The Prince Of Deadly Weapons Read online

  He took the cigar back. "Hit me where I live. Agreed."

  * * *

  ESSIE WAS at the bar when Nathan reappeared from the den. She asked Flesh, who was beside her, "Do you think you could know someone for years and be totally wrong about them?"

  "Only if you're me." Flesh tasted her double vodka and tonic. She handed it back to the bartender, "You want to give this drink something to be proud of?"

  She turned to Essie. "If this is about the possibility Taylor committed suicide, I don't for one minute be—"

  Essie's look stopped Flesh cold and before she could clean up her thought Nathan's voice cut across the room. "Ladies and gentlemen, could I please have your attention."

  * * *

  IT TOOK a few moments for word to pass through the rooms of people. Nathan caught sight of Essie and called her to his side. Nathan stood between her and the General as the mourners gathered together on the steps, in doorways, around the bar. All except Roy, who hung back on the terrace so he could tell Flesh what he'd found out.

  "First," said Nathan, "let me thank you for being here today. For helping Essie and I deal with our sorrow, and for allowing us to help you deal with yours."

  Flesh whispered to Roy, "What did Ivy say?"

  "She gave him the Valium, and you know what else? Taylor told her he was thinking about going to a psychiatrist. That he felt his life was a failure."

  Nathan continued, "As you know, Taylor was an organ donor. He told me once it was his way of passing on a few hopes and dreams to someone who might desperately need a hope and a dream."

  "Flesh, I think we might be looking at a suicide."

  "Taylor had started taking flying lessons three weeks ago out at Rio Vista," she said. "He had made plans for a trip to Hong Kong."

  "Maybe he was desperate," said Roy, "to find something to keep his mind off killing himself."

  Nathan pointed to Ivy. "Ivy and I were sitting on the terrace the night Taylor died as we spoke of this very subject. I was looking out across our beautiful marina and was touched by a thought. I'd like to think it was Taylor's spirit that put it there, in those moments when he was moving between our world and the next."

  "You know what I think," whispered Flesh. "You want it to be a suicide."

  "From this day forward," said Nathan, "I am going to use all my skills and talents, my drive and will, to one end. It will be to build a research center, in this community, to be the finest in America, for organ transplantation. And I am going to build it… in my son's name."

  There was a run of polite applause.

  "Why should I want it to be a suicide?" Roy whispered. Nathan quieted the crowd.

  "Because," said Flesh, "maybe it will help break the spell of Taylor and you'll have another shot at her."

  Nathan rested a palm on the General's shoulder. "I also want to add that Merrit Hand, my good friend and Taylor's godfather, has promised his and the bank's full support in making this project a reality."

  Roy had plenty of filthy things to call Flesh but she was up and gone, joining that crowd of hand clappers. What made him angriest— she was right.

  Charles was sitting with his wife and two daughters and there was no shortage of congratulations coming his way for what everyone assumed he knew of and was committed to.

  Charles smiled through the backwash of a thought— the old carcass wants me to carry him to heaven on my fuckin' back.

  * * *

  NATHAN LAY in bed and stared up at a black ceiling. Ivy lay beside him.

  "The General hasn't been able to look me in the eye since Taylor was killed. I feel he knows, or at least suspects, it was Charles."

  Ivy leaned up on one elbow and put a hand over his mouth. "You are going to poison yourself with thoughts like that."

  He removed her hand and held it. "I'm gonna build that center and I'm gonna use it as a way to destroy him. I don't know how yet, but I am."

  "And how do we keep from being destroyed along the way?"

  He let go of her hand and stared up into that sky of a ceiling.

  "Nathan…?"

  * * *

  A LIGHT cleared away the darkness where Taylor had lay dying. It cleared darkness from the doorway. Across the living room this single wave of light moved leaving a black tide in its wake. The light then found Taylor's desk.

  Essie looked upon the scene. It spoke to her with its punctuated meaning: Nathan's picture at one end of the desk, hers at the other. And between, just open empty space.

