Ill Will

by J. M. Redmann

  The next day, I took Rafe’s advice and had Debbie call Grant. It went to his voice mail. By the end of the day he hadn’t called back.

  So much for special.

  The day ended and it was time to go home to a quiet evening of cats in the lap, a roasted chicken—light on the pepper for Cordelia—for dinner and early to bed.

  The next morning as I was fumbling to put my key into the lock at my office, my cell phone rang. I dropped the keys on the ground and left them there to answer my phone.

  But it wasn’t the phone now in my hand ringing. I quickly dug through my briefcase to get Debbie’s phone, barely managing to answer before it went to voice mail.

  Maybe I was special enough to get a call the next morning.

  “This Debbie?” It was a woman’s voice. Nope, still not special.

  “Yes, yes, this is. Who is this?”

  “It doesn’t matter who I am. What matters is that I have information for you. Get ready to jot this down.” She wasn’t impolite, her voice sounded professionally warm. But she wasn’t concerned where I was or what I was doing—I needed to write down the information right now.

  “Let me find a pen,” I said as scrabbled in my briefcase for a pen and scratch paper.

  “Tonight at eight thirty.”

  “Got it,” I said. I finally located a pen and grabbed the first blank piece of paper that came to hand. I hoped it wasn’t my Entergy bill.

  She gave me an address in New Orleans East, off Lake Forest Boulevard. “You’re going to have to park on the street, the lot still has a chain link fence around it, but you can get through at one end,” she instructed. “This is for your sister, right? She needs to be there and you need to bring the money. You have to pay up front before you see the doctor.”

  “Okay, we’ll be there.”

  “You can come with her, but only she can go in, got that?”

  “Yes, of course. Who are you? What’s the doctor’s name?”

  She ignored my questions, repeated the address and reminded me to bring the money, and hung up.

  If there weren’t enough glaring warning lights, this was just another. No legit doctor would operate this way. I suspected it was either someone who lost his license for selling too many diet pills or, more likely, someone in a white coat who had a vague idea of how to take blood pressure. Theater is largely props and suspension of disbelief. Call someone a doctor, do a few doctor things. Someone badly needs this charade to be real, and they believe enough to hand over their life savings.

  I scooped my keys off the sidewalk just as a large black truck cruised by.

  His was wrecked.

  He could have got a new one by now.

  I jammed my hand into my briefcase for my gun.

  The truck kept going and turned the corner.

  I hurriedly stuck my key in the door, opened it, just as quickly locked it again when I was on the other side and ran up the stairs.

  I called both Joanne and Danny to see if there was any update on Dudley. Neither was available. I left messages.

  Then I called Rafe.

  “Lights, action, camera,” he said.

  “Easy for you to say.”

  “True. Do you trust me enough for me to come to your office? Or should we meet somewhere in public for me to wire you?”

  “You think they won’t check for a wire?”

  “I assume they will. This is why you’ll be wearing a state-of-the-art one.”

  “Why don’t we meet at your office?”

  “Because it’s in Dallas and we’d have to meet at my hotel room.”

  Given that choice, I started to tell him my address, but he cut me off.

  “I’m out front right now.” Of course he’d know where I worked. He was smart enough to add, “If now’s not a good time, I can come back.”

  I had been debating whether or not to say I had a client and wasn’t free. He just edged over not being blown off. “It’s a fine time, come on up.”

  Of course, his coming up meant my going down to unlock the door.

  “Not much to steal in here,” he commented on the austere lobby—which was basically enough room to fit two people and the stairs and the junked-up hallway that led to the back door.

  As we chugged up those very stairs, I explained about Dudley. It was a brief explanation as by about the third flight, talking becomes punctuated by obvious breathing.

  “The cops really think he might come after you?” Rafe asked just as we were on the final flight.

  “The cops don’t know that he won’t,” I answered. I waited until I was unlocking my door to continue. “He’s an addict. Probably meth, from the look of his mouth. He could be crazy enough to think that if he kills me, his legal problems will go away.”

