Blind Shuffle

by Austin Williams

  “Get your ass in there where I can see you,” he said, pointing to the great room.

  Ninety-five percent of Abellard’s attention was on Pierre, waiting for the first signal that would necessitate putting a bullet in him. The remaining five percent was devoted to spotting a sign of that motherfucker Diamond.

  Without knowing Diamond’s location in this big dark house, Abellard knew he was leaving himself somewhat vulnerable. Even with a gun, he couldn’t rule out the possibility of being surprised again. All the more reason to get this done fast.

  “Where’s Professor Bitch?”

  “She’s not here,” Pierre stammered, pausing a beat to glance toward the staircase.

  “Bullshit. I want her down here, and then I want to see my woman. Both those things better happen pretty goddamn quick.”

  “If you’re concerned about Miss Lavalle, let me assure you—”

  “On the floor,” Abellard told Pierre as they emerged from the hallway into the illumination of the great room. “Keep them hands up high.”

  Pierre did was he was told, lowering himself into a cross-legged position on a damask rug in the center of the room.

  “Move an inch and you’re dead,” Abellard told Monday, shoving her into the nearest chair.

  “There’s no need for all this, Joseph.”

  Three heads turned at the sound of Guillory’s voice. She stepped into the room behind them, having just descended from the second floor. Any surprise she may have felt at this scene was concealed from view.

  “Good,” Abellard said, keeping the gun on Pierre. “I was getting ready to air out your boy if you didn’t turn up. Take a seat.”

  He gestured toward the same sofa where Guillory had sat less than an hour ago when dealing with the first hostile man to darken her door tonight.

  “You certainly know how to complicate a simple transaction. Was it beyond your capacity to handle this without bringing a stranger to my home?”

  With a glance at Monday she added, “Two strangers.”

  Abellard was feeling more in control with these people assembled in his frame of vision. He’d never seen any house staff other than Pierre on his previous trips here, but even if there was a maid hiding in some broom closet right now, he wasn’t going to worry about it. He knew how far this property was located from any hick cop who might respond to a distress call.

  “I know you got some kind of attachment to this pretty motherfucker,” he said to Guillory, jerking his head toward Pierre. “But I get the feeling it runs a whole lot stronger the other way, so I ain’t gonna bother threatening him.”

  The gun rotated away from the muscled manservant, putting Guillory directly in the line of fire.

  “Don’t point that at her!” Pierre bellowed.

  “Here’s how this works. I don’t see my woman in sixty seconds, I shoot. You pull some bullshit, try to grab a weapon or do any fucking thing except what I just told you, I shoot. Sixty seconds.”

  “This is all so unnecessary,” Guillory murmured.

  Abellard stepped closer so the .38 hovered less than a foot from her temple.

  “Make that fifty.”

  “I’ll get her, just stay calm!” Pierre cried, face contorting, though Anne Guillory appeared only mildly fazed by the muzzle inches from her head.

  “She’s in the carriage house,” Pierre continued, lurching to his feet. “I might need a little more time than you’re giving me.”

  “Forty-nine. Forty-eight. Pretty soon I’m gonna start counting by five.”

  “This is crazy, just stop!”

  “For God’s sake, do as he says,” Guillory barked, sounding more disgusted with Pierre than with the man holding the gun. “He won’t do anything until he sees her.”

  “Don’t bank on that, Professor Bitch. I might just unload and start looking for myself.”

  Pierre moved quickly to the end of the room, opening one of the French doors that led out onto the rear grounds.

  “If anything happens to her, you’ll never get what you want.”

  “You still here, motherfucker?”

  Pierre disappeared out the door, pulling it shut.

  A weighted silence fell over the room, so heavy that Monday could almost feel it pressing down on her shoulders. She was no longer aware of any pain radiating from the spot on her cheek where Abellard had buried the revolver’s butt several minutes earlier. She knew that whole side of her face would hurt like thunder in the morning, but for the moment it was nothing more serious than a weak throb.

