Sick Like That

by Norman Green

  Got to be almost through, don’t they? How long could it take you to say, “Hey, I’m checking out so I’m gonna leave you a little something. Oh, and sorry about the old man . . .” Sarah looked at her watch. God, please let them get this over with. And get us through this in one piece. Please? Haig had been gone a little over twenty minutes when Agatha stirred, reached down into her bag.

  Sarah felt her heart stop.

  Agatha pulled out her cell and punched a key, held it up to her ear. As she spoke into it, she turned and waggled her fingers at Sarah.

  All done, finally.

  Almost home . . .

  Sarah backed her mother’s car out of the garage carefully. “You okay?” she said to Jake.

  He swallowed. “I need a drink.”

  She shifted into drive and inched slowly back up the driveway. “Well, you’re fat now, you can buy me one, too.”

  He snorted. “I’ll buy you a beer,” he said. “But don’t hold your breath waiting for the check from that one. The only thing she’s giving me is a ticket to the undertaker.” He looked out the window. “Everything all right?”

  “So far.” She kept her speed down to a crawl, all the way out to the street. She stopped just outside the stone pillars. Two police cruisers and a tow truck were just down the road. One of the cruisers blipped its siren.

  Sarah stopped and shut off the engine. “Get out here,” she said to Jake. “Nice and easy. Don’t close the door behind you, leave it open. Nice and easy, now.”

  Three cops approached, two of them wearing suits that made them look like astronauts.

  “Those guys look like bomb squad techs,” Jake said.

  “Yeah,” Sarah said. “Nice and easy, like I told you.”

  One of the astronauts came over to the cruiser. Chief Jarvis rolled his window down. “It’s on the firewall,” the astronaut told him.

  “Holy shit,” Jarvis said, and he glanced in his rearview mirror at Jake West, who sat in the back. “I’ll be damned. Let’s move everybody back.” He twisted in his seat to look directly at Jake. “Mr. West,” he said, “it seems I owe you an apology.” He turned to Sarah. “You got a pair of balls, you know that?”

  Sarah looked back at Jake. “You all right?”

  He stared at Sarah, his mouth open. “You never mentioned a bomb,” he said. “You said Haig was gonna sabotage . . .”

  Jarvis was talking to his radio. “Go get ’em,” he said. “The West woman and her driver. Get ’em both, and keep ’em separated.” He dropped his radio. “Hey!” he yelled, pointing at a figure running diagonally across West’s backyard, angling toward the boathouse down in the far corner. “Hey! That’s Haig!” The astronaut backed out of the way, Jarvis flung his door open, jumped out, yelled at the other cops as he ran.

  Jake watched them go. “You drove the car? After you let him rig it to blow up? Are you nuts?”

  “Relax,” Sarah said. “He wasn’t gonna blow us up right there in Aggie’s driveway.”

  “I suppose not,” he said. “But you’re still nuts.” He stared over at the house. “She was telling me how much she missed him. Told me to go have a son. Call him Thomas.” He reddened. “The old snake. She was just keeping us there long enough to give Haig time to do your car.” He was getting angry now. Sarah figured that was progress. “How did you know she’d do it?”

  “Your brother was twenty-nine when he died.”

  “Yeah. So?”

  “How old are you?”

  “Thirty—”

  “And a very grown-up thirty, too,” she told him. “Your father set up trust funds for the two of you. You get the money at age thirty.”

  “Yeah, but . . . his company went under. There was all kinds of money missing. They tried to say—”

  Sarah shook her head. “They stuck Tipton with embezzlement and fraud,” she told him. “Your father’s estate took a big hit, but the trust funds were locked in. And when Isaac died, his money reverted to the estate. And to Agatha.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “It was in the papers, Jake. You guys were big news for a while.”

  “Jesus. Well, all right, fine. How’d you know she’d put a bomb in your car?”

