A Hard Death (22 page)

D
aylight. Jenner had left the curtains open, and the cabin was bright in the early morning light. He checked his phone on the side table; no messages.

He dragged himself out of bed, opened the door for the dog. He stood on the porch in his T-shirt and boxers, watching the thing snuffle and root around under the cabin. As he stood there, dressed in his underwear, watching his mutt crapping on a bush, it occurred to him that, just as he was about to leave for good, he'd never been more at home at the Palmetto Court.

What was he going to do with the damn dog?

He let it inside, and lay back down on the bed.

He was surprised he wasn't hungover. Maybe it was the fatigue, but he was definitely feeling the alcohol by the time he said good-night.

He really liked Deb—she was bright, incredibly kind, funny. And she understood him well—dealing with four brothers had left her with keen insight into the mysteries of How Men Work.

And she was different—at least, different from New York women. Her interest in him was relaxed, patient, artless. There'd been no game-playing, no look of recrimination when he'd rejected her with a good-night peck on the cheek, as if she were his baby sister. There'd been no need to say anything, she just understood.

He wondered if she'd read Maggie's note.

He opened it again.

He looked at his watch. Seven thirty a.m. Too early to call.

“Maggie Craine.” Formal, distant—maybe the “pick up chicks” suggestion wasn't a joke. Maybe he should get a clue.

There was a lolloping sound from the floor, and he leaned over to see the dog licking clean his sandwich plate. He lay back.

Marty's memorial was at eleven a.m.

Jenner got up and sat at the kitchen table, reading over his eulogy notes. He knew what he wanted to say: that they'd all been better for knowing Marty and Bobbie, that Marty had made him a better pathologist, and in doing so, a better man.

He needed a black jacket for the service. He showered and dressed, and headed to the New Promenade mall. He deposited his check at the bank next to Nordstrom, then spent a few minutes sorting out his money at the ATM. After paying off American Express and the minimum on his main Visa card, he realized, the check money wouldn't go much further. The credit card company wanted the full balance, nearly three thousand dollars, before they'd reactivate his frozen MasterCard; it would have to stay frozen. When all his money had been allocated between his various accounts and debts, he had barely enough to take out four hundred dollars in cash.

His cell phone rang. The tox lab director, confirming that Adam Weiss had been poisoned with Malathion, an organophosphate insecticide—the safety officer would be happy.

Jenner folded the money into his wallet and went into Nordstrom. It had just opened, and the store was still quiet, the air slightly stuffy and humid, with the faintest note of mold. The sales people were chatting dully, polishing counters and setting up. By the escalator next to the menswear department, there was a baby grand piano, its gleaming black lid open; a man in a dark suit and a bow tie was tapping keys one by one, listening to each note critically.

The jackets were handsome, and good quality, with New York prices. The $460 charge was too much for Jenner's Visa card; it took two more tries before the purchase went through, the clerk splitting the price between a $290 charge and $170 in cash.

Jenner refused the suit bag, had the salesman cut off the tags, and slipped the jacket on in the store. He smoothed his shirt and straightened his tie in a mirror, noticing that, somewhere along the way, his face had become tan.

He splurged on a coffee at Starbucks, and read his notes. They were good, his words heartfelt and true.

Jenner was ready to say his good-bye to Marty.

B
rodie stood at the top of the gentle slope, looking out over the outbuildings and pastures. Down toward the road, two of his Mexican field rats were herding a cluster of sows, leading them back to the slop troughs.

He scowled: for some reason, Brodie found their white-and-blue La Grulla Blanca baseball caps particularly irritating today. He loathed the way the fucking wetbacks swanned around in them, like commodores at a fucking yacht club. Of course, compared to typical farmhands, his men were wealthy.

Most growers paid pickers about fifty cents for a thirty-two-pound basket of tomatoes. Your typical Mexie would get up at four a.m. to get a prime position at the bus hub for the foremen's six a.m. day-laborer run. He'd work the fields all day, home at five or six p.m., now richer by sixty bucks.

Brodie turned and walked back over the slope, back to the bunkhouses. Inspection time.

The fifteen or so workers at La Grulla Blanca got five hundred dollars in cash at the end of each week, with Brodie holding another five hundred. In addition, twice a month, Brodie sent a thousand-dollar wire transfer to their home country.

This wage system had paid off big-time; gratitude from their
abuelas
and
mamacitas
created a work ethic on the farm that neither money nor the threat of violence ever could. Of course, there was always the threat of violence to back it up; the men understood that Brodie knew where their families lived, and they'd witnessed his cruelty firsthand.

Tony was leaning by the door to Bunkhouse A, the cookhouse; he nodded at Brodie. A breeze picked up, the smell of pig filth abruptly
sharpening; Tony's white guayabera billowed, and Brodie glimpsed the dark handle of his .45. Just under the lip of the house, hidden by tall grass, there were two Tec-9 machine pistols.

Brodie cracked open the door and peered in. It was cold in the long room, four industrial air-conditioners chilling it down into the low sixties. But it was never the cold that struck him so much as the smell, the cloyingly sweet smell of the acetone they used to extract the pseudoephedrine from the cold medicine, the sour citrus smell of the product.

