A Love to Kill For

by Conor Corderoy

  His eyebrows rose and he smiled a little. “Oh, okay!”

  I pointed at the steps and told him, “Carry him up onto the deck. Don’t make any noise.”

  You could see why people like del Roble employed these baboons. As long as they were working for you, they did anything you told them. He carried Rinpoche’s body up onto the deck, and when I gestured to him, he carried it over to the gunwale, facing out to sea.

  “Okay, Dino, when I say, throw the body over the side, then shout as loud as you can, like you really mean it, ‘He got away! Murdoch got away!’ Shout it twice. You got that?”

  He looked at me and nodded, then I like to think he smiled with a touch of admiration. I said, “Okay, go!”

  He heaved Rinpoche’s body over the side and there was a loud splash. Then Dino started to shout, “Hey! Murdoch! The prisoner! He’s gone over the side! Murdoch got away! Hey! You! Murdoch! Come back here!”

  He was really giving it all he had. I even felt he half wanted me to get away, so I felt bad doing what I did next. I fired a shot into the air and cracked him over the back of the head with the butt of the .38. To the goons playing poker, it must have looked as though I’d jumped overboard then shot him.

  The four remaining goons did what they had to do. They left their card game and ran to the gunwale, rods in hand, and started shooting into the darkness where they thought I was. After a moment they stopped and started asking one another, “Can you see him?” “Did you get him?” “I thought I got him.”

  Dead bodies don’t sink unless you weigh them down, so every now and then the moonlight would catch Rinpoche’s body with a gleam of reflected light and the boy’s would pepper him with shots then excitedly ask each other again, “Did you see?” “I got him.” “Did I get him?”

  While they were having fun, I slipped around the main cabin till I came up behind them. It wasn’t fair and I wasn’t proud of what I did. Russell would definitely not have approved. I’d never shot anyone in the back before, and I hope I’ll never have to again. But I figured the way the odds were stacked that night, I couldn’t afford to be particular about my ethical stance. So I shot the four of them in the back where they stood, shooting their dead colleague, thinking they were shooting me while I was really shooting them. Life and death are often full of funny little ironies like that.

  I went then and sat at the table they had set up. I poured myself a large Scotch and drank it straight off. It made me cough, but I felt better. Out of curiosity I had a look at Dino’s cards. He had a winning hand that night.

  Chapter Thirteen

  At the back of the yacht, there was a dinghy with an outboard motor. I lowered it to the sea then clambered in. It took me a moment to figure out how it worked, but eventually I got the motor running and headed for the shore. There were very few houses along this stretch of coast, and those there were, were deserted. Only one had lights in the windows, and that was the one Mary-Jane Carter had chosen for her hideaway. The moon was low and casting an eerie, blue-green light over the sea, and making ink-black shadows out of the sand dunes. It cast a strange luminescence behind the dark pine trees and cypress bushes that made the broken, stenciled skyline beyond the shore. The small motor made a lonely buzz over the water, and I hoped del Roble and his men wouldn’t hear it.

  At first all I could see was the glow of the illuminated windows and French doors at the front of the house. But as I got closer, I could make out that it was a single story bungalow built on the dunes at the back, but standing on massive wooden stilts on the beach-side. To get to the veranda at the front of the house, overlooking the ocean, there was a flight of steps leading up from the beach.

  After about ten minutes I ran her ashore, jumped out and pulled the dinghy up on the sand. By now I was pretty mad and I thought about just marching in and doing to del Roble and Mary-Jane Carter what I had just done to del Roble’s crew. But then I thought maybe that wasn’t so smart. So I pushed through the sand until I came to the dunes. Then I climbed up through the rushes and the pine trees until I came to the back of the house. There was a low, wooden fence that separated the bungalow and its land from a road on the other side. I went to the fence and looked over. The road led down to the beach one way and wound away, through the dunes, toward the mountains and the sierra the other way. There were three cars parked there. One, a BMW sports model, I figured was Mary-Jane’s. The other two would be for del Roble and his goons to go straight back to town if he got the box.

