A piece of glass. Part of a broken wine bottle.
For this had been a wine cellar for quite a number of years, and I had a thought, a prayer, really, that somewhere along the line, a bottle would have been dropped, would have broken, and a piece of glass would have been overlooked as whoever had done the dropping would have had done a sloppy job in cleaning up.
I felt along the piece of glass. A sharp edge. I moved back against the shelf, lodged the glass against the wood, and started moving my bound wrists against the glass. Up and down, up and down, and ---
The glass slipped.
Cut against my right wrist.
"Shit," I said, feeling the glass drop, feeling my wrist burn with the cut, now replaced with warmness as the blood started trickling down.
Reached and groped and got the glass.
Back again, cut and cut, and I felt the fabric of my necktie start to fray and break away. More cutting, more cutting, and I started moving my wrists and ---
Everything tore away.
My wrists were free. Freedom.
I was free.
I rubbed and rubbed my wrists, the blood roaring back into my fingers, tingling and tingling, more rubbing.
I leaned forward, started working on the leather belt around my ankles, my fingers numb and my wrist bleeding, and I tore a fingernail or two getting it off, but off it was, and I stretched my legs and rubbed out the cramps, rubbed some more, and yes, I was free ...
I looked up at the staircase, the locked door, the two tiny windows.
Some freedom.
Chapter Seventeen
I went through my pockets, wanting to find out what in hell had been poking at me, and I felt a small square of plastic and metal, and I pulled it out, and almost shouted with glee at what was there.
My hardly used cell phone, tiny and overlooked.
I pulled up the tiny antenna, switched it on, and started punching in the number of the Tyler Police Department. Diane would help me, Diane would know what to do, and-
Nothing.
Nothing at all.
Looked at the tiny display screen.
In tiny little letters that felt twelve feet tall. NO SERVICE.
Of course. Why should anything be easy?
I stood up, swaying, almost fell down again. Stretched and gasped as cramps rippled through my legs, and then I moved, rubbed again. I went up to the stone staircase, gently moved up along the steps, trying to keep the noise down, until I reached the top. Just for the hell of it, I moved my hands along the wall. No light switch. And I tried the doorknob. Locked, of course.
Cell phone in hand, I tried again.
The phone flickered into life, swinging between SERVICE and NO SERVICE. Close ... so very close.
I looked around the cellar, saw the light streaming in through the two small windows.
Maybe ... just maybe.
I quietly went down the stone steps, almost fell as another series of cramps went running through my legs, and I went over to the shelves, looked up. About eleven, twelve feet. A hell of a thing. Blood was still trickling down my right wrist and I made a sloppy bandage with my handkerchief.
And then I started climbing.
The wood had sharp edges against my hands, and I winced as I made my way up, the shelves groaning under my weight. About halfway, my foot broke through one of the slats, making a loud crack that I was sure could be heard as far away as Porter, and I murmured another series of expletives when the cell phone dropped from my hand. I looked down in the dim light and almost passed out when I saw the piece of metal and plastic split apart when it hit the stone floor.
I made my way slowly down to the floor, went and gathered up the pieces, and went to the center of the cellar, where the light was best. I put it back together as best as I could, and then went back to the wine rack, putting the cell phone back into my coat. Something must have loosened from my previous attempt, for the wood groaned and I felt the shelves move away from the wall.
"Close," I whispered. "So damn close."
I moved back up the shelving, taking it slow, knowing that by going slow, I wouldn't slip but was leaving open the chance of the damn thing collapsing under my weight, and I let that cheery debate run itself out as I got higher and higher, right up to the top, right by one of the two windows. The window was built into the stone foundation and couldn't be opened, and in any event, it was too small to crawl through ... but what I wanted to get through the window wasn't made of proteins. It was made of protons. Or something similar. My grasp on science right at that moment was pretty damn fuzzy.
Hanging on with one hand, I got the phone out of my coat, pulled the antenna out with my teeth, and held it up to the window, pressed the keypad.
