Medusa (14 page)

The place Corsack would take him, he suspected, was one where a very bad man named Samson Fain was waiting for them.
 

With a long, resigned sigh, Tiller started the car and pulled away from the curb, heading for the place Corsack had agreed to meet him.
 

Tiller drove slowly along the bay until he reached the side street where Corsack had said he would be waiting. It was a cramped little street. Tiller pulled up at the mouth of a dark, narrow alley, and after about two minutes, Corsack appeared from the deep shadows. He hurriedly opened the passenger door and got in, without a word. Tiller realized that Corsack knew he was under surveillance, and that he had probably been standing there in the shadows, emerging only when he was satisfied that Tiller wasn’t followed.
 

As for the place itself, it was one of the extremely narrow, European-style streets that were everywhere in the older parts of New Orleans. The buildings practically slanted together overhead. Trying to watch someone on this particularly street without being observed yourself would present a problem. No doubt, Tiller reasoned, that was the very reason that Corsack had chosen that street for the meeting. Tiller noticed Corsack was still wearing the very same powder-blue suit, and caught a whiff of strong cologne.
 

He sighed to himself. It was going to be a long drive, wherever they were going.
 

Tiller had planned to drive them back toward the hotel on some pretext, but Corsack came to life suddenly, as if he had been in deep thought and remembered something of the utmost importance.
 

“Wait, Mr. Tiller. I cannot go to hotel with you. I must beg you take me somewhere else.”
 

“Where?”
Bet I know where.
 

“Is not far. I must meet with friend of mine out in the swamps.”
 

“The swamps?”
 

“Yes. Most important. Along the backwater, there is a certain spot. He has information that might be of use to us.”
 

Tiller grunted in feigned irritation. This new development might just advance the case, and it freed him from coming up with a false reason to stall Corsack. “Well, all right.”
 

Tiller was amused. Corsack was being very careful, not stating the destination before the meeting. He wouldn’t have been surprised if Corsack had produced a gun and made him open his shirt to see if he were wearing a wire, but he did not. Trust was a wonderful thing.
 

Corsack provided directions as Tiller drove, and after a while, though Tiller was completely unfamiliar with the roads they were driving, he was certain he saw things that he had already seen before, from different vantage points. Corsack had brought them in a circle, back to the same intersection. Tiller didn’t let on that he noticed, but he realized that Corsack probably knew someone was tailing him. He might not know whether it was the drug dealers who were holding his wife, or the NOPD, or both, but he was definitely taking precautions.
 

After a few grumbled protests from Tiller that the drive seemed to be taking an eternity, Corsack’s manner visibly became more relaxed. He had apparently satisfied himself that they were not being followed.
 

“Here.” Corsack gestured to a winding county road to their left. “This is the road.”
 

“This friend of yours sure lives out in the boonies.”
 

“Isolation is sometimes best when sensitive matters are to be discussed.”
 

They drove for perhaps five miles. Finally, Corsack directed Tiller to take an unpaved road that veered off into the woods on the right.
 

“Only perhaps a mile or so down this road, there is a stand of woods we must walk through.”
 

They stopped and Tiller killed the engine. Corsack, ever watchful, got out and looked around intently. “Here.” He pointed into the small pines that surrounded the small clearing in which they had parked. Without another word, he walked into them, on a slender trail that was no more than a worn spot on the carpet of pine needles that lay everywhere underfoot.
 

Tiller followed him along, until abruptly Corsack came to a halt, and gestured by tilting his head. “Look. Over there. That is what you have come for. And that is what I seek, also.”
 

Tiller looked through the greenery and could vaguely make out the shapes of several buildings beyond.
 

“What’s over there? Out here in the middle of nowhere?”
 

“As I have said, everything we seek.”
 

Tiller could hear a vast range of emotions welling in the man’s voice, although it was evident that he was trying valiantly to keep himself under control.
 

Corsack began to take a step forward, and Tiller stopped him.
 

“I’m going to level with you, Corsack,” Tiller said, grabbing Corsack’s elbow, causing the other man to halt for a moment. “Detective Burns and his partner came to my room at the hotel today. You recognize those names, don’t you? They told me that you were involved with heroin smuggling. They told me about your wife.”
 

“And so now you are here to help them bring me in?”
 

“No. Because I think you’ve been playing everybody all along. You know things that you haven’t told anyone. You’ve kept things to yourself, and you’ve done so to protect your wife. You had to. I want you to know that I realize you had no choice. I’m here to help you, if I can.”
 

“Well, then, my friend, I thank you.”
 

Tiller lowered his eyes to the ground, preparing to speak again, and that is when Corsack brought the sap out and struck him across the nape of the neck. Tiller fell to the ground like a very large sack of potatoes. Corsack rolled him over and listened to his heart. The man was out cold, but that was all.
 

“I am very sorry, Detective Tiller,” he said to the unconscious detective. “However, now, I must go on alone.” He grabbed Tiller’s ankles and dragged him into the shade of the pines, where no one coming down the path would discover him with a casual glance. Then, he turned and started toward the buildings that lay beyond the trees.

Chapter 17

Her name was Zahra, and she was very afraid. She could not remember the last time that she had not been afraid. For the past three months, her world had been a small dark room. Her right leg was chained to an iron ring set in the middle of the floor of the room.
 

On the floor also were an air mattress and a bedpan. Some days they brought her food, other days they either forgot or decided not to out of cruelty.
 

