The Client (53 page)

“We can’t let them take the body, Reggie. Think about it. If they get away with it, it’ll never be found.”

“Good. You’re off the hook, and the Mafia forgets about you. Now let’s go.”

“No, Reggie. We gotta do something.”

“What! You want to pick a fight with Mafia thugs? Come on, Mark. This is crazy.”

“Just wait a minute.”

“Okay. I’ll wait exactly one minute, then I’m gone.”

He turned and smiled at her. “You won’t leave me, Reggie. I know you better than that.”

“Don’t push me, Mark. Now I know how Ricky felt when you were playing around with Clifford and his little water hose.”

“Just be quiet, okay. I’m thinking.”

“That’s what scares me.”

She sat on her butt with her legs crossed in front of her. Leaves and vines rubbed her face and neck. He rocked gently on all fours like a lion ready to kill, and finally said, “I’ve got an idea.”

“Of course you do.”

“Stay here.”

She suddenly grabbed the back of his neck and pulled his face to hers. “Listen, buster, this is not one of your little jungle games where you shoot rubber darts and throw dirt clods. Those are not your little buddies in there playing hide-and-seek, or GI Joe, or whatever the hell you play. This is life and death, Mark. You just made one mistake, and you got lucky. One more, and you’ll be dead. Now, let’s get the hell outta here! Now!”

He was still for a few seconds as she scolded him, then he jerked viciously away. “Stay here, and don’t move,” he said with stiff jaws. He crept from the brush, through the grass to the fence.

Just inside the gate was an abandoned flower bed outlined with sunken timbers and covered with weeds. He crawled to it, and picked out three rocks with all
the fussiness of a chef selecting tomatoes at the market. He watched both corners of the garage, then made a silent retreat into the darkness.

Reggie was waiting, and she had not moved a muscle. He knew she could not find her way to the car. He knew she needed him. They huddled again in the brush.

“Mark, this is insane, son,” she pleaded. “Please. These people are not playing games.”

“They’re too busy to worry about us, okay. We’re safe here, Reggie. Look, if they came tearing out of that door right now, they could never find us. We’re safe here, Reggie. Trust me.”

“Trust you! You’ll get yourself killed.”

“Stay here.”

“What! Please, Mark! No more games!”

He ignored her and pointed to a spot near three trees, about thirty feet away. “I’ll be right back,” he said, and he disappeared.

He crawled through the brush until he was behind the Ballantine house. He could barely see the edge of Romey’s garage. Reggie was lost in the dark undergrowth.

The patio was small and dimly lit. There were three white wicker chairs and a charcoal grill. A large plate-glass window overlooked it, and it was this window that attracted his attention. He stood behind a tree, and measured the distance, which he estimated to be the length of two house trailers. The rock would have to be low enough to miss the branches, yet high enough to clear a row of hedges. He took a deep breath, and threw it as hard as he could.

Leo jumped at the sound from next door. He crept in front of the garage and peeked through the
hedge. The patio was quiet and still. It sounded like a rock landing on wooden decking and rattling around next to the brick. Maybe it was just a dog. He watched for a long time, and nothing happened. They were safe. Another false alarm.

MR. BALLANTINE ROLLED OVER AND STARED AT THE CEILING. He was in his early sixties, and sleep had been difficult since the removal of the disc a year and a half ago. He had just dozed off, and was awakened by a sound. Or was it a sound? No place was safe in New Orleans anymore, and he’d paid two thousand dollars for an alarm system six months earlier. Crime was everywhere. They were thinking about moving.

He rolled to one side, and had just closed his eyes when the window crashed. He bolted to the door, turned on the bedroom light, and yelled, “Get up, Wanda! Get up!” Wanda was reaching for her robe, and Mr. Ballantine was grabbing the shotgun from the closet. The alarm was wailing. They raced down the hall, yelling at each other and flipping on light switches. The glass had scattered throughout the den, and Mr. Ballantine aimed the shotgun at the window as if to prevent another attack. “Call the police!” he barked at her. “911!”

“I know the number!”

“Hurry up!” He tiptoed in his house shoes around the glass, crouching low with the gun as if a burglar had chosen to enter the house through the window. He fought his way to the kitchen, where he punched numbers on a control panel, and the sirens stopped.

