Crash Tack

by A. J. Stewart

  “Your man Drew is a real piece of work,” said Lucas.

  I shook my head. “No. He’s not. Drew Keck’s not even here.”

  Chapter Forty-Six

  WE DID A full circle around the main house. It was large, maybe three or four thousand square feet, with a wraparound deck that must have offered views in every direction. If I ever needed to hole up, on the lam, I couldn’t think of many better places to do it. We stepped across the boardwalk that ran between the main house and the caretaker’s house, back to our starting point near the edge of the cleared land. There was light cascading from one side of the house but not the other. Perhaps the living room lit, the bedrooms still darkened. Lucas outlined a plan and I listened, and then he outlined it again for the dummies in the back. I told him I got it, and he pulled his gun from under his shirt, and I did the same, opening a button on my shirt and removing the Glock from the holster under my arm.

  We crept up the stairs, nice and slow. The house gave off slow vibrations, that organic lived-in vibe, and the breeze rustled the mangroves. We got to the top and Lucas nodded, and I nodded back. Then he took off left, toward the light, and I went right, toward the darkness. I reached the corner, with the Glock held forward and ready, and moved around. I found a door partway along. It was a slider that led from a bedroom to the patio. I tested it and it moved a touch, so I slowly pulled it back and then slid in sideways through the opening. I looked around the room. There was lots of dark wood and even more dark corners. I gave my eyes a second, and a four-poster bed materialized. There were clothes on a chair by the bed. I slid the door closed and moved on. The bedroom led out into a small hallway, across which I found another bedroom. It was dark but I checked it anyway, Lucas’s words ringing in my ears: Boldness wins you victory, but caution wins you life . There was nothing in the bedroom. No clothes, no toiletries in the en suite bathroom. The bed had not been slept in. I moved back out into the hallway and the soft light shining from the living room. I stepped past another empty bathroom, toward the light. On one side I saw the kitchen. It was nice, but unremarkable for the size of the house. I stopped at the corner of the hallway and watched it. Mandy Bennett stood in the kitchen, mixing a margarita. She helped herself to a generous slug of tequila, and padded on bare feet toward the living room. She wasn’t wearing yoga gear, but a floral summer skirt and a tight top. Had she looked back toward the bedrooms she would have seen me, the gun pointed at the floor. But she didn’t. She was very focused on not spilling her drink. She reached a bamboo-framed sofa and placed her drink on a side table and flopped onto the plush white cushions. There were two matching chairs to the side, and farther on but partitioned off by furniture was an area that looked like a library, where shelves of books and a recliner sat dormant in the shadows thrown from the living room. I waited for a couple of minutes, watching Mandy guzzle her drink and flip through a glossy magazine, not pausing long enough to read any one page. She took another long drink, leaving about a quarter to go, so I figured I’d move before she got up for a refill and saw me standing there anyway.

  I stepped softly across the hardwood floor but it groaned anyway, and Mandy flicked a glance to the other end of the sofa just as I arrived there. She said nothing. Perhaps the words had been sucked from her. Her feet were resting on the edge of a coffee table and she dropped them, her jaw matching the movement. We stayed like statues for what felt like the longest time, she staring at me, me pointing a gun at her head.

  “Where is he?” I asked.

  “Who?” replied Mandy in a soft voice, like she didn’t want to wake a baby.

  “You know who.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  This made her frown, like she couldn’t figure out what she had done to earn such distrust. “Can you point the gun somewhere else, please?”

  I left the gun pointing at her. “Where is he?”

  “He’s here.”

  I hadn’t seen him drift out of the shadows of the library, but I glanced now and saw him. I’d never met the man, but I’d seen photos. If I had to say, I’d suggest Will Colfax was heavier in real life. Maybe it was the stress, but I wasn’t convinced he felt any such thing. He was dressed in an Izod polo and Bermuda shorts, and he was pointing a revolver at me. I was no expert on firearms, and one instrument of death pretty much looked like another, but I recognized Lenny’s gun. He carried another pistol in his other hand.

