by Mike Knowles
Miles threw himself into an armchair and ran his hands through his hair.
Carl gave Miles a few more seconds of his attention, but gave up on him when he realized the con man was no threat. “I guess I’m up.”
“Just use a pillow,” Miles said. “Jesus, listen to me. Use a pillow to muffle the sound of us murdering a guy. This is so screwed up.”
Carl walked over to a loveseat and pulled a worn pillow off the sofa cushion. The corduroy fabric of the pillow was flattened from a head taking countless naps on it. The driver followed the same playbook as the con man and avoided coming at me head on. He held the gun at hip level as he started around the far side of the couch. I had lost the grin, but it wanted to come back out. Carl doing the killing meant Miles would be the only one left. Miles had no gun and he had ditched the knife. He would be empty-handed when I buried the syringe in Carl and took his gun. I took a breath and waited for the pillow. Needing to put the pillow over my head would mean that I would have to be within arm’s reach. It meant the same for Carl, and at the end of my arm was a long needle.
Carl started around the couch and then Miles spoke. “No, wait. Make Thomas hold the pillow over his head.”
Fuck.
Carl looked at Miles.
“Smart guy, remember.”
Fuck.
Carl smiled and handed the pillow to Thomas. “You heard the man. Put it over his face.” Carl threw the pillow to Thomas. The violinist made no move to catch it and the cushion bounced off his shoulder and fell to the floor.
“Pick it up,” Carl said, jabbing the man’s shoulder with the gun. “Or I rape your girlfriend on the floor in front of you.”
Thomas bent for the cushion without argument. He stood with the pillow in two hands and looked at me. I didn’t grin at him this time.
Thomas let the pillow fall as he turned on Carl. The cushion had been concealing a small paring knife with a hooked tip. Thomas buried the knife in Carl’s neck. A second later, Miles was on the driver, wrenching the gun from his hand. The wrestling match was one-sided; Carl had no fight left in him after the knife entered his throat. Both men realized this at the same time and took a step back from the driver. Carl stayed on his feet while his hands probed the hilt protruding from his throat. Then the light faded in Carl’s eyes and he fell to his knees.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
“Sit back down,” Miles said.
Thomas was looking at his bloody hands.
Miles had Carl’s gun, but he didn’t point it at Thomas. When he spoke again, his words were soothing. “You’ve had a rough couple of hours, Thomas. I know Carl did things to you, made you do things, and then I came along and put you in a terribly difficult position. It’s a hard thing, killing a man. It’s easier than something like that has any right to be. But this whole thing is almost over, Thomas. Almost, but not quite. I need you to sit down on the couch.”
Thomas kept looking at his hands.
“Now, Thomas.”
Miles put his hand on the man’s shoulder and broke his trance. He sat back on the couch still staring at his hands. Through his broken face we heard him say, “I’m not sorry.”
“That’s good,” Miles said. “We’re not sorry either.”
“Get up, Wilson.” Miles still had the gun in his hand.
I nodded at the gun. “You going to make me?”
Miles looked down at the gun and chuckled. “No.” He put the gun in the back waistband of his pants. “Truth be told, I hate those things. I was always better at talking my way out of trouble than shooting my way out.”
“Is that what you were doing there?”
“I didn’t change teams, if that’s what you’re asking. We were in a bad situation and I got us out of it the only way I knew how. But don’t trip all over yourself trying to thank me. I didn’t stick with you out of loyalty, or because I think you’re better than Carl. None of us have any white left on our hats. I backed you over Carl for one reason. You saw what he didn’t. You knew Thomas wasn’t ever going to talk. Carl would have figured it out eventually, but what then? I’m still with you because I didn’t think Carl had a plan B, or C, or D, or whatever plan we’re on now. It’s that simple. Every original idea he had was violent, and that wasn’t going to get us anywhere.”
I slowly got off the couch and said, “Give me a minute.” I walked to Carl’s body and tried to bend over, but the pain was too great. I went down to a knee and relieved him of the gun he had taken from me. I took the gun Carl had taken from Miles out of his waistband and held it out for Miles.
The con man took the gun and said, “Great, now I have two.”
I managed to stand without help and walked away from Miles towards the hallway. I walked towards the front door, one hand on the wall for support, until I came to a small bathroom we had passed on our way in. Thomas had put a lot of money into the updating the house — even the bathroom had been renovated. Everything was marble where it wasn’t hardwood and stainless steel. I ran the faucet and splashed water on my face. My skin barely registered the cold water. I had sweated through the new clothes; even my socks felt wet. I checked my phone. The clock read 7:07. The coke had gotten me a good hour and a half followed by a lousy forty-five minutes. I opened the shirt and lifted the bandage on my shoulder. The stench was there — impossible to ignore, and impossible to rationalize away. There was an infection driving the fever, and that was just the symptom I could feel. Underneath it all, I knew the wound was poisoning me. I needed a doctor who could get a bag of antibiotics into me. Finding a doctor would require help. The States wasn’t Ox’s sandbox. He could get me a name of a doctor who did the kind of off-the-books treatment I needed, but it would take time. Time was in short supply. I would need help to get wherever I had to go, and someone to scout out whatever doctor Ox came up with.
