Just Fall (17 page)

“Please try to understand. When it all went down, when I left home, Spencer—he was the only person who had believed me and helped me and I had to walk away and pretend I didn’t know him. It was a wake-up call. I knew then that I needed to tell you the truth. You’ve healed me, Ellie. Changed me. But I was so scared of losing you.”

Now she looked at him and he could see fear, even disgust in her eyes, but yes, also the desire to understand. Or in his desperation was he imagining that?

In a tight voice she asked: “But I take it the story doesn’t end there? In a moving company office in Cleveland?”

“No. But before I continue, I ask you to have compassion for the boy I was, and also ask if you can somehow keep that compassion for the man I became.” She gestured, a noncommittal shrug. She would try, no promises.

Then his new bride took a long shaky breath and said: “What’s your real name?”

Poor Lou. A first love corrupted by insanity and violence. Then public humiliation. Followed by a retreat—not only from the world she had known, but also from her brutally betrayed, lithe young body. Peace, finally, in a wallow of fat and obscurity—only to have her brains blown out by a sadistic fuck. Poor Lou.

Ellie aches with sadness. And resigned helplessness about her own fate. Quinn and Gold Tooth hustle her out of the hotel, Gold Tooth’s gun jammed into the small of her back. Ellie clutches her beach bag protectively in front of her chest. She expects she will die soon. Also that it won’t be swift or easy.

But life goes on out here in the streets of Vieux Fort. The street is throbbing with tourists and vendors; reggae music blasts from a bar a few doors down. Piquant chicken spits and hisses on a barbecue. The smell of the food brings a sudden rush of saliva to Ellie’s mouth.

Ellie spies Crazy B hawking his wares to a young couple with rucksacks.

“Hey, B, Crazy B! I changed my mind!” she calls to him impulsively.

The drug dealer pivots, a broad smile lighting up his face. “Beauty! Whatever you want.”

“Shut up,” Gold Tooth hisses in Ellie’s ear.

“Going to shoot me in the middle of the street?” she hisses back. Then, louder, to the dealer, “Let’s you and me go somewhere together.”

“You got it, beauty.” Crazy B sidles over to her, all sweat and muscle, his forehead creasing as he notes the blood trickling from the side of Ellie’s mouth. He looms over Gold Tooth.

Gold Tooth flashes enough of his gun to make a point.

Crazy B just smiles broader. With a tug of his tie-dyed T-shirt he reveals the automatic weapon shoved into his waistband. “The lady wants to come with me.” The island lilt in his voice makes him sound sweet, despite the madhouse glint in his eyes.

Ellie glides away from Gold Tooth and toward Crazy B’s outstretched arm.

Gold Tooth glances at his own single-round handgun and then at Quinn, panicked.

Quinn’s hand reaches into his pocket. “The girl has nothing to do with you.”

“Like I said,” Crazy B insists, “Beauty wants to come with me.”

Quinn glances around at the crowded street. Back at Crazy B. Quinn’s bony face looks skeletal; his skin goes paper white. “Let’s go,” he murmurs to Gold Tooth. Then to Ellie, “We’ll catch you later. Count on it.”

Gold Tooth hurries into the driver’s seat. Quinn slides in next to him and the Volvo churns to life.

As Ellie turns to face her savior, dread rises in her throat. Crazy B’s eyes are bloodshot; a wild heat spirals off his muscular body.

Has she jumped from the proverbial frying pan into the weed-reeking fire?

Was this terrifying stranger his father? Rob got into Quinn’s car and drove away with him, insisting he call 911 for Matt. Quinn seemed amused by this gesture but allowed it. Then he tossed Rob’s cellphone out the car window.

Quinn changed clothes in a rest stop bathroom, discarding the clothes still damp with Matt’s blood into a Dumpster. He kept Rob with him all the while but didn’t initiate conversation. They went to the airport, and traveled first class to Miami.

Quinn’s behavior on the flight gave no clue about the horrific act he had just committed. He sipped the proffered champagne, flirted with the flight attendant, made observations about fellow passengers to Rob. When they landed, a chauffeured car awaited them. They were driven to a modern beachside mansion, with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the ocean. The décor was black and white and steel gray, with a few splashes of startling red (the kitchen counter, a patterned area rug in the dining room, an enormous abstract painting that swallowed up most of one wall). Rob was burning with questions and Quinn gradually doled out answers.

Quinn had loved Rob’s mother, and she had loved him, but her uptight WASP parents were never going to accept a man of Quinn’s type. What type was that? Rob wanted to know.

Quinn took the long road in answering this question. His origins had been impoverished, his upbringing lonely and insecure. He was working as an errand boy for a drug dealer by the time he was ten, dropped out of school at fourteen. He moved up in the ranks, started side businesses that flourished. At twenty-four he met Rob’s mother, a college senior from Bryn Mawr down in Miami for spring break. A year later she had Rob, at which point her parents got involved, separating them with an iron hand. He tried to see her, tried to see his young son, but was thwarted at every turn and eventually gave up. Until he heard that Rob had been accused of murder and had disappeared. Then Quinn had started looking for him.

