Night on Fire

by Douglas Corleone

  Hurts a hell of a lot more coming out than it did going in.

  I back away, my vision blurry. I’m already dizzy, cold, feeling faint. Stumbling, I drop to one knee just as Dominic begins to get to his feet.

  Summoning every scrap of strength, every shred of rage, I launch myself off my bad right knee and charge forward, swinging at the prick with my right. The awkward, off-balance hook I deliver connects squarely with the left side of his throat.

  Time seems to freeze.

  In the dimness an inky liquid flows like a faucet from between Dominic’s lips.

  That’s when I realize I still have the knife in my fist.

  Gazing into his mismatched eyes I’m frozen like a block of ice. But I need to find the kid.

  I release the knife, manage a few slow, painful steps forward as Dominic’s body brushes against the wall, then slumps to the floor.

  As I pass him, my eyes lock on the stiletto still lodged in his throat.

  The sensation that washes over me isn’t at all what I expected. In fact, although I know I never have, it distinctly feels as though I’ve done this before.

  CHAPTER 62

  The body of Chelsea Leffler lies spread-eagle on the floor of her bedroom, the white cordless phone clutched in her hand. Cautiously, I kneel beside her, peel each thick finger off the bloodied receiver, then put phone to my ear.

  Nothing. The line is as dead as Dillinger and I’m on my own again.

  As I press the palm of my hand against the hole in my gut, a gurgling noise suddenly sounds from Chelsea’s throat, startling me.

  I lean over her and lift the lids of her eyes—dilated, even with the lamplight spraying us from the corner. I check her thick neck for a pulse, feel a beat, but it’s feeble.

  “Where’s Josh?” I say softly.

  “P-p-p-p…” she tries, crimson bubbles rising from blue lips, popping, spilling scarlet down her triple-chin.

  With my free hand I reach for a dresser drawer handle and fish around for a piece of fabric. I dig out an empty white pillowcase and press it to my stomach, futilely trying to ebb the bleeding. I feel weak and woozy, light-headed as though at any moment I might white-out.

  I again attempt to lift myself up but fall forward onto the floor next to Chelsea. Immediately I’m smacked in the face with the blended stench of shit and piss and blood and perfume and death.

  With images of the fire blazing through my mind, finally I roll myself over, try again to rise, and rasp, “I’m going for help.”

  A few seconds later I’m actually on my feet, lurching in the direction of the door. Pressing the now-crimson pillowcase against my stomach, I squint away my double vision and teeter forward.

  Fortunately, as I stagger through the frame, I hear a drifting Chelsea Leffler mutter her last word.

  CHAPTER 63

  “Park,” she’d said.

  From the road the park appears to be one wide open field but as I charge through the long blades of grass and thick mud I realize that the rear portion of the park is pure forest. The rain continues to drop from the sky like nails. Tree branches take swipes at my cheeks but I barely feel them. I lower my head and hasten through the muck like a crazed Doberman, searching the pitch for the kid.

  I resist calling out for fear that I may expose Josh’s location, just as I exposed Erin Simms on Hidden Beach with my electric-orange Jeep.

  The blow to the dead center of my back feels as though it were delivered by sledgehammer. I’m paralyzed, facedown in the mud before I even see my attacker.

  Then a body lands on top of me, straddles my lower back, a rigid hand holding my face down in the pungent, putrid earth.

  “I’ll fucking kill him, Josh,” Sebastian shouts from a few inches above me.

  Mud flooding my open mouth, I can’t speak, can’t warn Josh to run like hell, never mind me.

  “I’ll fucking kill him, Josh,” Sebastian shouts again. “Come out now or your lawyer friend is dead!”

  No sound but the teeming rain as it slices through trees and angrily pounds the earth’s surface. Even though I know I’m about to go, a wave of perfect relief washes over me.

  But suddenly the silence is broken by a child’s scream—“Please, no!”—coming from behind the broad trunk of a nearby tree.

  The grip on the back of my head loosens and I lift my eyes enough to see the kid step through the downpour like a dream.

  “Leave him alone,” the kid cries.

