A Devil's Bargain

by Jonathan Watkins

  A jagged wound now existed in one of the two recessed locks. She set the saw on the floor and picked up the large screwdriver she’d found while rooting through the supply shelves. Its tip was flat, and fit easily down into the cut she’d made. She pried at the lock but it did not budge.

  “That’s fine,” she said. “That’s dandy. I can do this all day, buddy.”

  She hefted the saw back into her arms and was lining it up to inflict a second wound upon the lock.

  “Do what all day?”

  Issabella spun around to see Theresa standing in the doorway. The bar’s owner lit a cigarette and said, “You’re making a hell of a racket, Izzy.”

  At the sight of Theresa, standing there in her I Don’t Know Karate But I Bite T-shirt, Issabella put the saw on the workbench, rushed over to her, and wrapped her in her arms.

  “You’re back,” she said. Cigarette smoke curled over her goggles and for once she didn’t have to screw her eyes shut against it.

  “Yep. Darren put up the money. You can let go of me, Izzy. It ain’t like I beat cancer over here.”

  She kept her hands on Theresa’s shoulders and leaned back enough to see the woman’s gruff tone was just a put-on. Theresa was grinning back at her.

  “You’re never going back there,” Issabella told her.

  “Well, we’ll see. Right now, I need a shower.”

  “Of course.”

  “What’re you doing with the suitcase?”

  “Winning the game, hopefully.”

  Theresa looked dubious and said, “What game?”

  “Darren’s game. Where we assign points for...you know what, it isn’t important.”

  Theresa shrugged and walked up to the workbench. Issabella followed her and they both stared at the wounded suitcase.

  “You really think there’s anything in there that’s gonna help me out?”

  “I hope so,” Issabella said. “The more we know about why Gil Sharps was here, the better the chance is that we find out who would have wanted him dead. If we can show someone had motive, that might be enough to get the cops to actually investigate.”

  Theresa seemed to mull it over.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Hmm? Oh. Nothing. Just, you know, I guess I should have held onto that key instead of giving it to Darren.”

  “What key? For this? You have the key for the suitcase?”

  “Nope. Darren does.”

  Issabella looked at the doorway.

  “Where is he? Is he here?”

  “Nope. He just dropped me off like a minute ago. Saw your car out front and said you probably wanted to go over the case with me and he’d come back after he went home and opened the suitcase. Said to tell you something.”

  “Tell me what?”

  “That he’s winning the game. What game?”

  Issabella laughed and hefted the saw back into her hands.

  “What game?” Theresa repeated.

  “The one he’s about to lose,” Issabella assured her.

  * * *

  Darren was kneeling on the living room carpet, scratching behind Sam’s ears and puzzling over the absence of the stolen steel suitcase when his phone chimed. He fished it out of his pocket.

  “You know,” he said when he put it to his ear, “there should be a rule in our game that precludes the theft of a player’s rightful prize. It isn’t very sporting to poach someone else’s points, Izzy Dear.”

  Issabella was usually as ready to play their game as he was. Since their first case together, she’d proven herself more than able at turning a legal investigation into an informal contest between them. He was expecting a teasing quip from her about the fact that he was now behind in their competition.

  Instead, Issabella’s voice was decidedly grim when she spoke.

  “I don’t want to be a lawyer anymore.”

  “Really? That’s a bold statement, counselor.”

  “You need to get back here, Darren.”

  “Alright. I guess we have a conversation ahead of us.” Sam meandered away and Darren stood up straight. He stared at the spot where the suitcase had been the last time he’d seen it. The truth dawned on him and he said, “You got it open, didn’t you?”

  “You need to get back here.”

  “Izzy, just tell me what’s inside.”

  She was silent and that silence made Darren suddenly afraid. The walls of the room seemed to creep inward and a claustrophobic discomfort swept into him. He looked out the window wall at the downtown skyline in an attempt to stave off the feeling. Out there, Detroit was a noiseless and static panorama.

  “Izzy, are you okay?”

  “I’m okay. Theresa is, too. But you need to come down to the bar now. It’s...it’s not something to say over the phone. Just come on down. We’ll both be here. With you. We’ll be together with you.”

  “What the heck does that mean?”

  “Not on the phone. Get down here.”

  “Izzy—”

  “I love you,” she said and he heard the connection die.

  Darren walked straight out of his apartment. Down in the parking garage, he took the turns that lead out to the street quicker than was safe. Issabella had sounded frightened. It had been there, under the calm she was forcing into her voice.

  On Woodward, he blew a red light and made a squealing left without slowing down. A dead man had spoken the name James Klodd and now that man’s box of secrets had filled the woman Darren loved with some sort of dread.

  He kept ignoring stop signs and traffic lights, ignored the blurting horns of other drivers, and when he brought the Lexus to a jarring halt on the curb outside Winkle’s Tavern, he couldn’t remember a single moment of the drive over.

  Out on the sidewalk, Issabella was there. Darren rushed up to her.

  “I’m fine,” she said before he could ask. “I really am. Also, this is the worst day ever.”

