One Way or Another(90)

It had been so easy. He had been sitting here, just like he was now, when he’d heard the rustle of silk behind his chair, the soft tap-tap of Mehitabel’s heels. He turned his head, glanced up at her.

“Are you here to apologize for the disaster?”

“I don’t believe apologies are necessary. We are one, you and I, Ahmet. You know that. Whatever you do or say, I accept. And expect the same from you.”

She’d taken the chair next to him, silk rustling as she sat down. He’d taken her in, seeing the beauty, and the shallowness, her personal pain and her lack of feeling for others. She was right about the two of them being the same, of course.

He stood, reached out a hand, pulled her to her feet again.

“Where are we going?” she asked as he marched her onto the top deck where the white helicopter waited.

“To the airport to pick up my plane. It’s time to go home, Mehitabel.”

She stared, surprised, back at him; they both knew he had no “home” anymore. Marshmallows was gone.

“We’ll go check it out,” he explained, guiding her into the helicopter. “Talk about rebuilding. I know you’ll have some good thoughts on that, I can always trust you to come up with an answer.”

Momentarily pleased, Mehitabel fastened her seat belt. In a short while they were at the small airport, boarding the Cessna. Ahmet took the controls himself. He was a homing pigeon, heading for Marshmallows.

*

Viewed from the air, through the everlasting mist, the ruined house was merely a collection of broken walls, blackened stone, dangling steel girders. Not a tree. Not a flower. No sign people had ever lived here, partied here, imagined a future here. All there was were the marsh lights and the unexpected caw of a white heron, frightened from its new nest by the roar of the small plane’s engine.

Ahmet dropped into a landing, trundling slowly over the bumpy strip of grass, pulling up at the very end where grass became the deeper green of marsh. He leaned over and unbuckled Mehitabel’s seat belt, then got out and walked around to her side, opened the door, indicated she should also descend. When she did so, he took her hand, looked at her for a long moment, then held it to his lips. She stared back at him, nervous.

“Now, Mehitabel,” he said, “it’s time for a walk.” He took a step back, pulled the gun from his belt, the small Beretta. It fit his palm as though made for it. “Or do you prefer a bullet?”

Mehitabel froze. She had seen death many times, been the cause of it, the instrument. She had never expected it to face her.

“You must have known one day it would end like this,” Ahmet said. “People like us, you and I, we don’t live ordinary lives. And we die by extraordinary means. Now, I suggest you go for a walk. Take off your shoes, you’ll be more comfortable, and the marsh grass will be cool against your bare feet.”

Mehitabel slipped off her shoes. She stood barefoot, terrified, waiting.

“Please be so good as to walk away from me, my dear,” he said. “I would hate it to be any other way. And you’re a woman who knows, anyhow, when you’re beat.”

Mehitabel did. Turning, she began to walk very slowly away. The grass was cool. Wet. The mud clung to her ankles, sucked at her calves, until it was a struggle to move forward. It was very dark ahead of her. The darkness of forever.

She was to die in the swamp but Ahmet put a single bullet into her just to make sure. Then he stood for a long while, waiting, watching as the marshes took her over, and the river rose and then, the great wall of rushing tidal river. No one would ever find Mehitabel. Only her shoes had remained, forgotten where she had stepped out of them, such a short while ago.





67

A few days later, Ahmet was sitting in his favorite captain’s chair, on the deck of the Lady Marina, the one used for his portrait, waiting for Marco. He had called Marco, asked the favor of his company, said he had something important to tell him. He’d also said that Marco was the only one he wanted to know about this, and that he trusted his discretion completely.

“I like you,” he’d said, and then, in his usual less than tactful way, “Better than I like your portrait of me.”

“Well, that should take care of that, then, sir” was Marco’s response. “It’s my version of you. You must look at it that way, or else you paint your own picture. One way or another.”

“I’ll take it this way. I’m no artist, and whatever I think I know, one day it’ll hang in the National Gallery next to the Rembrandts and Picassos.”

Marco smiled. “Well, perhaps not next to the Rembrandts.” Still he had accepted Ahmet’s invitation, a command really, more out of curiosity than anything. He wanted to know what the bastard was up to this time.

Lucy was out of the picture, safe with Martha. Marshmallows was gone and would never rise from its ashes. Angie was safe in a rehab facility found and paid for by Marco. Mehitabel was no longer around, which caused Marco to think the worst, but even then he couldn’t believe Ahmet would simply have gotten rid of her. Not in that way, anyhow. He’d probably simply fired her, sent her out into the real world to fend for herself. It was the kind of thing the man would do. “Cruel” was too soft a word to describe Ahmet.

The MV Lady Marina was moored in the Aegean Sea, just off the Turkish coast. The lights of the port of Fethiye glimmered in the distance and the air was so clear that through the darkness Ahmet could see his small plane, bearing Marco, coming in to land.