by Ron Base
By the time John Ringling moved the winter headquarters of the Ringling circus empire to Florida in 1927, his four brothers had died, and John was left to run the show by himself.
A couple of years later, John Ringling owned virtually every circus in America and was one of the world’s richest men. Not surprisingly, he had no qualms about lavishing a considerable fortune on the creation of a thirty-room Sarasota mansion inspired by the palazzos he and his wife had visited in Venice. These days, only the state could keep up such lavish digs, and thus the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art was open to a public anxious to see how John and Mable had lived and view what they had collected.
As Tree drove the Lincoln along North Tamiami Trail, Baldur issued an angry expletive and threw his iPhone on the seat. Tree glanced into the rear view mirror and caught Baldur staring at him.
“Everything okay, Mr. Baldur?”
“Eddie? Is that your name?”
“That’s right, Mr. Baldur.”
“Where you from, Eddie?”
“Lot of places,” Tree said. “Chicago, originally.”
“Chicago? I live in Chicago.”
“Is that right? You’re not from down here?”
“Eddie, do I sound like I’m from down here?” With a tinge of disdain—apparently his preferred tone with inferiors.
“You don’t sound as though you’re from Chicago, either.”
“Where does it sound like I’m from?” Baldur had adopted a slightly amused expression.
“I don’t know,” Tree said. “One of the Scandinavian countries? Norway? Sweden?”
Baldur waved a dismissive hand. “No, no. Finland. Not Scandinavian, although that’s what most Americans think. Finland is a Nordic country, not a Scandinavian country.”
“I stand corrected,” Tree said.
“Everyone makes the same mistake.”
The GPS told Tree to turn right onto Ringling Plaza. With relief, he spotted the complex ahead. Baldur had his iPhone in hand again, punching out another number. When he got someone’s answering machine, he hung up in disgust, and then leaned forward as Tree drove through the entranceway.
“Park close to the mansion.”
“Yes sir.”
Tree guided the Lincoln along the main drive past the Circus Museum and the Banyan Café. To his left, he could see an impressive rose garden before the road arched in a circle to the mansion entrance.
As soon as Tree stopped the car, Baldur jumped out, calling, “Follow me.”
The boss was being unexpectedly friendly, Tree thought as he got out and joined Baldur on the walkway in front of the house. The breeze blew Baldur’s blond hair back and made his white shirt billow. He looked like a galleon setting sail as he watched workers erect billboards announcing “Life Is a Circus.” A crane lifted a huge cutout of a smiling Aksel Baldur off a flatbed truck. Searchlights were mounted into position atop webs of scaffolding on either side of the drive.
Baldur turned to study the mansion façade, a picture book combination of Arabian Nights fantasy and Venetian palazzo, anchored by an impressive tower of terra cotta and stucco.
“I love this place,” he said. “You been here before, Eddie?”
“A couple of years ago,” Tree said.
“Ca’ d’Zan,” Baldur said. “That’s what Ringling called his home. Supposedly it means House of John in the Venetian dialect. There are fifty-six rooms in Ca’ d’Zan. Ringling and Mabel filled them all with something like ten thousand pieces of art and antiques they collected in Europe.”
“How do you do that?” Tree said. “How do you find ten thousand pieces of anything that you want that badly?”
Baldur smiled again. “See, Eddie? That’s why you’re always going to be doing the driving, instead of being driven. John and Mabel didn’t think small. They couldn’t stop acquiring things; too much was never enough for them.
“John Ringling was the king of the circus,” Baldur continued. “He owned his own railroad that transported the greatest show on earth across the country each season. Thousands of men and women and animals. The Ringling Circus would arrive in town, offload the cars, set up tents, feed everyone, do a show, take it all down again, put it back on the train and be off to the next town, all in twenty-four hours. Night after night they did this. No computers, almost no communications. Manpower and organization made it work. Ringling was something else. He lived like a king and then lost everything and died with three hundred dollars in his bank account.”
