the Pallbearers (2010)

by Stephen - Scully 09 Cannell

  "Nothing in life is that simple, Gene."

  "O'Shea's the one who killed Walt. So how's that my fault? I wasn't even there. It's on him, not me."

  "That's gonna depend on how Rick decides to tell it," I said. "And then you got this multiple-kidnapping charge. You're holding four people at gunpoint against our will. If we end up dead, it's murder. Who you gonna blame for that?"

  "You got lost wandering around out here at night, ended up on the wrong side of the border, got shot by cartel drug smugglers. I know how to control Mexican jurisprudence. I've got connections down there. It's not even close to being a problem."

  I didn't like the sound of that. There's a lot of police corruption in the border provinces of Mexico, and with the right connections, my guess was he might actually pull that off.

  "You've got nothing, Scully. I'm wasting my time talking to you." He turned and walked to the door but stopped unexpectedly and turned back. He had something more he wanted to say but was struggling to get it out.

  "You probably loved Walt," he began. His voice was thick with emotion. "You were too fucking gullible to see what a selfish, egocentric prick he really was."

  "Selfish?"

  "All that cheap Zen philosophy, talking over everyone's head. Trying to make it sound like he had some kind of cosmic answer. Like my life was some kinda journey instead of what it really was--a nightmare created by selfish, angry people who didn't give a shit what happened.

  That worked great on most of you, but even back then I knew it . Was psychobabble. I was too smart for Walt's livpe. My mind refused to log bullshit. I was always looking for the real answers. I could see what was really going on. I was too smart for him. Too smart for everybody. That's why I made it from a dirt hut in the desert to the top of corporate America. Nobody understood what I was thinking. I thought Walt did in the beginning, but then I found out he was just another guy with a program, working the system." He stopped talking, but the vein had not stopped pulsing in his forehead.

  If I wanted to survive, I needed to get a handle on this guy fast.

  "Why were you so angry at Walt? A guv you just surfed with?" I asked.

  And then, without warning, he told me.

  "Walt caught me stealing once," he said. "After it happened, he took me out to dinner. I remember thinking, What is this? I steal a bunch of money from the home, lie catches me at it, then pays me back by buying me dinner in a big fancy restaurant.

  "Asshole that Walt was, of course he had this bullshit Zen lesson for me. We're sitting there over inch-thick steaks, and he tells me that two wolves were fighting over my soul. I'm thinking, wolves? Gimme a fuckin' break. He says one wolf was evil and only wants to eat my heart, but the other was good and was fighting to protect my spirit. I remember getting more pissed by the minute. The guy was patronizing me. It wasn't about that. It was about need. It was about winning; getting the other guy before he could get you. So I finally asked him, Okay, if these wolves are fighting, which wolf will win? You know what he told me?"

  "Yeah," I answered. "He said the wolf you feed will win." I remembered the story well. Walt had told it to me the second week I'd been there. The day he'd caught me stealing money from the office.

  Mesa was silent for a minute, then he said, "Two months later Walt threw me out. Sent me back to child welfare. I was twelve."

  "So you were at Huntington House just like the rest of us," I said.

  It was the piece I'd been missing. All along, I'd thought Walt had befriended him as an adult. Now it turned out Eugene Mesa was just another orphan. It was the emotional connection that had caused all of this. Anger, love, and betrayal were driving him. Revenge, not money, was the motive for Pop's murder.

  I must have looked shocked because Mesa laughed before saying, "I thought you already knew." "No."

  "I was found in an alley in Long Beach by child services when I was nine years old. I lived at Huntington House for three and a half years."

  "And that's why you framed him and tried to destroy his reputation? Because he threw you out for stealing?"

  "He betrayed me," Mesa said, coldly. "Pop was a fool. After I made it, I called him, set up a meeting. He let me get close to him again all those years later. I formed Creative Solutions and bought Huntington House when he ran out of money in the mid-nineties. All the time I was helping him, he never realized all I ever wanted was to pay him back for what he'd done."

  In that instant, I could see Eugene Mesa the way he was as a nine-year-old, full of hatred and fear. He had been exactly like me.

