Cold Around the Heart

by Michael Prescott

  “You mean you’re going after him?” For the first time Cynthia seemed at a loss for words. “You’re going to hunt him down all by yourself?”

  “Looks that way.”

  “But ... this man is a killer.”

  Bonnie finished her coffee and smiled. “I hate to break it to you, toots—but I’m a killer too.”

  CHAPTER 26

   

  Pascal sat on a bench on the Brighton Cove boardwalk, watching the rain come down. He had found a sheltered spot by a pavilion. The observation deck, supported by brick pillars, provided a roof over his head. From this vantage point he could watch the boardwalk in both directions as he waited for the arrival of the man named Kurt.

  It had not been easy to persuade Kurt to join him. The fellow was as skittish as a kitten. Plainly he was terrified of Bonnie Parker, sure that having escaped death at her hands once, he could not risk a second encounter.

  His fear competed with his hatred. He wanted her to die, and he wanted to see it happen, but he was afraid to be anywhere near her. Pascal had required all his diplomatic skills to seal the deal.

  “Are you shitting me?” the man had asked more than once.

  Pascal had kept his voice low and soothing. “We have a common interest, a common objective. And she will not be expecting a second man.”

  “I don’t know ...”

  “There will be no danger. I will do the actual killing. You will serve merely as a diversion.”

  “As bait?” The man’s voice jumped with panic. “That what you mean?”

  “Not as bait. There will be no risk to you. I have it all worked out.”

  This was true. He had worked it out in that moment, his mind accessing some stratagem perhaps tested in another incarnation.

  “You’re sure it’s safe?” the wheedling voice pressed.

  “Absolutely. You will come to no harm. And you will see Bonnie Parker die. That is worth something, is it not?”

  “Yeah.” Pascal could actually hear the man lick his lips like a starved animal. “Yeah, it’s worth a lot.”

  They had said a few more rewords, making their introductions. The man was Kurt, just Kurt. Pascal considered using an alias but decided it was unnecessary. He had already taken a dislike to Kurt, and he expected to eliminate the man after his usefulness was exhausted. This was a point he prudently did not mention.

  Kurt agreed to meet him by the pavilion, which lay across the street from the parking lot where Pascal had stashed his car.

  Even so, he still could not be certain Kurt would come. The man was a coward, obviously, and he could easily back out.

  He was also a fool. He had not learned the most elementary rule of the hunt, to keep one’s emotions in check. It was perfectly all right to hate one’s adversary, Pascal knew, but the hate must be cold, ice cold—as cold as his own hands.

  To the north, lightning flared, seconded by a whipcrack of thunder. Spiderweb traceries of fire lit up the bellies of churning storm clouds, casting the earth in sharp relief. In the sudden unnatural glare, a figure stood revealed, far down the boardwalk, coming this way.

  Pascal peered past the plunging curtains of rain. Dimly he made out a man in a tan raincoat and baseball cap. He walked slowly, stiffly, each stride an effort. His left leg was unnaturally stiff. But he was coming. Kurt had not failed him.

  It took a long time for the man to cover the remaining distance. Pascal waited, patient as a trapdoor spider. Even when Kurt had crossed under the observation deck and stopped, staring at him, Pascal made no move to rise. To greet him, to show the slightest deference, would be a sign of weakness. With a man like this, it was necessary to establish dominance early. Once instituted, it would never be challenged.

  “Is that you?” Kurt said finally. It was the same hoarse rasp Pascal had heard on the phone.

  Pascal nodded. He waited for Kurt to approach him. The man seated himself tentatively on the bench, choosing the spot farthest from Pascal, not making eye contact. Good. Very good.

  “I am pleased you came, my friend,” Pascal said.

  “Still not sure this is such a great idea. I had my own plan for getting her.”

  “And yet you have not executed it.”

  “I was getting ready. It was all set up. But ... your way might be better. I can’t be connected with it, if we do it your way.”

  “Indeed not. No one will ever know. Did you bring a gun?”

  “Haven’t got one.”

  “And you intended to kill Miss Parker on your own, without a firearm?”

