by Erik Carter
He glanced to the back of the room. Gamble had put the tape into the VCR connected to the projector. He was fiddling with the settings.
Hurry up, damn you.
Burton stepped toward Hudson, leaned down, getting close to his face. Hudson was still fighting to hold on to the stoic facade, but Burton could see anguish wriggling under his skin. Sweat beaded his forehead.
“But you went to the raid and still survived,” Burton said. “You’re nothing if not a survivor. So it all worked out just splendidly, because now I get to show you what exactly happened to you dear little C.C.”
Hudson squirmed in his chair now. He could no longer contain his fear. Lips trembling. Eyes blinking rapidly.
It was savorous, Hudson’s anguish. Burton could almost see it, like a cloud emanating from his sweaty figure, wafting up toward the ceiling, disrupted by his torturous writhing. Burton smelled it, sucked it in, took in a big gulp through his nostrils, still smiling at him, always smiling.
In New Orleans, Pete Hudson had cost Burton tens of thousands of dollars out of the startup fund he was using to form his new operation. In recent hours, Pete Hudson had taken four of his seven men. And, months earlier, Pete Hudson had stolen the favor of Burton’s surrogate father, the man who Burton had stood beside, supported, risked his life for even as the old man lost his mind.
Yes, Burton was going to enjoy destroying Pete Hudson’s soul.
“It’s ready,” Gamble said from the rear of the room.
Burton straightened up and nodded at Gamble.
He turned to the screen, which came to life. A flash of white; the bright blue standby image returned for a moment; PLAY appeared in white letters in the upper righthand corner.
Then the video began.
First, there was McBride’s fat, Irish ass on the screen, but when he shifted, the scene was revealed—Cecilia in the middle of the Farone library, surrounded by Burton’s troops, all wearing black leather gloves and dangerous smirks.
Hudson moaned.
Earlier, Burton had tried to position himself perfectly, to get himself into the most photogenic position for the final image. He wasn’t sure how the end result would turn out, of course, but seeing it now on the big projector screen made him smile. He’d done well—positioned like a born leader at the left side of the screen, standing tall, a commanding presence watching as the circle of his men tightened around Cecilia.
Burton turned back to Hudson. “I look good, don’t I? Like a freakin’ movie star.” He turned to the other men, who had taken positions on either side of Hudson’s chair. “Don’t I?”
Laughs from his troops.
Hudson averted his gaze from the screen, burying his face in his shoulder. Hodges grabbed him by the hair, twisted his head forward, Clockwork Orange style.
“That’s right,” Burton said. “Pete’s gonna watch our movie, fellas. All of it. Don’t let him look away.”
On the screen, Burton’s troops tightened their circle around Cecilia. Odom twirled his blackjack baton aimlessly in his hand.
Cecilia shook, stumbled.
Burton’s on-screen doppelgänger was smiling just as much as his current state. The other Burton looked at the camera and winked.
The circle of men closed within feet of Cecilia. And stopped. A moment of relative stillness. Just Cecilia trembling, slowly turning in a circle, looking at the faces.
Then Knox backhanded her hard, spinning her around, sending a line of blood flying into the library.
Hudson screamed.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
The woman calling herself Christie Mosley was in her Cutlass Supreme outside the beach house that belonged to the man to whom she’d been posing as a girlfriend for months. The beach road was quiet and dark, very little traffic moving past to interrupt her view as she looked through her binoculars at the massive banks of windows on the first floor of the house, the main tier of its staggered geometric design.
The scene she’d been watching for several minutes play out in Burton’s sprawling living room was illuminated by two faint light sources—the moonlight pouring in through all the massive panes of glass, reflecting off the waves beyond; and the projector screen at the far wall of the living room, where a video was playing.
A pillar blocked her view of the screen, and the interior of the house was so dark that she saw everything in shadows, silhouettes. Four men on their feet; one bound to a chair.
