The Prince Of Deadly Weapons Read online

  * * *

  WHEN NATHAN was ready he had the river boat lights dimmed to black. Gambling wheels stopped, drinks were no longer served, people gathered to watch and listen. A video camera had been set up far back from the stage and there were monitors on other decks and in small rooms and above the bars for those who could not see or hear firsthand. Nathan whispered to Dane about where he would like him to stand.

  Flesh was with Essie when Roy joined them. Flesh rattled her cocktail glass so the ice sounded like the tail of a diamond back and meant— behave. From above the bridge a spot switched on and a white portal of light filled the stage and everyone now saw Nathan was not alone.

  Flesh whispered to Essie, "Who is that?"

  Essie had no idea who the young man was standing at the edge of that raised platform, with legs together, hands folded behind his back, and head slightly bowed.

  As Nathan began, his words reverbed out across a tide of faces, were carried on cables down through deck after deck of that reconstructed river wagon. He spoke with a father's pride of his own son's exuberance for life, his charity, his selflessness, his common decency, his sense of love. Each simple and cadenced phrase, one by one from the heart, silently reinforced within Nathan his own failure in the face of life. As he worked his way through the painful missive he saw, more and more deeply, how choice after choice had left him poorer of soul. And in that he was not alone. That secret was shared by all, in some fashion, as failures of choice play no favorites, they abide by no laws of chance. Failure of choice is one of life's threads that may strangle us, or, if we can understand where it leads, can set us free.

  Nathan spoke of how people wished they could recall the past, recast it as the present, have it relived for all futures to see and praise. "And in a way," he said, "a handful of God has touched us with that possibility. Though sorrow cannot be changed, it can be amended."

  Nathan glanced upstage. "Ladies and gentlemen, I want you to meet someone who is a living symbol of what the center wants to achieve." He pointed toward Dane. "This young man was on the verge of losing his sight and were it not for my son, in part, being an organ donor, he would be blind."

  As Dane's face rose, the camera panned and zoomed, captured a momentary stare of perfect dark calm, and the crowd moved in from the edges of just plain interest toward the pure business of what tomorrow might bring.

  "My dear and only son believed organ donation passed a hope and a dream to someone in desperate need of a hope and a dream. I'd like you to meet Dane Rudd. Recipient of a hope and a dream that allows him to look into your faces, to see how your hearts respond. I can't tell you what it means to have him here."

  Nathan spoke at length on how the center would be a place for second chances. People heard the words, but it was the sight of that silent, attractive young man given new life that had their attention, that tilted the scales of an idea toward reality. Some it inspired, others yet complained cynically among themselves that Nathan was using the boy as a human souvenir, a token success that would help make the sell.

  But the emotion of it reached them all. Charles, sitting with his wife, relived dreams that he allowed his father-in-law to steal from him, as Merrit spit blood into a handkerchief, which only amplified the hostile end that swiftly approached. And Roy, who lived with anger over the judgment of fate against his legs, while Ivy became more and more the closet junkie knowing there was no second chance for what she had done. And then Essie, who promised she would remain their collective memory, alone, to one end.

  Taylor Greene was murdered—

  And the moment was not lost on Dane either. He, the least of all. As Nathan began his emotional plea for a call to action to end the atrocious ignorance and suffering of the past and make the center a reality in his son's name, Dane looked out into the half-lit expression of nameless hopes and faces, past the cold moon spot and the camera, toward the river and skyline of Sacramento where clear and crystal tidbits of stars stretched on and on into that wandering notebook we know as America. And where his own future hung in the balance.

  He heard the words, and others yet unsaid.

  Taylor Greene was murdered—

  Chapter Fourteen

  WHY DIDN'T YOU tell me about… him?" Essie's jaw stuck out toward Dane, who was making his way past the stares and congratulations that followed the tribute.

  Nathan apologized, but to Essie it sounded like artificial and expedient lip service. Then he added, "Truth is… I was scared."

  "Of what?"

