The Highest Stakes

by Rick Reed

  “And what if I decide not to?”

  “If you don’t, it’ll hurt.”

  Quinn had laid his gun in the open between them, but Jack had witnessed how fast the man was. He felt Shirl’s ankle and tugged out a little revolver.

  “Was he a friend of yours?” Quinn asked.

  “Not particularly,” Jack said. “But he shouldn’t have been killed by a worthless bastard like you.”

  Quinn got to his knees and put his hands on top of his head. “You know, Detective Murphy, I’m really impressed with your, ah . . . will to survive. I can’t seem to kill you.”

  “I’m Irish. We kill each other.”

  Quinn laughed at Jack’s black humor. “Ah, Detective Murphy. You’re quite entertaining. It’s really too bad we didn’t meet under other circumstances.”

  “It wouldn’t have worked out, Quinn. I like women.”

  Quinn laughed again and said, “Well, since we obviously can’t stand here exchanging quips all day, I’m going to make you a deal.”

  The deck lurched a bit, and Jack was caught off guard. He saw Quinn dive for the deck and he fired, but his bullet passed through empty space. Quinn scooped up his gun and fired. A bullet grazed Jack’s knee and he went sprawling to the deck behind Shirl’s body. He pulled Shirl’s body close and felt the impact of several bullets as they struck the corpse. Jack tried to return the fire, but this time his gun really was empty. He still had Shirl’s .38. He shoved Shirl’s body away and pulled himself to the rail, ready to fire, but Quinn was gone.

  He leaned over the rail and saw a dark shape moving down the side of the boat. He tried to aim at the figure and saw sparks on the rail beside him. He was being shot at. He held the revolver over the rail and cracked off blind shots. He didn’t think he’d hit the bastard. He was about to lean over the rail again when a sound like a jack hammer started and the railing and deck around him sheared off, hurling chunks of metal past his face, and shredding his clothes.

  Jack dropped to the deck as green tracer rounds buzzed through the air. Jack back-pedaled and fell over Shirl’s legs, which probably saved him. Shirl’s body jumped and danced as bullets ripped it to shreds and the air was came alive with stinging bits of shrapnel.

  * * *

  Quinn expended the full belt of one hundred sabot tracer rounds from the Browning .50 caliber machine gun. The armor-piercing rounds had ripped through the steel deck, creating an impressive lightshow. Quinn unclipped the machine gun from its mount and let it drop into the river.

  “Well, that should make you think twice, Jack,” Quinn said, and stacked the bags of money into the stern. It wasn’t as much of a haul as he had expected, but it was what it was. He hoped Jack Murphy was dead. If he wasn’t he’d have to come back someday for a rematch.

  He slipped the securing line from the ladder and was pushing off when something heavy dropped on him and slammed him to the floor of the raft. He could feel a leg and torso pinning him. He pulled his pistol and pumped rounds into whoever until he was sure they were dead. In the moonlight he saw it was Shirl’s body.

  Quinn shoved the body over the side, pointed his pistol at the edge of the deck, and yelled, “I think I’ll let you live, Murphy. But don’t worry. I won’t forget you.” He was trying to goad Murphy into sticking his head out, but there was no movement from above.

  He started the engine just as something else crashed down on him. This body was very much alive.

  * * *

  Murphy’s Law says: “Medical costs for bullet wounds: $15,000. Loss of employment and pension for disobeying orders: $250,000, give or take. Dropping twenty feet and landing on your enemy: Priceless.”

  He had landed on Quinn by pure luck. He rolled off Quinn and over the side, into the river. The sudden submersion in the cool water shocked him and he sucked in a lungful of it before he came up for air.

  Jack heard a motor revving and grabbed for the side of the inflatable craft. His hand caught a rope and he wrapped his arm in it before Quinn goosed the big motor to full throttle. Jack was dragged by an arm, hydroplaning across the surface, flipping and slamming face-first again and again into the water like a trapped rodeo rider.

  * * *

  The water tore at Jack’s remaining clothing, and he was losing his grip, but somehow he got both hands on the rope and pulled himself close against the raft. With an effort born of panic, he threw one leg over the side and then pulled himself over. Quinn saw him and kicked at his face as he lay in the bottom gasping for breath.

