Castle of Sorrows Page 4

  …and he’ll kill me if I puke, Griffin thought. So he kept scanning the room for things he could focus on rather than seeing what was happening to the man in the chair, the one named Tyler Funkhouser, the bodyguard of Christina Blackwood.

  Griffin wished Marvin Irvin’s living room were dimmer. But the canned lights in the steeply pitched ceiling were angling down to exactly where Funkhouser sat, the feet of the folding chair to which he was trussed crunching and crackling on the blue tarp. Funkhouser writhed in agony as Marvin let the glowing orange eye of his cane tip drift closer and closer to Funkhouser’s bare chest. Marvin had already burned Tyler Funkhouser three times, once on the navel, once each on Funkhouser’s shaved pectoral muscles.

  “Please!” Funkhouser was screaming, and though Griffin wasn’t looking at Funkhouser or Marvin—was in fact raptly examining the shag carpet between his feet—he could hear well enough the snuffling wetness of the man’s voice. Even worse—far, far worse—he could smell the scorched bacon scent of the man’s flesh. God, like the gamey odor of a cook’s griddle after a long night of frying.

  Griffin’s stomach clenched.

  A voice at his ear said, “You want your mommy?”

  Griffin turned and looked into the pitiless face of Nicky Irvin, the boss’s son.

  With a feeling of dread, Griffin turned back to the gruesome tableau:

  Funkhouser still tied to the chair, his bare shoulders heaving, his body rimed with sweat. Marvin Irvin favoring Funkhouser with a speculative look that carried with it a jolly good humor that Griffin found, under the circumstances, horribly inappropriate. Jim Bullington—the giant—looking on impassively from his position ten feet away. But no Rubio. Where the hell had Ray Rubio gone?

  Griffin felt a hand press the middle of his back and compel him around the struggling bodyguard, no doubt to afford him a better view of the proceedings. This close everything looked even more hideous, the beating Bullington and Rubio had delivered showing in the weals and lacerations covering Funkhouser’s face. The worst was the bubbled swelling of the bodyguard’s left eyelid, the skin there puffed up so taut it looked ready to explode like an overripe zit.

  “Please don’t,” Funkhouser said. “Please don’t do anything more to me. I’ve told you all the stuff I…” A gasping inhalation. “…all the stuff I know. Please—”

  “You’ve told me stuff, sure,” Marvin said. “But you haven’t told me anything useful.”

  “Bullshit,” Tyler Funkhouser said, then his one good eye opened wide in terror. “I’m sorry, Mr. Irvin, I didn’t mean to disrespect you, but what I mean is—”

  “—you don’t know,” Marvin finished for him. “Yeah, you said that already. Whether it’s true or not remains to be seen.”

  Funkhouser’s mouth fell open. “True or not? Course it’s true! You think I’d go through all this for some rich bitch who couldn’t care less whether I lived or died? Hell, I worked for her three months, you think she ever said more’n a few words to me?”

  Nicky stepped between Funkhouser and Marvin. “You don’t care about her, why not give us the code to the security system?”

  Funkhouser sagged. “I already told you that. I told your old man I don’t know it. No one knows it. No one but Jorge and Christina and the old farts in the security shack. You really wanna know something, whyn’t you kidnap one of them?”

  “You hear that, Nicky?” Marvin said. “The prick’s willing to sacrifice some old men, but he’s not willing to risk his own neck.”

  “I heard him,” Nicky answered without taking his eyes off Funkhouser.

  “You see, Nicky, this is why I take care of my own business.” Marvin stepped up next to his son so that both men loomed over the trussed bodyguard. “Guy like this,” Marvin said and unleashed a vicious right hook on Funkhouser, whose head whipped sideways with the blow, “he thinks once a man reaches a state of advanced years, he ain’t good for much anymore. You hear him? ‘Take one of them old farts, they don’t matter.’”

  “I didn’t mean it that way,” Funkhouser protested, but his voice was small and scared, scarcely more than a whimper.

  “Oh you meant it all right,” Marvin said. “You meant it as sure as I’m sixty-one this August. And I’m gonna tell you something, you mewling little maggot…” Marvin got right up into the muscular bodyguard’s grill, bent over and rested his hands on his knees. “I’m more a man at age sixty-one than you are at whatever the fuck you are.” Marvin slashed down with a brutal left fist.

