“Maybe so.”
She eased off him a bit.
All of a sudden, outside lights went on, flooding the bedroom through the sliding glass door. There were shouts and sounds of commotion.
Evan got up, pulled on his jeans, and stumbled through the slider, the balcony frosted beneath his bare soles. By the barn four narcos were laid out on their backs, making tiny, listless movements. Another was curled on the wet ground beside them, clutching his stomach, vomit drooling from the side of his mouth. The skinny guard was off the tower, radioing frantically. He waved around one of the slender white remotes, clicking on more lights to illuminate the grounds. Samuel staggered out of the barn, veering unevenly toward the fire. He banged into the suspended pot, knocking it to the ground. A sludge of chili spilled out.
Samuel sat heavily on a crate, wiping sweat from his brow. He pointed to the dark glop of chili on the ground.
The skinny guard’s posture changed. His rail-thin shoulders lowered. He crouched and picked up one of the bone-china plates resting on a crate. Let it drop from his hand. It shattered. He sat on the crate, lowered his head into his hand.
Then he rose, doubled over, and ran into the barn. No doubt looking for a toilet.
“What?” Despi said, keeping a few steps back from the threshold to the balcony. “What is it?”
Before Evan could answer, he heard the resonant boom of the chalet’s front door opening. A moment later Dex lumbered off the porch into view, his massive back bowed, his shadow elongated before him. He approached the barn and spoke to Samuel.
Hard rain spit at Evan. He squinted through the haze as Samuel slid off the crate, collapsing to the ground.
Two dogs, three guards, two snipers, and Dex.
Dex turned, the lights of the eaves hitting him full in the face, his pale bald head seeming to glow. He stared directly at the balcony, at Evan. For a chilling moment, they locked eyes through the quickening rain.
Dex lifted his left hand and slapped the bloody scowl across his face. The tattoo colors were sharp in the glare, glossy red dripping from pointy incisors.
Evan backed into the room.
“What is it?” Despi asked.
The door flew open. Manny charged in, shotgun raised, firing a beanbag round that hit Evan’s center mass. It knocked him into the wall. He slid down lurchingly to sit on the floor.
Nando grabbed Despi’s bare shoulder and flung her behind him. She banged into the desk before falling to the floorboards at René’s feet.
With a polished loafer, René shooed her toward the door. She staggered a bit, pulling herself upright in time to collide with Dex’s chest, now filling the doorway. His rain-wet shirt clung to him, every muscle pronounced. He grabbed her by the wrist, wrenching her arm, and tugged her out of view. A moment later a door opened and slammed up the hall and Dex returned, pocketing a key.
Evan’s lungs were locked up. He couldn’t breathe.
With the toe of his boot, Manny tipped him over, cuffed his hands, hoisted him onto the bed. Evan leaned forward, his mouth wavering, air still out of reach.
At last his muscles relaxed, and he drew in a screeching breath and then another.
René walked over and leaned casually against the desk, examining his fingernails. “Let’s have a talk,” he said.
26
Man or Nature
Evan sat on the bed, his wrists cuffed painfully behind him. The flexible baton round had left a red mark the size of a fist in the middle of his chest. He was still having trouble finding oxygen.
And yet René wanted to talk. “My guards seem to have been stricken with an illness. Vomiting, diarrhea, crippling abdominal pain. I don’t suppose you know anything about that.”
“I don’t.”
René nodded as if Evan had confessed. “Your skills are fascinating,” he said. “I want to know more about you.”
Evan managed to get out a few words. “… not … that interesting.”
“You are to me.” René removed a kerchief, wiped his brow. His face was flushed from all the excitement. “What are you?”
“A drug kingpin. An arms dealer.”
“No. You’re more lethal than that. Something doesn’t add up about you. I’ve been thinking about your hobby, killing Contrell. Who does something like that? Who kills a human trafficker for fun?”
Evan did not respond.
“I’d imagine the same kind of person who would poison my guards,” René said. “Dr. Franklin is seeing to the men now.”
