Iron House (23 page)

They eased her down, and Jimmy cut the tape from her wrists and ankles. She tasted blood, and realized she’d bit down on her tongue. Her hands burned as circulation returned.

“Get me some clothes,” Jimmy said to one of the men.

“What clothes?”

“I don’t care. Whatever.”

The man came back with some rumpled men’s clothing and stacked it on the sink. Jimmy turned the shower on, then squatted by the tub and watched her shake in the bottom of it. “I can cut you, burn you, kill you. I’ve got seven men here who would love to screw you senseless. The only reason they’re not is because I don’t allow that kind of behavior.” He moved hair from her face. “Do we understand each other?”

Elena said nothing.

He stood and looked down. “I’ll be right outside if you need anything. Scented soap. A fresh robe.”

There was no humor in his voice. He closed the shower curtain, closed the door. Elena was alone and alive, cold in the shower as she spit blood, and watched red water circle the drain. She curled tight, breathing hard and trying to hold onto herself. It wasn’t easy. This terrified person shaking in a cold shower was strange to her. She spit more blood, then tugged her robe open and put a palm on her stomach as she pictured the scars on Michael’s body, his strong and capable hands. She saw him differently, saw him the same, and for the first time since running she prayed that he would find her, that he would kill Jimmy while she watched. It was a new feeling, this rage that spread out from beneath her palm. It was maternal, fierce, and in the cold wash of her helplessness, it offered the first real taste of hope.

Jimmy found Stevan outside the bathroom door. The hall behind was empty, and the house had a powerful, vacant feel.

“I asked the men to wait outside,” Stevan said. “We need to have words, and I don’t want them confused. They need to know where we stand, you and me.”

“There’s no confusion, Stevan. When the bitter end comes, I’ll be standing behind you. The men know that.”

“That’s good, because…” His voice trailed away. “Why are you smiling at me like that?”

“Sorry.”

“Well, stop it.”

“Fine. Done.”

Stevan gave a hard stare, then said, “Do you know what my father told me before he died? What warning he gave?”

Jimmy almost laughed. Stevan was using his
entitled
voice, which had come to mean very little since the old man died. Stevan was smart enough, but he was weak and the street knew it. Bookmakers were already taking odds on how long he would last and who would be the triggerman to take him out. The smart money was on “not long.” The really smart money was on Jimmy. The only reason he was still breathing was because of certain considerations, sixty-seven million of them at last count. That was the rumored amount of the old man’s cash holdings at his death. Not business interests or future cash flows, but cash. Hard dollars in a dozen offshore accounts.

Only Stevan had the account numbers, the passwords.

Otherwise, he’d already be dead.

Stevan lowered his voice and stepped closer. “My father said I should kill you in your sleep, and count myself lucky. He wanted me to do it before he died.”

That got Jimmy’s attention. “Really?”

“He thought you were crazy.”

“Bullshit. We respected each other.”

“He respected your skills; there’s a difference.”

“Fuck off, Stevan. Your father and I worked together for twenty-five years. Since before you had hair on your pecker.”

“That doesn’t change what he said. He told me you were inherently unbalanced, that the only thing keeping you on an even keel was fear of him and fear of Michael.”

“I’m not afraid of Michael.”

“He said you would deteriorate with him and Michael gone. He said you would go off the tracks, said you were a risk.”

“Your father was in decline.” Jimmy kept his sudden fury in careful check. “I understand.”

“Look, Jimmy, I’m telling you this because I think he was wrong, because I want you to trust me and because I want us to be a team. You understand? I want this to be the beginning of something new, of you and me.”

“Sure, Stevan. ’Course.”

“Then what are you doing?”

“Is there a problem?” Jimmy asked.

“We’re here to kill Michael right?”

“Yes.”

“We lay low, and we kill him for what he did to my father.”

“And for being an arrogant, self-righteous—”

“You took his girl, Jimmy. You don’t think he’ll notice?”

“You’re the one who told him we were coming after his brother.”

“That was bait. And hypothetical. Now he
knows
!”

