Scott Mariani - The Doomsday Prophecy

‘How much?’

‘Nine figures.’

‘A hundred million,’ Ben said.

Skid nodded. ‘Just loose cash, as far as Miss Vale is concerned. She had some investments and bonds waiting to mature, a whole bunch of lawyers working on it and billing five hundred an hour while the money was still tied up. Clayton’s due to get it sometime soon, this month or next.’

‘I take it Zoë wasn’t very happy when she heard about this.’

‘Damn right she wasn’t,’ Skid answered. ‘She’d met Cleaver at one of the old lady’s dinners. Said he was a sleazebag and a con artist. She couldn’t believe that Miss Vale was so taken with this guy who was so obviously stringing her along. She was convinced that he was turning the old lady against her.’

Ben leaned back in his chair and lit a cigarette.

‘You getting this?’ Skid said. ‘So, anyway, Zoë couldn’t stand it any more. She left and went back to England. We didn’t keep in touch for a while. I had my own problems this end. Molly probably told you. But then, a few weeks ago, I get this call from her. She’s excited. Just came back from some dig in Turkey and has thought of a way to get a whole lot of money out of Clayton Cleaver. It was perfect, she said. Foolproof. Nothing could go wrong.’ Skid stared down the length of his plastered legs and grunted.

‘She’s been blackmailing him,’ Ben said. ‘But with what?’

Skid toyed with the whiskey bottle. ‘Truth is, I don’t know. She never told me details. Something dirty, maybe. Sex. Who knows? But whatever it was, it was working. She called him from Greece and made some kind of a proposal to him. Asked for money. She knew he didn’t have the hundred million yet, so she said she’d be easy on him. For now. She wanted a down payment of twenty-five grand. Five of that was my cut. All I had to do was deliver a box to Clayton’s offices.’

‘A box.’

‘A box. Just a plain old cardboard box, about this big.’ Skid angled his hands out to make a six-inch cube. ‘It felt light. Don’t ask me what was in it. I have no idea. All I know is that when you shook it, it rattled.’

So it wasn’t photographs , Ben was thinking. So much for a sex sting.

‘Cleaver took the box into a room while I waited outside,’ Skid went on. ‘I heard cardboard ripping, like he was digging in real fast. Whatever was in there, it persuaded him. He came back out with a case containing twenty-five thousand dollars in cash. Handed it right over. I took out my cut, the rest was hers.’

That explained Zoë’s sudden wealth, the expensive hotel, the villa, the parties.

‘But she wanted more, didn’t she?’ Ben said.

‘She told Cleaver that as soon as the big money rolled in, she wanted ten million dollars from him in exchange for whatever she had. My cut was ten per cent. I didn’t even have to do anything, it was just a handling fee. It looked as if Cleaver was agreeing to the deal. I couldn’t believe it. A lawyer’s dream. I had it all planned. I was going to get out of that rat hole office and move the practice uptown, clean up my whole act.’ Skid sighed. ‘But evidently he changed his mind.’

‘The night you got beaten up.’

Skid nodded. ‘I’d been pretty sure for a couple of days that I was being followed. Never saw anyone. It was just a feeling. I was spooked enough to keep the revolver around me. Then one night I was working late at my desk. I didn’t even hear these guys come in. Next thing I’m being dragged out of my chair with a gun in my face. They threw me down on the floor, started asking me where it was. “Where is it? Where is it?” I didn’t know what the hell they were talking about. Then they started asking me where Zoë was.’

‘And you told them.’

‘Not at first,’ Skid said. ‘I’ve taken beatings before. I’m no chicken. But then they opened up this bag and took out a couple of fucking hammers. Started going to work on my legs while the third one held the gun to my head. You’d have to be pretty damn tough to keep your mouth shut when two big guys are smashing your knees to shit. Of course I told them. You’d have done the same.’

‘Did Zoë ever say anything to you about some kind of prophecy?’ Ben asked.

Skid looked blank. ‘As in reading your star signs kind of prophecy?’

‘She’s a biblical archaeologist,’ Ben said. ‘So, as in Bible prophecy. She told someone that the money was somehow tied up with it.’

‘I don’t know anything about that,’ Skid replied. ‘How could a Bible prophecy make her rich? Like I said, she had some angle on Cleaver.’

‘Forget it,’ Ben said. ‘It’s not important.’

The door opened, without warning. Skid jumped and made a grab for the shotgun. The pump action was racked halfway back on its rails when he relaxed and laid it down again. He slumped back in the chair.

Molly locked the door behind her and walked into the room carrying a six-pack of beer. She dumped it on the bed. ‘Time for your pills, honey,’ she told Skid.

The lawyer nodded sadly. ‘And that’s all I have to tell you,’ he said to Ben. ‘If it wasn’t for Molly here, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.’

Molly walked over to his chair and laid a hand softly on his shoulder. With the other hand she wiped away a tear. Skid stroked her arm. There was tension between them, but there was tenderness too.

‘I didn’t want her to go to meet you,’ Skid said. ‘It was her idea. She’s a brave lady.’

‘What are you going to do now?’ Ben asked.

‘What else is there for a broke-down, penniless drunken cripple to do? I’m stuck here.’

‘You can’t stay here for ever.’

‘I’ll stay here till Cleaver forgets about me. Or till I die, whichever happens first. I can’t go home, can’t go anywhere. They find me, they’ll kill me. Might as well drink myself to death right here in this chair.’ Skid glanced up at Molly, who was smiling down at him through her tears. ‘What can I say?’ he said. ‘The day I ran into Zoë Bradbury was the day I just screwed my life up into a little ball and threw it in the fire. I’ve lost everything. And I lost the best woman a man could wish for.’

‘You didn’t lose me,’ she whispered. She leaned down and kissed his clammy forehead.

Skid turned and stared at Ben. ‘What about you? What happens next?’

‘I think I should pay a visit to Miss Augusta Vale,’ Ben said.

‘I have the number,’ Skid said.

‘Good. And then I want to talk to Clayton Cleaver.’ Ben reached for his wallet. ‘But first there’s one more thing you can do for me.’

‘What’s that?’

‘You can sell me that big revolver of yours. I have a feeling I might need it.’

It was late by the time Molly drove Ben back to Hinesville. She squeezed his hand and wished him good luck. He smiled and watched her take off into the rainy night, then climbed into the Chrysler and headed for Savannah. In his canvas bag on the seat behind him was Skid’s Freedom Arms.475 Linebaugh hunting revolver and a box of hollowpoint shells.

Ben drove into Savannah and checked into a hotel. For a long time that night, he sat in his room pondering and staring out of the open window across the Savannah river. He was dead tired but sleep was impossible with a thousand thoughts swirling in his mind.

If things had seemed unclear when he was in Greece, the picture was fuller now. And uglier. Working through the pieces, he could see that the chances of finding Zoë Bradbury alive had just slipped further away.

So now he knew the name of the rich, powerful figure who’d felt threatened enough by her to take some kind of drastic action. A hundred million dollars and aspirations to the Governorship of Georgia – you couldn’t get much richer and more powerful than that, without going all the way to the top.