on my knees so my face was level with both girls. I suddenly realized how ill-equipped I was to relate to their world, to their reality. Let me tell you about Brazilian fire ants.
“I’m taking you to my friend’s house. Her name is Kathleen and—”
“That’s a pretty name,” Rosa said.
“Yes, it is. It is a very pretty name and she is a very pretty lady. She’s going to give you some food and a nice place to sleep for a couple of nights.”
“Will you be there?” Maria asked.
“I live close by. I will see you tomorrow. The day after tomorrow you will start your journey to your new home. It’s—”
“Stay with us,” Rosa said.
I hesitated. “I’ll stay with you tonight. You’ll like your new home. A wonderful woman will take care of you—”
“No, she won’t,” Maria said with anger, and her change of tone startled me. “No one will take care of us. No one cares or even knows what is happening to us. We were left in a room all alone.” Her lip started to quiver and for the first time she seemed to break.
I was tired. Every bone in my body hurt. My left arm was somewhere between numb and hell. I was pretty certain I had a mammoth headache, but it just couldn’t hold its own against the other neurons shrieking for my attention. A couple of teeth, thanks to Cruz’s right hand, coupled with my inability to control my tongue, were barely hanging in there. My hips were starting to freeze up; they weren’t designed to be boat fenders. I put my arms around Maria and gave her a hug, and a long breath left her.
I pulled away and looked into her moist eyes. I had no idea where I was. “You’ll be fine, Maria. I promise you.” It sounded like total shit, but I didn’t know what else to say. I got up and walked back to the helm where Morgan and Garrett sat.
“She’s following us back,” Morgan said.
“Who?” I asked. The irritability of my voice surprised me.
“Nevis. She’s off the bow.”
“Fucking dolphin, Morgan.” I spit it out with disgust. The night had
landed more punches than I thought.
“Saved the day,” he said in an even voice, not letting my mood infect him.
“How so?”
“How do you think you got in that boat?”
I thought back to the struggle to get my legs over the side of the runaway boat. My foot had found something solid and that allowed me to push off and get over the side. I thought it might be a boat strake, but knew it was too wide. I couldn’t imagine anything else.
“No way,” I said.
“She was positioning herself the whole time you were trying to get on board and she finally got under you.”
“I don’t believe it. Garrett, you see any of that?”
But Garrett Demarcus didn’t answer me. He wasn’t going to waste his time if I didn’t believe Morgan. He looked at me like I was the sorriest thing he’s seen that night. I knew then how little I know about anything worth knowing.
I looked out at the black and tried to clear my mind. But the only thing I saw were Victor’s surprised and innocent eyes staring back at me in disbelief. I wondered what he meant when he said “go,” but his final gaze conveyed everything that my mind fought to deny. I feared I was as flippant with someone’s life as I was with my tongue. Piss on him. He wore a turtleneck. For all I know he was East Slavic mob trash that had killed before, but never would again. Still, his eyes would be added to my luggage. It was already over the weight limit, and there’s a price to pay for that.
CHAPTER 37
Morgan settled Impulse silently alongside Kathleen’s dock. To the east the drawbridge was rising. I wondered for what other reasons anyone else would be on the water at that time. The air felt as if someone had draped a moist, woolen blanket over the ground. But as we trudged up from the dock, the lights from her house beckoned us like an inviting cabin in a Colorado winter night.
The back door swung open when we were ten feet away.
“We’ve got company for you,” Morgan said as he brushed past Kathleen and carried Rosa into the house.
“Jake?” Kathleen asked when I stopped in front of her. I held Maria’s hand. “Are you OK?”
“Business is brutal.” I gave her a light kiss on the lips and neither of us closed our eyes.
“You’re arm’s bleeding.”
“It’s nothing.”
“Your face looks like it got in a fight with a spiked telephone pole, and don’t tell me I should see the pole.”
“Where the devil are my slippers?”
No smile. Maybe even a frown masking a hint of frustration. Disappointment. She started to say something but changed direction.
“Who’s your new friend?”
“This is Maria. Maria, this is Kathleen.”
She took Maria’s hand from me. “Let’s go inside. Are you hungry, Maria?”
“Jacob, you are going to stay here, right?” Maria asked. Her feet were planted apart, as in Escobar’s room. But this time there was no dead body behind her convulsing on the floor and fighting for a life it no longer possessed. That was why I had tried to rush the girls up the stairs and, when Maria refused re-entry to the safe room, eventually into the kitchen. Victor dying was not a pretty sight.
“Yes. I’m going to sleep on the couch. You and Rosa will sleep in a bed tonight.”
Maria looked back at Kathleen. “Yes, I am very hungry.”
“Outdoor shower, Jake,” Kathleen said. I had a change of clothes in her house as well as a spare set I kept on Impulse. I started for the door and heard her from behind me. I stopped but I did not turn around.
“I thought you’d be back sooner. It was hard. It was hard waiting and not knowing. And you’re hurt. And to look—to look like that.”
I remained silent.
“Did you get the letter?”
“Yes.” My back was still toward her.
“I hope it was worth it.”
I walked away.
