“Look, buddy, the building is probably sound,” Sudden said, “but if wind and water gets blown in at 120 miles an hour it will tear the place up inside. Any little hole could cause millions in damage to the penthouse. You want that to happen?”
The man’s eyes widened. He knew Fats Boudreau buried people in the bayou for missing a thousand-dollar loan shark payment. He couldn’t begin to imagine what would happen to someone who cost the boss millions. Sudden, who knew what the poor thug was thinking, suppressed a smile. He decided to help the man along.
“Of course, if you sign off on everything, I’m out of here.” He pulled out a pen and tapped an official-looking piece of paper on the clipboard. It was the rental agreement from his car. “Just sign this form. Then it’s on your head.”
That did it. The man wasn’t going to sign a form that could be his death sentence if things went badly with the storm. He fished out the key from his pocket and put it in the panel. The elevator door opened and Sudden got in. Just before the doors closed the guard said, “Hey, pal. You really don’t think this place can fall down, do you?”
***
As the elevator rose toward the penthouse, Sudden began to have second thoughts. Not about killing Boudreau and Vocce, or anyone who got in his way upstairs. But the elevator was swaying noticeably and he presumed the building was, too. He wondered if the generators were powerful enough to keep the elevator running if the power went out. Probably at least the express lift to the penthouse. He hoped.
Sudden opened the tool box and took out the Bersa automatic. He screwed on a silencer and put two extra regular clips in his pocket. Probably overkill. The 15-round magazine was already in the automatic. Sudden knew that if he needed more than 15 shots, he was probably dead.
When the elevator doors opened his weapon was pointing into an empty hallway. He could hear conversation and male laughter and a slight hum, which he knew to be the wind. The penthouse apparently had excellent soundproofing. He placed the toolbox and clipboard on the floor next to a wall outside the elevator. There were undoubtedly toolboxes and construction materials lying throughout the Shalimar II.
Sudden walked toward the voice sounds. A man came out of a room, apparently a kitchen, carrying a tray of tall drinks. They looked like juleps, but there was so much mint in the glasses they could have been mistaken for floral arrangements. When he saw Sudden, he hesitated. No one likes to drop a tray of drinks. But he did and went for his gun. Sudden shot him twice, once in the throat and once in the forehead. The man slumped silently to the floor, quietly. But the tray of drinks had made a loud crash. Sudden tensed.
“For fuck’s sake, Lucien, did you drop another tray?”
Sudden recognized Boudreau’s voice. He stepped over the dead man and walked into the penthouse living area, figuring the odds.
Two men were sitting on a low-slung divan in front of a large TV. The screen suddenly flickered and died. One of the men cursed and franticly started working the remote in his hand.
“It ain’t the TV, moron,” the other man said. “I’m surprised it lasted this long. Cable is probably out all over.”
Vocce was leaning against a bookcase. Boudreau and Longsteet were on a leather couch near the glass doors leading out to the terrace. Five in all. He had enough bullets, even taking into account all the beef they’d have to go through. Should be a couple extra in case another of Boudreau’s in-house water buffalos came out of another room. Sudden could see rain and wind beating against the glass, which seemed to be bulging inward. The wind hum was more like a screech now.
It was Longstreet who first noticed Sudden.
“Who the hell are you?”
“Pest control,” Sudden said, firing a round for effect into the TV, which shattered and sparked. “First one of you roaches that moves gets exterminated.” He pointed the Bersa at the two men in front of the TV. They had their jackets off but were wearing shoulder holsters. “Slide out of those rigs and drop them to the floor. Make a wrong move and you will join Lucien in mint julep heaven.” They did as they were told. “Now get up and walk over to the far wall.”
Vocce hadn’t moved. He was a pro.
“Longstreet,” Sudden ordered, “get on the wall with them. Then all of you turn around.”
“I don’t understand,” Longstreet sputtered. “Who is this, Beauregard?”
Sudden put a round in the leather couch between the two men. He wasn’t going to waste any more bullets. But he doubted he’d have to.
“Move!”