  “Get over here, Josh,” Sebastion demands as he continues to straddle me. “Get over here and I’ll let him go.”

  The kid takes two quick steps before I’m able to shout, “No!”

  I get a swift punch to the back of my head for my troubles.

  And the kid’s still coming.

  “I have to, Kevin,” Josh says, resignation washing over his face. “I have to and I will. You saved my life. Now I have to save yours.”

  “Run, kid,” I shout. “Run, goddamnit! He’s gonna kill me anyway.”

  Then my face is buried in the mud again and I can’t breathe, the weight of the bastard on top of me sinking me deeper and deeper into my wet grassy grave.

  “Come here,” Sebastian shouts at the kid.

  With all the strength I can muster, I force my head up. “You fucking coward,” I spit out, choking on soil as I try again to scream.

  “Coward?” Sebastian says in my ear as I drown. “You’re calling me a coward? Let me tell you something, Corvelli. It’s easy dying to protect someone else. It’s fucking hard to kill to protect yourself. Especially your own boy.”

  I can almost feel the blood spilling out of my gut, mixing with the rain and mud. I twist my head to the side. “You killed the kid’s mother,” I say with quiet rage.

  “That’s right, Corvelli. Know why? ’Cause Katie and I were trying to set things right, trying to make things work. Then the filthy cunt started fucking that goddamn pussy-boy prosecutor.”

  Josh is stepping this way, his footfalls coming closer.

  “And the kid saw you,” I say softly with a faceful of pain.

  “Right again, Counselor. I saw him up in that window with his goddamn bird binoculars. I would’ve done him right then and there but some fuck neighbor turned his lights on.”

  “The kid didn’t say anything, ya know,” I mutter through clenched teeth.

  “I know.” A hint of sorrow permeates his voice for the first time. “He’s been a good boy. But, with all your fucking digging, that secret was only gonna stay inside of him for so long, Corvelli, and you know it.” Sebastian presses my face into the mud again. “That’s it, Josh. Come here and I’ll let your friend go.”

  The kid cries, harder even than he did on the stand.

  This is how I’m going to die, I finally realize. Drowned facedown in the mud.

  Everything glows as I fall deeper and deeper into the abyss.

  And then instantly it is as though Kevin Corvelli doesn’t exist, as though I’m ten feet below the surface of the Pacific, eyes open, pushing water past me like the fins of a big fish, detached wholly from every worldly thought, every worry, every other human being who has ever lived. I’m underwater yet filled with fire, drowning in blue-hot flames. I’m reaching with my outstretched arm for the rocks, straining my body toward the bottom, extended fingers grazing it just barely, just briefly, and then I am determined to rise, rise, rise again, using a reserve of strength I never knew I possessed, launching myself to the surface so that I can breathe in that tropical air again, steal one long last look at that horizon.

  Without thought my fingers clench into fists, scraping up two handfuls of mud, then I am pushing myself up on my knuckles, my entire body rising on the strength of two tired, rarely-used biceps, and I can feel my rider cling tighter to the torn jacket of my suit.

  I’ve got one shot at this, I think. One chance to throw this fuck off me like a mad bull.

  Just as the kid pauses about five feet away from us, I heave myself and Sebastian’s 1
80 pounds up with all my might. It’s not enough to buck the killer off me, but it’s enough for me to angle my body and ultimately twist around so that I’m facing him. He immediately presses his weight against my bleeding gut and before I can scream his hands close tight around my throat.

  He’s choking the life out of me. Instead of drowning I’ll be strangled—if I don’t bleed out first.

  Dr. Noonan’s going to have his work cut out for him, I muse.

  Suddenly the kid runs at him, head down, screaming like a rock star in the throes of his final set.

  Sebastian glances up and it’s all the help I need. I shove one of my two fistfuls of mud in his face and say, “Choke on this, you psychotic fuck.”

  I follow with a second fistful of mud to his mouth, then I reach for his eyes, press my muddy thumbs in on the lids as he screams, something black oozing from the corners of each eye.

  Finally I’m able to throw him off me, his body rolling a few yards before coming to a halt at the base of a tree.

