A Stolen Season

Chapter Twenty-one

The moon was out. A miracle in itself after so many clouds, so much thick fog and blacked-out nights. The light came pouring through my windows, turning everything different shades of silver. It seemed to make the floor itself glow, so bright I could make out the stains there, the vague shadows that would always be there to remind me.

I could still smell her scent in my bed, just like the night before. If anything, the scent was stronger tonight. Impossible, but somehow it was.

I couldn’t take it. I got up and went to the couch, wrapped the blanket around my shoulders as the wind picked up outside. I rocked back and forth, my eyes closed to the moon and the wind and the horrible cold hours of the middle of the night.

I was leaning half sideways when I opened my eyes, early morning sun coming through the windows now. My neck was stiff. I got up and took a shower, trying to loosen up under the hot water. I got dressed, had a cup of coffee. It felt like it was burning right through my stomach.

Vinnie wasn’t here last night, I thought. He’s not here now. For all his talk about not leaving me alone…But I know I’ve been pretty miserable to be around lately. I’ve been trying as hard as I can to drive him away. I should write the man a note, try to tell him why I’m doing this.

No, what the hell. He’ll know why. If I don’t live through another night, he’ll have no problem figuring it out.

I wasn’t sure what to do with myself for the rest of the day. Eight P.M. was a long haul. I didn’t want to use up any more ammunition practicing, and I didn’t want to go into town to buy any more. I didn’t want to just sit here, watching the minutes go by. I didn’t want to be around anybody else, either.

I finally took Natalie’s picture outside with me, sat on my folding chair in front of the cabin and looked at her face for a long time. She was so serious in the picture-I had to try hard to remember her smile. I tried to remember that one look she’d give me, when she’d say something smart and she’d give me a little sideways glance to see if I’d caught it. Or the look she’d give me when she was done fighting with me. When she was finally ready to let me get close to her. Her eyes focused on me, almost nearsighted it seemed, like suddenly I was the only person in the world.

I sat outside and held the picture, felt the cold frame in my hands. The sun tried to warm the day. I went inside and ate the rest of the leftover beef stew from the night before. I didn’t put ketchup on it, my own final touch, always over Jackie’s objections. I didn’t even heat it up. I couldn’t taste anything, couldn’t enjoy anything. I was a machine now, all wires and solder inside. On the outside metal and plastic.

Still no Vinnie. The day slowly ticking by and not a sign of him. Had he finally given up on me? It didn’t seem possible.

Two in the afternoon. I was still alone. Four o’clock. Five. I ate again, whatever I could find in the cabin. Vinnie wasn’t there to bring me anything else. At six o’clock I started to think about when I should be on the road.

Six thirty. It was about time. I should get there early, I thought. Take a good look around the place. I gathered up my supplies. Leon’s Ruger in the right pocket of my jacket. The Taser in the left pocket. The backup pistol strapped to my ankle. I was ready.

Still no Vinnie. I should have been relieved that I wouldn’t have to fight my way past him, but all I could do was wonder what the hell he was up to.

I found out as soon as I got into my truck and tried to start it.

I didn’t even have to look under the hood. I knew what he had done.

“Son of a bitch,” I said as I got out. “You have got to be kidding me.”

I walked the quarter mile down to his cabin. His truck was parked out front. I went to his front door and opened it without knocking.

He was standing at his sink, filling up another plastic bag with ice. He didn’t say a word when I walked into the kitchen. He didn’t move.

“Why did you cut my battery cables?” I said.

“Same reason you cut mine.”

“I don’t have time for this. I need your truck.”

“You’re not getting it.”

“Vinnie, God damn it. Don’t even start this. I’m serious. Give me your keys.”

“You’re not driving my truck, Alex. If you have someplace to go, I’m taking you there.”

“You’re not coming with me. Give me your keys.”

“I’m coming with you,” he said. “Period.”

“Vinnie…” I closed my eyes for a moment, rubbed them, tried to think of the right words to say. Meanwhile, the time was slipping away from me. All day to wait and now I was suddenly racing the clock.

“You have to trust me,” I said. “I need to go somewhere, and I need to go there now. Alone. You have to give me your keys.”

“You think this has been easy? You think I like you fighting me every step of the way?”

“Vinnie…”

“No, let me finish. I’m trying to understand what you’re going through the last few days. I know it’s not exactly the same as what I had to deal with, but I think I’ve got the general idea. I’ve been trying to be your friend, Alex. Your blood brother. I’ve been trying to be there for you, just like you were for me. But instead of letting me help you, you’ve been sneaking away whenever I turn my back. You’ve been driving around, all over the place, looking for a way to get yourself killed. And now tonight…God knows what you’ve got planned. God knows. You really think I’m going to let you just drive off and do this by yourself?”

