Leather Maiden

18

We got there late afternoon and went into the woods above the house at the summit of the hill. The woods were thick, but there wasn’t much of it. It was hot and we had to sit down to rest because the trees held the heat and it was hard to breathe. There were hordes of mosquitoes and flies.

We had come on a couple of Jimmy’s motorcycles. We had our camping equipment and the surveillance equipment strapped over the backs of the bikes. We broke out the pup tent and set it up and pulled the mosquito net down and secured the bar at the bottom of the tent against the ground. The way we placed the tent, we had a view through the net and through a little clearing in the pines, a straight-shot look down the hill. It was close in the tent with the two of us, and the trees were tight around us, and that made it warmer, but it really wasn’t too uncomfortable. We had a pair of binoculars, and from time to time Jimmy put them to his eyes and glanced down at the Siegel house.

“What are you, General Patton?” I said. “Give those things a rest.”

“I don’t think they’re there,” he said.

“You said that already. Maybe ten times.”

“Well, I just want to make sure.”

“You know what I think? I think these guys are amateurs, and I think they see a way to make some bucks, that’s what I think. And I don’t think they’re going to show early. They figure they got you by the balls, and they do. So they’re going to wait until time and then they’ll show, and you will show, and I will have the camera, and I will get them on film.”

“By the way,” Jimmy said, “did I mention we too are amateurs?”

“No. You didn’t. But you’re right. Still, I think we have the edge. They did something to Caroline, got away with it, it was most likely an accident. Now they’ve gotten greedy, and that could be their downfall.”

“That’s why you think they’re amateurs?”

“That’s why.”

Jimmy scratched his chin, gave me a hard look. “And what happens when I don’t have the money?”

“That part is tricky,” I said.

“Since it will be my ass on the line, perhaps you could lay out the plan a little more clearly.”

“I told you already.”

“I got it down, but I don’t like it. I keep hoping for more. Way it is now: They ask for the money. I say go fuck yourself, I haven’t got any money. My brother is on the hill with a camera that has a telescopic lens and he’s filming you. And if you don’t believe us, we can swap a DVD with you tomorrow for the one you got. How am I doing?”

“Swell.”

“Now, here comes my question. Why would they care? They got the good DVD, and all we’ll have is a film of me and them standing around down there by the Siegel house. For all anyone can tell, me and them are going to sit down and have a circle jerk, see who can shoot it the farthest.”

“That’s why you will have the wire and I will have the recorder, and that’s why you will say they do anything to you, it’s on film and recorded, and I’ve got both.”

“What if they don’t believe me?”

“Talk your talk, and then point up the hill. I’ll flash my flashlight at them in confirmation. You just have to talk some good doo-doo, brother.”

“I still think we ought to do what needs to be done.”

“Don’t go there again, Jimmy. I’m not up for it. Not even a little bit. I’m here to help you, I got to believe you’re not going to give me grief. We don’t try and do anything to hurt them.”

“What if they just decide to shoot me, then come up the hill after you?”

“I will run like the wind.”

“I will still be dead.”

“That is true, but I will tell heroic tales of your death for as long as I live.”

We lay there in the pup tent, passing the binoculars back and forth, watching the house and all around the hill, as if Jimmy’s blackmailers might come crawling up through the vines. The sun moved overhead and fell westward. The mosquitoes buzzed against the net, and a blackfly about the size of a pterodactyl lit at the center of the net and lay there as if waiting for us to make a move.

I thumped the fly and it flew off. I showed him. He wasn’t so scary.

The falling sun had begun to cause a big shadow to stand out to the side of the house and it made the vines there dark as a pit. The sun melted bright red on the west side of the woods, and some of the rays from it came through and lay over us and made everything appear as if we were seeing it all through a red cellophane lens.

Then the redness sank down and the dark rose up. I checked my glow-in-the-dark watch. It was eight p.m.

“Only four hours to go,” I said.

“Shit,” Jimmy said. “That’s like an eternity.”

An hour or so later we had a false start when a car parked down at the bottom of the hill near a tall pine and a guy got out on the passenger side, stood in the darkness of the tree. From the way he stood, and from what little the moonlight showed us, we could tell it was just some guy stopping to pee. When he finished, he got back in the car, and his buddy at the wheel drove them away.

It was kind of like a signal. We got out of the tent and found a place for us to do the same. When we finished, we got back in the tent, behind the skeeter net, which was a good thing. The mosquitoes were really thick now and I had a dozen bites on me, all of them acquired during the time I was taking a leak. The crickets were very busy and there were so many of them, it sounded like someone sawing wood. Inside the tent, listening to them, protected from the mosquitoes, it was almost soothing.

