The Client (28 page)

Mark was a cool liar.

HE AWOKE IN A STRANGE BED BETWEEN A SOFT MATTRESS and a heavy layer of blankets. A dim lamp from the hallway cast a narrow light through the slit in the doorway. His battered Nikes were on a chair by the door, but the rest of his clothing was still on. He slid the blankets to his knees and the bed squeaked. He stared at the ceiling and vaguely remembered being escorted to this room by Reggie and Momma Love. Then he remembered the swing on the porch and being very tired.

Slowly, he swung his feet from the bed and sat on the edge of it. He remembered being led and pushed up the stairs. Things were clearing up. He sat in the chair and laced his sneakers. The floor was wooden and creaked softly as he walked to the door and opened it. The hinges popped. The hallway was still. Three other doors opened into it, and they were all closed. He eased to the stairway, and tiptoed down, in no hurry.

A light from the kitchen caught his attention, and he walked faster. The clock on the wall gave the time as two-twenty. He now remembered that Reggie didn’t live there; she was above the garage. Momma Love was probably sound asleep upstairs, so he stopped the creeping along and crossed the foyer, unlocked the front door, and found his spot in the swing. The air was cool and the front lawn was pitch black.

For a moment, he was frustrated with himself for falling asleep and being put to bed in this house. He belonged at the hospital with his mother, sleeping on
the same crippling bed, waiting for Ricky to snap out of it so they could leave and go home. He assumed Reggie had called Dianne, so his mother probably wasn’t worried. In fact, she was probably pleased that he was there at that moment, eating good food and sleeping well. Mothers are like that.

He’d missed two days of school, according to his calculations. Today would be Thursday. Yesterday, he’d been attacked by the man with the knife in the elevator. The man with the family portrait. And the day before that, Tuesday, he had hired Reggie. That, too, seemed like a month ago. And the day before that, Monday, he had awakened like any normal kid and gone off to school with no idea all this was about to happen. There must be a million kids in Memphis, and he would never understand how and why he was selected to meet Jerome Clifford just seconds before he put the gun in his mouth.

Smoking. That was the answer. Hazardous to your health. You could say that again. He was being punished by God for smoking and harming his body. Damn! What if he’d been caught with a beer.

A silhouette of a man appeared on the sidewalk, and stopped for a second in front of Momma Love’s house. The orange glow of a cigarette flared in front of his face, then he walked very slowly out of sight. A little late for an evening stroll, Mark thought.

A minute passed, and he was back. Same man. Same slow walk. Same hesitation between the trees as he looked at the house. Mark held his breath. He was sitting in darkness and he knew he could not be seen. But this man was more than a nosy neighbor.

*     *     *

AT EXACTLY 4 A.M., A PLAIN WHITE FORD VAN WITH THE license plates temporarily removed eased into Tucker Wheel Estates and turned onto East Street. The trailers were dark and quiet. The streets were deserted. The little village was peacefully asleep and would be for two more hours until dawn.

The van stopped in front of Number 17. The lights and engine were turned off. No one noticed it. After a minute, a man in a uniform opened the driver’s door and stood in the street. The uniform resembled that of a Memphis cop—navy trousers, navy shirt, wide black belt with black holster, some type of gun on the hip, black boots, but no cap or hat. A decent imitation, especially at four in the morning when no one was watching. He held a rectangular cardboard container about the size of two shoe boxes. He glanced around, then carefully watched and listened to the trailer next door to Number 17. Not a sound. Not even the bark of a dog. He smiled to himself, and walked casually to the door of Number 17.

If he detected movement in a nearby trailer, he would simply knock slightly on the door and go through the routine of being a frustrated messenger looking for Ms. Sway. But it wasn’t necessary. Not a peep from the neighbors. So he quickly set the box against the door, got in the van, and drove away. He had come and gone without a trace, leaving behind his little warning.

EXACTLY THIRTY MINUTES LATER, THE BOX EXPLODED. IT was a quiet explosion, carefully controlled. The ground didn’t shake and the porch didn’t shatter. The door was blown open, and the flames were directed at the interior
of the trailer. Lots of red and yellow flames and black smoke rolling through the rooms. The matchbox construction of the walls and floors was nothing more than kindling for the fire.

