Kingdom of the Seven (11 page)

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Authors: Jon Land

BOOK: Kingdom of the Seven
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“Karen, what’s gotten into you? Where in God’s name are you?”
Alexander MacFarlane’s voice blared into Karen Raymond’s ear through the receiver of the pay phone in Modesto.
“It doesn’t matter, Alex. And I don’t plan on talking long enough for anyone who might be listening in to find out.”
“
What?
What are you talking about? I was worried to death last night. I thought someone had kidnapped you. I couldn’t believe it when the guards said you were alone in the car.”
“Not alone. My boys were in the backseat.”
“My God, they could have been hurt … .”
“Or maybe shot, Alex, by men who didn’t want me off your property, out of your sight. Beyond your control.”
“Make sense, Karen!”
She checked her watch, careful not to give MacFarlane
enough time to have the call traced. “Not this call. Suffice it to say I’m playing things safe.”
“Last night, Karen, think about what happened last night!”
“I am.”
“Talk to me, Karen! God help me, I don’t know what’s gotten into you, but we’ve got to talk.”
“Soon,” Karen finished, and hung up the phone.
She had abandoned MacFarlane’s Cadillac the night before with the certainty that law enforcement officials all over the state would be watching for it and her. It had taken her twenty minutes to drive ten miles, far enough, she hoped, to give her a sufficient head start. From there she had called six cab companies before finding one willing to make a drive at that time of the night to Sanpee and a trailer park from her past.
Of course, she had no cash to pay the driver and informed him of this fact at the outset, promising to get the money as soon as they reached their destination. The man took another look at her kids, shrugged, and relented.
The drive toward Sanpee took just under a half hour. The boys had drifted off to sleep almost instantly. Every time Karen nearly joined them, a pair of piercing headlights or a horn would jolt her alert. She saw enemies everywhere; around the next turn, hidden on the embankment just up ahead, following in the minivan flaring its high beams into the rearview mirror.
They passed into Sanpee and reached the outskirts of the trailer park just before 4:00 A.M. It looked unchanged, the trailers just where they had been when she had left eight years ago. There weren’t many lights on at this hour, other than the sporadically placed weak floods which the management called security. The cab weaved its way through the mazelike confines toward the rear, Karen straining her eyes through the darkness.
A dog barked. Then another.
The driver hit the brakes. Karen and the boys lurched forward.
“Holy shit,” the driver muttered.
The dogs, all pit bulls, surrounded the cab and barked at it, jumping up and snapping at the tires and grille. The driver instantly closed his window. He turned round toward Karen with fatigue replaced by fear on his face.
“Were you expecting this, lady?”
Before Karen could answer, a familiar voice rang out.
“Looks like we got us some visitors … .”
T.J. Fields stepped into the spill of the cab’s headlights, twelve-gauge shotgun in hand. The white glow shrouded him, and he didn’t as much as blink it back. He was just as big as Karen remembered him, even bigger now in the gut. His hair had grayed and been trimmed much shorter. But besides that, he looked the same as the first night they had met when he saved her from Tom Mitchell’s wrath, right down to the leather chaps, biker buckle boots, and leather vest with the Skulls logo embroidered on its rear. Karen imagined she could hear the chaps creaking as he started forward.
“That’ll be enough, boys,” his stern, powerful voice ordered. Instantly the pit bulls went silent, save for a lingering whine. “Dr. Raymond, I do believe you can come out now.”
“Mom,” started Taylor, wide-eyed, “who is—”
“A friend. Someone who’s gonna help us.”
“That guy’s your
friend
? You know
him
?”
Instead of explaining to Taylor that T.J. Fields was his friend as well, Karen simply eased herself over Brandon and out the cab’s door into the night. Two-Ton strode toward the car, the twelve-gauge balanced over his monstrous forearm. The dogs swarmed aimlessly about him, panting and whining. A few bored ones sauntered off.
Karen leaned against the open door.
“Come into the light and lemme take a look at you,” the big man ordered. “Well, ain’t you a sight. Still as pretty as the day is long.”
T.J. eased the twelve-gauge away from him as if it were
a toothpick, then opened his arms. Karen took another step forward, and he swallowed her in a tight hug.
“Been too long, girl.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“Fuck sorry. Sorry’s for losers. We got lots of people call this home who are just passin’ by.” He moved her away, holding her still at the shoulders. “Not many call themselves ‘doctor,’ though. Some of the boys thought you were the examining kind when I told them you was coming. They forgot.”
“You didn’t.”
“Never forget my friends, doll. We drift apart sometimes, yeah, but getting back together always makes it seem like nothing’s changed.”
“Plenty has. Recently.”
T.J. looked into the backseat at the two boys. “So I gather.”
“I’m in trouble.”
“Sounds familiar. We did this dance before, ’member?”
Karen started to reach into the backseat for Brandon. Taylor slid across the seat after him.
“Can you pay the driver?” she asked T.J. “I had to leave in a hurry.”
T.J. already had pulled a wad of cash from the pocket of his jeans. He wet his finger and began separating the bills, holding them in the hand still helping to cradle the shotgun.
“How much?”
“Thirty-two fifty,” the driver told him.
T.J. pealed off four twenties and handed them to him through the window. “Rest is keep-quiet money. You were never here.”
The driver took a quick glance at the impatient pit bulls. “Never even knew the place existed.” The relief was plain in his voice.
After the driver had swung around and started his cautious exit out, T.J. turned back to Karen. The fading glow
off the cab’s brake lights was enough to show the lingering fear in her face.
“You and a bunch of dogs,” she said wryly, holding the sleepy Brandon against her. “I was expecting a bit more.”
T.J. Fields grinned and jammed his thumbs into the corner of his mouth for a high-pitched whistle. Instantly from behind trees, from under, around, and atop trailers, a dozen armed figures appeared in the night.
“This enough for ya?” asked another familiar voice from the darkness.
Karen swung left in search of the speaker and saw an old man step out of the night. “Papa Jack?”
“None other.”
She ran forward and hugged him.
“Easy,” he sighed, “or you’ll be crushing what’s left of my bones.”
Papa Jack, spiritual leader of the Skulls, had claimed to be on the near side of sixty since she had known him. The Korean War had left him with a black patch over his left eye, and a motorcycle accident years later was responsible for the eight steel screws in his right leg. His gray hair was tied back in a ponytail, and his single blue eye regarded her with a hint of amusement.
“Suppose you’ll be wanting your old trailer back.”
“Only if you got the hot water fixed finally.”
“Next on my list, babe.” He winked. “A little influence in the right place might speed me up a mite.”
“You’re too fast for me, Papa Jack.”
He seemed to notice Taylor and Brandon for the first time. “These couldn’t be
your
boys. Please tell me I ain’t gotten that old, babe.”
“They’re mine, Papa Jack. But that doesn’t make you any older than fifty-nine.”
He tugged on his eye patch. “Music to my ears, babe, music to my ears.”
 
