Choice of Cages

by Parker Avrile

  Lane, already tall, felt even taller this close to me. He reached for the clips that attached the chains to the O-ring.

  “Playtime's over,” he said.

  My arms dropped, and he pulled off the fur-lined manacles as I stumbled forward.

  “Pull up your pants.”

  “Wha- what?” It felt like being abruptly woken from a dream.

  “We have an intruder.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  LANE

  Our early warning system had never gone off before, but it seemed to work entirely as designed. By the time our uninvited guest had gotten inside the gates, Thorne was stashed in his cell and I was sitting frowning over paperwork in my office. I hit a button, a signal to the guards that they could allow the intrusion to continue.

  A moment or two later, Thornhill Raynaud stood in the open door of my office, two off-duty deputies at his heel. My deputies. Excellent. He thought he'd broken in, but everything was working exactly the way it was supposed to.

  “Lane. It's me. You can call off your dogs.” He nodded at the deputies, and then I nodded, and they retreated out of sight.

  “What can I do for you, Thornhill?”

  “Can I come in?”

  “Of course. Sit down.”

  “What is this place? State money pay for this office?”

  “This would be a private office,” I said. “Paid for with funds from private supporters.”

  “Uh huh.”

  We looked at each other across my desk. Raynaud surely understood I'd have a private place, but he probably hadn't imagined the size of the operation. I could see the wheels turning in his beady little brain.

  “Mind telling me how you found this place?” I was making noise, giving myself time to think, because it was perfectly obvious.

  “I followed my son. He was at the house to see his mother.”

  I thought Thorne finally trusted me. Turned out he was still holding back. He hadn't said anything about his mother. Did he think I wouldn't understand?

  “I see.”

  “So this is the place where the magic happens.” Raynaud didn't sound impressed, which I figured was more of his bullshit. “You know, I've been thinking I didn't get a very clear understanding of what's going on here, Lane. This whole situation has gone far beyond what Willis described to me. Too far beyond. I almost feel like I was tricked into something.”

  He'd wanted to be convinced. He'd heard rumors, and he'd gone to Willis. Maybe he was telling himself something different now, but that's the way it was. He'd wanted his son changed, but he hadn't wanted the military or a prison to change him.

  “Magic” was an interesting word. Raynaud had wanted magic. Yeah, he expected to wave his magic money wand and have his son all fixed up the way he'd always wanted him to be.

  I saw no reason to back down. “Your son has a serious issue with thrill-seeking behavior including kleptomania. You do know that, don't you?”

  “Don't sugarcoat it for my sake. My son's a fucking thief. A professional. That boy could have had everything, and he threw it all away to defy me.”

  Two strong-willed men fighting to be on top. Nothing I hadn't seen before.

  “We've been friends a long time, Lane. I've always counted on you to keep my boy out of trouble.”

  Sure, that's what he'd hired me to do. My methods might be unconventional, but they were working. What the fuck was his problem?

  “The visit to your house was the result of a test. He failed the test, and I'm addressing the situation right now,” I said. “But otherwise he's coming along just fine. There will be no more unscheduled visits.”

  “I realize you got to test the boy. That isn't the issue.”

  Then what? I waited.

  “What's going on here isn't the kind of retraining you led me to expect would be taking place. I thought...”

  I knew what he thought. That somehow Thorne would be transformed into a happy frat boy who'd attend some agricultural college and come back and help Raynaud buy up farms and turn them into real estate. Give up the gambling, and take up bourbon. Settle down with a nice girl who produced three point five babies. Keep the gay to backroom places in New Orleans.

  Yeah, I knew all that, and I didn't blame Thorne for not wanting to be pushed into Thornhill Raynaud's assigned category. Thorne needed to change, but he didn't need to be Raynaud's mini-me.

  “Thrill-seeking behavior isn't something you can change,” I said after a moment. “It's only something you can channel. You wanted your boy in this program, Thornhill, and here he is. Now you're going to have to trust me that I'll do a better job of adjusting his attitude than you did.”

  “Is that the way you want to talk to your biggest campaign donor?”

  “I respect you enough to tell it like it is.”

  “You didn't respect me enough to tell me everything. I've heard some disturbing rumors. There's some... physical shit.”

  “Has anyone, ever, gotten a good result from this boy by talking at him? Yes, there's some rough stuff. Your boy is not a china doll, and it's high time you accepted that.”

  “This is bullshit. You promised me you'd keep my boy safe.”

  “I made you zero promises, Thornhill. I said I would work with the boy, but I made you zero guarantees about how it would work out. You didn't want to know. What's changed?”

  “The whole point of this program was to keep my boy safe. And now I find out he's working undercover? Going up against Bernard Justire's machine? What the actual fucking hell, Lane?”

  Fucking hell. Anytime you work with the fucking feds, there's a fucking leak. I didn't know how Raynaud could possibly know I'd sent Thorne on a job, but he knew.

  “What gives you the idea Thorne's working undercover?”

  “I know everything that goes in my town.”

  Maybe so, but the Talokka reservation was pretty far from Beauville.

  “You're not telling me everything, Thornhill.”

