Текст книги "The Call of the Mountain"

Автор книги: Sam Neumann

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Текущая страница: 15 (всего у книги 16 страниц)

55

Raphino slowed as we approached the house. I looked for the soft glow of a light or lamp, but saw none. We were in front of the house now, close enough to take a few steps up the front stairs and enter the door. We turned left and followed a crude path leading around the side. The snow was chopped up from footsteps, only partially packed now but manageable. We took care with our feet, conscious of the crunch from the snow’s top crust. As we moved around the side, there were still no lights; we made our way by the dim reflection off the snow. On the backside of the house we found the door, Raphino moving slowly toward it and motioning for me to follow. Silence enveloped us, and we had not broken it.

The door was locked, of course. I was, at this point, in favor of our excursion ending here. Had we been able to speak, I would have voiced this opinion. But we were not, and thus I was at his mercy. Raphino produced a small metal object from his pocket, resembling in the moonlight a tradesman’s multi-tool, and went to work on the lock. There were small nicks and clicks, each sound amplified in the winter stillness, but nothing inside the house stirred.

A minute passed, then two. The back door sat beneath a large wooden deck that shot off the main level. It was darker beneath the deck. Raphino worked on the lock and I stood watch, eyes darting from the house to the yard behind us, hand on my pistol. My fingers slowly went numb from the cold. There was a louder click, a push, and the back door creaked open. We were in.

We both knew the creak of the door was too loud. I took extra care when stepping inside the dark basement, and left the door cracked open behind me to eliminate the noise of the latch, but closed enough to keep the draft out. Once we were both inside, he held up his hand and we observed the basement, crouched on the floor. It was dark and smelled damp. Two or three different hums came from corners of the darkness. Raphino drew his pistol, and I did the same.

The stairs were easy to find, because a light shined down from the top.

We waited for a moment in the darkness, because Raphino had not said to continue. He crouched and perked his ears up, listening over the hums. My hands were numb. I wished the light upstairs was not on. I tried to listen as well, tried to mirror Raphino, but all I could hear were the hums.

Finally we proceeded. The stairs creaked but not enough to arouse suspicion. Again we were cautious and slow. I heard nothing from upstairs. The top of the stairway was shielded by a knee wall; we stopped a few steps from the top to avoid revealing ourselves. We regrouped in the light, careful not to cast shadows where anyone could see them. It was still silent. The light was nothing more than a soft yellow glow from a single floor lamp, but seemed blinding compared to the darkness of the basement. We let our eyes adjust and took inventory. Raphino slowly counted down with his fingers.

3. 2. 1.

In unison, we sprung up above the half-wall and faced the large, empty room. We both pointed pistols outward, searching for movement across the barrels. I pretended I knew what I was doing. Nothing moved, thank God. We stood for a few seconds, silently tracking an empty room. I saw the front door on the far wall, where I had entered for soirees. I saw the couch I sat on the first evening, drinking beer and watching the music, Suzanne beside me, passing a joint and making me feel comfortable. It looked different now.

Raphino rotated his body clockwise, then back, scanning the room. When he was satisfied, he nodded his head forward, and we tiptoed on. Off the top stair, on to the wood floor, across the large decorative rug. Each time the floor squeaked, we both stopped and walked slower, more carefully.

We cleared rooms methodically. First the living room, then the kitchen, then the bar area, pointing the guns and looking for movement in the dim light of a single lamp. They were all empty. Raphino made his way to the long hallway and I followed, ready to start going through all the rooms that lined it. But there was another light, softer even, coming from the single room at the end of the hall. A light shined from beneath the door of Vince’s office.

56

The two of us walked to the end of the hallway, while I expected the doors to swing open any moment. I waited to be apprehended or shot in that hallway. I accepted the fate. I preferred it, in some ways, to making it to the end. But each journey has an end, and ours was the light at the end of the hallway, and whatever was behind that door.

We reached the door and listened. There was no sound. Raphino motioned for me to enter.

Me? I asked with a head nod and shoulder shrug.

He nodded.

