Gone Wild (Thorn Series Book 4)

by James W. Hall

  "The fuckers got illegal drugs in there."

  "Now you're whining, Orlon. You're making me queasy listening to you."

  "They got PCP, shit like that. Makes them ultraviolent. Smoking crack, drinking rattlesnake venom, hell, I come to the door, what if they're hallucinating, think I'm the cops? Blow my head out into the street?"

  "They do that, then I'll go out into the street, pick it up, bring it back, and screw it on right this time."

  "Shit."

  "Just do it, get it the hell over with. Be a man."

  Ray swiveled around, grabbed hold of the snake sack, plunked it down in his brother's lap.

  Orlon sat for a minute more, the things squirming in the bag, hissing, then he opened his door, dragged himself out. Didn't say a word. Marched to the front door very stiff, like he was headed down the corridor to the gas chamber.

  Ray opened the glove compartment, took out the Glock nine. Eyes on Orlon as he hammered at the front door, and it swung open instantly. Fat guy in a black T-shirt and a moth-eaten beard hanging down to his belly stood there and said something. Orlon paused, looked back over his shoulder, then went inside.

  Ray waited, holding the weapon, finding a grip he liked.

  Waited three, four minutes. Looked over, and there was the grandmother still standing guard across the street. A couple of buses came and went, and she was still there. Crime-watch poster girl.

  Yeah, now Ray knew who it was. That old lady. About the same age his dear old mom would be if it wasn't for the breast cancer. Probably be just as hefty, too, the way she was packing it in the last few years of her life, cooking all that Cuban food. Pork loins, sausage, fried plantains, night after night. Turning herself into a Cuban, taking Spanish lessons, dressing Cuban, dying her hair that fake red color.

  She'd even carried a frilly parasol a few times, mainly to church, but once or twice on the way to work, waiting out in the sun at the bus stop on Flagler and Seventeenth, going off every day to clean people's houses along the bay. Darlene Annette White. Saying how Miami was the perfect place for someone like her, a woman full of wanderlust but too poor to travel. The town was turning itself into a foreign city. All you had to do was stay put, watch it become Havana. Didn't cost you a nickel. Right at the end she even got herself a live-in Cuban boyfriend. Her own Ricky Ricardo. Jorge something or other, but it didn't last long, less than a year before she died.

  The cancer got her when Ray and Orlon were in the eighth grade. Jorge moved his clothes out the same day, didn't even say adios. All of which started Ray and Orlon on their life of crime, lying, forging Darlene's signature so the school people wouldn't know she was dead. They kept on paying the rent, the light bills, stealing to do it. Breaking and entering. So they could stay in the same house, fulfill Ray's deathbed promise to Darlene to keep the family together.

  At least that's what he thought she said, mumbling under her breath as she was dying, Ray with his ear close to her mouth. Keep together. Or something along those lines. Anyway, Ray was still trying to manage it. He and Orlon with bedrooms down the hall from each other, still stealing to get by.

  Back then, eighth grade, it was no great life, but at least they didn't get shipped out to some foster home, no HRS shelter. Shit on that. Yeah, that's who the Cuban grandmother looked like. Darlene White, stay-at-home world traveler. Same parasol. Only yellow.

  Ray put his hand on the door handle. Feeling dizzy all of a sudden, seeing his mother's double over there. A trickle of sweat down his ribs. Like a vision, a mirage of Darlene Annette White, come back to tell Ray something, give him a message, or chastise him, slap him hard in the face like she did sometimes when he was bad. Raimondo, you're screwing up. Look at your little brother, what he's become. Raimondo, wake up, see what's going on.

  Ray glanced at the clubhouse, picturing again the way Orlon looked with the tip of his nose flapping loose. Starting to think too much time had slipped by.

  Ray opened his door. He was just stepping out of the car when he heard tires scream. He jerked around, and watched the whole goddamn thing unfold in sleepy half-speed. A black Camaro waiting to turn left at the light, some little red pickup truck speeding from the other direction, trying to make the last second of the yellow. Ray watching the light turn red, the guy in the Camaro not seeing the pickup, going on and making the turn, right into the path of the speeder. The pickup's brakes screamed as it slammed into the Camaro's passenger door, hurled it backward; the Camaro spun once, twice.