  “Got it, boss,” a voice said from the doorway.

  Marvin sighed happily, stood erect. “Good.” He glanced back at Ray Rubio, who clutched something at his side. Rubio watched the bodyguard with that dead stare of his. It was the way Rubio looked unless he was being cruel. When he was being cruel, his dead stare was replaced by a look of maniacal glee. The kind of look a mean six-year-old gets when vivisecting ants or plucking the wings off of houseflies.

  Marvin murmured, “Step aside, Nicky.”

  Nicky took a few steps backward, and in his place came Ray Rubio. The object dangling from Rubio’s side was flat, comprised of white plastic, and had braces at each end so the flat part would be raised. Something in its center glinted.

  “You know what this is?” Marvin asked.

  Funkhouser was huffing quickly again, hyperventilation not far off. “It’s for cutting vegetables, I think. My mom used to have one.”

  Marvin gave him an admiring nod. “Not bad for a primate.” Marvin gestured toward the implement Rubio grasped. “Its proper name is a mandolin slicer, but you’re correct, Tyler, it is for cutting vegetables.”

  Rubio stepped closer. Funkhouser started to whimper.

  Marvin smiled. “But we’re not going to slice vegetables with it today, are we, Ray?”

  “No, sir,” Rubio said, the dead stare giving way to that predatory glee.

  “Oh man, you gotta stop this,” Funkhouser said. “I told you all I know. I know it ain’t much but—”

  “Hold the slicer, Jim.”

  Jim Bullington strode forward expressionlessly, took the mandolin slicer and situated it firmly on the bodyguard’s lap. Now that the slicer caught the full light from above, Griffin could see how sharp the diagonal blade was, how the surface wasn’t quite level. He imagined someone sliding a cucumber over the white surface and how the blade would shear a thin slice neatly off.

  Hot bile began to burn the back of Griffin’s throat.

  Rubio went around and untied Funkhouser’s wrists, but as he did, Nicky grasped his left wrist so that it remained pinned uselessly against the chair. Straining, Rubio muscled the bodyguard’s right hand up so that it hovered just over the mandolin slicer. Funkhouser’s hand was balled into a trembling fist, but Rubio was more than powerful enough to move it into position.

  “Aw shit,” Tyler Funkhouser moaned. “Aw shit, don’t do this. Don’t do this to me.”

  “Stick out your fingers,” Rubio grunted.

  “I’m tellin’ you I don’t know any—”

  “Have it your way,” Rubio said and jerked Funkhouser’s fist over the plastic board.

  Griffin heard a nauseating shnick and then blood was pouring out of Funkhouser’s knuckles, the tops of which had been sheared clean off by the sharp blade. Funkhouser let loose with a high, keening wail, his head thrown back, his back arching against the chair, the blood from his knuckles pattering over the blue tarp.

  Rubio brayed laughter, glanced back at Marvin, whose face betrayed no emotion. “That got his attention, didn’t it, boss!” Rubio said through his laughter. “Oh, oh, that hurt you, fella? That hurt your big bad hand?”

  Funkhouser made the mistake of unflexing his fist. The moment he did Rubio slapped the open palm on the mandolin slicer and jerked it over the cutting board. This time a whole sheet of skin was peeled away from the bodyguard’s hand. Sheaths
of flesh from his palm, his fingers, even his fingerprints were sliced neatly off.

  Funkhouser’s feet drummed the floor, his screams nearly intolerable, and when Griffin caught sight of that pink-red hand with its pared epidermis and its network of blood streams dribbling down the man’s forearm, he could control his gorge no longer. Griffin prescribed a half-turn and unleashed a flood of vomit on Marvin’s white shag carpet.

  “Moron,” Nicky growled. “Look at what he did, Dad. Dumb shit doesn’t have the sense to do it on the tarp.”

  But Marvin didn’t sound mad at all. “It’ll clean,” he said. “This is all part of the bird’s initiation.”

  Funkhouser was sobbing.

  Rubio giggled. “Poor Toomey. He thinks this is bad, wait till we start in on the bastard’s face.”

  Funkhouser wailed.

