The Solomon Organization

by Andrew Neiderman

  Meg Lester, she told herself, don’t let your imagination run wild, and whatever you do, don’t become some terrified little girl again. Sharma will have you banished from the female sex. She laughed to herself and stepped down the stairs firmly. She would read, watch a little television, and go to sleep. Every night that passed, every morning that came, brought her another inch or so away from the horror that was and closer to the peace of mind that awaited. She had to believe that; that had to be her sustaining faith.

  She turned at the bottom of the stairs, deciding to get herself a cup of warm milk. It would soothe her stomach, calm her nerves, and help her get drowsy. Old-fashioned remedies, but we cling to them in times like these; it’s like turning back and embracing Momma by following something she said or did, she thought and concluded that tragedy and disappointment turned us into children again.

  For the moment, she didn’t mind being a child. She liked the feeling, liked recalling how safe and warm it was in her mother’s arms while she rocked her and hummed softly, chasing away her childhood fears. Hopefully, she would be able to give Justine the same sense of security, even after all this.

  Her head down, a sweet angelic smile on her face, her arms folded under her bosom, Meg walked through the hallway, not even gazing to her right or left and thus never seeing the looming shadow that metamorphosed into a man. He stepped forward in the den doorway and struck her sharply on the back of her skull with the head of that ceramic cupid for which she had overpaid just three short months ago when shopping had been a way to relieve some of the frustration.

  She never uttered a sound after being struck. It was as if someone had dropped a curtain of lead between her and her thoughts. She folded quickly and then seemed to float, turning and twisting like a body caught up in a raging stream before finally settling to the bottom. A steady trickle of blood began to draw a jagged line across the back of her scalp. It dripped to the beige Berber carpet, the material quickly absorbing and accepting the precious fluid.

  Bernard Lyle hovered over her for a moment, his shadow draping her like a shroud. Then he dropped the cupid at her side and kicked it over so that its cherubic face was turned toward hers—his little joke. He did not turn to flee. Instead, he casually strolled down to the kitchen himself, as if out to complete Meg’s mission. He opened the refrigerator, found something cold to drink that pleased him, poured himself a glass, and then retreated to the living room to wait.

  There was still much to do.

  Scott groaned and turned over. Not realizing he was already at the edge of the sofa, he fell on his face on the carpet and for a few, long moments, kept his eyes shut. The whole world was spinning. He expected to pass out again. But he didn’t lose consciousness even though the sharp headache made him wish he had. He felt around his temples, expecting to touch a pair of iron pincers or something.

  He sat up and took a deep breath. Then he kept his eyes open and let himself grow used to the darkness. The surroundings were familiar, but it was confusing. Where the fuck am I?

  When the realization set in, a cold chill whipped across his chest and seemed to settle like a fist of ice around his heart. He was home…in the house in Westwood, but how the hell did he get here and where was Meg?

  He struggled to his feet and then flopped back on the sofa. Not only did he have trouble navigating; he had trouble merely standing. He could have passed out again; he wasn’t sure. When he opened his eyes once more, it seemed as if some time had gone by. He took another deep breath and reached over to turn on the lamp beside him. The light exploded, striking his face so sharply he grimaced and squeezed his eyes closed protectively. He had to take it in small increments, opening those lids a millimeter at a time. Finally, he was able to look around again and take stock.

  He was in the living room and maybe, as he had suspected, the world was topsy-turvy because the easy chair across the way was on its side and that antique side table Meg had spent a small fortune on was down beside it, one of the bony legs snapped. Magazines and books were strewn about and what looked like Meg’s precious Leek leaf was cracked into two pieces.

  He shook his head. What the hell happened here? When did it happen? He struggled to recall his most recent memory and visualized the two women Philip Dante had brought along in the limousine. Later, in one of the bedrooms of that beautiful house, they had sandwiched him between their nude bodies. Everyone had been laughing. The blonde fed him champagne like a mother feeding her infant formula. He sucked on the neck of the bottle. They’d gone to someone’s home somewhere in Pacific Palisades. He remembered that much. He remembered laughing and laughing, gagging on the champagne, and then…

  He woke up here. Huh? Was this some sick joke Philip Dante had pulled? Dropping him off in Westwood to show her she couldn’t push him around?

