I wondered how they knew where I had gone, but the answer came to me within the next breath. Occam’s razor. All other things being equal, the simplest solution was the best.
The CCTV cameras.
They had tapped into the cameras, saw where I had gone; maybe they had lost me after that visit, unable to track me when I had gone to other places, lost me before Myhotel. But they had seen me talking to the Yugoslavian. Had gone after her, questioned her, and tortured her. And to save her own life the Yugoslavian had given up the African woman, the woman who had been Catherine’s best friend.
Catherine said, “You have beaten me before.”
“I’m not like that anymore. I’m not angry at you in that way.”
“You came to Amsterdam to kill me before.”
“That was a lifetime ago.”
“It was yesterday in my mind.”
“I’ve changed.”
“You are still that person.”
“I am not that person.”
“You are. I saw that in your eyes when you were here. I saw the hate was still there.”
“All I’m trying to do is make sure everything is right.”
“You come here, you teach my son to fight.”
“To protect himself.”
“You think I do not know, you think my son does not tell me that you take him and teach him to use a gun. You teach him violence. You teach him to be like you.”
“I teach him the same shit you taught me when I was supposed to be your fucking son.”
“You are still angry. So angry.”
I caught my breath. “I teach him how to protect himself and how to protect you.”
“What do I need protection from, besides you, Jean-Claude? What else do I need protection from?”
“I am not your enemy.”
“You come to my home,
threaten
me, tell me you would take my son away from me.”
“I used to be your son.”
“Why didn’t you leave us in London, leave us where we were? Why bring us here?”
“I wanted you to have a better life.”
“A life you can take away whenever you feel like it.”
“That’s not . . . Catherine . . . I’m . . .”
“You are Margaret’s son.”
“I don’t know Margaret. I only know you.”
“And now two more of my friends are gone to be with Margaret.”
“I’m back in the area. I’ll come over for a while. We can talk face-to-face.”
“Please do not come over. I know this home is the home you pay for, and you have the right to come and go as you please, a right I would never interfere with, but this one time, please, do not come.”
I took a breath. “Okay.”
“I have to go, Jean-Claude. I have to wash my face, have to make my son his dinner.”
“Wait, hold on. Look, I think this thing . . . someone is after me.”
“You think they did this horrible thing because they are looking for you.”
“I can’t prove it. But I think so. Some bad people. They were after me in London, probably followed me, saw me talking to the Yugoslavian. I had asked her about you and the kid.”
“So . . . someone is following you . . . because of what you do.”
“I’m doing what you taught me. This is your nurturing.”
She paused. “Someone wants to do harm to you and anyone who knows you.”
“Something I did a while ago. It’s coming back at me now.”
“And because of you and the things you have done they killed Ivanka. You spoke to Ivanka one time and they killed her. They killed Nusaybah. You did not know Nusaybah and they killed her like she was a worthless dog. And they have taken her son, probably have killed him as well. Because of you.”
A moment passed, my anxiety growing exponentially. “I’ll be there in about thirty minutes.”
“
No no no no no.
If they are after you, then you should not come back here.”
London. Cayman Islands. Huntsville. She was right.
She asked, “Did you go back to London and murder my friends?”
“I’m not a murderer.”
“Did you kill her son?”
“I didn’t touch any of them.”
“What did you do to her son? Answer me. Tell me. Did you harm him? Did you?”
I snapped, “The boy was in the alley playing soccer when I left.”
“I have seen what you do, Jean-Claude. I have seen the person you are.”
“The person you made me. I am the person you made me to be.”
“You were already that person; when you were born you were that person.”
“Is that how you see me?”
She sobbed, cried like her only family had died at the slaughter.
I said, “I killed a man to protect you.”
“Because you were like the man you killed.”
I fumbled with what to say, no words coming, just said, “Talk to you soon.”
“You should not call here, Jean-Claude. Until you have fixed what is wrong, do not call.”
