Beyond Innocence Page 31

  “Don’t you care?” asked Faye as she jogged to catch up to him.

  “About what?”

  “That Calvin is on the loose. What if he finds out you’re back? He’s nuts! He might come after you.” She looked around as if expecting the lunatic to jump out of an alley at that very moment. “Or me.”

  Tate knew the risks all too well. In fact, he was counting on them. He waved away her concerns. “He may be nuts but he’s also a gutless coward. I’d guess he’s long gone. After shooting that cop and knowing that they’ve got your testimony, there’s no way he’s sticking around so they can nab him.” They had reached the back door and Tate stopped with his hand on the knob. “Don’t worry.” He stroked her cheek and relished the confusion in her eyes. “I’ll take care of you. I’ll take real good care of you.”

  She smiled uncertainly and he dropped his hand. He resolved to wash it thoroughly at the first available opportunity.

  He walked into The Pit and the squeals of delight that reached his ears weren’t nearly as welcome as he had expected. The kisses and hugs, the hands that stroked his chest and touched his face, the breasts that were displayed to garner his attention—none of it held its old charm.

  The girls were still his, and he still felt a powerful responsibility toward those he had taken under his wing. Most of them were sweet and good-natured. They all had their stories and they all felt a fierce loyalty to him—to the man who had rescued them from a dubious fate. It still astounded him that they didn’t see the truth of it.

  Sure, he treated them well, didn’t hurt them, and their life with him was a damn sight better than it had been before he found them. But he was still using them. Even the ones that didn’t whore for him—even the waitresses and the dancers—were his pawns. He had always known that in some deep, hidden recess of his consciousness, but he had managed to ignore it. He had tried to tell himself he was doing them a favor. If it weren’t for him they’d just be hooking on a street somewhere, probably getting beat up or scrounging for their next fix.

  Perhaps that was true, but it didn’t change the facts of what they were, and what he was. They were still prisoners of their situation—all of them, him included. The fact that it was a gilded cage didn’t change the truth. He was a pimp and they were hookers. He used to think this was where he belonged and what he was meant to do. But now he wasn’t so sure.

  He let them pamper and stroke. He saw to matters Calvin had screwed up that needed his personal attention. He slipped back into his role as naturally as a rat slips into its hole. But all the while, nagging at the back of his mind, was the image of a woman with small breasts and a boyish figure, glasses and a tight braid, a creamy complexion and soft brown eyes. He’d trade every one of his buxom babes for her any day. But the fact remained that she had no place here, and he had no place in her world.

  He had learned years ago that no one could fight his birthright. He couldn’t fight who he was and he couldn’t fight his destiny.

  With that thought he remembered one more thing he had to do.

  “Somebody get me a phone!” he yelled. Within a minute a cordless phone was in his hand and a kiss had been plastered to his cheek.

  “Welcome home, Tate,” crooned one of his dancers, whose name escaped him. “I’m on next. Promise me you’ll watch?”

  “Always, sugar.” He swatted her bottom as she walked away and then turned his attention to the phone. When the other end picked up he bellowed into the phone, “Dad! How ya’ doing, you old fart?”

  He paused and allowed Jeremiah to curse and rant.

  The love-hate relationship he shared with his father continued to astound him. Ever since Tate had stood up to him all those years ago, Jeremiah had shown his son a grudging respect and, eventually, outright admiration for Tate’s accomplishments and the success of the business. How could he come to feel anything for the brute who had beaten him and his mother to within an inch of their lives and had been the ultimate cause of his mother’s death? Was it fate? Despite the fact that he held none of the old man’s genes, he and Jeremiah shared a common heritage. They were cut from the same cloth. Their destinies were linked and that wasn’t something that anyone changed easily.

