B009XDDVN8 EBOK (50 page)

“Is he going to beat us up like old times?” said Ben.

“He never beat you up.”

“True.”

Tony let out a relieved “Ahhhhh” as he came back into the room, fastening up his pants. “I needed that.” He stopped, looked around. “What?”

“We’re just glad to see you still alive,” I said.

“There you stand, Moretti, lying straight to my face. At least some things don’t change.” Tony dropped down on one of the beds, his hands beneath his head, making himself perfectly at home.

“Tony, not that I’m not glad to see you alive and all,” I said, “but what the hell are you doing here?”

“I need a ride north,” he said.

“How’d you get down?”

“My bike. But when we were out of the house, I gave it to Derek. He needed it more than I did.”

“Not really,” I said. “I gave Billie the hundred thousand she wanted. I bought your brother’s life.”

“Why the hell would you do something like that?”

“I figured I owed you.”

“Then you should have given the money to me,” said Tony. “I would have taken it and let the bastard fend for himself. He’s on the run from Clevenger’s people anyway, and I could sure use a new truck.”

“Too late.” Pause. “So how was it, seeing him again?”

“It was full, man, that’s all I can tell you. Full. And you want to know what I did?”

“What?”

“I apologized. Just like I said I wanted to in that bar. I apologized—I don’t even know what for—but I felt suddenly lighter. Like I had let go of another one. You ought to try it, man.”

“Apologize to Derek?”

“To whoever.”

“But I don’t have anyone left to apologize to.”

“Find someone.”

“I’m sorry.”

“See, is that so hard?”

“Sure, you can hitch a ride with us. We’ll take you as far as Virginia. And maybe on the way up you can apologize to me for throwing that football in my face.”

“Are you sure I did that?”

“I’ve been carrying it a long time.”

“Let it go, dude, that’s my advice. Let it go.” Tony looked around a bit. “So this is what it’s like to hang out with you guys. I always wondered. Pretty damn lame.”

“It was better when we were sixteen,” said Ben. “And when Augie was still around. And when we were getting high.”

“So what
are
we doing, actually?” said Tony.

“We’re waiting for a call,” I said, and just then the minuet began to play.

I motioned to Tony to stay quiet and then, with shaking hands, gently handed the phone to Ben.

Ben closed his eyes for a moment like he was slipping into something and then opened them again as he answered the phone.

“Clevenger,” he said in a sharp Midwestern patter that was surprisingly close to the original. “Good. Stay put…Is she okay?…Make sure she stays that way…Twenty minutes…Right.”

When he hung up he dropped onto a bed like he had just run a marathon.

“Well?”

“She’s okay. They’re waiting for you.”

“Where?”

“Where we should have expected them to take her all along.”

I
HADN’T DARED
drive from the motel. I was too hopped up, too angry, too frightened, too nervous, too distracted. So I told Harry to get behind the wheel and situated Ben next to him to give directions, which left Tony and me sitting in the bed like migrant workers, the wind rushing over us with a terrifying roar. And all the while I was running scenarios in my head.

What would she look like? How scared would she be? What would I say to her? Was she mad at me? God, I hoped she wasn’t mad at me. I couldn’t handle it if she was mad at me. How would I play it with the sons of bitches who had taken her? What kind of deal could I make? The key to her safety, I knew, was to keep it low key and nonconfrontational. No police with their bullhorns and SWAT teams ready to turn the night into
Dog Day Afternoon
, no guns, no hysteria or acrimony. Just some reasonable men trying to find a win-win for everyone. I needed to let them know that Clevenger was dead, that the game was over, and that if they released Shelby with a minimum of fuss, they could each leave Florida rich enough to start over again. Probably fifty would be enough, but I’d offer whatever was necessary to make it happen. It would be tricky, sure, but I could handle it. Life and death is every day in the mortgage business.

