by John Hart
“And after tomorrow?”
“Once I am dead, you have nothing to fear.”
Reece closed his eyes as a wave of relief swept over him. “I have your word on that?”
“You can consider it a solemn promise.”
“I appreciate your promise. To be safe, though, I’ll keep Jason’s brother until after the execution.”
“So long as we have a deal.”
“Once you’re dead, I’ll let the kid go.”
“Unharmed.”
“Yes.”
“Swear it.”
“I swear it,” Reece said; but thought, Maybe.
* * *
X felt better after the phone call. Decisions had been made, events put into motion. He checked himself, though, afraid self-deception might wear a mirror for a face.
No, he was good.
Maybe better than good.
“Warden Wilson. Come down, please.”
“Yes?”
“Send down the lawyers, but don’t go far.”
“Is everything okay?”
“Things are fine,” X said. “But plans are changing.”
* * *
When X summoned him back, hours had passed.
“Warden Wilson, if you would join us.”
That from one of the lawyers, a tall, spare man who disappeared back into a cell, leaving the warden no choice but to trail along behind. Inside, X sat at a table lined with rows of documents, the second lawyer across the table, saying things like, Sign here, thank you, now initial here …
X said, “Warden Wilson. Just in time.” He kept his head down, dashing off signatures on trust accounts, transfer documents, letters of incorporation. Numbers seemed to leap from the pages.
Ten million to the Bank of the Caymans.
Forty million to fund a revocable trust.
Two hundred million to Zurich Cantonal Bank.
The warden could barely process the numbers, and there were others, so many others.
X signed a final document, and one lawyer notarized it, adding it to a stack for the other attorney to sign as witness. That done, X held out a hand, saying, “Mr. Preston.”
The attorney handed X a sheaf of papers, and X, in turn, offered them to the warden, who took them numbly. “What you’ll find there,” X said, “is an account at Mellon Bank in New York, established in your name, as well as transfer documents, a notice of verified funds from the transferring bank, and a letter of authorization signed by me, notarized and witnessed. You’ll see that the transfer documents are dated for tomorrow.”
“After your, uh…”
“Yes,” X allowed. “After the scheduled execution.”
Warden Wilson looked down at the documents, but words swam on the page. He tried again, but only one thing sprang into focus. “This is for twice the amount we discussed.”
“Because I’m changing the terms of our arrangement. The numbers should reflect that.”
Papers trembled in the warden’s hand. “What changes?”
X smiled, but it was thin as a dime. “Gentlemen, a moment.”
The lawyers rose, and left. When they were alone, X put a hand on the warden’s shoulder in a manner so unexpected and intimate, it was absolutely terrifying. “I need something more from you,” he said. “Something I never expected to ask for or want.” X laid it out for the warden. What he wanted. When it should happen. He spoke slowly for the warden’s sake, and repeated it twice. “I’ll leave the how of it to you.”
The warden stared dumbly. “The how of it?”
“Shall we go through it again?”
“No. No.” The warden shook his head. Nausea. Cold sweat. “I’m not sure I can manage that.”
“I’m giving you forty million dollars.” X squeezed the shoulder until it hurt. “Of course you can.”
“But tomorrow … I mean … the timing.”
What he meant was, I can’t do it, I won’t, I’m not fucking insane.
X, though, had no patience for fools and their feelings. “We spoke recently of your youngest son, Trevor. We’ve never really talked about his older brother. Thomas, I believe.”
“Thomas, yes.” The warden nodded stupidly.
“He lives at home, I’m told.”
“He helps his mother.”
“He has a girlfriend? A job?”
“No. Neither.”
“Physically, though…” X sat, and laced his fingers. “How is young Thomas?”
41
Nothing changed until the phone rang. After that, we drove for a long time, open roads at first, and then traffic sounds, starts and stops that felt like the city. By the time we stopped for real, Chance had been too quiet for too long, and I was half-dead from the heat. The car rocked when the driver got out, and it was another bad moment, because it felt so final.
I didn’t die, though.
He left us in the trunk.
Ninety degrees on the outside, maybe one-forty in the darkness. Chance was as loose as a dead man.
Was he breathing or not?
I couldn’t tell; I didn’t know.
I thought maybe I was dying.
* * *
When the trunk opened, it was dusk, and I was still alive. I saw black trees and that purple sky, everything fuzzy at the edges. I couldn’t move, and he knew it. Maybe that’s why he’d left us in for so long. Or maybe he wanted us dead the easy way. It wouldn’t take much more. He stood there for a few seconds, and then was gone; and I drank down cool air, lustful, lost, and drowning. When sound came, it was a slaughterhouse sound, like a pig squealing. He hauled me out and dropped me down, folding Chance like a blanket beside me, dead or alive, I still couldn’t tell. His heat could be trunk heat, his movements involuntary as wheels squealed again, and he rolled us toward a house I’d never seen, then down a ramp to a room filled with tables, cages, and horrible things made of bright metal so they glittered in the light.
