Mortal Sin

by Paul Levine

  We were doing seventy on a two-lane road. He shot a look toward the southeast and the Big Cypress Swamp. “Then you come along, Jake. A half-assed ex-jock without a clue. Did you have a plan? Fuck no. All you cared about was screwing my wife and fucking me over. I cut you a break. I hired you on the Tupton case, you ungrateful piece of shit. Even after you screwed my wife, I let you live. But you gotta go fucking around with the Indians and the geologists. You stupid fuck, I would have dealt with you. You didn’t have to go public.”

  “It was the only way to stop you,” I said softly from the backseat.

  “Once you knew about the oil, you could have come to me. I would have cut you in.”

  “I didn’t want a piece of your action. I wanted you.”

  “Fine. You got me, pal. You got me good. Fifteen years of work down the drain. A lifetime of plans. Now what the fuck am I going to do with you?”

  “Turn me over to Socolow,” I said.

  “Maybe I’ll do that,” he said. In the rearview mirror, I saw him smile, or at least bare his teeth. “In pieces.”

  “After what I’ve been through, you think you can scare me, Nicky?”

  “Who gives a shit about scaring you when I can kill you?”

  He swung the Bentley onto a gravel road. Diaz kept the gun leveled at me. The muddy bank of a canal rose above us on our left. Stalks of sugarcane towered over the car on our right. I had the claustrophobic sense of being in a tunnel. The sky was filled with black smoke, portions of the cane fields being scorched prior to harvesting. The fire burns off the undergrowth and much of the unwanted leaves, leaving the hard-husked cane intact. The air smelled sweet, like summer corn on the grill.

  “Your face is going to be on the evening news,” I said. I imitated his voice. “‘You sneaky bird-dogging son of a bitch, I’m gonna kill you.’ How would it look if I turn up dead?”

  “Maybe you won’t turn up at all. Maybe you get buried under twenty tons of dirt.” He looked toward the bank of the canal. “Hey, Guillermo, we got any shovels in the trunk?”

  “No, boss, just a tire jack.”

  “Shit!”

  Florio was quiet a moment as the car crunched along on the gravel road. He seemed to be thinking of what to do with me. Killing was easy. Disposing of the body was hard.

  “We got a camera back there?” Florio asked.

  “Don’t think so, boss.”

  “Shit! Jake here likes to take pictures, don’t you, lover boy? Wouldn’t mind taking one home to Gina, maybe Jake’s dick stuffed in his mouth like a cigar.”

  “Or a salami,” I said.

  “You think this is funny, asshole? I’m gonna watch you die.”

  “Nicky, think it over. It’s too late. You can’t kill me now. I was seen leaving the gym with your hired hand here. You just threatened me on videotape. Abe Socolow’s figured out you’re a scumbag and would love to bust you. Face it, Nicky. The game’s over. Why make it tougher on yourself?”

  “Because I owe you, big time, and because I can’t have you testifying about Rick Gondolier. Face it, I can’t afford to let you live, even if I wanted to, and guess what, pal, I don’t want to…”

  I heard it then, the roar of the engine. At first, I thought it was a piece of equipment in the cane field, a harvester maybe.

  “…So what are your odds, Lassiter, six-to-five against?”

  Then I saw it, above us, dipping down for a closer look. The helicopter with Hank Scourby at the controls. Florio saw it, too, and instinctively hit the brakes. “What the hell!”

  “Even money,” I said.

  The copter hovered in front of us, dropping to just a few feet above our roof.

  “This guy a friend of yours, Lassiter?” Florio yelled, jamming the accelerator to the floor. We bounced through puddles and potholes, my head hitting the ceiling. The copter hung there in front of us.

  Over the noise of the copter and the racing car engine, I barely heard it. Not as much pop as a firecracker, the first gunshot missed. The second one pinged off the hood, and Florio nearly lost control, swerving toward the canal bank, then across the road toward the cane field, before straightening the wheel. I looked up, and there was Hank Scourby, door open, leaning out with his .44 Magnum, blasting away.

