Three Sides of the Tracks (22 page)

“Oh, thank goodness.” Caroline’s tongue danced inside his mouth then she
pulled back and kissed his cheeks, his throat, his lips. “When you yelled for
me to run, I couldn’t move. My heart was racing, my stomach fluttering. I just
wanted to run to you . . . to hold you.” Caroline stepped back and looked
deeply into Danny’s eyes. “Promise me you’re not just saying that to keep from
hurting my feelings. The way you’re kissing me—”

Danny kissed her hard then chuckled throatily. “Caroline, I can’t get you
out of my mind. You’re the only thing I think about, care about, but you’re
right. It is different. In a way, it’s like we just met.”

She rested her chin on his shoulder. “When did you know? I mean, did you
just wake up one day—”

“No. That date you had with Richard Turner. I felt so jealous. I realized
I loved you in a different way. Being my best friend was great but now . . .
well now I was
in
love with you too. It was like looking at a flower
petal one day and the next day it blooms.”

Caroline snuggled her face against his. “Something happened during all
this. I broke down and lost control; and, then, when I was at my lowest, I saw
your face, how you’d always protected me, helped me, saved me from all the
stupid things I got myself into. Since that moment I’ve been thinking about a
lot of things.” She wrapped her arms around him and squeezed him tight. “Danny,
I feel so alone unless I’m with you. I knew I loved you but not how much until
a moment ago.” She caressed his cheek. “Danny, I
fell
in love with you.
Oh my goodness, I’m tingling all over.”

“I love you too, Caroline. And don’t ever doubt it.”

34

Payoff

The phone rang twice then stopped. Jessie leaned over his desk and
snorted another line of his concoction, sniffed deeply, then washed it down
with a slug of Crown Royal. He picked up both phones Lenny had given him
because he couldn’t remember which one he’d used last and walked out the front
door without saying anything to Marie.

Before he’d driven 10 miles one of the phones rang.

“It’s all set. I’m taking care of the problem in a few minutes. Let’s be
clear on this. Don’t want any misunderstandings,” Lenny said.

“Fifty for the boy. A hundred for Caroline. Another hundred to do those
assholes. What’s to misunderstand? Just take some pictures so I’ll—”

“Why don’t you just drive down? I’ll keep one alive so you can have the
pleasure of seeing for yourself?”

 “Cause the damn FBI might be kinda curious about me leaving town.”

 “Just messin’ with you, man. I’ll see you in a few hours. Have the
dough?”

 “No problem. Listen, make sure my little girl doesn’t know about the
boy. Not a word. That’s part of the deal.”

“No, it ain’t part of the deal, but I’ll make sure she don’t know or at
least don’t know it came from you.”

“Okay. Make sure you throw those damn phones away too.”

“Sure, boss.” The line went dead.

Jessie threw his phones into the roadside weeds. “A quarter million
dollars,” he muttered to himself. “Hell of a lot of money for at most two days’
work.” He began considering whether Deadhead and Iggy could do away with Lenny
and save him big money.

 His mind was on how he would do it when he reached home and opened the
car door. Before he could step out, the car slammed violently forward, and
Jessie’s head hit the steering wheel. Someone jerked him out of the car and
hard knuckles pummeled his face.  

“Hire a hit man to kill my son, you son of a bitch. You’re going to jail
but not before I kick the living shit out of you.”

Jessie rolled on his stomach and covered his head with his arms. Fingers
tangled in his hair and raised his head then slammed it against the concrete
driveway. The drugs and whiskey and lack of sleep made Jessie too sluggish to
do more than try to block the punishment and hope it would soon stop. Who in
the hell would dare do this to him?

“Stop it, you’re going to kill him,” a voice said, then Jessie heard a
groan and the blows stopped.

Jessie crawled to his car and reached across the seat for his pistol. He
turned over and wiped blood from his eyes. Marie stood there with a metal lamp
in her hand. There was a man lying on the driveway but Jessie couldn’t tell who
it was. Then he remembered what the man said. “A hit man.” Whoever he was knew
about Lenny. Jessie aimed and fired. Three times to make sure.

“No, Jessie, no,” Marie screamed.

“Shut up. I had to kill him. It was self-defense. You saw. You hit him
with that lamp, didn’t you?” Jessie pulled up his shirttail and wiped his eyes
again.

“Damn it all,” he muttered when he saw that the man was Martin Townsend.
“Screw it. It’s still self-defense. He’s on my property.”

“You’re just as guilty as I am,” he told Marie. “Besides, you know damn
well he would’ve killed me if you hadn’t hit him with that lamp. That is what
you did, ain’t it?”

