“You sure you want to spend the night here? After what happened, I mean.”
“What did you have in mind?”
“What I meant, you have a friend or something you want to spend a few days with? Or I could drop you at a hotel.”
She gave him a sigh, deep and long-suffering. “No, I’m better off in my own bed, I think, Jack. Thank you, though. Would you mind seeing me to the door?”
“’Course not,” Cullen said.
Claudette watched him get out and hustle around the hood to open her door. He offered his hand and Claudette told him thanks, she could manage, grabbed the edge of the door frame and pulled herself out. Cullen closed the door and took her arm, falling in behind her when they reached the shoveled walk, not enough room for the two of them between the tidy banks of snow. At the entrance Claudette turned to face him.
“Thanks again, Jack. I hope I haven’t put you out.”
“Glad to do it,” Cullen said, handing her something. His card. “Call me if I can be of any further assistance.” He pointed at the card. “My home number’s on the back.”
“I will,” Claudette said, opening the door. “’Night, Jack.”
“’Night, Mrs. Yaghi.”
“Claudette.”
“Yeah,” Cullen said, smiling. He started away. “Claudette.”
She watched him walk back to his car, a solid, droop-shouldered man in his forties with a good belly on him and no rings on his fingers. He gave her a wave as he opened his door, wiggling blocky fingers, then he was gone, the faded maroon car rolling down the street, turning left on Craig and out of sight.
Claudette pushed her way inside, filling the stairwell as she clomped up the wooden risers, out of breath by the time she reached her second floor apartment. She kicked off her boots and hung her coat on the hook, almost tripping on the uprooted runner as she made her way to the fridge, the ticket waiting for her there under a magnet in the shape of a pear. She plucked it free and kissed it, then looked around for a pen to sign the back with. She found one by the phone, bent over the counter to sign the thing and thought,
No, do it tomorrow at the lottery office; it’ll make a great publicity shot
. She tucked the ticket folded into the fleshy chasm between her breasts and tossed the pen on the table.
She got a king can of beer out of the fridge, lit a Cigarillo and drew herself a hot bath. While the water ran she opened the medicine cabinet door, angling it so the mirrored surface faced the tub, and tucked the ticket into its beveled edge. The final touch before she stripped and lowered herself into the steamy bath was her boombox radio, which she rested on the toilet seat and tuned to her favorite top forty station. The song that came on as she cracked her beer and took a swallow couldn’t have been closer to perfect had she called the request line and asked for it by name: “If I Had A Million Dollars” by the Bare Naked Ladies.
Admiring her fortune—wrinkled now, looking somewhat the worse for wear—tucked into the edge of the mirror, Claudette sang along in a soaring voice:
“If I had ten million dollars…”
Her imagination roamed a glamorous spectrum as she lay there smoking, drinking and singing, and before she got out of the tub she decided that when the Hollywood moguls came sniffing around for the movie rights to her story, she’d insist on playing herself. After all, who else could fill the role?
The thought made her laugh out loud.
––––––––
Raybould worked the heavy bag, the sound of his bare-fisted blows resounding through the headquarters gym. He liked it down here this time of night, eleven-thirty, twelve o’clock, the gym always abandoned. His workouts were intense and he preferred to do them without people gawking. For variety he threw in the occasional savage kick—front, spinning back, roundhouse—tricks he’d picked up from an upper echelon martial artist he sometimes trained with. Twice his weight, the bag jiggled and jived on its chain.
Sharpening his focus, Raybould pictured the prosecuting attorney, those superior eyes staring bullets at him across the safety of the courtroom. He imagined the man’s soft body, stripped of its thousand dollar suits, and drove his fist into the bag, instead of the flat impact of knuckles on canvas feeling the satisfying give of human tissue, the snap of bone under vicious assault. He didn’t like the way the man made him feel, a sensation so alien to him he had difficulty giving it a name. It wasn’t fear; that was something he understood, a precise weapon in the right hands. It wasn’t even helplessness. It was more a kind of uncertainty, a distressing confusion as to how to proceed. It made him feel cornered, persecuted, angry. He wanted to lash out against a situation that demanded restraint, make personal issues that were coldly impersonal. Even if he did go after the prosecutor—kill him, scare him off, whatever—they’d just send in another.
