Three Sides of the Tracks (25 page)

41

Telling Danny

Danny drove past the front of his house, turned right at the side street
and into his driveway. He parked in the back yard beside his mother’s car. As
soon as he shut the engine off, the back door opened and Belinda rushed out.

“Now, Mom, before you chew me out, I—”

“I’m not mad at you, Danny,” she said and reached into the car and hugged
him around the neck. “Just relieved you came back in one piece.”

Danny grinned. “So am I.”

“You keep that attitude and you might get that chewing out.”

The grin faded.

“Are you getting out, or are you going to sit in the car all day?”

Danny was staring at Bernard’s house. He could see Bernard watching them
through the screen door of his back porch.

“Mom, is that a bandage wrapped around Bernard’s head?”

Belinda turned her head and saw Bernard. “Come on in the house. A lot has
happened.”

Danny stepped from the car and waved at Bernard. “I’ll bring the car over
afterwhile,” he shouted.

Bernard didn’t respond and didn’t wave back. He just disappeared from
view.

The same sick feeling in the pit of his stomach he’d had right before
knocking on the beach house door returned as he followed his mother across the
yard and inside.

“Do you want something to eat?”

“No, ma’am. Just a glass of tea. You want one too?” Danny opened the
refrigerator and poured himself a glass then turned to see whether Belinda
wanted one, but she was standing at the other end of the table with tears in
her eyes.

He set the glass down and hugged her. “I’m sorry, Mom. I had to find
Caroline and was afraid to tell you my plans.”

She squeezed him tighter, and, with a choking voice said, “Your father’s
dead, Danny. Martin’s dead.”

Danny froze. It wasn’t possible. They’d just eaten together at the diner,
what was it, three nights ago. He’d just been told Martin was his real father
and now, now, he was dead. No. Danny saw his face, how timid the strong
handsome face had looked when he told Danny he was his real father and how
deeply in love he and his mother had been . . . still were. Danny snapped back
to the present.

“Gosh, Mom. Me gone was bad enough. And then this happens. Please forgive
me for worrying you. I’m soooo sorry.”

Danny’s sweetness in being concerned for her instead of himself broke her
last restraint. Belinda’s shoulders shook with grief as she released her pain,
now that she didn’t have to worry about Danny too.

Still clutching each other, they settled onto the kitchen table chairs.

Belinda waited until she cried herself out before telling the rest of the
story. She had to muster at least a semblance of composure to tell that.

“That was a bandage you saw on Bernard’s head. Someone broke into his
house and shot him.”

Danny jumped up. “Looking for me? He shot Bernard looking for me, didn’t
he? Oh crap. Is Bernard okay? He didn’t wave or say anything. He must be
blaming me. What the heck was I thinking?”

Belinda clutched his arm and pulled him back to his seat. “No, Bernard
doesn’t blame you in the least. He blames himself for helping you. And now
probably for Martin’s death as well. I don’t know. I haven’t talked to him
since Martin was shot.”

Danny jumped up again. This time almost turning the table over. “Dad was
shot? He was shot? Who shot
him
? I thought they were just after me?”

“What do you mean they were after you? Who was after you?”

Danny hesitated for a second, but this was no time to be keeping secrets.
“Caroline thinks her dad hired some guy to kill me.”

Belinda’s eyes widened and her mouth opened in shock. “Kill you? He must
be completely insane.”

“Pretty much, yeah. But . . . now I know you’re not going to like this,
Mom, but I shot him instead.”

Belinda flopped against the chair’s back. “You . . .
you
shot
someone?” Who? Caroline’s father or the man he hired?”

“The man he hired. Mom, if I hadn’t, he would’ve killed me. He shot at me
first then Caroline jumped on him and knocked him off balance, and I was able
to pull out a gun Bernard gave me and then . . . then I just shot him. He was
fixin’ to shoot at me again and I didn’t have any choice.”