By the time Rufus Bibbs next door could punch 911, the Sway trailer was engulfed and beyond help. Rufus hung up the phone, and ran to find his garden hose. His wife and kids were running wild, trying to dress and get out of the trailer. Screams and shouts echoed on the street as the neighbors ran to the fire in an amazing array of pajamas and robes. Dozens of them watched the fire as garden hoses came from all directions and water was applied to the trailers next door. The fire grew and the crowd grew, and windows popped in the Bibbs trailer. The domino effect. More screams as more windows popped. Then sirens and red lights.

The crowd moved back as the firemen laid lines and pumped water. The other trailers were saved, but the Sway home was nothing but rubble. The roof and most of the floor were gone. The rear wall stood with a solitary window still intact.

More people arrived as the firemen sprayed the ruins. Walter Deeble, a loudmouth from South Street, started babbling about how cheap these damned trailers were with aluminum wiring and all. Hell, we all live in firetraps, he said with the pitch of a street preacher, and what we ought to do is sue that sonofabitch Tucker and force him to provide safe housing. He just might see his lawyer about it. Personally, he had eight smoke and heat detectors in his trailer because of the cheap aluminum wiring and all, and he just might talk to his lawyer.

By the Bibbs trailer, a small crowd gathered and thanked God the fire didn’t spread.

Those poor Sways. What else could happen to them?

     20     

AFTER A BREAKFAST OF CINNAMON ROLLS AND CHOCOLATE milk, they left the house and headed for the hospital. It was seven-thirty, much too early for Reggie but Dianne was waiting. Ricky was doing much better.

“What do you think’ll happen today?” Mark asked.

For some reason this struck Reggie as being funny. “You poor child,” she said when she finished chuckling. “You’ve been through a lot this week.”

“Yeah. I hate school, but it’d be nice to go back. I had this wild dream last night.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing. I dreamed everything was normal again, and I made it through a whole day with nothing happening to me. It was wonderful.”

“Well, Mark, I’m afraid I have some bad news.”

“I knew it. What is it?”

“Clint called a few minutes ago. You’ve made the front page again. It’s a picture of both of us, evidently taken by one of those clowns at the hospital yesterday when we got off the elevator.”

“Great.”

“There’s a reporter at the
Memphis Press
by the name of Slick Moeller. Everyone calls him the Mole. Mole Moeller. He covers the crime beat, sort of a legend around town. He’s hot on this case.”

“He wrote the story yesterday.”

“That’s right. He has a lot of contacts within the police department. It sounds as if the cops believe Mr. Clifford told you everything before he killed himself, and now you’re refusing to cooperate.”

“Pretty accurate, wouldn’t you say?”

She glanced at the rearview mirror. “Yeah. It’s spooky.”

“How does he know this stuff?”

“The cops talk to him, off the record of course, and he digs and digs until he puts the pieces together. And if the pieces don’t fit perfectly, then Slick just sort of fills in the gaps. According to Clint, the story is based on unnamed sources within the Memphis Police Department, and there’s a great deal of suspicion about how much you know. The theory is that since you’ve hired me, you must be hiding something.”

“Let’s stop and get a newspaper.”

“We’ll get one at the hospital. We’ll be there in a minute.”

“Do you think those reporters’ll be waiting again?”

“Probably. I told Clint to find a back entrance somewhere, and to meet us in the parking lot.”

“I’m really sick of this. Just sick of it. All my buddies are in school today, having a good time, being normal, fighting with girls during recess, playing jokes on the teachers, you know, the usual stuff. And look at me. Running around town with my lawyer, reading
about my adventures in the newspapers, looking at my face on the front page, hiding from reporters, dodging killers with switchblades. It’s like something out of a movie. A bad movie. I’m just sick of it. I don’t know if I can take any more. It’s just too much.”

She watched him between glances at the street and traffic. His jaws were tight. He stared straight ahead, but saw nothing.

“I’m sorry, Mark.”

“Yeah, me too. So much for pleasant dreams, huh.”

“This could be a very long day.”

“What else is new? They were watching the house last night, did you know that?”

