They All Fall Down

by Rachel Howzell Hall

  Stunned, I blinked at her, then said, “I’d never say anything like that to you.”

  Evelyn wiped her snotty nose on the sleeve of her sweater, and kept muttering, “A bag of bones, that’s all I am. A boat should run over me and drown me. No mercy.”

  Two months ago, I had no idea I’d be standing in this bathroom, in this house, on this island, in Mexico. But then, that email came from Mr. A. Nansi, and oh, what good fortune, my luck had changed, and finally, something wonderful was gonna happen.

  But now …

  Where was the boat? Where were the Mexican police? Who would come for us? Would someone come for us? Would we leave Artemis? Of course, we’d leave Artemis … We … Not many of “we” were left, not many at all.

  That Phillip. Such a joker. I’d said that less than an hour ago.

  I’m so lucky. I’d said that, too.

  Yeah. My luck had definitely changed.

  Excerpted from the Houston Chronicle

  Sunday, April 2

  REDUCED SENTENCE FOR MORTGAGE FRAUD

  … saw his sentence reduced from 30 to 2 months for cooperating with authorities in the prosecution of his partner Montriece Carneckie.

  Trey Porter, 49, a onetime real estate agent, joined with Carneckie in forgery and mortgage fraud over the last seven years. The scheme cost victims more than $20 million. The racket came to an end once a third partner, Alvin Alvinson, was murdered in a local Dallas barbershop. For cooperating in the murder investigation, Porter was given a reduced sentence.

  “He was scared for his life,” Phillip Omeke, Porter’s attorney, claims. “Carneckie had threatened that he would come after Trey if he talked.”

  Prosecutors allege that Carneckie, Porter and Alvinson forced victims to pay thousands of dollars to save their properties from foreclosures on fraudulent loans, which were originally forged by the three men.

  25

  Yes, my luck had changed. But someone else had worse luck than me.

  I stood there in the middle of the bathroom, staring down in disbelief at a dead man on a wet tile floor. Exhaustion and anxiety made me shake, and my organs knocked against each other in time to push-push-push … another one bites the dust. In that golden light, the steam made everything shimmer. Even everyday things—Frank’s toothbrush, tube of toothpaste, razor, bottle of lotion—dazzled on the marble counter. None of it would ever be used again.

  Quietly weeping, Evelyn trotted out of the bathroom, hands lost again in her woolly hair. A moment later, Frank’s bedroom door slammed.

  I turned to Eddie. “Why did you…? Why?” My voice sounded raspy, weak.

  Eddie stuck his right hand inside his shorts pocket, then pulled it out again. One of Desi’s fake sapphire earrings sat in the middle of his palm. “While Frank was in the bathroom, I searched his luggage. This was in a pocket. He lied—he stole her earrings.”

  I squinted at him. “And so you killed him because—?”

  “Are you nuts? I didn’t kill him!”

  “Your hands were around his—”

  “That wasn’t me killing him. That was me trying to help him.”

  “Help him? You’re just like every other abusive asshole—”

  “What did you just say?” he boomed.

  “I said—”

  “Play nice, girls!” Wallace perched on the toilet with his mottled hands gripping his knees. “We need to move him to the freezer.”

  My arms and legs were too weak to lift anything or anyone else. “What if we just lay a sheet over him?”

  Him. Motionless. Lifeless. And his blood was now seeping around the floor’s square tiles like grout.

  “He was already like this when I got here,” Eddie said to me. “I was trying to help him get out of the tub.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Get out of the tub, drown him, po-ta-to, po-tah-to, it’s all the same, right? Tell it to the judge.”

  “All’s I know is this.” Eddie pointed at me. “You left your station. You were supposed to—”

  “Wallace said he’d cover for me,” I yelled.

  “Wait just a minute.” Wallace’s violet eyes widened, and he touched his chest. “I said what?”

  “You told me that I could go rest and that you’d stand watch—”

  “Because I’m now Wyatt Earp? Guarding—that doesn’t even sound like something I’d be interested in.”

  “No one was at the door,” Eddie said. “I asked you, Miriam, to watch him, not Wallace.”