  He brought himself to a standing position again and steadied himself with the arm of the sofa. Deep breaths, he told himself. Keep taking deep breaths. It seemed to help; he garnered strength and was able to walk. He went to the door of the living room and gazed out, listening. Where was Meg? She sure as hell wouldn’t be happy to know he was here, he thought and turned to his right.

  At first her sprawled, twisted body seemed like an illusion, part of a dream. She was in such an awkward position, her skirt up above her knees, her rear end turned toward him. One arm was extended and then twisted above her head and the other was back, her palm up, the fingers curled.

  “Meg?”

  Silence came back at him with the impact of a sledge-hammer. He knew before he drew closer to her that she wasn’t going to respond.

  “Meg?”

  He knelt down, the motion making everything in his back scream like rusted hinges. His knees threatened to buckle and send him cascading over her twisted torso. His gaze went to the dried blood on her neck. He followed the line up through her hair and saw it disappear under the strands. A dark stain on the carpet stretched under her chin, and beside her, the little cupid smiled, a bloodstain on its own forehead.

  “Oh, shit. Meg!” He shook her, but she didn’t moan and her eyes didn’t open. She felt cold to him.

  He drew his hand back as if he had been jolted with electricity and struggled to stand. For a moment he clung to the wall and gaped down at her, still unbelieving. Then, he thought about Justine.

  Mustering new strength, he hurried down the hall, seized the bottom of the banister and pulled himself up the stairs like a man ascending a steep hill, tugging and groaning all the way until he had reached the top. He shot forward toward Justine’s bedroom. The door was wide open.

  He stopped in the doorway and clung to the jamb. Her bed was empty, the blanket pulled back, the pillow still creased where she had lain her head. A quick perusal of the room told him she was not there, not in the bathroom, not hiding in a corner or behind a dresser…nowhere. Our bedroom, he thought, and hurried to that one, only to find she wasn’t there, either. The bed was untouched. She’s hiding somewhere in the house, he thought, terrified.

  “Justine! Sweetheart! Justine!” He charged about frantically, his calls growing more and more desperate. He put on every light in the house, upstairs and then downstairs, but still there was no sign of her. He paused beside Meg again, trying to think, trying to be sensible.

  How could this be happening? What was going on? Dante, he thought. Dante would know. He went to the telephone, but it wasn’t until he lifted the receiver that he realized, he didn’t know this man’s number; he didn’t have it in his pocket address book, either. He didn’t even know the man’s address. Scott had never asked and Dante had never mentioned it.

  Information, he thought, and punched it out quickly.

  “City please,” the mechanical voice responded.

  “Los Angeles, Dante, Philip.”

  “How are you spelling that, sir?”

  “Dante, Dante. D…a…n…t…e.”

  “Thank you.” There was a pause. “I’m sorry, sir. I don’t have a Philip Dante.”

>   “What do you have?”

  “A lot of Dantes, sir. Do you have an address?”

  “No.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t…”

  “All right, thanks,” he said, hanging up quickly. He sat there thinking. The only other name he knew was Bernard Lyle’s, the unpleasant escort. Bernard Lyle. Yes. He dialed information again and asked for Lyle, but he got the same result. No Bernard Lyle listed.

  “What the hell’s going on?” he demanded frantically. “Is he unlisted?”

  “No, sir.”

  He hung up again and began to pace. He had been in such a frenzy, so angry and confused that he forgot to ask Dante the most obvious questions: where do you live? Who do you work for?

