Iron House

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

When Elena woke, she heard engine noise and the hiss of traffic. She was blind in the dark, her wrists bound behind her back, ankles crossed and tied. Her limbs had gone numb, but she tasted tape on her lips-a bitter, chemical gum-and when she tried to move, her head struck metal in the blackness. Pain shot down her neck, and in the stifling heat, she panicked. Thrashing and rolling, she smashed her knees and elbows, the small bones of her toes and the soft bottoms of her feet. The air was close and thick, a gasoline burn so strong in the back of her throat it made her gag.

It was a nightmare, she told herself, the skin of some horrible dream; but the skin stuck. She was in the trunk of a killer’s car.

Killer’s car.

Killer.

None of this could be real! The motel. The shower. But she felt the hotel robe on her skin, electrical burns on her side. She tried to stay calm, to think of the baby; but somewhere, the car would stop, and when that happened he would drag her out at the bitter end of some thin, dirt road. She would see a last wedge of sun, and then it would happen. She would die in the mud, and her baby would die inside her.

The thought made her nauseous, but she tried to think clearly. What would Michael do? God, the question was insane. She didn’t even know who Michael was. But, she had to think like him. She had to be strong. Think, Elena! Her fingers found a can of some sort, then touched nylon strapping and a hank of stiff rope. She tried to gauge distance, but the car slowed and accelerated, turned left and right. Once there were railroad tracks-a brief clatter as the car angled up, then down-then two more lefts, and the car turned onto gravel. The shocks worked harder, and Elena pictured the empty, dirt road she feared. The trees, when he pulled her out, would be very tall, and their leaves would move as if nothing in the world had changed. She thought, perhaps, that she should pray; but then silence came, and it was sudden. The car slid to a stop and the engine died. She felt for something sharp or hard, but there was nothing. There never had been.

Michael…

Elena tried to make herself small, but when the lid rose she saw the same man leaning over her. He wore sunglasses, and there were other men, too, hints of whiskers and unblinking eyes. They ringed the open trunk, and studied her as if she were a fish in the bottom of a bucket. The man she thought was Jimmy said something and two men reached in to pick her up. They caught her by the robe, her arms. She fought, and one of the men laughed as they heaved her up and out, then dropped her as she struggled.

“Jesus,” she heard a man say, and thought it was Jimmy.

“She’s slippery.”

Elena rolled her eyes and saw a small, green house circled by trees and dead grass. The driveway was long and dirt. The car was silver and smelled of burnt oil.

Hands came at her again. Two were brushed with hair; two were lean and tan. “Nice tits,” somebody said, and she realized her robe had torn open.

“Just get her in the house.”

Hands gripped her again, and when they got her up, she thrashed and fought until they dropped her a second time.

“For God’s sake…”

“Damn, Jimmy. She’s strong.”

“This is ridiculous. Step away.” Jimmy appeared above her, his face a pale blur under a canopy of high, green leaves that moved exactly as she’d thought they would. He held the stun gun an inch from her eyes and made blue sparks snap and sizzle.

“You remember this.”

She felt herself nod.

He lowered the stun gun, and closed her robe where it had opened. “Be a good girl.”

She let the same two men lift her off the ground, and did not fight as they hauled her up four stairs and onto the half-rotted porch of what looked like an old farmhouse. A screen door hung in the frame. Green clapboarding peeled under a baking sun, and from the porch she saw a barn in a sprawl of milkweed and brambles. Beside the barn were a half-dozen dusty cars.

“Back bedroom,” Jimmy said. She felt a wave of heat as her body broke the plane of the entrance. The room was filled with ancient furniture and brown carpet tracked muddy. She saw hints of other men, guns on a table. “Right side.”

They angled her body around an end table and then into a hall with floors that creaked. The room on the right side had a single chair and an iron bed. They dropped her on the bare mattress, and a musty smell rose up to fill her nose. Men crowded the door as a mosquito whined in her ear. She looked, but there were too many to process. She saw eyes here, a belt buckle there. Hands that opened and closed. No one spoke as sweat rolled on her face, and hot air stroked skin where the robe rode up on her hips.

“Out,” Jimmy said.

And everyone left.

Jimmy smoothed his sleeves and closed the door. In spite of the heat, his skin looked as fresh as if it was powdered. He checked his shoes for mud, and then dragged the room’s single chair across the floor. When he sat, he removed his sunglasses and tucked them into the breast pocket of his jacket. Then, he leaned forward, got his nails under the tape and ripped it off her mouth. She wanted to speak rationally. She wanted to yell and scream, but nothing came out. All she could think was don’t hurt my baby…

“Let’s start with what I know.” Jimmy pinched a mosquito from the back of his neck, rolled blood between two fingers. “Your name is Carmen Elena Del Portal. You were born in Catalonia twenty-nine years ago and have been in this country for three years. You’re pregnant. You worked at what used to be a nice restaurant.” He smiled coldly. “You would be considered attractive by men who go for the obvious-meaning, Michael, of course-and yet one breast is slightly smaller than the other, and you have an unfortunate blemish on the inside of your high, right thigh.” Elena shrank away. “Did I miss anything?”

“What do you want?”

Jimmy ignored the question. He crossed his legs, made a velvet sound. “Michael told you what he is, didn’t he? That’s why you left in such a hurry, why you were weeping in the shower of that disgusting motel.”

