A Hard Death

by Jonathan Hayes

  CHAPTER 41

  The clubhouse at the Port Fontaine Polo Grounds Country Club was a white clapboard mansion with green shutters and a gabled slate roof. In the lobby, slowly turning plantation fans stirred the sweetly fetid perfume of bouquets of stargazer lilies across glowing marble floors.

  They followed Chip Craine through a lounge done up in Plantation Moderne, out onto a wide veranda lit by stylized hurricane lamps and bracketed at either end by vine-covered trellises. The crowd was full-on Lilly Pulitzer, in cocktail dresses and blue blazers, sitting at wicker tables, admiring each other as white-jacketed waiters slipped between them with platters of steak and lobster, planter’s punches and gin fizzes held aloft.

  A captain rushed to greet Craine and escort his group to their table. The view from Craine’s table was as impressive as that from the portico of his home. Clay tennis courts lay to the right, grass courts to the left, and between them, shaded by box privet hedges a good ten feet high, a flagstone pathway that led to the first tee. Beyond the tee, the golf course stretched out into the dark, small lampposts lighting the paths through a vast, shadowy terrain of compact forests, low, billowing hills, and tonsured putting greens, dotted with ponds black as oil.

  A small army of waiters descended upon Craine, and a runner arrived with bottles of still and sparkling water. Menus were unfurled and the bartender brought Craine a Negroni unbidden; the sommelier, an attractive young brunette in a clingy knit dress with a surprisingly short hem, dropped to a knee so he could whisper in her ear.

  Jenner watched, amused, unaware that Maggie was watching him.

  Craine’s face was handsome and patrician, his thinning hair swept back, his nose fine, his lips thin. His eyes were as blue as his daughter’s were green, his pupils oddly tiny, even in the soft light on the patio. He wore an open-necked white Charvet shirt, his initials embroidered in blue on the spread collar, and a well-cut navy blazer, clearly bespoke, doubtless from H. Huntsman on Savile Row in London.

  He was an attentive host, a lively and engaging storyteller who took an obvious delight in pushing his listeners as far as propriety would permit, and pushing his daughter a little further. His stories all started simply enough, but quickly became byzantine and extravagant—a business trip to Shanghai to scout locations for a factory turned into a tale of drinking prowess in which Chip faced down a local triad enforcer in a whiskey duel.

  Jenner suspected Craine could tell the stories in his sleep by now, but he was funny, even charming, playing the old rogue to the hilt, easy to listen to, easy to like. Later, Jenner would remember that while Craine spoke, his eyes were constantly roving, drawn irresistibly to the younger women on the veranda.

  To Jenner’s surprise, Craine ordered for the table without consulting either of his guests. Grilled Gulf shrimp with a pineapple and papaya salsa, then a surf and turf with Maine lobster and small filets of Niman Ranch beef, next a cheese plate, and key lime pie to finish. He spoke briefly with the sommelier, settling upon an ’82 Mouton Rothschild, of which he ordered two bottles.

  The food was surprisingly good, the best Jenner had eaten in Port Fontaine, and, as good as it was, the wine far surpassed it. The benefits of being rich, Jenner thought. How sweet Craine’s life was—sitting on the veranda at his regular table with his beautiful daughter, enjoying the immaculate grounds, the superb food and wine, surrounded by his other rich friends and their beautiful wives and daughters!

  As he carved his steak, Craine interrogated Jenner about medical school, about why he’d chosen forensics. Craine said he’d considered med school at one point, but had ended up falling in with his brother to run the family empire. “I was awful at it—never had a head for business! Gabriel runs the company now; I go to New York four times a year to sign papers and attend stockholder meetings, but mostly he’s put me out to pasture.”

  He sloshed some more Mouton into their glasses, then leaned back, sipping the wine, musing silently about the path not taken.

  He said abruptly, “So, Dr. Jenner—what would you say is the most revolting thing you’ve ever seen?”

  Maggie said, “Oh, Daddy!” She shook her head reproachfully. “Jenner, please ignore my father…”

  “It’s okay; people are always asking us that.” Jenner grinned. “I’d have to say that the most utterly, completely disgusting thing I’ve ever seen was…” He leaned toward Craine conspiratorially, waited for Craine to lean in too, then murmured, “An instructional film on how they make luncheon meat—I was vegetarian for a week after that.”

