by Greg Herren
“BEEP. Frank, Scott, this is Angela Blackledge. I have a business proposition for the two of you. Could you please return my call at 030-234-9876? Thank you.”
I almost dropped the beer.
Angela Blackledge. I played the message again, writing the phone number down on the pad we kept by the phone. It was a foreign number, that much I knew, but I didn’t know the country code. I picked up the phone, and put it down.
I swallowed. How weird that I was just thinking about Colin, and here’s a message from Angela Blackledge.
When Colin’s true identity had been revealed, Angela Blackledge had claimed she had no idea who he was—that he didn’t work for her, never had, and our little agency here in New Orleans was not affiliated with hers in any way. We’d had no choice but to believe her—neither Frank nor I had ever spoken to her on the telephone, and Colin had handled all of the business arrangements. At first, I’d been certain she was lying—but in fairness, I was still trying to clear Colin in my head at the time. What she’d said had not been what I’d wanted to hear at the time. What I’d hoped for was an explanation, some magical deus ex machina to come down from the heavens and explain why Colin had killed two men and kidnapped Frank.
It was very hard to accept that you were in love with a paid killer.
But still, I hesitated. Maybe, just maybe, I’d sensed she was going to call—and since she and Colin were so completely linked in my mind, that put thoughts of him into my head?
And just because the cards were warning me about someone untrustworthy from my past didn’t mean it was Colin. There were a lot of untrustworthy people in my past.
But, I reasoned, it had been a long day, and there was no need to call her back right away. I didn’t owe her anything. I didn’t have to call her back at all.
I did want to know what she wanted, though.
I sat down in front of my computer and opened the Internet browser. I pulled up a search engine and typed in country code 30. The little wheel spun for a few seconds, and a directory popped up. I stared at the screen for a moment. Greece. She was calling from Greece. The city code was Athens, apparently; there was a list of the different city area codes on the page. I pulled up a time zone site. Greece was six hours ahead of New Orleans. I glanced at the clock in the bottom right corner of my computer screen. 12:27 a.m., which meant it was 6:27 a.m. in Athens.
What the hell, I thought, if it’s too early for her she doesn’t have to pick up.
I dialed and waited as the phone rang on a scratchy connection. On the fifth ring, voicemail picked up. It was one of those toneless voices that come with the service that gives no information other than the number and to leave a message at the tone. When it beeped, I said, “Ms. Blackledge, this is Scott Bradley returning your call. Please call me back—bearing in mind there is a six-hour time difference. It is currently 12:27 a.m. in New Orleans. I will wait up for another hour and a half. If you do not call within that period, please wait a minimum of eight hours before calling. Thank you.”
I hung up the phone and took another drink from my beer. If I’m going to wait up to see if she calls, I should make use of this time a little better. I pulled up a search engine and typed in Benjamin Garrett.
There wasn’t much there, mostly links to conference speaking engagements and articles he’d published in academic journals.
I thought back. I couldn’t remember ever, not once, hearing him refer to his service days in Vietnam. That wasn’t surprising, I supposed. Vietnam had been one of those horrible times in history where public opinion was horribly divided—between those who thought we should be there and those who thought we shouldn’t. Mom and Dad certainly had strong opinions about our “imperialistic intervention in Vietnamese affairs.”
I picked up Levi’s grandfather’s letter again and reread it.
“…the actions of three foolish young men in a time of war are coming home to roost…”
I typed Vietnam War Atrocities into the search engine, and clicked on the first link that came up.
It was an article for a history Web site by a woman doing her dissertation on the Vietnam War. I started reading. I didn’t really know a whole lot about the war, other than the brief week we spent on it in U.S. history in high school, and movies I’d seen. As I read, I grew more and more horrified.
In 1971, the Army began a four-and-a-half-year investigation of the alleged torture of prisoners, rape and murder of civilian Vietnamese women, the mutilation of bodies, murder of civilians, assault, and dereliction of duty. No one was ever court-martialed; on the contrary, soldiers under investigation “resigned” from the military during the investigation. The vast unpopularity of the war at home made it necessary for the Department of Defense to sweep any alleged American war crimes under the rug. Several American newspapers did remarkable investigative pieces on these crimes, notably the Toledo Blade in 2003.
Had Doc been a war criminal?
But that didn’t make sense to me. If he and his friends had committed war crimes, someone seeking revenge would certainly want to kill them—but the ransacking of their homes didn’t fit into the equation. Levi’s grandfather had been tortured, but Doc hadn’t. The only common denominators between the two murders were the ransacking and the old photograph.
Unless—
I swallowed. Unless they tortured Levi’s grandfather to find out where Doc was hiding.
But they had to be looking for something as well.
The question was, what? And the way they’d left Doc’s apartment, I doubted they’d found whatever it was. The whole place had been ripped apart, which would have only been necessary if whatever it was they were looking for had been in the last place they’d looked. What were the odds of that?
Of course, whenever I was looking for something it was always in the last place I looked.
The phone started ringing, startling me out of my thought processes. “Hello?” I said, picking it up.
“Scotty.” It was my mother, and she seemed short of breath. My heart sank. I should have called her and told her about Doc.