“That’s how you want to end up?” Tree asked.
Baldur gave him a wide smile. “A little more than three hundred dollars—maybe. Rich guys like Ringling, they are my heroes. My role models. Larger than life. Outsized appetites. Always greedy for more.”
He started walking toward the house. “When I grew up we had nothing. My old man was a monster. I should not have been able to survive him, but I did and look at me now.
“So I live fast and hard, Eddie, just like John Ringling. Full out. Get everything, lose it, get it back again. That’s me, that’s what I like to do. Who knows how it will turn out? Bad, I suppose. No reason to think it won’t. In the meantime, it’s a hell of a ride.”
As he finished, Tree noticed that the huge Aksel cutout had been successfully lowered into place. It didn’t quite dwarf the nearby Royal Palms. Someone must have miscalculated. Baldur studied the gigantic reproduction of himself. His eyes took on a dreamy expression.
“What do you think, Eddie? Impressive, huh? We’re presenting my fall collection tonight. You see yourself up there like that and you think, okay, all the crap you have to go through, it’s worth it.”
“Looks like it’s going to be quite a show.”
“Not just a show, Eddie. An extravaganza!”
Aksel the showman strode up the steps to the mansion entrance. Tree hurried to keep up.
Inside, a red-carpeted foyer opened through a series of archways onto a two-story atrium surrounding a gloomy sitting room full of heavy, ornate furniture. The gloom soon would be broken by the lights being hung from the balconies. Workmen removed the furniture to make space for the runway being laid the length of the room. Others unfolded stacked chairs and placed them on either side of the runway.
“Hang in for a few minutes, Eddie,” Baldur said.
He crossed the room and disappeared around the corner. As soon as he was gone, Tree fished out his cell and called Ferne’s number. It immediately went to voicemail.
“It’s just me, Ferne,” Tree said. “I’m with Baldur at the Ringling Museum. Get over here as soon as you can.”
He closed the cell. Six jean-clad young women, stick thin, wandered through the mounting chaos. Two of them gingerly stepped onto the runway. Tree’s cell phone rang. He looked at the readout. It was Ferne.
“Did you get my message?” Tree said.
Whoever was on the other end of the phone did not respond.
“Ferne?”
The phone went dead.
A cold fear pricked at his spine. He sensed something behind him and turned. Baldur said, “What are you doing standing there?”
“Waiting for you,” Tree said.
“Let’s get going.”
“Yes, sir. Where are we headed?”
“Back to the house.”
In the car, Baldur busied himself texting on the iPhone. He didn’t speak to Tree until they pulled into the driveway. “Swing around to the back and drop me there,” he ordered.
Tree guided the car around to the rear and came to a stop.
“Will there be anything else, Mr. Baldur?”
He looked at the rear view mirror. Baldur was staring at him.
“Just get the door open for me.”
Tree opened the driver’s door and stepped out. He opened the passenger door to allow Baldur to exit. Tony Dodge appeared with Fudd and Elmer. Baldur gave Tree a dead-eyed smile. “Did you know we’ve got Jay and the Americans performing tonight?”
“Jay and the Americans?” Tree said
.
“You like them?”
“Didn’t know they were still around.”
“I love their music. ‘Young Girl?’” He grinned. “It’s practically my theme song.”
“No kidding,” Tree said.
Aksel took the smile off his face. “How stupid do you think I am, Mr. Callister? You don’t think I watch the TV news and know what you look like?”
Tree found he was having trouble swallowing.
Baldur said, “Tell me what you are doing here.”
“I suppose I’d like to find out how you’re involved with Elizabeth Traven, and why you would kill Kendra Callister.”
Baldur’s eyes became smaller and blacker. “Yes, Jay and the Americans are going to be great. But I’m afraid you’re not going to be there to see them.”
38
As Baldur turned away, Fudd stepped smartly forward. His face was still swollen, Tree observed, just before Fudd swung him around and then yanked his arms behind him. He felt cold steel enveloping his wrists, the rotating arms of handcuffs ratcheted so tight they hurt.
