by Blake Banner
Keeping in the shadows, I slipped along the wall to stand in the corner, looking out onto the terrace. They had the terrace lights off and were sitting like moonlit ghosts at a table. Beyond them, I could see the luminous ocean and the lights of a small launch.
Emma spoke suddenly.
“Please, Geronimo, I am begging of you, please don’t hurt him. Please, don’t hurt him.”
Geronimo gave a high-pitched wheeze, which must have been a laugh, and said, “Oh, I am going to hurt him, Emma. I am going to make him weep like a child, and I am going to make you watch every second of it until he dies, sobbing for his mommy. Unless, of course, you tell me where the box is. And where is Tammy?”
TWENTY-THREE
“I am sick of telling you!” Her voice was a hiss in the night, like an echo from the surf on the beach. “I don’t know! For this very reason, Geronimo! I knew that you would try something. I knew that you’d try to trick us and betray us.”
He gave a screech like a parrot. “That! That is fine! When it was your sister who cheated me in the first place! If she had stuck to the terms of our agreement in the first place, we would not be in this mess now!”
“An agreement that gave her a filthy two thousand dollars while you netted an incalculable fortune!”
He leaned forward and spat the words viciously at her. “It was not for me! It was for the Mother Church! He had no place owning that treasure! It belongs to the Church!”
“This is getting us nowhere.”
“Where is Tamara?”
“Where you can never find her.”
“Where is she!”
“Never! I will never tell you!” They were both silent, glaring at each other. Then Emma exploded, “Why are you so obsessed with her? Why can’t you let her be?”
“Because she stole from me, and she must pay.”
“You are such a cretin! If you had just left things as they were, Geronimo! You would have your bloody box! I would have my money and my guarantee, and we would be done! Now you get nothing!”
“Fine!” He pounded the table with his fist. “Have it your way! Ronaldo, go and get him!”
Ronaldo moved toward the plate glass doors. As he did so, Emma threw herself at him, clawing at his arm and pleading, “Please! Please don’t hurt him! For God’s sake, please! Please don’t!”
Geronimo pounded the table again. “Enough of this!”
“I swear to you he has the box! I gave it to him so that you could not get it from me! I don’t know where it is! Kill him and you will never get it!”
I stepped out onto the terrace.
“She’s telling the truth. She gave it to me this morning, and we agreed she would have no knowledge of what I did with it.”
Geronimo gaped. “Stone! What the…?” He glared at Ronaldo and screamed like a hysterical woman. “You incompetent fool!”
“Now, you are at an impasse, Geronimo. The clock is ticking. Hurt Emma or hurt me, you will never see the box again. In a week, it could be anywhere in the world. You tried to be too smart. Now, you have one chance and one chance only. Accept you will have to buy the box with more than money.”
“What do you mean, more than money?”
“A confession, signed and recorded, that implicates all three of us. If any one of us gets hurt, the other two go down.”
“That’s absurd!”
“That’s the deal. Take it or leave it.”
His face went crimson, and he pounded the table with both fists till I thought he was going to have a stroke. Even Ronaldo looked curious.
Dos Santos leaned across the table, pointing a finger just an inch from Emma’s face. “Just once! Just once I saw her! Perfect! Beautiful! Enrapturing! If I could have owned her, I would have bought her! But I knew, I knew.” Now he pounded the side of his head with his finger. “God spoke to me. ‘She is the spawn of the Devil! She will be only trouble!’ Five minutes I saw her and I knew!” He dropped back into his chair. “But I was desperate to do God’s work, and I was a fool!”
“You’re a boring man, Geronimo. You talk a lot of shit. Now what’s it to be? If we have a deal, let’s do it. If there is no deal, Emma and I are walking out of here, and you know there is damn all you can do about it.”