  "I feel sorry for you, Gene," I said softly.

  "Don't," he said. "As it turned out, I never needed anybody anyway." Then he opened the slider and left me.

  Chapter 59

  I watched Mesa talking to Rick O'Shea out on the deck, just outside the pool-house window. As soon as I was alone, I began trying to get the Swiss Army knife out of my right front pocket. I had my hands around to the side as far as they would go and thrust deep into my jeans. My fingertips could just barely touch the knife. I moved over to a barstool, and by rubbing on the edge of the seat, managed to shift the knife up half an inch inside my pocket. I hooked my little finger through the metal loop on the top of the handle and finally fished it out.

  I was holding it in both cuffed hands behind me as O'Shea came back inside the pool house. He was now dressed in his fight trunks and wearing a white silk robe that had RICOCHET embroidered on the back. He closed the door and walked directly over. As he crossed, I managed to open the small blade behind my back and turned it in my hand so I could start sawing on the plastic band that bound my wrists, while trying to conceal my body motion as I worked.

  "What makes you think you can prove I killed Walt?" he asked.

  "We've got the motive, the accounting work papers Pop had, your bank transactions that match the exact amounts you embezzled. All the stuff you were trying to get from him when you accidentally beat him to death."

  I was about halfway through the plastic cuffs when he suddenly stepped forward and hit me. The knife flew out of my hand and clattered on the floor behind me. I instantly tasted blood in my mouth. He hit me again, and I went down hard.

  As soon as I hit the floor, the half-sawed plastic cuffs snapped and my hands came free.

  I scrambled to my feet, with my fiberglass cast and one good fist in front of me, ready to defend myself for the third time. If I lost this round, it was going to cost me my life.

  "This is gonna be fun," O'Shea said as he went into a fighting stance, "just like before, you got no chance, Scully."

  I slammed the cast down hard on the bar top. It hurt like hell, but the scored end cracked and immediately exposed the little Bobcat .25 in its protective baggie. I transferred the gun into my good left hand, ripped the baggie off, flipped off the safety, and fired.

  I pulled the shot slightly and the bullet hit him high in the right shoulder.

  "Fuck," he said, looking down at the wound. Blood began spreading out, blossoming on the white silk robe around the bullet hole.

  It looked like the .25 caliber slug had gone clean through without hitting a bone or doing any major damage.

  Then O'Shea charged me, knocking the gun to the side as I fired a second shot, which missed him completely. In seconds he had me by the throat, and threw me to the floor.

  It was the Torrance Airport all over again as he wrapped me up in some kind of bone-breaking, martial-arts hold. I managed to retain the Bobcat, got it up between us, and fired again. This one hit him in the groin and did a lot more damage. He screamed in pain, then let go of me as he grabbed his stomach with both hands.

  "Hey, Scully. My turn."

  It was Jack. He had rushed through the door at the sound of the first shot and was standing directly behind O'Shea with a pool cue he'd picked up off the center table. He swung from the heels and caught O'Shea behind the ear. Rick slumped on the floor, out cold.

  I untangled myself and slowly stood. "We gotta tie him up.
See if you can find something."

  Jack picked up my Swiss Army knife and used it to cut down a drapery cord to bind O'Shea's hands, then handed it back to me.

  "Somebody must ve heard those shots," I said. "We gotta get outta here. Call the hotel desk. Ask to be connected to Captain Thomas Ironwood at the tribal police. Tell him to get some people out here fast, and tell him the FBI should be arriving any minute. They need to be included. Then get that maintenance truck and park it by the back gate behind the pool."

  "Whatta you gonna do?"

  "I'm gonna find the others and meet you out back in five minutes."

  I headed out of the pool house, clutching Alexa's tiny Beretta in my left hand.

  Chapter 60

  Once I was outside, I realized that, despite the gunfire, miraculously, nobody was running out onto the pool deck. I sprinted across the pavement into the main house and started looking for the most logical place where Calabro would take the others. I saw a door leading to the subbasement and bounded down the stairs.