  "That you wouldn't approve. That you'd see this as an invasion of your feelings for Taylor."

  "Having my feelings disregarded was invasion enough. Nathan, do you realize how much you've hurt me by—"

  They went silent in mid-sentence as Dane slipped between them. A forced calm followed that he easily picked up on. After a barely managed introduction came a few badly managed minutes, which led Nathan to a polite escape, leaving these two strangers at the mercy of the moment.

  "If my being here is uncomfortable for you—"

  "Uncomfortable," she said, "is the understatement of understatements."

  A waitress came by with drinks, which neither took. Essie noticed, as did Dane, a couple manage one of those nonchalant stares as they opportunely happened past.

  "I'm sorry about Taylor," he said. "Since I never met him it feels utterly strange to say his name. And yet, it feels right, since he's had such a profound effect, already, upon my life."

  Essie tried not to let what he said reach her.

  "I only found out tonight you never saw my letter. That you had no idea I was coming. This isn't exactly the kind of surprise I personally would have planned. I want you to know that."

  "You overheard Nathan and I."

  "I met some friends of yours, Paul and Maria Caruso."

  "You're trying to sneak past my question."

  "I would never try to sneak past anyone who was obviously in so much pain."

  The muscles of her face held back a sudden surge of loneliness and tired anger. The band began to play again, only now Charles had joined them with a Schechter strapped on and plugged in for the ego ride.

  "I understand pain," Dane said. "I wear the marks left for me to remember it by."

  He was staring at her when she glanced up. A man in a sharp doublebreasted suit with a pinkie ring and cigar swung past eager for a look-fix of those eyes.

  Dane shook his head, his squared cheekbones bared back. "Second time around has me going through some very strange doors." He tried a smile but it was halved by a spell of sadness. "I better remember to bring along ID and maps, so I know who and where I am when I get there."

  Her eyes flickered at the recognition of what he meant. But, "I would never have allowed myself to meet you," she said. "Never."

  * * *

  SHE LOOKED hurt," said Ivy. "Very hurt."

  Essie hadn't blown Dane off and they seemed to be having something that might approach a conversation. "He's a handsome kid," said Nathan. "He comes across intelligent, presents well. He could be a real asset."

  "You're not thinking of using him as a sort of public relations gimmick for the center?"

  The music got hotter and more aggressive. Nathan didn't like the idea that Charles was on stage trying to be Mr. Guitar Slinger at his son's tribute.

  "You haven't answered my question."

  "You know what the kid said to me downstairs? You wouldn't believe it. He's got a good heart. He's like… Taylor, that way."

  * * *

  INTRODUCE THE players, girl," Flesh said, draping an arm over Dane's shoulder.

  While Essie introduced her and Roy, Flesh got right into Dane's back-pedaling stare. She had a cigarette in one hand and a cocktail in the other and carried them like a gunfighter would a brace of pistols. She was being coy and obvious as she spoke. "I read that you can't tell if someone had a cornea transplant. They form fit a few layers of tissue onto the person's eye. It's like grafting on glass.


  "Of course, I wouldn't be nearly as tacky as most of the human knockoffs doing shark patrol around your face, just so I could see for myself." Flesh said this, of course, with all her available eye sparkle and mouth pout.

  Dane slid from her grip. "If someone ever asks me who's got the perfect nightgown smile I'm gonna have to reach into my memory bank for your name."

  "Nightgown smile, hunh." Flesh looked from Essie to Roy, who wasn't happy with her little performance. "Nightgown smile." Flesh's nostrils flared a bit. "Where are you from?"

  "California originally… Palmdale… San Diego… San Louie Obispo. We moved a lot."

  "And how did you lose your sight?"

  "Christ, Flesh." Roy groused around on his crutches. "We're not two minutes into the conversation."

  Flesh shrugged, "I'm Queen of the Prelims."

  "You an attorney?" Dane asked.