A stupor seemed to settle in Belinda’s eyes as she struggled to accept
what she was hearing. “I’m glad you did, Danny. If you had to.

“That must have been what Martin wouldn’t tell me. He thought it would
worry me too much. You have no idea how angry he was. I mean, he was almost
like a different person when he found out . . . when we went to see Bernard,
and Bernard told us about helping you and then he told us you left a note when
you ran off and the man found the note and came to his house. So I suppose,
from what you say, Martin figured out Caroline’s father hired the man and
that’s why he went to see him.”

“I’m confused, Mom. Who went to see who exactly?”

“Caroline’s father killed Martin, Danny. Your father found out about the man
who tried to kill you and went to Jessie Whitaker’s house to beat him up, but
Jessie had a gun and shot Martin.”

Danny stared at Belinda for a long moment as the enormity of all Jessie
had done sank in. Sadness filled his eyes. “I don’t think there’s any
punishment bad enough to cover all the lives he’s ruined. Do you?”

Belinda covered his hands with hers. “Not on this earth.”

42

A Plan

Caroline dried off and sat in front of her vanity mirror rubbing
moisturizer into her face. She’d never used makeup.

She heard a faint tap on her door and knew it was her mother. Jessie had
never knocked that softly in his life.

“Can I come in?” Marie asked when Caroline opened the door a crack.

Her mother had such a needy expression on her face that Caroline couldn’t
say no, although she didn’t really feel like talking.

“Sit down, and I’ll brush your hair. Remember how you loved for me to do
that when you were a child, little more than a baby really?”

Caroline nodded and smiled and sat back down in front of the mirror.

“I loved doing it too. Something we had in common.”

“Mom, how have you stayed with him all these years? I can’t. I have to
find some way of getting out of this house.”

“I believe your father has finally gone over the edge, dear daughter, and
I might have reached my limits too.”

Caroline spun in the chair. “
You
, Mother? You’re going to leave
him? I can’t believe it.” 

“I stayed this long only because of you. That, and the fact that the last
time I told him I wanted a divorce, he said that, if I did and took you with me,
he would have us both killed. I believed him too. At least for my part. I
wasn’t so sure about you. You’re the only person he’s ever really cared about.
“But now that you’re old enough to do as you please, there’s really no legal
way he can stop you. And with all he has on his plate right now, he’s not
likely to resort to violence. Right now, he needs me more than I need him.”

Caroline’s eyebrows raised as her brow wrinkled in confusion and
surprise.

“This is going to upset you terribly, but, if we intend to get away from
him, we must not be rash, so don’t storm out of here and confront him with one
of your tirades when I say what I’m about to say. Promise me that.”

“Mom, if you’re going to tell me about daddy hiring a man to kill Danny,
you’re too late; I already know.”

It was Marie’s turn to be stunned. She raised a hand to her mouth as if
that would shield her shock. “So that was the cause of . . . No, I didn’t know
about that. Are you sure?”

“I was standing right there when he tried to do it, and, if I hadn’t
knocked him off balance, he would have succeeded. And caused what? What else
happened?”

Marie took Caroline’s hand and led her to the bed, where they sat facing
each other, Marie clutching both of Caroline’s hands, both for support and understanding.

“A man came here last night just as your father—”

“Don’t call him that anymore.”

“. . . Jessie came home. I heard a crash then shouting and, when I went
outside, the man had Jessie on the ground beating his head against the
concrete.”

“I thought I saw blood stains on the driveway when I came home.”

“No, dear. Those weren’t from that. I didn’t know what was happening or
why, just that the man . . . I thought he was going to kill Jessie he was
beating him so and Jessie had blood all over his face. Anyway, I grabbed the
table lamp by the door and hit the man on the head to make him stop. Just to
stop. I didn’t want to hurt him. But then . . . then Jessie crawled to his car
and the next thing I knew he’d shot the man. Several times. He killed him. I
was horrified. There was an awful lot of confusion but I think I heard the man
saying something about his son, and, now, what you just said makes sense.”

