The Devil's Redhead (17 page)

Dayball said, “So tell us, Frank. Inquiring minds want to know. How'd it feel?”

Unable to face Shel again, Frank looked at the floor instead.

“Need an invite?” Tully said. “Answer him, Short.”

Frank turned back to Dayball and tried to conjure up the right answer. “It feels done.”

Tully and Dayball laughed. Dayball said, “Done like how, Short. Like it's a fucking cake?”

“Stick a fork in it,” Tully said.

Frank pictured the remote house, the upstairs room, the identical dead boys. He recalled how quiet it was after.

“I mean it's over,” he said. “It's finished.”

Dayball said, “Not by a long shot, Short.” He took out a cigarette and lit it. Tully coughed into his fist.

“So you squirreled away your money,” Dayball said. “Usually, Short, you know, just to catch you up on the drill, we sort of look for a doofus like you to choke on his dough when he's pulled a little side action like you done. But in this instance, I've got instructions—from Felix, Frankie, Felix—instructions to let you tell your story. You follow?”

“She didn't—”

“I said, ‘You follow?
^'”

“Yes.”

“Good, Frank. Splendid. Now, for beginners. This stuff you stole, Frank. Who'd you pass it off to?”

“A contractor,” Frank said. “Some guy on the north shore of the river.”

“His name, Frank.”

“Lonnie, promise me. I'll tell you everything. Just untie her. Let her walk on out of here. I got no grounds to ask, but I'm asking.”

“What was the contractor's name, Frank.”

Frank lowered his head and began to sob quietly again. Dayball looked toward Tully and Tully walked over, clutched the rope binding Frank's wrists and pulled straight up, lifting Frank from the ground. Frank screamed so terribly even Roy Akers looked away. Tully dropped Frank to the floor and kicked him till he lay face flat, at which point he put his boot to the back of his neck and applied weight.

Frank began to talk. The words came out in a choked and halting stream, he was confessing, confessing to God, to the Devil, to all the living and the dead. By the time he was finished, Shel was weeping softly along with him.

Dayball waited till Frank ran out of words. Studying him on the ground, pinned beneath Tully's foot like a snared cat, he grunted pensively twice, blinking, then let loose with a long soft whistle of awed disbelief as the import of Frank's confession hit home. Addressing the Akers brothers, he nodded to Shel and said, “Get her out of here.”

Leaving her wrists and ankles tied and grabbing her beneath the arms, Lyle and Roy lifted Shel from her chair and dragged her down the hallway to the guest room, where they dropped her onto the bed.

Lyle, eyeing her in a sudden heat, sat down close beside her. She kicked at him, caught him in the chest, his eyes flared but then Roy dragged him off from behind and pushed him toward the door.

“Now now,” Roy cracked. “You'll make the cows jealous.”

Lyle spun around, flushed red. “Touch me again, fucker—”

“Yeah yeah yeah,” Roy muttered. “Moo.”

Lyle, seething, flexed his hands then turned on his heel and vanished. Roy followed him for a step, reaching the doorway, then pivoted around. Leaning on the door frame he said to Shel, “Don't get your hopes up. You're still gonna wish you'd been nice to me.”

He closed the door, leaving her in the dark. She lay on the bed, craning to hear, listening in particular for screams, but none came. Something like an hour passed, then quietly the door opened. A silhouette appeared in the doorway. It was Lonnie Dayball. She felt a certain relief, albeit small, that he came alone. He turned on the overhead light and closed the door behind him.

Pulling up a chair beside the bed, he studied her for a moment. His eyes were a deeply flecked blue that this particular light rendered a hazy violet. The distortion in color gave his eyes a gentle cast. It was that utterly fraudulent gentleness, more than anything, that scared her.

He reached into his pocket, withdrew a small knife, and cut the tape around her mouth. He loosened the adhesive from her skin and hair, whispering, “Sorry,” several times. Once it was free he tossed the snarled mass onto the floor and helped her sit upright.

Settling back into his chair, he said, “I'll tell you how this is gonna happen.” He closed his knife, pocketed it, and folded his hands behind his head. “Your old man, Looney Two Shoes, in there? He's in the bizarre position of being in luck precisely because he screwed up worse than anybody coulda thought.”

