Abellard lowered the gun from where it was trained on the base of her skull to her lower back. He found the spot he wanted. Not enough satisfaction to be had from blowing a hole in her head. No. Make her feel it. Destroy her spine with one shot.
Monday’s right foot rose from the floor as her left planted hard, pushing for maximum speed. Stretched into a sprinter’s pose, extending as far as she could.
She’d heard Abellard yell at her to stop. She knew he wouldn’t speak again. The next sound she heard would be a thunderous ignition of gunpowder propelling the bullet that killed her.
Eyes blurred, her mind flooded with adrenaline to a point where she didn’t recognize the tall dark figure who’d emerged into the hallway from the front door. She knew him, but couldn’t come up with his name for all the money in the world. Not just this second.
She saw his black-cloaked arm rise, in a similar motion to Abellard’s when he’d lifted the gun. The arm came hammering forward in a downward arc, the hand opening.
Something flew from its grip, flying end over end. Her senses slowed by stress overload to I’m-going-to-die-right-now speed, Monday saw it coming straight at her, flashing in the murky light.
It was sharp, incredibly sharp.
The Marrow Seeker grazed past her head close enough to slice off a single curl of amber hair. The shorn lock twirled silently to the parquet at her feet. She lost sight of the wooden blade as it rocketed past, pinwheeling at the speed of a helicopter’s rotor.
The knife continued its flight clear across the hall. All the way into the great room, where its razor-sharp tip embedded itself into the throat of an astonished Joseph Abellard, whose finger reflexively closed on the .38’s trigger and released a round that missed Monday by less than a foot before disappearing into the paneled wall next to her.
All seemed suspended for a moment in the gunshot’s fading reverberations. Then the revolver fell to the floor, and the man who’d fired it followed.
Abellard was dead before his face smacked against the damask rug. Monday didn’t see it. She was still standing in a rigid posture of shock, unsure if she’d been shot in the back or carved by a flying blade.
She looked up at the tall, dark form filling the unlit space in front of her. With a burst of recognition, she knew who it was.
Of course. Who else would it be? And where the hell had he been all this time?
Rusty hadn’t seen Abellard die either, but he wasn’t seeing anything at all.
38.
Nobody said much on the return drive to New Orleans. Monday used her phone’s GPS to traverse the lightless rural byways of Livingston Parish onto the eastbound I-10, cautiously steering the Navigator while Rusty and Marceline huddled in the back seat.
The trip passed largely without incident. They experienced no delays except for a five-car wreck outside Metarie that forced them to detour off the interstate for a mile before resuming the journey home.
Not until the high-rises of downtown NOLA came into view did an argument break out inside the Navigator. It had to do with where they should stop first, and it grew fairly heated before bubbling to a lukewarm resolution.
Monday insisted they go directly to an emergency clinic, so both Rusty and Marceline could get thoroughly checked out. She herself felt no need for medical aid. Her wounds were superficial. The gun butt’s bruise on her face wouldn’t be going away soon, but some vanishing cream would render her able to go about daily life without inviting stares. Her arm still screamed from Abellard’s chickenwing, but that would heal. Monday knew an excellent holistic practitioner and yoga guru in Pirates Alley who would certainly have some remedies to offer.
Marceline flatly refused Monday’s plan. Her top priority was getting to her father’s house and letting him know she was still alive. To delay that revelation for even another hour was intolerable. They’d tried calling his landline several times from Monday’s phone but got no answer. Prosper was probably riding the streetcar back home even as they sped toward the city.
Rusty backed up her wishes, insisting his eyes could withstand a little more time until receiving medical attention. He and Marceline claimed a majority vote on the matter. Monday grudgingly conceded, but only after Marceline agreed to a full examination the next day. Blood work, pelvic and cervical exams, ultrasound, everything. Though she seemed in good health and persisted in maintaining that she hadn’t been ill-treated during her confinement, only a full evaluation could confirm no harm was done to her or the baby.
That issue settled, they turned to the larger topic of exactly how much of what happened tonight should be reported to the NOPD. This required no debate whatsoever—all three reached the same conclusion of their own accord.
There would be no police involvement. Period. Rusty’s killing of Joseph Abellard ruled that out, now and forever. It was that simple. They never saw that house in Maurepas. Never heard of Anne Guillory. End of story.
No amount of careful explanation of all the mitigating circumstances would change the fact that he’d hurled a knife into a man’s throat. Even if he found a sympathetic ear in Dan Hubbard, which was doubtful, charges would be pressed. Marceline would have to relive her ordeal by explaining it all to the police, quite possibly doing it again from the witness box.
What was the point? The people who deserved punishment had all gotten it. They wouldn’t be coming back. Let them molder in that elegant room until weeds grew over the whole house and there was nothing but dust to tell the tale. If and when someone happened upon their remains, the Navigator’s threesome had nothing to do with it.
For Rusty and Monday, this was an easy decision. Marceline found it more painful and complicated. Despite cutting Joseph Abellard out of her life over a month before with no intention of reconciling, she had history with the man from which she’d never be separated. Raising his child, his memory would stubbornly hover over her life in one way or another.
