A Twisted Ladder (6 page)

She had already been through this video four times over the past half hour. On the tiny screen, the “other” daddy grew more agitated; his feet suspended in midair as he strained against the men holding him. His dark face turned purple. Somewhere off-screen someone was fixing a sedative. Another doctor, not her.

This was the point where her father had broken free. He’d gotten to her in an instant.

Here, now, in the safety of the screening room, Madeleine watched a pixilated image of her own body being knocked to the ground. She could not see whether her hands ever came up in any kind of defensive gesture.

Would he really have killed me if the others hadn’t been there?

At the time, she had hoped that some part of him might recognize her, that he could stop himself.

The video ended. She released her breath in a long, slow wave, trying to calm down. This was her shot to help change the way the government and society in general treated mental illness. To help Daddy. He was the only family she had left.

Her father appeared by her elbow, closing his hand over her shoulder with a warm squeeze. “It’s fine kitten. Gonna be just fine.”

“I know. It’s just that we need the funding so badly. As it is I have to fight tooth and nail to keep them from cutting my program.”

“Oh, come on now. Why are you so worried about that?”

Madeleine shot him an incredulous look. “Because this country needs it! Because of homelessness, violent crime, and countless other social issues that increased after a single stupid government decision from years ago.”

“And what decision was that?” Daddy asked, shoving his hands in his pockets.

“The decision to up-end the mental health facilities and spill sick people out onto the streets.”

He was beaming at her. She felt the blush return, because it occurred to her that Daddy hadn’t been asking because he didn’t know the answers to these questions.

“Thanks. I know you’re just helping me refocus,” she said.

“Listen honey, you got your head on straight and we’re gonna knock this one out of the park.”

“OK, you’re right. I just don’t want to mess this up.”

“What’s to mess up? We’ll just do a little talkin.”

She tried a smile. “Fortunately
you’ll
do most of the talking.”

“You did fine just now.”

“That’s different,” Madeleine said. “Talking to you is a whole lot different from addressing Congress.”

“Ain’t nothin but a big room full of people, just like you and me.” He patted her shoulder again and moved away.

She returned her gaze to the video. Funny how different this sort of thing was from Daddy’s perspective. He was charming and loquacious and thought nothing of presenting in public. He had an excellent speech prepared, and his testimony would be about as powerful a speech as the Association for Psychological Discovery could ever hope for. But even with the video, those congressmen couldn’t possibly understand the extent of Daddy’s affliction. Or how difficult it was to convince a schizophrenic to stay on his meds when they made him sick and swimmy. She hoped the congressmen would be amazed at Daddy Blank’s transformation. That they’d appropriate generous funding toward research and psychotropic medications like the ones that had so dramatically stabilized his personality.

“If you run that video one more time, you’re liable to wear it out,” the aide chided as he approached Madeleine again. “You’re on in fifteen minutes.”

“Already?” Madeleine glared at her watch, then glanced around the room. “Where’s my father?”

The aide glanced at the door. “He ran to the men’s room.”

Ran to the men’s room
.

She stared at the door for a long moment. “Could you get him for me please?”

The aide blinked. “I’m sure he’ll be right back, Dr. LeBlanc.”

Madeleine leveled her gaze on him. “Please.”

“Sure, but I told him to be quick. Don’t worry, everything will be fine.”

That’s exactly what her father had told her mere minutes ago:
It’s fine, kitten. Gonna be just fine
.

The aide exited through the door and Madeleine once again glimpsed the federal amphitheater. She swallowed, and then stepped through the door out into the vast room beyond. The ceiling soared high, with carved wood adorning every spare handspan above and along the four walls that rimmed the amphitheater. It was too big. Too vast. To address such an audience seemed an impossibility. Her eyes panned the perimeter, and her gaze fell on Chloe. She and her houseboy were sitting side-by-side in the same place where she’d seen them before. No sign of the child. Madeleine searched the other faces, hoping to find Daddy among them. And then she spotted the little girl.

No longer with Chloe, but instead lingering about twenty feet away, partially hidden behind a curtain in a corner of the stage where access should have been restricted. Though the child was mostly obscured, Madeleine could see that her face was smudged as she leered back.

Madeleine frowned and looked away. She groped for a sense of faith in Daddy.

And yet she knew better. Her fingers throbbed, and it felt like the inside of her stomach was sprouting brambles.

It’s fine, kitten. Gonna be just fine
.

But no, everything was not going to be just fine. She knew better, all right. She saw it on the face of the bewildered aide as he returned alone. Her father had left, and he had no intention of coming back.

BATON ROUGE, 2009

ZENON LANSKY WAS SITTING
with Josh, but his attention wandered from the radio to his own thoughts and then over to the apartment building and back to his thoughts again. He figured his metabolism stayed so high out of sheer mind-churning. Mostly he was thinking of Marc and Madeleine LeBlanc. The Blank sibs, his long-ago Bayou Black family. Madeleine would be in Washington, D.C. about now, he knew. Marc had left her all alone in this wide world save for her daddy. Funny how the world does you. He wondered whether Marc’s suicide had knocked her off her high horse yet.

He lit another cigarette and took a drag, then hung his arm out the driver’s side window. The Duster had no air conditioning and the humid Baton Rouge night crowded in close.

Headlights flashed behind them, and for a moment Zenon’s gray-blue eyes shone in the rearview mirror, lids hooded in isosceles angles. The car passed and paused in front of an empty parking space along the street.

“You ain’t gonna fit in that spot,” Zenon said to the car.

The car maneuvered back and forth into the space until the driver gave up and drove off. Zenon and Josh both chuckled.

“You know I sit in that gun shop all damn day watching them people make asses of themselves, trying to park their cars.”

Josh chewed on the end of a stick.

Filthy habit
, Zenon thought.

