Jodi Compton - Hailey's War

“Mr. Marsellus.”

“I’m told you want to speak with me.” He had a low voice, like suede, and there was very little of South Central left in it.

I nodded. I couldn’t read anything off his tone and bearing.

“About?” he said.

“Half of it’s what you’d expect,” I said, meaning an apology. “The other half’s going to take a little explaining.”

Marsellus looked into the distance and rubbed his chin with his hand, considering. Then he took a cell phone from his jacket. “I’m going to call someone to pick you up and take you somewhere we can talk. I’ll be there later.”

He didn’t specify how much later and it wasn’t my place to ask. But I said, “The baby’s got to come with me, wherever I go.”

“Yours?” he said. Marsellus was economical with language.

I shook my head. “My responsibility, but not mine.”

He nodded and then moved a little bit away from me to make the phone call. I didn’t try to overhear what he was saying.

Then he returned and said, “Wait here. Someone will be here in about fifteen minutes.” He moved off into the dispersing crowd.

Not long after, a Lincoln Navigator pulled to the curb. There was a large black man in warm-ups behind the wheel, and another in the passenger seat.

“Miss Cain?” the passenger-side guy said after rolling down the window.

I nodded.

He got out and opened the back door for me. “You want me to hold the baby?” he asked. He had a soft, high voice.

“I got him,” I said. Even so, the security guy took Henry’s diaper bag, like the driver of a hotel shuttle, before I could reach for it. Then, after I’d settled in with Henry, he closed the door and we pulled away into traffic.

We made no conversation as the SUV made its way across town, and the SUV’s good construction and windows kept a remarkable amount of city noise blocked out. All I heard was soft, throbbing beats from the satellite radio, set at a low volume. Henry slept in my arms, a warm weight, peaceful.

The driver downshifted, and I looked out the window to see that we were making an ascent. In a moment, I realized that we were headed up into Beverly Hills.

Surely Marsellus wasn’t having me brought to his home? Maybe I’d been thinking of life as war for too long, because it seemed all wrong. Home was where you went to ground. You didn’t bring your enemies there, even the ones who were no threat to you. Home was supposed to be a refuge.

Yet when the motorized gate slid back, I recognized the house. I’d read a lot of articles about Lucius Marsellus in my last days in Los Angeles, and some of them had pictures of his home.

The Navigator came to a stop and we got out.

I’d expected to be searched when we got away from the eyes of bystanders. That didn’t happen. I considered remaining silent about the SIG I was carrying, but decided the wiser course was not to go into Luke Marsellus’s home strapped and get found out later.

“I’m carrying,” I told the guard when we were on the front doorstep. “You want to hold it?”

He paused and considered. “Lemme see it.”

I pulled out the SIG and handed it to him. Expertly, he took out the clip, checked that there was no round in the chamber, and handed it back to me.

I followed him through the front door and into a tile entryway. I could see into a long, wide living room with a ceiling that was at least fifteen feet high. That was where the Christmas tree should have been, but it wasn’t. There were no decorations of any kind, which suggested that there was no woman’s presence in this house-that Marsellus’s wife hadn’t returned, nor had he met someone new.

“Which way?” I asked.

“Upstairs,” the security guy said.

He led me up a curving staircase and down a long hallway, then opened a door. He didn’t go in, instead motioning with his arm for me to enter. I stepped inside and looked around.

It was a bedroom, as I’d thought. There was a twin-size bed and a dry, empty fish tank and a toy chest. The walls were blue. God, this was Trey Marsellus’s bedroom.

My escort set down the diaper bag. “Mr. Marsellus should be up soon,” he said. “Does the baby have everything he needs?”

I nodded.

He withdrew, and the door clicked shut behind him.

I looked around. There was a stuffed bear on the dresser, a Dodgers pennant, a signed photo of one of the Lakers, personalized to Trey. But my eyes kept going back to that empty fish tank. It seemed emblematic of the room overall. Dry, because Trey’s father couldn’t bear to come into his room every day and feed the fish, but not gone, because he still hadn’t been able to pack up Trey’s room and make something else of it.

This was part of my penance, seeing all this. How much of my penance it was remained to be seen.

It was a good twenty minutes before I heard the door handle twist, like that moment in a doctor’s office. I turned to watch Marsellus come in.

For a moment he just surveyed me, standing in the middle of his son’s room, holding a baby. Then he pulled the chair out from Trey’s child-sized desk and turned it to face outward. He gestured toward it, clearly indicating that I should sit. I did. Marsellus leaned back against the footboard of the bed, a position that was mostly still standing, and said, “Speak your piece.”

I took a deep breath and did. “I came here to tell you that I’m sorry about your son,” I said. “I went to the hospital the evening Trey died to say that, but your security men stopped me. After that, I was advised that you and your family might need some space.”

“And then what happened?”

“I left town.”

“Why?”

I knew he knew, but he wanted to hear me say it. It was as if Marsellus were handing me a shovel, wanting me to dig myself a deeper hole, but I wouldn’t lie to him. I said, “Because it was suggested to me that you might not be able to forgive me.” Come on, Cain, say it all . “And that you might have me injured or killed.”

“Miss Beauvais suddenly being gone planted that idea in your head.”

“Yes.”

“Where did you go?”

“San Francisco.”

“Not very far.”

“I guess not.”

He rubbed his long chin. “Now you’re back. Why?”

“That’s the story I came here to tell you.”

“Go ahead, then.”

“Do you know who Anton Skouras is?”

He considered and then shook his head no.

“Not a lot of people do. He’s low-profile, but he’s been called the biggest unindicted organized-crime figure in San Francisco,” I said, borrowing Jack Foreman’s phrase, because I couldn’t put it any better. “And this baby is his only grandson.”

I told Marsellus the story: Adrian and Nidia, my involvement, Herlinda Lopez’s death, the tunnel, Gualala, and Nidia’s death.

“Some of this can be confirmed by news accounts,” I said. “Adrian’s obituary was in the San Francisco Chronicle , for example, as was an account of Herlinda Lopez’s disappearance. Henry’s kidnapping from the hospital was statewide news.”

“Good Lord,” Marsellus said, recognition sparking. “This is that child?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t look anything like the sketch on the news, of the woman who took him.”

“That wasn’t me.”

He shook his head. For the first time, I’d genuinely surprised him.

I went on: “Beyond the parts that were in the news, I can’t prove the whole story. Although… can you hold the baby a minute?”

Marsellus looked taken aback, but then he held out his arms. I stood up and gave him Henry, who accepted the change equably. Then, as I had done with Julianne, I pulled down the neckline of my shirt, revealing the scar under my collarbone. I said, “This is what Skouras’s gunmen did to me down in Mexico.”