The Devil’s Share

by Wallace Stroby

  “We can still work this out.”

  “I don’t think so.” Chance was watching her.

  “I didn’t want things to go the way they did,” Hicks said. “Any of it.”

  “You kept the same phone.”

  “Guess I didn’t think I had anything to worry about anymore.”

  “You thought wrong.”

  “I’m not surprised, though. I knew there was a chance you’d walked away in Phoenix. I figured if you did, I’d be hearing from you again, one way or another.”

  “You owe me some money.”

  He laughed. “You’ll have to take that up with the old man.”

  “I will.”

  “Let me know how that works out for you.”

  “Answer me one thing. Out in the desert. That driver, the one who ran, he was in on it, wasn’t he?”

  “What if I said yes?”

  “Did you plan to kill him all along?”

  “Not then. When it was all over, yeah. As a safety measure. But he forced our hand.”

  “Is that what all this has been? Safety measures?”

  “Collateral damage.”

  “Cota know about all this, what you’ve done?”

  “Does it matter now? He wanted his money, he didn’t care how he got it. He looked the other way while I did the real work. Way it always was.”

  Chance reached for the phone. She shook her head.

  Hicks said, “Sandy had some people with him.”

  “He did.”

  He took a breath. “All of them?”

  “They called the play.”

  “God damn, girl.”

  When she didn’t respond, he said, “So I guess we’re the last ones standing. Funny how that worked out. No harm, no foul, though. I’m headed someplace where it’s warm all year long, spend some of the old man’s money. You should do the same. All in all, you didn’t come out too bad.”

  “And you can leave it at that?”

  “What else is there to do?”

  “What about Sandoval?”

  “Sandy was a soldier. He knew what he was getting into. We all did. Your people, too.”

  She took a breath. “You were wrong.”

  “About what?”

  “About us. You and me. We’re not alike. Not at all.”

  “No? Maybe you should think about that a little more.”

  “I did,” she said, and ended the call.

  “You should have let me talk to him,” Chance said.

  “There’s nothing more to say.” She opened the back of the phone, took out the SIM card, broke it in two, dropped the pieces out the window. Four miles later, she tossed the phone.

  “So what now?” Chance said.

  “We’ll find a motel for tonight. Somewhere in Indiana, maybe. I’ll feel better across the state line. We’ll take a look at that leg, then get you on a train, plane, to Iowa, wherever. Then I’ve got some things to take care of.”

  “I’ll come along.”

  “No,” she said. “Not this time.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  The tennis court behind the house was the easiest way in. She used bolt cutters on the chain-link fence there, working by moonlight, the scrub pine hiding her from the neighboring houses. She wore a black windbreaker, black jeans, gloves, and sneakers.

  A two-day drive out here, and she’d gotten what she needed along the way. Her rental car was parked up the hill, nosed into a stand of trees, hidden from the road.

  When she’d cut an L in the chain-link, she slid through the gap, careful to avoid the jagged edges. Crouching there in the shadows of the court, she looked up at the house. Lights on the second and third floors, the ground floor dark. No sound but the faint splash of water from the fountain beyond the garden wall. She waited, watching for movement behind the windows. Nothing. She eased back a glove to look at her watch. Two A.M.

  On the other side of the court was a chained and padlocked gate that led onto an enclosed patio. She crossed the court, used the bolt cutters on the chain, then unthreaded it from the fence posts. She left the chain and bolt cutters on the ground, opened the gate quietly and went through.

  At the back door, she used strips of duct tape to cover the glass in one of the lower panes, then bumped it with an elbow. The glass cracked but stayed in place. She pulled gently on the loose ends of the tape, and the broken glass came away without a sound. She set the tape down, plucked the last glass fragments from the frame, then waited, listening for any sounds inside the house. Somewhere in the hills, a coyote called.

  A long count of sixty, and only silence. She reached in then, felt around for the dead bolt, unlocked it. The door opened inward. No chain. Staying low, she slid in, eased the door shut behind her, waiting for an alarm.