  I was running recklessly down a narrow basement hallway, throwing open doors, looking for Alexa and the others when I turned a corner and suddenly collided with Kimbo Sledge and Gary White. They were also decked out in silk fight robes, their MMA ring names stitched on the back.

  I raised the Bobcat and pointed it in their general direction. Its such a small weapon, it didn't seem to worry them at all, because they both simultaneously attacked me. I was trapped in close quarters and had just enough time to fire once. The .25 caught Gary White in the forehead. "The Great" White was off the ride and dead before he hit the floor.

  I didn't have time to shoot Kimbo Sledge, who was instantly on me. His silk robe said SLEDGEHAMMER, and he began to prove it. The man was pretty much finishing up the job O'Shea had started on me five days ago.

  Suddenly a corridor door flew open and Sabas Vargas came charging out and hit the pile. He'd somehow gotten his hands untied. All three of us were rolling on the ground. Both Vargas and I were pummeling Sledge, who had curled up and become a very difficult target composed of nothing but elbows and forearms. We weren't doing any damage when Alexa came through the same door, also untied. She held a heavy metal floor lamp in both hands. Without hesitation, she swung the base at Kimbo's head. He went down and out.

  "How'd you get loose?" I asked them as I picked myself up off the floor.

  "Jack came back a minute ago. He slipped me a kitchen knife," Vargas said.

  "We've gotta find Vicki and Diamond, then get out of here fast," Alexa said. "I counted ten security. God knows how many more he has."

  We left the "Sledgehammer" unconscious on the floor next to the late Gary White and ran down the basement corridors, throwing open doors until we reached a utility room, where we found Vicki tied to a water heater. Using my Swiss Army knife, I cut her loose.

  "Where's Diamond?" I asked.

  Nobody knew.

  We spent another five minutes searching until we heard cars pulling up outside. Doors were slamming and men were shouting orders.

  "We gotta go now or we're not gonna get out at all," Alexa said.

  We took off running up the basement stairs to the main floor.

  The pool area seemed clear. After checking outside, we ran out of the house and across the deck.

  Then I spotted Eugene Mesa standing with his back to us on the second-floor balcony, screaming instructions at someone over his cell phone.

  I grabbed Vargas's arm and stopped him.

  "I want this guy," I said, pointing up at Mesa, who still hadn't seen us.

  "Then let's get him," he said.

  We doubled back toward the main house and scrambled up the outside staircase to the second-floor balcony, taking the steps two at a time. As soon as we reached the top, Mesa spun to face us as two young security cops stepped out of an upstairs doorway, blocking our path.

  I took the nearest one, hitting him with the flat side of the Beretta, which I was holding in my good hand. He sagged to his knees, dropping his gun. Sabas unleashed a devastating combination, dropping the second. Mesa was staring at us a foot away, holding his cell phone in front of him as if it could somehow protect him.

  "Looks like you're gonna have to do your own fighting this time, Gene."

  I moved into punching range. He took a step back and started digging for a small compact gun that was in a holster at the small of his back. It was an awkward slow draw and I fired the Beretta before he could get it out. Either I was jerking my shots or the little Bobcat was pulling up and to the right because I hit him in about the same place I'd hit O'Shea, high in the right shoulder. Mesa's gun flew from his hand and clattered onto the pool deck one story below.

  "Let's go," Sabas said, as armed men swarmed onto the pool deck beneath us. I grabbed Mesa's good arm. Vargas got a grip on his wounded arm and we pulled him off the balcony into the house just as gunfire erupted from below. Glass shattered but nobody got hit.

  "Lemme go! Lemme go!" Mesa screamed, his eyes wide with fear.

  Sabas and I pulled him downstairs toward the pool doors, then I shoved the Bobcat up into his ear.

  "Okay, Gene, real easy question. How bad do you want to stay alive?"

  "Don't kill me," he stuttered.

  "Then do exactly as I say."

  I nodded to Vargas, who kicked open the glass door, and we dragged the billionaire out onto the pool deck, which now contained almost fifteen armed men.

