Rob Cornell - Ridley Brone 01 - Last Call

by Rob Cornell

  “So you’ve never seen him.”

  “Of course I’ve seen him. He gives me a dollar to wash his windows.”

  I opened my mouth to ask for more, stopped. I looked across the street at the gas station where I’d first seen the toll keeper.

  “You mean across the street? You washed his windows when he went to the gas station?”

  He scratched his chin, thinking it over, and I left him to it. I ran across the street, heedless of oncoming traffic. Traffic wasn’t really an issue in this part of the city anyway.

  The tone that sounded when I opened the door seemed to echo for an age while I stared at the man behind the counter pointing his Magnum at me… again. The pink spots on his dark head looked extra pink today.

  “Hello, my friend.”

  “If we’re such good friends, why are you aiming that at me?”

  “I saw you coming from across the street. I thought I would surprise welcome you.”

  “Your surprise isn’t very welcoming.”

  “What can I say? Our friendship has been strained since you took bullets.”

  “I assume you got more.”

  He smiled.

  “I need to talk,” I said.

  “You are talking. You talk a lot, I think. You talk but you don’t buy. Not a very good customer.”

  “It’s important. Could you put the piece away?”

  “Maybe you give bullets back first.”

  “Put it away!” I took three steps toward him.

  “Come no closer.”

  I took three more steps.

  “I will shoot you.”

  At the counter, I slapped Lincoln’s picture down, grabbed the Magnum, and jerked it out of his hand. He watched me wide-eyed while I emptied the bullets, put them in one pocket, tucked the gun in my belt, then retrieved the photo and held it up.

  “This guy look familiar to you?”

  He didn’t bother looking. “Give me my gun!”

  “Not until you answer me. Have you seen him?”

  He slapped his hands over his eyes. “I’m not looking at anything until you give gun back.”

  “Open your eyes or the last thing you’ll ever see is your gun.”

  He lowered his hands, brow furrowed. “That does not make sense, what you said. I would not see gun if you shot me when my eyes are still closed.”

  “Haven’t you ever heard not to point a gun at somebody unless you mean to use it? No wonder I never see anyone in here. You’re nuts.”

  “I have many customers.”

  I pointed at the photo. “Is he one of them?”

  “You are very rude. Can’t you take joke?”

  I counted back from three, since I didn’t have time for ten. Not much help, but I did restrain myself from throttling him.

  “Is… he… a customer?”

  Finally, his eyes shifted toward the picture. His eyebrows lifted, followed by one corner of his mouth. “That is him.”

  A rock rattled through my intestinal track. “You know him?”

  “That is my faithful white customer I tell you about. Very generous. Always pay cash.”

  “He comes in here?”

  “Why you sound so surprised? I told you I have white customers. I have many customers.”

  “You already said that.” I set the photo down, trying to see the larger picture. “How often does he come?”

  “Sometimes he come three times in a month, sometimes I not see him for many weeks. Depends. But he has come here for as long as I own place.”

  “How long is that?”

  He looked toward the ceiling and ticked it off in his head. “Almost ten years now.”

  So Lincoln comes downtown, but doesn’t go into the clinic. Like the woman at the window had said, if someone like Lincoln Rice went in there he’d be remembered. Instead, Kelly Simple comes out, maybe has one of the girls with her. They make arrangements for the girl to sell her child instead of getting an abortion. Lincoln then turns around and sells the baby for a profit. Maybe the girl gets shipped up north to that doctor Autumn mentioned. Kelly Simple gets a finder’s fee. Everyone’s happy.

  The idea seemed so unreal, treating children like merchandise—stolen merchandise at that. Who knew what kind of “parents” the kid ended up with? I couldn’t stand to wonder. But the theory filled a gap in the larger story. Lincoln wasn’t a client of the adoption ring, he helped run it. When Autumn became pregnant, and Daddy didn’t approve, he decided to earn a little something extra for the inconvenience.

  My stomach felt so twisted I could barely stand up straight. I staggered toward the door.

