Long Way Down

by Paul Carr

  Long Way Down

  A Sam Mackenzie Thriller

  Copyright © 2009 by Paul Carr

  Cover Design: Judy Bullard

  Chapter 1

  THE WOMAN in the black jumpsuit walked under the dock lights and stepped onto the deck of Slipstream, Sam Mackenzie’s forty-foot cruiser. Sam watched her from the shadows of the stern, a cold beer in hand. She was attractive, her hair long, silky, and black as ink. A tingle ran across the back of his neck when he spotted the gun in her hand. It looked like a .22, a weapon of choice for assassins: light and easy to conceal.

  A bead of perspiration rolled down his cheek into his shirt. He took a long drink of beer, set it onto the deck, and crept down the other side of the cabin, his pulse drumming in his ears.

  When he rounded the corner, she turned to run. He lunged for her, and they fell to the deck. Straddling her on his knees, he twisted the gun from her hand and stuck the tip of the barrel to her chest.

  “Hey, get off me!” Panic gripped her voice.

  Sam thumbed the hammer on the pistol. “Who are you?”

  “I could ask you the same question.”

  “This is my boat, and you’ve got about two seconds to tell me why I shouldn’t pull the trigger on this little gun.”

  “You’re Mackenzie?” She blew hair from her eyes.

  “That’s right.” Though he still couldn’t see her face clearly, the eyes looked nice.

  She drew a deep breath and let it out. “Somebody’s trying to kill me. I need your help.”

  “People looking for help usually call or knock on the door.”

  “Tommy Shoes mentioned your name.”

  Tommy Shoes? He hadn’t thought about him in a long time. Sam and Tommy had crossed paths in Chicago when they were younger, and Sam had forgotten about him until a couple of years ago when a friend said he was in Miami.

  “What did Tommy tell you?”

  “He said you’re the kind of person who can get me out of this mess.”

  Sam glanced at the gun in his hand.

  “What were you planning to do with this?”

  “Like I said, somebody’s trying to kill me. How about letting me up?”

  Sam got to his feet and reached for her hand. “Let’s go inside.”

  She took quick breaths, as if she might be hurt.

  He opened the cabin door, flipped on the light switch and moved aside for the woman to enter. She stepped into the lounge and turned as if to say something, but her face went blank, her eyes rolled up, and she dropped to the deck. Sam stepped in and closed the door behind him. She lay on the floor, her face covered with perspiration.

  He laid the gun on a table next to the sofa, got a damp paper towel from the galley, and mopped beads of moisture from her face. Her skin was pale, flawless, and appeared translucent in the light of the lounge.

  The side above her hip was wet with what looked like blood, so he unzipped the suit to the waist and lifted the fabric. She wore nothing underneath, as if she had dressed in a hurry. There was a crimson smudge on her skin the size of a saucer, with a hole in the center. The bullet, if that’s what it was, probably had gone straight through. He checked her pulse: barely fifty beats per minute.

  After searching her pockets and finding them empty, he picked up the gun from the table and checked it out. It smelled as if it had been fired recently and the clip was missing several rounds.

  Sam looked down at her; she was quite beautiful, and right now she needed to go to a hospital, but he knew what would happen if she did. There would be a lot of questions, probably more than she’d want to answer, and he didn’t need that kind of attention any more than she did. He ran his fingers through his hair and sighed.

  Sam went to his stateroom closet, lifted a door in the deck where he kept cash, and removed several of the green stacks, and stuffed them into a bag. Back in the lounge, he opened the door and glanced up the dock to see if anyone was watching. No one was around, but good watchers didn’t let you see them. He picked the woman up and carried her to his car. It was warm for an April night, and he was perspiring from the effort.

  He put her in the back seat and drove inland to Highway 441. Turning north, he went several miles until he neared Miami Gardens. A turn down a winding drive led to a large stucco building. It had a tile roof, and might have been a country inn, except it had no windows. It was nearly hidden behind a lush growth of palms.

