From A Dead Sleep Read online

  She wasn’t the first woman I’d met who’d been impressed with the tale, but she was the first that I really cared about impressing. I could tell by her demeanor that she was completely comfortable with my disability, which is a rarity. Most people feel they have to speak with precision and slow down their dialogue in order for me to understand them, but that night, she spoke to me like she would speak to anyone else. She was smart, witty, and genuine. The beauty inside her mirrored the outside, which is unheard of in a town packed full of plastic women with bleach-blonde hair and abnormally large breasts, serving as walking canes for rich old farts.

  I wanted badly to be with her, which meant perpetuating the lies to keep things going. Someone like her would have had enough self-respect to kick me to the curb if I had come clean and copped to my bullshit. There’s no future for a woman like her with a shady casino man who works alongside thugs.

  It was an impulsive deception that turned epic. The lengths I’ve gone to have been nothing short of astonishing—mostly motivated by the fear of losing her, but also by my wanting to be something I’m not.

  Early on, I asked her a couple of times to drop me off in front of FBI headquarters three miles from the casino with the explanation that my car was in the shop. I’d enter through the front door of the tall, imposing building and walk right back out of the lobby to catch a cab the moment her car turned the corner. I never had to go as far as security screening. After that, I managed to avoid using that location as a meeting place all but once or twice. There were times when she expressed interest in wanting to see my office, but I always cited security clearance issues as an excuse or found a way to change the subject.

  The handful of coworkers on my side of the aisle at our small wedding consisted of paid prostitutes and chauffeur drivers. I had one of them even record an automated FBI phone menu through a separate line to redirect to the TDD in my office at the casino or to my cellphone.

  A rare advantage of being deaf is that you have a natural excuse for not being readily accessible. This became particularly helpful when I needed to go out of town for a few days at a time to serve as a numbers guy for the business. Whether it was on the other side of the state or in California or Arizona, it saved me the stress of having to lie to her for a while. I told Lisa long ago that when I’m in the field, she can’t reach me. She bought it from the beginning.

  Finances had been a bit of a hassle. It took a lot of work convincing Lisa that the public school system offered a better health plan than the FBI, but enough phony paperwork prodded her in the direction I wanted. My salary was directly deposited into our savings from a business account I set up under the name Freelance Business Incentives. I made certain that the acronym, FBI, was what showed up on our statements.

  Whenever I got backed into a corner over contradictions or inconsistencies, I always managed to somehow weasel my way out of the mess.

  However, I’ve never been put to the kind of test I face right now, standing in this dungeon of a basement in the mountains of Colorado with the fidgeting body of Valentino Greco dressing the floor.

  Chapter 35

  Trying to roll back what has already happened is as futile as attempting to scrape toothpaste back into a tube, but my mind explores the possibility anyway. It’s the curse of being wired that way. I consider the fact that only Alvar heard Valentino’s confession firsthand and weigh the approach of drawing a line of loyalty in the sand by trying to convince Moretti that Alvar is lying for some reason. That, however, would require Valentino’s unhindered cooperation, and there’s about as much chance of that happening as there is a meteor falling from the sky and landing on Moretti back in town. Valentino would throw me under the bus in a heartbeat if he felt there was any chance it could save his ass.

  My only confidence at all comes from the fact that Arianna is an extremely gifted liar. She’s as good at lying to her spouse as I am—and that’s saying something. That skill alone will at least keep her safe until Moretti can sort out whether or not Valentino’s story is true. What happens after that is hard to say.

  As much as I try, I can’t fathom a solution in which my presence in this house, when Moretti gets back, can possibly work in my favor. If I stick around while Valentino spills out more of the details from that night, I fear that no amount of bullshitting on my part will be able to save us.

