Devil Red (20 page)

69

There were lights now, and large rooms, and I turned off the pointless headlight and went through several of the rooms until I came to a half-open door with a man on his knees, his forehead pressed to the wall.

He had fallen there. He was a large man. There was blood all down his shirt and all over the floor in a fresh wet pool. He had never known what had hit him.

There was another hallway. I went down quickly, and when I came to the end of it, there was a door slightly cracked, and there was light coming out of it. I eased over and touched the door gently, moved it aside.

Looking in, I saw Vanilla Ride squatted on her haunches, the silenced automatic in her gloved hand. Across from her, lying on the floor, her head against a couch, a hand held to her blood-gurgling throat, was Clinton. Her eyes darted toward me. She coughed and blood squirted from between her fingers. There was a little automatic lying on the floor not far from her free hand. Her fingers curled toward it, like a dying spider, but nothing more. A Doberman lay on the floor nearby. Dead, of course.

Vanilla turned her head and looked at me. She said, “You can finish her if you want. If you think it’ll make you feel better.”

I shook my head.

I felt empty standing there watching that woman die. Right then, it didn’t matter to me what she had done. Had I come upon her first, I would have shot her myself, no doubt, but now, looking at the life ease out of her, I just felt confused.

Clinton glanced at Vanilla. She tried to say something. It sounded like “why.”

“Why not?” Vanilla said. Her gun hand flicked up and the silenced weapon made a tubercular noise. Clinton’s body jerked a little. A red spot appeared on her forehead, and whatever muscles were holding her head against the couch released and she rolled over on her face. The blood pooled beneath her. A pool of urine soaked out of her and its smell was rich with ammonia.

Vanilla stood. She looked at me. I can’t describe what I was seeing there, but in that moment she looked much older and stranger and dangerous, a visitor from someplace far beyond Mars.

She said, “Done, and done.”

70

We searched through the house, looked in all the rooms, all the nooks and crannies. There was no one left. We went out the way we had come in and stopped on the veranda in sight of the dead man in the yard. It had grown bitter cold and the snow was turning hard.

“You lied to me,” I said. “You said you wouldn’t get involved.”

Vanilla put her gun inside her coat and looked at me. “I didn’t know I was getting involved until I started drawing that map for you. Jimson, like I said, that was personal.”

“I presume the map you gave me isn’t really the easiest way for me to get here, is it?”

“I gave you quite a trial, didn’t I?”

“You think I’d give up and go home?”

“I thought if I gave you the long and hard way here, I’d get here first, in plenty of time. Still, I didn’t want you not to be a part of it. I wanted you to know it was done.”

A part of me wished I had been late. From what I could see, she hadn’t needed me at all.

“What made you do it?” I said.

She looked at me like that was a question that didn’t immediately compute. Finally, she said, “I don’t know. I learned a lot in that big room back there so long ago, the one with the mats. I learned how to fight and use a knife, ice pick, most anything I could lay my hands on. There’s also a gun range farther in. Everything nice and padded and silent. There’s also a bedroom that wasn’t my room and it wasn’t their room. You didn’t see it. It’s a large room, and it’s silent too. I learned a lot there from Mr. Kincaid.”

“I’m sorry, Vanilla.”

“All part of the drill, I suppose. The males got the same.”

“I’m still sorry.”

“I suppose I had to close things out. I believe that’s why I came, more than for you.”

“How do you feel?” I said.

“Just the same.”

“What now?”

“I’ll show you to my car, drive you around to yours, and we go our separate ways.”

“I mean what now for you?”

She shrugged and started walking across the yard. I slung the shotgun strap over my shoulder, followed, our feet crunching on the snow-covered grass. We went out through the open front gate and I swung the shotgun off my shoulder, and we got in her black Volkswagen Beetle. The one I had passed when I drove over to No Enterprise and found Jimson and his goons.

Vanilla had merely driven straight up the drive and gone inside. I don’t know how she had gotten through the gate. Maybe it was open. Maybe she knew a code. After that, it had been easy. Drop the guard and the dog, and then I showed up. I’m sure she had answers to those questions, but at that point in time, I didn’t really care.

As she started up the Volkswagen, I said, “I thought you were like James Bond till I saw this car. Does it have machine guns in the headlights?”

“It’s maneuverable and dependable,” she said. “Just like me. Did I ever tell you how maneuverable I am?”

“It’s best I don’t hear,” I said, and she wheeled us out of there.

71

When we stopped at my car, Vanilla turned slightly in the seat, said, “You could go with me.”

“You know I can’t do that.”

“You can.”

“All right. I can. But I won’t.”