Longstreet scurried to the wall.
“I have no reason to kill you three, so don’t give me one. Just kneel and put your hands in your pockets and be quiet.”
They did as they were told.
“You said he wouldn’t know it was us,” Boudreau said.
“I was wrong,” Vocce said calmly. He looked at Sudden. “How did you figure it out?”
Sudden walked closer to both men.
“What now?” It was Boudreau. There was a sheen of sweat on his face. “You want your dough? You can have it. It’s in the safe.”
“Sylvia Beech,” Sudden said.
“Who?”
“The woman you killed.”
“I never killed no woman.”
“I did,” Vocce said. “Guys gave me the wrong bullets. Should have waited until I got the right ammo. I was sloppy. Round went through him. Killed her.”
“Your broad?” Boudreau said.
Sudden didn’t say anything. Vocce looked at him.
“The angle I had, I never saw her. She was behind that tree.”
“Tough,” Boudreau said, confused. “But you’re a fuckin’ hit man. Shit happens.”
“He not a regular hit man,” Vocce said. “He’s something else. Or he wouldn’t have figured it out.”
“This ain’t right,” Boudreau whined. “It was still an accident.”
“This won’t be,” Sudden said as his finger tightened on the trigger.
Then the lights went out.
CHAPTER 28 – SLOW MOTION
There were several moments before the building’s emergency generator fully kicked in when the lights flickered on and off. Everyone in the room made a move. Boudreau rolled off the couch surprisingly fast for a man of his bulk. Having a gun pointed at you will do that. Vocce slid off the bookcase in a crab crouch, reaching under his jacket for his weapon. The two Boudreau soldiers came off the wall and dove for their holsters. Longstreet hit the floor.
The flickering light made everything look like a slow-motion movie, but Sudden knew he had to act. He fired at where he thought Boudreau and Vocce were, and then dove to his left as all hell broke loose when everyone else with a gun started firing. In the confined space of the room, the gun noise was deafening. Sudden went through a second magazine during the battle, shooting at anything that moved. He knew he survived only because his opponents spent most of their ammunition shooting at shadows or each other. Between the flickering lights, shadows, gun flashes and the lightning outside the windows and terrace doors, the room looked like a laboratory in a 1930’s horror film. All that was lacking was a mad scientist, sparking vacuum tubes and arcing electrodes.
Sudden was reaching into his pocket for his last magazine when the lights came back on steadily. He stopped when he saw Vocce standing a few feet away casually pointing a gun at his head.
“Drop the piece,” Vocce said. “It’s over.”
Sudden did as he was told, and slowly stood.
“I don’t know how I missed you,” Sudden said.
“It pays to be skinny.”
Sudden looked around. Longstreet and the two bodyguards were sprawled on the floor. Dead.
“I couldn’t have done all that,” Sudden said.
“You didn’t. I think I may have gotten at least one of them. Not on purpose, of course, but they are hard to miss. Hell, they may have even shot each other. Boudreau’s crew wasn’t big on marksmanship, unless they were using forks.”
&nbs
p; “Where is Fats?”
“Probably in a back bedroom. He can move like a wide receiver when he has to.”
Vocce looked pensive.
“I do feel bad about the woman. That’s not my style. You know, none of this would have happened if Fats had paid you off like I told him. Cheap bastard. Penny wise and pound foolish, my mother used to say. Wasn’t your fault you were sent after the wrong guy. How did you find Tucci, if you don’t mind my asking?”
Sudden shook his head.
“Classified.”
“Well, I had to ask. Good for you. I figured you were Government. Tell you the truth, I’m glad you guys are getting your shit together. I hope you’re using it against the towel heads, too.”
Vocce raised his gun.
“Sorry about this. You know the cliché. It isn’t personal. And this time, I really mean it.”
A sharp, piercing whistling sound startled both men. It sounded like a boiling kettle. It was coming from the glass wall surrounding the terrace doors. Looking past Vocce, Sudden could see small cracks in the glass, undoubtedly caused by some of his errant shots. He was mesmerized as the glass began to be suffused with a spider web of more cracks. Then, under the incredible force of 150-mile-per-hour winds, the entire glass wall exploded in a tremendous roar.