  He had been the connection, a construction that made them close even though she had worked for Nathan almost three years. Now, there was a break in their lives. A distance. A hole that had to be filled. And it wouldn't be filled with eulogies or wakes, not by a research center or memorial. It demanded something living, something that swept over dream like and nostalgic memories. It demanded answers.

  By moving Taylor's body you contaminated the site—

  Facts can be blunt instruments. And that statement of fact was meant to harm, to hurt Essie in some deeply vulnerable reach and reinforce what she already felt— that she had failed him.

  Essie let that flashlight again find the room. She saw Taylor's books stacked and open wherever he had last been reading. His CDs, not a one, as usual, in its case. And the one-armed bandit she had given him as a Christmas present. She walked over and ran her hand across its enjoyably tacky facing. The card that came with it was still perched up on top. She reread what she had written that holiday past:

  Something for you to play with when I'm not around. Love, Essie.

  Her chest clutched. Her breath made traumatic stops and starts, her neck clenched. She wanted to surrender to her emotions. To let herself be devoured by human frailties. To collapse with pain and wanting and loss. To just cry herself away. But she didn't.

  What if Taylor found out—

  She did not want to believe the worst about Nathan or Ivy. But their faces through the off-lit glass seemed to be a succession of bleak, angry and frightened snapshots into their being.

  Don't overreact, Essie thought. Don't blind yourself to other possibilities that it was only something unwise— imprudent— something that would shame but not silence life.

  She drifted around the room in confusion. She had to believe, had to make herself believe, dare herself to believe that there was a shapeless, invisible thread that moved through all of this. A measured rope that would guide someone, anyone, her, through a maze of moments to reach a point where truth be known.

  She talked to Taylor. She made a promise there in the dark. With the silver of night reflecting off the slough water. She made a promise she would keep at any cost. A promise that his life would not end up like it had today, the subject of grave side gossip. She made her promise, and she would tell no one. No one.

  Chapter Eight

  THE BURROW HAD a cheap, rave breakfast. Essie often ate at the Rio Vista Airport restaurant as Taylor had rented a hangar there to store goods he'd imported.

  It had been almost three months since his death. Essie was there that morning to continue cleaning up his business affairs.

  The night before Roy had taken her and Nathan to dinner in Lodi and given them the news. Essie scanned an article in the newspaper that was, almost verbatim, what Roy had told them— an investigation failed to furnish legitimate evidence that Taylor Greene's death was a homicide.

  Essie was disgusted. Taylor had become an official postscript to his own story.

  "It's a shame," said Paul Caruso, as he brought Essie breakfast.

  She looked up. Sancho Maria, his wife, was right there beside him. "A god damn fuckin' shame," she said, then leaned down and pulled Essie toward her.

  Sancho Maria was dark skinned and sensually padded. Paul Caruso told everyone Sancho Maria reminded him of Liz Taylor…"after she'd been knocked around by a few earthquakes."

  As the three talked of hard pain Essie noticed the Fenn Brothers walk the tarmac from their hangar to Taylor's. A cell p
hone began to ring. The man in the booth behind them answered and got into one of those self-indulgent cha-cha business calls, talking loud enough for everyone to hear how important he was.

  Through the sunbleached window Essie watched to see what the hell the Fenns were doing around Taylor's hangar as Paul clipped that Hawaiian-shirted yuppie man on the back of his neck. He turned. Caruso pointed to the far wall. Just above a huge painting of the ancient Cretan Labyrinth was a sign that read: TALKING ON A CELLULAR IN THIS RESTAURANT IS A NON-STARTER. CEASE AND DESIST.

  "I'll just be a minute," was the man's placating response.

  "You ain't got a minute, geek, before you go through the glass."

  It looked to Essie as if the Fenns were undoing the lock.

  The man considered Caruso's nicked-up face, his torque wrench arms, and the Am-Staff stare on that woman beside him. He killed the call.

  Essie stood up. The Fenns were opening Taylor's hangar door.

  * * *

  THEY HAD pretty much just gotten into the dark stacks of furniture and boxes when Essie came in asking, "What are you doing here?"