  “I think that's fair since you're not telling me everything. I asked you to change my son's attitude. Put him on the road to Jesus. I didn't ask you to get him involved in active law enforcement.”

  “I'm an officer of the court,” I said. “Law enforcement is my life.”

  “I'm not criticizing your life choices. Somebody's got to have ideals. That's fine. Somebody has to protect and serve, all that good happy crappy. Just not my son.”

  It was the same asshole Thornhill Raynaud who didn't want his son in the military. How much of his attitude had rubbed off on Thorne as a boy? How much of his arrogance? How much had he absorbed the attitude he didn't have to go through the same experiences other men did to shape their characters?

  “It's good enough for Davis Lacompte's son but not good enough for Thornhill Raynaud's son.”

  “Don't even pretend you don't know what I'm talking about. We're not the same kind, and you know it.”

  “I'm not entirely clear on what about being a fucking real estate speculator makes you better than a law enforcement officer.”

  “He's no fucking officer. He's a sneak of some kind.”

  “The ability to work undercover is a rare skill, and it builds on skills he's already developed.”

  “It isn't the skill I would have chosen for my son.”

  “There's a lot of things you wouldn't have chosen for your son.”

  “I'm not going to pretend I was thrilled when I realized he'd turned out gay. I have to blame his mother for that. But he's still my son. I want him out of this life and back in school.”

  Do people still believe you're gay because of something Mommy did? I sat there shaking my head. Rich people can be so isolated from reality. Maybe they think they can afford to be.

  “The boat has sailed. Your son is who he is—a person with a need to always be getting away with something. His only choice is to channel that energy into legal activities or illegal activities. That's it. That's the choice. As a master thief, he developed a very high level of
skill at getting in where other people can't—a level of skill most actual trained law enforcement doesn't have. He can bring something valuable to undercover work.”

  “Good at being undercover is almost worse than being good at nothing.”

  “In your opinion.”

  “My opinion is the one that counts.”

  Really? After all this, really?

  The whisper of the door coming open. Raynaud turned around and then took a deep, hard breath that seemed louder than a shout.

  Thorne sashayed in wearing the jeans and the shoes along with a silk pajama top he must have pilfered from Willis Dauphine's boy's room. His hair was tousled, and somehow he smelled of an expensive cologne.

  Trust Thorne Raynaud not to stay where you fucking put him. Trust him to come in smelling like a rose.

  “Hello, Father,” he said. “I presume I'm the topic under discussion?”

  Chapter Twenty

  THORNE

  You can keep me in a cage exactly as long as I agreed to be kept there. Exactly as long and no longer. Lane knew that.

  Now my father needed to know that too.

  “What are you doing here, Father?”

  His arms were folded over his chest, an expression of stubborn.

  “I need to talk to you.”

  “We have nothing to talk about. I needed to see Mom and make sure she knew I was doing OK, so she wouldn't worry. You weren't worried to begin with.”

  “I don't know what you think you're doing, but you're the last person who needs to be involved in police investigations.”

  So he knew about that. What didn't he know? “Fuck you.”

  “This seems unproductive.” Lane mirrored Father's stance, so he also had his arms folded over his chest. Here I was in the center of a room full of macho.

  “Is this more productive in your opinion?” Father touched my arm and pushed back the sleeves of the silk pajama top. The red marks of the cuffs came into view. “A normal man would be disturbed by this.”

  “I'm what your DNA made me, Father,” I said. “I need more intensity than the normal man. And I don't get that intensity from churning real estate.”

  We glared at each other. He wasn't going to blame Lane for this. If he needed to throw around the blame, this time he better put it right where it belonged.

  “If Thorne wants to leave this program, he's free to do so,” Lane said. “He's always been free to leave. This is voluntary training.”

  “Is this true?”

  “It is,” I said. “I can safeword out at any time. The thing is I don't want to leave. I came back here, didn't I? All I wanted to do was touch base with Mom, make sure she wasn't worried.”

  “There are other ways we can get you help. You don't have to do this just because he says so.” Father gestured at Lane. “The charges against you have been dropped. This is over. The only reason he's keeping you here is for his own entertainment.”

  I looked not at Lane but at my father. I'd already made some guesses, but now I needed to be sure.

  “Have you changed your mind, Father?”

  He glowered at me.

  “You told Mom I was going to be making some changes and she shouldn't worry if I went underground for a while. You were the one who set me up for the theft of the painting.”

  Father said nothing, but Lane nodded. “It was always going to come out in the wash, Thornhill. Your son is no dummy.”

  “I knew from Willis you boys had a program for elite prisoners. I wanted my son in that program. I wanted only the best for my boy. But...”

  It was killing him to say he'd made a mistake.

  “You didn't know it would be hard.”

  “I didn't know it would be so... physical.”

  “You didn't know it would be hard.”

  It was my father who had transferred the money into my bank account. It was a lower risk move than it looked like. I would be afraid money from an unknown client would spark a federal investigation, thanks to the currency transfer reporting laws.

  Father would know the feds would easily determine the cash came from family—a perfectly legal gift.

  It was a cute way to apply pressure. Fuck it. I almost felt stupid that I didn't figure it out before.

