Just do what I say, please, everything is going to be okay, don’t worry.
He ended the call quickly, then placed the next one. It didn’t matter that Messing would see the number from which he was calling. Soon enough Cal would be getting rid of that phone, like he had promised Heather he would.
Standing in the driveway, the property unlit, the tall wall of hedges blocking out the streetlights along Ox Pasture Road, Cal could barely see his hands in front of his face.
He was certain, though, that they were shaking once again.
Back in the gatehouse, he announced, “We’re all set. Messing will meet us in a half hour.”
Lebell was upright, sitting on the edge of the bed, the white comforter around his waist. He was obviously, Cal noticed, naked beneath.
“Good,” he said. “And Heather?”
“She should be on her way.”
Angelica had retrieved a roll of silver duct tape from the main house and had wrapped Lebell’s torso with it. Its stiffness was what was keeping Lebell upright. Tearing off a long piece of tape, she laid it on top of the bandage covering the wound on Lebell’s shoulder, to help hold the bandage in place. In addition to the tape wound tight around his torso, from waist to upper ribs, there was tape around his forearm, covering it from wrist to elbow like a gauntlet.
Cal had never seen a man so battered.
“You know, I could go for you,” Angelica said. She spoke softly, focused on her task. “Just tell me what to say, I’ll say it word for word.”
“No, I have to do it,” Lebell said. “They need to know that I’m still alive. I need them to think they didn’t hurt me, that he sent his best and I’m still walking around.”
She pressed down on the tape as carefully as she could, needed to make it stick if it was going help keep the deep cuts from reopening. Despite her care, Lebell winced.
“That’s if you don’t bleed to death in the car on the way there,” Angelica said.
“I’ll be fine.”
When she was done, it was time for them to get him dressed. Laid out on the bed was a change of clothes. Black pants and a sweater, shoes and a leather jacket. Expensive. These things, too, she had retrieved from the main house. It took Angelica and Cal working together to get Lebell into these clothes. It took them both to help him to his feet and, one on each side of him, guide him through the narrow rooms of the gate house.
Nearly every step caused Lebell to draw in air through gritted teeth. Once outside, they walked him through the chill to the Lexus.
When he was settled into the passenger seat, as Cal hurried around to the driver’s side, Lebell said to Angelica, “We won’t be long. Be ready to go when we get back.”
She nodded. “Be careful.” Looking over the roof of the vehicle, she said to Cal, “Both of you.”
The meeting place was Road D, a narrow beachside parking lot on the far end of Dune Road. Secluded, it was impossible to approach by vehicle from either direction without being seen, and impractical to reach on foot via the beach—at least not by anyone pressed for time.
Pulling into the lot, Cal parked close to the beach. He looked around first. The lot was empty.
“You better help me before he gets here,” Lebell said.
Cal hurried around to the passenger door, helped Lebell out and to his feet, then walked him to the back of the Lexus and leaned him against its trunk. Walking back to the lot’s entrance then, he stood watch, facing east.
There was, of course, no traffic at this time of night; the homes that lined Dune Road were lavish summer houses, and it was long past summer. So, who else but Messing, coming to meet them, would be on this road now?
A minute or so passed, and then Cal finally spotted a pair of headlights approaching. It wasn’t till the vehicle was almost upon them that he recognized it as an unmarked sedan. Cal felt Heather’s cell phone buzz in his pocket just as the car turned into the lot.
He grabbed the phone, read the incoming text.
Getting into cab.
He slipped the phone back into his pocket as the unmarked sedan parked beside him. Its headlights went dark, its engine silent. Messing emerged, looking first at Cal, then across the lot at Lebell.
Finally, he looked back at Cal and said, “What are you doing involved in this, son? I thought you were the one with his head on straight.”
“I’m just trying to help out a friend.”
“That’s often how it starts. Harboring a known fugitive, that’s some serious stuff.”
“Just listen to what he has to say.”