Only the fact that Vocce stood between him and the maelstrom of shards saved Sudden from being shredded. As it was, he was hurled at least 20 feet against a wall. A round object bounced across the carpet toward him. It stopped at his feet. He stared at in in both horror and fascination.
It was Vocce’s head, apparently cut cleanly off by a huge shard of glass.
The dead hit man’s eyes gazed directly at him.
“A Vocce ball,” Sudden murmured.
Then the eyelids blinked. Sudden knew that it was just a reflex, nerve synapses on automatic pilot. He’d read that it was a common, if unnerving, occurrence among the condemned after they were guillotined. Involuntary mouth movements were rarer, but gave rise to the belief that the recently decapitated were trying to say something in their last conscious moments. But Vocce’s lips never budged.
There was another roar, and Sudden passed out just as the rest of the room seemed to fly right at him.
CHAPTER 29 – NOT A GOOD LOOK
Sudden came to. He could hardly move. He was buried in furniture. He was sore all over. But it was the soreness of a bad beating. There were none of the sharp, searing pains associated with broken bones or lacerated internal organs. Of course, he knew he could be in shock. He also considered the possibility that the weight of the debris holding him down was preventing, or at least, minimizing, internal bleeding. He had seen gravely injured people pinned inside smashed vehicles who were conscious and lucid, and looked like they were barely injured. But once they were cut out of the metal and the pressure was released they quickly died. He remembered holding the hand of a young girl who instinctively knew what would happen if she was freed and begged her “rescuers” to leave her alone. Of course, they couldn’t. He had watched the light go out of her eyes.
Sudden shook off the macabre memories and started testing his limbs. He was able to get enough leverage to push the heaviest of the furniture off him. He waited a moment and realized he wasn’t going to bleed out. When he finally extricated himself, the only clothes he was wearing were his trousers. His watch was gone, so he reached in his pocket for his cell phone. It was virtually unscathed. He resolved to write a complimentary letter to Apple. He looked at the time. He’d been out for almost three hours.
Instinctively he looked for his gun but quickly gave up. The room looked like a bomb had gone off. One of the pieces of furniture that had covered him was the leather couch. It had undoubtedly saved his life. Three naked bodies – Longstreet and the two hoods – were now piled against the same wall he’d slammed against. There was another body. Also stripped clean of clothes by the fierce wind. It lacked a head.
Sudden half walked, half crawled toward the terrace, unsuccessfully trying to avoid all the glass shards, some of which cut his bare feet. The wind had died down considerably. The storm seemed to be abating. He pulled himself up, leaned on the railing and looked up and down the beachfront. There was devastation as far as the eye could see. Nothing but rubble, broken trees, overturned cars and boats. Furniture floated in pools, those made by man and water-filled depressions scoured by the storm. He saw movement. A dog made its way gingerly through the detritus of what had been a two-story condo, now reduced to one story. Further down the shore there was more movement. People! Some had come through. Amazingly, since alone among all the structures on the shoreline, the Shalimar II was still standing at the height it started out with.
Sudden was momentarily cheered by that. Then he heard the crunch of broken glass behind him. He turned to see a bloodied and naked Fats Boudreau. Well, he thought, at least I know where my gun is. Fats was pointing it at him.
“That’s not a good look for you, Fats.”
“You ain’t gonna look too good in a second, wiseass.”
“You got to hand it to Longstreet, Fat Man” Sudden said. “He put up a hell of a building. Only one still standing. Never would have figured a con artist like him to be such a stickler for building codes. ”
“Yeah. It would take a fuckin’ tornado to bring down this joint. But shit, the prick could afford it, using other people’s money. Including mine.”
“Good point. What now?”
“I’m going to kill you.”
“Will you change your mind if I stop calling you Fats?”
“No.”
“How about if I tell you that I work for the C.I.A. and my colleagues will hunt you down like the corpulent dog you are?”
