The woman reached her free hand out as if she wanted to touch Pepper, see if maybe she was a ghost.
"You've had a long life," Pepper said. "And here you are still learning things right up to your last day. Now, that's pretty unusual, wouldn't you say? That's something to be grateful for."
"Where's Roy?" the woman said.
Pepper capped the Flaming Canary and reached out with it and pressed the juicy side to the old woman's soft, wrinkled throat.
"Now there'll be a little burn, but it'll go away."
The woman touched Pepper's arm.
"See, what I'm doing is, I'm making this as painless as possible. You got that burn, and it's already starting to subside, then I'm making the cut right behind it, which you shouldn't feel at all." Pepper raised the woman's chin so she could get a better shot at her vein. The mortarboard fell to the floor. She made the cut, quick and deep. Her patients had bragged for years about Pepper's gentle touch. She could find a vein, draw blood without even the twitchiest patient knowing she was under way.
"Now there, that's done. All you should feel now is a little sleepy. The blood will just start leaking out of you. Get your dress messy, maybe, but hey, who cares about that at a time like this? From now on, every heartbeat is going to pump a little more blood out of you until you just sort of coast off to sleep."
"My boy," she said. "He's unhappy with me."
"Oh, no, I'm sure Roy loves his mom. He's just been getting back at you a little. Taking advantage, that's all. Can't blame him for that. Probably has some leftover childhood things going on in his head."
"Roy," the woman said, and lifted the laughing box again, but her arm sagged and the box fell from her hand.
Pepper stayed with her for a little while longer, a minute, not much more than that. Till the front of her dress was dark and damp and her head was slumped over. She'd had a long life, and a pretty easy way to die. Damn sight better than most people could say.
Pepper closed the door softly behind her and went back down the hall.
Roy Everly was sprawled on the floor. He looked bigger dead. Like a rhino had charged into the room and collapsed. Enough meat on that carcass to throw a neighborhood barbecue every day for a month.
"He tell you anything?"
"Yeah, he blubbered out a name."
"How'd you get him to talk?"
"I'm a trained professional," Echeverria said. "You keep forgetting."
"Somebody else he told about the endorphins?"
"A neighbor," Echeverria said. "Some friend of his named Monica."
"You think to ask him where Monica lives before you sent him off?"
"I told you. I'm a professional."
Pepper brushed the hair off her face, tucked her pistol in her waistband.
"I'm starting to like you, Echeverria."
"Don't do me any favors."
"If you weren't such a dumb, ugly Cuban, I might entertain serious sexual possibilities with you."
"I thought you had the hots for the doc."
"A woman's got to keep in shape," she said. "When the Prince finally shows up at the door, invites you to the ball, you want to be in peak condition, ready for action."
Echeverria started for the door, then stopped.
"Greta had it coming," he said. "Way she dressed, her attitude. Flaunting her body all the time. One of those haughty bitches that used her tits and ass to get where she was, then she turns around and shoots anyone down who pays any attention to them."
"Short skirts, tits falling out, like that?"
"Exactly," Echeverria said. "And anyway, she enjoyed it. Don't tell me she didn't. I saw it in her face, lying there, enjoying the hell out of it."
"Doesn't matter if she fell in love with you, Echeverria, wants to get married, have your children. The second Bean finds out what you did to her, you're one stone dead buckaroo."
CHAPTER 21
Monica knew she was only having a nightmare, but that didn't calm her any. Same thing happened with movies and books. She'd be scared out of her mind, and she'd force herself to look up, glance around at where she was, put the book down, stretch, yawn, blink, but she'd still be scared shitless. Or she'd be in the dark theater, heart wild with fright, she'd make herself have another handful of popcorn, munch it, remind herself for the dozenth time that it was only a movie, but it wouldn't matter. Her heart would still be thrashing around like an injured bird in the cage of her ribs.