  The next shot missed, then another ricocheted off the trunk. Finally, one squarely hit the front windshield, splintering it into a spider’s web of fissures. Again, the Bentley swerved, but Florio kept driving, and the copter stayed with us.

  Diaz lowered his window, stuck the .38 out, and fired two rounds toward the copter. He didn’t appear to hit anything. He took a look at me, poked the gun out the window again, and I turned toward him. In a flash, the gun was in my face, the barrel pushing at my cheekbone.

  “You want to try something, abogado?”

  I shook my head, no.

  Florio slowed down as the black smoke became thicker. The burning leaves now saturated the air, black papery cinders swirling in the breeze. Inside the car, the smell of the cordite combined with the sickly sweetness of the fire. Suddenly, Florio hit the brakes and slid to a stop. The copter wasn’t visible. We were engulfed by clouds of smoke. Waves of heat from the blazing fields poured over us.

  “If we can’t see him, he can’t see us,” Florio said. “But we gotta get off this road.”

  We sat a minute, maybe more. Then I heard it again, growing louder. As it drew closer, the smoke was beaten away by the rotor. Suddenly, a clang from above. Scourby had set the copter down on top of the car. Now he was bashing our roof in.

  Up, down, bam, bang. Twice more.

  I slumped lower in the seat. Again, Florio hit the gas and took off, the copter in pursuit.

  “There, boss.” Diaz was pointing at what looked like a dirt path coming out of the cane field. It connected with the gravel road at a right angle.

  Florio swung the wheel to the right and slid onto the path. It was narrower than the Bentley. We careened through the burning field, the car knocking down cane stalks with a whackety-whack, the wheels spinning in the soft earth. Singed leaves were plastered to our splintered windshield, smoke curling around us. The helicopter was nowhere to be seen, or heard.

  Florio slowed as we entered a canebrake. In a moment, we were in an adjacent field. Here there was no fire, and the earth was soggy. Twice, our rear wheels spun helplessly, whining in the mud, but Florio kept the car moving, fishtailing his way onto firmer ground. Now, I saw them, a legion of cutters in tattered khaki work clothes and bandannas, wiry, dark-skinned men swinging machetes at the base of the stalks, cutting and gathering the cane. They wore shin protectors and thick Kevlar gloves like a platoon of hockey goalies. Hanging from their belts were flasks of energy-laced “petrol,” a high-calorie brew of beer, sugar, and eggs. As we approached, they stopped and stared in wonder as our battered English sedan invaded their territory.

  Again, we emerged into a clearing, and still we drove on. This time I saw the copter before I heard it.

  Straight ahead.

  Half a mile in front of us.

  No more than ten feet off the ground, and aimed straight for us.

  Hank Scourby was playing chicken with Nicky Florio. I didn’t know who was crazier.

  “Son of a bitch!” Florio cried out.

  The copter dropped a couple of feet lower. On this path, its struts would come right through our windshield. Florio floored it, and we bounced through the mud on a collision course. At the last moment, with the roar of the car’s engine lost in the drone of the copter, Florio swung it hard right, toward one of the burning cane fields, and we skidded and bounced over a muddy incline, the car flipping onto its side, tumbling me into Guillermo Diaz. The car continued its slide through the flaming brush, mowing down a row of cane, finally rolling onto its dented roof and slowing to a clunking, thudding halt.

  I was upside down. My neck was twisted sideways, my head pressed against the ceiling, and my ears ringing. I hadn’t felt like this since an offensive lineman grabbed m
y face mask and twisted my head around like Linda Blair in ‘The Exorcist. Now my shoulder was squeezed against the door, and the backseat was a jumble of arms and legs: Diaz’s and mine. I untangled my legs from his, and he screamed in pain. Then he moaned softly, “Mis piernas tienen fracturas, mis piernas están rotas.” I groped for his gun, but I couldn’t find it.

  In the front seat, Florio was cursing. I heard glass tinkling. Florio was hanging on to the steering wheel but was upside down. He scrunched his neck and turned to face me. His face was studded with glass, rivulets of blood streaming into his eyes. He tried to reach into his coat pocket. “Where the fuck’s my gun?”

