“Oh my God!”
She started swaying and I pulled her over and let her bury her head against my shoulder as she cried.
It was four o’clock. The meet was set for midnight. I had a phone call to make. Maybe two. One was to Roberto Nunez. I needed some advice from a man who dealt with violence. He would know better than me how I should deal with João. I needed to know what to do. João could have the diamond, but I had a gut feeling he wouldn’t be satisfied with just that. What would satisfy him would be to kill me. And maybe Elena because she would be a witness.
What was bothering me also was João saying the only person I could bring along was Cross. It left me between another rock and hard spot. If I took Cross with me, he might double-cross me. And if he was on João’s take, he might be waiting with João when I got there.
Marni suddenly looked up at me. “I saw them in Angola.”
“What do you mean?”
“The Joãos of this world—men capable of murdering or maiming children. He’s not bluffing.”
I knew that, but I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say.
79
João had chosen a lonely spot along Pacific Coast Highway north of Malibu for the swap. He would have a long view of cars approaching from either direction. I thought about his choice for the rendezvous and figured out something real quick. That deserted stretch of road would be to João’s advantage by letting him monitor traffic in both directions—but it could also be a trap for him, because it limited his escape route if anything went wrong. João would be a fool to trap himself that way—and he was no fool.
“A boat,” I told Cross, as we drove along the dark highway on our way to the meet.
“Boat?”
“I’m thinking out loud. The spot João chose doesn’t make sense.”
“It’s deserted, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, but there’s only one escape route if João needs it—by water. Listen, Lisbon isn’t just on the sea, the whole country borders it. It was once a great sea power, that’s how they got Brazil and colonies around the world. Portuguese blood is half saltwater. João chose that spot because he can drive there—but as Bernie used to say, I’ll bet a dollar to donuts that he plans to leave by boat. He just needs a boat waiting a hundred yards offshore and a dinghy to take him out.”
I had agonized whether to bring Cross along, whether he was friend or foe, and finally decided I had better take him. The fact that João had expressly said I could bring him had obviously sent my paranoia screaming. Why had João said it? To encourage me to bring him? Or knowing that it would make me suspicious of Cross so that I wouldn’t have him backing me up?
I was unarmed, I didn’t see what good a gun would do me, João wouldn’t be alone. Cross was packing a 9mm semi-automatic pistol. I didn’t encourage or discourage him from bringing a gun, but I didn’t think it would help, either. Like I said, João was no fool.
I couldn’t keep Marni out of the loop. I tried, but she wasn’t buying it. Hell, she showed more courage in Angola than I had in a lifetime of racing cars and boats. Finally, I agreed she’d stand by in Malibu. If I didn’t call her ten minutes after twelve and let her know I had Elena, she’d call 911 and at least get sheriff’s deputies out. I figured that ten minutes ought to give João enough time to go through with the deal—or finish me off.
I was scared, for myself, for my daughter. My daughter. The words still had a strange ring to it. I tried to imagine Elena in my mind, to see myself in her features, but I could only see Marni because I couldn’t imagine what I looked like. I never really planned on having kids. Too busy, I would have said, but maybe I was really too frightened. I experienced so much death so early I didn’t want to expose a kid to it.
“Jesus Christ, slow down.”
I had been taking the narrow coast highway at top speed without thinking. I hit the brakes. João said twelve o’clock and he wouldn’t want me showing up a minute earlier.
As we neared the rendezvous, the motion-picture camera in my mind went on as my long-term memory kicked in big time. I saw my mother lying cold and dead, my father watching carefully as I marked a diamond where it should be cut, eating a hamburger after school at a table with Uncle Bernie at the Diamond Club while Bernie kibitzed with his pals, playing one-upmanship in regaling about the big deals they handled that day, making love with Marni in Cape Town. Maybe it’s not just drowning people who see their whole lives pass before their eyes—or maybe I was drowning and didn’t know it.
There was nothing out on the highway, no cars, no lights. I would never have spotted the turnoff, but as I approached the spot, a man on the shoulder of the road waved me toward the dirt road with a flashlight. As I slowed to make the turn, the guy disappeared into the rocks and brush.
We were no more than a couple hundred feet from the water. There was a full moon and I could see something offshore, a boat with its running lights off. João’s escape route. I should have told Marni to notify the Coast Guard. It was too late to make the call, I would be seen by João’s men.
Sonofabitch.
I pulled the car to a stop ten feet off the highway and turned off the engine.
“Why you parking out here?” Cross asked.
“I wasn’t told where to park, this is as good as any.” I parked my car so it would be seen if police patrol cars came flying down the highway.
“Vanity and greed,” I said, opening my car door.
“What?”
“That’s what it’s all about. It’s a killer combination.” I felt the Heart of the World in the pouch in my breast pocket. “What a fucking business. I should have gone into shoes.”
I subtly dropped my car key under the carriage of the car as I got out. I wanted to make it hard on João to have the car moved if I wasn’t the one behind the wheel.
We walked toward the shore, our steps crunching on rock and sand, the only sound in the night waves slopping onto the beach. It was a warm night, little wind, calm seas, perfect for a moonlight sail. I almost laughed at the thought.
We moved around a mound of large boulders and saw João’s limo first. As we slowly walked up, neither of us in a hurry, the man who had signaled us with the flashlight came out of the boulders behind us. He had a gun in his hand now.
“Keep moving,” he said in Portuguese. He was a knockoff of the thugs that tried for me in Paris. He might even have been one of them, for all I knew.
