Hell on Church Street (18 page)

“Yes.”

“And you’re going to do…what’s best for our family?”

Van sighed. “Of course.”

“Very good, dear. Now how do you propose…we go about it?”

“Ian and I will take him out through the parking garage. The desk nurse here is taken care of.”

“How much did that cost us?” Mrs. Norris asked.

“Three thousand.”

The old lady winced like she’d been stuck with a pin. “Three thousand dollars! You
ain’t
got no more sense than… You’d pay five dollars…for a bucket of spit.” The hateful tone she used was awful to hear. It was so much worse than the way she had spoken to me. She stared at him hard for a moment and huffed, “Some fucking lawyer…you are. First, you were supposed to get…old lady
Dyess
to sign over control of the…
luminum
plant. But you fucked that up. Then you give the preacher…a copy of the will.”

“Am I going to have to hear about this for the rest of my life?” Van demanded. “It’s what Ms.
Dyess
told me to do. Card was the only one she trusted. How was I supposed to know you and Doolittle were going to try to circumvent her will? I thought the matter was laid to rest when she died.”

“Maybe if you’d actually think…for once in your damn life.”

“Stop attacking me!” he snapped. He seemed to get smaller as he said it, like a balloon deflating.

Mrs. Norris titled her head.

Ian smirked. It was the first expression I’d seen drift across his long, flat iceberg of a face.

Finally Mrs. Norris smiled at Van, warmly, understandingly. “Oh, my baby,” she said tenderly. She took his hand and kissed it. “You’re under…so much stress. You do take care of…your momma.”

“Thank you,” he said dryly.

Ian didn’t move. He just stood there like a machine that wasn’t being used.

Mrs. Norris told Van, “I know…you’ll take care of this…for me.”

“I will.”

“And the stuff…with the papers…and the investigators?”

Van gently pulled his hand away from his mother and put it in his pocket. “I’ll take care of all of it, mother.”

Mrs. Norris smiled and folded her arms in her lap. She looked like an old lady again, an old lady leaving a quilting circle.

“Ian,” she said over her shoulder, “you take me…down to Dawn. She’ll drive me…home. Then you come up here…and help your uncle.”

Ian said, “Yes,
Grandmom
.”

She looked at me. “Goodbye,” she said. “Goodbye…mister dead man.”

After Ian had rolled her out, Van leaned against the wall and slipped his hand out of his pocket. “She’s crazy, of course,” he said.

I didn’t say anything.

He wiped a smudge of lipstick off his knuckle. “But she’s my mother, I suppose.”

He shook his head.

“And Ian…his parents are gone, and she raised him like you’d train a dog for pit fighting. He’d come in here and cut my throat if she told him to.”

He jabbed his hand back in his pocket and jiggled his keys and chewed on his bottom lip.

“What now?” I asked.

He raised his eyes and stared at me over his glasses. “Goodbye mister dead man.”

Chapter Nineteen

When Ian came back in, he was cracking his walnut-sized knuckles. “Let’s get to work,” he said.

Van asked, “Is it ready downstairs?”

“Yep.”

They looked at me. It was a bizarre thing to watch them size me up like a broken sink.

“Should we do it here?” Ian asked.

I opened my mouth to yell
help!
and
had gotten the first syllable out when, in one fluid motion, Ian leapt to the bed and struck me across the mouth. A pain shot down my neck and into my shoulders. Suddenly there was a knife in his hand. “Don’t,” he said. “Or we’ll make it hurt. We’re mostly alone on this hall, anyway. Just make it easy on both of us and be quiet.”

My lip was bleeding
and my teeth hurt. Ian slid the cold blade across my sweaty forehead.

Van said, “I don’t have much experience with this end of it.”

Ian put the knife away. “I’ll handle it.”

“Well then. What’s the best way?”

Ian walked over to him and took his arm and they went out in the hallway. I scrambled for the phone. The movement made my neck explode with pain and it was all for nothing, anyway, because the phone was disconnected. I looked around for something, anything. In the drawer
was
a Bible, a pad and a pencil. I took the pencil. Maybe I could jab someone in the eye with it.

After a few minutes, Ian came back into the room. He leaned over the
guard rail
, a giant hovering over me, and said, “Here’s the deal.” His voice was like a depth charge. “I’m not a trained liar like Uncle Van. I think laying things out is best. This is the situation: You are going to die tonight. I assume you already know this.”

There was nothing to say to that. There was nothing in Ian’s eyes that could be appealed to. I was a master manipulator, but there was nothing there to manipulate.

