I said, “You ever thought about getting a bigger vehicle?”
“With these gas prices?” He shook his head. “They say gas might go up as high as seven dollars a gallon. Hard times all over. They about to shut down over six hundred Starbucks, heard that this morning. No matter what kinda job, on the top floor or in the basement, people getting let go.”
He reached into the backseat, moved old Starbucks cups and older Krispy Kreme boxes out of the way, grabbed a FedEx box, and handed it to me. I handed him money to pay the toll to get out of the parking garage and he eased his taxi out into the bad weather, windshield wipers working overtime.
Jewell Stewark smiled at me from a billboard, the rain giving her face tears.
For a moment I smelled her on my hands. Then that one-night stand was in the rearview.
Alvin said, “Hope you don’t mind, but I spent a little of that money you asked me to hold.”
“How much?”
“Was a little behind on my rent.”
“No problem.”
“Spent about five hundred. Can run and get the rest if you want it right now.”
“We can take care of that later. Get me to Powder Springs.”
I stared at the package from FedEx, the label from DNA Solutions.
The answer to my fears, doubts, and obsession was in my hand.
I asked, “Where is the note you found at the house?”
“Left it at the house. Didn’t think to bring it.”
Something was down by my feet, didn’t want to kick it around, so I picked it up. It was a pair of black, French-cut panties. A matching bra was down on the floor too.
Alvin took those out of my hand. “I think those belong to Bunny. That girl something else.”
He left Hartsfield, took Camp Creek Parkway, the rain coming down hard enough to make the streets become red rivers. Some of the soil had a reddish color, the rain making it look like blood was running into the street, that redness in the soil caused by iron oxides. Blood everywhere I looked.
I said, “Those two problems you found . . . ?”
“They in the trunk. Keeping each other company.”
“They’re awfully quiet.”
“Yup.”
“They dead?”
“They wasn’t the last time I checked.”
“When was the last time you checked?”
“Yesterday. Might’ve been day before.”
“You feed ’em?”
“Food cost too much.”
“You give ’em water?”
“There is a drought here. No extra water to go around.”
“Good man.”
“Cramped up like that with no food or water. They should be pretty weak. They was tiptoeing around the house. At first I thought they was stealing gas. Lot of that going ’round now. People siphoning gas like they did back in the seventies. Not only that but people are drilling into the gas tanks on the SUVs and Hummers and stealing gas. Stealing gas and messing up people’s gas tanks. Bad enough all your gas is gone, but now you have to get your gas tank repaired.”
I said, “You said they were tiptoeing around the house.”
“Yeah. I snuck up on ’em.”
“You hit them?”
“Left hook dead square on the chin.”
“Knockout punch.”
“He was knocked out like Suge Knight. Did the same to his buddy. Knocked ’im out too.”
“Way to go.”
“Fellows in the trunk. Both of ’em had guns. I threw the guns away. They hog-tied.”
“Alvin.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Alvin, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
About eleven miles out, Camp Creek turned into Thornton Road. Twelve miles after that Thornton Road ran into Richard D. Sailors Parkway. I had been on the cellular the entire ride. Called Hawks a dozen times, tried Konstantin just as many. A new level of stress erupted as we approached Macland Road. Stress magnified as we turned on Gus Robinson Road and found our way to the section of Powder Springs where I had bought the three-level house for Catherine and the kid.
Thirty-two miles and a little over an hour later we had pulled up on Double Creek Drive.
It was raining pretty hard. Skies as dark as midnight.
Midnight.
I thought about the man they had called Midnight.
When Alvin pulled up in the driveway, I had him get out of his taxi.
Told him to toss me his keys, and I told that huge man to go wait inside until I got back.
He nodded.
I took off in his orange taxi, moved through rain and winds, tornado warnings on the radio.
When I made it back, I was up to my ankles in soil that looked like diluted blood.
Once again the Creature from the Black Lagoon.
The taxi was about four hundred pounds lighter when I returned.
Alvin’s trunk was empty.
As empty as the smoking .38 I had wiped down and tossed into the Chattahoochee River.
I stood and looked up the street, searched for more of Detroit’s men.
A strawberry blonde was on my mind; leaving her aboveground gnawed at me.
A lot of things gnawed at me.
I took the FedEx package off the front seat and headed for the house.
The note Alvin had found inside the house.
It was in Catherine’s beautiful handwriting. In cursive writing that looked like art.
What she had to say had been left on a sheet of printer paper.
In blue ink, she had written the note in French, her native tongue.
It said that she and the boy were leaving America.
They had packed as much as they could and had gone back to Europe.
That hurt me more than the gunshot wound and the jellyfish sting.
Didn’t take many words to shatter a fragile heart.
Hawks and Konstantin.
I heard from them the next day. I was resetting the system in the house. Lightning had knocked the system offline. Had to reboot so I could look at the cameras.
Konstantin had made it back home, was with his wife and kids.
He had left madness and gone back to normalcy.
Hawks came to Georgia, called me when she was at Atlanta Hartsfield.
I took the Mini Cooper I had bought for Catherine and picked Hawks up from the lower level. Hawks was back in jeans, still on crutches, wore one cowboy boot, a backpack on her arm. When she got inside the car she kissed me so long I had to pull away from her.
She said, “Don’t be mad at me, okay?”
“Why would I be mad?”
She showed me pictures she had on her cellular phone.
The strawberry blonde. Naked. A hole in her head. Pretty shoes at her side.
The opera was over. The fat lady had sung.
I asked, “Did you have to go do that?”
“You’re one ungrateful jerk. You are really disappointing me right now.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t drown her and make it look like an accident.”
“Was going to. Her suite didn’t have a bathtub.”
“How much I owe you?”
“Oh, please.”
