"I suppose that means this is going to cost me more."
"Probably," he said. "Probably cost you a lot more."
She smiled at him, seemed willing to accept that risk.
She was wearing her hair in a ponytail, a pink band tying it off. The pink matching the stripe in her white blouse. Lipstick a darker shade of pink. Navy blue slacks, white canvas boat shoes. Her eyes looking fresher, relaxed today. She seemed to be seeing more than she had yesterday when she was so lost in her head. Today she was a hundred percent right there. And that's how Sugarman felt too. Seeing it all in keen detail. Not having any more conversations with himself. Senses quickened. Enjoying each breath.
"No, there's no backing out," she said. "I have to find out what's going on. Something's wrong."
"People change," Sugarman said. "Winchester might not be as bad as the guy you ran away from. Might've mellowed."
"Or else," she said, "he could've gotten much worse."
Sugar lifted the finger Doris was touching to his arm, brought it to his lips and kissed it. Never thinking of himself before as that kind of guy, a finger kisser. But he kissed it, the tip, the middle knuckle, and Doris tried to tug it away, but Sugar held it tight, kissing across all the knuckles, till Doris suddenly tensed her arm, jerked her hand free.
Sugarman rose and stepped back. Doris staring at the windshield.
"What?" he said. "You don't want your hand kissed?"
Stiffly, she kept her eyes from him, and Sugarman could feel a hollow wind rising inside him, seeing in Doris's swerve of mood his wife Jeanne, the way her disposition so quickly and so often dissolved into a sulk.
"What'd I do? What's wrong?"
Doris's eyes were unblinking. She seemed frozen in the headlights of some memory. Then Sugar turned to follow her gaze and saw, at the sharp bend in the road, a man in tight jeans and cutoff sweatshirt, bald sun-darkened head, standing with his arms crossed over his chest. Legs spread. A handsome man of sixty with the sharp cut of an athlete. A gymnast who might've lost some limberness with age, but had managed to keep the spring in the steel. His face covered with a week's growth of silvery beard.
The man's eyes were pale, gray or blue, impossible to tell at that distance, but he could see Winchester was not looking at his wife from fifteen years ago, but the man's glare was fixed on Sugarman. Concentrating on Sugar's mouth, his lips, where the taste and scent of Doris Albright's hand still lingered.
***
Ray Bianetti drove his Firebird out of Key Largo, did the fifty miles north to Miami, exited the turnpike and went north along Dixie Highway, keeping well below the speed limit as he tried to spot one particular store in the dozens of rundown strip shopping centers lining the road. A poor area, blacks and white trash, check-cashing places, lots of liquor stores. He'd heard about this shop weeks ago, heard it mentioned in one of the clubs he frequented out on Miami Beach, stored away the name just in case. You want same-day weapons, beat the three-day waiting period, go to Guns B' Us in Perrine.
He parked, went inside, picked out a couple more pistols, a high-powered rifle, staying with the Ruger brand, making it the Ruger Number 1 H Tropical with the walnut stock, getting a quick lesson in its use from the hefty white woman behind the counter.
Bianetti peeled off the bills, handing them to the woman. Don't you want no shells? she said. Yeah. Yeah, of course, I do. Ray counted out more money. You okay? the woman said. You don't look too good. And Bianetti said, Does it matter how I am? If I'm not okay, if I'm fucking stark-raving nuts, would that matter to you? Would it keep you from selling me this shit? The woman said, How many boxes of shells you want?
Then Ray asked if by chance she carried any wire. Wire? she said. Piano wire, harp wire, gar-rote material. No, fresh out of wire, she said. Sold my last garrote just this morning. The woman so deadpan Ray wasn't sure, she could be joking him, she could be a hundred percent straight. It was Miami, after all, so who could tell?
Normally I use wire, Ray said, I was famous for it. But guns, they're still useful sometimes, when you can't work yourself close in, then a gun can be handy. But I prefer wire. Wire's better than a knife, not as messy. You get blood all over your clothes with a knife. I lost a lot of good silk shirts that way. You know how it is, right? Blood on silk.
