All Through the Night (5 page)
W
ayne loped across the yard. He was fairly certain nobody was going to bother him, especially not the guy inside that house, totally blinded as he was by steel shutters. The island estates were spaced well apart, a minimum two acres per, with all the extras any rich kid could come up with at Christmas. Stone walls. Borders of blooming trees. Wooden trellises rising ten feet above the walls, guaranteeing they would never have to glimpse another neighbor unless they hiked across their manicured lawns and rang the six-bong doorbell. High-impact glass and total soundproofing. As entombed as money could make them.
It was the high-impact glass that had him worried.
Up close the house looked fairly impregnable. Which was mostly bad and maybe a little good. Bad, because he was going to have just one chance to get this right. Even if blowing the transformer had also taken out the phone system as he hoped, the guy inside could not be given time to use his cell. Reach out and touch the local cops. Who would come swarming. With that one phone call, Wayne would become every security joe’s dream come true, the reason most of them deluged the real cops with multiple applications. So they could blow away the bad guys.
If he didn’t want to play one quick round of deer-in-the-headlights, he had to get it right the first time.
But it was also good. Maybe. A guy living inside a steel cell most likely lived alone. Wayne knew guys like that. These sorts of toys were definitely a guy thing.
The same sort of guy who trusted his own security more than a bank.
As in, the place to stow his illicit cash.
After all, this was the same guy who made a profession out of tweaking reality and taking money that basically wasn’t his. A guy who lived to abuse other people’s trust.
Of course, all this was assuming Wayne had the right house.
That line of thought kept him company as he danced his way across the moonlit lawn and inspected the corner of the house. Three stories, stone, high-pitched roof, sort of a pyramidal structure. The broad ground floor rose to a second story about half its width, and it to a third floor that was basically one large room wide.
Wayne was betting his life that top floor held the mother lode.
He unfurled his lanyard. The grappling hooks connected to the end were wrapped in foam rubber. Wayne began whirling, letting more rope slip through his hand until the circle reached almost the ground. Then on the upswing he lifted and tossed.
The hooks slid silently over the slate roof, then caught on something.
Wayne put his weight on the line, gripped hard, and put his foot on the stone wall. He pulled himself up hand over hand, and took another step. Walking straight up the wall.
That is, until the hooks came undone. Landing Wayne on his back. Blowing him hard.
He lay there for a minute, letting his ribs complain, reaching hard for breath. It was either tuck tail and retreat or try again. And Wayne had never been one for taking the wise course.
He rose to his feet, tested his spine, rubbed the spot where he was growing a pistol-shaped bruise over his right kidney, and recurled the lanyard. Swung and swung and swung and tossed. This time, when the hooks grabbed hold, he tested them carefully.
The climb was not hard and not easy. Wayne was in pretty good shape. His problem was the memories that came up as he climbed. Of other rock walls and cave mouths he had puffed his way around, hanging limpetlike and listening hard to all the sounds he was probably just imagining.
His muscles were doing a jelly dance by the time he made the fake balcony rimming the third floor’s largest window. There was probably a set of French doors behind the roll-down shutters, with the balcony meant to keep the occupant from doing a face-first into the succulents Wayne had just mashed flat. Wayne propped himself on the balcony railing, gripped the wall where it connected to the metal shutter, and tugged. Harder.
The news was so good Wayne actually turned and mouthed a silent thanks to the smiling silver face in the sky. As in, this much good fortune had to be acknowledged.
Again, assuming Wayne had the right house.
He pulled once more, just to make sure it wasn’t his imagination. The shutters accordioned through aluminum runners. Midway down, the right-hand runner was no longer firmly attached to the wall. It gave. Not a lot. But enough for Wayne’s purposes.
Wayne got to work, all without touching the balcony floor. Which was probably overkill, but it would be just his luck to have the security freak put motion sensors there. So Wayne balanced on the railing as he molded little rings of plastique around the two middle stanchions and then along the shutter lid and down the sides of the top housing. He imbedded minidetonators, connected the wires to the trigger, and looped the trigger through the front of his belt.
Wayne tested the lanyard hooks once more, just to make sure they hadn’t slipped free while he did his dirty work. He rose to his full height and looped the lanyard around his back, making himself a sort of hammock. Then he rolled the lanyard once around his gloved right hand. With his left hand, the one closest to the shutters, he plucked another item from his ready-belt.
The proper name for a flash-bang was compression grenade. As in, a lot of sounds and light and no frags. The purpose of a flash-bang was to so stun a quarry they were left incapable of thought, much less attack.
What a flash-bang would do when slipped between a steel shutter and a set of impact-resistant French doors was anyone’s guess.
