Double down, p.35
Double Down, page 35
After two fidgety, eventless hours out on the deck, Sigurd decided to act on a notion that had been rattling around in his head all evening. He popped inside, made a quick call to room service, and told them to send up a cold sixer. Couldn’t hurt none, he figured, couple brews; steady his tweaky nerves. This was some kind of heavy shit coming on, midnight, more responsibility than he’d ever had laid on him in his whole life, and he didn’t want to fuck up. Wanted to show ’em all—D’Marco, Uncle Eugene, Dietz, especially Dietz—Sigurd Stumpley had some def moves in him. Do it right and get in tight—that was his motto. Also make Mom proud, that’d be good, too, little fringe benefit, like.
He was right about the beer. Back on the deck, sipping at one (but slowly, temperately, and only his third), he was feeling better already, mellowing in the convalescence of the black wash of night. Okay, okay, so his partner might not approve—so what? Fuck him. He wasn’t here to bitch about it and he didn’t have to know. No harm being done. Nothing going on across the road over there. Everything under control. Fuck him. Anyway, he was borderline bonkers, that D’Marco, had to be your primo candidate for the wig factory.
Take tonight, for a for instance. Earlier, going through his gear bag, deciding on the pieces they’d be using, he’d held up a double-edge shank looked about a foot long—dagger, he called it—and said something about cutting ’em up, making a splatter platter. Then he brought out a goddam blowtorch, f’Chris’sake, talked about doing a Shake ’n Bake on ’em. Real casual-like, like he was trying to choose between a Bud and a Coors (or a carrot and a cuke, his case). And when he finally handed over the .22 and the silencer, his eyes got all wet and glittery and he said, “Do a tap with one of them and the loudest noise you’re gonna hear is the mark’s scream.” That’s what he said. Dr. Frankenfuckinstein.
The way Sigurd saw it, clipping the marks, standing up, that was one thing. But he wasn’t so sure about that weird kinky stuff, like the business with the ear the other night. That was straight out of the D’Marco Fontaine twitch house, and he didn’t like to think about that.
So he tried not to. He eased back in the chair, sipped beer, and waited, allowing his thoughts to drift along like the ragged coiling clouds skimming across the face of the moon. The very shape of the sky, empty of stars, seemed to shift before his eyes. Sky, clouds, peekaboo moon, sultry night—all combined to cast a magic spell, much as he’d felt that other night, gazing into the immense black void of ocean and contemplating, in his own fashion, the awesome mysteries of fate and chance, and the thin fragile line between life and death.
But a little after eleven these philosophic musings gave way to an urgent summons in his bladder, and though he didn’t like to leave his post he figured he better get it taken care of now, before the fireworks show began. In the john he washed and rinsed his hands deliberately, after his habit, and planted himself over the stool, unzippered his fly, and was about to blissfully unstopper the dam and—wouldn’t you know?—the goddam phone rang. Nice fucking timing. Unrelieved, he went into the room, picked up the receiver, and pressed it to his ear, and before he could even get out his standard Yeah salutation a breathless old fart voice demanded, “You see it?”
“Huh?” Sigurd said with some annoyance. “Who’s this talkin’?”
“O’Boyle. Tropicaire. You see it?”
“See what?”
“Lady. Just drove up. Went in the unit there.”
“When’d this happen?”
“Just now, like I said. You didn’t see it?”
“Nah, I hadda come inside a minute.”
“You Frog? You ain’t Frog.”
“I’m his partner.”
“Fella called Frog, he said watch real close tonight, anything funny go on let him know, he didn’t say nothin’ about no lady, so I thought I oughta—”
“Okay, okay,” Sigurd cut in on him, “give it a rest, hey. I got to think here.” His mouth had gone suddenly dry, and he could feel his heartbeat picking up speed. Even the sting down below was on temporary hold.
“I do right, callin’?”
“Yeah, you did good.”
“You tell Frog, okay?”
“I’ll tell him.”
“Anything else I should do?”
“Nah, just stay where you are. Keep watchin’. Keep cool.”
The instructions were pronounced toughly, evenly, like he knew what he was doing, but Sigurd had to wonder if they were delivered to the manager or to himself. He put down the phone and, tugging at his fly, hurried out onto the deck. Sure enough, there was the Jag parked outside the apartment, same car the player’s squeeze drove. So something was for sure going on, something funny, like the freeze dry just said. He looked at his watch. 11:20. Wasn’t till midnight he was suppose to make his move. Maybe he should get on over there right now. Or maybe call Dietz. Fucked if he knew: Nobody said nothing about this.