The big lady looking at him, lost her case of wiseass, seeing this guy in her store, either a total lunatic or else what he said he was, a killer, a guy who'd spent his life perfecting his murder skills.
Then Ray Bianetti was on his way again, back on Dixie, a block or two, then pulling off at a convenience store and stocking up for the drive. Chee?tos, three bags of them, a can of mixed nuts, some Ding Dongs, three Milky Ways, a quart bottle of Miller, a box of coconut-covered doughnuts, still warm. Then with the beer between his legs, the Chee?tos open beside him, cramming it in with one hand, driving with the other, he got onto the Palmetto Expressway, north a while, then down again onto Southwest Eighth Street and aimed west out of Miami into the empty swamp with the guns jingling and Bianetti holding the car to the speed limit. Eating that salt and grease, eating his way across Florida.
Farther and farther, out there beyond the houses and stores and gas stations and gun shops, on that empty two-lane asphalt highway, out there in the wild place, the Everglades, the beer beginning to loosen his thoughts, and with nothing to look at, nothing to keep his mind from going inside itself, he was starting to consider things, and finally, after an hour of driving across that empty swamp, an hour of beer and Chee?tos, he felt himself sliding down a long, long tube into the kitchen of his mother's house forty years ago.
His mother's stifling kitchen. Where she spent her days and most nights cooking, making pastries and delicacies of meat and cheese, and stirring soups that clogged the house with the stink of garlic, onion; Bianetti going down that forty-year tube, dropping out at the kitchen doorway, standing there and watching her again, his mother, stumpy legs and arms, her stockings gathering at her ankles, and not speaking the language of her neighbors, but cooking all day, burying herself inside that kitchen, inside all that food, hiding away inside the fat, until when he embraced her, it was as though he were hugging an ancient tree.
His mother was inside there somewhere, but the trunk around her had grown very thick. The woman didn't even feel alive. And there was no father to speak of. Off in the merchant marines, sending money home now and then. But always gone.
So Ray stayed in his room for years, growing up in his room, looking at his comic books over and over, bad guys, good guys, finding himself drawn more to the bad ones 'cause they were more fun, more interesting. The bad guys had imagination, were the creative ones; the good guys just wanted things to stay like they'd always been.
Then one winter afternoon, prowling the house, he discovered what he'd always suspected was there. Found it by endless tapping for hollow places around the entire house. He never understood exactly how he knew to look, but that afternoon he located a loose floorboard in his absent father's closet. And there it was, a single magazine.
On those pulpy pages, all the black-and-white photographs were of very young naked girls. Even younger than Ray at the time. Bianetti staring at them, girls with older men. Men his father's age. Shots taken indoors against a wall draped with a sheet. And Ray listened to his mother clanging about in the kitchen downstairs and his face grew hot as he paged through the magazine full of young girls. When he'd seen all of them, he went back again through it, lingering this time. Stopping finally at page six. The girl on page six was skinnier than the others, looking famished, looking dark and Polish and terribly ashamed as a man forced his face between her legs.
Ray knew who the girl was. An emaciated peasant girl who had starved her way across Europe, starved her way to America. And did what she had to do to survive. Selling her nakedness in the streets of New York, until she met Ray's father, married him, and began to conceal her terrified child's body beneath great heaps of flesh. That magazine was hers, not his. A reminder
of what she was hiding from. That little girl buried inside her. Hidden but not thrown away. That magazine, like everything awful that happened in a person's life, hidden but not thrown away.
As he drove that hundred miles across the skinny state of Florida, Ray ate all his junk food. While in his mind his mother never left the kitchen, never left the stove, all the pots bubbling, the oven full of pies and pastry and meat and melting things. And Ray, his mind clear, saw everything out the windows of his Firebird, hearing the hard jingle of metal, the rifle and the ammo on the seat beside him. Ray Bianetti driving to Naples with his cavernous belly. Devouring the nuts and chips and candy, and now glimpsing some part of the reason for his chronic appetite, his limitless capacity for food. Burying himself inside the food. Hiding from himself. Just like his mother.
