Vanilla should have been everything I detested in a human being, a stone killer with the conscience of a fly, but there was no denying I felt something for her. I didn’t know exactly what it was. But I felt it. And she felt it back. But then again, who was I to hate someone for being a killer?
I drove back to LaBorde through a bad storm mixed with rain and snow and a vision of that young girl’s face, the one I had killed in the mat room. She was just a kid. I told myself if I hadn’t killed her she would have killed me. I told myself she was being trained to kill others for money. For all I knew she might have been the one who shot Leonard. There wasn’t any certainty Devil Red, the two of them, or either of them had done the shooting. And if it wasn’t that young woman, someday it would be, for someone.
I arrived drained and exhausted at the hospital. It was way past visiting hours, but when I got upstairs I found Brett and Marvin in the waiting room. Brett had found a blanket and was curled up in a chair asleep. Marvin sat beside her, wide awake. He nodded at me as I came in, put a finger to his lips. We went outside the waiting room to a few chairs along the wall. We sat down.
“How’s Leonard?” I said.
“Better.”
I sighed with relief.
“Not out of danger yet,” Marvin said. “But better.”
“Good,” I said.
“Did you find them?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Did you take care of them?”
“Vanilla Ride took care of them mostly. I took care of some of it.”
“Vanilla Ride? Our Vanilla Ride?”
“How many of them could there be?” I said.
“I’ll be damned,” Marvin said.
I told him all about it, everything Vanilla had told me, how it had all gone down.
He sat for a while when I finished. “So it was like Brett thought, Devil Red killed all those people for revenge. Twilla too?”
“Maybe. And then Leonard and I fell into their line of fire.”
Marvin considered for a moment. “They most likely arranged the hit on Godzilla in prison, don’t you think?”
“It’s possible,” I said. “They decided to kill us all, symbolically salt the earth. They couldn’t get rid of their grief any other way. And I doubt that did it.”
“What amazes me is to think they actually cared that much for their children, considering what they were, what they did to Vanilla,” Marvin said.
“I think for them it wasn’t child molestation or abuse in the way we think of it. I mean it comes down to the same thing, but I think for them it was just business. They were sharpening the tools of their business by making them willing and moldable. When Kincaid was away from there he was an accountant, a husband to his airhead wife, and a father to his children, who he loved. One life had nothing to do with the other.”
“That’s what you call compartmentalization,” Marvin said.
“Yeah, I suppose it is.”
“How do you feel?” he asked.
“My hand won’t quit shaking. I got a few minor wounds, but that’s what surprises me the most. In all the gunfire and knifing, I didn’t get a serious wound. Worst thing I got was back pain from falling out of a tree. Thing I’m wondering is how we tell Mrs. Christopher that the job is done without telling her how it was done, and without getting our dicks in a crack.”
“That’s my job,” Marvin said. “I’ll find a way to satisfy her without telling her everything. There’s some things she doesn’t need to know. Do you think you’ll see Vanilla again?”
“I don’t want to. She makes me nervous.”
At that moment, Brett came out of the waiting room and came over to me and grabbed me before I could stand and hugged me. I kissed her near her ear. She was crying. She fell into my lap.
“My God, I thought that was you I heard talking,” she said.
She kissed me several times. I wiped away her tears. I hugged her tight. I looked at Marvin, said, “You should go home, friend.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I should. Call me if there’s any news.”
He stood and clapped his hand on my shoulder. I reached up and touched it. “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.”
We went back in the waiting room, and I told her all I had told Marvin.
“I don’t know how I feel about Vanilla Ride,” Brett said. “You’re my man.”
“You know it,” I said.
“Really now,” Brett said. “How pretty is she?”
“She’s all right.”
“Hap.”
“Okay. She’s real pretty.”
“Hap.”
“All right, goddamn it,” I said. “She’s stunningly beautiful.”
“Okay,” she said, “that’s enough.”