Marceline didn’t hold any ill will toward Rusty for what he’d done. She knew what would have happened if he’d acted a fraction of a second later. But she still had to grieve silently for Joseph Abellard. If not for the man he was, then for who she’d once hoped he could be.
As they crossed the New Orleans city line, Monday looked in the rearview and saw Rusty staring out the window at the passing streetlights, blinking furiously.
“Any better?” she asked.
He shrugged. He could just barely make out the odd flash, straining to discern something recognizable in the whirl of fuzzy patterns. He wasn’t sure if he really saw any of it.
“I can’t tell,” he answered. “Maybe a little better.”
“Can I ask you a question?” Monday said. “It’s been on my mind ever since we pulled out of there.”
“Sure.”
“Did you have any idea where that knife was gonna land? I mean, in your…present condition?”
Hearing this, Marceline lifted her head from Rusty’s shoulder where she’d been resting for a few minutes.
“I’ve been wondering about that too.”
Rusty didn’t reply right away. The mention of the knife made him reach into his pocket to make sure it was there. His fingers ran over the grooved wood of the Marrow Seeker, feeling sticky moisture that had to be Joseph Abellard’s blood.
Everything that happened in the short span of time from when Abellard fell dead and the three of them drove away from the Guillory property remained somewhat unclear in his mind. It occurred to him that he didn’t know who’d extracted the blade from the dead man’s throat and returned it to his possession. Could have been either of the women in this vehicle.
“Rusty,” Marceline said. “We asked you a question.”
“Don’t you ladies know a magician’s not supposed to reveal his secrets?”
He smiled at the feel of her elbow nudging his ribs.
“I was once privy to all your secrets, magician. Hell, we learned most of them side by side.”
“That we did,” Rusty said s
oftly. “That we did.”
“I’m feeling a little left out,” Monday chimed in from behind the wheel. “Since that knife came awfully close to my own noggin, I think I’m entitled to hear the truth. I promise not to tell a soul. Cross my heart and hope to die.”
“Well,” Rusty sighed, “somehow I just can’t say no to you two.”
“The truth,” he continued after a contemplative pause, “is that I spent well over ten thousand hours working on my knife throwing skills. Miss Lavalle here can attest to that. As you must recall, Marcie, one of my reliable show-stoppers in Vegas was hurling blades at live targets while blindfolded. Over the course of more performances than I can count, I never missed.”
“Very impressive,” Monday said, hitting her blinker to merge into the exit lane for Esplanade. “But that wasn’t the question.”
“I’m providing background. See, when you throw a knife blindfolded—or, hell, any object—you can’t just rely on the timed pattern of a rehearsed routine. In my stage act, we choreographed every last detail so that when I let a blade go, I knew exactly where the targets would be in their rotating pattern. We’re talking Swiss watch levels of precision when it comes to timing. But that alone isn’t enough stave off the possibility of something going wrong.”
He left it there for a moment. Neither of the women spoke. Though sightless, Rusty could feel Monday’s gaze on him in the mirror. The partial explanation he’d just provided, truthful as it was, couldn’t help but open up a question in both their minds.
She’s thinking about my confession to Prosper. She’s wondering how someone with my kind of training could allow a trick to go wrong the way it did at Paul Ponti’s house.
“Additional measures were needed,” he continued, “to ensure I could throw a blind knife with confidence. I had to learn to create mental photographs using my other senses, sound and touch especially. Even without looking, I had to see the basic arrangement of people and objects in front of me. That’s what I did tonight.”
“OK,” Monday said, sounding disappointed. “I guess that kind of answers the question.”
“No, it doesn’t,” Marceline countered. “She asked if you knew where that knife was going to land when you threw it.”
Rusty settled back into his seat as Monday steered onto Camp Street.
“Tonight,” he finally said, “I needed a little luck.”
• • •
The Navigator pulled to a stop at the curb in front of Prosper Lavalle’s shotgun house. Across the street, Coliseum Park slumbered under the glow of towering sodium lamps. Not a single denizen was to be found on its manicured lawns, other than some squirrels foraging for nuts.
Arms entwined, the three of them hobbled across the cracked sidewalk and climbed a short set of stairs to the porch in front of Prosper’s home. Rusty counted the steps, relying on the woman on each side of him for balance.
Marceline peered through the window adjacent to the door. A soft yellow light glowed from within.
Through a gap in the curtain, she saw her father dozing in his favorite chair. A lamp burned over his shoulder, illuminating the open book on his lap he’d been too tired to keep reading. Chin resting on his chest, his long legs stretched out to the center of a hooked rug at his feet.
“He’s sleeping,” she whispered, feeling her eyes fill. “I almost hate to wake him.”
“Trust me,” Monday said. “He won’t mind.”
“That’s right,” Rusty added. “He’s probably dreaming of you right now. There’s a key under the mat, I told him we’d be coming back tonight.”
Monday lifted a corner of the aged rubber doormat and retrieved a house key. She slid it into the lock, turning it so softly the tumblers barely made a sound.
Halfway through the door, she turned. Monday and Rusty held their places on the porch.
“You’re not coming in?”
