Nathan's Run (1996)
Page 28
Mark Bailey just wanted the agony to be gone-both mental and physical. Hearing Nathan's voice again on the radio had him balanced on the very edge of his sanity. He had to hand it to the little guy. He had the luck his Irish ancestors had intended for him.
As soon as Mark saw the news on television, he knew what had happened. And though he allowed himself a brief moment to feel vindicated by the failure of a "professional" killer to finish the job he'd paid Ricky to do so long before-could it possibly be just three weeks?-Mark knew the bottom line of what had happened last night. Pointer was not the kind to shoulder the blame himself. No, he'd want to share the glory with a friend. Even through the haze brought on by the recent death of yet another bottle of cheap bourbon, the swollen mass at the end of his arm reminded him of just how giving Pointer could be when he was in the mood to share.
Upon draining the last of the bottle, Mark made a pact with himself to sober up enough to make a plan. If history was any judge, he knew he'd be coherent again in a few hours. Meanwhile, he thought he'd engage in some serious introspection.
My God, he thought, what have I become?
Street-smart survivor that he was, it was not a question he often allowed himself. For thirty-three years, Mark had had to live off his own wits, thoroughly lost in the shadow of his perfect brother Steve. A year ago, when he was pressing charges against Steve's progeny, it brought a smile to Mark's face just to think of what Mr. Perfect Lawyer/Businessman/Class President would have been thinking as he watched the fruit of his loins treated with exactly the same respect that Mark had become accustomed to.
The look on the runt's face as he was escorted from the courtroom to the jail had said it all. Why me? Nathan's eyes had pleaded. Because I said so, Mark's smile had replied. The look on the judge's face had been a different matter entirely. The look of pure contempt had made Mark feel oddly recharged, contented. Brother Steve had been a star among the sanctimonious assholes who called the courthouse their office. And there they all stood, powerless, while Mark the Survivor sent Perfect Steve's kid to the hoosegow. Revenge felt sweet and thorough.
It had all seemed so simple then. Who could have guessed how complicated it would all become?
None of it was his fault, of course. If he'd gotten the same respect from dear old Dad that Steve had, then Mark would never have had to seek quick cash. When his old man told him that his inheritance was contingent upon finishing college, Mark never thought for a moment that he was serious. As much of a cantankerous old fart as he was, Mark never dreamed that he would disinherit his own blood for something as trivial as a piece of paper from some snotty ivy-covered building. But he'd been serious, indeed. Serious as a heart attack.
When the old man died, his will became cast in iron, unchangeable. Steve had everything. Mark had nothing. Even Nathan got a big chunk, but not Mark. Nope, he was just a doormat, and who ever heard of leaving money to a doormat?
But then, Steve had always been the talented one. No one could suck up to the old man quite like old Steve-o. Butt-buddies to the end.
Yes sir, Dad sir, I'd be happy to shit all over Mark, sir.
What, sir? Mark got a "C," sir? Why, that's terrible, sir. Have you seen my straight A's, sir?
So Steve and his seed got all the money and Mark got fucked. What else was new?
Once, when times got tough, Mark actually tried a little sucking up to the master himself, but all he got from his dear rich brother was a lecture on how he should get some "focus" in his life. Shithead.
Instead of sharing, Steve invested everything in real estate and in his practice. Then, two months after the real estate market collapsed, Steve-o became Jell-O at a railroad crossing.
When you're a survivor, you become adept at finding the opportunity hidden in the disguise of adversity. Now that there was a new orphan in the world, Mark had naturally figured that there would be money to support him. Dear old Dad's money at that. The irony was delicious.
Except there was no money. Steve-o's fortune had evaporated when real estate collapsed, and Nathan's funds were tied up in a trust managed by some hotshot lawyer in New York. Even Nathan couldn't touch the money until he was eighteen. The kid whined constantly, grew like a weed, and ate nonstop. That all cost money. Lots of money. Old Steve-o would have done well to concentrate more on the present than the future. An insurance policy would have been nice. Sure, there was that one policy for a quarter-mil, but that went pretty fast. That was when Mark was in his pimping era. Nasty little business, managing whores. Bad crowd, too. For the life of him, he had no idea where all the money went.
