The Devil's Right Hand (23 page)

Angela’s face brightened. “You’re seeing
Lucas again?” she said. “I thought he was doing drug rehab
now.”

“
He is. But he said he’d pick up where
we left off.”

“
He’s a good man. Looks like your luck
may be changing, Keller.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The 9MM Glock spoke rapidly, twice in
succession. The slide came back as Marie expended the last two
shots into the man-shaped target at the far end of the indoor
range. She ejected the spent magazine and set the gun on the
waist-high shelf in front of her, pressing the button to bring the
target to her on its steel cable. She grimaced as she looked at the
target. There was a group of holes in the center of the target’s
silhouetted torso, where the center of mass would be. There was
another, smaller group in the center of the target’s “head.”

Better
, she
thought,
but not great. At least I didn’t
miss any this time. I really need to practice
more
.

She had shot through two boxes of ammo
before the gun felt natural in her hand again, and her shot
grouping had been awful. But as she relaxed, the old rhythm and
flow returned. Draw, tap-tap. Draw, tap-tap. As always, the focus
on the simple tasks involved in hitting the target cleared her
head. There was something clean, uncomplicated about it.
Only two ways for it to come out
, she
thought.
Hit or miss, and it’s in your
hands
. She looked at the watch lying on the shelf in
front of her.
Whoa
, she
thought.
Got to go pick up Ben. Lost track
of time for a bit
. She took a deep breath of the
cordite-laced air, the gunpowder stench creating a mild but
pleasantly familiar burn in her nostrils, and smiled.

She packed the gun away in its case and hung
the ear protectors on the wall. She walked up a set of creaky
wooden stairs and opened the heavy door at the top. She stepped
into the bright fluorescent lights of the gun shop. Shiny glass
display cases showed off a variety of handguns laid out on
dark-green felt, while a forest of barrels sprouted from the brown
and black stocks of rifles and shotguns racked side by side behind
the counter. A large man half-sat, half leaned on a stool behind
the counter, his arms crossed across a considerable paunch. His
arms were a riot of dark ink, winding and swirling up his massive
forearms and biceps and under the sleeves of his dark green
T-shirt. His wind-burned face scowled at the world over a bristling
hedge of black beard that reached almost to the crossed arms.

Marie waved at him. “Thanks, Stoney,” she
said.

Stoney nodded almost imperceptibly. He didn’t
look at her and the scowl didn’t change. “Some dude called looking
for you,” he said. “Said his name was Stacy. Sounded like a
cop.”

Marie felt a chill in her belly. “Oh,” she
said lightly. “He’s a friend of mine.”

“
Uh-huh,” Stoney said. ”He didn’t sound
too friendly. In fact, he sounded like an asshole.” He looked at
her for the first time. “I told him you weren’t here.”

She sighed. “Thanks, Stoney,” she said. “It’s
nothing, really.”

“
Uh-huh,” he said again. “That why
you’re working out here instead of the police range?”

She tried to smile at him. “I like it here,”
she said. “Not as crowded.”

He grunted and went back to scowling at the
front door. Marie walked out to her car. She took the cell phone
from beneath the seat. She dialed her home number and punched in
the code for her messages when the answering machine picked up.
There was another message from Stacy. She fumbled in the glove box
for a stub of pencil and wrote the number down on the back of a
store receipt she found on the floorboard. She looked at it for a
moment, then took a deep breath. She dialed.

The person on the other end picked up on the
second ring. “Stacy.”

She was surprised at how steady her voice
was. “This is Marie Jones. You left a message for me?”

“
Jones,” Stacy growled, “Where the hell
have you been?”

“
I’ve been out,” she said.

“
With Jackson Keller?” Stacy
asked.

Until that moment, she had been prepared to
tell Stacy that she wouldn’t meet him without a lawyer present. But
the use of Keller’s name threw her off her guard. “What about him?”
she said.

“
Well, for one thing,” he shot back,
“Jack Keller’s got a murder warrant out for him. And for another,
you were seen leaving Eddie Wesson’s funeral with him.”

