The Reckoning (19 page)

17

Bloody Sunday

In the daylight, the sausage plant looked more benign—just seedy, really. Craig stayed in Darth with the windows sealed and the doors locked (at his stepfather’s request), while Royce cautiously circled the perimeter, lugging a gym bag containing Code Blue.

Damn, his Cavalier was nowhere to be seen.

The loading dock door he’d entered Friday night was locked shut, as were all the other doors he located. He peered in through skeletal window frames but saw no one moving across the bands of sunlight.

“Cliff,” he called meekly, then turned to scan the weathered livestock chutes.

“Cliff!”

No response.

He became more aggressive, going back to the steel door and pounding on it, then kicking at it.

“Cliff! Open up!”

The more he realized Cliff wasn’t home, the harder he kicked, the louder he yelled.

“Cliff, you fucking asshole!” he vented. “I’m gunning for you!”

Huffing, puffing, he returned to the car, saw the bewilderment on Craig’s face. He tucked the gym bag up front in the trunk and got in behind the wheel.

“This place sucks the big one,” Craig said.

“You ain’t kidding.”

They had some time to kill before having to pick up Les at the airport, so they stopped for brunch at a Village Inn on Eastern Avenue.

Royce needed to talk to Craig alone before Leslie came back into the scene.

“I know I’ve been acting kind of crazy lately,” he told the boy once they had been seated and ordered breakfast.

Craig shrugged listlessly. “Sort of.”

“Look, Craig, I’ll level with you, because I’m frightened I might have lost some ground with you lately. Remember that man who came over Thanksgiving? Who played Nintendo with you?”

Craig brightened. “Uncle Cliff?”

“Yes, Uncle Cliff. Well, he’s the man who has been bothering me.”

Craig seemed to have a hard time believing that.

“But he plays bitchin’ Tetris.”

“Well, he also plays some other kinds of games, games that aren’t so fun. The main thing is, don’t let him come near you. If you see him, call me right away, or Tony—or the police, even.”

The boy gulped, eyes big now.

“Okay, sure.”

“You still got that emergency slush fund?”

“Slush fund?”

“The money I gave you.”

Craig’s eyes rolled away from Royce.

“Well, yeah. Most of it,” he said sheepishly. “I did buy some comics with it…and a model of the Stealth Bomber. Maybe I spent only seven dollars of it.”

“That’s okay. A man’s got expenses. Still have that list of phone numbers I gave you?”

Craig nodded.

“First thing, I want you to add a new number to the list—nine-one-one, for a real big emergency. Puts you through to the cops right away.”

Royce jotted the number on a napkin, passed it across.

“Can you do that?” he asked.

The boy nodded again, looking like the weight of the world was now on his shoulders.

Royce went on, “Also, we don’t want to alarm your Mom. I’ll fill her in on everything that’s happened. She’s got a lot on her mind, what with your Aunt Jules and all, so we don’t want to upset her. I’m going to handle this, Craig. Like you recommended, I’m going to the police, Tony and me.” His voice cracked. “You got to believe me, though, that I won’t let anything bad happen to you and Mom. I really care…uh, love you guys.”

“I understand,” Craig said solemnly. He mulled all this over, then: “Does Aunt Monica know?”

Royce flinched. “Aunt Monica?”

“Does she know Cliff is a bad man?”

Royce took a hard swallow of some really hot coffee, burning his lips, tongue, throat.

Grimacing, he said, “I’m sure she does. What I told you about Cliff goes for Monica, too. Don’t let her near you.”

Craig got this guilty look, saying, “But I talked to her at the movie.”

Royce’s throat tightened. “Movie? Friday night?”

“She was there at the concession stand, buying some hotdogs, nachos and candy bars. She was real nice to me, invited me to come visit her at her store. Even gave me something for show-and-tell.”

“Show and tell?” his stepfather inquired suspiciously.

The boy blushed. “Yeah, but I don’t think I’m gonna take it. It’s too weird. You know.”

“What did she give you?” Royce asked firmly.

It was still in Craig’s parka pocket. He handed it over to his stepdad.

Immediately, Royce’s nostrils flared with the hateful scent of Poison. A wisp of black cloth, still warm from Craig’s pocket, flowered open in his palm. He stretched the silky fabric between his fingers.

