The Prince Of Deadly Weapons

by Boston Teran

  Merton's cellular rang. He answered it. All the indiscriminate threads of this were starting to connect.

  She crawled out from beneath the pylons and into the tule reeds along the berm. All she had to do was reach that maze of junk and machinery the Fenns stored and the darkness beyond was simple, Locke was but a long exhausting walk in the rain.

  She grubbed up the bank as Merton told the others, "We're going to Mexico. Tonight." From a crouch she took off but before she made it into that pathway of stacked heaps a sensor light along the roof line flooded down on her and Damon Romero caught the wraithlike back of an oil skin slicker running into that raining blackness.

  She heard them yelling as they spread out. She wasn't sure if they were chasing after her, or chasing away some phantom trespasser. But when a shotgun went off in a cyclopean moment of blue thunder tearing apart the trees far behind she felt as if her heart had burst right up into her mouth and she rushed headlong through a world of remote shapes like a half mad figure as another blast charred out of the night, and she could have sworn, even over the sound of the rain and her jabbing cuts at the brittle undergrowth, that somewhere above her branches had been sheared away.

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  A BROKERED SILENCE could not be as complete as the one Dane and Nathan waited through. Not even the sea's tidal pull seemed able to touch them. The minutes passed in profound discomfort.

  Two other men entered the salon. One was slightly older than Nathan. He was clearly African, but with agate eyes and glittering light brown skin. The younger man looked to be related.

  They did not speak. No names were given, no introductions exchanged. All forms of polite diplomacy were carried on with the physical nomenclature of slight nods and subtle hand gestures. The two men sat together facing Nathan and Dane.

  Nathan took the carryall from the floor and stood. He set the carryall on the glass table and opened it. He began to remove packets of money which he neatly stacked in rows. As he did this the older man glanced past the money to Dane. He held the older man's gaze. It was a moment of sameness and difference. A moment where each face calculates what is behind the face they are seeing, what exists there. The world as we know it is expressed in these tiny gestures, as filled with fraud as they are.

  When Nathan was done the older man spoke to the younger man in French, who then asked Nathan, "We know it isn't much, but we cannot allow ourselves to be stolen from. You know, then, who did this?"

  Nathan shook his head he did not. He sat. He slid the carryall from the table. He folded his hands and looked from the older man to the younger man to the older man as he said, "Ask the gentleman something for me. I ask with all deference. Sometimes partners change the terms of their deal. Sometimes deliveries are—"

  The younger man stopped him. He explained what was said to the older man in language that was terse and hardly positive. The older man's richly colored skin took on a certain tumult and there was no masking what those agate eyes said.

  Nathan returned the stare unflinching. The older man made one decisive gesture and it was Dane who saw the well-fed body of steroids cross the salon. A blacks tun gun had slipped down into its hand.

  Before Dane could even say, "Nathan," it was over. Two hundred thousand volts had been jammed into the base of Nathan's skull.

  Dane could hear the coarse staccato as the current ravaged right through his body. Nathan lifted out of the seat in shocked contortions. He hit against the steam-bent mahogany slats and by the time he collapsed onto the cold sandstone floor he was convulsing horridly.

  The stun gun bared down on Dane's face and held there as if tempting him to act. He did not. He heard the older man say "Cauchemar," and then in French he said, "Empty the meat locker."

  * * *

  ESSIE RAN till there was no more need for running, but she kept running anyway and only when she'd looked back enough times to answer the stark terror she felt, did she stop.

  Somewhere in that mile of black wetland between The Meadows and the town of Locke she stood in the dark, soaked and shivering. Her flesh was ice-cold red. She looked down and saw one shoe missing, how or where it had come off was a mystery. From the wound in the palm of her hand blood rivered down her fingers. She had barely escaped drowning in a private doom, and she knew it.

  A low bleary cry from her soul broke through in all its human frailty. She was disoriented and fending off collapse. What happened on the way to Mexico? Why were the others leaving? She needed to get to Locke—

  She called out Dane's name. "We'll be all right," she said. "We'll be all right."

