In the living room Thorn took another pass by the photographs. The déjà vu had slackened but not gone away. He studied the photos one by one, seeing Carmen as she’d been as a child. Her starched white blouses, her chaste smile. A Bible in her hand in more than one. A rosary, a catechism. The trinkets of religious devotion.
Thorn doubted that Stanton or Lola had been worried about Carmen’s safety. What worried them was their own. That Carmen might be able to give a full description of the man who fondled her in her bedroom before Snake intervened. If the cops had an accurate drawing of Edward Runyon, someone might have come forward and the whole operation might have been exposed.
Then Thorn noticed, high on a shelf, a photograph he had missed before. He had to reach up and take it down to view it clearly. It was a color shot of Jorge Morales with his hip cocked against the fender of a chromed-up Studebaker. His arm was slung around the shoulders of a pretty young woman with bright red hair. He wore baggy tan trousers and a loose blue shirt that rippled in the wind. The handsome woman beside him had on checked capri pants and a dark sleeveless blouse. One hand reaching up to rein in her tossing hair.
Jorge’s free hand rested on the sleek hood of that fancy car, and the look of smug possessiveness in his eyes might be assigned to his feelings for either the fine automobile or the woman, or perhaps some combination of both.
The woman, in contrast, was gazing at Jorge’s profile with such intensity, there was no mistaking the object of her devotion.
“Is this your benefactor?” Thorn asked the sister.
“Her wish is to remain anonymous.”
“But this is her. This red-haired woman. This beauty.”
“I won’t deny it,” the sister said.
“Has Carmen ever seen this?”
“That’s why it’s kept on a high shelf. The lady brought it and put it there for reasons of her own. But apparently the image upset Carmen the one time she noticed it. We can’t take it down, because the lady drops by now and then and always looks for it. So it’s there, up high, out of sight.”
“Her name is Lola, isn’t it? Lola King.”
The woman said nothing, but her smile was sufficient.
That house of horrors had become a convent, a place where the girl’s beliefs in a heavenly order could be lived out in everlasting isolation. A timeless, cloistered existence that was sustained by Lola and Stanton King’s unflagging guilt. Or some mutation of parental love that was so twisted, Thorn couldn’t quite get hold of it.
They had raised two of the survivors in their own home, and cared for the third in this never-never land. While some might consider their motives big-hearted and pure, to Thorn it all stank of murder.
He was headed for the door and a breath of fresh air when a small detail hiding within one of the photographs registered.
He walked back to the shot of Jorge and Lola leaning against the car and held up the boxing photo next to it.
“What is it?” Sister Sharon asked.
“I’m no expert on women’s clothes,” he said.
When Sharon came to his side, Thorn touched Lola’s checked capri pants in the color photograph, then touched the woman’s trouser leg that was barely visible in the boxing photo. The woman’s right leg was pressed against Meyer Lansky’s left. The boxing photo had been cropped to exclude the rest of the woman who sat beside the mobster. All but that leg.
“I am no expert, either,” the sister said. “But yes, they appear remarkably alike. And the shoes as well.”
The shoes in both photos were black and had silver buckles the size of half dollars. It wasn’t DNA, but it was plenty. Lola had been Lansky’s date for Clay versus Liston. Which meant that it was almost certainly Lola who went along with Runyon and Humberto that night to watch her lover die for the crime of abandoning her.
If there was more proof floating out there somewhere, Thorn felt no further need to search for it.
He thanked the sister and went out into the hot sunlight.
Sister Sharon stood in the doorway for a moment, waiting for some last word, an expression of gratitude or censure. But Thorn was fresh out of emotion. He was just relieved to be outside in the lively air.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Sister Sharon called the monsignor, and the monsignor called her. The monsignor called to say a man had been at the house. A man had been asking questions, looking at photographs. And he had met the young lady. Carmen. A man. A man in the house.
After the man left, the nun felt bad that she’d opened the door to a stranger. The nun thought the monsignor should know. The monsignor thought Lola should know as well. Felt that Lola should know about the man coming into the house. The man had showed a great interest in that photograph, the color one. Lola leaning against a car.
Lola listened to the monsignor and said nothing in reply.
It was the queen’s sacred duty to dominate. Without a dominant queen, the hive could not function. If the ruling queen died, another female wasp immediately asserted herself and dominated. Without a queen, there could be no workers, no drones, no laying of eggs in the cells, no feeding of larvae with the dead insects she brought. There could be no defense of the hive. Without a queen, the hive was in mortal jeopardy. The hive was exposed. The hive, the hive.
The monsignor called to say a man had entered the house. A blond man, tanned and tall. An invader. The monsignor apologized. The nun was new on the job and she’d been caught off guard and wasn’t sure she’d done right. The monsignor thought Lola should know, should know. The monsignor thought she should know.
Sweet Jesus. The nest was cracked. The center exposed, its sticky gold. The stinging swarm with nowhere to go. Sting sting but nowhere to go. A buzzing cloud around her head, a halo of poison. Nowhere left to go.
The drone of wasps, their stingers erect—everywhere she looked was a gray blur.
