I began to shake.
But not much, and not for long.
That’s for later. For now: focus. Do what needs to be done. Get Sophie out of the jam you got her into.
I waited.
Text messages from Haley told me Randall was driving hard on the pike. She asked three times what the hell was going on and why I’d had them bring Emma.
Three times I ignored her. I didn’t like thinking about Emma. About the way I was playing this. I shuffled approaches and scenarios, trying like hell to figure another move that could save Sophie.
I didn’t find one.
News radio talked about a big fire in Springfield. They called the club the Hard Hat. They get everything wrong.
Checked my watch, decided to risk a little recon.
From Boxer’s point of view, this was a good spot for a meet. The road was empty: frost-heaved and weed-cracked, it had serviced the mill and some related businesses, and had more or less died when they did. A miserable chain-link fence surrounded the mill and its parking lot, but the fence had long since been rendered useless by punks and thieves: I saw three gashes you could walk right through, and the main gate sagged open.
The big-ass parking lot—a couple acres easy, this place must have been something in its day—served as a moat for the mill itself. The joint had been built to last and built with pride, designed by men who couldn’t picture anything ever topping hydropower. Squinting, I counted thirty-plus steps leading from the edge of the parking lot to the massive front entry. Place looked like the Supreme Damn Court, but with only four columns.
If I were Boxer, I’d get here soon. I’d walk those steps, sit Sophie down, and lean—half hidden in case anybody brought a long gun to the party—on one of those giant stone columns. I might bring a pair of field glasses, and I might bring help.
Boxer thought he would wait up there and watch me bring his incriminating shotgun, hat in hand.
Boxer thought he would kill me, then Sophie. Then he would whistle a little tune and drive away.
He thought.
I worked things through in my head, and I’ll be damned if I could figure a trump card. I would have my leverage, the leverage I could barely stand to think about. Other than that, all I had was a voice mail to Charlie Pundo.
And how many guys Pundo’s age had I known who never checked their voice mail, who didn’t even know how to check it?
Hell.
I called him again.
Voice mail again.
I sighed. Time to stash my truck. I’d scoped out a good place half a mile away in another dead parking lot, back of a Wise potato chips delivery truck with four flats. Boxer might take a quick recon run up and down the road. I was better off if he didn’t know I was here.
The sun’s drop toward the Berkshires was building steam when I returned to a decent vantage point across the way, behind an eight-foot stack of pallets.
I was just in time. Teddy Pundo’s black SUV nudged the mill’s gate open, slow-rolled a loop around the parking lot, and ended up where I’d guessed: the base of the steps.
So Boxer had skipped the recon run. That was good news for me. It meant he was a little sloppy, a little overconfident.
I watched him step out, open the door behind him, tug Sophie’s arm. She stumbled from the SUV, then let Boxer speed walk her to the top of the steps. She wore her cheerleading outfit, of course. To me she vibed okay physically. But I was a long way off.
As I’d guessed he would, Boxer hustled her behind a stone column.
A black BMW X5 rounded the corner and idled to the gate, Randall knowing where to find me because I’d texted him the info. I flagged down the BMW, checking my watch as I neared Randall in the driver’s seat.
“You flew,” I said. “Thanks.”
“Is that him?” Randall gestured toward Boxer.
I nodded.
“Where’s Sophie?”
“She’s with him. Stashed behind the column to our right.”
He nodded, looked, thought. “Tactically,” he said after a few seconds, “this couldn’t be much worse.”
“I know.”
“What’s our plan?”
“Your plan is wait here,” I said. “With Haley.”
His eyes went hard.
Maybe mine went harder, because he said nothing.
As I walked to the BMW’s right rear door, my phone rang. Boxer. I picked up.
He said, “What kind of game you running over there, friend? Why the spectators?”
I turned and looked at him, a hundred yards off. “Do you want to get this swap done, or don’t you?”
Pause. “I’m not sure how well you can see from there, Sax, but my favorite little nine millimeter is half a meter from the glitter on sweet Sophie’s cheek.”
“I’ll keep it in mind.”
“Do.” He clicked off.
I opened the door. I leaned over Emma’s car seat.
She smiled up at me as I fumbled with straps.
Next to her, Haley sat. She’d been poleaxed by the sweep and pace of things, but she was coming out of it. “What are you doing?”
I said nothing.
“What exactly are you doing?”
I got the car-seat straps undone.
“Absolutely not!” Haley said, hurling herself across the bench seat, putting her torso between me and Emma.
Then she said it again.
And again, spittle-soaking my arms.
I was set to coldcock Haley to avoid losing time when Randall popped her door open, leaned in, got his hands beneath her armpits, and whipped her away like she was a rag doll.
“Shush,” he said. “Shush. It’s going to happen. It has to happen. Let it happen. Come to me.”
She babbled and screamed and pounded his chest. I paid no attention: had by now lifted Emma up and out.
I didn’t let myself feel, didn’t let myself think about the way I planned to use the baby.
You know the part of the vision exam where you cover one eye with a plastic paddle and look at the chart? That strange feeling as the covered eye wants to help, strains to help?
