Practice to Deceive (32 page)

I stretched and thought about some more eggs, maybe a slab of ham to go with them. The telephone rang. I answered it, expecting to hear Cynthia’s voice telling me her meeting had broken up early. Instead, a voice, deep and sour, informed me, “This is your last chance, asshole. Where’s the money?”

You know how sometimes when you first wake you feel like a car that’s been left on the street over a cold winter’s night? You might be running, but until you’re warmed up you just don’t want to go anywhere? Well, that was how I felt. And without even thinking about it, I answered the voice: “Listen to me, you prick. I’ve already shot one guy today, and I’ll be happy to make it two.”

The voice laughed at me.

I had thought that this problem had been taken care of. Then again, maybe the voice was working for Saterbak and hadn’t learned that his employer had been jailed and the gig was over.

“Fuck you,” I said and slammed the receiver home. But I did not let it go. There was something the voice had said. Christ. It said, “Money.”

I limped quickly to the kitchen, the muscles in my leg complaining with each step, and checked the caller ID under my kitchen phone. Along with a familiar telephone number, it flashed a name I knew well:
LEVERING FIELD.

And suddenly, I knew everything.

I
WAS HALFWAY
down the driveway before I realized I didn’t have a gun.

Careless.

I raced—that’s the correct word—I raced back into my house, to my bedroom, pulled open the drawer, took out a Beretta 9mm, checked the load, and ran out of the house, back to the car. I was on 280 heading south when it occurred to me to call the police, call Anne Scalasi, and tell them to hustle over to Amanda’s. Only I had left Sara’s cell phone on my kitchen table.

Careless, careless.

I stopped in front of Amanda Field’s house and limped quickly to the door. I pounded on it, leaned heavily on the bell with my thumb. No answer. With the Beretta in my right hand, I tried the knob with my left. It turned. I pushed through the door, yelling Amanda’s name. Still no answer. The house was dark. I went from the living room to the kitchen, racing again. Something caught my ankle and I went down, face first, my chin bouncing off the tile floor, my gun clattering beneath the kitchen table. I tried to rise, but a knee planted against my spine pinned me down. I heard the distinctive
click
of a hammer being thumbed back, felt the cold steel of a gun barrel pressed against my ear.

Careless, careless, careless.

“T
HIS IS SO
great!” she shouted as I was led down wooden steps into a finished basement. “This is just so unbelievably great! I can’t believe how great this is!”

Emily Elizabeth Field stood next to her mother, her mother’s Smith & Wesson .38 in her hand, pointed at the floor. She was smiling happily, like she just received her heart’s desire wrapped as a birthday present. Her mother was tied to a wooden chair, the thick twine cutting into her wrists. Her cheeks were stained with mascara. But she was not crying now, not making any sound at all. She was alive, but her face had the same hopeless expression that you see in the old photographs of Jews being herded into Nazi concentration camps. She wasn’t dead, but she wasn’t far from it.

Emily’s boyfriend, the one with the rusted-out Caddy and Oakland Raider’s jacket, pushed me ahead of him with his free hand. His other hand held a .32 Taurus revolver pointed at my spine. My gun was in his pocket. He was several inches taller than me, and his head just brushed the false ceiling.

“What?” he asked Emily, as he roughly pushed me into a wooden chair opposite Amanda.

“Don’t you see?” Emily asked.

“I wouldn’t ask if I—”

“We can shoot Taylor with Momma’s gun, and shoot Momma with Taylor’s gun,” Emily told him. “The police will think they shot each other. No wait! Better yet! We’ll shoot Momma with your gun and then put it in Taylor’s hand so the cops’ll think he shot Daddy, too. God, this is so great!” And then, in the mocking accent of the English gentry, she said, “So nice of you to come, Mr. Taylor. To what do we owe the pleasure?”

“Your boyfriend called me,” I told her. “I traced the call.” Then I told him, “You live on Railroad Island, don’t you? On Collins Street? I ran your plates. I should have put it all together when you threatened Amanda, calling her from Railroad Island.” I was angry with myself. Working at a bakery was looking better all the time.

Emily glanced at her boyfriend and then at me.

“The cops will figure it out. The woman in charge is smarter than I am,” I told them.

Emily shrugged. Traps and traces and MURs meant nothing to her. Yeah, you could see she was brains of the outfit.

“You want to kill both of ’em?” the boy asked.

“Why not?”

“I don’t know .…”

“C’mon, Jerry. It’s not like you haven’t shot anyone before.”

“But, both of ’em?”

Amanda slumped in her chair. If she hadn’t been tied to it, she probably would have fallen out. I was somewhat more alert. Blood was pulsing through me like the oil in a Formula One, some of it dripping from the wound on my chin. I took a chance. “Don’t be stupid!” I exclaimed. The outburst cost me a lump on the side of my head above the ear, delivered by Jerry with the butt of his .32. I didn’t let it deter me.

“Look at her wrists,” I told them, and they did. “You think the marks where the twine’s cut into her flesh will go away? You think the cops won’t notice them?” Jerry made another move toward me. “You think the medical examiner won’t notice bruises and swelling on my head?” I added.

He stopped and looked at Emily.

“So?” she asked.

“So they’ll know it’s murder. And the first person they’ll suspect is the one who benefits most from that murder.”

“That’s you,” Jerry told Emily.

“I know it’s me,” Emily replied, exasperated.

“With your mother gone, there’s no lawsuit,” I told her just in case she didn’t. “You’ll get to keep your father’s entire estate. That’s what all this is about, isn’t it?”

Emily lightly tapped the .38 against her cheek, thinking it over.

