The Prince Of Deadly Weapons

by Boston Teran

  This bluntly told fact neither shocked nor surprised Paul and Sancho Maria.

  "What were you doing up in The Meadows? Who are these 'others'?"

  Essie sipped from the mug. Her whole body grew tense. "The night Taylor was killed two witnesses happened to be at the slough. One was a man; handsome, Latin. He gave testimony at the hospital. Do you remember?"

  Sancho Maria glanced at her husband. Neither recalled.

  "He was at the Fenns'." She looked from one to the other. "A witness at the slough that night and he works with the Fenns. They all workfor Charles. Do you see where that leads?"

  They listened without speaking, without moving.

  "There was another man. I think his name is Merrit Merton. He has different businesses, or seems to. One is exports and imports. I also think he sells the diamonds."

  Sancho Maria took a heavy, slow breath. Again the box springs squeaked. "What are you talking about… diamonds?"

  Essie held the mug in one hand and pointed to Paul with the other. "You sometimes delivered those packages of blood for Taylor… the one the Fenns delivered… we found out 'cause… we thought… we suspected something was wrong… they used Taylor… we… Dane opened the box and—"

  They heard a plane overhead. They quieted, their eyes quicked up to the ceiling. The sound was still small against the distance, but it was a plane. And it was approaching.

  Paul listened hard for the plane's engine. His body tightened away from the doorjamb. "It could be them. Sit here. I'll go see."

  Paul pulled back the curtain that covered the dining room window. That window looked out onto the front yard and the small Airstream trailer parked there toward the runway. The rain had slowed; the mist had lightened. The plane, he could hear, was on its descending approach. Those few moments were a dark long time. Then he saw the white fuselage of a Cirrus he recognized.

  He called out loud enough to be heard in the back bedroom, "It's not him."

  Paul stood there in the harbored warmth of his home. He looked out at the Airstream trailer sitting in the ratty brush of his front yard. He saw Dane that first night, when he slept there. He'd watched from this very window. Dane sat on those silver steps, smoking. That bundle of intense boy with all of life and his secrets walking down the paths of him.

  "What if there were no Minotaur, what if there was nothing at the end of the labyrinth?" he'd asked.

  But Paul knew better. He'd even known soon enough. In the front yard that cat was night crawling for bounty. And it was a perfect yard for bounty. Unkempt and wild, the grass and weeds grown so long up and through the long-since painted broken pickets of a fence. She was sleeking along as natural as can be. Going about the business of her species. Unaware of what ends bring.

  Paul rested his forehead against the window. "Fuckin' kid. With that fuckin' remark about the glove."

  Sancho Maria touched his shoulder. Paul's face came away from the glass. All the feelings and concern he had for that boy sat there on his face for her to see.

  "I could fly down to Mexico."

  "No."

  "I don't know if I'd find them but—"

  "No."

  He pointed out toward the world. "If something happens to that—" He lowered his voice. "— If something happens to that boy the promises I make to anyone won't mean a rat's ass."

  She took him by the shoulders, she shook hard. He understood, he did not want to, but he understood.

  * * *

  THE LIGHT from backup the hallway just touched one bedroom wall. Essie could make out the tiny cloud motifs in the wallpaper. Small as this room was, it would have been perfect for the child that Paul and Maria never had.

  Sancho Maria returned; the box springs squeaked as she sat.

  Essie saw Maria was getting ready to say something. "I've always felt overwhelmed around you," said Essie. "The men at the coffee shop, they are. I guess that's because they know you're stronger. I guess that's how I feel. That you're stronger, and could endure anything."

  Sancho Maria made the slightest ripple of a sigh.

  "But whatever it is you might say to me, I won't do it. If it's what I think you're going to say."

  "It's better," said Sancho Maria, "to be given honest bad news, rather than dishonest good news."

  "All right."

  "The deeper you get into any kind of situation, even foolish ones, the more you start to personalize it. The more it becomes about you. Just consider, you and Dane both, consider, that you've given enough. Say what you know, and be done with it."