Wasps defended their hive. It was their destiny, their blood oath. They defended even broken ones. Even hives lying asunder. They would never give up. Under attack, they would sting and sting. They would even kill members of their own colony, any threat to the hive, any threat at all.
Lola hung up the phone. She stood for a long while, thinking. Then she opened the box of pellets. She loaded pellets into the eight-shot rotary magazines. She loaded every magazine she had. Twelve, thirteen, fourteen. She loaded and loaded.
She stood at the attic slats, wooden louvered slats, and looked out at the yard below, the pool, the patio, the driveway to the street.
Beside her, hanging from a single filament, the papery nest was hectic. Wasps came and went, returned and left again, killing their prey and feeding the hive. Feeding, killing, feeding, killing. Egg, larva, pupa, adult. The metamorphosis was fully under way.
Snake spoke Carmen’s name in the quiet sanctuary of the Church of the Little Flower. He spoke her name, but she made no reply. She had no counsel, no encouragement, no consolation. The big room swelled with silence.
Snake paged through Carmen’s Bible. He read a passage, read another, but none of it made sense. Snake shut the Bible and thought of Cassius. He thought of the noble young man who was so flamboyant, so serious at the core.
But Snake was no Cassius and never had been. All they shared was that both were once outsiders, unwelcome in a foreign land. Cassius had fought his way into the hearts of his enemy. Those who once despised him ultimately embraced him and crowned him as their own. He’d earned it all by sweat and stamina and courage. He grew strong and stronger, and his smile lit up the stages of the world. Cassius was a winner, a champion, a man triumphant. And look at Snake. Opposite in every way.
At the front of the church the old woman who’d been in the confessional drew the curtain aside and hobbled down the aisle. Snake took his turn inside the ornate box. The purple curtain drew back and Father Meacham’s profile appeared.
“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.”
Father Meacham looked at Snake through the grate.
; “I killed a man today. I shot him in the chest. His name was Edward Runyon. He was the man who molested my sister just before she was shot down. I killed him and I feel no regret. When I leave here today I’m going to hunt down the rest who were involved. I know their names now. I’m going to track them down and kill each one. Stanton King and Lola King and Pauline Caufield and any others who get in my way.”
Father Meacham was staring wordlessly at Snake.
“I descended to the bottom of the bottomless cave, and I shined my light in the face of the monster. I found out what happened and why. Now I will have my vengeance.”
Father Meacham closed his eyes, bowed his head, and was silent.
“Does God have anything he wants to say to me, Father?”
Snake riffled the pages of Carmen’s Bible and stared at the priest. Several moments passed without response.
“No?” Snake said, and rose to his feet. “I didn’t think so.”
Snake waited a moment more, then walked down the aisle to the exit. He left the Bible behind in the confessional. He had no further use for it. The truth had not set him free. Perhaps more killing would.
Sugarman had lost a dangerous amount of blood. It was touch and go.
“Touch and go? Are you saying he could die?” In the backseat of the taxi, Thorn pressed the cell phone hard against his ear. Alexandra sounded far away. It was difficult for Thorn to tell if it was just a poor connection or if the frailness of her voice signaled the new condition of their bond.
“That’s all they’ve told me, just what I’ve told you.”
“And Stanton King is dead?”
“That’s right.”
“Pauline Caufield is injured and on the run.”
“On the run, or on the attack. I don’t know. She’s obviously desperate. She’s probably got a concussion. Beyond that, I can’t say.”
“When will you know more about Sugar?”
“He should be out of surgery in a couple of hours.”
“And you?”
“They have to do the arm again, new pins, cast. I’ll be all right.”
“They’re giving you something for the pain?”
She was silent for several seconds, and Thorn thought he’d lost her.
“You still there?”
“Yes,” she said. “They’re doing what they can about my pain.”
The taxi driver pulled onto St. Gaudens Road. Stanton King’s street. Lola’s street. Snake and Carlos’s street.
“Alex. I’m so goddamn sorry.”
“I’m sorry, too, Thorn.”
The line was filled with the buzz of silence, then a click ended it.
They’re doing what they can about my pain. The careful phrasing wasn’t lost on Thorn. The sort of pain that tormented the tissues of the body could be remedied or dulled. But the kind of hurt Alex was referring to could not be lessened by drugs or any man-made potion. From her tone, Thorn doubted that time or any comfort he might offer would do much good, either.
Thorn counted out the fare and added a tip.
Carrying the manila envelope, he walked to the front gates of Stanton King’s estate and looked down the drive. The gray Audi that Snake and he had been using was parked some distance from the front door. Near the Audi, a white Ford sedan with dark windows had rammed into the unforgiving trunk of an oak tree. Its grille was crumpled, and wisps of steam from its radiator coiled into the lower branches. The white Ford didn’t wear government plates, but it might as well have.
Thorn held his position and surveyed the grounds.
He had seen the house before in the photographs from the forty-year-old newspaper. The photos had presented it in an idyllic light—an opulent refuge for the two boys who’d lost their parents and sister in an explosion of violence. But the dwelling Thorn saw before him now was anything but idyllic.
