by Robert Crais
“Tell him to get out of the car.”
Howell raised the phone.
“Marion?”
Outside, Clewes lifted his own phone. They could see each other clearly through the open door.
“Yes, sir?”
“Aim your gun at the woman’s head.”
MARION CLEWES
The world was comfortable here within Marion’s car, which still held that yummy new-car smell; with the windows up, the engine idling, and the air-conditioning blowing softly, Marion could hear only the two women crying and the voice in his ear. He took no pleasure in their tears.
“Yes, sir.”
Marion had his orders. Just as Glen Howell’s job was to recover the disks, Marion knew exactly what he was supposed to do and when he was supposed to do it. It was all about doing your job, being rewarded if you succeeded, being punished if you failed. Success or failure were defined by the disks.
Marion raised his gun to the mother’s head. She trembled, and clenched her eyes. Behind her, in the backseat, the daughter moaned loudly.
Marion smiled warmly, trying to lend comfort, even as he watched the events within the motel.
“Don’t worry, ladies. You’ll be fine.”
His gun did not waver from its mark.
TALLEY
The world collapsed to an automobile only ten steps away. Talley saw everything happening inside the car with a clarity so great it seemed unreal: The man behind the wheel touched a small black pistol to Jane’s temple. Glistening tears spilled from Jane’s eyes. In the backseat, Amanda rocked from side to side, also crying.
Talley screamed, “NO!”
Howell kept the phone to his mouth, speaking to Talley but also the man in the car.
“Give me the second disk or he’ll kill your wife.”
“NO!”
Talley jerked his gun to the man in the car but was scared that the angle of the windshield would deflect his shot. This wasn’t like when Neil Craimont had killed the man holding a gun to Talley’s head at the day-care center; the man in the car was surrounded by glass. An accurate shot could not be guaranteed. Talley jerked his aim back at Howell. Everything was suddenly wrong; everything that he was trying to do had gone to hell.
Howell was winning.
“I’ll kill you, Howell! You’ll never get the disk!”
“He’ll kill your wife, but your daughter will still be alive. Are you listening to this, Marion?”
Talley saw the man behind the wheel nod. Talley shifted his aim again, back to the man in the car.
“I’ll fucking kill you! Can you hear that, you sonofabitch?!”
The man in the car smiled.
Howell spoke reasonably.
“I’ll still have your daughter. Your wife will be dead, but your daughter will be alive. Do you see her there in the car, Talley? But if you shoot me, then he’ll kill your daughter, too. Do you want to lose both of them?”
Talley aimed at the man in the car again. His breath was coming so hard that his gun shook. If he shot low, the bullet would deflect high, but he didn’t know how much; anything short of a perfect shot would cost Jane’s life. If Talley shot at the man in the car, Howell or the man with the big head would shoot him, and then all of them would be dead.
Howell said, “The negotiation is over, Talley. I won.”
Talley glanced at Howell. He measured the shots; first the man in the car, then Howell, lastly the man on the floor. He would have to make all three to save his family. He didn’t think that he could make them.
Howell said, “Drop your gun, and give me the second disk. Give me the disk or he’ll put her brain on the window.”
Talley’s eyes filled because he thought they would all die anyway, but he still had one chance left. One small chance, because Howell and Benza still wanted the disks.
Talley dropped his gun.
The Mustang man jumped out of the way. Howell and the big-headed man charged forward. They scooped up Talley’s gun and shoved him against the wall, pinning him like an insect to a board. Howell searched him even as Talley told him about the second disk.
“It’s in my left front pocket.”
Talley felt numb. Defeated. Outside, the man behind the wheel climbed out of the car and came to the door. Talley watched Amanda and Jane in the car. Jane met his eye, and in that moment he felt buoyed by a tide of love that felt as if it could carry him away.
Howell loaded the disk into the ThinkPad.
Talley watched him open the disk, and took a grim pleasure in watching Howell’s face darken and grow fierce.
“You sonofabitch. This isn’t the disk. This isn’t the second disk! It’s a goddamned blank!”
Talley felt strangely removed from this room and these people. He glanced at Jane again. He smiled at her, the same small smile they had often shared at night when they were alone in bed, and then he turned back to Howell.
“I don’t have the second disk anymore. I gave it to the Sheriffs, and they’re giving it to the FBI. Benza’s over. You’re over. There’s nothing either of us can do.”
Talley watched the disbelief float to the surface of Howell’s face like a great slow bubble.
“You’re lying.”
“I’m not lying. We’re done here, Howell. Let us go. Let us go and save yourself the murder charge.”
Howell stood stiffly, like a mechanical man. He lumbered around the bed as if he was in shock, picked up his gun from the floor, and aimed it at Talley.
“Are you out of your mind?”
“I just want to take my family home.”
Howell shook his head as if he still couldn’t believe that this was happening, and then he blinked numbly at the man in the door, the man who had been in the car.
“Kill every one of these people.”
