Iron House

by John Hart

  Let’s pretend we were adopted …

  Few memories remained of Julian with a smile on his face, and for an instant, Michael found himself unmade. There’d been times when things were good, a moment here, an afternoon there: small, shy flickers of joy. Had those memories simply faded, or had he buried them with all the other remnants of his childhood? For an instant, Michael felt cheapened and untrue.

  How much did he need the ice at his core?

  How hard did he need to be?

  He gripped the sink. What did it matter? The past was gone. This was now. But was it only now? That was a good question. First Hennessey and now Ronnie Saints. Two dead boys from Iron House. Twenty-three years between them, and both stabbed in the neck.

  What is going on? Michael wondered.

  And who called the cops?

  Back on the porch, he dialed Elena’s number on his cell. He wanted her to answer, but knew, deep down, that she would not.

  Too soon.

  Too complicated.

  Perhaps it was for the best, he thought, a clean break and a safe, easy life far from his. He tried to feel good about that, but the lie burned deep as an image of them gelled in his mind: Elena and the child—a girl, perhaps, a dark-eyed beauty with her mother’s skin. They walked through high fields in the mountains of Catalonia, one lean and sad, one far too young to understand the empty place in her life.

  Tell me again about my daddy …

  The sky above them would be painfully blue, and in the wake of Elena’s silence, the question would come again. Michael saw it so clearly: a small child, and lies told often enough to taste of truth. Elena would move on, and his daughter would grow without him. Michael felt that future like a hole ripped in the wall of his heart. But, it didn’t have to end like that. There were options, always.

  He called her phone again.

  * * *

  Twenty minutes later, Abigail Vane arrived in the same beat-up Land Rover Defender. She looked good in linen pants and light makeup. The fear in her was less obvious, a hint of raw, rough panic buried deep. “I thought you might be curious.” She gestured at the boathouse, but Michael kept his eyes on the large, flat envelope in her hand.

  “A little, maybe.”

  She showed no signs of obvious distress, but little things gave her away. Sudden color in fingers squeezed white. A tiny swallow before she spoke. Too much glaze on her eyes. “Let’s sit.” She gestured at rocking chairs, and they sat in the shade of the deep porch. Abigail leaned forward, the envelope shaking slightly in her hands. “The police came early this morning, local detectives with a warrant to search the boathouse and lake.”

  “Search for what?”

  Her gaze steadied. “A body.”

  Every nerve in her was strung tight, but Michael could play this game in his sleep: cops, death, secrets. “Any particular body?”

  “I’m sure I have no idea.”

  “Did they show you the warrant? Do you know why they’re looking?”

  “Someone reported a death in the boathouse, a body put into the lake. That’s all I know.”

  “When you say someone reported?”

  “A confidential informant—that’s what the affidavit said. According to a confidential informant someone was killed in the boathouse. A body was sunk in the lake sometime last night. Our lawyers are circling the wagons, but couldn’t stop the search.”

  “Why would you want to stop it?”

  Michael was checking for a reaction, and got one. For an instant, she was dumbfounded, her mouth open and wordless. It didn’t last. “They checked the boathouse first, and found blood on the floor. A lot of it, apparently, though, someone tried to conceal the fact of it.”

  “You’ve seen it?”

  “They’re calling it a crime scene. It’s sealed.”

  “Why are you here, Mrs. Vane?”

  “Call me Abigail.”

  Michael leaned closer. “What do you want with me, Abigail?”

  This was the crux of it; he saw it in every line of her face. She was frightened, but not for herself. She needed something. Desperately.

  “Do you love your brother?” she asked. “I don’t mean the memory of him or the thought of him. Do you love him like I do? Like he’s still a part of you?”

  “Julian will always be a part of me.”

  “But, do you love him? There’s a difference between love and the memory of love. The memory of it is warm but basically meaningless. Love means you’ll do anything. Burn bridges. Tear down houses. Love makes normal life mean nothing at all. I want to know if that’s what you feel.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I want a reason to trust you.”