  Monday was waiting for her chance to bolt. Her phone was in her jeans, but who was she going to call?

  And where the hell was Rusty?

  “While we wait,” Guillory said, “maybe you’ll consider something. Whatever anger you might be feeling toward me is best directed at yourself.”

  Abellard didn’t respond. He’d abandoned his countdown, knowing the only person it had any effect on was no longer in the room.

  “Did you think there would be no consequences for falling behind on our agreement? My clients are highly demanding, Joseph. The one thing they don’t have is time.”

  “That ain’t none of my concern.”

  “But it is. Your most recent delay cost me a client, in the most literal sense. A lady—her family name won’t mean anything to you but it’s well known amongst the wealthier strata—she’d been waiting—”

  “You!” Abellard shouted, swinging his gun arm at Monday, who’d started inching off the chair in preparation to make a run for the hallway. “Sit the fuck down!”

  Blood going cold, she eased back into the chair.

  “As I was saying,” Guillory continued, “my client waited as long as possible. Or rather, her daughter waited. It was the daughter who arranged the purchase. She’d been expecting a crop of viable cells for one last salvo against the Hodgkin’s afflicting her mother. That delivery never came. The old woman died last night, you’ll be saddened to learn. This isn’t the kind of business where one can lure back disappointed clients with the promise of better treatment the next time around.”

  “Time’s almost up,” Abellard said, feeling just about ready to turn this place into a charnel house.

  One of the French doors crashed open, making everyone jump. Pierre came charging into the room.

  Monday’s breath caught in her chest as she strained to see if anyone else was coming in behind him. Rusty? Marceline?

  “She’s gone,” Pierre bleated to Guillory. “They’re both gone!”

  Monday braced herself for a reaction from Abellard, expecting an immediate explosion. He didn’t say a word, but the thin fabric of composure he’d been maintaining was visibly tearing at the seams.

  She saw the change come across his face, could almost hear the trigger being squeezed a fraction of a second before it happened.

  “Don’t!” Pierre screamed, but it was too late.

  The gun went off, and Monday screamed too.

  36.

  It took them a few minutes to navigate around to the front of the carriage house. Marceline measured each step with caution. Sensing this was for his sake, Rusty urged her to pick up the pace. The pain in his head had receded to a tolerable level, feeling less like two burning spikes had been thrust into his eyes than an unusually intense migraine.

  They soon found themselves on the same cobblestone pathway he’d walked before. Marceline led them toward the main house, seeking cover from any lights wherever possible.

  “Let’s hold up,” she said, crouching behind the stone well and pulling him down with her. “We’re behind a well.”

  “All right,” he nodded, locating it within the mental snapshot he’d taken earlier. By honing in on individual details like the well and the copper lanterns, a fuller picture assembled in his mind’s eye.

  “There a magnolia tree up on the right,” he said. “Fifteen feet or so?”

  “Uh huh. I can smell it from here.”

  “That’s our next checkpoint.”


  “Hold it.”

  Marceline lifted her head above the well’s rim to scan the back of the house. She glimpsed a silhouetted figure pass by a pair of French doors on the ground floor. It may have been more than one person, she wasn’t sure. Lace curtains behind the glass prevented a clear view.

  “Good to go?” Rusty asked.

  “I just saw someone in the house.”

  “Man or woman?”

  “Couldn’t tell. Let’s hang for a minute.”

  Marceline kept her eyes on the French doors, waiting to see if the figure reappeared. Rusty ground his teeth and muttered with the frustration of being sightless until she told him to hush. After what seemed like a safe interval, she stood.

  “Looks clear. Let’s move.”

  Keeping low, they jogged hand in hand across the grass until the magnolia’s leafy boughs offered a veil of protection.

  “How far’s the house now?” Rusty whispered.

  “There’s a porch about twenty feet in front of us. No lights, looks empty.”

