Medusa (18 page)

He started heading toward the house.
 

As Tiller cautiously approached, he saw an old woman sitting in a rocking chair on the back porch. She was sitting out there in the darkness, just sitting and rocking. Tiller could see her outline, the backlighting creating a halo of gray hairs around her head. He was reminded of Anthony Perkins dressed like his mother in Alfred Hitchcock’s
Psycho
, the way she just sat there, rocking. She must have seen him approaching, perhaps even when he stepped out of the funhouse, across the lot. She didn’t move, though, just sat there and watched him come across the weeded lot to the house, to the porch were she sat.
 

For some reason that he could not quite define, he tightened his grip on his pistol and stopped momentarily. He looked behind him, around him. For some reason that old woman wasn’t afraid, and that fact paradoxically made Tiller more afraid than he should have been.
 

“Christ, Tiller, the old bat probably just can’t see very well.”
 

And that’s when someone hit him from behind, someone moving like a freight train, and just about as big.
 

Tiller went down, and his gun flew from his grasp.
 

Oh my God, it’s him—
 

The thought that Fain was upon him shot through Tiller’s mind, and he knew he was done for. But no, despite the force of the blow, and despite having the breath knocked out of him, the assailant did not press home the attack. Tiller flopped over on his back.
 

It wasn’t Fain. The big tall blonde man from the picture that Corsack had showed them stood over him, a sullen look on his face. He glared at Tiller through his stringy bangs and made a growling noise.
 

Tiller looked around for his gun. He rose slowly to his feet, breathing hard. He raised his open hands slowly.

“Easy, easy now—”
 

“You stay way from Granny!” The big man screamed, and his hands became fists, and he took a step toward Tiller. Tiller turned and broke into a dead run for the woods at the edge of the yard. He distantly heard another voice, a gravelly and incredibly mean sounding voice, the old crone on the porch talking now, and she said, “Get after him, Bertrand honey. Kill him for your granny, now.”
 

Tiller was already at the tree line, and he plunged into that darkness, and dared turn and look behind him to see if the big lummox—Bertrand, the old woman had called him—was back there. And, oh yes, there he was, apparently having stood still until the old woman admonished him to pursue Tiller.
 

This big dumb bastard’s going to kill me if I don’t get my gun back.
 

The gun was out there in the yard, somewhere. Tiller tried as quietly as possible to stay in the shadows, and circle back toward the house, scanning for the glint of metal in the grass. The big guy was in the woods with him, now; he had entered the shadows and stood abruptly still. Tiller knew Bertrand was somewhere close, waiting for him to make a sound. Tiller stood there, trying to breathe quietly.
 

Just what in the hell is going on out here? The old woman is running this show. I wonder what they’re covering up? A meth lab? A prostitution ring? Tiller hadn’t seen any women. Slave trade? Chop Shop? Could be anything. One thing was for certain. They were willing to kill to protect whatever it was they were doing out here.
 

Tiller moved slowly to the edge of the woods, eyes scanning the yard. Darkness apparently fell quickly out on the bayou. No hills out here, just the green flash on the horizon for the tourists, and once the sun went over the edge of the world, it was all over.
 

He looked around desperately, and tried to figure out where he had been standing when Bertrand had knocked him down. He had been within earshot of the old lady in the rocker. He could still see the high grass crumpled where he had been standing. He moved to very edge of the woods and looked back at the house. The old woman was still out there, sitting on her rocker. No doubt she would call to Bertrand the second Tiller showed himself. But even as the thought occurred to him, he saw his pistol lying about fifteen feet from the porch.
 

Damn it, now I have to go out there and I don’t know how close that lunkhead is—
 

But he was moving, now, because there was nothing else to be done, and he was Detective Sergeant Amos Quenton Tiller, Chief Petty Officer United States Navy, Retired, thank you very much, and he was a smart, well-read, well-traveled, no bullshit type of man, and there was maybe just one way out of this fucked up situation, and he’d be goddamned if after all he’d been through that he’d let some old lady and some ape with half a brain take him down because he was too chickenshit to walk out there and pick up his gun.
 

So across the yard he went, making a beeline for that beautiful Smith & Wesson .38 Detective Special, and the old woman immediately set up a mewling that made all his hairs stand up. But he was running, running as fast as he could, and like a rhino running behind him he heard Bertrand’s feet pounding the ground, so that as he got near the gun he sensed the big man almost on top of him. Tiller dove for the gun now and it was somehow in his hand, so that when he hit the ground and rolled he was on his back looking up at Bertrand, who had a farm implement in his hand. The big man roared and raised the thing above his head, a big pole axe with a blade that looked like something from the middle ages, raised for a death blow, and that’s when Tiller stopped trying to be nice, and shot the poor dumb bastard.
 

* * *

Culver Ray was one satisfied man. He had finally gotten something that he had been waiting years to get. Mafalda had been good, every bit as good, maybe even better, than he remembered her bible-thumping momma had been. In the end they had been the same, just a couple of pretty whores who really liked it underneath all the screaming. Mafalda was the more honest of the two, because a whore was all she ever was, from the time Granny kept her in a little shack out on Patreaux Island and made her service the gentlemen callers that came through there.
 

Mafalda’s momma always pretended that she was a good Christian woman, and Culver Ray knew that there wasn’t no good Christian anything, because people were scum, just like him. He had no dream or ambition other than to get high, get drunk, and do other things that felt good. Look at where putting on all of them airs got you. Mafalda’s momma was dead and in the belly of alligators five years ago. Culver Ray had killed her himself, just like he had her daughter tonight.
 