There. I'll be damned.
SERVICE.
But another message was blinking at me. LOW BATTERY.
I guess my phone was one of those newfangled ones, for there was a digital countdown letting me know exactly how many seconds of usable power I had left, and I saw the number thirty become the number twenty-nine, become the number twenty-eight ...
Who to call?
Back in my coat pocket again, looking and finding ... a slip of paper in my hand, up to the window and the light, and there, the one call I would make. A call to warn her, a call to let her know, to go into hiding, to prevent her husband's defeat tomorrow, to call the Secret Service and do what had to be done ...
I punched in the numbers and waited, imagining the little digits running their way back to zero, and from upstairs, I heard a phone ringing. What a coincidence.
An odd counterpoint, this phone ringing, the upstairs phone ringing ---
A click. It was answered. A hesitant voice. "Hello?"
"Barbara?"
And everything got quite cold, as I realized the phone upstairs had, had . . .
Had stopped ringing. "Lewis? Is that you?"
And in the background, a very familiar voice, one I had heard the day before, as he was thumping me with a stun gun.
"Here? The sumbitch phoned you here?"
She hung up. I looked at my phone, now dead, and let it gently fallout of my hand and drop to the floor.
I slowly and carefully made my way back down to the stone floor, and feeling like the floor itself was being carried on my shoulders, I went over to the bottom of the stairs and looked up at the closed door.
And waited.
I didn't have to wait long.
The door opened and the lights came on, blinding me for a moment. I raised up a sore and bloody hand to my eyes to shield them. Harmon Jewett yelled down, "You wanna come up here, boy?"
"Do I have a choice?"
He laughed and a woman murmured behind him, and then he came down the stone steps, smiling widely, holding out the stun gun in his hand. Behind him was someone dear and familiar, and with each step she took downstairs, she broke my heart again and again. For a moment I was that college-aged boy, wondering and wondering why she had left me and had never called or written.
"Barbara," I said.
"Lewis."
She came down to the bottom of the steps and was now standing close to Harmon, standing right close to him, and with her arm through his, her head lowered. I flashed back to what I had seen, what I had remembered, about her and Jackson Hale. Over the past several days I had seen numerous videos of Barbara with her husband-candidate, and in each video-save one-she had been the devoted spouse, standing right next to the senator, smiling with him, laughing with him, applauding at each appropriate applause line. In each and every video, save one.
The one from the Tyler Conference Center.
And in that snippet of history, I remembered seeing Barbara with her husband, standing apart from her husband, standing very far apart from her husband ...
... because she knew.
She knew gunshots were going to be fired. She knew.
She always knew.
Harmon said, "Hands where I can see 'em, boy."
I held
my hands out, and Harmon chuckled. "Glad to see you're bleeding. Helps everything else as well."
I ignored him, stared at the woman I had once loved so long ago, and before me ... before me was a stranger.
I said, "I guess first lady wasn't that attractive to you, was it."
Her head snapped right up and the sharpness of her eyes and her tone chilled me. "When did I ever have a choice? When did I ever have the right to say no? When did I ever have a voice in what was going on? When? It was all assumed. It was all planned. And if I hated being a senator's wife, being first lady to this nation of clowns was going to kill me. Was going to absolutely kill me ... "
"And killing your husband was going to change things?"
Harmon said, "Not kill 'em. Just wound him. Except that damn Spenny couldn't hit the broad side of a barn ... and our planned patsy was busy pukin' his guts instead of being inside the building and takin' the fall. So instead of a wounded candidate and a scandal over his wife's former lover, we got a bump in the fuckin' polls, if you can believe it."
Now I looked to Harmon. "This is what you do when you're marginalized, when Jackson Hale won't fire you? When he keeps you on his payroll?"