I inhaled and put my left hand on the doorknob. It was stiff, but turned right. It was time to be quick now, so when the door unlatched, I swung it wide open and pointed my pistol. I felt Raphino’s gun swing over my right shoulder, pointing in the same direction. We made noise now; our silence was broken. Again the room was lit by a floor lamp. Across the office, at the large wooden desk, sat Vincent Decierdo. He looked at me with a straight face and calm expression. I knew he was no longer Vince; I knew he was Ben Murray. I knew this. But when I looked at that large, bearded Irishman sitting behind that desk, I saw nothing but Vincent Decierdo. Drug lord, manipulator, killer, and king of the mountains. On the desk in front of him lay a pistol grip shotgun.

He said nothing, and we moved into the room quickly. My heart beat fast, my brain refreshed, waiting for the realization that it was all an illusion, that he wasn’t there, that the room was really empty and we had come up skunked. He stayed. We stood twenty feet from him and pointed our guns.

“Hands where I can see ‘em,” Raphino yelled. “Where I can see ‘em. Right now.”

Decierdo waited to speak.

“Where I can see ‘em, motherfucker,” Raphino repeated.

“They’re here on the desk,” Decierdo said. His voice was calm, measured. “Can you not see the desk?”

“Push the gun away,” Raphino barked. “Push it out of reach.”

Decierdo didn’t move.

“Are you deaf?” Raphino asked.

Vince looked down and spoke. “No, in fact. But what you’re asking is not practical.”

“Push it away.”

“Understand the situation that’s presented itself.” He was calm, strangely calm. “Two gentlemen pointing weapons in my direction, and you’re asking me to willingly absolve my ability to defend myself. It simply wouldn’t be wise. I’m sure you can appreciate that, officer.”

Raphino, in plain clothes and no visible badge, said nothing.

“Eagle County, correct?” Vince asked. “The desk man? You’ll have to help me with the name.”

“Shut up,” Raphino said. He gathered himself.

“If you’re an officer, please identify yourself,” Vince said. “Otherwise this is nothing more than a home invasion.”

Raphino paused and pulled up his shirt to reveal a badge on his belt.

Vince nodded in satisfaction. “Very well. I expect you have a warrant?”

Raphino cleared his throat and recalled his mental script. “Confirm your name is Benjamin Murray.”

Vince tilted his head to the side. Inquisitive. “I’m afraid I can’t do that. I don’t know a Benjamin Murray. My name is Vincent Decierdo, but your comrade can tell you that.” He nodded his head in my direction.

Raphino, gun still raised, looked over his shoulder at me.

I cleared my throat.

“Good evening, Julian,” Vince said. “I hadn’t expected you.”

“We know the truth, Vince,” I said. “We know your real name. We know everything. It’s over.”

His right hand moved, and we both held our pistols higher. Before Raphino could yell again, Vince picked up his wallet from the right side of the desk. “Would you like to see my identification?” he asked.

“You think we’re stupid?” Raphino said. “You think we’re stupid.”

Vince nodded to himself. “Very well then. Gentlemen, my hospitality is running out. I’m going to need you to produce a warrant or leave my home.”

There was a thud in the basement. Raphino and I looked at each other.

“Mr. Murray,” Raphino said, “is there anyone else in this house?”

“You’ll have to address me by my name,” Vince said.

“Is there anyone else in this house?” Raphino asked again.

Vince shrugged.

Raphino looked at the door, then me. He lowered his gun and walked toward me.

“I’m going to go check it out,” he said quietly. “Just hold him here until I get back.”

“What?”

“You’ll be fine,” he said, and vanished through the door.

I looked to Vincent Decierdo, alone with him in the room. It was quiet. He held a blank expression, his eyes concealing whatever thoughts were running through his head. His hands seemed to have moved a half-inch closer to the shotgun. I thought back to the last time I was in this office with him, and the conversation we had. It was different, this time.

“Hands away from the gun,” I said.

He said nothing. My palm and fingers perspired on the pistol. I badly wanted Raphino to come back.

“Hands away,” I said. He didn’t move.

Vince’s eyes studied me quietly. Murray’s eyes I reminded myself. Murray.

“You going to shoot me, Julian?”

“I will if I have to.”

“Do you believe that?”

“Shut up,” I said. “Scoot your chair back, away from the shotgun.”

“I just described to your partner the reason I cannot do that,” he said. “You know I’m a pragmatist, Julian.”

“I know you’re a liar.” I looked over my shoulder.

