The Captive Condition (23 page)

Satisfied with their handiwork, Madeline and Sophie slipped out the back door and hurried over to their own yard, where they unearthed the spare key beneath a rock in the flowerbed, but the tiny ruin of a house held no warm memories for them. It looked just as abandoned and empty as the barn in the valley and just as likely to be infested with hibernating creatures from out of bad dreams. Making sure to avoid the clothesline, they went inside through the patio door. A gentle snow quickly covered their tracks, and by disappearing without a trace, the girls knew the Kingsleys would have to call their father. The captain of the
Rogue
would set a new course for the nearest port, and within a day or two their dad would be back home.

After months of preparation, the Gonk decided it was finally time to put his own plan into motion. In the end it wasn't some phony New Year's resolution that convinced his ex-wife to accept the terms of a meeting but a simple business deal that would clear the Gonk of all financial obligations to her and at the same time help Xavier achieve his goal of taking an early retirement on Delacroix Cay. Why she believed such a preposterous story he didn't know and didn't particularly care, but for someone like Sadie, the daughter of an indigent and alcoholic pig farmer, the prospect of making lots of money was always a motivating factor.

That morning the Gonk called her with the details of what he claimed to be “a potentially life-changing opportunity.”

Sadie laughed. “But it's New Year's Eve.”

“Well, you know me. I don't fuck around. I want this thing out of the cellar. Today if possible. Starting tomorrow I'm turning over a new leaf.”

“And I'm supposed to believe that bullshit, huh?”

Sadie knew how his mind worked. To her way of thinking he was an unapologetic cheat, an angry drunk with a short fuse, a common laborer earning a modest wage at the Department of Plant Services, a lowlife who'd abandoned his dreams while he was still young and whose sole ambition was to go fishing on the river and pay an occasional visit to the titty bar. But the worst of his shortcomings by far was his sick and unnatural desire for her kid sister Lorelei, a nasty piece of business that had precipitated an ugly divorce and a year of unseemly legal battles.

“I don't much care what you believe,” said the Gonk. “If you're not interested, I know a dozen other takers.”

“How much you asking for it?”

The Gonk chuckled. “You're a smart woman, Sadie. You know it's never a good idea to talk business over the phone.”

Now there was nothing for him to do but sit on the porch and hope she would take the bait. There was a shiver in the north wind, and at ten o'clock that night, much later than he'd expected, he heard a pickup thundering down the driveway. In the red taillights he saw a set of flesh-colored truck nuts dangling obscenely from the trailer hitch.

Sadie pulled closer to the cottage and from the open window said, “I forgot what a true wilderness this place is.” She killed the engine, hopped down from the cab, brushed snow from the cuffs of her jeans, and breathed the clean, country air. “With all of the wide open spaces in this valley, you'd think someone would raise horses. It would be nice, wouldn't it, to see a pretty girl astride a sorrel with flaxen mane and tail?”

The Gonk walked over to greet her. “Wait, I thought Xavier was coming with you.”

“Busy, baby, busy. He's catering a big bash at the bistro. Some kind of art show for Colette Collins. Said he'll stop down later tonight. I'm just here to appraise the merchandise. See if this deal is legit.”

The Gonk tried to control his rage. This wasn't part of the original plan. “Xavier claims to be the expert.”

“We're business partners now, him and me. We split everything down the middle, fifty-fifty. A man has to love a woman to give up half of his assets, don't you think?”

“Love or hate,” he fumed. “You took half of what I owned.”

“No, you forfeited it. That was the price for diddling my kid sister. A real bargain, too.” She winked.

“Let's not start up with that, okay?”

“Whatever you say, sweetheart.” She sauntered to the back of the pickup.

“So where is Lorelei these days?”

“Still smitten, aren't you?” Sadie gave a little impatient shrug of her shoulders. “Well, let's see, I can't say for certain where she is now. I sent the little slut packing months ago. Last I heard she was dancing at the Normandy Cabaret. Probably trying to earn a quick buck giving deviants like you hand jobs in the back room. But she wasn't likely to last very long there.”

