Top Ten (16 page)

But time. Time was the issue here. Things would not happen overnight, and Valentin had not said by when he needed the information. Soon, Pavel had offered without being asked. But what was ‘soon’?

Soon would have to be soon enough. He needed to make some calls. Reestablish some acquaintances. Get his people moving. Yes.

He put down the list and picked up the picture of the American.

“Mills DeVane,” he said aloud, studying the face. Studying the eyes. What was the American saying? ‘The eyes were the window to the soul’. Pavel chuckled. If only it were that easy.

Fourteen

Rendezvous

If they’d been playing for money, Mills DeVane would have been cleaned out. Tapped. Broke. But as it was, the stakes were much lower in the room in which he sat, across the table from the man who’d given him the name he could not use. The payoff, though, was immeasurable. The winnings were time.

“You should bring chips some time, pop,” Mills said and gathered the cards into an unkempt pile after another hand lost.

“Why?” Arlo Donovan asked him. “So you can quantify how bad your old man beats you? Ha!”

Mills nodded. Nodded and smiled and straightened the cards into a deck again, neat and square.

“We should make wild cards just for you,” Arlo ribbed his boy.

“Yeah, yeah.” Mills shuffled and cut the deck and set about dealing another hand, was on the verge of spinning the first card off the top, when a knock came at the door of room 152 of the Family Way Inn.

His hands froze and his eyes tracked warily to the door. He could see the light from the parking lot being blocked intermittently through the peephole.

“I’ll check,” Arlo Donovan said and got up. His son rose as well, putting the undealt deck on the table and looking back toward the bathroom. Was there a window in there? He hadn’t checked. He had gotten lazy. Lazy just wanting to be with his father. With his pop.

“Pop, look first.”

Arlo Donovan nodded and went to the door, putting his eye up to the peephole. He lingered there, and when he came away he put his hand on the latch and turned back to his son.

Mills took a step toward his father. Just one. “Pop...”

“There’s someone you should talk to, son,” Arlo Donovan said, twisting the latch open as his son’s gaze flared.

“Pop...”

The lock clicked and Arlo turned the knob. The door swung slowly in with little assistance. Ariel Grace stood just outside.

Mills DeVane stare went to her as he took a step back now, then to his father, and again on the stranger as she stepped inside. Arlo closed the door behind her.

“Pop, what the hell...”

“My name is Ariel Grace, Mr. DeVane.”

He slowly nodded. “I recognize you.”

“She’s here to help you, son.”

To his father he looked, then again to Ariel, his mind racing through a thousand different possibilities as to why this woman was here. How she had gotten here. How she had
known
to come here.

“Can I call you Mills?” Ariel asked him.

“Sure.” He stepped further away still, backing down the wall on the far side of the bed until the wall stopped him there. “How did you find me?”

Ariel gestured to his father, and Mills gaze burned.

“How in the hell did you...” But there was only one possible answer to the question he deemed unnecessary to complete. The fire in his eyes doubled. “I swore to God that if... I told Jack Hale what would happen if he involved my...”

Arlo went to his boy and gripped him by both arms. “Son,
I
trusted her.”

He shook his head at his father. “No, pop, I told him. I made him promise. You were on the outside of this. He just brought you in!”

“I brought him in, Mills,” Ariel told him. “I was the one.”

“You, Jack, I don’t care. It was for his safety. My peace of mind.” Mills’s eyes implored her to understand. “That’s gone now. Gone.”

“Son...”

“Pop,” Mills said and took his father’s hands in his. “Pop. Knowing you were only connected to me in our way, that made all this bearable. But now...”

“Now, Mills, you have to listen to me,” Ariel told him.

He turned sharply at her. “I don’t know you, lady! I don’t know you! Do you know how important knowing someone is to a man in my position? Do you? How important it is trusting someone?” He let go his father and came toward her. She stood her ground. “I’ll tell you who I trust. Me and my father. Jack Hale used to be on that list, but no more. Not after he and you or whoever involved my father outside of our way.”

“Son, please.”

“Listen to him,” Ariel told Mills.

“Why?”

“Because—” Ariel began, but Arlo cut her off.