He glanced at the flat-roofed apartment building as Radio Tirana rolled through on the shortwave. Albania, that’s where he figured the broadcast was coming from. The first step was identifying the country, then the language, then if he could stand the monotony he could sift out a few cognates and get a fix on what they were actually saying.

“Anyways,” Zenon was saying, “it’s a cryin shame. Take somethin like an alligator, right? Stupid animal. Sloppy pickle with teeth. And yet he can haul his wide ass at thirty miles an hour to snag a hummingbird in flight. A hummingbird! And these fools cain’t even parallel park an automobile? Serious! I sit in the gun shop and watch’m all damn day.”

Josh chuckled.

Zenon continued, “Yesterday here come this ol’ boy. Tried to park in front of the store, I swear to God, took him twenny minutes at least, and he never did get the damn thing parked. He pulled in, came in front ways, not backing up like he’s s’posed to. Pulls in, then backs up. Pulls ahead, then backs it up again.”

Zenon took a quick drag. “Musta gone back and forth at least ten times, and each time he’s just getting fuhther and fuhther away from the curb.”

Josh removed the stick from his mouth and laughed, porkpie hat hugging his scalp.

“IQ of a skunk, serious. I mean,” Zenon blew out a trail of smoke. “His car end up sitting perpendicular to the damn curb!”

Josh guffawed and wiped a hand over his face. “No shit.”

“I shit you not!” Zenon tapped the cigarette and let the ashes fall to the accumulating collection of butts on the pavement below his car door. “Perpendicular to the damn curb. So, you know that guy next door? The barber? Apparently he was watching the whole thing too. He couldn’t take it no more and finally he come out there and told the guy to get out of the damn car. Parked it for him.”

Both men were quaking with laughter now.

“You have got to be kidding me!” Josh said.

Zenon shook his head. “I swear to God. I think that barber figured the guy was gonna come in for a haircut. He didn’t though.” Zenon grinned. “He come into my store instead.”

Josh whooped. “Oh man! He wanna buy a gun?”

“Oh yeah. He come on in, little bitty bastard, wanted a IAI rifle, standard grade.”

“Did you sell it to him?”

“Hell no, I ain’t sold it to’m! Like I’m’a sell a rifle to a fool like at. Anyways, his license wudn’t any good. People like that can’t be allowed to carry weapons.”

“Yeah, no shit.”

They sat quietly for a minute, then Zenon said, “That’s what I’m talking about. You got some damned fool runnin around, can’t even park his own car, come inna my store and wantna buy a damn rifle.” He waved his hand at the apartment building. “We ought to be sitting outside
his
house right now, insteada here.”

Josh shook his head. “Come on now.”

The two men slipped back into silence.

Radio Tirana droned on.
Albanian, yeah. Definitely Albanian
.

The Latin-based languages were easier to figure out. Zenon had started with French because he already spoke some from the bayou, and then Spanish because that was common enough and lots of Mexicans lived in the area. But then he was fooling around and came across a station where they were speaking Farsi. And on another day, Serbo-Croatian. He’d listen in whenever he was stuck doing something mindless, like this stake-out. He never spoke any of those languages, but came to understand them easily.

Up the block, a bobtail cat moved into a pool of orange light under a street lamp. It continued at a trot until its shadow stretched long to rejoin the darkness.

Zenon cabled his mind to the cat.
Stop. Back to the streetlight
.

After a few moments, it appeared again, its silhouette distorted at the rim of shadows. It took another step toward the inner circle of light, moving slowly and with intermittent hesitation.

Come closer
.

The cat looked to the left and dipped its head. It took three more hesitant steps forward before it turned and galloped for cover.

Josh said, “Good. You’re getting better. Keep at it.”

No street lamps glowed near Zenon and Josh. The Duster sat in relative darkness, with just enough faraway illumination to highlight ropey veins in Zenon’s arm. He blew a stream of smoke out into the thick, warm air, half-expecting it to coagulate into a solid mesh when it mixed with the humidity. His face beaded with perspiration that would not evaporate.

He stole a glance at Josh. No perspiration on
his
face. Never was.

“You hot?”

Josh shrugged. “It’s hot in here.”

“Yeah, I know it’s hot in here.
I’m
hotter’n hell. But are
you
hot?”

Josh shrugged again. “I guess. Quit givin me shit.”

In the apartment building beyond, the window filled with blue light from a television, and Angel came into view.

Her long straight hair swung at her shoulders as she maneuvered through her living room. The television reflected against her skin, framing her silhouette as she passed in front of it. She poured water over plants at the sill. And though she stood right in front of the window, she did not look out. Wouldn’t have seen them anyway. All the curtains stood open, even in her bedroom. The sheer fabric danced with the warm night breeze. She wore only a white button-down and panties.

“Look at that,” Josh said. “Half-nekked in front of an open window. Not a lick of common sense.”

Zenon shook his head.

“This one’ll be easy,” Josh said.

Zenon watched the figure moving inside the room beyond the windows. “I’m serious, man. I’m thinking there are better choices than this.”

Josh sighed.

Zenon was not going to be put off. “I can think of about a hundred people I’d like to see go down. The governor. Hell, the moonies. Hebetudes like that fucker who cain’t park.”

He waved a hand at the building. “I don’t even know who this woman is. I don’t see why
I
shouldn’t pick the mark this time.”

“Zenon,” Josh said, lifting his hand. “It ain’t like drawing straws. She’s one of them. A big one. This one’s important.”

“Hell on a mother.” Zenon clenched his lips, his right hand working into a fist.

Josh said, “Listen, brother, you gotta carry this out according to the plan. You go out there like a cowboy picking off people you don’t like, you’re just some random weirdo.” Josh paused, tilting his head. “And I don’t got your back no more. You gotta be cool.”