Spiral (35 page)

”Oh, John, I’ve fooled him for over a year now! My father can’t have much time left—Very’s little show on his birthday nearly triggered another ‘brain attack.’ And he once insisted that I sit through an explanation by his estate lawyer of the trust which will support me forever. Provided, of course, that no one advises the good Colonel of my duplicity while there’s still time left for him to revoke the trust and effectively disinherit me.”

”If you’d just gone to him when you began feeling better—”

”—the old bastard would have disinherited me on the spot!” Helides nearly roared the words himself. ”Told me to go out in the world, earn my own way. Which is exactly how he ‘handled’ Spi, after my dear brother told me I was the cause of our mother’s death. Well, John, what little I know about the ‘world’ I’ve gotten from books, television, and more recently the Internet or Web, and I don’t like much of what I’ve found. The thought of spending the rest of my prime struggling to learn survival techniques—after depression robbed me of what most of you take for granted—is simply not tolerable. No, John, I need the money my father will leave me, provided he believes his poor son to be the same damaged goods he’s had to suffer and support since birth. And once he’s gone, my miraculous recovery can be effected a week at a time, with all the credit going to Dr. Henry Forbes, psychiatrist extraordinaire.”

David Helides was Malinda Dujong’s crab-monster, all right, protecting his cave until he doesn’t need it anymore. ”I think I liked you better depressed than crazy.”

Helides tore a fresh piece of electrician’s tape off the roll near his feet. ”I like me better when I’m neither. But I think the only further sounds I wish to hear from you should not be recognizable as words.” He came toward me with the new piece. ”And I don’t believe I’ll be bringing you any kind of scarecrow for the vultures, either.”

Helides was square in front of me, perhaps two feet away. I couldn’t see anything past his head as he raised the fresh tape toward my mouth. That’s when I heard a faint whirring sound, followed by a chunking one directly behind him.

Still holding the tape, David Helides staggered forward and almost into me, his eyes wild. As he turned, I got a glimpse over his shoulder of a figure at the edge of the clearing, before a flash in the moonlight like a fish underwater came hurtling through the air, another whir/chunk combination reaching my ears.

It was only then that Helides stumbled away from me enough for my eyes to range down to the steel handle with the circular holes, sticking out near his spine. The blade was sunk into his body almost to the hilt, his right hand, still holding the fresh tape, scrabbling at the handle from a contortionist’s angle around the blood soaking through the black shirt.

Now Helides staggered to the side, a twin handle sticking out of his stomach. His left hand went down to it, tugging once before his facial features twisted, and he dropped to his knees. Helides began making a hacking sound, like a man with the dry heaves. Then he struggled back to his feet, lurching toward Duy Tranh, who had crossed half the clearing, the third throwing knife from his suite wall in his right hand.

Helides grunted something at him.

I said, ”He’s disabled, Tranh.”

”I am not so certain.” He looked at Helides. ”I think you can still kill me, David. If you really want to?”

”You...?” and four more lurching steps.

This time I yelled. ”Tranh!”

He kept watching Helides. ”Do not quit now, David. You have nearly reached me.”

Two additional steps by Helides, mechanical motions more than natural movements, and Tranh hefted his third knife by its handle, feet shifting into a striding stance.

I said, ”Tranh, just back away from him.”

One more lurching step by Helides, throwing arm cocked by Tranh, blade near his right ear.

I didn’t say anything more. David Helides, after swaying dizzily, keeled face forward, no attempt by his now limp arms to break his fall. I could see the point of the belly knife pierce the black fabric just above the back of his belt.

I said, ”He may live if we can get an ambulance out here. Cut Justo off that tree, and then he can do me while you run for a phone.”

Tranh looked in the directions of Malinda Dujong and Justo Vega before coming back to me. ”The binding material is metal cable.”

I tried to keep the anger out of my voice. ”And you have a knife.”

He regarded the artifact in his hand now. ”It might ruin the blade.”

I gritted my teeth. ”Use your head, then.”

Tranh lifted his eyes toward mine.

