Nate carefully pressed his arm and wished with all his heart for some heavy-duty painkillers.
“Don’t kick me out, mister.”
Nate let out a growl. “Then don’t tell me one more damn time about how you want freedom. I’ve had it up to here with freedom. Understand?”
The kid gulped and nodded. “Yeah. Okay. I got it. Sure.”
“You hungry?”
“You bet.”
They stopped at a McDonald’s for Egg McMuffins and reached the Malibu beach house where the kid lived at a little before noon. The kid’s mother made a big fuss over him. The father, however, seemed more concerned about the loss of his Mercedes than anything else.
“Do you have any idea what a machine like that costs?” the man demanded, when he and Nate were alone to settle up.
Nate mumbled something unintelligible—he always tried to be unintelligible when he wanted to say something he knew wouldn’t be wise.
“And you’d better have someone look at that arm,” the man suggested with distaste.
“I’ll do that.” Nate found himself thinking to hell with wisdorm, and added, “You know, if you cared half as much about your kid as you do about your car, he probably wouldn’t be risking his life hanging around with gangsters.”
The man gaped. “I beg your pardon.”
“You heard me.”
The man’s ears turned red. “I want you out of my house. This instant.”
Nate couldn’t help grinning. “I guess I’ll get no referrals from you, huh?”
Nate left, heading over to Cedars, where he had the bullet dug out. Then, at around four in the afternoon, armed with a vial of codeine tablets, he went back to his apartment.
The codeine worked great. At five, after an unsatisfying shower where he tried not to get his arm wet, he fell across his bed and slept for a drugged, blessedly dreamless twelve hours.
He woke at five in the morning. His arm was throbbing again. Somehow, he managed to pull on his jeans, though his arm screamed in pain as he did it. Then, unwilling to go through the agony that putting on a shirt and shoes would have cost him, he dragged himself into the bathroom and washed down another codeine with water straight from the tap.
It occurred to him then that he hadn’t eaten since the Egg McMuffin yesterday morning. So he wandered down the hall toward the kitchen, stopping on the way to gather up two days’ worth of mail; it had gotten scattered around the floor a little when he came in the evening before. In the kitchen, he flipped on the light. And groaned at the sudden brightness. He switched the light off. It was that time of half-light, just as the sky began to brighten. He could see well enough to make coffee and toast. And the mail could wait a little longer for his attention. He threw the pile of envelopes and circulars on the table and went to brew the coffee and make toast.
When the food was ready, he sat at the table to eat, wishing the codeine would kick in and stop the throbbing in his arm.
He saw the movement in the parking lot out of the corner of his eye. He turned to look, glad he’d left the light off or he never would have noticed.
Two skinny guys were sneaking around down there. One carried what appeared to be a crowbar. And the other had some kind of handgun.
Not good news for whoever they were planning to visit.
Community Watch to the rescue, Nate thought grimly as he picked up the phone and dialed 911. He reported two armed prowlers and gave his address. Then he got his own Beretta 9 mm, shoved in a loaded clip and headed for the door.
Nate crept down the stairs, wishing the Tyrells had left their porch light off, keeping to the side wall, his bare feet making no sound on the smooth concrete steps. At the bottom of the stairs, he waited, listening, pressed against the wall inside the enclosure provided by the stairwell. He heard nothing.
Slowly, he made his way around the side of the building, moving silently, even breathing with care. When he peeked around into the parking lot, he saw no one.
Beyond the lot loomed the carports, each one a dark cavern with the end of a vehicle sticking out of it. Terrific places for bad guys to hide.
Nate waited some more, listening for a giveaway noise, alert for any movement. He saw and heard nothing. He was just trying to decide whether he wanted to chance cutting across the open parking lot to get to the carports, when he heard splintering noises, then a window being shoved up.
The sounds came from somewhere on the other side of the building next door. Nate sprinted across the driveway that ran between the buildings, then raced around the laundry room. He saw a figure disappear through a pried-open window on the ground floor. Nate knew whose window it was: Hector Leverson’s. On the other side would be Hector’s living room. Since Nate saw no one else, he assumed the other prowler had gone inside first.
A number of choices presented themselves, none of them particularly appealing. He could wait for a response to his 911 call. Maybe they’d show up in time to handle the situation.
He could try Meggie’s technique and set up a racket. That might possibly make the prowlers—who had just attained the status of burglars—break and run. It also might freak them out enough that they’d shoot Leverson, if the poor guy was home.
Nate’s third option was to crawl in the window after them. They had thoughtfully left it open for him, after all.
Nate just couldn’t resist that open window. He approached it with caution and crouched below it for a full sixty seconds, listening for sounds from inside, thinking that the good thing about a little excitement like this was that it got his adrenaline up and he could hardly feel his throbbing arm at all now. But then, of course, that could just be the codeine starting to work.
A light went on, in a window several feet down the wall—in what he judged would be Hector’s bedroom. He heard a cry, slightly muffled, a cry that seemed to come from the room where the light had just come on.