  I turned and made my way back to the house. I kept turning over in my mind the question, why had Mary-Jane told del Roble she had the box? It didn’t make any sense. The only person who knew I didn’t have it was Catherine. It seemed pretty obvious she had somehow got word to her sister. But what I couldn’t figure out was why Mary-Jane had played it this way.

  There was a back door that opened in to the kitchen. I stepped through it. The lights were out and it was dark. From the kitchen there was a short, dark passage. On the left it gave onto a couple of rooms I figured were bedrooms and a bathroom. On the right I could see light leaching out of a set of double doors, which led to the living room. I could hear voices in murmured conversation. They sounded pretty tense. I eased into the passage and the voices got a bit louder, but I still couldn’t make out what they were saying. I eased a little farther. Through the living room doors, I could see the sliding plate-glass French windows that led out onto the veranda. One side was slid open too, and the sound of the surf was hissing in the background. I edged a little closer.

  Now I could see the side of a red armchair with its back to me, right up close by the door. There was a bare elbow on it. It was a woman’s elbow. Past that I could see the corner of a coffee table, and past that, the side of another armchair, but I couldn’t see who was in it. I slid another step, keeping in the deep shadows. Now I could see a platinum-blonde head that belonged to the elbow, and I knew this had to be Mary-Jane. And across from her I could see del Roble.

  Mary-Jane was saying, in her cute Southern accent, “This wasn’t the deal, Serafino. I told you I wanted Liam Murdoch here!”

  Del Roble was looking at her like a snake who isn’t sure if he’s eyeballing a mouse or a mongoose. He said, “What difference does it make? You told me he was dangerous. Now he’s out of the way. You say you have the goods. So give me the box, I give you the money, and my boys on the yacht finish Murdoch off. What’s the problem?”

  She must have crossed her legs, because an elegant shin with a nice ankle and foot suddenly came into view and started dancing nervously on the end of a bare knee. I heard a deep drag on a cigarette.

  “It’s a loose end, and besides, I don’t trust you. Why couldn’t you do things the way I said? I wanted him here, where I could see him.”

  Del Roble suddenly looked bored and irritated. He spread his hands and said, “Very well! If you insist! We can all go back to the yacht, where you can see him chained to a wall!”

  There was a short, dry laugh from Mary-Jane. “And be on your yacht with no protection? You must think I’m a real gray drone, Serafino.”

  His eyes turned narrow and hard. “The situation will not change much, Mary-Jane. Let me remind you that we are pretty remote, and you have no protection here, either!”

  She gave a laugh. “Yes, but you don’t know where the box is, Seraph. Right now, only I know where it is. If I bring it to the yacht, everything changes.”

  His face was becoming dangerous and I was beginning to wonder where this was going to end. His voice was hard and cold, like a hiss. “Let’s finish this, Mary-Jane. My patience is wearing out. You have caused nothing but problems since you started this stupid adventure. I have told you I am prepared to give you what you want. Now, where is it?”

  “A phone call away.”

  “So make the call!”

  There was a long silence during which the only movement was Mary-Jane’s foot dancing on the end of her leg. When she finally spoke, there was a hysterical edge to her vo
ice. “I’m real mad at you, Seraph! You shouldn’t ought to have done this, you know? You’ve spoiled everything! Tryin’ to be smart!”

  Her foot was going real fast, and del Roble’s face was going real dark. His eyes narrowed further and he hissed, “You are trying my patience, Serafina!”

  “Don’t call me that! I ain’t Seraph no more!”

  “You are going too far!”

  “Yeah? Yeah? What are you going to do? Set your fucking hybrids on me? Your fucking simians? Don’t try me, Father Seraph! I am calling the whole fucking thing off! You think I can’t find a buyer? You think the fucking CIA wouldn’t eat their fucking grandmothers alive to get their hands on this? Go fucking think again!”

  He sat forward. His skin had gone a strange gray color and I could see his fingers digging into the arm of his chair. “You can’t do that.”

  She gave a funny little laugh, like a small trill. “Try me.” She gave another weird, birdlike laugh and went on, “You can’t kill me, because you don’t know where it is.” His upper lip was curling. There was a strange snarling coming from his throat and I was beginning to think her game of brinkmanship was getting dangerous. He said, “It would not be hard to find out, Serafina!”

