by Lee Lamothe
Over the wire Preston was breathless and his pounding feet came to a halt. He said: “Marko?” In the background Jerry Kelly’s voice said, singsong, “Yes we have no Markos. Stay back there, Presto I’ll fucking kill you and the scrag, and then go and kill your fucking kid …”
Djuna Brown said: “Ray? Ray?” It sounded like she was sucking the words out of the air and back into her mouth. “Ray?” He realized she was crying.
He ignored her and spoke softly into the phone. “Boss, there’s a hostage in this, we don’t know where she is. Preston’s kid.” He spoke into his freddy: “Djuna, stop it. They’re on their way.” He spoke into the cellphone. “Move them right in, tight. Markowitz is down. Standing on the riverbank is Preston, Gurr and Kelly. All mutts. No sign of the hostage.”
“I’ll move ’em, Ray. You guys get on the ground when I call you. You don’t want to be standing up.”
Over the rig monitoring Preston, Ray Tate listened to heavy breathing and sobs. He told Djuna Brown they were moving down the hill, but she should be ready to get into the dirt when the boys brought their toys.
He heard Preston say: “Okay, okay, Jerry, I’ll do the runs. Just stop this.”
Jerry Kelly’s friendly voice said, “Attaboy, Presto. I knew we could work it out like civilized folks. We’ve had a little wrinkle in the plan. Marko couldn’t go the distance so he’s no help to us now. We’ll have to work around him.”
Preston shook his head. “I’ll make the runs. Julia makes the last run with me. I want Zoe back.”
“No can do, bud. Your chick makes the runs. I seen how much love you got for her, leaving her in great peril at the hands of a madman. Ooooo. No, she goes. If I don’t see her in two minutes after, you catch one in the head and Zoe … Well, right now Zo’s with pals. I got no reason to hold on to her, right? But afterward. I just want to get your variation done and then you guys, well, one big happy family.” He looked down at the motionless Marko. “Get the bags out of the cube. Get them over here. Then blow up the boat. Then we’ll send Marko in for a swim.”
Preston shook his head. “He’s not going into the river. Leave him here. We’ll take care of him after you’re gone.” His voice caught. Marko in the river like a desperate migrant strangled him. He’d sent enough people into the river.
“He was going to fuck you, you know that? ‘Beat Bobby’s head soft, Jerry,’ he said. ‘Leave him in the weeds,’ he said. He wanted to ride off into the sunset with this cutie here. Leave you for frog food. This guy was no pal of yours, Presto. He was a snake. I hadda stop him, for all of us. You can thank me later.”
“He doesn’t go in the river, Jerry. We’ll do the crossings, but Marko stays right there until we’re finished. He doesn’t get wet, no matter what.”
Jerry Kelly twirled his pistol and shrugged. “Suit yourself. Fat fuck’d probably kill the fishes, he’s so fucking toxic.” He kicked at the body and Preston told himself the real Marko had gone up into the lights. Jerry was just a nobody kicking nothing.
Ray Tate called the Cashman. “Send ’em in a little closer. They’re running a boat. But hold tight, boss.”
“My money going over, Ray? Can’t have that, man.”
“Money’s still on this side. It’s getting darker down there. We got a rig on Preston, so we can hear. Sounds like Gurr’s taking a load over. Once she’s clear from here, we’ll take Jerry and Preston. Less to worry about.”
“Stand by.” Cash went silent except for the audible clicking of his lips.
Djuna Brown crackled faintly. “Ray, what’s the play?”
“Just hold.”
The rig on Preston only carried the laborious sounds of bags being dragged, then a generator, and then heavy breathing.
Julia Gurr said Marko’s name a few times and then, “He’s going to do us in, Bobby. Jerry’s nuts.” She said, sadly, “You didn’t come down for me. I thought you’d come.”
“I couldn’t. I didn’t see Zoe. I had to be sure she wasn’t around. He’d’ve pulled her out if he had her here.”
“He was going to waste me, Bobby.” She sounded forlorn. “I thought we … You and me …”
Softly, Ray Tate heard Preston say: “Cops, Jools. There’s cops all over. They want the money, not us. If you hear shooting, get down.”