It had been a cluster fuck of a night and I just had to get it behind me. I had stared down the barrels of more guns in one night than in the last two lifetimes. I stripped down and turned the water on cold, which in summertime Florida is a lesser degree of warm. I scrubbed myself with the soap and shampoo that she kept on a small white plastic table that was missing one of its legs. I stood there a long time until everything was washed off, although I knew it wasn’t. I went to my boat and applied a double bandage and put on a long sleeve shirt to cover it all. It was only a graze. Just the high left arm. Little left of the heart.
When I went inside, Morgan had placed a midnight cruise smorgasbord of eggs, toast, potatoes, and bacon on the table. Garrett was in from the dock and Kathleen had showered Maria and Rosa. Rosa wore a long T-shirt that stopped between her knees and her ankles, and Maria was in a coral summer dress that fit her well. I wondered where Kathleen got it. Both girls had wet hair and Rosa brushed her locks over and over again.
Kathleen hadn’t made eye contact with me since I’d come in from the shower.
Garrett reached for the eggs when Rosa said, “Don’t we pray first?”
“That’s a very good idea. Why don’t you say a prayer for us, Rosa?” Kathleen said.
And while she did my mind drifted to Escobar and Binelli. I’d have to give her a call someday and see what they got on Mendis, if anything at all.
“Jake.” It was Kathleen. “I said would you please pass the juice.” She had to look at me now, and when she did I saw a small smile form on her lips, but it was only for the others. Like a clown’s smile, letting everyone see what they expected to see. The lines around her mouth that I had breathed in the night under the hibiscus seemed deeper. Or was it just the angle of light?
I retrieved the letter, and Morgan and Garrett ran the boat back to my dock. I crashed on the couch and slept like a plank until the sun came through the windows looking for me and no doubt wondering why I was so late.
Kathleen told Maria that she’d be back in few minutes, and then drove me the short island-hopping trip over three bridges to my house on the other island across from hers.
“Do you still like me?” I asked as we went over the first drawbridge. The top and windows were down and the air conditioning was on low—our preferred method of traveling side streets. The aggressive heat was starting to build, and it mixed with the cold air coming out of the car’s vents. The air was like water faucets, either hot or cold. No middle ground.
“No.” Her hair flew around her face. She usually tied it back, but not this morning. I realized how much I liked it, how different she seemed, when her hair was free.
“I bet I can win you back.”
“You probably can.” Neither of us spoke for a minute.
“It’s hard,” she started in. “And when you came in with a black eye, dried blood in your hair, a bloodied bandage on your arm, covered with salt from the Gulf, and sporting your omniscient frivolous glib, then I know. I know that you are risking it all. And don’t get me wrong, the cause is great. But is it always? You chased down a letter and freed two girls, and yes, their lives will be better, so much better for it, but is it always so clear that you risk everything we have for something, or someone, who is new? Who you don’t know? Because I don’t see priorities so clear, so black and white. I don’t get that.”
“Get what?”
“Get what? Really, Jake? You flirt with death. The big Game Over. And you don’t get it?”
“I do it for you and the kids.” She didn’t seem that ticked last night, meaning earlier this morning, although we didn’t have that much time together. She’d obviously been percolating overnight.
She shook her head. “I don’t know why I even try. Does it occur to you that you’re sacrificing us? Or are you in it just for the thrills?”
“You can always go back to your books.”
The split second that cast left my lips, I wished I could bring it back. What the hell is my problem?
She cut me a look I’d never seen and pray to never see again. “Did you just say that?�
�� It came out in an alien tone, as if we had crossed into new territory and were now different people with a strange new language.
“No. No, that would have been someone else.” I had to scramble to keep the situation from escalating. But it was like jumping on a hand grenade after it had already gone off. “I’m sorry for that. Pretend I never said it. Can we do those things?” She shook her head slightly, which was hard to detect with her hair flying in random directions. We pulled up to the red light and stopped. She looked straight ahead.
“I can’t believe you said that.” Still looking straight ahead.
“I’ll cease it today. Walk away as the luckiest man in the world and never look back.”
Straight ahead. I wasn’t even there.
I kept at it. “Right here, right now. Say the word. Don’t tell me you’d fear bitterness or resentment from me. There would be none. I’d bag groceries every day to walk with you.”
That earned a glance. “Stop it. Just hug me next time. Not some little peck on the lips and some lame movie tag line. Stop pretending. Is that too much to ask, Jake, or do you really want me to go back to my books?”
“I think I’d rather have died than have said that.”
“No, it’s you’d rather die than love anyone other than me.” No smile, just straight up. The light flicked green, the car jumped, and my head jerked back. Kathleen never did more than ten over and she never wasted a second in getting there. There is no law limiting the rate of acceleration.
“I didn’t think he knew anything about love,” I said louder to overcome the howl of the air and rumble of the road. Omniscient glib. I was going to remind her that her “spiked pole” comment was not exactly the depth of seriousness, but part of my brain was telling the rest of it to shut the fuck up.
“Once in his life,” she said without looking at me. I wanted to know like hell if she could look me hard in the eye and lay that same line down about her. And if she did, what would I do to protect her light heart?
I had lied. We both knew it. I wouldn’t last a day with the grocery gig. Maybe we had run as far as we could. What was I supposed to do, put a name around my neck and sit behind a desk? Do that until I stopped showing up in photographs and call it a life?