  My eyes scanned the wet, bloody tile as though the answer could be found among Frank’s twisted boxer shorts and his eighteen-karat-gold Cartier lighter. “You’re right, Eddie. You did ask me. I’m sorry.” Was I going crazy, though? Hadn’t Wallace agreed to stand guard? I had offered him the handgun and he’d said that I could go rest …

  Didn’t he?

  That lighter …

  I glanced back into the tub at that floating cigar, and I tried to smell past the stink of boiled man.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Wallace said. “What’s done is done. Frank is gone and there’s nothing we can do for him now.” He stood from the toilet seat. “You two decide what to do about him. I need to change out of these wet clothes and try to figure out where my guests are. Well, the ones who are still alive.” He tossed a final look at Frank, clucked his tongue, then slipped out of the bathroom.

  I closed my eyes and tried to slow the rush of my pulse. Tried to focus on the water’s deep, dark plopping from the tub’s spout. I even thought, There’s no place like home, then quietly clicked my heels together just in case it worked for me like it had worked for the girl from Kansas. I counted to three, then opened my eyes.

  There was Frank. There was blood. There was Eddie, standing at the sink, rubbing his hands across his face.

  “Miriam,” he said, addressing my reflection in the mirror, “I didn’t … do this.”

  This. Frank lay there, dead, a this now.

  I looked up to the ceiling to plead with a higher power, then noticed that the gold paint up there was a bit darker than the paint down here near the mirrors and door. I also noticed that a half-empty bottle of bath oil sat on the rim of the tub along with three thick votive candles with charred wicks. A matchbook sat on the toilet tank, a long way away from the tub.

  “It’s wicked strange,” Eddie said. “I was thinking about those earrings, and so I came back to the house since the boat wasn’t here yet, since I couldn’t get a signal to make the call anyway. I ran up the stairs and came here, to his room, and no one was guarding the door. I rushed in, okay, and found his luggage, looked through it, and of course, I found the earring. And that’s when I heard the splashing—he was in the tub. So I ran in, and he … It was hot in here, and I was a little pissed cuz he was taking a fucking bath when he’d just killed that girl, and I … I saw that something was wrong with him, and so I tried to pull him out of the tub but the water was so hot…”

  I looked at that lighter again. At that cigar again. Could have been nothing. Could have been the reason for that darkened ceiling. I plucked the lighter from the wet tile. So elegant, even as it simply sat in my palm.

  Eddie was still staring at my reflection in the mirror. “What is it?”

  “Maybe the cigar fell into the tub, lighting the bath oil and burning Frank. Fire. Heat. That could explain his frantic splashing.”

  Eddie said nothing.

  “When you came into the bathroom,” I said, “what did you see?”

  “I saw … Frank convulsing in the water, flopping around, making a mess. Could hardly see him, though, cuz of the steam. A lot of steam.”

  “Where was Evelyn?”

  “Who?”

  “The nurse,” I said. “Where was she?”

  He shrugged. “How would I know?”

  “Do you know if Frank had used the tub before?”

  Eddie shrugged. “Why would I know that?” He paused, then squinted at me. “What? You’re a detective now? Everybody wants to do my freakin’
job—”

  “I’m asking because if he’d just run the water and assumed it would be the right temperature … Maybe the water was too hot to begin with? Like it was broken or…?” A shrug with those questions—I didn’t know nor did I believe any of this. Maybe a hot tub in a janky roadside motel would malfunction, but a Jacuzzi in this house, a mansion with a name?

  Eddie scratched his head, then slapped his hand against his thigh. “You should’ve been here, Miriam. I trusted you, and you let me down.”

  “And I’m telling you,” I said, “I wouldn’t have gone unless Wallace had agreed to look after him. I know that I’m tired and a little stressed out, but I didn’t put words in his mouth.” I swallowed, then added, “And someone left a noose at my door. Someone also stole my Valium.”

  “Someone?” His eyebrows scrunched. “Like who?”

  “Wallace? Or…”

  “Just stop,” he said, holding up his hand. “You just can’t stop crying wolf. Are you gonna swear on your momma’s grave next? Ask God to strike you dead if you’re telling a fib? Demand a lie detector test? What?”

