by Mike Dennis
He remained frozen by the gaping van doors for another minute or two, breathing hard through his mouth. Moments later, another car pulled up, then double-parked behind that Dodge.
This was a Caddy, a beautiful snowy white one like he always dreamed of having, but the two guys who got out, well, they damn sure weren’t cops. They were wearing ties and overcoats like the first two, but they were different somehow. The way they were looking around with every step they took, it was like they were expecting an ambush or something. It just didn’t look like the way cops acted.
In fact, from here they kinda look like — like Mess’cans!
Mess’cans. Shit. Salazar’s boys? Are they?
How the fuck did they find out where we were? Wait, maybe they’re not. Maybe they’re with those cops, some kinda bigshot detectives or something. It did look like they were followin’ ‘em. But — but that Caddy damn sure ain’t no cop ride.
Mess’cans. Ho-ly shit.
He pretended to fiddle with the mattress, while they breezed by him like he wasn’t there. From one of them, the taller one, he caught the whiff of cologne. They paused by the open gate, gave a quick look around, then slipped inside, the gate shutting behind them.
39
The heavy knock on the door startled Felina out of a Mexico daydream. It was more like the thud of a closed fist rather than the rapping of knuckles. Almost immediately, it was repeated.
Linda was in the shower with the bathroom door closed, unaware. The trash bag lay on the floor in the hall. Felina slid it into the closet by the front door.
“Wh-who is it?” she said through the door.
“Police officers. Open up.” Another couple of thuds.
Leaving the chain lock on, she cracked the door wide enough to see the two men in overcoats silhouetted in the dim hallway.
“Let’s see some ID,” she said, trying to sound like the fear wasn’t right below the surface.
The badges came out, and she undid the chain. The men bulled their way in, shoving past her, nearly knocking her to the floor.
“Hey!” she cried. “You can’t —”
The big one grabbed her blouse collar, tearing it as he threw her across the room. She hit the floor at the base of the sofa.
“Ow!” she yelled. “You motherfucker. Who the fuck do you think —”
He was across the room astonishingly fast for a man of his great size. He pulled her to her feet, then slapped her hard across the mouth. The low-pitched whack of his beefy paw on her smooth, youthful face drew blood.
“Where is it?” he asked.
”What? Who are you? What the fuck is this?”
”I’m not gonna ask you again,” the big man growled. “Now where is it?”
”Where is what? I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”
Another hard hand across the face, this one on the temple.
A cut opened on the side of her left eye, as she lost her equilibrium for just a moment. She was hurting. He grabbed a fistful of her soft black hair, yanking her head back so that her body was arched backwards. He placed his foot up on the couch, positioning his thigh right under her curved back.
“The money, bitch. The fuckin’ money. You don’t tell me where it is, I snap your spine over my knee. Last chance. What’s it gonna be?”
It was gonna be an intact spine. “O-over there,” she whimpered, pointing to the closet. “It’s over there.”
He held her in that position, while he signaled to the other one, the younger one, to check it out. The younger one went to the closet, retrieving the loaded trash bag. Looking inside at all that money, all those bills, he allowed himself a brief smile.
“This’s it,” he said.
The big one dropped Felina’s limp figure like it was a wet sandbag. Standing over her, he looked even bigger, more menacing.
He said, “You don’t even wanna think about what’s gonna happen to you if you try to pull any shit.”
He lifted her up and one-punched her into semi-consciousness. As she crumpled to the floor, he heard the sound. The unmistakable deadly spit of a silencer.
≈≈≈
Joe Dunlap wheeled around, drawing his Magnum in one motion. He saw the young detective in the doorway, facing him. Momentarily stunned, he watched the younger man tumble forward to the floor, almost in a choreographed slow motion. His arms reached outward, with the final knowledge of death imprinted in horror on his face. He had gotten it in the back.
As he fell, the source of the shot was now visible. A dark topcoat standing in the doorway. And another one right beside him. His reflexes were about to return the fire.
But wait. The body on the floor. Is he dead?
No! He can’t be.