  Jeremiah stopped momentarily to draw in much-needed oxygen, and Tate took the opportunity to stop his tirade. “Shut up and listen, old man. Get your sorry ass over here so you can chew me out in person. I’m home and, dammit, I need a drinking buddy!”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Elsie gazed up at the sky. Ominous clouds had been threatening a storm all day. The drizzle on their umbrellas was light and fine, but the horizon to the west had taken on the hue of an angry bruise. The air was thick with the tickle of electricity. It made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up and sent shivers down her spine.

  She gripped Pete’s hand a little tighter and pulled Scott a little closer. The pastor’s words rolled off her like the tiny rivulets of moisture that beaded on the polished oak casket and dripped off its sides. She found no comfort in those words.

  Her comfort came from her family and her friends and a moment of shared grief. Her comfort came from the knowledge that steps were being taken to apprehend a killer. Her comfort came from the long-awaited certainty of Sam’s fate and the little bit of closure it afforded her. Her comfort came from many sources, but it wasn’t enough. She had lost a dear friend, and her son had lost a father. Sam had died brutally and miserably. There could be no comfort in that.

  The pastor ended his prayer and said a few closing words. At a signal from him, Elsie laid a single yellow rose on the coffin. She touched the gleaming wood with a tremulous hand and bid him a silent farewell.

  She stepped back from the grave and that was the signal for the crowd to disperse. Pete wrapped a strong arm around her shoulders as he guided her toward the waiting cars. She was grateful for Kyle, who had taken a special interest in her son and who now held his hand with a fiercely possessive grip. Perhaps Pete’s partners were always destined to have a special place in her son’s life.

  They had traversed only a few feet of damp sod when a flash of movement caught her eye. At the end of the row of cars stood two figures, one tall and lanky, the other small but proud. “Pete,” she whispered as she nodded in that direction. “Is that who I think it is?”

  Pete’s eyes crinkled as he focused on the two forlorn observers. “Son of a bitch,” he hissed. “What’s he doing here?”

  “I want to talk to him.”

  “Elsie, don’t torture yourself.”

  She shook her head. “No, I need to do this. I’ve actually been thinking about calling him. But I’d prefer if you were with me.”

  Pete considered, but she knew he wouldn’t refuse her this. “Should Kyle take Scott to the car?”

  “No,” she said after a brief hesitation. “If what we suspect is true then Tate is his uncle. He should at the very least meet him.”

  Pete motioned to Kyle and spoke to him quietly before steering Elsie toward Tate and his son.

  Elsie noted that while his son had a raincoat with a hood Tate did not. He had no umbrella. He merely stood there, still as stone as the moisture collected on his hair and skin. The rain had matted tendrils to his forehead and trailed rivulets down his battle-scarred cheeks. Whether all those droplets were due to the rain or whether some had flowed from his own eyes was unclear.

  Pete had told her the story of how Sam had died, and how Tate had reacted to the bullet that pierced Sam’s brain. It was almost like he died right along with Sam, was how Faye had put it. Or, at least, that was how she would have said it if she’d had the names straight.

  Elsie wanted—no, needed—to understand the man who had been a friend and then tormentor for her husband. That was the piece of the puzzle that was missing.

  At last they stood face-to-face. Tate hadn’t moved and no one had spoken. He met her eyes evenly, but there were emotions roiling beneath the surface that were complex and unreadable. She doubted that Tate
Barton was what any of them thought he was—including Tate Barton.

  “Hello, Tate.”

  “Elsie.” She noticed he gripped his son’s hand a little tighter and his eyes flicked to Scott.

  “You got a lot of nerve showing up here today,” growled Pete.

  “I’ve got as much right to be here as anybody, Gruber.” He never took his eyes off Elsie. “I knew Sam longer than any of you.”

  “Are you trying to say you’re grieving him?” Pete’s voice could have cut solid steel.

  “Maybe.” Elsie noted the bobbing of his Adam’s apple and the rigid set of his shoulders. His eyes cut away from hers and rested on the distant grave.

  “Who are you, Tate?” she asked.

  His eyes snapped back to hers. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Who were you to Sam? Were you brothers? Is that part of the puzzle?”