Marie stood frozen, looking at Martin, whose blank, lifeless eyes seemed
to stare right through her. Tears ran down her cheeks and her head shook back
and forth, back and forth.

There was an ever-growing pool of blood around Martin’s chest. Jessie
hadn’t missed.

“Who do I call?” Marie said in a trembling voice.

“Not a damn soul till I tell you to. I gotta clean up some stuff inside
first. You can call the lawyer. Think you can handle that without going to
pieces?”

“John Sawyer?”

“Hell, no. He’s probably blood brother to this one layin’ here. The
Atlanta lawyer. Bowtie.”

“I don’t know who ‘bowtie’ is.”

“Morrison, Marie. Just look in my address book. Charles Morrison.”

 Marie held her hands to her face one more time as if that would blot out
everything that happened then wiped her eyes and walked up the steps.

 “Wait a minute, Marie.”

“What now,” she said impatiently.

“How much . . . what all did you hear?”

“About what?”

“I don’t know ‘about what,’ which is why I’m asking. He was yelling and
talking crazy, and I’m just wondering whether you heard anything . . . whether
anything made any sense to you. Have to talk to the cops, you know, and we’d
better have our story straight even though it was self-defense.”

“I don’t know what you did to this man, Jessie, and I don’t want to know,
but, if the police ask me anything, all I can tell them is that he was
screaming and slamming your face into the ground when I came out.”

“Okay, Marie, that’s fine. That’s fine. Sorry if I was a little rough on
you. I’m just shook up is all.”

“Fuck you, Jessie.”

35

Confrontation

Lenny cruised highway A1A searching for the address on the map. He
followed the brightly lit numbers on the row of condos and hotels until he knew
he was close. Then he saw the iridescent numerals on two mailboxes perched
along the sidewalk, behind which were lots overgrown with semitropical
vegetation. A driveway separated the low palms and scrub from a grove of sea grapes.
“Yep, that’s it. Couldn’t be better,” he muttered.

He drove another half mile before turning around then pulled into the
hotel parking lot and backed into a spot next to the grove of sea grapes. He
put on latex surgical gloves then reached under the seat for his .22 pistol
with silencer and tugged a baseball cap low on his forehead. “Better sure than
sorry,” he whispered and put two extra 12-gauge shotgun shells in his front
pocket. He opened the trunk and grabbed the sports bag with the sawed-off shotgun.
The lighting was poor and he was already in the shadow of the sea grapes, so
his wiry body merging into the foliage went unnoticed.

 Lenny pushed through the 10-foot wide grove until he reached the
driveway then began his stealthy approach to the beach house.

He saw the two cars and stopped. The closest one had Georgia tags. He
touched the hood and it was still warm. The contract was here. Leaning at the
waist, he scurried from the Taurus to the house and, ever so slowly, raised his
head and peered through the curtains. He didn’t see anyone but did hear the TV.
He could see a refrigerator in the room to the right of the small sitting room
and a hallway to his left, which probably led to the bedrooms. He scuttled
around the side of the house and peered inside. Scant light coming from the
living room enabled him to see that no one was in either of the bedrooms, which
meant everyone had to be in the living room. Six people in one room was
problematic. He had to be sure.

He backed up a few steps and ran across the yard and over the sand dune. He
walked up the beach a few yards so the living room would be directly in his
line of sight, then set the sports bag down and tucked the pistol into his belt.
He looked around to make sure no one was in sight then crawled up the dune. As
he suspected, the sliding glass doors allowed him a good view into the living
room. He saw Slink right away. Shifting a little to his left, he saw Smurf and
Whitey reclining on the couch. Only three. Damn it. Where were the contract and
the girls? “Crap, guess I’ll have to do this the hard way.”

If he rushed them from here, they’d see him before he could get the doors
open, so he scuttled back around to the front of the house. He strapped the
shotgun over his left shoulder so that it supported its own weight then cradled
the short barrel against his forearm and quietly cocked both barrels. He took a
deep breath and turned the doorknob. To his surprise, it wasn’t locked. “Cocky.
And stupid,” he muttered and pulled the .22 automatic from his waist.

Lenny eased the door open just past the doorframe, stopped and listened.
Satisfied he was still undetected, he pushed the door open with his shoulder
and glided into the room.

“I’m three short. Where’s the others?” Lenny said in a monotone. He leaned
against the doorframe separating the living room from the kitchen. The shotgun
pointed toward the couch and the pistol at Slink.

Smurf’s cigarette stopped halfway to his mouth. Whitey’s eyes gauged the
distance to his pistol on the table. Slink shook his head.

“So are you the badass daddy or did the badass daddy send you?” Slink
said.

“Do I look like a blinkin’ daddy?”