  Maggie giggled, “It serves you right!” as Craine tutted and rolled his eyes.

  She stood, then excused herself. The two men watched her thread her way through the tables, her elegant hips twisting and swiveling as she dodged chair backs and waitstaff. When Jenner turned back to Craine, the man was studying him, eyes narrowed. Jenner flushed.

  Craine leaned back and smirked. “My daughter’s a very sexy woman, isn’t she, doctor?”

  He poured out the last of the bottle into his glass, squinting at the lees. He beckoned, and the sommelier appeared at his elbow.

  “We’re going to need one more bottle…what would you suggest?”

  Craine dismissed several suggestions with a curt shake of his head, then a sly look settled on his face. “I know—let’s have the doctor choose something. Give him the wine list.”

  The sommelier lowered a huge tome with a faux-leather jacket and laminated pages in front of Jenner; she stood at Craine’s elbow, the two watching Jenner turn the stiff pages.

  The first thing Jenner noticed was that the 1982 Mouton cost $1,900 a bottle. The second was that, despite the cheesy binder, the wine list had been expertly chosen. He considered the 2004 d’Auvenay, which would stand up well to both the lobster and the filet, but decided a white burgundy would be too showy. There was a fine Soldera Brunello, too, but Jenner suspected Craine might balk at an Italian. He hovered over the Cote Rotie, but then closed the book, slid it into the center of the table, and said firmly, “Let’s go with the Lynch-Bages, the 1982.” He paused, smiled, then added, “Final answer.”

  The sommelier nodded approvingly. “An excellent choice, sir. Very good indeed, and one of our better-priced, too. It’s one of the best wines in this cellar, but I find most of our clients are sometimes a little…resistant to the unfamiliar.”

  Craine scowled as she disappeared to decant the bottle.

  “So, you know your wine, doctor.”

  Jenner shrugged. “I lived in France for a year. When I left, I could speak passable French and order from a wine list. Not bad for a junior year abroad…”

  Craine’s face lightened. “French women, my God! They’re so…reasonable, compared with Americans, don’t you think? In bed, I mean.”

  Jenner smiled. “I can’t say—I fell in love not long after I arrived, and stayed in love the whole year.”

  “Just the one? Jesus! What a waste of a year abroad!”

  Craine was looking across the veranda, watching Maggie speaking to a friend at another table. “A French woman, Jenner, will do anything…Let you put it anywhere…”

  He stood and kissed his daughter as she sat.

  She said, “What were you two talking about?”

  “Nothing for your delicate ears, darling! Now, come sit closer to Daddy, there’s a good girl.” She half-stood so he could drag her chair closer to his own, away from Jenner.

  The evening wore on. Craine’s charm slowly faded as he became more drunk. He lurched from one story of debauchery to the next, his voice getting louder and louder. His daughter tried to calm him down, pressing his arm with soft fingers, murmuring, “Daddy, please. They can hear you in the kitchen…”

  Maggie changed, too, became more serious, less girlish. She signaled the maître d’, and no more alcohol arrived at the table. It took Craine a little while to notice the wine had dried up; when he did, he became petulant.

  “Some more of your excellent wine, doctor? What was it, the L
ynch…the Lynch…”

  Jenner shook his head. “I think I’ve had enough to drink.”

  “Well, that’s just as well.” Craine picked up the carafe, then paused, holding it in midair, shaking it to emphasize its emptiness. “Because, you see, my daughter has cut us off…”

  He slammed the carafe down onto the table.

  They were now the focus of attention in the dining room, the target of sidelong glances and murmured commentary. The maître d’ came over to whisper to Maggie, who replied in an apologetic whisper.

  She stood. “I think it’s time we headed home, Daddy. Unlike the Craines, Dr. Jenner has to be at work bright and early.”

  Jenner nodded and got to his feet with a polite smile. “Sorry to spoil the party, but it really is creeping up on my bedtime.”

  “Jesus!” Craine scowled. “What kind of man is thinking of bed at ten thirty p.m.?”