  Essie sat there resisting. She put the coffee cup down on the floor. Her hand ached. "There's something I want to ask you. Need to, really."

  "All right."

  "When do you know you've given enough?" Essie slapped the back of her bandaged hand into the palm of the other. "When do you know? Is it usually right before you give up… or just after?"

  Sancho Maria gave no answer. She got up to the sound of a creaking bedspring and leaning over kissed Essie on the head.

  Sancho Maria walked out of the room and closed the door. The short wash of light that fell across the wall was now gone. The wallpaper with its tiny clouds just blackness. Essie sat alone; she closed her eyes.

  "If you can hear me," she whispered, "you'll be all right.

  "If you can hear me," she whispered, "we'll be all right."

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  THEY WERE BROUGHT back by the tender to the beach. They slogged through the short waves. They were wrapped in blankets, a token of their little visit.

  Nathan collapsed in the darkness. Dane looked up and down the shoreline for any remains of the fire. There was none that he could see. Nathan began to retch. Dane walked until he found a rock that he could sit and lean against. When the retching stopped Nathan began to spit, and when the spitting stopped Nathan said, "I won't forget this."

  Dane could not tell from his exhausted tone if Nathan meant to revenge what happened, or just surviving that horror was its own devastating penalty.

  Dane felt a wave of trembling begin, and it was not from the cold. He stared out at the darkling sea, and the slow easy swells of tide that spread and smoothed their way up onto the shore. It was essentially so beautiful, so absolute, and just beyond it, past what he could see, was the boat.

  "You stood it," said Nathan. The voice had gathered backup a little of its gruff anger. "Fuck… you stood it." Nathan spit. "We can survive. Dane, do you hear me?" He spit again. "We can survive anything together."

  * * *

  PUNTA FINAL had a graded runway that led to a few dozen beachfront homes. These ran from the barely livable to the tasteless and not so quite baronial. Merrit Merton sat on a crate box, his back against the remains of a cinderblock wall. Tommy Fenn stood off in the darkness beside the plane smoking while his brother walked the tie-downs looking for any sign of the taildragger Nathan had flown out of Brown's Field.

  Shane returned bewildered and angry. "They're not here."

  "You sure?" asked Tommy.

  Even darkness could not cover up the hideously bulging, cut face. Shane had a can of beer, and he was too loaded already to be of any real use. "They're— not— fuckin'— here!"

  "He probably never stopped here at all," said Merton.

  The brothers turned.

  "Nathan isn't stupid. He's not gonna be as easy to kill as his son… or that Federal Reserve agent."

  It took less than a moment before Shane flung the beer at Merton. It hit the cinderblock wall just above his head. He got covered with a rake line of wet. Tommy walked to the plane while Merton just sat there. Tommy reached into the open cabin door. He came out carrying a flashlight. He turned, put the light right to Merton's face. He followed that white mark till he was standing over Merton who squinted, but did not move, did not look away.

  "Is that the flashlight you said you travel with? If it is, it isn't much."

  "Greene offed himself."

  "And you never shorted a delivery." Merto
n shoved the light away but Tommy brought it right back.

  "And what is this about some Federal Reserve agent?"

  Shane stalked the darkness behind his brother.

  "You think Romero isn't going to be frank with me? We know each other a long time. We do a lot of business together. We are friends." Merton slapped the light away again. "So don't go fuckin' around with the plane, understand?"

  Merton stood. He brushed at the wet stains down his coat and pants. This was done more as contemptible show than anything else. "Let's go back." He started for the plane. He walked right past Shane, staring at all that battered manhood. "Even if Nathan were here, look at this place. Who'd be stupid enough but you to try something."

  * * *

  DANE AND Nathan had flown to Mexico under a sun's closing; they flew back with a sun rising. The rim of the earth grew palish pink and blue and the sun, Dane thought, did not so much rise as sublimely come to be.

