God, I loved to blitz. Zack the Sack, that’s what they called me. Got six in one game against the Jets, just one shy of the record. Good timing, a fair amount of guts, then feets don’t fail me now and go straight at ’em. When it worked you were a goddam hero; when it didn’t, they’d pick your back door and hang you out to dry.
So I was stepping up to the line of scrimmage, showing my formation, waiting to see what they would throw at me. Stunt and shift, wait for the snap, and don’t you dare screw up.
I pulled off near the intersection of the C-3 and Dunkirk Road and waited. Ramin and Hamil didn’t appear behind me; they were keeping a safe distance. The phone rang. I wrote down more directions. I headed south on Dunkirk Road and turned where I’d been told to turn—a dirt road barely wider than the Mercedes, branches and thornbushes playing hell with the paint.
I was getting close now. One more turn, between a pair of crumbling stone columns, and I was heading downhill, toward a wooden bridge that spanned a gully maybe twenty feet deep with a clay-colored stream trickling through it. Two hundred yards beyond the bridge, at the crest of a low hill, sat the house. A stand of cotton trees and mahogany started near the house and ran down one side of the dirt road, all the way to the stream, and from it back to Dunkirk Road. The other side of the dirt road was overgrown field.
I drove slowly across the bridge, its timbers creaking and moaning. Then I was back on the dirt road again and heading up the low hill toward the house.
The house was in shambles but not unsubstantial. Two stories, walls of quarried limestone, a mossy slate roof that had caved in on one corner. Old, a couple of hundred years or more, it had been built when colonial plantations once ruled the Jamaican landscape. Behind it, the ruins of a few outbuildings, a tumbledown stone tower that once was a sugar mill. Another road, gashed with washouts, ran out the back of the property, through fields high with wiregrass and weeds. Once these same fields had been planted with cane. Great fortunes had sprung from them. It had been a long time ago.
Cumbaa’s green Honda was parked outside the house. I stopped the Mercedes beside it and got out. No sound but the wind blowing through the trees and across the field.
I walked to the front door. It was halfway open. I stepped onto the threshold, waited. Nothing. I stepped all the way inside.
The place was musty and damp and dark. It was cluttered with old furniture, none of it worth anything, just big heavy pieces that took up space. Some old rugs on the floors.
In the room to my left, in the middle of what once was a Victorian-era parlor, I could make out a figure sitting on a wooden crate.
Lanny Cumbaa was bound and gagged now, duct tape around his hands, his mouth. He sat very still, not struggling against the bindings.
He wore a black BCV, a buoyancy compensator vest, the ones scuba divers use. The weight pockets were stuffed with something that was definitely not lead weights. I’d seen images on television of similar devices. Used by suicide bombers. Yes, someone had wired Lanny Cumbaa to blow to Kingdom Come.
His eyes were wide. He was looking past me. The door swung shut. I turned around.
There, with a pistol pointed at me, stood Monk DeVane.
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If I hadn’t been expecting to find him there, I might not have recognized him. The head was shaved, the beard was gone. Bruises marked his cheeks and jawline, along with the puffy reddish traces of stitches recently removed. He didn’t necessarily look better, but he did look different. Just walking down the street, unsuspecting, I might not have picked him out.
“Like my new look?” Monk said. “Found this Indian guy, Dr. Ghogawala, did it on the sly at his clinic after hours, a discreet little place near Negril. I’d highly recommend him. Except for the fact that, well, he’s no longer in business. After he was done with me, I had to revoke his license.”
“You won’t get away with this,” I said.
“Sure I will,” said Monk. “As soon as we’re finished here, I’m heading to Kingston, boarding a freighter bound for Argentina. It’s a private charter, actually. Paying the captain $50,000 to haul me down there, no questions asked. Then I think I’ll head for Bariloche, up in the lake district. Buy a little ranch, run a few cattle, maybe find an Argentine honey. Amazing what you can do with money. Speaking of which . . . it’s in your car, right?”
