Violets & Violence (19 page)

I chuckled and reached into my pocket for the keys, opening the lock on the fence then leading the way up the cracked and sagging walkway. The steps leading up to the front porch had buckled. We veered off to the iron-gated side entrance that came off the overgrown driveway where my father had parked his car—always a Pontiac, even though he could’ve walked to work, and my mother was bussed to the Chrysler assembly plant where she had worked until she got sick. Before starting on the door, I peeked into the backyard for signs of intrusion. I saw none.

“You’re quiet,” Violet said. “Everything okay?”

I nodded, using another key to open the lock on the gated iron door. Another lock on the heavy, metal door that led inside.

“Always worried someone might’ve gotten in,” I confessed as I stepped inside. Behind Violet, Darren entered with his camera in one hand, the other clutching a bulge close to his crotch. Likely the handgun.

“Hasn’t happened yet,” I said optimistically, “and we’re still far enough from the really bad areas, but you never know.”

“You headed upstairs?” Darren asked, nodding down the hall toward the kitchen. “I like this ancient stuff down here, all the metal appliances that are starting to rust out.” He nodded into the front room, completely empty now; I had given most of the furniture away long ago, some charity or other. “The wallpaper is peeling nicely, too.” He raised his camera like it all made perfect sense why he would want to capture this shit – and it really was all
shit
– on film. But then again, I wasn’t the amateur photographer who got off on the stories of heartache and sadness that lie behind each abandoned room, house, and building. They were all
losses
, no matter how you looked at it, and my house was no different because my parents had lost so much of their equity and quality of life in this place.

I nodded, “Yeah, we’ll head upstairs.” I grabbed Violet’s hand, walking deeper into the house. Each footfall aroused a creepy creaking, but that had always been the case ever since I cut off the heating and electrical. Most would say it’s the emptiness and age, but cutting the utilities had seemed like that final nail in the coffin of my childhood home.

Violet’s hand squeezed mine as we stepped through the kitchen. “They’d smoke their morning and pre-bedtime cigarettes here,” I said, pointing to a rusting café table in the corner.

She smiled. “Looks like a cute place.”

“It was.” I grinned.

“No wonder your friend wants to capture this stuff.” I watched her run a finger across the dust on the stove, then blow it off her fingertip.

The stairwell was narrow and felt like it drooped underfoot, just like everywhere else. On the second floor, we passed the master bedroom which occupied the front half of the level, and then moved to the second bedroom which shared the rear half with the family bathroom.

“This is where I slept.”

“How many times did you kiss Leila here?” she asked, sliding in front of me and pulling me into an embrace.

I pressed my lips to hers, then drew back far enough out of her reach that I could stare through the Plexiglas window at the overgrown backyard without being distracted. “A few,” I admitted.

She pulled me away from the window, urging my body toward hers as she rolled her back against the wall. The damp drywall buckled and cracked under our weight.

I laughed. “This place is ready for a bulldozer,” I admitted, brushing the fake hair out of her face and kissing her again. But I didn’t keep at it.

I could hear the creaking wood. Darren loved taking pictures of deserted buildings, burnt-out cars, any and all things that reeked of abandonment, the kinds of things for which Detroit was notorious (my favorite collection of his consisted of black and white prints of rusted toys). I imagined he might creep into the room at any minute and snap off a series of pictures that would have me semi-erect making out with my magician girlfriend, high school-style. I didn’t want that; I was supposed to be a depreciating, grown man.

“I love your childhood home,” she said, grinning affectionately and nodding at the opposite wall. “Jeez, is that Disneyworld wallpaper, princess?”

I glanced back, smiling. “Circa nineteen-seventy.” I faced her again and my expression darkened a little.

I had questions, and I felt myself getting far too involved with this woman. It was why I’d brought her here, to the house where I grew up, the same way a teenager might bring his girlfriend over for dinner. Not only so she could meet my past, but so I could watch how she behaved in the presence of all of this. Would she be respectful? Would she mock it?

“What is it, Carter?” she asked softly, tilting her head and studying me. “You’re quiet here.”

Damn, she was good.