  “So we should be watching out for this guy as well?”

  I didn’t want to be baby-sat. “The police probably already have him in custody.” I explained about the wreck and his need for pain meds.

  “Damn, I forgot to scan the news feed to check up on you.”

  Enough of this. “Okay, so what are we doing tonight?”

  He pulled a thick envelope out of his briefcase. “Seven thousand,” he said as he tossed it on my desk. “Tell them it was all you could scrape up. That you can have more next week. The more contact we have, the more we’re likely to catch Grant Walters there.”

  He pulled out another envelope, not as thick. “Five hundred for you up front. You get another thousand after tonight. More if we need more of your time. Bonus of ten thousand if we catch Walters.”

  I put the envelope in a desk drawer. Then I showed him my wardrobe for tonight. The rhinestone jeans would make another appearance; Debbie was the kind of girl who had to wear clothes more than once. Plus the new pastel pink sweater and hot pink jacket.

  “That should make it easy to spot you.”

  “I’m playing a character,” I told him. “If it was me, I’d be in black leather.”

  “My kind of woman,” he muttered while groping in his briefcase.

  “Not if you knew me better,” I muttered back.

  He gave me a choice of wires. The better one was a small device that I could slip into a pocket, with a mic I could attach to a brooch. The other was a watch. I opted for the watch, remembering the woman on the phone had mentioned a doctor. I didn’t want to risk having anything fall out of my pocket should I have to undergo a physical.

  Which I sincerely hoped was not to be the case.

  We wouldn’t meet again. He asked me to call him when I was about to leave and they would discreetly tail me.

  Then he was gone and I was left staring at a watch—ladies’ style, no less, and two envelopes. I delayed lunch long enough to count the money—but it was as he said, seven thousand in one and five hundred in the other. I put the seven thousand in another envelope, one that would only have Debbie’s fingerprints on it. It wasn’t likely they would check, but better safe than wishing I’d done something as simple as change envelopes.

  I again went the high-calorie route for lunch, popcorn shrimp salad, so at least I got some greens. I needed to get back into the habit of bringing my lunch and sticking closer to the turkey sandwiches side of the spectrum and not the fried side. Cordelia’s eating habits—no, there was no habit here—what she could eat—was affecting mine. Like I had to make up for her bland rice and oatmeal.

  I called Joanne, ostensibly to find out what was happening with Dudley, but only got her voice mail. Tried the same thing with Danny and got the same result.

  The only person who seemed to want to talk to me was Lydia. I’d wondered what had happened to her. I was beginning to think she’d decided ignorance was bliss and blown me off. More likely, it was hard to suspect someone she knew well and she’d had to work through her ambivalence. And she only wanted to talk briefly. “Can we meet tomorrow night at nine?” she asked.

  I thought she was being a little cloak and dagger—Friday evening anywhere work-ish would be deserted, bu
t I agreed. She was worried, and some emotions aren’t worth arguing with.

  I left around four. To make up for going out again in the evening, I finished all the dishes and decided on pizza for dinner. I made two batches of dough so we could do two, one bland with spinach and mild cheese and the other artichoke hearts and sun-dried tomatoes with caramelized onions.

  Cordelia, in perfect timing, got home just as I finished chopping the onions and garlic.

  “You know you don’t have to cook every night,” she said as she joined me in the kitchen.

  “I do on the nights when I have to go back out.”

  “What for?”

  “Work. Helping with surveillance,” I hedged.

  But it was enough for her. She nodded and went upstairs to the bedroom to change.

  After we ate—she had a small slice of each—she proclaimed that she was fine vegging in front of the TV and would probably be in bed before I got back. I kissed her good-bye and left a little before seven.

  I went back to my office. I didn’t want to have to explain my pink clothing, so opted to change there.

  Carrying a gun wouldn’t do. They would certainly check for that. It wouldn’t protect me much in the glove box of my car except make me feel better. There was always the possibility that I’d run into Dudley either coming or going.