  “Please do not take my gun.”

  I returned to the counter, set the gun down, dropped the bullets next to it. Some of the bullets rolled off the counter’s edge. He caught the bullets as they fell.

  “Are you all right, my friend?”

  “I don’t even know what that means.”

  “I didn’t expect to see you again.”

  Autumn stood at the iron railing of the balcony to her hotel suite at the Rabson. She had a cigarette pinched between her fingers, and she stared at the burning end as if she didn’t know what to do with it. I wasn’t sure she did. I’d never seen her smoke.

  I sat in a plastic chair, shifting this way and that, trying to get comfortable, but the chair must have been designed for torture, not for sitting.

  Autumn raised the cigarette to an inch from her lips. “Daddy would pitch a fit if he saw me doing this.”

  We had the hotel suite to ourselves, Lincoln off “handling business” according to Autumn. We took to the balcony because Autumn didn’t want her father to smell the smoke. The gesture reminded me how far under Lincoln’s thumb she was.

  Autumn put the cigarette between her lips and inhaled, the end blazing in the night.

  My coming to Autumn while her father was gone was no coincidence. I had waited a long time in the parking lot, watching his car. I did have the sense to buy a sub at a nearby deli before settling in for my stakeout, determined to avoid another frozen mini pizza binge.

  Autumn coughed, shook her head, and tossed the cigarette away. I glimpsed it, a tiny baton with a fiery end, tumble out of sight. She rested both hands on the railing and stared out at the patchwork of lights in the windows of buildings across the street. An illuminated man in shirt and tie made late night photocopies in one window of an office building.

  I wasn’t the only one working late.

  “I’ve thought about what you told me,” I said, studying Autumn, taking note of the slightest reactions in her body.

  Her chin lifted half an inch, and her shoulder rose as she took a deep breath. “And?”

  I wasn’t sure how to play this, feeling my way through instinct, hoping the right response would come when I needed it. Autumn was my last chance at getting to Lincoln. I refused to let myself see her as the mother of my daughter, which proved easier than I thought. Autumn had become another crooked cog in the broken down machine that had stolen from me a daughter I’d gone fifteen years not knowing I had. Just a cog. A piece of the puzzle. A pawn. Whatever you wanted to call her. A means to an end.

  “There’s some things I think you ought to know,” I said.

  Her head tilted slightly, as if cocking an ear to hear me better.

  “I think I know what happened to our daughter.”

  Her back went straight. She almost turned toward me, but something stopped her. Her hands gripped the railing hard enough to raise the tendons in her arms.

  “How would you know that?”

  “That’s an odd question.”

  She finally turned, looking through the darkness at me sitting in the corner. “Is this another game? Some trick?”

  Was it? I didn’t quite know myself. I had an agenda, but that didn’t necessarily mean I was trying to trick her. “It’s no game.”

  She fumbled out the soft pack of cigarettes from her pocket and went about lighting one with a match. This time, when she
inhaled, she didn’t cough, though her grimace told me the smoke burned her lungs.

  “Just tell me then,” she said.

  “Do you remember Doug writing a story about illegal adoptions?”

  She flicked the cigarette at my face. The lit end singed my eyebrow. I swatted the cigarette away like a bug and stood.

  Autumn glared at me, nostrils flaring. “Don’t.”

  “You’re not going to like it.” I gripped her by the shoulders. “But you’re going to have to deal. You’re going to have to hear it.”

  She tried to wrench out of my grip, but I wouldn’t let her. I swung her around and pinned her against the wall to one side of the balcony’s sliding glass door.

  “I won’t listen to this,” she said. “I’m not going to listen to you trash my father anymore.”

  “Trash him? He’s lucky I don’t fucking kill him.” I shook her, trying to get her to stop struggling. “Listen to me, damn it. It all fits together. Doug started writing a follow up to that first story. He got too close to the shit your father was involved with.”

  Autumn spit in my face.