Harmon spat something on the ground, his voice as sharp as Barbara's. "His payroll. His gratitude. Damn him, if it weren't for me, he'd still be some little state senator cutting ribbons at Piggly Wiggly openings. I made him, and now I'm gonna unmake him, and steal his woman in the process."
He leered at me and squeezed Barbara tight, and in looking at her and looking at him, I could not imagine what had brought them together, what they hoped to do, and then I gave it up. Trying to fathom who they were and what they were doing was like trying to understand quantum theory with a third-grade math education. It just made my head hurt.
And the time for thinking was over. "Barbara ... "
She didn't say anything. My throat thickened and I said, "Just the other day, some smart man warned me of the danger of manipulation. I just wish I had appreciated how smart he really was."
Still no answer.
With a touch of impatience, Harmon said, "Upstairs, friend. Now."
"Or what? Plan to shoot me and dump my body with a rifle in my hand in front of Hale campaign headquarters?"
"Nope. Or I take my stun gun and shoot ten thousand volts into your private parts, then drag you upstairs. Either way, you're going upstairs."
Barbara's head was lowered again, as if that earlier outburst had tired her. "So ... is that it? That's all it's been since you've been here? Me as a tool so you can spend your days with ... with this creature?"
Her voice soft, she said, "He loves me, Lewis. He will do anything for me. Anything. And he will save me from going back to D.C. anymore ... so I can stop wearing that damn happy wifey mask."
She turned and went up the stairs. Harmon grinned at me, like a good ole boy sharing a joke with another equally good ole boy. I started up the stairs and Harmon gave me a wide berth, and as I got to the top of the stairs, Barbara was there and I had a quick thought of making a break for it, but the other woman --- -Carla --- stood there with a wary expression on her face, a nine-millimeter automatic pistol pointed in my direction.
Harmon joined us and said, "Permit me to introduce my companion, one Carla Conchita Lopez. Carla was once a member of the Guatamalan People's Army ... or the People's Army of Guatemala ... or some damn thing, until she got a taste for capitalism and headed north. She got caught up in an immigration sweep in Atlanta couple of years back ... and long story short, my cousin from INS dumped her in my care. Old Spenny. Old stupid Spenny, couldn't hit a target to save his life, and he sure as hell didn't. Jesus, you were supposed to call the cops when you found his body in your yard. Why the hell didn't you do that, boy?"
"Guess I forgot."
"Where is he now?"
I said, "In a safe place. You want to trade? His body for my freedom?"
He grinned. "Not much of a trade. Sorry."
Harmon went to a pile of clothing by the door and said, "The cuffs, babe. Toss him the cuffs."
With her free hand, Carla reached into a pocket in her slacks and pulled out a set of handcuffs, which she tossed to me. I caught the jangling pieces of metal and looked over to Harmon.
"Put them on," he said, "or I tell Carla to shoot you in your kneecap. Either way, it don't matter to me, 'cause the cuffs will be where they belong. Carla's one tough bitch, buddy, and some of the stories she told me about down south would make your balls ache. So do what you're told and don't fuck with her."
I was still looking at Barbara, still trying to remember those magical days in Indiana, at the university, and then giving up. No more time for the past. None. I had to focus on the here and now, as hard as it was. Barbara stood by Harmon, and she was still not looking at me.
“The handcuffs, Lewis. Now."
I slowly put one cuff on one wrist, and then the other on the second wrist. The clicking sounded as sharp as a sliding saw hitting a bone. "All right," I said. "Your patsy is ready. So? Shoot me now, or shoot me later? And do you trust me with a gun?"
Harmon walked over to the small pile of clothing on the floor. "Who said anything about a gun? Carla, keep an eye on 'im."
He bent down, picked up what looked to be a cloth vest, and my aches and pains and cramps went right away as I saw the wires leading up from tubes of material, fastened to the outside of the vest. He held it up like a fisherman proud of the trophy he had just captured and was about to bring home.