There was no window in the room. There was a single light overhead. Sometimes they would turn it on when they came, and it dazzled her eyes so harshly that they ached.
 

Zahra had a husband, a foolish man, she thought now, and his name was Laszlo Abramovich Solokov, the man who now called himself Corsack. He was foolish because he had trusted these evil people to honor their word to him to help him bring his wife into the country.
 

Zahra remembered the trip from Turkmenistan. It was oddly like her present imprisonment, with some important differences. On the container ship, she and the others had lived inside a railcar container. They had mats, and plenty of food. The crew member who knew about them would come and let them all out at night. They had regular toilets and showers on the ship. And no one came to rape them.
 

The one called Culver Ray had raped her many times. In the beginning, she thought perhaps she could make a friend of the big, simple one, and get him to hurt Culver Ray. But the smaller man was evil, pure evil, and he knew this about himself and enjoyed it. He sensed what she was doing immediately.
 

“Don’t let her string you along, Bertrand. Just get you some of whatever it is you want,” he had told the big dumb boy right in front of her.
 

Then he had held her down while Bertrand had his way with her. She had not dared fight them. The skinny man would kill her, and enjoy it just as much, if not more, than he did forcing himself on her. She could sense that he had killed others, and itched to kill again. Lately, they had spared her their attentions. They had brought food more regularly, always one of the two of them, but she knew there were others out there, beyond the walls of the tiny room. She had heard their voices.
 

One day, she had heard the voice of a big man, though she could not make out his words. She could tell that he was big because of the low, pleasant, boom of his voice. He was explaining something to the others, and they were silent when he talked. He was in authority, then. She had wondered if he knew they were raping her. She wondered if he would care, if he knew. She realized that the big man must have forbidden Culver Ray to kill her, or he most certainly would have done so already.
 

She knew from certain remarks that Culver Ray had made to Bertrand that they were keeping her here so that they could make her foolish husband bend to their will in some way. Corsack. She hated him one moment, loved him dearly the next. He had rescued her from a place that she and her people were persecuted, and delivered her into this new hell. Where was he? Why did he not simply do whatever it was these fiends demanded, and free her?
 

Zahra told herself every day that she was still alive, and that was what she had to cling to. She might walk out of there, any day. She might still have children, and live a long happy life, and put all of these terrors and outrages behind her, some day. There was always a chance, as long as one stayed alive. She feared for her sanity, if she had to endure much more. She had been in that tiny room for a long time, after all—far longer than some could have endured, already. She knew that her captors would grow impatient, eventually. She knew that her husband would try to get her out of there, one way or another. She wondered how much longer they would wait for him.
 

* * *

I drove along the backwater, going slowly, with the window down, listening. The air smelled snaky, and Spanish moss hung eerily from the trees, making freakish shadows against the green canopy that hung over the gravel road from either side. The bayou night was incredibly quiet.
 

Presently I came to a crossroads. There was no traffic light, or even a stop sign, just two rural, gravel-topped roads that crossed paths out in the middle of nowhere. But far to the right I saw lights in the trees, and so I turned the car in that direction.
 

I drove slowly up the road, and now and again I picked up sounds floating through the air, no louder than the crunch of the gravel under the car tires—a laugh, the tinkle of some kind of music, far off. I pulled over to the side and got out. My old army Colt .45 was in a holster under my left shoulder, and for once it felt awfully good there. I remembered the bizarre history of the place I was going to, as Mafalda had told it to me the night before. I wondered just what I was walking into.
 

* * *

There is a funhouse outside of New Orleans, the House of Rising Fun, and it is located near a certain bayou, and a certain small town. The place is in decline, and evil, the very dregs of the amusement industry. The place is mostly shutdown, only open occasionally, and then only seasonally, with interest in attendance definitely on the wane.
 

Patreaux Island was a bayou island that had been inaccessible from overland roads until the 1960s. In prior days, residents of the surrounding country had ventured out to the island to work or trade at the sugar cane processing plant that had dominated the island for almost a hundred years. During the Great depression, the plant closed down, and the local population dispersed. The Patreaux family was a proud bunch, though, and many of the clan refused to leave the sanctity of the little patch of land that they had owned since before any of those still living could remember.
 

In the 1950s, Cardigan Patreaux, the eldest male of the Patreaux family, had decided to convert the old former plantation house into a funhouse. It had fallen into disrepair since the family had moved out to newer homes, and Cardigan felt that the ancestral home place should be made to serve some sort of function. New Orleans was beginning to draw a new breed of American—the tourist. He placed advertisements in the New Orleans papers. People came in good numbers. Money rolled in. The Patreaux family of Patreaux Island returned to a state of solvency, if not to its former affluence.
 

Cardigan Patreaux died of lung cancer in 1961. This left the run of the place to his sister, Imelda. She was an an eccentric woman. She was twice married, and both husbands had disappeared. They had run off, she claimed, deserting her and her various children. No one doubted this, as she was known to be violent and strong-willed. But neither of the husbands were ever seen or heard from again.
 

For a time, almost a decade, the funhouse experienced a sort of heyday. But slowly social changes occurred, and the appeal of an old-fashioned funhouse stopped bringing the tourists to Patreaux Island in decent numbers. Imelda, or Granny, as she was now called, and those she employed came up with different schemes for making their money. Their plans still relied upon the occasional tourists, but with a few conditions.