Two thick black snakes were stretched out sleeping next to the bags, their heads resting like rubber fists against the cinderblock wall.
My heart rate accelerated, and I looked back up the stairs. When I turned my head back I saw another door set in the third wall. The snakes appeared to be sleeping. I eyed them as I walked over to the door.
The door had been secured with a padlock fastened through a hasp. I put my ear to the cool wood and heard the steady hum of an appliance through the door. I stepped back and listened. There was still no movement above in the cottage. I walked to the east wall and grabbed the sledgehammer by the wood handle and returned quickly to th qur in e door. I swung the hammer once and tore the hasp off its hinges. Then I kicked open the door.
Inside, a carefully arranged room was carpeted in red. A mattress lay in one corner and a camera set on a tripod pointed down at the mattress. The walls of the room had been paneled in sound-treated tile. On one wall hung oak shelves filled with black videocassette cases. In one of the shelves a television rested beside a VCR. On another wall several mounted photographs depicted acts of sodomy and rape. Many of the photographs were simply closely cropped shots of women’s faces. The faces reflected fear and pain.
A portable humidifier sat on a table and hissed steam into the room. Next to the table the coils of an oil heater glowed red. The room smelled of oil and incense.
I scanned the videotape selection. The cases were unlabeled, as were the tapes within. I walked back to the doorway and looked up the stairs, then returned to the bed and threw back the sheets. The mattress cover was clean. I felt the mattress and then lifted it. A brown leather briefcase lay beneath it on the red carpet.
I grabbed the briefcase by the handle and pulled it free from the bed’s frame and dropped it on the floor at my feet. I fumbled with the catch-it wasn’t locked-and opened the hinged top. I looked inside and ran my hand along its contents. Then I closed the briefcase and got up off my knees and walked quickly from the room, past the snakes on the cinder-block wall and the tools and the bags containing rooted plants, and up the stairs to the landing, through the narrow hallway to the living room, where I ran now, out the front door and off the porch and across the hard earth to my Dart parked beneath the oak.
I jangled my keys and fit one into the trunk and raised its lid. Inside, my nine-millimeter sat loaded and wrapped in oilskin. I set the briefcase next to it and slammed the trunk shut. Then I looked for my ignition key as I moved to the driver’s side of my Dart. I had opened the door of it when I noticed a tall man leaning in the entranceway of the sty, fifty yards away.
His arms were folded and he was staring at me with a grin. Some of his thick black hair had fallen in front of his eyes. Tommy Crane pulled the hair back behind his ears.
He said, “Can I help you, friend?”
I looked into the car and fingered the ignition key. I might have made it, though maybe not-Crane was quick, I had seen it in his walk-but it didn’t matter, because by then I had already decided to push it. Billy Goodrich had hired me to find his wife; I had only found the money, so for me it wasn’t over. I closed the door and stepped away from the car.
“I didn’t see your truck,” I said with what I knew was an unnatural smile.
“I can’t hear you,” Crane said.
“I said, I didn’t see your truck.”
“I lent it to a friend.” Crane was wearing his black down vest over a red chamois shirt. He made a sweeping gesture with his hand. “If you want to talk, come on. We can do it in the sty, but I don’t have time to fuck around. I got work to do.”
I looked behind me to the empty gravel road that led into the dimness of the woods. Then I looked back at Crane. “Okay. Let’s talk.”
I walked toward the sty. By the time I reached the hinged gate, Crane had ducked inside. I cleared the lip of the entrance without lowering my head and stepped into the cinder-block structure. The concrete floor was freezing, and the cold traveled up and numbed my calves.
Crane was by the back exit, standing in front of the punchboard that held the butchering knives. He had picked up the black hose that had been coiled beside the copper trough. Liquid boiled inside the trough, and beneath it burned an orange pile of embers. The rank smell of swill filled the sty.
I moved toward Crane and passed a litter of piglets feeding from a sow beneath the warmth of an infrared lamp. Another sow lay alone in a farrowing pen. I could see the balance of the pigs through the exit in the yard out back. Some were down behind the bales of hay. The rest were moving slowly about, wheezing and snorting as they bumped one another with their snouts.