"Carla here, when she was active in her little revolutionary movement, developed some nice skills, including bomb making. And what's gonna happen here, Lewis, is that you're puttin' this vest on ... and in about twenty minutes, ol’ Senator Hale is coming here for what he thinks is goin' to be a quick campaign stop to say thanks to that ol’' bitch Audrey Whittaker, who is over in Concord expectin' the senator to have a drink with her ... and when he comes up that driveway, why, you're gonna run out to meet him. You see, for the past half day, you've been holdin' the three of us hostage, which we're gonna swear to the investigatin' authorities. Plus, in that vest is some love letters you've written to Barbara ... love letters that come from your computer that we didn't have a chance to use the first time around ... and that little scandal will defeat that little bastard tomorrow."
The cuffs were cold and made my bleeding wrist sting even that much more.
"If stopping him is so important, why not put the word out about me? If that's the scandal you're looking for."
Harmon said, "Who humped who twenty years ago --- so what? --- but a crazed stalker, tryin' to kill the senator over a long ago love affair ... so much juicier, so much juicier that you dumb Yankees up here, who hate scandal so much, will give the nomination to somebody else ... and give me and Barbara a good laugh when we're done, just to see what we managed to pull over that numb Jackson."
I said, "Just so you know, Harmon, there's another copy of that surveillance tape. A copy I mailed to a trusted friend. Let me go and we can settle this ... settle it so nothing else happens, nobody gets hurt."
Harmon said, "Carla? The tape?"
She shook her head. "Can't make out your face. Can make out the license plate of the car. That's it."
Harmon turned to me, triumphant. "That ol' biddy lends her car, her house, and sometimes what's left between her legs to people she wants to help. So by the time investigators try to figure out what's what --- especially with no body for Spenny --- whoever's president will be working on his second term."
Barbara had moved next to Harmon like an obedient puppet.
She was by the door, Harmon standing next to her, and Carla, in turn, standing next to him. All three of them standing in a row, looking at me.
I said quietly, "Barbara ... you know what's going to happen. If I go out there wearing that vest, he's going to trigger it by remote control. Barbara, he's going to kill me. He's going to kill me in the next few minutes. Barbara."
She said nothing. Ju
st reached out and sought Harmon's hand, which he gave her. He was holding the vest with one hand, squeezing her hand with the other.
"Now, Lewis. Put the vest on now."
I lowered my head and moved forward, gauging my steps, and when I got close to Harmon and Barbara, the vest now held out to me, I tried to catch her eyes, tried to look at her, tried to make her see the man who was in front of her.
But she was studiously ignoring me.
And so I went up to Harmon and Barbara, and slugged her in the chin with my left elbow as hard as I could.
Chapter Eighteen
Barbara yelped and fell to the ground, still holding on to Harmon, and he stumbled and Carla shouted, and I grabbed the doorknob with my cuffed hands and opened the door and ran outside, almost tripping on the slippery steps, but I ran and ran and ran out onto the driveway. I was moving quick and thinking even quicker, and I knew the grounds would hold no shelter for me, not with the snowbanks of the driveway and the snow-covered lawn. I would slow down instantly in the thick snow and be a quick and easy target, so I stuck to the curving driveway, running and running, hoping that its gentle curves and the high snowbanks would hide me for a few seconds, for I was sure Carla was right behind me, with a shoot-to-kill order, and somewhere back there, both she and Harmon and yes, damn it, Barbara, had a Plan C to take care of everything.
It was cold and windy but I didn't mind. I was moving quick, the cramps and discomfort in my legs and arms now overlooked, the open entrance to the estate now before me, wide open, and as I ran toward the opening, I had a fearful thought that perhaps there was some automatic system back at the house to close the gates, but nothing happened as I approached the stone columns and the silent cast-iron gates.
There. Right through. Now I was at Atlantic Avenue. Look to the left, look to the right. The road here was fairly straight.
No traffic. None.
Ah, hell.
Then the sound of an engine.
Look, look, look, a voice inside me started screaming.
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