Till the Butchers Cut Him Down (13 page)

“Suits—”

“Come
on
.”

“Where?”

“Too many questions. Just let it unfold.”

As the JetRanger crossed the Bay and sliced through the airspace above Marin County there was enough daylight left so that
I could see thick fog masses boiling through the hollows of the coastal hills. Josh set the copter on a northwesterly course
above the Point Reyes National Seashore; ahead, the lights that ringed Bodega Harbor glowed faintly through the mist.

Somewhere between my house and the landing pad on Bay Vista’s roof I’d made the conscious decision to give in to what Suits
called letting events unfold. Not an easy concession for a person like me, who felt a constant need to be in control, but
now I found curious comfort in my self-imposed passivity. Perhaps it was the gathering darkness or the rhythmic throbbing
of the engine and the flap of the rotor; maybe I was just tired. Whatever the reason, I felt cocooned. Besides, my failure
to ask questions was bugging the hell out of Suits.

By the time we passed Fort Ross, flying parallel to the shoreline above the sea, night was falling. I took a last look inland,
saw the tops of sequoias piercing the fog cover, and thought of miniature Christmas trees on a spun-cotton back-drop. Soon
after that there was nothing but blackness.

Suits kept glancing at me, mystified by my silence. He’d undoubtedly expected me to pepper him with questions the whole ride—and
had also expected to amuse himself by fending them off. After a while I smiled serenely at him. He frowned and looked away.

Soon drops of rain began to speckle the windows. Josh’s voice came through the earphones. “Looks like we’re in for more weather
like we saw down south. I’m going to take her up higher, try for smoother air.”

Suits didn’t reply, leaving it to the expert.

The air wasn’t any smoother at the higher altitude; the copter hit a crosscurrent with a bump. “Sorry about that,” Josh said.
In the distance lightning flashed.

“What
is
it with this weather?” Suits asked. “It’s August, for Christ’s sake.”

I’d flown in far worse, but that had been on commercial carriers or with Hy, whose abilities and instincts I knew and trusted.
The cocoon of comfort I’d spun began to unravel; my fingers tensed against the seat edge. I glanced at Suits, but he seemed
sunk in private thoughts.

Another jarring crosscurrent. Josh took the copter even higher. Wind buffeted it, driving us farther out to sea; rain made
slash marks on the windows.

“Boss, I think we better bypass the cove and set down at the county airport. That pad’s dangerous when it’s wet, and I don’t
like landing that close to the cliff in this wind.”

“Okay, ask Ground Control at Little River to call that cabdriver down at Elk, see if he’ll run up and fetch us.”

“Right.”

Suits stared at my face, waiting for a barrage of questions. I looked back silently, taking pleasure in torturing him. I already
knew as much about our destination as he’d tell me, anyway: one of the many small coves that scallop the coast south of Mendocino.

Suits turned his head toward the window again. For the tense remainder of the flight he broke the silence only once, suddenly
sitting up straighter and peering downward. He said, “There it is—we’re right over Bootlegger’s Cove.”

Josh had veered inland; I had to lean across Suits to see the coastline. A faint scattering of lights lay below; one of them
blinked green. “Pretty,” I said and settled back in my seat.

Suits frowned and waited. I smiled.

“You’re getting a kick out of this, aren’t you?” he demanded.

“Out of what?”

He made a disgusted sound and began drumming his fingers on his knee.

Several minutes later we touched down at the county airport at Little River. The wind lashed the rain into stinging torrents;
Josh had to steady me against its force when I stepped out. Then Suits grabbed my arm—more for ballast than to assist me—and
we ran for the tiny terminal. Under the overhang of its roof we shook off water like dogs, stamped our cold feet, slapped
icy hands together. Josh hurried up a minute later with the bags, his hair plastered to his head.

Suits asked, “You coming along to the cove with us? It’s been a long time—”

“Can’t. There’s a sound in the engine that I don’t like. I’ll bunk in with my buddy in Albion, come back first thing in the
morning and work on it.”

“Whatever.” Suits shrugged. “We’ll drop you off, if that cab— Here he comes now.”