“I beg your pardon.”

“Yeah, somebody was watching the house. I was on the porch at two-thirty this morning, and I saw a guy walking along the sidewalk. He was real casual, you know, just smoking a cigarette and looking at the house.”

“Could be a neighbor.”

“Right. At two-thirty in the morning.”

“Maybe someone was out for a walk.”

“Then why did he walk by the house three times in fifteen minutes?”

She glanced at him again and hit her brakes to avoid a car in front of them.

“Do you trust me, Mark?” she asked.

He looked at her as if surprised by the question. “Of course I trust you, Reggie.”

She smiled and patted his arm. “Then stick with me.”

*     *     *

ONE ADVANTAGE OF AN ARCHITECTURAL HORROR LIKE ST. Peter’s was the existence of lots of doors and exits few people knew about. With additions stuck here, and wings added over there as an afterthought, there had been created over the course of time little nooks and alleys seldom used and rarely discovered by lost security guards.

When they arrived, Clint had been hustling around the hospital for thirty minutes with no success. He’d managed to become lost himself three different times. He was sweating and apologizing as they met at the parking lot.

“Just follow me,” Mark said, and they darted across the street and entered through the emergency gate. They wove through heavy rush-hour hall traffic and found an ancient escalator going down.

“I hope you know where you’re going,” Reggie said, obviously in doubt and half-jogging in an effort to keep up with him. Clint was sweating even harder. “No problem,” Mark said, and opened a door leading to the kitchen.

“We’re in the kitchen, Mark,” Reggie said, looking around.

“Just be cool. Act like you’re supposed to be here.”

He punched a button by a service elevator and the door opened instantly. He punched another button on the inside panel, and they lurched upward, headed for floor number ten. “There are eighteen floors in the main section, but this elevator stops at number ten. It will not stop at nine. Figure it out.” He watched the numbers above the door and explained this like a bored tour guide.

“What happens on ten?” Clint asked between breaths.

“Just wait.”

The door opened on ten, and they stepped into a huge closet with rows of shelves filled with towels and bedsheets. Mark was off, darting between the aisles. He opened a heavy metal door and they were suddenly in the hallway with patient rooms right and left. He pointed to his left, kept walking, and stopped before an emergency exit door with red and yellow alarm warnings all over it. He grabbed the bar handle across the front of it, and Reggie and Clint stopped cold.

He pushed the door open, and nothing happened. “Alarms don’t work,” he said nonchalantly, and bounded down the steps to the ninth floor. He opened another door, and suddenly they were in a quiet hallway with thick industrial carpet and no traffic. He pointed again, and they were off, past patient rooms, around a bend, and by the nurses’ station, where they glanced down another hall and saw the loiterers by the elevators.

“Good morning, Mark,” Karen the beautiful called out as they hurried by. But she said this without a smile.

“Hi, Karen,” he answered without slowing.

Dianne was sitting in a folding chair in the hall with a Memphis cop kneeling before her. She was crying, and had been for some time. The two security guards were standing together twenty feet away. Mark saw the cop and the tears and ran for his mother. She grabbed him and they hugged.

“What’s the matter, Mom?” he asked, and she cried harder.

“Mark, your trailer burned last night,” the cop said. “Just a few hours ago.”

Mark glared at him in disbelief, then squeezed his mother around the neck. She was wiping tears and trying to compose herself.

“How bad?” Mark asked.

“Real bad,” the cop said sadly as he stood and held his cap with both hands. “Everything’s gone.”

“What started the fire?” Reggie asked.

“Don’t know right now. The fire inspector will be on the scene this morning. Could be electrical.”

“I need to talk to the fire inspector, okay,” Reggie insisted, and the cop looked her over.

“And who are you?” he asked.

“Reggie Love, attorney for the family.”

“Ah, yes. I saw the paper this morning.”

She handed him a card. “Please ask the fire inspector to call me.”

“Sure, lady.” The cop carefully placed the hat on his head and looked down again at Dianne. He was sad again. “Ms. Sway, I’m very sorry about this.”

“Thank you,” she said, wiping her face. He nodded at Reggie and Clint, backed away, and left in a hurry. A nurse appeared and stood by just in case.