Duke reached his car and threw himself inside. His hands shook as he started the engine and Ahote appeared in his headlights, looking like a bloody, hulking monster from a horror movie as Duke banged a hasty reverse.
Duke spun the car around and slammed the gas pedal as hard as he could, right before Ahote reached his driver-side door, his giant fingers inches away from latching onto the handle.
It wouldn’t be until three days later when Duke would remember the painting he had left behind in the trunk.
CHAPTER 20
Duke surfaced up from the thirty-year-old story and moved to the refrigerator, where he poured himself a large glass of orange juice and drank it all in one fast, long drink.
“You had a five-million-dollar painting in the trunk of your car and you just forgot about it?” Sarah asked. “Who does that?”
“I didn’t know what it was worth at first.”
“Jesus, I need a drink,” Sarah said.
“I was right. You stole Max’s painting and he kidnapped Ben as payback. I swear, I could kill you,” Julia said. She shot up from the table and slapped her father as hard as she could across his face.
Duke took a step back in surprise and opened up his hands, as if encouraging Julia to take another swing. “I deserve that from you. You were always Ben’s girl. But understand one thing. I tried to stop it. I did. You made me go this far, so let me finish.”
Julia turned her back to her father and wondered if she had the gumption to kill a man, because she was certain she never hated anyone as much as she hated her father, right now, for what he did. She saw one of Duke’s guns lying on the kitchen counter; for a second, she could see herself picking up the gun and pointing it at the man responsible for Ben’s abduction. Julia pried her eyes off the gun and realized her entire body was shaking with rage. “Tell the rest of the story, before I do something I regret.”
“You want to be angry with me, that’s fine, but you hold on to it, that hatred will eat you up from the inside out,” Duke said. “I caught you looking at my gun. You’re not a killer. Self-defense is one thing, but you’re not wired to pull the trigger first. That’s a stain that would never let you go. A man kills another man, he’s never the same afterward. So, if it’s all right with you, Julia, I’m going to keep going here before I get slapped again or shot.”
“Just do it,” Julia answered.
“Okay, then. After what happened back at Max’s place up in Macomb County, I laid low for a few days at a motel in Livonia. I didn’t know what to do, so I called a buddy I trusted, Chip Haskell.”
“The man who was murdered in the car back in Sparrow,” Julia said.
“That was him,” Duke said, and paced back and forth across the length of the kitchen. “When I was in the motel in Livonia, I remembered the painting and thought I might need it as a bargaining chip with Max because of what I’d done to Ahote. But I wasn’t going to offer it up right away. Chip agreed to stash the painting while I figured out my game plan. But then, everything changed, and I knew I was in the center of a major shit storm. Before I brought the picture to Chip, I asked a guy who was in the know about art. He referred me to an appraiser, who’d just gotten out of jail for forging paintings and selling them off as originals. The guy almost blew a gasket when I showed him the picture I picked up from Lemming. He told me it was an original van Gogh, a painting that must have been part of some very private stash, because the appraiser-forger guy claimed he’d never seen it before. He gave me the five-million figure, and, I swear, I thought my head would pop off. I needed a backup plan, and the appraiser knew how to make forgeries, so I paid him to make me a copy. The guy was a tattoo artist. I picked up the forgery in the back room of his place, and, I swear, it looked identical to the original I got from Lemming. With everything coming to a head, I remembered what my buddy Rickie told me about having a contingency plan. I stashed the gun and passport Rickie left me, along with five thousand dollars, in a safe-deposit box. I called Max and I told him we’d do a trade, and that if he did anything to Ben, I’d kill him. And then your mother showed up while all this was going on. I remember looking through the peephole of the motel and couldn’t believe she’d found me.”
“Tell the rest of the story,” Julia insisted.
“Okay. And it will be the God’s honest truth,” Duke said, and for one of the few times in his life, he really meant it.
Marjorie sat at the scuffed, fake wood table in the motel room and clutched her hands underneath her chin.