  My skin burned as if it had just been lit with Frank’s fancy gold lighter. I wanted to scream, I’m not lying and I’ll show you, then drag him down to my bedroom, then shout, See? I told you. But I didn’t scream. I didn’t insist. The noose wouldn’t be there. Not because it didn’t exist, but because my role here at Artemis was Crazy Lady Who Made Shit Up, the Lying Liar Who Told Lies for No Reason. Because there wasn’t enough drama with dead people and missing yachts, I had to go create more fantastical tales than the ones I’d tell years from now to my great-grandchildren on dark stormy nights.

  “My girl Charlotte?” Eddie said. “She’s a liar, too. Reminds me a lot of you. Just a white girl, a redhead, that’s the difference. But she lied to my face as much as she breathed. You cheatin’ on me, Char? Of course not, Eddie. You lyin’ right now, Char? You’re so paranoid, Eddie. You screwin’ that guy, Char? On and on and her lying more and more … I couldn’t stand it then, can’t stand it now.” His face tightened as he glared at me, as the veins in his temples bulged. “You’re a lot like her. Drives me freakin’ crazy.”

  My blood chilled, because his loathing of me was louder than that dripping water, louder than my banging heart.

  Finally, he said, “Take it.” He dumped Desi’s single earring into my palm. “Once we find the other one, we can give ’em to her people. I’ll go find something to wrap Frank in, like a tarp or something.” Then, he stomped past me and out of the bathroom.

  Oh, hell no. He wasn’t leaving me alone with Mictlan Island’s newest dead man. So I ran after him. “I’m going with you.”

  “Don’t need you,” Eddie said.

  “I didn’t ask permission.” I squared my shoulders. “Either we look for a boat or a phone or whatever side by side, or I’ll do it by myself.”

  Eddie’s jaw tightened. “Fine. Keep up. Try not to die.”

  “Great,” I said. “Try not to kill anybody.”

  He glowered at me, then forced himself to grin. “You’re good shit, Miriam.”

  We hurried down to the dock—no yacht had been anchored off the pier. No yacht loomed far off in the distance. “You think pirates hijacked it or something?” I asked, my eyes scanning the horizon.

  Eddie scratched his scalp, then dropped his heavy hand. “Maybe it’s coming to the other side of the island. Let’s go look.”

  We followed the shoreline—fine white sand became pebbles, and pebbles soon grew into rocks and finally boulders. The waves crashed violently here, churning and frothing, squeezing into skinny spaces between those slick stones. Up, up high was the bluff that had hosted Desi and Frank’s midnight rendezvous.

  “Hey, Eddie. I don’t think a boat would come this way.” My face and shirt were wet with perspiration and mist from the crashing waves.

  The cop said, “I think you’re right.” He muttered a curse, then rubbed his jaw.

  I stared at the large man, at his sunburned arms and strong mouth. Men like Eddie solved problems all the time. How to ship goods quickly between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Where to find cheap labor to colonize stolen land. Then, men like Wallace stole those goods and purchased that stolen land at low, low prices. Men like Wallace kept secrets—and I thought he was actively doing that now. So I said to Eddie, “I think Wallace is keeping something to himself. This—none of this—seems right.”

  Eddie glared at me, then looked back to the sea. “Spit it out or save it for somebody else.”

  “I mean … this place. His job. Do you think he works for Escorpion?”

  Eddie clicked his teeth as he thought, then ran his hand beneath his wet baseball cap. “I have my theories.”

  I waited a beat. When he didn’t speak, I said, “You wanna share?”

  “No, not really.” He turned to me with flat blue eyes. “We should keep looking.”

  My legs burned from all the walking on the beach and slipping on wet rocks.

  Eddie didn’t slow down, nor did he look back to see if I had avoided being swallowed up in the surf or being eaten alive by a chupacabra. He kept moving, he kept his mouth shut, and he kept his theory of Wallace and this island to himself.

  And because of his silence, I knew to trust a chupacabra or the angry ocean before trusting him or Wallace ever again.