Next, Elmer, assisted by Fudd, hustled Tree over to where a lime green van was parked. Ferne’s van, he thought dimly.
As soon as the back doors opened, he was picked up and tossed inside onto a plastic sheet that held an unmoving body.
He stared into Ferne Clowers’ dead eyes.
He reeled away in horror, the plastic slippery and crackling. The doors slammed closed. In the semidarkness, he twisted around on the sheet coming face to face with the corpse of Slippery Street.
Then he realized what was making the plastic sheet so wet and sticky—it was drenched in blood from the two bodies.
He heard more doors slamming and the van starting up. It lurched forward, tossing him against Ferne’s body. Ferne who loved him even though she tried to kill him; Ferne who promised to be his guardian angel, who would watch his back—the promise broken by the murderous Fudd and Elmer. You came at them with a baseball bat, they retaliated by killing you.
The van picked up speed. The bodies shifted against him. He tried to concentrate on things that might come in handy later; the state of the roads they traveled; the sounds outside; the time elapsed.
But the state of the roads seemed smooth enough, providing no indication where they were headed. As for outside sounds, there were none. Just the soothing hum of the engine and the rush of air as the van rumbled across an unseen landscape. Any sense of elapsed time eluded him. But then what difference did it make? Even if he was able to draw conclusions, what use were they? The van would come to a stop, the back doors would open, and they would kill him. If he had any doubts as to the outcome, he had only to consider his traveling companions.
The van slowed to make a sharp turn onto rough road. It shook and bumped along for a few minutes and then came to an abrupt stop.
Silence.
The back doors opened. Fudd and Elmer reached in and pulled him out of the van, dropping him face down on spongy ground. The two thugs loomed above him. The fading light bounced off the lenses of Fudd’s glasses so that it looked like his eyes were on fire.
“What did you think, Tree?” he said. “You think you could send that supersized freak in a dress around with her baseball bat and her skanky little tool of a buddy and you’d be okay?”
“He’s even dumber than he looks,” Elmer said.
“And right now he looks pretty dumb to me,” Fudd said.
Elmer went out of view, and then the bodies of Ferne and Slippery landed with dull thuds beside him.
Fudd said, “Mr. Baldur told us not to kill you. Okay, we’re not going to kill you.”
“Nope,” chorused Fudd. “We are going to follow orders. Someone tells us not to kill someone, we don’t do it.”
“No we don’t,” Elmer said, lifting his foot to kick Tree in the face. Tree groaned and spat out blood and teeth.
Then his hands were being lifted so that the handcuffs could be removed from his wrists. Merciful relief—but only for a moment. Either Fudd or Elmer—he couldn’t tell who— grabbed his right arm and reattached a handcuff to his wrist. Then the other arm and another handcuff.
The damp ground cushioned him like a soft bed, dulling the pain drilling through his body. He would lie like this for a while and then he would figure the way out. There had to be a way, all it took was him closing his eyes for a few minutes. Then he could figure it out.
39
He regained something like consciousness, floating in a black void where uncertain shapes formed and reformed before dropping into focus: Ferne Clowers’ bloody body on one side of him, Slippery’s on the other; an impressive barrier of mangrove; two alligators.
The alligators required more concentration. Yes, they were alligators all right, approximately twenty yards away. He tried to move, and that’s when he discovered that his left wrist was attached to the dead Ferne.
When he tried to shift his right hand, it proved equally difficult since it was tethered to Slippery. So that was it. He was lost in a Grimm’s fairy tale forest, handcuffed to two corpses as a couple of alligators closed in.
Not good, he thought.
He spat out a wad of mucus and blood in order to clear his clogged mouth. Immediately, he regretted the impulse—the two alligators were certain to regard Tree’s blood as an invitation. Wasn’t this feeding time for creatures of the wild? He had seen something about that on the Discovery Channel.
