Vengeance (9 page)

He flicked a hand gesture at the men, launching a chair into a backward skid as the man stood. In the hazy mirror behind the bar, I could only see his head from my angle. His smear of a reflection loomed over me. My back went straight and I clenched both fists, pulling my bindings taut, making the chair buck and stand on its hind legs for a split second. It settled back in place with the sound of the two front legs landing at once, like horse hooves.

“My father sent me to see you!” I cried.

The cessation of all motion meant my plea must have activated an instant reprieve. I saw the head in the mirror turn to wait for a response from the hall where Rook had plunged into darkness. My breathing sounded like a flurry of prayer fragments funneling through a broken whistle.

“Who’s your father?” Rook said, his voice a congregation of shadows reverberating from the tunnel.

“Liam Tanner,” I said, trying to mask the quiver of desperation in my voice, even if I couldn’t hide the reek of fear spewing from my pores. I was in the most dire straits to use that name as a character reference.

Rook clicked his tongue from the roof of his mouth, like echolocation of the midpoint between disappointment and deliberation. It must also have been a summons, because the standing man behind me burst into a light jog toward the hall. His hard sole shoes slapped the concrete floor with each step. When the steps ceased, I could make out Rook’s voice as a low rumble, indiscernible from my position. The shoes approached with lighter taps and the side door opened and closed. As Rook’s man came back into view his arm was reached behind him and when it came forward, he was bee-lining for me with a semi-automatic pistol in his grip. As my heart battered its cage like a stallion trying to smash free from a burning stable my lungs grasped a last desperate drink of air. My teeth clenched, my chin tucked toward my chest, and my eyes shuttered themselves against the envisioned imminent sound of the firing mechanism and the muzzle flare.

Milliseconds burst past. No sound. No barrel pressed to my skull.

At the speed of realization, my eyes opened to find no one in front of me and my heart screamed at me to find an escape. I heard a shifting of feet behind me and felt the faint shockwave that preceded the hammering blow to the back of my head. For a second time I was plowed into darkness.

Chapter 10

You float. On the river. The smell of the river. Its sound. Electric throbs of awareness lapping at the back of your head. Icy spikes flow and numbness ebbs. The current buffets your limp body. Stirring you awake in time to drown. You bob and roll. In and out of sensation.

You are not floating. Have you sunk to the river bed? There is no current. You begin to feel your own weight. A ground below you. You realize you are breathing. Your eyes flutter open. Darker even than twenty feet of water at night could be. Still.

The ground scratches your cheek like stubble. You lift your head and hit the sky above you. Electric throbs and metallic firmament echoes.

I wasn’t under water. I reached to my head, but my hands were tied behind me. I started to extend my legs and they hit a wall. A hollow sound dulled by my shoes and the carpet. I was in the trunk of a car. That revelation calmed me. Locked alive in the trunk of a car was much better than my waking consciousness had imagined. The water was real, though. I could hear the river muttering outside over the distant jabber of traffic and industry. The ferocious pulsating wound on the back of my head was real, too. My thoughts could barely maintain themselves over the crescendo static of the aching.

I needed to get out. I tried rolling over, but my shoulder hit the roof of the trunk and I fell back to my original position, rocking the car gently. But it was enough that I could hear the keys jangling. Were the keys hanging from the lock of the trunk? Before I could decide what that might mean, I heard a voice and footsteps. Someone was approaching the car. Had the noise from the keys alerted them that I was awake and ready for more questioning? The steps grew louder and I could tell it was more than one person outside now. I wriggled to get my hands free. I froze as the lock clicked and the trunk sprung up. The faint glow of the moon and distant factory lights cast a mist of illumination across the sky behind two silhouettes that loomed over me. Neither cut the figure of Rook’s man from the bar.

“Come on,” a voice said. “Let’s get him out of there.”

“Dad?” I said. I could make out his face now that he leaned close. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m picking your stupid carcass out of the trunk of your own car, you dumb shit. What the hell else would I be doing at the goddam river this time of night?”

As the other man leaned in the grab my other shoulder and help pull my torso forward I recognized it was Casey. When they had me where I could sit up I told them to wait and I pivoted to work my legs out in front, over the lip of the trunk. They grabbed under my shoulders and elbows and helped me to my feet. My dad turned me around and one of them cut the rope from my wrists. I stretched my arms and turned to face them.