“Okay. Keep me posted. Let me know if they find the boy.”
“I cannot. I have to protect my son. He is all I have left in this world. All I have.”
Catherine hung up the phone, her tone filled with anger, tears, fear, and confusion.
I had been cut off from the kid. It felt as if my heart had been ripped out.
Batman. Golgo 13. A demon. Catherine saw me the same way.
I pulled up the house cameras again, saw her on the sofa crying. The kid rubbed his mother’s arm. She moved away from him; her pain put pain and suffering in his face. The kid cried. Didn’t know he ever cried. Had to remind myself that he was a kid. He might have kept his feelings deep inside, but he had feelings. I watched that as long as I could stand to watch it, that grief exacerbating my illness.
X. Y. Z.
Detroit was desperate, butchering innocent people to find her way to me.
She had forced me to sell my homes; now she had destroyed what little family I had.
Her evil had infected my personal world. Had spread to what I had considered to be my family.
I had slaughtered a dozen of her bodyguards when I had gone looking for her.
Men who would’ve done the same to me.
The number I had called in Huntsville, it was still locked in my mind.
I called.
She answered.
I snapped, “Bitch, you killed those women in London.”
“Gideon.”
“You crazy bitch. I’m coming after you. I’ll find you wherever you are.”
“You sound upset.”
“You think I’m fucking playing with you?”
“What’s wrong? Feel me breathing down your neck? You feel me? Are you afraid, Gideon? You should be. I am not to be fucked with. Ask my dead husband about that. You can’t escape me, Gideon. Every day I’m a day closer to killing you. Every hour I’m an hour closer. Every minute, a minute closer. I can find you. I know someone who can find anybody. And he will find you. Lowlife piece of shit.”
“The women in London had nothing to do with this shit.”
“You’re dead. Anyone you know is dead. Anyone you talk to is dead. I will kill as many as I have to in order to get to you. I shall see my vengeance. We’ve come too far to turn back now.”
“You’re a fucking coward. Why don’t you stop hiding, come see me, face-to-face.”
“Bet you’re losing a lot of sleep. Always running. Always hiding. Bet you’re afraid you’re going to slip. Knowing it only takes one bullet. You want me to stop chasing you? To not find who you know and kill them? Then do me a favor and kill yourself. Because if you don’t, I will get it done.”
“Fucking coward.”
“Don’t sleep, Gideon. Don’t sleep.”
She hung up.
Three hours later after that tragic news I was heading toward Hartsfield. My hardware had been entrusted to my new friend; I told Alvin I’d get the guns from him whenever I made it back.
He asked, “You okay?”
“Not really.”
“Get some more rest.”
“Have to keep moving.”
“Because of the trouble you’re in?”
“I have to keep moving.”
I had promised him five hundred American dollars, but I paid him twice that amount.
Alvin whistled and said, “Now that is one good-looking redbone.”
A bus was next to us, an advert for the local news, Jewell Stewark’s smile looking me right in my angry eyes. Her hair blond and straight, that dyed mane parted on one side, conservative and proper.
Alvin said, “Heard she has some temper though. Folks said she spat in some woman’s face.”
“Why would she do that?”
“Probably something to do with her husband. My wife gets the same way sometimes.”
“She spat in somebody’s face.”
“At Starbucks on Cascade Road.”
The bus passed and so did the memory of Jewell Stewark.
Then came the part with the larger trust. Hawks was gone and I couldn’t risk going to Powder Springs, not after the news that had been dropped on me, so I didn’t have much of a choice. I handed Alvin my messenger bag, kept my backpack with me.
“Alvin, I have something I can’t risk trying to take on the plane with me.”
“Drugs?”
“Money.”
“Drug money?”
“Not drug money. Need you to keep it for me.”
“You sure you want me to do that?”
I nodded, slow and easy, thoughts so heavy nodding was almost an insurmountable task.
He said, “How much money you asking me to watch?”