“Liar?” he asked. “What ever do you mean? I’ve been completely forthcoming with you. Took you to dinner, made you my top finance man. Sure, there was the surface deception about what the cargo was in those cars, but failure to disclose and lying are not the same thing.”

“You lied about your name,” I said. “Lied about that to everyone.”

“Julian,” he said, “I must say I’m offended.” His eyes were soft, understanding. “After the relationship we’ve built—the business partnership—for you to come barging in here with some half-baked accusations? And alongside that joker. Green as the day is long, looking to make a splash and get off the desk. I tell you, boredom is a dangerous thing.” He shook his head.

“Half-baked?” I asked, gun still raised. “You’re denying it, then. That your name is Ben Murray.”

“I am.”

I took it in. “Well, once a liar, I guess.” My hands shook slightly. I hoped he couldn’t see it.

“I’ll humor you,” he said. “I have every official government document with my name on it. Driver’s license, birth certificate, social security card. All with the name Vincent Allen Decierdo. The license is in my wallet,”—he nodded his head toward he far side of the desk—“the others are in that cabinet.” He nodded toward a beige filing cabinet to his right.

“And all that can be forged,” I said.

He gave a conciliatory nod. “I’ve been charged with a crime three times—each time exonerated—and the name Vincent Decierdo is on all court documents. Also in the cabinet. I grew up in Christfalls, West Virginia, and was second-team all-state in football. Nose tackle. There are news clippings with my name and pictures that display the surname on the back of my jersey. My mother, Patricia Decierdo, kept them for me.”

I listened.

“I tell you this out of respect for you,” he said. “I’m happy to show you any of these things. I must say, I’m offended, however.”

“Offended?” I said. “You want to talk offended? How about working for a drug lord that lies to you every step of the way?”

“You’re being irrational.”

“How about working for a murderer?”

His face changed. “Who is telling you these things?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“It does matter,” he said. “It matters quite a bit. These are serious accusations, and if you are going to barge into my home and spew them at me, you at least owe me the courtesy of revealing the source.”

I hesitated. “I had some professionals check you out.”

He smirked. “Ah yes. And I suppose these professionals charged you a sizeable fee for their services, yes?”

I said nothing.

“And I suppose,” he continued, “the professionals revealed information that fell mostly in line with whatever suspicions you brought to them?”

I said nothing. I just listened.

“Well?”

“Fuck off,” I said, re-gripping the pistol to compensate for the sweat on my fingers.

“You have anger, Julian. I don’t fault you for it. But I know you’re intelligent. I know you’re smarter than to believe whatever some crackpot investigator decides to feed you. I know you’re smarter than to team up with some rookie cop and launch a cowboy raid based on bad information. You’re breaking all kinds of laws here, Julian. You’ve put yourself in a precarious position.”

I gripped the gun tighter.

“But I can offer you a way out,” he said. “There’s a way out of all of this. To start, I need you to put the gun down.”

“You killed him.”

“Killed who?” he asked, annoyed.

“You know who,” I said, raising my voice. “Damon. You killed Damon, and you tried to kill Suzanne.”

He put on a broad smile. “Hogwash. I won’t stand for it. Damon Peters is in Mesa, Arizona, relocated due to necessity after I used considerable political capital to free him from an unfortunate situation that you created with your foolishness.” The smile was gone. “If it weren’t for me, he’d be doing twenty-five in the max wing of Florence right now in Colorado Springs. You know what kind of inmates run at Florence? Damon wouldn’t live to see the sentence through.”

The gun was getting heavy. Raphino hadn’t returned, which gave me reason to worry. I checked over my shoulder again.

As I listened to Vince, I wanted to believe him. I was still confident in the findings we’d brought, and the reason we were in his house; I was still confident in the mission. But he had an answer for everything. And his answers were preferable to the information I’d brought in. His answers were neat and tidy; he was who he said he was, he had the documents to prove it, we’d been fooled by a greedy investigator, Damon was alive and well in sunny Arizona, this was all a big mistake, but there was a way out. True or not, the world in which these answers resided was preferable to the world in which he was a murderous villain named Benjamin Murray. I wanted Damon alive. I wanted to leave this room without anyone getting hurt, without guns firing. I wanted Raphino to return safely, and us to quietly leave. That was what I wanted. I had never been one for confrontation.