I stepped back, mostly because I needed a bit of distance to ask my question. Now was as good a time as any, and I was tired of waiting, tired of not knowing. “I’m trying to understand your relationship with Luke,” I admitted. “I’m sure I’m overreacting, but I’ve got all these people that keep bringing him up. And…”

She reached out and took my hand, pulling me closer. Staring into her face, I recognized a touch of discomfort. But I also saw vulnerability. I knew her response wouldn’t be as tidy and neat as I had hoped, and she seemed to notice my disappointment.

Glancing away, she told me, “We work together. That’s our history. Our past. And we still work together, closely. Well, very closely. He creates the illusions. He truly is the brains behind Violets & Illusions, but we’ve never been involved. I promise.”

“He created the illusion where you walk through glass?” I asked.

She nodded, a little too eagerly. “Yes, exactly like that.”

“How?” I wondered, had been wondering since I saw her perform it.

“You really want to know?” She squeezed my hands. “I’ll tell you anything you want, Carter. But this thing with Luke, you really need to trust me on it.”

I gritted my teeth. I didn’t like him. I knew there was some kind of past between them, no matter what she said or how quickly she nodded her head. “What about New York? Is it because of Luke that you were there again?”

She shifted. The silence between us made me uncomfortable. It felt even worse because the creaking floors had stopped.

“Okay, the glass illusion,” I said, just so we could get talking again. “Let’s hear that secret.”

The heaviness in her face lifted, and that made me happy. “You sure you want to know? It’s obvious once you know the engineering end, and it might ruin magic for you…forever.” She had a serious-as-a-heart-attack look on her face.

I shrugged. “Sure. Let’s hear it.”

She took a deep breath. “The large glass wall is made of smaller blocks of glass. The way the lighting reflects off the front surface, and then the back surface once you were on the back side, means that you don’t see the seams when the smaller blocks move within the larger block.”

“They fold open?” I asked, frowning. It seemed too simple.

“No, they
slide
open,” she clarified, her eyes wide like that was more impressive than the magic itself. And maybe from an engineering standpoint, it was. “And as soon as I step through, they slide back into place.”

She could read the confusion on my face. “It’s that simple?”

“It’s not the glass block so much as the lighting,” she told me with a giddy, excited shoulder shrug. “It’s ninety percent lighting because people believe what they
see
, and ten percent glass block, because those small sliders make a ton of noise.” She shrugged again. “It’s loud enough in the theater with the crowd and music that you don’t really hear the smaller blocks, and even if you do, you don’t believe it’s coming from the demonstration on the stage because your eyes don’t see it happening. It’s pretty ingenious.”

“That
is
impressive,” I admitted finally, though I was still trying to wrap my head around the mechanics of it all. Still, it was difficult to ignore just how passionate she was about her show.

“Luke trained as a lighting technician, and he has a year of Structural Engineering from NYU. But then…” Another deep breath which was probably meant to convey more than an uncaringness about the man with whom she lived. “You wanted to know about New York, so I’ll tell you.”

I stayed quiet, and she kept her mouth shut, too. Almost like she wanted me to tell her it was okay. I didn’t need to hear this, but I did. No matter how bad it might be, I needed the truth, otherwise I would never trust her.

“Luke and I stole something pretty powerful in New York,” she admitted, her face twisting and her eyes elsewhere.

I took an involuntary step back.
Stole
?

She nodded, like she had just read my mind. “Yes, we stole. It was worth a lot of money to someone. I mean
a lot
.” She shrugged. “Which was why we stole it.”

“Did you get caught?” I asked, clearing my throat and trying not to let my concern show.

She nodded, then moved away from the wall, toward the doorway.

“What was it?” I asked her, turning around. “What did you two steal?”

She faced me. “Time,” she answered, forcing a chuckle.

I didn’t know what to say. It sounded so strange—
how can you steal
time?

But judging from the look on her face, she wasn’t joking. This was serious. “We were paid a couple hundred thousand dollars. That was a lot of money back then,” she added, her wide eyes finding mine like this justified everything.

The floor creaked outside my bedroom door, behind Violet. I didn’t think anything of it because I assumed Darren had joined us upstairs to take pictures of the retro bathroom fixtures, peeling wallpaper, whatever else it was that turned him on as a photographer.

Except it wasn’t Darren.

It was a man with torn pants, a couple months’ worth of facial growth, and a glass eye. Before I could react, he leaped into the room and tackled Violet, startling me to the point where I tripped backward and knocked another dent into the disintegrating wall.

