by Tim Tigner
Troy heard Emmy gasp as she entered and knew what she had seen even before he peeked around the doorframe. Officer Honey stood there with satisfaction beaming from his eyes. This time he was the one holding the Colt.
Chapter 57
Sketch
FARKAS WATCHED THE CLOCK, waiting for ten long minutes after hearing Troy and Emmy leave the yacht before moving. His plan had worked perfectly, but the jig would be up if Troy returned for something forgotten and found him awake.
Then the ball-peen hammer would come back out and stay out until Farkas revealed his secret.
Then Troy really would flash his memory away.
The upside of the whole bungled episode was that his custom contact lenses had been battle-tested. Now he could go forward without the nagging fear that some UV-C might still slip through. When Luther decided to terminate and erase their relationship—an end Farkas saw as inevitable—he would find the tables turned.
The downside of Troy and Emmy’s escape was that it made him look like an idiot. Luther might now decide to end their relationship with a bullet rather than a flash, especially when Troy and Emmy showed up at his door. That too was inevitable—unless Farkas killed them first. To do that, he had to escape.
Troy had used duct tape to bind the entire length of Farkas’s forearms to an aluminum deck chair. Farkas was going crazy trying to sever the thick gray coils. They were tough as steel gauntlets and Troy had removed every blade from the kitchen. Farkas tried everything from snagging the tape on shelf corners to puncturing it with drawer handles. Meanwhile, his quarry was slipping further and further away. Nothing worked. The legendary tape was just too resilient.
Since his only means of movement was hopping on two bound legs, and he could only do that while bent at an L-shaped angle, he was inadvertently giving himself a real beating. At a quarter past noon, Farkas finally conceded the inevitable. He would break his neck before breaking free.
He needed help.
He decided to scream.
Aware that he was more likely to break his neck than make it to the top of the stairs and through the door, Farkas positioned himself at the base of the stairs. Keeping his eyes on the wall clock, he began screaming “Help!” once every sixty seconds. After an hour, with his throat dry and sore, he switched to every two minutes. Then to every three. Four hours after his first scream, nearly six hours after Troy and Emmy had fled, he finally felt movement on the boat. “I’m down here! Please, help!”
Farkas heard cautious footsteps, and then a black face poked around the doorway at the top of the stairs, followed immediately by a gun. “Thank goodness you heard me,” Farkas said. “I’ve been robbed.”
“Are you alone?” the officer asked.
“Yes. The couple who did this to me left hours ago.”
The officer did not holster his weapon as he and his partner came down. After a brief visual inspection of his bonds, they searched the two staterooms in a manner much more professional than Farkas would have expected from paradise cops. Satisfied with their search, they began conversing in a language Farkas could not understand.
Farkas read their name tags. The senior officer was a sergeant named Brandell. Junior’s name was Mertins. They seemed to be studying him while they spoke, and were paying particular attention to his eyes. Farkas frequently received double-take glances since the reflective nature of the custom lenses gave his eyes an unusual metallic sheen. They were kinda cool, he had always thought. They meshed nicely with his scruffy beard and Kangol cap to complete a tough-guy image. He half expected to start a Hollywood trend. But admiration was not written on the officers’ faces, and an uneasy feeling overtook him. “Would you guys mind cutting me free?” he asked. “I’m getting pretty tired of this chair.”
Brandell nodded to Mertins, who went to the kitchen in search of a knife Farkas knew he would not find. He brought back a pizza cutter instead. Eventually, Mertins cut through the tape on the inside of Farkas’s right arm. The instant the final strand gave, Farkas ripped his arm free with a motion that would have made a veteran bikini waxer faint.
Farkas said, “Thanks,” and had begun to rub his bloody forearm against his shorts when Brandell stepped forward and slapped a handcuff around his wrist. Then the sergeant linked it to his left wrist before slicing through one side of the tape and signaling for Farkas to repeat the depilatory procedure. Farkas looked Brandell in the eye, gauged his intentions to be serious, and complied without breaking eye contact.
