"How about you, Clive?" I said.
Rylance shook his head. "It's madness, Jake."
"Come on," I said to the rest of the room. "Someone? Anyone? Do I have to do this myself? Any of you guys?"
Silence.
"Damn it," I said, and turned to deal with Buck's body myself.
"You got yourself into this," I heard Bross say. "Try and get yourself out of it. What the hell did you think you were going to do-sneak out of here? Save your ass?"
I turned slowly. "Trying to save all of our asses, Kevin," I said. "Because if you think just sitting here and being good boys and girls is going to save us, you're wrong. We have to get help."
"That's exactly what got Danziger and Grogan killed."
"Wrong. Russell killed them because they'd figured out who he is. Somehow he found that out-they could identify him. And I'll tell you something else: Grogan was the only one who knew our bank account numbers. Which means Russell's not going to get his money. And you want to guess what Russell's going to do when he doesn't get his money, Kevin?"
Bross's crooked mouth hung open in disgust. "Why is anyone even listening to this moron? He's got his head up his ass."
"No," said Cheryl quietly. "He's got guts. Unlike some of us here."
"Jake," Barlow said, "we're totally isolated here. There's no way to reach anyone anyway."
I shook my head. "There's a couple of possibilities. But I really don't have time to explain. I have to get this guy out of here. So all I ask of the rest of you is to cover for me. When they ask what happened to Buck, all you know is that he said something about being freaked out by the shootings, how he didn't want to go to jail for the rest of his life. You don't know anything more. And if they notice I'm gone, too, I said I had to take a piss, and I couldn't wait. That's all you say, okay? Nothing else."
I looked around the room. "But it only takes one of you to say something different, and we're all going to pay the price." I looked directly at Bross. "So even if you think I have my head up my ass, don't screw it up for everyone else. Including yourself, Kevin."
Bodine was nodding. So was just about everyone else, except Bross, who scowled furiously.
"No one's going to screw it up," Hank Bodine said. "Not if I have anything to do with it."
"Thank you."
"No, Jake," he said. "Thank you."
"All right. Is no one going to help me move this body?"
Silence.
"Me," came a voice from the far back corner. It was one of the Mexican waiters. The one I'd talked to at dinner.
Pablo, I remembered his name was.
"I help you," he said.
56
Pablo was small and skinny, with short dark hair and widely spaced brown eyes; for an instant I thought of Pee Wee.
But they looked nothing alike. This kid was slight of build, but scrappy, not fragile. And something else I'd glimpsed at dinner, as he apologized for spilling the wine: Behind the innocent eyes loitered a hell-raiser. A kindred spirit.
It was surprising how much easier it was to cut someone else loose than it had been to free myself. A couple of quick slashing motions using the heel of the blade, and the fibers began to give way, the strands splaying.
"There's no closet in this room, right?" I sliced through the ropes and tugged them off, jammed the two pieces of rope into my back pockets with the others.
"No closet."
"Out there?" I jerked my head toward the door as he clambered to his feet, ran behind me.
"For the table linens," he said. "But basement is closer."
No movement in the windows, no silhouetted figures. No screen doors slamming, no footsteps in the hall; not yet.
The entrance to the fitness center, in the basement, was next to the screened porch. Too close to Russell and his brother.
"How do we get down there?"
"I show you."
He knelt at one end of Buck's unconscious body, grabbing under the arms, his chest pressing against the back of Buck's neck.
The eyes came open just a bit, exposing little white crescents, and for a second I thought he might be regaining consciousness.
Turning around, I squatted between Buck's legs, grabbed his knees, leading the way out of the room.
Two hundred and fifty pounds or more of unconscious man was even heavier than I'd expected. Dried mud crumbled from the traction soles of his combat boots.
The great room was dark and still smelled of dinner.
How many hours ago was that? Five, maybe six? No more: yet the other side of a chasm.
We threaded carefully among the jumbles of haphazardly stacked furniture.
"Where kitchen is," he said, directing me with his eyes. We struggled to balance the body between us, keep it from sagging.
"If they come in," I said, "we drop him and run, understand?"
He nodded, strain contorting his face.
"There," he whispered.
I steered Buck's knees toward the kitchen door. The small round inset pane of glass was black, opaque. That meant, I assumed, that no one was in the kitchen.
The floorboards creaked.
I pushed against the door, swinging it open into the dark corridor. The cellar door, on the left, was sturdy oak.
"There," Pablo said again. "Switch is on the wall."
I let go of Buck's right knee to grab the big black iron knob. His right leg dangled, then his boot thumped loudly against the floor.
Somewhere a screen door banged.
I gave Pablo a look, but he already understood. We were moving as quickly as we dared with our ungainly burden.
The cellar door groaned open, rusty hinges protesting. I found the light switch on the wall, flicked it up, and a bare bulb came on, illuminating a narrow, steep stairway. The ceiling was low and sharply canted.
"Careful," Pablo whispered. "The steps-no backs."
I saw what he meant at once: The wooden steps were open, had no risers. A trip hazard, particularly since we couldn't easily look down.
The steps squeaked as we descended into dank cold air, the faint odor of mildew.
The cellar was dark, seemed to go on forever. Presumably, it followed the footprint of the lodge. The concrete floor, fairly recent, had probably been poured over the original packed earth.
A new cinder-block wall ran along one side, partitioning off the fitness center, a recent addition, from the rest of the basement. Against the wall was a line of old black steamer trunks, wooden crates, neat stacks of cardboard boxes. A facing row of metal shelving displayed miscellaneous junk: old lamps, cardboard boxes of lightbulbs, an antique Waring blender. An open pantry on the other wall was stacked with burlap sacks of rice and canned beans and giant tins of cooking oil.
"We need to tie him up to something that won't move," I said. "Where's the boiler?"
"Maybe something else," Pablo said. He jerked his chin to the left.
We carried Buck's body along a narrow aisle between tall steel shelves of laundry detergent and bleach and floor wax. Now, I figured, we were directly under the great room and the front porch. Oddly, the concrete walls sloped inward to what looked, at first glance, like the floor-to-ceiling bars of a prison cell. The light from the stairwell was too distant; I couldn't make out what it was.
Pablo gently set down Buck's head; I dropped the legs. Then he located a light switch mounted on a steel column and flipped it, lighting a line of bulbs on the ceiling.
Behind the steel bars, I could see, was a room whose walls and low, barrel-vaulted ceiling were built from weathered red brick. The floor was gravel. Plain wooden racks held hundreds of dusty wine bottles.
The wine cellar.
"Yes," I said, grasping a bar and tugging. "Good."
I pulled the two lengths of rope from my pockets, held them up. "We're going to need some more rope."
"Rope? I don't think down here…"
"Anything. Wire. Chain."
"Ah, maybe…" He turned slowly and headed back the way we'd come.
The wine cellar's grate was made of stout iron bars, the finest jailhouse construction. The Chвteau Lafitte wasn't going anywhere, and neither was Buck.