Upside Down (11 page)

21

Concord, North Carolina

Winter Massey sat at the table across from his son and, picking up one card at a time, appraised his hand. A pair of fives, an ace, a jack, and a three. Rush, who wore a ball cap pulled down low to make him look more like a dealer, set aside the deck. He lifted his own cards, fanning them so he could use his fingertip to read the dots located on the upper left-hand corner of the face of each card. He closed his hand and turned his head to his left, where Sean sat arranging her cards.

“Pot's right. Bet's up to you, little lady,” Rush said flatly.

Sean lifted two chips and dropped them one after the other in the center of the table.

“Two to you, old fellow.”

Winter contemplated his odds of drawing another five, then tossed in two chips. “I'll check to the dealer.”

Rush placed his fingers on either side of one of his five tall stacks of chips and lifted up several of them. Without counting them out, he put them down on the felt and said, “Your two, and three more is the raise.” Laying his cards down and lifting the deck, he said, “Cards, lady and elderly gentleman?”

“One,” Sean said.

Rush said, as he handed her a card, “Okay, the little lady has two pairs . . . or might she be drawing to fill a straight . . . or maybe she is a card short of a flush.”

“Three,” Winter said.

Rush passed the cards to his father. “Read them and weep. Working on building two pairs or three of a kind, are we?”

“You're fixing to find out,” Winter told him.

“This is my last hand,” Sean said.

“Because I have almost
all
the chips?” Rush said, arching his brows.

“No, not merely because your father and I are both almost out of chips. Also because it's almost ten.”

“I'll give you more,” Rush told her.

“Absolutely not. I hate losing the same money twice.”

“If Daddy wins, we play one more hand. Okay?”

“Okay,” Sean said quickly. “Like that's going to happen.”

“Dealer is standing pat,” Rush said, laying aside the deck and lifting his cards. “Bets?”

Unbelievably, Winter had drawn a third five and a pair of sixes.
Full house.

Sean bet five chips. Winter raised her a like amount.

Rush put in twenty.

“Perfect. I have only ten left,” Winter said.

Sean pushed in her remaining chips. “I'll be light two.” She laid her hand down. “Three aces,” she declared triumphantly. “Beat that, Misters Massey.”

Winter cut out three cards, which he put facedown on the table. He put down the other two faceup. “Beats my pair of fives.”

“Read 'em and weep.”

“What in the world do you call that?” Winter said, laughing. Rush laid down a hand devoid of any merit whatsoever.

“I was bluffing,” Rush replied.

“You were trying to let us win,” Sean accused.

Winter watched his son laugh. If you didn't notice the scar that ran from his temples, across both eyelids and the bridge of his nose, you would never guess that Rush was blind. Despite the limitations caused by his blindness, his son came as close to leading a normal life as most kids his age. Often it seemed that his other senses more than made up the difference. Winter hadn't thrown the hand to let Rush win because the boy was blind. He had thrown it because he didn't care if he won. He didn't at all mind coming in last in his home. Rush and his wife Sean meant everything to him.

“Did Mama call today?” Winter asked.

“No, Lydia hasn't called yet,” Sean said as she gathered up the cards and boxed them.

“It's that new
friend,
” Winter said. “Distracting her from her motherly and grandmotherly duties.”

“Her condo beau.” Rush was grinning. “Gram calls about every single night. Think they'll get married?”

“Don't be ridiculous,” Winter said.

Lydia Massey had moved to Sarasota, Florida, the week after Winter and Sean's wedding the previous March. She was dating a retired doctor who had a unit on the floor above hers. Winter had spoken to the doctor on several occasions and he seemed nice enough. It was just weird that his mother was dating.

“I have something for you fellows,” Sean announced. “A present.”

“What kind of present?” Rush asked suspiciously.

“A small one representing a very large one.” Sean leaned back and opened a drawer in the Stickley sideboard and removed a thin, gift-wrapped package. She handed it to Rush. “Open it.”

Rush tugged the ribbon off and removed the paper. It was a small silver frame.

“A picture frame?” Rush sounded disappointed. “So what's in it?”

“Nothing,” Winter said.

“Why is it empty?” Rush asked. “What's it for?”

“That's where we'll put the very first picture.”

“You bought a new camera?” Winter asked. Sean had told them it was a small something representing a larger something.

“Nope. The first picture of the new baby,” she said softly.

