Shadow Season (26 page)

“No. Both of you stay here. Rack is waiting for me.”

“How do you know? You could be wrong, you gob-shite pisser.”

“That’s why you need to stay here and stand ready. Especially if the lights go out.”

“Madman.”

Finn keeps one hand on the wall, leading himself out into the corridor, where he moves quickly and efficiently up to Roz’s apartment. He’s kicked in plenty of doors in his time. This one goes easy. Finn slips inside.

He has an extra cane folded under the bed. He has his own little drawer of effects. The closet is full of his clothes and coats. It’s not until after he strips off his torn shirt that he wonders why, after all this time, he doesn’t have a key to Roz’s apartment. It proves, perhaps, that they’ve never fully trusted each other.

His life is full of proof without substance. Answers without acknowledgment. He gets into dry clothes, puts on another pair of shoes. He finds one of the stupid hats with the ball on top. He tears the ball off and puts on the wool cap. He snaps his cane open. He readies the knife in his belt for a quick draw.

This is all just the warm-up to a different showdown. Ray will be out in three weeks.

THE SCREAMING TENSION INSIDE IS DAMPENED
by his own history. He could never talk the father off the roof, never take the shot that might save the kid. It was Ray who got the job done, and Finn who got the meaningless medal. He realizes that, in spite of everything, he owes Ray a great deal.

Sweeping his cane in front of him, Finn moves quickly and confidently down the hall to the staircase, rushing down the steps to the lobby. The pounding wind brings up a low C, and now it’s almost a monkish chant. It tells him more blood is coming, but he shouldn’t be afraid. Its voice is as clear as the shouts of his lieutenant, the smarmy voice of the mayor. He’s no more a harbinger of murder than anyone else. Finn knows it’s true.

He moves out the door into the storm. Its rage meets his own. He moves in the direction to the Carriage House at a nice clip through the drifts. He stumbles along the snow-choked walkway but keeps his heading. If he’s wrong, he’ll overshoot and be lost in the blizzard. He listens for the chimes and can’t hear shit. That doesn’t matter. He hopes it doesn’t matter. He can do this. He has to do this.

He blunders to the hedges outside the dining hall.
He’s somewhere near where Pudge’s body should be, if Rack hasn’t moved him. Finn fights his way past and gets inside. He heads for the east door.

Outside again, he staunchly marches toward the Main House and is almost carried there by the driving wind. It’s hard going through the snow, but he’s inured, protected this time. He’s got his fucking hat on.

His breathing turns heavy, and with each breath is a growl that forms the opening “J” sound of their names. Everyone needs a mantra to keep them going. He’s had many over the last few years. Now he has two more. The names take shape in his mouth. He begins to spit them into the storm. He says, Jesse. He says, Judith. With each step he’s brought closer to them and his own future.

Harley Moon, Finn’s own personal ghost child, is dancing nearby. Maybe out on a frozen river or tangled in the white treetops. Up high on the snowbanks, twirling, her hair wild. He hears her saying, You’re walking forward to your own doom, blind man.

Finn struggles along faster.

He can imagine what Judith thinks when she finds Vi’s body in the corridor. He can imagine it but chooses not to. He thinks of what kind of scars Jesse is going to be left with after tonight. Whether Rack is on top of her right now, whether he plans on it soon. Is he one of those bastards who can have sex ten times a day and still burn with lust? Finn remembers Rack’s coat, made of animal skins, and thinks of him rutting like a barnyard beast. He wonders whether either of the women is still alive.

Reaching the west door, Finn pushes his way inside.
He doesn’t shake the snow from himself. He grabs the knife and swings his cane, knowing that Rack is somewhere deeper in the building.

But he has to inch along anyway, he has to be sure.

The door slams behind him. It doesn’t matter. Noise is his friend. He slaps the cane down. He sees nothing with his facial vision.

His mind continues drifting, trying to drag his body along. He shouts Judith’s name and then Jesse’s name. He calls for Rack. He’s practically screaming. His voice is the voice of a lot of crazy bastards he’s had to put down in the past.

“Jesse! Judith!”

He refuses to think of Violet’s body at the other end of the hall. He forces his thoughts away from her saying how much she loves him. He presses past the day they almost made love, when he ran his hands over her. The effort makes him grunt.

Finn moves to the stairs, taking them two at a time.

The “J” names want out. His lips part, but instead of shouting now, he speaks softly, as if in conversation. “Jesse. Judith.”

He holds the banister tightly as he rounds the landing. Smacking his cane against the wall, he gets a reading of what’s ahead. No one’s in the corridor. He can hear nothing, smell nothing. He tries Judith’s office first.

The door is locked. Forcing it open is easy, he doesn’t even need to use all his weight. His strength has been waiting for him to accept it. The door bows inward and the lock snaps. He asks, “Judith?”

He sweeps the floor with his cane. He puts his back to each corner, hoping Rack is hiding and will jump the
easy target. Finn’s breathing begins to hitch and he takes a second to calm himself once more. He slips the carving knife back into his belt, under his coat.

He’s impressed by the scope and magnitude of the design that has brought them to this moment. The secrets, the storm, the easy choice of victims. Vi just sitting there outside his office, waiting for him.

Then he hears his name, murmured.

He doesn’t know if it’s Judith or Jesse who speaks it.

Or if it’s Dani or Vi or Roz, reaching back through the veil to find him.

Or if it’s Rack, wearing his shadow.

Out in the hall, he immediately knows he’s not alone.

He slaps his cane and senses two people in the corridor, about twenty-five feet in front of him.

“Miss-ster Fi-inn,” Jesse says, her voice broken by a panicked tremolo. The sound of his own name is every nightmare he’s ever had.