Messing glanced once more at Lebell. “Funny, that’s the same advice the chief gave me.”
He waited a moment more, then walked the Lexus. Cal was too far away to hear what they said. He watched them, though, when he wasn’t looking down the empty road for signs of headlights.
On the ride back, silence, two men deep in thought.
Lebell was laboring to breathe through the pain but also against the constraints of the duct tape wound tight around his ribs. Whatever strength had allowed him to hide his condition from Messing for the five minutes they’d stood face-to-face was all used up now.
Cal looked at the rearview mirror as he drove, saw no signs of anyone behind them. Did that mean no one was there? he wondered. Or was someone lingering just beyond his sight, holding back, waiting to pounce?
He thought of his father then, the man’s obsession with every strange car parked on their street, his habit of hiding a cocked gun within reach every time he went to answer the door.
“I think one of my cuts has reopened,” Lebell said. “I think I’m bleeding again.”
“I should take you to the hospital, man.”
“No, I just need to keep still. I can feel every fucking turn pulling on me, you know? Tugging, tearing me open.”
“Do you want me to pull over?”
“No. Listen, we need to change plans. I don’t think I can make it back to the garage tonight.”
“What should we do instead?”
“You and Angel should go there still.”
“We should stick together, don’t you think?”
Lebell shook his head. “Now that they know I’m alive and well, they’ll be after me. The reason I stood at the back of the car the way I did was so Messing couldn’t read the license plate. If he isn’t on the level, he would have used it to trace me to Angel. He still might be able to. He could run a search, find every silver Lexus registered in Southampton, which I’m sure is more than a few. It’d take time, but he’d eventually work his way to her. Anyway, once he gets the message to Janssen, they should back off, and I’ll be able to slip out of town when I’m ready.”
“When do you think that will be?”
“As soon as I can move without starting to bleed again. Tomorrow, maybe. I don’t know.” He took another stilted breath. “You’re going to need to stay sharp, Cal. This could still go very wrong. Don’t let them get their hands on the girls, whatever it takes. Promise me that, okay?”
“I promise.”
Lebell closed his eyes, nodded briefly. After a moment he said, “From what I’ve heard, Janssen has this big Russian dude working for him. He’s his driver and bodyguard, a scary fucker. And the woman he sent after me is tall and very beautiful, has dark, curly hair, so she’ll be hard to miss. If you see either of these two fucks coming—for that matter, if you see anyone you don’t know—you run, okay? You get yourself and the girls out of there, go far away and don’t look back. Got that?”
“Yeah,” he said. He thought not of the morphine hidden under the floorboard in his closet but the cash.
“Angel knows where the tapes are. She knows to get them and give them to a lawyer I’ve retained if I were to suddenly turn up dead. Janssen and Tierno can never know this, okay? They can never know that she knows where the tapes are. If they found out, they’d find her and fuck her up. So you can’t let me down here, man. Do you understand?”
“Yeah.”
/>
“She’s the closest thing to family I have left. I’m telling you now, I’d kill myself before I’d let them get their fucking hands on her.”
Cal looked over at his friend, said nothing.
“Once I’m out of town I’ll call you at the garage. I’ll call from a pay phone, so you won’t recognize the number. That’ll probably be the last you hear of me. Maybe, if I think it’s safe at some point, I’ll contact Angel and have her get in touch with you, but that won’t be for a while.”
Cal nodded, said, again, nothing.
At least this time he’d know in advance when they would speak their last words.
“Make sure you wipe down this car, okay? Everything we touched. From this point on you’re going to need to think that way. Like criminals. You’re going to have to be very careful and cover your tracks as you go. Tierno’s FBI, man. It took everything I knew about disappearing to run from him—and I know a lot about disappearing.”
Cal turned onto Ox Pasture Road. They were approaching the gate when he thought of his other reason for coming here.
“You didn’t happen to learn anything about Carver, did you?”
