by Erik Carter
Burton peeled the wet cocktail napkin from the bottom of his tumbler. “Joey Farone was like a father to me when I was younger, but he’s a spineless coward, even before he lost his mind.” He watched his fingers as he rolled the napkin into a ball, dropped it onto the bar. “And his son is a different kind of lunatic, a psychopath. There’s a great base of operation in the Pensacola outfit, built up for decades. It just needs leadership.”
Jake took a sip of his beer. “And you think you’re the man for the job?”
Burton shrugged. “Maybe so. But first I need to eliminate my competition. Things are changing, Hudson. I understand Glover gave you an invitation to side with me. That was before you stole a large portion of my nest egg, so naturally that invitation has been rescinded.”
“Naturally.”
Burton leaned off the bar, resumed his full height. At about six feet tall, he was a few inches shorter than Jake, but still his presence, his grinning existence, was enormous, orbital.
Something could happen.
Right now.
Jake slid his fingers off the bottle, across the polished surface of the bar, toward his holster, clipped to the back of his pants, beneath his jacket.
Burton’s eyes flicked down to Jake’s hand, the smile never leaving.
The muscles in Jake’s arm tensed.
Burton raised his glass, grinned wider. “I’ll be seeing ya, Pete.”
And it was over.
For now.
Burton drained the glass, plopped it on the bar, and gave a two-finger wave to the bartender. He stepped away, shouldering into the crowd. Someone said something to him, a woman, the same woman who’d tried to flirt with Jake moments earlier. Burton smiled at her, that oozing, natural charisma, but he continued on, meandering through the horde and ending up beside Glover.
Jake turned around and put both elbows on the bar. Exhaled.
A tapping on his shoulder. He expected to find the drunken woman, but instead it was Charlie.
“Well…?”
Jake smiled. “I’m still alive.”
He turned back around, and Charlie followed suit. Halfway across the lounge, separated by a thrashing mass of arms and dresses and sport coats and broadcloth shirts, two other men looked back at them.
Charlie spoke to Jake without taking his gaze off Burton and Glover.
“There’s a war coming.”
Chapter Eighteen
Silence escaped the memory, eyelids snapping open, back in the shadows, banana leaves brushing his neck, his hands, the smell of fertilizer and mulch.
A few of Burton’s words shimmered away, a pointed repetition from Silence’s subconscious, a dying, deconstructing reverberation.
But first I need to eliminate my competition.
Silence pulled the newspaper from his pocket. The article on the bottom half of the front page.
Hardin to Bury Hatchet with Mayor Sizemore
It was here, the connection, in this newspaper article. Silence could feel it. He remembered something from the first paragraph, scanned it.
Though Commissioner Matthew Hardin continues his harsh criticism of Mayor Ken Sizemore’s leadership during these tumultuous times…
Hardin had been making noise, expressing public distaste about how the mayor had handled the chaos created by Rupert Lowry, a criminal that Silence now knew to be in Hardin’s employ. And Hardin was going to join the mayor in a supposed act of benevolence.
…he has announced that he will join the mayor in a show of unity at tonight’s candlelight vigil…
Silence pulled out the PenPal, flipped it open. His eyes bounced over the bubbles of the mind map.
OLD ASSIGNMENT/NEW ASSIGNMENT
BOWMAN FAMILY
ADRIANA RAMIREZ
BENITO RAMIREZ
TRAITOR?
PROTECTION RACKET
His eyes lingered on the most beguiling bubble.
CONNECTION?
Hardin had hired Lowry to create chaos in the city, something to undermine Sizemore’s leadership as mayor.
That would make Sizemore an enemy, as Burton had said—Hardin’s enemy.
As Burton had said…
But first I need to eliminate my competition.
Burton’s plan had been to get rid of anyone in his way.
Silence flopped the folded newspaper on top of the notebook, looked at the lower article again.
…tonight’s candlelight vigil…
The mayor’s event.
Mayor Sizemore. Hardin’s enemy.
Tonight. 8 p.m.
Hardin, Lowry, and Adriana had just left, going somewhere together. On a schedule.
There’s nowhere safer for us than where we’re going, Hardin had said. Come on. We don’t have much time.
Silence checked his watch. 7:37.
…eliminate my competition.
That was it.
The connection.
Like Burton, Hardin was going to eliminate his competition. He was taking his thug Lowry with him to the vigil.
To assassinate the mayor.
A sharp sound broke the stillness, and Silence jolted. Something mechanical. An automatic garage door retracting.
He shoved the notebook and newspaper in his pocket, pulled the Beretta back out of its holster, then hurried along the side of the house, back to the front where the three-car garage was located.
Voices. Jingling keys. Car doors being opened.
He stopped at the corner of the garage, behind an arborvitae.
“How can you be sure?” Adriana said.
Hardin replied. “Calm down. We’ll be perfectly fine.”
Then a cruel laugh from Lowry. “Yeah, sweetheart, please don’t doubt my skills. Where’d you find this chick, Hardin?”
Car doors shutting. An engine firing up. The red glow of brake lights on the herringbone brick driveway. The light turned white—reverse lights. The crunch of tires.
