He crossed the open plateau again. Rusty hadn’t moved an inch. The bottle glinted in the moonlight next to him. His good arm was outstretched behind it. He was breathing heavily, noisily, his mouth open.
“Goddammit, Rusty!” Hardy came up behind his head and nudged it with his foot. “Come on, let’s shake it.”
He didn’t stir. For an instant Hardy thought that maybe he was dead, then reminded himself that dead men almost never breathed so loud.
He shook his head, thinking it out. Rusty had one bad arm, in a sling, and was pretty obviously drunk as a skunk. There wasn’t much real threat there, was there, Diz?
He could grab the good arm, pull him back away from the cliff like a sack of bricks, get him up and moving somehow. Unless he wanted to sit here all night, or walk home and maybe lose him.
He leaned over and took hold of the good arm around the wrist with both his hands. It was dead. There was no resistance. He got a better footing and started to pull. Rusty finally made a noise, half-turning. Hardy moved back, letting go. “Come on, get up.”
Rusty rolled again onto his back. This was getting old in a hurry. Hardy said fuck it and grabbed him under both armpits, leaning over, off balance for one second, to pull.
Which was when Rusty moved. Both arms came up, grabbed Hardy at the shoulders and pulled him forward, over, covering Rusty’s body in a somersault, legs out on no purchase, reaching out, trying to grab on to Rusty—something, anything—but there was only the night air, the cold far moon.
Then there was something under his feet, some small ledge, and one of Rusty’s feet, still dangling where it had been, over the cliff’s edge, right there, grabbable. But it moved, kicking out, hitting him in the shoulder, pushing him out into the darkness.
25
Rusty liked the idea of bringing the bottle along, because it was much easier to fake that you were drinking a lot. You could just lift the thing to your lips every couple of minutes, start rambling a little in your talking. In any event, it had worked.
He wasn’t sure, driving back home, whether Dismas Hardy had been a turn in his luck for the good or the bad. His idea of having him stay in San Francisco, implicate Baker, and get the word out that Rusty was in fact dead hadn’t, it seemed, worked too well. He didn’t realize Hardy had been such a coward—he thought he remembered a guy a lot more tenacious. He could have sworn Hardy would have gone to the cops, given his two cents.
But no, he’d run … Well, you couldn’t plan for everything in this world. If gambling had taught him anything it had taught him that. But then Hardy’s showing up here, he decided, was pure good fortune, a sign that like today at the games he was on a roll.
Sure, he’d had to give up on D.C., but he knew her hotel and he could pick things up there again if he wanted. Except since she’d been with him and Hardy, maybe that wouldn’t be too smart. The less they could be put together the better.
He got out to the road, running along the bay and turned north. It was too bad. D.C. really was his kind of woman—young, enthusiastic, beautiful, not too deep. Here for a party, and intended to have one. Couldn’t hold her liquor worth a damn, though.
He pulled up off the road, looking at his watch. Nearly one A.M. He and Hardy had half carried D.C. back to her room at the Las Brisas around 9:30.
He was pumped up. Things were going perfectly, and that’s when you took your flyers. The losers were the guys who didn’t run with it when they felt the roll kick in, and he wasn’t a loser, not anymore. He was invincible.
Now he took a real shot out of the bottle, U-turning back toward town, toward D.C. and what he felt like doing right now.
Tomorrow he’d find out about the body at the base of the cliffs. He’d go to the restaurant where they’d started tonight, ask if anyone had seen his friend. Of course, the first divers would find him—if the tide didn’t take him out.
He thought about Hardy. At first, he hadn’t really planned on doing anything about him, but as the night had worn on, it became inevitable. Hardy would eventually go back to San Francisco. He would tell someone he’d seen Rusty—hell, the guy was a bartender and it was a great story. Next thing you know, the word somehow gets back to Tortoni or even—which might be worse now—to the police.
He kept forgetting he had killed Maxine.
Imagine forgetting something like that. It was interesting, he thought, and like with Hardy tonight, it had been a spur-of-the-moment thing, going with the vibe.
