Jim McGill 02 The Hangman's Companion Read online

  Her father nodded and began filling another suitcase with money.

  “No doubt Ricky is telling the police all about us right now.”

  No doubt at all, Callie silently agreed, not after his public accusation of her setting him up. But she didn’t share that detail with her father.

  “His word alone isn’t enough, is it?” she asked.

  Bao looked over at her, not stopping his work.

  “To arrest us, you mean? Only if they think we’re about to run. So…”

  Speed was of the essence. Callie helped her father load the bag.

  Bao, to his great financial dismay, knew that chartering a plane would now be unavoidable. He’d have to use one of his false identities to arrange it.

  As the two of them worked in tandem, Bao said, “Even if we were to be arrested, Ricky’s claims alone wouldn’t be enough to convict us. Bishop O’Menehy, I would prefer to silence, but I think he’s more likely to keep holy the seal of the confessional.”

  “Father Nguyen, though,” Callie said, “if he were to talk along with Ricky…”

  “We would never see each other again after we were imprisoned. Even fleeing this country, after what we have done, we wouldn’t be safe in any country where the Church has influence.”

  That was, any place where they would care to live.

  Bao closed the top of the suitcase and Callie zipped it shut.

  “Father, as one who has admitted her own mistake, I am sorry to remind you of your own error. You really should have let me be the one to shoot Musette Ky, not just ring her doorbell.”

  Bao kissed his daughter’s cheek.

  “The past is past. But before we run one of us must kill Francis Nguyen.”

  Her father’s assessment was shortsighted again, Callie thought.

  They’d have to be rid not only of the priest, but his cousin, Donald Ky, as well. She had no doubt he would hunt them down if he were allowed to live.

  “Father,” Callie said, “I know how we can dispose of the bishop, Father Nguyen, and probably Donald Ky, too.”

  Bao looked at his daughter with the appreciation any good parent would show a bright child. “Tell me,” he said.

  Callie did, watching her father smile and nod in approval.

  It was a good plan, Callie agreed. But a great one would have included Welborn Yates.

  Under the Pont d’Iéna, Paris

  49

  They saw The Undertaker coming from a long way off. At more than seven feet tall and heavier than four hundred pounds he was hard to miss. He wore a workingman’s jacket and baggy pants. Moving along the Seine, from one pool of light to the next, it looked like he was getting bigger in stop-action increments. Damn, but the sonofabitch was huge, McGill thought.

  He, Odo, and Harbin crouched in the deepest shadows under the Pont d’Iéna. McGill could feel the tension rise in his companions. No doubt they, too, were wondering if they were about to bite off more than they could chew. Then McGill noticed something encouraging.

  “Look at the way he’s walking,” he said quietly to Odo and Harbin. “His legs are stiff. That guy he killed in the video, his kicks must have left the big jerk hobbled.”

  Odo nodded, but he reminded the others, “That may be so, but we must not forget Ma’amselle Casale’s caution: He may well remain quick over a short distance.”

  “D’accord.” Harbin agreed.

  “Yeah,” McGill said. “D’accord.”

  All three of them started breathing in unison. Taking in all the oxygen they could without being noisy about it. Psyching themselves up. Getting ready to fight.

  Gabbi, for her part, displayed no sign of pre-game jitters.

  She stood with her back to The Undertaker’s approach, giving him a view of a blonde woman wearing a coat that should look familiar. In another piece of stagecraft arranged by Pruet, Gabbi lit a cigarette, Diana Martel’s brand, using the stripper’s personal lighter.

  Draw the target in. Let him think everything was going his way.

  On the other side of the river, a car horn sounded briefly. It drew The Undertaker’s attention. But the sound was not repeated and there was no way for him to determine where it had originated. He turned his attention back to…

  Diana had removed her coat. Now she wore something black and tight. She started to walk under the bridge. Etienne Burel watched the way she moved: très sexy. The costume she wore looked like a sheen of paint applied to her skin. More than that, it seemed as though Diana had somehow lost the weight he’d been nagging her to shed. She’d always taken his comments as insults, telling him she would become sleek as soon as he did.