At the first cage, he rolled us inside, and then dragged us onto the floor. I hit hard, but couldn’t feel it. Chance’s head bounced. A knife appeared, but cut tape instead of skin. He didn’t look at my face or say a word, just closed the cage, and locked it with a hunk of brass the size of my fist. I thought he would leave us then, but he ran a hose and sprayed us down with cold water, the shock of it like a slap as it hit my face and mouth, and choked me. It was water, though, and when he was gone, I sucked it off the floor.
I couldn’t feel my arms or legs.
Chance never moved.
* * *
For French, the day was tough, but not impossible. He did have friends, and good friends would risk a lot. Late afternoon, he met one of those good friends in an alley two blocks from the station, a narcotics detective named James Monroe. After the old, white dude, he liked to say. A ten-year cop, he was dark-skinned and lean, with a hard face under gold-rimmed shades and eight inches of Afro.
“The APB went out ten minutes ago. Citywide. All departments.”
French nodded grimly. “I heard it on the radio.”
“It’s worse, though. Captain Martin ordered it statewide. SBI, FBI, highway patrol. I’m sorry, brother. I hate to be the messenger.”
French squinted into the bright light shining off the streets and buildings. Going statewide was an escalation. It meant Captain Martin considered his son a flight risk. The larger problem was that cops took statewide alerts seriously, and were much more likely to go in hot. “What about Burklow?”
“Still trailing Martinez and Smith. For a big guy, he can ghost along pretty good.”
“And the ladies are still with us?”
“Come on, man.” Monroe showed his teeth. “You know the ladies love you. More importantly, they love the kid.”
That was the cornerstone of French’s loose network: those who actually knew his son. The ladies included Captain Martin’s assistant, two dispatch supervisors, and a desk sergeant named Irene Devine who used to bounce Gibby on her knee. Not much happened in the station that
one or more of them didn’t know about. The plan was simple: find Gibby before he got picked up, shot, or made things worse; keep Gabrielle in total ignorance for as long as possible. But the first part needed to happen fast, before the second part blew up in his face. He’d looked everywhere he knew to look, burned every possible bridge. “What aren’t you telling me? Come on, Monroe. I see it in your face.”
“All right, man. Shit.” Monroe’s frown deepened. He pulled off the shades, and showed some seriously unhappy eyes. “Captain Martin called a press conference for five fifteen. He’s going live, man. He wants Gibby’s face on the six o’clock news.”
French’s fingers tightened into a fist. He couldn’t help it.
Monroe understood. “He thinks he’s helping, all right, that a press conference is the best way to bring Gibby in and keep him safe.”
But French didn’t see it like that. A clean takedown required control, and a press conference ceded that control to a city full of fucking idiots. “Where’s the press conference?”
“Usual.”
That meant the station house media room. Thirty seats. Good lighting. The captain was very proud of it. The time was 4:37. Thirty-eight minutes before they opened the doors, and the news crews piled in. “Martinez and Smith will be there?”
“What do you think?”
French chewed on a fingernail, an old habit he’d abandoned in his twenties. He studied the street, the station house. Captain Martin would run the press conference, but Martinez would have face time. He’d paint a bad picture. Another escalation. “All right, buddy. Thanks for the information. You might want to make yourself scarce for a while.”
“Are you planning something?”
French said no, but that was a lie, and both men knew it. “You go on and take off, okay? Have a drink at the Dunhill, and tell Mary to put it on my tab.”
“I don’t like this.”
French didn’t, either. His wife watched the six o’clock news. “Make it two drinks. Take a lady friend, if you like.”
“Are you sure?”
“Go on. Get out of here.”
“If that’s how you want it.” Detective Monroe slipped the dark glasses back over his eyes. “I do have a lady friend.”
When he was gone, French went to his dark place, working out the steps and asking hard questions like how far was he willing to go.
Leaving the alley, he worked his car through the neighboring blocks until he found what he needed, a three-story building in mid-renovation, and partially gutted, a half-dozen trucks still on-site. The clock was ticking down, but French had yet to meet a construction crew willing to work more than a minute after the five o’clock bell. This crew was little different. At five, they started packing up. Seven minutes more, and they were gone.
French gave it a fifty count to make sure no one had forgotten a lunch pail or tool belt, then pulled in behind the building, and parked. The lot had been ripped up, too, and that meant red dirt under his tires, a row of trees with dusty leaves. There were other buildings, built close. People could see him if they looked; it wasn’t impossible. He honestly didn’t care. His wife liked to watch the news on WBTV, and he could see her on the sofa, unsuspecting.
Six minutes.
Quitting the car, he took the back steps, and shouldered the door without slowing down. It was a construction door, plywood and flimsy, and the screws tore right out. Inside, it was bare studs and gypsum dust, but the stairwell was intact.
Goddamn right.
Back at the car, he snatched a gun case from the trunk, and strode back to the building as if he owned it, moving faster inside, second floor, the third. A voice said, This is not you, but he told the voice that thirty years of cop meant fuck-all next to his wife and child. On the roof, he checked his lines of fire, then dropped to a knee, unzipping the case.
Three minutes.
Reporters would be lined up outside the pressroom door, techs inside checking mics and lighting, as cops got ready. French could see that, too: the captain with his cue cards, Martinez chewing his lip like it was made of bacon and butter.
