DIE EASY: Charlie Fox book ten (the Charlie Fox crime thriller series)

by Sharp, Zoe

  I held my breath again. With three other armed men in the room it was suicide to try anything solo. I was amazed they hadn’t slotted Morton as soon as he’d kicked off. Slimy little sod always did have Teflon-coated shoulders for sliding out of trouble.

  But where were they taking him—and Jimmy?

  More to the point—why?

  Inside my head I could picture the layout, the large deck area with the gaming tables dotted around the place. If they’d any sense, they would have all the hostages sitting on the floor. Easier to keep an eye on them, and harder for anybody to launch any kind of surprise attack.

  Sean had said there were four of them holding a roomful of people. Any of the bodyguards would earn themselves a massive bonus if they managed to disarm one of the attackers.

  More, no doubt, if they managed to kill any of them. Or all of them.

  It all made isolating and separating out any possible troublemakers even more important for the hostage-takers. Whoever got brave would almost certainly also get very dead. But once someone took a chance and led the initial charge, the rest would be quick to take advantage of the situation. A few wouldn’t make it, but with their military background they were used to the concept of acceptable losses.

  “You’re wasting your time,” came another voice that was both shaken and shaking. I heard fear there, and pain, all being manfully hidden. His voice was quite distant. It wasn’t hard to identify the new speaker as Jimmy O’Day. “I hate to disappoint you, but there’s no way my father is ever going to make any sweeping sacrifices on my account,” Jimmy said. “You can take that to the bank.”

  I found my eyes straying to Tom O’Day as his son’s words came into my ear. O’Day senior certainly didn’t strike me as filled with paternal pride.

  “Well, let’s hope you’re wrong about your old man, because otherwise things are gonna get very nasty for you, Jimmy boy,” said the man from New Jersey with a certain grim relish to his tone. “Very nasty indeed.”

  “This is pointless. There’s no point to this,” Jimmy protested, sounding close to tears. There were jerks in his voice, too, as if he was still struggling against being restrained. “Why are you doing this? You think you can get away with holding us hostage? You think you can get away afterwards?”

  “Thanks for your concern, but we got that part under control. You got other things to worry about right now.” New Jersey man’s voice turned from almost cheerful to coldly precise like flicking a switch. “So, let me ask you one more time. Where. Is. Your. Fucking. Father?”

  There was a moment’s pause while the room as a whole held its collective breath.

  Then Jimmy O’Day spoke again, and this time the only thing I could hear in his voice was raw defiance. “Where is he? How the hell should I know? The old bastard wouldn’t tell me if he was going to the john, never mind anything important, OK?”

  I heard two quick steps before another blow landed. There was the gasp of expelled air, a muffled groan. Further off came more scuffling and cursing. Tuned in now, I put that down to Morton again. The guy had a lot more guts than I’d given him credit for.

  A lot more than I remembered.

  Then a new voice joined the fray. “I can hardly believe this is what you came for, is it?” Autumn said, her voice as cool and clear as I’d come to expect. “If you wanted to beat up on the defenceless, you could have picked a fight on a street corner. So, are you simply here to rob us, or are you really here for something else? Something to do with Tom?”

  Jimmy shouted, “Autumn! No—”

  “Ahh, yes,” said the man from New Jersey, satisfaction in his tone now. “Miss Sinclair. I was just getting around to you.” He let out a low whistle. I could almost feel him stripping her with his eyes. “Well, I’m guessing it’s O’Day’s money keeps you by his side, sweetheart, rather than his youthful good looks. Still, let’s hope he’s a little more fond of you than he is of his own flesh and blood, huh?” He paused. “You may as well take her away, too.”

  Forty-three

  I reported the gist of what had gone on down in the casino, trying not to add my own spin on things. Not altogether successful if Tom O’Day’s reaction was anything to go by.

  “First you blamed my son’s bodyguard for this, Charlie, then my own guy, and now it’s my fault all this is happening?” He shook his head. “Maybe these guys just want me because I put this whole deal together, so they kinda think I’m the icing on the cake.”

  “I’m not saying it’s anybody’s fault—just that they want you and seem determined to get you.”

  “We can sit around here arguing who’s to blame ’til Doomsday,” Blake Dyer said. “How about a little action?”

  Tom O’Day smiled at him. “Sounds good to me, my friend.” He glanced at me again. “So, Charlie, you with us?”

  “OK, OK,” I said sourly. “First we need weapons—or anything we can use for weapons. Any ideas where to look?”

  Tom O’Day pursed his lips. “Boat like this will carry distress flares, just in case of emergency, but they’ll be most likely on the bridge,” he said, considering. “The skipper’s cabin might be the best place. These old guys sometimes have a shotgun or some such. Never know what we might find there.”

  It sounded reasonable to me. “I’ll go alone, see what I can find, and come back for you. Less risk of exposure.” And in a fight I don’t have two civilians to worry about. “The captain’s cabin is right at the stern, isn’t it?”

  O’Day’s smile broadened. “You know, I’m kinda hazy when it comes to giving directions, ma’am. Better that I show you the way, don’t you reckon?”

