Authors: James W. Hall
Benny reached out, gripped Thorn’s knee, and said, “Three years ago we were doing nothing but rent-a-cop work for weddings, bar mitzvahs, dances. Shit work. But listen to this: Last year we grossed over eighty mil.
“ ’Cause we broadened our scopes. Nowadays we do it all, employee surveillance, security procedures, counterespionage. Things as simple as weapons selection, guard dogs even. We’ll take a guy, set up his entire security program for him, small business, international. We do labor disputes. Say a company wants to stay operational in the face of some union bullshit. We do home-away-from-home service, uniformed guards, negotiators, even bedding, laundry, recreational gear, the whole schmear.”
“You guard scabs.”
“That’s one way to say it,” Benny said. He looked warily at Thorn. “And seclusion enhancements are also big these days.”
“Seclusion enhancements,” Thorn said, feeling his mind fog. He said it again. Thorn cleared his throat and said, “Guys you used to put away, now you’re coaching them. That’s how it is?”
Benny shifted in his chair and sighed.
“See, what I’m trying to show you, Thorn, is you give me a couple of weeks of your time, let me pick your brain now and then, if it works out between us, there’s a lot of slots a person could fill with this company.”
Benny leaned back, his eyes panning around his property, snagging for a second on the redhead shivering, toweling off.
He bent forward, his voice dropping a few decibels, a rough imitation of confidentiality. “Fact is, Thorn. I’ll give it to you in full honesty. I’m in love with these islands. I want to relocate my home office down here. But you know, the place is lousy with disorganized clowns, loners, and losers stepping all over each other trying to get things done. One of my goals is, I’m going to bring this county into the twentieth century, man. That’s the long and short of it. You don’t have anything against the twentieth century, do you, Thorn?”
“A lot.”
Benny smiled vaguely and said, “I have guys working for me, they hunt elk in Montana every fall and just work the winter season.” He seemed far away now, not sure what was happening to the thread of his sales pitch.
“Hunt elk,” Thorn said quietly. “With the antlers.”
“Or wild boars,” said Benny. “Whatever you’re into.”
“Could I shoot people?”
“Not regularly,” Benny said with the same flat voice.
“I’d miss shooting people,” Thorn said. “If things got dull, could I shoot at you?”
“All right,” Benny said, his voice suddenly neutral, finally catching on. He turned a twisted frown on Thorn. Things jumped in his temples. The gold conch shell flickered.
One of Benny’s men was striding over, carrying a portable phone, wiping his mouth with the wax paper from his submarine sandwich. He handed Benny the phone. Benny held it, still glaring at Thorn, tapping his finger on the edge of the table as if counting off the seconds.
Thorn made him count off a few more, then stood, moved to the edge of the hot tub.
He kind of enjoyed the rumbling sound of the hot tub. It reminded him of one of those cracks in the ocean floor he’d read about, where the lava superheats the water, bubbles out, filling the water with its dark fertility. The fish growing huge, the plants monstrous. He liked that, a fissure between this world and that one. A place where you could go to see the two worlds clashing and bubbling and the fish feeding on the bounty.
Benny came close to Thorn, looked down at the bubbles. “OK, so I was wrong about you,” he said. “But let me tell you something, hot rod. You wouldn’t have lasted with us anyway. I’m looking for men. Guys got uranium in their balls.”
“You know,” Thorn said, turning and taking a good grip on Benny’s lapels, “person like you needs to learn to relax. Get your blood pressure down in the double digits. Slosh around, open the pores.” Thorn had him on the edge of the steamy Jacuzzi. Benny helpless, at arm’s length now from Thorn. Roger was on his way over from the gazebo to protect his boss, not exactly in a hurry. “Guy like you puts so much stress on himself, it’s got to be bad for your arteries. I feel mine get tight just looking at you.”
Thorn let Benny go. He looked down at him there, splashing around, the guy not relaxing after all.
Gaeton had dreamed through the afternoon. It was his horny dream about lush jungle women. Brazilian, Peruvian. He wasn’t sure. He’d been having it now for weeks. The setting and the women always the same, but the story line different. Probably it was his libido sending tomtom messages to his brain. Cut out all this thinking and figuring, get back to the glandular truths. Now he wished he had.
In this afternoon’s dream he had cruised batlike through a tropical rain forest, steam rising from rivers. Sharp cuts in the emerald shade of palms. He’d seen the iridescent blues and reds of macaws, lizards. Deeper and deeper into the green shadow of the jungle until he coasted into a clearing.