“I knew you were Government. But I don’t give a rat’s ass if you work for the fuckin’ Pope. You’re a dead man. You got a hard-on for me over your girlfriend. I know your kind. You ain’t never gonna stop comin’ after me. But I’ll make it quick. I feel like I kind of owe you for killing Longstreet. Saves me the trouble.”
“I take it you didn’t really kiss and make up with him.”
“Shit. Soon as I got him to sign over the building so’s I could get some of my dough back he was gonna be fish food.”
“Glad to oblige.”
“Hell, I don’t even mind you whacking the Toothpick.”
“The Toothpick?”
“Vocce. He was gettin’ delusions of grandeur. Even talked about wanting a piece of the action, real-estate wise. You probably saved me a bundle.”
“I think this property may be worth a lot less now.”
“Yeah, I never had much luck with real estate. But it’s still waterfront. You know what they say, God ain’t makin’ any more of it.”
“What about all the dead bodies? How will you explain them?”
“I don’t think they’ll be any shortage of dead bodies after this blow.”
“With bullet holes?”
“You think they’re gonna do a lot of autopsies? Hell, even if they do, I’ll just say you went berserk, started shooting up the place. Innocent bystanders got caught in the crossfire. I overpowered you. Shot you in self defense.”
“You don’t seem all that broken up about your men.”
“More where they came from. You know the unemployment rate in the Big Easy?”
“You can’t think your story will fly.”
Boudreau shrugged. Sudden had never seen a naked man that fat shrug. It wasn’t a pretty sight. It seemed to go on forever as it traversed various layers of lard downward, and then reversed course.
“It is what it is.” He cackled. “You got a better one?”
“I’ll need time.”
“Which you ain’t got.”
Boudreau raised the Bersa and aimed it at Sudden’s head. Then something just offshore caught the fat mobster’s eye. He looked past Sudden’s shoulder, a quizzical expression on his face. Sudden turned to look out to sea. There was a snakelike dark column rising from the wa
ter. At first he thought it was smoke curling up, possibly from a damaged ship. But then it grew much wider and seemed to stretch right into a low-lying cloud. At its base he could see spray. It was a waterspout.
Sudden knew that hurricanes often spawned tornadoes on their peripheries. This one looked dangerously large. He soon realized that part of the reason it seemed to grow so fast was that it wasn’t twirling side to side; it was headed in their general direction. Now he could hear its hissing sound.
“That’s just fucking great,” Boudreau said.
The huge twister seemed to move toward their right. It had turned from a hissing, almost beautiful, waterspout into a full-throated roaring tornado that would have done Kansas proud. Both men, their personal battle paling in comparison to the raw power of nature’s ultimate malevolence, watched in fascination as the monster come ashore a few hundred yards up the beach and began sucking sand and debris into its maw. The damn thing did sound like a thousand jet engines, Sudden thought, and immediately felt guilty for their good fortune. The tornado, he knew, would finish off a lot of people who thought they’d survived Hurricane Spenser. He saw the dog sprinting away. Go, boy!
Sudden’s remorse evaporated when the twister changed direction again and charged up the beach toward the Shalimar II. It first hit the pool and sucked out all the water, along with the chairs, umbrellas and submerged Tiki Hut, which was now sent spinning like a huge, thatched Frisbee directly up at the two men on the balcony.
“Shit,” Boudreau said, and for once Sudden agreed with him.
They barely had time to dash into the apartment before the world exploded again.
CHAPTER 30 – FLOATER
Sudden was drowning. He kicked toward the surface and found himself swimming in a sea of debris. The twister had ripped the last of his clothes off. He estimated he was a few hundred yards offshore. The Shalimar II had disappeared. Indeed, it had not been tornado-proof. Sudden realized he must have been sucked out of the building before it collapsed. He started swimming toward land but was too exhausted to make much progress in the rough water. He knew he would never make it. As strong a swimmer as he usually was, he felt humiliated.
TWO SUDDEN!: A Pair of Cole Sudden C.I.A. Thrillers Page 12