Want To Play? (Monkeewrench)

43

Roadrunner was at his desk in the loft, eating a Twinkie, of all things, and there was no clearer indication that he was having a bad day. Not only had he overslept for the first time in fifteen years, but when he had finally regained consciousness, it had been with a splitting headache and a stomach so sour he couldn’t even contemplate coffee. He blamed the champagne and swore off the stuff for the rest of his life.

Even Annie, usually the last to arrive at the office, had beaten him in that morning. Now she was swishing over in a brown satin ensemble that was covered from top to bottom with tiers of velvet, leaf-shaped cutouts in autumn colors. She was carrying a mug of coffee and a white bakery bag. She set the coffee down in front of him. ‘Here you go, Sleeping Beauty.’ She eyed his yellow sponge breakfast suspiciously. ‘I thought you said Hostess was the devil’s workshop.’

Roadrunner looked guiltily at the Twinkie and set it down. ‘They are, but I was hungry. The Food and Fuel is a little weak on the food part and I didn’t have time for anything else.’ He eyed her outfit. ‘You look like a tree.’

‘Honesty will never get you a date, pal.’ She dug in the bag and slapped a cherry turnover down on his desk. ‘If you’re going to poison yourself with sugar and fat, at least do it without the preservatives. The Russians used Twinkies to preserve Lenin, did you know that?’

Roadrunner gave her a crooked smile and took the turnover. ‘Thanks, Annie. You look like a pretty tree.’

‘Uh-uh. Too little, too late.’

‘Where is everybody?’

‘Harley walked down to Liquor World to get a little hair of the dog. Grace went with him.’

‘How is she?’

Annie clicked her tongue against her teeth. ‘Okay, I guess, considering. But she doesn’t want to leave.’

Roadrunner looked alarmed. ‘But we have to leave. We all agreed.’

‘We all agreed. Grace agreed to meet, to talk about it, that’s all. She’s not going to go, Roadrunner. She’s not going to run this time.’

‘Oh, man, Annie, he was in her backyard. There isn’t any doubt now, is there? This is the guy – he’s back. And he’s close. Jesus, she can’t stay here.’

‘Settle down. I talked to Mitch, he’s on his way over. When we’re all together, we’ll find a way to talk her into it.’

The elevator rumbled up a few minutes later and Mitch emerged, looking wild-eyed and worse than anyone had ever seen him.

‘Good Lord, Mitchell, what is the matter?’ Annie asked.

He gaped at her. ‘Are you kidding? You mean aside from the fact that there’s a killer stalking Grace, the company is going bankrupt, and we have to disappear and start all over again?’

‘Yeah. Aside from that.’

Mitch collapsed into a chair and dragged his hands down his face. ‘Christ. I told Diane we were thinking about leaving and she just freaked. You know what this means, don’t you? She’d have to stop painting. She’s at the top of her career, she has stuff hanging all over the world, and now she’s going to have to drop off the face of the earth and give it all up.’

They were all silent for a moment. It was Roadrunner who finally spoke. ‘You know, Mitch . . . you don’t have to go. You’re married. You have obligations the rest of us don’t. Your family’s got to come first.’

Mitch looked aghast. ‘This is my family. This has always been my family. If Grace goes, if the rest of you go, I go.’ He pressed his palms into his eye sockets. ‘Shit, this is such a fucking mess I can’t believe it. I’m not even supposed to be here. I promised Diane I wouldn’t come here today. I gave her my fucking word. And the minute she left for the gallery, I snuck out like some guilty, FUCKING KID.’

‘Jesus, Mitch,’ Roadrunner said. ‘Take it easy. You’re going to have a heart attack.’

‘I should be so lucky. Anyway, I can’t stick around for long. I’ve got to get back home before Diane does. Where the hell are Grace and Harley?’

The elevator started down, answering a call from below. ‘That’s them,’ Annie said. ‘And before they get up here, you should know that Grace said she doesn’t want to go.’

They’d had a meeting like this once before, Grace remembered. Only that time the others had all been standing around her hospital bed in the psych ward at Atlanta General. She’d been young, scared out of her mind, half in the bag from whatever tranquilizers they had dripping into her arm, and images of Libbie Herold bleeding to death on the other side of that closet door had still been playing on the inside of her head. In that state, she probably would have gone to the bunker with Hitler if he’d told her to.

But not this time. This time she was just too goddamned tired. She wanted it over, one way or the other.

‘Damnit, Grace, it’s different this time!’ Harley was pacing around their circle of chairs, smacking a beefy fist into his palm, making the dragons on his arms twitch and ripple. ‘He’s totally focused on you. He was in your backyard, for chrissake! This time you are the target, can’t you see that?’

‘That’s why I don’t have to run this time, Harley. This time it’s my risk, and only mine.’

‘Grace.’ Roadrunner leaned forward in his chair and grabbed her hands with long, bony fingers. ‘We could just go for a little while, until they catch him, then we could come back. It wouldn’t have to be forever.’

Grace squeezed his fingers and smiled. ‘If I disappear, he disappears, just like last time. And then maybe I’ll have another ten years of looking over my shoulder before he finds me again, and then it will start all over. The cops are getting close. Let’s give it another day or two.’

‘The cops are hopeless!’ Roadrunner said. ‘They were all over the Megamall and look what happened! And how about the paddleboat? You should have seen the men they had down there, and they didn’t do a damn bit of good!’

Harley stopped pacing and looked at Roadrunner. ‘Are you telling us you were down at the paddleboat landing when that guy was killed?’

Roadrunner gave him an irritable look. ‘Obviously not, or I would have seen the killer. By the time I got there the cops and the security people were already there.’

‘You stupid shit, are you crazy? Do you realize what they would have thought if they’d seen you there?’

‘I just wanted to make sure they had it covered, that’s all! I didn’t want anyone else to die!’ Roadrunner shouted, and for a minute it looked like he was going to burst into tears.

Grace patted his hand and smiled at him.

By the time Magozzi called to tell Grace Deputy Sharon Mueller was on her way, Mitch was in his office gathering paperwork to take home, Annie was across the street picking up takeout from an Italian deli, and the rest of them were hard at work on the only thing that remained for them to do – tracing the e-mails.

There was a hissing sound as Harley opened his second beer. ‘We’re going to get this son of a bitch,’ he muttered at his monitor.