The Take (23 page)

“The
money, bitch. The fuckin’ money. You don’t tell me where it is, I snap your
spine over my knee. Last chance. What’s it gonna be?”

It was
gonna be an intact spine. “O-over there,” she whimpered, pointing to the
closet. “It’s over there.”

He held
her in that position, while he signaled to the other one, the younger one, to
check it out. The younger one went to the closet, retrieving the loaded trash
bag. Looking inside at all that money, all those bills, he allowed himself a
brief smile.

“This’s
it,” he said.

The big
one dropped Felina’s limp figure like it was a wet sandbag. Standing over her,
he looked even bigger, more menacing.

He
said, “You don’t even wanna think about what’s gonna happen to you if you try
to pull any shit.”

He
lifted her up and one-punched her into semi-consciousness. As she crumpled to
the floor, he heard the sound. The unmistakable deadly spit of a silencer.

≈≈≈

Joe Dunlap wheeled around, drawing his Magnum in one motion. He saw
the young detective in the doorway, facing him. Momentarily stunned, he watched
the younger man tumble forward to the floor, almost in a choreographed slow
motion. His arms reached outward, with the final knowledge of death imprinted
in horror on his face. He had gotten it in the back.

As he
fell, the source of the shot was now visible. A dark topcoat standing in the
doorway. And another one right beside him. His reflexes were about to return
the fire.

But
wait. The body on the floor. Is he dead?

No! He
can’t be.

Three
more spits in rapid succession found their mark in Dunlap’s lumbering body. The
Magnum flew from his hand, and he screamed in sharp pain. Everything started
draining away.

As he
was sucked down into some kind of giant, noisy hole, he could feel himself
using whatever instinct he had left to stagger toward the body of the younger
man on the floor. The spits kept coming from the automatic pistols, as they
blasted apart organs and arteries and teeth. Blood spattered everywhere,
smearing his overcoat, his hands, even his face, as part of his cheek was
ripped away. He found himself on the floor now, everything going dim, dimmer,
as he reached out for the corpse of the young man.

With
his final effort, Joe Dunlap moaned through the blood gurgling from his mouth, “Joey
… Joey …”

V
ega scooped up
the trash bag. The two Mexicans then rushed down the steps into the courtyard.
As they headed for the gate, Tomás, who had fallen behind a step or two,
stopped.

“Rafael,”
he said.

His
partner turned around just in front of the French fountain. A life-sized statue
atop the fountain’s center rose behind Vega’s chunky figure. It was an image of
Charlemagne holding a sword high in the air. The sword appeared to be pointing
directly up at the courtyard balcony outside Linda’s front door. From where
Tomás stood, Charlemagne appeared to be standing on Vega’s head.

“
¡Vamonos, Tomás!
We got no time for
this.” And then he saw the .22 semiautomatic pointed at him.

“No,
Rafael. You got no time. You got none left at all.”

“Hey,
what izzis? What —”

Tomás spoke
softly, in measured tones. “You wouldn’t
listen, Ese. I tried to tell you. Chico won’t be running things no
more. The other boys and me, we’re not working for no cripple in a wheelchair.
But we would have worked for you. You coulda had it all, Ese. You coulda been
the
jefe
,
un hombre de respeto
.”

The
near-f moon reflected off the dark waters of the fountain, as it cast watery
ripples of light into Vega’s angry
face and over Charlemagne’s powerful legs. Just beyond the fountain,
broad waving banana leaves cast wide, shimmering shadows across the rest of his
body. The rage in his eyes gave way to grotesque pain, as the silenced weapon
spit poison-tipped bullets into his gut and groin.

His
muscles went limp. Dropping the trash bag just before tumbling back into the
murky pool of the fountain, he barely made a splash. Tomás approached the pool
and put one more round into Vega’s temple.

The job
done, he detached the silencer, then re-holstered his automatic. He seized the
bag and opened the gate to the street, never even looking at Vega’s body as it
floated face down. In the morning, those waters would be red.

E
ddie Ryan
waited.

It seemed
like hours. The filmy sweat crawled over his whole body as he loomed in the
shadows of the van’s rear door. None of those guys had come out yet, making him
grow fearful of what might be happening.

Shit, if anything happened to Linda —
or shit, Felina! Goddamn, if anything happened to her …

But he
couldn’t’ve done anything, could he? I mean, what was he supposed to do? Just
go in there by himself blasting with his little .38 against four guys in
overcoats?

Shit, they mighta had machine guns or who
knows what.

With
each anxious minute, he suspected more and more that this all added up to very
bad news.

He just
knew he didn’t belong here, with all these motherfuckers coming out of the
woodwork looking to kill him. But, if only the goddam Dodgers hadn’t —

The
gate opened.

Eddie’s
head snapped up in time to see one man, the one with the cologne, coming out
into the street carrying the trash bag. Slowly, he drew the revolver from his
waistband.

Where’re the others? Where’re all them
other guys?

This sumbitch’s got my money!

The man
walked around the car behind Eddie’s van, over to the double-parked Cadillac.
As he reached for the driver’s side door, Eddie leaped from the shadows.

“Freeze,
motherfucker,” he cried, aiming the .38 with both hands at the man’s midsection.
He was only four or five feet away. “Drop the fucking bag or your ass is dead.”

The man
didn’t move. Eddie didn’t move. Or at least, he was trying not to. There was a
little quiver here and there, but the gun was stationary. “Drop it!” he shouted.
His voice was nearly drowned out by sirens approaching from the distance.

“Okay,
man,” replied the Mexican. “I drop it. Don’ shoot, okay? I drop it.”

“Drop —”
Eddie stopped in mid-sentence.