She knew Thorn was safe, not locked up beneath the deck of his Chris-Craft, she knew that, though in the crazy logic of the dream it seemed true, truer than what her mind knew standing just outside the borders of the dream watching it happen, knowing it was all false, a script her unconscious had written for its own arcane purposes. Just her mind sorting things out, putting things in order, filing away the day's problems and images. She knew that. She knew she was dreaming, lying in bed, the pillow rolled up under her neck. She could even feel Rover sleeping on her feet, not letting her roll over if she wanted to, not letting her escape from the dream.
Thorn was locked below the deck of the Heart Pounder and the boat was sinking out in the Gulf Stream. On either side of them other boats paraded past. Monica sat out on the deck in the sun, her drawing pad in her lap, doing the most exquisite rendering of Rover that she'd ever managed. Complicated and rich and densely made. Nothing like her real drawings. An artistic breakthrough. A new Monica being created as she created the drawing, as she created the dream and watched herself create it and knew it was wrong for her to be sitting there doing such a frivolous thing when Thorn was in danger belowdecks, the boat sinking, both of them in danger, and even though she knew Thorn was about to die, Monica still had to finish her drawing.
She could hear him tapping on the floor. She could hear Rover growling, but the dog continued to sit perfectly still for his portrait, because he was a good dog, a well-behaved, happy, healthy dog, and she loved him. She could feel that love for the dog, feel it pour into her arms and her hands and feel it pour into the drawing she was doing. Focused on that page, on that white empty paper, filling it with fast beautiful lines as the water filled the spaces belowdecks and the boat sank slowly way out at sea with so many people around she could easily call for help, but she didn't because she was absorbed with the drawing, pushing herself to this new place, a revelation of major proportions, a seismic shift inside her, seeing the possibilities of art as greater than anything she'd imagined before. A great flowering. Everything making sense, finally making sense.
Monica hated it when people talked like that. A great flowering. All that artsy-fartsy bullshit. That kind of talk didn't help you draw. Drawing was just a wordless act that you either got better at or didn't. And she also hated it when people bored you with their dreams. Like you cared. Like anyone could possibly be interested in the secret code of another person's unconscious, even a person you liked or loved. And she really hated it when movies and books and dreams scared her and she couldn't break free of their grasp. She hated being a sucker, giving herself over to someone else's mind, to their visions of savagery and violence and the grotesque. Like watching someone you loved drown slowly beneath the deck of his own ship, hearing each glub, watching each bubble drift slowly upward as the water filled his lungs, while the one he loved, the one he counted on to save him, completed her breakthrough drawing on the upper deck.
Knowing it wasn't real only made the terror worse. Dreams were scarier than real life because they had stronger magic. Like this mind had figured out all the escape routes and blocked them, a mind that made you fall in love with someone, then killed them before your eyes, a mind that outsmarted you at every twist, one step ahead, always a surprise, always a heart-stopping race against the second hand, or in a dream, a mind that was your own mind, a part of you that was smarter than all of you. A mind that you didn't know even though it was living within your own mind. That could dream up terrors worse than any you could ever dream up, whispering in your ear, telling you a story abou
t a sinking boat and you and your loved one going down, and you oblivious of the danger, while he drowned, while you drew, while all of it sank beneath the dark surface of the magical sea.
Rover barked. Footsteps crunched through the gravel outside. And Monica was awake, sitting up in bed. Terrified.
***
"You don't know what goddamn lip liner is? You gotta be kidding me."
"I don't care what lip liner is."
"How about an eye blender brush?"
"Cut it out," he said.
"You're no fun, Echeverria. No fun at all. I bet you wouldn't let me put makeup on you, would you?"
"You're goddamn right I wouldn't."
A dog yipped from inside the little downstairs apartment. Echeverria had his pistol out, holding it down by his leg. She had hers out too. They were standing in the gravel drive looking at the door of the apartment.
"There was something else I was supposed to do on this trip," Pepper said. "Another job Bean gave me, but I can't remember what the hell it was. You ever have that, Echeverria? You have a thought one second, it's clear as day, then you turn around, zap, it's gone. Something important you gotta do, you can't remember what."