  When a minute had passed in silence, she took the Glock from her belt, then got out the penlight, switched it on.

  It was a concrete-floored pantry, a washer and dryer on one side of the room. On the other, a meat freezer and shelves stocked with canned foods. On the wall to her right was a keyboard for the alarm system. All the lights were dark. The system had been disarmed.

  She turned off the penlight, tried the door on the other side of the pantry. It was unlocked, led into a kitchen. With the Glock at her side, she went through, listening. Faint TV noise from an upper floor, nothing else.

  She walked the ground-floor rooms, using the penlight only when she had to. When she was sure the downstairs was empty, she went through the big living room and up the marble staircase to the second floor. The room with the fireplace was empty, but there were lights on in the hallway. A door on the right was ajar, where the TV noise was coming from. At the end of the hall, another open door, a dimly lit room inside.

  She stopped at the first door, eased it open with a shoulder. It was a bedroom, lit by a single lamp on a nightstand. On the wall, a flat-screen TV showing a black-and-white movie, the sound turned low.

  Katya lay in the bed, naked, sheets tangled around her fleshy legs. Her wrists were tied to the bedposts with red silken scarves. Another was around her neck, deep in the flesh there. She was facing away from the door, her eyes half open, her face purple and swollen.

  Crissa backed out of the room, moved down the carpeted hallway. The room at the end was a study. Bookshelves against the walls, an antique globe on a wooden stand, a desk lamp the only light. Near the desk, a painting of a clipper ship hung crooked on the wall.

  She stepped in, the Glock in a two-handed grip, pointing at shadows. The room was empty.

  At the desk, she lowered the gun, eased the painting aside. As she’d expected, there was a wall safe there, open a half inch. She lifted the painting off its hook, set it on the desk. Inside the safe were documents, a burgundy British passport, empty shelves.

  She went back down the hall, then up the stairs to the next floor. A cool breeze blew through the corridor. She followed it into the room with the big oak table. The French doors to the balcony were open, the curtains there shifting in the breeze.

  She aimed the Glock at the French doors, waiting for someone to come through them. She gave it a count of fifty, then went through the doors, gun up. The balcony was empty. The key lights were on in the gardens below, and she could hear the whisper of the fountain. Her foot hit something. Cota’s cane. She went to the marble railing, looked down.

  Cota lay faceup on the flagstones three floors below, eyes open. One leg was twisted up under him, a hand outstretched as if pointing to the fountain, the statue of the winged man. Blood had pooled beneath his head.

  She saw then how it was supposed to look. Cota killing the maid, then going off the balcony himself. A murder and a suicide. Everything resolved, and no witnesses. Hicks at work, closing the pipeline on his own.

  There was no sense trying to find his Venice apartment, waiting for him to show up. He’d be far away from Los Angeles by now, with whatever he’d taken from Cota. It was over.

  Back inside, she retraced her steps, let herself
out onto the patio. She picked up the bolt cutters, went back the way she’d come.

  * * *

  It took her three days to drive back to New Jersey. She got home in the middle of the night, exhausted and aching. When she woke the next day, after twelve hours of what felt like drugged sleep, the sun was already low in the west. She made coffee, took it out on the deck, called Rathka.

  “You’re back, I hope,” he said.

  “I am.”

  “I was worried.”

  “Things are settled, for now.”

  “Good. I have some investment ideas for your most recent deposit. I think you’ll approve.”

  “I’m sure I will.”

  “And you said there’s more to come?”

  “No,” she said. “Things went a different way.”

  He took a moment to process that. “Sorry to hear it. You should come by someday soon. We can take a look at your portfolio. See what you like, what you don’t like.”

  “I trust you.”

  “Any fallout from your recent trip we need to discuss?”

  “Nothing that affects you.”