  “You’re worried he had something to do with this.” Michael gestured at the lake.

  “Something made him break. You said it yourself.”

  She shifted her feet, and Michael leaned away, thoughts moving in the back of his mind. He saw the boathouse, abandoned and rotting, the fear in Abigail’s eyes. “What do you think happened here?” he asked.

  “I would kill to protect your brother. I need to know if you feel as strongly. Not want to know. Need to know.”

  Something was happening. A steadiness rose up in her, a moral certainty that went straight through to her soul.

  “I love my brother,” Michael said.

  Abigail closed her eyes, then exhaled deeply as she laced her fingers and tilted at the waist. “What did he say to you? In his room yesterday, what did he whisper? Something disturbing, I think. I was watching your face when it happened, so please don’t tell me I’m wrong. I won’t believe you.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I’ll beg if I have to. I’m not above it.”

  She was whispering now, a conspirator, and Michael wondered how much of it was an act. It was gently done, this corralling of common interests. He stood, took two steps toward the lake. “If there is a body under that water…” He looked back, and found that her face was ivory-still. “Do you really think Julian is capable of that?”

  “Yes.” Her eyes were bright and hard. “I do.”

  “Why?”

  That was the question, and in spite of her need and talk of love, it unsettled her. They’d gone too far, too fast. She was shutting down. “You came alone this morning,” he said. “I’m surprised Jessup Falls allowed it.”

  “Jessup’s a good man, but he thinks you’re bad.”

  “Bad?” Michael lifted an eyebrow.

  “New York bad.” She ran one hand across the envelope in her lap, and Michael sensed a weightless moment as she took a step and the earth dropped away beneath her. “Otto Kaitlin bad.”

  “Otto Kaitlin?”

  “I think you heard me.”

  Michael blinked once as Jessup Falls went up a notch in his estimation. In twenty years, not even the police had made such a solid connection. They knew of him, but had no photographs or composites, not even his name; they’d seen his work up close, but had conflicting descriptions. He was short, tall, white, black. Michael was a ghost and a rumor; a threat of violence masked by false names and manufactured stories. He was a shadow who took orders from Otto Kaitlin and no one else. Someone to fear. A cipher. That’s how it had been designed twenty years ago—Jimmy’s idea—and Michael, too, was careful. He’d never been arrested or printed. He had a dozen false identities and they were all rock solid. “Why would Falls think I have something to do with Otto Kaitlin?”

  Abigail narrowed her eyes, and Michael sensed the return of her earlier implacability. Whatever fear she harbored, she’d made her decision. “What do you think I am, Michael?” She opened the manila envelope in her lap. “A rich man’s wife who spends her days in idle pursuits? A dilettante?” She slipped a photograph from the envelope and handed it over.

  Michael tilted it in the light. It was a copy of the only picture in existence that showed him and Otto Kaitlin together: Michael and the old man and the 1965 Ford GTO Kaitlin had given him for
his sixteenth birthday. The photo that had been in his duffel bag. Michael studied the photograph, then handed it back. His face betrayed none of the emotions that tugged at him: love and regret at the sight of the old man; anger that his photograph had been copied and was being used against him. “It’s only a photograph,” he lied.

  She slipped it back into the folder. “There’s quite a stir in the city right now, talk of terrorism and organized crime. Police are looking for a man and woman.”

  “New York seems a long way from here.”

  “Not that far.”

  Michael shrugged. He had plenty of money. Julian was protected. All he had to do was find Elena and walk. “So what?” he asked. “Falls thinks I’m bad, and you don’t?”

  “I think I don’t care.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I think a body is going to come out of that water.” She leaned forward, her mouth a bitter line. “And I think you know something about it.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  When Elena woke, she heard engine noise and the hiss of traffic. She was blind in the dark, her wrists bound behind her back, ankles crossed and tied. Her limbs had gone numb, but she tasted tape on her lips—a bitter, chemical gum—and when she tried to move, her head struck metal in the blackness. Pain shot down her neck, and in the stifling heat, she panicked. Thrashing and rolling, she smashed her knees and elbows, the small bones of her toes and the soft bottoms of her feet. The air was close and thick, a gasoline burn so strong in the back of her throat it made her gag.