  “It’s a contender.”

  “Theresa told me about what she heard Gil Sharps say.”

  “Yeah. I don’t know what to think.”

  “What did Chelsea want?”

  “Just to kick the dead horse some more, I guess.”

  She peered up at him with somber concern.

  “Not so dead,” she said. “Go on in. Come out and talk to me after. We have to make some decisions together.”

  “Izzy—”

  “Just promise you’ll talk it out with me. That we’re in the same boat and we make the decisions together. Alright?”

  Darren nodded without needing to think the answer over.

  “I promise. Aren’t you coming in?”

  Issabella shook her head and looked down at her hands. He could feel the frustration radiating off her.

  “I have to do some thinking,” she said. “You go on in.”

  “You said you don’t want to be a lawyer anymore.”

  “Sometimes I blurt things out without thinking.”

  “Actually, that’s usually my purview, isn’t it? Do we need to talk? You’re worrying me, kid.”

  She gave him a bleak, tired smile and put her palm on his cheek.

  “Darren, with all of the things that just plain suck right now, don’t add worrying about me to the list. I’m fine. I just need a little time alone to think things through. Go on inside, okay?”

  It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dim interior of the bar, so Darren stood just inside the door while it shut behind him. Theresa was on her stool behind the bar, a cloud of smoke hanging above her. Her long brown hair was damp and her skin looked freshly scrubbed.

  She saw him and inclined her head down the row of booths that lined the far wall. His eyes followed and he saw the metal briefcase sittin
g atop the table of the booth in the back. It was yawning open and, apparently, waiting for him.

  “You know,” he said. “You two are kind of scaring the shit out of me right now.”

  “Don’t look at me, Fletcher. Izzy freaked out with whatever is in there and it’s been her show ever since.”

  “You don’t know what’s inside?”

  Theresa shrugged her shoulders and blew smoke.

  “Not really. Some envelopes and files, I guess. I was more interested in showering off the jail funk so I let Izzy poke around on her own.”

  “You weren’t even curious?”

  “I was curious about who was outside my bar last night and all that got me was a murder charge. So, no, Fletcher. I ain’t in a curious kind of way right now. You want a drink?”

  She was already getting off her stool and reaching for a bottle.

  “No.”

  “Uh, you sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Okay, then. Let me know if you change your mind.”

  Darren walked the length of the bar and slid into the booth at the back. It was the same booth he had occupied, every day, for three years. He remembered only the second two with real clarity. That first year he had drank so heavily that only foggy and incoherent memories of that time remained. The second year, he’d started to slowly piece little bits of himself together again. He’d helped Theresa with some legal issues involving a contractor who’d done a shoddy job on her roof. He’d written a few wills and started eating breakfasts before ordering his first drink of the day. The third year, he’d started taking low-level misdemeanors again.

  After that, it was all Issabella. With her at his side and in his arms, he’d been strong enough to get up out of that back booth and stay out of it.

  Darren’s eyes scanned over the familiar terrain. Before he had ever first walked into the bar, someone had carved the legend “Scooter Rocks” into the wooden tabletop, and it was still there. He looked at the plastic covered one-sheet menu glued to the wall. He looked at the twin yellow unicorns that perched atop the back of the opposite bench. It was all the same. Nothing had changed.

  He looked at Gil Sharps’s open suitcase. The locks had been sheared away. Jagged, ugly holes remained in their place.

  Strapped to the underside of the suitcase’s lid was a pistol inside a black leather holster.

  Darren noted its presence but didn’t reach out to touch it. He looked down at the compartment below the gun.

  A black laptop computer was wedged into the left side of the suitcase, its lid closed. The rest of the compartment was filled with large orange envelopes. Darren looked up and peered down the length of the bar at Theresa.

  “Didn’t she go through anything?”

  “I saw her messing with the envelopes some. Then she got mad. Then she put it all carefully back in the suitcase and called you. That’s all I know, Fletcher.”

  He picked up one of the envelopes. It was bulging and he guessed it weighed about four or five pounds. The adhesive strip wasn’t sealed, so Darren reached inside. When his hand came out, he was holding a stack of fresh, un-creased hundred dollar bills. Darren thumbed through the stack, counting. It took a full minute, and when he was done he knew that there was exactly one hundred thousand dollars in his hands.

  “Is that what I think it is?” Theresa said.

  “There are ten envelopes here,” Darren muttered.

  “What?”

  “It’s a million dollars, I think. A million dollars in hundred dollar bills divided into ten envelopes.”

  “You’re shitting me.”

  “I am not shitting you.”

  “I never seen a million dollars before.”

  “You want to come down and look at it?”

  Theresa started to stand up, seemed to think it over, and sat back down. She stubbed her cigarette out and said, “Nah. I’d just feel jealous it ain’t mine. I don’t want see a million dollars unless it has my name on it.”

  Darren put the stack of bills back in the envelope and was reaching to set the envelope back in the suitcase when he stopped and stared. In the empty space the envelope had occupied, he saw the corner of what looked like a file folder. He pulled three more envelopes out of the way and retrieved the folder from beneath them.