Maxine showing up after he’d already scared the pee out of Louis Baker. Baker gone. He, Rusty, screwing up his courage with the gun. Even with brass-jacketed .22s, he knew it was going to hurt like hell. He had his own cash in his briefcase—twenty-some thousand would have been enough had the other sixty not just jumped up in his face.
No. Maxine had been getting too serious anyway. He’d been planning that he would just die—to her as to everyone else. But then the fool woman comes over the day before they had planned to go, with all her money in her duffel bag …
He parked at the Las Brisas—individual spots for each guest in front of D.C.’s cabin. He took another hit of tequila, thinking back. It was strange he hadn’t gone over it so carefully before. He thought well on his feet, he had to give it to himself on that. That’s why he had been such a pistol of a trial lawyer.
That Wednesday night, Maxine had come in, unexpected. Unaware. Happy. Finally getting out of San Francisco and those dead dreams. Wasn’t it wonderful, Rusty?
Sure, wonderful.
But, goddammit, Johnny LaGuardia would be coming over in about two hours for his vig and Rusty had to be dead by then, blood tracking to the rail, body floating out to the bay.
She’d been excited, sexed up, geared for her new life. She’d started giving him her patented head, and okay, doing it wouldn’t hurt easing up some of his tension either. Didn’t take long.
Then her shower, him waiting now on the bed. The water turning off and then Maxine coming out, dancing, posing with the neck brace on—the thing that had made them all their money, that had made it all possible. She’d looked at him questioningly. What was he doing with Ray’s gun? Why …?
He opened the car door. If D.C. was still drunk it’d be easy. He and Hardy had left her on the bed, closing the door behind them. It might still be unlocked, and he’d just let himself in. Or, even if she’d gotten up and put the chain on, which was unlikely, he bet he could sweet-talk her back between the sheets in two minutes. He was good on his feet.
* * *
Later, Hardy would say the fall lasted twenty-six minutes by his best count.
He had had parachute training in the Marines, though it had been a long time. What saved him was that as he lost his balance, thinking he was dead, he still had pushed out, jumping, in some control.
He had noticed the boys diving—how the first part of the dive cleared the outcropping of rock. It was not far out. The length of the fall after that was what made it so impressive.
So he hadn’t spun or flipped, but dropped, in black panic, but with an eye on the phosphorus field forming under him, moving toward shore under him.
Hitting, feeling the impact through his shoes up to his shoulders, immediately ground into the bottom sand by the incoming wave, he struggled for what he hoped was the surface. There was no telling up from down and he hadn’t timed anything like when to take a breath.
Seawater. Lungs filling up. Slamming against rock. Under again.
And then he was on the sand throwing up. The stuff dripping down his right arm felt warm and looked black in the dun moonlight. The same moon was up there. He couldn’t see the top of the cliffs from the beach. The arm was starting to throb. He’d lost his right shoe. He reached down and there was more blood. He tried to stand and another wave came, knocking him down again.
He struggled to his feet, still gagging. He pulled off the other sand-filled shoe. His arm was killing him now. He was afraid to look at it. He sat into another wave and rubbed the blood away with t
he salt water.
His eyes gradually adjusted enough to make out depressions in the rocky face of the cliff. Footsteps. Only about five hundred of them, he thought. He put one foot in the first depression. Another in the next. The right foot was at least sprained, but he put weight on it and it held, through the pain made him catch at his breath. His teeth were starting to chatter. He tried another step.
“Okay, Rusty,” he said, “you want to play dirty.”
It was 3:15 A.M. by his watch when Hardy got to the El Sol. The office was a small room with rattan furniture and a bamboo desk with a glass top, under which were featured brochures of all Acapulco had to offer. Hardy leaned up against the bamboo and rang the bell. He was looking at a man standing next to a seven-foot sailfish. He moved the bell to reveal a platter of seafood. He rang it again.
He closed his eyes, suddenly dizzy. The cuts on his arm were more painful and bloody than deep, and they had clotted pretty well. Still, a few drops of blood had splattered to the floor. He figured his foot was beyond pain, that he would walk with a limp the rest of his whole life.