“You have to.”

“It’s not happening. I’m going with you, no matter what. You’d do exactly the same thing if the situation was reversed. You know that. Hell, you’ve done it.”

“This is different,” I said, sneaking a look at my watch.

“It’s not. It’s exactly the same.”

“Give me the keys.”

“No.”

“Where are they?”

I looked around the place, spotted his keychain on the counter.

“Don’t even try,” he said. “You’ll have to kill me to get them.”

He stood there, his hands at his sides. I knew I couldn’t take the keys from him. There was no way I could overpower him. And there was no way I could let him come with me. I’d want him on any other trip, but not this one.

Not if I honestly didn’t think I’d be coming back.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “You don’t leave me any choice.”

I reached into my jacket pocket and took out the Taser. Before he knew what was happening, I did the unthinkable. I pulled the trigger. The front cap exploded with a dull pop as the two wires shot toward him. I didn’t have to do anything else. It was all automatic. The voltage was already moving as the wires hit his chest. Even after I dropped the Taser, the charge kept running through him for several seconds, doubling him up, putting him right on the floor like a tied-up calf in a rodeo.

I went to the counter and grabbed the keys. Then I bent down and put my hand on his head. He was trying to speak, trying to move.

“You’ll be okay in a couple of minutes,” I said. “It’s totally harmless. I promise.”

Cheap words from a man who’d do this to his best friend. I couldn’t quite believe I had just done this.

This is what you’ve come to, Alex. This is what losing Natalie has done to you.

I touched his head one more time. He stayed there on his kitchen floor as I walked past him. The Taser had released a spray of confetti all over the place. I knew each little piece of paper had a unique serial number printed on it. It was all part of the weapon’s design-incapacitate your man, but leave a trail of markers on the ground for full disclosure. In this case, I didn’t think it would be an issue.

“I’m sorry,” I said to him as I opened the door. My hands were shaking. “But it’s not your day to die.”

The sun was just starting to go down as I drove Vinnie’s truck out of Paradise, the lights from the Glasgow Inn in the rearview mirror. I took the same roads south, the same fifty miles, crossing the entire Upper Peninsula to Hessel, from the shores of one lake to another. I left the highway, drove down the peninsula to the summerhouse. My fourth time there now, and the road looked just as deserted.

I parked Vinnie’s truck at Gray’s house. I didn’t see any reason to hide it. I got out of the truck and walked up the driveway. The gun felt heavy in my jacket pocket. The small pistol strapped to my ankle brought back a sensory memory from long ago, the way the shin guards felt when I was working behind home plate.

It was almost eight o’clock now. I walked across the road and down the neighbor’s driveway. When I got to the house, I saw that everything was exactly as I had left it. The back-door window was still broken, the rock I had used to break it still there on the ground. The boathouse door in the same state. I looked through and saw the boat still sitting there, nose in. It was riding a lot higher in the water now that its cargo was resting on the bottom of Lake Huron.

I wonder how long I’ll have to wait, I thought. Hell, maybe Laraque is already here. Maybe he’s watching me right now.

I looked all around me. Behind me the empty canal. The backyard, two rows of trees on either side of me, the darkness under the branches growing with each passing minute. Ahead of me the house. The driveway. The whole place seemingly abandoned to the ghosts of summer.

He’ll be here, I said to myself. He has to be.

I stood there for a while. A half hour snuck by in the absolute silence. The sky got darker. Finally, I heard a vehicle up on the road. Two headlights appeared, turned onto the driveway, came closer, pointing right at me. I had to look away.

The vehicle stopped. The headlights turned off. My eyes took a moment to adjust, then I saw two figures, one on either side of the car. It was a red Jaguar, one of the new, smaller models with the round front grill. I heard the two doors shutting, almost at the same time. The two figures started walking down toward me. I stood my ground next to the boathouse.

I looked from one to the other as they got closer. The woman was on my left, the man on my right. He had been driving. They walked slowly, the woman stepping carefully on the uneven ground.

They were both dressed in black. The woman in a black raincoat, knee-high black boots, black stockings. A black bag hanging from her shoulder. The man in a long black trench coat, black leather shoes. He was wearing dark glasses, even now with the sun long gone.

They came closer.

“Alex,” the woman said. Her voice giving nothing away. No emotion at all.

“You’re Rhapsody,” I said. She was a lovely woman, no question about it. She had the killer eyes. The dark eyebrows. A model’s face, and yet something wasn’t quite right. There was a sharpness in her features that would have put me on edge, even under innocent circumstances.

