by E. Z. Rinsky
“I can’t go out there,” he mutters, waving vaguely in the air.
“Where?” I ask.
“It, it . . .” he says. “It’s driving me crazy,” he snaps bitterly.
I decide to clarify this later. I find his checkbook and rush out of the office, through a few glass rooms, and back to Courtney—who has the books slung over his shoulder—and the cabbie. Write him a check for $1,200 and sign it myself.
“Thanks, man.” The cabbie grins.
“The extra two hundred is to not tell anyone about any of this,” I say. We wait till the driver leaves, then Courtney turns to me.
“What’s he like?” he asks.
“Bad,” I say. “Really bad.” I bite my lip. “I just realized, he didn’t even ask me about the books.”
Courtney frowns, then follows me back into the house.
Back into the office. Sampson doesn’t look to have budged an inch. We sit down across from him, in the same chairs we were sitting in when he showed us his stump, and throw the duffel bag on the coffee table. Courtney unzips it, pulls one out and displays it to Sampson.
“Here they are,” Courtney says. Sampson doesn’t even glance up. Just takes a long, sad slurp of soda.
“Thank you,” he says emptily.
“So,” I say, leaning in, “I know it took a few extra days, but the job has been done, as you liked. So there’s the matter of—”
“I can’t pay you,” Sampson says. “I have nothing left. Take whatever you want from me. Take the cars before they’re seized. Some of my furniture is worth something. I have some watches . . . whatever. Take whatever you want. I’m sorry.”
I swallow.
“And my passport . . . my identity . . .”
“Fine. All the papers are in the top drawer of my desk. Take them. What do I care.” Sampson finishes his Diet Pepsi and drops the empty can, letting it join the growing pile at his feet with a clatter. “He took my money. Not Rico. Him. Sophnot.”
I hear Courtney’s sharp inhale beside me. I bite my lip.
“Half of the other eight million were phony,” he says. “I couldn’t get more than four. Sophnot tried to liquidate them, and called me . . .” Sampson’s voice is trembling, and he’s staring at the space between us. Then he reaches into the bag and pulls out a book. Studies it with something like disgust, and drops it back in. Neither Courtney nor I say anything.
“I know I can’t understand everything he does, but I don’t know what I did to deserve this.” Sampson shakes his head slowly. “He’s taken everything from me.”
Courtney clears his throat.
“Well we still have these. We know they’re worth something. Mindy . . .” Courtney trails off, not wanting to incriminate her. Sampson hardly seems to have heard him, in any case.
His drink shakes along with his usually steady hand. And then he drops the still-full can onto the carpet, and collapses, slipping off the couch into his pile of empties, clutching his sides and sobbing.
“Oh god,” he moans into the carpet. “Oh sweet, sweet Lord. Please, please . . .” A chill shoots down my spine. “Please help me. I’ve made so many mistakes. I deserve nothing, I know . . .”
What has he done?
We let him cry for a while, awful choking sobs, sounds like a cat being strangled. Finally, Courtney can take it no more.
“What are you talking about?” Courtney asks. “What did Oliver do?”
Amidst his cries, Sampson manages to gesture to the fax machine beside his desk.
Courtney and I are there in a second. There’s two dozen pages in the tray; received faxes. Courtney grabs them before I can.
“Cover page says these were sent today at nine-thirty this morning,” he says, then tosses the cover page aside. The first page is a picture of Sampson, posing naked, looks like for a timed camera. His face looks younger, but it’s post-surgery. In fact, it looks like the point of this photo is to display his new anatomy.
“Where’s this from?” Courtney demands.
“I sent it to him,” Sampson whimpers. “A lot of pictures. As proof that I did as he instructed.”
Once it’s clear that they’re all in the same vein, Courtney combs through them pretty quickly, until arriving at a second cover sheet.
“Sent at ten this morning,” says Courtney. He lets this page fall to the floor, and then stops breathing.
The next group of pictures is all Mindy. She’s sitting on a wooden stool, a copy of this morning’s newspaper on her lap. Around her neck is a thick leather collar.