  “I didn’t. But when I talked to the service manager at the Bentley dealership where Haig used to work, he told me that Haig and Agnes used to be embarrassing. Which, I guess, so what. It’s a free country, you can suck face with whoever you want. Right? But that was before your father’s accident. So they weren’t exactly shocked when she hired him away from them. And Haig is a mechanic. Must’ve been pretty good, too, he made manager. And your father died in a car accident. There were accounts that said he was racing another car. What if he wasn’t racing? What if he was trying to get away?”

  “God. And Izzy—”

  “Thrown off his bike on the way to a yacht race. Agatha told me it was a boating accident. Not that far off, but it felt funny. I mean, wouldn’t you make the distinction, if it was you? You didn’t say anything about a boat when I asked you. You even knew which tire supposedly blew out. The Connecticut police crushed the bike when they closed the case so I guess we’ll never know for sure unless Agatha and Haig cop to it, but it fits. And then when I talked to Haig to set this meeting up, he wanted to be sure I drove you out here. That’s when I knew.”

  “Well, wouldn’t it be suspicious if your car just blew up?”

  “Yeah,” Sarah said. “I’m sort of curious to see how he worked that out.”

  A young military-looking cop with short hair and bright brown eyes stuck his head around the office door. “Hey, Chief,” he said. “Ah, Mrs. Waters, we’re gonna have to hold on to your car. You guys should probably look at picking up a rental.”

  “We can give you a lift anywhere you want,” Jarvis said.

  Jake shook his head. “I’ll get a car.” He seemed anxious to be gone.

  “You get it disarmed?” Jarvis asked the cop. “You gonna detonate it?”

  “No need to blow it,” the cop said.

  “Why not?” Jarvis sounded disappointed.

  “Chief, this thing is a work of art. Haig is a goddam genius. Pardon me, ma’am. But what you got, you got two plastic canisters, okay, one’s a carbon monoxide generator, feeds gas in through the heater. Everyone passes out, right, or dies. The second canister is an incendiary.”

  “So the car crashes and burns.”

  “Yeah. But here’s the kicker: the plastic canisters burn up in the fire. Who’s gonna notice? There’s a ton of plastic in the car. I mean, the inner fenders on that piece of shh, ah, on the car, they’re plastic. The detonator is attached to the outside of the canisters, not the firewall, so when the incendiary goes off, the detonator falls off on the road. If they were going sixty or seventy, it could wind up a mile or two back down the road. Probably get run over a couple hundred times before anybody noticed it.”

  “What kind of detonator did he use?”

  “Short-range radio. Yeah, he’d be tailing. Pick a good spot, okay, push the button, the first canister goes, then the second one. He’d be right there to give the car a little nudge if it needed one.”

  “Nice,” Sarah said.

  “Brilliant,” the cop said. “And when the tox reports come back, they show high carbon monoxide levels in your blood, they blame it on the car. And on your mom,” he told Sarah. “You know. For not getting a tune-up.”

  Alessandra ran back down the stairs.

  He has to know I’m coming, she thought.

  She heard her father’s voice in her head. “You think I haven’t taken on guys bigger than me? A lot bigger. And tougher.” She’d had a difficult time believing that at ten years of age, but she knew a lot more now about Victor Martillo’s particular brand of ruthlessness.

  Still, doubt had her stomach tied up in knots.

  She did a quick tour of the kitchen, looking for anything she could use, but the place had been thoroughly cleaned out.

  Quit stalling, she
told herself.

  She went out the back door instead of the one closer to the garage. Out in the side yard, a diesel engine cranked and then caught, revved high for about five seconds and then settled. Generator, she thought. He’s getting ready.

  No more time.

  She ran across the short backyard to the edge of the swamp, then crouched low and ran until the garage was between her and her target. The sounds out front covered the noise of her approach, she hoped, and she went around the far side of the garage, crept forward, and peered around the corner.

  He was there.

