They All Fall Down

by Rachel Howzell Hall

  Take a minute. Think. Eat.

  I perched on the bed, tore back the mango’s peel, ripped into the sweet, soft flesh, then gobbled a hunk of French bread. I guzzled a bottle of water and I listened to my blood sizzle and my bones harden. The room moved out of shadow as the sun found its place high in the sky. I stayed on the bed. Ate more bread and another mango, dozed off a few times, startled awake to find myself still alone in the room. This could not be my plan—hide until someone found me. But my body didn’t want to leave this spot. Indeed, popping two Valium had been a mistake.

  And so I lay there, and I slept, and I dreamed of Prudence McAllister kicking me, of Morgan pushing me down a flight of stairs. I dreamed that I sat on a white-sand beach, sobbing uncontrollably, never being rescued, the tide swallowing up the beach with each surge of waves.

  Sweating and panting, I sat up in bed. The shadows had returned, and the sky had turned a bruised blue-gray. I looked at my phone—it was nearly five o’clock. The drug had worn off, along with the hope that La Charon was now anchored at the tiny boathouse. Too much time had passed. Either the yacht had capsized or Escorpion had killed Raul and Andreas. Either way, the boat wasn’t coming. I was stranded.

  My throat tightened and horror banged at the door protecting my calm. You can figure this out. Do not give up. You’re a fighter. Hope sizzled through my blood like caffeine, and I said, “Okay,” and hopped out of bed.

  At the fireplace, I ran my hand along the short ledge and found Eddie’s gun. I could use it now, knowing that my knees wouldn’t give, knowing that I wouldn’t accidentally shoot myself. Then I crawled over to the window and peeked out at the darkening jungle.

  No Eddie.

  Was he still alive?

  I saw movement—a flash of bright skin, a pale face turned sideways. A gun pointed stick-’em-up style. Eddie, capless behind that TEC-9, skulked from the house to the forest.

  Fear crackled and clicked down my spine.

  What had he been doing all this time?

  He would remember me. He would think of Charlotte. He would come back with more threats.

  My cell phone was still in my back pocket, and I pulled it out: no bars, no reception. I needed to find that second satellite phone.

  Maybe Evelyn had stolen it, like she had stolen everything else.

  I pushed aside the chaise and the armoire again and opened the door. I hugged the hallway walls and inched toward Evelyn’s bedroom. So dark, so quiet until something somewhere clicked and a fan pushed cold air out from hidden vents. As I moved closer to Evelyn’s room, then stepped across the threshold, I heard flies, hundreds of flies, buzzing near the windows and around the pile of clothes near the closet. My skin crawled—there was no reason for there to be so many flies unless … Had something died?

  I peeked closer at the pile.

  A brown snake lay atop the clothes. Unmoving. Broken. Now being consumed by flies …

  Heart pounding, I pawed through the dresser drawers, pushing aside socks and skirts and raggedy bras.

  No phone.

  Evelyn’s turquoise ring sat atop the dresser. It was as beautiful up close as I’d imagined. Silver band, classic oval shape. What a story it had. A blood-crusted talisman worn by the killer nurse who’d killed three people in less than two days on this one island. There were other bodies scattered throughout New Mexico … I reached for it, paused, then snatched back my hand.

  That ring was also cursed.

  Evelyn’s ancient turquoise suitcase sat in the closet. It was the hard-shell kind, the kind a great-aunt purchased from Sears & Roebuck before her flight back to Mississippi on PSA.

  I pushed apart the right and left latches.

  Ker-chunk.

  The top popped open, and the scent of body odor, onions, and wet wool coiled around my head. I could taste the funk, and it mixed with all that water I’d guzzled and the mangoes and French bread I’d gobbled. Nauseous, I pawed through the skirts, shirts, and sweaters, swallowing the bile now burning up my throat. My hand struck something hard and rectangular.

  The other satellite phone!

  My heart soared as I hugged the phone to my chest, as I tried hard to ignore the low buzzing of those flies around my head. I turned on the power button and the green indicator light flickered. I punched in Morgan’s cell phone number, then held my breath. There was a beep-beep-beep followed by a woman’s automated voice telling me that the call couldn’t be completed as dialed. Fine. Okay. What now?

