Kagan pulled out a gun.
“Please,” Tricia said to Kagan, “don’t do it.”
“Oh? You’d rather he kill your boyfriend here?” Nicolazzo grabbed Charley’s chin in one hand, shook it roughly. “That’s fine with me. Your choice. Which one?”
“Neither,” Tricia said.
“That sounds good to me,” Charley said.
“You shut up,” Nicolazzo said, wheeling on him. “You, you imbroglione, with your goddamn cheating cards—you know what, I think maybe you should choose, how about that? Huh?”
“I’d rather not,” Charley said.
“Ah, but you will,” Nicolazzo said. He snapped his fingers at Pantazonis. “Get me a deck of cards. Now!” Pantazonis scurried out of the room.
“I’ve wanted to do this ever since you walked out my door,” Nicolazzo said. “A little rematch. A hand of Fifty-to-One—only with my deck this time, not yours. You want to know what the stakes are?”
“I doubt it,” Charley said.
“If I win, my man here shoots you—in the head eventually, but not right away, he’ll take his time. He’s got plenty of bullets and you’ve got plenty of other places to get shot in first. Painful places.”
“And if I win?”
“If you win, I spare your life—for now,” Nicolazzo said. “And kill her instead.” He jabbed a finger in Coral’s direction.
“You’re insane,” Charley said, and it earned him a punch in the head.
Pantazonis came back through the door, a deck of cards in his hand. Nicolazzo peeled the top card off, threw it in Charley’s face. It bounced off and landed on the floor. Eight of hearts.
“What’s the next one, Borden?” Nicolazzo said. “Think hard. There’s a lot riding on it.” He waved Kagan over. The big man positioned himself at Charley’s side and pressed the barrel of his gun against Charley’s neck.
Charley looked over at Tricia, past the gun. There was something in his eyes—sadness? Regret? Resignation? Maybe a little of all three.
“Name a card,” Nicolazzo said. “Or I tell him to start pulling the trigger right now.”
Charley closed his eyes. “I don’t know,” he said. “Queen of spades.”
“There you go,” Nicolazzo said. “Was that so difficult? La donna nero. Well, let’s see if this fickle lady, she comes to your rescue.”
With a nasty flourish, Nicolazzo turned over the top card. His face paled, and he looked from the card to Charley and back again. It was the queen of spades.
“What did you...?” Nicolazzo threw the cards down, scattering them everywhere. He grabbed Charley’s throat in both hands and started throttling him. “How did you do that? I demand that you tell me!”
“I didn’t do anything,” Charley croaked. “It was just a guess—”
Tricia ran to Nicolazzo, started battering his back with her fists, but it had no effect.
“You lie!” Nicolazzo roared. With one arm he swatted Tricia away from him and she went sprawling among the cards. “You,” he said to Kagan, “kill the sister—now! How many times do I have to tell you?”
“Yes, sir,” Kagan said. He crossed to the other side of the room, pointed his gun at Coral.
What happened next Tricia didn’t see clearly. There was a blur of motion as Coral stood up from the chair and slapped Kagan’s arm aside; his gunshot went wide, punching a hole in the wall. The rope that had bound her hands and legs fell to the ground, neatly sliced through.
Coral swung at the big man’s chin, a bare-knuckled uppercut that cracked, bone against bone, like a second gunshot. Kagan staggered back. Coral closed again and gave him another brutal right, then slashed at his arm with her left hand. A spray of blood shot into the air and his gun tumbled to the floor, just inches from Tricia’s face. A moment later a razor blade landed beside it—the one Tricia had passed Coral when she’d hugged her, the one Coral had just used to draw blood.
Tricia grabbed the gun and got to her feet. She also—carefully—picked up the blade. Above her, Coral was raining jabs and body blows on Kagan. He had his hands up protectively, but she kept sneaking punches in below his guard and to either side, vicious kidney punches and below-the-belt combinations.
Nicolazzo looked on, furious, shouting something in Italian to Pantazonis, who looked like he only understood every third word.