The Gonk tapped the truck nuts with the toe of one shoe. “I see you're driving Xavier's pickup.”

“Ain't his anymore. It's mine. He gave it to me. An engagement gift.”

“Engagement?”

She lit a cigarette, picked a fleck of tobacco from her lower lip, and then spit into the snow. “That's right, darling.”

“Sure is a classy thing to give a lady.”

Sadie sat on the back bumper so the nuts seemed to hang between her legs. With one hand she gently massaged them, scratching them lightly with her long nails. “Oh, I dunno. I sort of like having a pair. Helps me understand why you boys take so much pride in them.” She bounced on the bumper, and the nuts swung massively back and forth.

The Gonk grunted. Even a scene of great tragedy had elements of the comic and absurd. Weighing in his mind the course he must chart, he started walking toward the cottage. “So what's Xavier up to these days? Still getting innocent couples hopped up on that lust-inducing hellbroth?”

“His secret formula never worked on you, did it?” Sadie followed behind him. “Well, if hubby can't take care of business then it's the woman's prerogative to bring in a stunt cock, am I right?”

“That sonofabitch tried to poison me with the shit he peddles.”

“If it's poison he sells, honey, then why are his customers so loyal? Repeat business is the name of the game. Xavier is an accomplished chef, practically a chemist, not some lowlife thug dealing smack to junkies.”

The Gonk laughed. “He should maybe think about taking a few chemistry classes.”

“There's a rumor going around that you're enrolled in a class at the college. Art or painting or some shit. What, did you find out there were a few desperate coeds willing to pose in the buff for a perverted continuing-education student? With so much teenage trim around, you must be in your glory. Now you don't have to settle for your old lady's baby sister. Say, I bet you got a whole lot of pretty watercolors you're wanting to show me.”

“Goddammit.” He stopped, and with his eyebrows gathered together said, “I think maybe we should reschedule for another time. When your sugar daddy can make it.”

“Oh, don't you worry. Xavier's a real go-getter. He'll haul away this contraption of yours. That is, if I give him the thumbs-up. Besides, he'd like to see how his old pal is getting on without me.”

The Gonk snorted, but because he wanted to finish this business as quickly as possible, he decided to play along. As it happened, there were certain advantages to having things unfold this way. He guided Sadie through the kitchen and waved her down the dark and winding stairs. The cellar, though damp and clammy, was pleasant compared with the winter weather outside. It was also very quiet. The large sandstone blocks absorbed even the smallest sounds. He watched with amusement as his ex-wife walked through the sawdust where he'd constructed the pieces of the birch box. Sadie approached the still and rapped her knuckles against its copper pipes.

“No doubt about it,” she said. “If you get caught with a monster this size, you'll be charged with intent to sell.”

“Consider it a wedding gift,” said the Gonk.

She ignored him and began counting the empty mason jars on the wooden shelves and the big sacks of cornmeal and sugar in the corner. “Jesus, how the hell are we supposed to get this out of here?”

“That isn't my concern. I just want it gone. One thing's for sure, it'll make Xavier the biggest distributor of shine in the county, maybe the whole damn state. Of course I'm not sure he has brains enough to handle a large-scale operation. Before long he'll be a wanted man. His face will be in all the papers. He'll do time, probably a lot of it. Two years in solitary is my guess. That's how these judges roll nowadays. Zero tolerance. I tell you, Sadie, solitary changes a fella. Xavier won't ever be the same once he gets out. Who knows, he might even drop a few pounds.”

“If you had any balls,” she said, “you'd sell the shit yourself, make something of your life. Instead, you badmouth Xavier. Hell, yes, we'll buy your damn still.”

Worried his nemesis might show up and take him by surprise, the Gonk started pacing the cellar. His trembling fingers grazed the weeping sandstone walls and scraped a yellow fungus from the cement mortar. Long ago, in his hell-raising days, he relished the thrill of violence, but about the art and science of cold-blooded murder he knew absolutely nothing; nevertheless, when the moment seemed right, he was able to steady his hands and retrieve the long length of braided rope coiled beside the boiler. Like a pathogenic virus, the ability to kill lay dormant within him, building suddenly and without warning in every cell of his body, and with one swift motion he wrapped the rope around his victim's lovely stretch of throat.