“What the hell were you thinking?” my dad said. His eyes were too dark to read with the glare of factory lights across the river behind him. I knew he was angry, but I thought I heard something more.

“You told me to talk to Rook.”

“You walked up to him and said you wanted to talk to him?”

“Yeah.”

“Jesus! No fucking way you're my son! You're lucky he didn't kill you. You know that? Or at least break your arm, or something.”

“You sent me to talk to him.”

“Not like that, I didn't.”

He turned and paced off toward the river. Casey was standing with his hands in his pockets, staring at me, as if trying to divine whether or not a painting in a museum qualified as art. He noticed that I was watching him then and said, “You’re lucky they called us.”

“They called you? The guys who put me here?”

“Yeah. They told your dad where to find you.”

I shook my head, but it made the throbbing worse. None of it added up. With what my dad had told me about Rook, I should have been dead. They should have driven the car into the river with me in the trunk. Or the blow to the back of my head could have been hard enough to do the trick. Instead, they left me alive and called someone to come get me.

“How did they even know who to call?” I asked. “None of this makes sense.”

But Casey had turned toward my dad, who was headed back toward us, a few paces off.

“Can you drive?” my dad asked me.

“I don’t know. My head feels like it’s split open.”

Casey ended up driving me back to the motel and my dad followed. I leaned forward with my forearms across my thighs to keep the headrest from patting at my wound.

“You didn’t want to tell me something in front of my dad?” I said. “He told me he and Rook have history. You know about that?”

“It’s none of my business,” he said in a tone that sounded like an invitation to pry.

“Then work on your poker face. You want to tell me something or not?”

“All right. Yeah. You might still be alive because there’s some history there. But don’t count on that to save your ass in the future. That’s all.”

I doubted that was all he had to say.

“Rook owes my dad?”

“Don’t know. No one talks about it. Before our time. I know you two went out to Andy’s. That was either really brave or stupid of your dad. I’m calling it stupid. All I know is if the two of them ever end up in the same room, one of them isn’t walking out.”

Back at the motel, my dad and I stood between the parked cars. Casey waited on the driver’s side of his Lexus.

“Now what?” I said.

“I figured you’d head back wherever you came from,” my dad said. I recognized it as a challenge.

“You never did know me very well.” It was a bravado line because that’s what he wanted to hear.

“All right,” he said, maybe puffed up a little by how I responded. “You still need to talk to Rook. It’s going to be harder now. We’ll figure it out after we all get some sleep.”

*

I crossed to the convenience store and bought an overpriced bottle of ibuprofen. Each step across the asphalt sent shockwaves to my skull. I popped a double dose and filled my ice bucket, wrapped a parcel of it in a towel, and held it against my head until I was numb.

I slept on and off for several hours which helped me feel much better. In one of my conscious stints, I called the airline to change my flight. They informed me of their 24 hour policy and told me it wasn’t possible, so I gave them a sob story about how I came home for my brother’s funeral and now my father was in the hospital from a heart attack. I needed to stay a few days to make sure he was all right, I lied. They said they were sorry for my loss and it turned out they could move my departure back a few days and even waive the fee, which was a good thing because I wasn’t sure I had that much head room left on my credit card. What I did have was a couple more days, though I wasn’t sure if that was a lot of time or not much time at all because I had no idea where to find any answers. My immediate need was sleep, so I cleared my mind as well as I could and tumbled in and out of consciousness.

When I finally decided to stay awake, I called the front desk, but there were no messages from the mortuary or anyone else. I called the mortuary but got the answering machine again. A visit was going to satisfy me more than leaving a message. The parking lot had one car in it, so I was confident I wouldn’t be walking in on someone else’s ceremony. I entered through the front and poked my head into the chapel and various rooms, but didn’t find anyone. As I approached the back door, I heard a faucet running for a moment. I was met in the doorway of a back room by an elderly man who was drying his hands and flipping off the light.

“Can I help you?” he asked, trying to sound cordial, but clearly startled at finding me there.

“I’m Aiden Tanner’s brother. His wake was held here the other day. I left a message.”

