Bad Men (2003) (46 page)

“Now, where are you going?” said Dexter. He advanced upon her, gripped her by the hair, and dragged her back to Moloch.

Bonnie Claeson had given up on the phone, on her car, and on Joe Dupree. She had given up on everything. Something had broken inside her when she’d heard her son’s voice echoing down a dead telephone line, and so she had retreated into a beautiful illusion. Richie, her sad, troubled, loving son, was out in the snow alone, probably tired and afraid. She had to find him and bring him home. She wore only an open coat over her sweater and jeans, and her clothing was now crusted white with flakes Her cheap boots had not protected her feet, yet she did not feel the cold. She was lost to herself, and now she only wished for her son to appear out of the darkness, his orange jacket bright against the snow, his face filled with relief and affection as his mother came for him and drew him to her.

“I’m searching for my boy,” she said. “Have you seen him?”

She looked first at Dexter, then at Moloch, examining their faces. They seemed familiar to her. Briefly, her clouded mind was illuminated by a flash of clarity. She shook her head and moved away from the two men, never allowing her eyes to leave their faces.

They were Richie’s bad men, the men from the TV. She heard her son’s voice crying out its last words to her.

Momma! Momma! Bad men. Badmenbadmenbadmenbadmenbad—

Dexter saw the recognition in her eyes.

“Shit,” he said, “now we’re gonna—”

The gunshot came from so close to his head that he recoiled in shock, his ears ringing. The woman crumpled to the ground and began to bleed on the snow. Beside him, Moloch holstered his gun.

“We could have taken her with us,” said Dexter. “She could have helped us.”

“You going soft on me, Dex?” came the reply, and Dexter was sure now that Moloch was mad. In the unspoken threat he heard the death sentence being passed on Willard, the abandonment of Powell, Shepherd, and Scarfe to their fates, and the single-minded obsession that had brought them to this place. It was no longer about money, or a woman, or a child. Moloch might once have thought that it was, but it wasn’t. He had come here for some unknowable reason of his own, and those who stood alongside him were expendable.

We’re going to die here, Dexter realized. I think I always knew, and just hoped that it wouldn’t be true, but it will end here. I have no choice now but to follow it to its end, and to embrace it when it comes.

“No,” said Dexter. “I ain’t going soft.”

He walked over to where the woman lay and looked down on her. She was lying very still. Her eyes blinked and he saw her chest rise and fall, blood spreading from the wound on her left breast. Her lips formed a word.

“Richie,” she whispered, for the boy was beside her now. He had always appeared wondrous to her, always kind, but now he seemed transformed, his features perfectly sculpted and his eyes alive with an intelligence that he had never known in life.

“Richie,” she repeated. He reached out his hand to her and took it in his own, and he drew her to him and carried her away so that she would not feel the pain of the final bullet.

Marianne was on her doorstep when she heard the shots. They came from close by. Two overnight bags, crammed full of clothing, lay by her feet, and the knapsack hung over her shoulder. Danny sat on top of one of the bags, still drowsy. When he heard the shots, he looked up briefly, then resumed his previous position, his head cupped in his hands, his eyes nearly closed.

“Come on, Danny, we have to go.”

“Where?” There was that whining tone to his voice, and for the first time she lost her temper with him.

“We’re going to Jack’s. Now get up, Danny! I mean it! You get up or I’m going to give you such a spanking that you won’t be able to sit for a week. Do you hear me? Get up!”

The boy started to cry, but at least he was on his feet. Marianne took a bag in each hand, then gave him a little swipe with one of them, propelling him toward the door. She pulled it closed behind her with her toe, then urged him on down the path to Jack’s house. Once they got to Jack’s, she could convince the old man to take them off Dutch. Even if they got only as far as one of the neighboring islands, it would be enough. All that mattered was that they get away from here. The weight of the gun in her coat pocket slapped painfully against her leg as she walked, but she didn’t care. It had been in the knapsack with the money. She had cleaned and oiled it only twice in the years since she had fled, following instructions from a gun magazine, and had never fired it, not even on a range. She would use it, though, if she was forced to do so. This time there would be no fear. She would take his dare. She was stronger than he had ever suspected, stronger than even she had known. She would kill him, if she had to, and some secret part of her hoped that she would be given that opportunity.

