Devil's Redhead

by David Corbett

  He turned off the radio.

  Books lined the baseboard: Slocum’s Sailing Around the World Alone, Ernest Gann’s Fate Is the Hunter, Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Each volume contained a small white flag where drowsiness or boredom had mastered his curiosity. He picked one up at random and began to read, but soon the words devolved into a blur.

  He dozed till seven-thirty, then rose from the bed, put on his shoes and collected his coat. In the front room he gathered together his equipment then went back out into the street, fumbling with his car keys as he hit the pavement.

  The car was a twenty-year-old Dodge Dart, an old slant six that Eddie’d bought in near mint condition from an aging customer; all it’d needed were new plugs and seals, a tune-up and a lube. Eddy intended it as a token of gratitude, a way to say thanks for Abatangelo’s hard ten. Under any other circumstances, Abatangelo would have insisted on paying for the car, but his money was tied up in Mannion’s camera equipment. Besides which, without transportation, there’d be no getting out to the Delta.

  He traveled the same route he had that first night and for the last two weeks running, across the Bay Bridge, up the Eastshore Freeway, out the Delta Highway then down through the winding county road. He pulled off in a turnout he’d discovered. Putting the car in neutral, he let it glide an additional fifty feet. It came to rest in a cluster of pampas grass beneath a windbreak of eucalyptus trees, invisible unless you already knew it was there.

  From the trunk he gathered his tripod and canvas camera bag, filled with the equipment from Mannion: three telephoto lenses, an infrared kit, a Passive Light Intensifier. He donned a pair of rubber boots, scaled a barbed-wire fence, and worked his way uphill in the dark through lowing cattle and wet brush. A filmy scud of cloud obscured the moon, and making way in the windy dark he stumbled into gopher holes, slipped in manure and lost his footing in mudslicks where the cows had tread repeatedly day after day. At the crest of the hill, among a stand of oak and laurel trees, he dropped his equipment and eyed the valley below.

  To the right was the gate where the Akers brothers had cut him off. Moving to the left, a gravel lane scaled a low hill, connecting the county road with a house surrounded by elm trees and a white fence. It was Craftsman in design, with gabled dormers, jutting rafter tails and stone cladding along the sides. Furniture veiled with drop cloths cluttered the porch, lending a funereal air. Big, weird and ugly, Abatangelo thought. And better than I could give her.

  There were lights on in the house, the kitchen windows were open, and faint music carried on the wind uphill. A porch lamp brightened the dooryard, which was littered with junk.

  Beyond the house lay a barn with four silos connected by a catwalk. Three outbuildings stood behind the barn, defiled along a dirt track that continued into pasture and ended beside a rainwater sump rimmed with cattails. A small herd of cows grazed on the salient above the sump amid a clamor of bullfrogs.

  Abatangelo’s eye returned to the house and the access road on which it sat. The road continued east for several hundred yards, then gave way to a rutted path sparsed with gravel that followed a shallow ravine. At the far end of that path another group of buildings lay nestled in an orchard. Bunker silos sat in a scrap yard compound, protected by a high wire fence. It was an almost perfect hideaway, the lights only visible from above. Taking out the telephoto lens, Abatangelo checked those distant buildings more closely.

  This was where what activity he’d seen the past two weeks had taken place. The vehicles that came and went seldom stopped at the house; most continued on to the compound. Some of the cars whirling in off the road traveled all the way back and never came out again. He assumed they got stripped down and placed into one of the trucks that showed up from time to time.

  A truck sat down there now, a ten-speed sixteen-wheeler with a Freuhauf trailer that abutted a loading dock at the warehouse at the back of the compound. Four cars, all top of the line, had sped in during the past hour and not one had been seen since. He was getting an idea of what the Akers family business was.

  From behind, Abatangelo heard a pair of cars approaching along the same road he’d taken in. Stepping deeper into the cover of the laurel trees, he turned the camera about on its tripod, squinted into the viewfinder, and watched two large sedans rounding the last turn before the Akers property turnoff. They passed the spot where Abatangelo had hidden his car, not slowing, got to the gate of the Akers property, exchanged signals with the man posted there, and turned in. Like every other vehicle that came to the property, it sped past the ranch house and continued on, back to the fenced-in compound.