Ronaldo pulled his gun and pointed it at me. I looked Geronimo in the eye and said, “You have five seconds to make him put that gun on the table. If he doesn’t, I walk. Then one of two things is going to happen. One, you will kill me, and then you will never see your box. Two, you won’t kill me, and you will never see your box. You see how it works, Geronimo. Now, I am counting…”
Geronimo waved his hand at Ronaldo. “Put down the gun. Put it down.”
Ronaldo shrugged like he thought his boss was stupid. He wasn’t wrong. He put the gun on the table. I thought what would happen next would be that Emma would hand me the gun, but I guess I was a bit stupid, too. Instead, she reached out like she was reaching for a pack of cigarettes. Both Geronimo and Ronaldo frowned at her hand, like they were mildly surprised. She picked it up calmly and deliberately, pointed it at Ronaldo, and shot him in the heart. Then without losing her composure, she turned it on Geronimo.
He screamed again and threw the table up and over so that it crashed against Emma, knocking her off her chair. Next thing, he was flying at me like a quarterback. He piled into me, ramming me against the wall and knocking all the wind out of me. I fell to the floor gasping, and he was off again, sprinting across the floor with astonishing agility. As I staggered to my feet, Emma scrambled out from under the table. She screamed a scream of pure rage and sprinted past me, after dos Santos.
I made after her, but my lungs were in spasm and my head was reeling. She was up the stairs onto the mezzanine floor, and I heard the front door slam. I followed and she skidded out into the hall. I shouted after her, “Emma! No!” But she wasn’t listening. She had one thought in her mind and one thought only.
She wrenched open the front door. Outside in the moonlight, I heard a car door slam. On the porch, I saw her straddle her legs and take aim. I heard tires scream, and I hurled myself at her. The gun cracked twice before I collided with her and threw her to the ground.
She clambered to her feet, training the gun on me. Her eyes were wide, and she looked really crazy. I shouted at her, “Are you crazy? Are you nuts? What have you done?”
“Stay away from me!”
There was a second car, a Mercedes convertible. She backed toward it, with the gun still trained on me. She climbed in and I watched her fire up the engine and take off at speed after dos Santos.
I stood watching her taillights vanish up the road in the pale moonlight. My head was reeling. We’d had him. What she’d done didn’t make any sense.
Unless…
I went inside and scoured the house for my gun and my phone. After twenty minutes, I found my gun in Ronaldo’s waistband out on the porch. Even now, staring up at the translucent sky, he looked more bemused than surprised. My phone I eventually found in plain sight, sitting on a coffee table in the living room.
The bar was easier to find. I poured myself a stiff whiskey and phoned Dehan.
“Stone! What the hell is happening?”
“Nothing good.”
“Why did you stand us down?”
“I didn’t. Believe it or not, I was drugged. He took my phone and sent you the message.”
“Dos Santos?”
“Yeah, he is one devious son of a bitch.”
“Holy shit!”
“Tell me about it. I need you to come and get me. I also need a CSI team and the ME. There has been another homicide. The captain’s going to have to liaise with the local precinct.”
“Oh, he is going to love you.”
“I’m not too fond of me myself, right now. I can’t believe I got suckered like that.”
“He’s a slippery customer.”
“They’re both as crazy as a box of frogs.”
“Okay. I’ll be there in a couple of h
ours.”
TWENTY-FOUR
We got home to my place just after four in the morning. She sat me at the table and examined the damage.
“Boy, Stone, you look like somebody set fire to your face and put it out with a brick.”
“Thanks. You’re beautiful too.”
“There are no cuts, though. It’s just bruises.”
“Is that all?”
She nodded. “You must have a pretty hard face.”
“Yeah, it’s the way I was raised. Every time I was bad, my mother would set fire to my face and beat it out with a brick.”
She giggled. It was an odd thing to see in her.
I smiled. “You going to just sit there gawping at me, or are you going to pour me a drink?”
“Coffee laced with whiskey is what you need.”
“Sounds about right.”
She got up and went to the kitchen.