I remembered Suzanne, her pale skin and blue chattering lips. I remembered her story. It complicated things.

“Put the gun down,” he said.

“Where’s Adeline?”

“She told me, if that’s what you’re asking.”

It hit me like an arrow in the chest. “Told you what?”

He shrugged. “Everything. Or most of it, anyway. I can’t say it surprises me, the first part. She’s never been especially chaste. And it doesn’t anger me, either. I knew who she was.”

I swallowed. “I assumed she’d be here.”

“But you know better than to trust assumptions at this point, I hope.”

“Where is she, right now?”

“If I tell you, will you put the gun down?”

“No.”

“I want you to think right now, Julian. I want you to think hard, because what happens next will go a long way into shaping your future. Who can help you more? Who can help you more in these mountains, in this town? Is it him? Or is it me?”

I blinked.

“Who can help you more?” he asked. “Is it a rookie cop who works the desk? Ostracized by his peers because he lacks the basic skills to do the job? How much do you even know about him?”

I forced my dry throat to swallow.

“I’m a good man,” he said. “You know that, Julian. I know you do. I provide jobs, accommodations, and housing for dozens of people in these mountains. I make their lives whole. I created a community, where we’re safe from the pains and demands of the modern world. Look at the good I’ve done.” He motioned around the room, referencing everything in his empire. “And they say I’m a criminal? For what? For distributing a substance that people willingly pay for and choose to take?”

I could no longer swallow

“You have a decision to make,” he continued. “Put the gun down and let me help you. You know I can. You do. I can eliminate felony charges. I can make people disappear. I can do whatever the bloody hell I want in these mountains. I can make this all go away if you just put the gun down.”

I stared at him. He stared back. His fingers might have moved. I re-gripped the pistol. I longed for that office in that high rise. I longed for the city, the congestion, and the smells. I wanted to be back there, with my wife and my job and control. I wanted my unfulfilling, soul-sucking, terrible life back. I was safe there. The safety, at that very moment, outweighed everything else I had come to loathe. The safety was all that mattered.

“Put the gun down.”

The silence of the room hummed in my ears. It hummed for a good while.

I heard Raphino’s footsteps before I saw him. They came quickly down the hallway—he was no longer tiptoeing. Both Vince and I turned our attention to the doorway, where he appeared, out of breath.

Raphino still held his gun out in front of him. He entered with sweat on his brow, and spoke before surveying the room.

“Place is clear,” he said. “It’s just us.”

Immediately after the words came out, like a rebuttal to the declaration, a fourth man took one swift step through the door and put a gun to Raphino’s head. This man was young—in his twenties, probably—and had a cleanly shaven head. He stood behind Raphino at arm’s length and rested the muzzle of the gun on the back of his head. I hadn’t met him, or if I had, I didn’t recognize him. He came from nowhere.

“Kill him,” Vince said calmly. “Blow him away.”

My pistol swung from Vince to the new man, moving on its own. It was there immediately after Vince uttered the words, before they were even out of his mouth. It snapped to aim at his bald head. Time sped up now. I only tried to keep up.

I know I shot first. That’s one of the few things I know about what happened next. I shot first, and my shot was followed by dozens of others—from Raphino, from Vince’s shotgun, maybe from the fourth man’s weapon but probably not. My shot was what started it. Thankfully I hit him.

The pistol kicked back and more shots reverberated around the room, louder than I could have imagined, making my ears ring. I hit him because I was lucky, not because I should have hit him; I knew my way around a gun just as well as I knew my way around a cattle farm. But I hit him, right in the side of the neck, and he gagged and his bald head dropped and his gun jerked from Raphino’s head without firing, and after that small miracle then the room was a volley of gunfire. I hit the floor—instinctively, my sense of self-preservation raging in search of cover—and squeezed the trigger in the direction of the desk where Vince sat. My eyes weren’t open, I don’t think. I squeezed the trigger, one, two, three, four times, and more, until the empty chamber only clicked. The gun kicked like a mule, even held with two hands.