That had been hours before. A brief interlude of relative respite followed before the time came to call Alexander
MacFarlane. She had made that call from a phone booth outside a convenience store a few miles from the trailer park. After hanging up, she drove an ancient Ford Galaxy belonging to one of the Skulls another twenty minutes down the road to a second Sanpee convenience store, where she called MacFarlane again on his private line.
“Karen,” he said, without waiting to be sure it was her.
“I’ll meet you, Alex, but it’s got to be on my terms.”
“Karen, let’s talk this out now. I know how you feel … .”
“Then you should be all the more willing to follow my instructions.” Karen had already worked out the logistics in her head, having discussed them with T.J. The Skulls would be her ace in the hole neither MacFarlane nor anyone else could know about. “Torrey Pines State Park. The Overlook, ten P.M. tonight. Park your limousine on the south side of the ranger station. No one else but your driver.”
“I’ll be there, Karen.”
“So will I.”
 
Blaine McCracken arrived at the minimum security Taylorville Correctional Center in Taylorville, Illinois, for his appointment with the warden a half hour early. The guard inside the front entrance inspected the identification he had produced and looked up from it impressed.
“I’ll call the office and tell them you’re on your way,” he said.
Ten minutes later Blaine was seated in Warden Warren Widmer’s office. Widmer was a surprisingly dapper-looking man with an easy, conciliatory manner who treated every man, inmate or not, with respect. Now he listened to Blaine’s tale of Benjamin Ratansky in utter astonishment.
“What you’re telling me, Mr. McCracken,” came his response when Blaine had finished, “is that one of our present inmates was murdered in New York City yesterday.”
“That’s right, Warden.”
“Could you spell his name, please?”
Widmer turned his chair to face his computer terminal, entered the name as Blaine recited it, and typed in the proper instructions. He studied the results briefly and looked back at McCracken.
“It seems you’re correct. Benjamin Ratansky does indeed reside here in cell twenty-seven of cellblock D.”
“Resides there
now
?”
“Apparently not, I’m afraid. You see, cellblock D only has twenty-six cells.”
 
The strain in the priest’s voice was plain to the twins as he repeated his question to them over the speaker phone:
“Are you sure the descriptions you forwarded me are accurate?”
Jacob and Rachel looked at each other.
“Yes,” said Jacob.
“Straight off the police report,” added Rachel.
“I’ve managed to identify them,” their father explained after a long pause. “It wasn’t terribly hard. They’re rather well known in certain circles.”
“Who are they?”
As their father explained to them exactly who the bearded man and the Indian were and what could be expected of them, the twins grew more and more agitated.
“How could such men be involved in this?” Rachel wondered.
“They may well have stumbled into it. My information indicates this man McCracken had a prior experience with the Arab terrorist who was shot. Equally unpleasant.”
“That doesn’t explain the presence of the soldiers,” Jacob reminded. “They should have fled the scene after dispatching Ratansky.”
“We must assume they had their reasons for doing otherwise.”
“McCracken’s unwitting involvement? Something he did or … or even
learned
!” Rachel said, getting excited.
“Possibly. But only McCracken himself would be able tc tell us.”
“So we must find him!”
“But where to start?” Jacob raised despondently.
“Where would
you
start?” the priest challenged. “Think as outsiders. Detach yourselves.”
“Ratansky,” Rachel muttered.
“By now, McCracken will have identified him,” Jacob added.
“And gone where with the information?”
The twins looked at each other. Rachel said exactly what Jacob was thinking:
“Where we must go next.”
 
“Was the transfer unusual?” McCracken asked.
“In and of itself, not at all,” Widmer replied with a hard copy of Ratansky’s records before him. “Ratansky was a model prisoner, but wouldn’t have been eligible for parole for another two years under the terms of his sentence. Transferring him here to a minimum security facility was the next best thing.”

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