  Painfully I push myself to my feet and hobble toward him.

  I hover over Sebastian Haslett as he lies on his back fumbling for his eyes with his hands. Then I’m straddling him as he straddled me, striking his face with my closed right fist again and again and again and again.

  “Stop!” Josh screams.

  I ignore the kid.

  “Kevin, please! You’re gonna kill him!”

  “He has it coming,” I shout as my fist comes down on the raw flesh of Sebastian’s face again.

  It’s then I realize I intend to murder the kid’s father with my bare hands.

  PART IV

  END OF THE NIGHT

  CHAPTER 64

  When I arrive at the lagoon at dawn most of the area is already cordoned off with blaring yellow police tape. The water in front of the Kupulupulu Beach Resort itself looks as though it’s readying itself for a Jaws shoot. What once was a picturesque blue is now a grisly violet.

  The body floats faceup, naked, arms spread as though crucified to the surface of the water. Even now her face is beautiful, a visage burned into the mind, a smoking, stinging memory that will remain with me until my very last moment of life.

  I lower the Panama Jack hat until it pushes against the rims of my prescription sunglasses. The sky is clear, the sun is rising, and the photographers are vying for optimum space.

  “Slit both wrists with a switchblade,” John Tatupu says from behind me.

  I already know. The blade lived at the bottom where I left it, waited for her for six whole months, guarded by nothing more than a moray eel with a sharp set of teeth.

  “We can’t be sure yet,” Tatupu says, “but we think it may have been the knife that killed Trevor Simms.”

  “What makes you think that?” I ask.

  “Got a full confession from Sebastian Haslett overnight at the Queen’s Medical Center. Told us everything, including where he dumped the knife.”

  “That’s good.” I finally turn to face him. “Catch him without a lawyer?”

  “No, actually. Mickey Fallon sat there reading a newspaper the entire time.”

  “Figures.” I turn back to the lagoon.

  “You did a number on Haslett, Corvelli. He’s lucky to be alive. His buddy Dominic, though, didn’t fare so well.”

  “You looking for a statement, John?”

  “No, there’s plenty of time for that later. I just wanted to express my condolences to you for your client.”

  I feel photographs being taken of me, the lenses violating me in ways most could never comprehend. Me in my soaked-through suit, covered in scarlet from head to toe.

  “You been to the hospital yet?” Tatupu says.

  I nod my head. “It’s not so bad. Just lost some blood.”

  “They released you pretty quick, Corvelli. You still look very pale.”

  “HMO,” I tell him, but that’s not the truth. I’m a fugitive from Wahiawa General, pulled off a brazen escape just before they could transport me to Honolulu, to the Queen’s Medical Center. I think I’m due a blood transfusion, but when I heard about Erin, I figured it could wait. At least Wahiawa stopped the bleeding.

  “Here come your friends,” Tatupu says, looking over my shoulder.

  I turn and see an entourage heading this way: Dapper Don Watanabe, Luke Maddox, even old man Frank DiSimone.

  “Do me a favor, John,” I say. “Keep Maddox away from me.”

  “He wasn’t the one who tried to kill you, you know.”

  “I know,” I tell him. “I just don’t fucking like him.”

  And I’ll forever blame him for Erin’s suicide, regardless of what her suicide note says.

  I turn and start walking painfully away in the direction of the resort.

  “One thing that bothers me,” Tatupu says from behind me.

  I stop but remain with my back to him. “Yeah, John?”

  He comes up behind me so that I can feel his warm breath on the back of my neck. “Yeah,” he says. “I can’t for the life of me figure how Erin Simms knew the knife was at the bottom of the lagoon.”

  * * *

  “Come to say ‘I told you so’?”

  “Hell, no, son. You know me better than that.”

  I suppose I do.

  We stand on a hill under a palm tree a few hundred yards from the lagoon, away from the photographers and cops, away from the gawkers and closet fans of raw violence.

  “So what happens with the kid now that Chelsea’s passed on?”

  I shrug. “Foster home, I guess.”

  Jake nods but says nothing more on the subject. There’s nothing more to say.

