Fifty Grand

by Adrian McKinty

  “Shouldn’t we call the, the federal authorities?”

  “We’re all in too deep for that.”

  “I want no part of this.”

  “A part of it you have got, a big fucking part. Now shut up. Take his arm. We might be able to save him.”

  “Call a helicopter. We’ve got to get him to a hospital.”

  “No hospitals. We’ll get him back to the car.”

  “We have to take him to a hospital, for Christ’s sake, man.”

  “Listen to me. I’ve got adrenaline and a CPR kit in the prowler, we’ll do this ourselves. We’re fucked if we go to a hospital.”

  “Jesus! Wait a minute. Wait a fucking minute. I think she’s still fucking breathing.”

  “Is she now? Have you got her gun? Good. Ok, lemme see, lemme—Fuck me, would you look at that, you’re right, all surface, only grazed her.”

  “Told you, you should have used the three-oh-oh.”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “Well, we’ll soon put a stop to her fun and games.”

  I open my eyes. Deputy Klein. He’s holding a 9mm, a meter from my face. There’s a halo of water vapor around his head. He looks like the Angel of Death.

  Is that one in your tarot cards, Mother? Did you see that one in your voodoo ceremonies?

  Breathing hard.

  Grinning.

  Excited.

  Spittle frozen on the lapels of his coat.

  His eyes iron planets. His mouth a gutted fish.

  “I don’t know what you wanted, you crazy fucking bitch, but I hope you find it at the bottom of the lake. Say your fucking prayers.”

  He lifts the gun, rests his finger on the trigger, takes careful aim, squeezes . . .

  CHAPTER 19

  OUR LADY OF MERCY

  I

  am copied in your eye, mother of the golden breeze, lady full of grace, lady of the moon. Between ice and the gilt morning. I am copied in the patterns of your stars.

  You don’t get two chances. One they’ll give you. But not two. Not at point-blank range. Not so close that you feel the powder burn. Prayers, you say? Well, again it’s that old dilemma. In Cuba the state religion is unbelief. The high-church religion is Catholicism. The street faith is Santería. Who would I pray to? Who would I pray for?

  And yet.

  A breath escapes. And every breath a petition.

  The muscles in his face as taut as a halyard on a sail.

  Smile not, friend.

  Lillies grow from your mouth. Think not of drinking blood from my skull. Your corpse is food for trout.

  Don’t you see her? She is the image in your eye too.

  His face relaxes, transfigured by the mystery.

  Death has made him special, given him a secret that I do not possess.

  A full second after the bullet strikes I hear the crack.

  I roll to the side.

  He falls where I have been.

  A puff of ice. Another crack.

  Preoccupied with Youkilis, Sheriff Briggs belatedly turns to see his deputy lying next to me, the back of his head caved in like a melon that’s fallen off a truck.

  Briggs looks at me, sizes up the situation immediately.

  “She’s got a fucking accomplice. Everybody hit the deck.”

  “What?”

  “Hit the fucking deck, assholes!” he yells but only he and Jack fall fast enough to escape the gunman.

  A sound like sssssipppp and Deputy Crawford gets one in the leg. Gravity does the rest and he’s down too.

  Briggs pulls out a .45 and shoots randomly at the tree line.

  I count them off. BOOM, BOOM, BOOM. One, two, three.

  “What’s happening!” Jack screams.

  “You see anything?” Crawford yells.

  “I don’t see a goddamn thing,” Briggs replies and turns to his deputy. “How you doing, buddy?”

  Crawford grunts. “I’m ok. Fat shot. No arteries or veins.”

  “Thank God. Get your gun and look for the muzzle flash,” Briggs says.

  “Shouldn’t we kill her?” Crawford wonders.

  Briggs slides his body around to look at me. “Yes, we fucking should.”

  Another puff of ice, another crack.

  Briggs arcs the .45 in my direction. Mierde. I grab the body of Deputy Klein and drag him—it—in front of me, blood pouring from the hole in the skull, coating the ice beneath us in a red film. It pools under me, sticky, warm. The .45 slugs punch into Klein. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. At this range they could easily burn right through Klein and into me, but I get lucky, they snag on bone and muscle and internal organs.

  And then somehow Youkilis gets to his feet. Naked, hallucinating.