He said this with what sounded like genuine awe. He also seemed to be waiting for a reply.

“I don't know anything about that,” she said. It came out sounding weak.

Dayball smiled. “I know,” he said. “Now.”

“Untie me,” she said.

“In a minute.”

Dayball looked at the ceiling and clucked his tongue, thinking. “Frank's offered us a rare opportunity, believe it or not. People he dealt with, fucking Mexicans, and not just any Mexicans, oh no. The ones we had to chase on out of here not so long ago. They want revenge, the simple shits. For that little asshole we nailed to a tree out on Kirker Pass Road. They asked Frank to put them next to Felix. Can you believe it? They want Frank … to put
them …
next to Felix.” He chuckled at the lunacy of it. “Well guess what? We're gonna let him do that.”

“Why not just kill him now?”

“It is,” Dayball said, “a real opportunity.” He closed his eyes, as though to contemplate the full merit of the opportunity. When he opened his eyes again, he said, “I gotta know, he gonna hold up?”

“Till when? Till you kill him?”

“Nobody's gonna kill him, not while he's useful. And that's what I'm asking, how long's he gonna be in a condition to make himself useful?”

“You tell me,” Shel said. “You saw him in there.”

“Yeah, well, we can buck him up, pharmaceutically speaking. My question's a little more general than that.”

“I'm not a doctor.”

“You live with him,” Dayball said. “It's a simple question. He done for the night or can he stand up for just one more show?”

She didn't dare tell him about Frank's past. The part about Jesse. The part about this being the third anniversary of the boy's pitiless death.

“He's weathered worse,” she said.

“That doesn't help me much.”

“Not a lot I can do about that.”

“He cares about you, know that?”

Shel closed her eyes. She said, “Yeah. I know that.”

“Matter-of-fact,” Dayball continued, “he told me, just now in the kitchen, I swear to God, he told me the real, down-deep reason he dusted one of the twins out there in Knightsen was because the kid was boning you.”

Shel opened her eyes again. Dayball was grinning at her, waggling his eyebrows.

She said, “So why'd he kill the other one?”

Dayball shrugged. “Never break a set.”

“I never touched either one of the twins. Never. Never even thought about it.”

“You're saying Frank's nuts, then.”

“I'm saying he's mistaken.”

“Pretty fucking drastic mistake, you ask me.” Dayball shook his head. “Too bad. I mean, if he's unstable, he's useless. And if he's useless …”

“Don't, please.”

“Too much risk here. You see that.”

“He's harmless.”

Dayball chuckled. “Talk to the twins about it.” He rose to leave, shaking out each pant leg to nurse the crease. “No, you told me what I gotta know. Too bad, really. I'm not gonna take any pleasure from this.”

“Come on,” Shel said. “He can't hurt you.”

“I'm not so sure about that,” Dayball replied. “Sooner or later, somebody besides Tully's gonna find those twins. Say Frank gets hauled in. They do the usual on him, sit him alone for twelve hours at a stretch, no sleep, no smokes. Scare the piss right into his shoes. Then, once he's good and shook, they'll father right on up to him the way they do. ‘You don't need a lawyer, Frank. What you need a lawyer for, you feel guilty about something?' And then Old Frank sees the future. And me and Felix and Tully, we're in a world of hurt.”

“You can't snitch off on a murder one. You know that.”

Dayball smiled abstractly. “So they say. I'm not so sure. Say they lower it to murder two once they see he's willing to jabber. Don't tell me it can't happen.”

“Frank's not a talker.”

“Can't risk it, dear.”

“What if—”

“Plan's too touchy, darlin'. Frank's gonna be under the lights. I can't have him dreaming up shit isn't even there.”

“That's not what I'm telling you,” Shel said.

“No?”

“No.”

Dayball frowned. “What's that mean, then? You really did bone this kid? He came on, you said yes.”

“No.”

“You acted like you wanted to. You gave the impression.”

“Frank sees what he wants to see sometimes, it doesn't—”

“You're telling me he's useless.”