João was in his wheelchair, a blanket on his lap. An aluminum walker with big feet stood by the wheelchair. A large rubber dinghy was bellied on the beach. No doubt João meant to grab the walker and make a fast getaway to the dinghy. The driver’s window was down. One of João’s thugs stared impassively at me from the driver’s seat. The tinted rear passenger window to the limo was also down and Simone watched me through it as I approached. She got out when I stopped about ten feet from João.
“Where’s Elena?” I asked Simone.
“Out of harm’s way. Jonny’s taking her to Marni’s, she should be there about now.”
“Jonny’s in on this shit?”
“She knows nothing, she thinks she’s doing a favor for you and Marni.”
“You fucking bastard,” João said.
“An amateur compared to a prick like you. I never made war on a kid.”
“I’d have cut the little puta up and had the pieces for you in a paper bag if my wife had not stolen her away from me.”
“He’s gone luoco,” Simone said. The side of her face was blackened by a large bruise. “You don’t hurt children.”
“Give me the Heart,” João said.
I tossed him the pouch. He shook the diamond out of the pouch and held it in his hand. “Sim, sim, my baby has come back.” He looked up, nodding at the man behind us. “Kill him.”
A gun exploded in my ear and blood splattered the side of my face. I staggered. Cross fell to the ground. I gaped down at him. The back of his head was blown off.
I turned my gape
to João and he smiled. “Repayment for Angola. I saved you for last because I am going to kill you slowly and painfully, slicing pieces off of you one by one.”
An explosion erupted off the coast. The boat João relied on for his escape blew up in a savage, fiery burst. It was João’s turn to gape.
“Kill him!” he screamed.
As the gunman who had killed Cross turned to me, a burst of gunfire from the shoreline hit him, punching him, sending him backward. João pulled a gun out from under the blanket on his lap and raised it at me when Simone suddenly reached around from behind him and sliced his throat with a knife.
I stood dazed in the clearing as Simone jumped into the back of the limo and the car roared off, almost hitting me.
Roberto Nunez came walking in from the beach. He wore his SEALS wetsuit and carried an automatic weapon. He saluted me with the rifle.
“Not a bad night’s work, eh, amigo? Just like the movies.”
When I called Roberto earlier and told him João had taken Elena, he told me he would come personally rather than give me a contact name. I heard the roar of cars coming from the road.
“My compadres,” Roberto said. “We’ll give you a ride.”
My cellular phone went off. It was Marni.
“Josie called. She says she has Elena. Are you all right?” Marni asked.
“Ask me after I finish shaking.”
80
Traveling with Marni and Elena put a crimp in my style. We took a flight to New York, after the wedding, and I had to sneak looks at the buxom flight attendant.
Coming into the passenger reception area at JFK was like déjà vu from the time Marni and I landed in Lisbon years ago.
There she was, waving a handkerchief with my name scribbled in lipstick on it.
“I don’t believe it,” Marni said. “The police of two continents should be looking for her.”
Marni didn’t know I told the police I couldn’t identify the woman who sliced João’s throat.
“Don’t go too far,” I told Marni. I was holding onto Elena’s hand and I turned her over to Marni.
“Thanks,” I told Simone, as Marni and Elena moved away out of earshot.
“If it’s any consolation, I didn’t do it for you. João was turning crazy, I’m sure he would have ended up killing me, probably Jonny, too.” She shrugged. “I honestly loved him once, but when a dog turns rabid, you have to put it down.”
Jesus, I hope I never foamed at the mouth in front of her.
She handed me a pouch. “I came back to give you this.”
I squeezed the pouch and felt the Heart of the World.
“Why?”
“I’ve had a change of heart. I’m going into a convent, to become a nun.”
She laughed at the look on my face.
“You’re shitting me.” I didn’t believe it for one minute.
“Of course. I tried to sell the damn thing, but no one would give me anything near what it was worth. The best offer I got was five million and I figured you’d give me that for a finder’s fee. Saving your life is gratis.”
I shook my head. “You are still a first-class bitch.” But my heart pounded and my palms sweated as I held the diamond. Vanity and greed—and I had a world-class dose of it in my hand.
“And you are a bastard. If your pretty new wife wasn’t looking, you’d sneak me into the nearest closet and fuck me. You’re never going to go to heaven, Win. Neither of us will. I’m not even sure the devil would want us.”
When I rejoined Marni, I reminded her that Simone had saved Elena’s life.
“Sure, she rescued Elena, but threw her off a cliff first. Did she give you the fire diamond?”
“She gave me the fire diamond.”
“Why?”
“She got religious. She’s going into a convent.”
“Bullshit.” She held out her hand. “Give it to me.”
“Give you what?”
“Give me the diamond. It belongs in a museum, one that will pay plenty for it. Do you realize how much good we can do in Angola with the money? We can build a hospital or school or—”
I swept Elena into my arms and started walking. Marni had to do double-time to keep up. When she demanded the diamond, I felt like someone had squeezed my heart.
“Don’t you want to do good in this world?” Marni asked.
“Yeah, for the three of us.”
“That diamond could cure so much misery—”
“What diamond?”
“You are a selfish bastard.”
“And you’re going to a convent.”
Yeah, life’s a bitch, but it’s worth living when you have someone you love and who loves you in return. I knew exactly what I was going to do with the Heart of the World. It was going to my wife. She was a flawless gem and should only wear the most valuable jewel on Earth.
Heat of Passion Page 36