  He had his back to her, a sheet of stiff paper in his hand, he was punching keys on a control panel mounted shoulder-high on one of the modules. At the same time he was trying to watch for her, he kept glancing at the side door of the house, even crouching down to look under the vehicle. Al heard a new noise, it had to be a gear motor because the six tubes of the launcher, which were welded into one single unit, had begun to move. It looked like a giant dull green candy bar that was slowly pivoting on one end and elevating, one glacial degree at a time.

  Al aimed Raffi’s gun carefully and fired.

  He dropped abruptly to the ground.

  She fired again. The tubes continued to move, no faster and no slower. You’ve gotta be kidding me, she thought. They armored the control panel? Both of her rounds had apparently bounced off without causing any damage. Vincenzo rolled over on the ground, eyes wide, looked like he couldn’t believe his good fortune. She fired at the control panel once more, it was the last round in the pistol and the slide locked back.

  His face lit up.

  Al reversed her grip, threw the pistol at him as hard as she could, but he dodged it. Grinning, he rolled onto his feet, drew a black-bladed knife, and came after her. He was a good six inches taller than her, probably close to twice her weight, and he came hard, slashing with the knife and grabbing for her with the other hand. He was an order of magnitude quicker than Diego Ponce, the guy from the subway platform, and Al was willing to believe that he’d spent a significant portion of his life training for occasions like this one.

  She wondered what her father would do . . .

  Big, sweeping horizontal slash with the knife. She dodged back, spun the other way, got his wrist. His momentum carried him, all she had to do was let his weight and his movement bend his hand back. She felt the steel of the back of the metal blade cold on her forearm, felt his wrist snap . . .

  He didn’t lose his grip on the knife.

  He went past her, surprised, his face contorted. Quicker than she thought possible, he had his knife in the other hand. He planted his left foot to arrest his forward motion. The broken wrist did not seem to slow him at all. Al pivoted again and kicked out hard, aiming for the side of his knee, but he saw it coming and flexed the knee forward so that her kick caught him on the meat of his thigh just above the joint.

  Had to hurt like hell, though.

  He spun and slashed at her again, the knife in what had to be his nondominant hand, but the angle was wrong and she had no shot at getting his unbroken wrist. And she had surprised him the first time . . .

  He doesn’t have to beat me in order to win, she thought, he just has to keep me occupied until his missiles fire.

  She risked a glance at the missile launch vehicle.

  Mistake.

  He was too close.

  She feinted, but he anticipated that, his left hand, the one with the knife in it, was out of position but his right wasn’t. His wrist was turning purple, she saw him tuck it up against his collarbone and drive his elbow at her throat. She tucked her chin and dodged, it was a glancing blow, but it took her down just the same.

  I was ahead on points, she thought, and then she was on her back just inside the open garage doorway, her head spinning. She kicked at his knee, got it this time, she saw it bend the wrong way, but then he was falling on top of her, out of balance. She got both hands up, got both hands on his knife arm.

  The impact of his body falling on her drove the air from her lungs.

  Nothing to hit him with. There was an old spade leaning inside the garage doorway, maybe four feet away. Might as well have been in China.

  She felt his knife enter her abdomen.

  Not much pain at first.

  She pushed back as hard as she could. He screamed in rage and triumph. He knew something about momentum, too, and instead of resisting he went with her, reversed direction, pulled the knife back out, held it high for another strike.

  She could see her blood on the blade.

  This is it, she thought, forget the knife, this is your last shot . . . She stiffened the fingers of her left hand, jabbed at him with everything she had left.

  Surprised him again. Her fingers went in past the wet soft eyeball, her hard fingernails deeper yet, and she curled them and raked backward.

  He screamed.

  All of his attention went to his face.

  She took the knife out of his shaking hand.

  Stuck it into him, just below his navel.

  He rolled off her, but she rolled with him, once on top she ripped savagely, cut him open all the way up to his sternum. The knife stuck in something there and she couldn’t pull it out.

  Didn’t matter.