A brown sedan with a light on top that inexplicably said “Yellow Cab Company” was pulling in to the terminal parking lot.
Suits motioned to me, and we ran for it, Josh following with the bags. The cab’s interior was musty with old cigar smoke,
but the driver, an elderly man in a hooded army surplus slicker, had the heat on high, so I could forgive any noxious odor.
Suits and Josh greeted him familiarly, and we set off south, stopping to let Josh out at the foot of a road on the coast highway
below the hamlet of Albion. As we continued, Suits began to hum tunelessly, fingers of his right hand splayed and pressing
hard against his thigh.

Nervous, I thought. Something to do with the person he’s taking me to meet.

I didn’t ask, though. Just let it unfold.

* * *

When the cab turned off the highway some ten minutes later, its headlights washed over a high stake fence. Suits got out and
ran through the rain to a wooden box mounted next to the gate, used a key, and the gate swung open. The driver pulled the
cab forward, and Suits got back in. They’d done this before, I thought.

The property beyond the fence was heavily forested in cypress; a blacktop drive cut through the trees, then climbed a steep
rise. After the cab crested it, I saw rocky land falling away to the sea cliff and, on its edge, the lights I’d glimpsed from
the air. Wind buffeted the cab as it crossed the unsheltered land; beside me Suits leaned forward, staring at a house whose
outlines began to emerge from the sheeting rain.

I leaned forward too, saw two long, low wings of fieldstone and timber connected by a peak-roofed glass gallery that resembled
a greenhouse. The lights in either wing were masked by drawn curtains, and smoke from one of the chimneys was caught and swept
inland by the gale. As the cab stopped in front of the glass section, spotlights flashed on inside; they shone on a profusion
of palms and yuccas and vines, casting complex shadows through which a silhouette moved.

Suits’s earlier tension flowed out in a sigh. “It’s called Moonshine House,” he told me, “after the liquor they used to offload
down at the cove.” His voice was light now, almost boyish.

I turned toward him, but already he was opening the cab’s door and scrambling out. While I located my purse and briefcase
and pulled the hood of my parka over my head, he dealt with money matters and hoisted one of the bags with his good hand.
I climbed out and grabbed the other, and we ran for the house. The door swung open, and I skidded through it, dropping the
bag on a slick tile floor. A strong, slender hand steadied me. I looked into the face of the woman who waited there.

Suits said, “Sherry-O, this is my wife, Anna.”

She could have been my sister, we looked that much alike.

* * *

At first I could only stare, my eyes moving from Anna to Suits and back again. Then he let fly one of his alarming whoops
of laughter and the spell was broken.

Anna Gordon—taller and more slender than I, with waist-length black hair like mine before I had it cut—looked sternly at her
husband. To me she said, “I don’t suppose he mentioned the resemblance.”

“No.”

“The man does love a surprise.” She shot him one more stern glance, then urged me to our left, into a long wing where kitchen,
dining area, and living room flowed into a single open space that was dominated by a pit fireplace and a westward-oriented
window wall. Instead of the sea, I saw our images—Anna’s and mine—reflected on the black glass. She touched my arm and pointed;
we studied ourselves and each other.

There were differences, of course: Her height, accentuated by slim jeans and a loose silk top the color of clover honey. Her
features, more strongly Native American than mine, which are a genetic accident, a throwback to the Shoshone blood that traces
to my great-grandmother, Mary McCone. Her mannerisms … I couldn’t quite pinpoint it, but already I sensed a contentment …
no, a self-containment that I didn’t have, probably never would have.

But the likeness, given the circumstances, was unsettling.

Suits came in behind us. He’d removed the raincoat he’d worn draped over his shoulders and was still chuckling.

I turned and glared at him.

He held out his good hand as if to fend me off. “Sorry,” he said. “The devil made me do it.”

Really? I wondered. A practical joke, or an omission prompted by nervousness about how I would take the fact that he’d married
a woman who looked a great deal like me? I thought of the way he’d stared at me in All Souls’s kitchen before making the decision
to bring me here; of his brooding silence on the JetRanger and his edginess in the taxi. In either case, I’d misread Suits
once again, imagining him to be a loner whose life was played out in a series of half-furnished places in cities that weren’t
home. It convinced me that I would never read him accurately, would never do anything more than scratch the surface of his
persona.