  A slow, sly smile spread across his face. It was laced with a malice that was familiar and that she had come to associate with Tate over the last years. But almost as quickly it dissolved—as if he could no longer maintain the façade, as if the weight of Sam’s death was too heavy to allow for games and affectations.

  His shoulders drooped and his expression lost its edge. “How did you figure it out?”

  Elsie didn’t answer because his eyes had drifted away again. They weren’t looking at the coffin this time, though. She wondered if they were gazing into the past.

  “He was so gullible, you know.” Tate raked his hand through the wet mop. “He never suspected. He was a street-savvy cop who saw conspiracies everywhere, but he never suspected me. Despite all the signs, he never suspected the truth.”

  “What is the truth? Please, Tate. I need to know.”

  Pete and Kyle were silent. She watched Tate’s eyes drop to Scott and then rest on his son. “They’re cousins, you know. But they live in different worlds. Just like their fathers.”

  “Tate?” she whispered. “Why? Why did you seek him out and then turn away from him? How were you connected? I want answers.”

  He returned his gaze to hers and smiled, but this time it was sad and distant. “No, you don’t, Elsie. Just keep hating me. It’s easier that way.”

  “Easier for who? Just who are you protecting, Tate?” She allowed a note of anger to creep into her voice. “Me and Scott? Or yourself?”

  He ignored her and tugged on Tanner’s hand. They moved away toward the open grave—father and son, her only connection to a nebulous past. She would hear that story. If she had to hound and pester Tate to his grave she would learn the truth. She owed it to Sam and she owed it to Scott.

  “Come on, Elsie,” sighed Pete. “You’re not going to get anything out of him. Not until he’s ready.” He took her hand and led her toward their car. “Sam’s dad will be expecting us at the house.”

  * * * * *

  The duo stopped beside the glistening casket.

  Tanner tugged on his father’s hand. “Is that true?”

  “What?”

  “Is that boy my cousin or something?”

  “Yeah. It’s true.”

  “So, like, can I play with him? He seemed a little younger, but…”

  “He’s seven.” Tate knew Scott’s birthday down to the minute. When he found out Elsie was pregnant he had watched like a hawk. He knew the minute they headed to the hospital and he had visited the nursery the day after Scott was born. Sam never saw him. He never knew how much Tate ached to mend the rift and have a real family for once in his life.

  He still didn’t know what had held him back. What had made him hold so stubbornly to the self-destructive path he had chosen in a moment of anger and weakness? If Sam had heard the whole story, Tate had no doubt they could have mended their friendship. Hell! They could have actually become brothers. They could have been a lot of things.

  But instead of seeking change and resolution, Tate had hung onto the hate and the pain. He had relived his childhood innumerable times—relived the beatings and the threats, Jeremiah’s drunkenness and whoring, his mother’s depression and apathy. He had screamed silently for the life that had been denied him; and then, instead of seeking something better, he had wallowed in it, become one with the ugliness and the filth. At the time it felt right. It didn’t anymore.

  “So?” persisted Tanner. “Can I?”

  “Forget it, Tanner. We’ll never be welcome there.”

  “He could come to our house.”

  Tate smiled at the naïveté of youth. “Would you really want him to see your mother?”

  Tanner scowled. “When are we going to get rid of her, anyway?”

  Startled, Tate looked sharply at his son. “Get rid of her?”

  “Yeah. You’re gonna off her, aren’t you?”

  Jesus Christ! What kind of father had he been to have raised a ten-year-old who could talk so casually about murdering his own mother? He had to get them out of here. Once his business was finished they were leaving. At that moment he resolved to make a better life for his son. He had steeped himself in evil long enough. Maybe there was no hope for him, but he couldn’t do that to Tanner.