“No, man. I never even got to talk to George.”
Cal thought of telling Lebell what else had happened last night—his having to make a run to Shelter Island in the Citroën, his run-in with Heather’s husband, the possibility that Heather’s husband might soon track them to the garage through the Citroën’s owner, which mean that Cal’s days at the garage were probably over.
He thought then that maybe they could all run off together—Lebell and himself, Heather and Amanda, the four of them finding some safe place and settling down there, getting jobs, helping Heather raise her son. It would be useful to have someone as smart and as experienced as Lebell to tell them what to do and not to do, the ins and outs of disappearing.
Cal didn’t say anything about that, though, or about the events of the night before. Lebell looked like hell, and anyway they had already reached the gate.
Angelica was outside the gatehouse, waiting in the darkness, a small leather suitcase and a large plastic garbage bag stuffed full at her feet. Ready to go, just as Lebell had instructed. Cal knew that garbage bag contained the bloody clothes Lebell had arrived in, as well as the sheets and towels and comforter and used bandages stained with his blood. Every and any trace of his presence, he’d told her, needed to be accounted for and removed.
Cal got out and told Angelica about the change in plans, that Lebell needed to stay behind and rest. She took one look at Lebell’s pale face and asked Cal to help her get him inside. Easing him down on the couch just inside the front door—Lebell simply couldn’t make it any farther than that—Angelica told Cal to get the first aid kit from the bathroom.
He went to retrieve it, quickly glancing into the bedroom as he passed its open door. The bed was made, covered now with an old afghan. With the first aid kit in hand, he grabbed the afghan off the bed and a roll of paper towels from the kitchen counter as he returned to the living room.
He watched as Angelica worked, standing ready with the paper towels; there wasn’t much else for him to do. She opened the leather jacket and shirt, cut the tape that bound Lebell’s torso with rounded scissors, then peeled it back as carefully as she could.
It wasn’t just one cut that had opened up but two—the large one across Lebell’s stomach and a smaller one across one side of his chest. She held wads of towel against the wounds, applying pressure and soaking up the blood till the flow slowed enough so she could reapply fresh butterfly bandages. It was obvious to Cal that Lebell needed stitches, but there was no point, he knew, in expressing that.
When the butterflies were applied, Angelica placed clean gauze over both wounds, then reapplied the duct tape. As she laid the afghan over Lebell, she asked Cal if he would get a glass of water.
In the kitchen, Cal found a glass and the ornate ashtray in the dish drainer. He filled the glass from the tap, then returned to the living room with both items. He placed the glass on the coffee table and the ashtray on Lebell’s lap.
“Thanks, man,” Lebell said. “You should wipe off your prints.”
Cal did with a paper towel. Angelica put two pills into Lebell’s palm. He popped them into his mouth. She handed him the glass; he took a sip, then gave the glass back to her. A prescription bottle was on the coffee table. Painkillers, Cal assumed. Angelica slipped the bottle into the pocket of Lebell’s jacket. Then, reaching into her overcoat, she removed the pack of cigarettes and silver lighter, placing them in the clean ashtray on his lap.
There was nothing more that she could do, Lebell told her. It was time for them to go.
“Are you sure?”
“It’s better if we aren’t together for the next few hours. Cal will take care of you. Maybe he doesn’t look it, but, trust me, he’s a tough son of a bitch. Hard as coffin nails.”
Lebell glanced across the room at something then, did so suddenly, as if something surprising had caught his eye. Then, just as quickly, his attention shifted back to Angelica.
Cal turned and tracked Lebell’s line of sight to the living room window. He saw nothing there.
When he looked back at the couch, Angelica was leaning down, adjusting the blanket covering Lebell. She kissed his forehead.
Like a mother would a son, Cal thought.
There was no time for more than this. It was clear that Lebell wanted them to go, and now. Cal walked Angelica to the door, held it open for her as she moved through. He looked at Lebell, nodded once. Lebell nodded back.