Silence flattened himself tighter against the wall, farther into the shadows.
An SUV emerged, backed into a turnaround, and then rolled to the street. Silence watched until it turned and went past the edge of the property, then he sprinted out of concealment and down the drive.
Chapter Nineteen
A crappy old sailboat.
Lowry sniffed.
Damn. Smelled as bad as it looked. Like mildew, only … worse. Mold? A combination of mildew and mold?
Ugh.
A curled piece of thick, faded green paint lay inches in front of his eyes, right in his view. He took it between his fingers, tugged. It came off the board with a small snap, a full six inches in length. He dropped it, rubbed the flaky residue from his fingers.
Hardin hadn’t told Lowry where or when he’d gotten the boat, but its ramshackle condition made it clear that he’d purchased it especially for the occasion, finding something dirt cheap, knowing it would only be used once.
Fortunately Hardin hadn’t used the same philosophy on the outboard, which glistened in the back, brand new, waiting.
A pristine motor clamped onto a piece of shit boat.
Life’s full of paradoxes.
Lowry could have saved himself the discomfort and indignity of lying prone in the mold-boat; he could have, in theory, given the task to one of his men.
But there was no way in hell he was gonna let one of his guys get the money shot.
Whacking the mayor?
No, no, no. Lowry was going to do that himself. He’d made the city of Sarasota his own, so killing its mayor was akin to a presidential assassination or dethroning a king.
This moment would define him.
And add some hefty digits to his bank account.
When the deed was done, having a friend as the new mayor had obvious benefits of its own.
Everything about this situation was glistening gold.
The gun was an old M1A, a civilian version of the military’s M14 rifle. At least, that’s what Cameron, his source for high-level arms, had told
him when he sold it to him two weeks ago. But since Cameron had said that the weapon was a “ghost,” it might well have been made of mismatched parts, some legal, some not, some with filed-off serial numbers, some custom-fabricated. Lowry had raised a skeptical eye to the rough-looking exterior of the gun, but a couple of test rounds at Cameron’s private indoor range had reaffirmed Hardin’s trust in his arms dealer.
Regardless, none of this particularly mattered, as the plan was to drop the weapon in the sea after Hardin had fired the shot and used the sparkly-new outboard to flee the area.
He was at the bow of the boat, which rocked gently, creaking, squeaking, waves lapping against the hull. The boats in the slips on either side of him were dark and empty. So too were the bigger boats closer to the main dock with the restaurant and offices.
Hardin had done an excellent job choosing the slip, as it was positioned across the water directly in line with the tip of Bayfront Park’s peninsula, where the vigil was being held. Before Lowry, the dark water undulated gently, sparkled by both white stars above and golden points of light from the candles in the hands of the people gathering for the event.
It was a straight shot—quite literally—across the water to the speaker’s podium, about three hundred fifty feet away.
After the shot, Lowry would fire up that peppy outboard, shoot past the marina, past the park—and what would surely be a frightened, panicked crowd—through the bay to Big Sarasota Pass, where a yacht would be waiting for him. The gun would be dropped, the shitty boat would be easily capsized, and Lowry would be on his way out of town for a few nights, letting the heat pass, before returning to a large paycheck and more street credibility than he could have ever imagined.
Across the water, the little golden lights twinkled through the black silhouettes of the trees, so many lights, a warm, undulating blanket that was gradually contracting around the dais, where three people climbed the steps—Hardin, Adriana Ramirez…
And Mayor Sizemore.
Lowry grinned.
Chapter Twenty
Silence meandered through the people assembled at Bayfront Park, a peninsula that jutted out into the bay, curving around the marina, offering sweeping views of the water and the sparkling waterfront towers, the stuff of postcards and travel calendars.
The crowd milled among the trees, spilling through the green spaces and onto the paved patches and beach areas, all of them holding small white candles with paper drip guards, the lights twinkling off palm fronds and oak branches, dancing on the waves. On the opposite side of the water, at the marina a few hundred yards away, were slips full of boats, descending in scale—massive yachts nearest the crowded restaurant, sailboats at the other end. In the distance, towering condos framed the quiet beauty.
Silence moved toward the end of the peninsula, where the crowd slowly congregated. Quiet conversations, punctuated by a few smiles and a few low, restrained laughs. Only a few. The gathering had a reverent purpose, so the crowd’s respectful hum barely registered over the sounds of the waves and traffic in the city beyond.
A stranger approached him and wordlessly handed him a candle. Silence nodded a thank you as the man lit the candle and continued past him to the next candle-less individual.
Silence continued forward, around a curve in the concrete path.
And there they were.
Hardin and Adriana.
At the very tip of the peninsula, beyond the fountain with jets of water and sculptures of leaping dolphins, past a small cluster of palm trees, at a small, raised platform.
Hardin held a microphone low at his side, not yet preparing to speak, and Adriana stood behind him as he conversed with another man, someone Silence recognized from the newspaper—Mayor Sizemore.
In the newspaper photograph, Sizemore had appeared rattled, harried; now his face wore a different stress, the heavy type, the emotional type, the weight of sorrowful responsibility, a countenance in tune with the event. Hardin put a hand on his shoulder, said a few solemn words.