He had cut both of their throats, after having his way with them. In the end, they had both begged like dogs for him not to kill them, but they should have known better. He wouldn’t have touched a hair on either of their heads without Granny Patreaux’s say-so. When that old woman decided somebody had to die, though, it was usually Culver Ray who drew the duty. Not that it bothered him in the least. He liked to kill, liked to watch people die. Now, as he headed back to Patreaux Island in Mafalda’s car, he savored killing one more time before the night ended.
 

Roland Longville, the inquisitive man from Birmingham. Mafalda had given him the name, after he had applied his knife blade to certain key points. Longville was the big black fellow he had seen her with. He would be nosing around out on the island, and Culver Ray had to put a stop to that. And wouldn’t that make Granny Patreaux proud. Culver Ray smiled as he drove. He was a man about his work, and that pleased him.

Chapter 24

I moved through the darkness and came to another door. I stood still and listened to stealthy movement on the other side. Holding my gun tightly in my right hand, I grasped the knob firmly and flung the door wide. Standing on the other side, gun also in hand, was a familiar figure: Corsack.
 

“Jesus Christ,” I sighed. Corsack pointed his gun at the floor and put a finger to his lips.
 

I grabbed him by the arm. “Where’s Tiller?”
 

“He will . . . be along in a bit, I am sure. He is probably most displeased with me.”
 

“What did you do?”
 

Corsack shrugged. “He is all right, I swear it.”
 

“He’d better be.” I stood looking at Corsack, and the questions flew from me. “Who are these people? How are they tied to Fain? What do you want with them? Because I know now that you aren’t hunting Samson Fain.”
 

Corsack nodded slowly, and for the first time I saw real emotion in his face. I had seen that look before, in interrogation rooms, back when I was a cop. I saw it when people finally reached the point where they gave up lying to the cops who were questioning them—and to themselves. I had seen them break when it finally came home to them, the finality of their crimes—I didn’t mean to kill him, the gun just went off in my hands. He shouldn’t have fought back; we just wanted the money. Oh my God she was my baby what have I done.
 

Something was eating away at Corsack, had been from the beginning, and now he was ready to give it up, just like all of those poor lost souls.
 

And so he started talking. “Roland, I have admission to make. You are correct. I use you and your friend Tiller. I do not do this for evil purpose. I told you that I am here for my own investigation. This is truth.”
 

I nodded. “So you did. But I don’t recall you ever telling me just what your investigation concerns. You said it was somehow tied to our own.”
 

“It is truth. You see, this woman, Mafalda, the dancer. Someone told me that she is a Patreaux. She is tied somehow to two men, men whom I . . . seek to find.” Corsack ran his hands over his face.
 

“Your Samson Fain. I know him. You see, I am in country illegally. I come from place that is terrible. I take the name of a dead man, for Corsack is not the name my parents give to me. I try to bring my wife into the country also, but things go wrong. I—I fell in with men who guarantee me things. Lots of money, safe passage and identification papers for my wife. I was to act as intermediary between Cuban smugglers bringing heroin into country, and local people. For this they do all of these things for me, for it is a lot of drugs, worth millions. But things go wrong. There is a misunderstanding, perhaps one side tried to cheat the other, I know not, but they get into gun battle at the port where we go to make the trade.”
 

Corsack’s black eyes glittered, and he looked searchingly at me, and then he turned away and continued speaking: “I am downstairs in the ship when the fight begins. Then I realize that other people have found out about the trade, and seek to hijack the drugs and money. I rush to where the drugs are, in two big trunks, and I throw them over the side and climb down a rope. I get the drugs, and I put them into car, take them away with me. I think to contact the leader of the smugglers later and tell him the drugs are safe, but I find out he is dead. But the buyers are angry, they still do not have what they came for. They ask around and they find out about me. They know that I hide the drugs somewhere.”
 

Corsack drew a heavy sigh and went on to the thing I could see that he dreaded most to tell: “Zahra, my wife, you see, was kidnapped by them. They keep her from me, try to make me tell them where the heroin is, you see. I do not. They did things to her, terrible things, and then they threaten to sell her into prostitution. They are liars, killers. I tell them I arrange trade, but the police watch me now, for they have heard things from their informants. So I am stuck and cannot get her back by myself.”
 

I shook my head. I felt sorry for him, but the man had dabbled in a world that brings only misery, and misery is exactly what he’d gotten. My sympathy was far stronger for his wife, an innocent woman he’d gotten mixed up in all of this.
 

“Why can’t you arrange a trade? They could drop Zahra off somewhere and you could tell them where the drugs are. Everyone could just walk away then.”
 

Corsack set his jaw and shook his head. “No. Because, first of all Fain and the others cannot be trusted. And . . . I lied, you see. I did not really move the heroin . . . I dumped it over the side of the ship.”
 

“Why on earth did you let them think you had the stuff if it’s at the bottom of the Port of New Orleans?”
 

“They had already taken Zahra. I was afraid that they might kill her. I had to stall them, keep them at bay, you see?
 

I tell them this lie to buy time until I could find help.”
 

“So tell me how Fain fits into all of it. I think I see what Tiller and myself are supposed to do, now.”
 

“Samson Fain.” Corsack said the name and spit on the ground. “I met him near the Port of New Orleans. He is the one who came to me, he and another man, a thin, evil-looking man. Culver Ray is his name. The man you call Fain did all of the talking. He did not give his name. He said that he had heard of these local men who looked for someone like me. He put me into touch with smugglers to arrange the deal, but then Samson Fain and his friends, they double-crossed us all, however. They want the money and the drugs. They plan it all in advance.”