Page 69 of Double Shot
My dear Sadie had changed too. She had always had a core of sterner stuff, but now she had confidence, and was a lifetime away from the first day I saw her. Her bone thin half-starved body had filled out, and there was definition and tone to her. She found a purpose beyond just surviving another day, making it through another week.
* * *
After a third month,having put quite a dent in the entertainment and humanities offerings of the Baltimore/DC/Indigo City area, we decided it was time to visit a certain memorial. The anniversary of Lach finding Sadie and bringing her into our house seemed like a fitting date to go back home.
The drive from Phoenician, across Indigo, and down to Bootlegger was quiet and somber. Clouds hung over the city like a funeral shroud and the news promised rain later in the day. Breakfast had been light, a scattering of toast, some fruit, none of us had much of an appetite, and we had a lunch reservation at the Powhattan Hotel. Dressed in black, we did seem fitly dressed for a wake.
Itwasa wake really, for years the House on Bootlegger Head had been an integral part of our lives. Lach and I had turned the place into a fortress, ran the most lucrative jobs of our respective careers there, and amassed the fortune that placed us in the rarified company of the wealthy and the elite, with none of them knowing who we were, and that was an incestuous group of mock blue-blooded bastards.
We were no Rockefellers or Carnegies, but the holding companies I had built through elaborate means and online constructs were worth tens of millions of dollars. The house had reflected that, in our collected art, the cars, and the investments that had danced out of the Batcave and into our portfolios. The carefully manicured lawn, the intricate defenses, the historic stone wall, the jetty to where the boat had been berthed, it had all been by our hands.
The driveway curved up, and sections of the wall were still present, but the carnage of so many months ago was gone. The wrecked cars hauled away, the bodies carted off to the morgue, and the burning wreck of the house had been cleaned away. The basement under it was filled, and there was nothing left of it but a wide grassy field. We parked and then walked the rest of the way to where the front door had been.
The police and federal agencies had swarmed the place, and through cross referencing, they had found all but two of the landmines. Those would be dead now, once activated they had some sort of clever chemical trigger that would eat the fuse away, after so many days, leaving it inert. The other possibilities were that they had gone off and not been accounted for in the survey, or someone pocketed a pair of landmines, and then the dead fuse would still have happened.
“I really fucking liked that house,” Lach said.
“It was nice,” I agreed.
“Nice, you two owned a mansion that would have made Bruce Wayne jealous. All fancy and expensive and full of tricks and secrets.” Sadie slipped an arm around my side. “I was only there for a few months but nowhere we’ve been has really matched it, you know?”
“Aye,” I nodded.
“That’s because he did everything.” Lach gave me a smile. “I mean, God knows what asshole decorated and furnished this new house.”
“They liked mismatched antique furniture and basic store offerings.” I gave him a laugh.
“Did you have all the furniture custom made?” Lach asked.
“Nay, just a few pieces. Most of the stuff I found in overseas estate auctions, and I had a field day when some Silicon Valley wanker bought a castle, hated everything in it, and sold it. I took everything I could get, even tried for the tapestries, but those went, ouch, way over my budget.”
“What’s way over your budget?” Sadie gave me a squeeze.
“I won’t pay thirty grand for old wall rugs.” I squeezed back.
“You cheapskate, next thing I know, you’ll be hitting me up for tips on how to find clean food in the dumpster.” She smiled, but there was a shadow over Lach’s face. I gave him a tiny shake of the head, no reason for him to jump on that soapbox. She would never eat from a trash can, dumpster, or alley again in her life.
“What are we going to do with it, can we rebuild?” she asked.
“Nay, too many questions, there was a lot of contraband inside that building and they found residue and wreckage but not enough for tracing records. The people who owned that housediedwith it, and as far as the government is concerned, that is that. There are provisions, the city is supposed to take possession of the property, and ideally turn it into a park, at least that’s what is in the contracts.”
“A park, that’s,nice.” Lach gave a sneer.
“I think itis, nice,” Sadie said slightly defensively, knowing Kyle for his penchant of off-color jokes. “A park I can come to and sit and remember the good times? I’d much rather that than some development.” She sniffed.
“It is, indeed, the best option,” I agreed. “We can’t take it back, too many questions, too much heat.”
“Still, we’re out all of that money.” He tucked his hands in his pockets, I knew that annoyed body language, and it sometimes surprised me that even after the amount of money we had, he could be upset by even small losses.
“Nay, again. We’re not out as much as you think.” I gave him a nod.
“Explain that,” he said.
“The place was insured, because obviously, mate. The cars, the art, especially the art. There was a rider on the house as well, nice lump of change, that.” He looked unconvinced.
“A lot of insurance companies pay out to dead people?” he asked.
“That’s a good question.” She looked up at me.
