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“So what are we doing, actually?” said Tony.
“We’re waiting for a call,” I said, and just then the minuet began to play.
I motioned to Tony to stay quiet and then, with shaking hands, gently handed the phone to Ben.
Ben closed his eyes for a moment like he was slipping into something and then opened them again as he answered the phone.
“Clevenger,” he said in a sharp Midwestern patter that was surprisingly close to the original. “Good. Stay put…Is she okay?…Make sure she stays that way…Twenty minutes…Right.”
When he hung up he dropped onto a bed like he had just run a marathon.
“Well?”
“She’s okay. They’re waiting for you.”
“Where?”
“Where we should have expected them to take her all along.”
51. The Piper
I HADN’T DARED drive from the motel. I was too hopped up, too angry, too frightened, too nervous, too distracted. So I told Harry to get behind the wheel and situated Ben next to him to give directions, which left Tony and me sitting in the bed like migrant workers, the wind rushing over us with a terrifying roar. And all the while I was running scenarios in my head.
What would she look like? How scared would she be? What would I say to her? Was she mad at me? God, I hoped she wasn’t mad at me. I couldn’t handle it if she was mad at me. How would I play it with the sons of bitches who had taken her? What kind of deal could I make? The key to her safety, I knew, was to keep it low key and nonconfrontational. No police with their bullhorns and SWAT teams ready to turn the night into Dog Day Afternoon, no guns, no hysteria or acrimony. Just some reasonable men trying to find a win-win for everyone. I needed to let them know that Clevenger was dead, that the game was over, and that if they released Shelby with a minimum of fuss, they could each leave Florida rich enough to start over again. Probably fifty would be enough, but I’d offer whatever was necessary to make it happen. It would be tricky, sure, but I could handle it. Life and death is every day in the mortgage business.
But when we arrived at Derek’s overbuilt house, where my daughter was waiting, there it was, sitting right in front like a slap in the face. And as soon as I saw it I knew with a thumping certainty that all my best-laid plans had been laid once again to waste. A blue Corvette—the blue Corvette—its perfect paint job blackened and shredded, its hawk nose badly broken, as if smashed with a baseball bat, its windshield peppered with shot.
“Whose wreck is that?” said Tony, pointing toward the battered Corvette after we had descended from the truck’s bed onto the street.
“Your brother’s,” I said, “though it was pristine when he parked it in the garage that went up in flames. You don’t think he went back for it, do you?”
“He was grateful enough to get the hell out of there with his life and my bike. He wasn’t going back for a car, even one that was once as nice as this one.”
I turned to look at the wide front door and said, “I should have known the son of a bitch wasn’t going to die so easily.”
“What is it, Johnny?” said Harry, coming from the front of the truck.
“Complications,” I said. “Go around back, Harry, and check out the boat. Make sure it’s empty, and if it is, make sure no one gets on it.”
“What are you fixing to do?” said Harry.
“I’m going inside the house to get my daughter.”
“You have a plan?”
“I did, but that’s been blown to hell. Now it’s all about figuring it out on the fly.”
“Then you might want this,” said Harry, taking the gun from his belt.
“What the hell am I going to do with that?” I said.
“Shoot it,” said Harry, “just not at your foot.
I went back to the truck, opened the door, took the toolbox from behind the seat. “All I’m going to need is this. Give the gun to Ben.”
“Here you go, youngster,” said Harry as he handed the gun over to Ben. “Don’t you fire it at your foot neither.”
We watched as Harry skipped around the house with his gimpy crooked lean.
“Handy guy to have around,” said Tony.
“You don’t know the half of it,” I said. “Stay out here with Ben. Anyone but Clevenger tries to leave, let him.”
“Clevenger?” said Ben.
“That’s right.”
“That rabid dog is in there and you’re going in alone?”
“You need backup,” said Tony.