Courtney drops the pictures onto the wood floor, puts his head in his hands.
“Oh god,” I say. “Court—” I try to put a hand on his shoulder, but he slaps it away. Wordlessly walks back to Sampson and sits down on the couch, over his writhing form.
“What happened, James?” he says, with terrible calm.
“I don’t know!” Sampson howls. “Yesterday he started to threaten me, what would happen if he didn’t get the books. I told him he would! I told him it was all going to be fine, but then he sent those pictures. Of me. And then he took Mindy. I don’t know how. And he says if he doesn’t get his books he’ll slaughter her and send those pictures to the press.”
Courtney breathes fast.
“Alright,” he says, voice wavering. “So we’ll just go give him the books now and everything will be fine.”
“But it doesn’t matter. He took my money! It was all some kind of game. He took everything from me.” He gestures to his groin. “Everything.”
Courtney rises a few inches out of his chair.
“Call him,” Courtney says softly, voice trembling. “Tell him you have the books and ask where to bring them.”
Sampson rolls onto his side and vomits, violently retching through his cries, his whole body heaving in anguish.
“I can’t call him,” he whispers. “I can’t talk to him. I’m so ashamed.”
Courtney shoots to his feet, upends the glass coffee table which Sampson is cowering under, and lets it crash off to the side. He bends over Sampson and grabs him by the hair, jerks his head up until it’s even with his.
“Call him!” Courtney roars. “Call him!”
Sampson looks up at Courtney with eyes more dead than alive, and then sullenly pulls his cell phone from his pocket. Puts it on speaker as it rings. The Darth-Vader voice answers immediately.
“Yes?”
“I, I . . . I have the books, Father.” Some horrible mix of saliva and vomit dribbles down Sampson’s chin. “Where shall I bring them?”
“Bring them to me in the prison, and we will study and celebrate the Sabbath together.”
Courtney wrenches Sampson up a few inches by his hair and whispers in his ear.
“Father . . .” the Senator says into the phone. “What about the girl. What about Mindy?”
A short pause.
“She’s learned to read the holy writings meant only for my eyes. The punishment for that is death. She will be sacrificed this Sabbath.”
“But the pic . . . the pictures?” wheezes Sampson.
“Bring me my holy writings, and I will deal with you as if you were my own son. With nothing but love and compassion.”
“Okay,” Sampson gasps. “Okay.”
Courtney hangs up the phone.
“How could he bring her into the prison?” Courtney grabs Sampson’s neck and lifts the much larger man up until their eyes are nearly level. He’s choking him a little.
“Courtney, easy,” I say. My partner doesn’t seem to hear me.
“How could he bring a girl into that prison?” Courtney demands. “Is he a prisoner or not!?”
“I don’t know any more than you!” Sampson cries. “You heard him. He wants the books delivered to the prison.”
Their noses are nearly touching.
“We’re going now to fix your mistakes.” Courtney shakes his head like a doll. “You understand that right?”
“Yyyes. Yes.”
“Frank, check that your papers are in the desk.”
I move to the desk and slide open the top drawer. There’s a passport, a Social Security card, a birth certificate and a driver’s license. My new name is Grant McRoberts.
“They look good, Court,” I say, flipping through the heavy pages of the passport.
“All of Frank’s new information is in the system?” Courtney demands from Sampson. “All those documents are legit?”
“I . . . Yes. It’s all in the system.”
Courtney lets Sampson drop, and the Senator lacks either the will or the strength to prevent his limp body from smacking back against the ground. Courtney zips the duffel bag back up and slings it over his shoulder. Stands over Sampson, glowering at him with revulsion.
“You should never have gotten us into this mess,” Courtney says.
“I’m sorry,” Sampson wheezes. “I’m so sorry.”
“Give me the keys to the Hummer,” Courtney says.
“On my desk.”
“You’re not a bad person,” Courtney says. “I mean that.”
Sampson looks up from the floor, face ashen, a bleak kind of hopefulness in his eyes.
“You’re just weak,” Courtney says, and for a second I think he’s going to spit on the Senator. “Horribly, horribly weak.”