  “And left on my own I might fall asleep. My wife says my snoring would waken the dead, so we’d best not risk leaving me alone, just in case,” Blake Dyer said, deadpan. “I’ll come along, too.”

  I took in a lungful of air, let it out slowly. “You two,” I said, “will be the death of me.”

  As it was, getting there was no mean feat.

  The Miss Francis’s skipper had his personal quarters on the uppermost deck, just behind the wheelhouse. In some ways the positioning made perfect sense. He could be quickly summoned from his bunk if there was a problem.

  Or at least it would have made sense had this been an ocean-going liner. But for a riverboat that was never out of sight of land, it seemed an irrelevance. Maybe the eccentric skipper just liked to cling to past glories.

  Either way, being at almost the highest point of a shallow-draught boat did not seem conducive to a good night’s rest. Any inherent motion would be exaggerated the further above the waterline you got. Maybe the skipper liked being rocked to sleep, too.

  The cabin occupied the greater part of the stern area of the very top deck, separated from the public areas by a low gate with a No Admittance sign firmly attached.

  Unfortunately, getting to that area involved going past the wheelhouse itself, with the armed guard in residence. Not only that, but the deck lighting meant there were no shadows to hide in. The area at the top of the stairs leading up to the bridge deck seemed like half a football field of empty, illuminated space.

  At least the proximity to the rear-mounted paddlewheel, threshing the water behind us into white-foamed chop, meant noise was not a significant factor. Beneath the decking I could feel the thrum of the diesel engines, smell the sluggish river mingling with salt water coming in from the Gulf. The air was thick and clammy in the darkness, weighting my lungs with every breath.

  I led the two men up the stairs and made sure they kept their heads down as we crawled past the bridge. Light from every window spilled onto us. If anyone inside had looked down instead of outward we would have been dead ducks, but for once our luck held.

  The low gate was obviously well-used enough to operate freely and without undue noise—always a bonus. The three of us slunk through and I latched it again, then we scuttled for the unlit doorway and bundled inside.

  I dropped the blinds on all the windows and flipped on t
he light. The way the Miss Francis was lit up anyway, it was unlikely to draw more attention. And it was better than leaving the lights off and blundering around in the dark.

  The cabin was surprisingly spacious, completely lined with glossy wood panels. I had to remind myself that they were all decorative—that they were just window-dressing on a glass fibre shell. The rear had fold-back doors that opened out onto a short deck overlooking the giant stern-mounted paddlewheel. When I looked out I saw what appeared to be artificial grass lining the deck, as if the skipper had built himself a little garden out there. Well, we knew he was a character . . .

  “Ah, looks like the captain of our vessel is a sensible guy,” said Blake Dyer when he looked out, too.

  “How do you work that out?” I asked, but he was already pulling open doors to built-in cupboards and storage, peering inside. He was also making more noise about it than I was happy with considering the occupied wheelhouse was only a bulkhead away in front of us. There were limits to what the paddlewheel would cover up.

  Tom O’Day peered out, just as mystified, then he too seemed to have a eureka moment and joined Blake Dyer in his search. I shrugged and concentrated on the small built-in bedside drawer and the desk, which seemed the most likely places to hide a gun. Sadly, if the skipper had one, he didn’t keep it any place I could immediately find. There wasn’t even a lock-box or safe.

  Shit.

  “Ah-ha!” said Blake Dyer at last. I turned in time to see him pulling a bag of golf clubs out of a narrow cupboard on the other side of the bunk. He slid a long wood out of the bag, hefted the shaft in his hand to get a feel for the weight. “Just what the doctor ordered.”

  Tom O’Day joined him, picked out a seven iron. “Ping, too,” he commented, impressed. “Not used on the Pro tour so much now, but still a decent make. I knew that any guy who puts down Astroturf to practise his putting is serious enough not to skimp on his clubs.”

  I remembered O’Day’s long effortless drive off the first tee at the golf course and suddenly realised he could be a formidable opponent with one of those things—and not just on the greens and fairways.

  Still, a golf club might be a fine weapon above decks, but in a confined space, below them, that was another matter.

  “You know your golf clubs for playing, but if you’re going to use them as a weapon, you need something shorter than a wood,” I said. “I’d go for a five or six iron if I were you.”

  Blake Dyer grinned at me and selected a six iron.

  For myself I wanted something shorter still and easier to handle. I scanned the cabin again and my eye landed on a large Maglite near the spacious bunk. The flashlight was a five-cell in black—no flashy reds or silvers for our skipper. I was liking this guy more by the minute.

  And there, sitting on a shelf above the desktop was a roll of heavy-duty duct tape. The kind of thing you’d use for running repairs on just about anything. Or for securing a captive. I picked up the roll.

  “We all set?”

  “I just need to use the bathroom,” Blake Dyer said.

  “Make it fast,” I said. “And whatever you do, don’t flush it.” I’d been on some yachts supposedly a lot more luxurious than this where the marine toilets clanked like an old mine pumping engine when they flushed. There was no way I wanted to call that kind of attention onto us.