I needed Miles. The con man owed me nothing. In truth, he had more reasons to kill me than to help me. But I wasn’t dead yet. Miles had said the only reason he chose me over Carl was because I saw things the driver didn’t, but there was more to it than that. Miles wasn’t a killer. He hadn’t shot me, not even when I shot Ilir and he thought I had turned on everyone. He hadn’t raised a hand to Carl either; rather than get his own hands dirty, the con man had delegated the job of killing the driver to Thomas. Deep down, Miles was a thief, not a killer, and that was something I could exploit. I splashed another belt of water onto my face and felt a bit of the coolness seep into my skin. I knew what had to be done now, and it made the next decision easier. I pulled the syringe from my pocket and unhooked the belt I had taken off Tony. I found a vein and yanked the cap off the needle with my teeth. The tip of the needle hovered over my arm while I tried to steady my shaking hand. The contents of the needle could kill me, but without the violin, I was a dead man anyway. I needed another couple of hours on my feet and there was only one way that might happen. I stabbed at my arm between tremors and pushed the plunger down fast.
I fell back, colliding with the toilet on my way to the floor, as a ball of flame sped up my arm towards my chest. I clawed at my shirt trying to tamp out the flames as a yell came from my mouth. Then everything went black.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
Someone was hitting me. That was my first thought. The second was out of left field. Someone was kissing me. I opened my eyes just as the hitting started again. Miles was straddling my chest; his two hands were together and pressing down on the centre of my chest.
“Get — Get off, me, Miles.”
Miles took his eyes off my chest and looked at me. “Fucking idiot.”
He took hold of the counter, climbed off me, and stepped backwards out of the cramped bathroom. I rolled to my side and tried to breathe deep, but it felt like Miles was still sitting on my chest.
“Another hit, are you out of your mind? It’s only been a couple of hours.”
“What happened?�
�� I asked it already knowing the answer.
“You stopped your heart. Christ, if I hadn’t heard you hit the ground you would have died in there.”
“Where is Thomas?” I said.
Miles looked around. “Damn it!”
I rolled onto my stomach and got a knee under me. With the help of the counter, I got to my feet.
Miles called from the living room. “He’s in here.”
I stumbled out to the living room and found Thomas exactly where he had been sitting before.
“Didn’t even get up,” Miles said.
I looked at Thomas. He was a statue. He hadn’t moved an inch. We were in a house. Houses had back doors, side doors, windows. He could have gotten out any number of ways, but he stayed right on the couch. “I don’t get you,” I said.
Thomas didn’t say a word; he just kept staring.
“You know there is no point to all of this, right? We’re just after the Stradivarius. Killing you, killing her, none of that gets us anything. It will just draw more attention to the case and make our jobs harder. We just want the violin.”
“And it’s not like you can turn us in,” Miles said. “Hard to finger us for a crime you committed. So you have to ask yourself, what does sitting here really get you?”
“But you have to know all of that,” I said. “You could have called the widow and had her leave the violin somewhere. That would have kept her out of it. But you wouldn’t even pick up the phone.”
Had I gotten it wrong? I thought it was about protecting the girl, but what if it was about the violin?
I pulled the coffee table back an inch and had to take a second to recover from the effort. I sat on the table directly in front of Thomas.
“Why steal the violin, Thomas? Tell me that at least. Alison Randall stands to inherit a fortune. Why would she risk everything for a violin?”
Thomas’ one good eye stared unblinking at me. “He didn’t love her. He didn’t love anything. He liked how she looked, he liked her at parties, and he liked her in bed, but he didn’t love her. She was his pet. Something he kept caged up when company wasn’t around. He told her what to wear, what to eat, what to say, and she had no choice but to do as she was told. He kept all of his money separate from her. She got an allowance from him like she was a child. But she put up with it. Put up with him. Deep down, she was afraid of him. Afraid of what he would do if she tried to leave. There were stories about his last wife, about what happened to her, but they were just that — stories. Everything got easier when he became sick because Alison saw a way out. She knew she would inherit everything he owned, not just money but her life too. But after he died, the lawyers told her that all of the money, everything, was going to charity. He made sure she would never really be free. She would get her car and her jewellery, but that was only a few hundred thousand. A few hundred thousand out of hundreds of millions. She was going to contest it, but that would take money. He knew that. I bet he wanted her to fight it. She would have to use up what little she had fighting for what was hers. In the end, she would leave with less than she came with. Less money, less happiness, less time. Stealing the violin was my idea. I’ve played all over the world for most of my life. I know of a few people who would buy something like that under the table.”
“You already have a buyer lined up?” I asked.
Thomas shook his head. “I didn’t think it was a good idea to try and sell it before I had it.”
“So you came up with the idea. Did she fight you on it?”
Thomas shook his head. “She was on board right away. It was her idea to put my violin in the vault.”
“You love her?” I asked.
Thomas nodded.
I didn’t doubt him, or the story, but something was wrong. “Why didn’t you leave?” I said.