He turns to me.
“If you leave now, I won’t hold it against you.”
I wince. Look down at my feet at a picture of Mindy, gasping for air through the thick collar.
I was never her biggest fan, but nobody deserves that.
And even if she did, there’s simply no way I can let Courtney go meet Oliver Vicks alone.
“You drive.”
Courtney’s knuckles are white on the steering wheel. Since pulling out of Sampson’s estate, he’s been gripping it feverishly with both hands, like he’s trying to strangle the life out of the Senator by proxy with his vehicle.
“Is Oliver Vicks coming and going from prison as he likes?” I ask. “Is that possible?”
“All we know about what happened there is based on what the warden told us,” Courtney says. “Either he’s remarkably unaware of what’s happening right under his nose, or he lied to us.”
“Why?” I say.
“Think about it,” Courtney says, eyes pinned to the dotted yellow line on the highway; he’s going so fast it appears solid. “He thought we were from the FBI. Instead of admitting that he still doesn’t have control of his own prison, he made it sound like the problem was all resolved. And it worked. We left him alone.”
I breathe through my teeth. Courtney takes the exit for Golden. According to the GPS, we’re twenty minutes from the prison. It’s about five thirty, but it’s a long summer day. Still no trace of dusk.
“Let me see your phone,” I say. Courtney pulls it out of the front pocket of his ratty jeans and hands it to me. “I’ll call him.”
“Speakerphone,” Courtney insists.
He picks up after one ring.
“Nathan Heald,” he says.
“Hi, Nathan, it’s Ben Donovan. Me and my partner visited you a few days ago to discuss Oliver Vicks.”
“Hi Ben,” he says. “What can I do for you?”
“We have reason to believe Oliver Vicks is still in your facility.”
Heald pauses a moment.
“I told you what happened. He hasn’t been here for years.”
“I know what you told us. I’m suggesting that it may not have been accurate. Is there a chance that he’s continued to operate from your prison, without your knowledge? That some of your officers are loyal to him?”
Heald laughs.
“If a mouse moves in this prison, I know about it.”
“Oliver Vicks is in your prison,” Courtney shouts into the phone. “And he has a woman with him.”
Heald sighs.
“You’re welcome to come inspect my prison, but I think you’ll both be sorely disappointed.”
“We’ll take you up on that,” Courtney snaps, reaches over and ends the call. “He’s bluffing. Lying to save his own ass.”
There’s a vein pulsing in Courtney’s neck and the speedometer is ticking past 100. We rapidly advance on a red Chrysler. Courtney accelerates to pass it so abruptly that I think I can feel the g-force pinning me to my seat. The countryside is blurring into a sage-colored soup.
“Courtney,” I say, “slow down. Pull over.”
He doesn’t seem to hear me.
“Pull the fuck over!” I yell in his ear.
He slams on the brakes and jerks the Hummer onto the shoulder.
“What?” he snaps, breathing hard. “Every minute we wait it becomes more likely he’ll kill her.”
“Courtney,” I say as calmly as I can. “Something very wrong is going on there. Either because he’s an idiot, or because he’s complicit, Heald is letting Oliver Vicks come and go as he pleases. It sounds like there’s a guard at the front gate waiting for us. So . . . obviously we’re not going to just bring the books in with us.”
“What?” Courtney’s eyes narrow.
“Let’s not be rash. We’ll stash the books outside, go in and see what’s going on, see what he’s done with Min—negotiate to get Mindy back, then we’ll go get the books and bring them to him.”
Courtney’s cheeks are cherry-red, narrow face tight with concern.
“I don’t want to negotiate with him.”
“Look man, what’s the most important thing to you. Getting Mindy back, right? Prison security is going to take our guns. So if we go in with the books like a couple of chumps, Oliver or his guy will just take them with a smile and then it’s all over. But we go in without the books, we have a chance to draw things out. Negotiate.”
Courtney is silent for a moment.
“Court, I know you’re eager. But we can’t be stupid about this. Gotta be thoughtful. Patient.”
He smacks the steering wheel with a flat palm.
