by Don Porter
Mary was still snuggled in her blanket, but looking a little wilted. I broke a thirty-pound stalk of ripe bananas off a tree and tossed them to her. She scarfed down a couple, snuffled contentedly, and seemed to go to sleep. Most of her new brood seemed to be sleeping, too. The keys were in the pickup, so I backed it up and parked it beside the road while George slogged through the trees to retrieve the Buick. Our recently deceased benefactor had parked his rental right behind ours, but had taken the keys. Neither of us much wanted to climb back up and frisk him, so George banged bumpers a couple of times to make some maneuvering room, then drove in a tight circle right through the banana trees, mowing a path as he went. Banana trees aren't really wood. A cross section of the trunk looks like a roll of pasteboard, like boxes are made of. There was no problem mowing them down, but we were going to have to find a car wash before we dared turn the car back to the rental company.
We were back in our office, and had deposited the $23,300 from the duffle bag into our account. The two bundles that George had retrieved from the torn duffel were ten thousand each, and we had snatched $3,300 from the breeze. I was totaling up our expenses and it was looking pretty close. Maggie, maybe I should call her Detective Capriccio now, was several hundred pages into volume two of the detective course, reading as avidly as she had read the romances.
George had carried his coffee over to the window and was looking down toward the bridge where it had all started. “Will you stop adding expenses, we're still ahead?”
“Barely, but we did pay the rent and meet payroll, so it wasn't the worst month we've ever had. If you had shown the foresight to carry a butterfly net, we'd be sitting pretty now. Are you going to suggest giving Maggie a raise based on her new education, or do I have to do it?”
“My idea is to make her a partner and let her share in the losses. We'd save a bundle by not having to pay employee benefits.”
Maggie's voice was muffled by the book, but apparently her hearing wasn't. “If you put my name on the door, remember that it's Margaret, and I'll tell the painter how to spell Capriccio. You guys never get it right.”
The sound of a stampede erupted from the hall. George and I exchanged a glance, and George strode back to his desk. When our door flew open, we were both seated. Knuckles busted in, flanked by three gunmen. The first stood in the outer doorway facing out to cover the elevator and hallway. Maggie jumped up and plastered her back against the window again. The second goon stopped in the doorway between the offices and turned to watch Maggie. The third hovered inside our office with is hand inside his jacket, and Knuckles braced himself on George's blotter again, but this time we had been expecting them.
Knuckles was staring down the barrel of George's Glock, and my Beretta was in my fist, resting on the blotter, but covering the goon who had his hand inside his jacket. I almost wished that his hand had twitched, because I would have shot the three bodyguards before he could have drawn his gun. But then, we'd have had to clean up.
“Good afternoon,” George said. “We completed our assignment. Will there be anything else?”
“Both of them dead?”
“They died horribly, falling off a four-hundred-foot cliff.”
“And the two that I sent to help you?”
“Both shot to hamburger by the bodyguards. The demise of those two are official on Guam, the other two sleep with the sharks at the bottom of the Mariannas trench.”
“And the six million bucks?”
“Feeding fishes in the South Pacific.”
The phone rang and Maggie edged around the desk to answer it.
Knuckles started to stand up straight, but George stopped him with a gesture of the Glock. “And our little girlfriend who was vacationing in Las Vegas?”
“She came back to Hawaii two days ago. She's your problem now.”
“Healthy?”
“We never touched her. She doesn't even know she was watched.”
“And you'll be leaving the island now?” George asked it as a question, but it seemed to be a suggestion, too.
“The legislature killed the gambling bill again. We'll be back in two years.”
“Let us know if we can be of any assistance in the future.” George made a dismissing gesture with the Glock. Knuckles turned around and stomped out. The goon inside the office started to remove his hand from his jacket, then saw my finger tighten on the trigger. He left his hand inside the jacket while he backed out.
Maggie came to the inner door and leaned against the jamb. “Hey, Dick, that was Betty on the phone. I told her you were busy with a customer, so she just left a message. She'll arrive tonight on the eight o'clock United flight.
The End