The house was quiet and loomed with a faded nobility over its neighborhood. The Spanish mission architecture was reminiscent of some ancient Palm Beach hotel built for men in white suits and women in wide-brimmed hats and sun veils who played croquet and took their tea while European waiters tended to their every whim.
But the King estate was in the last stages of disintegration. The lawn was ragged, the paint washed out and patchy. The pink roof tiles were crumbling and blackened by mildew. Screens were ripped or missing entirely from the windows. It was the sort of house and grounds that required constant attention and an uninterrupted cash flow, and it obviously had been receiving neither for a very long time.
When grand old ladies like this one fell into such a sad state, it was time to sell the land and take the real estate winnings elsewhere. But people like Stanton King didn’t abandon South Florida. They had spent too many years setting their roots in that rocky, forbidding ground. Roots that tough and tangled in the limestone and coral rarely gave way.
Thorn stepped through the gate and onto the King property. Miles away over the Atlantic, dark clouds were muscling together and sliding upward toward the sun. Pulses of lightning brightened within the cloud banks, making muffled gray explosions. The clouds churned and roiled and half the sky had turned a frosty gray, while the other half was still bright blue.
It was weather that could swing either way: hours of raging storms with jagged shoots of lightning, or a day of perfect springtime sun. But even if it stayed out there and didn’t roll ashore, the black squall had an unsettling effect, flickering and rumbling like a distant battlefield. A reminder of the indifferent generals perched high above the human fields of war.
This sunny driveway where Thorn stood was not where he wanted to be, and this was not what he wanted to be doing. But he was no longer factoring in his own desires. He was acting on behalf of Lawton Collins, and in service to Mr. and Mrs. Shepherd Gundy, and for a girl who’d lost her life forty years ago but lingered in a dreary, unending twilight.
Snake Morales was on that list, too. His sister, Carmen, was still alive. Lola and Stanton, out of spite or some other brand of selfishness, had not informed him of the fact. Not that there was much hope that such news would heal Snake’s injuries; still, it seemed a small measure of justice that Thorn should pass the knowledge on.
Ten yards into King’s estate he saw the first sprinkle of blood on the flagstones. A few steps ahead was another spatter, and a yard beyond that was still more. A trail that headed directly toward the front door.
He touched the toe of his boat shoe to the closest dots of blood and smeared. They were only minutes old.
Squinting into the afternoon light, he tried to read the trail’s meaning. He took another step and changed his angle and saw that ten feet ahead the path of dark specks divided briefly, then rejoined. Which said that it was the track of not just one injured party, but two. The second had followed the path of the first but had lurched at least once along the way.
Thorn was stepping closer to the house, past the first dash of blood, when something plucked at his shirtsleeve and he felt a stunning jolt in his right biceps.
He staggered backward. The pain was intense, but after a second or two he found that it was localized, no more than a quick jab with an ice pick.
At the spot of the wound the sleeve of his denim shirt was pocked. He rubbed a finger against the throb and felt a lump embedded just below the skin.
He retreated another step, then another, till he was two paces behind the first spray of blood. He peered up at the house but saw no sign of life. With a finger he widened the rip in his shirt, then he set his teeth and squeezed the flesh around the lump. He had to use his fingernail to dig the object free.
He held it in his palm. The lead pellet had a flattened base, while its business end was sharpened to a nasty point. It resembled a squat steeple glistening with blood.
Ammo from an air rifle of some sort. Apparently the state-of-the-art BB gun was a hell of a lot more potent than the plinkers of Thorn’s youth.
He looked up at the house again, scanning the windows for any movement. One by on
e he tracked across them but saw no shadow, no silhouette, no twitch.
Another pellet stung his throat but didn’t lodge, and while he was scooting farther back, another skimmed the side of his temple. Thorn moved away another step, then halted. He watched the projectiles hit and skid and ricochet a few feet ahead of him. A new shot every other second. He stood there, safely out of range, and rubbed at the aching knot on his arm and wiped the smear of blood from his neck.
The pellets pinged against the flat rocks at his feet and skittered into the grass. He counted eight shots, then there was a pause of ten or fifteen seconds, apparently for reloading. Then the shooting resumed. This clearly wasn’t a pump-action single-loader. It was a semiautomatic with a magazine, eight pellets per clip. Each shot was sent flying by a burst of pressurized gas.
Fifty feet was the distance to the front of the house. If the shooter was as skilled as the previous shots suggested, Thorn figured he might take one or two more hits before he made it across. Fewer if he was lucky, more if he was not. Stumbling or stalling out from pain was not an option. Worst case, a pellet would find his eye.
He could try the back side of the house, or search for another entry point south. But the shooter might have those sides covered just as well or better.
He lifted the tail of his shirt and tucked the manila envelope under his belt. He set his feet, chose his course, lifted a hand to defend his eyes, and broke into a sprint.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Inside the front door he halted and took stock. The rump of a pellet protruded from his left palm. He pinched it out and tossed it on the rug. His earlobe was torn and bled down his neck like a botched piercing. Somehow a third slug had caught him high in the shoulder. He twisted his arm in that direction, bent his wrist backward, but could only graze the spot with his fingertips. No way to dig the sucker out.
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