Symphony of Blood, A Hank Mondale Supernatural Case (29 page)

“Who knows about the house?”

“Well, we have a big house in East Hampton. Everyone knows about that. But this other house is a secret. It’s at the far tip of Montauk. My father only goes there when he wants to get away. Nobody would expect us to be in Montauk.”

“Well, excuse me. Is that where the paupers live?”

“Very funny.”

“Why didn’t you mention it right away?”

“I don’t know. Why do you always talk to me like a cop? You’re not a cop, Hank Mondale. Get that through your head.”

“Okay. Knock it off. Who knows about the place in Montauk?”

“
Greenwal
. Bill Palmer. Horace and the guys.”

“In other words, no one who’s alive.”

“Yeah. I guess so.”

“Good. Let’s go.”

We jumped on the Cross Bronx Expressway. The traffic was moving fast; tractor-trailers whipped by at speeds upwards of eighty miles per hour. The Corolla stayed steady at sixty; I made sure of that. No need to draw any attention, just stay in the middle lane at a safe cruising speed. Not too fast. Not too slow.

As the
Throgs
Neck Bridge approached, I slowed down and eased into one of the cash lanes for the oncoming toll. Mackenzie began to twitch in her seat.

“What?” I snapped, my hands leaving the wheel to gesture at her. She was starting to irritate me.

“Look at all those cops.”

There were about a dozen lanes for the traffic to pass through the tollbooths, a uniformed cop with a neon-colored bib stood at the side of each lane.

“They’re just transit cops. They stand out there all day. It’s their job.”

“They are going to notice us.” Her knees were knocking at a rapid pace. She began to rub her nose and sniffle.

“Knock it off. We’ll be fine if you just relax. Don’t give them any reason to look at us.”

“Shit. Shit. Shit. They are
SO
going to notice us!”

I reached over and grabbed her knees, forcing them to stop fidgeting. “Relax! Please.”

“Fine,” she whispered, looking down as she did.

We coasted up to the booth and I rolled down the window. I handed a twenty towards the uniformed toll clerk. Without actually looking at him, I said, “Good morning.”

He grunted in reply, took a full ten seconds to count my change, then handed it to me.

I rolled up the window and gassed the pedal, very lightly and the Corolla lurched forward. Two transit cops were standing at the edge of the lane, chit-chatting.

“They are totally going to notice us,” she said as she rubbed her nose and sniffled, her legs fidgeting again.

“Relax.”

She reached towards the radio and turned it up, just as a cop stepped in front of us and held out his arm, gesturing for us to stop.

“Shit!” she said. “We’re so fucked!”

“
Shhh
! He’s just crossing the lane.”

The cop walked through the lane, then turned back, yelled something to his buddy and laughed. Then, he walked on. I hit the gas, this time hard, and quickly merged into traffic.

“Goddamn, I thought we were so busted,” Mackenzie said, half laughing and half sighing. She picked up her pocketbook and starting shuffling through it.

“You need to calm down. You aren’t helping matters any.”

“Yeah, yeah. Whatever, daddy.”

“Knock it off.”

She pulled out a small glass vial; the glass was tinted and it had a black top. She unscrewed the top, and I could see the white powder.

“What are you doing?” I wanted to reach over and smack it out of her hands, but I restrained myself.

“Bud out. I’m a big girl.”

She poured a bit of the powder onto her hand between her thumb and forefinger. Mackenzie inhaled hard and loudly. Her eyes fluttered and then she sniffed and snorted, then played with her lips and rubbed her nose. She set up another blast and did it again in the other nostril.

“Do you really need to do that?”

“I’ll share. Do you want some?”

I felt tingles run through my body. Part of me really did want a blast of that poison, but I knew I’d regret it, in more ways than one.

“No, thanks. Just do what you
gotta
do and put that shit away. What if we get pulled over?”

“Yeah, right. If we get pulled over the coke will be the least of our worries.”

I looked down and noticed the speedometer was over seventy, almost to seventy-five miles per hour. I let off the gas and braked.

“Take it easy,” she said as she almost dropped her stash. “What’s your problem?”

“You. That shit distracted me. The last thing we need right now is to get pulled over for speeding.” The car evened out at a steady sixty again, and I coasted.

She pulled a cigarette out of her bag and lit it. “How about one of these?”

“I don’t smoke.”

“Well you need to
fuckin
’ mellow out, man. You are acting like such a tight ass.” She began looking through her bag again. “You need a shot. That’s what you need. I know you drink.”

“I could use a shot. Damn, we left the bottle of Jim Beam at your friend’s place.”

“I have a bottle of Goose in here somewhere.” She continued looking through the bag and then finally came out with an airplane bottle of vodka. “Here. Drink. Please.”

I took the bottle from her and eyeballed it.

“It’s vodka. Just drink it.”

“I hate vodka.” I popped the top, took a deep breath, then swigged out of the bottle. I shook with spasms while forcing the booze down.

“Good. Maybe now you’ll shut up until we get to Montauk.”

We got off the exit for the Cross Island Parkway and came around the bend. Traffic was bumper to bumper. It was looking to be a long trip.

The traffic eased for a bit and we made our way out east on the Long Island Expressway. We hit periods of calm, followed by heavy stop-and-go delays. The traffic patterns were as choppy as her moods. She went from fiddling with the radio, constantly changing stations, to dozing off and then back to fidgeting. At times she yapped incessantly about mindless drivel: soap operas, rock bands I’d never heard about or cared about, her makeup…whatever. She just needed to hear herself talk; she didn’t seem to care much if I was paying attention. More times than not, I wasn’t.