  “We’ll lop off that pretty nose of his,” Rubio said. “Then we’ll make sure he’s circumcised good and proper.”

  And as Tyler Funkhouser continued to shriek and thrash in the chair, Griffin Toomey pitched forward, his consciousness mercifully abandoning him.

  Chapter Three

  Claire Shadeland pushed her stepson on the swing and eyed her husband, who had on that distracted look he wore too often lately. Claire gave Joshua one more push on the swing and said, “Pump your legs a little, okay? Mommy’s gonna talk to Daddy a minute.”

  She sat next to Ben on the wooden swing, where Julia slept on his shoulder. “You’re scowling again,” she said.

  Ben’s eyes tracked his son’s arc. “Joshua’s not ready to go that high yet.”

  “He’s fine, honey. It’s not like he’s going to let go in midair.”

  “He could slip.”

  Claire let it pass. Ben continued to caress Julia’s bare back. The temperature was in the upper eighties, which meant Ben would allow Julia to go without her onesie for a few minutes. Anything eighty-five or cooler and he insisted on wrapping their infant up like a mummy.

  Claire cleared her throat. “Did you call your mom back yet?”

  “I’ve been writing.”

  Claire knew that was a lie, but again she let it go. She’d heard him earlier, plinking out a few reluctant notes on their Steinway, but if that was writing, Claire figured they were in even worse shape than she’d thought. The score for The Nightmare Girl was due by September, but Ben had only composed a couple minor themes. He was too busy worrying, too busy monitoring his family’s safety. Too busy brooding about how everything could fall apart.

  Claire took a breath. “I think we should take her up on her offer.”

  For a long moment she was sure Ben wouldn’t respond, but at length he muttered, “I’m not ready for that yet.”

  “It’s just dinner, honey. An hour and a half. Two hours tops.”

  “We’ll take Julia with us. She’s portable.”

  “It’s Joshua’s birthday, honey. He’s been asking about this for weeks now. Months. You’re really too paranoid to leave her alone for a couple hours?”

  Ben’s gaze went stony. “It’s not paranoia. Paranoia means there’s nothing to worry about.”

  “There isn’t,” she said. “It’s been a year since the island, and we’ve been totally safe. Joshua doesn’t even talk about it anymore. Other than the nightmares—”

  “‘Other than the nightmares,’ Claire? You say it like it’s no big deal, like it’s normal for a kid to wake up screaming bloody murder night after night.” His voice had coarsened to nearly a growl. On his shoulder, baby Julia stirred.

  “Please don’t yell at me,” Claire said.

  “Then knock off the accusations.”

  “No one’s accusing you—”

  “The hell they’re not. First Brooks, now you. I’m tired of everyone acting like I’m some kind of lunatic for wanting my family safe.”

  “Teddy Brooks was here?”

  Ben made a sour face. “Yesterday, when you were taking a nap.”

  Claire searched his features for signs of recrimination, but found none. The truth was, she’d felt guilty for napping most of the afternoon yesterday, but her body had badly needed the rest.

  Claire glanced at Joshua, whose swinging trajectory had slowed to nearly a halt. Now he was doing little more than bucking in the seat, like he was doing crunches. “What did Teddy say?” she asked.

  “What does it matter?” Ben said and got up.

  “Was it about the bookie?”

  “He’s not a bookie, he’s a gangster. And according to Teddy, the gangster’s men haven’t been near the ranch for over a month.”

  Claire sat forward. “So it’s safe to take Joshua out for his birthday.”

  “Why are you so intent on leaving her here? You act like Julia’s a burden.”

  “I love her too, Ben. But she’s colicky. Every time we take her out with us she screams through dinner.”

  “That’s what babies do, Claire, they scream.”

  She stood, a hotness burning behind her ears. “Don’t give me that. The whole ‘You’ve never raised a child before, Claire, so you have no idea how they are’.”

  “Well, you haven’t,” Ben said. “So quit trying to pawn Julia off on my mom.”

  “Pawn her off?” Claire uttered a breathless little laugh. “How can you say that? Who was up with her all night last night while she screamed? Who—”

  “I had her until two a.m.”

  Claire tapped her chest with an index finger. “And I had her until eight this morning, while you slept like a lamb.”