  He bristled. “Look, if you can’t you use me, I’ll just get going.”

  “I can use you.”

  Pascal studied the man. His pale face wore a thick fringe of uncombed beard. The beard looked new. Pascal suspected Kurt had grown it to disguise his appearance. He had been awake all night and must have been drinking earlier, but the rain seemed to have sobered him up, leaving him more alert, and also more nervous—a scared, trembling thing, huddled against the chill, wincing at distant thunder.

  He was no knight errant. Of that, Pascal was certain. He was a weakling with no stomach for killing. A useless creature who had not earned the right to survive.

  Yet somehow he had. The riddle of it intrigued Pascal. “You said Bonnie Parker tried to kill you. Why then are you still alive?”

  Kurt flicked an angry glance at him. “You think she’s so damn good she always gets her man?”

  “I think she is more than good enough to get you, my friend.”

  For a moment Kurt seemed to think about challenging him. Then his head nodded in defeat, his eyes drifting away. “She had me, all right. I was just lying there. Couldn’t move. Two slugs in me.” Unconsciously he touched his leg, and Pascal understood his slow stiff-legged gait. “All she had to do was ...”

  “Deliver the coup de grace,” Pascal said.

  “It sounds nice and civilized when you say it like that. When you’re choking on your own blood, staring down the barrel of a gun, it doesn’t feel civilized. It feels like you’re a goddamn animal in a trap.”

  An animal, yes. But not one of the more heroic animals, those that qualified for inclusion on coats of arms. Not the lion, the wolf. Not even the wily fox. Rather, there was a rodent-like quality about this man, a quality stemming from his matted facial hair, his small pink hands, and his habit of chewing at his lower lip, like a rat obsessively gnawing, gnawing ...

  “But she did not shoot,” Pascal prompted.

  “She nearly did. I saw her draw down. But she didn’t go through with it. She just walked away.” Kurt worked his lower lip. “She was scared, I think.”

  “Scared of you?” The words came out with just the lightest lilt of contempt.

  “Not me. Scared of going through with it, face to face. Up close and personal, looking right into my eyes.”

  This was possible. And if so, it meant Bonnie Parker had a weakness. That was good to know.

  “So she let you live,” Pascal said thoughtfully.

  “Fuck, no. I mean, she didn’t intend to. She wasn’t showing me any mercy. She thought I would bleed out in the snow.”

  “But she was wrong.”

  “She was wrong. I was stronger than she knew. Stronger than I knew. It was hate that did it. Hating her—that’s what made me strong. You know how that is?”

  “I do.”

  “Somehow I limped out of the woods, all the way to a gas station. Made up a story about how I’d been shot in an alley by a couple of kids. I tossed my ID, used a fake name, said I was homeless.”

  “Why the deception?”

  “I couldn’t have the police investigating what really happened. She was after me for a reason. I’d broken some laws.”

  Pascal thought the man had an additional motive. He had not wanted Parker to know her quarry was still alive. She would surely have targeted him again.

  “They patched me up at the hospital,” Kurt said. “Three surgeries. Then rehab. The whole nine yards.
When I finally got out, I tracked her down and started making plans.” He chewed his lip, drawing blood. “She cost me everything. I’m in pain every damn day. Can’t show my face for fear of being recognized. I was on the way to having money, serious money, and now I’m living in a one-room apartment above a store. I cook canned beans on a fucking hot plate. That’s my life. And the only reason I get up in the morning is to have the satisfaction of seeing that bitch dead.”

  Pascal smiled. “If circumstances proceed as I expect, my friend, you soon will have your chance. We need only wait for her call.”

  “What the hell makes you think she’ll call you?”

  “She is young and brash, and her blood is up.” He gazed past the pillars of the pavilion, into the lightning-streaked sky. His gloved hands were steepled, his voice knowing and calm. “She will call.”

  CHAPTER 27

   

  Desmond, it seemed, knew her better than she realized. At least, he was a lot less surprised than Bonnie expected him to be when he opened his door at one AM and found her shepherding the Kirbys inside.