  Rocking from the motion of the car, Frank stared trance-like through the windshield as the headlights sprayed the gravel road. The car was a Lincoln Mark IV the Akers brothers had stolen earlier that night. A second stolen car drove behind, an old two-tone Le Mans—ironically, exactly the kind of low-slung bucket-seat American coupe with soft shocks and a throbbing V-8 that Mexicans loved. The cars passed through the compound gate and pulled to a stop. At the back of the main warehouse a sixteen-wheeler sat backed up to the bay, receiving the last of this night’s load. Tully, who was driving the Lincoln, honked twice and shortly Snuff appeared, planting his Raiders cap on his head and hurrying to join them.

  Snuff sat in back with his brothers Lyle and Roy. Frank sat in front, nestled between Dayball and Tully. Dayball removed his spiral notepad from his jacket as Tully put the Lincoln in gear again. “At long last,” Dayball said, addressing no one in particular. He checked his watch, wrote something down, returned the notepad to his pocket then turned sideways and squeezed Frank’s shoulder.

  Dayball grinned at the side of Frank’s head, leaned close, and whispered something in his ear. To Frank, it sounded at first like, “The Menace in Man.” Or: “Good medicine, my man.” He said nothing in response. Dayball, still grinning, turned around to regard the Akers brothers.

  “Where’s Hack?” Snuff asked him.

  “Hack rides with the second detail,” Dayball said. “Car right behind us.”

  Snuff looked over his shoulder. Hack was getting out of the Le Mans, waving at the truck crew as they rolled down the warehouse door and got ready to head on out. Hack would wait till the truck was gone, then lock the gates of the compound.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Snuff said. “Who else is in on this?”

  Roy groaned. “You think we’d do this with just three men? Shut the fuck up.”

  Dayball seemed to enjoy this brotherly spat. “Hack’s gathered a couple of buddies, Snuff, a little extra manpower. Got yourself a regular posse, kid. Strength in numbers.”

  Frank heard the voices rise and fall around him but paid them little mind. The sound of his pulse seemed louder than the voices. He struggled to keep his eyes open, lifting his hand to the ear Dayball had whispered into. It was still damp from his breath. Frank chafed his finger and thumb together and returned his gaze to the empty road reeling toward him from the darkness.

  The day after he’d killed the twins and buried the money, he’d accompanied Dayball and Tully out to the deserted milking shed. He chiseled away the Quickrete that sealed the cinder block in place at the hose-out hole, then crawled inside as Dayball and Tully watched from a window. He brushed aside the hay and dirt, revealing the new layer of Quickrete. Using tools they passed in to him, he opened up the floor, dug through to the money and hauled it out. He put the plywood back, kicked hay over it, then handed the Halburton case through the hose-out hole and crawled out behind it. They sealed up the hole again and Dayball elected to leave the jar of ether, the blasting cap and trip wire in place. It appealed to his sense of theater. Besides, there were Mexican squatters out this way at times. It’d serve as a message.

  “Gotta give you credit, Frankie,” Dayball had said. “You got flair when it comes to squirreling loot.”

  Frank snapped back to the present as they pulled up to the ranch house. Everyone in the car got out and milled toward the yard. Frank walked un
steadily between Lyle and Roy, trying to work his knees. As he did, he heard the sound of the sixteen-wheeler approaching from the direction of the compound, and shortly it took the final turn beyond the barn and thundered past, heading for the county road and vanishing in a roar of dust. Shortly, the Le Mans carrying Hack and his friends appeared and pulled up beside the Lincoln.

  Everybody went inside and found a place to wait. From his seat in the kitchen Frank heard the sound of a third car arrive. Two doors opened and closed and Bud Lally, Felix Randall’s bodyguard, poked his head in, surveyed the room, then held the door open.