I nodded.
Monk kept the pistol aimed at me while he stepped to a window in the parlor. A big desk sat by the window, filled with all sorts of tools and contraptions, along with a dozen or so cell phones and a pair of binoculars. Monk looked out the window, then he picked up the binoculars and peered through them. He scanned the road, then the stand of trees and the field that flanked it. No telling where Ramin and Hamil might be. And no telling what Monk might do should he spot them heading our way.
Cumbaa hadn’t moved a whisker since I’d walked through the door. He was taking long hard deep breaths, like he couldn’t get enough air.
I said, “Can you at least take the tape off his mouth?”
Monk ignored me, kept looking through the binoculars.
If Ramin and Hamil were out there, it was time for them to do something. Then it occurred to me: They didn’t care what happened to me. I couldn’t count on them to save my butt. They were only interested in the money. They would lay low and let Monk do whatever it was he intended to do to us, then try to grab him when he made his move to leave. It would be much simpler for them that way, no sticky hostage situation to deal with.
Satisfied with what he saw outside, Monk set down the binoculars and stepped my way. He said, “Knew I could count on you to play it straight, Zack. Although you should have left here when you had the chance. I didn’t plan on it ending like this for you. Really, I didn’t. I only needed you at the beginning.”
“To do what? Verify that you’d been in the van when it blew up at the airport parking lot?”
“Bright boy,” Monk said. “See, the problem, the whole sticking point in the plan, was physical remains. I figured if I created a big enough blast, then that would explain why there wasn’t anything to find. Still, there would be questions, and I needed someone who would be a credible witness, who could tie me to the scene and let the world know that Monk DeVane was no more.”
“Four people died there that day, four innocent people who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Monk shrugged.
“Collateral damage. There was no other way. That bomb had to blow everything to hell.”
“Except the fake Super Bowl ring.”
I glanced at the real one, still on the ring finger of Monk’s right hand, the hand that was pointing the gun at me.
He said, “Come on, Zack, you didn’t really expect me to just toss my ring away, did you? I flew to St. Martin, found a jeweler there, and paid him a shitload of money to make a copy, a pretty damn good one, you ask me. My only worry was that someone would find it and keep it instead of giving it to the police. I mean, it wasn’t a deal breaker if that happened, but it helped nail the notion that I had headed off to the hereafter. And it all worked out, didn’t it? I just love it when a well-laid plan comes together.”
“Only, you forgot the initials in the fake one.”
Monk looked at me.
I said, “Rina told me you had her initials and yours engraved on the inside of the band. I saw her at your funeral.”
Monk smiled.
“How was my funeral, Zack? Did I get a good turnout?”
“Not bad. I mean, for someone who ran off and left his wife and kids, set up an old friend, and killed anyone who got in his way. Put it this way: you got a lot better than you deserve.”
Monk tensed, glaring at me.
“Don’t get all high and mighty with me, Chasteen. I saw my chance and I took it. Now I get to reap the rewards.”
He stepped back to the window, checking the road, then scoping through the binoculars again. He seemed a little jumpy. I didn’t need him jumpy.
When he was finished looking outside, I said: “So how’d you do it?”
“You mean, the bomb in the van?”
“All of it,” I said.
I was already fairly certain of how he did it, but I just wanted to keep him talking while I figured out what to do next. I had to deal with that gun of his. And the bomb that was strapped to Cumbaa. Brilliant ideas were not presenting themselves.
“All the bombs—the one that blew up the maintenance shed, the one in the skybox, the one at the airport—they all worked the same way,” Monk said. “Very simple. I just used an SCR.”
“Silicone-controlled rectifier.”
“My, I’m impressed.” He reached in his pocket, pulled out two cell phones, looked at them, then put one back in his pocket. “This is the little baby that will light up your friend, Mr. Cumbaa. Got it set on speed dial. Just press ‘one,’ it dials the number, completes the circuit and . . .”