  For support she struggled through the underbrush toward a tree that rose starkly in the rain. She leaned into the bark and held on.

  The man… the one in the window… who was at Disappointment Slough the night of the murder… what was his name… he'd given testimony at the hospital… he'd been so fuckin' kind… what was his name…?

  Was the world unraveling around her, or was she just unraveling in the face of the world? To open a door to a crime, any crime, is to open a door into one's self.

  She stared at a black chamber of thickets and baize-skinned shrubs. Of sloping wetland and marsh with its wind twisted trees. She stared, all filthy and soaked, listening to the rain, trying to calm herself and reach into the living darkness around her as if some animistic power hid there that she could draw out and use to help pull the parts of her together that were fast coming apart.

  She was holding on, but she was lost. She didn't know which way was Locke. She had been running blind. Her head moved like a groggy prizefighter looking for some direction, some sign, something—

  Then she saw the television tower. Even through all that drizzled mist she could make out the spare trail of lights that climbed its spindle thin construction. And what she'd explained to Dane, she did. She anchored those tower lights rising into the sky like the needle of a compass, pulled her bleeding hand up against her chest, tucked her head down into the hood of her slicker, and started.

  * * *

  DANE WAS taken down a circular stairway. Below, a forward stateroom had been turned into a lazaret of sorts for wine and liquor. There were also two large freezers, both silver. One was shaped remarkably like a coffin. This was being emptied. The contents strewn on the gray stone floor.

  The older man looked at Dane, first to see if the boy understood what was about to happen, and if he did, how it was affecting him.

  Dane tried to shut out the bare dead sound every time something frozen, and with weight, hit the stone floor. But fear was in play. It was beginning to move against the walls of armor we all wear to defend ourselves against the notion of our ultimate annihilation.

  Dane felt pale. He tried to blank his face, to give them nothing to feed on. Inside a trembling and sickness had begun.

  The older man asked Dane through the younger man why he had been brought here. Dane pointed to his eyes, and just as he did every time he made a sales pitch he told his story. From the subway platform to this very moment, with every stop in between. Every errant and mordant detail that was either true, or a lie he'd already told. Before he was done the locker had been emptied and Nathan was half-dragged, half-carried into the lazaret.

  The light was cool gray. The older man said to Dane through the younger man how his daughter, the younger man's sister, had a liver transplant because of cancer. She'd had it done in London. Then, for the first time the older man spoke in English. "The miracles," he said, "the miracles."

  The older man pointed to Dane's eyes and the younger man translated. "What good are those if you couldn't foresee this?"

  Everything after that happened swiftly. Nathan, half-conscious as he was, was easily forced down into the freezer. The well-fed body on steroids pressed the stun against Dane's neck as a threat and eased him back, eased him toward the freezer, then took his huge flat hand and rammed Dane's chest. He was driven back over the lip of the freezer and hit the upturned lid.

  He grit a
gainst the panic. At the flood of hands that shoved his face, his chest, his arms, his legs. All hope for any denial about what this was, was over.

  It had taken only seconds. The cool gray light was gone and everything now was freezing blackness and a heart that felt as if it was about to burst up out of its throat.

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  SANCHO MARIA AND Paul were at Al The Wop's cozying up in a booth with a couple of cocktails and trying to kill off a long and troubling day when they caught sight of a waifish creature in an oil skin slicker crossing the dimly lit bar toward the ladies' room. More than a few heads turned as the soaking, hooded transient disappeared down the back hallway. Even the bartender leaned out from the bar to get a better look at what in the hell had just gone past.

  Sancho Maria turned to Paul. "I think that was Essie."

  He was staring down the barrel of his scotch glass, rattling the ice like they were runes, and wondering if Dane was alright. "No fuckin' way," he said.

  * * *

  IN THE ladies' room there were two stalls. One was occupied, the room was otherwise empty. Sancho Maria could see the oil skin slicker lying on the tile just inside the closed stall door, from where she could also hear sounds, something akin to a mangled choke or shiver.