From the top of the rise, Moloch and Dexter watched them leave the house, but they were not the only ones. Far to their right, almost at the edge of Jack’s property, a pretty man with blond hair stood among the trees and admired once again the shape of the woman’s legs, the swell of her breasts beneath her open coat, the way her jeans hugged her groin. In her way, she was to blame for all that had happened to him, for his rejection and abandonment by the man he admired so much. She had deceived him, betrayed his beloved Moloch, and he would make her pay. He vaguely recalled Moloch’s warning that she was not to be harmed, but he had the hunger upon him now. He would first make her tell him where the money was, and then he would finish her.

After all, Willard had needs too.

Jack heard the banging on his kitchen door as he dozed in his armchair. He had tried to paint, but nothing came. Instead, he found himself drawn again and again to the painting with the two figures burned upon it, his fingers tracing their contours as he tried to understand how they had come to be. Then the lights had gone out and the heat with them. The small fire faded in the grate and he noticed only when the cold began to tell on his bones. There was no wood left by the fireplace, so he grabbed his coat and opened the door, preparing to risk the cold in order to replenish his stock from the store of firewood in the shed.

But as he stood at the door, he became aware of a presence beyond the house.

No, not a single presence, but many presences.

“Who’s there?” he called, but he expected no reply. Instead, he thought he saw a shadow move against the wind, gray upon the white ground, like a cobweb blown, or an old cloak discarded. There were more shadows to his left and right. They seemed to be circling the house, waiting.

“Go away,” he said, softly. “Please go away.”

He closed and locked the door then, and checked all the windows. He took a blanket from his bed, wrapped it around his shoulders, and sat as close as he could to the dying embers of the fire. He thought that he might have slept for a time, for he dreamed of shadows moving closer to the great picture window, and faces pressed against the glass, their skin gray and withered, their lips thin and bloodless, their eyes black and hungry. They tapped at the glass with their long nails, the tapping growing harder until at last the glass exploded inward and they descended upon him and began to devour him.

Jack’s eyes flicked open. He could still hear the banging and for a moment he found himself unable to distinguish between dream and reality. Then he heard Marianne Elliot calling his name and he struggled to his feet, his joints stiff from sitting slumped against the chair. He walked to the kitchen door and saw the faces of Marianne and Danny, the woman scared and panicky, the boy drowsy and his face streaked with tears. He opened the door.

“Come in,” he said. “What’s wrong?”

She dropped the bags she was holding, then knelt down and hugged the boy close to her.

“I’m sorry for shouting at you, Danny. I’m so sorry.”

The boy began to cry again, but at least he hugged her back. Marianne, the boy’s head cradled against her neck, looked imploringly at Jack.

“We need to get off the island.”

“There’s no way you can get away from here until this snow thins out some more,” he said.

“We can’t wait that long.”

Jack said nothing. She understood that he wanted more from her.

“Danny,” she said, “go inside and lie down for few minutes.”

The boy did not need to be told twice. He passed by the old man and headed for the couch, where he instantly fell asleep.

“I’ve told some lies,” she said when she saw her son curl up with his eyes closed. “My husband isn’t dead. He was put in prison. I betrayed him to the police so that Danny and I could get away from him. And…I took money from him. A lot of money.”

She opened the knapsack and showed Jack the wads of notes. His mouth opened slightly in surprise, then closed with a snap.

“I’m not sure how he got it all, but I can guess, and so can you. Now he’s here on the island and he’s brought men with him. They’re close. I heard shots.”

She reached out and took the painter’s hand.

“My car is dead, but you have a boat. I need you to get us away from here, even just to one of the other islands. If we don’t leave, they’ll find us and they’ll kill me and take Danny away.”

She paused.