They were now nearing the middle of the forty-eight-hour methamphetamine cook cycle. At the far end of the room, three men in hooded white Tyvek jumpsuits and painters' masks gathered around a globe-shaped glass flask the size of a beach ball, wrapped in a steel heating mantle. As Brodie watched, they slowly trickled red phosphorus onto the pseudoephedrine they'd extracted that morning. There were three other triple-necked twenty-two-liter flasks, each half-filled with a bubbling slurry the color of caking blood; corrugated orange hoses crooked off the flask tops, pumping waste gas into tall plastic canisters packed with cat litter to absorb the reek. The cat litter was really overkill—they kept pigs on La Grulla Blanca because the stench masked the smell of methamphetamine cooking.

Brodie didn't speak—the phosphorus was lethally poisonous, and could ignite from friction, and the hydroiodic acid in the flasks could burn a man's eyeballs out. The greatest danger was fucking up the mixture and making phosphine gas, which would kill them all within seconds. This was why all his cooks came from Michoacán state, from Apatzingán or Tepalcatepec, where all the best meth cooks came from—Lord knows Brodie didn't want a roomful of dead Mexies on his hands.

He watched them tip the last of the phosphorus into the funnel, then carefully ease the canister down to the ground. They stepped back, relieved; one capped the open necks while another checked the heating-coil settings.

Brodie closed the door and looked out over the land. The farmhands had reached the feed pens now and were smoking in the shade as they
watched the sows crowd the trough. The average profit on a pig raised and slaughtered was less than $20; a two-day cook cycle netted thirty pounds of methamphetamine with a street value of roughly $800,000—it was always about the money.

Brodie thought of his daughter back in Mendocino, begging him to give Tarver a job but just to please keep him out of the meth business—his idiot son-in-law already had one strike against him in California. But Tarver wanted money, and factory or warehouse work wouldn't cut it. Besides, Brodie could use a man with Tarver's special gifts: the psycho was happy to do things most men wouldn't. Case in point: their little instructional video had been Tarver's idea.

Tarver had videotaped the men first as Tony worked on them, and after their interrogation, he taped their execution.

Brodie had shown the first video at the monthly barbecue. The men had been pretty drunk and raucous when Tarver rolled out the TV; by the time the screening ended, the men stood in stunned silence.

After the tape Bentas spoke to them in Spanish, explaining that the mistake of one man destroys the lives of all, and that the weakness of one can overcome the strength of many. He told them that the hanged men had been stealing meth, using it and dealing in Bel Arbre; these men had risked everything, risked sending them all to prison.

Then Brodie announced the pig they'd slaughtered that morning was ready, and the Corona and tequila flowed again, and everyone gathered around the pit to eat.

Later, Brodie gave each man a five-hundred-dollar bonus. And there was more: he clapped his hands and pointed to the main farmhouse. Headlights turned on, and a minivan trundled slowly to the barbecue area, the van full of whores from Bel Arbre, big fat
mamacitas
probably ecstatic not to still be fucking donkeys back in TJ. And while usually Brodie brought in two or three women, that night there were six.

When the owner came to a barbecue, Brodie had to supply young girls. At first he'd been surprised how easy it was to find a fourteen-year-old—for the right money, everything is possible. He didn't like it, though, not from a moral point of view but because it was an unneces
sary exposure: people talk about a fourteen-year-old whore in ways they don't when the girl is seventeen.

So Brodie took precautions. He sent out a different man to meet the procurer each time, used a rental car, blindfolded the girls immediately, and didn't take the blindfolds off until they were inside the main farmhouse. Afterward, the weeping girl (and they were always crying by the time the boss finished with them) was soothed with money and tequila, then blindfolded again and taken on a circuitous route back to the town. The challenge of procuring girls for the boss had become harder as his tastes had evolved; it was now difficult to find girls young enough and thin enough to make him happy.

Brodie spat and adjusted his cap. Fuck it—with a steady supply of ingredients, the farm was averaging two forty-eight-hour cook cycles a week, pushing the weekly gross near two million dollars. Brodie could stomach a little risk.

Because it was always about the money.

A
t ten thirty a.m., Jenner was dictating his report on the rib injuries when he looked up to see David and Marie Carter and Richard Flanagan in his doorway; he'd never seen Flanagan in a tie before.

“Time to go?” Jenner put down the microphone and turned to slip his new jacket off the hanger on which he'd carefully hung it.

They filed into his office somberly, and Flanagan shut the door.

They'd designated David Carter to do the talking; Carter clearly found it difficult.

“Dr. Jenner…”

Jenner nodded. “What's going on, David?”

“When I was driving here to pick Marie up, I passed by the chapel. It's a…a zoo out there—reporters, news vans, at least twenty TV cameras. And Amanda Tucker is outside right now…” He shook his head.

Jenner said, “Go on.”

Marie Carter broke in. “Dr. Jenner,
Eye on Port Fontaine
showed the report about you from the Amanda Tucker show this morning, and then they had Diane Sales from the sheriff's department saying you're leaving next week. They said you had problems in New York, and there are problems with your work here.”