He stood there a moment, heart thumping, bladder burning. An agony of doubt and physical distress. And then the decision was taken out of his hands, for off to the right two fingers of light appeared and behind them a car streaking down the road and squealing to a stop alongside the Jag. Holy shit, it was the Caddie, the player. Sigurd looked back up the street, fully expecting to see the LX come wheeling around the corner. No LX. Something serious gone wrong, mistake somewhere. And he knew Dietz frowned on mistakes. So did D’Marco. Seething with manic energy, cursing out loud the wicked luck that laid the burden of choice squarely on him, he dashed through the slider and out the door and down the corridor and down the stairwell, moving stiffly, fast as he was able given the mounting pressure in his lower regions, and attaching the silencer to his piece as he ran.
Not even midnight yet and here comes Mr. Badass tearing through the door like a chased hound. Jumps behind the wheel of the Caddie and takes it rocketing up the street and out onto PGA Boulevard. Whatever was coming down here, it wasn’t in the plan. But whatever the fuck it was, D’Marco had no time to deliberate. That was okay. Didn’t matter. Been enough deliberating already.
He turned the key in the ignition and pulled away from the curb. He swung onto PGA and, picking up speed, shaved the gap between him and the player easily. No problem there. None. Caddie up against this sweet little tooler of his—no contest. And as his vision narrowed on it, gun-sighted it through the windshield, all the sluggish lethargy comes of sitting on your can waiting three hours or better (three hours?—make that two long weeks) melted right away in the tingly heat welling up out of the pit of his stomach and rising through his chest and charging his limbs and quickening his breath. Same familiar heat he always felt just before a pop. Was nothing in the world measured up to that feeling. Nothing even close.
So intent was D’Marco on the unequal race, its winner and loser foreordained, he never once bothered to glance in the rearview mirror. If he had, he’d have seen a curious sight: a Rolls coming down the road behind him, moving just as fast as he was, swinging in and out of the traffic just as nimbly, a fierce-eyed black man at the wheel.
Quite by accident, it was the drawbridge that rescued him. Rescued?—more accurately bought him a moment of time. The Mustang closing in fast, the feeble escape plan utterly abandoned in the wild confusion of flight, he caught a glimpse up ahead of a tall-masted yacht slipping through the channel. He had a clear run at the bridge, and he floored it and got in just under the falling barrier gate. In the rearview he could see the Mustang grind to a fishtailing stop and swing about in a wide turn, and behind it, unless he was mistaken (for the two slabs of roadway were parting now, rising), the Rolls Corniche doing the same maneuver. So he had to assume there were two of them now, and if he was right, then the shooter would know instinctively where he was headed and the superspade would be keen enough to stay with the vehicle that was clearly tracking him, and if they took a back route down Prosperity and over to Highway One and across the Blue Heron Bridge then he had maybe a five-minute start on them, five minutes at most, no more, maybe less.
All these thoughts swept through Waverly’s head, and others as well, but none so dizzying, so chilling, as the thought inspired by the sight of the silver Jaguar parked outside the Tropicaire bungalow. Caroline? Here? Now? Not even the unkindest fate could play a joke so desperately cruel as this one. Yet when he came bursting through the door, there she surely was, perched on a counter stool, coolly sipping a drink; and there was Bennie, chewing up the rug, clutching a glass of his own, scowling, fuming. They spoke in unison, a simultaneous chorus.
Bennie: “Timothy, fuck’re you doin’ back—”
Caroline: “Tim, I’ve decided to—”
Waverly silenced them both with a flagging arm. “No talk. No time. They’re right behind me. Out out out—now!”
Bennie’s jaw dropped. He understood. He slung the glass on the couch and made for the door. But Caroline froze. Waverly crossed the room and seized her by the wrist and yanked her roughly to her feet.
“My things,” she said, wagging her head at two bags on the floor in a corner. “What about—”
“Forget the bags. Move!”
She moved. But outside, as he swung open the Jaguar’s door, she balked, turned, and gave him a frantic, searching, bewildered look. “Tim, what’s happening? Why are you—”
“Listen, Caroline. Don’t talk, listen. You’re in danger here. Serious danger. I want you to get in this car and drive away. Fast as you can pedal.”