And there he was suddenly sitting on a golden throne. He had tribal markings on his face and arms. Naked village maidens were lined up to present themselves to him, one by one. Good-looking maidens, too. Sonia Bragas, every one of them. That hair, those swollen hips. They lay down on the grassy earth, opening themselves to him.
He could feel his erection pushing against the linoleum. It brought him almost back to consciousness.
Then a blast of light. Sonia gone. The macaws flying into the brightness.
Gaeton swiveled his shoulders as much as he could to see the silhouette standing in the doorway of the shed. It was late afternoon. The door closed on an ominous sky. Probably five-thirty, maybe six. Sunday. Less than a week till the Old Pirate Days festival.
He’d always loved that time of year, even after it got so touristy. The seafood festival, the kissing booths, four days of everybody in Key Largo dressed like Blackbeard. Hey, me hearty. The treasure hunt at Harry Harris Park. The silly parade with pirate beauty queens in prom dresses and eye patches. The volunteer fire department throwing out rubber swords and headbands. It was goofy and small-town and commercial. But for three days in the middle of every January everybody on the island was smiling. And shit, when did you ever see that anymore?
Gaeton made himself look up into the shadow. He couldn’t make out the kind of pistol, but he could tell it had a silencer screwed on the barrel.
Benny leaned over and pulled off the tape and pulled out the sock. Gaeton had tested his range earlier in the day, rolling a half turn to his right, coming back, taking a breath, another fierce roll. But what then? Bite Benny’s ankle till he gave up?
Benny stepped close. Gaeton drew in a quiet breath.
“Oh, hey, Benny, it’s you. Jesus, how’d you find me? Let me tell you, man, it’s good to see you.”
“Cut the shit,” Benny said.
“What?”
“You know what, you Benedict Arnold.”
“Well,” Gaeton said up into the dark, “at least I tried.”
“That you did,” Benny said.
He had imagined this moment, pictured it in different ways. But never like this. It was Ozzie. Poor stupid Ozzie stumbling into it. That unpredictable swirl of weather that fouled up even Darcy’s forecasts. You could see the big patterns, shifts in the jet stream, fronts, and make probable calls based on them, but it was the little local dips and eddies in the atmosphere that might just lash up a tornado that would scatter a mobile home park. Hard as hell to see them forming.
“You’re a real smoke blower, you know that, Richards,” Benny said. “From day one I knew what you were doing. You came in here, smiling and winking and thinking you’re putting one over on me, finessing Benny Cousins. But from the first fucking minute you proposed it to the bureau, I knew. I always thought of you, Gaeton, as my pet. My pet mole.
“And then Larry, guy I had keeping tabs on you, he tells me you were knocked over the head by a guy in an ice cream truck and had taken up occupancy in this shed. And I’m like, what? This a special recipe for Eskimo Pie or something, grind up FBI undercover guys? Tell me, man. The fuck is going on with you? You in some kind of neighborhood dispute here? Some kind of sex thing? Man, it’s too weird even for me.”
Benny nudged the linoleum again, brought it back.
“How’d it happen, Benny?” Gaeton said. “You get some slime in an open sore? What flipped you?”
“Jesus, Richards. I thought more of you than that.”
“So what did it then? Tell me. You weren’t always a crook. Were you?”
“I’m still not,” he said.
He sat down on a wooden keg and sighted the pistol at Gaeton. He sighed and brought it back down.
He said, “See, Richards, you’re like most people, you got no sense of history. You never sat down and thought about what it is we’re doing, like in the big march of time.” Benny leaned his shoulder against the workbench, setting the pistol there. He said, “I’m a student of history. I read about crime. How it was, how it’s changed. How it is now. I mean, everybody acts like it’s all still ‘Honey, excuse me, I’m going to lift your money.’ Andy Hardy bullshit.
“Yeah, maybe there was a time back a hundred years ago, it was please and thank you, raise your hands, no profanity. There were rules. Everybody knew them, everybody used them. Cops could afford to be polite back. Make our nice little laws, all that goody-goody horseshit.”
Gaeton was quiet. His throat had almost closed anyway. And there didn’t seem much point to smart-mouthing.
He could hear a lawn mower, a baby crying. He held on to those sounds. He drew in the cut-grass smell, the aromas of the shed, oily concrete, something mildewing.