Crane fingered the brass nozzle of the hose and tightened it with a white-knuckled turn. “So,” he said, looking at the nozzle. “You came back.”
“I said I would.”
Crane slid his hand down off the nozzle and wrapped his fingers around the black rubber. “Sayin’ it’s one thing. The other day, you didn’t look like you had the stones.” He squinted. “What changed your mind?”
“A dirty cop, back in D.C.”
Crane studied my discolored jaw. “A cop, huh?”
“That’s right. He told me to stay off the case. But it didn’t really matter that he was a cop. He was just another guy, looking to get a piece of April Goodrich. It happened like that her whole dumb life. And I think the last time it happened, it happened here.”
Crane said, “How you figure, friend?”
“It wasn’t too tough.” I walked around Crane and leaned my back against the punchboard. It gave me a view through the entrance to the yard outside. I could see most of my car, and beyond that the empty gravel road that ran into the woods. My car sat alone beneath the oak. I thought of Russel and the warmth of his kitchen, and the care he gave to his animals. I wondered if he had picked up the phone and made the call.
“April headed west,” Crane said.
“No,” I said, “she didn’t.” Two large black pigs stood blocking the exit to my left, and Crane had squared off in front of me.
“Then where is she?”
I shifted my weight. “Here, somewhere. She came down with a briefcase full of money she stole, from back in town. You killed her for the money. Or maybe you killed her for the kick. Either way, Crane, you killed her.”
Crane said, “You crossed the line now. You better be able to prove what you’re sayin’.” ‹›
I reached into the pocket of my jeans, pulled out the silver antique ring with the ruby stone, and held it out. Crane’s black eyes widened. I said, “Here’s my proof.”
“That’s a stupid trick,” Crane said. “And it’s one you’re gonna die for.”
He swung the hose. The brass nozzle clipped my shoulder. I felt the sting and tucked my chin into my chest and pulled my elbows in, my balled fists in front of my face. I backed up and Crane swung again, making contact across my forearm. I grunted as the nozzle broke the cushion of muscle and reached the bone.
The black pigs screamed from the doorway. Crane made an animal sound and bared his clenched gray teeth as he brought the hose up over my head. It came down with force, but I moved to the side, and the nozzle chinked the concrete. Before he could bring it back up I pushed him off balance with an open palm, then came quickly out of my stance and fired off a left to his lower back and then a hard right into his kidneys, aiming two feet deep. Crane dropped the hose and doubled down to catch his breath, and when he did I moved in front of him again. I had time to rear back on this one, and Crane didn’t even blink as he watched my punch come straight in and connect square on the bridge of his thick nose. The nose gave like dry sponge, but it only moved Crane back one step. He straightened up and walked toward me, blood inching down over his lip.
I stumbled and fell back. Crane grabbed me by the shirt and pulled me back up. There was blood now streaked across his teeth, and in his eyes a mechanical rage. He shook me and then without releasing his grip quickly moved me backward with a shove that sent me into the punch
board. Knives loosened and fell to the concrete. I groped for the handle of the largest one as it bounced but got my hand around its steel blade instead. I heard pigs wheezing and I heard Crane laugh as he kicked my hand and pinned it against the punchboard. I felt the edge of the blade bite the skin of my fingers, and I watched my hand release the knife, and I saw the clean, even slice and then the blood.
Adrenaline brought my knee violently up into Crane’s balls. He grunted and his eyes jerked skyward, and I shot my hands up between his and broke out of his grip. He threw a wild roundhouse. I ducked it, then shifted to the left and came up in a boxer’s stance and combinated again with a left and then a right to his back. Crane screamed and spun with a hammer fist that hit my ear like a club and knocked me to the ground. I was up quickly and shaking my head clear when he grabbed me and ran me into the punchboard again. My forehead hit first, and as he pulled me back the sty was spinning and the sounds of Crane and the pigs were in the distance. I was pushed out the exit then, and I fell to my knees in the hard mud, and Crane put a boot to my back. I rolled over and stared at the moving gray sky as squealing pigs brushed my arms and walked with manic clumsiness across my chest. I was still trying to make the sky stop moving when everything suddenly turned to night.