  26

  Out here, way away from Mictlan Island’s newest dead man, the air had freshness, and my lungs had to work less to keep me alive. Out here, way away from Frank, Artemis transformed back into the luxurious mansion that I’d first seen, the luxurious mansion with a media room and a swimming pool, a special place that pampered you and tricked you into thinking you’d done something in your life to deserve a butler’s pantry.

  After tromping around the island in search of a boat, Eddie and I determined that there was no way of escaping this place short of swimming the Sea of Cortez.

  The cop and I parted ways at the base of the front porch. “I’m not giving up,” Eddie said, his words tighter than his fists.

  I ran my wrist across my sweaty forehead, then saluted him. “Good luck.”

  Wallace stood waiting for me on the second-floor landing. He had changed into a long-sleeved T-shirt, linen slacks, and pristine white sneakers. “Where did you and Edward go in such a rush? Is the boat here?”

  “No boat. He’s still looking.”

  “For?”

  “Anything. Everything.”

  “I don’t know what to do,” Wallace said, wringing his hands. “I can’t contact anyone on the radio—nothing but static now. A priest was coming, so who’s supposed to lead the service? And … can we even have a service? It’s just … just four of us and … This is a complete disaster.”

  I slipped my hands inside my jeans pocket. My fingers brushed against Frank’s Cartier lighter and Desi’s earring. I squinted over at the Bosch table. “I wanna check something. Come down.”

  “Really, Miriam,” he said, taking one step—slowly, slowly—at a time. “Are you okay? I’m barely hanging on.”

  I snorted, then said, “I’m barely hanging on, too, especially since you sold me out. But I guess that’s part of the fun.” I approached the Bosch table with my stomach bubbling. I counted—one … two … Four pieces left on the panels.

  Wallace said, “What do you mean by that? Since I sold you out?”

  “You told me that you’d stand guard—”

  “This again?”

  “Yes, this again. And give me the gun.”

  “What gun?”

  “I left it in the hallway when you told me that you’d stand guard—”

  “This again-again.” He turned to leave. “I’m going back to my room to stare at a television that doesn’t work and pretend Kelly Ripa is as funny as she thinks she is.”

  I grabbed his arm. “No. Wait.”

  He glared at my hand as though it was made of toxic sludge. “Dearest, I suggest you don’t go there.”

>   I didn’t let go.

  His eyes hardened.

  I squeezed his arm once to stress my seriousness, then released my grip. “Come with me. I have a theory.”

  “Can I not and pretend that we did?”

  “I’m serious.”

  “Come with you where?”

  I led him to Evelyn’s bedroom and knocked on the closed door. “Evelyn, you in there?”

  She didn’t respond.

  Wallace whispered, “Why are we—?”

  I shushed him, then twisted the doorknob.

  Unlocked.

  An atomic bomb had exploded in her baby blue bedroom. Feathers from busted pillows dusted the dressers, curtains, and bedding. Cotton batting from the gutted suede chaise lounge spilled out onto the soiled shaggy carpet. Wads of wet, balled-up paper—spitballs—clung to the ceiling.

  “What in the hell?” I whispered.

  “Monsters lead such interesting lives,” Wallace said as his eyes skipped from one mess over here to another mess over there.

  I crossed the threshold into the room, stepping on matted this and crunchy that. My stomach dropped as the stink wormed its way into my nose. That stink … indescribable but close to the same stink found on farms. Old eggs, hay, sweat, and—

  I’d smelled this before.

  “Why are we in here, Miriam?” Wallace asked. “And when can we leave?”

  My eyes scanned the filthy carpet and the flat surfaces. I spotted a dresser drawer that had been left open.

  Inside: a clear baggie filled with pills stamped 2 DAN. Desi’s second earring. A white and black plastic bottle. Eddie’s gun.

  I shivered, and that pressing feeling on my lungs returned. “This is why we’re here.”

  “How’d you think to look in here?” Wallace said, squinting at me.

  My mind struggled to land on a simple, believable explanation. “She just seemed … I don’t know.” I plucked the baggie filled with stolen tabs of Valium from the collection. “These are mine. She stole them from my room.”

  Wallace reached for the small white and black bottle and read the label. “Silver Cleanse Dip. Jewelry cleaner. Why do you think she has this?”