Finding Gideon(117)
“When you want me, remember this moment.”
“Is this a watershed moment?”
“I lowered my wall for you, Gideon.”
“From the moment I first saw you, I used to dream about you. All I wanted was you. I tore down my wall for you. Now it’s been rebuilt.”
“Parker Meridien. Carolina Inn. Coltrane. Miles Davis.”
“Just moments in our past.”
“You’ll want to make love to me again.”
“You don’t make love; you only know how to fuck. And the better a woman fucked a man, the more a man was convinced she was making love to him. I learned that from you.”
“Don’t throw my words back at me.”
“Don’t think I’m a fucking fool.”
“No one called you a fool.”
“Don’t fuck with me. I have a lot of blood on my hands because of you.”
She sipped her watermelon martini. “Scamz’s son meant nothing to me. I only slept with him after I came to the hotel room in London and found you with a woman. I stood at your door, heard you fucking her. A stranger you met on the plane. Not until then, not until I found you sleeping with a stranger did I even consider him being my lover. It would have been you. You saved me from men my sister had sent to kill me, and you saved me from Lakenheath. Well, no need for us to review all of that. We know how it went. I was thrown in the Thames. You were killed. I killed a few people. If not for Scamz, you would have stayed dead. He saved the man I cared about at the time and I guess he became my hero.”
The Russian came by with drinks. I took a beer.
When she walked away, Arizona said, “Shall we talk business?”
“The pen drive will have all the files, accounts, and passwords for the Horsemen.”
“Did you extract the information? Will I be able to get the money they stole from Scamz?”
“Money never leaves your mind, not even when blood is all over the dance floor.”
“I don’t like losing. Not to a woman you met on a plane, not to the Horsemen.”
“Medianoche did a swan dive and I didn’t have time to get the information.”
“They killed my brother.”
“They killed my friend. And they have killed my family. My mother and my brothers.”
She took a breath, modified her tone. “Do you want to negotiate?”
“I don’t negotiate.”
“You have it. You have what I need to take back the money they stole from Scamz.”
“Yeah, I do.”
“But you’re not going to give it to me.”
“You don’t deserve it. You’re no better than the Scamz resting at the bottom of the sea.”
She gave me half a smile, then stood, threw her martini glass against a partition, and walked away, each step hard, her ass sending me a negative message, that she was the queen, that there would be consequences. The music changed. And old-school jam played. Kelis was screaming, “I hate you so much right now.” Arizona sat in a recliner in a different section, legs crossed, one bouncing, high heel halfway on.
The Brazilian flight attendant came to me with a laptop. She cleaned up the mess Arizona had made. Everyone stayed away from the queen. I logged on to GoToMyPC and connected to Powder Springs. What I saw made me bend over, and the tears came strong.
Catherine was in the house. The boys were back at Powder Springs.
They were alive.
Then I was surprised.
Hawks was there, and so was the Bajan. Hawks was sitting up under the Bajan and he had his arm around her. I used the satellite phone and called the house number.
On the computer I saw everyone jump when the phone rang.
Catherine ran to the phone, looked at the caller ID.
She answered, afraid, hopeful, unsure, “Hello?”
I cleared my throat, wiped my eyes. “Hey. It’s me.”
“Jean-Claude?”
“Yeah. You’re okay. You’re okay, right?”
Catherine jumped up and down, shouted, “It’s Jean-Claude.”
Hawks and the boys made it to Catherine’s side first. The Bajan went to them and stood to the side. A gun rested in the waistband of his jeans. I didn’t let her know I could see them all. Hawks knew there were cameras in the home but didn’t know I was watching them all right now.
Steven yelled, “When are we roller-skating on MLK again?”
Robert ran and picked up the other line. “Yeah, we want to go roller-skating.”
My mother with her French accent. My brothers, one who sounded German, the other who sounded British. The United Nations was safe again. After my brothers told me hello, Catherine made them get away from her and get off the other line. They always did what she said.
I asked, “Catherine, are you okay? Did anything happen down . . . up there?”