  I stood and glanced out the window. My breath left my lungs.

  It’s her!

  The girl in the tattered pink sweatshirt stood in the swimming pool with her back to me. The tattoo on her neck peeked past her thinning black hair. She lifted her skinny right arm and pointed one crooked finger to the sky.

  The phone vibrated in my hand and the green light near the antenna flickered weakly.

  I hurried back into the hallway. My steps slowed as I reached Desi’s bedroom. Nothing had changed. Dim light, no light. A strange, heavy smell. Spilled and aging blood. The sheets and comforter were still twisted messes on the ground. The pillow sat on its clean side. Her nightgown lay on the chaise, still waiting to be worn.

  Back in the living room, I looked beyond the glass, past the terrace.

  The girl was still standing in the pool.

  I took a few steps toward her, and the phone vibrated again and the green light brightened.

  Closer … closer …

  I stepped out into the cool air. The smell of chlorine was as crisp as the scent of salt and sea. Gulls, millions of them, circled in the distance. Down here, though, were empty deck chairs, empty poolside tables, no flip-flops left near the Jacuzzi, no dog-eared novels or forgotten towels. It was as if the seven of us had never been here.

  Brooke McAllister stood in the middle of the pool, still, unmoving.

  I nudged off my sneakers and rolled up the legs of my fleece bottoms. Stepped into the water and ignored the cold. Didn’t care that the bottom of the pool felt as slick as snot. I waded to the western edge, right where the property ended and the cliffs began, high above the rocky shore where the waves crashed against each other and ate away at Mictlan Island. I keyed in “0–1” and then Morgan’s cell phone number again.

  Ring-ring, ring-ring … Click. “Hello?” My baby’s voice.

  “Morgan,” I shouted, fighting madness. “I need you to send help—”

  “Mom, is that—?”

  Then silence. Hard, deathly silence.

  Terror banged in my gut, and I screeched, “Hello? Sweetie? Morgan?”

  No answer. Just that hard, deathly silence again. She was gone.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  I gasped and whirled around.

  He had finally found me.

  31

  “I thought you were dead.”

  Wallace and I said that to each other at the same time. He stood on the terrace behind me, his toupee flapping wildly in the wind, his body as thin as grass. Any other occasion, we would’ve laughed, pointed at each other, and said, “Jinx!” But this was not that time.

  “Where were you?” I climbed out of the pool and slipped on my sneakers.

  “I hid in a tiny cubby in the media room,” Wallace said. “There are hidey-holes all around Artemis for storage and taking cover during hurricanes. I just never thought that I’d have to use one. But I did, because Edward has completely lost his mind. I’d tell him to go home and take a pill, but I think he’s already high as hell on something.”

  “Javier’s cocaine,” I said. “Eddie found it in Javier’s pocket, remember?”

  Wallace closed his eyes, nodded. “So what’s the plan?”

  Show Wallace the phone, and ask him to help find the best spot to make a call? Or keep the phone a secret from a man who had lied about why we came here?

  “Miriam,” Wallace prodded.

  I pulled the phone from my jacket pocket. “I found the second satellite phone. Evelyn h
ad hidden it in her luggage. But my calls aren’t going through.”

  “Because, dearest…” He pointed at Artemis. “The haunted mansion is blocking the signal. We need to find an open space.”

  My shoulders slumped for only a second before I remembered. “I know a place.”

  Moments later, he and I crept through the glade of banyans, on the same path that Desi and Frank had taken on their midnight rendezvous. Soggy leaves and mud made our shoes squelch, but the cries of birds masked our noise. I kept glancing up, expecting to spot another pair of legs dangling from the branches, or men with AK-47s watching us from on high. But I only saw branches, millions of fallen purple-brown seedpods, pale pink flowers and tangled vines, red birds that flitted from twisted limb to twisted limb, and butterflies that soared toward the sun.

  Every ten steps, I stopped to listen. To the birds sing. To the dull roar of the ocean. I especially listened for the clamor of crazy that now clattered off Eddie like gongs, clarinets, and electric guitars. I could feel Wallace’s heartbeat pushing between the blades of my shoulders, churning against my own sweat and my own fear.