  He leered up at Jenner. “Unless it’s to get a beautiful woman into bed…Is that what you’re doing? Do you have, uh, designs on my daughter, doctor? Can’t wait to get her home and unwrap her, that it?”

  Maggie stood with head bowed, hand raised to her face. “Daddy, please, don’t do this. Please. Not here.”

  He shrugged. “Well, then. Sit back down and let me finish this glass. I’ll behave.”

  She sat, and Jenner followed suit.

  Craine sat there, glass in hand. There was something uglier in his silence, his absence of speech the twitching of an invisible tail, a tomcat about to savage a kitten.

  “I have to say, I think it’s hilarious my daughter has appointed herself my moral guardian, particularly with her spectacular past. She tell you about that?” He looked past her to Jenner, and launched into a dissertation about Maggie. He distilled her past into a series of bad choices—her abusive boyfriends, her drinking, her decision to study art history as an undergraduate and then to go for her master’s, a year intended for studying painting in Italy quickly aborted in favor of spending time in Corfu with friends from New York. His word choice was deft and incisive, their intimacy letting him highlight her most painful moments in the cruelest possible way.

  She sat silently looking at her cheese plate, the tears spilling slowly down her cheeks. As he spoke, Craine was watching her closely, monitoring her reaction.

  “Of course, I bankrolled all this, and never said a thing, even when she flunked out of her program because she managed to get, as they say, ‘knocked up’…”

  Jenner said, “Mr. Craine, I think that’s enough. Let’s change the subject.”

  Craine turned slowly to Jenner and said, “So, tell me, doctor: what has my daughter told you about her little girl?”

  Maggie slipped out of her chair and walked quickly down the broad patio steps, vanishing into the oblivion of the dark golf course.

  Craine, flushed and smiling, watched Jenner follow her. He looked around for the bartender; perhaps he could bribe his way to another Negroni.

  CHAPTER 42

  Adam was flying now, pedal to the metal, pedal to the motherfucking metal, screaming down his track like a bobsled. The Hispanic guy, Bentas, put the little canister thingy up to Adam’s nose and said

  “C’mon, kid take another hit another hit just one more hit”

  And so he snorted it again and felt the top of his head blast wide-open. His face was burning, superheated like flames four thousand degrees hot racing across the surface of the sun. How fast his heartbeat? 10,000 mph. Mach five, no, in miles per hour? Go Speed Racer, go!

  There was the roar of an infinite snare-drum roll, no, not the sound, it was inside him, in his chest, his heart, 10,000 per hour.

  Overhead the sky was black and a thousand stars points of light in the black, turning to streaks as he made the jump to light speed. At this speed how long would it take to reach a star? He could make the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs.

  In front of him, the crop covers were bright rays, sunbursting out from his feet to connect the darkness where he stood to the gilded rim of the highway.

  Now Tarver was snorting from the little canister too, throwing his head back and whinnying, the sound like the squeal of horses when they fall, like the whistle of a screaming rabbit.

  There was a WHOMP! in Adam’s chest and he staggered he’d been shot no not that no that was a skip of his drumroll heart. WHOMP! again.

  He moved forward now, stumbling a bit, falling in between the humps of two rows. And then it went backward and he was standing upright again, Bentas yanking him up by the back of his shirt, as if he were a yo-yo.

  Bentas said, “Hey, here, drink this,” and held up a bottle of wine. Wine. He wanted him to drink the wine so Adam thought yes okay I’ll drink that.

  Then the top was off the bottle and Tarver was behind him, clutching him around his chest in a bear hug, locking him down in case his heart exploded and Tarver had a nose bleed, and Bentas had the purple gloves with the wine bottle. The label on the bottle said the wine came from California, smooth green glass and wine. 2002. No, 2007. No, 2002, 2002, 2002. He giggled. Red red wine.

  Tarver was pulling Adam’s forehead back, and Bentas’s purple fingers wrapped around the label 2002, tipping the bottle up, the red spilling onto Adam’s chest and gushing into his mouth and he glugged it down as fast as he could, but Bentas was pouring it too much and it WHOMP! was horrible, tasted like acid rust-water peed out of a radiator, it was black and battery acid in his mouth on fire, the spit pouring out.

  “Let him go,” said Bentas and Tarver let him go and Adam staggered forward into the field

  retching and spitting red

  red red wine

  “Follow him. He’s almost done now.”