“How’d you find me?” Duke asked.
“I begged Mike Ballentine to tell me where you were. He only did it because he felt sorry for me, because he knew what happened to Ben. Ballentine loaned me enough money to take a Greyhound bus down here. You need to come home.”
Duke took in his wife sitting across the table from him and noticed Marjorie’s eyes were clear for the first time in about a year since she’d first started drinking. But they were now filled with the hangdog look of someone whose internal light was about to be snuffed out for good.
“Somebody took Ben. Jesus, Duke. The cops are looking to file child endangerment charges against me for being at a bar and leaving the kids alone the night he was snatched.”
“You left the kids alone?” Duke asked.
“Oh please. As if you’re a saint,” Marjorie said. “I was so pissed at you for taking off, I went to Shanty’s, to take the edge off. I told myself I was just going to have one drink, but I lost count. I started to black out at the bar around ten. I’m pretty sure I remember getting home and crawling into bed. Then someone started shaking me really hard. It was like I was in a tunnel. I could feel what was happening to me, but it was like a dream I couldn’t wake up from. But then I got slapped across the face, and I came to. There was a man, a giant guy with a braid, standing over the bed. He hauled me over to a chair and made me sit down. The guy, he kept slapping me, asking me where you hid it. He said if I didn’t tell him, he was going to make us all regret what you’d done.”
“Did you see him take Ben?”
“No. I was really sick.”
Marjorie looked down at her hands, and in the growing folds of evening that cast dark shadows in the sterile motel room, Duke realized his wife looked far older than her thirty-five years. A vision of Marjorie fifteen years earlier flashed across Duke’s mind when he first spotted her in a coffee shop across from the art school she was attending. Duke couldn’t take his eyes off the gorgeous Marjorie as she sat alone, sketching a picture of Renoir’s On the Terrace, which she was trying to copy from one of her art books.
“Did the man who hit you assault you sexually?” Duke asked.
“No. I was drunk, but that’s something I’d remember. I tried to make it to the bathroom, when he let me up from the chair, but I only made it as far as the bed. I was lying on my back and the guy came over and just stared at me. Then he leaned down so he was just a few inches away from my face. I thought he was going to snap my neck, but he made this weird sound, like he was inhaling over and over again. I wanted to run, but I was so drunk, I couldn’t move. Then he stopped. The guy got up and grabbed a pad of paper and a pencil on my nightstand. He started talking in some weird gibberish and drew something on the pad. Then he left.”
“You didn’t follow him?” Duke answered.
“I spent the next half hour throwing up in the toilet. You took off on me, leaving me with this mess. Now I have two kids to look after, and the cops thinking I was involved in our boy’s kidnapping. You need to come back to Sparrow with me. You don’t get to run off now and leave me with the wake you left behind. I had a life before I met you. You stole everything from me, Duke, every last dream I ever had. You made this shitty life, you don’t get to leave me alone in it. You were never going to come back, were you?”
Duke reached across the table for his wife’s hand. “You stopped drinking.”
“I did.”
“You look beautiful, just like when I first met you.”
“Don’t try and charm me. You weren’t planning to come back to us, were you?”
“I sent you money. Who’s staying with the girls?” Duke asked.
“Nobody. Sarah’s fourteen. She can look after Julia. If you’re so worried about them, go back and take care of them yourself. You’re a hypocrite. Always were and always will be.”
Duke stood up, fastened a set of gold cuff links to his shirt cuffs, and headed to the door.
“Where are you going?” Marjorie asked.
“To make a phone call,” Duke said.
“You’re coming back, right?”
“Sure.”
Duke made his way to the pay phone next to the motel manager’s office and stood underneath a NO VACANCY sign that flickered above him. He dropped a quarter into the slot and pressed his head against the side of the phone as his foot tapped a nervous rhythm on the pavement. The number he called was the same one Max had given him when he was picking up the van Gogh in St. Louis. If Max wasn’t at his Macomb County property, Duke figured he’d try the numbers he had for him in Detroit and Birmingham.