The bitch had given his stepson a pair of her crotchless panties.

BWI was a zoo, what with the new security restrictions to counter the terrorism threats and an overload of business travelers making their calls before the holidays.

As Royce jostled in position to climb the parking ramp he spied a passing taxicab with a rather peculiar ad placard on its trunk.

Have you seen this man?

It was him all right, with the lovely, very talented Christine. How the fuck was Cliff managing this?

“Hey, watch out!” Craig warned.

He had sharply cut across two lanes of traffic to get away from the cab, narrowly avoiding a collision with a hotel shuttle bus. Craig pressed his palms crash down against the dash as the shuttle’s grille filled the sports car’s rear window.

Honk! Honk!

“Hold on!” Royce yelled, jamming the gas. Darth shot forward, revving up.

Craig screamed, “Look out!”

He swiftly kicked down on the clutch and brake pedals, coming within inches of snapping off a lowered parking gate.

Royce exhaled. “Close.”

Craig had thoroughly enjoyed his scrape with death.

“That was cool, Royce.”

They then located a parking space on the fourth level and walked into the main terminal. Already Royce was suffering from acute anxiety. Every airline poster, every piece of directional signage was a potential disaster for him.

“Now remember, let me tell Mom about the trouble I’ve had,” he told Craig on the walk over to the concourses.

“Sure. Okay,” he agreed, and put his hands in his pockets.

Leslie’s plane was only ten minutes late, so they didn’t have to wait long for her to come walking slowly down the concourse, loaded down with her bags. Royce could tell she’d lost weight, looked exhausted.

Upon seeing them, she wogged the last few feet, had a hug and a kiss on the cheek for Craig, a quick, dry kiss on the lips for her husband.

“Good to be home,” she said, “I missed you both so much.”

“Me too,” Craig said, reciprocating her hug with one of his own.

“Yeah, me too,” Royce said.

Royce took the heaviest of her carry-on bags and they made it out of the terminal without incident, Royce feeling like a Secret Service man, huffing and puffing ahead of Les and the boy and scanning for potential “problems.” Frankly, he wouldn’t have been surprised to see Cliff, with Monica in tow, and maybe Christine and Allison for good measure, all of them slam-dancing in the buff, their butts painted sky blue.

Lugging his wife’s luggage through the parking garage, he nervously awaited her reaction to Darth and was surprised when all she said was, “Cute.”

She set her overnight bag down at the rear bumper and it was Craig who was quick to tell her the trunk was up front.

“Well, excuuuuse me,” she quipped.

Royce loaded her luggage. Leslie saw the gym bag (a Christmas gift to him from her) and smiled.

“You’ve been working out?”

“A little,” he said. “Get in.”

Leslie was concerned there wasn’t enough room for everyone, but Craig quickly proved her wrong, jamming himself in the jump seat behind the buckets.

“See, I got plenty of room,” he boasted.

Royce put the Carrera into motion with a jackrabbit start, as much to keep Leslie’s line-of-site off balance as to demonstrate the car’s agility. He navigated the corkscrew exit ramp at a fast clip.

“Goodness, Royce,” she said. “Not so fast.”

“These cars are actually safer when you drive them fast,” he explained.

She laughed. “I do declare, Mr. R., that you are wee-weeing down my leg.”

He grinned, relieved to see a bit of the old Leslie back.

She said, “It is a nice car. Must be expensive. Who lent it to you?”

“It’s going back tomorrow, but I’ll explain everything when we get home.”

“Ah, really?” Craig whined. “Can’t we keep it?”

“Now, Craig,” Royce said firmly. “Remember our agreement.”

“Okay,” the boy said.

“Is this some kind of conspiracy to keep me uninformed?” his wife asked, too tired to be really upset.

Royce shook his head, saying, “I’ll explain—”

“I know, you’ll explain everything when we get home,” she cut him off. “You know, riding in this car reminds me of a joke.”

He finally had a reason to shift it into third and said, “I know exactly what you’re about to say—about Porsches and porcupines.”

Craig interjected from the back seat: “Does this make us all pricks?”

Darth’s cockpit filled with laughter, and Royce was starting to feel like his old self again, relaxed, balanced, sane.