He shifted focus, not liking where his mind was going, thinking now of Corsino, wondering what new breed of asshole the old man was sending his way. The little games they played, first trying to justify, then sanitize the act of murder by contract. Well, Raybould had his own little games—as the widow Flexner so recently discovered—with his own set of rules. And once a person played, he owned them forever. He concentrated on that. Thinking about it quelled that free-floating rage. He tried never to act in anger because when he got angry he stopped thinking. And when he stopped thinking he made mistakes.
He threw combinations into the bag, one-two, one-two, his wiry hundred-and-eighty pound frame dripping sweat. When the feeling began to leave his fingers he headed for the locker room for his weight lifting gear.
* * *
Hicks stood outside the door to the headquarters locker room and gym. He could hear Raybould in there, pounding the heavy bag. Probably pretending it was the head of some poor doper or pimp. It sounded like he was pelting it with a baseball bat.
He checked his equipment again: a small flathead screwdriver and the tiny remote transmitter Mayer had given him, microscopic circuits imbedded in plastic, the whole thing smaller than a dime. He’d practiced planting it a dozen times with Mayer before coming down here, using a Glock .45 identical to Raybould’s, with the heavy rubberized grips Raybould preferred. Mayer had checked the log for Raybould’s locker number: 203. Everything was set. It was a simple matter now of going in there and getting it done. As long as he could hear Raybould working the bag he’d be okay.
He pushed the door open and paused, listening into a sudden silence. Then Raybould was slamming the bag again.
Hicks took a deep breath, already tacky with sweat. Alone here in the face of what he intended to do, he was forced to confront his fear. He could think of no one he was more afraid of—and no one he despised with a deeper passion.
He went inside and started looking for Raybould’s locker, the wrist Raybould had injured throbbing with the beat of his heart. He scanned past the 100’s into the 200’s, rounded a corner and there it was, locker 203. Unlocked, as Hicks had known it would be. Hicks had asked him about that once, why he never locked up his stuff. He recalled Raybould’s cocky remark: “Who’s going to take anything of mine?”
He listened for the bag and didn’t hear it.
“Rodney, I never took you for the fitness-conscious type.”
Hicks spun and there was Raybould, shirtless, gleaming with sweat, the engorged veins in his arms standing out with brute vitality.
“Jesus,” Hick said, “you shouldn’t sneak up on a person like that.”
Raybould smiled. “I came in here like a bull in a china shop.” Getting into Hicks’ space now, backing him up. “Not paying attention again, Rodney.”
Hicks’ hands curled into fists. This was the first time he’d spoken to the man since that day in his bedroom. Now, it was like it happened only yesterday. Hicks wanted to drop him where he stood.
He said, “Preoccupied, I guess,” flashing on an excuse. He backed up another half step, Raybould’s good-buddy proximity raising his hackles. “I grabbed a shower down here last night and forgot my watch in one of the lockers.” He’d left it on the back of the toilet at home this morning.
“Which one?”
Hicks turned to the rank of lockers opposite Raybould’s, stepped over the bench separating the rows and opened the first unclaimed locker he saw. “This one right here.”
Raybould stepped over the bench with him, peering inside. “Hmm. No watch.”
“Stolen, I guess.”
“In a cop shop,” Raybould said with an ironic chuckle. “Is nothing sacred?”
“Just a twenty-dollar Timex,” Hicks said. He wanted out. “No harm, no foul.”
“You sure this is the locker?” He opened a couple of others, checking inside.
“That’s the one, all right.”
“Oh, well.”
“Yeah, well, listen Al, I gotta be going.”
“Okay,” Raybould said. He was in Hicks’ space again, showing that warm smile. “But before you go…” The smile was replaced with an expression of contrition, convincing as hell. “I never got a chance to apologize,” he said. “You know, for what happened.” Hicks clenched his teeth so hard they ached. “Things got out of hand there for a while. Way out of hand.” He put his hand on Hicks’ shoulder; Hick’s could feel its heat through his shirt, its coiled power. “I just wanted to say, I’m glad you could be a man about it.”
“Water under the bridge.”
The hand came away. Hicks breathed.
“How is Sal?”
“We split up,” Hicks said. “Last I heard she moved to Toledo to live with her mother.”
“Sorry to hear it. I hope it wasn’t because of…”
“It was because of a lot of things.”