Faintly Jerry Kelly’s voice came over the rig, “Hey, you guys, c’mon. Chitchat later. Boat’s ready to go.”
Cash’s voice came over the cellphone. “They’re coming in now. I’m sending them in. Give me a picture, Ray.”
“I can make out Jerry by the edge of the river. Gurr and Preston are to his left, pulling bags from a cube truck. They’re all in dark clothing. Jerry’s the one to take right away. Jerry’s the one they have to put down. He’s shorter than them. Okay, Preston and Gurr are dragging bags over to Jerry. He’s at the side of the river with the boat. It’s getting dark down there, boss. They’re clustered, they’re bunched up. When Gurr’s in the boat and on the river, we go. It’ll be down to two … a fifty-fifty shot.”
He could hear the scuffing sound of the dinghy being dragged across raw ground. Over the rig he heard Jerry Kelly say, “One bag. One bag first. If I’m happy and she comes back, we’ll load it up a little. You got two minutes after you land there, and if I don’t see you on the way back then Presto’s toast, you got that?”
Julia Gurr ignored him. “Bobby?”
“Jools, there’s a half-dozen currents. When you feel a pull on one side, paddle on the other. Aim for just near that light. If the current gets you, start spinning, paddle like fuck to get to the nearest shore. If you come back here, we’ll try again. If you make it over, beach the dinghy, drag the bag up, and just fucking leave it.”
“Okay. Okay, I got it.” Her voice became stronger. She was standing very close to Preston. “We’ll take Marko, after, and bury him, right? Right, Bobby?”
“I’ll see you in a couple of minutes. You can do it. It isn’t as bad out there as it could be, if it was winter. No ice, no wind.”
Her sad voice said, “It was for Zoe, that you didn’t come down, before. Right? It’s okay if it was for Zoe, Bobby.”
“I’ll wait for you. It’ll be fine. We’ll get Zoe back.” He said to Jerry Kelly, “Right?”
Jerry Kelly said, “Absolutely. This is just about the money, you guys. No end for me in keeping her.” He sensed skepticism. “Seriously. That thing with Marko there, well … We had issues, long-standing stuff from our business. He was jumping into my pathology, and going for all the dough.” He laughed pleasantly. “That’s the way, big hug goodbye. Ah, love.”
Over the rig, Ray Tate heard Preston’s voice softly whispering, “Stay over there, don’t come back, okay? I think Zoe’s dead. Soon as you’re clear I’m taking Jerry out.”
At first the current was gentle, running down the margin of the river. It took her a little bit, but she used the paddle vigorously, digging into the water on the left side of the dinghy.
But instantly, like it took a punch, the dinghy spun.
In the middle of the spin she saw a blur of Jerry Kelly standing beside Preston.
Another current took the nose of the dinghy invisibly, subtly at first, then rapidly, like a rushing insistent hand. She hustled the paddle to the other side and dug it in. The paddle corrected her, but almost instantly there was another cross-current of water. She could see it was running with a white foam of bubbles on it. Beneath it was a deeper color. She let the dinghy take the hit and rode it, shifting herself on the soaked bottom, her knees against the knapsack, letting the little craft come around in a full circle before trying to recover.
She thought of Bobby Preston sending people out on this, thought of the last moments of dying. A mouth filling to capacity with water, then swallowing it down into burning lungs until they were filled too, and then the mouth filling again.
She was almost at mid-river, about two dozen yards off course to the light that seemed to float in the air, when the dinghy seemed to so
ften, to relax, to breathe out. She could hear nothing over the increasing ferocity of the racing water. She took a hand off the paddle and felt the side. There was a softness there, a weakening of the air inside, a grim heaving sigh. She became frantic and glanced over her shoulder and saw a finger of light from the shore. One of the men was a standing smudge; the other lay on the ground like a pile of clothing at his feet. The standing figure stuck his arms in the air in a V and she heard a bellow of a laugh.
One of the arms pointed at her.
Another flash, then, and she felt a narrow rush of air near her face.
Ray Tate heard Jerry Kelly say: “Wow, fuck. That must be one fucking wild ride. Think she’ll make it, Presto?”
Ray Tate heard Preston say, “She’ll make it, Jerry. You’ll get your fucking money over.”