  “Aaaaggghhh,” he screams. Guttural, horrifying. He looks confused, hurt. The noise he made scared even himself. His hands are burning him, his lungs agony.

  “Get down, you fucking idiot,” Briggs says.

  “Get down, Paul, get down,” Jack says.

  But Youkilis isn’t getting down. He wants to escape the water, the ice, the hurt.

  He can’t. There’s no way ou—

  Cunning flits across his eyes when he spots me. Her. All this pain is something to do with her. “Neaaaahhh,” he says and comes for me, hands out like Mitchum in that Yuma flick with the kids and the money.

  He growls, staggers, trips on Jack’s leg.

  “Grab him!” Briggs yells at Jack.

  But Jack keeps his head down.

  That’s my boy.

  Youkilis steps around his boss and lurches closer. He’s going to kill me if he can. He’s going to bring me into his world.

  “Get down, you fool,” Crawford says and makes a grab for him. “Jack, tell your fucking buddy to get down.”

  But a nearby rifle shot sends Crawford diving for the ice.

  I hug Klein like a lover and his body protects me from the bullets and his blood protects me from the cold, seeping into my shirt, coating my skin, slithering into my underwear and down my leg, warming, purifying—as intimate as mother’s milk.

  “Faaaking bittch!” Youkilis says, staggering to within a few meters of me.

  “Go away,” I hiss at him.

  He laughs and is gearing up for the final zombie shuffle when a rifle shot buries itself in his back.

  He drops to one knee.

  “Faarg!” he screams, and he looks at me with savage, cold fury.

  Somehow he gets back to his feet. Fucking unstoppable. Naked, inhuman, a thing from beyond the grave. I’m afraid of him. And then Briggs resumes firing at me. BOOM. BOOM. A bullet rips through Klein’s neck and almost gets me, missing my head by centimeters and zipping across the ice. Briggs changes the clip.

  More rifle puffs. Youkilis swatting at the bullets like the monster in Frankenstein trying to catch musical notes. Finally the anonymous marksman makes the kill shot. A hit behind Youkilis’s ear—the expanding lead rifle round ripping through his eyes and forehead. He staggers on for one more beat and falls on top of Klein.

  You did it, you got here.

  “Fucker!” Briggs yells, and he shoots the reloaded .45. BOOM. BOOM. But now there are two corpses to give me cover.

  “We gotta get out of here!” Crawford says.

  “The fuck! How? Fucking pinned,” Briggs replies.

  “Been watching. It’s one guy, he’s in the trees by the car,” Crawford says.

  “Or it’s two guys, taking their time,” I suggest.

  “Shut up, bitch, you’ll get yours,” Briggs says.

  “If you surrender I’ll make sure they don’t kill you,” I yell.

  “Shut the fuck up, you fucking cunt,” Briggs says. “Crawford, can you get an angle on the bitch?”

  Crawford tries a shot that plows into Youkilis with a sickening squelch.

  “I don’t think so,” Crawford says.

  “Maybe we should give ourselves up,” Jack contributes.

  “Cut us down like dogs,” Briggs says.

  Briggs fires
several more at the tree line and his clip runs out again. It holds eight. The bad news seems to be that he’s brought several spares.

  A different noise. Thunder. No.

  A ripping, tearing, a—

  Beneath all of us the ice starting to crack.

  “Jesus Christ!” Jack yells, his hands still over his head.

  “We’re fucked!” Crawford says.

  “We’re not fucked. Keep it together!” Briggs orders.

  Another puff of ice. My unknown confederate adding to the mix.

  “Fuck it, let’s go!” Crawford says.

  Holes appear and water starts gushing up through the ice in frothy freezing bursts. One of the sharpshooter’s bullets skims past my feet. Shit. Was that a mistake? Is he really an ally after all? Is he trying to kill all of us? Esteban, is that you?

  Water bubbling underneath me. This is what you get for playing Nemesis.

  I scramble away from the blood and the surging water on hands and knees toward a firmer piece of ice a few meters from the bodies.

  This looks better. But how would I know? Cuba doesn’t even get frost.

  I kneel on the raw plain of ice, completely exposed.

  When I was child I used to play a game. If I closed my eyes I could make myself disappear. As long as I couldn’t see me no one else could. Keep ’em closed and you’ll be ok.