“Who’s this?” an unfamiliar male voice answered.
“Duke Gooden, put Max on now.”
Duke’s heart hit a strange, uneven rhythm as he waited a good five minutes until Max came on the line.
“I’ve got your boy, Duke. I’ve been staying up late at night debating whether I’m going to sell him to Lemming or watch him die.”
“I’ve got what you want. Put my boy on the phone.”
“Which outcome would you prefer for your child? You know what happens to the people I bring to Lemming. You want your boy to die right away or be exploited by adult men in St. Louis?”
“I’ll give it to you. Put Ben on. Now!”
Duke waited another ten minutes when he heard a child breathing hard on the other end of the phone.
“Ben? Duke asked. “I’m going to get you out of there, son.”
“Is Julia okay? If you don’t give them back what you took, they’re going to come after her, too. Give it back. Damn it, Daddy. Give it back!”
“Okay. Don’t swear. Are you hurt? Did Max and his men do anything to you?”
“Nobody hurt me. I’m stuck in a house with a bunch of other . . .”
Duke felt his gut tangle into a nervous bunch as the phone was pulled away from his son.
“Your kid is alive. For now. You’ve got two hours. Give me the shipment from Lemming, or I’ll take care of your boy one way or the other. You don’t want to pick what happens to him, then I will. If I still don’t have the van Gogh shipment after the situation with your boy is tidied up, I’ll go after your little girl next. Julia’s her name, right? That’s really pretty,” Max said.
“You’re not going to hurt any of my kids. This whole thing was a mistake, Max. That’s all. I got a little spooked when I went to your place up in the country. I needed a few days to lay low and think. But I’m fine with the type of business you do,” Duke lied.
“You stole from me and sliced up my head of security. These things a man cannot forgive. One hour and fifty-five minutes now. You know that field next to the new Kmart being built by the airport?”
“Yeah, I know the place.”
“Show up with the shipment from Lemming. I’ll bring your kid.”
“What if I call the cops?”
Duke could hear Max let out a caustic laugh, which sounded like a rusty old razor.
“You won’t. You like yourself too much to do that. You’re late or you show up empty-handed, you’ll never see your kid again. Oh, and I did you a favor. I bought you an alibi.”
“An alibi for what?”
“Cops are asking around about your whereabouts at the time your boy went missing. You’re no use to me in jail while they sort it out, so it was a necessity. A foreman in Indiana told the cops you were doing work for him that night.”
“Hold on,” Duke started to say. But Max had already hung up.
Duke began to turn around, but stopped when he felt a hand latch around his arm.
“What did you do, Duke?” Marjorie said. “What the hell did you do?”
Duke felt his left eye twitch as he and Marjorie drove toward the location where he was supposed to meet Max. It was ten o’clock at night. The red Cadillac that once felt like he’d arrived now seemed more like a tomb containing two people who were desperate to claw and bite and scratch their way out of their situation. Duke slid the windows down on the passenger and driver side of the Cadillac and tried to come up with his game plan as he hit the five-mile mark to the meet-up place. Between Max Mueller and himself, Duke knew only one side was going to deliver a touchdown, and the other would likely end up dead. Duke needed to be sure he was the one who was going to come out a winner and get his kid home, with a five-million-dollar payoff on the side.
“When we get to the place, just lay down on the seat until I know we’re clear. I’m supposed to meet a guy in the back of the building. I’ll park out front first,” Duke said. “You remember the plan?”
“You come around the side of the building, and if you raise just one finger, I drive as fast as I can. I pick you up and we get the hell out of here.”
“If it’s two fingers . . .”
“I pop the trunk and pull out the painting,” Marjorie answered.