  After a few minutes of silence, Jake leans against the trunk of the palm and clears his throat. “Tatupu tells me that Sebastian Haslett had some help aside from his boy Dominic.”

  “I know,” I tell him, my voice little more than a rasp. “I had Flan subpoena the passkey records for hotel security. Erin said she might have opened the door voluntarily the first time Izzy Dufu visited. The time of the first noise complaint and Izzy’s first use of the passkey to enter the honeymoon suite didn’t match up. Izzy went in there while Trevor and Erin were both out of the room to case the joint.”

  Jake sighs. “For fifty bucks.”

  I shrug. “Izzy didn’t know what Sebastian was going to do with the information. Probably he thought it was just going to be a simple in-and-out thieving. Happens every day at large resorts all over the world. Izzy knew he fucked up; that’s why he doctored the records before sending them off to Maddox.”

  “What I don’t get,” Jake says, “is why Sebastian Haslett would enter the Simms suite knowing Trevor was in there.”

  “He didn’t know it,” I say, swallowing hard, craving a drink of cold water. “Dominic spotted Erin down near the beach sucking face with a guy. Figured it had to be her husband, which meant the suite had to be empty.”

  Jake shakes his head incredulously. “So Trevor caught Sebastian by surprise.” After a moment he asks, “Who was the guy she was smooching with?”

  “Isaac.”

  “The best man.”

  “That’s right.”

  “If Isaac had stayed there on the beach with her she would have had her alibi.”

  “She and Isaac got into an argument,” I tell him. “That’s when Isaac took off for the Meridian, inadvertently creating his own paper alibi.”

  “How do you know all this, son?”

  “Talked to Isaac this morning. He’s the one who informed me that Erin was dead.”

  “How’d he get ahold of you?”

  “He didn’t,” I say. “I got ahold of him. He picked up the phone the last time I dialed Erin’s number from the hospital. After we talked about the night of the fire Isaac told me she’d left me a letter. He’d already opened it, so he read it to me over the phone. Then he threatened to kill me.”

  “Jesus,” Jake says. “What the hell did the letter say?”

  I don’t answer him and Jake kn
ows better than to press.

  “I’ll let you alone now, son,” he finally says, gently resting a hand on my shoulder. “We all right now?”

  I nod without looking at him. “We always were.”

  Jake crosses his arms against his chest. “I’m sorry I allowed a little thing like money to come between us.”

  “You were going through a lot with Alison,” I say.

  “Oh, I was going through a hell of a lot more than that, son.”

  I remove my sunglasses and look at him.

  Jake says, “I’ve been sober now going on six months.”

  My eyes narrow. Am I so obtuse? I think. So self-involved that I didn’t even notice that my partner had quit drinking after spending so many years in the bottle?

  “Wasn’t easy,” he says, “and I sure as hell didn’t want to burden you with it. I’m only telling you now to explain. Maybe help you avoid the same mistakes I made in my life. You’re one hell of a lawyer, son. Don’t you waste your talent and piss away your prime the way I did mine.”

  I watch as Jake wipes the sweat from his eyes.

  “No more secrets between the two of us,” he says. “Can you live with that, son?”

  I bow my head. “Turns out, I can live with a lot of things, Jake.”

  He turns to leave.

  “About the secrets, Jake,” I say, spinning him around. “I should tell you that last week I turned down a new case. Some prick—our prospective client—clubbed to death a pregnant monk seal.”

  “Well,” he says, “the hell with it. Like you said, we’ve gotta draw the line somewhere.”

  He sticks out his hand and I stare at it.

  “Think I’m coming down with something,” I tell him. “Maybe the swine flu.”

  Jake nods and offers up a knowing grin. “Jeez, that Casey is something, isn’t she? What a hell of a cross for Flan to bear.”

  “She’ll be all right,” I say, lifting my Panama Jack and wiping the sweat from my forehead. “Flan’s a good father. He’s going to let Casey make her own mistakes, and he’s always going to be there to bail her out. Can’t ask for more than that.”

  “Suppose that’s true.” Jake stuffs his hands in his pants pockets and his voice takes on a serious pitch. “Son, I ever tell you I have a—”