  These were punk garage tough boys and they carried themselves accordingly. Tommy held up a key. "Charles Gill got word some piece of furniture he'd ordered was delivered weeks ago. He sent us to get it."

  "Where'd he get that key?"

  "I guess from Taylor's old man."

  "Don't touch anything till I talk to Nathan."

  As she turned to go back to the restaurant and make the call Tommy slipped a cellular out of his back pocket. "Call him right now."

  She began to dial and Shane mumbled, "Just a little taste of moral outrage from the dooms lingers."

  Tommy gave his brother a look that said "kill the riff." Shane turned his attention to Essie. "It must be tough having a boyfriend freakin' off himself."

  January 2001 After the Murders

  Chapter Nine

  DAND RUDD LOOKED out the window of that Cessna and into the heartland of the Rio de Sacramento and San Joaquin. These two rivers formed the headwaters of the California Delta.

  "It stretches forty miles in one direction and fifty in another," said Caruso. "One thousand miles of waterway for fishing, sailing, marinas, anchorage s…" He stopped. "I sound like some dickless, loser tour guide."

  As the plane banked the red horizon fell away to the west and below was a weaving pattern of streams and tributaries, of channels, sloughs and currents that connected and reconnected in an astounding complex of nature.

  It was like looking down upon some vast and labyrinthine living body composed of water and earth that spread placidly toward the edges of sight, toward the gates of distance.

  "You can see," Caruso said, "there's more than one way in and one way out of those streams."

  As Caruso talked he kept trying to sneak a glance in or around the edges of Rudd's sunglasses and get a look at his eyes.

  "You can't tell anything," said Dane.

  "I don't getcha."

  Dane took off his sunglasses. "They transplant the cornea, not the whole eye. It's impossible to see if there was any surgery at all."

  Caruso was shamelessly unashamed of a need to stare. So he stared, and stared.

  Rudd's eyes were light, light gray. Almost transparent. More tone than true color or set shade. Closer in feel to water than earth.

  "I thought that maybe if you'd had blue eyes before and the person who died had, say brown eyes, you'd have—"

  "No," said Dane. "The real dramatics are from my side." He slipped back on his sunglasses. "I'm here because of Taylor Greene."

  "Taylor was the donor? Does his father know?"

  "If you want to thank a donor's family there's a process you go through by sending a letter to the eye bank, they in turn contact the family. It's their option to read the letter, and contact you."

  "And Nathan did?"

  "He sent me an invitation to the memorial."

  More than once Dane had glanced at the dirty T-shirt Caruso was wearing. On the front was printed, in diploma-style script: "Graduate of the Men's Colony… Class of '91."

  Caruso caught Dane's half grin. "What?"

  Dane pointed to the shirt. "How long did it take you to get your degree? Or should I say, release?"

  Caruso came back with his own larcenous grin. "You know what the Men's Colony is."

  "I do."

  "Most people are so stupid they don't get the joke. They think it's some trade school or college."

  "Well, in a way it is, isn't it. Many of our most aggressive, free-thinking citizens have done intense post-graduate work there… for their personal advancement, of course."

  Caruso grunted through his teeth. He held up a forearm as if it were a rock hard prick. "And the white collar boys are always the ripest."

  "It's good to know," said Dane, "the hard measurements of justice."

  Caruso again grunted through his teeth.

  Dane went back to looking out the window. The last of the sun poured forth like fire across the spreading landscape. The water burned with light and you could follow those blue sparkling lines as they cut deep and far into the life-green land. You could see boats that left frosty wakes as they sped on, and those with sails, fleecy white and tall, moving like gentle landmarks with the current, pulling their shadows toward the bay.

  There were old ferries and unused girder bridges. There were windmills and the remains of harbors, tule reeds that stood high as a man against the wind, and poplars that tracked the shore. There was farmland, squared patches so huge you would think they could feed the world.

  It was a beautiful trace where the past and present blended almost unnoticeably. Its very distance, and its very silence, made the world below more something of elegy than earth.