  “Oh, yes, the Vatican and the Opus Dei have some experience in persuasive methods, Seraph.”

  Suddenly he was on his feet, pointing at her. His face was distorted with rage but his voice never rose above a hiss, “Enough! Enough games! Take her to the yacht!”

  I was about to move when I heard her voice, as cool as silk. “I have to make a phone call, Seraph. If I don’t make that call, the box goes in the post.” She let the word hang in the air, tasseled with all its implications. Del Roble was frozen like a statue. He studied her face, thinking about what she had said. When she knew she had his full attention, she went on. Her foot had stopped dancing, and now began to make slow circles.

  “Now, where in the world do you think I would post it? Let me see… Paris? Somebody in Paris, maybe?” She trilled again, “Oh, no… That would be too obvious. London, then? No, no, no. Again, that would be too obvious. Athens? Better, don’t you think, my Seraph? But still, not difficult enough. A master of your talents would have no trouble at all finding friends of Miss Carter’s in any one of those cities. Likewise, Cairo, Casablanca…”

  He sat down very slowly, with his elbows on his knees, leaning forward. “You are bluffing.”

  She ignored him and went on, “Better still would be a post office box in, say…Hong Kong, Cape Town or perhaps Jakarta or Singapore. Which one do you think, my Lord Seraph? It is so hard to choose, ain’t it? And it might, after all, wind up being a PO box in any one of a million villages in central Africa, Russia, Australia or anywhere in the good old US of A. And, little old dead me, I’d never be able to help you find it, would I? On account of my being, well…dead.”

  Del Roble settled slowly back in his chair. When Mary-Jane spoke again, her voice was pitched low. “Now, why don’t you make it simple for everyone, my Lord Seraph, and go get Liam Murdoch and bring him here where I can see him? And in future, Seraph, if you want your little box at all, you just do things the way I say.”

  He sat for a long while with hooded eyes. His neck seemed to be swelling and he was making a weird noise in his throat. I was wondering if he was about to have a seizure when he suddenly sat forward and roared at her, “What is your obsession with that man? Isn’t it enough that I kill him for you?”

  I didn’t get her reply because I had slipped back into the kitchen. I stepped out of the back door into the night and the cool sand, and wrapped Rinpoche’s .38 in my jacket to muffle the sound of the shot. Then I aimed at the place where the electricity cable connected to the house and blew it off. Everything was suddenly plunged into darkness. I sprinted around the side of the house to the stairs that went up to the veranda. Then I crept up till I was standing on the top stair, pressed against the side of the house. The moon was almost at the zenith and the light was turning turquoise, casting ink shadows across the veranda and through the plate-glass windows.

  Del Roble suddenly exploded out through the sliding doors, followed by his gorillas. They all had rods in their hands and they were pointing them everywhere, staring out into the night and back into the house like terrified goats smelling a predator. Del Roble suddenly screamed, “What the hell is this now? What are you playing at, Mary-Jane? I swear you are going too far!”

  From where I was, I could just see Mary-Jane inside—or I could see about half of her. She was standing in the middle of the room, behind the closed section of the sliding French doors. Turquoise moonlight lay across the bottom half of her body. I could see her skirt and her right hand, which hung limply by her side, holding a .45. The top of her body was lost in deep darkness, except for the slight glint of her platinum-blonde hair. She was motionless. I looked back at del Roble and his men. They had stopped milling around and they were just staring and listening. All there was to hear was the luminous surf down on the beach. Beyond it I could see the small lights of the yacht dancing on the sea, with its cargo of dead men.

  Del Roble suddenly whirled toward the plate-glass doors and screamed, “I am going to kill you, Mary-Jane! I swear I’m going to kill you!”

  I looked at the huddle of frightened men, with del Roble slightly apart, standing with his legs wide apart and his back kind of arched into a weird hunch.

  I said, “You’ve made some pretty stupid mistakes tonight, del Roble. I wouldn’t add another one. It might be the last thing you ever do.”