  I let the spittle crawl down along the side of my nose, not letting her go. “Come on, Autumn. The man’s had you on a leash for as long as I’ve known you. Remember all that sneaking around we had to do? Remember what he did to you when he found out you were pregnant?”

  “I deserved it.” Her eyes changed. Maybe it was my imagination, but everything went dark when I looked into those eyes.

  “I betrayed him,” she said.

  She stopped struggling. I could feel the muscles in her arms turn soft. A second later, her legs gave out. I held onto her, pulling her over to the plastic chair and easing her into it.

  Her head lolled to one side. I forced my hand to stay gentle when I lifted her chin to look in her eyes.

  “I’m all right,” she said, though her voice sounded sleepy.

  I crouched down in front of her. “Betrayed him how?”

  She pressed the heel of one palm against her cheek and wiped away some tears. “Has it really come to this?”

  With no idea what she was talking about, I kept quiet.

  “I’m losing my mind, Ridley. All of this… I’m losing it for sure.”

  “You’re not losing your mind.” But I knew how she felt. At least, I thought I did. “Take it one step at a time. There’s a lot to deal with.”

  “You don’t know. You have no idea.”

  “Then tell me.”

  She laughed, a hollow, throaty guffaw that—I had to admit—sounded borderline insane.

  “I’m sick,” she said. “So sick.”

  I could sit there and debate every one of her self-criticisms. I’m crazy. No you’re not. I’m sick. No you’re not. The back and forth wouldn’t do any good. Again, I backed off to give her time.

  “I knew the baby was yours because I remembered the time at your parents’ house, we didn’t use a condom. That one time. That’s how I knew it was yours.”

  I kept my mouth clamped shut, afraid to try decoding what she was saying. A humid breeze fluttered into the balcony’s cubby. Every inch of my sweaty skin felt tight.

  “He didn’t think so,” Autumn said. A vein bulged on her forehead. “Daddy thought it was his.”

  Daddy? My gut split open. “Enough,” I shouted. I couldn’t take any more. Not one more twisted bit.

  “I’m sorry,” Autumn repeated over and over, her voice trailing away to an incomprehensible hiss.

  I stared out at the night. I’d always resented Lincoln for turning me away when I’d tried to contact Autumn. His face had always stood as a symbol for what I lost when Autumn shut herself away—only it wasn’t her at all. All along, it had been him.

  He deserved more than my resentment. He deserved a hardcore beating that involved a lot of his blood on my clothes.

  “Do you see what he’s done?”

  Her head jerked. She kept whispering “I’m sorry” like a mantra.

  I crouched, trying to get her to look at me. “The man is a monster. Stand up to him.”

  She cupped her face in her hands, but her incessant whispering stopped.

  “You can help me get back at him for all he’s done to us, to our daughter. As fucked up as he is, everything he’s done he thinks of as protecting you. We can use that against him.”

  Her hands slid down her face until only her fingertips remained touching her chin. She stared at her lap, breathing in short puffs. I could see the struggle in her eyes, her trying to stay in control.

  “Help me, Autumn.” I rested my hands on her knees. The contact made me squirm inside as I thought about how her father might have touched her in a similar way. “Help me put that bastard down.”

  Autumn lowered her hands over my own.

  I fought the urge to pull away. Parts of me felt like they were coming loose, like I might crumble right there on the balcony.

  “What can I do?” she asked.

  Using the last tatters of my self-control, I outlined my plan—or most of it at least.

  Autumn never once looked me in the eye.

  Chapter 24

  The next morning I woke up before dawn, yet felt better rested than I had in days, which wasn’t saying much. I still jerked awake three times during the night from some nightmare or another. I only remembered one image from those dreams—my hand holding a gun to the head of Lincoln Rice.

  I went through my usual morning routine, except that this morning I attempted to warm a frozen bagel in the toaster oven. The bagel ended up a little crispy on the outside, a little still-frozen on the inside. I ate it anyway over the kitchen sink, then took my coffee out to the back porch and sat in the dark while I waited for Autumn to call.