“You know, I keep going over it again and again in my mind. We had him. He was going to pay, God knows how much, millions. I had him hooked, and he had no way out but to pay and sign that damned confession. She and Tammy were home and dry. And she just reaches over, picks up the gun, and blows Ronaldo away. Why would she do that, Dehan?”
She was quiet, making the coffee. When it started gurgling, she sighed and looked at me. “I forget who said it, but there is a quote by some wiseass about how if you want to know a person’s intentions, you should ignore their words and look at their actions. So from that perspective, there is only one answer to your question. She would do that because she wanted them dead.”
I sat, turning what she’d just said over in my head. It was so clear.
“That’s right. That is absolutely right. She wanted dos Santos dead. That was exactly what she wanted.”
She looked at me curiously. “Is that surprising?”
“Not really. But it’s like one of those pictures where it looks like a scowling old man, and when you just change your perspective, suddenly it looks like a beautiful young woman. Suddenly, I see the other picture, and it all makes sense.”
“Glad I could help.”
“We have a long day ahead of us, Dehan. Let’s get some bacon and mushrooms going, and a couple of eggs. I have a lot to explain to you, and then we need to make a plan.”
So she gave us two more spiked coffees and started frying, while I started explaining.
Emma’s call came at half eight. She was hysterical, sobbing and almost incoherent.
“John, thank God! I didn’t know if you’d found your phone. I am going to pieces, John. What am I going to do. I killed a man! John, do you understand? I shot and killed him!”
“Take it easy.”
“What are you talking about, take it easy? They’ll send me to prison for life! You have to do something!”
“I said take it easy.”
“What am I going to do? I can’t go to prison, John? I can’t! Do you know what they will do to a woman like me in prison?”
“Emma. Shut up.”
I heard her swallow.
“In the first place, it was self-defense…”
“Self-defense…?”
“That’s right. There was you and me and Geronimo. If it ever comes to trial, you and me are telling the same story. He came at you with the gun. You struggled and somehow turned the gun on him.”
“Yes, I see…”
“But it is never going to come to that, because I am the investigating officer, and I am going to pin the whole thing on dos Santos.”
“You are?”
“You bet.”
“Oh, John, how can I ever thank you? All I want is to get away and put this whole nightmare behind me.”
“I know, baby. It’s almost over.”
“What about you?”
“Before you do your disappearing act, we need to talk about the box.”
“Keep it. I’ll put you in touch with a discreet buyer. You can open an account in Belize and have the money paid in there. Then you can live like a king for the rest of your life.”
“When can I see you?”
“May I come over this afternoon? I’d like to collect Tammy’s birthday present and say… not au revoir, but olive oil. I hope, when this is over…”
“Don’t say it, Emma. If it’s real, we’ll do it.”
“Yes. Yes, you’re right.”
“I’ll see you at four. Will you bring Tammy? I’ve heard so much about her, I’d like to meet her at least once before you do your vanishing act.”
“Of course. We’ll be there at four.”
I hung up and sat looking at Dehan. She stared back at me. After a moment I said, “Come on, let’s go and see Geronimo.”
We got to the plaza at shortly after nine thirty. My car was still there, so Dehan dropped me off and headed back to the station to talk to the captain, who was in the midst of an acute anxiety attack. I checked at the desk and Geronimo dos Santos was still in the Royal Suite. I took the elevator and made my way up.
This time, he opened the door himself. He stood staring at me for a long moment, then turned and walked back toward the drawing room. I stepped in and closed the door behind me. I found him in a large armchair sulking among his chins. On the coffee table in front of him, he had a bottle of vodka and an empty shot glass.
“You planning on stopping anytime soon, Geronimo?”
He glowered at me sullenly.
“What?”
“Acting like an asshole. How many people do you plan to get killed before you stop? Is this how you do God’s work, dos Santos? By going around getting people killed? Because let me tell you something, I am going to make it my business to ensure that the next person who gets killed is you.” I stuck out my finger and pointed at him. “You are alive this morning because I jumped on Emma when she was going to pop you. You owe me your life.”
