by Blake Banner
He gave a nod and went away, down some stairs that were just out of sight. Slowly, my brain functions were coming back. I listened hard to see if I could get some clue as to where I was. The silence was almost total, but there was something like white noise just in my peripheral hearing.
Surf. I was at the beach house, then.
I heard two sets of feet climbing heavily up stairs. There was also the heavy breathing of a man carrying too much weight. Geronimo entered the room and flipped a switch. I winced in the sudden glare but took in a writing desk and a chair, a gray carpet, and a bare white wall. Geronimo was leaning on the desk catching his breath. Ronaldo, proto-man, was standing in front of me looking like evolution gone wrong. Geronimo heaved a breath and gave a small laugh.
“I am not as young as I was. There was a time I would have sprinted up those stairs. And I try to observe a healthy diet, but age, Stone. It comes to us all, and it does not forgive.”
Here we were, a couple of pals having a chat. He pulled out the chair and lowered himself onto it.
“Now, Stone, where is the box?”
“Go fuck yourself.”
“Very well. Ronaldo, I think six should do.”
It was like getting hit by a wall. I weigh two hundred and twenty pounds, and he made the chair rock. By the second blow, I was disoriented and wondering how I was going to get through another four. He made it easy for me by delivering three of them to my chest, so I felt like I had a rusty saw stuck through my lungs. The last was a backhander that left the room spinning and my ears ringing.
Through the pain, I heard dos Santos’s voice.
“Now, let us at least dispense with the vulgarities, Stone. Perhaps I had better apprise you of the situation. Your wire has been removed. Detective Dehan has received a text message instructing her to stand down and await further instructions from you. So nobody is going to come charging to your rescue. You have one chance of survival and one only. Tell me where the box is, and where Tammy is.”
I knew I had to think. Somehow I had to get my brain working, but Ronaldo’s beating had left me groping for consciousness. I played for time, exaggerating my grogginess. I didn’t have to try very hard.
“You’re out of your fucking mind. You think I am stupid enough to make it this easy for you?”
“Frankly? I do, yes. I don’t want to resort to mutilation, Stone, but if you try my patience, Ronaldo here is pretty handy with a pair of pliers. Don’t push your luck. If I don’t have an answer in the next ten minutes, one of you starts losing digits, or some other parts of the anatomy which may be more persuasive.”
I looked up at Ronaldo’s passive face. It held the kind of peace only stupidity can bring. I looked past him at Geronimo. He was smiling. I knew I had to turn the situation around pretty soon, or I was going to be in big trouble.
“I don’t know where Tamara is, but you and I both know, dos Santos, that if I give you the box, I will be dead within seconds. Now you must be aware that I am too smart and too experienced to put myself in that situation.”
He looked complacent. “I just don’t think you have had enough time to do anything other than put it somewhere safe.” He gave a small laugh. “In fact, I am not even totally convinced that Emma has given it to you.”
“I’ll tell you where it is, dos Santos. It’s in a drawer, in a desk at the 43rd Precinct. Not my desk—the desk of a uniform sergeant who has instructions to put it in the mail if she doesn’t hear from me by midnight tonight. Now you can torture an address out of me, but how will you ever know if I have given you the right address?”
“You’re bluffing.”
“Maybe I am, Geronimo. But again, how will you ever know?”
He struggled to his feet. “Come on, Ronaldo. Let us go and talk to Emma for a while, and see if she can be more cooperative.”
They closed the door, and I heard their big feet lumbering down the stairs. They would question Emma to see if she confirmed or denied what I had told them. So far, I was on safe ground. But I wouldn’t be able to keep the game going indefinitely. And I could not rely on Dehan realizing the messages were not from me. At least not for several hours.