He enjoyed watching her eyes bulge, her legs thrash, but he was no sadist and had no intention of prolonging his ex-wife's suffering. For a few minutes she put up a fight and managed to scratch his face, but she was no match for a man who outweighed her by nearly one hundred pounds. When she finally went limp and slumped to the floor, limbs askew, mouth hanging open, she looked scarcely human at all, like a department-store mannequin whose polymer face had been melted from the heat of a blowtorch.

From the back pocket of her jeans, he took the crumpled pack of cigarettes, and for thirty minutes he sat on the steps, smoking one after another. It took all of his willpower not to chew the things, to grind them between his teeth and swallow them. He'd only meant to render her unconscious but had gotten a little carried away. He wouldn't make the same mistake with Xavier.

In the silence of the cellar, Sadie's shrill screams and strangled cries for help continued to ring in his ears like a furious raga that alternated between harmony and dissonance. Hoping to stop these unendurable sounds, the Gonk dipped the sleeve of his shirt in a jar of moonshine and dabbed the angry lacerations on his cheeks and neck. He relished the sharp sting, the comforting pain. When he finally mustered the courage to look at his ex, his jailor, his beloved, his obsession, he noticed how her lovely skin had turned a chalky blue and how her body seemed to yearn for burial. He was surprised and a little ashamed that he did not weep, but like a dutiful husband, he carried her carcass upstairs and over to the cemetery.

Under the distant winter sun, he loosened the rope from Sadie's throat, tied it around her waist, and gently lowered her into the oversized birch box, the “double wide,” as he called it. He whistled a dirge for the dead and noticed while gazing at her wrecked body how her clothes seemed drab, wrinkled, ill fitting, altogether lacking in her usual sense of style. Her shoes were knockoffs, her ring cubic zirconia. Maybe Xavier had been unable to give her the life she'd always dreamed of after all.

The Gonk bit his lower lip and circled the hole. Something wasn't right. Then he remembered: though he was never entirely convinced of God's existence, he did believe in things equally tyrannical and grotesque, like the sanctity of marriage, and he bowed his head in prayer, hoping Sadie now soared on angels' wings through a gaudy gold digger's paradise. Since there were no flowers in this winter desolation, he made a hasty bouquet of holly branches and in a last, wild gesture of love tossed it on her shriveling corpse.

This perfunctory ritual complete, he returned to the house, where he gathered the necessary tools—kerosene lamp, shovel, hammer, box of nails—and then waited for his dear friend to arrive. Together they would sit on the porch and enjoy one final drink, a kind of valedictory toast. It would be like the old days when Sadie joined them on the patio of the Victorian house near the college, just the three of them, and they laughed and told stories and sometimes, if Xavier's poison was strong enough and the mood struck them, they undressed in the moonlight and slipped into the hot tub and, after much grappling and groaning, emerged bright pink and well lubricated from the steaming water and hurried to the bedroom. The Gonk should have suspected something was amiss when Xavier began holding out a little longer each time, continuing to pleasure his wife and pollute her barren womb even while he, exhausted and insensible with drink, drifted off to sleep beside them, the spinning room perfumed with chlorine, the bedsprings squeaking a rhythmic and unrelenting lullaby, their arms twisted in extraordinary configurations like a dancing god of death.

Of course, what the Gonk had in mind now wasn't anything at all like those nights when they found themselves luxuriating in the warmth and wetness of the anonymous dark, the comforts of drunken debauchery, their pitiful excuse, but he'd always suspected that the time would come when the wicked pleasures of the flesh would give way to the splendid pleasures of retribution and, with Nature's mercy, the gracious gift of total annihilation.