  Jack reached for his gun, forgetting it wasn’t there. Quinn released the throttle and reached for his own gun. Jack launched himself forward, arms outstretched, intending to take Quinn overboard, but Quinn had anticipated the move and caught Jack’s injured knee with a kick. Jack nearly went over the side again. When he righted himself, Quinn was on him. The big outboard ran full out as they struggled, sending the unmanned craft hurtling down the river.

  Quinn grabbed Jack’s chin and the back of his head, attempting to snap his neck, but the rocky bounding of the boat caused Quinn to lose his balance. Jack drove a knee upward into Quinn’s groin, but the blow didn’t seem to faze him. Quinn slammed a fist into Jack’s face once, twice, and again before Jack’s pain-paralyzed brain even registered the beating.

  Quinn leaned over Jack and grabbed his head again, but Jack drove the fingers of his right hand into Quinn’s throat. The blow should have crushed Quinn’s larynx. It didn’t, but it was enough to push Quinn back. Quinn reached for his pistol, but he’d lost it in the struggle. He crawled around, searching the bottom of the boat.

  Jack lay on his back, feeling around for something to use as a weapon. His hand closed on a pistol. It was Quinn’s. The inflatable was bounding across the water, and he couldn’t steady his arm. Jack held the pistol against his side and tilted the barrel up, trying to point it at the blurry figure scurrying around. Jack knew he might get one shot off before Quinn took the gun away and killed him. The barrel crossed what Jack hoped was the center of the blurred image and he pulled the trigger.

  There was a muted cough; and Quinn grabbed his thigh just below the groin. Jack pulled the trigger again and Quinn collapsed with a shattered elbow. Jack was lining up a shot when the inflatable catapulted end over end and sent Jack flying through the air. Jack would later tell Liddell that he thought he had died and was having an out-of-body experience.

  The sensation of flying came to an abrupt halt when Jack struck the ground hard. He regained his senses, but he didn’t know where he was, or, more important, where Quinn was. He could tell he was on his back. He tried to move, to get up, and was only able to move his head and his arms and one leg. The other leg wouldn’t move. He stared into a dark sky. No moon, no stars. The air was warm, the ground cool, and there was an insistent buzzing noise.

  His ears popped and he could hear better, but the buzzing was louder. And where was Quinn? Jack pushed himself onto his elbows and saw that his right leg was twisted at an impossible angle, the toes pointing down and not up. There was no pain, but that wouldn’t matter because five feet away, Quinn stood . . . swayed actually. . . holding a silenced pistol. The assault craft had landed against a tree several feet behind Quinn. The noise Jack heard was the prop churning the air.

  Quinn’s face was streaked with blood, and one arm hung limply at his side.

  “I really should kill you, Detective Murphy,” he said and limped forward, clearly in pain. “But I think I’m going to cripple you instead. You can live the rest of your life in a hospital bed with someone wiping your ass.”

  “Well, you’re a little late if you want to cripple me,” Jack said. “Look, you’re boring me to death. You people all talk like a cheap spy novel.”

  Quinn’s expression changed so fast it was like watching a silent movie. He raised the pistol.

  “You really are a piece of work, Jack.” Quinn’s gun never wavered as he looked behind him at the bags of money near the overturned boat. “I’ll have millions, and
you . . . you’ll have your pathetic little disability pension.”

  Jack tried to give him the finger, but he was barely able to remain conscious.

  Quinn picked up the bags of money. “On second thought, Jack,” he said, a grin on his blood-smeared face, “I think I will kill you.”

  Quinn looked surprised, the smirk disappeared, and Jack noticed a pencil-thin line of blood trickling from the corner of Quinn’s mouth. Then he did the unexpected and fell backward onto the boat’s propeller. The spinning blades tore hungrily into Quinn’s back, and then threw his chewed-up remains into the sand.

  Crenshaw pulled a small inflatable boat onto the bank. “Bastard!” she said. Jack wasn’t sure if she meant him or Quinn, but it didn’t matter. He was glad to see her.

  “I didn’t know you served drinks onshore,” Jack mumbled through bloody lips.

