The Devil's Redhead (19 page)

“You two married?” Felix asked Shel in his throatish whisper.

The question took her utterly off-guard. “No,” she answered.

“Why not?”

His eyes were deeply set in his face, the result of having lost so much weight. Shel had never seen him well, but she had seen pictures, and he had been tall and fearsome. His eyes retained much of that power.

“It's never come up,” she said.

“You been together how long?”

“Three years.”

“Three years,” Felix repeated, “and it never came up? What, there somebody else?”

“No,” Shel said instantly. She wondered what they knew about her past, what they knew about Danny.

“I been married twenty-one years,” Felix said matter-of-factly. “I believe in marriage, the right two people. Cheryl, twenty-one years, she's been solid as a rock. You remind me of her a little.”

“Thank you,” Shel said.

He gestured with his chin across his shoulder toward the breakfast nook. “What do I do with him?”

Shel found herself searching for a reply. She doubted this sat well with a man who believed in marriage. “I was not aware,” she managed finally, “that it was in my hands.”

“I'm asking,” Felix said.

“He's suffered enough,” Shel said.

“For what?”

Shel closed her eyes. She felt afraid. “For his mistakes.”

“Is that what they were? Mistakes?”

“Yes,” Shel said.

“I'm not so sure,” Felix said. “I mean, I don't know that I believe in such a thing as a mistake. I think a person's pointed in one direction from the day he's born. He may get sidetracked, because life can fuck you good, but basically everybody finds a way back into the saddle. And I gotta ask you, is what's happened, what he did, a case of life knocking him off his horse, or was he headed that way the whole time.”

“I believe,” Shel said, “people make mistakes.”

Felix looked at the floor, clenched his jaw and shook his head. “I don't like that answer,” he said.

“I'm sorry,” she replied. “I wish I had another one.”

“I believe that.” Felix thought for a moment then turned to his bodyguard. Nodding toward Frank, Felix said, “Take him out to the cars with the others, all right?”

Buddy nodded, moved toward the breakfast nook and inserted his hand in Frank's armpit. He lifted Frank to his feet and led him toward the door. Frank's eyes met Shel's, but the only words he managed before leaving were,
“Hasta luego.
”

Shel cringed and closed her eyes. Felix shook his head. Once they were alone, Felix said, “So what am I supposed to believe, that he's gonna go on making mistakes?”

“I think,” Shel said, “he's learned a lesson.”

“Hasta luego
? He's learned a fucking lesson?”

Shel couldn't think of what to say. Felix grimaced. “What sort of guarantee I got he doesn't make a million more mistakes, each one worse than the last?”

“I'm the guarantee,” Shel said. “I'll watch him.”

Felix shook his head. “That what you are? A baby-sitter? A wife, there's a bond, there's an oath. A wife can't be made to testify. What's a goddamn baby-sitter?”

“I'll stay right here,” Shel said. “And I won't testify.”

“Why?”

Shel looked at her hands. “What's the alternative?” she asked.

“For who?”

“Frank.”

Felix thought this over for a moment. He said, “You're being honest.”

“Yes.”

“I appreciate that.”

She looked up. “I'm glad.”

Felix studied her again, a bit longer this time. “I don't have a problem with you, do I?”

“I don't know anything,” she said. “I don't know where, what or why. I barely know who. I tried to drop a dime on anybody, what could I say? I'd get laughed at by the cops, or used and then fucked over. And I'd still have you to contend with, wouldn't I?”

Felix didn't say anything.

“Besides which,” Shel continued, “I don't like the law, I don't run to the law. I don't believe much in the law, to be honest.”

“Like the sound of that,” Felix replied. He reached out for her hand. She gave it to him, and he held it in a surprisingly strong and bony grip. “Because, you know, if you were to cause any problems, I can find you. Not one man, not one woman, in all my years, been able to hide.”

“I've heard that,” Shel said. “And I believe it.”

“If I have to track you down, I'm not gonna worry about my manners. People'll get hurt. Not just you.”

She looked up into his gaze and thought: Danny. If they didn't know about him now, they'd find out when the time came.

“I understand,” she said.

“So when the boys get back, they'll find you here.”

She nodded. “Where would I run? What would it get me?”

Felix let go of her hand. “Funny how much you remind me of Cheryl,” he said. “Help me to the door.”

Frank waited in the backseat of the car with Lyle beside him. The crank-and-fentanyl hum was wearing off, he'd need a booster in short order and he knew he wouldn't have to ask. Everyone seemed quite content to keep him loaded.