  Darren held it in his hands without opening it.

  This is it, isn’t it? The money wouldn’t have unsettled Izzy. It wouldn’t have scared her. This is what scared her, right here.

  He opened the file. A mingling rush of nauseous apprehension swam up the length of him and Darren closed his eyes against it. The world was teetering so he took in a long breath and waited while it settled again.

  When he opened his eyes again, he was staring at a glossy color photograph of a man with wild red hair and a tangled, unkempt red beard. Darren knew every detail of James Klodd’s face. He had seen it countless times over the years since the child killer had vanished, when he slept, when his mind wandered, and whenever he grew too tired to keep his regret at bay.

  It was a bizarre face. Klodd’s eyes were set unusually far apart. That was the less distinctive of the two features that marked him as being afflicted by Waardenburg Syndrome. The second feature was the ribbon of white that ran vertically down the left side of his face like a straightened-out lightning bolt. The white line began in the hair atop his head, dividing the red on either side of it. It disappeared at his hairline before reappearing directly in the middle of his left eyebrow. Even the lashes of that eye were divided by the white line. Again, it disappeared until it reached his beard, and there it spread forth, widening out like a root system beneath his face.

  But it wasn’t the white streak that made his face bizarre.

  It was how the white streak that lined up perfectly with his left eye had turned that eye an unpleasant, dingy yellow. James Klodd’s other eye was blue. Mismatched as they were, it lent an alien sort of distance to his stare. They were inscrutable eyes. Eyes that held no discernible human emotion within them.

  “Hey, I know that dude.”

  Darren shivered in surprise and looked up at Theresa standing beside him. She set a mug of coffee down on the table and pointed at the photo.

  “What’re you doing with a picture of Reggie?”

  Chapter Twelve

  Krane tapped in the code that retracted the bolts on the front doors of the estate and stepped outside. Behind him, he heard the bolts clack back into place. The entire house was secure. Reggie was locked away in his den of stink. The man in the cottage was dressed in the clothes he’d worn the night Krane had grabbed him. The hard drive was unplugged and waiting in the front foyer of the house.

  Everything was as it should be, he told himself. Still, he was not at ease.

  Krane walked down the front steps to the circle of asphalt. A few seconds passed before he spotted the black SUV he’d allowed to enter through the main gate only moments before stepping outside.

  It rolled slowly toward him, in no hurry. When it came to a stop in the circular turn-around, a big man in a suit and tie got out of the back passenger side and stood on the asphalt looking at Krane without a hint of emotion on his acne-scarred face. Second out of the SUV was a much smaller man. The driver.

  No, he realized. Not a man. A woman. A slight little woman with dark skin wearing a man’s suit. There were no keys in her hand and Krane could still hear the low, rhythmic hum of the vehicle’s engine. She’d left it running.

  When she crossed around the front of the SUV and opened the passenger door, Krane knew what type of people he was dealing with. The big guy with the pitted cheeks who had exited the SUV first didn’t betray much. But the woman...the woman was military. Krane was certain. It was in her hustle, the swift intent that informed the way she moved. She kept her head up at all times, a
nd even with the sunglasses hiding her eyes, Krane knew she was scanning him, the yard, the house. She’d done protection detail before.

  Krane remained where he was, a dozen feet from the SUV, watching to see who got out of the door she held open. The man who stepped down out of the vehicle was tall, lean, and dressed in a navy blue, wool, chalk stripe suit that looked far more expensive than what the other two were wearing. The first man and the woman wore their suit coats unbuttoned and loose. This one’s was buttoned, perfectly fitted to his narrow trunk, and his violet tie was immaculately knotted. His dark brown hair was graying at the temples. His tan was so perfect it could only have come from a salon.

  Not military, Krane decided. This one, the one in charge, was some rich civilian. There was nothing guarded about him as he stared at Krane and nodded while the other two kept still and made a point of not looking Krane directly in the eye.

  The man smiled at him and said, “John Krane?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Excellent. Is everything in order?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then let’s get to work, shall we?”

  “What should I call you?”

  The man cocked his head like a dog who’s heard a curious noise. His smile remained in place as he said, “How did your employer instruct you to refer to me?”

  “They didn’t.”

  “Well, there you have it. Shall we?”

  Alright, Krane thought and made a mental note. Nice Suit was the man in charge. Acne Scars and the Mannish Little Woman were subordinates.

  “Do you want the guy or the computer first?”

  “I’m a people person, Mister Krane. Let’s handle that end of things first.”

  Krane shrugged to show that he was calm, though he was not. As he walked ahead of them around the front of the estate house, he shot a quick glance over his shoulder and noted the way Nice Suit’s two people kept him between them. Acne Scars stayed in front while Mannish Little Woman trailed a few steps behind.

  Yeah, we’re all on the same team. Okay. Sure.

  When they rounded the southeast corner of the estate house, the old cottage came into view. Krane pointed at it and said, “He’s in there. The hard drive is inside the main house.”