  My trembling hands form a lean-to against my forehead, and I force myself to breathe. My mind darts into the depths of dampened corridors and dead ends, struggling to devise a solution that will somehow let me see the light of tomorrow’s sunrise. There aren’t any weapons in the house. Alvar’s a walking arsenal who keeps his toys close. I know he stores an extra gun in his car, but he and his car are gone. It wouldn’t matter. There’s no way in hell this pencil-pushing accountant who’s never fired a gun in his life is going to pick off four men, especially when one of them is Alvar. If I’m here when they get back, they’ll sink their talons into my flesh and I’ll never break free.

  I have nothing with which to bargain for my life. Or do I? Moretti’s financial ledger is upstairs on the desk. Inside it is enough juice to do some damage to Moretti if it was handed over to the authorities. It’s a desperate play, but it’s the only thing I have. What I do know is that I can’t negotiate in person or else I’m dead. Can I negotiate the books for Arianna and speed up our plans? God, I can’t think straight.

  The realization that I’ve got maybe ten minutes tops before Moretti and the gang are back zips through my mind. I glance at Valentino who’s squirming around on the floor as much as the chair bound to his limbs will allow him. He’s cursing me out, and I feel paralyzed despite knowing I can’t afford to waste any more time. I can’t take Valentino with me. I can’t trust him and he’ll slow me down.

  I run out of the room and slam the door, locking it behind me. Sorry, Valentino; you made a deal with the devil, and now you’re on your own. I find myself glaring at the key in my hand instead of placing it back up above the door frame. It occurs to me that if the crew can’t find it, they’ll spend time busting the door down to check on Valentino. That’s time that they won’t spend in pursuit of me. I shove it in my front pants pocket and race up the stairs, skipping every other step.

  I stop in the kitchen and toss my bag of broken glass into the tall metal trashcan, just to get rid of it. Panting while I glare wide-eyed out the window above the sink, I see no headlights coming up the drive yet. I sprint down the hallway, nearly losing my footing across the hardwood floor as I lunge into the office. The ledger that holds the secrets behind all of Moretti’s finances resides on top of the oak desk I’d been using to finalize the Colorado deal. I grab my brief-bag that’s resting at the foot of the desk and slide the notebook and a slew of loose papers, envelopes, and everything else that my broad-armed swipe along the desktop takes. Any leverage that can save my ass is in that bag. I’ll figure out how to best use it later. Hold on, Arianna. I’ll figure a way out of this for us.

  Back in the kitchen, I search through the cabinets, high and low, yearning for a flashlight. I know I’ll be blind out in the forest without one, and I can’t afford to be without another sense if I hope to make it back to civilization on foot. Unfortunately, there is no flashlight to be found. I dart out into the cold, empty garage. The closest thing I find is a hook lamp that requires an outlet. There’s got to be a fucking flashlight somewhere in this house but there’s no time. By the time I get to the front door, sweat is streaming down my forehead and it stings one of my eyes. I spin a fist in my eye socket as an epiphany arrives, Alvar’s night-vision goggles.

  They’re better than a flashlight because Moretti’s guys won’t see a beam flickering through the forest. I jam my hand in my pocket and snag the key for the downstairs door. When my hand emerges, my haste leads to the teeth of the key catching the lip of my pocket and propelling it out of my grip and across the floor. It topples along the glossy wood finish toward the baseboard of the back wall and I watch in morbid
helplessness as it drops between two grooves in a brass furnace register.

  I shout out obscenities and lunge forward, sliding along the floor on my knees before coming to a stop at the register. I claw my fingertips at it, prying, noticing quickly that it’s secured with two screws. I don’t have time to waste scouring the house a second time for a screwdriver. With desperate savagery, I force the tips of my fingers under the excruciatingly narrow gap between the plate and the floor and place my feet against the wall, yanking it toward my chest, clenching my teeth with effort. Half of the plate snaps off and I fall to my back. Excruciating pain tears across the palm of my hand from the jagged metal that winds up embedded in it. I yank it out with my free hand, immediately witnessing a crevice of blood streaming from its center. It flows to the floor beside me and I grab my wrist to combat the throbbing laceration.

