Cold Springs(69)

John Zedman opened the door. His expectant, waiting-for-his-mistress kind of smile faded quickly.

“Hey,” Samuel said.

“What are you doing here?”

John had been drinking, that bad boy. His eyes were bloodshot, his nose webbed with capillaries. The way he stood blocking the doorway—nervous and pale, glancing down the street like he was looking for the cavalry—Samuel knew Pérez wasn't there. John had sent him away, maybe, so he could have time alone to think. Or better yet—maybe John was hoping Chadwick would come back.

“I'm with the prize patrol,” Samuel told him. “Invite me in.”

“Why the hell should I?”

He raised the movie disc. “It's about Chadwick.”

John's eyes latched on the DVD—not understanding, but hungry to, like an addict, like Katherine, the last night she'd visited.

He stepped back from his doorway.

There was a faint burning smell in the living room—the back windows were open to the sunset, the ocean turning the color of beer.

“Well?” Zedman demanded.

“Talk to me about the money.”

Zedman stole another glance at the DVD. He rubbed his fingers on the tail of his dress shirt. “You've got bad information. I don't know—”

“—what I'm talking about? Not what you said when you called Friday, John. Not what you said at all.”

Disbelief took over Zedman's face slowly, gripping it like a shot of novocaine. Samuel knew what he was thinking: This couldn't be who I've been afraid of.

Samuel had expected that. He was used to being underestimated.

“Chadwick sent you,” John said. “Is that it?”

“Sorry, John. Working this solo, and you don't even get why, do you?”

Zedman looked old and bent in that wrinkled tank top, those baggy pajama bottoms—like he should be using a walker.

“I'll see you buried,” he said. “I'll call the police—”

“And tell them what, John—how you stole twenty-seven million? How we know each other?”

Zedman's fists balled, his face turned the color of his dying begonias. “You couldn't do this alone. You wouldn't have the first clue.”

“You know, for a millionaire, you're a stupid f**k.”

Zedman charged him, but Samuel had been expecting that, too. His gun was already out of his pocket.

He pistol-whipped John across the left cheek, slammed him into the side of the fireplace.

John clawed his way up, but Samuel smashed the butt of the gun into his mouth, sent him back to the carpet.

Shit, he told himself. Slow down. Not here.

Zedman was kicking his legs feebly, trying to get up again. His upper lip had split open, blood making a stalactite down his chin, spattering the white bricks of the fireplace.

Samuel stared at the spots of blood, but he wasn't thinking of John Zedman. He was remembering Talia's house on a cold night with his little brothers yelling and stomping in the bedroom, Talia's music going in the kitchen while she argued with Ali. And Katherine coming in the door, crying, her lips cold when she kissed his cheek, saying: “This has to be the last time. Please. The last time, I promise. They found my stash.”

She told him why she was crying, why her father had gone to Texas, why she wanted to die—and Samuel tried to keep his anger from showing. Not just anger at Chadwick, but at Katherine, too. She was leaving him, after all that had happened. So he got her what she asked for, but something special, the uncut Colombian white, telling her, “This batch is a little weak.”

Standing on the porch, telling her goodbye, he had looked down at the little blue Toyota, dented up and smoking like a two-dollar pipe bomb, and saw the little girl's face in the window, just for an instant—the little girl who was Race's age. Samuel thinking, They get to leave. They drive across the bridge and leave us like a zoo exhibit.

Samuel and Race and the rest of his family alone—unprotected, with Ali treating their mother like a side of beef to be tenderized, and ripping down his real father's metalwork, then coming around at night to Samuel's little sister, same way Elbridge used to do, only this time, who would take the gun out of Johnny Jay's toolbox? Samuel had to. If he didn't, who would?

So he watched Katherine and the little girl drive away in the old blue Toyota, and he was thinking, No. You will not leave me behind. I will never let you go.

John Zedman had made it to his knees. He hunched over the fireplace, his smashed mouth swelling, his lips red and wet as a whore's. “I'm b'eeding. You hit me.”

“Get up,” Samuel told him.

“Won't get . . . the money.”

Samuel scooped a pack of Kleenex from the table, tossed it at Zedman. “Put that on your mouth. Then get the f**k up.”

Zedman pressed the whole wedge of tissues to his lip. Samuel watched the blood soak through, knowing that he should be moving things along, that time was not on his side, but Katherine's voice was still in his head, talking about flowers coming back after you tried to kill them, pleading with him that Zedman had paid enough already. Samuel should get the account numbers and leave. He could be on a plane tonight, him and Race. They could watch the sun come up tomorrow over Puerto Vallarta. Why add more voices in his head?