Right
then, with neck muscles bulging, the man flung the large bag at Eddie. It hit
the barrel of the revolver, knocking him off balance. His feet slipped from
under him, as he fell against the hood of the car. The man’s hand dove inside
his topcoat, emerging with a black angular pistol.

His
Mexican face, darkly handsome to begin with, broadened into a movie-star grin —
the kind that’s usually accented by soft-focus lighting and swelling violins.
This smile, however, was accompanied only by a crescendo of sirens, along with
the gun-metal gleam of his semiautomatic. At that moment, Eddie surrendered
totally to his own survival instincts, firing two shots. They were muted by the
sirens, now screaming right around the corner. He saw the man flung backward,
blood spurting from his chest, as a couple of fire engines roared up Burgundy
past St Louis.

Eddie
bent over the man. He was dead all right, no movement, glazed open eyes, blood
all over the cashmere. It was a cinch he couldn’t just leave the guy there in
the street, so he rolled him under the car that was parked right behind
the van.

Then he
picked up the trash bag and ran, dragging it back into Linda’s building.

In the
courtyard, the body floated in the fountain. It bobbed in the small pool, as
though it were supposed to be there, like for effect. Rushing up the steps as
quickly as he could while lugging the trash bag, he burst into the apartment,
startling Felina and Linda, but he sure wasn’t ready for what he saw.

Two
corpses lay close by one another, their faces frozen in masks of twisted
horror. Ugly stains of their blood spattered dark red across the room — the
walls, the rug, the toppled furniture.

Felina,
just coming to, laid on the sofa in tears, patting a damp washcloth on the
great gashes over her eye and upper lip. Linda, who had heard none of the
silenced carnage from her shower stall in the closed bathroom, was hysterical,
a towel halfway wrapped around her. She was closest to the door, sitting in a
chair with her head in her hands.

Eddie
rushed to her first, throwing his arms around her, while she melted into them.

“Eddie,
Eddie,” she cried. Howling sobs smothered her words. He held her tighter,
caressing her temple with a soft hand. As he did so, Felina called to him in a
weak voice. He gave his sister a reassuring squeeze and went over to Felina on the
couch.

“Baby,
baby, baby.”

He
gathered her in his arms, taking the washcloth from her. He dabbed at her
wounds, wiping away some of the awful blood that nearly covered the left side
of her once-perfect face. “It’s gonna be all right, darlin’. They’re dead, all
of ‘em. We got the money. Y’hear
me?
We got our money. All of it.” He smiled, then stroked her beautiful hair. “And
we’re goin’ to Mexico. Okay?”

Felina
managed a half-smile. “Oh, Eddie. It was terrible. I was … so afraid. I thought
he was gonna kill me. He hit me. So hard!”

She
whimpered out a few more tears, as he tightened his grip on her, rocking her
gently just as Linda used to do with him so many years ago.

He
looked over the bloody room and almost gagged. It looked like something out of
an R-rated movie, like Quentin Tarantino or somebody had just let his
imagination go crazy. Eddie couldn’t connect with those outer swamps where things
like this actually happen.

He did
know one thing, though. It wouldn’t be long before somebody found that guy in
the fountain, or the one under the car. There was no doubt that when they did,
he and Felina would have to be long gone.

He got
up and went to the trash bag. He drew out a handful of money packets, then
knelt by the chair where Linda sat. Her hysteria had subsided. Her dazed,
glassy eyes told the whole terrible tale.

“Sis,”
he murmured. “We gotta go. I’m leavin’ you this.” He pressed the money into her
limp hand. “For everything you’ve done, for putting yourself on the line for me
like you always did. I hate to — God, I hate to do this, leaving you here
with all this.” He swept the room with an arm gesture. “But I know you realize
that we gotta get out of here. I mean, the heat’ll be here any minute. Maybe
you c’n tell ‘em we went to Miami or someplace, to throw them off the track.”

“Sure,”
she mumbled. “Miami. Sure. Throw ‘em off the track.” Her eyes were still
transfixed in a gauzy gaze.

Eddie
got into the chair with her, while he continued to embrace her. She was half on
his lap, as he buried his face deep in her strawberry blonde hair, whispering, “I
love you, Sis. I love you so much. But we got to go.”

Still
holding the washcloth to her damaged face, Felina got up from the couch. Eddie
put his arm around her to help her up, then, dragging the trash bag with his
other hand, they started for the door.

Only
the odor stopped him cold after just a couple of steps. Felina knew it too.
They both flinched as their nostrils filled with the unmistakable odor of
Swisher Sweets.

“G
oing
someplace, buddy boy?”

The
soft voice of Val Borden boomed through the room, as he stepped out of the
hallway darkness into the apartment. Eddie and Felina backed up, pushed by the
sight of the long-barreled revolver in Val’s hand.

Val
stepped over the body of the young detective into the living room.

“Well,
looky here,” he said, checking it all out. “Looks like y’all had one hell of a
little party here.” He looked back at Eddie and Felina, biting his lower lip. “Y’all
been having a good time without me? Hm?”

“How’d
you find us?” Eddie asked.

“Oh,
you can thank your sweetie here for that,” he replied. “I paid a little visit
to her mama today. Seems your little honey just had to call home yesterday to
tell mama that her li’l girl was safe and sound in New Orleans. So I just
hopped in my pickup and drove on over.” He chuckled, as he said, “Dumb bitch
even gave her the address. What’d you think, honey? Think your mama was gonna
write to you?”

Eddie
stared at her in complete disbelief. “What? Is he kidding? Did you really call
your mother? Well, did you?” He grabbed her shoulders and shook her until she
talked.