  The doorbell had roused him from bed. He’d thrown on a flimsy summertime robe that did nothing to conceal the stark contrast between his sculpted torso and his shrunken legs. He rolled his chair backward and let the family file into the living room while Bonnie locked the door behind them.

  “I didn’t see your Jeep outside,” he said. They were the first words out of his mouth.

  “I parked in the alley behind the house.”

  He nodded, and she saw how much he’d learned from that brief exchange—that she was on the run, the family was hiding out, and somebody dangerous was after them.

  “I hate to do this to you, Des, but we got a whole thing going on here, and these guys really need a place to crash.”

  “There’s a guest room down the hall, on the right.” He waved in that general direction.

  Alan and Cynthia filed past, but A.J. stopped, staring with frank curiosity at the man in the wheelchair.

  Desmond smiled. “Hey, little man.”

  “What happened to your legs?” the boy asked.

  His parents winced, but Des was unfazed. “They went to sleep and didn’t wake up. Bummer, huh?”

  The boy nodded gravely.

  Cynthia took the boy’s hand. “Come along, A.J.”

  “Sorry about that.” Alan said. “He just—he’s not old enough to know ...”

  Des shrugged. “Don’t sweat it. Make yourselves at home.”

  “I’ll be with you in a sec,” Bonnie added as the trio tramped down the hall. She peeled off her poncho and turned to face him. “Des, I know this is a lot to ask, especially after the way we left things.”

  “Forget it. I shouldn’t have been playing shrink. Although if I were, I’d say that trying to save a family is a highly symbolic act. What kind of trouble are they in?”

  “Someone’s out to kill the daddy. Maybe waste the whole crew.”

  “What kind of someone?”

  “A sadist. A pro.”

  “Way to sugarcoat it.”

  “He’s good, Des. I mean, he’s bad, but he’s really good at being bad. Hey, speaking of the bad guy, how’s your Spanish?”

  “Awesome. Why?”

  “I lifted this thing he wrote. A poem, I guess.” She dug it out of her pocket and unfolded the damp page. “Care to translate?”

  He frowned at the close lines of script and recited slowly.

   

  Farewell my dearest, my kiss of death, my grave.

  When the moon rises, I will remember your lips,

  A night-blooming flower with poison perfume.

  The chill of your touch, the carrion cold ...

   

  He looked up. “And more of the same. Creepy. Like a love poem to a corpse. But I guess that fits this guy, huh?”

  “Oh yeah. Fits like a glove. No pun intended.”

  “Why is that a pun?”

  “Never mind.”

  “Anyway, it goes on for a while. A whole lot of death imagery. And something about samsara.”

  “I told you, no hablo espanol.”

  “Samsara isn’t Spanish. It’s Sanskrit. It means the cycle of life, death, and rebirth. You know, reincarnation and all that.”

  “Maybe he thinks he was Julius Caesar in a previous life.”

  “Actually, I don’t think he wrote the poem. It looks like a woman’s handwriting. And there’s a line calling the loved one a compañero de viaje—fellow traveler. Compañero is the masculine form. Whoever wrote this was addressing a man.”

  “Huh. Well, he told me he had a girlfriend.”

  “They must’ve made a beautiful couple.”

  “Yeah. Like Dracula and the Bride of Frankenstein.” She retrieved the poem and stuck it back in her pocket.

  He looked her over. “You need some tea.”

  “I just had coffee.”

  “Not the same thing.”

  “I don’t have a lot of time.”

  “There’s always time for tea.”

  He wheeled himself into the kitchen. She followed with a shrug. Tea. She would have preferred a Jack and Coke, but getting liquored up probably wasn’t the best idea right now.

  She watched while he filled the teakettle and set it on the stove. As he rummaged in a box of tea bags, he asked, “So what happened to you tonight?”

  “Lots of stuff, none of it good.”

  “What’d you do after you left my place?”

  “Took a bath.”

  “Doesn’t sound too stressful.”

  “Wanna bet?”

  He selected valerian and draped the teabag over a porcelain mug. “This bad guy of yours—any chance he’ll track your clients here?”