Half of Thomas’ face lifted into a sad smile. “She’s free. Free of him. Free of blame for the crime. Free of everything. I’m not going to put her back in a cage. No matter what.”
It was a good answer. A romantic-movie kind of answer. “But that doesn’t answer my question. Why didn’t you run? You could have called and warned her about us. Told her to leave town, hire security, anything. But you stayed on that couch. Why?”
Thomas said nothing.
I picked up the phone sitting next to me on the coffee table. I held it in front of the violinist’s eye. “Why not take the phone and run?”
Then, I got it. In one split second, I suddenly understood. I grinned at the ruined face in front of me. “I get you,” I said.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
There were two phones in the living room — both on the coffee table. I had noticed both of them because I had been sitting on the couch and looking in that direction. But, standing opposite the couch, the phone was not in the line of sight. I had judged the second phone, the one closest to Carl, to be his spare — the one he had been hiding from me. But I had been wrong. The second phone was Thomas’ phone. The one in my hand, the one that smelled like vanilla, was a woman’s phone. The wheelman had been good, better at a lot of things than anyone realized, but he was still a little green. He had walked into the house sure that he would be able to force Thomas to give up everything. He had focused on the man; Carl hadn’t learned that places can whisper all kinds of secrets if you just know how to listen.
I put my hand on the butt of the revolver in my pants. Thomas stopped looking at the wall; he was looking at my hand.
“Miles, go through Carl’s pockets.”
Miles got off the arm of the sofa and went to Carl’s body. “Don’t get the wrong idea, Thomas. We’re equal partners. He’s not my boss or anything. He’s just an asshole.”
Miles started prying open pockets. He began doing a verbal inventory as he tossed items onto the askew coffee table. “Let’s see. We got a money clip. Dibs on that. Cigarettes, a lighter, a cell phone, and some gum.”
Miles wiped the blood he’d gotten on his hands onto Carl’s pant leg and stood up.
“That makes three,” I said.
“Three what?”
Miles saw the cell I was still holding in my hand. It didn’t take him long to get caught up.
“So she’s here?”
I nodded. “Upstairs, I’m guessing. That’s why he didn’t leave. We were by the only exit near the stairs. She couldn’t get out without passing us, and he wouldn’t leave without her, so he just stayed put.”
“And he couldn’t call her,” Miles said, “because her phone was on the table the whole time.”
Thomas had stopped looking at the gun. He was looking at me, and I was wishing I had already drawn the gun.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
The violinist was on me like a predatory cat before I could even get the pistol all the way out of my waistband. The violinist was punching down with his right hand and groping for the gun with his left. Both the punching and the groping stopped when Miles kicked him in the damaged side of his face. Thomas howled and rolled off me. Both hands clutched at his face and muffled sobs of pure agony.
“You should really treat me better,” Miles said to me.
“Just go upstairs and get the girl,” I said.
“The violin, too,” Miles said. He started for the hall but turned back to look at me before he left the room. “You okay?”
I pulled the revolver and slowly got to my feet. “Just go.”
Thomas had gutted the whole house and replaced all of the old décor with new material, but he couldn’t change the aged skeleton underneath. Every step Miles took up the stairs was announced with a creak. I leaned against a wall and listened to him climb. I kept an eye on Thomas; my other eye was on my phone. My chest hurt and it was hard to breathe, but my left hand worked just fine. Using my left hand I unlocked the cell and entered in the fewest letters necessary to communicate what I needed from Ox. I got a text back thirty se
conds later. Ox would have what I needed within the hour.
Miles moved slowly from room to room upstairs. Every twenty or thirty seconds a creak from a different part of the ceiling told me where my partner was on the floor plan. He was almost directly above me when there was a noise much louder than a creak. It was a gunshot.
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
The sound of the gunshot ended the sobs coming from the man on the floor. Suddenly Thomas was on his knees, looking at the ceiling. Six more shots sounded above us. Each was paced a second apart. When I looked down from the ceiling, the swollen face was looking at me. The noise that came out of the man’s mouth was guttural. He came off the floor and rushed to tackle me. This time, Thomas didn’t have the advantage of being inches away from me. The violinist had to cover eight feet and the revolver wasn’t holstered; it was in my hand. Before he had made it five feet, I had the gun up. I put a bullet into the top of his head. The bullet stalled the man’s forward momentum and his body dropped straight to the floor like a foul ball.
I moved to the stairs and looked up. Fourteen in all. I had never counted stairs before, but now I looked at each one as a Herculean labor. I took hold of the banister with my left hand and took the first step using as many muscle groups as possible. The first six were slow; the second six were slower. I had to pause after thirteen and fourteen.
I ignored the first two doors — Miles’ creaks had told me that he was past them. Ahead of the doors, the hallway went to the right. I stopped at the elbow and eased my head around the corner. Miles was on his side propped up on one elbow. He still had the gun in his right hand; his left was over his chest. In front of him was a door at the end of the hallway. The heavy wooden door looked like it was an original part of the house — something Thomas had decided to keep as a tribute to the past. The antique was no longer as pristine as the rest of the house. Seven bullet holes had perforated the wood.