  There was a moment of silence while they tried to locate me. I slid down quietly and sat on the top step, with my back against the stair-rail. There was no way they could see me now, but I had a good view of them, and I could still see through the big, plate-glass windows into the living room. Mary-Jane was motionless, but I could tell that she was listening hard. Finally, del Roble said, “Murdoch? What in hell are you doing here?”

  I grinned. “It’s something that just seems to happen to me all the time. People who try to kill me wind up dying like flies all around me.”

  I could almost hear him thinking in the dark. Eventually he said, “Murdoch, I—”

  “Save it.”

  “What do you want?”

  It was a good question and right then I wasn’t sure of the answer. One thing I did know, though, was that I wanted to get Mary-Jane Carter and Catherine Howard in the same room with Sinead Tiernan and ask them a few questions.

  I said, “You’ve messed things up pretty bad, trying to be clever. I think I need to think things over. I’m not sure if the deal’s still on or not. I came to get Mary-Jane and right now that’s what I aim to do. As for you, you’ve got a lot of cleaning up to do on your yacht.”

  Mary-Jane’s voice came disembodied from the house.

  “Murdoch? Is that you?”

  “Yeah, I’m here.”

  I sensed del Roble and his apes go still and I realized that from where they were, they couldn’t see her clearly through the plate glass. And she probably couldn’t make them out either. The silence became eerie and after a moment she said, “I was scared you might not come. When they turned up without you—”

  I interrupted her and said, “Why did you tell him you had the box?”

  “I didn’t think.”

  Then del Roble cut in. “These games are truly becoming tedious. Which one of you has the box?”

  I ignored him and kept talking to Mary-Jane. “What did you tell him? Did you tell him you’d managed to get the box from me? That I’d turn up trying to sell it to him anyway, but that I’d try to play it smart and pull a gun on him? Is that what you did? Why did you do that, Mary-Jane?”

  Del Roble’s rasp came out of the darkness. “Which one of you…? Which one of you—?”

  One of the gorillas cut across him and took one step forward, “Shall I just waste ’em, Seraph?”

  I interrupted him before he took another step. “I wouldn’t step out
of the shadows, friend. If I don’t shoot you, sweet Mary-Jane will.”

  He hesitated, then stepped back. I heard del Roble sigh. “I don’t know what you people want! I have the money! Just give me the box, take the cursed money and let’s be done with this!”

  “Then what?” I saw his head shift. I repeated the question. “What then, when you’ve got the box in your hands? Will we all live happily ever after? I don’t think so, and I know Mary-Jane doesn’t think so.”

  There was another silence and I saw the white of del Roble’s cuff moving luminous in the shadows. Then I heard the soft scuff of his feet and his voice, wheedling, “My friends, don’t you think this has all got just a little out of hand? Who benefits from fighting and mistrust? None of us! We each have something here that the other wants. Surely we can talk about this and reach an accommodation satisfactory to all sides.”

  While del Roble was talking, one of the apes had slid up to the side of the French doors. I figured another step and he would be in Mary-Jane’s line of fire, silhouetted in the door, with the moonlight behind him. The other two were even more stupid. They were sliding along the balustrade toward me. Del Roble kept talking, right up to the moment Mary-Jane’s .45 exploded through the house. The goon had stepped out from beside the door and she had hit him practically point blank. The slug shattered the plate glass, lifted him off his feet and threw him clean across the veranda.

  Suddenly del Roble was screaming. The sound was horrific and took me back to the Triborough Bridge. It was a high, hysterical screech, “Get her! Go in there and get her! Get her.”

  I guess punks are punks because they’re too stupid to be anything else, and they are good at doing what they’re told. The two punks who had been inching toward me hurled themselves across the veranda at the shattered window. Their guns flashed twice, but they were shooting blind and their shots went wide. I saw Mary-Jane’s hand rise. She was more than cool. She was cold. She took the time to cup her right hand in her left, steady and aim. To her they must have been big black hulks filling the luminous square of the shattered French doors. She couldn’t miss. When the goons were just three or four paces from her, the gun exploded like a cannon, once then again. The first was lifted off his feet and landed on his ass, before flopping back. The second was hit high in the chest and his feet seemed to come up to meet him before he flipped and fell like a marionette.