But knowing the source of it all, its root cause — that didn't solve anything. Psychology was total shit. Ray was still famished, finishing the doughnuts, swallowing the beer, three Milky Ways, handfuls of nuts, licking the crust of salt from each finger, sucking them clean. Finishing everything he'd bought, every crumb, his belly full and warm, yet Ray Bianetti was still ravenous, still longing for something more, something he couldn't name.
***
"This is your car, Mr. Lavery. Isn't it?"
The valet was holding the door open for him.
"Yes," he said. "I suppose so."
Thorn stared at the burgundy sedan for a moment more, then walked around to the driver's side and handed the valet his last five, climbed in and settled into the deep leather seat. A Jaguar XJ-6.
He looked over the polished walnut dash, the instrument panel, a host of switches and knobs, got his bearings, then slid the shifter into first. He let out the clutch and the car surged forward, wheels smoking against the expensive paving stones, the car sending back to Thorn a deep pulse of power. He swung the car out into the lot, over-steered into the main street, and was immediately gliding through traffic.
He'd never been a car person. Even as a teenager, when all his friends had lusted for cars, he didn't seem to have that gene. Cars were just for transportation, even something of a nuisance most of the time.
But by the end of the first buttery mile driving that Jaguar he was ready to convert. Handling that car was not so much driving as it was floating forward where mind and eye commanded.
He was at the airport by two forty-five, too early to park and go inside, so he circled around the loop and went back out onto the entry road to drive some more. Maybe it was pure distraction to enjoy that car so much. Something to dodge the inevitable look into the dark twisted heart of this situation. Or something to keep his rage at manageable levels.
But it was working. That car was giving its allegiance to him as easily and completely as a thousand-dollar whore. Beautiful and serene, whispering to him that she was his and his alone, always had been his, and would always be, to do whatever he wanted, satisfy his every driving fantasy. Soothe him, make him forget every car before her, every sad and imperfect moment he'd ever known behind the wheel before.
***
Thorn located storage locker 276, opened it, pulled out the briefcase, and had a look. He glanced around the waiting area, but no one was paying any attention. The million three seemed to be there, more or less. Old bills, hundreds mainly. It might have jiggled the heartbeat for some people, but holding that much money did nothing for Thorn. Maybe depressed him a little. A lifetime of wages for ordinary people, crushing years of drudgery and sweat. All that stored labor, that yearning for something better, was stacked before him in neat, orderly packets. Meaningless. Simply a prop in a madman's fantasy.
He put the briefcase back, found a seat on the padded bench a few yards from the lockers, and kept watch on the hallway. Three o'clock. Then three-thirty. And no one.
He thought for a moment of dialing the police, alert them to the pile of bodies on the edge of Winchester's land, take this cash and give it to someone whose life it would improve. A tempting thought. Just step aside, let the blue suits handle it. But he wasn't certain how that would play out, the probable causes, the legal niceties. And he wasn't sure what strings Winchester still had hold of from his years with the government. Whether they led to Tallahassee or even perhaps to Washington and beyond. No, the only indisputable proof of the man's guilt were those red tilapia, the ones that came from Seamark. And to discover where they were hidden, Thorn could see no other way but to play out his hand as Peter Lavery.
He walked over to the cocktail lounge, bought a draft beer, and had three handfuls of bar nuts, his only food all day. He washed the nuts down with a couple of sips of the Busch, then left the rest sitting there and went back to his seat on the bench.
Three forty-five. A tour group of elderly women in matching pastel pantsuits and shiny white purses were chattering on the benches nearby. A group of smiling Japanese teenagers sat primly in the plastic chairs a few feet behind the women, and two thin women with candied hair, red cowboy boots, and pearl-buttoned shirts chain-smoked Camels in the No Smoking section that looked out at the main runway.
Thorn decided to give it five more minutes, call it quits at four even, drive out to the farm, see what the hell was going on. Throw himself into the gears of this situation. He was just standing up to get another handful of nuts when Harden Winchester appeared at the end of the long corridor. Blue jeans, sleeveless gray sweatshirt, white running shoes.
He grinned when he saw Thorn and picked up the pace. Same tiger gait, slow, loose-jointed, poised to spring.