“Because a crazy man is gunning for you, son.”

Mills turned back toward his father.

“For you,” Arlo said again. “And the others.”

Arlo had obviously seen the news. It seemed to Ariel that his son had not.

“What others?” Mills asked them both. “What are you talking about?”

“The man who’s number ten on the most wanted list is picking the rest of you off one by one,” Ariel explained. She saw his hard gaze soften. “He’s gotten nine and eight already. That doesn’t leave many until you.”

Mills did not look away from her for a long moment, and when he spoke next he was still looking at her. “Pop, you should go.”

A hand settled on Mills’s back.

“Pop, leave. Now. I’m asking you.”

The hand came off. Mills heard a coat being taken off the back of a chair. Heard keys jingle as they were removed from a pocket. Felt his father move past him. And all the while he glared at her. At this woman.

At the door Arlo Donovan stopped. “I want to see you again, son. Okay? Not too long?”

Mills nodded but did not look to his father, and when the door had closed behind Arlo Donovan his son waited until the familiar sound of his car’s coughing start to say what he wanted to say. “How dare you do that?”

“I wasn’t saying anything he didn’t already know,” Ariel reminded him.

Mills shook his head. “That doesn’t mean you should have. Do you know what this has been like for him?”

“No, I don’t.”

“You’re damn right you don’t,” Mills told her. “He doesn’t need it confirmed that his son may be in more danger than he already is. Do you know the burden he feels? Being the only person I can trust?”

“Take some of that burden away then,” Ariel suggested.

“It can’t be.”

“Trust me.”

“I don’t know you.”

“What do you want to know?” Ariel asked him, and he turned away from her. He walked to the table where he and his father had played dozens of hands of poker that night and sat. His fingers fiddled with the cards.

“What the hell can I do to make you trust me?”

“It doesn’t just happen that way,” Mills told her. “Trust isn’t just given. Not in the situation I’m in.”

“You’re in a hell of a more serious situation than you think. This maniac is good at what he does. He...” Damn, she hated doing this, but if he picked up a paper or turned on a TV, he would know. “...he gets to people on the list through people who know them. Loved ones.”

Mills flipped card after card past where his father had sat so they fell to the floor. “Thanks for connecting him to me with this brilliant rendezvous of yours.”

“We can put him under protection,” Ariel said.

Mills shook his head. “That would mark him real good.”

“Then trust me. Let me help you. Keep you informed of what’s going on. What Washington wants you to know.”

“Washington.” Mills chuckled derisively.

“All right,” Ariel said, offering alternately, “what I want you to know.”

He looked to her and put the cards down. “I don’t know you.”

“I’m Ariel, Teddy.”

His stare narrowed down.

“You’re not Mills DeVane,” she told him, and he looked away. She thought his eyes had begun to glisten.

“I have to be Mills until this is over.”

“Just don’t forget who Teddy is. That’s the son your father wants back.”

A bulge rolled down his throat. “I want this over so bad.”

She wanted to come closer, but she did not. He was right: he did not know her. And she did not know him.

“I just want it over.”

“This man who might come after you, he...”

Mills looked to her when the words got stuck in her throat.

“You might need someone to protect you.”

“I can’t afford that,” he told her.

“You may not have a choice.”

“I don’t understand,” Mills said. “What kind of man are we talking about?”

“I wish I knew,” Ariel answered, believing that fully, because knowing Michaelangelo, knowing what he was, how he had become the madness that he was, might make him that much easier to stop.

Fifteen

Mickey D

He was brought into the world on December 4
^th
, 1960, by Doctor Welford Elias, who had come straight from the bar to Talbot Memorial Hospital in Amarillo. The good doctor had been with friends at the Lone Star, putting back beers and vodka shooters, and was more than slightly annoyed when the call came in on the pay phone near the restroom that Muriel Strange had gone into labor. Bag of waters busted wide open. No waiting on her. He tossed a final shot of Stoli back and made it to his car.

On the way to Talbot Memorial he’d taken off a parked car’s mirror, but did not stop. He never even knew it had happened.

At the hospital he scrubbed and gowned up. Nurses sniffed the air covertly as he passed. He was on the bottle again. He’d been off the previous month. On the one before that. His wagon took short trips.