  So he'd pressured me and set me up to be arrested, with all the fallbacks in place. I couldn't be prosecuted for a felony if the painting was worth less than a hundred dollars. He'd have Lane ready in the district attorney's office to steer me on a different path.

  “You were never meant to get hurt. You were meant to... change.”

  “I was meant to change without effort. Just because. It was supposed to be easy.”

  “You were supposed to be scared. To think maybe you'd go to prison. You needed motivation, boy.”

  “You wanted to motivate me to be what you want me to be.”

  “I'm your father. I wanted what was best for you. Going on the way you were, the thefts getting bigger and bigger. A three hundred thousand dollar gemstone? The insurance companies were starting to put some pressure on the parish. Did you know that? Everybody who collects art or jewelry in this parish got hit with an insurance increase.”

  Oh, for fuck's sake. I knew my father cared about me, and I knew he cared about money, but sometimes it seemed like love and money were all mixed up in his head.

  “I can't say I lay awake at night feeling guilty because you have to pay more for insurance.” I laughed. “Sorry. That's just... that's just beyond my ability to give a fuck.”

  “That's why you needed the extra motivation.”

  We glared at each other like we hated each other, but we weren't fighting like this because of hate. Fuck it. I should be pissed off, but I wasn't. I wouldn't have come here voluntarily without the long arm of the law breathing down my neck. And I couldn't be sorry I'd come here.

  Lane wasn't moving, wasn't even breathing. I don't know what it cost him to stay out of this, but I appreciated it.

  “You gave me a gift, Father,” I said after a long moment. “You were right. I needed to make some changes. And maybe I did need the motivation. But I can't be your puppet. I can't ever be that.”

  “I know that, son.” He rubbed his hand over his face, briefly hiding his eyes. A rare gesture indeed from Father. He was used to manipulating the people of his parish, but he was wrong to bring that home and I think he knew it. “I... I... I...”

  It was still killing him to admit he'd been wrong. About any fucking thing.

  I swallowed, and he swallowed.

  “I'm not a thief anymore,” I said. “I'm done with it. But I'm not coming home because you blew your whistle and called time. I need this program, and I need to stay longer. I know you don't understand, but you don't have to understand. This isn't something I'm doing for you. It's something I'm doing for me.”

  He didn't know he was shaking his head, and he didn't know when the shaking changed to nodding. The words of apology seemed to be torn out of him. “I'm sorry, son. I was wrong. You don't belong here.”

  “You weren't wrong, and I do belong here.” I touched his arm. We weren't a touchy-feely family, but I squeezed and then let go. “I love you, Father, and I know you want to protect me, but I'm not happy being kept in a box. I need danger, I need risk.”

  “There's danger and risk in the real estate business.”

  I laughed out loud, and then he did too. “We're different, Father.”

  “I know, son. I know.”

  He had a very awkward embrace but I'll give him credit for trying. It was a brief, clumsy hug, but it was enough.

  I was staying, and he was going, and he wasn't going to set his dogs on me or Lane or Willis or anybody involved.

  But I still had one question.

  “Why the Hunter, though? Of all the things you could ask me to steal, why ask me to steal a fake? I mean, I know you wanted me to take something cheap, in case something went wrong and I got prosecuted. But there's a lot of cheap things in the world a man can steal.�
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  Did his face actually turn red? Out of all the questions we'd asked each other, out of all the things we'd confessed, this was the question that made him blush? “I don't think you need to know that. I don't think it's relevant to this discussion.”

  “Where is it now?” I asked. Silence. I turned to Lane. “Where is it now? Do you know?”

  “It's in the Angelina Parish evidence locker.”

  “Is it? Are you certain?”

  Silence.

  “Because a couple hours ago I saw a painting that looks a lot like it hanging in Mom's garden shed.”

  “The painting is not the point,” Father said. “The painting was something harmless you could take, and nobody's out anything. The painting doesn't matter.”

  Maybe. But Thornhill Raynaud was a great believer in efficiency. Killing two birds with one stone. The painting held a secret.

  “Why did you want that painting? A painting without value? A fake? You could have arranged for me to steal anything if you wanted me to get caught stealing.”

  Father wouldn't speak. Hammering him with questions was doing nothing but pushing us away from our moment of understanding.

  Lane looked from me to my father and back at me. “Wrong question,” he said.

  “How is it the wrong question?” I was lost.

  “Right question.” He sounded confident, like he wasn't even guessing anymore. Like he'd figured something out. “It wasn't painted by Clementine Hunter or William Toye. So who did paint it?”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  LANE

  Raynaud, thirty years older than his son, glared at me with the eyes of a hunting eagle. Such birds might not be as agile as merlins, but they were still raptors with a raptor's intensity. The two of them had never looked more like father and son.

  “Is painting a crime?” Raynaud lifted his chin, this too a familiar gesture of defiance.

  I wouldn't be stared down. “It depends on what you're painting and where you sell it and how many.”

  Thorne looked from me to his father, and then his jaw dropped.

  “Are there any other Thornhill Raynauds out there?” I asked.

  Raynaud wouldn't be stared down either. “Are there?”