  Officially, this was Carling Research, a company that dissected cadavers and produced study aids to be used in medical schools. Unofficially, it was an emergency medical facility for the few who knew about it. All payments were expected in cash. He suspected that the lion’s share of the company income was derived from services to practitioners in the Miami crime industry.

  Sam drove to the rear of the building where a large Mercedes was parked near the entrance. He pulled in next to it, got out of the car and walked to the door. A camera mounted high on the wall trained on his face. He spoke his name into a microphone below the camera and told about the wounded woman,

  The door swung open and two men rolled a gurney to the car. They lifted the woman out of the seat, strapped her to the apparatus and rolled her inside. Sam followed them down a long hall to what appeared to be an operating room.

  Another man and a woman entered the room, wearing hospital scrubs and rubber gloves. “You need to wait outside, Sir,” the man said.

  Sam turned to leave and almost bumped into a tall blonde woman in the doorway.

  “I need to talk to you,” she said. “Follow me.”

  She led him down the hall to an office, pointed to a chair, and sat down behind the desk.

  “Care for a smoke?”

  Sam shook his head.

  The blonde shrugged, pulled a long cigarette from a pack, lit it up, and blew a ring his way. Leaning back in the chair, she crossed her legs and stared at him. He pegged her to be about thirty-five, and she had the looks of a movie star. Her skirt was short, exposing long, shapely legs.

  The office might have been decorated by the same people who do motels, with a sofa and coffee table at one end and inexpensive paintings on the wall. Security monitors next to the desk displayed the building entrances and the driveway.

  “Nice setup,” Sam said.

  The woman blew more smoke and smiled, showing flawless white teeth. She wore bright red lipstick.

  “We expect a ten-thousand-dollar deposit.”

  Sam nodded, pulled the stacks of cash from the bag and laid them on the desk. She leafed through the bills and dropped them into a desk drawer.

  “I remember you,” she said, “you came in a year or so ago. Had a couple of bullet holes big enough to stick your thumb in.”

  Sam didn't remember ever seeing her, but that visit was a blur after losing so much blood. His shoulder still ached at the mention of the wounds.

  “How’s Mr. Craft these days?” she said.

  Jackson Craft had a boat in the same marina where Sam berthed Slipstream. He was a confidence man, and he was responsible for getting Sam’s bullet holes patched up at Carling Research.

  “You know Jack?”

  The woman nodded, blew a smoke ring in the air. “He did a bit of consulting for us.”

  Sam couldn’t imagine what kind of consulting Jack might have done for her, but unlike most business deals people undertake with Jack, Sam was pretty sure this woman knew what she was getting for her money.

  “I’ll tell him you asked about him.”

  She smiled. “I’m Carling. He’ll remember.”

  I’m sure he will.

  “We added a medevac a couple of months ago.”

  She laid her cigarette in an ashtray on the corner of the desk, pulled a card from under the desk blotter, and held
it out for Sam to read.

  “Remember the number. We can deploy a chopper in five minutes.”

  Sam suspected the cost would be high, but when you’re dying, who cares. He made a mental note, just in case.

  “You can wait in the lounge to hear what the doctor says about her. And let me know if you want a cup of coffee, or maybe something stronger.”

  Sam thanked her and walked out of the office.

  A large man in a suit sat in the corner of the lounge talking on a cell phone. His hair looked like wet paint, glossy-black, and he spoke with a street-wise accent. He glanced up as Sam entered the room, mumbled something into the phone, and closed it. Sam took a seat and picked up a magazine.

  A few minutes passed, and a man who appeared to be a doctor with blood on the front of his smock walked into the room. He glanced at Sam and headed toward the man in the corner. The man in the corner looked up and squinted his eyes, as if in anticipation of bad news.

  “He didn’t make it,” the doctor said, “too much damage.”

  The man scratched the side of his face.

  “Melba’s gonna be pissed.”

  “I’m sorry, we did all we could.”

  “Can you...you know, get rid of the body?” The man had dropped his voice, but Sam could still hear.