Caroline’s eyes flared. She clutched Marie’s arm “Who was the man,
Mother? Please don’t say it was Martin Townsend.”

Marie’s mouth gaped open. All she could do was nod.

“He’s Danny’s real father, Mom. Danny told me all about it on the way
home. Oh, my gosh. Danny. To get home and find out his father’s been killed
after he just found out . . . And his poor mother. The story Danny told me
about how his mother had married someone else just to protect Danny and his
real father’s good name was . . . was . . . tragic. Tragic and
noble
.

“I guess our friendship or love affair or whatever it could be called is
over now. He must hate me after this. Having someone’s father try to kill you
is bad enough but to kill your own father . . . I don’t see how he could
forgive that.”

Marie cupped her daughter’s drooping chin and raised it. “My dear, I
gather from what you said earlier that Danny must have tried to rescue you. I
would say his mother’s nobility passed to her son. Don’t sell the young man
short.”

Tears dripped from Caroline’s eyelashes. “I want to call and tell him how
sorry I am, but I’m afraid of what he might say.”

“No. Not yet. Give him some time. He and his mother have enough on their
plate right now. If you called, he would be worried about your feelings. Just
let him grieve for his father. Then you and he can talk things out. Do you
understand?”

Caroline nodded, hearing her mother’s wisdom through a curtain of shock
and grief.

They sat silently for a few moments, hand in hand, then Caroline asked,
“What did you mean when you said ‘he needs you more than you need him’ a moment
ago?”

“Oh, he called his big shot lawyer from Atlanta right after the shooting,
and, right on cue, both of them think I’m dumber than a doorknob, so they tried
schmoozing me because I’m the only witness. Of course, I could also be a party
to the shooting since I did hit Mr. Townsend with the lamp. But I’m not stupid.
I know what the years of abuse have done to my appearance. They won’t be
charging me with anything. Jessie needs me to back him up when he says he
feared for his life, which was supposedly the reason he shot Mr. Townsend. Until
you told me about the man who tried to kill Danny, I thought that might be
partially true, but, now, the bits and pieces I heard make sense to me, and I
think Jessie killed him because Mr. Townsend knew about the man you mentioned.”

“I have to get away from here, Mom. I can’t stand another day under the
same roof as him.”

“I know, dear. I know. And I’ll go with you. But not today. Give me a few
days to think of a way we can leave without a big uproar or him getting
violent. Will you wait that long?”

“If you promise to come with me, yes. I’ll do it for you. But you have to
promise me you won’t back out.”

Marie squeezed Caroline’s hands and smiled, and this time it wasn’t the
customary timid smile. “I promise, dear.”

Caroline nodded. For once, she believed her mother would actually do it.

43

Surprise

Jessie’s feet slipped off the desk and he snapped awake. He relit his
cigar and rubbed his eyes then looked at the newspaper again.

Iggy and Deadhead had arrived early morning carrying several editions in
their hands as if they were trophies, thinking their boss would be delighted
that his daughter had been found and rescued. Little did they know that the
news of Lenny would be the utmost of Jessie’s concerns.

Next came the FBI and GBI men with their damn questions. He’d told so
many half-truths and outright lies he hoped he could keep them straight.

Jessie stood up and stretched then opened the small refrigerator for some
ice, only to find he hadn’t filled the trays and there wasn’t any. He took the
three trays to the kitchen along with his ice bucket, filled the trays with
water and the bucket with ice and returned to his room. Before fixing his
drink, he opened the top right-hand desk drawer and cautiously withdrew the
mirror with several lines of cocaine already laid out.

 He lowered his head to the mirror and sniffed one line deep into each
nostril then tossed his head back and sniffed again until he felt the cold
numbness of the powder in his throat. A few seconds later, his head began to
clear. He put three cubes of ice in his glass and poured a generous amount of
Crown Royal.