“But I came here to be with you,” she said, and her stunned eyes were streaked with tears. “Go with you. The way we said.”
Waverly hesitated. So much to say. So many messages undelivered. “I know, I know. Maybe we’ll make it yet. Another time.”
“For Chrisfuckinsake, Timothy,” Bennie was bawling at him, squeezing his bulk in under the wheel of the Caddie, “let’s roll!”
There was a hollow flat thumping sound and, instantaneously, the sound of the Jaguar’s rear window shattering. Waverly jerked Caroline down behind the door, and peeked around it, and in a voice not all that far off a groan he said, “Jesus, we’re too late.”
For diagonally across the road, no more than fifty yards away, coming at them in a peculiar twittery hop, was the sidekick, the comic fatty, not so funny anymore with a piece in his hands. But just then he stopped abruptly and wheeled around, caught in the headlights of a car rushing toward him.
Waverly stood and pulled Caroline up beside him, and over his shoulder he called, “Come on, Bennie. Run.”
“Run where?”
“Over there.”
The three of them darted across the street and down the breezeway in front of the Collonades, Waverly in the lead, urging them on: “Run, run.” He heard the car come to a squealy halt and he looked back once and of course it was the Mustang. They kept running.
And as they turned the corner at the south wing of the hotel, two more of the hollow thumps sounded behind them. They sprinted along the wall as far as the stairwell in the back, and there Waverly suddenly stopped. He looked around him. Wall on one side, wide empty parking lot on the other, and ahead of them a grassy sweep of lawn and beyond it an expanse of open beach and beyond that the dark silent ocean. Caroline’s breath came in great shuddery heaves. Bennie gasped out the words, “Now where?”
Waverly put a foot in the wire mesh covering the entrance to the stairs, forced it down. “Up there,” he said. “Nowhere left to run.”
About halfway down the street D’Marco stopped running, set himself in a crouch, gripped his piece with both hands, and popped two caps at the figures fleeing through the shadows along the face of the hotel. Impossible to tell if he hit anything. No screams, he didn’t think so. He came out of the street—no cover there—and followed the breezeway the length of the building. Again he stopped, flattened his back to the wall, sucked in a deep breath, and graceful as a ballerina, pivoted around the corner, arms extended, elbows locked, the weapon in his hand swaying back and forth like the head of a tranced cobra. No one in the parking lot, no one in the dark passageway ahead of him. He ran to the back of the hotel, paused, listened. There was the sound of footsteps clambering up the stairs directly above him. Also heavy footsteps coming up behind him, and Sigurd’s wheezy panicked voice: “You see ’em, man? You clip ’em?”
“Shut the fuck up. Tell me, quick, what went down here?”
“I dunno. I’m watchin’ from the deck and outta nowhere the cunt pulls up, then the player. Didn’t see you, didn’t know what to do, so I figured I better get over there, sit on ’em till—”
“Okay, so there’s—what?—three of ’em?”
“Yeah, right, three.”
“They packin’?”
“Dunno that either. Don’t think so, way they bugged outta there. I’d’ve nailed ’em, too, except you—”
“C’mon.”
“Where to?”
“Just follow me, assbag. Move it.”
D’Marco took the stairs three at a time. From the sound of it they couldn’t be any more than three, four flights above him. No lead at all. Very cautiously, he came out of the stairwell at the seventh and last floor. He heard the footsteps receding down the oceanside breezeway, and then he heard a door cracking open. No more footsteps. Executing the same balletic move, he swung around the corner. Empty breezeway. Empty silence.
Silence, except for the clomping, sounded like a goddam baby elephant mounting the stairs. Worthless fuckup. Preceded and announced by his ragged breathing, Sigurd emerged from the stairwell in a mincing, tiptoeing step. He was about to say something when D’Marco put a flat hand in the air, forestalling speech and movement, both. D’Marco waited a moment, studied the layout, improvised a plan; and then he motioned him forward and in a toneless whisper said, “Okay, they’re getting cute here, real cute. What they did was duck into one of those rooms, can’t tell which. Sound of it, they’re down at the other end of the hall. Here’s what we do. You take this end, anything move, blow it over. I’ll go down one floor, come up the other end, box ’em in. Then I’m going to hit one room at a time, flush ’em out. All you got to do is cover me from here. You think you can do that?”