He pretended to thumb the number; Cumbaa’s eyes went wide. He grunted from behind the duct tape, squirmed in the chair.
Monk laughed at him, said: “What, you think I’m really going to be standing nearby when I punch your button? Unh-uh. I’ll be long gone, but it will be quite the show.”
He stuck the cell phone in his pocket.
I said, “So that’s what you did in the skybox? Just reached in your pocket and dialed the number while you were talking to Kilgore, the bomb-squad guy?”
“Yeah, that was a lot of fun. Emptying the whole stadium; the bomb squad rolling in there, like they had it dicked; the look on that bomb tech’s face when she saw the SCR engage. Then Darcy Whitehall, trying to act his cool collected self, all the while he was probably shitting his pants. And you, Zack, hurling yourself across the counter, knocking everything all to hell. Everyone just beside themselves when the bomb turned out to be nothing but a lot of smoke. Yeah, that was fun.”
“One thing I didn’t figure out—how did you get it in there?”
“Ali Whitehall.”
“She was in on it?”
Monk shook his head.
“No. I mean, I briefly considered bringing her in on it, but that was me letting my dick do the thinking. She was just a little side treat, nothing else,” said Monk. “You see all those shopping bags she had in the skybox? Before the game I just slipped it in one of those, looked like another box of shoes, and I offered to carry it in for her. Then when everyone was going around, glad-handing and being social, not paying any attention to me, I stuck it up under the chair. On the way down to the stands to get you, I called Scotty Connigan, told him it was in place, and then he made a call to Whitehall.”
“Seems like a lot of trouble to go to, just for a dud bomb.”
“All for you, Zack, all for you. I needed a way to hook you into coming down here to Jamaica. Make it seem like poor old Monk was in a jam and really needing an old buddy to help him out. Plus, it made it a little bit more plausible when the bomb went off in the van. Just another little nudge to convince Whitehall he needed to cough up the money.”
“And the bomb at the airport cinched it.”
“Sure did. And it gave me my exit strategy,” Monk said. “I left you at the terminal, walked to the van, and just kept walking. Had a car parked outside the gate. Got in it, started driving, and I was on Queen’s Highway heading to the late Dr. Ghogawala’s clinic when I dialed the number and it blew. I would have liked to have been a fly on the wall when Connigan and Skingle first heard about that. I bet they were freaking out, wondering who could have done such a thing to me. Bet it really spooked them. They were probably beginning to believe it really was the NPU.”
I said, “Connigan snuck into your room, took all your files.”
“Wasn’t anything in them, but they didn’t know that. They thought they had to get rid of them in case anything in there pointed in their direction. But it was just a smoke screen, something to keep them guessing.”
“Like the daybook you left lying on your dresser.”
Monk cocked his head, said: “So you figured that out, huh?”
I pointed at the pair of shorts I was wearing and said: “Had to borrow some clothes out of your closet.”
I reached for my pants pocket. Monk raised the pistol.
“Easy now,” he said.
“It’s just a piece of paper.”
I pulled out the receipt from Darwin’s Stationery Store. “I didn’t find that until this morning. That’s when I realized that everything you’d written in the daybook was just a setup.”
“Yeah, well, it’s like this, Zack. I had to throw a little bait out there, just in case you decided to stick around. So I wrote down the address of that old lady up in Martha Brae because she didn’t really know anything. It was just a false trail, something to waste your time.”
“She knew someone had been sneaking around her place,” I said.
“What good did it do her? When the time was right, I made the call to the JCP, told them they needed to check out what was hidden under that old woman’s house. Now she and her daughter will be taking the blame for everything that has gone down.”
I said, “And you stuck in that legal ad about Whitehall’s property off Old Dutch Road, along with the address of Equinox Investments, just so I would start sticking my nose into Freddie Arzghanian’s business?”
Monk grinned.