But he understood enough to whip out a gun of his own.
He leveled his at Coral and Tricia leveled Kagan’s at him. They both pulled the trigger at the same time.
49.
Gun Work
The dual explosion in the small room deafened everyone and the choking cloud of gunsmoke added to the confusion. Pantazonis lay at Charley’s feet, leaking blood like a punctured water bottle. Kagan and Coral were both upright; Pantazonis’ bullet had missed them.
Nicolazzo released Charley’s neck as Tricia swept her gun up toward him. He jumped over Pantazonis’ body and shoved her aside, continuing on through the door. Tricia heard him running down the hallway, shouting for his men.
She raced to Charley’s side. Her hands were shaking; her breath was coming rapidly. She fought the nauseous feeling rising in her gut. Had she just killed a man? She pushed the question from her mind. She could think about that later. If there was a later.
She started working on the ropes around Charley’s hands with the razor blade, trying not to slit his wrists in the process. At the other end of the room, Kagan and Coral were still standing toe to toe, fists raised like contenders in a boxing match. They looked at each other, smiled. He shrugged his shoulders; she stretched her neck, bending it this way and that; he cracked the knuckles on both his fists. Then she drove a right cross into his face. He swayed for a moment and fell like a tree. He didn’t get up.
“My goodness,” Tricia said.
“I don’t mean to be selfish here,” Charley said after a moment, “but do you think you could...?”
“Oh, yes—sorry.” Tricia finished slicing through the rope.
Coral, meanwhile, bent to grab Pantazonis’ gun.
“Is there any other way out?” Tricia said.
“Not unless you can fit through that porthole.”
Tricia thought she might—it wasn’t that much smaller than the bathroom window at the Satellite Club. But there was no way Coral or Charley could, and anyway none of them could swim to safety from wherever they were, somewhere outside U.S. coastal waters. The nearest land was probably miles away.
“Then let’s get out of here,” she said, just as a pair of Nicolazzo’s men burst through the door with guns in hand.
Before Tricia could react, Coral had dropped them both, one with a bullet to the gut, the other with a pair in his leg, the second shot blowing out his kneecap. Both fell to the ground moaning. Coral threw away the gun she’d used and pried theirs out of their hands. “Here,” she said, handing one to Tricia. “These’ll be fully loaded.” Tricia had only used one bullet from Kagan’s gun; she held onto both.
They went cautiously out into the hall. There was no one there at the moment, but halfway to the stairs they saw a pair of legs coming down. Coral didn’t wait, just took aim and fired, and the possessor of the legs slid to the bottom in a heap.
“Where’d you learn to shoot like that?” Tricia said.
“You pick things up,” Coral said.
“Sure,” Tricia said, following her up the steps to the deck, “but not things like that.”
“You do if you have to,” Coral said.
A bullet caromed off a metal railing beside them and they dropped to their hands and knees, crawled behind the nearest bulkhead. Coral poked one arm around the side to blindly squeeze off a shot, then fell back.
“How many of these guys are there?” Tricia said.
“I’m not sure. Fewer than ten, I think. Maybe it’s ten with the ones that brought you.”
“Then we’ve already gotten rid of half of them,” Tricia said.
“You always were an optimist,” Coral said, a
nd rose from her crouch to take another shot.
Behind them, Tricia heard Charley crawling away. “Where are you going?” Tricia said.
“I have an idea.”
“How about not getting shot? I’d think you’d like that idea.”
“I love that idea,” Charley said, “but I’m not convinced sitting here waiting to run out of bullets is the best way to accomplish it.”
“We should stick together,” Tricia said.
“With Annie Oakley there on your side? You don’t need me.”
“At least take a gun,” Tricia said, and tried to hand him one.
He held up his taped hand. “Broken trigger finger. Thanks, anyway.”
“Be careful, Charley,” she said.
“Always.” He hesitated a moment, then leaned in and kissed her. “In case I don’t get another chance,” he said. Then he scurried away, around the corner, chased by gunfire.