  Stumbling into the kitchen, I grab a white hand towel from the drawer and wrap it three times around my hand and form a fist to keep it in place. Returning to the register I find I’ve created a large enough opening to reach my good hand in and retrieve the key. Once I do, I survey the disarray I’ve created between the bloody streaks along the floor and the demolished register.

  For a fraction of a second, I find myself musing that the sight might make Moretti think that someone else had gotten to me first and had saved him the trouble. It’s then that my body freezes with only my heartbeat and brain left in movement. My observation urges me to ponder how my desperate situation might be remedied in part if I leave Moretti with a different assumption—an assumption that I didn’t find Valentino, but Valentino found me. If Valentino escapes, takes me as a hostage, and flees into the wilderness, it changes many things. At worst, they’ll form a search plan based on where they think he would flee to and not me. After all, he knows the area and I don’t. They’ll waste time checking out his shop and wherever he lives in town. Most importantly, it will delay the substantiation of his story and buy Arianna and me some time. If I play my cards right, Moretti will view an assault on me from Valentino as a shadow of doubt cast across Valentino’s entire claim.

  I rush to the window and check again for headlights. I then unwrap the blood-soaked towel from my throbbing hand and imagine what kind of struggle would take place if I was suddenly attacked by a desperate man who’d just escaped from a torture chamber. I smear my hand repeatedly along the textured wall above the broken register, streaking blood across it as if I had been trapped against it. I yank a large picture frame from the wall, snapping its mounting wire and letting it crash down in a heap that cracks the sheet of glass encased in it. I kick over a nearby chair before clenching my fist and letting more blood drain from it onto the floor and the edge of a large, oval-shaped rug that leads into the dining room. After rewrapping my hand, I grab one of my shoes from in front of the door that leads to the garage and drag the heel of it through one of the small puddles of my blood. I streak it across the floor as if I was manhandled and dragged.

  There’s relief in Valentino’s eyes when I fling the door back open. A grotesque smile shapes on his face as he struggles to lift his head back up off the floor. He’s wearing a beard of his own blood, which makes him look like a feasting cannibal. Battling time, I skip filling him in on my plan until I finish business first. I close the door behind me and grab a short crowbar that I had noticed earlier hanging from a mounted pegboard above some shelves. I wedge its claw between the edge of the door and the doorframe, and grimace from exertion as I yank at the bar wildly for what seems like minutes but is probably no more than twenty seconds before wood splinters and the door gives. I drop the crowbar on the floor, making certain the others will see it first when they return. My blood’s on it, but they’ll assume it belongs to Valentino. I use the key and secure the lock on the doorknob, then wipe it on the chest of my shirt to make sure there’s no visible blood before I return it to its original position above the outside door frame.

  I stretch the headgear straps of the night-visions behind the back of my head and let the eyecups rest against my forehead. The entire time, Valentino looks at me as if I’m crazy. He hasn’t a clue what I’m doing and I wouldn’t expect him to. I stand before him and lean forward, speaking clearly and concisely so he’ll understand me as I tell him that I’m setting him free but we have to leave together.

  The gratitude in his eyes is accompanied by glistening tears. He says something that appears to be a question that I can’t quite read so I use the back of my sleeve to wipe blood from his mouth. He tells me that he’ll need help walking because he broke his ankle trying to get free. My heart stops and I gape at the sight of his twisted foot, which I hadn’t noticed before, pinned underneath the steel chair leg, which was bent—probably from the collision when he fell to the floor.

  My head goes light as the adrenaline rush that had been pumping through my veins is suddenly squelched. I drift back a step, feeling my sense of balance faltering. I realize immediately that this changes everything. Those guys will be here any minute. With Valentino anchoring me down, we won’t get thirty yards from the house before they catch up to us. My entire plan is shot.

  “Come on, man!” he yells. “Let me go! I’ll do my best!”

