Man Down (20 page)

12

Turner was yanked from his swoon by the throbbing pain in his left hand.

Some instinct for self-preservation made him keep his eyes closed and he lay unmoving, taking stock.

He felt an uncomfortable tackiness between his butt cheeks and thighs and realized he’d fouled himself.

Jesus.

He relived Tanya, like a lunatic home improver, taking his ring finger and the two demons from hell forcing his bleeding stump into the gas fire, the flame searing and blackening his flesh.

Cautery.

He recalled the term from a documentary on Civil War battlefield amputations he’d watched lying on his bed in Jo’burg, the booze and mood enhancers he’d swallowed allowing him to feel a vicarious pleasure at the torment of those poor bastards who’d had only a few slugs of rotgut as an anesthetic before the sawbones had done their worst, closing gaping wounds and blood vessels by applying hot cauterizing irons.

He hadn’t even had the help of rotgut.

Turner opened one eye a slit and saw that he lay on the floor of the kitchen amongst blood smears and splatters.

When he spied his finger, flesh pale, ragged and bloody, lying like a discarded French fry on the tiles, he gagged and the pain in his hand amped in volume.

Once he got past the agony he felt a tightness at his ankles. His legs were bound.

He heard the soft drum of voices and was able to see, out the extreme of his peripheral vision, his wife sitting beside Tard on the couch, the fat freak occupying the space of two people, his colossal arm flung along the back of the davenport behind Tanya’s head in an attitude at once casual and terrifying.

Lukas Bone slumped in a chair facing them, arms folded across his belly, legs out in front of him, crossed at the ankle.

A man at his ease.

Turner couldn’t hear what they were saying but when he saw Tanya nod and sit forward to listen to Bone he suspected that he was witnessing the speediest case of Stockholm Syndrome on record and understood the two crazies had co-opted his wife as part of their lunatic game, ready to wreak havoc and mayhem for shits and grins.

Turner, overheated, feverish, lying with his head close to the pantry door, hearing his daughter’s heartbreaking gasps of anguish, knew that he had conjured these men like furies; that what he’d done in South Africa a decade ago had attracted them, drawing them from the shades into his life.

“Lucy,” he whispered.

“Daddy, help me. Please, Daddy.”

“Kiddo, I need you to be quiet, okay? For just a little while longer.”

“It’s dark, Daddy.”

“I know, kiddo.”

“I’m scared.”

“I know you’re scared.”

“Why were you screaming?”

“I’m okay now, Luce.”

“And Mom?”

“She’s okay, too.”

“Who are those men?”

“Just bad men.”

“What do they want?”

“Money. We’ll give it to them and they’ll go.”

A pause. A sob. A snicker.

“Will they go?”

“Yes, they’ll go.”

“I’ve peed my pants.”

“That’s okay, baby,” Turner said, feeling the fecal paste between his legs. “You hang in there. I’m going to get you out.”

“You swear?”

“I swear, kiddo. Hush now.”

Turner, sickened by what he’d set in motion, trapped in a head-on collision between belief and desire, childishly fantasized that he had Bekker’s gun in his hand, aiming it at the two madmen.

The weapon that was still holstered at Bekker’s hip.

Unfired.

Six bullets in the magazine and one in the chamber.

The automatic was invisible to Turner, hidden by the folds of the dead man’s black windbreaker, but he could visualize the stubby snout tucked into the waistband of Bekker’s jeans, pressed against flesh that was already stiffening with rigor, the handle with its rubberized grip trapped between his spine and the polished blond wood of the sitting room floor.

Turner focused so intently on this image of the gun, like Uri Geller willing a fork to bend, that, in a mad moment, he believed he could transport it into his grasp.

When his hand remained empty Turner, using only his elbows, found himself inching forward in a kind of leopard crawl, dragging his bound legs along the besmirched tiles, intent on getting closer to the dead man and that gun.

13

Heading through to the kitchen Grace decided it was time for a big girl drink and took a bottle of Jack Daniels from the cupboard above the sink, splashing a generous tot into a tumbler and adding just a kiss of Coke.

As she brought the glass to her mouth the pungent tang of the booze had her stomach somersaulting and she had to breathe her nausea away before she dared take a sip.

But the alcohol, once it burned its way down to her empty gut, entered her bloodstream mercifully quickly and she felt a calmness and resolve that she knew was an entirely artificial byproduct of the hooch.

“What the fuck,” she said, “if it’s courage I’ll take it.”

She threw the whiskey back and poured another and drank it in two slugs.

Grace set the empty glass down on the counter and walked through her bedroom into the bathroom. She washed her hands with warm water and soap and before she could talk herself out of it she ripped opened the box of the pregnancy test and removed the little stick.

“Do it, Grace,” she said to her reflection. “Just do it.”

Placing the stick on the edge of the sink she unzipped her jeans, pulled her panties to her knees and sat down on the toilet, gripping the stick.

She couldn’t pee.

Jesus.

She hummed and closed her eyes and thought of waterfalls and burbling brooks and finally a dribble broke free and when she heard it clatter into the bowl she shoved the absorbent end of the stick into her stream of piss and turned it so that the display window faced upward.

When she was done she set the stick on the basin, wiped and flushed and stood staring at the gadget’s blank little face.

She knew it would take a couple of minutes so she went back through to the kitchen and poured herself another drink—more Coke than Jack this time—and took it to the living room and forced herself to sip it as slowly as she could as she watched the cars below.

When the glass was empty she set it down beside the couch and went back to the bathroom and found herself looking everywhere but at the test kit.

Looking at the ugly floral shower curtain.

Looking at the Arizona Cardinals sticker applied to a wall tile by a previous occupant.