Thorn stepped over to the wall of lockers and waited.
"Peter, Peter, forgive me, please," he said, putting out his hand as he approached. Thorn shook it and Harden patted him on the back. Letting his hand rest firmly on Thorn's shoulder for a moment as if he were feeling for muscle mass. A probe of Thorn's potential for struggle.
"I know you said three o'clock, but something came up suddenly at the farm and I couldn't get away. I would've called and had you paged, but I didn't think you'd want your name echoing around the airport. Very sorry."
"It's okay," Thorn said. "Now let's get on with it. I want my fish."
"You pay your money, you get your fish."
Thorn dug the key out of his pocket and with Winchester standing at his side, Thorn opened the locker and took out the black suitcase. There was a ragged tear in the middle of it. Greenbacks visible through the opening. Thorn unsnapped the latches, looked around to make sure no one was watching, and then opened the lid.
Lavery reached out to touch a couple of the shredded packets of thousand dollar bills. The bullet had passed through the case, wiping out a few hundred thousand dollars.
"What the hell?"
"Don't worry. It's still negotiable."
Thorn closed the case. Left it resting on the edge of the open locker.
"Now we know," Thorn said. "It takes more than a million three to stop a bullet."
Harden let his arms dangle at his sides, hands open, poised, inching forward to within arm's length of Thorn, his smile disappearing. Thorn reset his feet, squaring off.
"So there's your money."
"Yes, there it is," he said. His eyes empty.
"Now we do the next part."
"Yes," he said. "But tell me something first. Would you?"
"All right."
Harden ticked his eyes to the right, then the left, back to Thorn.
He leaned close and said, "Is Thorn your first name, or your last?"
"What're you talking about?"
Harden smiled and pretended to watch a man in an electric wheelchair whir down the main concourse as though he were inviting Thorn to strike.
"You had me going for a while," Winchester said. He brought his lazy attention back to Thorn. "I actually fell for this one, god knows why. I have to hand it to Sylvie, that girl does keep on trying."
Thorn glanced around. No help in the waiting area.
"You know," Harden said, shifting his weight toward Thorn. "
I've always admired white people who had black friends. I've never managed it myself. Just didn't circulate with any I wanted to get to know better. Though I suppose Sugarman is at least half white, isn't he?"
"You son of a bitch."
"Now, now. Let's don't get emotional. Let's keep this as businesslike as possible."
"What'd you do to him?"
"Let me put it this way," Winchester said. "I hope you weren't too attached to Mr. Sugarman."
Thorn wrenched to his left, and threw a clubbing right at Harden's face, but Winchester dodged inside the arc of it and secured a crippling pinch on Thorn's right triceps. He felt a shudder pass through the nerves, and his arm went dead mid-flight, fist coming undone, so that all he managed was a harmless swat against Winchester's shoulder.
Harden held the numbing grip on Thorn's arm as he took hold of the suitcase, then swiveled Thorn around toward the main concourse and steered him forward. Grasping him with his right hand, the suitcase in his left. The two cowgirls turned and puffed their cigarettes in Thorn's direction, watching this scene play out. But they didn't seem particularly concerned about Thorn's welfare. Seen too many bar fights to get worked up over a little scuffle like that.
"It'll be a lot easier if you're still conscious, Thorn. So do us both a favor and don't try any more asshole heroics. You're not major league material, my friend. Not even close."
CHAPTER 29
Even after the twenty-mile ride to Winchester's farm, Thorn's right arm still hung lifeless at his side. Nerves in shock. When the car bumped across the rutted entrance road, his arm jostled and bounced, but it was a phantom arm now, the movement not his own.
The numbness reminding him of a gunshot he'd taken in that same arm years ago, winged by a redneck who was in love with Darcy Richards and thought Thorn stood between them. Thorn recalled that guy now, Ozzie, remembering that bullet wound, how the dullness in his arm had worn away quickly and the grim pain had begun. But at least then movement had been possible. Thorn would gladly accept that bargain this time, pain for movement.
Mean High Tide (Thorn Series Book 3) Page 28