  And Adam stumble-shuffled between the strawberries, his dark horizon ahead, the dark screw-toothed line of trees bouncing as he fell forward onto his legs as they rose to meet him.

  He began to trot, a teetering, wide gait, a toddler’s stambling run.

  Bentas and Tarver sauntered behind, Tarver pressing a paper napkin to his bleeding nose. Tarver was saying they should just shoot Adam, and Bentas was saying that Brodie wanted it to look like the kid was tweaking and died from doing too much speed, and Brodie also said if he didn’t fall out pretty quick, they could let him have a swig of the insecticide to get him over.

  And to not mess him up. They’d leave him where he fell, they’d find him when everyone came back, and by then he’d probably be rotted. But still don’t mess him up.

  Tarver stopped and threw his head back to stare up at the night, pressing the napkin hard to his nose.

  “Vucking theng won’t stob bleeding.”

  “Press it harder, asshole.” Bentas snorted. “Ever occur to you maybe you shouldn’t do so much meth?”

  Bentas looked back to the truck and was surprised at how far they’d come. His head snapped back and he stared at the boy making his hurried, waddling way across the field.

  “Christ—that fucker’s going to make the highway…Come on!”

  Bentas ran.

  Adam tottered out from the rows of strawberry plants, staggered across the rind of bare earth at the edge, then into the surrounding drainage ditch, squishing forward through the black ooze to clamber up the other side. Shrubs whipped at his skin as he moved past, but he reached the low wire fence and leaned over, the top wire sagging as he toppled over and fell onto the grass by the shoulder of the road.

  He heard the splash as Bentas went into the water, and dragged himself forward onto the blacktop, crawling now.

  Adam was on the road.

  Behind him he saw Bentas at the fence, hesitating.

  Then Adam began to vomit.

  Bentas was slipping over the fence and walking toward him, hesitantly, glancing left and right for traffic.

  Adam watched him slowly moving closer; Bentas was being so careful now it was funny, like he was making that tinkling piano noise when Sylvester tiptoes across the living room to get Tweety.

  Adam snorted (b
lood now): Bentas was standing on the shoulder of the road, staring at him as if Adam were Poppin’ Fresh, the Pillsbury Doughboy, as if he wanted to poke Adam’s tummy to see if he was done yet. Lying on the highway, tears pouring from his eyes, blood streaming from his nose, Adam started to laugh: Poppin’ Fresh!

  But the sound didn’t come. Now Adam couldn’t move, his breathing was ragged, his chest tight as if a house had fallen on it. He vomited again and felt the sweat pouring from his burning face.

  Bentas had stopped on the grass. This had to be it: the kid was dying now.

  Adam’s scalded mouth filled with spit, the rattling scrape of his breathing harsh in his ears.

  Then there was light on the highway, and he saw Bentas turn to shadow as he raced quickly back to the cover of the fence and the bushes behind. Adam laid his head back on the tarmac, then turned his face to look at the bright monster light bombing toward him and suddenly thousands of diamonds glittered on the blacktop around him, and Adam breathed rubies into the diamonds, and then he closed his eyes, and then the impact.

  CHAPTER 43

  The black Mercedes SUV sheared into a howling skid, the rear wheels fishtailing wide across the centerline, into a spin. There was a screeching lurch and the car swung back into its lane, swaying for a few seconds as the driver overcorrected right and left, before finally regaining control. The vehicle rolled to a halt.

  A minute or so later, the driver reversed, the SUV’s taillights flooding the road as it pulled slowly back toward Bentas’s hiding place. When Adam Weiss’s body broke the edge of the light field, the car stopped sharply.

  The driver’s-side door swung open, and the sound of a girl screaming repeatedly filled the air.

  The driver was young, a dark-haired kid maybe Weiss’s age, driving—what? His dad’s car? Bentas looked for the plate: a Palm Beach County plate surrounded by a loop of pulsing blue lights: it read GTARGOD. A rich kid’s car, then.

  The boy climbed out and ran to Adam’s body. He kneeled and looked at him for a second, then started pacing, hands pressing the top of his head as if holding his skull together, saying over and over, “Ohmigod! Ohmigod!”