I came to my senses when the gunfire had stopped. My ears rang loudly. I don’t know how much time passed. A few seconds. Minutes, maybe. Each man was on the ground. I took inventory of my body—everything was still there. I could not find a hole or a wound or blood on my body. My grandfather had once described being hit in World War II—he ran five hundred feet across the battlefield before realizing he was bleeding from a bullet wound in his thigh. I couldn’t feel anything. My skin was numb.

Raphino was the first to get up. He crawled out of the doorway where he lay prone, then got up to a crouching position. He moved over toward me, still crouching, and checked if I was alive. He said something I couldn’t hear. I couldn’t hear anything, just a dull ring. Raphino looked in my face, then at my body. He nodded, satisfied, and went to check the man who had entered last.

57

They were both dead, or at least close enough. The nameless fourth man could have been clinging to life. It was hard to tell. As he lay on his back with dark blood pooling beneath his head and neck, a gurgling sound came from his throat. I noticed small holes from shotgun pellets in his sweatshirt. His eyes were open wide and lifeless. Raphino put a bullet in his chest.

Vince was slumped behind the desk, having fallen out of the chair. There were bullets in his chest, stomach, and left arm. Nothing on him moved. He was dead.

I did my best to stay on my feet, swaying from side to side and fighting off waves of nausea. I stood in a half-bended hunch and Raphino went to work. He took my pistol and wiped the handle on his shirt, then set it on the floor by Vince’s body. The decorative wooden walls of the office were splattered with blood in places. Boards were splintered where bullets hit. It was a warzone. Raphino gingerly removed his jacked to reveal a red stained shirt. I panicked at the sight, but he told me he was fine. He gritted his teeth as he peeled off the t-shirt, then instructed me to tie it around his right arm. I couldn’t tell where it was bleeding.

“Caught a few pellets,” he said through a grimace. “Coulda been a lot worse.”

He grunted as I pulled the shirt tight. We walked out the front door.

I did a second inventory on my body. No wounds. Lucky.

“You’re lucky,” Raphino said.

We walked to his car and he drove with one arm. Down the dark streets, winding down the mountainside, faster than we had come. Raphino laid out the plan. He would drop me at my car and drive himself to the hospital. I would disappear. He would face the music.

“You were never there tonight,” he said, staring out over the headlights on dark pavement. “That part should be easy; there’s nothing tying you to this area, other than your name on an apartment lease. No official documents for Murray, everything off the books. Right?”

“Right.” My hands were still trembling.

“You don’t go back to your apartment, ever. You get in your car and point a direction, then drive until you can’t anymore. I don’t give a damn which direction it is. Understand?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t worry about your things. You don’t need them. People skip leases all the time. You drive until you’re far away from here, and you never come back. You tell no one about tonight. As far as you know, it never happened. No one. Not your family, not your girl. No one.”

“Got it.”

“I went into that house alone, investigating a noise complaint.” He was forming the story as he told it to himself. “Front door was open, I made my way to the back, the two of them were arguing over something, then just started shooting.”

“Will it hold up?”

“Gotta try. I’m hardly ever on radio, so that won’t tip anyone off. Just a simple house call gone wrong.”

“What about the cops you work with?”

He nodded as we took a sharp curve. “They can’t call me on it. They’ll know, but they’ll never be able to say anything. They’re in too deep. God willing, Murray didn’t have any district judges on his payroll.”

We were quiet as the car descended into town. I eyed the passing cars, wondering which one contained Vince’s goons, maybe Adeline, finished searching my apartment and still on the hunt. I pictured her face when she walked in the house and found him. The nausea returned.

I wanted to beat him, but not like this. It was all I’d wanted since I’d seen the first brick of heroin in that trunk, to take Vincent Decierdo down. To break his stranglehold on me and so many people. But not like this. The thought hadn’t even crossed my mind. Even as we entered that house with guns drawn, it didn’t fully dawn on me that it could end in death. We were just going in to take him, that was all. The guns weren’t real, the bullets weren’t real.

But they were, weren’t they? They were. It was amazing to me how such a heavy consequence could be levied by the mere pull of a trigger. From living to dead in the movement of a finger. It was easier than it should have been.

Raphino didn’t want it, either. I could tell by the look on his face as he drove. Yes, there was the white-knuckling through the pain in his arm, but more than that. He’d wanted Vince as bad as I had, maybe more. And he wanted him locked up, not dead. God knew what was going to happen to him now.