  “Where are we going?” the old man whispered. “I fear that I can’t keep walking on like this. My back is killing me.”

  “We’re going to the bluffs. We’re not too far.” I glanced at him over my shoulder.

  His face was quivering with pain. Perspiration poured off him as though he’d just climbed out of the swimming pool. His long-sleeved T-shirt and linen slacks hung off him—all that sweat had stretched his clothes two sizes bigger.

  “Do you have meds on you?” I asked.

  He winced, shook his head. “But we can always make homemade morphine, right? Poppies, poppies everywhere. You have a mortar and pestle?” He tried to chuckle.

  I stopped walking. “If you need to head back to the house, you should. I’ll be fine.”

  “And miss this great adventure?” He flicked his hand, then shook his head. “You may need me, doll. I’ll rest when—”

  “You’re dead?” Eddie slipped from behind a tree with his gun aimed at Wallace’s chest. The thick scar on his forehead cut into his face like the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. His pupils, as large as nickels now, pinwheeled in his bloodshot eyes.

  That crazy that I had tried to listen for lurched out of him like electricity, sizzling, dangerous, and unpredictable. And with all my sweat, a current could easily jump off him to electrocute me. But my anger ignored my anxiety, and I shouted, “Kill us already, you sick bastard.”

  Eddie said, “Such a drama-mama. Relax, darlin’. I’ll get to that.” He snapped his fingers at Wallace. “You. Stand over there.”

  Wallace, hands up, mischief and humor washed out of him, took two steps away from me.

  “More,” Eddie said.

  Wallace obeyed and took a few more steps.

  I could barely hear myself think over my thundering heartbeat. What now? What should I do?

  Eddie’s gun! It was still hidden in my waistband.

  The cop pivoted away from me. “Didn’t think you’d end like this, right, Escorpion?”

  Escorpion? He’d said earlier that Wallace was Escorpion’s number two. But now he was The Man?

  “Did you think you’d die like your hero, Pablo Escobar?” Eddie asked. “In a blaze of bullets? Mourned by millions?”

  Wallace blinked. “Now who’s being a drama-mama? Not that there’s anything wrong with that.” He paused and his features shifted and hardened. “I’m not Pablo, but I can sure as hell give you anything you want. What do you want? Money? Power? Women? Ask for it and you got it, it’s yours.” His voice had flattened, and his tone had lost all campy “extra.” Now he sounded like Wally from New Jersey, trying to make a deal. “We can talk this out, Eddie. C’mon, I’m a magic man. But I can’t do my magic if I’m dead, understand?”

  I could feel the gun beneath my T-shirt, that hard metal throbbing against my right kidney. As Wallace talked about all that he could do for Eddie, I slowly reached down to my side and very … very … slowly pulled the gun from my pants. The pistol felt stronger today—maybe because I had now placed all of my hope into its manufacturing. Praying that it wouldn’t make noise, I clicked off the gun’s safety.

  I didn’t hear a thing. But Eddie heard everything, and his head swiveled like an owl’s.

  My skin felt loose except in the space between my breasts. There, in that space, I was stitched tightly together by a heavy, heavenly hand. I tiptoed closer to Eddie until I stood less than a foot away from the back of his head. “Drop the gun.”

  He looked over his shoulder but wouldn’t meet my eyes. “Or what? You’ll shoot me?”

  My hands tightened around the grip. “Please drop the gun.”

  Eddie chuckled. “Stop fucking around, Charlotte. I ain’t got no beef with you. Put down the gun, honey, before somebody gets hurt.”

  “Put your gun down first, honey,” I said.

  He smiled. “No way. See, I’m killing this fake son of a bitch today.”

  I shook my head. “I can’t let you do that.”

  “C’mon, Char. He’s the reason we’re all dying, sweetheart.” Eddie nodded at Wallace. “I guess he’s got you fooled, too, huh? The prissy, funny gay thing—it’s an act. He’s nothing but a thug. A snitch. You can’t hide anymore, fucker.”

  The old man looked so tired now. The sparkle in those lavender eyes was eclipsed by exhaustion, age, and sickness. They were no longer the eyes that had scrutinized my face and eggy hair back on Friday afternoon.