  Should he phone the police? He had to phone the police, of course. But what was he going to tell them? Christ, he was with a couple of broads having a hell of a time and the next thing he knew he was here and Meg was sprawled out and his daughter was missing. Panic set in. He charged toward the front door and actually stepped out of the house and started down the driveway before he stopped and realized they would only come for him anyway. It was better that he be the one who called them. That would be in his favor. He reentered the house, but the telephone rang before he could get to it.

  He stood there for a few moments, undecided. Then he realized it was just possible Dante was calling him. There was a good explanation as to why they had left him here, and they had Justine, safe. Sure, that had to be it. He seized the receiver.

  “Hello.”

  Silence for a moment.

  “Scott? Is that you?”

  He didn’t reply.

  “I know it’s you, Scott, you bastard. You’d better say something.” It was Sharma Corman. He froze; he couldn’t speak. “Where’s Meg? Put Meg on the phone this instant!”

  He hung up, dread dropping over him like a black sheet, enveloping him in gloom and doom. They’d be all over him now, scratching and mauling him—the sharks, tearing him apart with a vengeance. The moment he called the police, it would begin. He had to find out what was happening and absolve himself of any blame before it started. But was he without blame? After all, he had gone with that man and appealed to that group of male vigilantes.

  He went to the kitchen and got himself a glass of water. Then he sat at the table, waiting, desperately trying to remember what had happened between the time the blonde said, “I go first,” and his waking up in the living room. But nothing came to mind, nothing…not a clue.

  They were going to rectify the situation. Wasn’t that what Dante had told him? But how the hell did this rectify the situation? Unless, of course, they had decided that neither Meg nor he were fit to have custody of Justine. What did that mean? Where was his daughter?

  He envisioned her being woken and carried out of the house, terrified and hysterical, screaming for Meg, screaming for him. It brought tears to his eyes. What have I done? he thought. My God, what have I done? He got up and returned to Meg’s body.

  “I’m sorry, Meg. Honest, I’m sorry,” he whined. “All of this got out of hand and I just lost it. I…”

  He thought he saw her fingers twitch.

  “Meg?”

  He knelt down beside her and did what he hadn’t done before: he felt for a pulse.

  There it was, faint but definitely there. Ecstatic, he hurried back to the phone and dialed 911.

  “My wife…she’s been attacked. And my daughter’s missing!” he cried.

  “What’s the address, sir?”

  He rattled it off.

  “What condition is your wife in?”

  “She’s unconscious. She’s been struck in the head.”

  “An ambulance will be on its way. Stay put, sir. A patrol car is in your vicinity.”

  “Thank you. Please, tell them to hurry.”

  He returned to Meg’s side. Her pulse hadn’t changed and she made no sounds. Thinking he had to do something else, he went and got a cold, wet cloth and put it over her forehead. Then he fetched a pillow from the sofa and lifted her head gently to put the pillow underneath.

  He could hear the sirens in the distance. The stronger they sounded, the more hopeful he became. They found him sitting there, clinging to Meg’s hand, rocking back and forth and muttering apologies.

  4

  To Scott it seemed he had been sitting in the interrogation room for hours, just sitting there staring down at his hands, turning his fingers this way and that, studying the lines in his palms, inspecting the crevices in his skin like some alien who had just inhabited this body and was intrigued with the smallest details. He didn’t know whether he had sunk into his own world or whether this room was just soundproof, for he wasn’t aware of anything going on around him in the police station.

  After Meg had been loaded into the ambulance, they had put him into the police car. He protested when he realized they weren’t taking him to the hospital, but they didn’t pay much attention. Instead, they brought him directly to this room and left him, promising someone would come in to see him soon.

  Now, sitting beneath the bright, glaring tubular neon lights, he felt exceedingly warm. His lips were so dry he scratched his tongue every time he ran it over them. Yet, he didn’t sweat. It was as if the perspiration was oozing into him. He envisioned drops of scalding water dripping into his stomach, searing his organs. He took a deep breath and waited, feeling more and more like a prisoner sitting in a cell adjacent to the gas chamber.