  But Etienne had never been trim or elegant. He’d always been as he was: mammoth, towering, grotesque. Shunned and shamed when young, he came to embrace his monstrous appearance. He learned to take delight in the fear he inspired, pleasure in the pain he caused.

  The world would never love him, but there were other satisfactions to be had.

  Following behind Diana, he thought she looked like the young girl he had met ten years ago. From the start, she had been the one woman who had never been afraid of him. Vraiment — truly — she had been the only woman who had ever bent him to her will. Lavishing him with sex such as he had never imagined, much less experienced, she had persuaded him to commit his first murder.

  The victim had been her own brutal father. The man who had abused her since she was a child. Diana had not only watched Etienne destroy the man, she had directed each blow, each kick, the breaking of each bone. It was only when she wearied of her father’s screams that she had Etienne finish him. Then she rewarded Etienne as she had motivated him.

  The experience of that night was so powerful he had asked Diana to marry him.

  She laughed bitterly at the idea. Wives were to be beaten. To be impregnated and then to turn deaf ears to the pleadings of their abused children. She would be no man’s wife, no child’s mother. Tubal ligation insured she would never bear a child, but the simple fact of living with Etienne, sharing his bed year after year had made her his wife in his mind.

  He’d even bought her a ring. Never showed it to her. Kept it in a corner of a drawer in the wardrobe of their bedroom. Not the same as on Diana’s finger, but close enough.

  Which meant he was entitled, as any husband might be, to beat her when given good reason. She’d been right about that. He’d only taken a hand to her twice, and then with great care, despite his anger, because he did love her, and the last thing he wanted to do was kill her.

  Now, here he was, ready to take her life. The truth was, he had tired of her.

  So it was ironic that seeing her tonight reminded him of the old times, brought back old thoughts. If he could believe those feelings would be more than temporary, he might have looked for another way out for them. Without turning to look at him, Diana stopped under the bridge.

  He halted ten feet away from her. If she ran and eluded his first charge, he would have a hard time catching her. But he had the feeling she wouldn’t try to flee. She knew why he was there and accepted her fate. She flicked her cigarette butt into the river, but still didn’t look at him.

  He told her, “Je le ferai rapidement et indolorement, ma chère.”

  I will make it quick and painless, my dear.

  Looking at her, seeing her so slim, so youthful, so sexy in her black outfit, he wanted her one last time. The idea of taking her life caused a pang of regret, one of the few he’d ever felt. He actually thought he might defy the men who had hired him, who had told him he must kill her. He might disobey them even at the risk of his own life. He was so intent on Diana he failed to see other dark figures emerge from the shadows.

  “S’il te plait, Diana, laisse-moi te voir l’une dernière fois.”

  Please, Diana, let me see you one last time.

  He decided that if she smiled at him they would run away together, danger be damned. He held his breath as she turned to regard him.

  And staggered bac
k, gasping, when he saw she had the face of a snarling dog.

  Still groping for understanding, The Undertaker saw a man, also dressed in black, also wearing the mask of a vicious dog, appear beside Diana. He was growling, and he held two long black sticks in each hand. As he handed two of the sticks to Diana, Etienne understood he had been betrayed, had walked into a trap.

  His face flushed with anger. Did the two of them really think—

  The giant heard more growls coming from behind him. These sounded like they might actually be … no, they were not real dogs. He saw two more men in black wearing dog masks and holding sticks. So there were four of them, then, including Diana.

  That was when The Undertaker had his epiphany: the woman standing before him was not his wife. She was someone who looked as Diana had years ago. Someone who had sparked old feelings and memories. Someone for whom he’d almost made a fool of himself. She was the one at whom his rage now pointed.

  He lunged at her with startling speed.