“A new baby? Holy shit!” Rush said.

“Rush!” Winter snapped. “Don't say that. Whose new baby?”

“Holy crapoly,” Rush said.

Winter finally got his mind around what his wife had said. “Are you sure?”

“Absolutely,” Sean replied.

“The doctor said so? That's why you've been sick?”

“You don't just guess at something like that,” Sean said, laughing.

He stood and pulled Sean up out of her chair and hugged her to him.

“Winter, are you crying?” she asked.

“Of course I'm not. I'm happy!” He knew, of course, that he was crying. But they were tears of joy. “We need champagne!”

“We have champagne,” Sean said. “In the fridge.”

“Holy—” Rush started.

“Rush,” Winter said warningly.

“Sorry! Do
I
get champagne too?”

It was a big deal for all of them. Winter didn't believe he could be any happier. He wished he could freeze that moment so he could have it to take out and relive over and over for the rest of his life.

The telephone started to ring.

“Let it ring,” Winter said.

“Might be Lydia,” Sean said.

“Gram is gonna freak out!” Rush said gleefully.

“I'll get it. I need to get some soap to wash out Rush's mouth with anyway,” Winter joked. He rushed into the kitchen to answer the phone, certain that he was going to be able to share the news with Lydia.

“Hello,” he said cheerfully.

“Is this Mr. Winter Massey?” The unfamiliar voice was heavily accented.

“Yes,” he answered, still thinking of Sean and her news.
A baby.
“I'm Winter Massey.”

Of course it
would
be a salesman, but for once he didn't care. From where he was standing, he could see into the dining room where Rush and Sean were actually dancing arm in arm. He wished he had a camera so he could capture the image. “So friend, what is it you're selling on this fine evening?”

“I'm Nicky Green.”

“I'm sure you are,” Winter said distractedly. “What's the pitch?”

“I'm a friend of Hank and Millie's.”

Winter's mind downshifted and he started paying closer attention.
Why would he be calling? Maybe Hank put him up to something.
“Sure, I know who you are. Sorry, what can I do for you, Mr. Green?”

“Well, I hate worse than anything to have to call you, but I'm afraid I have some god-awful news. It's bad . . . I . . . I . . .”

The smile had left Winter's face, and ice-cold fear froze his mind. Hank's old friend couldn't continue because he was crying.

22

In the open pool cabana, behind the sleekly modern concrete-and-glass house, a fire dancing in the small metal-mesh wastebasket positioned on a slate bar top was mirrored orange-red in the lap pool's crystal-clear water. Marta Ruiz, who sat on a stool at the outdoor bar before a cassette player, was at the end of an hour spent going through the stack of audiocassettes she had taken from the Porter house.

“Not here,” she announced.

Frustrated, she jerked the final audiotape out and tossed it into the wastebasket inferno. Arturo, standing outside the cabana biting his fingernails, uttered a long string of obscenities, then stomped around in the wet grass beside the rain-slick patio. Before listening to the cassettes, Marta had inspected each of the strips of negatives he'd taken from the dead lawyer and thrown them all into the same fire.

“I'm fucking cooked!” Arturo yelled.

“It isn't good,” Marta agreed. “Let's stay calm. We don't know that
she
has them either. The negatives could be anywhere Amber was during the days she was missing.”

“The tape . . .”

“If such a tape even exists,” Marta said, trying to calm him.

“All the police saw was an open machine, right? Probably there was no tape inside it. But if there was, it has my voice on it, Amber said my name a couple of times! It has my voice! I think I said Mr. Bennett's name! It has the fucking
hits
recorded on it!”

“Unfreak, Turo,” Marta said calmly. “There probably isn't a tape.”

“That's easy for you to say! Your balls aren't in the vise.”

“It's always counterproductive to freak. You are a professional. Anyway, Mr. Bennett doesn't know what might be on the tape, and the cops didn't find one.”

“Oh, so now there
is
a tape,” he said sourly.

“Whether there is a tape is not yet relevant to the situation,” she told him. “What Bennett is most worried about is the negatives—”

“Negatives which he didn't mention,” Arturo interrupted. “How dare that strutting rooster be angry with me, when he didn't bother to mention them in the first place!”

“Which also is beside the point. The tape can't prove anything against Bennett.”

“Is
that
right? Oh, sometimes I forget you know
everything
.”