”Justo and I can testify you saved us with the second knife, or that you murdered David Helides with it.”

Tranh blinked once. ”After your call about ‘directions,’ I venture out here to help, and this is the gratitude you offer in return? Why should I not just kill you both, blame everything on David?”

”Because then you won’t have any credible witnesses to make you a hero in the Colonel’s eyes despite killing his son, and you won’t have my testimony on what David did to the little girl whose body you found in that pool.”

Duy Tranh looked down at David Helides, then once around the trees again before holding up his knife, admiring the blade in the moonlight. ”You are right,” he said finally. ”But I want you to know that for me, it is a very close question.”

Why am I not surprised to see you again?”

I looked up from my hospital bed on Saturday morning at the nice Haitian doctor. ”They say three’s the charm.”

”I should hope so.” She asked me to sit up, then gendy pulled the strings on my johnny coat. ”After we admitted you, I did some computer research on this ‘manchineel tree.’ Not much information, but all of it quite nasty.”

As the doctor very gently touched here and there with latex-gloved fingers, I said, ”How’s Justo Vega?”

”I cannot comment, but his associate asked the nurse’s station to call him as soon as you were able to receive visitors.”

”Pepe?”

”I believe so.” She retied the strings at the back of my neck. ”A most persistent man.”

”Do you know whether David Helides made it?”

The doctor moved toward the door. Without turning her head, she said, ”Not my patient.”

”Hey, Mr. Whatever, how you doing?”

Carrying a small paper bag, Pepe was dressed conservatively in a pale blue shirt and dark blue pants. His lips were smiling, but his eyes weren’t, the bags under them the color of his pants.

”Pepe, have you seen Justo?”

Some rapid blinking. ”I am with Mr. Vega maybe an hour after they bring the two of you into here.”

I waited.

More blinking, and then a swipe across his eyes with the sleeve of his shirt. ”He gonna be okay. The doctor, she say maybe they have to do a—how you say it, when they take skin from one part and put it on another one?”

”A graft?”

”Yes, graft. That’s what she say. But other ways, he gonna be okay.” Pepe swallowed hard. ‘You save him from the devil, man.”

I waited some more.

He came forward, put the paper bag on my bed. ”I don’t know do you smoke the cigars, but these are Macanudos. Havana got no gasoline and no electricity, maybe, but cigars from there, they still the best.”

I thought of Mo Katzen, back in his office at the Boston
Herald.
”Thanks, Pepe. I know someone who’ll love them.” A nod. Then a pause before, ”Mr. John Francis Cuddy, you save Mr. Vega when he cannot, and when I cannot, because of what he say to me about hiding his wife and little ones. You ever need anything, you call Pepe, understand?”

”I understand.”

”What’s in the bag?” said Sergeant Lourdes Pintana.

”Illegal contraband.”

”I think that’s redundant.” She fished some papers from her tote and handed them to me. ”I need this statement signed, but I thought it might be easier for you if I came over here.”

‘You have any information on David Helides?”

”Died on the operating table.”

No emotion in her voice, and none on her face.

I looked down, read the printed pages. Duy Tranh getting full credit for a brave rescue, mostly in my words as dictated the night before. ”Close enough. You have a pen?”

Pintana passed one over to me. After I was finished and extended the pen back to her, though, she folded her arms instead of taking it.

I said, ”What, you want to check my spelling?”

Pintana gave me the amber eyes full-bore. ”I think you need to realize that sometimes people who come to you are trying more to help than to hurt.”

”With me, it’s generally been the other way around.”

”Maybe you should work on that.” Lourdes Pintana plucked her pen from my fingers without touching them. ”Let me know, you ever decide to try.”

”Colonel.”

Nicolas Helides limped with his brace into my room as Duy Tranh moved an armchair close to my bed for him, then backed discreetly toward the wall.

After lowering himself into the chair, the Skipper said, ”Lieutenant, I wanted to apologize for what David did to you.”

”You had no way of knowing that he—”

”I’ve spoken briefly with Lieutenant Vega, and he told me about Malinda as well.” Helides shivered. ”To think that my own son...”