  Next to me, Diaz was still moaning. One of his legs was bent in a direction God never intended. I wrenched around, found the door handle, and yanked. It took two tries, then opened with a groan, and I climbed out and tumbled into the mud. One of the rear tires was still spinning. I lay there a moment, got my bearings, and scrambled on all fours, half crawling, half running away. Behind me there was a noise as Florio toppled out of the car. He was yelling at me, but I wasn’t listening. I straightened up and did a poor imitation of a broken-field runner dodging stalks of sugarcane.

  My black wing tips splashed through puddles of water. I kept running, keeping my body low, cutting back and forth from row to row. Flames rose from the undergrowth, and black smoke hung over the field, choking me. I tried taking shallow breaths, the heat crushing my chest. As I ran, I put my arms up to ward off the leaves, their jagged edges stinging the heels of my hands. I missed one, and it swatted me just under the eye, drawing blood. I pulled off my suit coat and wrapped it around my right arm, using it as a shield.

  The first shot was a firecracker in the distance.

  Unlike the movies, I didn’t hear the bullet whistling by my ear, just a muffled blam from behind me. Second shot, same thing. I ducked out of one row and was suddenly left in an open field. I turned to go back into the forest of cane, but Florio was there, chugging after me.

  Across the open field was a mud levee rising perhaps ten feet above the ground. The irrigation system. Everglades water would be running through the canal, draining the Big Cypress. I made a run for it.

  The sound of the next shot didn’t reach me until I spun and collapsed headfirst into the muck. It felt like someone had smacked me in the back. I rolled over and touched the front of my left shoulder. Wet with blood. A clean shot through the deltoid. What Charlie Riggs would call a through-and-through if he was examining a corpse in the red-brick building on Bob Hope Road.

  My first reaction was surprise. What a lucky shot for a pistolero who probably never did anyone from more than three feet away, if he ever did anyone at all. Then anger. What an unlucky shot for me.

  I was on my feet again, stumbling up the levee. Another gunshot plunked into the dirt near my feet. I instinctively ducked. I touched my shoulder. Very little blood flow, but it was beginning to hurt. Not a great, throbbing pain, not at all what I expected. More like a hot stinging, what I imagined it would feel like to get stabbed with an ice pick.

  At the top of the levee, I slid down on my bottom. The water in the canal was maybe three feet deep. I waded across, climbed the levee on the other side, slid down again, and started running for the closest cane field. A mechanical harvester combine, a huge machine with tracks like an army tank, circled the rows. Like a giant snout, a green metal chute formed a V at the front of the machine, sucking the cane in, where rotating disks sliced close to the base of the stalks and sent the shards up a conveyor to a chopping drum.

  I raced after the harvester, yelling at the driver, but he was sitting in a glass-enclosed compartment high above the machine, and he never heard me, never saw me behind him. I turned to see Florio sliding down the bank of the levee. He raised the gun, and I ducked and ran again, a zigzag route.

  Another gunshot, but it was wild.

  I headed into the rows of cane, trying to disappear. The air was heavy with soot, the cane thick and sturdy, twelve-feet high and ready for harvesting. With the irrigation gates opened and the field waterlogged, I wasn’t running so much as slogging through the sludge. After a couple hundred yards, I became light-headed and wanted to sit down, but I didn’t let myself. I felt the shoulder with my fingertips. The blood was still trickling out, and the pain had grown worse. My skin felt cold and clammy. I was short of breath, dizzy, and just wanted to sleep.

  I stumbled a few steps and dropped to my knees. I crawled for a minute or two, then sprawled out, my head on my arms. I wasn’t unconscious, but I wasn’t conscious, either. My eyes were closed, and when I opened them, the world was gray. I closed them again. From somewhere far away, I heard a bird squawking, a moment later, the distant rumble of the harvester. Charred leaves fell from the sky, coating me with soot.

  And then a splash. Soft enough to have been a frog in a puddle.

  Another splash, then the unmistakable splat-squish of footsteps in the mud. I heard his breathing. Heavy, labored breaths. The rumble of the harvester grew louder.