  Felix Randall entered with a bent, painful weariness, walking with the help of a stick. With a nod of gratitude he accepted the chair offered him by Lonnie Dayball. His face was deeply cragged and he wore a two-day stubble that shone gray on his chin and cheeks. He wore his hair cut short in a military burr. At one time, in his biker heyday, the locks had flowed, but after his stint in Boron he’d decided on a more Spartan deportment.

  His hair was not the only thing prison had changed. After they’d discovered the tumor in his throat and transferred him to Springfield, they’d hacked out the better part of his larynx and esophagus to snag the growth, then bombarded him with chemotherapy and radiation. It was only in the past six months he’d managed to eat anything resembling solid food, and he still spoke in a growling whisper.

  Even with his haggard face and his weary eyes and his thin, bent body, he commanded the full attention of every man in the room. Sitting with both hands resting atop his walking stick, he gestured with his fingers for Dayball to lean toward him. When Dayball obeyed, Felix whispered to him, “Bring her in now.”

  Shel sat waiting in the guest room by the window in the dark, with only the glow from her cigarette lighting her face. She did not turn when the door opened. From behind, someone snapped his fingers.

  “Visitor,” Dayball said.

  She stubbed out her cigarette and rose. The first two weeks she’d done as she’d been ordered to do, nurse Frank along, keep him functional. Every night, she’d told herself: You kept him alive one more day. It felt, more times than not, like fattening a calf for slaughter.

  The past week they’d kept him from her, and given the sudden theatricality she’d sensed in everyone’s mood tonight, she expected to learn that he was dead, or due to die. She had little idea what had happened or even if it had already, but regardless it had taken three weeks to get right. Frank had kept it from her for her own good, which, given the circumstances, seemed a caring gesture.

  This last week they’d been plying him with speedballs, a home brew made of crank mellowed with fentanyl. This was meant to flatten out his impulses, self-destructive and otherwise. The few encounters she’d shared with him since had revealed a caricature of the man she’d known. He meandered around in a state of thoughtful obsession, focused on what it was they wanted him to do and nothing else, like it was all he could hold in his mind at one time.

  The most haunting thing about it was, he seemed happy. Once, when they’d passed in the hallway, he’d offered her a sunny, mindless smile, and she sensed it was as close to good-bye as they would come with each other.

  She entered the kitchen with Dayball behind her. Felix Randall studied her for a moment, then gestured for Buddy, his bodyguard, to lean close. Felix whispered something to him. Buddy stood straight again and said, “Everybody but her and Frank, out to the cars.”

  Dayball, Tully, the Akers brothers, and the other men filed out silently. When there was only the four of them—Felix, Buddy, Frank, and Shel—in the room, Felix gestured for her to come closer so he could talk to her directly instead of through Buddy.

  He pointed to a chair and Buddy pulled it up for her. She sat down, leaning forward, her arms folded and at rest on her knees. Frank sat in the breakfast nook, staring at her.

  “You two married?” Felix asked Shel in his throatish whisper.

  The question took her utterly off-guard. “No,” she answered.

  “Why not?”

  His eyes were deeply set in his face, the result of having lost so much weight. Shel had never seen him well, but she had seen pictures, and he had been tall and fearsome. His eyes retained much of that power.

  “It’s never come up,” she said.

  “You been together how long?”

  “Three years.”

  “Three years,” Felix repeated, “and it never came up? What, there somebody else?”

  “No,” Shel said instantly. She wondered what they knew about her past, what they knew about Danny.

  “I been married twenty-one years,” Felix said matter-of-factly. “I believe in marriage, the right two people. Cheryl, twenty-one years, she’s been solid as a rock. You remind me of her a little.”

  “Thank you,” Shel said.

  He gestured with his chin across his shoulder toward the breakfast nook. “What do I do with him?”

  Shel found herself searching for a reply. She doubted this sat well with a man who believed in marriage. “I was not aware,” she managed finally, “that it was in my hands.”

  “I’m asking,” Felix said.

  “He’s suffered enough,” Shel said.

  “For what?”

  Shel closed her eyes. She felt afraid. “For his mistakes.”

  “Is that what they were? Mistakes?”

  “Yes,” Shel said.