Slink turned to face Lenny, but shielded Lenny’s view of the
ivory-handled pistol as he did. “He must want his girl back pretty bad. What
about the others?”

Lenny swung the .22 away from Slink. It made a “Pufft” sound when he
pulled the trigger, and a bullet punched a hole in the wall between Smurf and
Whitey. The barrel swung back to Slink.

“Where are they? Not gonna ask again.”

“Kill us and how you going to get paid? Can’t find ‘em without us.”

“Found you, didn’t I?”

Slink turned back to the TV. Silence hung in the room. Smurf and Whitey’s
eyes shifted from watching Lenny to sneaking peeks at Slink for some hint of
what to do.

“Okay. Say we give you the girl or girls. Your boss want the guy too?”

“Just the girls. The guy is mine.”

Slink’s eyes bored into Lenny’s. “Now that don’t sound too friendly. You
couldn’t have found us without him. You didn’t tail him down here though, so
you must’ve . . .”

Lenny aimed the shotgun straight at Smurf and raised his eyebrows.

It was too much for Smurf. “They’re in the yard under the—”

“Shut up, you idiot.”

Another “Pufft,” and bits of cotton popped from the headrest of Slink’s
recliner.

Slink didn’t budge. “You son of a bitch. Killed my Unc, didn’t you? Found
out which house it was, then followed the kid down here.”

Lenny couldn’t hide his delight at killing Bernard, and Slink saw it in
his eyes. “Get him,” he yelled, and Smurf and Whitey dove for their pistols.

Lenny fired the first barrel at Whitey because he was quicker. Eight
balls of lead blasted from the shotgun barrel and caught Whitey full in the
chest, slamming him against the wall.

The .22 spat bullets at the armchair but Slink rolled over the side of
the recliner, ran through the hall and out the front door. As he fumbled for
the car keys, he heard the shotgun roar a second time and knew Smurf was gone
too. He snatched the car door open, jammed the keys in the ignition and whipped
the stolen car around and up the driveway. He was on A1A in little over a
minute since he’d yelled Whitey and Smurf to their deaths, but the only thing on
his mind was how smart he’d been for slipping five thousand dollars from the
bag and hiding it under his shirt.

*  **

Lenny didn’t bother running after Slink. He’d never catch up. Not now,
anyway. There’d be time for that later.

He saw the shovel as soon as he opened the beachside door. A few steps
into the small yard, he saw the disturbed ground.

As he began to scrape sand off the first depression, he heard voices and
stopped. Was it the two women or the contract and Jessie’s daughter? The job
would be much simpler if it were the women. Lenny dropped to his knees and
lowered his head to the ground. He heard a male voice. Cursing under his
breath, he stood back up and checked the number of bullets left in the .22.

The voices stopped as he scraped away more sand. Wary the two might bolt
as soon as the lid was loose, Lenny stooped and spoke into the air hole. “The
others are gone. I’m here to rescue you, so take it easy. I’m taking the lid
off now.”

Lenny pried up the upper portion of the lid then raised it off the box and
tossed it into the yard. He straddled the box and offered a hand to Caroline.

She sat up but didn’t take the hand. He gave off the same vibes as Slink.
“Why are you wearing those gloves?”

Lenny hesitated. “Oh, well, kinda particular, I guess. Don’t like to get
my hands dirty. All that digging. You know.”

“
Surgical gloves
for working? Who are you? How did you find us?”

Lenny lost patience. “Seems like you’d be grateful to get out of that box
instead of pestering me with questions. You want out or not?”

“Not if you’re one of them.” Caroline looked toward the house.

“You don’t have to worry about them anymore. Trust me. They won’t be
bothering anyone else.”

Caroline stood up. “My daddy sent you, didn’t he?”

“What does it matter? I’m taking you home,” Lenny replied in a gruff
tone, tired of the banter, but not wanting to give Jessie an excuse to get out
of paying him.

Caroline glared at the man as she stepped out of the box.

Danny grabbed the sides of the box to pull himself up. A foot pushed him
back down. 

Lenny stepped into the box, above Danny’s feet. “Not you. You’re one of
the kidnappers.” He pulled out the .22.

“Are you crazy? He came to rescue me. He got here before you did,”
Caroline shouted.

“You’ve been misled, miss. He’s been with them all along. That’s how he
found you so easy. Go stand beside the house, please.”

“I will not. Put that gun away.”

Danny saw the eyes change just before Lenny pulled the trigger. He rolled
to his right as the pistol’s ‘phfft’ erupted. The bullet thwacked into the
plywood behind him.

“No. Not him,” Caroline yelled. She leaped at Lenny and grabbed for his
gun arm.