Duct tape is a very useful, easy way of immobilizing somebody. It only has one drawback. Rope, especially nylon rope, is hard to cut through. With duct tape, all you need to do is nick it in the right place and it tears right in half. I peered around the room, looking for something with a sharp angle. There was nothing immediately apparent. Then I became aware that just behind me there was a bed. I started rocking the chair from side to side and angling my body so that the chair shifted. Soon I could see, over my shoulder, exactly what I had hoped for. A bedside table with a lamp on it. It was a long shot, but it was worth a try.
I did a little more angling, rocked a couple of times, and then, putting all my weight into one final rock, I threw myself backward onto the lamp. I smacked my head hard against the wall, and the chair got wedged at a forty-five-degree angle over the bedside table. But underneath my wrists and hands, I felt the glass shade of the lamp crack and shatter into shards. One of which I held in my bleeding fingers. It was enough. I moved it around until I had the tip wedged into the edge of the tape. Then I pushed and felt the tape cut. Another couple of slashes, and the pressure from my wrists was enough to do the rest.
With my hands free, I acted quickly, leaning forward and hacking at the tape around my ankles. I stood, unsteadily at first, with my head swimming and a feeling of nausea in my stomach. I moved to the door, opened it a fraction, and listened. There was silence.
There was a landing and, at the far end, a stairwell leading down. Dim light filtered up from below. I moved to the banisters and peered down. There wasn’t much to see, a carpeted staircase and part of a hallway. I had no weapon and no phone to call for backup. I took a couple of steps down and peered through the railings. The hallway was a broad space. Ahead of me, I could see the front door. To one side there was another door that was closed, but obviously gave onto a room at the front of the house, facing the sea. Next to it, there was an arch, and through it, three broad steps that led down into a large, modern living room. The lights were off, but I could make out a large fireplace with a copper hood, a cream sofa, and a large armchair. But no people. Another couple of steps and I could see that to the right there was a passage, and my gut told me that led to the kitchen.
I slipped into the living room. I was on a mezzanine floor with two steps to a lower level, where one whole wall was made of plate glass, in the middle of which there were two sliding doors that now stood open onto a broad, weatherboard terrace that was bathed in moonlight. Now I could hear voices and the sound of the surf.
Keeping in the shadows, I slipped along the wall to stand in the corner, looking out onto the terrace. They had the terrace lights off and were sitting like moonlit ghosts at a table. Beyond them, I could see the luminous ocean and the lights of a small launch.
Emma spoke suddenly.
“Please, Geronimo, I am begging of you, please don’t hurt him. Please, don’t hurt him.”
Geronimo gave a high-pitched wheeze, which must have been a laugh, and said, “Oh, I am going to hurt him, Emma. I am going to make him weep like a child, and I am going to make you watch every second of it until he dies, sobbing for his mommy. Unless, of course, you tell me where the box is. And where is Tammy?”
TWENTY-THREE
“I am sick of telling you!” Her voice was a hiss in the night, like an echo from the surf on the beach. “I don’t know! For this very reason, Geronimo! I knew that you would try something. I knew that you’d try to trick us and betray us.”
He gave a screech like a parrot. “That! That is fine! When it was your sister who cheated me in the first place! If she had stuck to the terms of our agreement in the first place, we would not be in this mess now!”
“An agreement that gave her a filthy two thousand dollars while you netted an incalculable fortune!”
He leaned forward and s
pat the words viciously at her. “It was not for me! It was for the Mother Church! He had no place owning that treasure! It belongs to the Church!”
“This is getting us nowhere.”
“Where is Tamara?”
“Where you can never find her.”
“Where is she!”
“Never! I will never tell you!” They were both silent, glaring at each other. Then Emma exploded, “Why are you so obsessed with her? Why can’t you let her be?”
“Because she stole from me, and she must pay.”
“You are such a cretin! If you had just left things as they were, Geronimo! You would have your bloody box! I would have my money and my guarantee, and we would be done! Now you get nothing!”
“Fine!” He pounded the table with his fist. “Have it your way! Ronaldo, go and get him!”