Manny and Nando glared at Evan, looking as though they’d like to beat him to death with their shotguns. Manny took a menacing step toward him, but René held up a hand and he halted.
“Those are our hermanos,” Manny snarled.
“No,” René said. “They were my employees. And they failed at their job. Make sure you don’t fail at yours.”
Dex barely had to move for the floorboards to groan beneath him. Manny looked at him, then stepped back into line.
René returned his attention to Evan. “There are two kinds of people in the world. Those who make messes and those who clean them up.”
The handcuffs forced Evan to hunch forward, but he looked up at René through a tangle of hair. “Which kind are you?”
“The third kind, who gets to make the categories.” His eyes gleamed from their burrows in his face. “You made a big mess tonight.”
Evan stared at Manny. “Or cleaned one up.”
Manny slid his tongue across his gold grill as if Evan were something he’d like to eat.
Someone tapped on the door, and then a man with long white hair came in, wearing a pair of tattered scrubs. The doctor hadn’t shaved in a few days; he had the wrecked good looks of an aging surfer who’d lived through one too many tequila sunrises.
“Hi.” Dr. Franklin looked across at Evan. “Oh. Hey.” Then at René. “Talk to you?”
René stepped out into the hall. Hushed murmurs carried back inside, though the words were unintelligible. Nando and Manny glowered at Evan.
It was an uncomfortable few minutes.
Finally René returned. “Six of my guards are in bad shape. Internal bleeding, renal failure. Their kidneys seem to be shut down.”
Manny made a noise between a growl and a cry.
“It is Dr. Franklin’s opinion that they ingested poisonous mushrooms.”
“It’s hard to distinguish them sometimes,” Evan said sympathetically.
“None of them claim to have picked any mushrooms, let alone added them to their chili.”
“If I added mushrooms to chili, I wouldn’t admit it either,” Evan said.
He watched Manny’s jaw tighten and enjoyed it a bit.
René cleared his throat. Evan was surprised to see his brown eyes moisten. “There’s nothing anyone can do,” René said. He added quickly, “And no major medical facilities nearby.”
“Here in Graubünden,” Evan added.
The chocolate eyes sharpened. “That’s right.” René swept a hand over his hair, though no strands were out of place. “They’ll die within days.”
“In excruciating pain.” Evan directed a look at Manny and Nando. “You should put them out of their misery. It’s the only humane thing to do.”
Manny and Nando studied the floorboards, waiting on their orders.
Evan switched his gaze to René. “Dying men drain resources quickly,” he added. “You should consider what’s best for everyone.”
After a moment René gave a little nod. “Do it kindly,” he said.
Manny bared his fourteen-karat teeth at Evan on his way out. And then Evan was alone with René and Dex.
“You’re upset,” Evan said.
“Not for them. For me.”
“Why’s that?”
“We all get sad when someone dies. It reminds one of one’s mortality.”
Jack’s blood-drenched hand trying to stem the arterial spray from his shoulder. The crimson soaked blue flannel mopped around Evan�
�s fist. Jack’s smile, rare as a rainbow, warming his eyes at the corners.
Evan said, “That’s why you think people get sad?”
“Remember when you first found out about death as a child? I never got over it. I don’t think any of us do. It’s an awful thing, to die. I don’t buy any of the marketing pitches that try to assuage the horror of it. Heroics of war. Drifting off into a blaze of white. The welcoming arms of God.” René’s teeth clenched, a sudden intensity. “I don’t want to,” he said. “And I won’t.”
“You’d be the first.”
His lips pursed, pulled taut. “Remember how long summer used to last when you were a child? An eternity. Everything still in front of you. Life feels … limitless.” He folded his hands at his waist and studied them. “And then one day you see a picture. You’re in your thirties, getting out of a pool in Santorini. And your hair is thinning, so much so that you can see the scalp beneath. It’s been that way for a year, maybe years—how often do you see a photograph of yourself swimming?” His palm rose again, hovering over his thinning hair. He seemed to realize what he was doing and pulled his hand away. “I don’t like limits. Being told what is possible. By man or nature. Just like you.”