  Dyer nodded, laid down his club and pushed through a louvred door near the far side of the bunk. To my surprise he was back a moment later.

  “I know I said ‘make it fast’, but you can’t have had time to—”

  “I didn’t have time,” said my former principal, face pale and voice sober. “It was . . . already occupied.”

  I pushed past him, went into the small en suite. Inside was a toilet so close to the sink that it would have been impossible to sit straight on it. The sink also overhung the cramped bathtub on the other side. In fact, the mixer for the shower came directly from the sink taps. It was an ingenious use of space, but I daresay this element of the design—however clever—was not appreciated by the dead man who lay in a crumpled pile of limbs in the bottom of the bathtub.

  Forty-four

  The image of the dead man sparked a memory—of the last time I’d faced a corpse in a bathroom. Must be the proximity of a drain and running water that made killers choose them as ideal storage places for bodies.

  The last time, I’d been in California, in a cheap motel just off Sunset Boulevard. The dead man had been someone I’d known only slightly but his death had hit me hard. I felt responsible for it.

  I knew this man, too, but felt nothing. His mistakes were all his own.

  “What is it—?” Tom O’Day demanded, peering over my shoulder. He saw the body and made a choking sound in his throat. “Oh my Lord,” he murmured, “that’s Hobson.”

  “Yes,” I said. I looked at his hands, the cuts and scuffs across his knuckles. “If it makes you feel any better I’d say he didn’t go down without a fight.”

  O’Day cleared his throat. “To be honest, ma’am, no it doesn’t,” he said slowly. “Knowing that makes me feel no better at all.”

  I knelt by the side of the bathtub and leaned in over the body, laid my fingers against the pulse point in the dead man’s neck as a formality, not expecting the faintest flutter. I didn’t find one. Hobson was still warm to the touch like he was sleeping or in a coma.

  The feel of him brought back another painful memory, of Sean lying inanimate in his hospital bed for more than three months after he was shot. His skin had taken on this same loose quality. As if the essence of him—the element that made him truly human—had gone elsewhere. As if he were trapped somewhere between the living and the dead.

  In Rick Hobson’s case, though, there was no possibility he was ever coming back.

  Tom O’Day waited until I’d confirmed life extinct, then backed out of the bathroom without a word. Through the open doorway I could see Blake Dyer sitting on the bunk, eyes fixed on nothing. If the two men had ever truly thought this was a game, they’d just realised it was not.

  In an ideal world I knew I should disturb the body as little as possible, but this was not an ideal world. I flipped open the dead man’s jacket and ran my hands down both sides of his torso, finding no wounds. No weapons either, more’s the pity. It seemed that Hobson had obeyed his own orders not to bring a firearm onto the Miss Francis.

  “Bloody hell, Hobson. Why couldn’t you of all people have broken the rules?”

  He was a big guy and he fitted snugly into the bath, so moving him took real effort. I bunched a fist in the front of his clothing and heaved, leaning my bodyweight into it. His upper body rose slowly and gradually folded so he was slumped forwards. And as his head lolled down I found out what had killed him.

  The back of his skull had been smashed flat, either from a high fall or a fast-moving blunt instrument. Not being a pathologist, it was hard to tell which. Either way, he wouldn’t have stood much of a chance. Nor would he have lasted long afterwards.

  I checked the back of his jacket, his rear trouser pockets. Nothing.

  Cursing under my breath, I stood up, sluiced the blood off my hands and went out, closing the door behind me. Blake Dyer was still sitting on the bunk, Tom O’Day in a chair across the other side of the cabin. Both men looked shocked and thoughtful.

  “Somebody caved his head in,” I said bluntly.

  Blake Dyer closed his eyes briefly, looked away. “Poor guy,” he murmured.

  “Still think he was their inside man?” Tom O’Day asked with a little edge to his voice.

  I shrugged. “No reason why he couldn’t have been,” I said. “Maybe they decided to cut their costs and kill him once his role was over. It’s not like he could sue them for breach of contract.”

  “Or maybe he saw them coming aboard and single-handedly put up a fight,” O’Day said stubbornly.

  “Maybe,” I agreed. “Or he could have played his part and then been taken by surprise by someone he had reason t
o trust.”

  He glanced at me sharply. “You have anyone in mind?”

  I shook my head. There was no way I was going to get into that kind of argument—they’d already had enough to send them reeling.

  Maybe one day we might even discover which of those scenarios was closest to the truth. Now was not that day.

  “We need to move—we’ve been here too long already.” I hefted the Maglite, holding it just behind the bulb where I could use the tail end as a club and still be able to see what I’d hit afterwards. I handed the roll of duct tape to Dyer and gestured to the open golf bag. “Choose your weapons.”

  They stuck with their original choices—a couple of medium irons. I couldn’t comment on that one way or another. But from the way they gripped the clubs determinedly I’d say the image of Hobson’s body was painted large and fresh in their minds. If it came to it, they wouldn’t hesitate to lash out like they meant it. I couldn’t ask for more than that.