Godchild

by Vincent Zandri

  My honeymoon motel.

  I was staring up at the red neon light that reflected off the white popcorned ceiling, the dog-eared copy of Godchild by my side, laid out on the mattress.

  Barnes’s job was finished, even though I had no cash to show for it. But then, I hadn’t exactly lived up to my side of the bargain.

  Not yet anyway.

  As far as Barnes or Tony knew, Renata and I were still in Mexico.

  My leg ached.

  At least I was alive.

  Renata was alive too, laid out on the bed opposite my own, asleep. My deal with Richard had been to return his wife as soon as I brought her back, no questions asked. But things had changed since then. It had been one hell of a twenty-four hours, the last fourteen of those particularly long. Renata and I left Shaw lying on his back in the middle of the desert. Left him for the buzzards.

  For whatever reason, he had betrayed the cause. Maybe he had acted on his own (as he’d indicated while on his knees in the desert), for the benefit of his own pocketbook. Kill Renata, kill me, then call Barnes, tell him he can have his wife back. But not until he raised the ante a bit. Meanwhile, Barnes has no choice but to wire another million or two, and all that time his talented young wife is dust anyway.

  Renata could not have conjured a better plot herself.

  But then maybe Shaw had acted on Barnes’s direct request. Maybe Barnes wanted his wife dead. And if he wanted his wife dead, he could very well want me dead. I had been a witness, after all, to the entire operation. Let’s face it, I would have to go. The thing is, why bother sending me after his wife in the first place if, in the end, he wanted her dead? Why not simply let her rot in prison?

  The answer was easy.

  Because there was the always the possibility that she could get out. Always the possibility that she could go public. That the public would find out about her predicament and how her rich husband hadn’t lifted a finger to get her out. By rescuing his wife, Barnes would not only make himself look like the good guy. At the same time, he could make sure, once and for all, that she was dead.

  Eight P.M.

  The red neon light flashed on and off. My leg throbbed. Maybe my homemade bandage had been applied too tight. Maybe I needed a codeine. Maybe two codeines and a drink. Another drink would definitely help the pain, help me decide what to do next.

  I sat up, slid off the bed, grabbed one of the beers I’d packed on ice in one of the little plastic ice buckets. I cracked the cap, took a swig, sat back down on the bed.

  Draped over the desk chair, my leather jacket, the restraining order still stuffed inside. A little worse for wear. I didn’t have to read it to know what it said. That I should be treated with extreme caution; that by law I could not place myself within one hundred feet of Val Antonelli.

  I picked up the phone, dialed nine for an outside line, then punched in Val’s number. She picked up after the third ring, said hello, a bit flustered, as though I’d caught her in the middle of something.

  I swallowed a brick. Then I said, “Val.”

  She took a deep breath, released it. “Oh my sweet Jesus,” she said.

  “I’m alive,” I said.

  For a full minute or more she just hung on the phone. Not saying anything. Just breathing hard. Until she gathered herself together. “What does that mean?” Voice calm, collected. Holding back. For now.

  “I’ve been asking myself the same question lately.”

  “Please,” she said. “Don’t do this.”

  “Dying,” I said. “It was all Tony’s idea.”

  “What difference does it make now?”

  “I went to Mexico on a job,” I said. “It was better if certain people thought I’d died. But it’s over now.”

  “I don’t love you.”

  “I don’t expect you to,” I said. “I just wanted you to know.”

  “What you did…Standing me up … It’s unforgivable.”

  “Can I see you?” I asked, taking a quick drink of my beer, setting it back down on the table.

  “I have protection now,” she said.

  “It’s just a piece of paper, Val. At least give me the chance to explain — ”

  “You don’t have to,” she said. “I know why you stood me up. So there’s no point in talking about it.”

  “The black Buick,” I said. “I saw it in the cemetery on Saturday. Tony’s known about it for weeks. It could be the one.”

  “Fran’s dead, Keeper,” Val said.