MARION CLEWES
Marion watched as Glen Howell opened the second disk. He was disappointed to see that Talley had tried to fake them out with a false disk, but he had expected as much. Talley was a policeman, after all; Marion had never expected that he would let a man like Sonny Benza walk away, not even with his family being held. In the end, turning over the disk to the proper authorities had been the right thing to do.
“Kill every one of these people.”
It was all about doing your job, being rewarded if you succeeded, being punished if you failed. Success or failure was defined by the disks, and Glen Howell had not recovered the disks.
Marion felt sad about that; he had always liked Glen Howell even though Mr. Howell hadn’t liked him.
Marion had his orders.
Marion lifted his gun.
TALLEY
The man in the door whom Howell had called Marion raised his gun and aimed it squarely at Talley’s face. Marion was a small man, ordinary in appearance, the type of anonymous man who would be invisible in a mall and impossible for witnesses to describe. An Everyman; average height, average weight, brown, brown.
Talley stared into the black hole of the muzzle and braced for the bullet.
“I’m sorry, Jane.”
Marion shifted his gun hard to the side and fired. He adjusted his aim, and fired again, then again. The first bullet took Howell above the right eye, the second the Mustang man dead-center in the left eye, and the third caught the man with the big head in the temple.
Marion lowered his gun.
Talley stood motionless against the wall, watching Marion the way a bird watches a snake. Marion shrugged.
“Life is unforgiving.”
Marion crossed the room to retrieve the one good disk, pocketed it, then went to the car. He helped Jane out, then opened the back door and helped Amanda. He walked around the car, climbed in behind the wheel, and drove away without another word. Talley saw him using his cell phone even before he was out of the parking lot.
The motel was quiet.
A dark wind had blown through Bristo Camino, something beyond Talley’s control, beyond his pain and his loss, and now it was gone. Now,
only the three of them were left.
“Jane?”
Talley stumbled out of the room and ran to his wife. He hugged her with frantic desperation, then pulled his daughter close, squeezing them to him as the tears spilled down his face. He held them and knew then that he would never let them go, that he had lost them once and now had almost lost them this second time, lost them forever, and that he could and would never allow that to happen again.
It was over.
28
• • •
Saturday, 4:36 A.M.
Palm Springs
SONNY BENZA
Sonny Benza didn’t try to sleep again after they got off the phone with Glen Howell. He popped twenty milligrams of Adderall and snorted two lines of crank to prop himself up, then the three of them sat down to wait.
The first time the phone rang, he damn near jumped off the couch.
Tuzee looked at him, asking if Sonny wanted him to answer the phone. Benza nodded, saying, Yeah, answer it. Tuzee answered.
“It’s the airport. They wanna know where you want to go. They gotta file a flight plan.”
“Tell them Rio. We’ll change it in the air.”
As Tuzee hung up, Salvetti said, “They’re still gonna know where we go. These jets fly so high that air-traffic control watches them all the way.”
“Don’t worry about it, Sally. We’ll take care of it.”
“I’m just saying.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
The second time the phone rang, Tuzee answered without asking. Benza could tell from Tuzee’s expression that this was the word.
Salvetti said, “Shit.”
Tuzee punched on the speaker, saying, “It’s Ken Seymore. Ken, Sonny and Charlie are here. What do you have down there?”
“It’s gone to shit. All of it’s gone to shit. I’m still here at the development, but—”
Benza shouted over him. The fear in Seymore’s voice infuriated him.
“I don’t give a shit where you are. Do we have the goddamned disks or not?”
“No! They got the disks. Glen Howell and two more of our guys are dead. They got Manelli and Ruiz and I don’t know who else. It’s a goddamned clusterfuck down here. I don’t know what happened.”
“Who killed Howell? Talley?”
“I don’t know! Yeah, I think it was Talley. I don’t know. Man, I’m hearing all kinds of things.”
Sonny Benza closed his eyes. Just like that it was gone, everything was gone, three low-class assholes break into a house and everything that he had worked for his entire life was about to end.
Tuzee said, “You sure they got the disks?”
“Talley gave the disks to the Sheriffs. That much I know for sure. Then I don’t know what happened. Glen got jammed up at the motel, they had a big fuckin’ firefight or somethin’, and now the FBI just rolled up, the real FBI. What do you want me to do?”
Benza shook his head; there wasn’t anything Ken Seymore or anyone else could do.
Tuzee said, “Vanish. Anyone who isn’t in custody, take off. You’re done.”
The line went dead without another word. Ken Seymore was gone.
Benza stood without a word and went to the great glass windows overlooking Palm Springs. He was going to miss the view.
Salvetti came up behind him.
“What do you want us to do, Boss?”
“How long do you figure we have before the Feds get here?”
He had a pretty good idea, but he wanted to hear it.
Salvetti and Tuzee traded a shrug.
Tuzee said, “Talley will tell them what’s on the disks, then they’ll probably talk to Smith. I don’t know if he’ll corroborate or not.”
“He’ll talk.”
“Okay, they’ll want to detain you as a flight risk to give themselves time to write the true counts, so they’ll get a warrant based on our alleged involvement with the killings and kidnaps in Bristo. Say they get a telephonic warrant and coordinate with the state cops out here through the substation … I’d say two hours.”