  “I don’t care,” I said, my voice quivering. “We’ll handcuff him, baby. We’ll call the cops and they’ll take him to prison. You don’t want anything else on your record, right?”

  “You think the Mexicans are gonna help?” Eddie snorted. “Those same cops are gonna build a tunnel from his jail—” He swiveled and pointed his gun at me.

  BAM!

  Red mist sprayed across the copper sunlight. Red mist sprayed across my right hand, and some of it splashed my neck and face.

  A meaty redness bloomed in Eddie’s right eye, and he dropped to the forest floor like a six-foot-tall sandbag. He didn’t move again.

  Take your time in a hurry.

  I wore pieces of him—he’d found new skin, a new home. I stood there, my hand vibrating, suspended in time, holding a gun that hadn’t shot a BANG! flag after all, holding a gun that had actually shot a real bullet. And now, I couldn’t hear anything else except the BAM of that single gunshot. A perfect sound.

  Excerpted from The Boston Globe

  Friday, March 3

  BOSTON POLICE OFFICER NOT CHARGED

  The court ruled that Edward Sweeney acted lawfully when he shot and killed Orlando Jackson, 33, in Boston, Mass., in November and will not face criminal charges for his use of force, a district attorney said on Thursday.

  Officer Sweeney believed he faced an imminent threat when he pulled over Jackson for a routine traffic stop. The officer spotted a gun in the man’s lap. At the time, Officer Sweeney was not wearing a body camera that would have recorded the incident.

  The controversial decision to not prosecute Officer Sweeney raised fears of protests in Boston. Some community activists said the shooting was caused by race—Sweeney is white and Jackson is black. This is the second police shooting involving Officer Sweeney. After the shooting of Jackson, he had been placed on indefinite administrative leave.…

  32

  I tore my gaze from the old man to stare at the dead man lying at my feet. A single bullet had penetrated his orbital socket, leaving behind busted eyeball, bloody pulp, and glistening bone—and all of it now oozed down into the jungle carpet. Bigger, blacker flies than the ones in Evelyn’s bedroom had heard that gunshot and smelled dead flesh, and they now descended on Eddie’s unmoving body.

  “You shot him.” Wallace gaped at me with horror and fascination.

  “I…” I licked my salty, dry lips and tasted copper. Eddie’s blood. Tears burn
ed in my eyes and I prayed that he hadn’t had HIV or hepatitis or anything that could kill me days, months, years from now. “I … I…” Tried to swallow the boulder lodged in my throat, but it wouldn’t budge.

  “You … killed him,” Wallace said, still fascinated.

  “He was going to shoot…” My words stuck again and my pulse quickened as the realization of what I’d done filled my head. Killed him. I killed him. I glanced down at my yellow sweatpants, now flecked with blood. My tennis shoes were flecked with blood. My T-shirt—blood.

  I had killed someone. Straight up. No nuance, no sussing out meaning. I’d held a gun and I’d pulled the trigger and my defense attorney was no longer around to explain it all away.

  Slapping away the fat tears rolling down my cheek, I lifted my chin. “Self-defense. I did nothing wrong, and I’d do it again. I had to protect you.” My heart shuddered at my mouth’s bravado, at hearing words similar to the ones I’d uttered just last year to my daughter, to Detective Hurley, then to Phillip Omeke.

  Don’t let your mouth get your ass in trouble. Too late.

  I held out my left hand, and said, “Wallace, wait—”

  He flinched. “Don’t come any closer.”

  I chuckled and rolled my eyes. “C’mon. You know I’m not gonna hurt you. We’re getting off this island.” I grabbed the second satellite phone from my back pocket. “Let’s look for a clear spot, all right? Just like we’d planned. Come on.” Talking to him like he was six years old. I started toward the bluff, refusing to look back at Eddie—there was nothing I could do for him to make it better.

  But there’s something he could give you.

  His gun. That other satellite phone. So, I turned back, and said, “Hey, Wallace—”

  Wallace was bent over Eddie’s body. He pried the TEC-9 from the dead man’s grip, then plucked the other satellite phone from the dead man’s pocket.

  I forced myself to smile. “I was just about to do the same—”