“Between fifty and sixty thousand.”
He whistled. “That’s a lot of money.”
“I know.”
“You done counted it all?”
“Didn’t count it.”
“How would you know I didn’t take some?”
“I’ll leave that up to you.”
He said, “Sure you want to do this? I mean, this is a lot of money. Like Mr. Kagamaster said, hard times all over. Home Depot is closing a dozen stores, city has a two-hundred-some-million-dollar hole in its budget, and the mayor done laid off people to balance the city budget and whatnot, doing all that while she trying to get taxes raised. She taking away jobs and letting those who left with paychecks pick up the slack. What I mean is, well, this is a lot of money to put in the hands of a man in hard times.”
The big man took the money and trembled.
Losing that money was the last thing on my mind, something I didn’t care about.
I handed Alvin a sheet of paper. The address in Powder Springs in black ink.
He asked, “What’s this?”
“Need you to be an angel in a world where I am a demon.”
“Okay.”
“It’s a woman and a kid. Her son. Watch the house. Look for trouble.”
“What you want me to do if I run into some trouble?”
“Whatever you have to do.”
“These some bad people after you, huh?”
“Some real bad people.”
He nodded.
An hour later I was between fifty and sixty thousand dollars lighter, on the other side of security, uncomfortable because I didn’t have a gun on my person, waiting to board a plane to Fort Lauderdale.
The image of two innocent women left butchered on a piss-stained street in my mind.
That had been the work of a monster.
What had happened to those women, that was what would have happened to me in London.
Twenty-four
the terror
Miami, Florida.
I had trailed his chauffeured stretch Hummer from the Tides Hotel in South Beach on Ocean Drive, a place described as a sanctuary of extravagance, had followed that oversized monstrosity as they partied up the MacArthur Causeway, chrome sparkling every time a sliver of light touched its lavishness. I shadowed that gas guzzler until the causeway became I-395 and merged onto I-95 right behind them.
They exited at Miami Gardens Drive, made a right, and less than a mile from that exit was their destination, Tootsie’s Cabaret, a playground for men that was the size of a football field, every square foot of it crowded with strippers and international people holding bottles or glasses of mood-altering liquids. Four-hundred-foot main stage, projection screens all over, luxury seating, skyboxes, champagne rooms.
It was like a combination of a meeting at the United Nations and a birthday party at Studio 54. Droves of international men. Hundreds of international women either naked or in thongs, bodies accented by six-inch heels and designer perfumes, some decorated with dollar bills, faces made up like movie starlets, walking around smiling and flirting, more comfortable butt-naked in this cavernous room than they would be fully clothed at a church bake sale. All the girls reminded me of Jennifer Lopez, Paris Hilton, or Eva Longoria. A few were in the Halle Berry category, fewer of the Gabrielle Union type.
Like my target, most of the people in the room were under thirty, but every now and then I passed by an old rich man pawing at the boobs on women the same age as his granddaughters.
A waitress came over. Slender number dressed in black, hair dyed brown, colored with highlights, very Miami Beach in frame and attitude. Tight eyes and a no-nonsense smile. She asked me what I wanted to order and I sent her to get me a Jack and Coke.
When she came back and handed me my drink I asked, “Filipina?”
She shook her head. “Mother is Chinese and my father is Japanese.”
“Didn’t mean to offend.”
“Nothing new, sweetie.” She sighed. “Happens all the time.”
“You’re a pretty woman.”
“Would probably be prettier to you if I was Filipina instead of a Japanese China doll.”
“Guess I blew my chance with you.”
She waggled her hand, showed me an engagement ring. “Dude, you never had a chance.”
I paid her and tipped her, and she walked away in a hurry. I went back to monitoring my target, held my drink but didn’t sip any. Couldn’t do alcohol if I wanted to. Was taking the meds Hawks had given me. Hands were scratched, but no open wounds. I ached, but B.C. had that under control.