The papers hadn’t made the connection between a local man being shot and
the shootings in Florida, so Jessie’s concern was whether Lenny had ditched the
phones and whether he was the kind of man who picked up his shell casings after
shooting someone.

“Screw it,” he muttered and smacked his lips. Lenny hadn’t survived this
long by being careless. “I ain’t worrying about it.”

“Now what?” he said when he heard the tap on his door. He stuck the
mirror back in the drawer just as his door opened.

“Jessie, can I talk to you a moment?” Marie asked in a soft voice.

Jessie held his temper. “Yeah, come on in.”

Marie came inside but left the door open.

“I thought you’d like to know Caroline’s home.”

“She is? She couldn’t take time to let me know herself?”

“Your, um, friends were here when she arrived. She took a bath and went
straight to bed. She was exhausted.”

“Yeah, yeah, okay. I guess that’s okay then. Would’ve thought she’d be a
little more considerate than that.”

It was Marie’s turn to hold her temper. She contained her disgust and
turned to leave.

“Tell her I want to see her when she wakes up. You hear me?”

“Yes, Jessie,” Marie said and shut the door behind her.

“Do everything for ‘em and they still treat me like crap,” Jessie
muttered and opened the desk drawer again.

Dusk came and Jessie decided he needed something stronger than the
cocaine, so he reached into his hiding place and laid out two long lines of his
special mixture. He left the little snuff box he kept it in sitting on the
table. He wasn’t finished.

He was used to Marie going to the mailbox and bringing in the afternoon
Atlanta
Journal
and local paper, the
Benson Times
, and it was dark before he
realized that there was likely to be more recent news of Caroline’s rescue and
the death of three men. He cracked his door open and looked on the end table
where she usually laid the papers, but it was bare.

He bellowed her name three times and, when she still didn’t answer, he
stumbled down the drive and retrieved the newspapers himself.

The newspapers lay on his desk while he fortified himself with a straight
shot of tequila and fixed another glass of Crown Royal. No matter what the
paper reported, he knew he wouldn’t like it. It was just a matter of how bad.

He opened the
Benson Times
first, and, below the headline, the
first caption read “Local Man Outduels Professional Killer.” Jessie’s first
thought was that the story was about Bernard, but then he saw Danny’s name.

The glass shattered against the wall. “That damn boy. That damn boy,”
Jessie ranted until his curses became incoherent with rage.

A
Benson Times
reporter had made the trip to Canaveral Beach and
put the story together from police statements and interviews with local
reporters, who had contacts within the police department.

Jessie had his hand on the doorknob when he hesitated and managed to stop
himself from raging upstairs and confronting Caroline. He turned around and
pulled the cork from the Patron tequila and took a long slug then flopped back
into his chair.

The money he’d collected to pay Lenny was in a briefcase behind his
liquor cabinet. “A quarter million. Damn it. If it takes going to New York,
then that’s just what it’s going to take, but that little bastard . . . ugggg,”
Jessie snarled.

“I gotta calm down and do this the right way. Too many eyes on me,” he
said and opened the drawer again.

His room was dark except for the 40-watt table lamp, and he sat in his
chair drinking and alternating between the cocaine and his special mixture till
long past dark. He’d heard no more from Marie and nothing from Caroline. Then
he felt more than heard his door open and anticipated seeing a contrite
Caroline’s face peeping around the corner.

The door shut softly and Jessie heard breathing.

“Come on in, baby. I’m not gonna yell at you.”

A lanky body glided into view with an ivory-handled pistol pointed straight
at his head. Jessie dropped the glass tube he used to snort the cocaine.

“So Sweet Cheeks made it home? What’s wrong, Daddy Badass, she wasn’t all
warm and grateful like you expected?”

Jessie recovered from his shock. “You son of a bitch. Come into my
house—”

Slink slammed the heavy pistol butt down on Jessie’s scalp. “Shut the
fuck up. I’m doin’ the talkin’ here. You killed two of my pards. You owe me,
buddy.”