  Gabbi knew he would come for her first. She’d heard his words of endearment. He’d kill her painlessly, but for old time’s sake how about one last peek, darling? What a guy. Then a gentle breeze had brought his scent to her. He hadn’t bathed in skunk pee; he’d put on cologne. Dolled himself up to break her neck. You made a guy like that look like a chump and…

  She darted to her left and ducked, moving to The Undertaker’s right, his bad side both visually and aurally. His massive arm swiped at her but passed a foot over her head. He might have reached back and grabbed her, but Gabbi heard a sound like a baseball bat hitting a pumpkin and then a scream.

  McGill moved in to attack the moment he saw The Undertaker start for Gabbi. If the colossal SOB had only feinted in Gabbi’s direction, he would have had McGill cold, wrapped him up in a lethal bear hug while the escrima stick in his right hand was still drawn back. But The Undertaker never gave McGill a glance, and the president’s henchman delivered a forehand strike that split the giant’s left brow. Blood gushed into The Undertaker’s good eye.

  Etienne howled in pain. Reflexively, he swung his left hand out in a backhanded blow. It barely connected, fingers only, but that was enough to draw a grunt of distress, and to cause a body to fall hard to the concrete. His satisfaction was fleeting. He felt a sharp blow to the outside of his right knee that almost brought him down. The woman, the faux Diana, had attacked him. He turned to his right, but all he could see was the blur of the Seine flowing by, and then the back of his head was battered by two stunning blows.

  He bellowed again in pain and covered his head with his hands and arms.

  No sooner had he done that than his ribs on both sides and his elbow on the right came under attack. Hard sticks were battering him all over, the blows repeated in flurries as if he were some enormous drum. Each bash was accompanied by a growl or a snarl. Even more daunting than his terrible pain, The Undertaker began to drown in a riptide of panic. Maybe he was under attack by real dogs after all. Maybe he’d only imagined they were people in masks. Soon he would be felled and devoured. Eaten alive in the middle of Paris.

  His screams rose to a shriek of terror. He threw his arms wide and spun counterclockwise on his left leg. Though his vision was blurred by his own blood and the gray veil that had hung over his right eye for years, he was still able to feel his hands connecting solidly with flesh. He heard two cries of pain that weren’t his own, and felt immense satisfaction.

  He had been seriously hurt, but he was not yet defeated.

  The two enemies he’d just struck, they had been men. He could tell by their heft. But chances were, as solidly as his hands had struck them, they were out of the fight, if not altogether unconscious. And the first blow to his head, that one had come from the side opposite where he had charged at the woman.

  He’d barely made contact with his first attacker, but even a glancing blow from him was usually enough to make a man’s head spin. If he was lucky, the woman would be the only one left. Just let him get hold of her and he would wake half the city with her screams.

  But first he had to be able to see his hand in front of his face.

  McGill had been lucky enough to land on his backside. He’d kept his head from striking the concrete by thrusting his arms backward. Abraded the hell out of his elbows, but he could live with that. For just a second he remembered Patti had taken much the same kind of fall. But unlike her, nobody would be rushing to his aid.

  Gathering himself, he saw the others beating a fearsome tattoo on the giant. The growling, howling, and smacking of wood on flesh and blood was a sight to behold. For a moment, McGill thought The Undertaker would have to collapse beneath the fury of the assault and the fight would be over. But then the giant spun, arms outstretched, like some Brobdingnagian ballet dancer doing a pirouette. He caught both Odo and Harbin by surprise, delivering stunning blows to each of them. The two men were left sprawled on the walkway.

  Gabbi only barely sidestepped the behemoth’s battering limbs.

  McGill got unsteadily to his feet. Not wanting to give himself away by speaking, he gestured to Gabbi to pull back. They’d take a moment to gather themselves, to work out some advantageous positioning. Coax The Undertaker away from their fallen comrades.

  All the bastard would need to do to finish Odo and Harbin would be to raise an enormous foot and stomp them.

  Gabbi saw McGill gesture for her to step back. But she remembered the video of The Undertaker’s fight to the death with the brawler McGill had called Smith. She had reached the same conclusion the president’s henchman had: Smith could have won, could have lived, if he’d pressed his advantage. Gabbi wasn’t about to make the same mistake Smith had made.