  “You are one determined SOB,” he said, as if he admired my never-say-die attitude.

  “You made a mistake,” I said. “Trying to set up Ron.”

  “Ron kind of got caught up in things. Whatever.” He shrugged. “Ron’s a nice enough guy, but he’s weak. He’s B-grade, on a good day. And I don’t really care who goes down. ”

  “You told me Ron was an accident,” said Mandy from the sofa. I realized that I still had my gun trained on her, not Will. I was at the end of the sofa, facing Mandy at my 12 o’clock. Will stood by a bookshelf at my three.

  “Don’t even think about it,” he said, sensing my move. “And Ron was an accident, sweet pea. He got tangled up in events. Not my fault.”

  “Not your fault?” I spat. “Like Lenny wasn’t your fault.”

  “Who the hell is Lenny?”

  “Lenny Cox,” I said. The blood was pumping through my head faster than the veins could handle, and I felt them pulsing. I had always prided myself on being cool in a crisis. It was a trait more than one pitching coach complimented me on. I learned a technique, back in college, from a girl I knew. Breathing in through my nose, out through my mouth. It was some kind of monk thing, I heard. It settled my nerves on the mound, that’s for sure. And it would have settled my nerves looking at the man who shot Lenny, but the hell with breathing like a monk.

  “The guy you shot in the back at Stiltsville,” I growled.

  Will said nothing in return. From the corner of my eye I saw Mandy’s head bouncing between the two of us.

  “You killed Lenny?” The pitch of her voice rose as she said it.

  “You should have left it alone when Ron got out,” Will said to me.

  “You killed Lenny?” repeated Mandy.

  “Leave it, Mandy,” ordered Will.

  “What about Alec?” I asked.

  “What about Alec?” repeated Mandy, although hers was more of a question than mine.

  I looked at Will. “Yeah, Will, what about Alec? ’

  “Shut your mouth and drop the gun,” he spat.

  “That’s right, Will,” I said. “We found Alec in your storeroom outside. He didn’t look well.”

  “Will!” screamed Mandy. “What happened to Alec?”

  Will looked at Mandy and yelled. “Mandy, just leave it.”

  I took my chance. I made to move my aim from Mandy to Will. But Will was faster than I gave him credit for, and he was paying more attention than I figured. He hadn’t moved his aim, just his eyes, and he shot them back toward me.

  “Move that gun toward me and you die.”

  I stopped partway.

  “Drop the gun. Now!”

  I let the gun fall from my hand. It landed with a heavy thud that was swallowed by the room. I wasn’t keen on having a murderer point a gun at me, but I calmed myself with two details. One, Will was unlikely to shoot me front on, if his past victims were anything to go by, and two, Lucas was out there, somewhere.

  We stood for a moment, Will apparently calm, having grown used to the feel of the revolver, me breathing shallow, trying to look calm but feeling anything but. I glanced at Mandy, who looked chastised. She was giving Will the kind of look that often resulted in wars. I decided that I had very little downside, with a gun already pointed at me, so I poked the bear.

  “It was a good plan, Will. Go missing in the middle of the ocean. I figured how you did it.”

  “Oh, you did, smart guy?”

  “Yeah. You brought an extra life raft, didn’t you? I saw it in its bag lashed to the transom
of your yacht in one of Amy’s photos. But it didn’t gel until I saw it again, just now, lying in the storeroom with Alec. ”

  “Someone needs to tell me what the hell happened to Alec!” Mandy was unraveling. The whole caper was taking a toll, but there were clearly things that she didn’t know.

  “Alec’s dead, Mandy,” I said, like I was talking about the weather. “Shot in the back like Lenny.”

  Mandy’s eyes didn’t tear up—they just went glassy and distant, like she was trying to connect dots that weren’t even on the same page. It seemed to take considerable effort to look up at Will.

  “But the bit that impresses me is you, Mandy,” I continued. “You handle a boat around the keys well, but getting all the way out into the Gulf Stream? That took guts.”

  Will chortled. “She couldn’t get out that far. Not by herself. I had to have someone take her to Bimini.”