  Sancho Maria leaned toward the door reluctantly, she went to knock, to call out, but found herself listening to that garbled voice-sound and trying to peek through the crack in the doorway, but she could not and finally Sancho Maria whispered, "Essie. Essie… it's Maria."

  Something that resembled a voice answered and the metal latch on the stall door snapped back. Sancho Maria cautiously leaned in with her head to find a pale, pale child thing sitting on the floor of that cramped gray and white stall; she was soaked and shivering and trying to dry herself with wads of toilet paper.

  * * *

  SANCHO MARIA leaned down over the booth seat and quietly said to Paul, "Pay the bill and let's go."

  Caruso's upper body and face went through the chapter and verse of physical gestures asking, "What in Christ's name is going on?"

  "Pay the fuckin' bill," she said. "And let's go."

  * * *

  WE DIDN'T short the delivery. How many times," said Tommy, "do I have to—"

  "Probably until somebody buys your act," Merton told him. "Or until proven otherwise."

  Merrit Merton did not like flying in small planes. He had too much need for self-control. But there he was with Tommy Fenn, traveling to Mexico in bare minimum visibility with long trails of rain across the cockpit window on the chance that Nathan had not already been killed.

  Tommy hit the steering column with his hands. "It could have been anyone." His look was not sparing.

  The plane was loud, it was small. It impaled on down drafts then jumped like something struck with electricity. And it stunk of pot.

  "I have thirty years' credibility," said Merton, "to answer for me."

  "Credibility is shit."

  Merton could feel the raw cold through the plane's thin hull. "You and I are here because our credibility has been compromised. So—"

  "All right."

  "— Damon's credibility has been compromised—"

  "All right."

  "— so Charles' credibility has been compromised—"

  "I fuckin' under—"

  "— and so on and so forth."

  Merton glanced out the window. The mist was like streaming ghosts that rushed past the cabin and light from the earth below looked helplessly far away. "Your plane stinks of pot."

  "I guess I'm just shit in every sense of the word."

  Merton stared at Tommy. "I've survived thirty years in this business. Blind trusts… hot money accounts… offshore bullshit… carrying gold to Vietnam for American banks. Everything in life succeeds on one simple principle— listen to me now. It succeeds because everyone in that system agrees to lie equally. No system can survive unless everyone agrees equally to some lie. Religion… politics… business… history, it's all the same. History is the best example. Read any book. It all holds together until someone gets scared or greedy, caves or decides to break. Till someone rebels. Then it's over. I don't care what the play is, or is about."

  The plane bounced, Merton held on. His mouth flinched. "To survive is to agree equally to a lie. Any lie. Otherwise—" Merton shook his head bleakly. "Understand, 'cause you could get us all killed the way you've acted, if you haven't already."

  Tommy dropped the plane. He nosed it five hundred feet just so the blood would go to all those little darkrooms holed up inside Mr. Merton. He pulled up and while Merton piped out a few torn gasps Tommy told him, "I don't fly without a fuckin' flashlight."

  * * *

  THEY WERE driving back to Rio Vista in Caruso's van. Heat blasted through the vents, the windows were closed up tight. The interior of that van was stifling. Essie lay across the back seat, her head rested on Sancho Maria's lap. Essie had already stripped down. Her clothes were a waterlogged heap on the van floor. She was wrapped up in one of the sleeping bags the Carusos kept stored behind the back seat. Her hand was bound up with toilet paper. Paul had taken off his shirt and this Sancho Maria used to stroke Essie's hair dry.

  The only sound was the heat blowing through vent fans and the occasional car whooshing by on the road in a flare of oncoming lights.

  "You were right today," said Essie.

  It was the first she had spoken, and at that, barely audible.

  "In the coffee shop, this morning. About Taylor."

  Caruso looked into the rearview mirror at Maria.

  "We know things."

  Essie's eyes lifted slightly.

  "Dane and I."