His expression changed to one of calculating cunning. It was an effort to control the urge to smack him.
“We are alone right now, dos Santos. You know? I ought to give you a taste of what you gave me last night.”
He swallowed and looked sick.
“You forced me.”
“Bullshit!”
“You and Emma… I can’t trust either of you…”
“Bullshit!”
He swallowed again. He looked scared.
“Between the two of you, you have fucked up a sweet deal—for no good reason! You because of your stupid obsession with Tamara, and her because she wanted to play it smart. If you had both listened to me, you would have your precious goddamn box by now, and she would have her money and her damned sister.” I approached the table and sat opposite him. “Now I am going to ask you one more time. Are you planning to stop?”
“What are you proposing?”
I’d been in the room thirty seconds and he was already making me mad.
“Maybe I didn’t make myself clear. Next time you try to screw me over, I am going to blow that sick little head of yours clean of your multiple chins. Now I am going to ask you one. Last. Time. And if I don’t get a clear answer, first, I am going to go over there and beat you to a sobbing pulp. Then, I am going to walk out of here and sell that box on the open market. Then I am going to put out a contract on you. So, Geronimo, are you ready to quit?”
He closed his eyes and seemed to shudder all over. Maybe it was the effort of having to make a commitment to not being stupid.
“Yes.”
“We get one last shot at this. We do it my way and everybody wins. You step out of line by one inch, and I will kill you, personally.”
“You have made yourself very clear.”
“You do not get Tamara.”
He opened his eyes and glared at me. His fat, white cheeks flushed red. I reached under my arm, pulled out my revolver, and cocked it. I took aim at his head. I am not honestly sure if I was planning to shoot him or not. His eyes bulged and all the pinkness drained from his face.
“All right! All right!”
&
nbsp; “Forget Tamara!”
He nodded.
For good measure, I added, “It is the only way you get to stay alive.” He nodded again.
I put my piece back under my arm and continued.
“I want ten million bucks, in a numbered account in Belize. Make no mistake, dos Santos. I know I can get a lot more. But I want this over with. Start pushing, try to get smart, and this deal disappears off the table faster than you can say, ‘please don’t shoot.’”
“I can do that, no problem.”
I threw my card on the table. He picked it up and looked at it. I pulled out my pen like I wanted to add something and gestured for him to give it back to me. He handed it over. I took an evidence bag from my pocket and slipped the card in.
“I take it your prints are not in the system.”
He went crimson to the top of his scalp. “You are bluffing. You can’t take prints from paper…”
“On the contrary. They are one of the best surfaces for taking prints. Though banisters, cell phones, guns, garden chairs, and tables are all pretty good, too. Your prints are all over Emma’s beach house, Geronimo, and all over my phone and my other gun. And even as we speak, there is a CSI team going over that house with a fine-toothed comb.” I held up the card. “This is insurance. I am as implicated as you are. If you go down, the best I can hope for is to make a deal, but I go down too. However, my friend, if I go down, there are no deals for you. You go away for life.” I stood. “Do yourself a favor. Be at my house today at three. I want to see my money in the account, then you get your box. And then you get the hell out of my city. I will make arrangements. Anything happens to Emma or Tammy, or me, you go down.”
He sneered. “A regular Galahad.”
“Don’t bank on that, dos Santos. I’m an ugly son of a bitch. You don’t want to see the dark side.”
I left, wondering how much of what I had said was truth, and how much was an act.
TWENTY-FIVE
I stepped out into the glare and the heat and made my way to my car. I sat for ten minutes staring at nothing, seeing only my thoughts. I replayed for the thousandth time the scene from last night. Emma, exquisite, sobbing, pleading for my life. Dos Santos, grotesque, sneering, talking about using pliers to remove my fingers. Ronaldo, his mindless face vaguely surprised as he looked at the gun. And then all hell breaking loose. I saw her scrambling to her feet, racing frantically after him, her legs straddled in the doorway, taking aim.