The rifle was as familiar as an old friend, but nothing special, a Remington 760 in .308 with a Bausch & Lomb 4× scope. Not a sniper rifle, not even police issue. But .308 was the right cartridge.
French glanced over the parapet. The station was a block away, the first transformer half that distance, a gray, metal unit silhouetted at the top of a tall pole. Maybe it fed the station, and maybe not. There were options, though. A second transformer was twice as far and west, but still an easy shot. The third was on the other side of the station.
Two targets, then.
Maybe three.
French had no idea how many bullets it would take to short out a transformer. How thick was the steel casing? Was there one best place to hit?
Not enough time to worry about it.
French fed in cartridges, and chambered the first. Second thoughts? Not even close. He was running dark, and wanted the station the same way.
“For Gabrielle,” he said.
The first shot took out four city blocks.
* * *
Reece was drowning in a wealth of riches. First, he’d beaten X. No, he thought gleefully, broken him. X might pretend to be aloof, but he hated losing to anyone not considered his equal or his better. How many times had Reece heard him blather on about respect and clarity and purity of purpose? It was exhausting. Admittedly, there’d been a time when Reece had wanted that respect—had craved it, in fact—but things had gone a different way.
Not my fault …
The sense of richness dimmed for a moment, in part, he knew, because some piece of him still craved that admiration. There was also a splinter of fear he didn’t quite understand. X would never break his word, and he’d been very clear.
I won’t spend a dime …
The execution was only hours away, and he’d been plain on that point, too.
Once I am dead, you have nothing to fear …
For a moment more, Reece worried at the splinter, but just for a moment. X was nothing special, after all. Maybe that’s why Reece felt so out of sorts.
With a mental flourish, he returned to all the good he’d achieved. He had two boys in the cage, and he really couldn’t let them live. Lonnie had been right about that. He’d keep them alive until tomorrow, of course.
But after the execution?
Reece poured a glass of his father’s favorite bourbon.
Such a small word to mean so much: execution. For Reece, it meant a life without shadow or reason to feel small. He had money. He had the girl. What couldn’t he do once X was out of the picture?
He sat on the sofa, and watched the television play in silence. He would be there, of course. Hundreds already were; they’d been all over the news, old Christians, young hippies, and other strange souls. Some called it a protest, others a vigil, a field full of headlights and campfires and lanterns. None of them really knew X, and that part did make Reece sad. X was a dinosaur and stiff as an old rope, but he was one of a kind. Reece could admit that much, at least. Raising his glass to the television, he watched shadows climb and dance on the prison walls. “The end of an era,” he said, then drank the whiskey down, and went off to watch the girl.
* * *
Alone in his office, Warden Wilson watched the news coverage. WBTV aired an hour-long special at seven o’clock. WRAL aired a similar program at eight, but focused more on the victims, and less on X’s childhood, family fortune, and long-ago string of famous acquaintances. After a time, he unlocked a desk drawer, removed an envelope, and spilled its contents onto the desk. Passports. Travel documents. New identities. According to X, the money would be wired after.
But only after …
What X had asked him to do was a horrible thing—a reprehensible, unforgivable, and horrible thing—but the warden had no choice.
“No choice at all,” he said.
And then he called Ripley.
When he arrived, the warden said, “Come in. Lock the door.” Ripley did and when the warden said, “Sit,” he did that, too. They’d known each other for a long time, not a friendship—how could it be?—but they understood each other. “What’s our status?”
“The lawyers are gone. X is eating.”
Warden Wilson glanced at the clock on the wall. The execution was scheduled for 9:00 a.m., a civilized hour, and not dawn, as people tended to think. “What about Jason French?”
“He’ll be front row, center. Like X wants.”
“And after? Who are you using?”
“Jordan and Kudravetz.”
They were good choices, mercenary as hell and just smart enough. Unlocking the desk, the warden opened the bottom drawer, and removed three buff envelopes, two the size of a large dictionary, the third even larger. With a felt-tip pen, he wrote a name on each one. Ripley. Jordan. Kudravetz. He pushed the largest across the desk. “Open it.”
Ripley did as he was told, no expression on his face as he stacked bricks of cash in neat rows. “Three hundred and fifty thousand dollars,” he finally said.
“And a quarter million for each of the others.”
A moment’s silence followed. A man could buy a good house for forty thousand, a sports car for five. Ripley laced his fingers, and leaned back in the chair. The wheels were invisible, but they were for-damn-sure turning. “All right,” he finally said. “Who do we have to kill?”
42
For Reece, it seemed anything was possible, and he wondered if this was what Christians meant when they spoke of being reborn. He was behind the false wall, and the girl was taking off her clothes. Too soon for a long bath, he knew, or even a hot, quick shower; but clean clothing had proved too much a temptation.
A richer world …
He followed her to the kitchen, only a few feet away as she uncorked a bottle of wine, and flared her nostrils before taking a sip. She moved room to room, and he trailed along behind the mirrors and the walls. When she slept, she did so fully clothed, with her knees drawn up. He’d planned to watch like this for nights or weeks, but it was the dawn of a new world.