  The doctor shrugged. “Sure.”

  “Okay, I’ll tell Melba he left town. Here’s something for your trouble.”

  The man pulled several bills that looked like hundreds from his suit and handed them to the doctor. The doctor glanced around the room and palmed the bills. Sam pretended to be absorbed in his reading.

  An hour passed and the doctor who had told Sam to wait outside the operating room came down the hall. He said the woman’s wound was repaired, that no vital organs had been damaged.

  “She’ll probably sleep the rest of the night and can leave in a couple of days.”

  The doctor left, and Sam went back to the office where he found Carling signing some documents.

  “Looks like she’s going to be okay,” Carling said.

  “Yeah, the doctor told me. I’m going home. How about leaving word to have someone call me when she comes around.”

  “She your girlfriend or something?”

  “No, we just met.”

  Carling smiled and pulled a bottle of brandy and two glasses from a shelf. “I’m calling it a day, myself. How about a drink?”

  Sam looked at the bottle and shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

  She poured one glass half full and held the bottle above the lip of the other glass.

  “You sure? This is pretty good stuff.”

  Sam looked at Carling, and all he could see was lipstick and white teeth. Before he knew it, he said, “Okay, why not.”

  By the end of brandy number three, Sam and Carling were great friends and had migrated to the sofa to get more comfortable. Within a few minutes, they were close, talking softly, and sipping the good brandy. Carling’s skirt rode high on her crossed legs, and her right hand caressed the back of Sam’s neck. Carling did most of the talking, mainly about her eccentric clientele. Sam mentioned that the friend of the man in the lounge hadn’t been too lucky.

  “Yeah, he was DOA.” Carling pulled Sam’s face close to hers, looked from his lips to his eyes and back.

  “What did he die from?” Sam said.

  “What?” Her voice was almost a whisper, her eyes dreamy. She put her left hand inside his shirt and caressed his chest.

  “What was it that killed him?”

  “Oh, four twenty-two caliber slugs in the heart.” She pressed her lips to Sam’s in a long, hungry kiss. He put his hand around her waist and pulled her to him, but all the while he was trying to remember how many rounds had been missing from the injured woman’s gun.

  Chapter 2

  THE PHONE rang and Sam woke with a jerk. He had dreamed the injured woman shot him in the chest with the .22. Putting the phone to his ear, he mumbled a Hello.

  “Sorry to wake you.” It was Carling, her tone anything but sorry.

  The sun pushed its way through the porthole like an unwelcome guest, flooding the room with white light. Sam looked at the clock: ten-past-ten. He had finally gotten to sleep about four-thirty, and would have slept another hour or two without the call.

  He rubbed his eyes with his free hand.

  “That’s okay. What’s up?”

  “Your friend is gone.”

  Sam remembered about the dream.

  “Gone?”

  “Yeah, she got up this morning at six and left a few minutes later.”

  “She had a bullet hole in her side.”

  “Yeah, but she’s gone just the same. I thought I’d let you know.”

  Sam ran his fingers through his hair, felt his face flush.

  “I wanted you to keep her there.”

  “Sorry, we don’t do that. Oh, yeah, about your ten grand?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’ll be keeping all of it.”

  Her voice had an edge to it, and Sam thought he knew why.

  “You’re still angry, aren’t you?” Sam said.

  “Why would I be angry?”

  “Well, you know...the way I got up and left.”

  He still wasn’t sure what had happened. They had kissed, and she was a world-class kisser, but the little voice in the back of his head said, Get out of here. He had ignored the voice before, but he usually regretted it. So he pulled himself away and told her he had to leave. It was one of the most difficult things he had ever done.

  “Yeah, well, that might tend to anger a person,” Carling said, “but I’m okay, forget about it.”

  Sam started to say something and she interrupted.

  “Just don’t get yourself shot again.”

  She hung up the phone and the dial tone droned in Sam’s ear. He dropped the handset to the cradle, got out of bed and stretched in the warm rays of the sun. Carling didn’t say that to wish him good luck. What she meant was, Don’t come back, because you won’t get in.

