“Like they know if he tells he’ll have more to explain. Maybe Gary West has a secret he doesn’t want anybody to know. Think Gary has secrets he doesn’t want Casey to know? West could have staged this.”
“Why?”
“To get his wife wet for him. I don’t know. The way this is shaking out, nothing would surprise me. Rich people like them live in a different universe than we do.”
“And who makes that possible?” Alexa asked, waving good-bye as she left.
38
When Leland’s head stopped hurting, he was in the closet, his body drawn up into a tight fist, drenched in sweat. One second pain was all there was in the world and then it was gone, leaving him totally spent. He knew the weakness would pass momentarily and he could step back into the light-filled world. He wouldn’t soon forget to take the medicine Doc had gotten for him.
After a few minutes, Leland climbed out from the stuffy space, to discover that Doc sat on the edge of the bed reading a red notebook he carried everywhere he went.
“Feeling better?” Doc asked without looking up, or meaning it either.
“Hate headaches,” Leland said.
“I agree,” Doc said. “Nothing worse than a migraine. Unless it’s having an abscessed tooth, your fingers flattened by a hammer while a furious big dog is chewing on your balls and you’re having to hit him with your broken hand.” Doc chuckled to himself.
“You say awful things, you know that?” Leland said.
“Medical knowledge warps the innocent. I can’t help it.”
“What’s it say in that there book that’s so interesting you have to keep reading it all the time?” Leland had never learned to read, but he knew some of the alphabet, and recognized his name when he saw it written out. And he could write it down by rote, having learned to re-create the specific letters.
“Aside from wealth beyond imagination?” Doc closed the book with a pop. “Nothing to speak of, my fine cretinous companion.”
“What you need me to do now?”
“You may go out into yon murk and mire to get the nice young man who’s presently residing within the four walls of your lovely floating hovel and bring him back here.”
“What if he’s already dead? Then do I have to?”
“Regardless of his vitals, you definitely have to do that for me. Best if he is, of course, but what is, will be.”
Leland shrugged. “I need to go get in my boat and check on my traps, because you stay off for long and just anybody can mess with your traps and lines. You know it?”
“ Your boat?” Doc said in his high-pitched voice. “ Whose boat is it, Leland?”
“You said I could have it for the jobs I’ve done did already,” Leland said, feeling the heat building in his head. People that lied and did take-backs got hurt and deserved it. Leland couldn’t change the way he saw that, and none of the doctors at the old hospital that smelled of pine resin and Clorox could either. The medicine they gave him made his arms feel heavy as wet oak logs, and he didn’t plan to ever take it again, on account of he didn’t like the way it made him feel like he was living in an underwater dream.
Doc wagged his finger at Leland. “Don’t go ribbity-rabid on me, Lee baby. It’s going to be your boat after tonight’s activities. The vessel will be a gift to you from me as soon as this is all over. The job isn’t over till the fat lady sings.”
Leland hadn’t heard a fat lady sing since he was in the hospital, and her voice hadn’t been worth listening to either. Maybe Doc liked bad singing, which wouldn’t surprise Leland. Anything Doc said or did wouldn’t surprise Leland one bit. “With owning papers saying it’s so, right?”
“Of course with a proper bill of sale turning the immaculate vessel over to one Leland Ticholet, Superman of the swampy glade. Don’t I always tell you the truth? Who was it that furnished you with copious quantities of Juicy Fruit during your unfortunate incarceration?”
Leland searched his memory, and it was true that, so far, Doc had always done just that. But Doc was a little bitty smarty-ass fool who seemed to like to get Leland just on start-up mad and then cool him back down with his flowery promises. Leland nodded and felt the heat in his face cooling. The mention of Juicy Fruit sent his mouth to watering. Leland smiled at the memory of the explosion of flavor he experienced when he chewed the magnificent little slabs of chewing gum that came wrapped in yellow. He kept forgetting to get some when he bought supplies.
“That’s better,” Doc said, putting the red book into a paper bag. Leland wondered why Doc was always wearing those gloves that made his hands look like he painted them blue.
“I need to get back out to my camp,” Leland said. “You got any Juicy Fruit?”
Doc reached into his pocket and threw Leland a jumbo brand-new pack of the gum, which hadn’t even been opened yet.
“Keep it,” Doc said.
“I have to go now.”
“Yes, so you’ve said. Go and fetch forth our guest. There’s lots to do before tonight’s big bang-bang. Don’t tell me you aren’t excited.”
“About what?” Leland asked, suspiciously.
39
After a hot shower to remove the smell of death she imagined was on her skin, Alexa dried off and looked at herself in the mirror, shaking her head at the dark splotches, scratches, and welts she’d acquired in her tumble. She was extremely lucky that she hadn’t broken any bones. Or her neck. Sibby Danielson was a local matter, unless it involved the abduction of Gary West. Truthfully, LePointe wasn’t the only man with power who used it to abuse weaker people, or who believed the rules of conduct and law that applied to everyone else carried a clause exempting him because of an accident of birth.
Alexa opened her suitcase for a change of clothes. She looked at a stack of postcards in there bound together with a rubber band. Lifting them, she flipped through them so she could see the bottom one. It was addressed to her, care of her D.C. apartment. There was no return address. The note consisted of carefully printed words, written by a hand she knew very well. You are dead, kitty cat. I will hate you forever.
Alexa’s throat closed as though being gripped by powerful hands, and she threw the stack of postcards into the suitcase, closed the lid, and zipped it up. She knew she should tear them into confetti, but it was as if she didn’t have the strength, so she merely collected them, and had brought them with her to New Orleans. There were ten of the picture postcards, each postmarked from a city in a different state or foreign country, even though the author was under arrest, being held in Virginia. The picturesque correspondence had arrived at the rate of one a month for the past ten consecutive months. Some were promising violence: You will die soon; some just said something like Thinking only of you…bitch. Threats or not, Alexa hadn’t brought them to the FBI’s attention, because she knew who the author was, and knew there was nothing anyone could do to stop her.
The person who had penned them might or might not actually mean her physical harm; the harm they did wasn’t visible. Overwhelmed with grief and the pain of failure where it most mattered, Alexa had cried while reading each of them. Every time she read them, the wound was torn open again. Hate me if it makes you feel better about who and what you became. I did what I had to do, what was right. I would do nothing differently. Nothing, but go back to our childhood and try to make sure you had turned out differently, or at least more right than you did. I did the best I could for us both.
Saddened beyond words, Alexa turned and saw the book Casey had given her earlier. She picked it up and opened it to the inscription Casey had penned, which she hadn’t read in the author’s presence. For the Patron Saint of the Lost. Kindest thoughts amp; warmest regards. Always, Casey.
Casey had appealed to her for help, and Alexa was going to help. Casey was a woman who had learned that enormous wealth was no guarantee that pain couldn’t find you just like it did the less fortunate. That beautiful woman, who seemed to have everything, stood to lose the only thing that made having everything matter to her. She trusted Alexa, a woman she had just met, to make her life whole. How could you not feel for a small girl who had seen her parents horribly murdered? How could anyone not empathize with a child who had been raised by people who measured life by a heavily weighted balance sheet or placement on the social register?