Ray Tate heard Jerry Kelly say, “Money? Fuck money. Money’s for losers. Losers like old Marko there. Anybody in this game for money is fucked.” He took an inhalation so deep it carried to Ray Tate’s ear rig. “This is what it’s about, Presto. Anarchy. For life. A little tension, a night on the river, ripping up the corners of your life. How many folks, you think, can imagine themselves out there like your chick? What chaos of life must intersect to bring a person to this time and place? Fighting for her life against the evil forces of nature? For love. Love, Presto. God love love.” There was a pause, as if he was waiting for Bobby Preston to answer. “Nothing to say? Well, how about this, then?”
Ray Tate heard an unidentifiable sound on the ear rig. Suddenly he could see only one smudge on the riverside and that smudge seemed to have its arms up in a V, and then one of them extended out over the water and there was a silent explosion of light at the end of it. And then another.
Her face was cold and wet and greasy. There was an audible wind sighing past her cheek. She thought of a hornet. There were little winks of lights from the trees above the river where she’d launched. She glanced back, looking for Bobby Preston and didn’t see him or Jerry Kelly either, but suddenly there were lines of light pouring down from the hill and a staccato rip of faint gunfire, focusing on where they’d stood.
The dinghy was puddling in on itself, slowly emptying like a lung.
She was in full panic; she dumped the paddle and used both hands to manhandle the relaxing edges of the dinghy. To lighten the craft, she grabbed the knapsack, struggling to throw it overboard. The shoulder strap looped around her wrist and the river got a hand under the dinghy, she went into the water and the tightly packed bricks of condensed money in the knapsack took her to the bottom.
Bobby Preston was sprawled on the ground, trying to cough blood and his front teeth from his throat.
He’d heard Jerry Kelly say, “No? Well, how about this, then?” And the pistol had smashed squarely into his mouth. He’d felt teeth go in an audible snap and he was on the ground. He heard the recycling slide action of Jerry Kelly’s silent gun as it popped a round and then another, but he felt no impact.
“Whee,” he heard Jerry Kelly say. “You go, girl.”
Ray Tate heard muffled sounds. Preston was down, lying on the transmitter. He heard Djuna Brown grunt as though hit and he twisted in her direction. He saw her rise, saw the glint of her eyes, and she screamed, “Jerry.” Her arm stretched out and her little automatic popped until it was empty. In the flame-back he could see the reflection in the whites of her eyes.
He didn’t see Jerry Kelly whirl and empty his gun in her general direction.
A rip of automatic gunfire came down the hill.
Anyone standing gets a haircut, she’d said.
Ray Tate held his breath and scrambled to where she’d been standing and found she was already in the weeds. She was rolling toward him. They collided, and hugged themselves as small as they could.
Then, from a clutch of bushes behind them, came another rip of gunfire. Rounds skipped off the water behind Jerry Kelly. Leaves wafted down, wood splintered. Ray Tate could hear Djuna Brown’s fast shallow breathing. As he hugged her he could hear the tinkling output of brass from the weapons up the hill behind him as the tac boys shredded the shoreline.
When he heard the woman’s voice call his name from up the hill, Jerry Kelly crazily thought it was Julia Gurr, that somehow sneaky Presto had come up with a variation that moved her through space. But when the steady popping of light came from the bushes, he ducked, then realized nothing was coming close to him and he unloaded his pistol up there where the pussy pops came from, hoping to kill something.
And that seemed to spark a fusillade of gunfire from several spots in the undergrowth further up the hill. Bark from the tree beside him shredded, branches came down. He felt the endless rounds close to him.
Jerry Kelly said Holy fuck to himself and hit the ground. He was giddy with it, giggling. He saw sneaky Bobby Preston crawling away toward the riverbank. Jerry Kelly threw his empty gun at Preston, but missed. Fuck it, let him live, let him endure the pain of never seeing his daughter again. Heartbreak, Bobby, it’s our constant companion, old pal.
Then Preston was gone silently into the water. There was a pause in the gunfire from the hill. Jerry Kelly crabbed quickly to his left, staying down on his belly. When he reached a shoulder-high stand of bush he rose to a crouch and began scuttling away.