The real cash, he found, was in the import business. Through some friends, he came to meet people who knew people. If he could cough up $500,000 and make a trip to Colombia, he could be set for life. That five hundred thousand could become five million, and with $5,000,000 in the bank, Mark could be anything he wanted to be. Poor alcoholics were bums; rich alcoholics were eccentric. All he wanted was respect.
That's where Pointer and Mr. Slater entered the picture. Mark had heard about their "bank" through street sources. It took all the salesmanship he had to leverage the cash-a thirty-day loan at 20 percent interest. But what was a hundred grand when you were looking down the pipeline at five million?
On May 27th, his hired pilot took off in a hired airplane to make the buy that would make Mark a rich man. When the son of a bitch failed to return, Mark's troubles began in earnest. Some speculated that the pilot was killed in a sudden storm over the Gulf, but Mark knew better. He knew that somewhere someone was spending his five million dollars, having never had to invest a penny of his own money.
Thirty days to the hour after he had borrowed the money, Pointer showed up at his door demanding payment. In retrospect, Mark knew that he should have told the truth in the beginning, but it just was not his nature. He stalled for time. There were some problems getting the stuff cut, he explained, smooth as silk, and Pointer gave him an extra day. Even Mark thought it sounded like the truth.
But the clock kept spinning. His plan was to withdraw the last of his insurance money-twenty thousand dollars-and offer it up the next day as a down payment.
By the thirty-first day, though, Pointer had discovered the lie, and when Mark offered the twenty grand, Pointer laughed like it was the funniest joke he had ever heard. No, it wouldn't do, he said. Suddenly the Hit Man had lost all interest in why Mark couldn't repay his debt, replaced instead with a well-developed plan to introduce Mark to whole new worlds of pain. Kidneys seemed to be an especially favored target, though Pointer was equally talented with gut punches. And when he drove that bony knee of his into your balls, well, that was a really special adventure, too.
The beating lasted off and on for the better part of a half-hour before the Hit Man said anything of substance.
"You know, Mark," he had said, lounging back on Mark's sofa as he methodically unwrapped a stick of gum, "I did a little research on you, buddy. You come from money. It pisses me off that you've got millions in the family, yet you expect Mr. Slater to believe you can't pay back a mere six hundred thou. Oops, this is Thursday, isn't it? Make that six twenty-five. Now, before I rip out your windpipe, you want to tell me why you're holding out on us?"
Though a month had passed, Mark still felt the pain of that afternoon; how new jolts of agony would self-generate from various bruised organs without Pointer laying another hand on him. He could still remember the Hit Man's exaggerated patience as he waited through the whole story of his banishment from the family. When Mark was done, Pointer had seemed genuinely disappointed that there really was no choice but to cut his throat.
It was the sight of the straight razor that made Mark think the unthinkable.
There was a way, he'd gasped hurriedly as Pointer prepared for surgery. Mark had remembered a clause in his father's will-a paragraph that had caught his eye years before, during the first reading. Dear old Dad had established a trust for his grandkids, of which Nathan was the only one.
"In the event that any grandchild dies prior to his thirtieth birthday and prior to having completed an accredited course of study as defined in Paragraph 8(A)(c)(ii) above, the bequeathed amount shall be distributed to the child's father, or, if such distribution is not possible for whatever reason, said share shall be distributed among my surviving progeny, per stirpes."
When the unthinkable had first occurred to him in the lawyer's office, Mark had seen the potential, but Christ, he'd have had to kill the whole family. Nobody needed money that bad.
Not until you'd spent some time with a pain expert, anyway. Jesus, that razor looked sharp.
It turned out that Lyle was a survivor, too, with a keen eye for his own pocketbook. Within a minute of hearing about the backdoor clause, Pointer had developed a plan. Mark would be allowed to live a while longer, for the sole purpose of killing his nephew and taking delivery of the inheritance money. Pointer, meanwhile, would shelter Mark from the wrath of Mr. Slater in return for a $200,000 fee.