He banged on the bell again, gave up and got around behind the back of the desk. There was an old green metal box with a red cross on it and he picked it up and limped out on his bare and bloody feet, through the bananas and bougainvillea, back to his room.
“Who was that?” Flo Glitsky sat up in bed. “What time is it?”
Abe was pulling on his pants.
“Where are you going?”
Normally Flo didn’t ask, didn’t stir in the middle of the night when Abe got up to, say, question a suspect. But they had only gotten back from Los Angeles that day, and her husband had seemed maybe interested in the job they were offering—a gang task force of some kind, community interaction, counseling. He said he felt that his live cases here had been wrapped up. So where was he going in the middle of the night?
“Hardy,” he said.
“What about Hardy? Where is he?”
“He’s in Acapulco. Rusty Ingraham just tried to kill him.”
As he threw things in a bag, he filled her in. She draped an afghan over her and sat straight up cross-legged.
“So what does he want you to do?”
“He wants me to come down there.”
“And do what?”
Abe sat on the bed and started tying a shoe. “Pick Rusty up.”
“Pick Rusty up,” Flo repeated. “In Acapulco? How are you going to do that?” Then, as though remembering something. “Is Dismas all right?”
“He seemed fine.” He turned to his wife. “You want to call the airport and see when the next plane leaves?”
He went into the bathroom to shave. Halfway through, Flo came to the doorway. “Mexicana, seven-twenty.”
“Well, I’ve got some time. How about a little breakfast?”
“You still haven’t told me how you intend to pick Rusty up.”
Abe had to be careful shaving around the scar that ran through his lips. He made funny faces into the mirror, scraping away.
“That’s perceptive,” he said finally. He threw some water in his face, reaching blindly for a towel. Flo picked it from the rack and put it into his hands. “And the reason is, I don’t know. It will take some finesse, though.”
He was back in the bedroom, taking a long-sleeved purple T-shirt from a dresser drawer. “Hardy knows me pretty well,” he said. “Rusty’s my collar.”
“But you don’t have jurisdiction down there. Why don’t you just get a warrant, have him extradited?”
“On what?”
“How about murder?”
“Murder’s good,” Abe agreed, “except he’s not wanted for murder. We could say we’d like to question him about a murder, but they wouldn’t extradite for that, to say nothing of the fact that extradition takes a year on a good day. We have any chub? Cream cheese and chub on a bagel sounds good. I might even have some caffeinated tea.”
“Abe.”
He patted the bed next to him. When Flo sat down, he put an arm around her. “He’s my collar. He’s alive and tried to kill Diz—it points strongly to him killing Maxine Weir. You just said as much yourself … If he hadn’t tried to kill Diz I’d say it wasn’t definite. But since he did …” He shrugged. “At least, for my own peace of mind I’ve got to talk to him.”
“Are you going to take your gun?”
“Hardy’s already got one.”
“In Mexico? How’d he …?”
Abe patted her shoulder. “He’s a resourceful guy, our Diz. And his having one saves me the trouble of hassling with the airlines, going through the locals for permissions, all that.”
“Except that if you use it, how do you explain it?”
Abe stood up. “We’re full of good questions today.”
“Well?”
“Well, we’ll have to think of something.”
It was still dark, but Hardy heard a rooster crowing far off. He was trying to pull a sock onto his right foot and it was a tight squeeze over the bandage. The cut on the side of that foot, from ankle to little toe, was deeper, longer and uglier than anything on his arm. From the walk, the soles of both feet were raw.
He felt a little bad about his omission to Abe that he didn’t have a real idea of where Rusty might be. At dinner, Rusty had bragged about his beachfront place five miles north of the city. So Hardy thought he’d drive on up the road looking for that telltale Volkswagen. Of course, he knew it could be in a carport, a garage, off the road, whatever. Well, then he would go back to the jai alai stadium. If Rusty thought he was dead, he’d probably just go back to his habits. If …
One sock on, he stopped.