  It was a nightmare, she told herself, the skin of some horrible dream; but the skin stuck. She was in the trunk of a killer’s car.

  Killer’s car.

  Killer.

  None of this could be real! The motel. The shower. But she felt the hotel robe on her skin, electrical burns on her side. She tried to stay calm, to think of the baby; but somewhere, the car would stop, and when that happened he would drag her out at the bitter end of some thin, dirt road. She would see a last wedge of sun, and then it would happen. She would die in the mud, and her baby would die inside her.

  The thought made her nauseous, but she tried to think clearly. What would Michael do? God, the question was insane. She didn’t even know who Michael was. But, she had to think like him. She had to be strong. Think, Elena! Her fingers found a can of some sort, then touched nylon strapping and a hank of stiff rope. She tried to gauge distance, but the car slowed and accelerated, turned left and right. Once there were railroad tracks—a brief clatter as the car angled up, then down—then two more lefts, and the car turned onto gravel. The shocks worked harder, and Elena pictured the empty, dirt road she feared. The trees, when he pulled her out, would be very tall, and their leaves would move as if nothing in the world had changed. She thought, perhaps, that she should pray; but then silence came, and it was sudden. The car slid to a stop and the engine died. She felt for something sharp or hard, but there was nothing. There never had been.

  Michael …

  Elena tried to make herself small, but when the lid rose she saw the same man leaning over her. He wore sunglasses, and there were other men, too, hints of whiskers and unblinking eyes. They ringed the open trunk, and studied her as if she were a fish in the bottom of a bucket. The man she thought was Jimmy said something and two men reached in to pick her up. They caught her by the robe, her arms. She fought, and one of the men laughed as they heaved her up and out, then dropped her as she struggled.

  “Jesus,” she heard a man say, and thought it was Jimmy.

  “She’s slippery.”

  Elena rolled her eyes and saw a small, green house circled by trees and dead grass. The driveway was long and dirt. The car was silver and smelled of burnt oil.

  Hands came at her again. Two were brushed with hair; two were lean and tan. “Nice tits,” somebody said, and she realized her robe had torn open.

  “Just get her in the house.”

  Hands gripped her again, and when they got her up, she thrashed and fought until they dropped her a second time.

  “For God’s sake…”

  “Damn, Jimmy. She’s strong.”

  “This is ridiculous. Step away.” Jimmy appeared above her, his face a pale blur under a canopy of high, green leaves that moved exactly as she’d thought they would. He held the stun gun an inch from her eyes and made blue sparks snap and sizzle.

  “You remember this.”

  She felt herself nod.

  He lowered the stun gun, and closed her robe where it had opened. “Be a good girl.”

  She let the same two men lift her off the ground, and did not fight as they hauled her up four stairs and onto the half-rotted porch of what looked like an old farmhouse. A screen door hung in the frame. Green clapboarding peeled under a baking sun, and from the porch she saw a barn in a sprawl of milkweed and brambles. Beside the barn were a half-dozen dusty cars.

  “Back bedroom,” Jimmy said. She felt a wave of heat as her body broke the plane of the entrance. The room was filled with ancient furniture and brown carpet tracked muddy. She saw hints of other men, guns on a table. “Right side.”

  They angled her body around an end table and then into a hall with floors that creaked. The room on the right side had a single chair and an iron bed. They dropped her on the bare mattress, and a musty smell rose up to fill her nose. Men crowded the door as a mosquito whined in her ear. She looked, but there were too many to process. She saw eyes here, a belt buckle there. Hands that opened and closed. No one spoke as sweat rolled on her face, and hot air stroked skin where the robe rode up on her hips.

  “Out,” Jimmy said.

  And everyone left.

