The Butler(53)

“I loved you,” Joachim said quietly, “and Mama still does.” Javier glanced back at her and she was crying as she watched them.

“If you tell the police I was here, I’ll come back and kill both of you,” he said to the room in general, and then with his right hand, he opened the door, walked through it, slammed it behind him, and disappeared down the stairs. Joachim knew instinctively that he would never see him again. And what they had just seen was a ghost. A man in the final stages before someone killed him, either his enemies or his associates. A man like Javier had no friends, not in his world. None of the normal rules of humanity applied.

Joachim put the chain on the door after Javier left, but he knew that they could shoot it off if they wanted to get in. He gently took his mother to her bedroom and tucked her into her bed. Her cheeks were still wet with tears as she looked at Joachim. “They’ll kill him. Maybe that would be easier for us all. He looks like a hunted animal.” Joachim nodded, he couldn’t disagree with what she said, or tell her she was wrong.

    He sat on the chair in her room all night while she dozed and woke with a start periodically, and then drifted off again. He wanted to be near her in case Javier came back. But he didn’t think he would.

The police rang the doorbell at eight the next morning. It was Saturday and Joachim was already up. They knew Javier had been there, and wanted confirmation from Joachim, and he didn’t deny it. He said he and his mother had no idea where Javier was going, he didn’t say. Joachim said that they hadn’t seen him in twenty-five years until last night, and he had held a gun on their mother until Joachim got home, and then on him. The police knew he was wounded. They said it had happened when a delivery went wrong and an informant had tipped off the police. He lived in a hard world, on the razor’s edge, at the edge of the abyss at all times.

“We got information that he was killed in a gunfight last night,” the police officer told Joachim, but he said they didn’t believe it, and neither did Joachim. Even Liese said she was sure he was still alive. He and his cohorts had put out the word to get the police off his trail, but it hadn’t worked.

“Call us if you hear from him again,” they said, and Joachim agreed. They had cooperated fully with the police.

“He won’t contact us.” Joachim was sure of it. “I don’t know why he came here. Maybe for one last look at his mother. I think he knows he’s a marked man. Everyone’s after him, even his own people.”

“That’s how it always ends with them. The only one safe is the man at the top, and he’s not it,” the chief detective said, and Joachim nodded.

“I want protection for my mother. Here in the building or just outside to watch who comes in. I have to go to work during the week, and she goes to work too. I want someone here for her at night.” The detective promised to arrange it by later that day.

    Joachim stayed with his mother all day. They stayed in the house, and he told her about going to the movies with Olivia the night before, putting an arm around her, and nothing had happened, so she was wrong. She looked at him in exasperation and shook her head.

“Then you’re either a zombie or a fool.” But she was too wrapped up in thoughts of her other son to worry about Joachim’s love life or lack of it.

They saw it on the news that night at eleven o’clock, and this time they believed it. It had happened an hour before and was breaking news. Javier had been shot and killed by one of the SWAT teams from the drug unit. He had been supervising the unloading of a boat in Toulon with five hundred tons of heroin in it. The entire shipment had been seized, and nine men had been killed, one of them a member of the SWAT team. Javier had been the first man down. In his world, he was a hero. To the rest of the world and his family, he was a lost soul.

Liese felt a shiver run through her as she watched it. And this time she knew it was true. She sat silently watching the news report on TV, and held Joachim’s hand, as the tears slid down her cheeks and fell on her bleeding heart.



* * *



—

Olivia had seen it on CNN too. They described the men and showed photographs of the more notorious ones. She saw Javier’s photograph come up, the same one she’d seen with Joachim at the airport in New York. She knew that it was another grief for them, for Joachim and his mother. She turned off the television and said a prayer for his mother.

    Joachim called Olivia on Sunday night, and told her that he wouldn’t be able to come to work on Monday, and possibly Tuesday as well. He had some appointments at the chateau that he said he would cancel. She knew why he wasn’t coming in. It wasn’t hard to figure out.

“I’m sorry for your mother. How is she?” He knew then Olivia had seen it on the news.

“The way she always is. Strong, wise, loving. He showed up here on Friday night while we were at the movies. He held a gun on her. He’d been shot. He wanted to stay here, and I told him he couldn’t. They might have come here and possibly shot all of us. He must have gone to Toulon last night. Someone had bungled a shipment on Friday night and he got shot. But the big shipment was due last night in Toulon. Five hundred tons. He was handling the operation. One of the SWAT teams killed him as soon as the ship docked. They’re going to let me collect his body tomorrow. I want to make the arrangements, so my mother doesn’t have to. She shouldn’t have to deal with that. He was a different person from the boy we knew. He was filled with venom, and hate. It’s ugly to see. I’ll come to work as soon as I can. Tuesday, or Wednesday at the latest. We’ll do a service for him on Tuesday.”