"Oh, God," he choked up. "I'm so sorry."
I stood up and turned my back on him, dug an assortment of pills from my shirt pocket and walked to the water cooler. I swallowed the pills and took a long drink of cold water as Mark sat up. He leaned back against the front of his desk, hands on his face.
"Why did you do it?" I shouted. I spun and threw the crushed paper cup at him.
"I was afraid," Mark said as he sat there, legs stretched out, hands falling to his sides. "A soldier pulled out a knife and said he would cut my throat if I resisted, and I told him everything."
I got mad all over again. "They killed Mel Shiver, and they're going to kill Katherine, you bastard!" I charged him like a wild animal and kicked the polished veneer beside his head. He didn't move. "What the fuck have you done?"
Mark stood up so fast he knocked his desk sideways. He stumbled toward me, his face red and his blue eyes blazing. "God damn you!" he shouted at me, his voice filled with rage. He was shaking. "Don't you ever talk to me like that again, you motherfucker!" He caught me by surprise.
"You never take responsibility for a fucking thing!" Mark said. "Do you really want to know why Katherine is with those bastards?"
He was crying. "Well, if you can't tell me, I can tell you. It's because you thought you could go up against the whole fucking world again, Mac. Your God damned ego makes you think you're Zorro, or Superman. But, you're not. You got Patty killed with your stupid games, and now Katherine and her daughter are in trouble.
"I know why I told them, Mac," he sniffed, and leaned back until he was staring up at the ceiling fan. "I got scared of dying. I guess we're not all cut out for this kind of shit, buddy. But don't you ever hit me again, or I'll have you thrown in jail."
Mark walked to the water cooler and took a drink. I leaned over his desk and lifted papers from his briefcase, looking at them as he composed himself. My emotions were yo-yoing and I needed to find some control over them. Mark turned toward me, his face bruised and swollen.
"You know," he said, "there is never a day when I don't think about her. And I know that if it weren't for you, Patty would still be here. She'd still be with me, and she'd be safe."
I felt old. Mark was right. I killed Sheevers, but her being with me had been Patty's choice, not his.; And, somewhere, the blame had to fall on those men whose power made them believe they didn't have to answer to anyone.
"Where's Candace?" he asked. I said nothing.
Instead, I spread the papers out on the desktop and looked them over. There were documents typed on Mark's letterhead that implicated the Men's Club and its members in a plot to subvert the Constitution of the United States, the current legal system and the people of Florida. He had spent a great deal of time on them and they were very well written. I guessed he'd had a lot of sleepless nights lately, too.
There was a copy of the letter the speaker told the crowd about that night as I hid under the table. It was an incredible document. In paragraphs crammed with patriotic jargon, each member was guaranteed a small percentage of stock in the companies that were being formed to sell drugs in the state, and a chance to buy into a system that would privately finance these new private armies. Armies to be used by the government to augment the true branches of the military. It seemed unreal.
There was a Reagan administration study from the mid-eighties that explored the possibility of using private enterprise, borrowing huge sums of money through banks and savings-and-loans, to purchase major military hardware like tanks and planes and battleships, then lease them to the services in a joint business venture. I heard Mark walk into the other room, and when he came back to his desk he had an armload of copies that he dropped on the blotter.
"I was going to take these to the newspaper," he said. "And the authorities, whoever they are, or anyone else that might come to mind. I made enough to go around." I stopped reading and looked up at my friend.
"I really am sorry, Mac," he said. "I thought I would be tougher than that, but I wasn't. There's no way to change it, but I'm sorry. I'll never forgive myself if Katherine and her daughter get killed."
I didn't want to talk about it any more. There were too many things still undone.
"Where did you get these?" I asked.
"Misters Barret, Barret and Finch are all on the board of directors at the Men's Club. I didn't think anything of it until you and I had that talk in the shopping center. They must've been the ones who told Birk about Katherine's flight to Tallahassee." Mark bent over the water cooler again and drank more water.
"I broke into Finch's office last night," he said without looking up, "but they don't know it yet."