“All right,” Shel said. “Yes. The kid came on to me. I didn't say no. I made eyes. I flashed some leg. All right? You got it? It's not Frank. It's me.”

Dayball crossed his arms, studying her with a smile that wavered between satisfaction and contempt.

“You're lying,” he said.

“I was bored. I'm not young anymore, got it? It felt good, being looked at that way. Okay? It wasn't just in Frank's head. It's my fault. I'm the one who caused all this.”

Dayball looked off, sighed, then sat back down. He rested his chin in his hand and said, “Well then.”

“I had no idea Frank would whack the kid. My God—”

Dayball held up a hand to stop her. “So this twin did come on to you.”

“Yes.”

“And you responded?”

Shel said, “Yes. Yes. Yes.”

“That takes care of that, then.” Dayball leaned back in the chair, folding his hands across his midriff. “Just one last question. Which twin was it?”

Shel felt her mouth go dry. In time she managed to say, “The stupid one,” but by then Dayball was already convulsed. He laughed so hard his feet tapped against the floor. Collecting himself, he ran his finger beneath each eye.

“Goddamn, that was luscious,” he said.

“Look—”

“I'm a man who loves his work, know that? Know how few people in America genuinely love their work?”

“It's me, not him, I meant that.”

He reached over and rubbed a strand of her hair between his finger and thumb, testing it for dye. “Let's go over this again, shall we?”

“Did you hear what I said?”

“We've learned how far you'll go for your boy, am I right? And we've learned you're a lousy liar.”

“Look—”

“You're not going to cause me any problems, are you.” He ran his finger across her cheek and smiled. “'Cuz you said it yourself, one way or another, you're the one responsible. Your words exactly.”

“Yes,” Shel said.

“You're gonna do what you're told. Stay put. Make sure he stays in the saddle.”

“Don't hurt him.”

Dayball smiled and put his fingertip to the bridge of her nose. He tapped gently. “As long as you keep him bright-eyed, as long as he can walk his talk …”

“And after that?” Shel asked.

Dayball removed his hand. “I can't tell you that,” he said. He rose, returning his chair to where he'd found it. “And the reason I can't tell you that, is because I don't know. I'm being straight with you.”

CHAPTER

9

Abatangelo was three weeks into his new daily schedule. He rose at six, showered and ate, then walked across Russian Hill to Lenny Mannion's photo portrait shop on Union Street. Mornings, he made cold calls to expectant mothers and did the newborn darling layout hustle. Come noon he switched his focus from infants to aspiring talent: homely comedians, models blanching dead smiles, belly dancers hawking cleavage. He stood in the darkroom, inhaling the warm chemical stench as he shepherded black-and-white glossies from developer to stop bath to fixer tray. Come five o'clock he walked back over Telegraph Hill to North Beach, arriving home just as twilight gave way to darkness. Electric buses jostled past, brightly lit and crammed with vacant-eyed office workers. The sidewalks teemed with men and women trudging home. Some of them walked arm in arm, smiling, heads touching.

His apartment remained sparsely furnished in front, but he'd managed to pick up a few items at sidewalk sales. He'd also obtained a metal storage cabinet for the camera equipment he was buying from Mannion, paying it off little by little each week. The camera equipment was part of the plan. He'd gone back out to Oakley two weeks running, sitting atop the hill overlooking Shel's house and snapping picture after picture of anything and everything that moved in the night. He hadn't actually seen Shel yet, though he thought he'd caught her silhouette once or twice in a lamplit window, a doorway. He hadn't mustered the nerve to go down to the door and knock. His reluctance had nothing to do with what the Akers brothers might do to him. It was what they might do to her.

Hanging his coat on the back of a chair, he shuffled to the back room and lay down on the bed, waiting for rush hour to end. He turned on the radio and found himself in the middle of an argument between two female psychologists. The topic, he learned shortly, was impotence. One of the psychologists had a breathy voice, as though letting him in on a withering secret. The other, in contrast, sounded defiantly upbeat. And so it went, like a round of Good Cop/Bad Cop, with the male member under the lights. Withering. Upbeat. Withering. Upbeat.

He turned off the radio.