  The sun had yet to touch the sky when my phone rang.

  “He’s agreed to meet at the park,” Autumn said. “But he isn’t happy about it.”

  “Do we care?”

  “I guess not.”

  I hung up and dumped my coffee into a nearby potted plant, or what used to be a plant before neglect had turned it into a brown husk. First thing tomorrow, I decided, I would hire a gardener—assuming I survived the morning.

  I peeked out the front door, looked both ways, and spotted the unmarked car with a single shadow inside, Palmer working this alone now. I had to wonder if he’d been out there all night. I hadn’t seen him on my way in the night before.

  I tucked my Smith & Wesson into its trusty spot at the small of my back, slipped a mini tape recorder into my jacket pocket. Two minutes later, I pulled out of the garage in the Rolls Royce. I had never operated any machinery so expensive before in my life. It felt kind of cool.

  As I drove away from the house, I checked my rearview. The unmarked remained parked at the curb.

  I took the most direct route to Garfield park, and did the speed limit the whole way.

  Lincoln’s Lexus was already in the lot when I pulled in. He and Autumn stood outside the car, both looking impatient. The expression on Lincoln’s face when I parked next to his car in my Rolls had Kodak written all over it.

  I cut the engine, and Bob Dylan’s “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” went silent.

  “Why on Earth are you driving that?” Lincoln asked when I got out.

  I gave the Rolls an appreciative once over. “Ain’t it sweet?”

  Autumn hung back on the other side of the Lexus, face cast down. Lincoln made a show of noticing the morning twilight. “There better be a good reason you’ve dragged me out here so early.”

  “Ms. Granthum told me you were an early riser.”

  That shut him up.

  “Were you followed here?” I asked.

  “No. I took care, as you suggested. Can we get on with this? I have some business matters with people overseas, and this is prime time to contact them.”

  What kind of business did he have across the ocean? More baby selling? Sex slave trade? I pushed the speculation aside. I had already learned more than enough abo
ut this asshole to keep me nauseated for a decade.

  “All right. Let’s go.”

  “Go? Where are we going?”

  Autumn watched a trio of seagulls bicker over some found morsel.

  I pointed to a stand of trees on the other side of the park’s main clearing. Nearby, a paved trail cut through those trees and led to the park’s other side. “Right over there.”

  “If you meant to have us meet on the far side of the park, why did you have us park on this side?”

  I gave him the are-you-dense look. “You want those cops looking for Autumn to find out I’m helping you? I’m taking precautions.”

  His mouth formed a line. He seemed to think about it, come to some decision, then nodded once. “Fine. Lead the way.”

  I tugged my jacket down to make sure it concealed my gun before trudging out ahead of them. Autumn took up the rear and watched her feet most the way.

  Lincoln kept close to me, but a little behind. I had a hard time keeping an eye on him, as if he meant to stay in my blind spot. A knot twisted in my stomach. This set-up had more holes than a wheel of Alpine Swiss, but there was more at stake here than getting a killer to admit his deeds. Lincoln was my last connection to my daughter’s whereabouts. I needed him to tell me how to find her.

  By the time we crossed the clearing, dawn bled some of the darkness from the sky, and the first hint of light deepened the shadows cast by the trees. The three of us stood facing one another in the shadows, forming a triangle. When I reached into my pocket to turn on the tape recorder, Autumn’s gaze jerked toward the movement as if she’d been waiting for it.

  I said to Lincoln, “The reason I brought you out here was because of something I found.” I glanced at Autumn. “I now know for a fact that Autumn killed Doug.”

  Here was the plan, or most of it at least: Give Lincoln a choice—his daughter or himself. Autumn was the only person besides himself that Lincoln seemed to care about. I thought if I could use that against him, he might sacrifice himself to save his daughter.

  That was the plan.

  But Lincoln Rice only smirked at my bluff and said, “Is that so?”

  Not the reaction I was looking for.

  Autumn stared at the ground. “I’m so sorry.”

  Lincoln pulled a gun.