  He and Nathan had said little to each other since the beach, they were so battered from the night before. As Dane watched the sky flower with light one thought image from that devastating hour on the Hunter Gracchus had at him. One— it was of that black-marketeer saying "the miracles" as he talked about his daughter and the transplant that saved her life knowing, knowing as he did, that it was paid for by some courier who had smuggled diamonds packed up their filthy asshole out of a wartorn country— what better spoke to the manifest contradiction that is man.

  Nathan began to speak in a tired voice. "They used to practice shit like that Senegalese did on us in special ops. In case we got captured. They'd put us in coffins with snakes, they'd tie us up and toss us into tanks of water to see if we'd crack. To see if we could hold our tongues and our shit at the same time. That's what the General used to say. That's how we came to know each other."

  "The miracles," Dane said quietly.

  "What?"

  Nathan was not sure he had heard Dane right. Dane explained what the Senegalese had told him about his daughter while they were bringing Nathan down to the lazaret. "He'd asked," said Dane, "why I was brought there."

  "And you told him."

  "I told him everything, on the chance it would keep us from being killed."

  Nathan moved sluggishly in his seat. "Yeah." His head nodded. "That's part of why the Senegalese got into this deal. His daughter. She's why he's letting us clean up so much of his money. He's trying to buy himself—"

  Dane's pointed stare and the realization of hearing what he was about to say directly said about him, and the terrible hole of emptiness that was Nathan Hale Greene opened right up.

  Dane saw it. He saw Nathan's face wedge up in disgust, then try to hide behind the slow coming together of a stoic, controlled pose. Dane saw it, and he saw a piece of himself there too. All wrapped up in the corresponding reality of how he got here in the first place.

  Silence settled in once more. Dane went back to watching the sky. He watched as the light kept coming up over the earth, like a stage curtain rising at the hand of ghosts.

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  PAUL AND SANCHO Maria were about a half hour away from The Burrow opening when Essie entered the kitchen through the alley door. Sancho Maria was ordering the help in rapid-fire Spanish and Paul, he was in the coffee shop handling set-up. Essie could hear him cursing through the walls about the wiring, which as all the airport rats knew, was a mess of inefficiency notoriously prone to blink.

  "I checked my messages," said Essie. "I heard from Dane."

  Sancho Maria waved off a question from the cook in dragon-snapped Spanish, took Essie by the arm to where they wouldn't get hit by a tray of passing cups or a pair of arms carrying moletas of steaming coffee.

  "He's in San Diego, with Nathan. They'll be back tonight."

  Paul was shouting through the wall for Maria to hear, "We ought to burn this fuckin' place to the ground and collect on the insurance!" The kitchen door from the bar swung open, and Paul came through right behind it. "You paid up our insurance, right—"

  Sancho Maria pointed at Essie. "Dane called."

  Paul stopped talking.

  "He said everything was okay."

  " 'Okay'… What kind of fuckin' answer is…'okay'?"

  "Quiet," said Sancho Maria. To Essie, "How did he sound?"

  "He sounded anything but okay."

  * * *

  THE GENERAL was still in his pajamas, sitting at the edge of the bed being attended to by his morning nurse when Charles arrived.

  Charles sat in a chair by the door. He had to wait impatiently through a shot, the swallowing of medication, and the nurse's innocuous chatter. As she was leaving Charles told her, "Close the door."

  The General sat stooped, hooked up to a small portable oxygen tank that could be dollied on wheels.

  "They couldn't find him in Mexico."

  The General struggled to stand. Charles got up and crossed the room. He offered help. The General looked the hand away and started for a chair the nurse had set up by the window.

  Getting to the light was a harder distance to cover each day. Charles watched the old man with that manufactured umbilicus, his lifeline to a tank full of air he pulled along on little black wheels in slow, slow shuffling steps. And to sit, every move and bend of the body was done with painful, cautious deliberation. It was a pageant of the pathetic.

  The General sat for a long time; ten minutes, maybe fifteen before he spoke. Charles had paced and sat and paced some more.

  "Nathan's friend…," said the General, "… the cripple."

  "Was his friend. They seem to have had a falling out."

  "He… approached you to… raise money."