Looking at a water mark on the ceiling that brought to mind an A-bomb mushroom cloud.

Then, finally, looking at the stick lying on the sink, the word “pregnant” spelled out loud and clear in the dinky display window.

Grace closed her eyes and when she opened them nothing had changed.

She was still pregnant.

She dumped the stick in the trash and went through to the living room and reached for the cordless phone.

She called John’s cell.

It went straight to voice mail.

She called his landline and almost hurled the phone at the wall when she heard Tanya Turner’s clipped, superior, British-sounding voice ordering her to leave a message.

In desperation she tried her own cell again, sinking down onto the couch, tucking her legs under her as she heard it ring and ring and ring.

14

Turner stopped crawling when Tanya, like a dinner party hostess of a mind to mingle, detached herself from the two mutants still relaxing on the living room couch and came across to the kitchen and squatted, staring down at him, his dried blood a spray of freckles across her nose and cheeks.

“So, Johnny, I guess this is goodbye.”

“Tanya . . .”

“If you say you’re sorry I swear I
will
cut out your tongue.”

Turner knew this was no idle threat and waited for her breathing to slow before he spoke again.

“What’s going to happen now?”

“Not what you’d planned to happen.”

“No.”

“I’m walking out of here. You’re not.”

“You’re going with them?”

“Yes.”

“Jesus.”

“I’m taking the chance they’ve offered me.”

“Just like that?”

“Yes.”

Tanya glanced across at Lukas Bone and Tard who looked on indulgently, then turned back to him.

“I suppose I should thank you,” she said.

“Thank me for what?”

“For this. For what you’ve done. For freeing me.”

“And what about Lucy?”

She twitched a shoulder.

“I’ll make sure it’s quick. Sorry, I can’t promise the same for you.”

“Christ, Tanya, she’s your daughter.”

Tanya shook her head.

“Not any more. I lost her years ago. She’s one of them now.”

He stared into the terrifying blankness of her eyes.

“You can live with doing that to her?”

“I’m your wife, Johnny, and you were ready to have Bekker kill me. And
live
with it.” She laughed. “Oh, you’re going to tell me that’s different? That I should be guided by some maternal imperative?”

He said nothing.

“Truth is, she’s become everything I loathe. She’s like a taunt to me every day of my fucking life and I’m fucked if I’m going to get on my knees and present my neck for the kill shot. There’s one seat on the bus out of here and I’m taking it.”

“There’s another way,” Turner said, dropping his voice to a whisper.

“Another way?”

“Help us, Tanya.”

“
Help
you?’

“Yes. Help us to all get out.”

“How?”

“Pretend that you’re going along with them and then get hold of a weapon.”

“What? Play the Trojan Horse?”

“Yes.”

“It’d never work, but even if it did what the fuck would I be left with? Nothing. You and Lucy would be gone, anyway.”

“I’ve ended it with Grace.”

“Bullshit. That was just a smokescreen. I wouldn’t’ve even been cold and you would’ve had your cock inside her.”

“I swear, I won’t see her again. It’ll be as it was before.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“And I’m meant to swoon at that? Our sham of a marriage?”

“You’d rather take off with those fucking in-bred swamp things?”

“Isn’t that just a teensy bit hypocritical, Johnny? After all, you let them in here.”

He couldn’t argue with that.

“You and your little flunky brought them into our home, a place they’d normally avoid like the plague. Men like them don’t do the suburbs, Johnny, they cruise the interstates preying on drifters and hookers, the throwaway people nobody cares about. But I suppose that Bekker thought he could control them, bend them to his will?”

“Yes, I guess he did.”

“That arrogant little fucking
poseur.
Well, you’ve let the genie out the bottle, Johnny. Deal with the consequences.”

“What do you think’s going to happen to you, Tanya?”

“I don’t know.”

“You really believe they’ll keep you alive?”

“For a while at least. I amuse them.”

“And what? You’ll become something out of a Doors song? A serial killer in training, shooting torture porn on your iPhone?”

She shrugged.

“Christ, Tanya. You killed Bekker in self-defense. You took my finger in a rage. You really think you’re going to be able to go out there and maim
and slaughter some poor useless bastards you’ve never even seen before?”

She shrugged again. “I can’t answer that.”

He stared at her.

“All I know is that I’ll walk out of here alive. And I’ll do that very American thing: hit the open road and drive off into a brand new life.”

She narrowed her eyes.

“Tell me, Johnny, are you pleased with all you’ve wrought?”

“No, I’m not pleased.”

“No?”

“No. I’m sorry.”

“I warned you not to say that.”

“It had to be said.”

“Sorry that it didn’t work out? Or sorry that you made it happen?”

“Sorry that you couldn’t have just let me go, Tanya.”

She laughed. “Jesus, you’re a spineless little shit.”

Tanya stared him in the eye.

“Want to hear the good news?”

“What?”

“I
am
letting you go, Johnny. I am letting you go.”

The sound of a car and the wheeze of brakes had her standing.

Lukas Bone moved fast, heading to the window by the front door.

“Jesus, this house has more traffic than a fuckin McD’s drive-thru.”

Tard sat forward on the couch, cocking his huge head like a retriever.

“That’s a Mazda 2,” he said. “Few years old. Exhaust is shot.”

“Goddamit, Tard, you’re good,” Bone said, peering out the window. “Now will somebody kindly identify the big blonde bitch walkin her ass up the pathway?” 

Tanya, crossing to his side, glanced outside and said, “That’s his whore.”

Bone laughed. “You’re shittin me?”

Tanya shook her head. “I am not.”

“Well,” Bone said, “in the words of my dear sweet mama: ‘When the flower blooms, the bees come uninvited.’”