“Insult me all you like, but I am the one by your side, Turo,” she said. “Bennett is all right because what people say to each other about him isn't proof. Without those negatives to give those statements credibility and provide a motive for him sending you to kill them . . .”

“Well, if he
had
told me about the negatives, I would have made that stupid bitch tell me where they were before I killed her.”

“Unfortunately Bennett won't be concerned with that,” Marta said.

“But it isn't my fault!” Arturo yelled. “He didn't say a fucking thing about any fucking negatives.”

“Watch your mouth,” she scolded. “Foul language is the crutch of the ignorant.”

“I'm sorry,” Arturo said. “Mr. Bennett only said she stole eight pictures. Never once did he mention anything about any negatives. If he had—well, he didn't.”

“Here is the problem as I see it.” Marta's eyes were on the flames consuming the tapes. “The negatives tie Mr. Bennett to a crime for which he can be prosecuted and perhaps executed.”

“Executed for sure. Anybody sees what he was doing to those people, he's a dead man.”

“That is his main concern, which for the moment overrides any others. I don't care about the negatives. It's a consideration, because one of Bennett's alternatives is to think that you have them and that you might use them to blackmail him. Another thought he is going to have is that you can tie him to the hits today and all of the jobs you've done for him in the past. And maybe he is going to worry because you saw his dirty little pictures.

“He will start thinking about cutting his exposure and punishing others for his mistakes. After this settles down, he's going to feel the need to clean up. I expect his police pals will help him do it. Or he might bring someone in. There's nobody local with the ability.”

“He was stupid to make the pictures and to keep them. How can he blame me? Stupid . . . whore-painted face . . . potbelly . . . wig head!”

“Men like him don't ever think anything is their fault,” Marta said. “We have to get the girl, because even if she doesn't have tape or negatives she saw you. And she certainly heard your name.”

“Nobody saw anything. I didn't see her, and the place was small with nowhere to hide. I looked everywhere in those rooms, and I made sure nobody was there. I always check. The kid wasn't in the bathroom down the hall or anything. There were not any schoolbooks or book bag, which means she came in after. If she saw me from a distance outside the office, so what?”

Marta exhaled, and like a patient parent she said, “You say that all you like, but that girl knows about Mr. Bennett's crime and about his connections with the authorities. Maybe the negatives were somewhere in the office.”

“I wasn't looking for any negatives.”

She nodded. “It doesn't matter anyway. But somehow the girl knows, and if she has the negatives and the tape she is going to figure out someone to give them to pretty soon.”

Arturo frowned. “She wasn't there. I bet she just came in and then listened to the tape. Maybe on the tape Amber said Bennett owned some cops or something.”

Marta had to fight to keep from slapping Arturo. “A child who just finds her mother dead will not sit down at a desk to listen to some stupid tape before she calls the cops—before she runs for help. No. If the girl had come in from somewhere else after you left and discovered the body, she would have gone screaming bloody murder for help, or sat there in shock until the bodies were found. She's twelve years old, Turo.” She pointed at her forehead. “Think like a twelve-year-old girl. That shouldn't be too hard for you.”

“I can't think like a girl,” he snapped. “Before you were twelve, you had killed a man already.”

“Because the law didn't do its job.”

“At that age you were screwing—”

“She is
not
like me,” Marta cut in, suddenly furious. “Unless she knew that Bennett owned cops, she would have called 911 first. And because no decent mother would tell her child that sort of thing, Amber must have told the lawyer all about it and the kid must have overheard it. If there was a tape, and the girl knew about that, then she took it. If she saw the negatives she certainly has them. She was hiding in a cabinet, behind a curtain, under the desk, or stuck to the ceiling like a fly, or who gives a damn where she was.
You missed her!
She heard enough to know
not
to call the cops. That means she will have to tell someone else, and if she has the tape and the negatives she will give them to someone who isn't a cop Bennett can buy off. Maybe it will be another lawyer or a friend of her mother's. We have to find her first, or whoever is hiding her, and make sure that doesn't happen.”

Arturo smiled and nodded. “Absolutely. Once we get everything and close the door on this, Mr. Bennett will trust me again.”

“Comb your hair.”

Arturo produced a comb and calmly put his hair in perfect order.

Marta watched Arturo, his pretty face painted by the dying firelight. She would find the girl and kill her. Then she would kill Mr. Bennett before he could have Arturo killed.

Whatever else happened, nobody was going to harm her Arturo.