  “We need to get to the driveway out front, but we can’t risk going through the house.”

  “So what do we do, climb over it?”

  “Might be fun to try if we had more time,” Rusty said, once more calling upon his mental snapshot. “There should be a gap up ahead on the right, between the house and some hedges. See it?”

  Marceline squinted into the darkness and shook her head.

  “Not really, it’s dark over there. Might be a little bit of space.”

  “Let’s try it. If I’m wrong we’ll try something else.”

  They rapidly closed the distance from the magnolia to the back corner of the house. Marceline flattened herself against the wall and peered in the direction he’d indicated.

  A narrow path stretched between the west gallery porch and a high row of hedges along the property line, just as he’d described. It was covered almost entirely in darkness except for some faint moonglow. This side of the house featured fewer windows than the front or back, and none of them were lit.

  “Goddamn,” Marceline said, squeezing his hand. “I forgot how good you are at this.”

  “I’ll hold off on taking any bows until we’re out of here.”

  “Can’t see how far it goes,” she whispered. “Maybe all the way to the front.”

  “Let’s find out. If we have to go over a wall, so be it.”

  Twenty paces down the tight thorny path brought them to the front corner of the porch. As Rusty had predicted, a brick wall six feet in height connected the space between the porch and the hedges.

  Marceline was ready to move herself over it with a swift two-handed vault. Rusty calmly reminded her she was five months pregnant. He insisted she use his cupped hands for leverage and begged her to take it slowly.

  Once she was on the other side, Rusty followed. He didn’t need his eyes to scramble up and over the wall with ease.

  A faint glare appeared in his left field of vision, coming from a bright lamp above the front door. It was the first flicker he’d seen since his exposure to the plant residue. He thought he could barely discern the shape of the house’s front facade.

  Don’t get too excited just yet, he cautioned himself. Could be a trick of the brain, easy.

  Marceline took his hand and they walked a few paces toward the front door, which stood open an inch or so.

  “We’re looking at the driveway, right?”

  “Yeah,” Marceline answered. “Straight ahead.”

  “Black Escalade parked there?”

  She paused before replying, recognizing the vehicle.

  “Is that Joseph’s?”

  “Don’t worry, we’re leaving him here. He won’t be following without his keys.”

  “Where is he now?” she asked. Rusty didn’t like the sound of that question.

  “Cuffed to the wheel. Hopefully still unconscious.”

  “I don’t see anyone in there. The driver’s door is open.”

  Rusty silently cursed himself for not incapacitating Abellard more fully, even if that meant a lethal blow. But as he berated his own timidity, he still couldn’t imagine himself taking the man’s life in cold blood.

  “Let’s move fast,” he said. “We need to get to the end of the driveway, and it’s a decent walk.”

  “There’s another car here,” Monday said. “A silver Lincoln.”

  “What?” Rusty groaned, feeling his stomach drop like he was being pulled back into Barataria Bay all over again.

  “It’s parked in front of Joseph’s.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  Goddamnit, Monday. Why didn’t you keep your fucking post?

  “Whose car is that, Rusty?”

  He hesitated, unsure how Marceline would respond to learning the identity of his partner in this rescue operation.

  “Your friend, Nurse Reed. She helped me track you down. Couldn’t have done it without her.”

  “Monday?” Marceline asked, her incredulity clear as a bell. She grabbed Rusty’s arm, not softly. “You got Monday mixed up in this?”

  Rusty turned away from her, moving toward the door he couldn’t see except in the dimmest of outlines. He threw himself against it, ready to kick it down, and the door yawned open.

  Marceline reached out to grab him.

  “Wait! How are you going to—”

  Gunfire exploded from within the house, killing the question before she could finish asking it.

  37.

  Anne Guillory didn’t scream when the bullet pierced her ribcage, but Pierre did. The agony in his voice sounded like he was the one who’d just absorbed a 125-grain hollow point round. He hurdled across the room, oblivious to placing himself in the path of another shot, and threw himself over Guillory even as she was crumpling to the floor.