Prior to unlocking the front doors at eight o'clock for those overeager and obstinately punctual first guests, Xavier D'Avignon was charged with the formidable task of preparing the bistro for the highly anticipated party. Earlier that day, under Marianne Kingsley's supervision and with Morgan Fey's grudging assistance, he set up additional tables and chairs, inflated dozens of black and silver balloons, draped foil streamers from the wooden rafters, suspended pretty paper lanterns from the exposed heating ducts, and, since the other members of the staff were too busy getting drunk at parties of their own and had either called in sick or patently refused to work that night, saw to all of the preliminary custodial duties—scrubbing toilets, scouring sinks, mopping floors, scraping mildew from the white subway tiles. He also assembled, to the best of his limited abilities, the giant clay sculpture of the college's notorious founder, Nathaniel Wakefield.

Commissioned by the board of directors, the thing was an outrageous challenge to good taste. By far the largest exhibit on display, the sculpture, with its frightening discrepancies of scale, seemed to wobble back and forth as if pushed by invisible fingers of heat. Like some self-important plus-sized model striking a languid pose for the paparazzi, it leaned against the exposed-brick walls, its impressive girth preventing any fresh air from sweeping into the cavernous space and filtering out the nostril-puckering scent of poorly prepared French food. Brutal in its aspect, the sculpture in some strange way seemed to nag Xavier, begging him to lavish it with an attention he did not wish to bestow upon it.

Now, dozens of resolutely radiant faces, beaming with a kind of social legitimacy, surged back and forth through the bistro in a great, roaring sea of taffeta and silk ties, everyone much too busy admiring each other to stop and consider the paintings hanging on the walls or to ponder that bizarre sculpture blocking an unremarkable view of the crumbling slate rooftops and the badly battered church steeple on the square. The happy, chattering mob, decked out in bespoke suits and extravagant cocktail dresses, jostled for position beside friends and colleagues, pleased and maybe a bit relieved to be counted among those important and influential enough to have received an invitation in the mail, an exquisitely designed card with raised lettering and a shimmering vellum overlay.

Marianne Kingsley, standing at the threshold, looked like she should have been reading their fortunes with a deck of Tarot cards and forecasting some imminent disaster. A prim and painted proprietress in a fanciful frock of blue with a ruched bodice and sequins around the waistline, she greeted each guest with two wet kisses to the cheek. “A lovely affair, isn't it?” she said, unable to suppress a small smile of professional vanity. “I wanted to make the bistro a gathering place, a fashionable salon, the beating heart at the center of this moribund community. Martin? Oh, I'm afraid he couldn't join us tonight. Yes, I know, a pity. But do make sure you enjoy the Red Death. It's a cocktail he discovered over the summer.”

The professors and their spouses, divulging departmental gossip and expropriating bits and pieces of each other's banal conversation, glided like trained dancers through the bistro while Xavier, watching these precisely choreographed rumbas and cha-chas, burned with envy. While on one level he may have despised those well-heeled urbanites for their airs and graces, on another level, somewhere above the malodorous smell wafting either from the kitchen or from the depths of his soul, he couldn't be sure which, he knew it was small-minded to begrudge them their achievements. Successful people were entitled to a bit of swagger, especially if they'd struggled against and triumphed over life's insurmountable odds, and if things went as planned tonight, he would soon surpass this impolite, parasitical bunch of bores, these local-culture creeps, and live a life of ease and privilege far from this incest and hookworm belt of the state.

Back in the smoky kitchen, unable to cope with the demands of the prattling partygoers, Xavier maneuvered tubbily between the gas burners and the big chopping block. Ever since the night Lorelei danced on the bar top, he'd cut back on his alcohol intake, but tonight the pressure proved too much for him, and in haste he prepared another batch of carrot juice, a recipe he'd finally perfected after years of practice. While he could, of course, make extravagant and delicate dishes that appealed to the most discriminating palate—baked custards, stewed pears, a sour-cherry compote, the decidedly fussy cheese soufflé, the notoriously temperamental
blanquette de veau—
he took the greatest pleasure in mastering those subtle and obscure culinary techniques that to the untrained eye must have seemed deceptively simple, particularly the preparation of his precious carrots. For him there was an ascending and descending order to the cutting of carrots that he often likened to a musical étude. The slicing was an exact exercise, like fingers gliding nimbly over the correct keys of a piano, octave after octave, shimmering glissandos, rolling arpeggios, a forward momentum, a driving rhythm, a skill that was unquestionably athletic as well as artistic and one capable of producing a trancelike state in its humble practitioner.