No one said anything to him. This was 1960. Doctors were gods. Nurses were skirts. If you didn’t know that, the saying went, then you shouldn’t wear the skirt.

In delivery room 3 the nurses had Muriel Strange on the table and prepped. Her legs were in the stirrups. She had been given an enema. Her husband was not in attendance. Nicky worked for the railroad and was likely somewhere between home and the stockyards up Chicago way right then. Doctor Elias slurred a hello and got in the catcher’s position, nearly falling off the stool that had been placed there for him.

He berated a nurse for not locking the wheels down and turned his attention to Muriel Strange. With his thumbs he spread her labia. There was some blood. Not too much. He squinted and saw the baby beginning to crown.

It was six p.m.

At six forty five Baby Strange was born. A boy. Wailing and pink. Twenty inches. Six pounds twelve. A healthy boy. Everything looked good. Elias thought he might get back to the Lone Star by seven thirty. Maybe get in a game of darts. Maybe get a pinch of old Sylvia’s ass. Yessiree Bob.

“Is my baby all right?” Muriel Strange asked as a nurse mopped her brow.

“Fine, Mithes Stange,” Doctor Elias assured her as a nurse held the baby for him. “A pink and prethy boy.”

Another nurse handed him some scissors. Shiny and sterile and sharp. It was time to cut the little fella loose. Let him get out there on his own. Cut the ties that bind. Elias spread the scissors open and reached for the cord. Saw it right there, pink and prethy. Went for it. Snipped it as a nurse screamed and Baby Strange began to wail.

*   *   *

A nurse had snatched the neatly severed penis from the floor where it fell, but microsurgery was not a discipline conceived much less understood in 1960. All that could be done was the medical equivalent of a patch job by a surgeon brought in on the quick once Doctor Welford Elias realized what he had done. The bleeding was controlled. Skin was rearranged, folded and snipped and stitched, and an end was given to an organ that had seen its taken away. The ureter was fed through and made useable as best it could. No infection developed, but the doctors told the parents there would be scarring. They were right.

Talbot Memorial fired Doctor Elias. Criminal charges were brought and there was a trial. The good doctor was convicted and sentenced to three years. He served two and moved to California when paroled. A month after arriving he was knifed in a barfight and lingered for a month before succumbing.

Those who knew of him thought it justice.

A lawyer offered his services to the Strange family soon after their son’s birth. Mickey, they were calling him. The lawyer told them they were due compensation for what had been done. Nicky Strange liked the sound of that. Muriel wondered if it would help Mickey. In the long run, it could, the lawyer told her. Nicky asked about the short run.

The case was brought to court. Evidence presented demonstrated that hospital employees knew of Doctor Elias’s penchant for the bottle. The Strange’s lawyer referred to him as ‘the drunkard’ in court; in 1960 one did not have ‘a problem’. The jury was shown a picture of the damage done to Mickey. The picture was taken a day after birth. There was tremendous swelling. It made an impact.

Muriel Strange kept Mickey at home during the proceedings. Nicky Strange was in court every day. His employer asked when he was coming back. When the jury came back with a verdict against the hospital, Nicky told the railroad they could shove their job.

The damages awarded were unprecedented in 1960. Then again, what had happened was unprecedented. The jury gave little Mickey Strange one million dollars for pain, suffering, and, as they put it, ‘future needs’. They gave Muriel and Nicky Strange fifty thousand dollars for emotional distress. Nicky whooped when he heard the amounts. He thought he’d won some lottery.

The judge decreed the child’s award be held in trust until he was 21, and assigned administration of the money to an attorney in Houston. The man had managed similar trusts over his career and was known to be particularly adept at financial matters.

Nicky and Muriel Strange received a check for fifty thousand dollars, less attorney’s fees. The amount on the check stunned Nicky. Twenty thousand dollars. The lawyer had taken over half their money. Nicky complained, but compensation had been spelled out in the contract they’d signed. Nicky shouted at the lawyer, and the lawyer suggested he read documents before signing them. Muriel told him that twenty thousand was a lot of money. Her husband slapped her and took it to the bank.