Three more spits in rapid succession found their mark in Dunlap’s lumbering body. The Magnum flew from his hand, and he screamed in sharp pain. Everything started draining away.
As he was sucked down into some kind of giant, noisy hole, he could feel himself using whatever instinct he had left to stagger toward the body of the younger man on the floor. The spits kept coming from the automatic pistols, as they blasted apart organs and arteries and teeth. Blood spattered everywhere, smearing his overcoat, his hands, even his face, as part of his cheek was ripped away. He found himself on the floor now, everything going dim, dimmer, as he reached out for the corpse of the young man.
With his final effort, Joe Dunlap moaned through the blood gurgling from his mouth, “Joey … Joey …”
40
Vega scooped up the trash bag. The two Mexicans then rushed down the steps into the courtyard. As they headed for the gate, Tomás, who had fallen behind a step or two, stopped.
“Rafael,” he said.
His partner turned around just in front of the French fountain. A life-sized statue atop the fountain’s center rose behind Vega’s chunky figure. It was an image of Charlemagne holding a sword high in the air. The sword appeared to be pointing directly up at the courtyard balcony outside Linda’s front door. From where Tomás stood, Charlemagne appeared to be standing on Vega’s head.
“¡Vamonos, Tomás! We got no time for this.” And then he saw the .22 semiautomatic pointed at him.
“No, Rafael. You got no time. You got none left at all.”
“Hey, what izzis? What —”
Tomás spoke softly, in measured tones. “You wouldn’t listen, Ese. I tried to tell you. Chico won’t be running things no more. The other boys and me, we’re not working for no cripple in a wheelchair. But we would have worked for you. You coulda had it all, Ese. You coulda been the jefe, un hombre de respeto.”
The near-full moon reflected off the dark waters of the fountain, as it cast watery ripples of light into Vega’s angry face and over Charlemagne’s powerful legs. Just beyond the fountain, broad waving banana leaves cast wide, shimmering shadows across the rest of his body. The rage in his eyes gave way to grotesque pain, as the silenced weapon spit poison-tipped bullets into his gut and groin.
His muscles went limp. Dropping the trash bag just before tumbling back into the murky pool of the fountain, he barely made a splash. Tomás approached the pool and put one more round into Vega’s temple.
The job done, he detached the silencer, then re-holstered his automatic. He seized the bag and opened the gate to the street, never even looking at Vega’s body as it floated face down. In the morning, those waters would be red.
41
Eddie Ryan waited.
It seemed like hours. The filmy sweat crawled over his whole body as he loomed in the shadows of the van’s rear door. None of those guys had come out yet, making him grow fearful of what might be happening.
Shit, if anything happened to Linda — or shit, Felina! Goddamn, if anything happened to her …
But he couldn’t’ve done anything, could he? I mean, what was he supposed to do? Just go in there by himself blasting with his little .38 against four guys in overcoats?
Shit, they mighta had machine guns or who
knows what.
With each anxious minute, he suspected more and more that this all added up to very bad news.
He just knew he didn’t belong here, with all these motherfuckers coming out of the woodwork looking to kill him. But, if only the goddam Dodgers hadn’t —
The gate opened.
Eddie’s head snapped up in time to see one man, the one with the cologne, coming out into the street carrying the trash bag. Slowly, he drew the revolver from his waistband.
Where’re the others? Where’re all them other guys?
This sumbitch’s got my money!
The man walked around the car behind Eddie’s van, over to the double-parked Cadillac. As he reached for the driver’s side door, Eddie leaped from the shadows.
“Freeze, motherfucker,” he cried, aiming the .38 with both hands at the man’s midsection. He was only four or five feet away. “Drop the fucking bag or your ass is dead.”
The man didn’t move. Eddie didn’t move. Or at least, he was trying not to. There was a little quiver here and there, but the gun was stationary. “Drop it!” he shouted. His voice was nearly drowned out by sirens approaching from the distance.
“Okay, man,” replied the Mexican. “I drop it. Don’ shoot, okay? I drop it.”
“Drop —” Eddie stopped in mid-sentence.