  "He's not only good-looking. Am I right, Essie!" Essie held back, tried to keep a polite and reserved distance. To Roy: "He is good-looking, isn't he?"

  "Don't forget, Flesh," Roy told her, "ward policy says you have to be back by midnight so they can chain you down."

  She huffed, "I'm an Assistant D.A. Roy here is a D.A., Sacramento County. Now, how did you lose your sight?"

  "I never lost my sight completely." Cold certainty took control of what he was about to say. "I was on a subway platform going from Manhattan to Queens. It was near two in the morning. That's when you get to experience the other side of the other side. I was waiting there thinking how my whole life was ahead of me when an express train changed all that.

  Dane took a moment, as if he was reliving the episode. "Some freak with a cross bone trigger flung a glass at me from between two cars of that train as it blew through the station. There were chemicals and ammonia in that glass. A little reminder cocktail from the world's circus. I got hit in the eyes and went down and heard a woman scream above the rattle of those metal wheels and what I heard freaked me: 'His eyes are burning.'"

  When Dane finished, all that glib trimmed conversation was gone leaving only the meat of a wound. What followed was clipped facial expressions and silence until Essie broached the one question they all wanted to have answered: "Did they catch the person who did that to you?"

  "For all I know they're still riding the subways and toasting their good fortune."

  None of them knew quite how to handle his making a dark joke out of such a personal scar. Eye contact became a notable chore, except for Dane.

  "It must be very frustrating," said Flesh.

  "Frustrating?" As he answered he looked at Essie. "As someone rightly once said, that would be the understatement of understatements."

  More silence now which made the party around them turn into an untidy clutter of noises that grew louder and more abrasive. Essie communicated to him silently using her heart shaped and sorrowful mouth to make the words: "I'm sorry."

  "Of course you're not strangers to what I feel." Dane turned his attention to Roy and Flesh. "You're Nathan's friends. You were close to Taylor, I heard. You had some control over the investigation. A friend is murdered and no one is prosecuted?"

  "Now wait a second," said Flesh. "We could never prove he was murdered."

  "But we know he was," said Essie.

  Roy's body constricted. "Everything indicated suicide."

  Essie came right back, "Taylor would not commit suicide."

  "I understand," said Dane, "how tough it is. You can't resolve something, you feel impotent."

  "Excuse me," said Roy.

  Essie went right on, "Everything wasn't done that could have been."

  "Roy and I have this very same argument."

  Roy's hand grabbed at his beard. "Show me facts. Give me leads. Give me something. Idiot people shouldn't be out there talking up—"

  "Am I one of those idiot people?" Essie demanded to know.

  "I didn't mean—"

  Essie walked off. She'd had enough. Flesh called to her. Angered, Roy turned on Dane. His mouth was a wall of smoke-stained teeth.

  "I was just trying to make a point about how you can feel impotent when things can't be resolved to your satisfaction. When you can't pull it all together."

  Flesh knew that for Roy any form of criticism, whether justified or not, any comment that even hinted of criticism, whether real or imagined, was an indictment of his crippled body.

  "Everything said suicide."

  "Did you go to college?" Flesh asked. It was an embarrassing bridge and well beneath her skill but she worried that Roy would make a fool of himself and a possible politician should not be making a fool of himself in public.

  Dane answered civilly, "When I was sixteen I won scholarships to college. I was one of those Harvard to Berkeley–type brain children people want to strangle or set on fire, that is, until they discover how much they can make off of them."

  "We did everything we could as prosecutors to get to the truth. And I have one of the best prosecution and conviction rates."

  "I certainly didn't mean anything more than I said."

  Flesh pressed on, "What are you going to do with your life now?"

  "I'm going to try and improve on the old one, and I think I'll take a few steps in that direction right now, and excuse myself."

  Dane hadn't cleared a line of heads before Roy went all to hell cursing and commenting and telling Flesh, "Did you hear the little shit?"

  She grabbed his arm and dug her nails in and told him to keep his voice down and she kept squeezing and digging so hard he almost tipped over and she said, "Yeah, I heard the little shit, only the little shit is you."