“No,” Evan said. “You want to be everything. I want to be one thing well.”
“Then you suffer from a failure of imagination.” René leaned forward, a fall of light illuminating his meaty features, the dried dabs of cover-up, the augmented hairline. “We all want to beat death. It just becomes embarrassing to admit. But think if you could. Control time. If you control time, you control everything.” When he leaned back against the chairless desk, the thick fabric of his suit rippled like spread butter. “Imagine being who you were in your twenties.”
“Like the good book says, ‘You can’t repeat the past.’”
René smiled, showing a gleaming row of beautiful ivory caps. “‘Why of course you can!’”
The cuffs were cutting off the circulation in Evan’s hands. He wondered how long René was going to leave them on.
René produced the skinny bottle and sprayed down the surfaces he’d touched. “Uncuff him and lock him in,” he told Dex. On his way out, he paused before the big man. “No need to be gentle.”
Dex’s softball biceps flexed as he raised his right hand and cupped it over his mouth.
Happy face.
27
Six in Total
Evan lay on his back in the darkness, waiting for the gas to hiss through the vent and knock him out. He was tired enough to sleep without the encouragement, but there was no way René could know that.
He had just drifted off when a distant gunshot woke him. And then another. They kept on at regular intervals, one after another.
Six in total.
The vibration of the final bullet held the air for an extra few moments, unwilling to let go. At last there was complete silence.
Evan stared at the ceiling.
To Alison, to the boy, he sent a simple thought: I’m coming soon.
Then he fell asleep on his own.
28
The Grim Reapress
The next morning Evan was roused from sleep with a shotgun pressed into the side of his neck. He opened his eyes, looking up the length of the barrel past the neon orange stock at Manny. Manny grimaced, those teeth flashing—Jaws from James Bond gone rapper. “Get your culo up.”
Evan eased to a sitting position. The metal bore remained shoved into the side of his throat. Nando stood five feet back and to the side, a second shotgun at the ready.
“You’re wanted downstairs,” Manny told him. “But I’m thinking maybe you have a accidente right here. You made a move on me. I reacted.”
Evan’s eyes slid to Manny’s finger on the trigger. His knuckle was white, the trigger partially depressed. Another half pound of pressure and the opposite wall would be wearing Evan’s trachea.
“Samuel. Yoenis. Álcides. Memo. Luis. Eddie. I will not forget those names.” Manny’s voice shook. “We took them out to the woods last night. And said good-bye.”
Tears leaked from his eyes, but he kept the shotgun level, making no move to wipe his face. He glided the barrel up Evan’s chin, ground it across his cheek, shoved his nose to the side.
Evan didn’t meet his eyes. He looked at the far wall. Kept his body language neutral. Hoped he hadn’t pushed Manny far enough that he’d contradict René’s orders and kill the golden goose. Though Evan had stared down more gun barrels than he’d care to recount, decapitation by beanbag presented new intricacies he didn’t want to contemplate.
Santa Muerte’s skull head grinned from the side of Manny’s neck. The Grim Reapress. She wore a blue cloak bedecked with roses, one skeletal hand clutching a scythe, the other an hourglass. At the moment of death, she was said to sever the silver thread of life.
Evan wondered if now was the moment that the scythe would fall, that his own thread would be cut. He stared ahead. Waited for a one-centimeter movement of Manny’s knuckle.
“Manny,” Nando said. “Manny.” He stepped forward and tugged at Manny’s shoulder. An instant later the pressure relented.
“We won’t forget what you made us do,” Manny said. “Now get your shit downstairs.”
* * *
Evan was marched along the ground floor through a moist corridor scented of lavender and rose water. At Nando and Manny’s prompting, he pushed through a glass door beaded with condensation and stepped into a sprawling spa area.
They passed a Jacuzzi, a cold-water plunge pool, a teabag stuffed with herbs slung into a freestanding marble tub. Various enclosures were labeled with sleek metal placards: SAUNA, EUCALYPTUS STEAM ROOM, RAIN SHOWER. The Korean mist room featured a concrete bench studded with large smooth pebbles, matching the Zen-Disneyland motif of the rest of the spa.