Well, not completely relaxed. There was still the drive home, and along the way the sight of a taxi sent his foot slamming into Darth’s gas pedal, causing Leslie to comment that she never knew her husband could be such a reckless driver.

Though rare, billboards also posed a potential threat, which is why he avoided main drags like the Taylor Expressway.

In any event, they made it home without incident, and no surprises (from what Royce could tell) were waiting for them. Craig took charge of his mother’s overnight bag and Royce got the other piece, and the gym bag as well. As befitting the head of the clan, he led the way into the house.

No signs of vandalism, thank goodness; too many Hollywood detective movies had junked his head with imagery of drawers spilled out on the floor and seat cushions stabbed open.

They got the luggage into the master bedroom, then Royce gave his stepson the high sign, which meant he was to make himself scarce for awhile—Nintendo in his own room.

Royce then closed the bedroom door, not even giving his wife a chance to unpack. With a theatrical flair, he opened the gym bag and gently set Code Blue on the bedspread, muzzle aimed in Leslie’s direction.

She looked at the gun, her eyes shock-wide. To Royce, it seemed his wife had aged ten years in Montana—skin dry and fissured, hair dull, the beginnings of a calcium deficiency hump between her shoulders.

“So it’s come to this,” she said with finality.

Leslie fixed her stare on Code Blue and told him, “I want that gun out of this house, now.”

He tucked and zipped the Python back into the bag.

“I’ll put it downstairs for tonight, then get rid of it tomorrow, maybe sell it to a pawn shop.”

She had retreated to the far corner of the bedroom, and he sidled up behind, feeling for all the world like a stalking rapist. He offered to touch her, but she flinched him away.

“Well?” he said.

“Okay, so you told me.”

She hadn’t cried, not even a sob. Maybe she was all cried out from the Jules thing. Shell-shocked.

“I guess all we can do is try and go on,” she said haltingly, dazed. “At least get through the holidays.”

“Yes. Do you forgive me at all?”

“Not really. No.”

He didn’t like the sound of that.

“I understand,” Royce said.

She trained her browns on him and said, “I hope you do, Royce. I hope you really do.”

Royce picked up the gym bag.

She said, “When you’re down there, you might as well bring the ham up, unless you and Craig ate it while I was gone.”

“No, I didn’t. Mostly pizza and TV dinners,” he said with a levity that was lost on her.

“I’ll slice it off for ham and eggs. That’s about all I’m up for right now.”

“We can go out.”

“No, just bring the ham up.”

He went into the kitchen and down the basement steps, feeling about one hundred pounds lighter. As bad as it was, it could have been worse. True, he hadn’t quite told her everything, just what he felt she should know, for her own good.

Yes, he confessed that he, in a weak moment, under the influence of alcohol, had a “one-night thing” with Monica Pleshette. And yes, Cliff was using this “brief incident” to blackmail him into laundering money through his company. No mention of Christine, though, nor of the photos. Why upset her with these details? But he did stress that if Cliff didn’t let up after knowing he had confessed all to her, he was going with Tony to the police on Tuesday.

Additionally, he’d pretty much filled his wife in on his LA days, excluding the business with Carly and her fatal breast implant surgery, and his hedonistic lifestyle—the really horrible stuff. Frankly, he still hadn’t worked out in his mind what had actually happened to Carly, but it was starting to come together in that part of his brain that still believed in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, and it filled him with dread.

He placed the gym bag on a high shelf above the washing machine, went to the refrigerator, opened the door.

Ooops.

Royce’s bowel cinched as his eyes locked with Marvin’s.

Marvin Garden was inside, just his head, resting on its side next to the ham, a few delicate, white tendons and tubular arteries hanging out from the jagged cut at the throat.

A shock went through Royce’s system. He slammed the door, reopened it. The private investigator still stared back, whites of the eyes all dried up, corneas like black, shiny chips.

He slammed the door again, went down on his knees, praying to God. Jesus fuck, they’d been here.
In his house
.

The man sprung to his feet, rushed to the gym bag and pulled out Code Blue. He spun, searching with the gun in front of him. Wary, he tiptoed behind the furnace.

“Please, God. Please…”

Nothing.

Trembling, he clutched his sides, holding his insides in. His head pivoted back and his jaw unhinged to release a silent, primal scream.