  “Let me guess,” I said. “Mr. Smith.”

  Will frowned, which dissolved into a smile. “You are resourceful, aren’t you?”

  “No more than the cops.”

  Will snorted. “They think I’m at the bottom of the ocean.”

  “Do they? The PLB was a nice touch. Let me guess, you jumped into the raft just off Bimini and Alec waited to toss the life jacket with the beacon on it in the water a couple hours later.”

  “As soon as he heard any movement down below, or the middle of the Gulf Stream, whatever came first.”

  “But it wasn’t enough, was it? The sealer was the blood, and the other stuff on the deck. What was that, brain fluid? How on earth?”

  Will nodded at his own cleverness. “Cerebrospinal fluid. I visited my doctor, and he took blood and did a spinal tap. Painful, but did the trick.”

  “You don’t think the doctor will talk? ”

  “He’s got a lot of gambling issues.”

  “Very clever.”

  Will smiled. He really did think he was the whole package.

  “So you get picked up offshore, taken back to Bimini, then down here.”

  He shook his head. “Straight back to Miami from the pickup. The weather was going to turn, which suited my purpose.”

  “Just two problems.”

  He snorted again. “I don’t think so.”

  “Oh, yes. One, the wrong guy got the blame.”

  “And got out, and you should have left it there.”

  “But I couldn’t. See, I had a client.”

  “What client?”

  “Michael Baggio.”

  “What?”

  I nodded. “After his partner Keegan got arrested, he saw the writing on the wall, and he came to see me and Lenny.”

  Will shook his head. “You shouldn't have done that. You should have just let the fag take the fall.”

  “You set up Michael simply because you didn’t like his sexual orientation? Very small of you.”

  “Those two fell into my lap. I’d been skimming money from the company for years. The damned Internet was killing all the good deals in China. That’s why I got involved with Alec in the first place. I had the containers, he had the cars. But Cyntech was going to end, sooner or later. My last finance guy saw it and bailed on me. Then Keegan applied for the job. I could see what he was from the get-go. His fancy suits and that girly laugh. So I knew I had my guy. I just got some key tracking software off the Internet, got his password and started moving the money through his login into my offshore accounts.” Will shook his head. “Stupid. Then his other half, Michael, he tries to best buddy me, says he wants to go sailing. Idiot. He couldn’t tie his shoes, let alone a clove hitch. So he became my out.”

  “Except for the second thing.”

  “What second thing?”

  “Alec. He knew the whole plan.”

  “Alec had a big mouth and was too stupid to know he was in over his head. I told him we were done with the shipments. He should have left the last containers alone. Celia shouldn’t have given him the papers to get the containers out but he threatened to expose us. He got greedy.”

  “So you put a bullet through his head.”

  “Will,” said Mandy. It was the voice of a lost child. Not angry, or sad, just confused. “You said no one would get killed except for you.”

  “We can still arrange for that,” said Lucas.

  I had no idea where he had come from, or how long he had been there, but he stood on the far side of Mandy’s sofa, in the direction of the kitchen. He was holding his gun in one hand, steady and calm, aimed at Will. Will pushed himself deeper behind the bookshelf. He was totally open to me, but mostly hidden from Lucas. I guessed all that Lucas could see was his shoulder, an area about the size of a coconut.

  “You should put your gun down if you don’t want your friend to die,” said Will. He held his gun close to his body, so his arm wasn’t exposed to Lucas, but it meant it would be a very lucky shot to hit me.

  “But he’s facing you,” said Lucas. “You like to shoot from behind, don’t you?”

  It turned out it was more of a preference than a rule. Will held the gun up to his eyes, looked along the short barrel and fired. It was a hell of a loud sound in the house, nothing else but the distant hum of generators and bugs. It would have been deafening to Will, but I suppose he figured he’d get over it. The round shattered the lamp on the table next to me. It was some kind of a crystal thing, and it exploded around me. I recoiled, curling into a standing ball.

  “Will!” screamed Mandy.

  “I got five more chances to get it right,” yelled Will. “Drop the gun.”