Duke nodded, knowing the signal meant that Ben wasn’t with Max and Marjorie would hand Duke the forgery. Then Duke knew he would have to make the decision whether or not he’d be willing to call the cops to get his kid back. If Ben was with Max, and Max realized the painting was a fake, as much as Duke hated to do it, he’d have to hand the real van Gogh over. But Duke trusted his gut on this. His only bargaining chip was the painting, and if he gave it to Max and Ben wasn’t with him, then he and his son would both be killed, or Ben would be sold off to Lemming. That’s why Duke had stashed the real van Gogh with his buddy Chip, along with five thousand dollars up front to pay for his services. He and Marjorie had stopped by Ballentine’s first to see if he’d store it for him, but Ballentine had refused.
“I don’t like this one bit. I think we need to bring the police in. Who are these people?” Marjorie asked.
“Better you not know. They’ll kill Ben if we call the cops.” This wasn’t exactly a lie. It was something Duke truly believed, but he also didn’t want to get arrested and serve more time than he’d ever dreamed of for inadvertently lifting a masterpiece.
“You’ve got a gun, right?” Marjorie asked.
Duke swallowed and covered his throat with his right hand so his wife wouldn’t see his nerves and his Adam’s apple popping up and down in his neck like a spastic Ping-Pong ball.
“Not with me. I stashed it with a few other items I might need if things get sticky here.”
“What good is a gun for protection if you’re not carrying it?”
“I’ve got my charm, darlin’. I’ve got my charm,” Duke said.
Duke turned off the exit toward the half-built Kmart building and shut the Cadillac’s headlights off as he eased the car a mile down the empty two-lane road.
“I’m scared, Duke,” Marjorie said.
“Me too. We’d both be fools if we weren’t.”
A streetlight cast a pale glow on the parking lot in front of the Kmart building. Duke swept his eyes across the space and felt a slight sense of relief that maybe his plan might work, when he saw the front lot was empty.
“Okay. I’m getting out. Slip into the driver seat, but hunch down so you won’t be seen.”
“How am I supposed to know when you come out to give me the signal?” Marjorie asked.
“Just duck low enough so you can see me without being conspicuous. If a car drives in, hit the deck, though. Got it?”
“If we get Ben back, what are we going to tell the cops? They’re going to arrest me, I know it. Maybe it would be better. . . ,” Marjorie started, but then cut herself off before she revealed her true thoughts.
D
uke took a look at his wife and realized she was just as bad a person as he was, both of them more worried about their own asses before their son’s welfare. But Duke hoped he could make it right before he took off again. He didn’t need to be a good man. There’s no way he’d ever attain that mantle. But he didn’t want a kid to suffer from his mistake, especially his own blood.
A slick, wet sweat coated the back of Duke’s collar, but he still put his suit coat on. Look sharp, feel sharp, and then people will respect you. And without a gun, which he was now regretting big-time as he exited the car and began to walk in forced, steady steps toward the side of the building, he knew he better look sharper than hell.
The mid-September night air had the first delicious cool snap that Duke used to love, a reminder that fall would soon be settling in. But tonight, the first fingers of autumn just felt like a cold glass of ice water being thrown in his face.
Duke turned the corner of the building and stuffed his right hand in his pants pocket, hoping like hell it looked like he was packing.
He hugged close to the side of the unfinished Kmart structure and practiced his speech in his mind, over and over, until he reached the end of the building. He peered around the side and spotted Max’s car and another vehicle, a blue van, similar to the one he had seen at Max’s remote property, but this time in a different color.
“I’ve got the picture, where’s my boy?” Duke whispered, over and over, as he approached the cars. A set of high beams cut through the darkness and Duke covered his forehead with his left hand to try and see. Through the glare of the headlights, he caught the image of Max Mueller exiting his car. Max was wearing a tuxedo and leaned on his bent black cane.
“I used to like you, Duke. A lot. Where’s the shipment from Lemming?”
Duke pressed his right hand forward in the lining of his pants pocket to try and emphasize the impression that he had a gun.
“I got it. Like I said before on the phone, this is a misunderstanding. Where’s my kid?”
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