  "From here," said Dane, "the world is heartbreakingly beautiful."

  Chapter Ten

  AFTER THE FLIGHT Caruso offered to stand Dane a couple of beers.

  The Burrow was one part coffee shop, one part bar and booths, and one part tree shaded patio. The building, which looked out over the western runway, anchored a small complex of offices, bathrooms and showers.

  The Burrow was also one of the Delta's more well-known eccentricities as the inside walls of the coffee shop and bar were covered with representations of the ancient mythological Labyrinth. There were funky paintings and framed photographs. There were cutouts from magazines and books of famous renditions glued then glazed into a kind of world-tour collage.

  As Caruso was back in the kitchen explaining to Sancho Maria what Dane told him, she'd sneak glances through the kitchen door and watch this intensely absorbed young man take in image after image of that famous maze where Theseus and the Minotaur confronted life, and from where Daedalus and his boy escaped toward the sun using wings made from wax.

  It was all there for Dane to walk, that journey memorialized on Greek coins and sandstone slabs, on the subterranean walls of Egyptian burial chambers and in the floors and bas-relief of the great cathedrals of Europe.

  There were labyrinths designed as prisons and cages and oubliettes. There were those that symbolized the escape through Samsara, and those that spoke of the karmic law and the night sea voyage. From Pompeii to the postmodern ideal, with steps along the way for Brueghel and Picasso and Dürrenmatt and sculptured creations you could walk and those of petty hipster visual maze artists on the rip.

  There were labyrinths of the one path and those of the many and those of the seven convolutions. As Dane took in that puzzling pilgrimage of straight and blind paths, he could see that since human life was young enough to think and feel the mystery of that symbol had been with us.

  "I'm a fuckin' head case, right?"

  Dane turned to find a beer waiting for him.

  They sat in a booth where Caruso had assembled, besides beer, a bottle of tequila, a lemon, a knife and salt. "Let me tell you something, okay," he said, placing these accoutrements on the table for a little extra righteous enjoyment. "From the
age of fourteen to the age of forty I was in and out of prison; seven times I was in lock down— for possession, dealing, burglary, robbery, armed robbery, assault. But the last time in stir, and I was in for nine years, I got lucky on two counts."

  Sancho Maria walked past with a tray of beers. "You're not gonna make him sit through the bullshit story of your life?" She winked at Dane, "You can doze off any time you want. Just stretch right out there in the booth and if you need a pillow, give me a holler."

  Caruso's lip curled as he waited for her to be gone. Then he started right back in repeating himself. Dane could see this was talk first, drink later, so he reached for the lemon and knife and held them up as if asking would it be all right to start.

  "Sure, sur e…" said Caruso. "Like I was saying. There were two things… The first was her." Caruso pointed to Sancho Maria as she passed back on her way to the bar with a tray of empties. "She was a corrections officer at the Men's Colony."

  The way Dane's look moved from one to the other caused Caruso to say, "I shit you not. She was a corrections officer and we fell in love." To Sancho Maria, "Right?"

  "Pity me," she said. "I liked the way he used to walk the yard."

  "You should have seen her when she was wearing a flak jacket and had a riot gun tucked up under her tits."

  From fifteen feet away she punctuated his statement with, "It was the riot gun that got him hot."

  As Dane sprinkled salt on the back of his hand Caruso leaned in close as if sharing something very, very special. "And the second thing that happened was I got into reading about mythology. Bull-finch… Edith Hamiton… all that shit blew my mind but you know what story hooked me the most?"

  Dane downed a shot of tequila, finished the ritual with lemon. Then, behind those sunglasses his eyes went from wall to wall to wall. "I think I can muscle up at least one serious guess."

  "Fuckin' A. I mean, what's a more right-on story if you're in a six-by-twelve lock down for a decade."

  Caruso pointed to the entrance wall. Dane turned to see a framed parchment maybe four feet across and three feet high, the paper cracked with age, of Daedalus and his son flying from that stone entrapment on wings.