  Ray saw what was about to happen, saw it like it was underwater; all he had to do was walk across 103rd, loaf over there in normal time, scoop up the grandmother and set her down ten feet to the left and she's okay, going to live to glare another day.

  The Camaro made one 360, then another, dream-slow, tires screaming, horns going all over the place, somebody screamed, but the old woman with the pink parasol didn't see anything happening, 'cause she was staring into Ray's eyes as he stood across the empty street, Darlene Annette White, and Ray raised his hand to wave at her, wave her the hell away from that spot, the Camaro going right for her like it had all been planned out in advance, a bunch of engineers plotting out the angle of impact, number of rotations of the Camaro, an X painted on the sidewalk where the grandmother should stand.

  The Camaro whirled around one more time, then thudded against her, its right front fender catching her on the left hip, launching her backward into the air, the lady still holding the parasol Mary Poppins. But this one not making a soft landing. This one going ass first, fifty feet, a hundred, losing the parasol, then smashing her spine against a four-legged mailbox, knocking it over, the lady going on some more, rolling down the sidewalk, her body all loose, a jumble of meat and bones. A sack of dead potatoes.

  The red pickup came to a halt in the middle of the street, a few yards in front of Ray. Ray found himself walking over to it. Numb, caught up in the dream-trance now. Time stretching out all around him. A dead hush. Feeling the gun in his hand as he stepped up to the window. Looking in at the pimply kid behind the wheel, shaking the fuzz out of his head. Eighteen, nineteen years old, radio on super-loud. Boom boom yadda yadda.

  Ray ducked his head down to the window, reached across the kid and shut off the noise.

  The boy stared up at him.

  "You killed her, kid."

  The boy gave Ray a nothing look.

  "You a cop?"

  "You're gonna wish I was a cop."

  Ray raised the gun, pressed the barrel against the boy's neck.

  "Now, you should say you're sorry, kid."

  The boy opened his mouth. No sound came out.

  "Apologize, you fucking cancer. You ran a red light, killed an old lady. Minding her own business."

  The boy was starting to materialize in Ray's sight. Jorge, the last boyfriend. The one that walked out when his Anglo girlfriend died. Ricky Ricardo. Striking resemblance.

  "I was late for work," the kid said. He took a hard breath, looked like he was strangling. "Now, lookit. My truck's totally fucked and I think I got a case of whiplash."

  The boy tried to open the door, but Ray forced it shut.

  "Not good enough," Ray said.

  "Whatta you want me to say?"

  "A simple apology would be a good start."

  "I didn't do anything. I was just driving."

  "Just driving. Is that right?"

  "Hey, let me out of here. Let me out."

  Like Jorge, just exactly like the guy. Walking out the door that day, bag of clothes in one hand, a toaster in the other. Not saying it out loud to the two kids he was leaving behind, but there it was, let me out of here. Let me out.

  "Wrong answer," Ray said.

  He squeezed off a round into the kid's shoulder.

  And then Ray's trance was over and everything was back to normal time. Like somebody'd given the pendulum a bump and the cosmic clock was ticking again. The volume had turned back up, lots of noise all around him, voices, cars, sirens, people rushing, Spani
sh gobbledygook, radiator steam spewing out of the car.

  Ray slid the Glock under his shirt, walked back to the Corvette. No one paying any attention to him. People coming out of their businesses, their houses, standing on their porches. People slamming their brakes. A crowd gathering all along the walk.

  Then Orlon was there, hairless Orlon, standing beside him counting a wad of cash. Ray looked over at the lady's body, the people collected around her, nobody touching her. He watched the police arrive. Damn good response time, give 'em that.

  Orlon said to him, "Don't you want to hear about it? What happened in there? You won't believe it, man, you won't fucking believe it."

  Ray didn't answer. Just got into the Corvette, sat there, his eyes scanning the scene till he found the pink parasol, stuck on a low branch in an oak tree over there. Upside down. The traffic had already resumed on 103rd. Swinging out around the red pickup. A cop standing by the pimply kid's window, looking inside.

  Orlon got in the car, slammed the door.