Echeverria was staring at the apartment. He kept swallowing.
"What I found," Pepper said, "best thing you can do is get on with whatever you were doing, and the thought'll come to you then. But you try to remember it, the thing just squinches down and hides inside a brain cell."
The big man wasn't moving.
"You okay, Echeverria?"
"Shut up for once, would you?"
"You got the look of a man about to spew his cookies."
She stood beside him as they listened to the dog bark inside the apartment. There was a rustle at the curtains, someone staring out at these two figures in the driveway.
"Was that your first kill, cowboy? That what this is?"
His chest rose and fell.
"That's the look you got. Like it's starting to hit you, what you've done. Got that seasick thing going on in your face, the ground starting to feel rocky underfoot. Is that what it is? 'Cause if it is, tell me now, and I'll go in and do this one. I wouldn't want you to choke on your spit, have to call an ambulance. That'd be hard to explain. My friend got some gray matter spattered on his shoes and it's made him a little woozy. No, that wouldn't sound too good."
Echeverria walked up to the door and tapped on it twice with the butt of his Colt. He kept tapping till the overhead light came on and a voice sounded through the door.
"What?"
"There's been a problem, ma'am. Mr. Everly is hurt, we need to use a phone."
"Mr. Everly?"
"Your neighbor, Mr. Everly. Hurt bad. Please, ma'am. We have to act fast."
The door swung open and a woman stepped out holding a little black-and-white terrier in her arms. She wore a yellow silk nightie and her hair was in curlers under a net. There was white war paint on her face. She was six hundred years old, and still doing everything she could to look four hundred.
Echeverria stepped back from her, a safe shooting distance.
"You a friend of Roy Everly?"
"Who you want?" The woman had Cuban mush in her mouth.
"Is your name Monica?"
"Monica?" The woman saw the pistol. "No, you make mistake."
"I don't think so," Echeverria said.
"I no Monica. She young girl. Live there, in house. Blond chica."
She raised her arm, pointing at a house across the canal, while she clutched the dog tight against her breast with the other arm. Echeverria lifted his pistol and shot the woman in the face. She fell backward and the dog spilled out and his nails spun on the cement as he charged. Echeverria shot it too. Took two slugs to stop the thing from yipping.
"You sure that was her?"
Echeverria was still pointing the pistol at the terrier.
"It's what Everly said. The house next door. You see another one?"
"Maybe you should check her ID, make sure."
"You don't think it's her, then you check her ID."
"All right, all right. Let's get out of here. That's about all the fun I can stand for one night."
"Aw, fuck, maybe you're right," Echeverria said. "We should check that house, the one she was pointing at."
***
Monica watched the tall man and woman stride back down Sandpiper Drive. From her window she could see Mrs. Benitez and Pepito lying side by side on the cement floor of the carport just across the canal.
Monica didn't have a phone. No one in the world to call but Thorn and he didn't have one, so she hadn't bothered. She stood at the window and tried to think. She knew what she'd just seen was no dream. Happening with all the sloppy, helter-skelter rhythm of a normal event. Brutal and quick and ugly.
Monica stood at the window and watched the moonlight spread like the golden sheen of a swelling tide, rising up the gravel drive until it lapped near the two fallen bodies. A minute, two. Trying to breathe. Trying to reconstruct what she'd seen. The woman dressed in black, the tall man with the potbelly showing through his white shirt. The man shooting Mrs. Benitez, then Pepito, then turning around and walking away. All of it, twenty, thirty yards away across the narrow canal. That close.
Trying to put it together, what she should do, her brain was buzzing with static.
Rover whined at her leg, wanting to go out.
Monica went over to the door and swung it open. She was wearing her cotton pajama shorts and a white T-shirt and the night air felt suddenly cool on her flesh. She reached back into the apartment and grabbed her purse and keys from the desk and walked out to the Impala.
