Medusa (17 page)

Roland, she thought, and smiled. She realized she had spilled her personal life to him, without a second thought. He was nothing like most of the men she had met while dancing. There had been plenty, confused men who thought they were in love with her, when really all they wanted to do was screw her. She had thought that’s all Corsack was. But, now he shows up with Roland and the other man . . . most confusing.
 

As big as her crush on Roland might be, she didn’t believe his story that Corsack and he had only just met. So, despite her warming feelings for the mysterious big brown man, she had picked up the phone and called her dear old Granny. Or, to be more accurate, she had spoken with Culver Ray, who wasn’t really a member of the family, but some drifter who had showed up at the old funhouse one summer and took to the illicit and tawdry goings on out there like the proverbial duck to water, he being a dirty duck and the funhouse one particularly scummy little pond.
 

She had told Culver Ray in as few words as possible that a couple of men had come around and asked questions, and hadn’t given her any reasons. Culver Ray had grunted a response and hung up. Mafalda knew that he would report all of this to Granny Patreaux, who would most likely be mightily displeased. The thought of Granny displeased made her stomach queasy. She could be unreasonable at times.
 

Her thoughts went back to the night when a policeman had come to the door to tell them—she and her mother who she so strongly resembled—that her father was dead . . . he and another man killed in a hold-up across town, shot down by cops just like himself. Mafalda felt the cop had come to give them the bad news, himself, so that he could let his eyes feast on the two women left behind, defenseless now that daddy was dead. That was Chicago.
 

After her father had been killed, they had come back to Louisiana, because they were part of the Patreaux family, after all—Daddy’s family. It had all sounded so idyllic until they arrived and saw the weathered island, and the derelict and twisted funhouse—and the stern and maniacal matriarch and her weird brood of hangers-on.
 

She remembered another summer night years later, when her mother had disappeared. “Gone away,” Granny had told her, stroking her hair and staring past her with her witch’s eyes. “Your momma never was no good, and now she’s run off and left you for your poor old granny to take care of.”
 

Mafalda never had quite believed the story, always suspecting that the old woman was mad, or something maybe far worse, and the way Culver Ray and Bertrand looked at her made her skin crawl. She had thick enough skin to hide her true thoughts about them, however, as she sensed crawling beneath the surface out on Patreaux Island there were some very dark goings-on, which in time she would be expected to become a part of. Her worst fears were confirmed one evening when Granny had sent Culver Ray for her.
 

There in the moonlight, Granny had held court, and told her that she was sixteen now, and it was time to start earning her keep. They would open the house up again and Mafalda would dance. Granny would bring in a lady from New Orleans who would teach her everything that she needed to know.
 

“If anybody asks, and believe me, honey, nobody will, you’re eighteen. Now, don’t you disappoint your poor old Granny.”
 

So, under the tutelage of a brassy old girl with big fake breasts and bleach blond hair, Mafalda had learned her trade, and in time she had perfected her routine, adding the snakes. Things had gone well until one night Granny had called another counsel. It seemed that her dance routine was very popular, indeed. In fact, some gentlemen liked it so much that they had approached her dear old Granny and expressed a desire to meet Mafalda, and perhaps even entertain her for the evening.
 

“I need you to be nice to these gentlemen. Don’t let your poor old Granny down.”
 

Mafalda had endured this hellish indentured servitude for several months, but in the end she had run away to one of the gentlemen callers, not because she loved him, but because he was wealthy and offered to get her out of the situation, and it was the only way out that she had. The apartment she lived in belonged to that man. He was rarely in town, and sometimes he seemed to have gone from her life forever, but then, once or twice every few months, he would come by, and then she was reminded all too well of just how she had gotten here. Because on those nights, what she did with him was really no different from what Granny had her doing with other men, out on Patreaux Island.
 

The thing that Mafalda found herself contemplating the most now, was the fact that after Roland completed his business here, he’d be leaving. She liked him, she supposed, because he was different. He was strong, he had purpose, and he was . . . decent, and she sensed that he always had been. She realized that decency was something she’d seen precious little of in her life.
 

Mafalda blinked suddenly and shook her head. The door­bell had rung. She smiled, and found herself half skipping to the door. Had Roland come back already?
 

Christ, honey, you have got it bad for this guy, she smiled to herself, but when she got to the door and looked through the peephole, her smiled disappeared. Out there on the stoop stood Culver Ray.

Chapter 23

Tiller awoke. He tried to sit up, one, two, three times, before his body obliged him. He got up slowly and groaned, rubbing the back of his head.
 

Corsack, you bastard.
He realized that whatever the guy’s plan might have been, leveling with him about his talk with Bishop and Burns had lit a fire under the man, and sped those plans up considerably.
 

“No good deed goes unpunished,” Tiller said aloud, to no one.
 

He felt under his shoulder. Corsack had left him his pistol. That was odd. In his place, Tiller would certainly have disarmed someone he’d just pistol-whipped—unless he figured that they might be needing their gun later on, and didn’t want to leave them defenseless.
 

Groggy, Tiller looked around the area that Corsack’s directions had taken them. It was a forested area, bordered by a swamp. The land was semi-flat, sloping gently down toward the water. There were lights in the distance, and beyond the water, more trees. They were on the bayou, Tiller reasoned.
 

Instinct told him that was the direction that Corsack had gone, after sapping him and dragging him into the underbrush. Despite the welt that throbbed behind his right ear, he felt almost as if Corsack had knocked him out to protect him from something, as much as to buy himself some time. But protect him from what? Two guns were always better than one when things got hot and hairy.
 