I dug through the papers until I had one copy of each. I folded them and slipped them into my back pocket. "Give me your keys," I said. Mark hesitated, but only for a second. He removed the car keys from a ring and handed them to me.
"If you call them and tell them I'm coming, Mark," I said, "you'll find out that I'm more of a danger to you than they'll ever be. Do you understand?"
"Yes," he said. "But don't worry, I'm not going to do that. I really was going down there to try and stop them, Mac. I'll get the rest of these papers to a friend of mine. He'll help me get them to the right people." I headed for the door.
"Mac!" I looked at Mark over my throbbing shoulder. "They have over a hundred troops camped out on Omni land right now. I think they'll use them against you if they feel threatened. You've really fucked things up for them."
"I hope I have," I said. "And I hope they feel threatened. Maybe people will wake up when they see tanks in the streets."
The sun seemed hotter and was a blinding white as I stepped outside. Mark's car cranked easily and the cool, conditioned air felt good on my face. Everything seemed crazy and unreal. I drove cautiously across the eastbound bridge that spanned Palmetto Bay, linking the beaches to the urban sprawl. The westbound bridge was clogged with tourists eager to get to their motel rooms, and the traffic was backed up through three intersections. I took side roads and was downtown in less than ten minutes.
The business district had been built around the Sunset Hotel, and it dominated the skyline. Tall and wide and ancient, its facade was ominous, its presence imposing. Every important man who visited Palmetto Bay had stayed at least once at the Sunset. Photographs on the walls, some cracked and yellowed with age, showed politicians, dignitaries and celebrities at the enormous, shadowy bar.
I had studied the Sunset Hotel with an intensity that I seldom achieved, Sheevers lying naked on my back as I propped myself up on my elbows, tangled in the sheets and comforter. As I flipped the floor plans from page to page, working on our case against Tommy Lovett, Patty leaned over my neck, whispered in my ear and drew obscene stick figures in every room, and with a great deal of imagination. If they hadn't made any drastic changes in the layout, I knew I could find my way in and out of there in a hurry.
There was an ingenious system of stairs and narrow halls in the rear of the building designed to bring food and liquor, girls, boys, men, or women to the guests. I backed the Mercedes into a spot between two pickup trucks and, with the darkly tinted windows up, I scanned my mind for patterns of flow, the lengths of the hallways, and the angle of the stairs. I thought of them as tunnels and set myself to respond to them in that way. I put my senses on alert and hoped I hadn't lost too much over the last few years.
Mark's fedora lay on the passenger seat, and I put it on before I got out, kept my head down and crossed the alley quickly. Once inside the service door, I tossed the hat into a trash barrel and pulled the pistol from my belt, checking the clip before gripping it firmly in my good hand.
I strained to hear the sounds of the building, and soon an aura of noise surrounded me, lifted me up the stairs past tall, wooden doors with ornate knobs and, high above, stained-glass transoms. I could hear conversations and feel the movement of air through my throbbing fingertips, and picked up the smells of perfumes, cigars and food.
My feet moved
surely on the carpeted stairs and swiftly down the halls. People stirred in their rooms, other rooms were silent. It was a little after one o'clock in the afternoon, and there was no activity in this part of the Sunset; too late for lunch, too early for sex.
I struggled to maintain my sensory discipline, and was exhausted by the time I had finished the second floor. When I reached the third I thought that maybe I was just wishing it, but I heard a voice familiar to me and smelled Katherine's faint perfume. I put my fingers on the walls and traced my way to the fourth door. There, just a few feet away from me, was Katherine Furay. I knew it.
I heard two men talking low, then recoiled at the abrasive voice of Tommy Lovett. He was saying nasty things about me and laughing. I did not hear Katherine, and I wondered if she might be dead. At that point, it didn't matter. I was going in.
I shifted the pistol to my slow left hand and aimed it at the lock, just in case. With the right I slowly twisted the knob and found it unlocked, pushed open the door and raised the pistol as I stepped inside. Two silver haired men in expensive suits sat in overstuffed chairs and Tommy Lovett leaned against the wall between them, arms folded across his chest. Startled, they almost bolted, but I swung the pistol in a slow curve that covered them and said, "Don't."