  Tanner read his silence as assent. “I hate her. I heard her and Calvin talking, you know. I never hated her so much as when I thought she’d killed you. I thought about doing her myself, but—”

  “Tanner!” Tate kneeled down and grabbed Tanner’s shoulders. He shook him, and then stopped himself because he wasn’t sure he’d be able to. “Stop it! I know how you feel about your mother and I don’t blame you. She’s a liar and a witch. She’s—”

  “Then why did you marry her?” Tanner’s eyes were swimming in tears.

  Tate blinked stupidly. “It’s complicated. But I don’t regret it, because we had you. She’s made a lot of mistakes and she’s going to pay for them, but it’s not your place to worry about that. Christ! You should be worrying about Little League and homework, not this shit.”

  “I just don’t want to live with her anymore, that’s all. She hardly even sees me, and that Calvin was so mean. I hate her.” He sobbed. “I just wanna be with you.” Tate wrapped him in a strong hug. “Please, Daddy. I just wanna be with you.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Don opened the door and Marnie stepped from the cab.

  Don paid the driver and, as the taxi drove away, he grasped her hand. They stood together on the sidewalk and stared at the structure before them. Blazing red neon announced The Pit to the world. An old gas pump and a miniature Formula One racecar flanked the front doors. A stack of tires and a rack of Valvoline cans completed the façade. There were no windows.

  “Charming,” mused Don.

  Marnie cleared her throat. “It’s…innovative.”

  “It’s tacky.”

  “It’s a strip joint, Don. He’s not exactly catering to the Bible-thumping set.”

  Don closed his eyes. “I’ve never been in a strip club in my life.”

  “This was your idea, remember? No backing out now.” Actually, it struck Marnie that Don would fit right in. His worn jeans and tattered T-shirt were a far cry from his usual blue suit. They accentuated his rugged physique and were likely to garner him lots of attention on the other side of those doors. That promised to be very entertaining.

  “He better be worth it,” he whispered.

  Marnie felt an unexpected surge of warmth toward her brother. She reached for his hand and squeezed. “No matter what happens, I’ll never forget this.”

  “I expect a couple of weeks’ worth of babysitting, you know.”

  Marnie took her first steps toward the doors. “That’s hardly a threat. Tiffany and I have a new understanding.”

  “I was actually hoping for Tate.” Marnie stopped in her tracks and gazed up at him in disbelief. Don grinned down at her. “She won’t stop talking about him.”

  “Sometimes I just don’t get you.”

  “The feeling’s mutual. Now, let’s go.”

  They pushed through the rusted metal d
oors and were immersed in another world. Loud music hit them like a solid wall. Air thick and heavy with smoke settled around them like a noxious cloud. The Friday night crowd was boisterous and noisy. Women in skimpy body suits flitted among the patrons, handing out drinks, flirting and accepting tips. A buxom young lady cavorted about the stage in time with the incessant rock beat. She was still semi-clad, and the key points were covered, but judging from the hoots and hollers from the peanut gallery Marnie doubted that would last long.

  Someone who might pass for a hostess approached them. She wore a simple black cocktail dress, and while the cut could hardly be described as modest it was downright elegant when compared to the attire of the waitresses and dancers who buzzed around the room.

  She brushed back a swathe of straight blonde hair and addressed herself to Don. “Hiya, honey. Table for two?” Her eyes flicked to Marnie. “Not many guys bring their girlfriends here.”

  Don stiffened. “Actually, we’re here to see Tate Barton. Is he around?”

  Her brilliant blue eyes roamed up and down Don’s sculpted form. “Yeah. He’s here. He’s in the office, but nobody goes back there without a direct invite. I can ask, but whom shall I say is calling?” She batted her eyelashes and lifted one eyebrow suggestively.

  Marnie demanded attention. “Just tell him Marnie’s here. And in the meantime, yes, we’d like a table.” As an afterthought she added, “Away from the stage.”

  The woman’s eyes checked Marnie over just as thoroughly as they had perused Don. “You looking for a job, honey? ‘Cause I can tell you right now, you’re not his type.”

  Marnie gritted her teeth. She was a lot more Tate’s type than this woman could ever guess. “Just get him. Please.”