Ronaldo moved toward the plate glass doors. As he did so, Emma threw herself at him, clawing at his arm and pleading, “Please! Please don’t hurt him! For God’s sake, please! Please don’t!”
Geronimo pounded the table again. “Enough of this!”
“I swear to you he has the box! I gave it to him so that you could not get it from me! I don’t know where it is! Kill him and you will never get it!”
I stepped out onto the terrace.
“She’s telling the truth. She gave it to me this morning, and we agreed she would have no knowledge of what I did with it.”
Geronimo gaped. “Stone! What the…?” He glared at Ronaldo and screamed like a hysterical woman. “You incompetent fool!”
“Now, you are at an impasse, Geronimo. The clock is ticking. Hurt Emma or hurt me, you will never see the box again. In a week, it could be anywhere in the world. You tried to be too smart. Now, you have one chance and one chance only. Accept you will have to buy the box with more than money.”
“What do you mean, more than money?”
“A confession, signed and recorded, that implicates all three of us. If any one of us gets hurt, the other two go down.”
“That’s absurd!”
“That’s the deal. Take it or leave it.”
His face went crimson, and he pounded the table with both fists till I thought he was going to have a stroke. Even Ronaldo looked curious.
Dos Santos leaned across the table, pointing a finger just an inch from Emma’s face. “Just once! Just once I saw her! Perfect! Beautiful! Enrapturing! If I could have owned her, I would have bought her! But I knew, I knew.” Now he pounded the side of his head with his finger. “God spoke to me. ‘She is the spawn of the Devil! She will be only trouble!’ Five minutes I saw her and I knew!” He dropped back into his chair. “But I was desperate to do God’s work, and I was a fool!”
“You’re a boring man, Geronimo. You talk a lot of shit. Now what’s it to be? If we have a deal, let’s do it. If there is no deal, Emma and I are walking out of here, and you know there is damn all you can do about it.”
Ronaldo pulled his gun and pointed it at me. I looked Geronimo in the eye and said, “You have five seconds to make him put that gun on the table. If he doesn’t, I walk. Then one of two things is going to happen. One, you will kill me, and then you will never see your box. Two, you won’t kill me, and you will never see your box. You see how it works, Geronimo. Now, I am counting…”
Geronimo waved his hand at Ronaldo. “Put down the gun. Put it down.”
Ronaldo shrugged like he thought his boss was stupid. He wasn’t wrong. He put the gun on the table. I thought what would happen next would be that Emma would hand me the gun, but I guess I was a bit stupid, too. Instead, she reached out like she was reaching for a pack of cigarettes. Both Geronimo and Ronaldo frowned at her hand, like they were mildly surprised. She picked it up calmly and deliberately, pointed it at Ronaldo, and shot him in the heart. Then without losing her composure, she turned it on Geronimo.
He screamed again and threw the table up and over so that it crashed against Emma, knocking her off her chair. Next thing, he was flying at me like a quarterback. He piled into me, ramming me against the wall and knocking all the wind out of me. I fell to the floor gasping, and he was off again, sprinting across the floor with astonishing agility. As I staggered to my feet, Emma scrambled out from under the table. She screamed a scream of pure rage and sprinted past me, after dos Santos.
I made after her, but my lungs were in spasm and my head was reeling. She was up the stairs onto the mezzanine floor, and I heard the front door slam. I followed and she skidded out into the hall. I shouted after her, “Emma! No!” But she wasn’t listening. She had one thought in her mind and one thought only.
She wrenched open the front door. Outside in the moonlight, I heard a car door slam. On the porch, I saw her straddle her legs and take aim. I heard tires scream, and I hurled myself at her. The gun cracked twice before I collided with her and threw her to the ground.
She clambered to her feet, training the gun on me. Her eyes were wide, and she looked really crazy. I shouted at her, “Are you crazy? Are you nuts? What have you done?”
“Stay away from me!”
There was a second car, a Mercedes convertible. She backed toward it, with the gun still trained on me. She climbed in and I watched her fire up the engine and take off at speed after dos Santos.