Right then, with neck muscles bulging, the man flung the large bag at Eddie. It hit the barrel of the revolver, knocking him off balance. His feet slipped from under him, as he fell against the hood of the car. The man’s hand dove inside his topcoat, emerging with a black angular pistol.
His Mexican face, darkly handsome to begin with, broadened into a movie-star grin — the kind that’s usually accented by soft-focus lighting and swelling violins. This smile, however, was accompanied only by a crescendo of sirens, along with the gun-metal gleam of his semiautomatic. At that moment, Eddie surrendered totally to his own survival instincts, firing two shots. They were muted by the sirens, now screaming right around the corner. He saw the man flung backward, blood spurting from his chest, as a couple of fire engines roared up Burgundy past St Louis.
Eddie bent over the man. He was dead all right, no movement, glazed open eyes, blood all over the cashmere. It was a cinch he couldn’t just leave the guy there in the street, so he rolled him under the car that was parked right behind the van.
Then he picked up the trash bag and ran, dragging it back into Linda’s building.
In the courtyard, the body floated in the fountain. It bobbed in the small pool, as though it were supposed to be there, like for effect. Rushing up the steps as quickly as he could while lugging the trash bag, he burst into the apartment, startling Felina and Linda, but he sure wasn’t ready for what he saw.
Two corpses lay close by one another, their faces frozen in masks of twisted horror. Ugly stains of their blood spattered dark red across the room — the walls, the rug, the toppled furniture.
Felina, just coming to, laid on the sofa in tears, patting a damp washcloth on the great gashes over her eye and upper lip. Linda, who had heard none of the silenced carnage from her shower stall in the closed bathroom, was hysterical, a towel halfway wrapped around her. She was closest to the door, sitting in a chair with her head in her hands.
Eddie rushed to her first, throwing his arms around her, while she melted into them.
“Eddie, Eddie,” she cried. Howling sobs smothered her words. He held her tighter, caressing her temple with a soft hand. As he did so, Felina called to him in a weak voice. He gave his sister a reassuring squeeze and went over to Felina on the couch.
“Baby, baby, baby.”
He gathered her in his arms, taking the washcloth from her. He dabbed at her wounds, wiping away some of the awful blood that nearly covered the left side of her once-perfect face. “It’s gonna be all right, darlin’. They’re dead, all of ‘em. We got the money. Y’hear me? We got our money. All of it.” He smiled, then stroked her beautiful hair. “And we’re goin’ to Mexico. Okay?”
Felina managed a half-smile. “Oh, Eddie. It was terrible. I was … so afraid. I thought he was gonna kill me. He hit me. So hard!”
She whimpered out a few more tears, as he tightened his grip on her, rocking her gently just as Linda used to do with him so many years ago.
He looked over the bloody room and almost gagged. It looked like something out of an R-rated movie, like Quentin Tarantino or somebody had just let his imagination go crazy. Eddie couldn’t connect with those outer swamps where things like this actually happen.
He did know one thing, though. It wouldn’t be long before somebody found that guy in the fountain, or the one under the car. There was no doubt that when they did, he and Felina would have to be long gone.
He got up and went to the trash bag. He drew out a handful of money packets, then knelt by the chair where Linda sat. Her hysteria had subsided. Her dazed, glassy eyes told the whole terrible tale.
“Sis,” he murmured. “We gotta go. I’m leavin’ you this.” He pressed the money into her limp hand. “For everything you’ve done, for putting yourself on the line for me like you always did. I hate to — God, I hate to do this, leaving you here with all this.” He swept the room with an arm gesture. “But I know you realize that we gotta get out of here. I mean, the heat’ll be here any minute. Maybe you c’n tell ‘em we went to Miami or someplace, to throw them off the track.”
“Sure,” she mumbled. “Miami. Sure. Throw ‘em off the track.” Her eyes were still transfixed in a gauzy gaze.
Eddie got into the chair with her, while he continued to embrace her. She was half on his lap, as he buried his face deep in her strawberry blonde hair, whispering, “I love you, Sis. I love you so much. But we got to go.”