  A jet flew by so low she could feel it, the noise of the engines was an assault on her eardrums. The one they’d called Vincenzo lay on his back next to her, hideously transformed, his heels thrumming on the ground. Her hands were covered in his blood. Her head throbbed and despite the temperature outside, she didn’t feel cold at all. Her air came back then and she inhaled, the pain from her ribs receding to some far corner of her consciousness.

  She felt enormously tired.

  There was a stain spreading slowly on her shirt, a warm sticky feeling running down past her waist.

  Get up, she told herself. Get up! You can sleep later. She crawled over to the edge of the garage door opening, grabbed the spade, used it like a cane to help her climb to her feet.

  Another thundering roar close overhead.

  She ignored it.

  She focused on the rubber cord that linked the two modules together, it was just long enough to droop on the ground between them. Unhook it, she told herself, and she looked at where it connected to the launch vehicle, feeding it power and data, but she was no longer functioning well enough to figure out how it came apart. Serve you right, she told herself, you let that asshole get his blade into you . . .

  Down to her knees.

  Focused on the cable.

  Direct approach, she thought. Just go stone age on it . . . She raised the spade high, still another roar just above the house, she brought the blade of the spade down as hard as she could manage on the cord.

  Mother was tougher than it looked.

  Come on! she told herself. Hit it like you mean it . . .

  Same result.

  Third time was the charm, the cord parted with a loud bang and a shower of sparks. The generator shut down, the gear motor stopped, the big green candy bar went still. She looked at her spade, the electricity had vaporized a baseball-sized hole at the bottom of the blade. She turned slowly, collapsed, leaned back on the launch vehicle.

  Choppers, faint in the distance.

  Inhale, one, exhale . . .

  Darkness fell.

  Twenty-one

  He was an older guy, he had snow-white hair, but it was punked. He was probably about sixty, but he had the bright and curious eyes of a four-year-old and a nice smile to go with them. He was there when she woke up in a haze, but she was only conscious for a second or so. He was there again when they brought her out of it, he was dressed in blue scrubs. There were two or three others around, too, but she only remembered him. A while later they got her off a gurney and into a bed. The effort didn’t seem to bother them, but it exhausted her and she fell asleep again. The third time she woke up gradually. She was in bed in a small room that was dominated by tubes, wires, and machines, most of which seemed
to be connected to her. Her mouth was dry and her head was banging. Seemed to her that she could still hear choppers somewhere.

  The door to her room was open, it was almost as wide as the room itself. It fronted onto another room, a bigger one, where there were people. A nurse looked up from a monitor and over at her. Seconds later the white-haired guy was there. “Don’t try to sit up,” he told her. “Just take it easy. How are you feeling?”

  “Thirsty,” she said.

  “Here,” he said, reaching for a pitcher.

  Something was bothering her, something important, but it took her a minute to figure out what it was. “Did they fire?” she asked him.

  “I don’t want to go getting you excited,” he said. “And they’re waiting to debrief you. I guess they’ve got a lot of questions. I’m not supposed to tell you anything.”

  She looked into those eyes. “Hey, Doc,” she said. “Who gives a fuck what those guys want?”

  When he laughed, he laughed with all of himself. “Well, all right,” he said. “I suppose the nurses will tell you anyhow. No, they didn’t fire. You got them shut down in time.”

  Exhale . . . She felt the tension drain out of her. “When do I have to talk?”

  “I’ll keep them away until you’re ready,” he told her.

  “I’m not ready.”

  “Can’t say I blame you. I’d like to look at your stitches, if that’s okay.”

  “What stitches?”

  He waved to a nurse, who came over to stand next to him. “You came here with a pretty deep stab wound,” he told her. “We almost lost you. Two members of the assault team were qualified medics, they got you stabilized, got the bleeding slowed, they brought you here on one of their helicopters.” He flashed that smile again. “A big green National Guard helicopter landing on the roof! You made all the news shows. But without them, you’d have bled to death.”