Jimmy waved a hand. “That’s irrelevant, and eventually to our advantage.”

“You may feel good about going head-to-head with Michael, but I don’t. He could blow through this house in thirty seconds.”

“Your house. Not mine.”

“Forty seconds, then. With you standing in the middle of it.”

Jimmy’s eyes narrowed. “I think it’s you who’s fearful.”

“You take that back.”

“No.”

Seconds spooled out, and Stevan blinked first. “You can’t beat him, Jimmy.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really.”

“Why don’t you just let him walk away, then?” Jimmy could barely hide his disgust. “Just let him go.”

“Because he killed my father in his own
damn
bed!”

Jimmy felt his eyes go flat. Stevan didn’t want Michael dead because of how the old man died. He wanted Michael dead because of how the old man lived. Because he loved Michael more than he loved his own son. Because he respected Michael more. Because Stevan was a coward, and Michael was not.

Anything else was a lie.

“I have a plan,” Stevan said. “Things are in motion. You don’t have to worry about Michael until I tell you. You just have to sit and wait.”

“I
want
to worry about Michael.”

“Don’t make this personal, Jimmy. It’s not about who’s best. It’s about killing him and moving on.”

“I don’t like it.”

“Well, it’s arranged.”

“Just like that?”

“I’ll tell you when I need you.”

“Tell me why the records are sealed.” Michael struggled to keep his emotions level, but he still felt his brother’s skin, hot under his palm and stretched across a curve of bone that felt so much like his own. For the first time since coming to North Carolina, Michael felt the flesh and blood of his brother’s dismay. Not the theory of it or the possibility, but the blade of it, the full and unfettered hurt. For the first time in a decade, Michael was truly in danger of losing his cool.

“He didn’t mean what he said.” Abigail was distraught. They stood in an empty hall one floor down. “He needs you.”

“Don’t change the subject. You knew those drugs. You’ve heard the diagnosis before.” She opened her mouth in denial, but Michael said, “Courts don’t seal medical records without good reason.”

“They do if a ranking senator calls in favors.”

“That’s what happened?”

“Favors. Threats. Whatever it took.”

“To cover up what Julian did.”

“To protect my son.”

“We’re talking about the boathouse, aren’t we? How long ago was it? Fifteen years? Twenty?”

“What do you know about the boathouse?”

“I know it’s been neglected to the point of decay. The parking area is overgrown, the road in disrepair. The deck is rotten, boats ignored. Everything else on the estate is immaculate, but the boathouse is left to rot. So, how long has it been? Fifteen years? Twenty?”

Abigail hesitated, then said, “Eighteen years next month.”

“Who did he kill?”

Her head snapped up. “How do you see these things?”

“You said yourself that he was capable, that you expected a body to come out of that water. So, let’s quit screwing around. Who did he kill?”

She shook her head. “I can’t talk about it here.”

“Then where?”

She was breaking. “Anywhere but here.”

They ended up in the Land Rover, Michael driving. He followed estate roads at random.

“It happened five years after we brought him home. He was fourteen.” Abigail’s face was stone, her gaze locked straight ahead. “He’s had very few friends in his life—your beautiful, damaged brother—but his very first was a young girl, Christina Carpenter. She was older than he was, seventeen when she died, but very small. A tiny young thing. Very pretty. Her mother ran the stables; her father worked in town. They lived in a small house a few miles down the road. They were good people, and their daughter took an interest in Julian. Nothing physical, of course. They were young and she was a good girl. They were friends.” She blinked, and Michael knew she was looking into the past. “Normal teenage friends.”

Michael nodded as if he could see it, but in reality he could not imagine having had a normal teenage friend. His childhood had been about violence and hunger and mistrust, the total absence of friends. At that age, he’d been on the street, and the only girl he’d ever met was one who offered to prostitute herself for a ten-dollar bill and half of the canned fruit she saw in the mouth of his open pack. When he said no, she forced a smile and a hollow laugh, then told him she was relieved. She told him she’d never been with a boy, but thought that’s what all boys wanted.

A girl’s mouth down there ...