Hardin was accounted for. Adriana was accounted for.
But no Lowry.
Silence headed toward the water, around a tree and past a pod of white-haired retirees gripping their candles and shaking their head, murmuring about what the world was coming to. There was a larger group behind them, maybe twenty or so, in a darker section of the trees, an ideal place for Lowry to conceal himself.
Silence slipped to the side, behind a palm, and took a small pair of binoculars from his jacket pocket. He looked to the group in the back, which the binocular’s night-vision optics showed him in shades of green, blazing white pinpoints from their candles.
Bowed heads. Solemn nods. More of the strangled, sad smiles. But he didn’t see Lowry’s long hair, long nose, penetrating eyes beneath a protruding brow.
He scanned past the group, past the trees, over the water, toward the marina, over a dock with slips full of bobbing sailboats.
And he stopped.
There was a figure on one of the sailboats, a bright bit of heat at the bow, head just visible, looking toward the ceremony.
Silence could just make out the long hair he’d been looking for, the protruding brow.
Lowry.
Holding a scoped sniper rifle.
Silence shoved the binoculars back into his pocket and surveyed his surroundings. To get to the boat, he was going to have to sprint all the way around the peninsula, through the parking lot, up the marina’s main dock, and down the farthest dock, nearly to its end.
Of course.
Distance. Isolation.
They’d planned this out perfectly.
Get the shooter on the other side of the water, separated from any immediate retaliation from gung-ho good Samaritans, and place him in a convenient getaway vehicle.
Clean. Organized. Well-planned.
The only way to best a well-conceived plan was to cut it off at the pass.
So Silence snuffed out his candle and dashed off, sprinting along the edge of the peninsula.
He raced past the group in the back and into the less-crowded part of the park, stealing glances across the water at Lowry, who looked very far away.
An amplified voice boomed through the trees. Hardin’s. Coming from the tip of the peninsula.
“Thank you all for joining us here for this solemn occasion. I’m Commissioner Matthew Hardin. Our city has faced…”
Silence’s lungs burned as he reached the end of the peninsula, slowed somewhat to turn to the left, and bounded down the long parking lot toward the marina.
People getting into and out of their cars called out to him.
You all right, buddy?
What the hell’s the matter with you?
Another turn, onto the marina’s main dock, down the long stretch of concrete, past the crowded restaurant, people watching with awe from the outdoor tables.
“…which has left our police department reeling, our citizens in fear.” Hardin’s voice continued, crisp and clean as it traveled over the water. “Every soul who’s lost their lives…”
Another turn, onto the farthest dock. Gently bobbing sailboats, water lapping against their hulls. His feet clanged on the boards, ruining his element of surprise. He no longer needed it. There was no telling how little time he had before Lowry would fire.
He reached beneath his jacket and took out his Beretta.
“…I’d like you to meet Adriana Ramirez, my housekeeper. She was the intended target of an attack tonight that could have…”
Lowry’s boat was in the fourth slip from the end. Silence had counted during the glances he’d stolen while running over. But with all the masts and stays and booms tangled in his line of sight, he was having difficulty locating the exact boat.
He retrieved his silencer, screwed it onto the end of the Beretta.
A little splash in front of him. One of the boats rocked harder than the others. A flash of movement.
A figure. Lowry. At the bow of a decrepit boat.
Taking aim with his rifle.
Chapter Twenty-One
The boat suddenly rocked beneath Lowry, right as he was squeezing the trigger, the scope’s crosshairs resting over Sizemore’s chest.
Lowry didn’t break his concentration, not for a moment—he just immediately pivoted, bringing the gun around to the stern.
Instinct had told him why the boat had shaken, who had shaken it.
The Quiet Man.
Lowry rolled onto his back. His finger tightened on the trigger. Millimeters of travel, a minuscule amount of pressure, a fraction of a second, and a round would blast out of the barrel. An inevitability.
But it didn’t happen.
A sensation on his fingertips. Movement. Then the cool tickle of emptiness. The rifle was gone, wrenched from his grasp.
But how had—
CRACK!
Something hard. Against his jaw. Piercing pain and sudden disorientation. He’d seen the shadow figure and the sky. Now he saw the deck; he was on his side. Tasted blood. And saw blood. Before him. A rope of it slung from his mouth and splattered on the teak.
A clatter from the stern. Something heavy. The rifle being tossed away. Footsteps. A black chukka entering his line of vision, stomping inches from his eyes, splashing the puddle of his blood.
Pressure on his shoulders. A pair of hands grabbing him and with a powerful thrust inverting him. He looked back into the shadow figure again. More features were visible, the same ones he’d glimpsed from a distance outside the Ramirez house—the hewn cheeks; cold eyes; dark, choppy strands of hair falling into his face as he glared down at Lowry.
Lowry had one shot at this, one chance of survival. The tiny revolver, the Colt, in his rear pocket.
Every bit of energy, the last drops in his reserve tank. His hand went to the pocket, got the gun, aimed.
And for a fraction of a moment, satisfaction. Because he’d seen something in the Quiet Man’s dark eyes. Not fear, but recognition.