“What’s the problem?” Farkas asked. “Why the cuffs?”
Neither officer replied. They just pulled him to his feet and escorted him back to their squad car.
Perhaps Troy and Emmy had been captured and broken. He could think of no other explanation for this cruel twist of fate.
As they pulled away from the West Bay marina, he pressed his luck. “I deserve to know what this is all about.”
Neither officer spoke, but Sergeant Brandell held his clipboard up to the Plexiglas partition without looking back. It displayed a police artist’s sketch—of his face.
Chapter 58
Tango
STARING DOWN the barrel of Officer Honey’s Colt, Emmy felt like her air supply had been cut off.
Then the lights went out.
In the blink of an eye the theater became dark as a cave. Before she could react, someone grabbed her arm and yanked her violently backwards. She careened into someone else and they both tumbled to the wooden floor. The makeup room door slammed as she fell, blowing wind across her face.
Lying there in the dark, Emmy pictured the circuit box they had passed in the hall. Troy must have flipped the big gray switch. His reflexes were amazing.
She waited through a moment of stunned silence for Troy to place a hand on her shoulder or whisper in her ear. Neither came. Had the slamming door drowned out a gunshot? Was Troy wounded? She reached out tentatively toward the figure beside her. She felt the soft fabric of old coveralls. William.
He groaned in response to her touch, his tone more winded than wounded. He was not shot, just stunned.
If William was with her, then Troy must be on the other side of the door. He had used the momentum of swinging her out to sling himself in. He had gone after Honey.
She braced for the gunshot that would change her life while picturing the two combatants blindly circling one another on the other side of the door. William stirred, breaking her trance with, “Oh Lordy.” As he began rising to his feet, she knew instinctively that he was going for the circuit box. She had to stop him before he found the lever.
At five foot two and a hundred pounds, Emmy was not born into the warrior class. But she had come of age on predatory streets. She sprang up, wedging herself between William and the wall. Her left shoulder knocked his probing arm aside as she rose while her hands grappled for his neck. As William staggered backwards to slip her grip, she moved with him, getting her legs into position. When he brought his hands up to claw at hers, she brought her right knee up with full force. It found the soft target.
William let out an agonized, “Ooph,” and doubled over, whacking his forehead against the top of hers. The wallop dazed Emmy, but she remained standing. William crumpled to the floor, where he began to rock and moan.
A gunshot boomed through the dark like a cannon as scuffling sounds erupted from the makeup room. Emmy froze and strained her ears. The noise peaked with a loud smack followed by a crash.
Silence ensued.
She got a splinter groping for the circuit box, but found it and pulled the central lever.
William lay off to her left, still rolling around much as she had envisioned. If only he had waited a few seconds … As she reached for the knob of the dressing room door, it opened. Troy stood there, his face a mask of concern.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“I’m fine.” She poked her head into the room to see Officer Honey on the floor.
“He’ll be okay,” Troy said. “I just knocked him ou
t.”
“With your bare hands?”
“It’s not that hard, medically speaking, if you know what to do. The tough part was doing it in the dark. I had to direct my blow by touch which meant grabbing before I struck. That was when he got the shot off. But enough history, let’s get the hell out of here.”
“Not yet,” Emmy said. “We still need disguises. Pull William in here while I search for what we need. Then change into Honey’s uniform. When you’re done with that, tie them up together, back to back.”
“You want me to impersonate a police officer?”
“It’s the only way, Troy. You heard the broadcast. I’ll explain as we get dressed.”
Chapter 59
End of the Line
FARKAS UNDERSTOOD what had happened the moment he saw his composite picture. The old couple from Elisabeth Avenue had given his description to the police. He felt like kicking himself. If only he had remembered them a few hours earlier...