  The bodies. The blood. The shooting—the rifleman from the parking lot, Briggs and Crawford firing back into the trees.

  Don’t look in my direction.

  Don’t look.

  I’m invisible.

  I’m not here.

  A grinding, gurgling sound. I open my eyes just as Youkilis slips beneath the surface. Klein follows him into a fissure, his body turning and his cat black eyes staring at me before disappearing into the slime of the lake bottom.

  Ice cracks all around me and I get to my feet for balance.

  My sweater is dyed red, like a target, like Che storming the barricades, but he had a gun and I’m a sacrificial la—

  Wait a minute.

  The backpack.

  A 9mm and a clip.

  My father’s gun.

  “Jesus, there she is! Got a shot?” Briggs yells.

  “Yeah, I got one, fucking ice breaking, hold on, yeah, try this on for size, ya fucking bitch!” Crawford replies.

  BOOM.

  Down. Hard. Nose cracking off the surface.

  “Missed her!”

  “I’ll try!”

  Triage. Everything seems—BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM. Briggs, a gun in each hand. The right firing at the parking lot, the left shooting at me.

  I lie flat on the ice, a tough shot for both men, as long as my friend keeps them pinned and I don’t stand up again.

  They’re going to have to get lucky—but they need to be lucky only once and I need to be lucky all the time.

  Use your brain, Mercado. Do something smart. Work ’em. Jack is the weak link. Work him while you make your way toward the backpack, six meters to the left, on the edge of a hole in the ice.

  “I’m a federal agent! We’ve got you surrounded. Drop your guns and surrender and we’ll all get out of this in one piece,” I yell.

  “You’re no fucking cop!” Briggs says.

  “I’m an agent. Sheriff, this is crazy. You covered up a vehicular homicide. That’s not a huge crime in the big scheme of things. You’ll lose your job and get probation. You won’t do a day,” I yell, switching from the formal English we learned in school to the Yuma English of the movies and TV.

  “If you’re the feds, where’s the SWAT team, where’s the fucking helicopters?” Briggs yells. He’s no dummy.

  “They’re on the way, believe me. Now cease firing and let’s all get out of this alive,” I shout.

  Briggs takes aim at me and pulls the trigger. The bullet whizzes over my head. Close, but he’s gotta stand to get the kill shot.

  Work the others. “Crawford, you’re a veteran, you won’t do a night in prison. Jack, if you plea-bargain you’re looking at thirty days. We don’t need to lose our lives for this. I’m the one that’s fucked anyway.”

  “What do you mean you’re fucked?” Crawford asks.

  Another puff of ice, another rifle crack.

  “I’m fucked because I didn’t have the authority to bring Youkilis up here,” I say. “I screwed this whole operation up.”

  I slide slowly toward the backpack; its shoulder strap is in the water, the ice cracking around it. Please don’t fall, please don’t sink.

  “You hear what she says, Briggs?” Crawford yells.

  “You’ve done nothing wrong, Crawford, not a thing. If you kill me, a federal agent, it’s the death penalty,” I tell him.

  “If you’re a fed, tell your buddy to stop shooting,” Briggs demands.

  “My radio’s at the bottom of the lake. Just cease fire and drop your weapons,” I yell at him.

  “What do you think, Sheriff?” Crawford asks.

  “She’s fucking lying!” Briggs says.

  Five meters from the backpack. Freezing water. Ice burns all over my fingertips.

  “Let me show you my ID. We’ll see who’s fucking lying,” I shout. “Cease fire! That’s an order.”

  “Yeah, you’ll all be fucking ok, but I’ll go to jail for manslaughter. My career will be finished,” Jack says.

  “You’ll be fine. Vehicular manslaughter ain’t jail time, look at your buddy Matthew Broderick. I say we stop this madness right now,” Crawford says.

  But the sheriff isn’t falling for any of this bullshit. He looks at me, smiles, and shakes his head. “She’s no fed. She’s got one friend. Two of them. Take ’em out one at a time. That’s the way we do it.”

  “How?” Crawford wonders.

  “Get a bead on the trees. Look for the muzzle flash and unload a fucking clip, pin him down. I’ll take her. And when she’s dead we’ll get across to the other side, away from our lone gunman and before all this fucking ice cracks.”