Someone patted her roughly on the shoulder.
“Hey,” Coral said, “are you listening? I said give me that gun.”
“Sorry,” Tricia said, and passed Kagan’s gun to her.
Coral pointed across the way, the opposite direction from the one Charley had gone. “When I say go—”
Tricia nodded.
“Go!”
Tricia scuttered through a wide open No Man’s Land while Coral laid down protective fire and followed her. Return fire plowed up the wooden deck at their feet and one splinter caught Tricia in the calf. She could feel the bite and the blood running down her leg.
“You okay?”
“Yeah,” she said, grimacing. She hunched behind a broad wooden bitt with a hawser coiled around it. Coral crammed in beside her.
“Ladies,” came a booming voice, Nicolazzo’s, “if you put your guns down right now, I won’t kill you.”
“You think we’d fall for that?” Coral shouted back.
“Your sister’s got a lot of money that belongs to me,” Nicolazzo said. “Much as I would enjoy killing you both, I wouldn’t pay millions of dollars for the pleasure.”
“ ‘Kill the sister,’ ” Coral said. “I heard you three times.”
“Clearly the situation has changed.”
“Yeah,” Coral said, “it’s changed because I’ve got a gun. How about you put your guns—”
The boat lurched before she could get the rest of her thought out. Tricia felt the engines turn on belowdeck and over the side she saw the water churning as they got underway.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Coral said.
The men on the other side of the deck seemed confused as well, judging by the argument being carried out in yelled Italian. Tricia glanced up, over the side, toward the horizon. “Look!”
She pointed.
There was another boat in sight, headed their way, bouncing in the spray as it chewed up the distance between them. Nicolazzo’s boat was trying to get away, it seemed, powering in the same direction but more ponderously, a wildebeest being chased down by a cheetah.
A red light mounted on the other boat’s fly bridge went on and began spinning. A harsh voice amplified through a bullhorn said, “Cut your engines. This boat is operating under the authority of the Federal Bureau of—” The voice went silent for a second. “—under the joint authority,” it resumed, “of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the New York Police Department. Prepare to be boarded.”
Nicolazzo’s yacht was gaining speed, grinding angrily through the waves. Off in the distance, through the early morning haze, Tricia thought she could just make out the outline of the coast. They were making headway. But the police boat was making more, growing larger and louder—a siren went on, to go with the flashing light—and pulling up alongside them.
Nicolazzo’s men ran to the railing, Tricia and Coral forgotten, and began shooting down over the side. More sounds of gunfire came up from below, and one of Nicolazzo’s men fell backwards, clutching his throat.
“You are firing on agents of the United States government, a federal offense punishable by life in prison. Drop your weapons and allow us to board.”
The ships kept racing, jostling each other for position, the big yacht pulling away in one direction, then the other, only to find itself headed off by the more nimble boat. Finally, Tricia felt the engines cut out and they slowed to a dead stop with the police boat out of sight on the far side of the pilot house. Nicolazzo and his men ran down that way; once they were past, Tricia and Coral followed.
By the time they arrived, O’Malley and two uniformed cops were standing on the deck alongside a half dozen federal agents, thick flak jackets protecting their torsos, steel helmets covering their heads. The feds had machine guns cradled at the ready in their arms and Nicolazzo’s men had their hands up, guns littering the deck at their feet.
Tricia dropped her gun. When one of the feds looked Coral’s way, Tricia nudged her with an elbow and Coral reluctantly released hers as well.
Two of the feds cleared an opening at the rail and Special Agent Houghton Brooks, Jr. climbed up through it. He wasn’t wearing any armor or protective gear, just the gray suit he’d had on in the interrogation room. But he walked blithely into the middle of this deadly crowd as if he’d been taking a stroll down Fifth Avenue.
He located Nicolazzo and marched up to him.
“Salvatore Nicolazzo,” he said, “you are under arrest.”
Nicolazzo chuckled, looked at the men on either side of him. “You can’t arrest me here. You can’t even be on board my ship. We are in international waters. You have no jurisdiction here.”