The instant I’d settled on this plan, I’d forced my head into that mode. Couldn’t let myself look at how awful, how unthinkable the plan was. At how rotten I was for putting it in play.
Emma was a lever. My only lever. She was my best chance—not a great chance, not even a good one, but the best chance available—to get Sophie back alive. Right now, she was nothing more.
I’d put a plastic paddle over the part of me that knew better. I had to.
Damn, but she was a good baby. Even with the craziness around her, she just cooed and looked at me and got a decent grip on my nose.
“You remind me of my cat Dale,” I told Emma. “He’s a good cat.”
Before I was ten paces from the BMW, I heard Randall trot to me. He patted my shoulder. “You’re a good man,” he said.
I thought it was weird of him to pull a war-movie stunt like that. Until I felt something slip into the back pocket of my jeans, felt Randall tug my T-shirt to cover it. I realized my torso was blocking Boxer’s view of Randall. “It’s a ridiculous ladies’ gun,” he said. “A twenty-two with a pair of rounds. But it’s all I could dig up at Casa Biletnikov.”
I remembered the piece—had spotted it when I tossed the house.
Good old Randall. He’d found that thing, or demanded that Haley produce it, in a hurry.
I walked west toward Boxer and Sophie.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Jeez, this Emma was in a jolly mood. Must have napped most of the ride, then drained a bottle. Or done whatever makes babies happy.
As we crossed the parking lot, she smiled at me some more. I smiled back, dipped my nose for her to grab, kept my left arm high to block as much sun as I could.
When we were halfway across the lot, my phone rang.
I ignored it.
I looked left and right, head on a swivel. Had an icy feeling in my rib c
age, wary that one of Boxer’s boys was on sniper duty. And I was still hoping to spot Charlie Pundo.
That hope hadn’t been much to start with, though, and it was fading fast.
When I reached the base of the steps, Sophie said, “Ow.”
I looked up. Boxer had elbow-jerked her. He had her squeezed tight against his left side, had his 9mm shoved against her face in a way that forced her mouth open. A corner of my brain wondered why he wasn’t toting the Desert Eagle he seemed so proud of.
But Boxer was paying Sophie no mind. He was staring at Emma, and his face looked like it was boiling.
“You clever motherfucker,” he said. “You clever, stupid motherfucker. You’re now responsible for any bodies that drop today, friend. And drop they will.”
“Not going to argue that,” I said. Then to Sophie: “Sorry, hotshot. We’ll just be a minute here.”
The sweet little trouper nodded as best she could with a gun in her cheek. I wondered if she knew how my heart felt, wondered if she knew how hard it was for me to play it calm, one pro to another, with Boxer.
She was smart. She likely knew.
“I see you know who I’m holding,” I said to Boxer. “So you know her history. You know what she means to your boss.”
He chuffed a mean little laugh. “That fairy hasn’t been my boss for five years. Hasn’t been a boss in five years, not by any real measure.”
It was a bluff. Boxer was scared of Charlie Pundo. I could hear it in his voice, see it in his body language.
“So you hooked up with Teddy to end-run him. To push him out.”
“New York and Providence tolerated Charlie’s silly dalliances. Why wouldn’t they? Less for him meant more for them. Fat Teddy decided to grow a pair of balls, get back in the game, show the others who really owns Springfield.”
“Teddy was dumb as a box of rocks. I’m guessing you helped him decide.”
“Could be.” Boxer made a crooked smile. “I owe you a debt of gratitude regarding Teddy’s bad morning.”
We were quiet maybe twenty seconds.
“I need you to know something,” I said.
“What’s that?”
Quick as I could, I shifted Emma to my left arm, reached behind me with my right, and brought the silly little pistol around.
I set its barrel against Emma’s milk-white temple.
The baby cooed.
There was a wail behind me, far off. Haley.
“That one,” I said, nodding at Sophie, “means as much to me as this one means to Pundo.”
“Do you have the balls, Sax?”
“Do you?”
I watched him measure. I watched him think.
He was a gunman. A pro.
He knew his odds were rotten if he tried a shot from this distance with a handgun.
Still, I spread my feet. What I’ve found, guys firing downhill shoot low. A wide stance gave me a better chance that if Boxer did try, his round would zip between my legs.
He made his crooked smile again. “That a pistol? Or a toy for Emma?”
“It’s not much of a pistol,” I said. “But then, it doesn’t have to be.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“I’ll say it again. That one means as much to me as this one does to Pundo.”
“Well it’s a Mexican standoff, then, isn’t it?”
We stood that way. I caught Boxer cutting his eyes to his right, my left, and that icy feeling ran through my rib cage again. It’s the feeling you get when you’re exposed, a target. The feeling that makes you hunch over without knowing exactly why.
The look told me Boxer thought he had help. And that the help was probably positioned on loading docks a hundred yards to my left. It made sense: Boxer could’ve dropped a man there on his way in from the main road. It would explain why he hadn’t driven past while I stashed my truck.
It hit me full: Boxer was stalling, hoping for long-gun help that for whatever reason hadn’t come.