  I uncoiled myself slowly, my eyes on Lucas. He hadn’t moved, his aim still on Will’s position.

  “You won’t get another chance, pal,” said Lucas. “It’s over. Drop it now, or you’re going to meet Lenny at the big house, and he’s gonna kick the living daylights out of you.”

  I waited for the comeback, for Will’s snort or pithy remark. But it didn’t come. Not right away. Because Mandy jumped up from her sofa and leaped between Will and Lucas.

  “Mandy,” said Lucas. “Don’t.”

  “You can’t kill him. I’ve got nowhere else to go.”

  Lucas frowned. He looked worried. I’d never seen him look worried before. Happy, sad, angry. But not worried. It wasn’t a good look on him. He didn’t want to go through Mandy. I wasn’t sure he could, if it came down to it. She wasn’t an innocent party, not by a long shot, but she hadn’t killed anybody, least of all Lenny. But going through her was the only way this ended well for old Miami. Will was hidden behind her, his gun, Lenny’s gun , aimed at me. I watched him extend his arm, get a better aim.

  I thought about Lenny, and meeting him again sooner that I had planned. We’d cause some trouble together, whether we both ended up upstairs or down. Then I wondered if we would indeed see each other. If he was truly a good man, and I was not. Or the other way around. And who, if anyone, got to make that distinction. And what we could do to change it. To rearrange things. I wished I’d had a backup plan. And then the pithy remark came. Will kept the gun on me but looked at Mandy’s back, in Lucas’s direction.

  “You know why I win?” said Will. “Because I’m a winner.” Then he moved his eyes back to reassert his aim. But what he saw was not what he expected to see. What he saw was my backup plan. The kind your mentor makes you get, for situations that you cannot possibly conceive. Insurance of the unconventional kind, tucked away in the back of my shorts, just under my shirt.

  I remembered what I had forgotten, and slipped the Ruger out from my waistband and brought it around in a sweeping motion, cocking it with my left hand as it passed my hip, so that when Will looked down his barrel he saw my barrel, and a burst of flame. He didn’t see the round flying across the room. That was supersonic, faster than the eye. But he felt it explode into his chest like a heart attack, and he felt his back hit the wall behind him, and then his butt hit the floor as he slid down the wall, leaving a vermillion smudge behind him.

  I kept the gun on
him, ready to go again. Wanting to go again. I stepped over to him. I think Mandy was screaming, and I think Lucas was holding her back. But I wasn’t sure. The sound and movement didn’t travel well through my bubble. I stood over Will, his breathing raspy, his chest weeping blood. I looked down at him, ready to say something. But sometimes there are no words. Sometimes the language fails to communicate the meaning. So I said nothing. I just watched Will Colfax, watching me. Then he coughed. Then he died.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  MANDY DISPENSED WITH the margaritas and went straight for the tequila. She sat on the floor of the kitchen, not weeping or wailing, just quietly drinking her pain away. Perhaps she was making plans, mentally going through her rolodex. But after the initial screaming, the shock sank in and she retreated to the kitchen where Lucas let her be.

  I was tempted by the tequila myself, but Lucas took me out on the deck, the lights of the houses on Ramrod Key twinkling across the water. He told me to wait on things, that he would call the cops and that it would be better if I didn’t have alcohol on my breath, even if it got there after the event. I sat on the deck and watched him collect the Glock from where I had dropped it on the floor. It hadn’t been fired, but Lucas said it would be better if the cops didn’t find a gun with the serial numbers filed off, so I watched him walk away across the clear part of the island and disappear into the mangroves. He reappeared shortly after, and then came back upstairs. He left everything else as it was, and picked up the phone and called 911. Then he came and sat with me on the deck.

  “You throw the gun in water?”

  “Nah,” he said. “It’s a perfectly good gun and it wasn’t involved here. You used your own weapon, which is good. I just put it in a bag and tied it to a mangrove below the waterline. We’ll come find it another time.”

  I nodded but I didn’t care. I didn’t want it back. It might be insurance, but I felt like I’d already cashed it in.