They came to a small lap pool fringed with artificial grass that crunched pleasingly beneath Evan’s bare feet. He was wearing only the boxer shorts he’d slept in.
René waited cocked back in a zero-gravity chair, paperback hoisted overhead, the inverted V like a bird in flight. An IV tube snaked from one arm to a saline bag dangling off a chrome stand.
Smoking an electronic cigarette, David propped himself against a paisley-shaped bar made of rich polished wood and decorated with a string of fat Christmas lights. A bottle of Bacardi 151 sat beside his rocks glass, which was filled to the brim with square ice cubes and the amber rum. A tray of bar treats waited at his elbow. He munched Doritos from a crinkly bag, puffed vapor, sipped his drink.
René rotated forward in his chair, sinking his feet into a bubbling tank suffused with blue UV lighting. As Evan neared, he noticed dozens of tiny fish inside, swirling about René’s feet and ankles.
René flicked his paperback toward the bar. “Made from sustainably farmed rain-forest wood from Brazil,” he said. “Can you imagine caring that much?”
“Why do you have it, then?”
“None of this is mine.” His gesture encompassed the chalet. “I rent this life. What is mine is hidden away down a rabbit hole.” A smile. “Just like you do it.”
Leaning over a side table, he exchanged his book for one of the slender white remotes that seemed to operate the entire chalet and its personnel. He keyed a few buttons and let it rattle back onto the table.
A moment later two huge metal panels in the far wall parted to reveal a narrow elevator with Dr. Franklin inside. He trudged over to René, cautiously removed the IV from the crook of his elbow, and scurried back to the elevator. The doors closed, and Evan watched the lit numbers above as the doctor descended to a basement level.
Straightening his pricked arm, René buttoned his shirtsleeve. Even here in the humidity of the spa, his sartorial elegance was on display. “Would you like a refreshment?”
“Bag of Doritos would be good.”
“Nando, please fetch our guest some chips.”
Before Nando could move, David reached for a bag.
“Don’t, Dav
id,” René said. “Let Nando handle it.”
David smiled around his plastic e-smoke filter, the blinking Christmas lights casting his face in different colors. He pushed himself off the bar, walked across to Evan, and held out the bag. Manny and Nando moved closer, aiming at Evan’s head.
David shook the bag in front of Evan. “Go on,” he said.
Evan took the Doritos.
David scanned Evan’s body. “You don’t strike me as the junk-food type.”
“You don’t strike me as the e-cigarette type.”
“Oh. This. I’m trying to work my way up to real cigarettes, but I hate the taste. I just graduated from nicotine patches.”
“Congratulations.”
David gave a mock curtsy.
“Step away from him,” René said.
“He’s not gonna hurt me,” David said.
René tilted his head at Manny, who gently but firmly pulled David back toward the bar while Nando and his raised shotgun eased into Evan’s blind spot.
David returned to his overproof rum. “You’re such a dick,” he said into his rocks glass. “You think you can control everything.” He gulped down the rest, slammed the heavy tumbler on the sustainably farmed rain-forest wood, and ambled out.
René smiled indulgently.
He followed Evan’s gaze, looking down at his feet. In the tank the fish had clustered around his toes and heels. “You starve them, you see. Doctor fish. At a certain point of hunger, they develop a taste for human flesh. I suppose anything will. They eat away the dead skin, slough off the calluses and psoriasis patches.” The grin widened. “Nibble away my imperfections.” He waved a hand. “You’re welcome to have a treatment yourself.”
Evan pictured himself with cucumber slices on his eyes, slathered with mud, Manny and Nando zeroed in on him over shotgun sights.
“No thanks.”
“Maybe have Dr. Franklin do some laser treatment on that nasty scar on your stomach.”
Evan stared down at the white line on his abdomen where a woman had once slid his own knife beneath his ribs. He’d stitched it up himself on the floor of his bathroom, a bloody, painful affair during which he’d discovered fresh nuances in an already intimate relationship with pain.
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