Father Night (18 page)

“I do.”

Charlie grunted like a warthog as he devoured the last bites of the Coney wedge, along with a couple of onion rings. “You remember when we scammed that Irish mafia don? We was still wet behind the ears. We’re older than that now.”

Fraine said nothing.

Charlie sucked a chunk of meat out from between his teeth. “So how long we been singing songs around the same campfire together?”

“A long time,” Fraine said. “Too damn long to count.”

“You got that right,” Charlie snorted. He pointed a fat forefinger. “So I hope to fuck you listen when I tell you not to go down this path. Thorns’re likely to eat you alive.”

“I hear you, Charlie, but I’ve got no choice.”

The fat man’s eyes grew sorrowful. “These days none of us got a choice, seems like.”

“It’s all a matter of priorities, isn’t it?”

Silence grew between them like a vine.

“One more chance, Al.”

Fraine could think of nothing to say to this that hadn’t already been said.

Charlie sighed deeply and sat back as well as he was able, considering his shape and weight. “Well, then, shit, I gotta guy for you. He don’t have what you’re lookin’ for, he’ll know who does.”

“What’s it going to cost me?”

Charlie Patrick scooped up another messy wedge of the Coney, carved out a mighty bite, and grinned.

*   *   *

T
HE REPORTS
from the shots Stas fired traveled from inside the ringmaster’s car, penetrating to where the two elephants, Romulus and Remus, already agitated by Stas’s threatening energy, lifted their heads and trumpeted deafeningly.

Jack and Annika had been hiding between them, but now their sanctuary had turned into a death trap. Huey’s attempts at calming the animals went for naught; they were too terrorized.

Annika allowed Jack to guide her, the colossal legs just missing them. Jack’s brain had mapped the inside of the car and now, because his mind worked at such lightning speed, he was able not only to feel the elephants’ extreme agitation but also to accurately predict their responses to it.

Their darting movements were akin to a pair of video game avatars dodging and weaving to avoid enemy attacks. The problem was, they had no way to fight back; their only protection was Jack’s mind, making connections Annika could not even dream about.

Remus’s backside was jammed against one connecting door, Romulus’s tusks poking the other, blocking those routes to safety. Jack, one hand on the leg of each elephant, kept making connections, moving Annika in what seemed a circuitous route toward the sliding door on the side wall.

They were almost there when Romulus bellowed again, as if in pain, and almost smashed Annika between his quivering flank and the wall of the car. At the last instant, Jack pushed her down into a crouch, and drew her quickly under the animal’s swaying belly.

Huey grabbed her hand and they ran to the car wall. Jack helped him slide open the side door, and the wide ramp, reinforced to handle the animals’ weight, was automatically deployed.

“When they’re like this,” Huey said breathlessly, “there’s nothing I can do. Terror has gripped their hearts. They’ll need time to calm themselves.”

Then they all had to leap for their lives as Romulus thundered down the ramp, his heart dark with rage.

*   *   *

R
ODYA
S
TAS
pulled up the love seat’s shattered bench board and peered inside.

“Look what you’ve done!” Kurin wailed over and over again.

He appeared on the verge of hysterics when Stas turned and slapped him across the face. “Where are they?”

“Where is who?” Kurin shuddered. “I don’t know who you’re looking for. And why would you think that person is here?”

Stas checked the space again for any sign of blood or a body. Nothing. He’d pumped enough bullets at close range to kill anyone hiding. Anyway, now that he had a look at it, the space was too small for a person, unless he was curled up in a fetal position.

Thoroughly pissed off, he got up into the ringmaster’s face. “Listen, you flyweight pansy, if I find out you had hitchhikers on your pink lady express I’m going to come back here and personally ram your head up your ass, got it?”

Kurin, staring at the pointy toes of his high boots, said nothing.

Stas cursed mightily. The tip had been wrong; he’d been on an hours-long wild goose chase. And, in the meantime, Gourdjiev had surely slipped out of Moscow unseen. Perhaps, knowing the old toad as he did, he’d hired a double to throw Stas off the scent. That would be just like the sonuvabitch.

Shoving Kurin roughly aside, he picked his way across the car and exited through the rear door, where he rendezvoused with his men.