More than likely both scumbags had stalked their prey there. Which meant the living room would be deserted—he hoped.
Muttering a short prayer to the patron saint of fools and PIs, Nate slid over the sill and into the dark living room. His bare feet hit the floor soundlessly and he stayed crouched low when he landed, weapon ready.
Luck was with him. There was no one there. But from the bedroom, he could hear voices speaking in low, intense tones.
He rose to his feet and moved silently across the floor, to the short hall that branched two ways—straight on toward the front door and to the left toward the bedroom and bath. He turned left and then plastered himself against the wall, moving as close as he could to the open bedroom door.
He listened.
“Please—” that was Leverson’s voice “—there’s money there. On the bureau. Take it and go.”
“You got more stashed around here somewhere,” one of the scumbags insisted. “I know you do. I got a sense about this stuff. You’ve got yourself a hidey-hole. I would have found it last time if we hadn’t been... interrupted.”
“No,” Leverson said. “I keep my money in the bank. I swear to you. What’s there on the bureau is all we have on hand.”
We, Nate thought. Leverson wasn’t alone? That would make four people in that room.
He listened, to place them.
He heard footsteps. And rustling sounds. “There’s only about fifty bucks here.” It was the same scumbag who had spoken a moment before.
“That’s all you’ll find in this apartment.” Leverson’s voice again.
“You come up with more.” Bingo, Nate thought. Scumbag number two. “Or the woman gets it.”
“I will, I will. I’ll...go to my bank, withdraw all I have,” Leverson said. “Just, please. Don’t hurt her.”
“Don’t beg them, Hector.” Nate’s heart stopped. He knew that voice. “They’re low-life trash. You don’t beg low-life trash.”
The second scumbag muttered something foul. Nate heard the thudding impact of what might have been a fist or a pistol grip against flesh. Then
he heard his mother’s groan.
“Now,” said the first man. “The bitch is quiet. And we want more money, or—”
“Or what?” Nate stepped into the doorway and aimed his Beretta at the man who’d spoken last.
For a moment, everyone froze. Nate found himself noting the fact that his mother and Hector Leverson were wearing matching pajamas.
Then the first scumbag swore. And the second scumbag turned the .38 special in his hand away from Sharilyn toward Nate.
“No!” Sharilyn cried.
Nate opened his mouth to warn her not to move. But he was too late. She launched herself across the bed and threw herself in front of him.
The scumbag fired his .38.
And pandemonium broke out.
When it was over, Nate had the guy with the crowbar in a chokehold and Hector had beaten the one with the .38 unconsciousness, using a bronze statuette he’d grabbed off of the bureau.
Sharilyn lay on the floor, as still as death, with a .38 slug in her back.
As it turned out, it was a busy morning for the LAPD and prowler calls had gotten low priority. They had to call 911 again to get a patrol car and an ambulance.
Help came right away, however, for a call that included breaking and entering and possible murder. All the tenants came out to see what was happening. Dolores wailed on her husband’s shoulder, outraged at all the evil in the world.
Within an hour of the incident, the patrolmen had taken the bad guys away and Sharilyn had been wheeled into an operating room at Cedars for emergency surgery.
Nate stayed with Hector.
They sat in a waiting room and drank bad coffee.
And Hector talked. “The one with the gun,” he said for about the tenth time. “That was the same guy who attacked me last November. It’s amazing. He actually came back to try again.”
“It was his last try,” Nate promised, as he’d done more than once already. “Don’t worry about him, Hector. They’ll lock him up for good now.”
Hector lowered his head. “Do you think she’ll be all right?”
Nate had to swallow hard before he could speak. “Yeah. Sure. She’ll be fine.”
“We were married yesterday,” he said to Nate, as he’d said already to the tenants and the patrolmen. “It was the happiest day of my life.”
Nate was still having trouble dealing with that news. He knew his mother. She had wanted only to be free. And yet, she’d chosen to marry again.
Hector sighed. “She’s a wonderful woman. I’m the luckiest man alive.”
“Right.”
Hector’s hands were clenched. “I don’t believe in violence.”
“Gotcha.”
“But I can’t help it. I wish I had killed the one who shot her.”
Nate grunted. “You did him serious damage, I promise you. His head will never be quite the same.”
“Good,” Hector whispered. He looked hard at Nate. “She would like to make peace with you, more than anything in the world.”
Nate closed his eyes and looked away.
But Hector wouldn’t take a hint. “I know, I know. She told me. About the money she took from your grandfather, about how she sent you away. But she really did believe things would be better for you at the Rising Sun than they would have been with her. She never could control you, and she felt that you were headed for trouble. She thought that your grandfather would take you in hand.”
“And about the other, when you were a small child. She always felt you were deeply... damaged by that She feels she should have known earlier. I told her that she has to forgive herself, that she had been so busy trying to support the family all on her own. And at least when she did find out she took action. And it never happened again, did it?”
Nate said nothing. He felt strange. Nauseated, suddenly. And a little light-headed. He thought of the dreams. The dreams of the darkness...
“Are you all right?” Hector was asking.