“If he sees an army there’s no telling what he’ll do to Shelby. But he’s got me pegged for the coward that I am. He’s not worried about me, so we can work something out without the gunplay. In fact, the only reason he’s still here is that he’s waiting for me. Stay outside unless you hear me screaming in horrible agony, then maybe you two might want to join the party.”
“Good luck, J.J.,” said Ben.
“Yeah,” I said before I slid over to the heavy wooden door, pressed the front latch slowly, pressed the door open softly, stepped inside. The foyer was dark, the whole house was dimly lit except for light bleeding through the living room from the back room with the bar and the flatscreen and the pool table. Something was going on in there; I could hear the tinkle of ice in a glass, smell the noxious scent of a cigar.
I slammed the door closed behind me and called out, “Honey, I’m home.”
When I stepped down into the back room, I saw her immediately and my heart seized. There was nothing else in the room besides her. She was sitting demurely, her legs together, her arms crossed. Her beautiful face was wiped clean of its makeup, her eyes were small and red and wet, her mouth was tight with fear. And she seemed so young, Christ, a little girl again, my little girl. I was so captured by the sight of her, I even wondered why she didn’t run right to me when she saw me enter; I was worried that she might be so angry at what I had done to her that she couldn’t bear to touch me.
And then I noticed the guy next to her on the couch. With a gun jammed into her side. My old buddy Holmes. Out of the hospital and now in Florida, his face bruised, his left arm in a sling. So they had let him go, and he was the one who had picked her up. It kept on getting better and better, the mess I had created for my daughter. And the best treat of all was at the bar, with a drink in his hand and cigar in his teeth, his clothes blackened and singed but aside from that looking none the worse for the blow he took from the coffee table. Clevenger.
“Hey, Shelbs,” I said as calmly as I could muster. I think I might have even winked. “How you holding up?”
“I’m sorry, Daddy,” she said with a trembling jaw. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s not your fault, it’s mine. All of it is mine. Are you okay? Did Holmes hurt you?”
“No, I’m okay.”
“Was it just him?”
“Just me,” said Holmes.
“And he didn’t…”
“No,” said Shelby. “Nothing.”
“That’s good.” I looked at Holmes. “For you and for him.”
Holmes sneered at me out of that bruise of a face.
“I love you, Shelbs,” I said.
“I know you do, Daddy.”
“I’m going to take care of everything, okay?”
“Okay,” she said, forcing out a sorry excuse for a smile.
“This is quite the touching reunion,” said Clevenger, looking at the lit cigar he had taken from his mouth. “I’d be weeping if I was the kind of guy who wept. We’ve been waiting for you, Moretti.”
“And here I am.”
“Except you took your time getting here. We’ve been here too long, it’s time for us to clear out. So let’s get down to business, shall we? Who was it who decked me in the house?”
“Derek.”
“He’ll pay for that.”
“If you ever find him, which I doubt. I brought in the case.”
“Come to pay the piper, is that it?”
“Something like that,” I said.
<
br /> “It’s good to see you wised up. The piper always gets paid. How much is in there?”
“All that was left of the cash we took. A hundred thousand dollars.”
“There’s twice that much.”
“Was, but I gave a hundred to the motorcycle gang.”
“Why the hell?”
“You don’t think they earned it for saving our lives? This is all that’s left. I’m sick of it anyway, it hasn’t brought me anything but loss. It’s cursed. You deserve it.”
“You bet I do. It isn’t enough to clean the books, but it will do for now. Bring it over.”
“Not until you let Shelby go. Just let her leave out the front door and the case is yours, it’s as simple as that.”
“I’ll set the terms, my friend, and you’ll accept them. You don’t have much choice, do you?”
I looked at Holmes on the couch, the gun still pointed at Shelby even as his attention was fixed on the box.
“No,” I said. “You’ve got me in a vise, all right.”
“So let’s cut out the chatter and cut right to it. Show me what you have, boy.”
I brought the case over to the bar. Clevenger put the cigar back in his teeth and swiveled to watch as I grabbed one side of the case with my right hand and reached down with my left to unlock the latch. As I lifted my hand to snap it open, in one smooth motion I missed the latch, grabbed hold of the handle, lifted the case, and drove it like a battering ram smack into Clevenger’s face.