“You checked the undercarriage of every car?”

“Yes, sir.”

Stas stood for a moment, hands on hips, as if willing the old man to appear. Then he turned and stalked back to his car. He and his men piled in. At that moment, a door slid open and a ramp slammed down onto the ground near the cars.

Stas turned in his seat in time to see an elephant rampaging down. “Get us out of here!” he called to his driver. “Now.”

But the second elephant, thundering down, blocked their way. The driver was in the process of turning around when the first elephant stepped on the second car, demolishing it. Stas’s eyes nearly bugged out of his head. He scrabbled for the door handle. Too late, the elephant’s eye was fixed on him. Lowering its head, the beast jammed one of its tusks through the car window, impaling Stas. Then, with a powerful flick of its head, it tossed the car high in the air. Tumbling end over end, Stas’s car landed on its side, bounced, and slammed upside down with such force that the roof collapsed, crushing its occupants. That didn’t stop Romulus, who continued to attack the car with a relentlessness remarkable not only for its vigor but for its clear, almost human sense of revenge.

*   *   *

“N
OTHING, SIR,
” the detective said. “No one on the street or in the area, and the guards at Fort McNair reported no gunshots.”

“There were no gunshots,” Vera said. “I told you.”

“Yes.” Elbows on his desktop, Chief of Detectives Bishop steepled his fingers as he studied Vera. “All this happened in total silence.”

Vera was about to utter one of her caustic retorts but something in his tone, a steel edge barely perceived, warned her against saying anything at the moment. As soon as the Lincoln Town Car was out of sight, she had risen and begun to run. Then, thinking more clearly, she had returned to Lenny’s car and had driven it to Metro police HQ, rather than a precinct. Even so, how she had so quickly gotten bumped up to the chief of detectives was still a mystery. She had prepared an elaborate song and dance to get her moving up the Metro ladder from the detective who took her initial statement to the brass, but as it turned out, the persuasion hadn’t been necessary. Now she was terrified that she had made the wrong decision by coming here. The men who had kidnapped Alli were powerful people in a city that ran on power. Who knew how many people they might have in their pockets?

Bishop referred to her statement, which Del Stoddart, the intake detective, had prepared. “You say here that all this happened around the
Titanic
Memorial.” He looked up. “Is that right?”

“Yes.”

“Yet no one was around, no witnesses.”

“That’s right. The area is under construction.”

Bishop’s gaze dropped again to her statement. “I see.”

And with those two words, Vera knew that he didn’t believe her.
Why
he didn’t believe her she couldn’t say, but all of a sudden she suspected that she herself was in trouble.

“I’ve contacted Commander Fellows and he confirms that Alli Carson is not at Fearington.” Bishop looked up. “But then neither are you, Ms. Bard. And I can’t help wondering—echoing Commander Fellows—why you aren’t at Fearington. Technically, you and Ms. Carson are AWOL. I’d very much like to hear why that is.”

Vera watched him with both caution and suspicion. He had very deftly turned the interview upside down, making it about offenses that she and Alli had committed, rather than concerning himself with what she had witnessed.

“Two federal agents were killed and my friend has been abducted,” Vera said, “and you’re asking me why Alli and I are absent without leave?”

“That’s right.”

“I don’t believe this. How the fuck did I land in a Kafka novel?”

“Are you going to answer me, Ms. Bard?”

Her mistake was now writ large in front of her. She should have gone to the Feds right away instead of dicking around with Metro.

“Are you going to inform Secret Service?”

“I have. I’ve told them that one of their vehicles has been stolen.”

“Wait, what? Is that what you think?”

“What else
should
I think, Ms. Bard? You tell me this wild story concerning murder and kidnapping, yet you claim you didn’t see any of the perpetrators.”

“I was hiding under a car. I couldn’t see anything but a bunch of legs.”

“Did you get the tags off the Town Car?”

“No.” She had decided to lie because she didn’t trust this man, didn’t trust anyone now. All she wanted was to bolt out of there.

Chief Bishop’s phone rang and he fielded the call. He listened, then spoke softly into the mouthpiece before putting the receiver down. He rose. “Wait here a moment, please. Officer McKay will keep you company until I return.”