“Dammit!” I screamed. “Darren!”

I heard his footfalls rush across the floor downstairs, then climb the steps two at a time while I started toward Violet and the squatter rolling around on the floor. Before I could reach out and rip him off of her, they stopped.

And I froze.

He was holding a knife to her neck, gripping her from behind. The blade pressed into her flesh, just enough that a small, red tear rolled down her neck to her collarbone.

She whispered a desperate, “Carter.”

And all I could do was raise my hands as Darren stormed into the room behind the squatter and Violet. Darren gripped his gun, holding it forward with two hands and looking like a rookie cop.

“Put it down,” the squatter ordered with a twangy accent. When he spoke, his front tooth—the rest of his mouth seemed empty—wiggled. It was creepy. “Or I’ll cut her head straight off.”

“Okay, okay,” Darren said, letting the gun go limp around his trigger finger. As he got down on one knee, he added, “Let the girl go and the gun is all yours.”

The squatter smiled, nodding.

So Darren nodded, too.

“Nothing smart,” the squatter warned me.

I couldn’t move. In fact, I could barely breathe. I raised my hands to show I wouldn’t do anything smart. “Okay. Okay, let’s stay calm.”

Before he could absorb the words, Darren squeezed the trigger and the squatter screeched. The knife dropped out of his fingers to the floor.

He screeched some more as Violet rolled deftly out of his grip. She moved so quickly that, in a flash, she had the knife in her own hand and was now standing over the squatter. She called him an asshole while he bled on the floor, clamping the outside of his arm with the other hand. He seemed to be bleeding a lot.

“Get out,” Darren told him, the gun trembling in one hand while the other hauled the squatter off the floor. “Get—” grunt, “—out. Now.”

He shoved him out of the room and pushed him down the stairs.

More screaming from the surface wound on his arm.

Violet dropped the knife and hurried over, wrapping her arms around me and weeping into my shoulder. It felt nice, knowing that she found comfort in me.

And that, I realized, was probably the exact feeling she wanted me to feel so that I would forget that she had not only stolen “time” from someone in New York, but had pried hundreds of thousands from the hands of generous people who also happened to be my clients.

But the one question I still needed answered was
why?

The
crack!
of the baseball felt good; connecting with the ball the
right
way never resulted in the painful vibrations that often travelled up my arms and into my joints. But then again, connecting with a ball zipping at you at nearly ninety miles per hour wasn’t all that simple. I heard Darren whistle an impressive
wow
behind me as I positioned myself for the next ball.

“You sure you don’t want your blazer?” he asked.

The ball launched,
whoooot
.

I swung.

I connected,
crack!

It was the lunch hour on a Tuesday. I had been to Birmingham to deliver a reprinted statement to a client’s accountant, and then figured I could use the exercise. Most people didn’t consider smacking the life out of a ball to be true exercise, but if the purpose of exercise was to relieve stress and live longer, than these batting cages were my equivalent of a full-service fitness club. Even “working out” in my Bostonian shoes and Van Heusen shirt with my sleeves rolled up allowed me to burn a few calories.

“Scholarships are a beautiful thing, aren’t they?” Darren barked.

I had a few balls left, tip-fouled the first, then sent the remaining two bouncing down what would’ve surely been the third-base line. Which meant my swing was slowing.

Wiping the sweat off my forehead with my rolled-up sleeve, I followed Darren through the facility to the wooden stairs in the corner. They led up to the administration offices where the staff sorted tokens, bundled cash, and managed the operations of the Wayne County Batting Cages.

Darren’s office was in the corner, nothing too big or fancy; the room had two small windows that overlooked the parking area, a metal desk with two client chairs atop a green rug that looked like the same kind of fake turf you would find on a mini-putt course.

“Sorry about your girlfriend and that homeless guy this weekend,” Darren said casually.

It was the first time we had spoken about the so-called “incident” in the house.

Last Saturday, after dropping the squatter off at an ER and hurrying off, we had returned to Franklin where my Toyota had remained untouched, and I took Violet home. She had been shaken up, sitting quietly in the front seat next to me and, no doubt, wondering just how messed up my childhood had been after
that
close call. She hadn’t spoken the entire time.

“She’ll be fine,” I assured him, snapping out of the memory.