Lifting his gaze from his handcuffs to the patrol car window, he spotted the pier where Troy had dumped the detective’s body. He only had a few minutes to escape. The first order of business at the police station—after calling the Wootens in for a lineup—would be to print him. Once they found his fingerprints sanded, they would know they had their man.
He had to attack while they still harbored doubt.
Using the sharp nail of his right thumbnail, he began slicing the skin of his left wrist just above the calloused lump. He had imagined this moment a thousand times since placing the implant, but found it much more difficult in real life. His skin did not yield so easily, and warm blood turned his fingers so slick that they could not wrench the key free. He clawed on in desperation, ignoring the pain as he dug into the scarred tissue. He had only seconds, only one chance, and it was slipping from his grasp.
He looked back up as they hit the curb to the garage where it all began. His eyes scanned the garage for other occupants while his fingers continued working.
“Let’s see if we can’t get this straightened out,” Mertins said, getting out and opening the rear door.
Farkas stayed put.
“Come on, buddy,” Mertins pushed. “It’s time for the moment of truth.”
“Where are we?” Farkas asked. “How do I know you’re really cops?” It was weak, but the only disarming stall tactic that sprang to mind.
The question was surprising enough to buy Farkas another second of delay. That second proved enough to wrest the key from its encapsulation.
“We’re at police headquarters,” Mertins said. “Look at the other cars in the garage.”
Farkas made a show of looking around from the back seat while mating key with lock out of sight. He continued to study one car in particular as he emerged. His puzzled stare prompted Mertins to follow his gaze.
That was all it took.
Farkas whipped the empty cuffs around like a flail, catching Mertins square in the temple. As Mertins fell, Farkas bounded off the doorsill, banked off the open door and lunged over the roof at the shocked sergeant. Brandell made the mistake of going for his gun rather than getting out of the way. Farkas slammed into him before he could raise his weapon. As the sergeant tottered, Farkas whipped around, windmilling the handcuffs into the back of Brandell’s head. As Brandell slumped, Farkas saw that he had not been as lucky as his junior partner. The handcuff spur had impaled his neck around the second cervical disk. He would likely be paralyzed if he lived.
Farkas picked Brandell’s hat up off the bloody concrete and placed it on his own head. Then, for the second time that week, he heaved two bodies into a patrol car trunk. Again, he had to arrange the unconscious forms like spoons in a drawer so they would fit. He slammed the trunk, got into the driver’s seat, and uncuffed his right wrist. Time to fly.
Emerging from the dim and dreary garage into the freedom of the bright Cayman sunlight, Farkas felt like he was being born again. He drove straight for Owen Roberts International Airport with dark lights and a silent siren. It was only a few miles. He found a place in the corner of the lot where a good thirty meters separated him from the nearest other car. He needed the buffer. Mertins would soon awake and start making noise.
He stuffed the composite drawing of his face into his pocket for later study and got out. His first impulse was to lock the keys in the car to add further delay to the chase. Realizing, however, that this would limit his escape options if the shit hit the fan, he stuffed them into the exhaust pipe instead.
He walked to the terminal and scanned the departure board for the first flight out. He found one headed for Orlando leaving in just thirty minutes. With luck, he would be aboard. If not, the next departure was not for an hour and ten minutes, and it was headed for Mexico City.
Farkas made it to the gate with enough time to grab a cup of Blue Mountain Jamaican coffee. Boarding was just starting as the barista passed him his steaming beverage, so he decided to get the call over with.
Picking up a payphone receiver, he half expected to see Emmy and Troy walk past disguised as a nun and priest. He knew the odds of that were infinitely small given the manhunt, but kept his eyes peeled nonetheless. What was that quote about luck being at the intersection of preparation and opportunity?
“Hello Luther? It’s me.”
“You’re not calling from your satellite phone,” Luther said. It was a statement, not a question.
Farkas did not want to explain that the phone was now on a yacht, and that it would likely end up in police custody. So he just said, “That’s right. The battery died.”