“Jesse, are you all right?”

“I think so,” she says and breaks down sobbing. “There’s a man. He’s … he’s holding me. He’s got … he’s got this knife… the really big sharp knife… oh God, he’s licking me,
he’s licking my ear—
”

Finn hears her trying to control herself and stifle the tears, but she’s fourteen, for Christ’s sake.

“Where’s Mrs. Perry?”

“In your office. He punched her in the face and kicked her. He kept kicking her. He kicked her in the mouth. Her teeth. Some of them, they broke.” She stops and sucks air like she’s been underwater for minutes. She goes into a coughing fit.
“He’s chewing my earlobe.”

Jesse squeals in pain. Rack is hurting her.

Finn takes a step and Jesse shrieks.

And Rack saying nothing, doing nothing, wanting his nine grand.

Finn waits. There’s nothing else for him to do.

He keeps his eyes on Rack. His shadow keeps its eyes on him. They are swaying together, moving to the rhythm of their shared pulse. They converse in a language made of darkness, beyond comprehension.

It’s instinctual, genetic. It’s found in the structure of blood going back ten thousand generations to when man first looked out at the night and sought refuge behind a rock. He and Rack are brothers closer than Rack was to Pudge, closer than Finn’s ever been to Ray.

This second is so brightly lit and clear that Finn actually turns his head aside as if to shield his eyes from the sun.

“He bit me, Mr. Finn! He bit my cheek. He bit my ear. He’s biting my ear, Mr. Finn! He’s got a knife. He’s nicked my throat. He’s doing it right now. Oh God,
I’m bleeding!”

Finn knows. He can smell it.

IN HIS HOSPITAL ROOM, WHITTLED FOOT
hiked in the air on pulleys, blood smears on the bed, Ray’s grinning because he knows Finn has made a serious mistake shooting Carlyle’s boy.

Turns out it really is Carlyle’s boy. Finn thought he recognized him. Donald Carlyle, twenty-five, had a taste for back-alley preop transsexual prostitutes, chicks with dicks who let their hormone injections slip so they still had a touch of five o’clock shadow. Donnie had taken over the job of punching Ray’s ticket, trying to show his father he could handle whacking somebody. These mob kids, they’re always insecure as hell and have so much to prove to their mob boss daddies.

Ray’s grinning because now Finn’s in the soup right alongside him. No way that Carlyle can let something like this go. It doesn’t matter that Finn has nothing to say on the stand and can’t sink anybody’s boat. Carlyle’s going to move on him. And if Finn’s got any sense at all, he’s got to step on Carlyle first. It’s what Ray’s been hoping for.

Cops come in and out of the hospital room, every one of them giving Finn a look. Some seem proud of
him, and some have eyes that seem to say, You’ve screwed the pooch bad, son.

After the body is carried off and Finn is taken down to the station to give his report, IAD comes after him again. They want him to testify to a whole load of shit that isn’t true and a lot that is. He wonders why they need his testimony for anything, they’ve already got wiretaps, street sources, digital video feeds, and tax evasion documents. Nothing he says will help their case in the slightest.

It doesn’t matter. They think they’ve got him by the nuts. He wants to call Dani but they tell him no. They tell him they can get him into witness protection, move him out to Tempe, Arizona.

Finn thinks, Arizona, you can’t play a round of golf anywhere in the whole damn state without sharing the green with a mob enforcer turned rat or some syndicate accountant who took too big a slice of pie.

He’s cut loose at four in the morning. He owns the roads heading home beneath a vault of night littered with blazing stars. He tries the house again and gets voice mail. His thoughts are a riot of impossibilities and dead ends. He and Danielle are headed for North Carolina, not the fucking desert.

When Finn is a half mile from home Ray phones and says, “You’ll find Carlyle in the usual place. The fish market. Do it soon, he’s going to move fast on you.”

Finn’s too tired to think about it anymore. And it’s his anniversary tomorrow. He wonders if he should broach the subject of moving to Tempe before or after he gives Dani the diamond pendant he’s bought her.

She’s asleep, of course, when he slips into bed.
Spooning her, he’s amazed, once again, that she’s still here, that she’s always here for him. He drapes his hand over her thigh. With only a slight stirring, she grabs his wrist and draws him closer.

Morning arrives without warning. Finn doesn’t even remember shutting his eyes. He’s immediately alert as Dani exits the master bathroom, nude and with a smear of baby powder across her right breast. She glides into the hall and down the stairs.

He needs a shower. Under the hot jets he feels a little sharper and more optimistic. He allowed Ray and the IAD to rattle him. Carlyle isn’t a fool. He’s a middling crime lord and a businessman. Pricks like that don’t put their own kids above cold cash and common sense.

Downstairs, Dani is mixing eggs in a bowl. She’s naked at the stove. His heart does a little stutter and begins to ache. She’s that beautiful.

She glances back over her freckled shoulder and asks, “Pancakes or French toast?” Still moist from his shower Finn leans into her, nuzzling her throat, nipping at the throbbing blue pulse there, and then draws her down to the kitchen floor. He likes the feeling of the cool Italian tile under his back.

They make love fast and with a crazed kind of intensity. It’s angry sex except he’s not angry. She’s miffed that he left the way he did last night and still hasn’t explained where the hell he was. He feels like he hasn’t been inside her in years.

On top of him, his cock slipping from her wetness as he continues to pant on the floor, Dani levers herself up but doesn’t completely stand. She reaches for the junk drawer behind her, slides it open, grabs something,
and then sits back down on him. It’s a hell of a way to fuck a man. The motion tickles him, begins to arouse him again. He hardens enough to ease back inside her. He palms sweat from his eyes.