It was a time for fresh starts for both of them, Quinn insisted. Rob gathered his courage to ask about Matt. Why had he, you know, felt it necessary…? To his astonishment, Quinn hugged him. He had waited long enough to know his son, he answered simply. He added nothing more.

The next few days passed like a dream. There were girls in neon bikinis, lavish meals prepared by Quinn’s private chef, the ocean and the pool and the hot tub. The spectacular sunsets: crimson, gold, and magenta, palm trees silhouetted against the exploding sky. Quinn came home with gifts for Rob: new clothes and shoes, an expensive watch. He had a girl come to cut Rob’s hair and shave off his goatee, an old-fashioned shave with a straight-edge razor. There were drugs, and Rob couldn’t help himself, one bump of coke leading to another. Rob wasn’t a prisoner, not exactly, but Quinn seemed to travel with a posse and one of his men was always visible a few feet away.

Just as Rob had compartmentalized his life into neat, hermetic compartments in the past (one, before his stepfather; two, after the abuse started; three, after Rob killed the bastard and was homeless and friendless; four, working for Matt), he now allowed himself to pretend this new phase was all he had ever known. Why not? The living was easy, the best he had had since the long-ago compartment number one.

He surfed the Internet looking for information about Matt Walsh. No obituary, no crime reports. It suited him to believe Matt was fine and so he did. He had plentiful food and a comfortable bed, all the material comforts he could desire. He had the father he had never known. He had what he had always wanted.

Quinn was casually frank about the illegal nature of his businesses, and even though Rob was on the alert for it, he didn’t see another incident where a trickle of menace spiraled into a flash flood of violence. So what if his father was a criminal? Rob asked himself. His stepfather had been a card-carrying Republican, a respected and respectable member of the country club set, and he had been an abusive monster. Who was Rob to judge? People did what they needed to do to survive.

Days drifted into weeks. And then one morning, as a thunderstorm raged outside the windows, Quinn told Rob he wanted to put him to work.

Quinn had a job for Rob that would play to his particular skills. Surprised, Rob asked what Quinn thought those skills were. Quinn painted a flattering picture. Rob was special. Intelligent, but more important, both street-smart and society-smart; he had the healthy all-American good looks that opened doors. He had charm and he had hustle. He could think on his feet and had quick reflexes. Here Quinn tossed a beer bottle at him. Rob snatched it midair and Quinn smiled.

Rob felt a swagger flood his bones. This was more like it. This was who he was.

The first job was easy: checking into a swank hotel and leaving behind a satchel when he checked out. In fact, Rob felt a little deflated afterward. Sure, he engendered respect from the hotel staff when he checked in with his hip clothes, Louis Vuitton suitcase, and twenty-dollar tips. But how was this using what was special about him?

Quinn sensed Rob’s disappointment and teased Rob that he had to walk before he could run. Rob realized this was his first ever father/son pep talk.

There were more simple drops. Then Rob was brought in on a meeting regarding Quinn’s pipeline for smuggling counterfeit designer goods. Soon he was handling some meets all on his own. Cash drops. Drug pickups. A cache of guns.

He was also hitting the clubs. Young, good-looking, and moneyed in Miami, what else would he do? He met a girl one night, a fun girl, Cuban American, Solana. Her name meant sunshine, she told him. They danced a little, kissed a little. Rob had to step out to the parking lot to meet a guy. He told Solana he’d be right back.

From the moment he saw the guy, Rob sensed trouble. He was high on meth, for one thing, cagy about the fact that his payment was light. They were getting into it, standing by the open trunk of Rob’s car, when Solana, tipsy and flirtatious, teetered into the exchange on her canary-yellow stiletto sandals.

It was all so fast—the guy had a gun in her face, he was twitchy and shouting and shaking. Rob grabbed the tire iron in his open trunk and smashed it into the guy’s head. The gun clattered to the pavement. Solana stared at Rob in horror as the meth head slumped to the parking lot pavement and blood spattered her strappy yellow shoes and her perky toes with their optimistic poppy-colored nail polish. She began to cry.

Killing the meth head was a rush. It was terrifying. It was thrilling and awful, empowering and dreadful. It felt like his destiny.

Quinn cleaned things up. Gave Solana a few grand to keep her mouth shut, got rid of the corpse. Quinn seemed proud, like Rob had popped his cherry. And so began Rob’s lessons. His induction into Quinn’s world.

Ellie desperately assesses what she knows. Maison Mary Ann. It’s really the only clue she has. And where she has directed Matt Walsh to find her, in the note left at Lou’s.

Ellie lays out a proposal to Crazy B boldly, spinning the shiny threads of fiction as fast as she can invent them. She had come to St. Lucia to make a major drug buy, she tells him. The losers he scared away ripped her off. But she knows where the drugs are, and also the hundred grand they have taken from her. The dealer’s eyes widen at the mention of the number and Ellie knows she’s got him on the hook. If he will help her find the place, she continues, share his local knowledge, she will make it well worth his while. He’s already seen the men she’s dealing with are pussies. The two of them will be able to take back the money
and
score the drugs.

He seems all in until she mentions Maison Mary Ann.