”He was a sick man, Colonel.”

”I know. But depression is one kind of illness, and depravity another.”

I couldn’t think of anything to say that would make it better for him.

The Skipper stared at me, across a gulf of years filled with things I’ve yet to learn. ”A great deal of my time has been spent trying to affect people’s behavior in a way I thought was improvement. Ultimately, those efforts resulted in my soul being covered by scars. And Lieutenant, I almost envy yours being mainly physical.”

Now I didn’t want to say anything at all.

Colonel Nicolas Helides reached his good left hand across the sheets and covered mine. ”Thank you, son. You’ve performed every mission I ever gave you, including this one.” He withdrew his hand and put it on the arm of the chair, but didn’t try to stand. ”Duy?”

Tranh came to the Skipper, helping him get to his feet. More wobbly than he’d appeared entering my room, Colonel Nicolas Helides made his way to the door. As Duy Tranh closed it behind them, he gave me a tight-lipped smile.

Of triumph, I thought.

I spent the rest of my time in the hospital tying up loose ends. Visiting Justo, who was still a bit groggy from painkillers. Meeting his wife out in the sunroom, Alicia thanking me for shortening her husband’s horrors. I even shook hands and exchanged clipped, awkward sentences with their three little daughters.

After being discharged, I gave an exclusive interview to Oline Christie of the Fort Lauderdale
Sun-Sentinel
on the proviso that no picture of me or the Vega family would run in it. Duy Tranh took care of my medical bills and settled with the rental company’s insurance adjuster about the damage done to my Chevy Cavalier at Donna Moran’s trailer park. Sunday evening in my hotel room, I even watched part of the Super Bowl as I packed, putting the picture of Nancy and me in a protective envelope before sliding it into my suitcase.

The flight back to Boston on Monday was a nonstop, the discomfort from the manchineel burns manageable, and no problems with baggage on arrival. There were even plenty of cabs outside the terminal at Logan.

I told my driver to take me home rather than to the office.

When we got to Beacon Street, I was amazed at the lack of snow and a temperature into the fifties during the last week of January. I walked around to the parking lot behind my brownstone. The Prelude still rested in its slot, and upstairs, my rented condo looked the same as when I’d left.

And I felt just as empty.

I walked over to the telephone tape machine. Its little window glowed a fluorescent ”9,” and I realized I’d better start getting back into the real world. Replaying the messages, I registered two above the others.

Both were from Drew Lynch at Nancy’s three-decker in Southie, the second saying he really needed to hear from me by four
p.m.,
Monday. Kicking myself now for not returning his earlier call after I picked it up from Fort Lauderdale, I checked my watch. An hour to spare.

When I dialed the Lynches’ number, a familiar male voice answered.

”Drew, John Cuddy.”

”John—”

”I’m sorry I didn’t get back to you sooner, but I’ve been in Florida, and—”

”Florida?”

”It’s a long story, Drew.”

A pause on his end. ”John, I’m afraid we’ve got a problem.”

Just what I needed. ”Go ahead.”

”Remember when you were here last time, and I told you about my mom being sick?”

”Some kind of flu, right?”

”That’s what we thought, but when she didn’t get better, we took her to the doctor, and it’s not a virus.”

”So what is it?”

”An allergy.” Another pause. ”To cat dander.”

Shit. ”Renfield.”

”Right. I guess it wasn’t so bad when Nancy was living above us, because the cat didn’t stray much, given his legs and all. But we’ve been showing her apartment, so Mom’s been carrying him down to ours. And now with the allergy, we can’t have him here anymore.”

I felt a tug behind my belt buckle. ”What are you going to do?”

”Either give Renfield away or bring him to an animal shelter. And my wife says today is the deadline.”

I thought about Nancy and how much she’d loved the little guy. About my nursemaiding him after his operation and how he’d imprinted on me.

About how Renfield had looked and sounded when I’d gone back to Nancy’s place to clean out my stuff there.

”John?” from Drew Lynch.

”I’ll take him,” I said, before I could change my mind.