  Aside from a small, narrow, high window across from him, there was nothing remarkable about the room, except that it had the scent of disinfectant. He imagined after every interrogation, a custodian appeared and washed down the floor, table, and chairs contaminated by the dregs of society dragged here.

  The click of the door snapped him into a stiff posture and he looked up expectantly.

  Two men entered, one tall, easily six feet three, all legs and long arms. Must have been a good basketball player, Scott thought. He had thin, light brown hair so fine it looked like the breeze from someone walking by would lift it out of place. The tall man smiled, but his dark brown eyes were fixed on Scott like a cat preparing to spring on its prey. He had his jacket off, his gun visible, strapped under his arm. Scott thought he was a man in his late forties, definitely pushing fifty. His partner, a much shorter and stouter man, maybe five feet eight, didn’t smile. He looked ten years or so younger, but meaner. There wasn’t even the pretense of politeness in his face. He appeared to have only disdain for Scott.

  “How you doin’, Mr. Lester?” the tall man asked.

  “Why did you just leave me sitting here without any information?” Scott replied quickly. “How’s my wife?” he demanded.

  The tall man didn’t break his smile, but the short man smirked.

  “It will be a while yet before they call us, Mr. Lester. You know how it is…they got to run all sorts of tests, X-rays, blood work…”

  “She’s still alive, if that’s what you mean,” the shorter man said.

  “What about my daughter? Any news as to her whereabouts?” he asked anxiously.

  “We were hoping you could tell us,” the shorter man said.

  Scott sat forward again and nodded gently.

  “I know how this looks,” he said.

  “How does it look, Mr. Lester?” the tall policeman asked. He stared a moment and then smiled and said, “I’m Lieutenant Parker and this is Detective Fotowski. We call him Foto, for short.”

  Lt. Parker pulled out a chair and sat across from Scott. Fotowski remained standing, glaring, his arms folded across his barrel chest. He had wide shoulders and a thick neck, the upper body of a college wrestler with the necessary competitive and aggressive gleam in his eyes.

  “It looks like I did it,” Scott said. “We’re in the middle of this nasty divorce proceeding, battling for custody of our daughter.”

  “Did you do it?” Lt. Parker asked. He rested his forearms on the table and clasped his hands. There was nothing else on
the table, but the top was crisscrossed with scratches, some carved deeply. The ranting of the frustrated and the trapped, the guilty and the innocent, Scott thought, and imagined suspects, not unlike himself, grinding pens, fingernails, even teeth, into the wood while they waited.

  “No,” Scott said, shaking his head vigorously. “I did not do it.”

  “We lifted a pretty clear set of prints off that statue,” Lt. Parker said softly. “Are they going to match yours? It was clearly the weapon used,” he added.

  “I don’t see why. I didn’t touch it; I can’t remember ever touching it. Meg bought it recently. Paid a lot of money for it, I thought. I wasn’t crazy about it.”

  “Crazy enough to hit her with it, though,” Fotowski said calmly.

  “No. Absolutely not.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “You want to tell us exactly how you came to find her unconscious on the floor?” Lt. Parker said.

  “I think I’d better wait until my attorney arrives,” Scott replied. Fotowski’s eyes were burning through him. “Before I say anything else, that is.”

  “If you’re innocent, what are you worried about?” Fotowski snapped.

  “I’ve seen enough movies and television. I know how people get…get confused, say the wrong things.”

  “There’s nothing to confuse, no wrong things to say if you have nothing to hide.”

  “You have no objection to giving us a set of your fingerprints, do you, Mr. Lester?” Lt. Parker asked quickly.

  “What? No, I don’t suppose…”

  “Fine. Why don’t we just do that while we’re waiting, and, in the meantime, if you think of something you want to say, we’ll be glad to listen. I don’t see why we have to bring him out there to take his prints, Foto, do you? Just bring the pad in here.”

  Fotowski didn’t reply. He threw another look of contempt at Scott and then left. Lt. Parker sat back.

  “Divorce,” he said shaking his head, “it’s never easy, no matter what they say.”