  Sam made coffee in the galley and walked out on the deck. The newspaper lay on the gangway, encased in a plastic bag. He picked it up and carried it to one of the deck chairs under the awning.

  Sipping his coffee, he scanned the paper for any mention of the woman, or of the man who died with four bullets in his heart. There were lots of crimes in Miami, but none seemed to fit. She said someone was trying to kill her. Maybe she knew something she shouldn’t, or had stepped on somebody’s toes. She was a great-looking woman, and that might have something to do with it. But what kept coming back to him was the gun and the probability that she had used it very efficiently to kill a man.

  Sam walked to the railing, leaned on his elbows, and looked toward the inlet. The mirror of water threw the sun’s glare back in his eyes. A mullet jumped near the boat, and Sam thought he and the mullet were alone until he spied a lazy pelican perched on a dock timber. The bird cast longing eyes toward the fish, probably waiting for the last meal to stop wiggling in its stomach. Its eyes blinked sleepily, and it pecked at something under its wing until the mullet jumped again. The pelican jerked its head around, flapped its wings, and dived into the water. It bobbed up a moment later, empty.

  This mullet had savvy, and so did the mystery woman. Who would expect her to go up against Miami thugs and come out alive. She had taken a bullet, but had killed a man and gotten away. Like the pelican, though, they would be back, and Sam was pretty sure he would see her again.

  ****

  SAM HAD been running on the beach for about thirty minutes when he spotted Jack Craft about fifty yards away, tending a fishing rod. Almost a week had passed since Sam had seen the wounded woman, though he’d thought about her every day, hoping she wasn’t dead. She’d said Tommy Shoes sent her to him, and Sam remembered that Jack had mentioned Tommy a couple of years before.

  He slowed to a walk and angled over Jack’s way. Jack turned, saw him approaching, and set the rod in a hol
der stuck in the sand. Sam mopped perspiration from his forehead with the bottom of his tee shirt and nodded toward a plastic bucket at Jack’s feet.

  "Catch anything?”

  Jack Craft grinned and reached down.

  "Got a bluefish.” He pulled what looked like a three-pounder out of the bucket. "Thought I had something really big the way this baby pulled."

  “Yeah, that’s a nice one,” Sam said. “Invite me over when you cook it. I’ll bring the beer.”

  Jack nodded and dropped the fish back into the bucket.

  “You got it. By the way, the tackle store had a sale on that rod you liked and I got it for you. It’s on my boat if you want to come by.”

  Sam smiled. Jack had gotten the fishing bug after watching an old geezer drag a large Pompano in from the surf. He had been working on Sam to go fishing with him. Sam kept putting him off.

  “As a matter of fact, why don’t I give you a ride back. I need to get this blue in the reefer."

  “That sounds good. It's too hot out here to run, anyway.”

  Jack gathered his tackle, Sam grabbed the bucket and they walked about two hundred yards to Jack's Mercedes.

  Sam had met Jackson Craft about ten years before when they both were hired by a Government agency in Miami to bring down a notorious financier who had stolen a large fortune from retirement accounts. Sam happened to be good with a gun and Jack could run a good confidence game. The financier didn’t have a chance, and Jack cruised away with his million-dollar floating home, The Clipper. Sam got his regular contract fee, along with a few bumps and bruises. Since that time they had been involved in a number of cooperative ventures, some of which Sam tried to forget.

  Jack did most of the talking on the way back to the marina, telling Sam about his latest activity.

  “I buy boats from the DEA and sell them to rich people.”

  “You have a boat business?”

  “Actually,” Jack said, “I never see the boats, I simply broker the sales.”

  On this particular operation, Jack said he had made an average of about thirty percent on the dozen or so boats he had brokered. He didn’t mention dollars, but Sam knew that Cigarettes and Donzis, which were favored by drug smugglers because of the enormous engine power, would sell for a small fortune on the second-hand market.