“Nah,” Rusty said with a shake of the head. He could almost see her shape silhouetted in the glow from the living room, but it was little more than an indistinct blur. “You two should be alone.”
“Definitely,” Monday said before turning to Rusty. “And we need to get you checked out.”
Marceline nodded. “Rusty, I…” The words faltered on her lips.
“Go inside,” he said with a smile. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”
“You’ll be in New Orleans awhile?”
“Yeah. I’m not sure how long, this town’s a little too rough for me. But I’ll stick around for a bit.”
“Good.”
She reached out to touch his cheek, then gently pulled the door closed.
Monday leaned forward to look through the open space in the window. Framed in the gap between the drapes, she saw Marceline lean down to tap her father’s shoulder.
Prosper’s eyes blinked open, adjusting to the light slowly and with effort. His face composed itself into a map of uncertainty quickly washed over by a flood of relief. Not happiness, or even gratitude. Not yet, those would come later. At this moment, the old man was simply overcome with relief.
Marceline kneeled down and let him embrace her. They held that pose, arms entwined, tears flowing in a conjoined stream.
“What am I not seeing?” Rusty whispered from his darkened spot on this same porch where he’d once sat for hours at a time, mastering basic illusions and trying to impress a teenaged Marceline with his budding skills.
Monday slid both arms around his waist, pulling him in tight.
“Exactly what you’d want to see. She’s home.”
39.
The better part of a week passed before Rusty felt more than middling confidence that his eyesight had returned to 20/20. Only a thorough vision test could determine that, but he didn’t feel in any particular rush to get one. He could see well enough, and the prospect of learning he’d suffered even minor diminishment depressed him.
Everyone gets a little beat up along the way, the body breaks down in measurable degrees from hard use and the passage of time. Everything came with a price. If some weakened visual capacity was the required fee for Marceline’s return to safety, he’d gladly pay.
After dropping her off at Prosper’s house the night they drove home from Maurepas, Monday had taken him straight to the nearest walk-in urgent care center. A sleep-deprived clinician peppered Rusty with questions, clearly puzzled by his ailment. Rusty spun a marginally plausible story about visiting the City Park greenhouse and stupidly rubbing his eyes after picking up some rare tropical plants.
The clinician didn’t appear to buy that explanation, but he did offer some encouraging information. The topical effects of the Excoecaria residue were highly unpleasant to the eyes but by no means permanent. Direct contact with the retina virtually guaranteed a period of sightlessness that might last up to a week, but careful maintenance of ocular hygiene should restore full sight with time.
Swabbing Rusty’s eyes with saline solution and discharging him, the clinician offered a dubious piece of advice about being more careful when handling exotic plants in the future.
Monday waited in the lobby while he was being treated. They got back to her apartment a little after three A.M., both too exhausted to do anything but sleep the moment they fell into her bed. Waking late the next morning, they made up for it.
That afternoon Rusty returned the Navigator to Hertz, checked out of the Cornstalk Hotel, and moved his luggage into Monday’s apartment. It was a short-term arrangement, and wordlessly agreed upon as such. They used the amiable pretext that Rusty should remain in New Orleans at least as long as it took for his vision to fully return. He’d not only save money by staying at Monday’s place, but also benefit from sharing quarters with a nurse who could offer aid in the event of any unforeseen impediments to his recovery.
That was a wonderful ruse, all the more satisfying since neither of them believed it. Rusty’s eyesight greatly improved within seventy-two hours of being poisoned, but they both agreed he should stick around a little longer to st
ave off a potential relapse.
He ended up staying almost three weeks, and it was a healing time in more ways than one. The breathless moments he shared with Monday only grew sweeter with repetition, but it was the opportunity to reconnect with Prosper and Marceline that Rusty valued most.
During the day, when both women where working at Bon Coeur (Monday had resumed her duties after receiving a clean bill of health), Rusty would loiter around the Quarter for hours, often popping into the Mystic Arts Emporium. Sometimes he’d just merge with the other tourists and shoppers, silently watching Prosper work his craft from the back of the crowd.
Marceline’s return visibly rejuvenated the elder magician, spurring some of the most exquisitely rendered illusions Rusty had ever seen him perform. Once in a while, Prosper would invite him to assist with a particular trick, making a cryptic comment to the audience that this stranger might just know a thing or two about the mystic arts. On three occasions, a spectator asked Rusty if he was “that magician who used to play Vegas…you know, whatever happened to him?”
He demurred from directly answering those inquiries as politely as he could, then figured maybe it was better not to hang around the Emporium during peak hours. Instead, he would join Prosper and Marceline for dinner in the Quarter on nights when the old man decided to close up shop early. When Monday wasn’t working at Temptations, they made it a foursome.
Rusty waited three full days after the events at Anne Guillory’s house before deciding he couldn’t put off calling Dan Hubbard any longer. He sensed it might look better to visit the Sixth Precinct in person, but didn’t trust his eyesight completely and didn’t want to answer any questions about it.
He thought long and hard about what to say and what to omit before placing the call. In the end he concluded a good lie—or an entire network of lies—was much like a good magic trick, in that it was best kept as simple as possible.
Blind Shuffle Page 25