  I opened my eyes. Nicky Florio’s Italian leather loafers, coated in mud up to his ankles, were six feet away. His back was to me. If I could get to my feet, I could blindside him, take him down into the muck. But there was no way to get up without rustling leaves and sucking up mud. By the time I was ready to pounce, he would have turned. He’d have a clear shot at me.

  His shout startled me: “Where are you, asshole?”

  I had to concentrate on not answering him. I pressed lower into the soggy earth. He turned slowly, looking left and right. One more quarter turn and he would see me. The noise of the harvester grew louder as it approached. When it came into view, Nicky spun that way, the sight distracting him, the sound muffling my movements.

  As the rumble increased to a roar, I got to my knees. Then from a crouch, I stood up. I kept my eyes on Nicky, aware of the green steel monster chugging toward us, its tracks crunching fallen stalks and the burned debris on the soggy field.

  I took one step, and Nicky whirled, either hearing me or sensing me there. His face was a mask of dried blood. A shaft of sunlight cut through the smoke and reflected a prism of colors from the shards of glass embedded in his forehead. His eyes were crazed with hate. The gun came up and pointed at my throat as I dived at him. Instinctively, I ducked my head to the left.

  The gun was alongside my right ear when it discharged, breaking the eardrum. My good shoulder—the one without a hole in it—caught Florio in the chest and dropped him backward. The gun flew over his head and landed at the base of a cane stalk. I landed on top of Florio. I punched him with a right hand that had nothing behind it, and he gouged my right eye with his thumb, then clawed at my face. I grabbed him by the hair and bashed his head into the soggy ground. I wished we were on asphalt. He tried to knee me in the groin. I got two hands around his throat, but I had no strength, and he pried loose, then kicked at me, sliding out from underneath. I collapsed into the mud, my shoulder bleeding, my ears ringing, my eyes blinking.

  Nicky got to his feet and came at me again. I was on my knees when he tried to kick me, but he slipped in the mud and fell on his ass. He got up again, and we came at each other, locking up like a couple of wrestlers. I pushed him back through the cane, the stalks bending and slapping at us. He tucked a leg behind mine and tried to trip me, but he didn’t have the leverage, and I used my heft to drag him across my hip and put him on his back. He just missed being impaled on a sharp stalk sticking out of the ground.

  I lunged at him and pinned him down by sitting on his chest. He yelled something at me, but I couldn’t hear a thing. Again he growled, and this time I could read his lips.

  “You son of a bitch, Lassiter. I always liked you, did you know that?”

  I answered by smashing him in the mouth with a fist. “You’re crazy, Nicky.”

  He said something else, and again, I couldn’t hear a word. “What?”

  “You stupid fuck!” he screamed, spitting blood onto my chest. “You alway
s wanted to be like me, but you can’t admit it.”

  That made me laugh. “You’re out of your mind.”

  The harvester churned closer. “You admire me, because I do whatever’s necessary to win,” Nicky screamed. “I took Gina away from a spoiled rich kid, and you didn’t. I work for myself and don’t answer to anybody. What do you do, get pushed around by judges with their rule books? I take what I want, Jake, and you don’t. I’m a winner. Can you fucking hear me, you punch-drunk second-string shyster?”

  “You don’t look like a winner,” I said. “You look like a two-bit punk.” This time, I gave him a short chop to the neck.

  He gagged and forced a sick smile. Blood trickled from his forehead in a dozen meandering streams. “You stupid prick!” he yelled at me. “You still don’t understand. It’s not just that I was going to make you my partner ‘cause you knew too much. I wanted you to be my partner. I let you fuck my wife. I knew all about it, even before I found the letter.”

  He twisted his head around, looking toward the approaching harvester as it bore down on us.

  “I don’t get it,” I said.

  “I remember you from when you played ball. I hung around training camp and knew half the guys on the team, but I’ve always been a loner, Jake. I was never on a team of any kind.”

  “Yeah, you were a jock sniffer. You were always one of the guys who wanted to belong, but you didn’t, Nicky. You were a lowlife then, and you’re a lowlife now.”

  His body shifted underneath me. “Yeah, but I got something you don’t.”