"Mac!" Katherine leapt to her feet from a daybed along the wall and stopped short of embracing me.
"Hey, bubba," I said to her, and turned slightly, moving the heavy pistol back into my right hand. The left hand had already started icing up and going numb. "Candace is alive and safe."
"Oh," she inhaled the word. "Thank God!"
"Mr. Clay," one of the seated men said. I motioned to Katherine and she stepped behind me, between the gun and the door.
"Yeah?" I cocked my head toward him but kept my eyes on Tommy Lovett.
"It seems we've underestimated you more than once," He said. Lovett snorted.
"Thanks for the compliment," I said. "But, I think it's more likely that you've just been overestimating yourselves." I felt Katherine's fingers caress my back. A door closed down the hall, and I heard men's voices coming closer. Katherine reached behind her and slammed the door shut, then turned the deadbolt.
Someone began yelling and pounding on the door and I saw Lovett ease away from the wall. The two men gripped the arms of their chairs. I raised the pistol and pointed it at Lovett's head, telling him to stop. He did. "Tell them to back off," I said to the younger of the silver-haired men. He shouted nervously to get their attention.
"Don't come in!" he said to the door. "Stay where you are. We're having a bit of a problem."
"Good," I said. "Let's keep cool." I thought of Candace and Lonnie Patrick and wondered how he would find us, wishing I thought about stuff like this ahead of time.
"It seems obvious that you're not going anywhere," the same man continued, his voice calm and smooth. The other, softer and older with limpid eyes and bony fingers, sat like a stone. Tommy, a small, wiry ferret with darting eyes, would have looked more natural in a pink dress than in the ridiculous silk suit he wore.
I watched the other two and saw how tightly their skin was stretched across their faces, lips twisted in thin grimaces, neck veins bulging. These guys were stressed out power junkies with a shortage of junk. I realized that, even if they got rid of the bunch of us now and destroyed all the evidence, Bob Birk's campaign was tainted. And they had already hitched their wagon to his rising star.
We had won, sort of. If not a victory, at least we put the spotlight on these cockroaches of the game, the boys who like doing it in the dark. Each plan for a new Florida would have to be reconsidered and, who knows, maybe some reporter would not only stumble over the story but have a boss who'd print it.
These were remote chances, but these were people who didn't take chances. I felt a little better. "Boy," I said, "you guys really botched this thing, didn't you?"
"I'm sure you believe that what you're doing is right," the older man started, his eyes burning with rage. I had humiliated him.
"But you just don't understand what's at stake here," he said. "We'll find Ms. Furay's daughter and take whatever steps necessary to correct the damage you've done. It's an inconvenience, but it's just another lesson we must learn. Loose ends, Mr. Clay, can be very costly." He practically cooed at me from the big chair.
"You're a dinosaur, and you know it," he went on. "One of those useless and unnecessary creatures that doesn't know when to quit. Under normal circumstances, I would have sympathy for someone like you. But, you're hurting America's future, and I can't excuse it. We've been living a lie."
He smiled, and I let my eyes drift past him a little, watching for any movement from the other two. The men in the hallway were silent. The front door of the room was closed, and Katherine slipped over carefully and locked it, too, then returned to me.
"We want problems to solve themselves, but they won't." The guy was warming up. "Drugs are ruining us, destroying the economy and the will of the people. Indecision is killing our politicians but, thank God, we have a few real men left who will act to make things right again.
"The people of Florida will be proud of themselves when they see what they've done. When they see how much safer their streets are, how much nicer their neighborhoods and towns will be when we put dope addicts and disgruntled dissidents like you in places where they don't have to worry about you."
So, I thought, they're planning on arresting a few thousand subversives and dangerous politicians along the way? That made sense.
"Property values will rise, decent people will move here and, with the services people like you will provide, living expenses and taxes will go down." His smile became a smirk. "Now do you see the future, Mr. Clay?"