“Your father put all his assets in your name to avoid taxes, and with him dead, it all goes to you unless your mother convinces a court to give her half.”

Now Emily was brushing her cheek with the barrel; I doubted she was even listening to me.

“That’s why your boyfriend, here, killed your father, wasn’t it? Because your father intended to give me two hundred and eighty-seven thousand dollars—”

“It was
my
money!” Emily shouted. I guess she had been listening. “I told him not to give in to you. But he said it wasn’t worth it anymore. He said it was easier to just pay you off. Easy for him, maybe. It was
my
money!”

Amanda moaned incoherently.

“It was!” Emily yelled at her. “Daddy had no business giving it to him. And you had no business trying to take it away from me.” To emphasize her point, Emily slashed her mother across the mouth with the barrel of the gun, tearing her lip at the corner. Amanda didn’t even bother to lick the blood away.

“I warned her,” Emily informed me, “but she wouldn’t listen.”

“So you had loverboy try to shoot her in the back.”

Loverboy shrugged. “She was out of range,” he said.

“But you’re not,” Emily said, pointing the Smith & Wesson at my head. “
Where the fuck is my money!
” she screamed.

“What money?” I asked as calmly as possible. Jerry hit me again. “What makes you think I have your money?”

“’Cuz the ol’ man said he gave it to you,” Jerry said softly.

“Huh?”

“Before I spiked ’im, I asked, ‘Where’s the money?’ and he said he gave it to you.”

“That’s not true,” I said.

“
Then where is it?
” Emily screamed again.

I looked up at Jerry and smiled. “Ask the boyfriend,” I said.

“Hit him again,” Emily told Jerry, and Jerry did. Then she told me, “That ain’t gonna work, trying to play us against each other. We watch TV, too.”

I tried to rub my head where Jerry kept hitting me, but he rapped my knuckles with the barrel of his gun, and I pulled my hand down.

“Where’s my money?” Emily repeated.

“You searched my house,” I reminded her. “I haven’t got your money.”

That sent Emily to rubbing her cheek with the barrel of her gun again. After a few minutes she said, “OK, this is what we’re gonna do.”

“What?” asked Jerry, her obedient servant.

“We’ll shoot Momma with your gun,” Emily told him. “Cops will figure whoever shot Daddy shot her, too. OK, then we’ll take Taylor out to the woods somewhere—”

“Where?” Jerry asked.

“I don’t know. The woods. Itasca State Park. I don’t know.”

“Why?”

“We’ll take him out there and torture him.”

“Torture him? How?”

“Gouge out his eyes or something. Do I have to think of everything?”

“I was just asking.”

“We’ll torture him until he tells us where the money is, and then we’ll kill him and bury him in the woods. Nobody will ever know what happened to him.”

I looked at Jerry and thought about the wannabes I’d met on the pier at Roseville Central Park. They could never do what Emily suggested. But could Jerry? He looked at me without expression, with the dull flat eyes of a shark. Yeah. He could.

Screw this
, I thought. After everything I’d been through, I’d be damned if I would let a couple of psycho kids kill me without a fight.

“God, you’re stupid,” I said. Just as I expected, Jerry moved toward me, his gun directed at my head, ready to strike. I shifted my head away from the line of fire and with my left hand slapped the gun behind me, holding on to it. I slipped off the chair to my knees and with my right hand punched him hard in the groin, one, two, three times in quick succession. That brought him down to me, and I followed with an elbow to his jaw. He weakened. I pulled the gun from his grasp and smacked him upside the head with it. He was on his side now, groaning, holding his head with both hands. I spun on my knees, transferred the .32 to my right hand, brought it up, and pointed it at Emily’s chest. Emily had the Smith & Wesson in both hands, aiming it at me with one eye closed. I thumbed the hammer back, my index finger squeezing the trigger, When Amanda screamed, “
No, no, no, no, no!
”

Emily hesitated, glanced at her mother, looked back at me, and slowly let the gun slip from her hands onto the floor.

And because Emily had listened to her mother, I didn’t kill her. I didn’t put a big, bloody hole through her tiny, cold heart.

D
ESPITE EVERYTHING, AMANDA
tried to save her daughter, inventing a story as she went along in which I was the bad guy, in which I had threatened her, and Emily had merely come to her rescue. The cops who arrived first on the scene listened closely. From their expressions, I guessed they were just as confused as I was. By the time Anne Scalasi arrived, though, Emily was doing all the talking, explaining how her mother and father—and I—had cheated her out of money that was rightfully hers and got exactly what we deserved, except that Amanda and I weren’t dead. Amanda started crying again. And the more she cried, the louder Emily wished she had killed her mother when she had had the chance. After about ten minutes of it, Anne finally told Emily to shut up, to stop talking until Emily had a lawyer, until someone from juvenile services could advise her.

Meanwhile, Jerry sat on the floor, his back against the wall, arms folded across his chest and his eyes closed. He seemed genuinely surprised when a uniform yanked him to his feet and led him outside. No doubt when he opened his eyes, he had expected all of us to be gone.

Amanda wanted to ride to the cop shop with Emily, but Emily didn’t like the idea. “You ruined my life,” she told her mother—told her several times. And Amanda kept saying, “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” She repeated the words even after the patrol car had taken Emily away. And then she turned on me. “
This is all your fault!
” she screamed. She slapped my face and would have slapped it again except two uniforms restrained her. I suppose I could have just stood there and taken it. Hell, turn the other cheek, where was the harm? Except I had almost been killed—three times now—and I was tired of taking abuse because of Amanda’s dysfunctional family.