But unless the doors were molded titanium, Wayne imagined he might earn himself a way inside.
Wayne pulled the safety clip with his teeth. Took a long breath, wondering if it was too much to make his first prayer in fifteen years be that he was actually aiming at the right room in the right house.
He pried the shutters out a trace and slipped in the grenade.
The canister rattled on the stone flooring. Which Wayne took as his signal to slip away.
He scrambled around the corner, unfurling the wires with his left hand. His heart raced fast enough to chop the seconds into billionths. He was in position and had the trigger out when the grenade went off.
He punched the trigger so fast the two booms, one from the grenade and one from the C-4, sounded as one. A great roar of sound. Then nothing.
This time round, there was no question which of the neighbors had dogs.
Wayne punched his legs out and leaned into the swing, such that he cleared the corner entirely. Just swept around the house and came flying over the balcony railings.
The shutters hung like an astonished metal tongue over the railing. The French doors were gone. There was no sign of them ever having existed. Instead, the entire room sparkled in the moonlight, like a truckload of fairy dust had been flung at the walls and ceiling and floor.
Thankfully, the bed was at the room’s far end. Otherwise the lone occupant might have sparkled as well. Instead, the guy floundered around in his sheets. Clearly knowing he was supposed to do something right then. But his brain was so scrambled he couldn’t be sure
what
. The guy made it to a seated position, sort of, just in time to watch Wayne come flying through what was supposed to have been an impregnable wall. Out of his nightmares and into his bedroom.
Wayne covered the distance from window to bed in three pounces. He gripped the guy with one hand and slipped the knife from his belt. Put the blade right up against the guy’s cheek, directly beneath his left eye, letting him feel the cold threat. Then Wayne lifted the blade out far enough for the guy’s moon-shaped eyes to get a glimpse of true terror.
“You’ve got one chance to save that eye,” Wayne said. “Where’s the upstairs security box?”
The guy stammered, swallowed, made the words come out. “Front hall.”
Wayne carried such a load of adrenaline he one-handed the guy up off the bed and through the dressing area and into the foyer. He sped across from the gigantic curving stairway to where the security unit flashed its danger light. On this side of the house Wayne could hear the whooping siren attached to the home’s street side.
Wayne refit the knife to the guy’s face. “Shut it down.”
The man did not hesitate. After all, why should he. The siren was mostly cosmetics. There was little chance a neighbor was going to risk life and limb for him.
After the siren was silenced, Wayne forced the man hard against the wall. Waited.
The longest minute in Wayne’s entire life passed. The only sound came from the emergency generator drumming softly in the garage. Nothing. No phone call. Which meant they had taken out the alarm in time and the emergency call had not been coded through to the security office.
Wayne flipped the guy onto the floor. Kneed him in the back. Pulled back his arms and taped his wrists together. Taped over his eyes and mouth. Pulled him to his feet. “Let’s go.”
The guy tumbled on the stairs and stayed upright only because Wayne was too busy tripping on adrenaline to notice. On the ground floor Wayne used the light of the motion sensors and one wall clock to find the rear doors. The switch for the shutters was beside the lights. He pushed it and waited as the shutters ground open in torturous fashion.
They basically flew across the rear lawn. The only sounds Wayne could hear were a pair of stubborn hounds. Wayne dumped the guy in the bow. Jumped in after. Jerry and Foster both wore their masks. Wayne hefted the man by his hair. “Is this him?”
The two men leaned forward. Foster whispered, playing for gruff, “Show me his eyes.”
Wayne ripped off the tape. Their hostage whimpered.
Jerry shifted his bulk forward a notch, causing the guy to whimper again. Jerry had gone from a bulky man in shorts to a menace.
Foster said, “That’s our boy.”
Wayne made all his motions out where Dorsett could clearly watch. He took the pistol from his belt. Screwed in the silencer. As he did so, he talked. “Your security system is shorted out. You’re almost two miles from the security station by the bridge. A passing guard might have heard the explosion. A neighbor might have called it in. They might run a check. But they’d have to go around to the rear of the house to see the problem. Otherwise it’s just you and me, Dorsett. You understand the situation?”
Wayne stuck the gun’s business end hard against the guy’s nose. Pulled back the trigger.
When the prisoner started kicking, Jerry moved in and sat on his legs.
“You’ve got one chance,” Wayne said. “Just one. Nod and tell me you understand.”
He responded with more of a body tremble than a nod. But the moan was clear enough.
“I’m going to take off the tape over your mouth. You’re going to tell me where your safe is and give me the combination. Nothing else. I’ll go inside. Get what we came for. Then we’ll leave. You haven’t seen us and we were never here. Do we have a deal?”
This time the nod was for real.
