The Devil's Redhead (34 page)

Cohn said, “Well, wasn't that inspirational.”

“Tony—”

“Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that you can fill me in on a lot that's still missing from the picture. That may prove helpful at some point, but frankly I don't want to hear it now. The most important thing is, you need to stand clear. The scenario I laid out, the thing about laying all this on the sociopath, this Frank clown, I don't mean to take the most twisted view possible. Not that there's a good or better way this thing could've gone down. Christ. What I mean is, it's all hypothetical at this point. And I need to see every way it could have happened, especially since the cops appear keen to pin it on you.”

Abatangelo groaned and started to object but Cohn cut him off again. “No. You listen. I realize the most important thing to you is finding out what happened to your friend. That isn't my chief concern. My chief concern is you. When this lead detective—I spoke with him, by the way, and Waxman's right, he's sharp—when he calls, it'll be to me, not you. I took care of that much. If they want you for questioning, the two of us go together, period. Given how fast this thing's spinning out of control, you're not saying word one without immunity. As for the Bureau of Prisons, if they want to yank you in for a violation—”

“On what grounds?”

“Any fucking thing they want,” Cohn snapped, his eyes catching the light again. “What are you, dense?” He looked away, collecting himself. “Do you have somewhere to stay?”

“Home.”

“I'm not sure that's wise. You said it yourself, there may be people after you.”

“I've got a home, Tony, that's where I go.” The thought of possible harm to himself seemed inconsequential. Almost inviting. “I'm not hiding from anybody.”

“It's not just some redneck bam squad I'm worried about,” Cohn said. “I'm trying to work it so, if your probation gets revoked, you can surrender on your own terms. Instead of being taken down at your apartment like a fucking abscond.”

Abatangelo shrugged. “I smell feds at the door, I'll shag out the back. Won't be the first time.”

Cohn grimaced and scanned the parking lot. “No,” he said quietly. “That won't do. You have to listen to me. You do what I say, and only what I say. It's got to be like that or I pass this on.” He gestured out the window toward Waxman. “You don't need a lawyer, not a press agent. You sure as hell don't need the likes of him.”

Waxman, speaking into the phone now, threw his cigarette onto the asphalt, creating a tiny ricochet of ash. He crushed the butt with the toe of his desert boot then chafed his arm to warm himself.

“Wax is all right,” Abatangelo said. And strangely, he meant it. The remark about a scamming knack for bullshit, it stung. “He just needs to be caught up to speed. Stakes are a little higher than he's used to.”

“I'm advising you,” Cohn said, “not to talk to him.” His voice was surprisingly calm, almost kind, despite the ultimatum.

“Can't do that,” Abatangelo responded. “As fucked as the situation is right now, I back away, let everybody else tell my story while I just sit there, I'm screwed. I've still got Wax's attention right now. I'm the best source he's got. That's leverage, Tony.”

Cohn let loose with a long, slow, dispirited sigh. “I would have thought,” he said, “after what happened tonight in particular, that I would not have to remind you of your deficiencies in the judgment-of-character department. Good God, we're talking murder one here.”

“That's bullshit.”

“It's always bullshit with you,” Cohn barked. The calming kindness was gone. Abatangelo, choosing to ignore that, knocked on the glass to assure Waxman he'd not been forgotten.

“He'll betray you the first chance he gets,” Cohn said. “From the sounds of it, he already has.”

“Interesting tone you're taking.”

“I'm not here to make apologies for myself,” Cohn said, “if that's what you mean.”

Abatangelo turned to look straight at him. “Lucky you.”

After Waxman finished his phone-in, he returned to Cohn's Lexus and the two men drove away. Abatangelo, left behind, returned to the old Dodge Dart. It felt small around him as he got in. Digging his key from his pocket, he inserted it in the ignition and turned. The engine started at once, and warmed up quickly. He found himself strangely comforted by so minor a thing as that.

He put the car in gear and pulled out onto the Delta Highway, heading west through scant traffic toward home. Gripping the wheel, he listened to the thrum of the motor, the high-pitched whistle of the wind keening in from the side vent. The highway lines on the empty road darted forward in the cross-eyed skew of his headlights. It's possible, he reminded himself over and over, that she's all right, alive at least. He could not tell whether that prospect made him feel more committed to finding her, or simply more afraid she was going to suffer. On reflection, given what he'd accomplished so far—or more correctly, what he'd failed to accomplish—one seemed to go with the other.

He spent the rest of the drive in a sullen brood, and by the time he reached North Beach and entered his flat he felt vaguely hopeful at the prospect of unwelcome company. A fight, he thought, that's what I need. Catharsis. Blood. The place was just as he'd left it, though, empty and untouched. In the kitchen he downed several glasses of ice cold tap water, then set his empty glass in the sink and wandered. When he came upon his tape player—Maria Callas still cued up in the cassette port—he turned it on. With the music as background, he dragged a wooden chair across the cracked linoleum floor to the window and stared out across the bay, watching as dawn crept upward in the eastern sky, bathing the far-off hills in a mad wash of color.

CHAPTER

17

Shel sat upright on a bare mattress laid out on a concrete floor. The room was small and stark, with a low ceiling and whitewashed walls. A rough crucifix the size of a candy box hung on one wall, directly across from the wood plank door that Shel had tried repeatedly to open. Through its rough-hewn slatwork she could smell damp earth and a faint stench of rot. There was a root cellar out there, with a bare dirt floor. She remembered it from when they'd dragged her down here, locked her in.