  “You don’t understand,” I said, glancing at Renata, asleep on the bed beside my own. “I’m closer than I’ve ever been.”

  “I can’t compete with a dead woman,” she said.

  And then she hung up.

  I drank the rest of my beer while Renata slept.

  I opened another.

  The room was dark, except for the red neon leaking in through the picture window. I lit up a cigarette and smoked it while watching the red light as it flashed against the wall and the ceiling. Sometimes I concentrated directly on the backward letters. Other times I just watched the smoke as it collected in swirling clouds that floated upward and dissipated.

  Renata was lying on her back, breathing regularly now, her mouth opened just slightly, her left forearm stuffed under the pillow that supported her head. She was wearing a black leather jumper that had small tears in the elbows and the knees. Her short auburn hair was mussed, her black boots set on the floor beside the bed. I knew she had a lot of sleeping to do to counteract the junk the Mexicans had been shooting through her veins for days on end.

  As soon as we had checked into our motel room, she told me they had injected her with a sedative called Diprovat, which, according to Renata, actually slows the heart rate to a near deathlike rhythm. The opiate was made in the U.S. by a company called Zerline Pharmaceuticals. She knew this because she managed to study one of the empty vials her captors had accidentally left behind on the floor of her windowless cell.

  But she also knew of the product because once she had assisted Richard in putting together a public-relations profile for Zerline, just a year before their son drowned.

  Eventually the proposal was rejected, but she had learned that Diprovat was used mostly as a cardiac anesthesia and that it could also be used as a general anesthesia in MAC patients. When I asked her what MAC meant, she sleepily informed me that Monitored Anesthesia Care patients were generally nuts, psychotic, or just plain wacky, depending upon what side of the psychiatric fence you were standing on. Diprovat was utilized to keep them at bay, which is exactly what the Mexicans had been doing with the stuff. Drugging up their more rambunctious inmates.

  I had Renata’s publicity package spread out all over the bed. The articles on the death of her child were lined up side by side. I had read them over, three or four times in the past half hour. The more I read them, the more the words stayed the same.

  It was time to contact Tony.

  I tried his office. When I couldn’t get him there, I tried his house.

  “Where are you?” he said.

  I told him we were back.

  “What about Renata?” he said. “Is she alive? Because if she’s not alive, we’re dead.”

  Interesting way of putting it, I thought.

  “She’s alive,” I said. “Sleeping like a baby.”

  “You were supposed to call me from the plane, paisan,” he said. “We have a deal with Barnes. You have a deal with me.”

  “Hudson tried to kill Renata and me this morning.”

  Dead air.

  “Did you hear me? Barnes’s ace contact drove us both out into the desert, tried to shoot us in the back. Like that had been his plan all along.”

  “And you believe that was his plan?”

  “Makes sense doesn’t it?” I said. “Barnes wants his wife dead. This Mexican thing provides him with the perfect opportunity. Hire a sap like me to go down and rescue her, give the impression of caring and concern. When she shows up dead, he blames the whol
e thing on me, says I was crazy over the death of my wife. He should have known better. Bad judgment on his part. And I’m not around to defend myself, because I’m lying in the middle of the desert.”

  Tony said he didn’t believe any of this. Not that I would lie. He just had a hard time believing he could be taken for a fool, even by a slick operator like Barnes.

  Then I told him about the girls in the pool. About their slashed throats.

  He let out all his air. He wasn’t saying anything, but I knew how his brain worked. It was either believe me or allow his pride to get in the way of a quick solution.

  On the bed beside me, Renata mumbled something, then rolled over.

  “Did it ever occur to you that Hudson had a personal agenda? They’re all bandits down there.”

  “What I know is what I believe,” I said. “And I believe that Barnes has not played this one straight with you or me, old buddy.”

  “You don’t know that,” Tony said. “Not yet.”