Though she couldn’t fully distinguish his features, the man in the chair was clearly Jake Rowe. And what was happening to him looked horrible.
Her cellular phone was on the passenger seat. She placed a speed-dial call, turned on the speakerphone feature, left the phone where it was.
“Yes?” Falcon said, scratchy through the speakerphone.
“They’re torturing him.”
“How so?”
“It’s hard to tell. He … He’s clearly tied to a chair. Thrashing all over the place. Violently. They’re holding him back, but…” She squinted. “But they’re not beating him. They’re hardly touching him, just the occasional slap.”
“Electrocution, perhaps.”
“Maybe. Or maybe poisoning, but … Oh, god. It’s getting bad. He’s convulsing like crazy.”
She checked the clock on the dash.
“It’s been ten minutes of this. I need to do something.”
“You’ll do nothing. This isn’t your fight. You won’t jeopardize everything we’ve worked for.”
“They’re gonna kill the guy!”
“So be it. Stand your ground.”
She watched as one of the figures stepped behind Rowe, both hands on his head, which had fallen to his chest. The man yanked him back up straight, and Rowe began to shake again, even harder, the entire chair thrashing.
Oh god…
Falcon must have been correct. Electrocution. It had to be.
Rowe continued to thrash.
Her stomach roiled. Her legs twitched, wanting to bolt. She didn’t know how much more of this she could take.
More importantly, she didn’t know how much more Rowe could take. Whatever they were doing to him, he wasn’t going to last much longer.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Jake couldn’t tell how much time had passed. In his training at the academy, he’d learned that in times of high stress, the perception of time can be distorted.
Maybe an hour.
Maybe five minutes.
Maybe half an hour.
Knox had struck her first. Backhanded her.
She’d spun around, twirling to the opposite side of the circle of men, where Gamble had caught her, grabbed her arms.
McBride approached. An uppercut to the stomach that folded her.
Gamble pulled her back upright. Shoved her away.
Hodges grabbed her next, hands moving up and down the sides of her dress, grabbing her breasts. Burton shouted at him, anger replacing his smile momentarily. Hodges cowered, shoved C.C. away.
She’d avoided the next man’s grasp, Odom’s, and she punched him in the mouth. Her strength was clearly zapped, and her form was pitiful, but she’d caught him by surprise, a blow that snapped his head back.
The other men laughed.
And Jake welled with pride, somewhere deep within the swirling mass of pain in his gut.
Odom looked at the others as they laughed, mortified. He swung his blackjack at her face, crushing her eye socket, tearing the skin.
Jake screamed at this. Turned away. Someone punched him hard in the ribs. Saliva exploded from his mouth.
Someone else grabbed his head from behind, forcing him to face the screen, callused fingertips pressing into the corners of his eyelids, prying them open.
Blood dripped from the side of C.C.’s face.
Cobb next. Broke her nose.
She fell.
They picked her up.
McBride.
Gamble.
Hodges.
Glover—he was given extra ti
me with her, benefits of being Burton’s second-in-command.
They threw her to the left side of the circle.
Then the right.
Burton watching. The smiling supervisor. Shouting encouragements. And also shouting the occasional admonition when the men touched her just so.
To the left side of the circle. Right. Back and forth.
On the floor. Lifted up.
Laughter.
Wet sounds of flesh-to-flesh, progressively wetter.
An arm around her neck, choking her out. She smacked blindly at the man.
Hodges slapped her. He’d only slapped. No punches, no kicks, some distorted sense of chivalry.
Gamble wasn’t afraid to punch. He gave her a blow to the forehead that sent her back to the floor.
They didn’t lift her up this time. Instead they kicked.
Jake yelled out again.
A searing burn across his cheek as someone backhanded him.
Glover embellished his kicking routine—more of the benefits of being Burton’s primary lieutenant—turning it into an Irish-style dance, laughing. He and McBride, the two Irish members of the group, shared a chuckle.