Wayne ripped off the tape. “You cry, you die.”
The guy chattered hard through the words. “You’ll let me go?”
“You can trust us, Dorsett. More than we can say for you, right?”
“Don’t have any choice, do I.”
Wayne ground the pistol in harder. “Last chance.”
“Ouch, wait!”
“The safe.”
“In the wine cellar. Closet beside the pantry. Lift the middle bottle of champagne and hit the switch. The rear wall swings out. Combination is oh-four-six-two.”
“Say the numbers backwards.”
When the guy did so, Wayne handed the gun to Jerry. Or tried to. Foster stepped in between them. “Give me that.”
“Can you shoot him?”
“You just go do your thing.” The old man took a two-handed grip on the pistol and took careful aim. Foster’s voice was raspy with banked-up rage. “I’ll just sit here and pray this guy asks me to blow him away.”
Jerry leaned over and mashed the tape back over Dorsett’s mouth. “Naw. You watch. Our man is just
dying
to behave.”
Wayne moved to his carryall and dumped the rest of his gear onto the boat. He balled up the empty bag and trotted back to the house.
The island made a few night-type noises. Otherwise it was totally quiet. Neither of the other two houses he could see even had a light burning.
Just another night among the isolated rich of Lantern Island.
T
hey spent the rest of a ragged night driving and then counting. Foster was good at the latter, Wayne discovered. So good, in fact, that Wayne basically relegated himself to keeping the accounts. Foster’s fingers lost about fifty years every time they took hold of another stack of bills. And there were a lot of those.
The safe had been jammed full. Wayne had stuffed with both hands, sweeping one shelf empty after another. The bills were all denominations, fives to hundreds. Wayne had crammed the sack until he could scarcely shut the zipper, so full he staggered trying to lift it. He had then returned to the kitchen, stripped the plastic garbage bag from the trash can, and filled that as well. Even so, he had left far more than he had taken. He was still roaring with his adrenaline high, still waiting with every breath for the lights to flash and the night to shrill and the voice from the dark to shout for him to drop it and spread. Which did not give his feet wings on the return journey but did keep him moving even beneath that double-armed load. He had made it back to the boat with a couple of night birds sounding the only alarm. Wayne dropped the sacks into the boat, Foster pushed them off the bulkhead, and Jerry rammed the motor straight to full bore. The scam artist lay still, his eyes never leaving the sacks. They dumped him on the marsh island’s sandbank, just out of shouting distance from his home. Their last image of Lantern Island was of Zachary Dorsett standing two hundred yards from the edge of his almost perfect world, watching a significant portion of his hard-earned cash drill through the calm Gulf waters.
While Foster counted and Wayne made notes, Jerry kept order and brewed coffee. Wayne used the community records to list what was owed to whom. At his written instructions, Foster separated the cash into little piles, one for each of the homeowners who lost their stash to the scam artist. They didn’t have envelopes, so Wayne wrote the names on slips of paper and fitted them under the rubber bands. A lot of the bills were old and greasy. Wayne doubted any of the group was going to object.
Jerry did not sit down until Foster shook his head to another coffee recharge and Wayne covered his own mug. Then Jerry dragged over a chair from Wayne’s dining table. Foster looked up at the noise and frowned, but his fingers never stopped counting.
Jerry settled himself down and sipped from his cup, taking his time. Maybe giving Wayne a chance. Finally he stretched out his legs and asked his cup, “How come …”
Wayne just waited.
Jerry stared at his steaming mug for a while. “Never mind.”
Wayne studied the big man. Jerry’s refusal to cover more ground with his questions was about as big a gesture as Wayne had ever known. He wanted to thank the man, but all he could think to say was, “Ask me again and I’ll tell you.”
Jerry looked at him then. Really looked. Eyes of dark copper, steady and strong. “That works for me.”
Foster slipped a rubber band around the pile he’d been counting, fitted Wayne’s handwritten sheet on the top, and glanced over.
Jerry went on, “Some things that need telling don’t need telling now. Wouldn’t want to mess up how good we’re all feeling.”
“Speak for yourself,” Foster said. “I wouldn’t mind learning why you’ve got a pile of assassin’s gear stowed in your closet.”
“Sniper weapons,” Jerry corrected. “And the man will tell us. Just not now.”
Foster snorted. Wayne looked over. Offering him the same deal. Say it again, and Wayne would talk. But Foster dropped his focus back to the next slip of paper, shook his head once, and resumed counting.
Even so, for the first time since all the mess started, Wayne found silence was just not enough. When he was certain his voice wouldn’t sound ragged, he said, “Last night is the first time I ever shot that rifle off a range.”
Jerry said, “Let it go now.”