The fat man hit the floor like a sack of gravy.
“Here’s how it’s going down,” I said to Holmes as I stared at the muzzle of his gun, now aimed straight at my heart. “You can bet I didn’t come alone. You shoot, you die, it is that simple. But there’s a way out. Put the gun down, walk out the front door, and it’s over for you.”
“What about him?” said Holmes.
“What do you care? Consider your employment terminated. The severance you get is your life. I’ll even throw in the cash if you just do it without any lip or back-and-forth. If I have another negotiation I’ll scream. Now put down the gun, take the money, walk out the front door, be something other than a mindless thug.”
“Go to hell,” he said, snapping his gun so it jammed right into Shelby’s torso, causing her to gasp. “Get up.”
“Daddy?”
“Do what he says, Shelby,” I said.
She stood and he struggled to stand with her. There was something wrong with his leg; the accident had done a job on him, all right, but not enough of one to put him out of commission. I should have sprung for the bigger engine in the 3 Series. When he was finally off the couch, he jammed his gun again into Shelby’s side.
“I am getting out of here,” said Holmes, “just like you said, and with the money, too, but not like you said. It’s going to be sweet Shelby and me together. And we’re going out the back, not the front, where your little trap is waiting.”
“You’ll never get away.”
“Sure I will. On the boat. Clevenger swiped the keys. Now slide the case over, low and slow.”
“It’s good to see a dumb lug like you taking some initiative,” I said as I put the case on the floor and kicked it over to him. “Too bad you’re a dumb lug.”
He gestured for Shelby to take the case, and when she looked at me, I gave her a signal to do just as he wanted her to do. She reached down and heaved it up. While still pressing the gun into her side, he gave her a tug, and the two backed away, slowly, Holmes limping all the while, slowly backed away toward the sliding door that led to the pool and then to the dock.
“I hear a shout, a call, anything,” he said, “and your daughter gets a hole in her gut. Understand?”
“I understand,” I said. “And don’t worry, you won’t hear a peep out of me.”
He turned briefly, opened the sliding door, and then continued backing out slowly, his gun still jabbed into Shelby, his eyes still on me as he stepped backward into shadow.
It happened so fast it barely registered. A flash of something, quick as a dart.
Holmes’s face snapped back and he reeled around, his arms rising as he did.
And then two more just like the first, two quick jabs that pummeled his nose, leaving him teetering before a swift left hook to the jaw sent him down, down for the count, the gun sliding across the flat pale stones that surrounded the pool.
A bent figure now stood over his prostrate body. Like Ali over Liston. You bet it was. And as my daughter rushed back inside and pressed her wet face into my neck, I suddenly knew just how good a fighter Sugar Ray Robinson had been.
52. Slim Chance
THIRTY MINUTES LATER I stood with Harry on the deck of Derek’s Bayliner as the engines churned the water and the boat slid backward into the waterway.
The boat lights were lit, red and green beaming from the front, a bright white on a post rising from the rear, and Harry was at the wheel, gently fingering the throttle. I turned and surveyed the scene to my right, the grotesque house bright and welcoming even though it was empty, the pool lit from below like a kidney-shaped jewel. It all would stay lit like a party of light until the power company turned off the juice and the bank repossessed the thing.
“You hear that?” said Harry.
“Yeah, I hear it.”
“Let’s hope no one else does.”
“I’ll take care of it,” I said.
Before throwing off the ropes and hopping on the boat, I had done one of the most difficult things I had ever done in my life. In front of Derek’s house I had said good-bye to my daughter. It was just until the morning, but still.
“Dad, no. I want to stay with you. Dad.” There was fear in her voice, a panicky fear, completely understandable after what she had gone through, and it cut me that I was forced to ignore it. But there was nothing to be done.