“So let’s have it.”
“You want the good news, or the bad?”
“Start with the good.”
“I figured out how they got back on your trail. Emmy tattooed your bank account number on the sole of her foot.”
“Wiley sons-of-bitches. Well, at least once the foot is gone, the clue will be too. I suppose that’s your bad news—that the foot has escaped with Emmy still attached?”
Farkas could hardly believe his ears. Luther’s tone was calm and cordial. What had gotten into him? He was usually a prick even without cause. Now that Farkas had genuine bad news, he seemed unfazed. Perhaps he had finally gotten laid. Perhaps he was in love. “Yeah, I’m afraid so.”
“And I suppose you have no idea where they are, or where they’re headed?”
“Nope.”
There was a long, painful silence ending with, “Get your ass on a plane to Las Vegas. You’ve got a job to do, and just forty-eight hours to do it. Instructions will be waiting for you tomorrow morning at the Bellagio.”
“Okay. You got it. What’s the rush?”
“I’ve got another project for you after Vegas, a big one.”
“Sounds good. Where?”
“I’ll tell you that when we meet,” Luther said.
“Meet?”
“Yeah. Meet. In LA. Forty-eight hours from now. Call me when you know your flight details. I’ll send a car for you.”
Luther hung up the phone before Farkas could respond. It was just as well. Farkas was in shock. They were finally going to meet. That could only mean one thing: His gravy train was approaching the end of the tracks.
Chapter 60
Officer Jones
TROY—or Officer Jones as he would call himself for the next hour—dropped Emmy off a block from the cruise terminal and then backtracked in order to leave the patrol car halfway to the airport. It was worth a mile’s walk to keep the clues ambiguous.
He moved like a man on a mission—which he was—having reverted to his military bearing the moment the cap hit his head. He spotted Emmy where she said she’d be, doing some convincing window-shopping, and made a swift approach. She was wearing brown contact lenses, stage glasses with silver frames, and a curly blonde wig that ended at her shoulders.
“Don’t you look dapper,” she said as he walked up beside her. “I’ve always been drawn to men in uniform. Not so sure about the mustache and goatee, t
hough. Makes you look a bit too Pancho Villa for my tastes.
He touched the shiny black bill of his hat and then grabbed her beneath the elbow like a formal escort.
Turning toward the terminal he said, “Three ships, that’s a blessing.”
“I was hoping for more,” Emmy said. “And where are all the people? Judging by what we heard on the radio, I had expected this place to be a virtual anthill.”
“Don’t worry about it. Everyone will assume that you can’t be a fugitive if you’re already with the police. Trust me, I’ve worn a uniform enough to know how people react to one.”
Just then a pink and yellow courtesy trolley pulled into the terminal cul-de-sac. Before it had finished disgorging its jolly crowd, a second trolley pulled in.
“Ask and ye shall receive,” Troy said.
“I wish.”
They blended into the herd of beach bag-toting cruisers. Emmy flashed her stolen cruise ship ID at the terminal checkpoint, but the guard paid more attention to Troy. It was as if he expected Troy to point at her and mouth “prostitute” with a wink. Troy maintained his no nonsense expression.
As they approached the Neptune III, a pair of uniformed officers with binoculars rose from a table and began walking their way. Troy asked Emmy a question, using conversation to augment their camouflage. “So how do you think Honey found us?”
Emmy’s cool and reasoned reply reflected her battle-ready state of mind. “He just put himself in our shoes and set an intercept course. I’m sure he orchestrated the media blitz just to make sure we were thinking about disguise.”
“My thoughts exactly. I’m just embarrassed that I didn’t play a better game of chess.”
“You did okay,” Emmy said. “Why do you think he came alone?”
“That’s an easy one. Pride.”
The officers were almost upon them now, and they looked serious. Troy could not see their eyes for their mirrored shades, but he felt their gaze boring into him. So close …