I stood watching her taillights vanish up the road in the pale moonlight. My head was reeling. We’d had him. What she’d done didn’t make any sense.
Unless…
I went inside and scoured the house for my gun and my phone. After twenty minutes, I found my gun in Ronaldo’s waistband out on the porch. Even now, staring up at the translucent sky, he looked more bemused than surprised. My phone I eventually found in plain sight, sitting on a coffee table in the living room.
The bar was easier to find. I poured myself a stiff whiskey and phoned Dehan.
“Stone! What the hell is happening?”
“Nothing good.”
“Why did you stand us down?”
“I didn’t. Believe it or not, I was drugged. He took my phone and sent you the message.”
“Dos Santos?”
“Yeah, he is one devious son of a bitch.”
“Holy shit!”
“Tell me about it. I need you to come and get me. I also need a CSI team and the ME. There has been another homicide. The captain’s going to have to liaise with the local precinct.”
“Oh, he is going to love you.”
“I’m not too fond of me myself, right now. I can’t believe I got suckered like that.”
“He’s a slippery customer.”
“They’re both as crazy as a box of frogs.”
“Okay. I’ll be there in a couple of hours.”
TWENTY-FOUR
We got home to my place just after four in the morning. She sat me at the table and examined the damage.
“Boy, Stone, you look like somebody set fire to your face and put it out with a brick.”
“Thanks. You’re beautiful too.”
“There are no cuts, though. It’s just bruises.”
“Is that all?”
She nodded. “You must have a pretty hard face.”
“Yeah, it’s the way I was raised. Every time I was bad, my mother would set fire to my face and beat it out with a brick.”
She giggled. It was an odd thing to see in her.
I smiled. “You going to just sit there gawping at me, or are you going to pour me a drink?”
“Coffee laced with whiskey is what you need.”
“Sounds about right.”
She got up and went to the kitchen.
“You know, I keep going over it again and again in my mind. We had him. He was going to pay, God knows how much, millions. I had him hooked, and he had no way out but to pay and sign that damned confession. She and Tammy were home and dry. And she just reaches over, picks up the gun, and blows Ronaldo away. Why would she do that, Dehan?”
She was quiet, making the coffee. When it started gurgling, she sighed and looked at
me. “I forget who said it, but there is a quote by some wiseass about how if you want to know a person’s intentions, you should ignore their words and look at their actions. So from that perspective, there is only one answer to your question. She would do that because she wanted them dead.”
I sat, turning what she’d just said over in my head. It was so clear.
“That’s right. That is absolutely right. She wanted dos Santos dead. That was exactly what she wanted.”
She looked at me curiously. “Is that surprising?”
“Not really. But it’s like one of those pictures where it looks like a scowling old man, and when you just change your perspective, suddenly it looks like a beautiful young woman. Suddenly, I see the other picture, and it all makes sense.”
“Glad I could help.”
“We have a long day ahead of us, Dehan. Let’s get some bacon and mushrooms going, and a couple of eggs. I have a lot to explain to you, and then we need to make a plan.”
So she gave us two more spiked coffees and started frying, while I started explaining.
Emma’s call came at half eight. She was hysterical, sobbing and almost incoherent.
“John, thank God! I didn’t know if you’d found your phone. I am going to pieces, John. What am I going to do. I killed a man! John, do you understand? I shot and killed him!”
“Take it easy.”
“What are you talking about, take it easy? They’ll send me to prison for life! You have to do something!”
“I said take it easy.”
“What am I going to do? I can’t go to prison, John? I can’t! Do you know what they will do to a woman like me in prison?”
“Emma. Shut up.”
I heard her swallow.
“In the first place, it was self-defense…”
“Self-defense…?”
“That’s right. There was you and me and Geronimo. If it ever comes to trial, you and me are telling the same story. He came at you with the gun. You struggled and somehow turned the gun on him.”