He saw Felix appear in silhouette in the kitchen doorway, Shel to the side, guiding him down the steps. They looked like father and daughter. Shel let go of Felix's arm as Buddy took over and she took a step backward up the steps. Felix walked slowly through the porch-lit dooryard toward the cars, leaning heavily on his stick. As he passed the first vehicle he said in a loud and raspy whisper, “Good luck,” then he walked down toward the side of the car in which Frank sat. Felix stopped at the window and peered in at Frank, then gestured for Dayball to approach. When Dayball was beside him, Felix said, nodding toward Frank, “Make sure the brothers understand. Comes a time, no more good graces. Job gets done.”

From the porch Shel watched as the cars backed up in the gravel and drove off. Their headlights sprayed the house and the sagging fence and then the rain-wet hill as they made their way from the property in a slow parade.

She turned and went back into the house and wandered. Rowena and Duval were gone, sent to a movie by Roy. She was, in a sense, free.

As though pulled by gravity she returned to the window where Dayball had found her earlier and she sat back down in the same chair. She picked up the package of cigarettes she'd left on the sill, probed the package for a smoke, then put it back down again and put her head in her hand.

Felix was right. What Frank had done went far beyond the orbit of “mistake.” He'd been keening down one disastrous path since the very beginning. Nothing she'd done had changed a thing. Except she'd learned something. She'd learned why she felt for him the way she did, learned what fueled the little machine of pity in her heart. What thou doest for the least of my brethren. There but for fortune. It could be you.

She'd always believed that she and Frank weren't all that different. Poor, white, luckless, children of busted homes, bruised bodies and cheap promises. American deadlegs. Had she been born male, she might well have wandered a path like his. A fuckup careening toward a tragedy. And though she hadn't meant for it to happen, she'd cherished the intensity, the drama, the sense of purpose Frank had brought to her life. It had filled the vacuum Danny's absence had created. She hadn't foreseen the trap it would become.

In particular, she hadn't seen that Frank's psychic vulnerabilities had a killing edge. She woke up often, thinking of the twins. She felt guilty, felt used and foolish and betrayed, and at the same time realized why he'd done it.

The secret lay in that mournful little phrase he was always muttering: Everything I do, I do for you. Like a pup that brings you a mangled bird in his teeth, blood all over, tail wagging like mad. So proud. He did it for me, to get my attention, to make me understand—there but for fortune, it could be you—to make me suffer the way he does. To make me guilty, like him.

She reached for her cigarettes again.

Abatangelo remained hidden in his hilltop shelter of oak and laurel, poised behind his tripod and camera. Overhead, the cloud front had broken. The sagging meadow, the ribbon of asphalt, it all came alive beneath the winter moon, charged with unearthly detail.

For the first three rolls of film he'd shot, he'd used the Passive Light Intensifier, and until he had the chance to fiddle and prod in the darkroom he'd have little idea how the prints would appear. Now, with the moonlight, he used 3200 Tri-X with the telephoto, closing down as far as he could and exposing each frame for as long as ten seconds. For the longer shots, the ones of the compound at the back of the property, he'd used an even slower telephoto, a 300 mm. He shot three frames for each composition, to yield a continuum of detail and compensate for botched exposures. The shots would take some pushing in the bath, just to produce a semblance of detail.

To what end, he wondered.

He'd managed to shoot the cars coming and going, but due to the timed exposures they'd most likely reduce to nothing more than a blaze of headlight and blurred masses of shadow. Still, he'd caught a few shots of the men coming in and out, milling around the cars, and that might lead to something. The truck that had left just a while ago would resemble a long, milky smear flanked by moth-like wings of haze. One spot would be clear, the truck's grill and cabin, maybe even the driver in silhouette, caught as the aperture closed. Abatangelo would bathe the prints in Acufine to sharpen the grain, then blow them up fivefold to see if he could make out the license numbers.

For all the preceding activity, the place seemed strangely quiet now. He presumed the truck had taken off the last incriminating whatever; the compound was locked up, any contraband removed, he supposed, and if they had a meth lab back there they'd hauled off the chemicals and dregs and dumped them, probably in a neighboring rancher's well water. The man who had been posted at the county road had driven off with the others and hadn't come back. The ranch house was lit up here and there, squares of light curtained dully, just another lonely house in the shadow of Mt. Diablo in eastern CoCo County. A scented wind rustled the trees. From within the drowsy herd milling below, a bull let out a moaning roar and shook its head, rattling the clapperless bell strung around its neck.

Bending down to peer through the viewfinder again, he spotted a distant, solitary figure. A woman. Dry-mouthed, he watched each step. Even after all this time, the years of having nothing but memories of her in his mind's eye, he knew.

She hurried down the gravel lane away from the ranch house, walking with her shoulders hunched, arms tight to her body, battling the cold. As she passed the barn he dug the lens cap from his pocket, fit it into place and bagged his equipment, shouldering the tripod for the run downhill. Shel reached the first outbuilding, lifted the rolling aluminum door and disappeared inside. Shortly a truck engine shrieked then purred and headlights sprayed the gravel outside.