Ian solemnly
acknowledge
my silence. “Good, you do know. You should. I don’t want there to be any doubt about it. It’s my job to kill you, so you know it’s going to get done. And I think the best way to do it is to just dope you up and slit your throat in the bathtub. That’s the way I’d do it if it was just
me
. But Uncle Van wants us to have you check out. He’s one for the dotting of i’s and crossing of
t’s
. And it’ll be all around easier if you just walk out to the SUV and get in and we drive off. He wanted me to try and trick you, some foolishness like you see in the movies. Tell you we’re not going to kill you so you’ll come along peacefully.” He shook his
block head
. “You heard
Grandmom
. She said you’re going in the ground tonight and her word is gospel. I suspect you know that. The cops are going to want you for killing the preacher and his wife and spoiling their daughter.
Anyway you look at it
,
you’re dead
. So here’s the offer I’m willing to make you: if you sign yourself out, and if you walk out quietly to the car, I won’t hurt you. We’ll go for a short ride to the family plot. I’ll let you say a last prayer, smoke a cigarette or say a few last words. And then, once you’re ready, it’ll be a relatively peaceful death.
One bullet in the back of the head.
There’s a chance that you won’t even hear the gun.
If you think about it, that isn’t a bad proposition.
One pop and it’ll be over. Most people don’t get to die that quickly or simply.” He leaned in close, just as his
grandmom
had done, and I could smell meat on his breath. “Otherwise, I’m going to have to hurt you. And since I’m not a sadist, I’ll be angry with you for making me hurt you. That’s just more weight for the soul to carry. I’ll torture you with the cold fury of a man who’s been forced into it. Do you understand me?”

Van walked in and said, “That’s enough, Ian. For Christ’s sake.”

Ian turned and stared at him blankly for a moment. Then he said, “It’s hard to believe you and Doolittle were brothers.”

“Isn’t it though?” Van said. He pulled open the closet and took out my clothes. “Your church friends,” he told me, “they brought some spares for you.” He tossed them on the bed. “Get changed and we’ll be going.” He looked at Ian and jerked his head at the door. They walked to the hall to whisper some more, and I slowly got dressed.

I wasn’t really thinking. My neck hurt and my left hand was wrapped to protect my broken fingers. There was blood under my fingernails and my hands were shaking. I couldn’t think. Mostly, I thought about putting on my clothes. I looked down at the pencil,
my would
be weapon, and I dropped it on the floor, letting it roll under the bed. I was tired and my body was quivering with pain. I didn’t care anymore. Why not let Ian give me one in the back of the head?

I was dressed and sitting there quietly when Ian and Van walked back in. Ian was grinning. Van looked like his head hurt.

“Let’s go,” he said.

After I signed a couple of forms at the vacant nurse’s station, we made our way down the hall as if nothing were wrong. Tense beside me, Van stared at the elevator at the end of the hall without blinking, but Ian strolled along as if he were wandering outside for a smoke. I walked between them. That’s all. I felt numb.

One in the back of the head.

I chuckled. Ian glanced at me and drifted a little closer to me, but Van kept staring at the elevator. The halls were long, clean and pastel. And empty. It was as though the Norris reputation and money had evaporated any last vestiges of humanity. It was just
me and the Norris boys
.

In the elevator, Van pushed the button for the bottom floor while Ian leaned his bulk against the wall behind me. Being a medium sized county
hospital,
there were just four floors and a basement/parking garage. We’d been on three and were headed for the garage, but suddenly the elevator stopped on the first floor. Van shot a look at Ian.

Ian stood up straight. “Stay calm,” he intoned. “Both of you.”

The doors slid open and a young couple smiled at us. The girl was pregnant and the boy was carrying a powder blue baby bag.

“Hello,” the girl said as they crowded onto the elevator.

“Hi,” I said. “How are you?”

Ian touched my back.

“Fine,” the girl said. She was a strawberry blonde with a skinny face and small legs. Her young man took her hand. I don’t remember anything about him. I was looking at her, at the field of freckles spread across her nose and cheeks.

“When are you due?” I asked.

“Seventeen days,” she said.

“That’s wonderful. Congratulations.”

Her young man stared at the digital readout of the floor numbers. She smiled quietly and said, “Thank you.” She glanced at my
neckbrace
and said, “I hope you’re okay.”

The cold, flat side of a blade rubbed against my elbow.

I sighed. She was looking at me, half smiling, waiting for me to answer.

The bell dinged and the door opened.

The young man stepped out and the girl blinked and I didn’t say anything and she stepped out. Van stepped out behind her, and I followed him.

“Over here,” Ian said. “You need to take it easy.”

“Good luck,” I told the girl. “Congratulations.”

She grinned at me, glanced at Ian, then back at me and said, “Thank you. I hope you’re okay.”

Her young man took her hand, and she smiled and turned and walked off with him.

The garage was tiny, but the young couple was parked on the side opposite Ian’s SUV. Still, I could hear their footsteps behind me. Something in that slowed me down, some distant echo of hope, but Ian moved in close to me—so close we were walking in step with each other—and whispered, “If you make me hurt a pregnant girl, I’ll torture you for months.”