From his place at the table, Foster said, “Don’t see why you had to flap that big mouth of yours in the first place. Go and ruin everybody’s morning.”
Jerry turned around. “Yeah, like you weren’t dying to know.”
“Had to dump a heap of misery on my buddy.”
“So he’s your pal now. And what am I, chopped liver?”
Jerry sipped from his mug and said nothing more.
They stayed like that while the dawn took gradual hold. Wayne finished the last of the accounts and sat watching the light grow beyond his front porch. The only sounds were birdsong and the rattling air-conditioner and the flicker of Foster’s hands.
Finally Foster scraped his chair back. He rubbed the small of his back with both hands. Stretched. Asked Wayne, “You want to know how much is left over for the community?”
But the strengthening day had revealed a house almost smothered in bougainvillea. “Later. First I’ve got to see a lady about a bet.”
Victoria was there waiting for him, an elfin hue inside the screened porch, painted in shadows and sunrise. Only her eyes were clearly visible. “Are you boys all safe?”
“Yes.” He stopped on the front porch and found himself wishing he was back in uniform so he could sweep off his hat. The diminutive woman might have been dressed in a quilted housecoat, but her authority was unmistakable. “You were right. I lost and you won. I owe you.”
She inspected him a long moment, then said, “Go ask your friends if they’d like pancakes for breakfast.”
The kitchen table was just a ledge off the back wall, proper for an intimate couple. They ate in the living room off fold-up trays. Foster hovered around Victoria as long as she was on her feet, sitting only when ordered. Jerry watched the two of them with the dark concern of a man who had learned not to say what he thought.
Victoria ate rations for a tiny bird. When Foster complained, she silenced him with, “Haven’t we discussed this?”
“Well, if you won’t look after your own health, somebody else needs to step to the plate.”
“I’m healthy and I’m happy. That should be enough for anybody.”
Two walls of her living room and one in the kitchen were filled with photographs attached to drawings and letters. Some of the pictures dated back to a monochrome era of crinkled edges. Tiny black children grew to have children of their own, who drew love messages on onion skin paper, many of them addressed to someone called
Maliaka.
Two Anglo girls grew up amidst the dark faces, smiling and laughing with them, and now held babies of their own, and soon these babies were laughing as well. All in villages of scrub and dust and a light so strong it shone across the years. Wayne asked, “Your daughters are missionaries?”
“One is. The other works in Cape Province. Her husband is with the UN.”
“You miss them.”
“They’re where they should be.” She sat as erect as a corporal on report. “Your sister Eileen tells me that your father was a pastor.”
Wayne made a process of setting his tray to one side. “Yes.”
“A stern man who lived in a state of perpetual disappointment, as far as you were concerned.” She did not actually sing the words. And there was not really a hint of accent. Yet something in the way she spoke suggested she had spent years thinking and dreaming in a different tongue. “A man who never approved of his uniquely special children.”
“You got that right.” Wayne found himself so drained from the night he could speak without the old bitterness. “Eilene was the son he always wanted, only inside the wrong skin.”
“There is absolutely nothing wrong with your sister,” Victoria replied. “Or with you.”
The two older men sat and watched the exchange like they would a good movie, silent and absorbed. Wayne said, “You’re going to tell me to give God another chance, is that the wager?”
“No, son. I’ve spent my entire life witnessing the bitter legacy of people forcing others to believe.” The morning light turned her features translucent. “But I will say this. God does not wear your father’s face.”
Victoria held him. Not with anything he had ever known before. Not with anger. Not with strength or authority or seniority. With
luminescence.
She said, “I know your father’s ways all too well. Religion becomes another word for oppression and coercion. Religion specializes in shame and blame, a lot of energy and no inspiration.”
“I probably deserved it.”
“Son, listen to me. We all deserve it. Each and every one of us.” She gave him a moment. When he did not speak, she went on. “You weren’t allowed to live your own life, but instead were expected to conform to someone else’s concept of order.” She shook her head. “No wonder the old-time religion failed you.”
Victoria leaned forward until he could see the sparks lifting from her eyes. Until he could
feel
them. “Jesus loves you, son. Deal with it.”
Wayne said weakly, “You won the bet. I asked what I owed you.”
Victoria leaned back in her chair. She did not show disapproval. Instead, the illumination dimmed somewhat. She said, “Go do whatever it is your sister asks.”
Wayne felt as much heat as his weary frame could manage. “We didn’t say anything about transferring debts.”
“Your first mistake was not asking.” Victoria used the arms of her chair to push herself erect. She waved away Foster’s move to her aid. She was light on her feet, scarcely more than a sweep of quilted robe and eyes of diffused light. “Your second mistake, son, is thinking your sister brought you here only for your sake.”