I kept staring at the wall. "Mr. Clay?" he repeated himself. I blinked rapidly and let my eyes focus on his face.
"I'm sorry," I said. "Were you talking to me?"
Katherine laughed and the man glared at me, his fatherly act gone. "I never should've expected you to grasp the complexities of our goals."
"Oh," I said, "I have no problem with the politics or sociology, I'm just not that interested in those things right now. You see, I'm trying to find a gang of psychopaths who murdered four people at Limestone Creek about five years ago. Two of the victims were children."
"Don't be absurd," he exploded, almost rising to his feet. "Those weren't children! They were drug sellers, dope addicts!"
"Yeah," I said, "and Mel Shiver was a dealer, too. Shut up, old man. You're making me tired."
I was bored with this drivel, and it was keeping my mind away from solving the minor problem of getting out alive. I heard a commotion at the front door, and someone rattled the knob on that one, too. Things were getting a little tight.
Katherine edged around until she was at my side again. She reached slowly forward and pulled a folded newspaper from a small table beside the older man, uncovering a small pistol hidden beneath it. I hadn't noticed.
"Leave it alone, bitch!" Tommy Lovett snapped at her, his eyes following her hand as she picked up the little gun. It was a .25 automatic. The old guy had been leaning in its direction, and now he slumped back in the chair.
"Thanks, pal," I said.
"Don't mention it." Her voice was a wonderful thing. Tommy Lovett shifted positions, and I watched him closely. He stretched his lips into a cold smile.
"I hate to see you die before we get your little girl," he said to Katherine. "She was a hot little piece of ass back in the day, and I was hoping you'd be around to watch what I do to her." He closed his eyes for a moment and breathed in deeply, then opened them again, staring at me, not her.
"I think I'll chop her up like I done his old girlfriend." He never blinked. My world was reduced to an area no larger than Tommy Lovett. I felt a bitter heat spread through my stomach and into my chest.
"Lovett," one of the men said quietly. "Stop."
Tommy Lovett stared into my eyes and laughed. "You should've heard the noises she made ever
y time I stabbed her, Clay," he said. "It was like I was fucking her."
The fire raced down my arm and into my hand, into the finger coiled around the trigger. My head felt as though it was going to burst, but the rage rendered me immobile. In that instant, they reacted. So did I, but it was a second too late.
The younger man grabbed a glass ashtray and tossed it like a Frisbee at my face. I ducked it and came around, getting a shot off in his direction, but even as I did, I watched Tommy Lovett move around the chair. He grabbed a heavy brass floor lamp and swung it like a baseball bat. The solid base smashed into my left shoulder and ruptured the healing wound, ripping the swollen flesh under my make-shift bandage.
I couldn't move, couldn't even think because of the pain. He brought the lamp back and reloaded to swing again, stepping into it this time like a major leaguer, but I heard two loud pops and his silk shirt erupted into twin fountains of blood. He slammed back into the wall.
"Bastard!" Katherine shouted as she shot Lovett a third time, and the sound was buried in the noises made by both doors being bashed in. The old guy stayed in the chair, and as I gripped my shoulder and dropped to my knees, I saw the talker slumped in the corner of the room with an ugly red hole in his neck.
Katherine stood over me as people poured into the room from both sides.
SEVENTEEN
There was a whole lot of shooting going on, and I wasn't doing any of it. I saw Lonnie Patrick and four other men burst through the front door, weapons up, just a moment before the back door caved in, and in a wall-splintering hail of fire, one of Lonnie's men grabbed his side and stumbled. Lonnie and the other three stood their ground, and in less than five seconds, it was over.
Katherine was trying to pull me to my feet, and Patrick joined her, dropping under my bloody shoulder and lifting me until I was attached to his side, my own pistol hanging uselessly in my other hand. People were yelling and running up the back stairs, and with the Lieutenant shouting orders we raced out the front door of the room, down a large stairwell filled with frightened people, and into a lobby filled with guns.
A Thousand Bridges Page 17
