The Ice Harvest (9 page)

Through the kitchen door the microwave hummed, and Lori poked her head through. “Milk? Sugar?”

“No, thanks.” Her head disappeared again and the microwave bell dinged. Ten seconds later Lori appeared with two mugs, each with a spoon.

“Might need a little more stirring. Sorry, it’s instant.”

She plopped down onto one of the chairs. “Merry Christmas.”

“Yeah, Merry Christmas. You going to see your family tomorrow?”

“Mine’s all in Indiana.” She sipped tentatively at the coffee, testing it for heat. “You going to see your kids?”

“Saw them tonight. Over at the in-laws’.” He put the mug to his lips, took in a small amount of hot, corrosive liquid, and surreptitiously spit it back into the mug.

She gave him a curious look, head tilted to one side, eyes narrowed. “You get back together with your ex?”

“No, I just went over there for a few minutes.”

“Because that’s what Dora thought maybe happened.”

“No.” She was staring straight at him, and he found it hard to meet her gaze.

“I’m sorry.”

“What for?”

“I’m sorry I hurt Dora.”

“Charlie, you’re so full of yourself it’s not even funny.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I don’t mean to burst your bubble, Charlie, but you didn’t really hurt Dora. I mean, sure, a little at first, but she got over that quick enough. She knew it wasn’t going anywhere, anyway. She’d known it for a long time.”

“She did?”

Lori leaned back. “What do you want me to tell you, Charlie, that you broke her heart? Shit, she was dating one of the interns before you even quit calling. And if he couldn’t keep her from moving to Fort Worth, I certainly don’t think you could’ve. Don’t worry about it. Your conscience is clear.”

“That’s a relief,” he said, though oddly it wasn’t.

“I’m not trying to break your balls, honest. So how’s work and stuff?”

“Same as always.”

“They ever find out what happened to that stripper who disappeared? Dora said you knew her pretty well.”

“Look, I probably should get going. Got six o’clock mass in the morning.”

Lori snorted. “Yeah, you and me both.”

At the front door Charlie gave her a peck on the cheek.

“Good to see you again, Charlie. Sorry I’m feeling like such a bitch tonight. And sorry about the coffee.”

“Thanks for letting me come in. Nice to see you, too.”

“You know, you could call me sometime. It wouldn’t have to get complicated.”

“Yeah, maybe I’ll do that.” He opened the door and stepped back onto the porch.

“Sure. Merry Christmas,” she said, and shut the door behind her. As he stepped off the porch a woman in a flannel robe stared at him from the front window of the other unit of the duplex, her angry eyes wide open and her face pinched tight in the soft multicolored light of a Christmas tree.

He got back onto the state highway headed west and pulled onto the access road leading to the Midas Touch, dark now and abandoned-looking, the only building for half a mile in either direction. He sat in the car and sorted through his key ring until he found a key marked
MASS
. A piece of hand-printed notebook paper was thumbtacked to the front door:

WE WILL BE CLOSED CHISTMAS
DAY SO OUR EMPLOYEES MAY
SPEND IT WITH THEIR FAMILYS

Inside it was cold and silent, with a faint moldy smell. He turned on the light in the front room and a brightly colored plastic bas-relief of Santa’s head winked knowingly at him from the cheap wood paneling.

“Anybody here?” There was no answer. He turned to leave and noticed that he’d tracked in mud and, leaning on the front desk, picked up his left foot to examine the sole. The shoe was wet, with tiny crystalline chunks of hardened snow clinging to it, but no mud to speak of. Looking back down at the mud he saw a messy trail of it leading to Encounter Room Two and felt his sphincter snap tight. Involuntarily he glanced back at Santa, whose red-faced leer had assumed a threatening aspect, and cautiously began following the tracked mud.

The trail led to the massage table, which was muddy and smeared with still-tacky blood, then continued out to the storage room, and finally to the back door. Charlie looked at the door for a minute, wondering whether someone was outside it or not. The alarm light was on, and on the back door it could be turned on and off only from the inside. He stuck his key into the alarm box, turned it off, and stepped outside, apparently still alone. Two parallel furrows in the snow led to a patch of snow flatter than any of the surrounding area, about six feet long by three feet wide. He stood over it for a minute or so, then went back inside to find a shovel and, if possible, a drink.