“The redhead?”

“That’s some of it, yes.”

“And Leonard.”

“Yep.”

Vanilla nodded. She smiled. “I don’t know, Hap. I don’t understand it. Why they mean so much to you.”

“I don’t think I can explain it.”

“There’s another thing I don’t understand.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Why am I attracted to you?”

“It’s the way I dress.”

“Hardly,” she said.

As I put a foot outside the door, Vanilla said, “You ever been to Europe?”

“No.”

“Italy is a wonderful country,” she said. “Beautiful people. The best food you can imagine. Scenery that has to be seen to be believed.”

“You go there often?”

“I’ve never been to Italy. But I’ve read about it.”

“You believe everything you read?”

“Only when I want to. The money I got, I don’t need to do anything anymore but lie on a beach in a bikini somewhere and soak up the sun. I might just retire there. Maybe you could come see me?”

“All I can say is I owe you one,” I said.

“Oh, that was a freebie. That wasn’t for anybody but myself. I didn’t feel good or bad about it before, but now, sitting here, I’m starting to get the warm fuzzies. I liked the way Ms. Clinton looked when I shot her. Lean over here.”

I did. She kissed me gently and quickly on the lips.

“Our secret,” she said.

I didn’t know what to say to that.

I got out of the car with my shotgun and she backed around and was gone.

72

Vanilla should have been everything I detested in a human being, a stone killer with the conscience of a fly, but there was no denying I felt something for her. I didn’t know exactly what it was. But I felt it. And she felt it back. But then again, who was I to hate someone for being a killer?

I drove back to LaBorde through a bad storm mixed with rain and snow and a vision of that young girl’s face, the one I had killed in the mat room. She was just a kid. I told myself if I hadn’t killed her she would have killed me. I told myself she was being trained to kill others for money. For all I knew she might have been the one who shot Leonard. There wasn’t any certainty Devil Red, the two of them, or either of them had done the shooting. And if it wasn’t that young woman, someday it would be, for someone.

I arrived drained and exhausted at the hospital. It was way past visiting hours, but when I got upstairs I found Brett and Marvin in the waiting room. Brett had found a blanket and was curled up in a chair asleep. Marvin sat beside her, wide awake. He nodded at me as I came in, put a finger to his lips. We went outside the waiting room to a few chairs along the wall. We sat down.

“How’s Leonard?” I said.

“Better.”

I sighed with relief.

“Not out of danger yet,” Marvin said. “But better.”

“Good,” I said.

“Did you find them?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Did you take care of them?”

“Vanilla Ride took care of them mostly. I took care of some of it.”

“Vanilla Ride? Our Vanilla Ride?”

“How many of them could there be?” I said.

“I’ll be damned,” Marvin said.

I told him all about it, everything Vanilla had told me, how it had all gone down.

He sat for a while when I finished. “So it was like Brett thought, Devil Red killed all those people for revenge. Twilla too?”

“Maybe. And then Leonard and I fell into their line of fire.”

Marvin considered for a moment. “They most likely arranged the hit on Godzilla in prison, don’t you think?”

“It’s possible,” I said. “They decided to kill us all, symbolically salt the earth. They couldn’t get rid of their grief any other way. And I doubt that did it.”

“What amazes me is to think they actually cared that much for their children, considering what they were, what they did to Vanilla,” Marvin said.

“I think for them it wasn’t child molestation or abuse in the way we think of it. I mean it comes down to the same thing, but I think for them it was just business. They were sharpening the tools of their business by making them willing and moldable. When Kincaid was away from there he was an accountant, a husband to his airhead wife, and a father to his children, who he loved. One life had nothing to do with the other.”

“That’s what you call compartmentalization,” Marvin said.

“Yeah, I suppose it is.”

“How do you feel?” he asked.

“My hand won’t quit shaking. I got a few minor wounds, but that’s what surprises me the most. In all the gunfire and knifing, I didn’t get a serious wound. Worst thing I got was back pain from falling out of a tree. Thing I’m wondering is how we tell Mrs. Christopher that the job is done without telling her how it was done, and without getting our dicks in a crack.”

“That’s my job,” Marvin said. “I’ll find a way to satisfy her without telling her everything. There’s some things she doesn’t need to know. Do you think you’ll see Vanilla again?”

“I don’t want to. She makes me nervous.”

At that moment, Brett came out of the waiting room and came over to me and grabbed me before I could stand and hugged me. I kissed her near her ear. She was crying. She fell into my lap.

“My God, I thought that was you I heard talking,” she said.