“Your harem just keeps growing and growing,” Lebell said.
It was, of course, meant to be ironic—a harem took care of the man, not the other way around.
Outside the gatehouse, Cal geared up—jacket zipped tight, helmet and gloves on—then, on his old Triumph, led Angelica, in the Lexus, through the automatic gate and onto Ox Pasture Road.
It was three thirty, and much colder now, but his gear would keep him warm enough during the twenty minutes it would take them to reach Bridgehampton.
There was no room for the Lexus in any of the work bays, so Cal had Angelica park behind the building, between it and the bordering trees, where Heather had, till last night, kept the BMW.
Out of sight, in the shadows. The best they could do.
As Angelica watched, Cal quickly wiped the steering wheel and door handles down with the cuff of his steerhide jacket, then brushed the headrests for stray hairs. We have to think like this, Lebell had told him, like criminals. Doing so, growing up the way he had, came all too easy to Cal.
Deactivating the security system from the outside keypad, he led Angelica through the office and three work bays. She waited at the bottom of the stairs as he removed the pins and lifted the third door. Backing the bike inside, he closed and locked the door again, reinserted the pins, and ran into the office to reactivate the security system.
Sealed in tight, the two of them safe, he led her upstairs.
Her reaction to his rooms was one he’d seen before, from the few women he’d brought back here over the years. You live here? But it didn’t matter what Angelica thought of it, did it? This was different. He showed her to Heather’s room, asked if she needed anything. She said she didn’t. Despite the late hour, despite all that had happened, and could still happen, Angelica had that same calm about her, that same composure. She was sitting on the narrow bed and looking around the bare room when Cal left her.
In his own room he removed his peacoat and steerhide jacket but kept his boots on. Just in case. Glancing at his clock, he saw that it was almost four. How long since he’d slept? Long enough. He was tired now, but he knew he shouldn’t sleep—he wouldn’t have been able to even if he wanted to. Stay sharp. With those two words in his head, how could he even close his eyes?
He sat on the edge of his bed, holding Heather’s cell phone, wondering where she was right now, if the call she still owed him was overdue or not. Hard t
o know, one way or another. Perhaps it was best, considering everything, to assume the worst. He wondered what he would he do if he didn’t hear from her in the next few minutes. What should he do if he didn’t hear from her in the next half hour? Shortly after he had begun thinking that, though, the phone, still in his hand, suddenly buzzed.
It both relieved and startled him.
On the display was her new number.
“You okay?” he said.
“Yeah. Where are you?”
“At the garage.”
“Are you coming here?”
He had no idea where “here” was, thought to ask, then remembered that he couldn’t know. “Not yet,” he said.
“Why not?”
“I’m waiting for a call.”
“From who?”
“Lebell.”
“What the hell is going on, Cal?”
“It’s a long story.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“Lebell is in trouble.”
“What a surprise.”
“It’s not that. Someone from his past found him. They tried to kill him.”
“Jesus.”
“Everything’s going to be okay, though. We might have to take off. I mean, like tomorrow.”
“Does this have anything to do with your boss Carver?”
“No. Like I said, it’s someone from Lebell’s past.”
“He always seemed ... up to something to me.”
“Everyone’s got a past,” Cal parroted.
Heather was silent for a moment. “When will you know for sure? You know me, the farther we can get from here, the better.”
“Tomorrow,” he said. “Sometime tomorrow. Lebell can’t travel yet.”
“Why not?”
“He’s hurt pretty bad.”
Another pause, then, “You okay?”
“Yeah. I’m just tired.”
“Get some sleep, Mr. Fix-it.”
He smiled at that. “You, too, Heatherlicious. I’ll call you in a few hours.”
“Please do.”
So many directions from which violence could strike.
Cal thought about them all; there wasn’t much else for him to do as he lay on his bed and studied the darkness beyond his only window.
[2010] The Violet Hour Page 16
