The Guise of Another (26 page)

Alexander thought that going to the cabin would be a good idea. He and Ianna would have time to organize things, plan a short- and long-term existence, now that they had the flash drive. It would give them a chance to be alone—really alone—away from the threat of Drago Basta and the pressures of Alexander's collapsing life. It would give them a space to breathe and time to think. But maybe time to think was the last thing that Alexander needed.

When they stepped out of the car, Ianna immediately ran to the lake, stopping at the end of the dock to look around.

“You really have no neighbors?”

“Not a one,” Alexander said.

Alexander started for the cabin but paused as the smells and sounds of his childhood overwhelmed him, the scent of pine and moss buoyed in the thick, moist air left by an evening sprinkle. A carpet of wet needles squished under his feet as he walked. His senses filled him with memories of better times. He shook away the images and went to open the cabin. It would turn cold soon. They would need a fire.

The cabin was laid out like a cross, with the kitchen at the head of the cross, the living room at the foot, and the dining room in the middle. The cabin had two bedrooms, making up each of the arms of the cross, one on either side of the dining room.

He brought their belongings in and laid the bags on the bed in one of the bedrooms. They managed to scrounge together enough clothing to last a couple days. And with $100,000 in cash, they could fill in the blanks of their wardrobe as they traveled.

As Alexander unpacked the duffle bag, Ianna wandered around the living room, looking at pictures of Alexander and Max over the years.

“You two look alike,” she said.

“What?”

“I said that you and your brother look alike.”

“Yeah, lucky him.”

“Definitely,” she said.

Alexander placed his laptop computer on the dresser and ran his fingers across the flash drive in his pocket. “Shall we watch this now?” he said.

Ianna walked into the bedroom with a twinkle in her eye. “I'm up for a movie.”

It took Alexander a while to get the laptop to read the flash drive, and for a moment he doubted the ability of the new computer to read the old drive, but then the screen opened to a menu with two files: one read “girls,” and the second read “death.” Alexander clicked on the “death” file.

The screen filled with the interior of a yacht's salon. On the left side of the screen, a man with a dusting of silver in his hair sat on a curved leather couch, his face unshaven, and his head slumped halfway to his knees. On the right of the screen, another man with thinner hair and a slightly more sober air stood next to the dark-haired man that Alexander recognized as Drago Basta. The man standing next to Basta spoke first.

“Richard, I don't want to do this, but you've left me no choice. Think about it. How will Sarah feel if she finds out you were with a whore? What will your kids think? Or your friends on the Appropriations Committee? All you have to do is agree to turn a blind eye. You don't have to set anything up. You just look the other way when the money turns around. That's all you have to do.”

“We've known each other for a long time, Wayne,” the man on the couch said. “I've known you to do some despicable things, but this…to me? If you get caught, they aren't going to indict you alone. They won't say ‘Well, Richard Ashton wasn't involved because he looked the other way.’ And then what will my wife think? What will my children think?”

“We won't get caught,” Wayne said.

“Nobody thinks they'll get caught, Wayne. Everybody thinks they'll get away with it.”

“Richard, we'll be fucking rich.”

“That's the difference between us, Wayne. I'm rich enough. I don't need a fucking yacht. I'm able to make deals because the men with the money trust me. My integrity has a value to me. I'm not throwing that away.”

“Yeah? Where was that integrity when you were banging that redhead?”

“I was drunk. You set me up.”

“How far will your friends trust you when they get a load of you huffing and puffing and sweating all over that prostitute's ass?”

“We're done, Wayne. This partnership…this…this company, it's over. You want to blackmail me? Well, fuck you.” Ashton stood up and walked to Garland, stopping an arm's length away to yell his defiance into Garland's face. “Without me, you have no company,” Ashton roared. “You have no money source. I'll take my chances with Sarah. And when my friends in Congress hear what you're doing, they'll be shaking my hand for dumping your ass. I'll start my own firm. My answer is, Fuck You!”

“I'm sorry we have to end it this way,” Wayne said.

Alexander knew what was coming, so he paid particular attention to Wayne Garland and saw the subtle nod he made to Drago Basta, who had slipped in behind Ashton. On Garland's cue, Basta drew a thin cord out of his pocket and pounced on Richard Ashton, wrapping the cord around the older man's throat.

Ashton's head snapped back, and his hands shot up to the cord around his neck. His face, already red from sun and alcohol and rage, began to move through ever-darkening shades.

“Start your own firm?” Garland taunted. “Fuck you, Richard. You could have been a very rich man. All you had to do was play ball.”

Ashton fell to his knees, reaching back far enough to grab Basta's hands, but the assassin ignored the slight annoyance. Then Garland
kicked Ashton in the ribs, an attack that seemed to carry several years of pent-up frustration. Alexander couldn't tell if the kick knocked Ashton into unconsciousness or if he passed out from the garrote. Either way, Ashton went limp, and his body slumped to the floor. Drago maintained his pull on the cord, kneeling on Ashton's back while Garland went to the salon door to peek out.

Ianna had been kneading the muscles in Alexander's shoulders as she watched the video, and as the violence grew, the grip and pull of her hands on Alexander's trapezius increased. Alexander glanced up, at that part of the footage when Drago Basta climbed onto Ashton's back, and he saw Ianna smiling—excited by what she was watching. A strange chill ran through Alexander's body.

After Basta finished strangling Richard Ashton, he went to his quarters and returned with two barbell weights—large, round, steel plates—and a chain. He carried the weights and chain across the room and out the door to the deck. He then came back, grabbed Ashton by the ankles, turned him around, and dragged him from the room. After that, the footage ended.