When she took the vial out of her pocketbook again, I said, “You should stop doing that shit.”

“And you should stop trying to be my daddy.” She poured some powder out onto her hand just as we hit a deep pothole; it spilled. “Shit! You did that on purpose.”

“I did not.” Then I turned to her and said firmly, “But if I had, I wouldn’t deny it.”

“Fine.” She took a book of matches out of her pocketbook, folded it in half, then used it to dig some powder out of the vial. She sniffed it up successfully, then quickly screwed the top back on the vial. “Ha! See. No mess.”

“I’m sure you’re real proud.”

She took a cigarette out and lit it. “Why are you such a pain?”

“I don’t care if you snort yourself to oblivion, okay. That’s your father’s problem, not mine. But right now, we need to keep our wits about us and figure out a way out of this mess.”

“You keep your wits about you, and don’t worry about my wits.”

“I’m worried.”

The Expressway let us off on Old Montauk Highway, a thin, four-lane road and we took it all the way to the end. The lighthouse of Montauk Point came into view and we turned off the very last turn of the road, down a quiet side street. On our right was a tree-lined, grassy area, and to our left was a sharp drop and below it the Atlantic Ocean.

The pavement ended abruptly, and I slowed down, almost stopping the car but not quite. We were just slightly rolling as she said, “Keep going, straight ahead.”

I gassed the car and we continued down a dirt path. It was past lunchtime, and my stomach was starting to growl.

“How much further?” I asked.

“Not far. Just keep going.”

The path ran for at least a mile, and it tilted slightly to the right. The ocean stayed to our left but we came around almost full circle and were actually heading west again when the house came in sight.

“That’s it.” She said, although I had already figured it out. It was the only house there; it was the only thing in sight for that matter.

There was a wood, farm-style fence that was closed. The car came to a stop, and I put it in park. I looked over at Mackenzie and she didn’t say a word.

“I guess I should open it.”

“Yeah. It’s not locked. Just push it open.”

I stepped out of the Corolla and walked to the gate. When I pushed the fence, there was a surprising amount of resistance for such a light fence.

“It’s old,” she called out. “You have to really give it a push.”

It creaked loudly as I pushed a little harder, then the rusty hinges gave way and it swung open and smacked the other side and held in place.

I walked back to the car.

“Your father can’t afford to give those hinges a little grease?”

“He hasn’t been here in ages, asshole.”

I shook my head and snickered. “No need for that language, missy.”

“Don’t call me missy, buddy.”

“Okay. Okay. Truce.” I reached my arm towards her. She didn’t move, just staring at my hand like I had leprosy. “Come on,” I coaxed, waving my hand lightly. “We’re going to have to spend some time together. There’s no use bickering.”

Mackenzie’s left eye shut while her right eyeballed me. Then she let out a sigh, full of melodrama and said, “Fine.” She took my hand and shook it, daintily, barely touching me.

“Good,” I said, although things clearly weren’t all that good. I put the car in drive and slowly eased down the dirt path. Gravel crackled in the wheels underneath us and dust kicked in the open window.

The house was simple, by Blake standards anyway: a traditional, two-story white colonial with black shudders around each window; a two-car garage was connected on the west side of the house; the east side had a red brick chimney; to the north was a modest front lawn with overgrown grass that seemed healthy other than a handful of weeds; and to the south was the Atlantic Ocean. I could hear the waves crackle loudly against the dunes, although I couldn’t see it from this side of the house. The salt-water smell filled the air. I didn’t get to smell salt water much in the city; the odor was acrid, but I found it pleasing at the same time. I stopped the car in front of the garage, and we stepped out.

“Is there anything in the garage? We should probably get this car inside and out of sight.”

“Okay.”

She walked towards the front door. I didn’t follow, instead leaning against the car, waiting. There was a wall in front of the door: white painted cinder blocks that ran about three feet high. She stepped on the wall and reached up into a lamp that was posted on the side of the house. Her hand came out with a key ring in it, and she stepped down off the wall, then walked back towards me.

“Nice,” I said. “You rich people are so trusting. Where I come from, if you leave a key in a place like that, you’ll come back to an empty house.”

“Very funny.”

“Who’s kidding?”

The keychain had two keys on it. She took one of the keys and stuck it in the side of the garage door, which activated the automatic door and it rose slowly and loudly—it too hadn’t been lubricated in some time.

“Very nice. Automatic garage door.”

“They don’t have those where you come from either, Hank?”

I shrugged as I stepped back in the car and started it up. “Nope. We don’t even have cable TV yet where I come from.”

“Well, how do you live?” she said in a silly, self-deprecating tone.

I chuckled back as I eased the Corolla into the garage. Once inside, I could see the garage was fairly empty. No car occupied the other side. There were a handful of tools, paint cans and some odds and ends; that was about it. She followed me in and hit the button to let the door back down. She flipped on a light just as the sunlight faded.

“Come on inside,” she said while walking through the door.

There was a hallway with hooks where jackets should go, but the hooks were empty. We passed a utility room with a washing machine and dryer and a shelf filled with cleaning products. Mackenzie walked up a three-step stairway and I followed her up and into the main house.

“This is nice,” I said, looking around a wide open living room. The ceiling was about fifteen feet high and the far wall was windowed, exposing a full view of the crashing waves that ran up the sandy beach. There was a door with a large glass pane. I walked over and opened it. The salt water hit my nose again, stronger than before, as the wind gusts blew it right up my nostrils. “I could really get used to this.”

“It’s okay,” she said in a flat tone that reminded me how she’d taken life for granted. This place was too good to take for granted, even under the circumstances.

“I’ll get the food from the car. How’s the kitchen?”