13

H
e pulled open Ivy’s top drawer and found nothing but blank Mastercharge slips and a stack of special coupons:
Buy five Oriental Massages and get a
free
Breast Massage.
The other drawers were empty except for a couple of dense, well-thumbed paperback romances. He was sure Ivy kept a bottle in the desk; she must have taken it home with her for the holiday. He didn’t feel capable of digging up whatever was out back without a fortifying drink, but after a cursory search of the drawers and cabinets in the Encounter Rooms he had to face the fact that there was not a drop of liquor to be had in the Midas Touch that Christmas morn.

A shovel leaned against the wall of the storage room. Its blade was wet with grayish brown frozen mud. Charlie picked it up, turned on the rear floodlight, and pushed his way out the back door. The rear of the property was enclosed by an old warped chain-link fence, and beyond the fence he saw no sign of life. He stood for a moment over the spot, then began to dig. If Vic was down there, then the money was gone, Charlie was exposed, and his only option was to run. He kept digging anyway, more certain with every shovelful that it was Vic. The pain in his hip, almost forgotten, began to reassert itself.

The soil turned more easily than he had expected, big chunks of solid, semifrozen earth already broken by the earlier excavation. His heart pounded from the effort nonetheless, and by the time he hit something soft about three feet down he was wheezing desperately. He uncovered most of the thing, a canvas package tied with twine and looking very much like a human body. He looked down at it, feeling tiny beads of sweat freezing on his face. He cut the twine at the head with his penknife and then sawed through the canvas. Beneath it lay the back of a human head, its short dark hair matted with blood. It might have been Vic or it might not. He became conscious of a stitch in his side, a consequence of the unaccustomed physical exertion, but he felt strangely calm. He tried to turn the body over so he could get a good look at the face, but the canvas was stuck fast to the soil beneath it and it wouldn’t budge. He took a deep, painfully cold breath, got a firm grip on the head itself with both hands, and gave it a good, solid twist. It didn’t budge, but there was a small, encouraging crackle and he tried again, putting his shoulders into it. It gave this time with a slow, wet, splintering sound punctuated by several sharp snaps. The bloody face, its eyes and mouth open in apparent surprise, was Deacon’s. Standing up and appraising the whole canvas Charlie saw that the body was far too small to have been Vic. He felt giddy with joy and disbelief. For the moment, anyway, he had a reprieve.

He phoned Vic’s house from the front room. The other end picked up, but no one spoke. He hesitated. “Vic?”

“What the fuck’s going on? I got home and the front door was wide open. I almost had a heart attack. Where are you?”

“The Midas Touch. Deacon’s dead.”

“Christ, what’d you do, dig the little fucker up?”

“I saw there was a grave; I thought it was you.”

“That’s real thoughtful of you, Charlie. I hope you put him back the way you found him.”

“Sure I did, what do you think?” He hadn’t. In his excitement he’d raced straight back inside, leaving the grave open and the floodlight on.

“You better get over here. We got more trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“I’ll tell you when you get here. You’ve spilled enough over the phone for one night.”

He covered the canvas package with the frozen blocks of mud, but couldn’t get them on an even plane with the rest of the ground. He tossed a few chunks aside, settling finally for what was at best a more or less even coverage, which he then layered over with snow. When he stood back it still seemed to him lumpy and uneven, and he began smashing it flat with the shovel. After eight or nine solid blows, he was wheezing again and gave it up. He shoveled some more snow onto the top, smoothed it over with the shovel, and turned to go. At the door he stopped. Deacon had been a nasty little homunculus and had most likely died trying to get him killed, but it seemed wrong to leave without a prayer of some kind. He mumbled a Hail Mary, an Our Father, and what he could remember of the Ninety-third Psalm and then he opened the back door. Fat lot of good that did Deacon, he thought. He stamped around the area bounded by the fence, breaking the crust of the snow so that the disturbed area wouldn’t stand out so badly, then turned off the flood and looked out at the grave, trying to decide whether it was any more or less obvious than when he’d first seen it. He decided it looked all right and pulled the back door shut.

It was four-forty-five in the morning when he got to Vic’s house. The lights were off again, and he went around the back way. Vic was waiting for him in the kitchen, wearing a bright blue down ski parka.