David Carter raised a hand dismissively. “We want you to understand all of us know that's completely wrong—we've worked with you, and we've seen your dedication, and the great work you've done here.” He hesitated. “But this has got really political now. If you go to the Roburns' memorial, it'll be all about you—they'll ask Sheree about you, they'll talk to the sheriff about you. And when you show up, they'll ask you all sorts of questions. Let's face it: they're going after you—you know that,
don't you? They're making you the fall guy for everything that's gone wrong.”

He paused, then said, “And if you go, Marty and Bobbie will get lost in the shuffle.”

Jenner put his new jacket down on the desk. “I see.”

Flanagan said, “Doc, we hate to ask you. We know you were closer to him than any of us. And we know you're getting a bum rap here. But you show up, it'll be like Clown Day at the circus.”

Jenner looked down at his notes. Then he nodded, and said, “You're right. Of course I don't want to get in the way.”

He didn't look up as they left.

Jenner picked up his speech, folded it in half, in quarters, then across into eighths. Then he lobbed it into the bin.

L
eila, the head of Craine's household staff, was waiting for Maggie at the steps.

“Mr. Craine is on the terrace, Ms. Craine; he's expecting you.” Maggie had long ago given up trying to read her father's mood from Leila's expression; that Chip had summoned her to Stella at all was never a good sign.

Her father kept the house glacially cold; when she was a kid, the tile in the ridiculously formal entry hall always felt like ice under her bare feet. Hugging herself against the chill, Maggie crossed the living room. The view was as gorgeous as ever, the green sweep of perfect lawn, down to the Gulf of Mexico, the water now blurred by silver haze.

She pushed through the big glass doors and out onto the terrace, down the steps to the pool. Her father sat at the table in his robe, eating scrambled eggs and toast and reading the
New York Times
. He was wearing a pair of handmade Italian sunglasses that cost over three thousand dollars.

He accepted her dutiful kiss and gestured to the other chair.

“Coffee? Juice? I can have Rosalba make up some eggs if you'd like…”

Maggie shook her head. “I had coffee at home.” She sat.

“I'll get straight to the point: I've been going over the bills from Palm Haven.” He tapped a leather folio on the table. “Lucy's stay is going to cost over thirty-two thousand dollars.”

“My God!” The number was astonishing. “But they were great with her, I think she's doing really well.”

He nodded. “And of course, that's the most important thing—that Lucy keeps making progress and getting better. It's what we all want.”

Where was he going with this?

He slid the folio aside and leaned back. “So, have you seen any more of the doctor?”

She didn't like this. “No.”

“You spent the other night with him.”

She flushed. She didn't answer.

“Of course, your affairs are none of my business.” He shrugged. “But I have to say, I don't like him.”

“You never like them.”

“What?”

“You never like anyone I date.”

He chuckled. “That's just silly—I liked Charlie Endicott.”

“Charlie Endicott was a prick—you only liked him because his dad
hated
that he was dating me.”

“Ah! I am a bad man indeed, comforted by the discomfort of my enemies!” Craine said. “But, anyway: I disapprove of the doctor—I mean, the man cuts up dead bodies, for crying out loud!”

Maggie was silent a second.

She said quietly, “I like him. He's kind to me, patient with me.”

“Well, I think we've all been very patient with you.” Craine took a sip of grapefruit juice. “But I've seen you do this a thousand times. You always think you've fallen in love, and make a fool of yourself over some man, then a few days later, a week later, you realize they were wrong for you all along.

“You make bad decisions, we both know it. Most adults are independent, work for a living—but not you. I buy you a house, I give you an allowance, I even fund your damn shelter, so you can pretend you've actually done something with your life! And in the end, I always have to jump in and clean up after you. It's like dealing with a six-year-old.”

She was teary now. “Daddy, please. That's so unfair.”

“I watch you throw yourself at this doctor, and I can see it's just one more Maggie Craine disaster in the making. I've had just about enough. It's time you assumed more responsibility.”

He opened the folio and tapped his finger firmly on the Palm Haven bill. “Lucy gives me enough to worry about without you disappearing
with strange men all the time—you should be home looking after her! How on earth did you let her starve herself like that? Where were you, exactly, when she was making herself throw up?”

He watched Maggie sob, his eyes unblinking and lizard-like.

“
Thirty-two thousand dollars!
You act like the money grows on trees!” He pulled another invoice from the folio and pushed it across the table. “And the family therapy? You think that's free? Three hundred dollars an hour. How would
you
like to pay for it?”

He closed the folio firmly. “Really, Maggie, if you're independent enough to run off and sleep with every man who comes along, you should also be responsible enough to pay for the medical care Lucy needs because of your neglect.”

Maggie leaped to her feet, grabbed his juice glass, and threw it at him. It hit the robe silently, spattering juice onto his neck and chest and lap; Craine caught the glass before it fell to the floor.

He called after her, “Oh, well done, Maggie! I completely take back what I said about you being immature!”

She kept going and didn't turn when he called to her, “It's up to you—you just let me know how you want to cover it…”