*     *     *

LEO HAD JUST RESETTLED INTO HIS GUARD POST NEXT TO the Spitfire when the crash shattered the stillness. He bit a hole in his tongue as he scrambled to his feet and darted once again to the hedge. A siren screamed briefly, then stopped. A man in a red nightshirt down to his knees was running onto the patio with a shotgun.

Leo crept quickly to the rear door of the garage. Ionucci and the Bull were crouched in terror beside the boat. Leo stepped on a rake, and the handle landed on a bag full of aluminum cans. The three stopped breathing. Voices could be heard next door.

“What the hell is it?” Ionucci demanded through clenched teeth. He and the Bull were shiny with sweat. Their shirts were stuck to their bodies. Their heads were soaking wet.

“I don’t know,” Leo bristled, spitting blood, inching toward the window facing the hedge that separated the Ballantine property. “Something went through a window, I think. I don’t know. Crazy bastard’s got a shotgun!”

“A what!” Ionucci almost shrieked. He and the Bull slowly raised their heads to the window and joined Leo there. The crazy man with the shotgun was stomping around his backyard, yelling at the trees.

Mr. Ballantine was sick of New Orleans and sick of drugs and sick of punks trying to rob and pillage, and he was sick of crime and living in fear like this, and he was just so damned sick of it all, he raised his shotgun and fired once at the trees for good measure. That’ll teach the slimy little bastards that he meant business. Come back to his house, and you’ll leave in a hearse. BOOM!

Mrs. Ballantine stood in the doorway in her pink
robe, and screamed when he fired and wounded the trees.

The three heads in the garage next door hit the dirt when the shooting started. “Sumbitch is crazy!” Leo screeched. Slowly, they raised their heads again in perfect unison, and at precisely that instant, the first police car pulled into the Ballantine driveway with blue and red lights flashing wildly.

Ionucci was the first one out the door, followed by the Bull, then Leo. They were in a huge hurry, but at the same time careful not to attract attention from the idiots next door. They scooted along, close to the ground, dashing from tree to tree, trying desperately to make it to the woods before there was more gunfire. The retreat was orderly.

Mark and Reggie huddled deep in the brush. “You’re crazy,” she kept muttering, and it was not idle talk. She honestly believed that her client was mentally unbalanced. But she hugged him anyway, and they squeezed close together. They didn’t see the three silhouettes scampering along until they crossed through the fence.

“There they are,” Mark whispered, pointing. Not thirty seconds earlier, he had told her to watch the gate.

“Three of them,” he whispered. The three leaped into the underbrush, less than twenty feet from where they were hiding, and disappeared into the woods.

They squeezed closer together. “You’re crazy,” she said again.

“Maybe so. But it’s working.”

The shotgun blast had almost sent Reggie over the edge. She’d been trembling when they arrived here. She’d been mortified when he returned with news that someone was in the garage. She’d damned near
screamed when he threw the rock through the window. But the shotgun was the final straw. Her heart was pounding and her hands were trembling.

And oddly, at that moment, she knew they couldn’t run. The three grave robbers were now between them and their car. There was no escape.

The shotgun blast brought the neighborhood to life. Floodlights filled backyards as men and women in bathrobes walked onto patios and looked in the direction of the Ballantines’. Voices shouted inquiries across fences. Dogs came to life. Mark and Reggie withdrew deeper into the brush.

Mr. Ballantine and one of the cops walked along the rear fence, searching perhaps for more felonious rocks. It was hopeless. Reggie and Mark could hear voices, but they could not understand what was being said. Mr. Ballantine yelled a lot.

The cops settled him down, then helped him tape clear plastic over the window. The red and blue lights were turned off, and after twenty minutes, the cops left.

Reggie and Mark waited, trembling and holding hands. Bugs crawled over their skin. The mosquitoes were brutal. The weeds and burrs stuck to their dark sweatshirts. The lights in the Ballantine house finally went off, and they waited some more.

     38     

A FEW MINUTES AFTER ONE, THE CLOUDS BROKE AND THE half-moon lightened Romey’s backyard and garage for a moment. Reggie glanced at her watch. Her legs were numb from squatting. Her back ached from sitting on her tail. Oddly, though, she had become accustomed to her little spot in the jungle, and after surviving the thugs, the cops, and the idiot with the shotgun, she was feeling remarkably safe. Her breathing and pulse were normal. She was not sweating, though her jeans and shirt were still wet from exertion and humidity. Mark swatted and slapped mosquitoes, and said little. He was eerily calm. He chewed on a weed, watched the fence row, and acted as if he and he alone knew precisely when to make the next move.