It was day again. I raised myself up on one elbow. The pigs were now back along the fence. I moved my arms at the joint and then my legs. Nothing was broken, and nothing felt right. I wiped blood from my palm onto the leg of my jeans and stared at the ground until I could focus on the ridged mud. When I looked up I saw Crane taking long strides through the sty in my direction. The snub-nosed. 38 was in his hand.
“I should have killed you straight up,” he shouted, still walking with purpose. “Makes no difference now.”
I didn’t try to move. I took a deep breath and smelled the air, and I remembered that it was Christmas Eve. Crane ducked his head and exited the sty. I thought of my grandfather, and of his hand around mine, the two of us, walking at night through the snow. Crane stood over me and cocked the pistol’s hammer and pointed the. 38 at my head.
He said, “No mess, friend.”
There was a roar. Crane’s red shirt ripped apart in the middle of his chest, and his black vest waved out as if it had been blown by a sudden gust of wind. Blood and bone jetted out and rained down. Crane threw the. 38 aside and did an airy two-step dance. His eyes rolled as he fell to the ground and landed at my side, his arm draped across my chest. The arm jerked in spasm. I pushed it off me. Then I looked in the direction of the sty.
Hendricks was standing in the exit. Smoke curled out of the barrel of the. 357 that he held at his side.
I wiped chunks of Crane off my face with a shaking hand. I looked at what was left of him. His mouth was open and his gray teeth were sunk into the mud. The large white boar hobbled by and stopped and inspected Crane’s inert body. Something like a smile was on the boar’s snout. I looked at Hendricks and nodded. Hendricks nodded back.
“April’s dead,” I said.
“Then Crane had it comin’.”
“Maybe so,” I said. “But you didn’t have to kill him.”
Hendricks smoothed out the brim of his hat as he holstered the. 357. “I was aiming for his legs,” he said, with a shrug. “Sight’s way off on this goddamn Smith and Wesson.” A slight gleam appeared in his eye. “Gotta get that son of a bitch fixed. Know what I mean?”
TWENTY-ONE
Hendricks walked slowly back to his car and radioed for an ambulance. While we waited for it he had a seat beside me in the mud and asked for the details. I handed him April’s ring and described everything I had seen in the cottage, with the exception of the brown leather briefcase. Hendricks listened closely. He never once looked at Crane or touched the corpse.
When the ambulance arrived I left the keys to my car with Hendricks and was gurneyed and rushed north to La Plata General. I spent the next three hours in the emergency room, mostly next to a moaning, liver-spotted old woman who had stumbled and broken both wrists on what was probably her last Christmas Eve. She complained about her daughters who lived in Pittsburgh and never called, even at Christmas, and I sat there and let her complain. I had eaten a couple of Tylenol 3s, and I wasn’t feeling all that bad. But a taste of whiskey would have made things a whole lot better.
The bearded doctor who finally saw me had the look of a lawn and gardIsnfonen department manager. He cleaned out the cut across the inside of my hand and wrapped my fingers together with tape over a gauze bandage. After that I was ushered off into a busy room and laid on a cold table, where an unsmiling brunet with shapely but occupationally cumbersome breasts took several X-rays of my bruised arms and shoulders. Everything turned up negative.
I asked for “something stronger,” but the good doctor ignored me as he pushed his wire-rimmed glasses back up over the bridge of his nose and wrote out a prescription for more Tylenols. When I was released I walked out to the parking lot alone. Hendricks leaned on the trunk of my Dart. His white car sat idling next to mine.
I followed him to the station in La Plata and sat at a nondescript metal desk in a room that had a gated chain fence run along its interior. Hendricks asked me the same questions he had asked earlier, and I tried to duplicate my answers exactly. When it was over I asked if I was to be charged with anything, and I asked if my name would be released to any of the local media. He answered no to both questions, and I thanked him again and wished him a good Christmas. He did the same, and as he handed me the keys to my car I shook his hand and said good-bye.