She turned in her chair to see a burly uniform standing just inside the doorway. She spent the next few moments calming herself, then she, too, rose and went to where McKay stood guard.

With her back to him, she stuck her finger down her throat and made herself retch. She groaned. “I think I’m gonna be sick.”

McKay looked around, grabbed a metal trash can, and brought it over. Vera took it and smashed it into his face. McKay staggered backward, blood gushing from his nose, and Vera ran past him, then flew through the doorway. She heard his garbled shout as she took the stairs, three at a time, hurried across the echoing lobby, hightailing it out of Metro HQ. She did not stop until she had lost herself in the crosshatching of city streets.

T
EN

O
NE SUMMER,
on a day of dazzling sun and clouds in the shape of African animals, Alli and Caro played in the Barrier Island surf. Alli remembered the smell of Caro, a combination of salt and Coppertone, and the sheer blondeness of her, as if she were an apparition or a child model in one of the slick women’s magazines her mother was always leafing through.

Seagulls cawing overhead, the splashing of the surf, the feel of Caro through the water, slick flesh, slippery as a fish. She had not wanted to come out of the water, even when her mother called them, even when Uncle Hank came to gather them in his arms. Alli was docile, but she remembered Caro squirming, crying, fighting. Caro hadn’t wanted to leave the surf for the small village of blankets, beach chairs, striped umbrellas, and baskets filled with food and drink.

Alli tried to calm Caro after Uncle Hank set her down on one of the blankets, but nothing would appease her. Alli remembered Caro waiting until her father’s back was turned, then running back down to the water. Alli had tried to follow her, but her mother had scooped her up, holding her to her breast as Alli watched Caro hitting the surf. Caro fell, but picked herself up, spitting out seawater, pushing forward, deeper and deeper, until Uncle Hank reached her in long strides. He slapped her bottom over and over as he brought her back to where the family waited. But Caro didn’t cry; Caro never cried, at least not in Alli’s presence. Instead, she glared straight ahead, through everyone, as if they were ghosts, already dead.

The memory unspooled in Alli’s mind with such vividness that she felt as if she were experiencing it all over again, as if she had gone back in time, as if the present had been wiped clean, as if she could start all over again, as if Emma McClure hadn’t died, as if she didn’t carry around with her a terrible burden of guilt, as if she had never been kidnapped and held captive by Morgan Herr.…

Eyes opening, lids gluey, vision blurred and distorted. She felt, rather than saw, that she was surrounded by grayness.

What? Where?

And then the present rushed in like a tidal wave, obliterating the sand-castle dreams her mind had created to protect her from the horror of her new reality. She opened her mouth, she wanted to scream, but nothing came out, not even a squeak. Her tongue hit against something. Thinking there was a dead animal in her mouth, her eyes rounded in terror and she gagged. Then reason overtook irrationality, and she realized a wadded ball of cotton had been stuffed into her mouth to keep her from crying out.

She felt her heart beating so hard it seemed to be painfully expanding and contracting the surrounding ribs. Closing her eyes, she tried to center herself. She breathed through her nose, slowing her breaths, lengthening them in order to get oxygen down into the deepest parts of her. Her heartbeat fluttered, then slowly calmed as she harnessed her mind, turning it to what she needed to do in order to improve her chances of escape.

She opened her eyes again, blinked several times, then tried to assess her surroundings. Grayness, relieved only by a narrow shaft of sunlight heavily filtered, falling from high above her head. She lay on a poured concrete floor. It was unsealed and she felt its powdery residue in her nostrils and at the back of her throat. With an effort, she suppressed the urge to cough, which, with her mouth full, would only cause her to gag again.

She lay on her left side. Looking down her body, she saw her legs tied at the knees and ankles with plastic zip ties as if she were a trussed lamb ready for the slaughter. She tried to move, and pain flared through her. Her arms were tied behind her back, the wrists bound with, she assumed, another zip tie.

It took an alarming amount of effort to roll herself onto her back. Her hands scraped against the floor and her back arched unnaturally. She stared up at the ceiling. Apart from an air vent grille high up, it looked exactly the same as the wall. Turning her head brought the window into her field of vision. It was too small for even her small body to worm through, even if she could somehow free herself and find a way to reach it.