  “He wanted her dead, Tony, and he wanted to blame it on me. Just like he would have blamed the death of those two women on me to prove what a psycho I am, and I think you know something about it.”

  “You don’t think for a moment I would have betrayed our trust. For God’s sakes, I’m your friend, not your adversary.”

  “I don’t know who to trust anymore, Tone,” I said. “I don’t know who to trust or where the hell to go, for that matter. The guy screwed us over. Do you hear what I’m saying? Shaw screwed me and Barnes screwed you. That’s what it comes down to. That’s what this is all about now.”

  I picked up the little article, the one with Renata and Richard walking out of the church, the Bald Man (or a bald man) walking out along with them.

  “Tell me where you are. We can talk to Barnes together, get this thing straightened out.”

  “I’ll decide when we get together,” I said.

  “At least tell me where you are.”

  “I’ll tell you when I think you need to know, Tone,” I said, my eyes fixed on the Bald Man.

  “What about the girl?”

  “She stays with me,” I said, hearing Renata’s deep sleeping breaths. “Until I get a better idea of what’s happening.”

  “Keeper, wait,” Tony pleaded.

  I cut the connection.

  Chapter 45

  Renata and I had to move.

  Other than my apartment in Stormville, the Coco Motor Inn would be the first place Tony looked for us. I knew we had to get the hell out, find a new safe house. Do it quick.

  First I packed up our things, set everything by the door. Then I called out for Renata. She stirred and propped herself up on her elbow.

  “We have to leave,” I said.

  She sat up straight, slid herself off the mattress.

  No arguments.

  I stood by the door, looked out the window. Nothing in the parking lot other than a Ford pickup, a Chevy Malibu, and the Ford Explorer I rented from the Hertz counter at the Albany International Airport.

  I turned and allowed the curtain to fall back. She was sitting on the edge of the bed now, groggily bending over her boots, zipping them up. Although we had hardly spoken at all on the plane (she slept for almost the entire five hours), we’d spoken enough for her to know I’d been hired by her husband to get her out of Monterrey Prison. But did she know that it had all been a charade, that he may have wanted her dead at my expense?

  “If he wanted me dead,” she had said from her window-side seat in our 747 from Monterrey to Albany, “why would he send you after me?”

  “Maybe to make it look like he wanted you rescued,” I told her, and let it go at that.

  She asked me what I planned on doing next.

  I told her I wanted to keep her with me. What I didn’t tell her was that I was prepared to force her to stay. At gunpoint if necessary.

  “Until you figure something out?” she asked, her words coming slow and slurred, her head bobbing.

  “Until I know it’s safe,” I said. “And that goes for the both of us.”

  But that’s as far as I got before the captain asked us to fasten our seat belts and whatever Diprovat was left in her bloodstream knocked her out cold.

  I grabbed my leather, slipped it on. I had a crewneck sweater in one of my honeymoon duffel bags. I tossed it on the bed for Renata to wear.

  She asked me where we were going.

  “New motel,” I said, hitting the overhead light, drowning out the red neon that leaked in through the small space between the curtain and the window.

  “So are you like my unofficial bodyguard now?” she asked, her eyes squinty in the white light.

  “Something like that.”

  “Who exactly is it we’re hiding from at this point?” she said.

  “Like I already told you,” I said, “we’re hiding from your husband. And another man.”

  “What man?”

  “My best friend.”

  “Doesn’t sound like much of a best friend to me,” she said.

  I felt my heart sink when she said it.

  Doesn’t sound like much of a husband either, I wanted to say.

  The setup of the second-floor room at the Airport Days Inn was basically the same as the Coco Motor Inn. Same twin beds, same color TV mounted to a black plastic swivel stand, same bathroom off to the left as you came through the door, same coin-operated bed vibrator, same FREE HBO.