Tiller shook his head. He’d kick Corsack’s ass, just as soon as they made sure the guy’s wife was safe.
 

“Poor misguided son-of-a-bitch,” he muttered, and moved down toward the water. There was a low suspension bridge there. As he approached, Tiller heard something that sounded like the world’s largest bullfrog utter a long low moan. Alligators. The sluice of water under the bridge was full of them, six feet long, and larger. He wondered why so many would gather together in one place—unless there was plenty of good eating. He tried not to think about just what someone had been feeding them as he walked over the shaky, antique-looking timbers of the suspension bridge.
 

Patreaux Island. So, Corsack had realized that this was where Longville had gone.
 

Tiller shook his head. He realized that Bishop and Burns had used him to apply pressure to Corsack, because they knew that Roland had come out here, and that once Corsack caught wind of it, he would either lead them to the place where the drugs were hidden, or to the people who were holding his wife. Either way it was win-win for them.
 

“Bishop, you clever bastard,” Tiller smirked to himself. “Well played.” They hadn’t been followed, because they had most likely planted a GPS tracking device on that spiffy new rental car that Roland had procured. No doubt, they were on the way out here now. All Corsack’s caution in selecting a narrow, close street to allow him to spot a tail more easily, had been for naught. Bishop had been two steps ahead of them all along. Tiller realized that, even as he had sat fuming in Bishop’s office, Bishop had been working it all out in his head.
 

Tiller crossed the bridge and realized that Corsack had brought them up behind the funhouse. No doubt, Longville would have parked and approached from the front.
 

Directly in front of Tiller was an overgrown lot. He hoped there were no alligators lurking in the high grass. The thought made him pull his revolver and take an involuntary step to the side. Beyond the weeded area, there was a backyard that had been converted into a small amusement park of sorts. There were several small, brightly painted buildings linked together, and a raised catwalk ran in a circle over them, so that a person could exit the funhouse via a second story balcony and look down on the goings-on from a variety of vantage points. The idea seemed sinister to Tiller for some reason.
 

The Funhouse itself was obviously an old plantation home. Why someone would want to take a grand old house like that and convert it into a second-rate amusement park was beyond him, but he had seen so much of the human race’s insanity over the years that nothing surprised him.
 

Tiller made his way through the weeds and found himself walking on pavement. That, at least reassured him. Alligators didn’t like pavement, did they? Tiller realized that he didn’t know too much about alligators. Have to read up on them. He came to the rear corner of the first small building and peered around the corner. As he stepped around it, to his right he saw a human figure, standing there, immobile. He swung fast and brought his pistol up. At that moment, the clouds parted in the bayou night, like a dark silk handkerchief pulled slowly from a crystal ball, and silvery ghost light illuminated the tableau—a detective, far from his home, holding a stuffed clown at gunpoint.
 

His captive regarded him with a painted smile. The mannequin held one hand upward, as if holding a balloon, though the hand was empty.
 

Tiller sighed. “I knew this was going to get weird, I just frikkin’ knew it.” He moved around the wide wall, toward the front of the house. He grunted when he saw the blue Saturn, sitting out front on the gravel. So, Longville was in the funhouse, somewhere. He wondered if he had encountered Corsack yet. Or Fain.
 

Tiller moved to the front door and into the hall beyond and pulled out a pocket-sized flashlight. He shined its beam around the hallway and took a step forward, then stopped. He knelt and examined the floor more cautiously.
 

Tiller took out knife and, opening it with one hand, he carefully slid it under what appeared to be a gap between the floor tiles.
 

He pried the tile upward. The darkness that yawned beneath the tile, and the resistance that the tile gave to his knife blade told him what it really was: a spring-loaded trap door, one that opened downward.
 

“Holy Jesus.”
 

Tiller looked cautiously around the rest of the hall, and now the tiles in certain parts of the floor revealed themselves to his careful inspection for what they were, doors down to some unknown room or rooms. His mind went back to the alligators in the ditch outside, and something within his gut churned.
 

“Christ on the cross, what’s been going on out here?”
 

After a minute, Tiller edged forward into that dark hallway. There were no trap doors close to the wall, he saw. The trick was to stay close, very close, to the wall. Slowly, he edged past the trap doors and their invitation to unknown fate, and presently he was past them, in a long hallway. He walked as quietly as possible, listening, looking. Small rooms, no more than alcoves, opened on either side of him, little mouths of darkness. They contained things that were weird and scary to Tiller: mirrors that distorted his image, a stuffed chimpanzee, a portrait with holes for eyes.
 

All of the small alcoves were covered with layers of cobwebs. It was obvious that if anyone had come in here in recent years, they hadn’t gone much farther than the front room.
 

The corridor ended at a small room that lacked furnishings of any kind. There were stairwells, three of them. One on either side led up, while the one in the end of the room that Tiller was facing led down. He had a feeling that what he was looking for was down, and so he took that staircase, keeping his light on the floor. No more trap doors; that was good. The stairwell led to a back door, however, rather than down into the bowels of the house. Tiller tried the knob. It was unlocked. He cautiously opened the door.
 

Tiller stepped cautiously out into the quiet night, once more. He looked across the back yard, out over the way he had come in, but from a different angle. He saw now that there was a low, one-story house beyond the trees and the high bamboo that had been on his left when he had walked across the bridge on his way here. There were lights on in the house. Something told him that the Patreaux family lived there.