We talked for a while, and when that played out, we took turns nodding off. About ten-thirty we heard a noise behind us, and it occurred to me that our blackmailers would probably come up on the house the way we did, from the top of the hill, or to be more precise from the opposite side of the hill and through the woods. They weren’t on motorcycles, though, and they weren’t coming up the trail alongside the woods the way we had come. They were walking along a trail on the opposite side. We could hear them whispering, and we could hear limbs being pushed aside not too carefully, and then someone, a woman, cursed, and Jimmy and I looked at each other in the dark.

We pushed the mosquito net up and eased out of the pup tent. We sat in front of it and were quiet.

The two people were not quiet. They were louder, now, and we could see them as two human-shaped shadows walking between a crooked row of trees and scraggly brush. If they had looked to their left, and had they really been watching for us, they would have seen us.

They fought the limbs some more, and I realized then that they hadn’t really scoped things out before coming out here. I was even more certain, now that I could see their shapes and hear their voices, that they were young. Not kids, but young.

Finishing off the trail, coming out of the woods, they started down the hill, two shapes with the moon fully outlining them and the house below, the vines looking like some kind of strange dark ocean, the waves frozen, the house being the biggest, darkest frozen wave of all.

They walked down to the gravel behind the house and stopped there for a moment. They were wearing light coats. It was way too hot for coats. The guy leaned over and kissed the girl on the cheek, then they slid in close and held each other for a while.

After a moment, they broke apart and went on down to the house. They worked at the vine-covered door for a long time, and then it came open and they slipped inside.

“I don’t know,” Jimmy said. “I don’t know what to do.”

“It isn’t midnight yet. Just wait. Could just be a couple grabbing a quickie.”

We lay there in the tent behind the skeeter net until about eleven-thirty. No one else had shown.

“I can’t believe it,” Jimmy said. “That has got to be them.”

I looked at my watch. “Still half an hour. Someone else could show. In the meantime, I think we ought to wire you up.”

We got out of the tent, and while we fought mosquitoes, we put the receiver on his belt and pulled his shirt down over it. The way it was set was like a baby monitor. Whatever Jimmy heard, I’d be able to hear up here with a little piece that went in my ear, like one of those walking phones. And I could record it.

When I had him fixed up, he turned on the receiver and said a few words, and I could hear them in my earpiece. I said, “It seems all right. I don’t know how it’ll work when you’re down the hill apiece, but it ought to be fine.”

Jimmy went over to his motorcycle. There were saddlebags on it, like a horse. He reached in one of them and took out a pair of gloves and a little snubnosed revolver in a holster that was mostly just a strap with a little belt.

“I thought we went over the gun business,” I said.

He came over with another pair of gloves and tossed them at me. “We might end up leaving some print somewhere down there, and we don’t want to do that.”

At the time, I thought Jimmy was being a little excessive, but later I was glad for the gloves. I pulled them on. When I was finished, I gave him a hard look.

“I still don’t like the gun. You can keep ignoring me, but I’m going to keep saying it. The gun, it’s not a good idea.”

“Don’t panic. I’m going to strap it to my ankle. It might be them that loses their cool. They do, I’d like to have a fighting chance.”

“They’re a couple of kids.”

“And maybe,” Jimmy said, “they’re the couple of kids who killed Caroline, as well as the ones blackmailing me.”

“I don’t like the gun business.”

“Don’t worry. I’m not going in blazing. But I don’t have any money either. They might take that personally.”

“Thing is, you got to get them to come outside,” I said. “I can hear you in the house, but I can’t see you and I can’t film. I need to get their faces on the film. Tell them you left the money outside, hid it up the hill. Anything to get them out of the house. What I’m saying as plain as I can say it is don’t go in the house. Don’t get out of my sight.”

“I’ll do what I can.”

We climbed back in the tent and waited. Just after midnight, Jimmy and I got out of the tent and I got the camera and made sure my earpiece was in good, and we tested the equipment again. I adjusted the telescopic viewer on the camera and looked down the hill. The infrared view reminded me of the tools I had used in Iraq. Something about that made my skin crawl. I took a deep breath, looked at Jimmy.

“Everything okay?” he said.

“I think so. About that gun.”

“I’m cool,” Jimmy said. He reached in his back pocket and pulled out a short cylindrical pipe, or at least it looked like a pipe. He flicked his wrist and a narrower, longer piece popped out. It was an asp, an expanding baton. “I also got this.”

“Why don’t you pull a goddamn cannon down there with you,” I said.

“Believe me, I thought about it.”

Jimmy looked at the house below, took a deep breath, started walking.