She kissed me several times. I wiped away her tears. I hugged her tight. I looked at Marvin, said, “You should go home, friend.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I should. Call me if there’s any news.”

He stood and clapped his hand on my shoulder. I reached up and touched it. “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.”

We went back in the waiting room, and I told her all I had told Marvin.

“I don’t know how I feel about Vanilla Ride,” Brett said. “You’re my man.”

“You know it,” I said.

“Really now,” Brett said. “How pretty is she?”

“She’s all right.”

“Hap.”

“Okay. She’s real pretty.”

“Hap.”

“All right, goddamn it,” I said. “She’s stunningly beautiful.”

“Okay,” she said, “that’s enough.”

73

The next morning we got word that Leonard was out of the woods, and though not ready to see visitors, much better. We decided to go home and have breakfast and get some sleep.

About noon we woke up and made love, and when we were finished, we were ravenous. We ate a quick lunch and went to the hospital. We found Rogers, Leonard’s surgeon. He took us into the waiting room, where we were the only ones present. He said, “I can’t figure Mr. Pine. He not only should have died in that parking lot, he shouldn’t be awake and feeling as well as he is. He’s not going to jump up and run a marathon or anything, but he’s doing miraculously well.”

“Can we see him?” Brett asked.

“Shortly,” Rogers said.

About an hour later we were allowed into ICU to see him. I had hoped to have his deerstalker to wear, just to pick at him, but I didn’t. I guess the cops had it.

We sat in chairs on opposite sides of the bed. We each held one of his hands. He looked rough, but he had his color back, and that wicked look in his eyes.

“So, you’re gonna shit in my hat,” he said, looking at me.

“You actually heard that?” Brett said.

“Yeah,” Leonard said. “I wanted to answer, but couldn’t. I was a little under the weather.”

“I’ll say,” I said.

“You know,” Leonard said, “bullets hurt.”

“Yeah. Well, you know our motto.”

“If the dick’s intact, we’re all right.”

“That’s the one”

“You’re sitting funny, Hap.”

“I fell out of a tree.”

“Ha,” Leonard said, and then licked his dry lips. “Did anyone call John?”

I felt a little ashamed. “No,” I said.

“Good. I don’t want him to see me like this. I don’t want any goddamn sympathy from him. He comes back, I want him to come back because of the right reasons. Not because I got myself shot.”

“Your surgeon said it was small caliber, and your muscle tone had a lot to do with your survival,” I said. “You know what really surprises me, though?”

“What?”

“That you have any muscle tone.”

“Ha, ha,” he said. Then: “Brett, could you see if they would let me have a bit of soda pop? I’m craving a little something wet and sweet.”

“I can ask,” she said.

“Tell them I’ll try not to let it squirt out the holes in my chest.” Brett got up and went away.

Leonard squeezed my hand really tight. He said, “Do you know who shot me?”

I told him who as quickly as I could. I told him what had happened to them.

“Man,” Leonard said, “Vanilla is so cold and mean—”

“—her mean has to wear a hat and tie,” we said together.

Leonard laughed, and then winced. “Oh,” he said. “I think I shit myself a little.”

“What nurses are for,” I said. “Ask Brett to tell you how much she loves that part.”

He grinned at me, then gradually turned serious. “How do you feel, man?”

“It got done, and Vanilla got whatever it was she needed out of it. I figure eventually we’ll read about it in the papers. Someone will find them in time. They won’t show to work, and then they’ll go out there and find all those bodies. I don’t know what the law will think.”

“As long as they don’t think about you, it’ll be okay,” Leonard said.

“I think Vanilla and I did it pretty clean. I’m even going to get rid of the shoes and clothes I had on last night. I’m leaving nothing to chance, no footprints, no clothes fibers. And since I didn’t write my name in blood or draw a drawing of a devil head, I think I’ll be all right.”

“Of course you will,” Leonard said.

“I’m going to get rid of the guns tomorrow. Except my automatic. I didn’t use it. It’s still clean.”

“Hate to see them go,” he said.

“Best bet, though. I know a good place to ditch them.” Leonard nodded.

“Vanilla, what she did,” he said, “she didn’t do it for me. It was for you.”

“And herself.”

“What I can’t figure is how you got someone like Brett, and then someone looks like Vanilla, to be attracted to you. As a queer, I got to say, I don’t find you attractive at all.”

“Feeling’s mutual,” I said. “Minus the queer part.”

“But, you know what?”

“What,” I said.

“I love you, brother,” he said, without looking right at me. “And you’re the reason I came back from the dead. That, and the fact it’s cold over there. And dark.”

“Still,” I said, squeezing his hand, “I’m not giving you that damn hat back.”