  Ben stepped nearer, teeth bared. “I never sleep well and you know it. I haven’t since…”

  Despite his tone, the torment she saw twisting his face took away some of her anger. “I know you don’t sleep much. You know I understand.”

  He cupped Julia tighter against him, a desperate plea in his eyes. “Do you, Claire? Do you really? If you did, you’d know I can barely stand to be in different rooms than the kids, much less in different zip codes. You don’t know what it was like to have your boy stolen from you by that—” He broke off, his muscled neck straining.

  But Claire did know. She remembered the nightmarish moment as clearly as if it were unfolding before her right now…in the uppermost room of Castle Blackwood, the vast window-lined studio…stashing Joshua in a bench compartment, telling herself he’d be safe from the monster there, safe from Gabriel…then the lid swinging back, Joshua opening the lid…and a moment later the monster crashing through the window, seizing Joshua in its filthy black talons, and leaping through the window to land six stories below…the feeling of abject terror and dismal failure that drowned her as she watched Joshua being borne away…

  Claire exhaled shuddering breath. “I saw it happen, Ben. I know how it feels.”

  “You didn’t know Joshua then,” Ben said, and when Claire made to interrupt, he overrode her. “And I know you love him now—I know you love him more than Jenny ever did—but you didn’t love him then. Not yet. So you can’t know how it was for me, how it was to know a monster took my boy.” He shook his head, tears of rage pooling in his eyes. “Never again, Claire. By God, I’ll never let it happen again.”

  Claire saw the steely determination in his eyes, and all at once she longed to slip her arms over his broad shoulders and hug him. She raised her arms to do just that, but something in her periphery drew her attention, and then she remembered Joshua, her adopted son dangling in the swing less than twenty feet away. He was watching her and Ben with trepidation.

  “It’s okay, honey,” Claire said. “Mommy and Daddy aren’t mad at each other.” She couldn’t believe Julia hadn’t wakened yet. Why couldn’t their baby sleep this well at night?

  “Here,” Ben said and handed Julia over. Claire cradled her and moved toward the house. Ben went to Joshua and said, “Bath time.” Joshua groaned, but when she g
ot to the deck and looked back, she saw Ben carrying him upside down toward the house, Joshua squealing with laughter.

  That night Ben was on the phone with Nat Zimmerman, one of the producers of The Nightmare Girl, until well past ten. It galled Claire that she had to wait so long for Ben, not because she wanted to continue their argument and certainly not because of whom Ben was talking to—on the contrary, without Nat Zimmerman, things would be a hell of a lot tenser between them and the studio—but for the simple reason that Claire was horny. She reckoned it was the first time she’d been truly aroused since she’d given birth four months ago. She knew the forced celibacy bothered Ben—heck, it bothered her—but the combination of nursing Julia what felt like fifty times a day and what Claire suspected was a mild case of post-partum depression had pretty well derailed whatever sex drive she’d had while pregnant.

  So she contented herself with re-reading The Nightmare Girl and waiting for her husband to come to bed.

  As it had the first three times she’d read it, the novel drew her in immediately. She liked it even better than the last adapted novel they’d scored, a ghost story called House of Skin. The movie version of House of Skin had gone on to become the surprise hit of the winter season, partially due to the fact that its director, the infamous Lee Stanley, had died before it was released, but also because—if the critics were to be believed—of the haunting music by Ben and Claire Shadeland. The success of House of Skin and its score helped them secure the contract for The Nightmare Girl—itself one of the bestselling novels of last year—but it also brought with it heightened expectations to which Claire was unaccustomed.

  She’d gotten to a tense scene at a gas station when she heard the muffled footfalls of her husband returning from his call. Claire quickly returned the book to her nightstand drawer—having it constantly out in the open, she feared, might increase the pressure Ben felt to compose the music that was due in under six weeks—and pushed the blankets down to her waist. Propping herself on her elbows, she surveyed her breasts to make sure there was no milk leaking through her pink nightgown, then debated shoving the covers down farther. Nursing had enlarged her breasts a full cup size, but she’d also gained some weight in her hips. Lifting the covers and eyeing her thighs dubiously, she finally decided Ben would be too grateful for the prospect of intercourse to be turned off by her weight gain, and pushed the blankets all the way down to her knees.