  * * *

  FLESH WAS sweating up her first serious Q and A for a felonious assault robbery case when someone tapped on the glass that separated her cubbyhole from the hallway.

  She looked up— it was Essie. Flesh waved her in, stood and came around the desk with arms open.

  "Hello, Francie. I hope you don't mind my stopping by like this."

  "Mind? Finally a human being enters my office. And by human being I mean someone who does not practice the law." They hugged. "How do you like my office? It's a perfect mind fuck for a claustrophobic."

  Flesh kicked the door closed, had Essie sit. During a few minutes of catch up talk Essie lied away the reason for her bandaged hand. Then Flesh got around to Dane. "I hear Dane is now Nathan's official protege."

  Even knowing what Flesh only meant, it was for Essie an acid moment reflected in a look.

  "Intense… hunh," said Flesh. "In a good way, I hope."

  "Yes, Francie. In a good way, we hope."

  "Do you think Nathan and Roy will ever talk again? Though I can't really blame Nathan. It's Roy. Men. If they can't use their dicks one way, they've got to use them in another. And usually to the detriment of your average sized, decent hardworking civilization."

  Flesh picked up a pair of scissors. She began to snip at the air as if it were your average sized, decent hardworking penis.

  "I don't understand, Francie."

  "Nathan didn't tell you?"

  "Nathan stopped calling Roy. Roy stopped calling. I didn't ask. That's all I know."

  Flesh sat there holding the scissors in the air. She'd had no idea.

  "Francie?"

  "Roy told Nathan, in what was supposed to be a private conversation with Ivy, Taylor admitted to her a few weeks before his 'death' he might go to a psychiatrist. It seems he felt 'suicidal' since he was not a success like his father. According to Ivy."

  Another uninvited small doom clutched at Essie's throat. "Are you sure that's what Ivy said?"

  "To be honest with you, yes. As Roy told me. I won't ask if Taylor ever said anything like that to you."

  "And Roy told Nathan. Was any of this because of Roy's relationship to me?"

  Flesh held the scissors out like a gun. "They've got dicks. If they can't hurt you with them, they find someone else to hurt in your place."

>   Essie found herself staring at the scissors and thinking, how much free time people have to spend on their petty grievances.

  "We ought to go out drinking one night," said Flesh. "We can have a nice dinner then get down to trading malicious gossip and rumors. Be catty. Say nasty things about people we usually have to be nice to. No… wait a minute… that's what we do around here for a living."

  Essie glanced from the scissors to Flesh's smile.

  "I was making a joke. Seriously, I would like to go out one night."

  Essie nodded. "Could you do me a favor?"

  "Haven't you heard? Around here I'm called 'The Queen of Favors.'"

  "I bumped into a man the other day. He had been at the slough the night Taylor was killed. I had forgotten his name and was too embarrassed to ask. He said a lot of nice things about Taylor and, well… I wanted to send him a note. You wouldn't still have his name in a file somewhere?"

  "I might." Flesh looked at Essie. It was an affable but decidedly professional stare that Essie weathered innocently. Without saying anything more Flesh got up.

  One wall was stacked with files, in some places three, almost four feet high. Taylor's file was sadly close to the bottom of one stack. While Flesh knelt there tugging it loose so as not to topple the others, the office door opened and Roy's head peeked in.

  "Hello, Essie… Flesh."

  Essie turned. "Hello, Roy."

  Flesh pulled the file, stood and set it on her desk.

  "I was walking by and I saw you."

  Flesh began to go through the file watching Roy with one eye as she did.

  "You here to see Flesh?"

  "I'm here to see Francie."

  Flesh found the name. She wrote it down on a scrap of paper, with a phone number and address. She handed this to Essie.

  DAMON ROMERO— even seeing the name made no real impact. But Romero and Romeo—

  "I guess you were going to come and see me before you left. To say hello."

  Essie folded up the paper. "No, Roy, I wasn't." She slipped it into her purse. "Thanks, Francie." She stepped around Roy and stopped at the door. "Call me, Francie. We'll go out. Maybe we can even trade a few rumors."