Lenny blocked Caroline with his body then pushed her away with his free
hand. Just as he swung the pistol toward Danny, the boy rolled back over. In a
flash of insight, Lenny understood the despair in the eyes of all his past
victims just before they died.

The hollow-point bullet from the hidden derringer struck his throat and expanded,
ripping through flesh and blood vessels. His head flopped to one side as a
copious spout of blood turned the sand red.

Even the sound of the dying hurricane’s wind and rain stopped.

Danny’s hand shook and he felt like throwing the derringer as far as he
could. But he didn’t dare. So much had happened, he was afraid . . . just
afraid. Finally, he climbed from the box and wrapped an arm around Caroline,
who stood transfixed, staring at the grotesque body.

“Oh, Danny.” She flung her arms around him and sobbed.

He stroked her back and let her cry.

“I know my daddy sent him. I just know he did. I feel so dirty, so
ashamed. How can a person be so mean he wants to kill someone who’s never done
anything to him? How can I be the daughter of someone like that?”

“You’re not.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean you’re nothing like him, so don’t feel guilty for the crap he
does. Okay?”

Caroline cuddled her face between his shoulder and neck. “You have a big
heart. As much as he’s done to you, you’ve never once blamed me or held it
against me.”

“I know you too well.”

They held each other for a few moments then Caroline looked at him with a
twinkle in her eye. “Maybe not as well as you think.”

“How do you figure that?”

“You didn’t expect that first kiss, did you?”

Danny chuckled. “No, you got me there. But I’d like another.”

“Anytime,” Caroline said. She cradled his face in her hands and kissed
him deeply, then suddenly broke their embrace.

“Oh, my gosh. I forgot about Brandy. She’s there.”

Danny found the shovel as Caroline stood over the pit and told Brandy
through the air pipe that they were digging her out. Brandy didn’t reply.

“Hurry, Danny. She’s not saying anything.”

Danny scraped the sand off and pried up the lid.

Brandy lay curled up in a fetal position, eyelids half open. She didn’t
seem to notice she was free.

Caroline stooped down and brushed sand off her face. “Brandy, come on
now. It’s over. We can go home.”

Brandy’s eyelids flickered. She looked suspiciously at Danny as he untied
the knots around her ankles. “Who is he?”

“This is Danny, my friend.”

“The Danny you were calling for the other day?”

Caroline fought back a blush. “Yes. He found us. Come on, we need to get
you to the hospital to take care of that leg.”

“I’m gonna help you up,” Danny said gently and reached an arm under
Brandy’s shoulders and raised her up.

Caroline untied the rope around her wrists.

“Can you stand?” Danny asked.

The knife wound had turned ugly. Half of Brandy’s thigh was now dark blue
and streaked with caked blood.

Brandy tried to stand, with Caroline holding her on one side and Danny on
the other. The bad leg wouldn’t take any weight.

“We’ll make better time if I carry you. Hold onto my neck. I have a car
in the driveway.” Danny picked her up and carried her to the Taurus, thankful
both for leaving the keys in the ignition and that Slink had taken off in the
other car.

Danny laid Brandy across the back seat. “You’re going to be fine. This is
all over, okay?”

Brandy nodded without speaking, her eyes still glazed.

“Should we call the police before we leave, so they don’t think—”

“I don’t give a damn what they think. Let’s get Brandy out of here,”
Caroline said.

She pecked Danny on the cheek, opened the driver’s side and slid over.

“My phone. I have to go inside and get my phone,” Danny said. “Where’s
yours?”

“It was in that other car, I think. Anyway, don’t take time looking for
it. Just get yours and let’s go.”

Danny had driven past the hospital on his way in and remembered where it
was. They were there in 10 minutes. He parked right outside the emergency room
doors, and Caroline helped Brandy from the car while Danny found a wheelchair.

Brandy settled into the wheelchair and looked up at Caroline with misty
eyes. “Thank goodness that’s over. A nightmare if there ever was one, huh?”

Caroline blinked back tears and squeezed Brandy’s shoulder. “It
is
over. Try not to think about it.”

Danny wheeled her over to the admitting window. As he told the nurse why
they were there, the nurse’s disinterested eyes lost their dullness and began
their journey from disdain to incredulous. Danny leaned closer to the glass
window. “Ma’am,” this lady has a
very
serious knife wound.”

The woman’s gaze switched to Brandy, who was now parked behind Danny with
Caroline holding onto the handles. The wretches standing before her made the
homeless people the ER treated look like well-dressed storefront mannequins.
Filthy; deep bruises; cut faces, arms, lips; matted hair. The trio looked more
like disaster victims than the people who walked into her ER.

She snapped out of her shock and picked up the phone to wake the dozing
intern. She slid paperwork through the window and told Danny to fill it out and
someone would be with them in a moment.