  Jimmy smoothed his sleeves and closed the door. In spite of the heat, his skin looked as fresh as if it was powdered. He checked his shoes for mud, and then dragged the room’s single chair across the floor. When he sat, he removed his sunglasses and tucked them into the breast pocket of his jacket. Then, he leaned forward, got his nails under the tape and ripped it off her mouth. She wanted to speak rationally. She wanted to yell and scream, but nothing came out. All she could think was don’t hurt my baby …

  “Let’s start with what I know.” Jimmy pinched a mosquito from the back of his neck, rolled blood between two fingers. “Your name is Carmen Elena Del Portal. You were born in Catalonia twenty-nine years ago and have been in this country for three years. You’re pregnant. You worked at what used to be a nice restaurant.” He smiled coldly. “You would be considered attractive by men who go for the obvious—meaning, Michael, of course—and yet one breast is slightly smaller than the other, and you have an unfortunate blemish on the inside of your high, right thigh.” Elena shrank away. “Did I miss anything?”

  “What do you want?”

  Jimmy ignored the question. He crossed his legs, made a velvet sound. “Michael told you what he is, didn’t he? That’s why you left in such a hurry, why you were weeping in the shower of that disgusting motel.”

  He lit a cigarette with a brass lighter, and then blew gray smoke at the open window. “Do you know who I am?”

  Elena’s throat hurt when she swallowed. “Jimmy.”

  “Michael spoke of me?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what did Michael tell you about me? Some overblown horror story? Something blood-soaked and gothic?” Elena grew still, and Jimmy nodded. “Lack of imagination has always been his great shortcoming. No sense of destiny. No sense of greater things.”

  Elena saw Michael with paint on his hands: his excitement for the baby, the future. He’d always seen family as something greater than its parts. He’d described it for her so many times: how it would be when they were a family, the significance of it. “That’s not true,” she said.

  “A small man with small ideas.”

  “You’re wrong about him.”

  “A little fire. I like it. But it is true. Probably my one great failing in how I raised him. Not enough sense of his own greatness.” Jimmy took a final drag, an
d then flicked the cigarette out the window. “A depressing lack of self-worth.”

  Elena worked her wrists, felt tape bite deeply.

  “I’ll tell you a story,” Jimmy said. “It’s a funny one. Did Michael tell you about the day the old man found him? How he was about to be killed under a bridge in Spanish Harlem and the old man saved him. You know that one? Did he tell you that?”

  Elena felt her head move, and Jimmy laughed.

  “’Course, he did. It’s his favorite story, his own personal mythology. It’s like the novels he reads. Dickens, I guess. Maybe Oliver Twist.”

  Jimmy made a flourish with his hands, and Elena knew she’d never forget the sight of the condescending smile that bent his face.

  “Now, here’s the beauty of it.” Jimmy leaned forward. “You ready? Watch this. Otto Kaitlin hired those punks to cut Michael up. It’s beautiful, I swear to God. Otto wanted to see for himself if this kid was as tough as everybody said.” Jimmy lit another cigarette, leaned back, shrugged. “Turns out, he was.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Because, in spite of that, Otto Kaitlin didn’t make Michael what he is. I did.”

  “And that matters?”

  “Are you serious?” He laughed.

  “I want to know why you’re telling me.”

  “I’m telling you, you ditzy bitch, because Michael’s not some random killer. He’s elegant, like Mozart would be if playing the piano was killing, like da Vinci if the Mona Lisa was body count. He’s a work of art, a genius, and I made him. Not Otto Kaitlin. Not the street. I gave birth to that boy as sure as whatever whore pushed him out on the filthy sheets of some flophouse bed.”

  “And you’re proud of that?”

  “You don’t think God is proud of Jesus?”

  A pale, still madness smoldered in the dark centers of Jimmy’s eyes, but something else burned in there, too, and for a second, it looked familiar. “What do you want with me?”

  Jimmy shot his cuffs. “I want you to tell me about Michael. What his plans are. Where he’s going.”

  “Just let me go.”

  “No, no, no. Too late for that.” Jimmy rose, and then sat beside her, his hip narrow and hard against her leg. He dragged a finger along the sweat of her forehead, and then rubbed the dampness against his thumb.