  “Don’t listen to him, Crawford! It’s a death sentence!” I yell.

  “She’s fucking lying,” Briggs says.

  Two meters from the backpack. It’s sitting on top of a seven-centimeter fissure somehow defying gravity. Don’t fall. Don’t fall. I keep it from plunging to the lake bottom by sheer force of will.

  “What do you want me to do, Sheriff?” Crawford asks.

  “Don’t listen to him, Crawford. You’ve done nothing wrong at this point. I’m the only one in real trouble here! Jack, if they kill me, you’ll be accessory to a murder, you’ll get life in prison for that.”

  “We’ve got to do what she says,” Jack yells desperately.

  The crack widens, the backpack starts to tilt. I spread my weight and try to touch it.

  “Like fuck we do! She’s a lying cunt,” Briggs says.

  “We can’t just kill her. We’ll get—”

  Closer . . . closer . . . closer.

  “We’ll get nothing. She’s some dumb Mex on a fucking trip. Never find her. Crawford, you ready?”

  I touch the backpack, grab it, start to unzip it.

  “I’m ready,” Crawford says.

  “Pin the rifleman, I’ll take her,” Briggs says.

  Rifle shot. Muzzle flash.

  Crawford gets up on one knee, bites through the pain of his wound, stands, and starts firing at the trees. But Briggs doesn’t keep his side of the bargain. He’s too chicken. He’s still trying to shoot me lying down. BOOM, BOOM, BOOM. All misses. Get up and kill me, asshole. Where’s your huevos? Thought you were a fucking war hero.

  “Did you get her?” Crawford asks.

  “Angle’s wrong,” Briggs replies. “Don’t worry, I’ll fucking kill the bitch. Keep plugging at that shooter.”

  “Rifleman’s reloading,” Crawford says. “We got ten clicks.”

  And now Briggs does stand up. All six foot five of him and still somehow wearing his fucking cowboy hat. He flinches, bracing himself for a bullet in the
brain.

  I rummage through the stuff in the backpack: pepper spray, ski mask, rope, duct tape, finally the loaded 9mm Stechkin APS pistol that hadn’t been cleaned or fired in years.

  Briggs walks toward me, striding over the ice fissures, holding his .45 in both hands. Six meters away. Impossible to miss. He beads me, lifts the gun. “No more chances now, whore,” he says. His eyes narrow, focused, concentrating, his grin wide.

  “None necessary,” I reply, sliding up my father’s pistol and shooting him in the neck.

  Briggs falls to his knees, drops his weapon.

  Hands at his throat, blood seeping between his fingers.

  Ssssfff! The rifleman in the trees has evidently reloaded. Crawford hits the deck.

  “Did you get her?” Crawford says.

  The ice cracks beneath me as I walk to Briggs’s .45 and kick it into the water.

  “Damn it, man, did you get her?” Crawford says, firing the last of his clip at the marksman in the woods.

  The sun breaks over the tree line. New-born photons bisecting the lake into a world of shadow and a world of light. Water seeps into my shoes, I lose my balance, put my arms out, regain it, step over a widening fracture, and come up behind Crawford.

  He turns.

  “Cocksucker,” he says and slams home a fresh clip but can’t get off a round before I put one in his groin, one in his thorax above his body armor, and one in his mouth.

  I wave at the man in the parking lot.

  He stands up, waves back.

  It’s too skinny to be Esteban. It has to be Paco.

  I wave my hands over my head. “Stop! Stop! That’s enough! They’re dead.”

  Silence and then a distant voice. “Are you ok?”

  “Sí.”

  “I’m coming.”

  I walk to Jack and kneel beside him.

  He’s terrified. He smells bad. He’s defecated himself.

  I smile in a kindly way.

  “W-who are you?” he asks, his voice quivering.

  “I’m María.”

  “Why have you done this?”

  Well, it ain’t because you’re a lousy tipper.

  A groan behind me. Briggs, living yet. That type needs a stake through the heart at a midnight crossroad.

  “Wait here,” I say to Jack. “Don’t go anywhere.”

  Dodging cracks and fissures, I walk back to Briggs. The ice is cracking all around him. Blood and water, water and blood.