  He scrutinizes the glaze covering my eyes and he shouts again for me to set him free. My shoulders are sunk and I feel the helplessness of defeatism that I’m convinced God has dealt on me as punishment for the sins I’ve committed throughout my life.

  I circle behind Valentino and hunch down before I begin peeling at the strands of duct tape constraining his wrists. I can see from the widening of his cheeks and movement of his head that he’s talking to me. I assume he’s lavishing gratitude upon me. While I steadily strip away at his bonds, I think about today’s sunset that lowered behind the tranquil mountains out behind the house. I wonder if it’s the last time I’ll ever see the sun. I then remember nearly falling through the large hole in the earth, which I concede could have served as a metaphor for the events that have transpired tonight. The obscure cognizance calls on me to stop what I’m doing.

  I peer down at the sight before me as if I’m outside my body, hovering above the room. I see the back of Valentino’s head and his contorted body hunched forward in the shape of the overturned chair he’s strapped to. In front of him is the clear, plastic sheet Alvar had laid underneath him to keep blood from seeping into the concrete.

  My despairing thoughts convince my mind that my plan is too good to jeopardize, and my warped sense of reason offers little resistance. Valentino’s inability to participate can’t detour my only shot at my new life with Arianna. I tell myself that it’s the only chance we have of breaking free and starting over. As if I’ve resigned control over my body to a darker force, I find myself leaning forward and stretching my arms along each side of Valentino’s head. Before he can take notice of the evil brewing behind him, I grab a handful of the plastic sheet in each hand and savagely pull it back toward me. It covers his face and his body reacts in panic, jerking and buckling as much as his constraints allow him to. I step over the back of the chair and place my shoe into the back of his neck, forcing his head deeper into the plastic as I keep it taut.

  I close my eyes and see only waves spreading along the Lake Michigan shoreline with Arianna lying in my arms in the white sand. I repress the thought that if I could hear Valentino right now, I’d be sickened to death by the sound of a man dying at my hands. A well of tears eclipses my eyes and they roll down my face as I relentlessly keep up the pressure.

  God forgive me. It’s all for you, Arianna. It’s all for us.

  Chapter 36

  The last step is a brutal one, as were the twelve before it. With Valentino’s heavy body draped across my shoulders, the act of reaching the top of the staircase feels for a moment like I’ve conquered Everest. He weighs more than he looks. I hope that I mashed in his chair enough to make it look like he twisted through the tape and broke free of his own accord. Catching a fresh perspective of the raw scene ju
st outside the kitchen, I’m confident that the calamity appears authentic as if a massacre took place. I carefully slip my feet into my shoes, relieved they’re monk straps so I don’t have to deal with laces with Valentino’s dead weight bearing down on me.

  The temperature outside is surely much cooler than it was before the sun set and the storm came through. Coupled with the fact that my shirt is a bright cream color and might catch someone’s eye in the dark, I reach for my trench coat that’s hooked along a wooden knob beside the front door. The moment it touches my hand, however, I realize how suspicious it will look for me to take only my own coat when it’s supposed to be Valentino who’s in control. I grab both mine and a dark jacket that Tony left behind to collaborate the perception that two men left. I also snatch Arianna’s stocking cap that she left behind. It will conceal my golden-haired homing beacon of a head.

  I freeze when I see a flash of light dance off the wall beside me. It’s coming through the front window. They’re here. Shit.

  I preserve as much composure as I can possibly muster as my eyes bounce from one side of the room to the other, taking inventory to ensure there’s nothing I missed. My brief bag is strapped over my shoulder with the coat and jacket draped over it. I place my arm over everything like a paranoid man checking for the bulge of his wallet in his pants pocket.

  When Moretti realizes that his books, along with all of his account numbers and proof of his ties to the cartel are missing and presumably in the hands of Valentino, it ought to send a piercing shock through his dark soul. I hope it gives the fat bastard a second heart attack.