“Two hours.”
“Yeah, I don’t think they can get here before that.” Benza sighed.
“Okay, guys. I want to be in the air in an hour.”
“You got it, Sonny.”
Salvetti said, “You gonna tell New York?”
Benza wouldn’t tell New York. He was more frightened of their reaction than he was of battling the Feds.
“Fuck’m. Go get your families. Don’t bother packing, we’ll buy new when we get there. Meet me at the airport as soon as you can. Forty-five minutes tops.”
The three of them stood mute for a time. They were in deep shit, and all three of them knew it. Benza shook each man’s hand. They were good and dear friends. Sonny Benza loved them both.
“We had a good thing here, guys.”
Charlie Salvetti started to cry. He turned away and hurried from the office without another word.
Tuzee stared at the floor until Salvetti was gone, then offered his hand again. Benza took it.
“All this will blow over, Sonny. You’ll see. We’ll get this straight with New York, and we’ll be fine.”
Benza knew that was bullshit, but he appreciated Tuzee trying to cheer him. He even found it within himself to smile.
“Philly, we’re gonna be looking over our shoulders the rest of our lives. Fuck it. It’s all part of the game.”
Tuzee smiled tiredly.
“Yeah, I guess so. See you at the airport.”
“You bet.”
Tuzee hurried away.
Sonny Benza turned back to the window. He admired the lights in the desert below, glittering like fallen dreams, and remembered how proud his father had been, how much the old man had bragged, Only in America, Sonny, only in America; right down the fuckin’ street from Francis Albert!
Frank Sinatra had been dead for years.
Benza went to wake his wife.
Saturday, 7:49 A.M., Eastern time
New York City
VIC CASTELLANO
Vic Castellano sat on his terrace overlooking the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It was a beautiful morning, clear and pleasant, though it would be hotter than a sonofabitch before noon. He still wore the white terry-cloth bathrobe with Don’t Bug Me on the back. He liked that sonofabitch so much he’d probably wear it until it was threads. He put down his coffee.
“I can tell by your expression it ain’t good.”
Jamie Beldone had just come out to see him.
“It’s not. The police have the disks. They have Benza’s accountant, and several of his people. Once the Feds develop the information, we’re going to have a fight on our hands.”
“But we’ll survive it.”
Jamie nodded.
“We’ll take a few shots, but we’ll survive. Benza, that’s something else.”
“That sonofabitch still hasn’t had the decency to call. You imagine that?”
“It shows a lack of class.”
Castellano settled back in his chair, thinking out loud. He and Jamie had gone over this a hundred times last night, but it never hurt to go over such things again.
“We’ll survive, but because of this Mickey Mouse West Coast asshole we’re exposed to serious heat from the federal prosecutor. This means we’ve got just cause to seek redress.”
“The other families will see it that way.”
“And since the Feds are going to put Benza out of business, no one can beef if we take care of it for them.”
“It’s a fair trade.”
Castellano nodded.
“All in all, it’s probably good for everyone that all this happened. We can send somebody out west, take over Benza’s end of things, and cut ourselves a bigger piece of the pie.”
“The silver lining that everyone will enjoy. What are you going to do, skipper?”
Castellano had known what he was going do for the past six hours. He took no pleasure in it, but he had it all arranged.
“Make the call.”
Beldone started back into the house.
“Jamie!”
“Yes, sir?”
“I want to be sure about this. That guy Clewes, Marion Clewes, he’s kinda flaky. I don’t want to just take his word that Benza fucked up. I want to know for sure.”
“I’m sure, Vic. I double-checked. I just hung up with Phil Tuzee.”
Castellano felt better. He knew that Phil Tuzee wouldn’t steer him wrong.
“That’s good enough. Make the call and finish this.”
Saturday, 4:53 A.M., Pacific time
Palm Springs, California
SONNY BENZA
Benza’s wife moved so slowly that he wanted to stuff a cattle prod up her ass. The kids were even worse.
“Would ya hurry it up, for chrissakes? We gotta get outta here.”
“I can’t leave my things!”
“I’ll buy you new things!”
“We can’t leave our pictures! What about our wedding album? How can you buy a new wedding album?”
“Five minutes, you got five minutes! Get the kids and meet me out front or I’ll leave your ass here.”
Benza trotted back through the house to the garage. All he carried was a blue nylon gym bag with one hundred thousand in cash, his blood pressure meds, and his .357. Anything else he needed he could buy when they landed; Benza had over thirty million dollars stashed in foreign accounts.
Benza hit the button to open the garage door. He tossed the nylon bag into the backseat of his Mercedes, then slid behind the wheel. He started the car, threw it into reverse, then hit the gas hard, backing in a wide arc toward the front door. He was moving so fast that he almost broadsided the nondescript sedan that blocked his path.
Flashes of light speckled the air around the sedan, exploding Benza’s rear window. The bullets knocked him into the steering wheel, then sideways onto the seat. Sonny Benza tried to get the .357 out of his bag, but he didn’t have time. Someone pulled open the driver’s-side door and shot Sonny Benza in the head.