  Crenshaw blew a strand of hair out of her eyes. One arm hung useless at her side, and she had packed and bound the wound on her neck somehow. She was shot to hell and bloody, but still standing, her pistol pointed in Jack’s direction.

  “I really should kill you,” she said

  Jack wasn’t surprised when, instead, she threw her pistol into the sand at his feet. She stepped over what was left of Quinn, disappeared behind the raft, and the engine shut down. She reappeared with a small gasoline can.

  “You take off if you want,” he said. “I’ll just lie here for a while.” He wasn’t sure what she had planned, but gasoline and a hot engine were not a good combination.

  Crenshaw ignored him and uncapped the can. She poured gasoline onto Quinn’s body and all around it and said, “You never saw me, Jack.” She emptied the can on the inflatable and tossed the can onto Quinn’s body.

  She said, “This psycho was robbing the riverboat with a couple of bad cops and tried to escape. You pursued and jumped into the raft with him. He crashed into the riverbank and there was an explosion, but you were thrown clear.” She kicked her pistol nearer Jack’s hand. “There is the small matter of the bullet I put through his temple but, hey, I can’t think of everything. You’re a smart guy. You finish the story.”

  “Why are you doing this?” Jack asked.

  “You mean not killing you.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Yeah.”

  She picked up the canvas bags and tossed them toward Jack. She opened one bag and pulled out a stack of banded $20 dollar bills.

  “You’ll be quite the hero when they find the money. But you know they will never believe there was a government agency behind all this. Even if they did, the government will cover it up, and you’ll look like a nutjob. Spies, assassins, and conspiracy theories are only good for the movies, Jack.”

  She pulled a Bic lighter from her top, lit the stack of money and, tossed it onto Quinn’s body. A whoosh was followed by a blast of heat that crawled across the ground.

  “With Quinn turned to ash, you won’t have any proof.”

  Jack asked the question that had been eating at him.

  “Quinn didn’t kill anyone else did he? I mean, my friends are . . . ?”

  Crenshaw held her side with her good arm, and he could see she was still bleeding. She walked her small boat out into the water and gingerly climbed in. She turned and looked at the bonfire she’d made. “You’ll see,” she said.

  “Up yours, Lucy Crenshaw,” he said softly.

  “Back at you, Murphy,” she said.

  Jack’s eyes closed. An army of darkness came for him and he spun into the void.

  Chapter Forty-four

  Six days later . . .

  “Where’s my gun?” Jack asked, peeking under the sheet. “There you are.” He lowered the sheet.

  Liddell sat in a chair by the window next to the bed. “Welcome back, pod’na,” he said with a big smile.

  The light coming through the window hurt Jack’s eyes. He turned his head and saw he was sharing the room with another patient. Bandages covered the other man’s entire head like a turban.

  “Who’s the sultan?” Jack asked Liddell.

  “You should talk,” Killian said. “You’ve been laying there for six days spilling your guts in your sleep. An’ boy I heard me some juicy shit. I didn’t know you and Double Dick were having a mé-nage a duo.”

  Jack lifted a hand and gave Killian the finger. “You look like someone’s mummy. Glad to see you’re still in the land of the living.”

  Killian said, “Your partner here has been filling me in on what happened after my surveillance was so rudely interrupted.”

  Liddell pulled a chair up and sat. “Not so fast, Killian. I need to ask Jack some questions to see if his memory is intact.” He asked Jack, “What was the last thing you said to me before you went and almost got yourself killed?”

  Jack turned to Killian. “Ignore him. Too much sugar and he gets this way.”

  “Wrong. The correct answer is, ‘I’ll keep you posted.’ And did you? No you didn’t. You went all commando, and I had to steal your boat to go looking for your ass.”

  “You took the MISS FIT?”

  “Well, me and Susan,” Liddell said. “She stayed with you while I went back for medics.”

  “Thank you for saving my life, partner,” Jack said.

  Liddell cocked his head and said, “Who are you, and what have you done with Jack?”

  Killian said, “I recognized Shirl at the warehouse. Then I heard someone behind me, and next thing I woke up here.”

  Jack asked Liddell, “What happened to Pons? And Stu?”

  Liddell said, “Pons was released this morning.”