  Sancho Maria kept stroking her head slowly.

  "I found out more tonight. Up in The Meadows. Much more."

  Essie put her hand up against the vent and held it there feeling the warmth, needing the warmth.

  "What about Dane?" asked Paul.

  She shook her head. "There was some kind of fight in Mexico. I overheard it at the Fenns'."

  Caruso pulled off the road quickly and onto the rocky shoulder. He put the van in park, then leaned around the seat. As he was shirtless, Essie saw the chest scars he'd earned in prison were like white threads his blood didn't touch.

  "What kind of fight? Is he—"

  "Shane got beat up pretty bad by Nathan. The others are heading down there tonight."

  "What the hell do you mean, the others?"

  His tone was fearful and blunt. Both faces stared down at her through half shadows. "If I tell you, you've got to swear to me you'll say nothing to anyone. You have to swear."

  Sancho Maria stopped stroking Essie's hair. "Jesus Christ, girl, what do you think you're trying to do?"

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  THE OLDER MAN pointed to his watch, then to the freezer. It was tipped over by three other men, as a fourth lifted up the lid. Dane and Nathan tumbled out onto the stone floor.

  So bent from the cold, their bodies looked like hieroglyphics of improper jointing. They shook hopelessly, their faces spare grimaces of vein blue and bone marrow white.

  Water was thrown on them, warm water. Their bodies began to reflex and recoil. Wrecked sounds kindled from their lungs as sensations told them they were free of death's light, for now.

  Nathan began to bang his fist on the polished sandstone floor like a brute beast, as much out of rage and the relief of being free, as if trying to beat the blood back through his body.

  Dane fought to stand, but his arms shook so terribly, his body tremored so miserably, it was a lost cause getting hold of anything for support.

  More warm water was flung on them. It hit their flesh like bricks. Dane focused on the floor, on the shoes of the men around him, on their legs, using them as an axis his head could follow to know he was moving in the right direction.

  Both men were soon pulled to their feet. Each to have his life roughed back into him, shook back into him, slapped back into him, struck ba
ck into him.

  The older man spoke to Nathan, the younger man translated. "You live by the deals you set." The older man grabbed Nathan's face. "Or you don't."

  As Nathan was taken out the older man turned to Dane. He looked into that no-man's land of a stare, with its dark liquid piercings so huge in that place.

  The older man pointed to the freezer and spoke, the younger man translated. "You've had a taste." The older man's arms crossed his chest in the pantomime of a corpse. "It will never be the same. You will never be the same."

  He looked at Dane from across the years. It was a leveling stare filled with the surety that nothing he could do mattered. What he got back from the boy resonated with everything he did not say.

  But the older man understood these child angels, with all their silent mutinies and enough drive to feed on any curse. He had seen them all, and they all died. He pointed to Dane's eyes. "Now, let us hope, you will truly see with those new eyes. And make sure they obey."

  * * *

  CARUSO SAT at his dining room table in the semidark gravely staring at the phone. Sancho Maria passed through coming from the kitchen. She carried a steaming mug of coffee spiked with whiskey. She stopped. Caruso looked up at her for advice, counsel. She told him, "We'll agree to say nothing."

  He nodded. Both went together down a back hallway to a small bedroom. It could barely hold a bed, chair and bureau. Essie sat in the chair, in the dark. She wore one of Sancho Maria's T-shirts and a heavy cloth robe that had deeply worn patches. Her hand had been bandaged.

  The Carusos left off the light. As Sancho Maria handed her the mug, she told Essie, "What you say here, we keep between us."

  Essie looked to Paul. With the dim hallway for a backdrop he was a mere outline leaning against the doorjamb. He nodded solemnly. "Until you tell us otherwise." He was going to add, or until something happens to you or Dane, but he wisely thought the better of it.

  Sancho Maria sat on the bed beside the chair. The box springs squeaked as she handed Essie the mug. The first sips burned Essie's throat, heat filled her stomach. Then, she spoke. "Charles and Nathan are money launderers."