  “I’m not so sure,” Felix said. “I mean, I don’t know that I believe in such a thing as a mistake. I think a person’s pointed in one direction from the day he’s born. He may get sidetracked, because life can fuck you good, but basically everybody finds a way back into the saddle. And I gotta ask you, is what’s happened, what he did, a case of life knocking him off his horse, or was he headed that way the whole time.”

  “I believe,” Shel said, “people make mistakes.”

  Felix looked at the floor, clenched his jaw and shook his head. “I don’t like that answer,” he said.

  “I’m sorry,” she replied. “I wish I had another one.”

  “I believe that.” Felix thought for a moment then turned to his bodyguard. Nodding toward Frank, Felix said, “Take him out to the cars with the others, all right?”

  Buddy nodded, moved toward the breakfast nook and inserted his hand in Frank’s armpit. He lifted Frank to his feet and led him toward the door. Frank’s eyes met Shel’s, but the only words he managed before leaving were, “Hasta luego.”

  Shel cringed and closed her eyes. Felix shook his head. Once they were alone, Felix said, “So what am I supposed to believe, that he’s gonna go on making mistakes?”

  “I think,” Shel said, “he’s learned a lesson.”

  “Hasta luego? He’s learned a fucking lesson?”

  Shel couldn’t think of what to say. Felix grimaced. “What sort of guarantee I got he doesn’t make a million more mistakes, each one worse than the last?”

  “I’m the guarantee,” Shel said. “I’ll watch him.”

  Felix shook his head. “That what you are? A baby-sitter? A wife, there’s a bond, there’s an oath. A wife can’t be made to testify. What’s a goddamn baby-sitter?”

  “I’ll stay right here,” Shel said. “And I won’t testify.”

  “Why?”

  Shel looked at her hands. “What’s the alternative?” she asked.

  “For who?”

  “Frank.”

  Felix thought this over for a moment. He said, “You’re being honest.”

  “Yes.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  She looked up. “I’m glad.”

  Felix studied her again, a bit longer this time. “I don’t have a problem with you, do I?”

  “I don’t know anything,” she said. “I don’t know where, what or why. I barely know who. I tried to drop a dime on anybody, what could I say? I’d get laughed at by the cops, or used and then fucked over. And I’d still have you to contend with, wouldn’t I?”

  Felix didn’t say anything.


  “Besides which,” Shel continued, “I don’t like the law, I don’t run to the law. I don’t believe much in the law, to be honest.”

  “Like the sound of that,” Felix replied. He reached out for her hand. She gave it to him, and he held it in a surprisingly strong and bony grip. “Because, you know, if you were to cause any problems, I can find you. Not one man, not one woman, in all my years, been able to hide.”

  “I’ve heard that,” Shel said. “And I believe it.”

  “If I have to track you down, I’m not gonna worry about my manners. People’ll get hurt. Not just you.”

  She looked up into his gaze and thought: Danny. If they didn’t know about him now, they’d find out when the time came.

  “I understand,” she said.

  “So when the boys get back, they’ll find you here.”

  She nodded. “Where would I run? What would it get me?”

  Felix let go of her hand. “Funny how much you remind me of Cheryl,” he said. “Help me to the door.”

  Frank waited in the backseat of the car with Lyle beside him. The crank-and-fentanyl hum was wearing off, he’d need a booster in short order and he knew he wouldn’t have to ask. Everyone seemed quite content to keep him loaded.

  He saw Felix appear in silhouette in the kitchen doorway, Shel to the side, guiding him down the steps. They looked like father and daughter. Shel let go of Felix’s arm as Buddy took over and she took a step backward up the steps. Felix walked slowly through the porch-lit dooryard toward the cars, leaning heavily on his stick. As he passed the first vehicle he said in a loud and raspy whisper, “Good luck,” then he walked down toward the side of the car in which Frank sat. Felix stopped at the window and peered in at Frank, then gestured for Dayball to approach. When Dayball was beside him, Felix said, nodding toward Frank, “Make sure the brothers understand. Comes a time, no more good graces. Job gets done.”