  "Piece of cake, man, piece of lemon-frosted cake." He started the car, juiced it up. "See, what I didn't realize was, last year, that cut on the nose they gave me, it was like an induction thing, that cut made me an official Hell's Viper. Trakas told me. The fat guy at the door, the chapter president.

  "Guy sat me down, explained I was a Viper from the second I got cut, said he told me about it last year. In fact, everybody wondered why I never came back. Say the guys like me, think I'm terminally weird.

  "But hell, I don't remember anything about it. I guess I was so fucking discombobulated. I mean, can you believe it? I'm a Viper. I get regular club privileges. Full use of the clubhouse anytime I want. You and me, we could have a party up here, invite girls over, whatever. Be loud as we want."

  Ray could count the exact number of rotations the Camaro had made. He watched in his head as the pink-parasoled Cuban grandmother flew. The mailbox, all of it.

  "You okay, man?"

  "That accident," Ray said. "An old lady. She had a parasol."

  "You been listening to me? What I just told you?"

  "You remember that parasol Mom had?"

  "What the hell you talking about, man? A parasol."

  "It was yellow," Ray said. "A yellow parasol."

  Orlon put the car in gear, eased out into the street.

  "You mean that umbrella doohickey? That thing? Twirling it all the time. Kicking up her legs like goddamn Ginger Rogers."

  "A parasol is what it's called."

  "Jesus, man. You coming down with something, or what? You look like you just got fucked by a ghost."

  ***

  Sean's father was sixty-one. Tall and angular with a body kept hard by endless rounds of golf. A country club tan. That afternoon in her mother's bedroom, Harry was wearing a beige twill suit, a yellow Oxford shirt with a burgundy tie. He had bright green eyes that took slow, silent measure, missing little. He was not a talker, not a demonstrative man. Guarded, an excellent diplomat, and now a careful lawyer. Though Sean was over the regret, she still wished sometimes that her father had been the kind of man who'd swept his daughters off their feet for extravagant fatherly embraces, rollicking swings through the air, instead of the one who gave her cool pecks on the cheek, a light pat on her head.

  After Allison shut herself in the bathroom, all three of them stood stiffly in the doorway, and after a moment's awkward pause, Patrick apologized for upsetting Allison.

  "Oh, it's not your fault," Harry said.

  Patrick stared at the bathroom door.

  "I wish there was something I could do."

  Harry led them out onto the landing, and shut the door.

  "Aren't you going to say hello?" Sean held her hand out and Patrick smiled, took it lightly in his hand and pressed his lips to her knuckles, kept them there a second or two.

  "So," Harry said. "What about that tour? Still want to take a look at the house?"

  Patrick let her hand go, and gave her a steady stare as if he expected her to swoon away before him. Sean smiled back at him with amusement. He was probably just off his uncle's Concorde. Somebody needed to remind him which tarmac he'd touched down on — America, land of sexual democracy and pragmatic women. A place where hand kissing didn't have quite the sway he imagined.

  Harry led them around the three other upstairs bedrooms, his own, Winslow's, finally Sean's. Patrick lingered there. He stared at a bookshelf where Sean's collection of stuffed animals was wedged tight. He picked up a framed photo of her in her cheerleader outfit. Back from Brunei just in time for her sophomore year, in time to do the splits for dear old Gables High. Patrick examined the photo closely, then set it back exactly in its place. Slowly he bent over and brushed his fingertips across Sean's teenage bed. For a moment his smile vanished, then resurfaced with a wistful edge.

  "I always wondered," he said.

  "And is it how you imagined?" Sean said.

  "Oh, better, much better."

  Harry glanced at Sean, then Patrick.

  "Am I missing something?"

  "Apparently Patrick used to fantasize about us, Harry. What our bedrooms were like, that kind of thing."

  "Oh, yes," he said. "Boys do that."

  "Well, some do anyway," Sean said.

  They headed downstairs, visited the bar first, a chardonnay for Sean, freshened Dewar's on the rocks for the men.

  Patrick wore a silk suit, apricot, an impeccable white shirt with a mandarin collar buttoned to the throat. His hair was glistening black, hanging in waves just past his collar. Sean could imagine it in a ponytail, drawn back tight to highlight his cheekbones. A roguish look.