She could drive over to Roy's, try to rouse him, use his phone, or she could drive to the Food Spot, call the police from there.
Rover jumped into the front seat, wagging his tail hard, sensing her edginess.
She started the car and the noise and vibration of the big V-8 finished waking her. She slid the car into gear, backed out, turned up Alamanda Lane toward the main entrance road, and her headlights lit them up. The tall girl in black and the bald man in a white shirt and black trousers striding down the middle of the street. Like they were going house to house, shooting whoever they found.
They halted, the woman saying something to the man, the man waving her away.
Monica shoved Rover to the floor and told him to stay. Stamping the high beam button, she flattened the accelerator, let go of the clutch, and fishtailed toward the two killers.
The woman jumped aside, but the big man held his position and lifted his pistol with one hand and fired twice. She saw both spits of flame from his barrel and felt the spray of windshield glass against her cheek, but she kept the wheels burning down the asphalt, swerving a little but holding the big car on the street, flashing past them, hearing another two sharp pops as she passed and feeling an icy numbness at the back of her neck. She skidded left onto Poinciana and raced toward the highway.
After only a second or two the warmth began to seep back into her neck, while something even warmer spread down her back. But she didn't reach around to probe the wound. She knew she was in shock, feeling no pain; the golden glow of numbness might last the fifteen minutes it would take her to drive to Mariners Hospital. Let the emergency room people call the police. First things first, get down the road, get some medical attention, stop the bleeding. Her eyes were clear, she was thinking straight. She'd just been grazed. It was only fifteen minutes to the hospital, twenty max. She'd make it, no worry.
She was out on the highway, a half mile down, cruising at eighty through Rock Harbor when she leaned over and saw Rover on the passenger floor. She took her foot off the accelerator.
"Rover," she said. "Rover."
A bullet had gouged through the car just behind the wheel well and there was a bloody scoop gone from the top of the dog's skull, his head cocked against the carpet at a hopeless angle. His mouth was open and his teeth were bared as if even in his last seconds he had be
en doing what he could to protect her.
CHAPTER 22
Sunday morning at eight o'clock Thorn parked his wheelchair across the street from the Casa Marina Hotel. It was a palatial Mediterranean structure, a Marriott update of a building where in an earlier incarnation congressmen and Hollywood rogues and rumrunners and lobstermen had swapped lies. Piazzas, loggias, black cypress ceilings, a full orchestra playing on the lawn. All those indispensable features of a 1920s resort, built by Henry Flagler, the man who single-handedly concocted Florida and made it safe for millionaires.
The Marriott people had decided the thick stucco walls of Flagler's old beauty should be replastered and dabbed with hipper colors, fitted out with flimsy brass lamps and cutely painted Mexican tile. And they had continued to veneer and paint and tile with all the trendiest materials until by now every vestige of the graceful original had been concealed by a series of slapdash contractors who'd apparently served their apprenticeships decorating wedding cakes and Mardi Gras floats.
Thorn was waiting for Echeverria to appear. He was going to follow the son of a bitch through his Sunday routine, spy on the spier. See if he tried to butcher any more dolphins. And if the occasion presented itself, Thorn had decided to test the limits of his own physical condition, see if he could blindside the bastard, knock him into a side street, throttle him until he bleated out the truth. And if truth was not forthcoming, just keep throttling him till he was senseless.
That's how he'd awoken this morning. Angry. Angry at the sky, angry at the trees and air and sidewalk. Angry at the people walking on two legs, angry at the joggers, angry at the cars and the dogs and cats, angry at the clouds and the herons and ibis and gulls, angry at the men hosing off the sidewalks outside the bars, angry at the paper cups tumbling in the wind up Duval Street, and especially angry, uniquely and particularly angry, at the two legs attached to his body. The two stupid, useless, empty reminders of the careless life he'd been leading, the healthy, vigorous body he'd been taking for goddamn granted.
Red Sky At Night (Thorn Series Book 6) Page 19