“Yeah. I’m fine.”
Hector’s kind eyes widened as understanding dawned. “You don’t remember, do you?”
Nate only looked at him.
Hector swallowed. “Oh, God.”
Nate’s palms were sweating. “What...are you talking about?” As he said the words, he wanted only to call them back.
Hector drew in a long breath and faced Nate. “It’s not my place. I was wrong to say anything. I’m sorry. Please. I’m so worried. About her. I’m just not thinking straight.”
Nate stared at Hector, he was still talking. But his voice seemed far away. And his face blurred before Nate’s eyes, became his father’s face, scowling at him, scaring him...
“A man needs some damn freedom in his life,” Bad Clint muttered as he pushed Nate into the closet.
Then he closed the door.
And Nate was alone, in the darkness, with the smell of musty wool from the coats and rubber from the rain boots stored back against the wall.
The darkness was all around him, pressing on him, making it hard for him to breathe.
But then, just when he though he would start screaming, he looked down.
And saw the thin line of light that came in beneath the door. As long as there was that thin line, he told himself, he could stand it.
Nate heard the lock turn. And then he got down on the floor where the light was, put his thumb in his mouth. And waited.
He didn’t know where his father went. He didn’t know what his father did. But he did know that his father would let him out before his mother got home.
“Nate. Oh, please...”
He heard Hector’s voice from far away. He waved a hand at the voice absently. He was wondering...
Had there been a time when he protested, when he cried and screamed and fought what his father did to him? He didn’t know. Right now, all his memory would show him was acquiescence. And a terrible patience.
A promise to himself that he would wait. To get out. That he would grow up, be a man, eventually. And then, like his father, he would have his freedom. No one would box him in ever, ever, again.
“Please...”
He felt Hector’s hand on his arm. He shook it off.
He must have been about five before his mother discovered what his father did with him when she went to work. That was after she somehow scraped enough together to buy the bar and they were living over it. She came up in the middle of her shift one time. And Bad Clint was gone. She called for Nate.
But he stayed quiet, waiting, the way his father always warned him to do.
“If you know what’s good for you, you’ll keep your yap shut,” Bad Clint always said.
Nate heard his mother moving through the apartment, looking in the closets and calling his name.
At last, she opened the door. The light came in, all over him. Banishing the darkness. Making everything all right.
“Oh baby, my baby,” she cried as she scooped him close to her body. She was warm and smelled of cigarettes from the smoky bar downstairs. He cuddled against her and didn’t say a word.
“Nate...”
Nate shook his head, blinked. And Hector’s insistent voice faded into nothing again.
Later, when Bad Clint showed up, Sharilyn was waiting for him. She screamed at him. She told him she’d have him arrested if he ever tried a trick like that again.
“How long?” she demanded, “How long have you been locking him up in the dark like that?”
“A man needs a little damn freedom,” was all his father would say.
“I mean it,” she told his father. “I will see you in prison if this ever happens again.”
How Nate loved her then. Fiercely. Totally, for saving him from the darkness, for telling his father he’d better not ever put him in the darkness again.
Nate swore to himself that he would do anything for her. Anything at all.
He ran free after that, until his father died.
And then his mother sold him to his grandfather.
And he lear
ned that she was just like his father: she would do terrible things, just to be free.
He had hated her then, a thousand times more than he ever hated his father. He had hated her more because she had made him love her before she sent him away as if he was nothing to her.
And then this morning, she had taken a bullet in the back to protect him.
It was just possible he would have to reevaluate his judgment of her.
“Nate. Dear God Nate...”
Nate blinked. And Hector was looking at him, his gentle eyes full of fear and concern.
“Are you all right, Nate?”
Nate armed sweat from his brow, feeling numb and strange and not all there.
Was that it, then? Was a dark closet the place where the hunger for freedom had been born?
Over the years, he’d managed to forget the horror of the darkness. Only the hunger to be free had remained.
Had that hunger served him in any way?
The answer came instantly: yes. It had given him the patience, the will to stay sane, a child locked in a dark place for what must have seemed like forever.
But did it serve him now?
Was it worth the price now—of love? Of connection? Of knowing his child? Of holding Meggie in his arms every night, for as long as both of them lived?
“Nate. Please. I never meant to—”
Nate made himself smile at Hector. “No. It’s all right. It’s been...a hell of a morning, that’s all.”
An hour later, the surgeon came out to talk to them. “She’s going to be all right,” he said
Hector and Nate went in to see her. She looked pale and she was still unconscious, with tubes taped to her nose and her mouth, and an IV drip hooked up to the back of one hand. She had a huge, dark bruise on her chin, where one of the scumbags had clipped her. Hector pulled up a chair and took the hand that had no needles stuck in it. Nate stood across the bed from him, waiting.
It was a few hours before she woke up. Nate was there when she opened her eyes.
She looked at his face and she knew instantly. She whispered in a papery voice, “I guess things will be all right now between you and me.”
“Yeah,” Nate said. “If you want it that way.”
Marriage By Necessity Page 19