  She thought of what Hicks had said on the phone. Had he really gone somewhere warm, or was that just misdirection? There would be no percentage in his staying around. He had all the money he was going to get, had burned all his bridges. She was no threat to him now, and he knew it.

  “One other thing,” she said. “I think I’d like to do some traveling soon. Change of scenery.”

  “No work involved?”

  “No.”

  “That’s good. I’ve been hoping you’d take some R&R. Happy to help. What did you have in mind?”

  “I don’t know. Europe, maybe. I’ve never been there. I’ve always wondered what Paris was like.”

  “You’ll love it. Monique can set that up for you, four-star all the way.”

  “No,” she said. “An apartment maybe, something simple. A place I can live for a while without attracting attention.”

  “How long were you thinking?”

  “I’m not sure. A couple months maybe, then I’ll decide. If I get bored before that, I’ll come home, figure something else out.”

  “I’m glad to hear you talking this way. That you’re giving some other things a rest.”

  “I might make a trip to Texas first. Let him know what’s going on.”

  “My advice? Make it a quick one. Don’t get distracted, change your mind about going away.”

  “We’ll see how it plays.”

  “Give him my best,” Rathka said. “And tell him we haven’t given up.”

  “He knows that. But I’ll tell him anyway.”

  “Let me look into these other issues, get back to you. I have a friend, a publisher, who knows Paris like she was born there. I’m sure we can come up with something that’ll work for you, something off the tourist path.”

  “Thanks.”

  “In the meantime, you should come by the office. Monique’ll make you an espresso. I’ll show you the latest pictures of the twins. They just turned eight.”

  “Maybe I will,” she said.

  * * *

  The faces came to her that night, as she knew they would. Struggling to sleep, the Lunesta not working, she’d see them again. A man with his throat torn open by buckshot. A blood-spattered silver cross. Sandoval in a ditch, eyes dull, looking up at the night sky, his life draining into the dirt beneath him. Then the desert again. The snapping of rifle bolts. Four men facedown, motionless.

  Too much blood this time, too much pain. And none of it worth it.

  When the bedside clock said five A.M., she gave up, took a bottle of wine out on the deck. She poured a glass, sat on the steps, arms wrapped around herself, listening to the wind and the water.

  Home again, she thought. A different world. A different life.

  Dawn was breaking, a red sun rising over the ocean, when she went back inside, carrying the glass and the empty bottle. She slept then, sprawled atop the sheets in sweats and T-shirt, the Glock on the nightstand, pale light coming through the windows. She didn’t dream.

  TWENTY-SIX

  She woke at noon, her mouth dry, washed down two aspirin with a full bottle of water. They barely touched her headache.

  Most of what was in the refrigerator had gone bad while she’d been away. She threw out almost everything, made a list of what she’d need at the store. Then she dropped the rental off at an agency office in Ocean Township, took a cab home, got her own leased Ford out of the garage she kept two blocks from her house. At the post office, she went though two weeks of mail. Utility bills, junk mail solicitations, and two business envelopes from Rathka’s office.

  She threw away the junk, opened the letters at a side counter. Each had a check for fifteen thousand, yields from various investments. She’d deposit each in a separate bank.

  The afternoon was already turning gray, clouds moving in. At the grocery store, she replaced what she’d thrown away, paused at the entrance to the adjoining liquor store. Her head still ached, but she knew she’d have to drink again tonight if she hoped to sleep.

  She bought a bottle of Medoc, told herself she’d only have a glass. Knew she was fooling herself. This would grow to be a problem if she let it.

  Back at the house, she put on a red and black Puma tracksuit, did the mile run along the inlet and into Belmar, then back, panting and nauseous all the way. But her head had begun to clear, and by the time she reached the house she had sweated most of the alcohol out of her system.

  The wind was picking up outside, rattling the windows, slicing whitecaps on the inlet. She wasn’t hungry, but knew she would feel better with something in her stomach. For dinner, she cooked a hamburger steak, microwave french fries. She ate standing at the kitchen counter, looked over at the bottle of wine on the table. A glass or two afterward, that would be it.