“Fine,” he says. “Fine, fine, fine. Where you wanna put them?”
Outside the car window is nothing but gently sloping hills. Boulders as grey as bone, waving grain, trees that seem to be hunched, cowering as if hiding from the fierce sun. Beside the highway runs a little creek.
“C’mon,” I say, stepping out, swapping leather upholstery for gravel and dust. Courtney gathers himself for a moment, then slams his door and comes out to join me.
I scan the landscape, looking for someplace that I know will stand out enough for us to identify later. About every twenty seconds a car zooms past, throwing up a little cloud of dust that stings my eyes.
“You want to leave them out here?” he says. “In the middle of nowhere? What if it rains? They’ll be ruined.”
“We’re only a fifteen-minute drive from the prison,” I say. “We’ll go in, figure out what the fuck is going on in there, then come back and get them. It hasn’t rained in weeks. It’s not gonna rain in the next few hours.”
Courtney bites his lip.
“What if he gets upset, Frank? And hurts—”
“We want him upset.” I glare at Courtney. “Listen, I know you got a thing for Mindy, but you gotta get a grip here. He’s in your head, man. Think about it, if you’re scared about the books being damaged, think about how freaked out he’ll be. That’s called leverage.”
Courtney shifts his weight uncomfortably.
“Okay,” he says.
“We’ll leave our guns in the bottom of the bag too. If someone brings us back here to collect them we can blast their brains out. And we can’t bring them into the prison with us anyways.”
I unholster my Magnum, give it a nostalgic once-over, and tuck it in the duffel bag.
“I gave mine to Mindy,” he says. “At the red house.”
I don’t respond to that. I’m sure he’s thinking the same thing I am:
Did she even get a shot in at whoever abducted her?
Wordlessly, we look around us for a place to stash the bag. A dry breeze flap
s through my T-shirt.
“There,” Courtney says, guiding my line of sight with his spindly finger. Perhaps fifty meters from where we’re standing, the earth curves up into a modest hill, and halfway up there’s a low tangle of bushes that contrasts a bit with the landscape, on account of their purplish blue color.
“Let’s just bury them,” I say.
“Digging a hole that big will take forever,” he says. “C’mon.”
We have to jump over a little wooden fence that runs parallel to the highway. I wonder if this is private property.
It’s farther than it looks to the blue bushes. We step awkwardly through high grass, sharp rocks, avoid little bramble bushes that have prickly burrs that stick to your pants. Despite my best efforts, I have a million little brown husks wrapped around my ankles by the time we get to the bush. Try to pick one off and it pricks my finger.
The purple bush thicket is very dense, and covers as much area as a baseball diamond. I bend down to sniff a prickly blue pine branch. It smells fresh and springy.
“What is this, juniper?” I ask Courtney. Juniper, I think, is the only kind of bush I know.
“Some type of dwarf evergreen,” Courtney says.
I scan across the canopy of needles. At some points it grows taller than me.
“How are we gonna remember where we put them exactly, Court?” I ask.
Courtney scratches his scalp, then roots around in his red bag, pulls out a small tube of black spray paint.
“Why do you have that?” I ask.
“For security cameras.” Courtney looks up at me like I’m an idiot. “Obviously.”
He squats at a little red boulder that rests on the dirt and sprays a C on the face of it. Then picks up another small boulder, sprays an F, and places it at the edge of the thicket.
“I don’t think you’d notice these if you weren’t looking for them,” he says, content, “these two form a straight line into the bushes. You crawl in a couple meters and drop the bag.”
“Me?” I say. “What the fuck.”
He picks at his scalp.
“Too cramped in there, you know . . .”
I roll my eyes. Forgot about his claustrophobia.
I get down on my stomach next to the F boulder, put the duffel out in front of me to protect my face, and crawl ahead, soldier style. Pine needles and branches immediately claw at my body. I can hardly see anything; the branches above block out most of the light in here. It’s kind of like being at the bottom of a deep swimming pool, the surface seeming miles away. I have to keep my eyes closed every time I move anyways, to avoid them being scraped and poked.