“Hey, Mom,” I croaked out, taking another swallow of beer to bolster my courage. “I was meaning to call you…”
She cut me off. “Scotty, I need you to come over to the apartment, right now. I am serious. Now.”
“Mom? Are you okay?” There was something in her tone that seemed off.
“I can’t discuss this on the telephone, Scotty. You need to come over. Now.”
I started to protest but she’d hung up. That, too, was unlike Mom.
I sighed, glancing at the clock. It wasn’t likely Angela Blackledge was going to call me back anyway, and what else did I have to do? And it would be better to tell Mom about Doc in person, anyway. She always said she hated getting bad news over the phone.
But what was wrong? I wondered. The way this night was going, it could be anything.
I pulled on a pair of shoes and grabbed my keys. I locked the door behind me and went down the stairs. Millie and Velma’s apartment was still dark. I made my way down the passage and out the front gate, making sure it slammed shut behind me. I started walking quickly, turning the corner at Barracks and heading up the street. It was deserted, which was normal for this hour on a Sunday night.
I had almost reached the corner at Royal Street when I was grabbed from behind and slammed against a brick fence, knocking all the breath out of me. My head hit the bricks, and stars swam in front of my tearing eyes.
I didn’t have time to yell or do anything before a very sharp knife was pressed to my throat.
Adrenaline coursed through my body.
The man who was holding the knife to my throat was wearing a black hooded sweatshirt with the hood pulled low over his forehead. I couldn’t make out his features above his nose, which was long and crooked. His lips were thin over yellowed teeth, and he smelled bad, of a mixture of tobacco and body odor that made me slightly sick. “Where is the eye?” he said in thickly accented English.<
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“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I tried to keep my voice calm, which wasn’t easy. My heart was pounding loud enough to be heard blocks away.
The blade pressed harder against the base of my throat. “You lie! Where is the eye?”
He pressed closer against me, and I scanned the street in both directions. No one was around. No police cruiser conveniently patrolling the lower Quarter, no group of drunken tourists staggering back to their hotel, no gutter punks walking their dog and spare changing people.
It was then I realized he’d made a huge mistake. My right leg was in between his, giving me a clear shot.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said again, then raised my knee as fast and as hard as I possibly could.
He let out a strangled moan, the knife dropped away from my throat, and he collapsed to the sidewalk.
I took off running. I ran around the corner at Royal Street and just kept going. I didn’t slow down until I got to the corner at Dumaine, fumbling for my keys to the gate to the stairs behind the Devil’s Weed that led up to my parents’ house. I slammed the gate shut and took the stairs two at a time, and paused to try to catch my breath before opening the back door.
Finally, I put my key into the lock and pushed the door open.
“Mom? Dad?” I called as I walked through the kitchen into the big living room.
What I saw stopped me dead in my tracks.
“Hi, Scotty.” Colin smiled at me from the couch.
Chapter Five
SIX OF CUPS, REVERSED
Living in the past rather than the present
For just over three years, I had imagined what this moment would be like. I’d imagined all kinds of witty bon mots I would toss off nonchalantly, wounding him the way he’d scarred Frank and me. I’d wondered if it would be better to be cold and distant, and not give him the satisfaction on knowing the damage he’d left in his wake. I’d wondered if I would get angry, lose my cool and start yelling at him. I’d wondered if it would be better to simply be indifferent. There was a part of me that wanted to somehow get even with him. Those kinds of thoughts bothered me. That wasn’t the kind of person I wanted to be, that I tried to be, that I was raised to be.
So I’d tried to cleanse my soul of negativity and bitterness. I tried to put aside my pain, and prayed for him and his safety. I’d wondered if he were alive, or if his line of work had finally proved fatal for him. I’d wondered if he had really cared about us, or if we’d simply been a convenient cover for him in New Orleans. Had he loved us or been using us? There hadn’t been a single word from him in all that time. There were times when I’d tried to understand him, tried to get inside his head and figure it all out. Maybe he was afraid to get in touch, maybe he was afraid we hated him, maybe he knew there was no way he could repair the damage he’d caused.
Maybe, maybe, maybe.
But in all my fantasizing about this moment, I’d never imagined it would be like having someone reach inside my rib cage and squeeze my heart with both hands.
I just stood there, gaping at him like a fool incapable of speech. My mind was racing through thoughts and emotions I’d thought I’d be finished with years earlier. My body felt numb from head to toe. My breathing was too fast, and if I wasn’t careful I was going to hyperventilate.
I closed my eyes and tried to clear my mind. Focus on getting your breathing under control, I thought as blackness started to crowd into the edges of my consciousness. I leaned against the door frame, and as I took deep controlled breaths the blackness started to fade away.
My mouth opened and closed several times, but no sound came out.
The truth was I didn’t know what to say or how to react.
It was really annoying.