“Let’s go for a little walk,” he said, rising from his knees.

“Where to? The car?”

“No. Just down the trail. My leg is about to cramp.”

Her right leg was numb below the knee. Her left leg was dead below the hip, and she stood with great
difficulty. She followed him through the brush until they were on the small trail parallel to the creek. He moved deftly through the darkness without the benefit of the flashlight, swatting mosquitoes and stretching his legs.

They stopped deep in the woods, out of sight of the fence rows of Romey’s neighbors.

“I really think we should leave now,” she said, a bit louder since the houses were no longer in view. “I have this fear of snakes, you see, and I don’t want to step on one.”

He did not look at her, but stared in the direction of the ditch. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to leave now,” he whispered.

She knew he had a reason for saying this. She’d not won an argument in the past six hours. “Why?”

“Because those men could still be around here. In fact, they could be close by waiting for things to settle down so they can return. If we head for the car, we might meet them.”

“Mark, I can’t take any more of this, okay? This may be fun and games for you, but I’m fifty-two years old and I’ve had it. I can’t believe I’m hiding in this jungle at one o’clock in the morning.”

He put his forefinger over his lips. “Shhhhhh. You’re talking too loud. And this isn’t a game.”

“Dammit, I know it’s not a game! Don’t lecture me.”

“Keep your cool, Reggie. We’re safe now.”

“Safe my ass! I won’t feel safe until I lock the door at the motel.”

“Then leave. Go on. Find your way back to the car, and leave.”

“Sure, and let me guess. You’ll stay here, right?”

The moonlight disappeared, and suddenly the woods were darker. He turned his back to her and began walking toward their hiding place. She instinctively followed him, and this irritated her because at that moment she was depending on an eleven-year-old. But she followed him anyway, along a trail invisible to her, through the dense woods to the undergrowth, to about the same point where they’d waited before. The garage was barely visible.

The blood had returned to her legs, though they were very stiff. Her lower back throbbed. She could rub her hand across her forearm and feel the bumps from the mosquito bites. There was a thin sliver of blood on the back of her left hand, probably from a sticker in the brush or perhaps a weed. If she ever made it back to Memphis, she vowed to join a health club and get in shape. Not that she planned any more ventures like this, but she was tired of aching and gasping for breath.

Mark lowered onto one knee, stuck another weed in his mouth to chew on, and watched the garage.

THEY WAITED, ALMOST IN SILENCE, FOR AN HOUR. WHEN she’d reached the point of leaving him and running wildly through the woods, Reggie said, “Okay, Mark, I’m leaving. Do what you’ve got to do, because I’m leaving now.” But she didn’t move.

They crouched together, and he pointed at the garage as if she didn’t know where it was. “I’m crawling up there, okay, with the flashlight, and I’m looking at the body, or the grave, or whatever they were digging at, okay?”

“No.”

“It won’t take but a second, maybe. If I’m lucky, I’ll be right back.”

“I’m going with you,” she said.

“No. I want you to stay here. I’m worried that those guys are watching too, somewhere along the tree line. If they come after me, I want you to start yelling and run like crazy.”

“No. No way, sweetheart. If you’re looking at the body, then I’m looking at the body, and I’m not arguing about it. That’s final.”

He looked at her eyes, four or five inches away, and decided not to argue. Her head was shaking and her jaw was tight. She looked cute under the cap.

“Then follow me, Reggie. Stay low, and listen. Always listen, okay.”

“All right, all right. I’m not totally helpless. In fact, I’m getting pretty good at crawling.”

They attacked from the brush on all fours again, two figures sliding in the still darkness. The grass was wet and cool. The gate, still open from the hasty retreat of the grave robbers, squeaked slightly when Reggie hooked it with a foot. Mark glared at her. They stopped behind the first tree, then eased to the next. Not a sound from anywhere. It was 2 A.M., and the neighborhood was silent. Mark, however, was worried about the nut next door with the gun. He doubted the man would sleep well with a thin sheet of plastic over the window, and he could envision him sitting in the kitchen watching the patio and waiting for the snap of a twig before he began blasting away again. They stopped at the next tree, then crawled to the junk pile.