Odom loped over to C.C., raised his blackjack—
And Burton caught his wrist, gave him a shake of the head, pushed him back to his place in the circle.
“That’s enough,” the on-screen Burton said to the other men.
C.C. was nearly motionless. Slow rising and lowering of her torso.
Alive.
Somehow that was a comfort to Jake. Why? He knew how this ended.
Surely she’d been unconscious by then. He prayed she was.
For several minutes, there had been terrible screams. Then there had been nothing but the dull thuds of the blows as she’d been thrown among the men, on her feet, alive but dead.
Now there was no sound coming from her. Not even moaning.
Burton stepped away from the others, closer to the camera, looking right into Jake from the screen. He smiled.
Then he went to C.C., squatted. He brought his face inches from her ear. Whispered something.
He took out his revolver and placed it against the back of her head.
Somehow Jake’s voice returned.
“No!”
Burton fired his weapon. C.C.’s body went limp. The other men laughed.
The real-life Burton stepped up to Jake, blocking his view of the video.
“Oh, so you can talk.”
For once, the creepy smile left Burton’s lips. No false pretenses now; his face was simply dark.
“New Orleans was a mistake, Pete. It’s a bad habit of yours: stealing from me. You stole in New Orleans, you stole my troops tonight, and you stole my adopted poppa before that.” He paused. And quieter he said, “This is where it ends for you. Say hi to Cecilia for me.”
He straightened up and brought the smile back, turned to his remaining men.
“Boys, our friend Pete can talk again.” He began clapping. “Come on, now. Give him a hand!”
The other men applauded. Dark eyes penetrated Jake from all sides.
“Let’s give ol’ Loudmouth an appropriate ending, shall we? We shut him up for a few hours; now let’s shut him up permanently.” He looked past Jake. “Grab his hair, Gamble.”
A tearing sensation at Jake’s scalp as his head was pulled back.
Burton stepped forward. He ran his index finger along Jake’s outstretched throat. Then he made a pair of crisscrossed swipes right in the center of Jake’s neck and looked him in the eye.
“X marks the spot.”
Burton pulled back a fist, jaw clenched, arm quivering with wound-up energy, preparing for a blow destined to do a lot of damage.
And with a blur, it was delivered.
The fist cracked into Jake’s throat.
Inconceivable pain. Tearing and crunching. The sensation of air sucking, distorting, wheezing. Scalding needles. Slicing razors. A boiling in his stomach and a blinding light in his eyes.
And a strange thought.
A notion.
One that was simple and pure.
He was going to die.
Everything went white.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
As he thought about the last moment of his previous life, Silence ran a hand along his throat, grimacing slightly with the pain.
He looked out to the street while his finger traced his Adam’s apple. The quiet neighborhood of East Hill had become slightly less quiet since he’d first sat down with Mrs. Enfield. Ahead and to the left, windows were now alight in the biggest of the houses, whose modern, squarish, geometrical design reminded Silence a bit of Burton’s beach house. More and more people were walking the sidewalk, all laughs and smiles, heading west toward downtown and the upcoming festival.
The sky had been gray all day, but as dusk approached, the waning light peeked through the gloom, just slightly, as though coaxed from its hiding by the joy percolating from the imminent festivities. The streetlights had kicked on a few minutes earlier, joining the party.
Sounds were already drifting over from several blocks away—music and whistles and horns—even though the festival’s official start time wasn’t for another hour and a half. Pensacola liked its outdoor events, and start times were more general guidelines than strict deadlines. -Ish was appropriate for most situations. 8ish. 6:30ish. Pensacola Beach was located on a barrier island, so it made sense that Pensacola proper’s leisure activities had a sense of island time.
As he watched a trio of middle-aged women pass by—dressed to the nines, chatting and laughing—he pressed slightly into his neck, tickling the pain embedded in its core.