  "Don't shoot!" Mesa yelled at his guards. "He's got a gun on me!"

  We dragged him across the deck with the complement of gunmen trailing us like a pack of feral animals, all of them with their weapons at the ready, not sure of how to attack us without killing Mesa.

  "Don't shoot, that's an order!" Mesa screamed at them in panic.

  We pulled him out the back gate, where the golf maintenance truck was sitting with the back door up and the electric engine running. Alexa was behind the wheel with Jack beside her. Vicki was in the back, motioning us to hurry. She held out her arms and helped pull us inside.

  Just then the headlights from two vehicles swept around the side of the estate. As they neared, I could see that both were pickups. There were several Mexican men in the back with long rifles. As soon as they came into view, they began shooting over the truck cabs at us. I figured they must be the coyotes from the Mexican side of the res that Mesa had hired to kill us.

  Bullets were pinging off the engine compartment and riddling the back of the maintenance truck. In a second we would be disabled or dead.

  "Don't shoot!" Mesa screamed again. "I'm in here!" But this was already out of his control.

  "Get going!" I yelled at Alexa. Bullets ripped into the truck. I feared it was already too late.

  Then I picked up some movement off to my right side. I turned and saw Seriana Cotton. She had somehow followed us here and was running low in a shooters crouch, with an ugly-looking Austrian Stevr machine pistol cradled in both hands.

  She yelled out to us. "Get out of here!" Then she threw herself down in the dirt and started shooting at the pursuing trucks. Her machine pistol ripped the night, shattering windshields and headlights.

  Alexa floored it and we were away. Seriana was alone on the golf course, left to deal with God knows how many assailants. There was nothing I could do but watch as we pulled away, leaving her there, her machine pistol tearing into the night.

  What happened next is hard to describe. We were all being thrown around in the back of the maintenance truck as Alexa bounced over greens and sand traps, cutting across the course toward the main gate of the Tohono reservation. I could see about five sets of headlights still behind us, trying to catch up, but the little maintenance vehicle was pretty quick on grass. Still, as we kept going, I could see that the pursuers were beginning to narrow the gap. It was going to be close.

  "How much farther to the gate?" I shouted.

  "Right up ahead," Alexa called back. "I see a bunch of unmarked cars. Gotta be the feds."


  "Then this is where I get off," Jack said.

  "Jack! You stay put!" I yelled. "You re under arrest!"

  He ignored me and leapt out of the moving maintenance truck, rolled on the grass, and came up running. I could see him sprinting toward a line of trees. In seconds, we had left him behind.

  We couldn't stop. The pursuing vehicles were getting closer. Occasional gunshots again hit our truck, the bullets rattling around inside. Miraculously, none of us were hit. Alexa bounced over the curb and headed toward the main gate.

  It was quite a welcoming committee. The Indian cops were in some kind of major jurisdictional argument with Faskin, Westfall, and about half a dozen FBI agents in Windbreakers. We skidded in, threw our gun out, and pushed E. C. Mesa from the truck. All of us kept our hands in the air.

  The men in the pursuing vehicles didn't know what was in store and came boiling in behind us, their gun barrels still hot. The feds and Indian police swarmed.

  Ten minutes later, everybody was in handcuffs.

  "So where the fuck is he?" Leo Faskin demanded of me. He was standing near a tan sedan with government plates, glowering.

  "Let's not worry about Jack," I said. "I've got people tied up and bleeding all over this resort. We need to start collecting the bodies."

  "You're really something, Scully," Westfall said. "You played us. Jack was never here at all, was he? You just needed our badges so you'd have some clout with these tribal cops."

  "It's still a great bust, guys. I'm seeing gold shields and federal merit citations all around."

  Again, Westfall proved to be the wiser of the two as he asked, "So where's this Mesa guy's house again?"

  Chapter 61

  Captain Ironwood handpicked four deputies and went with the six feds to collect what was left of Team Ultima. O'Shea was alive and transported by ambulance to the jail hospital in Tucson, where he was hooked to a machine and intubated. Kimbo Sledge and Chris Calabro tried to run but were arrested.