“Or they may kill Danny too. My husband, he never had any love for Danny.”

The old man looked back at the swing door of the kitchen, beyond which the boy lay sleeping.

“You told Joe Dupree any of this?”

Marianne shook her head.

“He’ll help you, you know that. He’s different.”

“I was afraid, afraid that they’d put me in jail or take Danny from me.”

“I don’t know enough about the law to say one way or the other, but it seems to me that they’d be a little more sympathetic than that.”

“Just take us off the island, please. I’ll think about telling someone once we’re away from here.”

Jack bit his lip, then nodded. “Okay, we can try. This all your stuff?”

“It’s all that I had time to pack.”

Jack took a bag in each hand, then kicked the knapsack and said: “You’d best look after that yourself.”

They entered the living room, Jack leading. Marianne was so close behind him when the shot came that Jack’s blood hit her in the face before he fell to the floor. There was a wound at his shoulder. He clutched it with his hand, his teeth clenched as he trembled and began to go into shock. Danny awoke and started crying loudly, but she could not go to him. She could not move.

All that she could do was stare impotently at her husband, even as Dexter frisked her and took the gun from her coat. He raised it so that Moloch could see it.

Moloch grinned.

“Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just not happy to see me?” Moloch asked.

He stepped closer to her and struck her hard with his right hand, sending her sprawling on a rug. She lay still for a moment, then crawled across the floor to Danny and gathered him in her arms.

“You’d better make that last,” said Moloch. “You don’t have much time left together.”

Moloch stared at his reflection in the painting, his face seeming to hang suspended above the dark waves that the old man had painted, the twin arms of the outcrops like horns erupting from his head, almost touching above his hair. He moved on to the next, a watercolor filled with blues and greens, before returning to the first. The waves in this version were very dark, almost black, white peaks breaking through, like the pale bodies of drowning men. A sliver of moonlight cast a weak silver glow across the skies above. There were no stars.

“I like this one,” he said.

Jack, seated on the floor, his hands bound before him with a length of clothesline, peered up at the intruder. He was deathly pale, apart from a smear of blood across his cheek. In the murk of the room, the blood appeared black against the pallor of his face, creating a strange resemblance between the artist and the work of art before which Moloch now stood.

“You go away and you can have it for free,” said Jack.

Moloch’s mouth twitched, the only sign he gave that he might be enjoying the joke.

“Something I’ve learned,” he said. “You get nothing for free in this life. Although I can say, with some certainty, that if you fuck with me, money is never likely to be a worry for you again.”

Dexter stood behind the couch. The appearance of the woman and the money seemed to have concentrated Moloch’s mind some. He was no longer rambling. Dexter began to experience a faint hope that they might somehow get out of this alive. His hand rested on the back of Danny’s neck in what might have been almost a protective way, were it not for the fact that the tips of his fingers were digging painfully into the boy’s skin, almost cupping his spine.

“Make him stop,” said Marianne. “He’s your son. Make him stop hurting him.”

Moloch walked toward the boy, who attempted to shrink back but found himself anchored to the spot by the force of Dexter’s hand. Moloch reached out and touched the back of his hand to the boy’s cheek.

“You’re cold,” he said. “If you’re not careful, you’ll catch your death.”

He glanced at Marianne.

“He doesn’t look much like me. You sure he’s mine? Maybe he’s something that you and that dyke bitch cooked up between you with a turkey baster. She’s dead, by the way, but I suspect you knew that already.”

Marianne’s eyes blinked closed. She bit her lip to try to keep from crying.

“Actually, I got to tell you that a lot of people are dead because of you. Your sister, her husband, fuck knows how many people on this island, all because you were a greedy bitch who screwed over her own husband. You try that out for size, see how it fits on your conscience.”

He turned to Dexter.

“How long have we been here?”

“Ten, fifteen minutes, maybe.”

“We can’t afford to wait any longer for the others, but now that we have a boat a little closer to home”—Moloch kicked Jack’s leg, causing the old man to flinch—“it looks like I have some time to kill, in a manner of speaking.”