  A little before eight, I called Rafe. Our conversation lasted about two seconds. Then I headed downstairs, carefully locked up behind me.

  The last glimmer of light was leaving the day. They had set the time to make sure it was dark.

  New Orleans East is, as it name implies, in the east. It hugs the lake and is on the other side of the Industrial Canal. Left largely untouched until the 1960s, it developed into a suburban style enclave, mostly single family homes with large yards. It was badly flooded during Katrina and is still struggling to come back. The two hospitals out here hadn’t reopened. Many of the businesses, especially the large scale national chains that had anchored the malls, hadn’t returned.

  Now, driving there at night, the devastation felt sinister. The lights were back on, but so many places were vacant and dark, as if pieces of the city had been ripped away and only a black stain remained. Just as I had entered the freeway, a dark blue SUV closed in behind me and the driver waved. Then it faded into the traffic. Now either I had lost them, or Rafe and his crew was very good. I’d given him the address so they didn’t need to tail me to get there. I would give them the benefit of a doubt and assume that they would be there.

  Once I exited the interstate, there were only a few other vehicles around. I drove at a steady pace, as if I belonged here and wasn’t searching for a location. I’d given myself plenty of time. The last thing I wanted to do in a situation like this was to hurry.

  I had to remind myself that I might need to not be Debbie, but her ill sister. Being sisters, I assumed that they both liked pink. I tried to remember the name I’d given Walters. Donna. Now I was Donna Perkins. Wait, was that her married name? No, I decided, she’d gone back to her maiden name after the divorce. And Donna had never married, so she was still Perkins.

  Keeping all this straight was enough to earn me the five hundred.

  As I got close, I noted they had picked a desolate area—the better to come and go without anyone watching. Only the street lights and a few distant cars offered illumination. I wondered where Rafe and his crew were. Maybe I should have spent more time checking him out, even sicced the Grannies on him. He could be double-dealing, working with Grant Walters.

  The dark was spooking me, creating vampires in every dark crevice. Rafe would lose his license and his business if he helped someone like Grant Walters.

  I drove past the address I had been given. It was indeed enclosed with a chain link fence, the parking lot filled with weeds growing through the cracked asphalt. One end of the building had lights on the top floor; the rest was dark.

  At the first corner, I took a right, traveling past the end of the building with the lights. Trying not to slow down too much, I tried to look into the windows, but they were covered, only a diffuse glow escaping. I continued around the block, losing sight of the building behind empty houses as I turned the next corner.

  The next turn brought me to a small parking lot behind the building. There had been no cars visible from the front because they were back here. I counted four. I didn’t want to stop and stare, that would be too obvious if someone spotted me—Donna Perkins might have overshot and gone around the block, but she wouldn’t stop and mark down license plates. One car was the expected dark SUV—the choice of criminals. Two were nondescript sedans and one, improbably, was a high-end sports car, a Lotus or Lamborghini.

  Somebody—my bet was on Grant Walters—was flaunting his wealth with an adolescent wet dream.

  I turned again and this time parked in front. It was 8:25. Mine was the only car there. Assuming all the gang had parked in back—four of them, unless they were thrifty crooks and carpooled, that meant that I, aka Donna Perkins—was the only client. For a few thousand dollars this didn’t seem worth their while.

  Or they could be smart and schedule us far enough apart to make sure there was no overlap. It might not do to have someone with AIDS chat with the cancer patient and discover they were getting exactly the same treatment.

  I sat in my car for a few minutes—I was early, after all—pondering all the things that might go wrong. They want money, not murder, I reminded myself. The only big danger was that Rafe Gautier had totally misled me. But there was no reason to go through this scheme if he was playing me. Other than as a ruse to get me to a desolate part of destroyed New Orleans. But then I’d have to believe in cloak and dagger that made Lydia’s paranoia seem perfectly sane by comparison.