“What the fuck took you so long?” His flat, round, usually pale face was bright red from anger or exertion or cold.

“Just straightening up at the Midas Touch.”

“No point. They’ll find Deacon the twenty-seventh or -eighth no matter what we do, and by then we’ll be long gone. Come on downstairs; I got something to show you. You’ll get a kick out of this.”

In the center of Vic’s basement was a large footlocker riddled with bulletholes, all of them burst outward as though shots had been fired by someone inside it.

“We’re gonna have some fun on our way out of town, Charlie.”

“You’re a fucking dead man, Cavanaugh.” The angry voice came from inside the footlocker, which scuffled and scratched uselessly on the dust of the cracked green linoleum.

“Big talk from a guy locked inside a trunk, Roy.”

“Who’s with you? Is that Arglist?”

“Shut up. Give me a hand here, Charlie; let’s take him upstairs and get him into the Lincoln.”

“I don’t have the Lincoln.”

“What are you driving, then?”

“A Mercedes.”

“What the fuck you driving a piece of foreign shit like that for? You got the best American car there is.”

“The Lincoln’s full of puke.”

Vic gestured at the gyrating footlocker. “Will that thing fit into the trunk of a Mercedes?”

Charlie shook his head. “I’m not sure. Might have to put it into the backseat.”

“That’s no good. I don’t want to have to listen to this cocksucker all the way to Lake Bascomb.”

“Arglist, listen to me.” The voice was ragged and breathless. “You could still get out of this alive if you help me out of here. He’s gonna cut you out anyway.”

“Shut up!” Vic gave the trunk a vicious kick, then pulled back in pain. “Jesus, my toe.”

“Why don’t you just shoot him?”

“Because I want to see him sinking slowly into Lake Bascomb. Besides, we have to get rid of the body somehow.”

“So what happened, exactly?”

“I was waiting for you, and around about one o’clock I heard a noise, so I went outside to check it out. So there’s Deacon, hiding behind the side of the house. I coldcocked him and took him into the garage and got him to tell me what he knew and who else knew it.”

“You hear me, Charlie? I’m offering you a deal.”

Vic started to kick the trunk again, thought better of it, and grabbed a length of steel rebar and smashed it on the lid.

“Shut up, I said! Come on, Charlie; let’s go upstairs.”

They climbed the stairs, Roy Gelles’s offers to cut a deal with Charlie following them hoarsely up into the kitchen.

“Come on into the living room, Charlie. I’ll see if I can’t salvage us a drink from the wreckage before we go.”

The living room had been demolished. Furniture was overturned, upholstery slashed, drawers yanked out. The television lay on its side, a hole the size of a cue ball in its screen. The bottles on the bar, which had been full when Charlie was there waiting for Vic, were now empty. Vic went over to the liquor cabinet and opened it, searching for a bottle of anything at all.

“This is adding insult to injury, you know? He just fucking poured it out.” Vic shook his head at the empty bottles as though examining a desecrated church.

“How’d he get into that trunk?”

“Oh, yeah. So I got back from getting rid of Deacon and there was Roy, tearing the place apart. I snuck up behind him with that chunk of rebar and coldcocked him just like I did Deacon, took his gun, pulled him downstairs, and stuffed him into the trunk. He’s wedged in there tight, Charlie. I was so tired I forgot to check if he had another piece on him. Turns out he did. I about had a fucking heart attack when bullets started coming out of that trunk, I’ll tell you.” He rose, shaking his head sadly. “Not a drop.”

“Any beer in the fridge?” He wanted a drink. His head was starting to hurt.

“Nope. Well, you have to drive anyway. I figure we can still make the eleven
A.M.
flight to JFK, even after a stop at Lake Bascomb. Come on, move your Mercedes into the garage and let’s see if we can’t fit old Roy into the trunk.”

Charlie was surprised to find that the footlocker was indeed too long to fit into the trunk. He had begun to believe that the car would never let him down. “We could shove it halfway in lengthwise, stick a red cloth on it, and tie the lid down with twine,” Vic said.

“There are traffic laws regarding oversize loads in trunks.”

“Your problem is you think like a fucking lawyer, Charlie. Let’s just do it and get this done so we can get out of town.”

“If we get it wrong, some cop might decide to stop us and tell us how to do it right. What do we do when the footlocker starts talking to him?”