Marie’s breath caught in her throat. The
knuckles on the hand wrapped around the cell phone went bone-white.
“What?” she said, the word coming out in a strangled croak. Then
she rallied herself. “Maybe I should talk to a lawyer first,” she
said.

“
Yeah,” Stacy said, “maybe you should.
You can call one from jail when we pick you up. ‘Bye,
Jones.”

“
Wait!” Marie hated the pleading note
in her voice. There was silence on the other end. Then, “I’m
here.”

“
I--I have to get my son from day
care.”

“
Oh, don’t worry. I’ll call Social
Services to come get your kid.”

“
Please,” Marie’s voice was shaking. “I
can talk. Just not right now. Tomorrow. First thing. I
promise.”

Another long pause. “Okay,” Stacy said
finally. “Tomorrow. 9:00 AM. Sharp. Your house. And Jones?”

 “
Yes?”

 “
No lawyers. I even see a Gucci
loafer, I’m taking you in right then and there, and your kid goes
into foster care.”

“
I’ll be there,” she said. There was a
click as Stacy hung up. Marie shut off the cell phone. Then she put
her head on the steering wheel and wept.

Raymond’s house was a one story brick ranch,
large and roomy, but not ostentatious. In many ways, he was a
cautious man, and he knew the dangers in calling too much attention
to himself. The house wasn’t even in his name, and very few people
even knew where he stayed. It stood in the middle of a hundred-acre
tract of farmland, screened from the main road by a stand of trees.
The rich earth around the house hadn’t seen a crop in years;
Raymond paid a local kid to keep it mowed flat so he could see
anything coming. He stood behind the huge picture window in his
living room and clearly marked the progress of the large black
Chevy Suburban coming up the quarter mile of driveway. Raymond
fumbled in his pocket for the plastic bottle of pain pills. He took
one out and washed it down with a swallow from the glass of iced
tea on the coffee table.

“
You might wanna go easy on them
things,” Billy Ray said. He was sprawled in an oversized recliner
across the room. “They’s supposed to be addictive.”

Raymond didn’t answer. He ran his fingers
across his side, feeling the expanse of bandages wrapped around his
torso beneath his shirt. The bleeding had stopped, but the wound
still felt like someone was holding a red-hot poker into his flesh.
He was afraid it might be getting infected. Soon, though, it
wouldn’t matter.

The Chevy pulled up in the gravel parking lot
before the front door. Raymond went to the door and opened it. He
was shocked to see that the person getting out on the passenger
side was Paco Suarez. Geronimo got out of the driver’s side. Two
goons he didn’t know exited the rear passenger doors. Raymond
relaxed slightly with the knowledge that if Suarez himself was
here, it was unlikely that they had come to kill him. Suarez was
also careful. He always arranged to be miles away from any
bloodshed.

Raymond and Suarez embraced as Suarez reached
the front door. The Latin custom had always made Raymond slightly
uncomfortable, but there was no actual warmth in the gesture. It
was a formality, nothing more. Suarez stepped back and looked at
Raymond. He was a small man, with a narrow, bony face and the
merciless eyes of a bird of prey.

“
You don’t look well, my friend,”
Suarez said. “You look like you need a doctor.” His accent was
barely noticeable. Suarez had received most of his education in the
U.S., first in the schools and universities and then courtesy of
the U.S. Army in the days when they weren’t picky about who
received advanced “anti-insurgency” training.

“
I’m fine,” Raymond said. “Healing,
anyway.” He stepped back and motioned Suarez through the door.
Suarez stepped back and let Geronimo and the other two goons
precede him. Raymond followed.

Suarez sat on the couch in the living room,
Geronimo on his left. The two other men stood flanking the door.
Billy Ray got up and gave Raymond the recliner.

“
I have your assurance that this place
is safe?” Suarez said. “You have attracted a great deal of
attention to yourself.”

“
It’s safe,” Raymond said. “Ain’t many
people that know about it.”

Suarez nodded his approval of this. “And the
local police, I know, are still firmly in your hip pocket.” He
leaned forward. “Or are they? You are now a hunted man. Can you
still do business?”

Raymond nodded. “My network’s still together.
You deliver a shipment to the usual place, and we’ll move it.
Guaranteed.”