Benny said, “But come on, man. The dope czars, they got Silkworm missiles in their trunks, they got more people praying at their knees than the pope, and whatta we got? A piddling Smith and Wesson? The worthless fucking Bill of Rights?
“These guys got auras the size of New Jersey. They got armies and satellites and more money than the Saudis. This isn’t happytime Eliot Ness shit. You don’t Boy-Scout these fucks. What we need these days is guys on our side as big and bad and dangerous as their guys. And as rich. We been castrating ourselves with our decency and our Judeo-Christian this and that. But what we need, man, is good guys as big as they are. And ready to do whatever the fuck ugliness it takes. Guys like me.”
Gaeton said, “Tell me the scam, Benny. What the hell it was I died over, huh?”
“Fuck that noise,” he said. “I wouldn’t tell you jackshit.”
Gaeton dragged in some air.
Gaeton said, “It’s just you, isn’t it? Joey, Roger, the other guys. They don’t know from shinola what you’re into, do they?”
“I’m a loner,” Benny said. “Those guys are plumb lines, man. Fastest route between two points, every one of them.”
“OK, so what is it, Benny?” Gaeton said. “You supplying hitters for the Italians, playing with wise guys, is that it?”
Benny laughed, shaking his head in disgust. “That’s what you think? You work almost a year, and that’s what you come up with? Jesus, no wonder the FBI dumped you out here in a no-win situation. Guy as dumb as you, they were probably glad to get you out of the office.”
“Well, what then? You’re going to do me, what’s the harm? Tell me.”
Benny rose from the wooden keg. Picked up his silenced .38.
“You know, this is real convenient for me. You being rolled up like this. This is a real lucky circumstance. Because I been wondering just how I was going to step you across. But I like this, this is weird, rolled up like that. Some guy is working his own vendetta on you, and I’m just fortunate enough to be able to assist him. Man, sometimes, your karma kicks you out something like this, you know it must be from all the good you been doing. You see what I’m saying, Richards?”
“You’re a goddamn disease, Benny,” Gaeton said, trying to find Benny’s eyes in the darkening room, to give him a look to remember. But all that was left of him was a gleam from his bald head, another glint from that gold earring. Gaeton said, “You’re standing there giving me a twisted history lesson and I’m supposed to smile and nod my head. Get enlightened from a bag of self-righteous rat puke like you. A guy with a spine full of pus, a guy, he screws his country, and has delusions he’s a goddamn hero.”
The first shot tore into the edge of his belly. And Gaeton began to sink away into a gray sea inside himself. Then slowing, stopping, beginning to rise, coming up into his body again.
Benny looked down at him from a mile away. And with blood rising into his throat, Gaeton said, “Higher, asshole.”
The next shot crushed his sternum, knocked the breath from him. And he flickered on the edge of consciousness.
“Jesus Christ,” Benny said. “Those fucking checks. You’re still holding those, aren’t you? Huh, asshole?”
Then Gaeton could dimly make out Benny bringing his head down, reaching his arm into the linoleum roll, his hand slipping farther in, wiggling the fingers into Gaeton’s shirt pocket.
Gaeton collected his dwindling strength, focused it, let it gather as Benny dug the checks out. And as he was pulling his hand out, Gaeton grunted and jerked his head off the cement and bit into Benny’s ear. Snagged the earring in his teeth and gave his head a final twist. Benny screamed, fell onto the cement beside Gaeton. And Gaeton sucked the earring into his throat.
Far away he heard Benny cursing. And in a moment he felt the burning circle of the barrel press against his forehead. Branded. The Circle O Ranch.
And then it was cool and exquisitely dark, and for the first time in a very long time, he wasn’t thirsty.
Benny, fighting back the pain, dropped the pistol onto the cement floor. He tore off the yellow rubber gloves. Once again keeping his hands dishwater safe. He wadded them in the pocket of his crumpled white coat. Then he squeezed his ripped earlobe tight in his right hand. Blood on his sleeve, on his shoulder. He stood there cursing himself, cursing the dead jackoff.
With his other hand, he slid the cashier’s checks into his inside jacket pocket. His goddamn earlobe was pulsating with about a hundred megawatts. Benny chanted his curses, a twisted mantra of goddamns and shits.
He stooped over the body again and opened Gaeton’s mouth. He stuck his fingers in there, probing between gum and cheek, under his tongue, down into his throat. A fucking first, giving a guy a postmortem mouth feel.