He considered calling Abe back. Never mind. I’ll go to the Mexican police and report my attempted murder. File charges. Let them look. Fuck it.
But, he realized, if he thought things had been personal before, Rusty had upped the ante by about a thousand. He wanted to take him, wanted to get him for what had started this whole thing, not just for the legalities. Abe deserved his chance, too, what with running around after Ray Weir and Johnny LaGuardia and Hector Medina and Louis Baker. Let’s get the posse together, saddle up and kick some ass. He had told Abe to come to the El Sol when he got in. If he had left Abe with the impression that he’d have Rusty here, trussed up and ready to roast, he figured his friend would forgive him.
He was wearing dry jeans, a pair of suddenly too small tennis shoes, an Armani long-sleeved shirt Jane had given him, probably ruined forever now with the blood seeping through the bandage he’d wrapped around his arm. Well, too bad. He smiled at himself in the cracked brownish mirror—the Miami Vice look. Very nice. He grabbed a light tan Windbreaker on the way out.
His Samurai was where he’d left it, around the corner from the El Sol’s office, halfway up the hill. It was a long way up the silent, dark street He felt under the driver’s side fender. Still there.
He sat in the driver’s seat, feeding the bullets he had taped under the bottom of the glove compartment into the chambers. He didn’t think he was going to shoot Rusty on sight, but … Playing it as though the man was just screwed up, a once-nice guy gone a little bad had nearly cost him his life tonight and he wasn’t about to let it happen again.
The sky behind him was starting to get light. He heard something drop onto the canvas roof of the car. A large dark shape appeared at the top of the windshield. Hardy knocked at it with his hand and the lizard skitted down and off the hood into the leaves on the side of the road. Hardy shivered. Get moving, he said, even if you don’t know where you’re going.
The ignition caught right away. Hardy slipped the Samurai into gear. Sitting still, even for a moment, sapped his energy. He thought he had probably lost a fair amount of blood, but not enough to weaken him. The fatigue must be from the hour—he’d been awake now for nearly a day, one filled with more than the usual ups and downs. But once a month or so at the Shamrock he’d pull an all-nighter talking to Moses, so he felt in shape that way.
/>
He hoped.
At the corner he stopped, suddenly remembering that there was one other person in Acapulco who might know where Rusty lived. And he knew where to find her, though she might be a little tough to wake up.
Make that knocking go away.
There was dim light at the corners of the curtains. Dull gray light of very early morning. But he could see everything in the room. He didn’t feel like he’d slept more than two hours. D.C., who definitely had been worth the stop, lay turned away from him on her side, naked and uncovered. Absently, he ran his hand along her flank. She made a sleepy, purring noise.
More knocking. He listened. Somebody was already up playing tennis—Rusty heard the rhythmic thok of the ball being hit. That must be it.
No, it was the door. Someone knocking on the door. Jesus, what time was it?
“Si?.”
“Servicio, señor.”
D.C. stirred. “What’s that?” she asked.
“Room service.”
She mumbled that they had the wrong room. Rusty tried to say “wrong room” in Spanish but it didn’t seem to take. The guy knocked again.
D.C. moaned and rolled out of the sack. “I’ll just tell him.” Rusty watched her walk across the room. He wondered how breasts so big could ride that high. He liked how she looked as she reached up for the chain, undoing it, opening the door a crack to tell the guy …
Stepping back away, her hands to her mouth. And before Rusty could react, Dismas Hardy was inside, the door closed behind him, pointing a gun at his head.
“Remember that thirty-eight Special I recommended you buy,” he said. “I thought you’d like to see what one looked like.”
26
“You can’t shoot me.”
“I can’t?”
“Please God don’t shoot us!” D.C said.
Hardy grabbed the sheet that covered Rusty and threw it toward D.C. “Wrap yourself up and sit down,” he said. He motioned to a chair with his head and leveled the gun at Rusty, now back up against the headboard, naked, covering himself. “I’m sorry, where were we?”
The Vig Page 31