“I’m going to leave you with Ben,” I said. “He’s one of my oldest friends. He’ll take care of you. You’ll go to his house and you’ll call Mom. She already knows you’re safe, but she needs to talk to you, to hear your voice. We’ll be together again tomorrow.”
“I’ll stay with you. Let me stay with you.”
“You can’t,” I said. “I don’t want you involved when I take care of these guys. After tomorrow we’ll be together long enough for you to be sick to death of me, okay? But I’ve got to make sure these people stay out of our lives for good.”
“What are you going to do with them?”
“I’m going to take care of them.”
“Dad?”
“With the authorities, sweetie. I’m going to take them to the authorities, where they’re going to pay for their crimes.”
“Okay.”
“But you don’t need to be in the middle of it. What they did to my friend in Las Vegas is enough to put them away for a long enough time. We can keep you out of it that way, so that’s the way I’m going to play it. Go with Ben.”
“I want to be with you.”
I want to be with you. When was the last time she had said such a thing? “Go with Ben, call your mother, be as sweet to her as you’ve been to me. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“I guess.”
“No guessing,” I said. “I love you, Shelby. It will all be okay. Now go on.” And it would be okay, I knew, but still my heart cracked as I watched Shelby slowly leave my side and climb into Harry’s truck.
Tony and Ben were standing to my right, surveying the scene as I sent my daughter away. “I won’t forget what you did for my brother,” said Tony.
“He sold me out, he sold out Augie.”
“He’s a bastard, I agree, he always has been.”
“And yet you apologized to him. Maybe I’ll figure it out sometime.”
“I’ll leave Harry’s truck at the dock in Virginia where you told me and hitch a ride north.”
“I guess that’s it, then. I’ll see you around.”
“You coming up to Pitchford again?”
“Never.”
<
br /> “Then you won’t be seeing me around.”
There was a moment when I thought I ought to hug Tony Grubbins, a moment when the nascent embrace sort of hung in the air between us, but thankfully the impulse died.
“You were an asshole growing up, J.J.,” said Tony. “I just wanted you to know that.”
“You were a bully.”
“We deserved each other.”
“Keep an eye on Madeline for me,” I said, before I took the hug that had been hanging around Tony and gave it to Ben, hard. And he hugged me back, just as hard.
“We’ll keep in touch this time,” I said while still grabbing tight to my oldest living friend.
“Sure we will,” said Ben. “We’ll check in every week.”
“No, for real now. Not just still here, but how’s it going, how can I help, the whole thing. Like friends should.”
“Okay.”
“I don’t have many people left in my life. I’m not going to lose you again. We’ll meet up in Las Vegas, all right.”
“Sure.”
“Sooner rather than later.”
“Okay, yeah,” he said, catching on. “Vegas.”
I let go and watched Ben and Tony climb into either side of the cab. It was a comforting sight, like a security sandwich from my past wrapping around my daughter. As the truck pulled away, my daughter turned and stared at me. I gave a little wave.
When they were gone, I headed back through the house toward Harry and the boat. On the way around the pool I passed Holmes, still lying where Harry had put him down. I didn’t know what to do with the son of a bitch, so I decided to leave him where he fell. To bring him to the police would get my daughter involved in something she should never have been involved in. I had done a job on him with the car, Harry had battered him with his fists, he wasn’t worth the further trouble of dealing with. Maybe he would learn something, stop being a dumb lug, though I doubted it.
When I reached the boat, the engines were already thrumming. And beneath the thrumming, like a low undertone of dread, there was a moan coming from the boat’s cabin. I threw off the lines tying the boat to the dock and hopped aboard. Harry gave me a look as I wiped away a tear before he started maneuvering the boat away from the dock. And as we slowly motored away from Derek’s former mansion, I thought of the three people in that truck, the old friend to whom I had remained loyal, the old enemy whom I had befriended, and the daughter whom I loved and had saved. And as I thought of them I could believe that whatever I had done twenty-five years ago, and whatever I had done to protect what I had done, all of it hadn’t ruined me. I could think of those three and believe in my own innate goodness.