Suarez looked doubtful. “What of your other,
ah, legal problems?”

Raymond leaned forward. “There was only a
couple witnesses to what happened at that house. The main one I’m
worried about is DeWayne Puryear. He’s one of the men who shot my
daddy.”

Suarez bowed his head and raised a hand in
sympathy. “A senseless tragedy. Please accept my condolences,” he
said. His face hardened. “Had you let us know about this,” he said,
“We could have taken steps ourselves.”

“
He was my daddy,” Raymond said. “The
job was mine to do.”

Geronimo spoke up for the first time. “But
now you ask for our help.”

Raymond turned to him. Geronimo was taller
than Suarez, and broader, with a fleshy frame and a round baby
face. People who looked at him tended to think him soft or foolish.
He was neither. Next to Suarez, Geronimo was the most dangerous man
Raymond had ever met.

“
Yeah,” Raymond said. “Like you said,
things have got out of hand. I need to get out of the country for a
while.”

“
That is putting it mildly,” Suarez
said. “And what will become of your business?”

“
It’s yours,” Raymond said.

Suarez’ normally impassive face registered
shock for the first time. “All of it?”

“
All of it,” Raymond said. “The club,
the labs, the warehouses, even the trucks. All yours.” He pulled a
small notebook from his back pocket. “It’s all in the lists right
here. Nothin’s in my name, but my lawyer can draw up papers to have
it put in any name you want.”

 
Suarez leaned back and steepled
his fingers beneath his chin. “Just for a way out of the
country.”

“
No,” Raymond said. “That’s not
all.”

“
Ah,” Suarez said. “And what
else?”

“
I want Puryear. I want the other guy
that was there, the one who shot my brother. He’s a bondsman out of
Wilmington, name of Keller. And there’s one other.”

Suarez sighed. “This will be the last
condition, I hope?”

“
Yeah,” Raymond said. “There was a
Latino guy that was helping us. Said his name was Oscar
Sanchez.”

 “
Probably not his real name,”
Geronimo offered.

 “
Probably. But he ran out on me.
He took my truck.”

Suarez looked amused. “You want to kill a man
over a truck?”

“
No,” Raymond said. “But I want him
taught a lesson.”

Suarez nodded. “Is that all?”

“
That’s it.”

Suarez thought for a moment. Then he stood
up. “Allow me a few minutes to confer with my associates.” Geronimo
stood as well. The two men headed to the door.

Raymond stood up and went to let them out. He
almost stumbled from the light-headedness of the pain pills, but
caught himself.

“
We’ll let ourselves out,” Suarez
said.

Outside of the house, the Colombians gathered
on the far side of the truck. “Guillermo,” Suarez said to the man
Raymond called Geronimo, “Your thoughts.”

“
The man is a fool,” Guillermo said in
Spanish. “He’s throwing everything away for the sake of killing
some two-bit punk.”

 “
He’s dying,” Suarez said. “Or so
he has convinced himself. The last thing he wants before he goes
into the ground is his revenge. And when he goes, what will become
of his network? He has the facilities, the people, police
contacts...and he is willing to turn them all over for the sake of
his vengeance. So,” he said, “we give it to him. Guillermo, take
care of this. Use some of your trusted men, good shooters. And do
it quickly.”

“
What about this way out of the country
he says he wants?”

Suarez shrugged. “He may survive this,” he
said. “When everything is done and all the assets have been turned
over, get him on one of our planes. Tell him we’re taking him
someplace safe. When you get over the water...” Suarez smiled and
pantomimed throwing something, his arms held low so as not to be
seen from behind the truck.

Guillermo responded with an ugly grin.
“Before I do, I’ll make him say my name right.”

Suarez clapped him on the shoulder. “Let’s go
in and tell him we have a deal.”

Angela looked up from behind the counter as
the bells on the front door jingled. Angela immediately pegged the
two men who walked in as cops. The first one was short and balding.
He was wearing a pair of wraparound sunglasses that hid his eyes.
The one who followed was tall, broad-shouldered, red-faced. His
shades were mirrored. The outside heat had them sweating slightly
in their cheap sport coats. .