“Yeah, sure, course I can do it,” Sigurd said, but the conviction was annulled by the chirpy flutter in his voice. His face was shiny with sweat and his body seemed to jiggle all over, particularly the lower half.
D’Marco looked at him narrowly. “What’s the matter with you? You better not be going pussy on me here.”
“Ain’t nothin’ the matter,” Sigurd mumbled, “I’m set.” He sure as shit wasn’t going to say anything about his urgent—make that acute—need to piss. Fuckin’ bladder felt like an overinflated balloon about to pop on him any second now.
“All right,” D’Marco said, starting for the stairs. “Let’s do it.”
All the way over to Singer Island Nimrod, an able and experienced stalker, kept a wary distance between himself and the Mustang, and when he turned onto Ocean Avenue and saw the action in the street he killed his headlights and pulled up at the curb. He wasn’t exactly sure what was goin’ on, but he pretty soon got a bulb: Regular OK Corral out there, couple hope-to-dies suited up and bustin’ on his punk. That boy got to have some kinda jacket on his ass, just don’t click up with nobody. Put a whole new figure on it, them two bounty hunters did, but that was fine, negative wet. They get in his game and they be gone, too. Tonight he goin’ earn his keep, bring his dustball prince back a boss trophy, like the punk’s hand maybe, same one caught Mr. Smooth doin’ the nasty.
So he waited just long enough for them two little bros to get to the end of the dark hotel, and then he climbed out of the Rolls and took off after them on a dead run. For a man his size he covered ground fast. In one hand he held a Colt .357 Magnum, in the other the extended steel baton (his own magic wand, you give her a sweep and she guarantee to disappear anything in your path). He did a sly at the corner, peeked one eyeball around it in time to see them bounding up the stairs. He scooted along the side of the building, stopped in the stairwell, got his wind, then followed them up. On the fifth floor he heard somebody coming back down, so he hugged the wall, set to spring. But whoever it was—just one of ’em, he could tell by the step—got off on the floor above and went down the breezeway.
Nimrod thought about it a minute, put it together: one on each end, punk in between, nice little squeeze. Okay, that was cool. Let them do the heavy work, then he strut in and collect the gold star. Treading noiseless as a ghost, he continued up the stairs, but when he came out on the top floor even he, who’d seen plenty, his day, even he was unprepared for the sight and the sound that greeted him: jelly-butt bro standin’ there with his back to him, Johnson in his hands, splashin’ a Niagara out over the rail. Nice time be leakin’ the lizard, nice move, real professional.
Sigurd’s stance was wide-legged, flat-footed, hump-shouldered, the very image of centered focus. Aiming his member between two rickety columns of the waist-high guard rail, he fire-hosed the dark void beneath him. A low whistling sigh escaped his parted lips. His eyes roved out over the somber ocean, here and there flecked with white foam from an indolent surf breaking on the beach, but otherwise black as the starless bowl of sky. His face wore the dreamy contemplative look of a man luxuriating in the indescribably blissful sensation of relief long overdue. A band of moonlight poured through a gap in the cluster of clouds, and for an instant, for reasons unknown to him—the night, the sea, the sky?—who could say?—he was dazzled, awed, lost in the boundless immensity of space and the relentless spill of time.
But only for an instant. Something dimly preconscious, more felt than heard, the red alert of an animal in mortal peril, flashed across the synapses of his brain and impelled him to turn. An enormous figure, black, silhouetted in the sheath of moonlight, glided effortlessly toward him out of the dark. His worst nightmare actualized, his fanciful movie come true: Ride, Muthafucka, Ride. And as though seeing its approach through the wrong end of a telescope, time and motion and distance blurred, he froze in a paralytic trance of dread, heat jolting in his chest, hands still clutching the still spraying member. And though he couldn’t believe any of it was happening, and happening to him, as he gazed, stupefied, at the figure bearing down on him, its steel-pointed eyes stuck in the black face and fixed remorselessly on him, its bulgy arm swinging some long glittery shaft at him in a lethal looping arc, he understood the terrible moment of his own death had arrived at last. In an agony of fright he lurched backward, and he shrieked once as the rail splintered under his weight and his hands released the errant organ, agent of all his calamity, and clawed at air, but only briefly, for a dense velvety fog seemed to rise up to meet him and cushion his seven-story fall.