  As she followed them through the rest of Harry's tour, she examined this boy she remembered so vividly, now filled out in his young man's body. Unlike most men from that side of the world, Patrick was almost Harry's height. Slender hips, wide shoulders. He moved with a quiet poise that suggested a strength beyond his size.

  She remembered Winslow saying Patrick's real father was English, his mother Malaysian, or vice versa. Part of the sultan's large extended family. But beyond that, Winslow knew nothing of them. With such pale skin, light blue eyes, and large bones, Patrick looked far more like one of the British royals than one of the Malaysian aristocracy.

  In a vaguely American accent he told Harry how charming he found their house, the Moorish style, the thick, cool stucco walls, the terra-cotta floors, the skylights, a small mosaic of a tropical scene, parrots and banana trees, on the dining room wall. He said little else, but seemed to drink in every detail. In the living room he paused once more to examine a photograph of Sean and Winslow that sat on a side table. He picked it up, gazed at it silently for almost a minute, then put it down with a quiet sigh.

  "It must be very hard for you. Your only sister."

  Sean nodded but said nothing.

  "Have the Sarawak police been helpful?"

  Harry said, "The Sarawak police have been utterly goddamn useless. We have the impression they've given up on it already. I call them every other day but they're very vague. No leads, that sort of thing. I've tried to pull some strings over there, our people in Kuala Lumpur, but you know how complex that world is, how restrained everyone is by their goddamn rules of etiquette. Their mysterious protocol."

  "Perhaps I could do something."

  Harry shrugged.

  "I don't know what anybody could do at this point."

  He turned his back on Patrick and wandered outside to the patio beside the pool. They joined him there and the three of them stood for a quiet moment in the shade of an old banyan.

  "Let's sit," Harry said. "Been on my feet all day."

  They drew the patio chairs in a semicircle facing the pool, and Patrick stared at Sean, drinking her in, and shook his head in wonder.

  "What's wrong?" she said.

  "Oh, nothing."

  "I know what it is," she said.

  "Yes?"

  "It's that we've all grown up. We're all big people now. A
mazing how it happens."

  He leaned forward in his chair to stare into the pool, elbows on his knees. He had a sip of his drink. Turned his head and smiled at Sean.

  "You're wrong," he said. "I am still seventeen. I am a boy sitting on the porch of my father's house watching the vice consul's lovely daughters strolling down the sunny boulevard. Jalang Tasek. The mimosa trees are blooming, the alamandas. The American girls are swaying past in their bright summer dresses.

  "And I am sitting out on my aunt's verandah listening to those same girls as they discuss world events with the adults, drink coffee, and laugh. I am sitting very still, hearing the cicadas chirr, and their calls are mingled with the sound of the Farleigh girls' beautiful laughter rising up into the dark like the fragrance of powerful incense."

  Harry cleared his throat. He glanced up toward Allison's bedroom window, checked his watch.

  "So, Sean," he said. "I'm taking Patrick to Mark's Place for dinner. Give him a chance to experience our famous Miami cuisine. If we promise not to talk business, are you free to join us?"

  She watched the young man lean forward, his elbows on his knees as he stared into the clear swimming pool. His smile turning inward.

  CHAPTER 16

  The White brothers ate supper at a Denny's near the airport. Orlon ordering a double portion of ribs, two helpings of pie. Seemed to be celebrating conquering his fear.

  Afterward they swung by the office. A half hour late for their meeting with Dr. Kurt Franklin. In the warehouse Ray took down the box of monkey chow from the shelf next to the elapid envenomization kit, fancy phrase for snakebite medicine. He checked the phone messages, nothing, then walked down the narrow corridor and pushed open the metal door into the primate area.

  The air was pollinated with the rich stink of straw and piss, and the sweet funk of ape dander, a collection of smells Ray found strangely comforting, reminding him nearly every day he walked in of all those times his mother had taken Orlon and him into pet stores, standing before the garish birds, the snakes, iguanas, Darlene Annette cooing at all the animals, but always too poor to buy anything. Telling Ray and Orlon how this parrot or that Gila monster came from thousands of miles away, a desert that looked like the moon. Australia, the Belgian Congo, Persia, her eyes coming unfocused, hypnotizing herself as she chanted the names of those distant lands.