  Liddell didn’t say anything about Stu, so Jack knew he was dead. He choked up at losing a good man . . . a good friend.

  “Tell us about these CIA people,” Liddell said.

  Jack said, “Not even if you held a gun to my balls.”

  “Cops don’t have balls,” Killian said.

  Liddell persisted. “C’mon, pod’na. Pons said there was three of them on the boat. None of their bodies were found and the surveillance video was wiped clean.”

  Crenshaw. You magnificent bitch. Jack didn’t know how she did it, but she had wiped her tracks clean. Well, almost. There was the matter of a crispy Quinn.

  “We found you because of the bonfire. Fire department said it was gas fueled. The body in the fire was almost cremated. Was that Quinn?”

  Jack remembered Crenshaw shooting Quinn, and then setting his body on fire. She had saved his life and disappeared. “It was Quinn. I had to shoot him. I think he burned up in the crash,” he lied. “Did they find Stu? Did anyone else die?”

  “Stu saved a lot of lives,” Liddell said. “The casino paid for his services and made a quiet donation to his family.”

  Jack remembered that Stu was divorced but had a son and daughter, both serving in Iraq. Killian said Jack had been unconscious for six days. He’d missed Stu’s funeral. “Were his kids notified?”

  “They came home on compassionate leave,” Liddell said. “They came to visit you, but you weren’t awake yet. They said to tell you that you weren’t to blame. They knew their dad was doing what he always did.”

  “That he was,” Jack said.

  “Skippy Walker and Shirley West were found with a lot of evidence that ties them to the robbery, but this Quinn fella is still a mystery. The Feds are trying to identify him by DNA. A couple of passengers died, but most of the injuries were caused by them trampling each other.”

  “So, the boat didn’t sink,” Jack said.

  “Oh,” Liddell said. “ATF Chief Misino sends his regards. He said, and I quote, ‘Tell Murphy to quit goofing off and get back to work.’ ”

  Jack laughed, but it hurt. In fact, everything hurt.

  “I haven’t told you the best part,” Liddell said and finished the story.

  * * *

  Crenshaw was correct about one thing at least: Jack was a hero. Not to his own supervisors, of course, and definitely not to Double Dick, who had launched a campaign to h
ave him fired. But as far as the news media and the Blue Star Casino were concerned, he could do no wrong. To the Casino, he and Pons and Killian were national treasures. The casino was paying for their medical expenses, and every inch of space in their rooms was filled with flowers proclaiming each of them to be a “Winner.” What else could you expect a casino to say?

  Barbara came in and kissed her husband until Jack said, “Enough. Get a room or pull the curtain.”

  Doctor Goldman came in and was impressed with Jack’s improvement. Instead of the white lab coat he wore a brown tweed jacket, light blue button-down shirt, and tan slacks. Golf was definitely on his rounds this morning. Goldman said, “You should stay out of gunfights for at least another week.”

  Jack asked, “How about something for the pain, doc? Maybe an IV with Scotch?”

  “You’re already on enough pain medication, detective. Junkies are coming in off the streets and lining up outside your room,” the doctor said.

  “Good one, Doc,” Liddell said with a grin.

  The doctor assured Jack that if he survived the hospital food, he could leave in a few days.

  Jack asked Liddell the question that had been on his mind since he woke up. “Did Katie get in trouble with the Feds? What happened to Susan and her minion, Miz Johnson-Heddings?”

  “Susan is back in Indianapolis and up for a promotion. Her secretary retired, but she sent you her love,” Liddell said.

  “Right.” Jack was glad this was so funny to someone.

  “Katie has spent almost every day beside your bed,” Liddell said.

  “Oh yeah?”

  Killian said, “She left about an hour ago with your captain. I had the impression they were, you know . . .” Barbara gave him a harsh look, so he added, “But I’m sure I’m wrong about that. Barbara always tells me when I’m right. It saves time.”

  At first Jack was a little upset, but then, what had he expected her to do? Say, “Thanks, Jack, for turning my life upside down, and taking up with Susan again, and then running off to get yourself killed. You really know how to show a girl a good time.” It was probably for the best. He had a way of attracting trouble and ruining relationships.