The details were left up to Mark, but Pointer made it clear that he expected a clean job. Recognizing that details can be expensive, he had even returned the twenty grand down payment.
The rest had been shockingly simple. Mark found Ricky by following the guards as they left the JDC at shift change and gathered at the Woodbine Inn for drinks. They were not a happy lot, bitching constantly about every aspect of their jobs. Of all the guards, a young skinny one named Ricky Harris was the most vocal.
"I'd do anything to get out of that fucking place," he'd said.
Mark bought Ricky a drink. Over the course of the evening, Mark bought him a lot of drinks. It was nearly midnight when Mark made his pitch. All Ricky had to do, he explained, was kill the kid and skip out of the country. Twenty thousand dollars went a long way in some parts of the world. As luck would have it, twenty grand was more money than Ricky Harris had ever seen in one place, and with that much cash up front, he didn't seem especially bothered by the prospect of killing one of the worthless pukes under his care. When he found out that the target was that pussy Bailey, he seemed thrilled.
And so it had started.
As Mark now sat alone in the sweltering heat of his soon-to-berepossessed house, he marveled at just how wrong everything had gone. The stack of legal 'sheets strewn on the table served as yet another monument to his shitty life. And in the sureness of his own approaching death, he grew terrified of his appointment with hell. Somewhere deep within his self-pity, there was even a growing tumor of remorse for what heed forced Nathan to endure.
He was pulled from the past by a knock at his front door. He was frightened at first, until he realized that it was impossible for Pointer to have gotten back so soon. He considered for a moment that it might be a cop. In his stupor, he was unable to decide if that would be good news or bad.
By the time Mark staggered to the door, the visitor had grown impatient, pounding with his fist.
As he swung the door open, a large man, maybe six-three, stood silhouetted against the brilliant white background. Mark winced in the wash of sunlight.
"What do you want?" Mark demanded.
The man stepped in without being asked. "I came to talk to you, Mark," the man said. "Mr. Slater sends his regards?'
Chapter 35
In the car, Jed and Harry listened to The Bitch on the radio, and her ongoing interview with Nathan. Warren was right, Jed realized. If you listened to Nathan's side of the story and accepted it at face value, Warren's hit man theory explained it all.
Jed suddenly felt terribly guilty. He'd allowed himself to get so wrapped up in the boy's escape and the events surrounding it that he hadn't taken the time to look at the obvious. In his heart, he'd always believed that Ricky Harris probably deserved to die; that he was caught in the act of something despicable, perhaps even sexual. But until his conversation with Mitsy, he'd never considered that his sole purpose was to kill the boy. And even then, it didn't make any sense.
In an effort to manage the frustration, Jed had written off such details as irrelevant in the short term. The whole department had. All that mattered was the boy's capture. They'd all rationalized that whatever motivation Nathan might have had for killing the supervisor was between him, the prosecutor and the jury.
Jed silently berated himself and his colleagues as he realized that this collective myopia had nearly cost a young boy his life. The very police force that was supposed to protect him had in fact eased the burden on his killer. That thought-and the thought of those poor cops in New York-sickened him. Soon, though, they'd set it all straight.
The first thing Jed noticed about Mark Bailey's untidy little house was the drawn curtains. They gave the structure a haunting, abandoned look.
"I wonder if anybody's home," he thought aloud.
Things didn't look right. A Ford Bronco sat in the driveway, its image shimmering in the heat rising from the driveway. Nothing moved this day but the thermometer. It was barely noon, and the temperature had already topped ninety-eight degrees. The weatherman on the radio said to expect a new record at 104. Jed longed for the fall.
"That's his car:' Harry offered. "In the same spot as yesterday." "Does the place look odd to you?" Jed asked.
Harry studied the front of the house for a moment. "No," he said. "Looks like a house. What are you thinking?"
"I don't know," Jed mused. "Looks odd to me for some reason. Like nobody's home. All the blinds are shut."
"Well, his car's still in the driveway," Harry reminded him. "My guess is he's just trying to keep the place cool."