But when we arrived at Derek’s overbuilt house, where my daughter was waiting, there it was, sitting right in front like a
slap in the face. And as soon as I saw it I knew with a thumping certainty that all my best-laid plans had been laid once again to waste. A blue Corvette—
the
blue Corvette—its perfect paint job blackened and shredded, its hawk nose badly broken, as if smashed with a baseball bat, its windshield peppered with shot.

“Whose wreck is that?” said Tony, pointing toward the battered Corvette after we had descended from the truck’s bed onto the street.

“Your brother’s,” I said, “though it was pristine when he parked it in the garage that went up in flames. You don’t think he went back for it, do you?”

“He was grateful enough to get the hell out of there with his life and my bike. He wasn’t going back for a car, even one that was once as nice as this one.”

I turned to look at the wide front door and said, “I should have known the son of a bitch wasn’t going to die so easily.”

“What is it, Johnny?” said Harry, coming from the front of the truck.

“Complications,” I said. “Go around back, Harry, and check out the boat. Make sure it’s empty, and if it is, make sure no one gets on it.”

“What are you fixing to do?” said Harry.

“I’m going inside the house to get my daughter.”

“You have a plan?”

“I did, but that’s been blown to hell. Now it’s all about figuring it out on the fly.”

“Then you might want this,” said Harry, taking the gun from his belt.

“What the hell am I going to do with that?” I said.

“Shoot it,” said Harry, “just not at your foot.

I went back to the truck, opened the door, took the toolbox from behind the seat. “All I’m going to need is this. Give the gun to Ben.”

“Here you go, youngster,” said Harry as he handed the gun over to Ben. “Don’t you fire it at your foot neither.”

We watched as Harry skipped around the house with his gimpy crooked lean.

“Handy guy to have around,” said Tony.

“You don’t know the half of it,” I said. “Stay out here with Ben. Anyone but Clevenger tries to leave, let him.”

“Clevenger?” said Ben.

“That’s right.”

“That rabid dog is in there and you’re going in alone?”

“You need backup,” said Tony.

“If he sees an army there’s no telling what he’ll do to Shelby. But he’s got me pegged for the coward that I am. He’s not worried about me, so we can work something out without the gunplay. In fact, the only reason he’s still here is that he’s waiting for me. Stay outside unless you hear me screaming in horrible agony, then maybe you two might want to join the party.”

“Good luck, J.J.,” said Ben.

“Yeah,” I said before I slid over to the heavy wooden door, pressed the front latch slowly, pressed the door open softly, stepped inside. The foyer was dark, the whole house was dimly lit except for light bleeding through the living room from the back room with the bar and the flatscreen and the pool table. Something was going on in there; I could hear the tinkle of ice in a glass, smell the noxious scent of a cigar.

I slammed the door closed behind me and called out, “Honey, I’m home.”

When I stepped down into the back room, I saw her immediately and my heart seized. There was nothing else in the room besides her. She was sitting demurely, her legs together, her arms crossed. Her beautiful face was wiped clean of its makeup, her eyes were small and red and wet, her mouth was tight with fear. And she seemed so young, Christ, a little girl again, my little girl. I was so captured by the sight of her, I even wondered why she didn’t run right to me when she saw me enter; I was worried that she might be so angry at what I had done to her that she couldn’t bear to touch me.

And then I noticed the guy next to her on the couch. With a gun jammed into her side. My old buddy Holmes. Out of the hospital and now in Florida, his face bruised, his left arm in a sling. So they had let him go, and he was the one who had picked her up. It kept on getting better and better, the mess I had created for my daughter. And the best treat of all was at the bar, with a drink in his hand and cigar in his teeth, his clothes blackened and singed but aside from that looking none the worse for the blow he took from the coffee table. Clevenger.

“Hey, Shelbs,” I said as calmly as I could muster. I think I might have even winked. “How you holding up?”

“I’m sorry, Daddy,” she said with a trembling jaw. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s not your fault, it’s mine. All of it is mine. Are you okay? Did Holmes hurt you?”

“No, I’m okay.”

“Was it just him?”

“Just me,” said Holmes.