Two miles up the road I pulled off onto the shoulder, got out of the car, and walked back and unlocked my trunk. Inside was my automatic, and next to that the leather briefcase. I closed the trunk and got back into my car and stopped at the next open bar and had a beer and two shots of Jim Beam, then drove back to my apartment in Shepherd Park.
My landlord was waiting for me at the door with my annual Christmas present, a fifth of green-seal Grand-Dad. I gave him a hug and a kiss on his dark brown cheek, and picked up my cat on the way in, rubbing the scar tissue in the socket of her right eye as I carried her. My landlord followed me. I poured two slugs of Grand-Dad into juice glasses and shook two Tylenol 3s into his palm, and two into mine, and we washed those down with the bourbon. Two hours later the bottle was nearly empty, and I had the English Beat’s I Just Can’t Stop It on the stereo, full blown, and my landlord and I were dancing wildly around my living room while my cat watched calmly from her roost on top of the radiator. It was Christmas Eve, and I guess I had a right to celebrate, but I wasn’t thinking about the holiday. I was thinking that I had come close this time, that I had seen the empty black eye, and I had walked away. I was thinking how good it felt to be alive.
Hendricks phoned me from southern Maryland two days later. A dog search of Crane’s property had failed to turn up any sign of April Goodrich. The cottage had been combed as well, with no result. Only when Hendricks screened the tapes from the root cellar did he find the evidence.
The collection had consisted of the standard rough trade pornography, with a few snuff films in the bunch. On the tail end of one, some home video footage had been cut in.
“You sure it was her?” I said carefully to Hendricks.
“Yeah,” he mumbled. “You don’t want to know the details, Stefanos. Let’s just say he did her like one of his pigs. Tied up, with one bullet to the head.”
I thought about it and closed my eyes. Hendricks cougHenlked awayhed once on the other end of the line. I said, “That kind of thing can be faked, Hendricks. Any reason to think…”
“No reason. Listen, Stefanos-I’ve seen the tape, you haven’t. What I saw can’t be done with trickery, or special effects. April Goodrich is dead. Now, I don’t know the motive, except that Crane surely was one sick son of a bitch. But it doesn’t matter now, does it?”
“I guess not,” I said, thinking of the money.
“I called her husband,” Hendricks said.
�
�I know. I spoke to him myself.”
“How’s he doin’?”
“How would you be?” I said.
“Right,” Hendricks said.
“There’s a service for her tomorrow, outside of town.”
“I never get that close to D.C.”
“Bad things happen in the country too, Hendricks.”
“Bad things happen everywhere,” he said tiredly. “You take care.”
The memorial service for April Goodrich was held in a small Baptist church in Beltsville, just south of Laurel. April had no family, and none of her former friends were in attendance. The group consisted of Billy, his parents, me, and a pale, anemic minister. I kept three pews back from Billy and his family and watched Billy the entire time. He stood with his hands folded, expressionless throughout.
Outside the church I shook Billy’s hand and began to walk away. Billy told his parents to wait on the front steps and followed me across the gravel lot to my Dart. He caught me as I was putting the key to the driver’s side lock.
Billy thanked me for coming, and for seeing everything through to the end. Then he asked if I had “found anything” that day at Crane’s.
I shoved him back with both hands. Billy fell onto the gravel. He sat there looking up at me, and we stared at each other for what seemed to be a very long time. Finally I got into my Dart, started it, and pulled out of the lot.
In the rearview I saw him stand and brush the dirt from his billowing cashmere overcoat as he watched me drive away. Billy’s parents were behind him, staring at us both. They held each other on the steps of the church, wondering what kind of horrible thing had finally happened, just then, to end it between their son and his old friend.
TWENTY-TWO
The day after April’s service I took the Metro to Gallery Place and had lunch at the District Seen. A bartender in combat fatigues served me a club sandwich and a cup of vegetable beef to go with it. I washe Metrod that down with a Guinness, and then another while I read that week’s City Paper and listened to De La Soul on the house deck. When bicycle messengers started to crowd the place, and Jaegermeisters were served, I settled up my tab.
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