Jessie shook his head and squinted through the pain and dizziness trying
to identify the man in front of him. “Who the hell are you?”

“Don’t you read the papers?”

“You don’t look like any of the kidnappers.”

“A little dye job and a few accessories. What you need to get through
that rich head of yours is that
I’m
the badass, not you. You’re nothin’
but a wannna be who pays folks like me to do what you don’t have the balls for.
You feelin’ me?”

 A stunned Jessie stared into Slink’s eyes. They reminded him of Lenny’s,
except they weren’t lifeless. They were cold. Cold and angry.

Slink tapped the top of Jessie’s head with the pistol barrel. “If you
can’t talk, nod.”

“Why are you here?” Jessie stuttered while rubbing his scalp to see
whether it was bleeding. It was.

“I want the dough you were going to pay your hit man.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I didn’t hire any—”

Slink jammed the .45 into Jessie’s chest. “Now you listen to me, asshole.
Your boy went to kill the kid, but something happened. Then he figured you’d
pay a lot more if he were to get your daughter back for you, so he followed the
bread crumbs to my uncle’s house and almost killed the old fart trying to find
out where the kid had gone. I would kill you outright just for that, but,
frankly, that church money is gone and with all these folks on my trail I need
big dough. And
you
are going to give it to me. Right now. We’re gonna
play a little game called “with or without.” You want to be on the “with” side.
You gettin where I’m comin from?”

Jessie eyes went blank. Was this guy crazy or—”

“I see you’re a little slow. Must be that white powder you been stickin
up your nose. It works like this. “With” means I leave with the money and you
get to stay here with your life. “Without” means I leave without the money and
you stay here without your life. Making sense to you now?”

Jessie nodded ever so slightly.

Slink snatched a pillow off an armchair, put it against Jessie’s head and
cocked the .45. “Decide.”

Jessie threw up his hands. “Okay. Okay. But I don’t have it here. You’ll
have to wait—”

“Bullshit. You got it here. If your boy had done his job, you’d be payin’
him off right about now. Last chance fat man.”

Jessie quivered and sweat covered his face as greed fought against
self-preservation. The visceral part of his brain knew this man was serious.
And he wasn’t stupid; he’d figured it all out.

“I’ll get it for you under one condition.”

“No conditions. You killed my pards and tried to kill my uncle.”

“I had nothing to do with that. I just wanted the boy dead. The rest was
on . . . well you know who it was on. I still want the boy dead.”
“That’s your condition?”

Jessie nodded.

Slink’s black eyes glinted. “I figure you were paying the dude about two
hundred thousand: fifty for the boy and a hundred for getting Sweet Cheeks back
alive, then another fifty for doing us.”

Jessie couldn’t hide the surprise in his eyes. “Something like that.”

Slink chuckled. “I was thinking of doing him anyway. He’s the reason it
all went south.”

“Behind the cabinet,” Jessie heard himself say, his eyes shifting to the
liquor cabinet.

“You get it. Better be money in your hand and not a pistola when you pull
it out.”

Jessie’s hands shook badly as he reached behind the cabinet, fervently
wishing he’d had the foresight to split up the money instead of keeping it all
in one place.

Slink stood over him with the cocked pistol against his neck. “Easy does
it, fat man.”

They backed up together and Jessie laid the case on the desk.

“Open it, jerkoff.”

Slink’s eyes widened when he saw the bundles of twenty, fifty, and
hundred dollar bills that filled the briefcase. “That’ll do.”
“Wait a minute,” Jessie said. “I had some of my money in there too. There’s
fifty thousand of my—”

Slink snapped the lid shut and grinned. “You can always get more.”

“How do I know you’ll do what you say?”

Slink’s grin grew wider. “Why, you have my word. Might take a few days
though. Too much heat right now.”