Джон Макдональд - A Flash of Green

Kat was waiting for him in the small alcove beyond the emergency room. She sprang up when she saw him and came to him, her eyes swollen. He held her in arms that felt wooden. She rolled her forehead back and forth against his shoulder, saying, “The dirty bastards. The horrible filthy dirty bastards.”

“Where’s Ross?”

“He’s with her right now. He’s waiting for the sedative to work.”

“Has he reported it?”

“Yes. It was outside the city. Two deputies were here. They left a little while ago. What good can they do? She didn’t know those people. She didn’t get a look at any of them.”

“Who’s the doctor?”

“The one who was on duty in the emergency room. He’s quite nice. He was very upset about it. Dr. Bressard.”

“Does Ross expect me to go to her room?”

“No, dear. He was lucky enough to get a private room for her. He told me to wait for you down here, and for us both to wait for him. It shouldn’t be long now.”

“Can you tell me about it?”

“I think Ross ought to.”

Ross came down five minutes later. He seemed to walk very carefully, like a man trying not to limp. His expression was thoughtful. “She’s asleep now. It won’t wear off for a while. I’ll come back here so I’ll be with her when she wakes up. Let’s go get a drink someplace.”

They walked to a small cocktail lounge two blocks away. It was a warm still night. They could hear the radios in the cars that drove by. They sat at a red plastic horseshoe booth in the back. Kat slid in first. After they had ordered, Kat said, “I haven’t heard all of it, you know. How did they get the drawings?”

The low wall lamp had an opaque shade and a weak orange bulb. Ross Halley’s face was in shadow. The light shone on his lumpy, malformed hands. He tore off small bits of the paper napkin, rolled each into a pellet and dropped it into the black plastic ashtray. “I didn’t know the drawings were missing. I didn’t know anything was missing. I haven’t had time to check. Saturday afternoon we went to the beach. I took a camera along to get some casual beach stuff. Background for future work. I wanted to get her mind off this damn Palmland deal anyhow. We got back a little after four. Somebody had pied my studio. Dumped all my work, all my files and records and materials in the middle of the floor, poured everything onto it that would pour, and stirred it up with a broom. The tubes of color they squirted on the walls. The way they got in, they broke my outside studio door open. They wedged something in there and pried it open and splintered the door all to hell around the lock.”

“Did you report it?” Kat asked.

He stared at her with a blank expression. “What was the point? Did it do any good reporting they cracked a window ten days ago heaving a rotten cabbage at the house? When Jackie saw what’d been done to my workroom, I’ve never seen her, or anybody, so mad. She scared me, she was so mad. When that was over she cried as if her heart was broken. Sunday she was still mad, but it was a deep slow burn. I fixed the door, put a new bolt on the inside. We worked all day long cleaning the place up, salvaging what we could. I haven’t got any kind of insurance that covers that sort of thing. I checked and I don’t. Actually, it’s a hell of a loss. It made me feel sick. All the work I do for a long time is going to be just that much harder to get right. Now, understand, I’d been telling her to be careful, but when she went out tonight, I should have gone with her. She went out about eight o’clock, just to drive over to the mainland and pick up some cigarettes. We were nearly out. I guess they were waiting for her to come out, and followed her. I guess if we’d both gone out, it would have been the same thing. I don’t think they were going to let me stop them.

“She went over to that shopping center at Bay and Mangrove. It was just about full dark by then. When she came back to the car, just as she opened the door, somebody eased up behind her and pulled some kind of big thick bag down over her head. She’s a strong girl, but they didn’t give her a chance. They grabbed her and hustled her into a nearby car and drove out of there. They’d wrapped some fast turns of line around her. It was so airless in that bag she panicked, and she thinks she fainted. But Bressard found a lump on the side of her head, so maybe she didn’t. When she came out of it, she was being carried along a path in the woods. When they found she could walk, they stopped carrying her. They walked her with her arms twisted up into her back. The bag was gone and she wasn’t tied. They had flashlights. She thinks there were at least four of them, and no more than six, all men, all in dark clothes, all wearing black hoods with big eyeholes and a big place for the mouth. They came to a small clearing. She could hear traffic a long way away. They spoke in whispers, and they used no names.

“They told her to take her clothes off, or they’d be ripped off. She tried to run and she tried to stall. Nothing worked. She did as they told her. They tied her to a big live oak tree, her face to the tree, so big she couldn’t reach around it. She said she was blubbering and bellowing by then. There was a length of line fastening one wrist to the other. They wanted to show her something. They put the lights on it and held it where she could see it. Her head was turned to the side, her cheek against the tree. It was one of my drawings of her. I did a lot of them. I kept about twenty of the best ones. Some were charcoal, some pastels, some ink. Nude studies. Nothing lascivious, for God’s sake. They were unmistakably her. I can get a good likeness. I did them years ago. I love her. I love how she’s built and the way she looks. These were a private labor of love, something between me and my wife. Our business. Nobody else’s. The head man whispered to her, ‘Did you pose for this?’ The question steadied her down. She said of course she did, and why not? Her husband is an artist, she said. Only a sick mind would see anything wrong in acting as a life model for your husband. He told her to answer yes or no, and he asked her again. She said yes. As soon as she said it, there was a sort of whistling, whirring sound behind her, and then such a terrible smashing pain across her naked back she bucked hard against the tree and screamed. The man tore the drawing in half, whispered, ‘Repent!’ and held up the next one and said, ‘Did you pose for this?’ Along about the fourth drawing, she tried saying no, to see if that was what they wanted. When she said no they hit her twice, once for posing and once for lying. She said she would have done anything in the world to stop them. She begged. She said she repented. Toward the end she was going into a half-faint after each lash. She hung against the tree.

“Suddenly there were no more drawings. She heard them whispering to each other. They cut her wrists loose. She slid and fell. She heard them hurrying away, going away through the woods, and she lifted her head so she’d know what direction to go in. She rested for a long time, then, with her eyes more accustomed to the darkness, she was able to find her clothes. It took her a long time to put them on. She wandered off the path on her way back toward the highway. She forced her way through the brush and went through a deep ditch and up onto the shoulder. She was on the Bay Highway, about a mile this side of Everset. Two young boys picked her up, probably thinking their luck had provided them with a fine drunken blonde. She wasn’t walking very well. As soon as she was in the car she fainted. Apparently the boys discovered the blood soaking through her shirt and slacks. Instead of dumping her anywhere, they drove her to the hospital and dumped her out there. She sat on the curb near the driveway to the emergency entrance. A nurse spotted her out there and came out and looked at her, then went back in and came out with another nurse and a stretcher. She told them to call me. When I arrived, Bressard was still working on her. He had a lot of cleaning to do, from where she’d rolled over into the dirt when they cut her loose. He thinks it was a heavy length of braided leather. Every swing sliced her open. The highest one is across the top of her shoulders, and the lowest one is across the back of her thighs a couple of inches above her knees. He says the worst places are where two marks cross. He did some stitching on those places. They had to treat her for shock and loss of blood. I saw her back. It’s a dozen colors. If it wasn’t for the shape of her, you wouldn’t know what it was.”