Anna took my purse and briefcase, helped me out of my wet parka, and loaded them onto Suits’s good arm. “Make yourself useful,”
she told him. Then she led me to one of the sofas that surrounded the fire pit. “Take off those boots and put your feet up,”
she said. “I’m going to fix us some food.”

I sat holding my hands out toward the warmth of the flames. The rain whacked down on the roof, smacked mercilessly against
the glass wall behind me. After a moment I pulled off my boots, wriggled my toes, and propped them up to toast on the fire
pit’s edge.

Anna had gone to the kitchen at the far end of the space—rich wood and copper and earth-toned tiles, warm on a night like
this. Suits came in from wherever he’d taken my things and joined her. She stood at a counter that faced out into the room,
arranging food on a plate; he moved behind her, cradling her body with his good arm. Anna paused in her work, turned for a
kiss, touched his cast gently with her fingertips. When she resumed what she’d been doing, he rested his chin on her shoulder;
she was a few inches taller than he, and his head fit nicely into the curve of her neck. As I watched, his weary face underwent
a transformation: lines smoothed; his eyes closed; a smile curved his lips.

My work has made me something of a voyeur, but even such an accomplished one as I knows when to stop intruding on a private
moment. I looked away at the fire pit. In spite of the many questions that nagged at me, the flames soon had me mesmerized.
I heard soft conversation and rattling of dishes in the kitchen, the repetitive beeping of a microwave oven. My limbs sagged
against the soft cushions, and my eyelids grew heavy. …

The conversation was louder now, something to do with wine. I jerked my head up; I’d been dozing. Anna crossed the room and
set a tray laden with glasses, plates, and utensils on the fire pit wall. “Hope you don’t mind eating informally,” she said.
“That dining room table? We’ve had it five years now and never once used it.” Then she went back to the kitchen, and I removed
my still-damp feet from next to the tray. She and Suits returned with two additional trays and took seats on either side of
me.

“Okay,” Anna said, “you can eat fancy or plain, or both. We’ve got duck liver pâté and another kind—I think it’s pork and
beef—with some of those designer mushrooms that Suits likes but I find suspect. There’s Brie and Stilton”—Suits growled in
appreciation—“and caviar and anchovies”—she made a face—“and crackers and sourdough. Now, over here”—she indicated the tray
closest to her—“is the kind of stuff I live on when he’s not home, which is most of the time. All microwavable.”

I stared. It was a junk-food fancier’s dream: egg rolls, tiny pizzas, little tacos, pot stickers, chicken wings, White Castle
burgers, chips and dips and pork rinds. “This is
wonderful
!”

Anna smiled triumphantly at Suits. I gathered they’d made a wager over which kind of cuisine—if either could be so termed—I’d
go for. She reached for a taco and said, “We have such a crazy setup here that I haven’t cooked a meal except for big pots
of chili and soup in years. I’m not sure I’d even know how any more.” Then she looked at Suits, who was plunging his knife
into the Stilton cheese. “The wine?”

“Oh, right.” He picked up a bottle and glanced at its label. “The Cabernet is a nineteen eighty-five Spottswoode—very crisp
and lively. The Chardonnay is a nineteen ninety-three Sanford Barrel Select—spicy, complex—”

“Just ask her white or red and pour, would you?” To me, Anna added, “It’s that damn photographic memory of his; he reads a
wine magazine and the descriptions stick in his head.”

To my surprise, Suits grinned widely. “She keeps me honest,” he said.

I opted for the Cab—a perfect choice for a cold, rainy night—and loaded my plate with junk-food tidbits. As a concession to
Suits, I also sampled some caviar and Brie.

Suits was working seriously on the Stilton, as if he was afraid Anna or I might decide we wanted it and leave him only a chicken
wing. “So, Sherry-O,” he said, “I guess you’re pissed at me.”

“I will be dangerously pissed if you don’t stop calling me Sherry-O.”

“It’s only a nickname.”

“I hate it.”

“Sorry, Sherry-O.”

Anna leaned around me, frowning severely at him.

Suits looked at her, rolled his eyes, and said, “Okay, I won’t use it again.”

I smiled at Anna, shook her hand. To Suits I said, “You’re not off the hook yet. You might at least have told me you were
married.”

He shrugged.

I asked Anna, “Was the resemblance a shock to you, too?”