She sat there on the mattress, back propped against the wall, panting from the effort of tramping back and forth. She'd slammed herself against the door, clawed at the planks, tried to pry them apart. She'd grown weaker by the hour, blaming it on fear, exhaustion and the stew of pills in her system. The pain in her head didn't help. It throbbed nonstop behind one eye, erupting from time to time in spearing flashes that made her think her eardrums would crack. Her face and hands dripped with sweat that congealed with the mucus and blood she was constantly wiping away. The wounds Frank had inflicted and Danny had nursed were open and raw again. You're a nasty mess, she thought, trying to wipe her face on her shirt, her hands on the mattress. Don't let them kill you like this.

Across the room, a tarp lay in a shapeless form, tucked into the corner. She'd found herself staring at it off and on, ever since the Mexicans had locked her inside the room alone. The tarp was filthy, encrusted with smears of paint and oil. The only thing in the room except the mattress and the crucifix, it spooked her. That's going to be your shroud, she thought. Then claim it, she told herself. Claim it for your own, wrap yourself in the thing and let them find you like that. Let them know you see right through them, you're scared but not weak. Show them.

She scuttled across the floor, drew the tarp away from the wall and recoiled screaming.

Underneath the tarp, wrapped in clear stiff plastic, lay the naked body of Snuff Akers. His hands and ankles were bound with wire, a wad of filthy cloth jammed deep into his mouth. A bloody scald the size of a tennis ball blackened his temple. His eyes gazed vacantly. A needle and syringe lay with him inside the plastic sheath.

Shel sat there shaking in the middle of the room. Sobs chirped unbidden in her throat and she told herself, You're losing it, girl. Hang in there.

She heard the sound of an approaching motor, then tires on gravel. Doors opened and closed. Men brayed in Spanish and laughed.

She crawled back to the mattress, wiped her face and pressed her back against the wall. Heavy footfalls resounded on the wood plank steps into the cellar, then softer ones across the flagstones and mud. A key rattled in the door lock.

The first one through the door was the wiry one, with the birthmark, the one who spoke English. In a glance he saw the tarp had been pulled away, Snuff's body exposed.

“Takes a sick mind,” she told him, “to do a thing like that.”

He chuckled, not to suggest contempt or mockery, but almost sadly. “Tell that to Gaspar Arevalo and his brothers,” he said. “Only problem, they're dead.”

One of the huge ones she remembered from the night before followed him in, carrying over his shoulder the sagging form of a semiconscious man, the head obscured by a black cloth hood. His hands and ankles were bound with wire like Snuff's. The huge Mexican dipped through the small doorway, ignoring Shel, focusing instead on his load, which he promptly dropped like a sack of cement on the hard floor. The cloth hood muffled the ensuing scream. Despite the invisibility of the face, Shel knew by the clothes who it was.

Lonnie Dayball.

He reeked of vomit and urine. His clothes were rank with it and stained with blood. His whole body twitched, as though from shock. The second huge one wandered in, carrying a baseball bat over his shoulder like an ax. Seeing the tarp drawn away from Snuff's body, he chortled, “Señor Snuffito.
Buenos días.
”

“Snuffito-Bufito,” the other big one chimed.

The smaller one with the birthmark approached the mattress where Shel sat. He gestured with his hand for her to get up.

“Time for a little walk,” he told her. “Some air will be nice, no?”

Behind him, the one with the ball bat swung it back, then cracked it ferociously against the base of Dayball's spine. Dayball convulsed, screaming into the hood. The two large men yipped and clapped. Home run.

“Please,” the smaller one said, taking Shel's hand.

He helped her to her feet. Wrapping her arm across his shoulder, he braced half her weight as she walked. As they ducked through the low doorway, one of the two big ones made kissing sounds from behind. A whispered voice in singsong litled, “Ce-sar-io.”

The little one turned, shooting a hateful glance back at the two of them.
“Bufos
,” he said.

“Ravon
,” one of the others shot back.
“Pendejo.
”

The kissing sounds returned. The little one murmured something to himself that Shel didn't catch, then he turned back to lead her away.

The dirt walls of the root cellar oozed with seeping rainwater. The floors were a slick mess except for the path of flagstones crossing to the far side. The path was flanked by empty wood shelves thick with cobwebs. A scent of old decay lingered. The little one allowed Shel to walk on the flagstones as he trod beside her in the mud. He drew her up the wood plank steps through a pair of hurricane doors just as a second car approached down a long gravel road.

“Quick,” he said. “Around the house.”

He hustled her along as the headlights approached. They turned the corner just as the car, a Mercedes with tinted windows, pulled to a stop outside the root cellar. Behind her, Shel heard two doors open and close.

He let go of her after a moment, to see if she could stand on her own. She tottered but didn't fall. Smiling, she said, “Thank you.” After a moment she decided to risk his name.

“They called you Cesario. Can I call you that?”

He shot her a look of such intense and immediate hostility she almost felt her legs give way. This traffic in names, she realized, it foretold death, but she couldn't suppress the need to talk, to know this man, at least a little, given the likelihood it would be his duty to kill her. In time he said, “Cesar.” Shrugging, he looked away. “What can it matter.”

“My name's Shel,” she told him.

“I know.”

Shel smiled. “You do.”

“It's written on the back of the picture I have.”

“The one you had at the house.”

He reached into his coat pocket, withdrew a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. As he scratched the flint to create a flame, Shel thought of the bloody black scald at Snuff's temple.

“Where'd you get that picture?”

“From Francisco Fregado.” Cesar grinned. “That's what we called him. Frank the Mess.”

She felt light-headed suddenly and searched around for a place to sit. A rock jutted out of the grass not far away. She aimed for it, took two lunging steps, and came within falling distance. She hit the ground in a heap then pulled herself onto the rock. Cesar walked up behind.