“Pretty slick of me, wasn’t it? I thought if you sniffed around Freddie’s business long enough he would get rid of you himself and I wouldn’t have to do it,” said Monk. “It was the old misdirection play. Get everyone moving the wrong way while you slip off to the other side. So you caught on. You get the gold star, Zack, but what the hell good did it do you? If you had it all figured out, how come you drove up here and got yourself in this mess?”
I let it ride. “When did you decide to double-cross Skingle and Connigan?”
“Oh, I knew from the beginning that it was going to have to come down to that. My share wasn’t going to be big enough to disappear on; they were cutting me short. Plus, I knew they had a little stash hidden up here from their shakedowns at those other resorts.”
Monk stepped behind Cumbaa, to the rear of the parlor. He pushed aside a chest of drawers then lifted the edge of a threadbare rug to reveal a hatch door in the wood floor. He kneeled down and pried it open.
I could see a steel vault sitting inside the hidey-hole. The original click-wheel lock was gone. In its place was a heavy-duty padlock.
“The way Skingle and Connigan were talking, I’m guessing there’s nearly two million inside. Haven’t had a chance to count it yet. Still need to bust off the lock,” he said. “But before I do that, why don’t we step outside, Zack. I’m dying to take a look at what you brought me.”
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Monk waved me out the door with the pistol and followed me to the Mercedes. As we walked, I tried to gauge how far behind me he was by the sound of his feet crunching rocks, tried to visualize how I could spin and hit him. I’d have to hit the gun first, knock it away. What hand had it been in? His right. Was it still there, or had he switched hands? That would determine which way I had to spin.
But he was keeping a healthy space between us. If I spun around I’d hit air. Then I’d have to lunge. And he would shoot me.
I said, “Money’s in the trunk.”
“Pop it,” he said.
He followed me to the driver’s door. I opened it, reached in, and pulled the trunk release. Then he followed me to the trunk.
“Unzip the bags,” he said.
As I did, Monk stepped in closer, and I felt his pistol against my ribs. He picked up a packet of bills, tossed it in his hand.
“Working a tight schedule here, so I’m gonna trust the count,” he said. “I mean, what’s a few thousand among friends?”
I felt the pistol move from my ribs; heard Monk step back.
Monk said, “OK, turn around, face me.”
So this was it. Make your move, or make your grave.
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I whipped around, slicing my left arm ahead of me. But Monk caught it with his free hand and held it while he arched back and brought a foot down on the worst possible place he could plant it—my right knee.
I heard the cartilage tearing, felt the pain in every nerve ending. I went down in agony, grabbing my leg. Nothing could make the hurt go away.
Monk looked down at me.
“It was the right knee, wasn’t it, Zack? The one you blew out against Tennessee? Damn shame,” he said. “Guess you won’t be dressing out again.”
And then, from inside the house, came an insistent, high-pitched buzzing sound—on-off, on-off—like you hear on a home burglar alarm when you punch in the wrong code.
Monk looked down the hill, toward the road.
“Godammit,” he said.
He grabbed one of the cell phones from his pocket, punched at it.
“Come on, come on, come on,” he said. “Do it, do it . . .”
I lifted myself off the ground just enough to see the white Range Rover as it rolled onto the wooden bridge. And then came the explosion. The bridge split apart, timbers flying in all directions. The Range Rover flipped twice, then landed upside down at the bottom of the gully, wedged above the stream.
Monk watched, transfixed by his own handiwork.
“Cool,” he said.
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I grabbed the bumper of the Mercedes and pulled myself up. Tried to put weight on my right leg, but my knee wouldn’t take it. I braced myself against the car.
Monk opened a back door. He grabbed a duffel out of the trunk and tossed it onto the backseat. Then he grabbed the other duffel and tossed it in there, too.
“Now don’t go running off anywhere,” he said. He hurried into the house.
I considered my options. The stand of cotton trees and mahogany began about fifty yards away, down the hill. I could make like a log and roll there. But then what? Crawl on my belly like a snake until Monk caught up with me? I didn’t want to bow out that way. I’d take what he was serving, spit it back at him if I could.
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