“And he didn’t…”

“No,” said Shelby. “Nothing.”

“That’s good.” I looked at Holmes. “For you and for him.”

Holmes sneered at me out of that bruise of a face.

“I love you, Shelbs,” I said.

“I know you do, Daddy.”

“I’m going to take care of everything, okay?”

“Okay,” she said, forcing out a sorry excuse for a smile.

“This is quite the touching reunion,” said Clevenger, looking at the lit cigar he had taken from his mouth. “I’d be weeping if I was the kind of guy who wept. We’ve been waiting for you, Moretti.”

“And here I am.”

“Except you took your time getting here. We’ve been here too long, it’s time for us to clear out. So let’s get down to business, shall we? Who was it who decked me in the house?”

“Derek.”

“He’ll pay for that.”

“If you ever find him, which I doubt. I brought in the case.”

“Come to pay the piper, is that it?”

“Something like that,” I said.

“It’s good to see you wised up. The piper always gets paid. How much is in there?”

“All that was left of the cash we took. A hundred thousand dollars.”

“There’s twice that much.”

“Was, but I gave a hundred to the motorcycle gang.”

“Why the hell?”

“You don’t think they earned it for saving our lives? This is all that’s left. I’m sick of it anyway, it hasn’t brought me anything but loss. It’s cursed. You deserve it.”

“You bet I do. It isn’t enough to clean the books, but it will do for now. Bring it over.”

“Not until you let Shelby go. Just let her leave out the front door and the case is yours, it’s as simple as that.”

“I’ll set the terms, my friend, and you’ll accept them. You don’t have much choice, do you?”

I looked at Holmes on the couch, the gun still pointed at Shelby even as his attention was fixed on the box.

“No,” I said. “You’ve got me in a vise, all right.”

“So let’s cut out the chatter and cut right to it. Show me what you have, boy.”

I brought the case over to the bar. Clevenger put the cigar back in his teeth and swiveled to watch as I grabbed one side of the case with my right hand and reached down with my left to unlock the latch. As I lifted my hand to snap it open, in one smooth motion I missed the latch, grabbed hold of the handle, lifted the case, and drove it like a battering ram smack into Clevenger’s face.

The fat man hit the floor like a sack of gravy.

“Here’s how it’s going down,” I said to Holmes as I stared at the muzzle of his gun, now aimed straight at my heart. “You can bet I didn’t come alone. You shoot, you die, it is that simple. But there’s a way out. Put the gun down, walk out the front door, and it’s over for you.”

“What about him?” said Holmes.

“What do you care? Consider your employment terminated. The severance you get is your life. I’ll even throw in the cash if you just do it without any lip or back-and-forth. If I have another negotiation I’ll scream. Now put down the gun, take the money, walk out the front door, be something other than a mindless thug.”

“Go to hell,” he said, snapping his gun so it jammed right into Shelby’s torso, causing her to gasp. “Get up.”

“Daddy?”

“Do what he says, Shelby,” I said.

She stood and he struggled to stand with her. There was something wrong with his leg; the accident had done a job on him, all right, but not enough of one to put him out of commission. I should have sprung for the bigger engine in the 3 Series. When he was finally off the couch, he jammed his gun again into Shelby’s side.

“I am getting out of here,” said Holmes, “just like you said, and with the money, too, but not like you said. It’s going to be sweet Shelby and me together. And we’re going out the back, not the front, where your little trap is waiting.”

“You’ll never get away.”

“Sure I will. On the boat. Clevenger swiped the keys. Now slide the case over, low and slow.”

“It’s good to see a dumb lug like you taking some initiative,” I said as I put the case on the floor and kicked it over to him. “Too bad you’re a dumb lug.”

He gestured for Shelby to take the case, and when she looked at me, I gave her a signal to do just as he wanted her to do. She
reached down and heaved it up. While still pressing the gun into her side, he gave her a tug, and the two backed away, slowly, Holmes limping all the while, slowly backed away toward the sliding door that led to the pool and then to the dock.