  While The Undertaker was still trying to rub his eyes clear, she charged him.

  McGill saw what Gabbi was about to do and yelled, “No!”

  He tried to run at the giant to give Gabbi help, but he didn’t have his equilibrium back and fell to his knees. All he could do now was watch.

  Etienne Burel heard McGill’s shout, and turned his head in that direction.

  He never saw Gabbi coming at him from the other side.

  Gabbi wanted to hit the big bastard smack across his ugly face, but he still had his hands up around his head, and being close now she thought the worst she could do if she went up high was to get him on the hands or wrists. A better idea, it came to her quickly, would be to whack him again on his knee. Maybe that would bring him down and Magistrate Pruet could put in his appearance and throw his net over the beast.

  All she’d have to do would be get out of the way of the tree as it toppled.

  Using all her might, she bashed The Undertaker on his right knee. Actually, the strike landed just below the right knee, as she couldn’t see his patella under the baggy pants he wore. The blow unexpectedly produced a reflex action. Anchored by his relatively sound left leg, The Undertaker’s right leg shot out. His massive boot caught a retreating Gabbi squarely on her left hip. An awful cracking sound mixed with screams from both the giant and the State Department’s Regional Security Officer.

  McGill saw Gabbi rise into the air like a football kicked off a tee. Her mask flew off, showing her face twisted in agony. The sound of the giant’s foot making impact with her hip had been louder than that of Colonel Millard’s arm being pulled out of its socket. McGill could only imagine the pain Gabbi was feeling, but he saw it was sufficiently great that her eyes closed as she lost consciousness at the apogee of her flight.

  And then she dropped into the Seine.

  Magistrate Yves Pruet, dancing back and forth across the Pont d’Iéna, above the battle going on below, felt as if he were the sole listener to a radio play that even Orson Welles at his most fiendish would have been hard put to devise.

  He’d heard words of love spoken by a man to a woman he intended to kill.

  He’d heard the slap and crack of hardwood sticks colliding with flesh and bone.

  He’d heard the impact of punches thrown
in retaliation.

  He’d heard the thuds of falling bodies hitting concrete.

  He’d heard moans, groans, and screams. Many screams.

  But all of the drama had occurred where he’d been unable to see. It was maddening. He’d raced back and forth across the bridge, following the sounds of the battle below, all the while carrying a large net meant to throw over The Undertaker should he emerge from the shelter of the bridge.

  McGill had told him it was too bad he wasn’t up to carrying an anvil to drop on their quarry, especially if The Undertaker were the only one to leave the battlefield. Pruet had hoped that one of his colleagues would dash out from under the bridge to be followed by the lumbering villain. He would then literally drop the net of the law over The Undertaker, saving one of his friends from a terrible fate.

  But fantasies, as was their nature, often went unfulfilled.

  Sometimes, however, reality substituted an event beyond one’s imagining.

  Pruet heard a splash, a body hitting the water.

  The Seine flowed to the west, and as luck would have it he was on the proper side of the bridge to look down and see who had fallen into the river. The magistrate’s heart lodged in his throat when he saw the blonde head of Mademoiselle Casale pop to the surface of the water. She’d lost her mask and he could see her eyes were closed; the magistrate could only hope she was simply unconscious. Pruet had never fished a day in his life, but he did exactly the right thing when he cast his net. Holding one end in his left hand, he threw the other end of the net into the air … and gave thanks to a God he hadn’t addressed since childhood that he’d snagged one of Mlle Casale’s arms and her head in the latticework.

  He exerted all the restraint he could on the loop holding her arm while applying just enough upward pressure to keep Mlle Casale’s head out of the water, lest he strangle her. The task might have daunted a master marionettist. Pruet also had to struggle against the pull of the river’s current. He had to strain against the dead weight of the woman’s body. Above all, hold onto his catch without doing any fatal damage.