She said it slow and guilty.

I’ll put my mouth down there for ten dollars and half that fruit ...

Michael had said nothing at first. He was cautious because this was how it happened on the street: distract from the front and attack from the rear. But no one was paying any attention.

No one gave a flying shit.

She had a plastic water bottle and grimy skin, clothes that were crusty and smelled bad. She was a young girl at the end of a short, sorry rope; so, Michael let her talk. She was a runaway, she told him, from some town in Pennsylvania whose name meant nothing to him. She’d been in the city for over a week, but wasn’t really sure how many days. She’d stepped off a midnight bus, started walking and still had no idea where in the city she was, no notion of Harlem or Queens or Manhattan.

It’s all New York, isn’t it?

Michael was dumbfounded by her ignorance. But she was alone and cold and hungry, so he gave her some fruit, and then a little more when she shivered and stole small glances at the can. He remembered how she ate it: small pink tongue darting out, pale juice on her chin and a clean spot where she’d rubbed it off. Afterward, she’d sniffed once and told Michael she was pretty without all the dirt, that if she could get cleaned up somewhere, then maybe she could get a job modeling clothes or shoes or hats. That’s why she’d come to New York, because all the men back home said she was pretty as a picture.

One man said I was a flower.

Pretty as a pink, pink rose.

Michael never told her different, not even as she pulled grubby fingers through matted hair. He gave her the last of his fruit and said she could stay with him for a while if she wanted. But, she said no. She wanted a place to get clean so she could get on with being a model. “You have to start young,” she explained, and Michael watched a blue fly buzz the sweet spot that fruit juice had made on her face. He doubted she was older than he, and doubted, too, her claim that she’d never been with a boy. Michael knew jaded when he saw it—just like he knew bitter and afraid—and imagined that whatever man told her she was a pink, pink rose had done so for his own reasons. But that was life, and this was the street; so, he said they could be friends, and pointed her toward midtown because he thought it would be safest, what with tourists and cops and all the wealth of the world. But she never got that far. She died four blocks away—knifed and left to bleed out in a cardboard box. It was the talk of the street for a day, and then it was nothing at all. But Michael remembered her name: Jessica, who preferred “Jess,” a pink rose in the gray, cold city.

For the first time in his life, Michael felt a twinge of honest jealousy. It would have been nice to have friends, or anything else
normal.
It would have been nice to have a mother.

“How did he kill her?”

Michael drove out all thoughts of regret or what might have been. He parked on a hilltop and watched black water, cops in dark suits.

A third boat was on the water.

He saw divers.

“They were on the lake,” Abigail said. “They did that a lot: boating, fishing, swimming. Sometimes, Julian would take a book and read to her while they floated. He thought that’s what you were supposed to do with a pretty girl in a boat. But he didn’t read poetry or a young love’s prose, he read science fiction novels, adventure books, comics. He never really understood the point of reading to a pretty girl on still water. I think he saw it in a movie, once, and thought it’s what men should do.” Abigail paused. Downhill, water shone between green banks that rose like knees softly spread. “No one saw it happen. They went out on Saturday morning. That afternoon, Julian was found walking down the side of the road, wet to the skin, blood on his hands.”

“And the girl?”

“They found Christina’s body the next day. Drowned in the lake. She had contusions on her face, bruising around one wrist. The police believed that Julian’s damaged hands matched the damage done to her face, but there was never any credible motive, no reason in the world he would hurt that girl.”

“I don’t believe he would.”

“Harm a girl?”

“Harm a friend.”

“The police felt differently. From the first, they believed Julian killed her. They thought he made a pass and she rejected him. They say he most likely killed her in a blind rage.”

“Did Julian deny it?”

“He was as lost as a newborn child, with no memory of what happened, no idea where he’d been or how he ended up on that roadside. All I know is he wept at the sight of her body being pulled from the water. He cherished that girl.”

She trailed off, and Michael said, “But?”

“But questions were posed, and the implications led to no other possibilities. The bruising and Julian’s blackout, the skin under her nails; their history together. Julian was the last person to see her alive.”