The alligators moved suddenly, with a speed that caught Tree by surprise. Weren’t gators slow-moving creatures? No, that was the point. They seemed slow moving, he remembered reading. But in fact they weren’t, particularly when food was involved.
Tree sat up as best he could and began jerking his arms up and down. Slippery, lighter in death, moved around like a puppet on a string. But Ferne was the immovable whale. Not that his movements made much difference. The alligators appeared unimpressed.
The bigger of the two moved again, jaws snapping closed around Ferne’s immense torso. Flesh ripped away in a spray of blood and torn bone. The alligator dived back into the shadows as if afraid his partner might attempt to rob him of his dinner.
The second alligator had other ideas, launching its own lightning strike into Ferne’s torso. The force of the creature’s tearing jaws slammed Tree forward. Then the gator disappeared with its dinner.
Tree shook with fear. Soon the alligators would return for more, and it would not be long before they got to him. Frantically, he tried to crawl away, but the bodies were so much dead weight holding him in place.
The last glimmers of daylight squeezed through the dense mangroves. In minutes, the world would be in darkness. Tree saw Slippery’s bared leg and the leather sheath strapped to his ankle. The gleaming stainless steel handle of Slippery’s straight razor was just visible. Tree lunged for it.
And could not reach the razor.
He tried one more time, but that only brought more agony. He rested a bit before pulling Ferne closer to him so that he had more leverage to reach Slippery. Yes, that was better, he thought. Not as much pain. He bent slowly forward, reaching out, and now his fingers brushed the razor handle.
He straightened, took a deep breath, and then bent over, straining further forward, willing his body to become longer.
And it worked.
Somehow, he had the handle in his grasp, sliding it out of Slippery’s ankle sheath.
He straightened, holding the razor. Tree used his teeth to pull the blade from the handle. Could he do this? Did he have it in him?
As though reading his mind, one of the alligators reappeared through the gloom, having finished the first course. What he had to do abruptly became much more doable.
He shifted around to Ferne’s body, lifted her cold hand, and put the blade against her wrist.
He closed his eyes, gritted his teeth, and went to work.
40
Tree Callister running—not running exactly, more like stumbling, lurching, trying not
to scream with every tortured footfall, trying to choke down a rekindled sense of panic borne of the knowledge that he had no idea where he was. He thought Fudd and Elmer had driven him along an unpaved roadway. But in the dark he could not find any road. He could barely see his hand in front of him. He tried not to consider the handcuff dangling from his right wrist let alone the matching handcuff attached to his left.
Furthermore, he did not want to think about what he had just forced himself to do in order to free himself from Ferne and Slippery; what he’d done so he would not become alligator food. He did not wish to contemplate what those alligators were currently doing to what was left of the bodies. Ferne did not love Slippery who loved Ferne. Now they were together forever. Maybe that would finally make Slippery happy. He was not so certain about Ferne.
The drifting moon squeezed out from behind thick clouds, illuminating a darkly shadowed hell that in daylight would be forest but at this time of night was an impenetrable tangle.
An exposed tree root sent him sprawling to the ground.
Agony.
On his knees, he raised his arms and screamed and screamed, his screams echoing through the primordial forest. He lay there exhausted for a time, feeling the warmth of tears running down his cheeks. What would Ferne think of him sobbing like a baby in the middle of the woods? Ferne who loved him unconditionally; Ferne who would die for him; Ferne, who, if he was being honest, made his skin crawl.
She might gently point out that it didn’t matter what Tree thought, she loved him, anyway. And as for the crying, that wasn’t going to help things. Ferne would be right.
He got to his feet and started off again.
An hour or so later—it could have been longer, shorter, he had no real sense of time—Tree found himself at the edge of a body of water. He sank to the ground, unable to go further and uncertain where he would go even if he could. He was lost in the dark.
After he had lain on the ground for a while, a light flashed in the distance. Was he seeing things?
No, it was a light, and it was moving toward him. Sound accompanied light—an outboard motor?