Like Natalie had said about her, she looked like a younger, sexier Cruella De Vill.

And Laraque…What I could see of his face behind the dark glasses…Natalie had told me he wasn’t a tall man. He wasn’t muscular. He wasn’t physically imposing in any way. Yet the unspoken power that emanated from him…

This was him. I clenched my fists. This was him.

“You have no idea what we went through to get here,” Rhapsody said. “I hope you’re ready to make it worth our trouble.”

The bag around her shoulder was unzipped, in perfect position for her right hand to reach into it. I had no doubt about what was inside.

“Remember one thing,” I said. “If you shoot me now, you don’t get your guns back.”

“Who said anything about shooting you, Alex? We came here to talk.”

I looked at Laraque. He hadn’t said a word yet.

“So talk,” I said. “I’m going to ask you something. I want the truth.”

He didn’t say anything. He didn’t move.

“Please take the sunglasses off,” I said.

Nothing. He was a statue.

“He doesn’t wish to take them off,” Rhapsody said.

“I’m not talking to you,” I said, without looking at her. “I want to ask you one question, and I want to see your eyes when you answer me.”

Another long moment. Something flew over our heads. Either a bird out late or a bat out early.

“Take them off,” I said.

A movement, finally. He lowered his head a fraction of an inch. Then he reached up with his right hand and took off his glasses. He put them in his coat pocket.

As I stepped closer to him, I could sense Rhapsody shifting the bag around her shoulder. I was one second away from dying.

I didn’t care.

“Natalie Reynaud was one of the police officers who met with you in the hotel room,” I said.

He looked me in the eyes. There was just enough light left to see his face clearly.

“She and her partner were both shot dead. I want to know if you were responsible for that.”

His eyes, a greenish shade of brown. Hazel, they call it. Although in the dying light it looked more like a dull shade of gold.

“Did you have them killed, Laraque? Tell me.”

He blinked once. Twice. Slowly, he shook his head.

You clear your mind. You ask the question. You listen, you watch. Your gut tells you if it’s the truth.

“Tell me,” I said. “Say it. Did you have them killed?”

“No,” he said. “No, I didn’t.”

I watched him. I remembered what Natalie had said about him, about the fear she felt just being in the same room with him.

Something happened then. His eyes moved. He started to look over at Rhapsody. Then he stopped.

It happened that quickly. But it was all wrong.

Forget if he was lying or telling the truth. In that instant, I knew something even more important. Natalie Reynaud would never be afraid of this man.

“You’re not Laraque,” I said.

If there was any doubt, his reaction was all I needed. The eyes went wide before he tried to regain control. “What are you talking about?”

“You’re not Laraque. What’s going on here?”

The gun came out of Rhapsody’s bag. It was just like some of the guns I had seen on the boat, an automatic with a suppressor fixed to the barrel. The damned thing was so long, it was a wonder she could get it out of the bag so fast.

“Okay, enough of this,” she said. “Just tell us where the merchandise is.”

“Where’s Laraque?”

“Never mind him. You need to deal with me now.”

“I told you I wouldn’t talk to anybody else.”

“You don’t understand what I’m trying to tell you. Laraque is out of the game. You can’t talk to him.”

“First thing you can do, you can take Mr. Dress-Up here back to Canada. Was this Laraque’s idea, by the way? Send a stooge over here to take his place? Is that the kind of man he is?”

“Alex, listen to me…”

“Second thing, you tell the real Laraque he has twenty-four more hours to get his ass over here.”

“You see, that’ll be hard to do, on account of his being very dead right now. Unless you’d care to join him. Maybe you can talk to him on the other side. I don’t know.”

“What are you talking about? Who killed him?”

“Who do you think, genius?”

“You did? Why would you do that?”

She shook her head. “I know you’re a man, so I’ll try to talk slow here. I killed the boss so I could take over the operation. You understand me?”

“That’s not a good enough reason,” I said. “Not compared to mine.”

“Whatever you say, Alex. Just get over it, because we’re not joking around here. Why don’t you wise up and tell us where the stuff is right now, before we really hurt you?”

“Who’s we? You and your caddy here?”

“No, not him. Jacques is my driver. He’s quite harmless.”

“Then who are you talking about?”

“And just for the record, this whole fake Laraque thing, it wasn’t my idea. I thought it was a little over the top myself.”

“Whose idea was it? Who are you talking about?”

“I think that’s your cue, Babe,” she said. She raised her chin, said it loud enough for anyone else to hear, anyone who might be waiting in the trees.

I heard the footsteps. I turned and saw the man. I recognized him in a second.

It was Cap.