At Violet’s house, I had kissed her goodbye once I stopped the Camry in her driveway, and followed that up with the millionth apology for what had happened.

She’d told me she loved me and my childhood, but not the memories that would haunt her from my childhood home. That last part, she had added with a bit of a chuckle but both of us had still been so shaken that neither of us could offer more than a faint grin. Still, the failed attempt at lightheartedness wasn’t lost, however.

“I read in the paper last night that she incorporated it into her act,” I said. “Had one of the volunteers hold a knife to her neck while she was underneath that sheet during the great finale.”

“Where she disappears off the stage and reappears somewhere in the audience?” Darren asked. He had seen the show as well, earlier on before I had even heard about it.

I nodded. “She texted me, said it went well.”

Darren seemed to have disappeared into his thoughts about the show. “How does she do that, Carter? Disappear and reappear like that?” He shook his head. “It’s pretty genius, whatever it is that she does.”

“It is,” I admitted. I remembered that night at the Fisher, seated next to James when, at that big finale, it turned out that I had been seated next to Violet.
Where did James go? How did she exist on the stage during that final act while returning to James’s seat after the intermission without me noticing?
“Genius,” I repeated.

“She must’ve told you, Carter,” Darren insisted, raising his eyebrows insistently. “The way she looks at you… I’m sure she’s told you.”

I didn’t know what it was, but the question spooked me. Or maybe it was more about—

“Are you okay?” he asked.

I snatched my jacket and hurried from the office without saying goodbye.

At the Grosse Pointe Yacht Club, I broke protocol and parked up front with the expensive, German imports, and hurried through the lobby like I belonged there. It had been weeks since my last visit and the only boat remaining in the marina now was the
Ill Eagle IV
.

When I stepped onto the boat, the alarm sounded.

“Shit.” As I backed off, I noticed the shadow on the other side of the sliding glass door.

It was Bill. He was holding a baseball bat in his hand and wearing one of those sweaters that came straight out of an Abercrombie & Fitch catalogue. His shoulders went slack once he recognized me, and then he tossed the bat deeper into that big party room before opening the door and welcoming me inside.

“It’s warmer in here, plus there’s the bar,” he said, offering a sly wink.

“Sorry about dropping in like this, Bill,” I said, shaking out the chills from my arms.

He seemed to recognize my anxiety and steered me toward the table at the back. The same one where I had reviewed his latest investment statement. The one next to that bar he’d mentioned.

“Thirsty?” he asked.

I chuckled. Mind reader. “Just a little.”

He poured scotch into a couple of glasses, adding the ice last, and then sat across from me.

“I’m sorry about intruding like this, Bill.”

“You’ve said that already, Carter. So what’s on your mind?”

I took a deep sip, felt the burn before asking the question I needed answered. “What can you tell me about James Calver?”

Bill’s eyebrows knotted. He didn’t seem to recognize the name.

“You introduced me to James at the party,” I reminded him. I wanted to add,
Think about it, Bill, just think,
but kept quiet. “We had a chat upstairs. He knows Violet and her manager, or whatever he’s called.”

At last, Bill nodded. “I remember James. He invested in the show as well.”

He’s an investor?
“Where would I find James?”

Bill took another draw from his scotch before speaking again. “I think I have James’ contact information. I’ll email it over to you.”

“Today?” I wondered, shifting in my seat and getting a little closer. I wanted to know James’ involvements.

Bill nodded, took another sip, then asked me a question of his own. “I’ve been hearing some rumbling that you and Violet have been getting close. Any truth to that?” He raised an eyebrow, and I wondered if he thought I had played any kind of role in introducing him to Luke.

I spread my hands apart, then smiled. Guilty.

Bill laughed at my quiet admission. “There’ve been talks about that woman, Carter. She and that guy she’s working and living with.”

“Luke.” I hated the sound of his name and it felt blasphemous hearing it in my own voice.

“He really is a little crazy, to be honest.” Bill’s face was as hard as the scotch he had poured for us. “One of the reasons I wrote him a check for a hundred was as an insurance policy.”

“Insurance?” I asked, a little confused.

“Yes,” Bill added. “I wanted some kind of insurance that he couldn’t make my assets disappear.”

I frowned. “Bill, what’re you talking about?”