  Landing on top of her while trying to cushion the fall, he wrapped himself into a tight protective shield. He used his entire body to create the widest possible range of obstruction.

  “Get up,” Abellard ordered him. “Get the fuck up!”

  Pierre didn’t hear him, or made no sign of it. Guillory’s breath was coming irregularly. The bullet had pierced her right lung, limiting respiratory function to a minimum. Pierre pressed his ear to her heart, then raised his head to face Abellard.

  “I need to take her to a hospital!”

  “Fuck that. On your feet.”

  Guillory released a pocket of suppressed air from some wounded place inside, sounding more surprised than injured. Pierre frantically placed his lips on hers and forced oxygen into her lungs.

  “I said on your feet!”

  “She’s still alive. I need to get her help right now!”

  “You ain’t goin’ nowhere till I see Marceline Lavalle.”

  A stunted breath caught deep in Guillory’s diaphragm. She released a wet gurgling noise like a tire slowly deflating. A froth of pinkish blood appeared at the corners of her mouth. Pierre wiped it away and resumed his frenzied attempt at resuscitation.

  “Where is she?!”

  “The carriage house,” Pierre moaned, glaring up at Abellard with tear-streaked eyes. “She was in the carriage house ten minutes ago, I swear it!”

  “Show me.”

  “I need to get her to a hospital!”

  “No one’s leaving, so shut up about that. Do what I tell you or you’re getting the next one.”

  “For God’s sake!” Pierre pleaded. “You can have money, whatever you want. There’s a safe upstairs with over six hundred thousand in it. Just let me help her!”

  Watching it all happen, Monday raised herself from the chair by inches. Abellard stood at quarter profile to her, focused on the two people on the floor but not completely showing his back.

  Monday knew too sudden a move was likely to attract his notice. The hallway opened up less than three yards from where she stood. If she could reach it, buying even a second or two of blockage from Abellard’s firing
range, she might be able to make it to the front door.

  A broken exhalation escaped from Guillory’s lips, followed by a pooling of blood that trickled down her cheek. Pierre Montord looked down at her, his face a mask of disbelief, and knew he’d just witnessed her final moment.

  He buried his face in the pale flesh of Anne Guillory’s neck. His shoulders heaved in a silent sob, quickly followed by another until he resembled a human oil derrick hopelessly pumping an empty deposit from which life would no longer flow.

  “What’s it gonna be, man?” Abellard said in a calmer tone, looking down at the two prone forms.

  Pierre emitted a guttural cry and pitched himself off the floor. It was a suicide effort at best, a flying leap directly at an armed man. Abellard retreated with surprise but his finger closed on the trigger almost lazily.

  The bullet caught Pierre in the neck, jerking his head back even as his brawny frame continued its forward momentum. His knees hit the floor first, upper torso following. Abellard backed away to avoid being struck by the falling body.

  Ears ringing from the shot, Monday saw her chance and took it. She bolted over the arm of the chair and ran toward the hallway. Abellard caught her movement in his peripheral vision and swiveled. The revolver rose in his hand, four rounds still in the chamber.

  “Stop!”

  She took two more steps, accelerating. It wasn’t enough. The hallway was still five paces away. Even if she got there, then what? The dividing wall would offer protection for only as long as it took Abellard to catch up with her. She’d never make it out the front door. Even if she banked a quick right and raced up the stairway, he’d shoot her down. There was no place to hide, but she didn’t stop moving.

  Abellard took aim as Monday dashed across the carpet. He didn’t rush.

  Guillory and Pierre had died too quickly. He couldn’t even say with any certainty they’d suffered. This one would be different. This bitch had known Marcie all along, probably polluted her mind with bad ideas from the start. Hell, she was probably the one who convinced her to break off their relationship.