Jed said nothing else. He opened the car door and walked silently up the sloping front yard toward the porch. Harry followed, three steps behind. The younger man was startled when Jed withdrew his big nine-millimeter Glock from the high-hip holster under his sportcoat.
"What's up?" Harry asked as he drew his own weapon.
"Don't know," Jed replied, whispering now. "Just doesn't feel right."
Standing off to the hinge side of the door, out of harm's way in case someone blasted bullets through the door, Jed knocked loudly enough to draw a look from the neighbor across the street. There was no response. Harry took a mirror position to Jed, on the knob side. Seeing the guns, the neighbor moved quickly inside, gathering her five-year-old daughter in her arms.
Jed knocked louder. "Mark Bailey!" he shouted. "This is the police. Open the door!" In the humid air of the still neighborhood, his voice echoed off the houses. Despite the noise, nothing moved from within Mark Bailey's house.
Jed eyed the doorknob, then nodded to Harry, who reached down and tried to turn it. When it didn't budge, he returned his eyes to Jed and shook his head.
Jed swung away from his defensive position and took a shooter's stance, two-handing his aim at the door, while Harry swung around to jam the sole of his boot into the door just adjacent to and a little above the knob. As though blasted open with dynamite, the steel door exploded inward with a crash and rebounded closed, just as Harry dove sideways to catch the door with his shoulder. From his awkward position on his left side, Harry could cover the front hallway to the right. In three quick steps, Jed darted into position to cover the left.
"Mark Bailey!" Jed yelled again. "Police officers!" Harry scrambled to his feet, staying crouched down low, ready for action. Still, nothing moved.
"Check out this level:' Jed instructed. "I'll go upstairs."
They split up, and even as they parted, Jed knew what they would find. There is a smell to death, a thick sweet odor. Over the years, he'd learned to detect even the faintest traces of the stench. Mark Bailey's house reeked of it. Jed had just reached the top of the stairs when Harry called out from the l
iving room.
"Oh, shit!" shouted Harry, clearly unnerved. "Oh, Christ, Sergeant, I found him! He's in the living room! He's dead."
I knew it, Jed thought as he headed back downstairs.
Harry was finishing a frantic primary search of the first floor while Jed entered the living room, holstering his weapon. "Bad guy gone?" he asked, inwardly amused by the fear on the young cop's face.
Harry nodded. "Yeah," he said, "the place is clean. Look at him, though. That's disgusting:'
"Yeah," Jed agreed as he surveyed the body, instinctively reaching for his little notebook. "He sure as hell pissed somebody off."
Mark Bailey's body was tied rigidly into a dining room chair, his head cast backwards over the chair back. His mouth was open wide, a yawning cavern rimmed with crimson smears. His graying blond hair dangled heavily, matted and violet. In the middle of it all, a long finger of extruded brain tissue extended like a ponytail from a ragged hole in the crown of his skull. Both arms dangled limply at his sides. Harry was the first to notice that the cast had been removed from Mark's right arm, and that his purple, swollen fingers were twisted at horrifying angles.
Using a handkerchief to hold the receiver and a pencil eraser to push the buttons, Jed used the phone on the end table next to the sofa to call for the criminal investigative unit and the coroner. While he waited on the line to pass along the critical information, he surveyed the interior of the tiny house, taking particular interest in the broken television set with the empty booze bottle resting where the picture tube should have been. Three days' worth of newspapers had been stacked next to the sofa, each issue opened to a story about Nathan. Jed remembered his briefing on the details that had sent Nathan to the Juvenile Detention Center, and he wondered what the boy's Uncle Mark had thought about the events of the past three days. Was he remorseful? Titillated? Amused?
"C'mon," Jed urged impatiently, waiting for somebody in the coroner's office to pick up the phone. He shifted the receiver from his hand to his shoulder, where he held it in place with a sustained shrug. His eyes wandered to a sheaf of papers; legal documents, he recognized from the numbered lines and exaggerated indentions. There it was, on the front: The Last Will and Testament of somebody named William Steven Bailey. Having nothing better to do, he casually thumbed through the stapled pages.