Still holding the washcloth to her damaged face, Felina got up from the couch. Eddie put his arm around her to help her up, then, dragging the trash bag with his other hand, they started for the door.
Only the odor stopped him cold after just a couple of steps. Felina knew it too. They both flinched as their nostrils filled with the unmistakable odor of Swisher Sweets.
42
“Going someplace, buddy boy?”
The soft voice of Val Borden boomed through the room, as he stepped out of the hallway darkness into the apartment. Eddie and Felina backed up, pushed by the sight of the long-barreled revolver in Val’s hand.
Val stepped over the body of the young detective into the living room.
“Well, looky here,” he said, checking it all out. “Looks like y’all had one hell of a little party here.” He looked back at Eddie and Felina, biting his lower lip. “Y’all been having a good time without me? Hm?”
“How’d you find us?” Eddie asked.
“Oh, you can thank your sweetie here for that,” he replied. “I paid a little visit to her mama today. Seems your little honey just had to call home yesterday to tell mama that her li’l girl was safe and sound in New Orleans. So I just hopped in my pickup and drove on over.” He chuckled, as he said, “Dumb bitch even gave her the address. What’d you think, honey? Think your mama was gonna write to you?”
Eddie stared at her in complete disbelief. “What? Is he kidding? Did you really call your mother? Well, did you?” He grabbed her shoulders and shook her until she talked.
“Eddie, please, she was so worried. I just wanted her to know we were all right. She said she wouldn’t tell anybody.”
“I don’t fucking believe this,” he said. “You told her where we were!”
The two of them sputtered at each other a little more, while Val smiled. Then, he looked over at Linda in the chair, naked against the towel.
“And you, baby doll, you must be the sister.”
He eased over next to her. With the gun still pointed at Eddie and Felina, he ran a hand across her bare shoulder. She turned away.
“Val!” said Eddie. “Leave her alone. She’s out of the picture.”
Val continued stroking her skin and smirking.
“I
dunno, buddy boy. I think she’s pretty much in the picture, if you ask me.” Then he stopped, having had his fill for the moment. He turned his attention back to Eddie and Felina. “Okay, boys and girls. Show’s over. That garbage bag in your hand, Eddie. ‘S’that the jack?”
Eddie nodded.
”Set it down, real easy-like,” Val said.
Eddie complied and said, “Listen, Val, there’s no need to get violent about this. Just take my share and get out.”
”You mean like you took my girl and got out?”
”Hey!” Felina spoke up. “He didn’t take me. I went with him. I wanted to get away from you, you fucking pig!”
He reached out and slapped her with his left hand. She doubled over, yelping in pain, as Eddie bent down to her side.
“The bitch gets it, buddy boy. And you do, too. I can’t have you dropping the dime on me to Salazar. Now back away from that money.”
He raised the gun into firing position. Linda leaped screaming from her chair, the towel falling behind her. As she lunged into Val’s midsection, the gun went off. The shrill crack boomed through the apartment. Val tried to extricate his gun hand from Linda’s slackening body. She slid to the floor and immediately, Eddie was on Val, knocking the gun free.
They struggled until Eddie was able to land a solid right to Val’s jaw. He staggered backward, as Eddie dove for the gun. Val recovered, then planted a kick in Eddie’s chest just as he gained a grip on the gun. The weapon, shaken from his hand, slid under the sofa.
Val went for another kick, and Eddie ducked it just in time. Scrambling to regain his balance, Eddie blocked a punch. He countered with one of his own and it scored. He felt teeth loosen from its impact. He threw a hard right that landed flush on Val’s nose, reeling him back. He punched his face again, then again, as Val wobbled farther and farther back toward the front door. A blow to the solar plexus bent him over in pain, while the final uppercut sent him flying backward out the door, onto the balcony. He completely lost his balance, back-tumbling into the wooden balcony railing. It gave way on impact and Val plunged over the edge. His scream was silenced when he landed face-up on Charlemagne’s upraised sword, impaled through the heart.