He was still one of the most gorgeous men I had ever seen. He had an extraordinary masculine beauty that was mesmerizing, almost impossible to look away from. His thick curly blue-black hair was longer than I remembered, and his olive skin contrasted nicely with his almond-shaped bright green eyes that always looked dewy beneath his long black lashes. There was a bluish shadow on his cheeks and chin that usually showed up within hours of him shaving. He had dimples, even white teeth, and thick sensual lips. When he smiled, his entire face lit up, and he was smiling at me now. He was a little shorter than me, maybe about five-seven, and his body was thickly muscled from years of working with weights and strenuous exercise. His shoulders were broad, his waist narrow, and his stomach completely flat. He had gotten bigger since I’d last seen him, and he looked as powerful as a tank. He was wearing a pair of baggy black jeans and a black T-shirt stretched tightly across his hard chest.
I closed my eyes and remembered the first time I’d ever seen him—wearing a yellow thong in the manager’s office at the Pub before we went out to dance on the bar. And like then, I just stared at him without speaking.
I opened my eyes and noticed he had gauze wound around his upper right arm—and there was a slowly expanding dark red dot in the center of it. He’s injured, I thought, sympathy welling up inside me. I resisted the urge to go to him, put my arms around him, and kiss him.
I gritted my teeth. Oh, but hell no, I thought, pushing all the sympathy I was feeling behind a door in my mind and slamming it shut.
“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t call the police right now,” I said. My teeth still clenched together. I realized my hands were trembling, so I shoved them into the pockets of my jeans.
His smile never faltered. “Go ahead and call them,” he said in an even voice and shrugged. “If that’s what you want. We can finally get everything cleared up.”
I wasn’t expecting that. There was an outstanding warrant for his arrest, for committing two murders over that crazy Mardi Gras weekend so long ago. Maybe he was just calling my bluff. I stepped out of the dark kitchen and into the living room, pulling my phone out. “Yeah, maybe it would be best if I just went ahead and called them.”
His smile faded, and his eyes widened. “My God, Scotty, your neck is bleeding! What happened to you? Are you okay?” He started to get up out of the chair.
“Stay where you are!” I commanded in a shaky voice as my hand flew up to my neck and felt wet stickiness. When I pulled it away, it was covered in blood. “I—oh.”
The adrenaline high I’d been riding chose that moment to crash, and my legs got wobbly in the knees. I felt myself starting to get dizzy, and I managed to stagger over to a wingback chair before collapsing completely. That bastard cut me, I thought, staring at the blood on my hand. My heart was pounding in my ears, and I was vaguely aware Colin was calling for my mother. She came into the room, but I couldn’t really hear what was being said. I saw my mother kneel down in front of me and her face go pale. I blinked and she was gone, and Colin was there, with a paper towel, daubing at my neck. I tried to push his hands away but my arms had no strength in them. The numbness was spreading through my body. Breathe, Scotty, focus on your breathing, you’re going into shock. Colin covered my legs with a blanket. I was shaking, the adrenaline rush long gone, and I ached with exhaustion. I closed my eyes, and when I opened them again my mother was kneeling in front of me, gently patting my neck with a warm, wet cloth. “Honey, what happened to you?” she asked, placing a piece of gauze at the base of my throat before anchoring it in place with a bandage. “It’s a small cut, but you’re bleeding like a stuck pig. What on earth happened?”
Has the entire world gone crazy? I wondered as I watched her get up. Colin had sat back down on the couch, and she sat down next to him, patting him on the leg. She smiled at him, like having a murderer sitting on her couch was not a big deal, just the most normal thing in the world.
“What is he doing here?” I blurted the words out at last. I’d stopped shaking, but was still exhausted. “Mom, why haven’t you called the cops?”
Mom looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “The cops?” Her voice was puzzled, and then her expression broadened into a smile. “Oh, of co
urse, you mean because he’s been shot. No, we agreed there’s no need for us to call the cops.” She patted Colin’s shoulder gently, and he smiled up at her. “He doesn’t want us to, and since it’s just a small flesh wound I could fix up—”
I said, very carefully enunciating each word, “No, Mom, I thought maybe you might have called the police because he’s wanted. You know, like his picture is on a poster in the post office?”
“Don’t be silly.” She dismissed that with a wave of her hand. “It most certainly is not. I was just there yesterday, and I can assure you—”
“Mom, he killed two people?” And who knows how many others? “They were your brothers? Hello? How could you forget that?” Okay, granted, they’d had connections to the Russian mob and terrorists, and she’d never met them, but still. And I remembered we’d never told her he’d been trained by the Mossad, and worked as a paid assassin. Frank thought we should tell everyone the truth—but what Colin had done was bad enough, I’d thought. Frank finally came around to my way of thinking.
At least Frank wasn’t here to say I told you so.
“Hey, I’m sitting right here,” Colin said, looking from Mom to me and back again.
Mom ignored him, a stern look on her face. “Colin did not kill them.” Her eyes narrowed as she continued speaking. “He said he didn’t do it, and that’s good enough for me.” She gave him a huge smile. “He’s not a killer. I would know if he was.” She folded her arms in front of her. Her tone clearly implied and that’s the end of that unpleasant subject.
“Maybe we should leave that to a jury?” I wanted to shake her. “And there’s a little thing called aiding a fugitive from justice? Accessory after the fact? You could go to jail!”
“Hello? I’m right here,” Colin said, his eyebrows coming together over his nose.