“Thanks, Hawks.”
“Thank me when you take me where you promised to take me.”
“Where was that?”
“Puerto Rico. Did you forget?”
“Puerto Rico. Right. I’ll take you.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
“Pinky-swear promise.”
“Hawks.”
“Pinky-swear promise.”
“Okay. Pinky-swear promise.”
Newspapers were on the dining room table. Mostly
USA Today
.
ANTIGUA FINDS II DEAD IN THREE DAYS. Men from Oakland, New York, Memphis, Miami, Cleveland, Compton, and Detroit were in that lot of the dead. All had entered the country on forged documents. Assumed to be drug-related. Not one of the men was connected to my enemy. The hardworking locals wondered how the deaths would impact tourism and sailing week. Hard times were all over. Everybody was suffering. Somehow I doubted that series of murders would be noticed beyond the shores of Antigua. Most of the dead were of the wrong complexion to have a meaningful impact on tourism. It was blamed on the Jamaicans. Everything was always blamed on the Jamaicans.
I wondered who the Jamaicans blamed their problems on.
Next to that were dozens of pages that had been downloaded from the Web site for the
Detroit Free Press
. That paper ran the story on the front page. Had more details. The death. The funeral. Pictures of grieving politicians, relatives, and friends. Enemies were there too. Posted were words from people she had wronged, people who were glad she was dead, the talk of her death being a hit in retaliation for all the wrong she had done over the years. She was called a narcissist with a bottomless ego. Said she knew where the bodies were buried. And they repeated they believed that she had hired a hit man to kill her husband. Others speculated she was about to expose the elected official who had killed her husband, that was why she had been silenced. Another story said that over the last few days hundreds of thousands of dollars had been found missing, money misappropriated from the city she claimed to love so much. She was dead and the FBI was investigating her legacy as well as council members. Bribes for approving a sludge-removal contract. Forty-seven-million-dollar sludge contract in exchange for kickbacks. A morning news anchor-woman was involved. My enemy was dead but much was being said. Her being confirmed dead had left a lot of intimidated people unafraid to speak their minds. A lot of the negative shit was posted where people went to post negative shit and remain anonymous, on the Internet. They hadn’t found any incriminating text messages. At least not yet.
I read the papers not to confirm her death, but to see if she had stashed evidence of her crime anywhere, if she had left behind anything that would lead the law to me. Nothing popped up in the newspapers. Nothing popped up on the Internet. I had Google alerts set on
Gideon
and
Detroit
. The only thing that popped up was a Baptist Church in Warren, Michigan, and a guy named Gideon who had graduated from Syracuse with a degree in finance. No one came banging on the door.
The Daily Mirror. Daily Star. The Independent. The Daily Telegraph. Daily Express. The Sun. London Lite. News of the World.
Those were the newspapers in London and Britain. I searched them online, went back to the day I had last been there. Not one word about two women being found butchered on Berwick Street. They had died the way they had lived, unimportant to the important.
Two weeks went by.
Two weeks of me and Hawks taking meds, icing down injuries, taking warm baths, recuperating. Fourteen days of a mesomorphic man and a woman with an ectomorphic body playing Scrabble and unloading wagons before she had to leave. Hawks said she would call me soon. She promised.
She was going back to work. Had bills to pay and a condo to keep from sliding into foreclosure.
I bought her a present before she left. Something for Puerto Rico. A pair of Italian-made pink open-toe stilettos with a rhinestone brooch as an accent piece. She loved those shoes. Took off her cowboy boots and sashayed around in five-inch heels, loved the ribbons that tied across her ankles.
I sat up in the bed and asked, “Still think I’m a jerk?”
She looked stunned, whispered, “Good Lord, these are
gorgeous
.”
I laughed as she hurried to stand in front of a full-length mirror.
“Good Lord. They make my calves look beautiful. Look at my butt.”
I laughed. “How do they feel?”
“Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.”
Hawks took off everything except for the shoes. Modeled naked in heels. Her body unbelievable.
“They look good on you.”
“Good Lord. These heels are so high I might get a nosebleed.”
I stared at the shoes, shoes that led to smooth and sexy legs, a road to ecstasy in five-inch heels. She sat down on the bed, touched the Italian leather, ran her fingers across the design, then she stared at me.
Her haunting eyes locked on me.
Hawks touched the shoes and trembled, stared at me, her expression intense.
I asked, “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“These shoes . . . got me all tingly . . . made me a little excited.”
She let her hair down, her highlighted mane flowing down her back, hanging below her waist.
Hawks came to me, undressed me, mounted me, kissed me, took me to a wonderful place.
Days passed before I heard from Catherine.
A few days of not knowing where the kid was had felt like one hundred years of solitude.
She had gone to claim Nusaybah’s body. And she had done the same for the Yugoslavian named Ivanka. The money I had given her, she had taken that with her to make sure her friends had proper funerals and proper burials. Nusaybah had no relatives. Ivanka’s people wanted nothing to do with a whore, shunned her even in death. Catherine paid for them both to have services at a Catholic church. And she paid for them to be buried in a decent cemetery, side by side, both in graves that had tombstones. Tombstones where friends could visit and leave prayers and flowers. She didn’t leave them to be claimed by the government and disposed of like they were animals. She made sure they left this world with some sense of dignity. And she had taken Steven, the boy who used to be called Sven, the X in our algebraic equation, had taken the kid to help her find Nusaybah’s son, if he was still alive.
I asked, “Are you and the kid coming back?”
“Nusaybah’s son is missing.”
“No one has seen him?”
“Not since the day his mother was murdered.”
“What now?”
“I am going to the morgues. I am going to look at the unclaimed bodies of children.”
Silence and grief sat between us.
She asked, “Did your package come?”
“It came.”