  I got out of the car, following the directions to find the opening in the chain link fence.

  It was at the far corner, clearly a deliberate opening, but only large enough for one person to get through. Then a long, ill-lit walk across the broken, weed-choked asphalt. But as dim as the light was, I was easily visible to anyone watching. The dim light of the lot was blocked by the building’s portico. I had to pause for a moment to give my eyes a chance to adjust to the deep blackness before I could see the faint outline of a door. I scanned the façade, but it was the only place that looked like an entry.

  I tried to open the door, but it was locked. Okay, this was beginning to feel more cloak and dagger than I liked. This was a lot of high security for bilking desperate people out of their money. And I had to remember that I was one of those desperate people. What would a woman dying from cancer do?

  The answer that came to me was be at home sitting and dozing in front of the TV. Then I reminded myself she wasn’t dying.

  Why had Reginald Banks come? What would bring a young man to a place as desolate as this? Desperation, Cordelia had said. Medical care offered him bills he couldn’t pay for treatments that never cured his illness. This was the only way out of a life of illness, an early death. One last, desperate chance.

  I knocked on the door.

  Waited. Then was about to knock again when it was flung open, the sudden light blinding me.

  “Where is your sister?” a male voice asked.

  I couldn’t place the voice, then my eyes adjusted and realized I was standing in front of Grant Walters.

  “Oh, Mr. Walters. I mean Grant. I didn’t expect to see you here.” Didn’t expect, didn’t want. It was time to improvise; no way I could pretend to be Debbie’s sister.

  “Didn’t they tell you to bring your sister?”

  “Yes, sir, but she’s having a rough day. She asked me to do this for her and I—”

  “She has to come. The patient has to meet with the doctor. You can’t do it for her.” He smiled at me as if he realized that was what he was expected to do. I was special, after all. “I’m sorry, but she really has to come.”

  “I brought the money,” I said, holding up the envelope.

  He grabbed it o
ut of my hands, glanced inside, then looked at me. “Come back and bring your sister. They’ll take care of you then.”

  I reached for the envelope, but he held it beyond my grasp. “I can’t leave the money, unless I get—”

  Again he cut me off. “It guarantees that we’ll reserve the treatment for you when you come back. At times we run out, the demand is so great. You’ve paid up front.”

  “But I already gave you money up front—”

  “That was to help get you in. With this, you’re guaranteed. Just bring your sister.”

  He started to shut the door. I put my hand against it. “But when? When can we come back? She’s not doing well.”

  “Someone will call you,” he said.

  “But wait, what are you doing here? I thought you said you weren’t involved?”

  “I’m not. I’m here on an unrelated manner.” He shoved the door closed, leaving me in the dark, my eyes burned by the light.

  I stumbled back out, going slowly over the cratered asphalt as my eyes adjusted. “Damn, damn, damn,” I muttered, staying enough in character. I was sure they were watching me. I could be an upset Debbie, but I couldn’t be an upset Micky Knight.

  I didn’t look around to see if I could spot Rafe. Debbie wouldn’t be looking for anyone. She was someone about to go back to her sister to tell her she no longer had the money and she didn’t have the promised treatment. Someone would call to let them know when they could come again.

  “Damn,” I muttered again as I got in my car. But I wasn’t Debbie, it wasn’t my money, and no one was desperately hoping that this would save her life.

  I drove away, in a hurry, as an agitated Debbie would. I headed back to my office, wanting to get out of this desolate neighborhood as quickly as possible.

  As I was coming over the High Rise, the section of I-10 that crossed the Industrial Canal, the dark blue SUV came up behind me. I assumed that he’d follow me back, but he disappeared again into traffic. Or maybe it was just a random SUV. There certainly are enough big, dark things prowling the roadways.

  I parked in front of my office, but didn’t get out of my car. I was guessing that if Rafe wanted to talk, he’d follow me here. By waiting for him, I could save myself three flights up and back. Plus make sure that Dudley hadn’t decided on an unplanned visit.