First, he had to choose a knife for its workmanship and durability, the feel of its handle, the smell of its wood, the glimmer of its blade when testing its sharpness against a thumbnail. Most chefs preferred the ever-reliable “master of cooking” knife, with its straight, deep blade designed to cut with surgical precision through tough meat and gristle, but several years ago he had the rare pleasure of watching a self-described “bushman from French Indochina” use a jungle hunting knife, a barbarous weapon with a thick, serrated top edge that might have been the obvious choice of indigenous warriors for the purposes of slaughtering sworn enemies and hacking the tough hides of water buffalo. Never taking his eyes from the cutting board, the reputed bushman shaved a dozen carrots and then arranged the paper-thin slices one by one on a platter until they resembled the swells of a tropical sea at sunset.

Tonight Xavier chose a similar knife because he didn't trust the Gonk, not for a single second, and he feared the man would be well equipped with a knife of his own, a gun, a chain, a length of rope. If this deal for the moonshine still was on the level, he would need to go upstairs and remove one small bundle of cash from the safe. He checked his watch again. He picked and clawed at his shoulders, rubbed his neck and elbows, scratched the side of his leg as if a double thread of red ants had crawled up his black slacks and now balanced like trapeze artists from his short hairs.

Morgan burst into the kitchen with a tray of dirty dishes and looked at him with grave concern. “Hey, are you all right?”

Xavier swirled the juice in his glass and said distractedly, “Never better, never better. Listen, I may have to leave the party in an hour.”

“Very funny.”

“Don't worry. I won't go until after I close the kitchen for the night. I'm supposed to meet the Gonk in the valley. Seems my old chum wants to unload a moonshine still. I don't need to tell you,
mon chéri,
that quality moonshine goes for
beaucoup
bucks around here.”

“The Gonk?” She shook her head in astonishment. “He'll gut you like a fish.”

“Oh, he would never harm me. I'm much too important, a prominent member of the business community.” Insensibly drunk, rocking back and forth on his heels, Xavier set the
jazar
down on the counter and shoved a platter of frozen food into the microwave oven.

“I don't want to be involved in your crazy schemes,” she said. “When someone plays a potentially lethal game, it's wise not to ask too many questions.” She grabbed a bag of garbage from the corner, slung it over her shoulder, and made her way toward the back door. “I'm tossing this and then having a quick smoke.”

“Yes, fine, fine. But let me tell you something, Morgan. Do you know why most people never escape from this god-awful town? Do you know why they never rise above their pitiful circumstances?” Xavier thrust his face toward her, and his enormous pupils seemed to gather all of the available light in the room. “It's because they're afraid. Afraid of risk. They refuse to gamble. But I believe this meeting tonight is a risk, a calculated risk, and one well worth taking.”

Marveling now at the bleak and frozen landscape of Normandy Falls, Morgan Fey descended the icicle-sheathed steps, her fingers sliding clumsily along the banister. Through ankle-deep snow she trudged toward an overflowing dumpster near the river and took a moment to watch the steaming water as if waiting for a makeshift raft to come floating along and carry her away to a place of safety and comfort. Only three months ago the riverbank was green and lush with reeds and cattails, but now it was featureless except for the sad flotilla of cans and bottles bobbing through a narrow channel warmed by the power plant, the fatal gash of its twisting current a cramped and constricted eternity colored by a blue-black seepage that had risen from the muddy bottom. For too long the citizens of this cursed town, an obscure and irrelevant people, had desecrated these waters, and now the river demanded some kind of restitution. Only then could it be cleansed and purified of human sin.