It had been a mere instant when Burton’s fist had connected with his throat. A fraction of a moment—that’s all it takes to change things completely. Silence had always looked at life as a forward-progressing line. To change its direction, you simply place a peg in front of the line, bounce it off its previous course by a few degrees. Want to change your life again? Place another peg in your path.
But other people could lay pegs in front of your lifeline as well, zapping the control you had over your destiny. Burton had placed a large peg in front of Silence’s line and sent it careening off into a dark region of life he was never meant to explore, stripping Silence of his sovereignty.
If Silence could just go back and somehow remove that single peg, he’d have control. One minor correction—that’s all would take to set things right again.
C.C., if she were there, would smile at him serenely now, and in a mediating, non-patronizing way she would tell him that his concerns were unfounded. She would say that wishing for the ability to change the past was silly and a horrible waste of life. She would say that he had no control, that he never did. No one did. Control was not meant to be. It was not a part of destiny.
She would tell him to let go.
Life doesn’t happen to you, love. It happens for you, she had told him.
He felt something on the back of his hand. Mrs. Enfield’s dry, old fingers. She pulled his hand from his throat.
“Stop messing with it.”
How could she sense these things?
He lowered the offending hand and placed it on the soft, warm, rumbling mound draped across his right thigh. When he looked down, Baxter looked up, and the moment they made eye contact, the cat’s purring spiked.
Baxter’s eyes were squinted with contentment, and his head was tilted to the left, which was thusly the side of his face from which his ubiquitous line of drool was leaking—directly onto Silence’s thigh. A gross, wet, warm little puddle, right onto a very nice pair of charcoal wool pants with a subtle plaid texture. Versatile, comfortable. Only a week old, and already one of Silence’s go-tos.
And now, evidently, their versatility extended so far as to be a cat bib.
He rubbed Baxter’s big head. The purring spiked again.
“You’ve gone quiet on me again,” Mrs. Enfield said. “Dark quiet.” She
pointed at his throat. “I’m thinking that whatever gave you your bullfrog voice is also the reason you won’t open up to me. Yes?”
Not only could Mrs. Enfield see without seeing, but she was also incredibly perceptive.
And insistent.
Silence wasn’t particularly bothered by her insistence—it came from the best possible place—but still he didn’t reply.
Mrs. Enfield nodded. “On your time, Silence. On your time.”
She turned her blind eyes slightly to the west, listened, and shook her head.
“Darn Tristán Festival. I swear it gets less family-friendly each year. Soon, it’ll be nothing but a big drunken fest. I wouldn’t take kids there past 9 p.m., I’ll tell you that much.”
Of the many festivals Pensacola hosted each year, the Tristán Festival was one of the biggest and one of several that celebrated the city’s proud historical heritage, chiefly the fact that, in 1559, Pensacola was the first European settlement in America, courtesy of Spanish explorer Tristán de Luna.
The Tristán Festival was an annual two-day event, with a first day devoted to a Mardis Gras-style parade and a costume contest, which crowned a King and Queen Tristy. The second day was a more adult-oriented, nighttime affair. The main drag through downtown was closed off from vehicular traffic, and what began as an arts and crafts festival eventually—and sooner than later—turned into a “drunken fest,” as Mrs. Enfield had put it.
She groaned. “And those whiz-jets will be flying over, too. I appreciate their service, but at my age I just can’t take the noise.”
The “whiz-jets” were the Navy’s Blue Angels aerobatic team who performed aerial stunt shows all over the country. Pensacola was known at “The Cradle of Naval Aviation,” as Naval Air Station Pensacola was the primary training location for naval aviators. The Blue Angels and all things naval aviation were more sources of great pride for the city, and the aerobatic team performed a flyover at the beginning of each year’s Tristán Festival.
Silence noticed something in his periphery. A vehicle stopped at the far corner, in the opposite direction as downtown and the festival.
The El Camino. Engine idling. The white guy dangled out of the driver-side door, sunglasses and fedora, looking their way.