“I’ve seen the show, just like you have. It’s an illusion, isn’t it? The way Violet disappears on the stage and shows up somewhere else.”

“An illusion,” I repeated.
What’s James’s role in it?

“Yes, that’s what magic is.”

We drank in silence. Part of me wanted to feel the rocking of the boat, to hear the water crash up against the hull, but this big beast didn’t even budge here in the marina. We could’ve been seated in the penthouse suite at Aria; we weren’t moving or swaying or anything.

An illusion, it’s “make believe.”
“The last time I was at the show,” I told him, “I was sitting next to James. When Violet disappeared on the stage, she appeared next to me.”

“What happened to James?” Bill asked.

I shrugged. “I don’t know, but I think he
switched places
with Violet at intermission. Is it possible that he’s part of the show as well?”

“Did you just walk out of there with Violet?” he asked, interested in the secret to her act. “I bet the theater went wild.”

“No, we didn’t walk out,” I said, shaking my head. “We dropped through a trap door and landed on a big bean bag.” I thought about that night again, making love for the first time in the darkness underneath the theater. “Is James part of Violet’s show, Bill? Am I missing something here?”

He shook his head, doubtful. “James? No way. He invested into the show, just like I did.” He took a sip and nodded, a little more pensively this time. “Yes, he invested for exactly the same reason I did.”

“To protect his assets? For insurance against what Luke could do to him?”

“Yes, that’s how I would put it. Because if Luke can make a woman drop out of thin air at one end of the Fisher and have her reappear at the other of end, I can only imagine what he can do with all the money I have.”

He was right. If Bill Thomason – the man who had sold his data encryption company for more money than heaven was worth – felt uneasy with Luke Kemble and his so-called abilities, then what should I have been feeling?

I shuddered at the thought of just how powerful Luke might be –
did they really steal
time
like Violet had suggested? What does that mean? What kind of value does time have, if such a thing were even possible?

“He’s a dangerous man,” Bill added, finishing off his snifter of scotch. “Gets to know you, learns what feeds your ego, then swoops in for the kill.” He frowned, thinking back to his time with Luke and Violet. “We golfed, we got along. He found out about my charitable event and committed to helping me increase donations simply by throwing Violet at my audience. And it worked, rather well. So when he asked me to reciprocate with an investment of a hundred, what could I say? It was blackmail, the clever, silent type.”

Blackmail?
“Bill, did he really blackmail you?”

He chuckled like it was all a big joke. “Well, let’s just say that I’ve dealt with a lot of different folks in my old line of business. When they wanted my company’s data encryption solution, it was for a reason. They needed to secure something. Usually assets, sometimes government secrets, and sometimes some really bad shit.” His face settled into some kind of darkness. “I’ve worked with some really scary men in my day, and I knew better than to turn Luke down. When he held his hand out for the check, I really didn’t have much of a choice.”

I worked all of this through in my head. Was my experience these past few weeks the equivalent of Bill’s experience with Violet at his charitable event? Would Luke come to me with his hand outstretched? He had warned me about steering clear of Violet; he’d been clear about that.

“And from what everyone else has said about him, he owns Violet,” Bill explained, almost as if he could read my mind. “They live together, they’ve known each other since the beginning of time, apparently.”

All I could do was nod at what Bill was telling me.
Since the beginning of time…

“And you, Carter? You know all these wealthy people. You’re a gold mine for Luke, and all Violet had to do was get cozy with you.”

A phone started ringing. It wasn’t mine; I had my volume turned off. Bill reached into his pants and recovered his phone, motioning at me that he needed to take it. As he pressed the phone to his ear, he slipped out of his chair and headed down the hallway next to the room.

It seemed like I sat all alone at the table forever. Taking small, pecking sips of scotch, I tried to figure out Violet’s angle. Her true interest in me. Like Bill suggested, Violet knew that my career put me within arm’s reach of some very wealthy and influential individuals. The kind of people that, like Bill, considered a hundred thousand dollar “investment” in her show to be relatively inconsequential to their overall net worth. Enough to keep Violet and Luke living a lifestyle insulated with luxury, but not enough to send Bill to the authorities. Because, really, what could someone like Bill do? Luke’s approach didn’t exactly leave a paper trail. And I could tell from my own experience with him that he didn’t leave ransom notes either.