He lit a cigarette with a brass lighter, and then blew gray smoke at the open window. “Do you know who I am?”

Elena’s throat hurt when she swallowed. “Jimmy.”

“Michael spoke of me?”

“Yes.”

“And what did Michael tell you about me? Some overblown horror story? Something blood-soaked and gothic?” Elena grew still, and Jimmy nodded. “Lack of imagination has always been his great shortcoming. No sense of destiny. No sense of greater things.”

Elena saw Michael with paint on his hands: his excitement for the baby, the future. He’d always seen family as something greater than its parts. He’d described it for her so many times: how it would be when they were a family, the significance of it. “That’s not true,” she said.

“A small man with small ideas.”

“You’re wrong about him.”

“A little fire. I like it. But it is true. Probably my one great failing in how I raised him. Not enough sense of his own greatness.” Jimmy took a final drag, and then flicked the cigarette out the window. “A depressing lack of self-worth.”

Elena worked her wrists, felt tape bite deeply.

“I’ll tell you a story,” Jimmy said. “It’s a funny one. Did Michael tell you about the day the old man found him? How he was about to be killed under a bridge in Spanish Harlem and the old man saved him. You know that one? Did he tell you that?”

Elena felt her head move, and Jimmy laughed.

“’Course, he did. It’s his favorite story, his own personal mythology. It’s like the novels he reads. Dickens, I guess. Maybe Oliver Twist. ”

Jimmy made a flourish with his hands, and Elena knew she’d never forget the sight of the condescending smile that bent his face.

“Now, here’s the beauty of it.” Jimmy leaned forward. “You ready? Watch this. Otto Kaitlin hired those punks to cut Michael up. It’s beautiful, I swear to God. Otto wanted to see for himself if this kid was as tough as everybody said.” Jimmy lit another cigarette, leaned back, shrugged. “Turns out, he was.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because, in spite of that, Otto Kaitlin didn’t make Michael what he is. I did.”

“And that matters?”

“Are you serious?” He laughed.

“I want to know why you’re telling me.”

“I’m telling you, you ditzy bitch, because Michael’s not some random killer. He’s elegant, like Mozart would be if playing the piano was killing, like da Vinci if the Mona Lisa was body count. He’s a work of art, a genius, and I made him. Not Otto Kaitlin. Not the street. I gave birth to that boy as sure as whatever whore pushed him out on the filthy sheets of some flophouse bed.”

“And you’re proud of that?”

“You don’t think God is proud of Jesus?”

A pale, still madness smoldered in the dark centers of Jimmy’s eyes, but something else burned in there, too, and for a second, it looked familiar. “What do you want with me?”

Jimmy shot his cuffs. “I want you to tell me about Michael. What his plans are. Where he’s going.”

“Just let me go.”

“No, no, no. Too late for that.” Jimmy rose, and then sat beside her, his hip narrow and hard against her leg. He dragged a finger along the sweat of her forehead, and then rubbed the dampness against his thumb.

“There’s nothing I can tell you,” Elena said.

“Of course there is. Where he’s staying. What weapons he has. Security issues. People around him. Where he sleeps and when.” Jimmy smiled, but it was small. “Little things.”

He licked his lips, pale skin flushed, and Elena had an epiphany. She realized what she’d seen in his eyes.

“You’re scared of him.”

She didn’t know where the certainty originated, but it was real. Jimmy’s talk of pride and fatherhood was bluster. He was frightened, and now that she’d said it out loud, it was all over him. His posture. His face.

“Don’t say that again.”

He made the words a threat, but Elena had been electrocuted and taped up, tossed in the back of a trunk and terrorized. This knowledge was the only power she had, and as small as it was, it was seductive. Her mouth opened, and Jimmy’s eyes went dead before the words had formed in her mouth. He caught a fistful of her hair and pulled her off the bed, the same deadness on his face as he dragged her across the floor.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”

The words were glass in her mouth as he dragged her into the living room and across the filthy carpet. Men rose and stared. Skin burned off the backs of her hands and then she heard hollow thumps as Jimmy’s shoes landed hard on the boards of the porch. Sunshine struck her face, and he dragged her down the stairs and onto the soft, pungent dirt.

“Please…”

He hauled her to the back of the car, rolled her with a foot. Someone said, “What’s going on, Jimmy?” But Jimmy ignored him. The trunk popped with a small sound and Jimmy leaned in, pulled out a gasoline can and emptied it onto Elena. The smell hit some primal part of her, so that even as her eyes burned and her mouth filled with the bitter taste of it, she tried to crawl away.

“Who’s scared, now?”

His voice had an inhuman quality, an indifference that was too studied to be real. When he lowered the gasoline can, she saw nicks in the bright, red plastic, fine stitching in the seams of Jimmy’s leather shoes. Elena blinked against the burn in her eyes, saw the lighter in his hand. It was brass. He spun it between his thumb and four fingers, opened it, closed it. Bright metal winked and she saw the charred, black wick inside.

“Don’t.” She curled around the baby in her stomach.

“Don’t what?”

The lighter spun, clicked open.

“Please…”

Jimmy looked up, squinted at the high, blue sky. “Hot out today.”

Elena began to cry.