  * * *

  ESSIE WAS on the bow of the lower deck when Dane found her. Alone, at the railing, under a drifting rope of lamplight, she was telling herself what in her heart she already knew. They had moved on. They had their lives and hopes and needs, and they had their evasions and lies and headstrong excuses.

  She looked down at the water and watched herself rise and fall on a seiche of tide. It had been six months and what had she discovered that disproved what they said? A few slight unimportances she kept to herself and did not understand.

  "I didn't mean for my conversation to upset you."

  Essie came about. Dane sat on the railing beside her. "But did you mean to upset them?"

  Dane's body turned toward the river with a spartan economy. He took in the night a long time. "Let's just say I'm trying to imagine what Taylor would like me to see, if he could ask."

  Dane stood. She was examining him now, studying the letter of his words. There was beauty in her face, he thought, a beauty beyond features, formed in that realm where color and character connect, where the angle of bone and curve of flesh demark tendernesses and dark spots of obstinacy. This was a face you could believe would wear with courage the bruises of the world while offering you glimpses of gentleness and love and care.

  "I saw Disappointment Slough from the sky today. And I'm going out there tomorrow. I'd like it if you would take me."

  A hard breeze had blown up from the bay and she turned away from it. "I can't."

  "The Carusos offered to let me sleep in a trailer they keep at the airport."

  She shook her head. "I can't."

  "I'll be leaving from their coffee shop around nine."

  As he walked away she told him for the third time, "I can't."

  * * *

  THE CARUSOS lived at the airport. They had a small Airstream parked in their front yard. After they brought Dane sheets and a pillow and said their good nights Dane dialed out on his cellular. He turned off the lights and watched from the darkness to make sure neither Sancho Maria nor Paul returned.

  "I'm calling to fill you in," Dane said, when the line at the other end was answered…"Yeah, you all are right. Even the fiancée is certain Greene was murdered, and she's not bashful about saying it… The kid's father? I can't make him out exactly but he's a pitchman. Has the stroke down. My gut tells me he's a con's con… Yeah," said D
ane, trying to cover up the bitterness and pain he felt at the accusation…"Who better than me to spot a con."

  He reached for the cigarette Caruso left. He went to put it in his mouth and light it. He stopped. "If you quit your little litany of warnings long enough I'll give you the good news… Nathan Greene wants me to stay on… Yeah… To be part of his dog-and-pony show. The miracle of modern science he'll troop out to fund-raisers… I don't think you could have wished for a better situation. It gives me a solid reason to stay here and…" Dane's back stiffened. "Right. Be careful what you wish for. I'll try not to forget it."

  Chapter Fifteen

  I THOUGHT WHAT you did tonight was incredibly selfish and vain."

  Charles would have come at that statement but there was a sensory struggle going on inside him and he could not orient to the feelings. He stood in the bathroom doorway twirling his toothbrush nervously between two fingers.

  "The night belonged to Nathan." Claudia slipped into bed. "And Taylor. Not to one of your overheated guitar solos."

  "I should never have let your father talk me out of my music career."

  To her he seemed almost pathetic. He put the toothbrush down and wiped his mouth on a towel. Why quibble, she thought, with a bank clerk who couldn't carry his own excesses and over-confidence.

  "Was it a few drinks too many and Nathan's speech about second chances? Was it because you heard someone's heart and it rattled you? Or was it that handsome kid who is probably everything you aren't?"

  Disturbed, he told her, "It was all of that. And more."

  "You go through these self-purges every year, but they come to nothing. And I would like to correct your statement about my father. When you were busted for dealing to your music friends, who got the charges dismissed so your record was clean? My father… who then offered you a job so you could make a living."

  "And you know what that offer meant."

  "I know who and what my father is. I know about Nathan. I know they'll both be buried in Arlington Cemetery. I know what you've become. It was not my father who compromised you. I watched you take that turn, remember."