For Morgan Fey, who resented the fact that she was at the party as hired help rather than as a guest, the whole gaudy affair, like much else in life, was another long exercise in shameful servitude, a festival of regret, a cruel lampoon of old hopes already crushed. She was never more aware of her dirty uniform, her clumsy black shoes, her twenty-dollar haircut, the dime-store dye job. With each sip of the Red Death the guests grew louder, their voices crackling with hilarity and scorching wit, and soon they circled the bar like a herd of stamping, snorting, fly-swaddled wildebeests protecting a coveted watering hole. As Xavier's sole assistant and confidante, Morgan was tasked with working the bar and ladling the wicked tincture into plastic cups from an enormous crystal punch bowl. She also had to dispose of the garbage, of which there was quite a lot.

As she continued to monitor Xavier through the kitchen window, she managed to ignite her cigarette, and for the first time in her life she was truly frightened, terrified by the thing she was about to do that night. With any luck she would never have to worry again about the river or the disinherited and vengeful people who lived along its polluted banks, but now there were serious considerations of safety as well as common sense. During the past few weeks, Morgan and Lorelei had exchanged a number of lingering and conspiring looks, and in recent days they'd begun to discuss openly and in detail the fantastic heist that would liberate them at long last from Normandy Falls. The bistro's safe, Morgan believed, contained close to fifty thousand dollars in cash, more than enough money for the two of them to make a fresh start in the world, in some other town, in some other country, a suitable refuge for Lorelei and her unborn child. Because the Gonk was the type of man who, if he found out about the pregnancy, would hunt for Lorelei and try to take the child from her.

Xavier's early departure from the party would make Morgan's objective all the easier to accomplish. When she was sure he wasn't observing her through the window, she reached behind the dumpster and checked again on the toolbox she'd placed there. Inside was everything she needed to bust into the safe—hammer, hacksaw, crowbar, drill. Keeping her head down, worried that a shadow of criminality lurked in her eyes, she made her way back to the bistro and waited for the right moment to climb the narrow staircase that led to Xavier's quarters.

Among much glitter and glare the great fête raged on most furiously, and as midnight drew near and the party reached its supreme madness, I parked my car on the street and watched as Professor Kingsley, clearly drunk on
jazar
juice, stumbled toward the bistro. Before going inside he covered his mouth against a gurgling belch and loudly smacked his lips with the vile sting of acid reflux. I was surprised to see him arriving so late and hoped his present condition wouldn't compromise my plans. I followed close behind him and managed to slip unnoticed through the double doors, the only guest wearing jeans, a houndstooth sport coat, and a hastily knotted knit tie, although I did dress things up with a boutonniere, a bright peacock feather that fixed its unblinking blue eye on everyone in the room, a poor substitute for a functioning eyeball perhaps, but all things peacock were supposed to be in this year, that's what the fashion magazines said, and if the feather failed to provoke discussion among the guests, it at least warned them away and made them keep their distance. No doubt they took me for another slightly loony and unlettered townie, a coarse-featured, conniving, sadly diminished man whose brain had been starved and looted of its creativity and whose pinched and predatory face had been scarred by bitterness and sorrow. Instead of the arrogant smirk of a college kid on a full scholarship, I wore the hangdog expression of a native. The look was unmistakable—a sickly pallor and a crooked smile stained from bottomless pots of black coffee.

As he jostled through the crowd, Kingsley scrupulously avoided making eye contact with his colleagues in the department, some of whom were deplorably sober and yet somehow excessively happy, and this made him want to avoid them all the more. How in the world could anyone possibly be happy without the assistance of drugs and alcohol? He was mystified. The provost in particular had a habit of abstaining from all stimulants and depressants, coffee and cigarettes included, and judging from the dour expression on his face he was in no mood for idle chitchat. At the moment he was embroiled in what appeared to be a serious labor dispute. No one had seen the men from the Department of Plant Operations in several weeks, and the assumption, at least on the part of the provost, was that the ticks had joined a union and were on strike. As I slid behind a support beam and watched this gleeful circus of rumor and innuendo, I wondered if I should tender my own resignation, leave town, start a new life in another college town, far from this awful place.