  The air was thick with humidity, and there was a deep ache in her hip. She found two pain pills left in a bottle in the medicine cabinet and took one with a palmful of water from the faucet.

  In the living room, she turned on the radio, opened the bottle of wine and got a glass from the cabinet. She sat on the couch, listened to a Handel concerto she recognized but couldn’t name. With her third glass of wine, she felt the tension of the last few weeks starting to fall away.

  She took the bottle and glass out onto the deck, left the sliding glass door open, sat on the steps, the music drifting out around her. Night now, but still warm, the air heavy. The houses on both sides of hers were dark. To the east, over the ocean, lightning pulsed on the horizon.

  She drank wine, watched the oncoming storm. The wind grew stronger, water lapping rhythmically against her dock. She filled her glass again, saw the bottle was nearly empty.

  So much for one glass, she thought. You need to get a handle on this before it gets bad.

  The first raindrops came then, thick and warm. Call it a night, she thought, and start making some changes tomorrow.

  The rain picked up, the thunder closer. She got up, tired and sore, carried the bottle and glass inside, shut the sliding door against the wind and the night.

  * * *

  The smell woke her. The scent of rain, of the sea, of night on the water. It pulled her out of a dream in which she was sinking into an immense darkness, trying to swim back to a surface miles above.

  She opened her eyes. Rain drummed steadily on the roof, a lulling sound that had helped ease her into sleep. On the nightstand, the clock read three fifteen. The radio still played softly in the living room. She’d left it on when she’d fallen asleep.

  She sat up, saw the figure by her bed, a blacker shadow in the darkness. She pushed away covers, reached for the Glock on the nightstand, knocked over the empty wine bottle there. Her hand closed around the gun, and she pointed it at the shadow, finger on the trigger. It felt wrong, the balance and weight off.

  The nightstand lamp went on, and Hicks was sitting there, in a chair beside the bed, drippin
g wet. He held up the Glock’s magazine so she could see it, put it on the nightstand. “You sleep sound.”

  She squeezed the trigger. It depressed halfway, stopped.

  “I took the round in the chamber, too,” he said. “Knew you’d have one there.”

  Thunder in the distance. The rain on the roof grew louder. She kept the Glock steady.

  “That alarm company ripped you off,” he said. “Once I got into your basement from outside, it only took about ten minutes to figure out how to override the whole thing. I were you, I’d ask for your money back.”

  She slid away from him to the other side of the bed, the gun still up, untangled her legs from the covers.

  “Door’s right there,” he said. “Think you can make it?”

  She came off the bed, stood. She wore sweatpants and a T-shirt. The hardwood floor was cold beneath her bare feet.

  He picked up the bottle, set it back on the nightstand. “Drinking to forget? How’s that working out for you?”

  She stayed where she was, keeping the bed between them. She could use the Glock as a club if she had to, but from where he sat he blocked the open door. In the hallway beyond, she could see the gleam of wet footprints on the floor.

  “See, that gun’s just a hunk of metal now,” he said. “It’s useless. But this”—he reached down into his boot, came up with a wood-handled ice pick—“is always loaded. It’s as primitive as it gets. Silent, too.”

  She thought of Sladden, the patchwork of holes in his flesh, the final entry wound at the base of his skull.

  “How did you find me?” she said.

  “Your friend in Kansas City. On one of his laptops he had a post box number and a zip code for you. The hard drive was password protected, but one of my guys cracked it. The entry was half-ass coded, and under a different name, but it wasn’t hard to figure out.”

  She took a step to the left. He watched her.

  “Long odds, but it was worth a shot,” he said. “I drove all the way out here, found that post office. Tough part was the waiting. I sat in that parking lot across the street for three days, pissing into an iced-tea bottle, waiting for you to come along and check your mail. Not knowing if you ever would, or if you even lived around here anymore. I got lucky, I guess.”