  She didn’t give him a direct answer. “The only way he could trace them to this location is through my phone. He’s got it, and you’re in my contact list, but so are a bunch of other people. He shouldn’t have any way of narrowing down the search to just you.”

  The teapot began to whistle. Des ignored it. “But ...”

  “But he’s been ahead of me all along. It’s got me kinda rattled. I’m starting to think he can beat me, no matter what I do.”

  “That doesn’t sound like the Bonnie Parker I know.”

  “I’ll get over it. Just keep them alive, Des. They got mixed up in something complicated and stupid, but they don’t deserve to die for it.”

  He filled the mug with hot water. “I’ll look after them. Somebody’s got to, and the hubby doesn’t seem quite up to the job. He strikes me as more of a beta male.”

  “Yeah. And the wife’s an alpha bitch. I don’t know what they see in each other.”

  “The heart has its reasons.”

  “Whoa, that’s what she said to me. Different context—which she had to explain.” Bonnie sipped her tea and wished it could soothe her. “Sometimes I think I should’ve stayed in high school. Then I might not be the least educated person in every room.”

  “This thing’s really got you doubting yourself, huh?”

  She said nothing. They lingered in silence. Then slowly he reached out and clasped her hand.

  She’d lied when she told Dan Maguire she had no friends. She had one.

  She had Des.

  ***

  Bonnie caught up with the Kirbys in the guest bedroom, where Cynthia was bedding down the kid, and Alan was pacing like an inmate scheduled to walk the Green Mile.

  She spent some time examining the attached bath. The sight of the tub triggered a twinge of nausea in the pit of her belly, but she powered through it.

  “Okay,” she said, emerging. “This could work.”

  Alan stopped pacing and looked at her. “As what?”

  “A panic room.”

  “Picnic room,” A.J. said sleepily from under a hill of blankets.

  Cynthia was skeptical. “A lavatory is a far cry from a panic room.”

  “You make do with what’s at hand. The bathroom has n
o windows. The walls are tiled; the floor is a concrete slab. Door is oak, solid-core. Lock’s in good shape. If you hide in there, it’ll buy you time. You brought in your cell phone, right?”

  Alan nodded. “I always have it with me. It’s the one I called you from, to set up our meeting.”

  “If there’s trouble, hustle your loved ones into the bathroom and call nine-one-one. Police response time around here is maybe four minutes on a busy night. Two minutes if nothing else is going down, and usually nothing is. I know you don’t want the authorities involved, but if it gets to that point, the boys in blue will be the least of your concerns.”

  “Right, right.” Alan glanced past her into the bathroom, and she knew he was imagining himself and his wife and child huddled inside as a killer prowled the house.

  “It’s not gonna come to that,” she said. “I’m just preparing for every contingency. It’s what I do.”

  “What about, you know, weapons?”

  “There are kitchen knives, maybe a couple hammers, and the toaster oven makes a nice blunt instrument.”

  “You know what I mean—firearms.”

  “There aren’t any, and you don’t need any. You’d just end up shooting yourself or someone you care about. Or me, most likely.”

  “I have a hard time believing your friend doesn’t keep a spare piece in the house.”

  “Spare piece? Who are you, Bugsy Malone? When you got guns lying around, it just gives the bad guy more opportunities to get hold of one.”

  “Okay, okay. And your friend—he doesn’t have a problem with us being here?”

  “He’s cool about it. He sort of rolls with the punches. Well, maybe rolls is a poor choice of words.”

  “How much does he know about your, uh ...?”

  “My special services? I’ve never discussed it with him. I don’t know what he’s guessed.”

  Cynthia watched her closely. “So you really are a killer?”

  “That’s my stock in trade.”

  “And you’re all right with that?”

  She shrugged. “I’ve always believed it’s not what you do, it’s how you do it.”

  “Then your private investigator business is just a cover?”

  “It’s for real. I do regular PI work most of the time. I kinda stumbled into this other thing.”

  “Just like that?” Cynthia didn’t sound judgmental. She seemed honestly curious.