“The shotgun you’re after,” I said. “You used it at Almost Home. Then you used it on Gus. Then you planted it on Crump. You thought you were packaging everything up in a way the cops couldn’t resist. But something went wrong. What?”
Half-beat pause, then: “The fucking weapon that wound up in Crump’s fucking truck hadn’t been fired in five fucking years is what went wrong.”
“How’d you manage to screw that up?”
“You tell me, friend.”
Click.
It hit me hard.
I told him nothing. But I knew.
Spurnings and strikings.
Matching Western duds. Matching Harleys. Matching BMWs.
Matching shotguns. The best in the world, made by a little Czech the Feds couldn’t stand but couldn’t touch.
Peter and Rinn.
Well well well.
The surge of knowing lasted maybe ten seconds. Then Emma clucked and shifted, and I looked down at her.
And saw the joke pistol against her temple, where I’d laid it.
And the eye-exam paddle fell away.
And everything left me but shame.
I hot-potatoed the gun across the weedy lot, shifted to hold Emma in both arms, looked up at Boxer.
My knees began to shake.
“What are we doing?” I said.
“We’re doing what we do.”
I shook my head. “I’m not. Look, I didn’t know about this shotgun deal until you told me just now. Never heard about any second gun, don’t have a damn clue where it might be. Can’t help you. Do what you need to do. But Jesus, leave the girls out of it.”
I half-turned, put finger and thumb in my mouth, cut loose with a whistle, made a come-here gesture.
Boxer said, “What gives, friend?”
I ignored him. Randall started across the lot, but I exaggerated a headshake. He stopped, pointed at Haley. I nodded. She started toward us at a dead sprint.
I turned back to Boxer. His gun still pressed Sophie’s cheek. Her legs were shaking. Like mine.
“I’m going to pass the baby to the nanny,” I said. Was surprised at the calmness of my voice. It was a hell of a time to feel serene, but I did.
“Then,” I said, “I’m going to walk up those steps and take Sophie from you. Then we’ll all walk away, and you can deal with your problems and I’ll deal with mine.”
Boxer cut his eyes to his right one more time. Maybe it hit him that the cavalry had chickened out, because his shoulders dropped an inch. When he spoke again, he seemed tired. “’Fraid it can’t happen that way. If you make the mistake of walking up these steps, I’m going to wait for a nice, easy shot. Then I’m going to drop you.”
Sneakers slapped. Haley, panting, was at my left shoulder. I passed her the baby without turning, heard the sneakers retreat.
“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,” I said.
“Come again?”
“Never mind. Here’s the thing: if it plays out your way and you drop me, you don’t need Sophie. Can we agree on that?”
“You’re jumping ahead, Sax. You’re skipping around. What you need to do is think about getting me my shotgun.”
I sighed.
And looked Boxer in the eye.
And stepped up.
Then again.
“That’s far enough, friend.”
Fucking frind. “Where are you from?” I said. “Australia?”
“Given present circumstances, I’ll ignore the insult. I hail from South Africa.” Seth Efrica.
I took two steps. “You’re a pro. Once you take care of me, you don’t need Sophie. And you know you don’t need her.”
“Don’t force me,” Boxer said, taking the 9 from Sophie’s cheek and aiming at me.
“Conway, don’t!” Sophie said.
“Shush,” I said.
And took two steps.
My relationship with Boxer was shifting with each stair climbed. My altitude began to match his. His features came into focus.
He was overtanned. He would get skin cancer someday.
I walked. I felt serene. I felt ready.
I felt pure.
I was a dozen steps from the top.
Then ten.
“Conway,” Sophie said, sobbing.
Eight steps to go. Boxer’s belt buckle was brass and shaped like Texas. Go figure.
Half a dozen steps to go.
“For Christ’s ever-loving sake,” Boxer said. “Have it your way.”
He firmed up his stance.
He raised the 9.
He sighted down it.
His eyes were green. I hadn’t noticed that before.
I spread my arms wide, giving him as much center-mass target as he could ask for, and took one more step. My gaze did not drop.
He began to squeeze the trigger.
The gunshot wasn’t as loud as I’d expected.
Sophie screamed.
I froze.
I felt nothing. I didn’t hurt.
I looked down at my chest.
Huh?
I grabbed the neck of my T-shirt. I ripped all the way down its front.
No blood.
Sophie screamed again.
I looked up.
Boxer’s chest had exploded.
He toppled toward me.
He hit facedown.
He slid a few steps, stopping at my feet.
Now I saw the small entrance wound heart-high on his back.
I looked up a third time.
In the grand doorway of the shut-down mill, holding at his side a big-ass handgun with a suppressor as long as a paper-towel roll, stood Charlie Pundo.
Who apparently knew how to check voice mail after all.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
“You took out the sniper?” I said to Pundo. I was breathing hard—each of us had taken one of Boxer’s legs, and we were dragging him deep into the mill.
“Sure,” he said. “I took one look and saw the punk had to be on the loading docks. He never knew what hit him.”
“Was it the one with the red beard?”
He nodded. “How’d you know?”
“I totaled the other one’s hand.”
“You did, didn’t you? That seems like a long time ago.”
Shotgun Lullaby Page 24