“You were,” Brooks said, “in international waters. Until about five minutes ago. You’re in U.S. waters now, mister.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Nicolazzo said calmly. “Check the instruments. I assure you my captain knows perfectly well where international waters begin and end.”
Tricia tried to see through the window of the pilot house, but the glare from the morning sun prevented it.
“Very well, let’s check the instruments,” Brooks said. He strode up to the door to the pilot house and swung it open. A man trussed hand and foot rolled out. He’d apparently been leaned up against the door. This was the captain, Tricia presumed, judging by the nautical cap on his head. A gag of some sort prevented him from making more than soft mewling sounds as he squirmed about.
Past him, inside the pilot house, Charley stood at the ship’s wheel, his hands gripping it tightly at the two and ten o’clock positions. His taped finger stuck out accusingly.
“What have you done?” Nicolazzo said. “What have you done?” He would have leapt at Charley but one of the feds, coming up behind him, restrained him.
Brooks checked the instruments, nodded. “U.S. waters. I assure you, Mr. Nicolazzo, we wouldn’t have come after you otherwise. The Bureau always operates by the rules.” And to Charley: “It’s just as well that it took us a little while to pinpoint Miss Heverstadt’s signal underwater. That gave you enough time to steer the ship here. Your government is grateful to you, mister...?”
Charley looked at Tricia.
“Stephenson,” she said.
“Borden,” he said.
50.
Fifty-to-One
The man the glazier had sent over was kneeling in the corridor, fine brush in hand, carefully painting gold letters onto the new pane in the door:
HARD CASE CRIME CHARLES BORDEN, PROP.
“I might ask him to change that,” Charley said. “Borden, I mean.”
“Why?” Tricia asked.
“Now that the feds are keeping an eye on me, it feels like maybe it’s time for a fresh start,” Charley said. “Anyway, too many people who know me by that name would like to do me harm.”
“Or you owe them money,” Erin said.
“That, too.”
“So what’ll you change it to?” Tricia said.
“Why?” Charley said. “You think you might have a personal stake in
the matter some day?”
She found herself blushing again, damn it. “Anything’s possible,” she said.
He kissed the side of her head. “Don’t worry, I’ll pick something that sounds similar to Borden. Keep it easy to remember.”
“Gordon?” Erin said. “Arden?”
“Something like that.”
He opened the door to the chateau. Four faces turned their way. “That’s okay, don’t get up, girls. I just wanted to let you know I’m back.”
“You ever hear of knocking?” Annabelle said. She had nothing on but a towel—wrapped turban-style around her head.
“What, and miss seeing you like that? Never.” He pulled the door shut and they went on to Madame Helga’s at the end of the hall.
“What happened to you?” Billy Hoffman said as they entered, gesturing toward Charley’s black eye and taped-up finger.
“Long story,” Charley said. “Let us use your office, will you?”
“Of course.”
They went inside.
Charley handed the phone over to Tricia, who sat behind Billy’s desk. How long had it been since she’d walked through that door for the first time? Since she’d seen Hoffman sitting right here and Robbie Monge staring at her as she danced. Poor, unfaithful Robbie Monge.
She picked up the receiver and placed a call to Aberdeen. The phone rang and rang and she let it—mama might easily have been at the other end of the house when the ringing started, and she wasn’t as young as she used to be.
“Hello...?”
Tricia’s face lit up. “Mama! It’s me, Patricia.”
“Patricia? Are you coming home?”
“No, mama, I’m not. But guess what? Coral is.”
There was silence on the other end. Then: “Coral?”
Tricia thought about the scene down on Cornelia Street earlier that morning, when she’d accompanied Coral to her room. She’d finally gotten to see Artie. Damned if he didn’t have his father’s chin after all, and no doubt at all who the father was.
What are you going to do? she’d asked Coral, who’d had to think about it.
I’m going to go home, she’d said finally. Not for good—but for now.
“Yes, mama,” Tricia said. “Coral. And she’s bringing someone with her.”
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