“Tanner. Of course. What exactly can I do for you?”

I hesitated because I realized I shouldn’t go into any details. After George’s reaction, I figured I should ask what I needed without offering an explanation.

“If you want to come to retrieve his belongings, I’m afraid what little he had was already taken by your father.”

“Do you know if he picked up Aiden’s jacket?”

“The leather jacket?”

“Yes.”

“You must not remember. That is what he was buried in.”

I had paid so little attention to anything other than the fact that Aiden was in that casket. But when he said it, I remembered Aiden had been wearing his black biker jacket. It looked almost like a tuxedo in that setting.

“Were you involved in preparing the body?”

“Yes. I take care of the loved ones.” I didn’t know if that was standard undertaker phrasing or if this guy spoke in terms as old as he looked.

“Do you remember if the jacket was torn up or if it had any bad abrasions?”

“On the contrary, I thought it was in excellent condition. It was a tasteful choice for his rest. I understand it was his favorite.”

“Yes, it was,” I said. Aiden had had that jacket for years and always treated it like it was worth every cent of the two week’s pay it cost him. He hated having to hang it up when the weather got warm in spring.

“May I just say,” he continued, “that you two look very much alike. When I saw you at the wake, I knew that I had done my best with the presentation. It wasn’t easy. I tried to convince your father not to have the casket open. I hope it wasn’t unsettling for you.”

“No,” I lied, trying to address the concern I could hear in his voice. “I thought he looked amazing, all things considered.”

“Thank you. Oh, but I’m sorry to even bring that up to you. I know you are still grieving.”

“It’s fine,” I said. It wasn’t fine, but with everything else on my mind I wasn’t going to be distracted. I wasn’t sure how to find out whether there was evidence of Aiden being in an accident without asking it directly. I didn’t want my question to influence his interpretation of what he had seen. So I said, “You did an amazing job on his hands, too. I thought they might be too scraped up to fold over his chest that way.”

“Why thank you. But, actually, I didn’t have to do much with his hands at all. They weren’t scraped up. Just two knuckles on his right hand. That was easy enough to cover. He had such strong hands. I saw that in your father and you. Those hands are a family trait.”

“Yes, I suppose so,” I said, turning my right hand palm up, palm down, fingers fully extended, squeezed into a fist. Aiden hadn’t been wearing gloves, but his hands weren’t scraped up. That didn’t necessarily mean he hadn’t crashed. He might have kept his hands on the bike. But the knuckles being scraped sounded like he had punched someone, a sign that he put up a struggle. Or maybe he had hit something before taking off on his bike. Like everything else, there was no clear evidence one way or the other. I realized I was keeping the old man, but it seemed like I was neglecting something. After a moment, it came to me. “You must have washed the body? Were there—did he have any… marks?”

“Marks? Do you mean tattoos?”

“Not tattoos. I mean, on his arms. Was there any sign that he…?” But I didn’t know how to finish the sentence without coming right out and asking if Aiden had heroine tracks. I wasn’t comfortable talking about Aiden as a druggie. But whether the old man had encountered this sort of question before, or whether he was just able to divine where I was headed, he took over for me.

“If you are asking about needle marks, there might have been a few,” he said, “but no more than a few.”

This time the short silence we shared was not hurried. I could sense he respected my need to reflect on that answer before deciding what to say next. I understood what he was offering me wasn’t an official autopsy by any means. But I figured he had seen enough in his time to know what he was looking at. The presence of needle marks wouldn’t help determine whether there had been a motorcycle accident, but it was a question I needed an answer to for my peace of mind.

When I returned to the motel, there was a message waiting from Casey. I called back and got his beeper, so I left a message of my own. I was going to fetch more ice for my head when the phone rang. We arranged to meet at the motel. I iced my head as I waited for Casey, but the pain had subsided and burrowed under the surface far enough that the ice was more trouble than relief. I popped a few more ibuprofen.

Casey tapped the horn when he pulled in behind my rental. I grabbed my jacket and went out to meet him.

“Where are we headed?” I asked.

“Shopping,” he said. “If Rook doesn’t want to talk to you, you’re going to have to make him talk to you. And if you want to bag a Rook, you need the right tools.”