Greg Iles - The Quiet Game

His offer leaves me dumbfounded. There can be only one reason for it. He’s running scared.

“I don’t see your lips moving,” Leo says. “You’d better jump while you can. The offer’s good for sixty seconds.”

“Dwight Stone is alive,” I think aloud. “And neither you nor Portman can find him.”

His face remains impassive. “Fifty seconds.”

A wicked elation flows through me. “You can stick that offer right up your ass. Tomorrow-”

All of us turn at the sound of the door.

Ray Presley is standing in the study, aiming a revolver at Leo’s chest. It looks like a. 357 Magnum. He’s abandoned his pajamas in favor of Levis, Redwing boots, and a black western shirt. Only the John Deere cap remains the same. The vulpine eyes burn from beneath its bill just as they did the day I bought my father’s. 38 back from him.

“Evening, Judge,” he says.

Presley looks like he’s lost ten pounds since I saw him last. He’s still ropy and tough, but he seems diminished somehow. Imagining him raping Livy is almost beyond me, he looks so much older than she now. Yet Livy has backed against the wall opposite me like a frightened girl, like she’s trying to become her own shadow.

“I’m not armed, Ray, ” Leo says from behind his desk, but I see that he’s holding Ike’s Sig-Sauer behind him.

“Throw that Sig on the floor, Judge,” Presley says like a chiding parent. “I saw it in your hand when I came in.”

Marston knows better than to try to raise the gun and fire before Ray can pull his trigger. He tosses Ike’s gun onto the floor at Presley’s feet.

“I saw the boys outside too,” Presley says, his voice almost friendly. “You knew I was coming, didn’t you?”

“Ray-”

“Anybody makes a move, it’s their last,” Presley says, glancing at me. “I hit what I aim at.”

“Like Ike Ransom?” I say.

He smiles. “That nigger talk any before he died?”

“Enough.”

“You lookin’ to get killed too, college boy?”

“Fuck you, Ray.”

The smile disappears. “I came here to kill one, but I can kill three just as easy and damn near as quick.” He motions toward Livy and me. “You two come here. Stay right in front of me, backs to me.”

I move slowly, gauging my chances of getting to Livy’s purse-and gun-before Ray shoots me. Less than zero at this point. But if I can get closer…

Livy and I stand shoulder to shoulder, facing Leo across the desk, with Presley behind us. Presley’s hand pats its way up my legs, around my waist, up my torso.

“Don’t you touch me,” Livy says in a voice that could freeze alcohol.

But he must have touched her, because she suddenly spins into his gun and slaps him hard enough to rock him back on his heels.

“Livy!” shouts Leo. “Don’t be stupid!”

Presley’s harsh laugh fills the room as Livy backs away from him, panting with outrage. If she grabs for her purse, I’ll have to stop her. Presley might endure a slap with a laugh, but he’ll recognize a lunge for a gun.

“Ray?” Leo says in a careful voice. “This boy’s got nothing on us. He can’t connect us to Del.”

A snort from Presley. “He can’t connect you. But he’s got me nailed down tight as a tick. Don’t make no never mind, though. This visit’s got nothing to do with that dead nigger. This is about you and me, Judge.”

Leo affects puzzlement. “I don’t understand, Raymond.”

Presley jerks up his gun at this use of his Christian name, what must once have been a gesture of friendship. “Yes, you do. You gave me up to the Feds while you kept raking in the money. You made me your goddamn scapegoat.”

Marston’s eyes flick toward me, not in anger, but with purpose in them. He’s prodding me to think. Leo is first and foremost a survivor, and he intends to live through this. If that means a short-term alliance with me to neutralize the most immediate threat, he won’t hesitate.

“Nobody in this room but me knows what five years of prison means,” Presley says. “Five years I’ll never get back. And I need them years now. You got to pay for ’em, Judge.” He fingers the trigger of his gun, raises his aim to Leo’s head. “And there ain’t but one way to do it.”

Marston remains calm. “Ray, you shot at those FBI boys on your own hook. Hoover demanded a price, and you were it. Cost of doing business, son. You understand that. You were sentenced to seven years, and I got you out in five. It cost me to do that. You want to kill me for it?”

Presley’s chin quivers with rage, and the gun trembles in his hand. “It cost you? You could pass out half a million bucks and you wouldn’t feel it. You’d make it back in a couple of months. But time? You don’t never get that back. Make your peace with the Lord, Judge. And be quick.”

“Ray!” I shout, trying to hold his attention. “If you shoot him, you’ll spend every hour you have left behind bars.”

Presley laughs. “If I stick around to get arrested. Which I ain’t. Tomorrow night I’ll be in Mexico, and nobody in this world can stop me getting there. I know ways in and out that the wets ain’t even thought of.”

“I can see why you’d want to shoot him,” I go on. “I’d like to shoot him myself. But the way I figure it, you two are already square.”

He gives me an uncertain look. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, I just found out what you did to him in seventy-eight.”

“What you talking about?”

I nod at Livy. “Well, to her, I mean. That’s the same as to him, isn’t it? It damn sure gives him the right to shoot you, if anything gives a man that right.”

“Shut up,” Livy hisses.

Presley starts to turn the gun on me, but he steadies himself and holds it on Marston.

“What’s that, Cage?” Leo asks. “What are you talking about?”

“Tell him, Ray.” Keep tapping on the pressure point.

Presley takes a step closer to Marston, but he doesn’t fire. I think he wants Marston to know the truth before he dies.

“Do you know a girl named Jenny Doe?” I ask Leo.

“Please,” Livy begs.

“I’ve met her,” Leo says.

“Do you know who her father is?”

His eyes flash with anger. “You are, you pissant.”

“Sorry, Judge. I never knew that girl existed, and I am most definitely not her father.”

“Then who is?”

“The man holding the gun on you.”

Leo blinks three times quickly. Livy has gone white. But Presley’s face is a strange mix of wonder and defiance. He obviously knew nothing about Jenny Doe until this moment.

“You and me got a kid?” he says, his eyes on Livy.

“Olivia?” Leo says quietly.

“Tell him, Livy,” I urge her.

“He raped me,” she says simply. “When I was eighteen, Ray raped me three times one night and got me pregnant.”

“That’s a goddamn lie!” Presley bellows. “She give it to me, Judge. Teasing me with it all the time, prissing around like a bitch in heat, grabbing my privates. She told me she wanted it that night.”

“Livy?” Leo says again.

The mere fact that he’s asking tells me Leo believes Presley’s story could be true. Livy knows this too. Her lips are pressed tightly together, her nostrils flared. She stares into the middle distance for a few moments, alone with her demons. Then she looks at her father with absolute sincerity.

“He raped me, Daddy. I should have told you when it happened, but I was too afraid. He told me he would kill Mother if I did. All these years I let you think Penn was the father. He wasn’t. It was him.”

Leo’s face goes through a dozen different emotions, only a small number of them readable. But the one that finally settles in his features is rage. Pure, unalloyed rage. This is the natural reaction of any father, but there is more here. Ray Presley served Leo for more than thirty years, performing deeds too dirty for his master to soil his hands with. But whatever bond this forged between them, Presley was always a servant. A hired man. The realization that he transgressed this class boundary-trespassed into the very flesh of the Marston family line-probably offends Leo more than the act of rape itself. His jaw muscles are working with enough force to grind his teeth to nubs if he keeps it up, and his blue-gray eyes burn with a fearsome light.