“Oh my God,” Ianna said, her words breaking on the edge of laughter. “We're going to be so fucking rich.” She turned Alexander around and kissed him. “Did you see that? They're going to pay through the nose.”

“We have ’em all right,” Alexander said, forcing a smile to his lips. He reached for the laptop on the dresser and shut it down.

“I'm hungry,” Ianna said. “What'd you get us for supper?”

Alexander had been hungry before watching the video, but not now. He'd seen death before, in person and on video, and it never sat well with him. He and Ianna had just watched a man get murdered, a man who died for no reason other than he refused to sacrifice his honor. This man's death would be the source of their wealth. And Ianna was hungry?

“Steaks.”

“I love steak.” She whispered as she started unbuttoning Alexander's shirt. “Thick and juicy.” She pushed him down onto the bed. “But first things first.”

Their sex did not catch fire as it had the night before. Alexander couldn't stifle the images in his head. He kept seeing Garland kicking Richard Ashton, and Drago Basta kneeling on the dying man's back. He saw the smile on Ianna's face as she watched the murder unfold. Watching Richard Ashton get murdered seemed to turn Ianna on. He tried to put her reaction aside as he made love to her. You're with a beautiful woman, he told himself. Focus on her. Focus on the task at hand.

And like a journeyman carrying out his trade, Alexander performed his duty well but found little passion in it.

Later, after a big meal of steak and potatoes and wine, followed by more wine, the two of them made their way to bed. It didn't take long for Ianna to succumb to the exhaustion that hid behind her eyelids. Outside, a smudge of a moon pushed through the wispy remains of the fog, giving a soft edge to the woods. Alexander stared at the ceiling, glancing occasionally out the window to watch the faint shadows of the jack pine rustle in the light breeze. As tired as he was, he couldn't sleep. Every sound—every chirp of a bird or bug—seemed half a note off-key. The world around him played out in minor chords.

When Ianna fell into a deep-enough sleep, Alexander slipped out of bed and into a pair of blue jeans and a sweatshirt. Enough moonlight cut through the night to guide him to the dock where he used to sit and think when he was a boy, a place where the brushstrokes of his life seemed to blend together and make sense to him. He walked down to the lake because he needed, more than anything else at that moment, to make sense of what his life had become.

On his way, he passed their fishing boat, pulled up on the shore.
On the seat where Max sat to steer, Alexander saw the aluminum-foil wrapper of Max's cigar package. He picked it up and found a single cigar remaining in the bottom of the pack. Alexander lifted it out and put the cigar to his nose to smell the tobacco. He had no lighter, so he held the cigar in his teeth and continued his walk to the dock.

There he lay down and thought back to a time when he was a child and he would lie on that dock, contemplating the great unknowns of life. It was on that dock that he drank his first beer with Max when he was thirteen, and it was on that dock that he rehearsed the words he would say to Desi when he proposed to her.

He remembered a time when he was sixteen, he and Max lay on the dock and watched the stars and talked about what they were going to do with their lives. Max was eighteen and already had graduated from high school. He had been accepted to Mankato State University and knew that he wanted to be a cop. Alexander didn't understand why. They had no relatives who were cops, no cop friends. Max plucked the vocation out of the deep night sky, and that was it.

Alexander, on the other hand, didn't know what he wanted to be—maybe a fireman or a stuntman, something exciting. He talked to Max about someday being a dad and a husband. He told Max that he wanted three or four kids and a beautiful wife. He wanted to bring them all to the lake. He could envision his kids flinging themselves off of the rope swing and into the water like he and Max did. He looked around the lake now and tried to remember that life, but all he saw was the darkness.

A light shiver pulsed up Alexander's spine—a chill in the breeze coming off the lake, he thought.

He breathed in deep through his nostrils, taking in the smell of pine trees and cigar tobacco and memories. Then he set free the thought that he had been trying to suppress: he would never again see this place; he would never again see his brother or touch his toes to this lake. Never again would he and Max troll back and forth across the lake, drinking beer, smoking cheap cigars, and waiting for that elusive pull on the fishing line. He let those thoughts—those memories—cascade through his mind, and he watched them fall away.

He tried to replace his old memories with visions of the future. He tried to imagine his toes bobbing in the crystal blue of the Mediterranean Sea, but he couldn't hold that picture. He tried to think about sipping brandy and coffee in a room overlooking the Alps or the Andes. He tried to imagine him and Ianna eating nectarines and crackers, and listening to the faraway strum of a flamenco guitar. But all of those thoughts sank into a dark place in his mind, hidden behind a black panic that oozed through him like blood itself.

What had he done?

He was on his way to Canada, and from there, who knows, with a woman who smiled when she watched a man die? Alexander thought back. What was it she said? “We've all done things in our lives that we wish we could do over.” What did she mean by that? He never bothered to ask. For that matter, he hadn't asked her anything about her past.

But now it was too late—wasn't it? There would be a warrant out for his arrest. And Desi would be home now. She would have found Ianna's suitcase and…the negligee. And what about Max? He would miss Max, and that would be a wound not easily healed.

Alexander started to lapse into another memory of him and Max when a crackle stirred the ground behind him. At first he assumed the sound came from a woodland critter, maybe a raccoon or opossum, but then it occurred to him that it might be Ianna stepping out of the cabin to look for him.

He craned his head around to look and at first saw nothing. Then a shadow stepped out of the trees, a figure crouching low, tiptoeing toward the cabin. It wasn't Ianna.