“That won’t happen,” Vic said, but his face was troubled. “I see people do it like that all the time.”

“Come on, it’s maybe twenty minutes to Lake Bascomb, even with snow. Let’s just put him in the backseat.”

The voice rose from the locker again. “I’ll make it worth your while, Charlie. I’ll say I couldn’t find you. You can take the money with you. All of it. I’ll bring back Vic’s head in a hatbox and that’ll be enough for Bill.”

“You feel like listening to that the whole way out there, Charlie?”

“We’re less likely to get stopped that way. And this way we can fit all the luggage in the trunk and we won’t have to repack it afterward.”

Vic sighed. “Okay, you win. Whatever Charlie wants. I’m tired. Let’s just get the bastard into the car and get going.”

They lifted the footlocker by the handles. Roy’s struggling inside caused Charlie’s grip to loosen, and he dropped his end hard onto the cement floor of the garage, prompting a cry of pain and surprise from within. Again he lifted his end and they maneuvered it successfully though with some difficulty onto the backseat. Charlie was again impressed by the car’s deceptively large interior.

“You know, that’s a hell of a big footlocker. I’m not sure this thing would have fit into the Lincoln’s trunk, either.”

“Yeah, maybe not,” Vic said. “Let’s get the bags loaded and split.”

There wasn’t a car in sight as they turned off the old state highway three miles east of town. Roy’s pleadings had ceased and been replaced by low, garbled mumblings. Charlie found that he was almost able to block the noise out of his mind beneath the din of Christmas carols from the easy-listening station, and then Vic reached out and turned the radio off. “Heard enough of that shit to last me a lifetime,” he said, and the incoherent moaning was the only sound to be heard over the engine and the heater.

Roy probably wasn’t getting much air through those bullet holes, Charlie thought. Without them he most likely would have suffocated already. Vic sat staring straight ahead, his face blank, saying nothing. He looked like he might be headed to cash in some empty pop bottles, or pick up his dry cleaning.

“I gave the negative to Renata,” Charlie said absently. He still wanted a drink.

Vic’s brow creased. “What negative?”

“Cupcake.”

Vic turned to face him, stunned. “You gave her the negative? What the fuck for?”

He shrugged. He shouldn’t have mentioned it. “Christmas present.”

“That’s not funny. You don’t go doing things like that. It upsets the balance of power.”

“What do we care? We’re gone anyway.”

“That’s not the point.”

“So it’s okay to fuck Bill Gerard over for three and a half years and then empty his operating accounts, but it’s not okay to give away a lousy photograph?”

Vic shook his head, disgusted. “Never mind. Just never mind.”

“She told me Roy was in looking for us both tonight.”

“Why would she bother to tell you that? Like it’s something sinister? What did you tell her, anyway?”

“Nothing.”

“Come on, Charlie, why’d she think you were giving her the fucking negative? Of all the dumb bastards I’ve ever met in my whole life you’re the one. You are the one.”

“Vic, Bill Gerard knows. That’s why we have Roy locked in a box back there.”

Vic was very quiet. “That’s not the point,” he said softly. They were silent for a few seconds, and Charlie made out a prayer coming from the box, a series of alternating Hail Marys and Our Fathers.

Vic shook his head. “Listen to him, trying to get in good at the last minute.”

“It’s funny, I just said a Hail Mary earlier tonight for the first time in I don’t know how many years, and here it is popping up again.”

“That’s inspirational.”

“You Catholic, Vic?”

“Yeah, course I am. So are you, right?”

“Used to be, anyway.”

“What do you mean, used to be? Once a mackerel snapper, always a mackerel snapper.”

“Well, I married a Congregationalist, so my kids are being raised that way.”

“I’d never let my kids get raised anything but Catholic. Not that Bonnie’d ever try.” Vic turned around and looked back at the footlocker. “Hey, Roy, what’ve you done since your last confession? Nothing too bad, I hope.” He laughed. The raw monotone chant from the footlocker abruptly ceased, and Vic laughed louder. “Sounds to me like Roy’s headed straight for hell.”

“I want to talk to a priest,” Roy said. He sounded drunk.

“That’s right, isn’t it, Charlie? You die with anything worse than a venial on you without confessing you go directly to the hot place.”