  We sat down on the bed beside each other, me in my leather jacket, Renata in my oversized gray sweater. I knew we were running out of time. Even the change of hotels didn’t guarantee that we wouldn’t be spotted in a day or two, or in the next five minutes for that matter. Which meant I had to work fast. Find out first why Barnes might want his wife dead while paying Tony and me two hundred Gs to keep her alive. Then find out what Renata knew about the Bald Man. If there was any connection between them whatsoever.

  I looked into Renata’s eyes. They were blue and glazed over in the dim room light.

  She breathed in and out. “You’re looking for answers,” she said, like a question.

  I got right to the point.

  I asked her if she could think of any reason in the world why her husband might want to have her killed.

  She broke all eye contact with me, choosing instead to concentrate her gaze on the wallpaper directly in front of her. Wallpaper patterned with colorful fruits. Oranges, pears, lemons.

  “In all seriousness, Mr. Marconi,” she said, “I’ve always assumed my husband loved me very much.”

  I grabbed her arm, pulled her into me. Face to face. “I need real answers,” I said. “Not some crap about how your husband loves you.”

  “I saved your life,” she said, her voice trembling, verging on tears. “That’s got to be worth something.”

  “I saved yours too. That makes us even.”

  I let go of her arm.

  She put her head in her hands. The skin on her hands was pale—as pale as her face, anyway. Or maybe it was the way the skin looked in contrast to the black leather jumper.

  I went for my bag, set it up on the bed. I unzipped it and pulled out the publicity package. I opened the envelope and pulled out the article with the photograph of the grieving Barneses and the Bald Man following them out of the church.

  “What can you tell me about this man?” I said.

  I handed her the clip. She dried her eyes and sniffled. She stared at the black-and-white photo.

  “What man?” she said.

  Pressing the tip of my index finger against him. “The bald man with the sunglasses,” I said. “What do you know about him?”

  She stared at it a little longer. “No idea,” she said.

  She tried to hand the clip back.

  I stepped away from her.

  “The man was at your son’s funeral service, Renata,” I said. “You must know who he is.”

  I was trying to stay calm. I didn’t want to scare her any more than I wanted to force her into admit
ting something that may not have been true.

  She looked at the clip once more, brought it close to her face, as though she could actually see into the photo. Then she set it down on the pile of publicity material on the bed.

  “I’ll say it again,” she said. “I have no idea who this man is or why he was at the funeral service. Perhaps he was a friend of Richard’s,” she said, waving her open hand in the air. “Or someone working for the governor.”

  I looked at her.

  “The governor attended the funeral?”

  “Richard worked for him. For his campaign. Maybe that man is a bodyguard, or a driver. I really don’t know.”

  I thought about the Bald Man. About the black Buick. A sedan, not unlike the kind of cars the Albany politicos drive around in with numbered license plates. I felt a slight jolt of electricity in my brain. Whether Renata knew it or not, she was answering my questions. Could it have been possible that the Bald Man worked for the governor? And if he was working for the governor, had he been working directly with Wash Pelton, back when Wash was the Commissioner for the Department of Corrections? If Wash had wanted me out of the picture because of the way I had come down on the drug trade at Green Haven Prison, it only made sense that he might hire a goon like the Bald Man to shake me up a little. It would have been risky on his part. A real reckless move. But a possibility all the same.

  I set the clip back inside its folder with all the rest of the publicity material, while I pursued another, not-totally-unrelated line of questioning.

  But first I lit two cigarettes. One for me, one for Renata.

  She inhaled hers slowly, with feeling. She exhaled a long, blue stream that floated to the ceiling. She was one those people who made a cigarette look good.

  “You never answered my question,” I said.

  “Which one?” she asked, taking another long drag.

  “About your husband, Richard,” I said. “Why he’d want to see you dead.”

  She smoked for a while longer, once again staring at the wallpaper. Until she looked up to me with those blue, glazed eyes. “I assumed he had no idea,” she said, the words barely leaving her lips.

  “No idea about what, Renata?” I asked. I was pacing the floor now, from one end of the bed to the other.