He found he couldn’t stop giggling.
Chapter 35
There were no further fusillades.
Ray Tate hit redial on his cellphone and told the Cashman it was over, that the money was still on the site, that there were dead people in the river, Julia Gurr and maybe Preston and Jerry Kelly in there as well. “We need supervisors here, boss. We need security to hold the vehicles and the money. We’re gonna need ambulances and teams for a river search, body recovery. This needs a major incident response. I don’t know if anybody made it across, but you better call the Canadians.”
“Fuck, Ray, okay, hold on.” Ray Tate could hear him speaking rapidly, a one-way conversation. He came back on the phone. “You guys okay, Ray? Anybody hit? Djuna, any of you two guys? Tell me no.”
“We’re okay, boss. Tell tac we’re fifty feet down the hill, in front of them. We’re armed and we’re staying down until somebody voices out our names.”
Ray Tate heard a telephone ringing in the background and Cash told him to hang on. Away from the phone he said, “I got two guys down there, white guy Tate and a black chick Brown. We got bodies in the river. I need a security team to secure some currency … Never fucking mind how much. Me? I’m Cash, the commander of the asset recovery unit. You got a problem, call Hogarth at headquarters, but call him from the road, okay? Get somebody down there … I want my fucking people out.” He came back on the line. “Ray? Ray? The dough. Tell me it’s still there.”
“Congratulations, boss. You hit the jackpot.”
“Fuck. Oh, fuck. Ray. Just … Ray. Fuck. We know how much?”
“We don’t. Millions though. Marko’s millions.”
“And no Marko left, right? To make a claim?”
“No, boss. No Marko, no claim.”
“The Cashman’s Millions. Perfect.”
A perimeter was set up around the vans. A helicopter played its light downriver, oscillating up and down, its spotlight running like silver over the river and the treeline. Ambulance workers spent a little time examining Marko Markowitz’s body, then idled around in expectation of more work. Ray Tate and Djuna Brown stood cautiously drinking boiled coffee and watching the cube truck being wrapped in swaths of yellow tape. Four swat team members stood on each side of the cube, their weapons pointed out. On the Canadian side the flashing lights of emergency vehicles gathered.
A city Sector inspector asked Ray Tate what had happened.
“Can’t say yet, man. My boss is on the way. He’ll have to tell you.” He sipped at his coffee. “It’s major incident stuff.” He made a circle above his head. “You know.”
“Okay, I’m an asshole.” The Sector inspector turned away and took a call on his cellphon
e, then turned back. “How many went in?”
“Three, I think. Two guys and a woman. No, four. There was a fisherman who got it a while ago. He went in, too. And there should be a raft out there, someplace.”
A four-car convoy came down the road, each with blinking lights in the grill and on the side mirrors. The Cashman climbed out of the third car and badged his way through the police line. He introduced himself to the Sector inspector and they walked away, talking. Ray Tate leaned himself against Djuna Brown. “‘Djun? You okay?”
She stared at him, her face blank, and said nothing. The surface of her coffee was surfing out of the cup onto her hands, down her wrists.
He carefully took the cup from her. It was scalding but she didn’t react to the spill. “It’s down, Djun’.”
“Except for losing Bobby. And his kid. And Marko and Gurr.”
“They were mutts. They’re our business. You know that.”
“I liked them. Marko and Bobby.”
“End of the day, they die or go to jail. That’s what they chose.”
“Yeah, yeah. I know.” She struggled to find a positive side to it all. “There’s Mona, Sharon Sherriff. Her, at least, we can save, right? Get her up home, get her safe?”
They were in the ladies room at the Sector Eight station.
Djuna Brown was throwing up in the toilet and Ray Tate was holding her shoulders and making okay-okay noises, smoothing her hair flat.
A charger stuck his head in the door with Djuna Brown’s cellphone in one hand and her jacket in the other. “Your cell went off, Sergeant. A space cadet, it sounds like, asking for June. You June? You want her to call back?”
She wiped her mouth against Ray Tate’s jacket. She took the phone and said her name.
“June? It’s Mona … I mean, Sharon? Sharon Sherriff? From, like, up north, from … ah … before? You remember me? Buck’s my uncle?”