“Yeah, well.” Raybould’s expression changed again, a light coming into his eyes. “Say, you want to spar?” He smacked a fist into his palm.
“No thanks,” Hicks said. He stepped over the bench and started away. “I’ve got a bum wrist.”
“Nice talking to you again, Rodney,” was the last thing he heard.
* * *
It had been three hours since the nurse gave Keith an injection for the pain in his fingers. They were killing him now, really throbbing. He could barely concentrate on what his sister was telling him. Some new antic of his brother’s.
“He invited them in for lunch—”
“Who?”
“These three Jehovah’s Witnesses. Dragged them right into the kitchen for soup and crackers and ended up selling
them
about a hundred dollars’ worth of Amway.”
Unable to endure the pain any longer, Keith interrupted Lee’s story and got her to go fetch a nurse. When the nurse came in he asked her if there was any way they could move his injection up a bit; it wasn’t due for another hour. The nurse went out to ask Dr. Sutcliffe, returning a few minutes later with a computerized med-pump mounted on an IV pole.
“It’s a PCA pump,” she told him, setting it up. “Patient controlled analgesia. A morphine infusion you control yourself.”
Lee watched the nurse load the pump with a fluid-filled syringe fixed to a length of slender tubing that ended in a needle, which she inserted into Keith’s IV. “Okay,” she said, handing him what looked like a call button attached by a length of gray wire to the pump. “No more needles. When it hurts, just press the button.”
“I can’t overdose myself?”
“Nope.” She patted the fancy pump. “We limit how much you can give yourself. There’s a loading dose going in right now, so you should start to feel better very soon.”
Even as she said it Keith thought the throb in his fingers had backed off a little. He put on a pained grin for his sister. “Ain’t technology grand?”
Lee returned his grin, watching the nurse leave the room. “So before you’re too high on drugs,” she said, “tell me more about this young policeman.”
“Not much to tell,” Keith said. “I only met him today. He seems nice enough, though. Katie took a shine to him right away.”
“Well, I can’t say too much.”
“Considering you married one.”
“And I’d do it again in a minute,” Lee said.
“How is Dale?”
“Bored since he retired. He’s gone back to the accordion.”
“Now I know why you’re here.”
They shared a private laugh, Keith wincing, splinting his ribs with his hand.
The phone on the bedside table rang, startling them both. Lee picked up the handset and said hello, then handed it to Keith. “It’s Kate.”
Keith said, “Katie, are you all right?”
“Yeah, Dad, I’m fine. We’re still at the house. There’s another storm up here and—”
“Well, you just stay right there, then. Lee’s here and I’m fine. They’ve got me hardwired into a case of scotch and I’m getting drunk as a lord.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m pulling your leg. Don’t worry about me. Stay there ’til the weather clears. Your friend can sleep in my place.”
“I thought I’d put him on the couch upstairs.”
“I’m sorry, sweetie. I didn’t mean…”
“I know, Dad.”
“You’re a grown woman.” He cleared his throat. “Did you see your boss yet?”
“I’m meeting him at Eddie’s in twenty minutes.”
“Got your lips puckered?”
“Like a rosebud.”
“Taking Steve along? Police presence?”
“No, I’ve got him reading my screenplay. Besides, Mo likes to be the biggest cheese on the platter.”
“He’ll take you back.”
“I hope so, Dad. Sleep well. I’ll call you in the morning.”
“Okay, kid.”
“’Bye,” Kate said. “Say ’bye to Aunt Lee for me.”
“I will, hon. ’Bye for now.”
Lee took the handset and replaced it in its cradle. Keith looked at her and chuckled.
“Look at you,” she said with a wry smile. “You
are
drunk.” She patted his hand. “How’s the pain?”
“Backing off some, I guess.” He sighed, shaking his bandaged head, the drug shifting his mood. “You know, Sis’, I feel so bad for Katie. She was so delighted about the money.”
“Don’t be silly. She was a happy young lady before you became Donald Trump, she’ll be a happy young lady again. When you think about it, except for the accident, nothing’s really changed.”
“I changed. I went crazy. I feel like this is all my fault. Why couldn’t I’ve just waited?”
Lee said, “That’s not important now. What is important is that you and Katie are alive. Money’s just money. Remember what Mom used to say? The root of all evil?”