Tropical Freeze (35 page)

He felt the whoosh of air before he saw the blur coming for his head. Ducked to a crouch and rolled sideways across the wood floor. And the blade of a long sword swished past his ear. Definitely not rubber.

“The boy’s got some reflexes on him, doesn’t he?” Benny said. He aimed the sword at Thorn. He was dressed in a black cinched jacket with wide shoulders, gold epaulets. Black knickers and ballet slippers. A braided silver cord crossed his cummerbund and frilly white shirt. The samurai sword in his right hand.

A stainless .357 in his left.

Darcy lay on the bed. She had dark blue mumps. Lips puffy. There was a ragged three-inch gash on her cheek. But her eyes were bright. She gave him a look to live for.

Benny said, “I been waiting and waiting. I was beginning to think you’d chickenshitted right out of things. Just going to sacrifice Nancy Drew to save your own ass.”

“I wouldn’t have missed this,” Thorn said.

Benny said, “You’ve been fucking up my picnic, Thorn. You been doing it and doing it. And now it’s going to stop.”

Benny’s eyes went to the pistol at Thorn’s belt, and he sighted the .357 at Thorn and told him to take that pistol out real slow, put it on the leather wing chair. Thorn drew it out of his belt, held it by the silencer in front of him with thumb and first finger as if he had a rat by its tail.

“Now, smart guy,” Benny said. “Put it on the chair.”

Thorn kept his face easy, his eyes floating between Benny and Darcy. Benny looking at him from down a long tunnel of hatred. A twist in his mouth, quick-draw eyes.

“So you had to kill Roger, huh?” Thorn said, still holding the pistol. “Why was that? He finally draw the line somewhere?”

Darcy said, “He tried to protect me.”

“Shut up, bitch,” Benny said. He waved the pistol at her, keeping his eyes on Thorn. “OK, hot rod. Put that fucking pistol down, or I start shooting right now.”

Thorn set the .38 on the chair. He moved to the window. His back to it. He heard the truck start down below. Heard the here quack, there quack drifting away. He glanced over his shoulder. The gang of pirates was marching out the drive.

Benny said, “Now move away from there.”

But Thorn turned his back to Benny. He looked out at Gaeton. His friend’s face was mottled with light. A trickle of wind twisted the sword in his hand as if he were trying to sever the threads that still held him in this plane.

He seemed at ease there in that chair. Receding into some distant place. He’d done all that he could in this world and now he was off toward the endless meadow of hazy light, or whatever it was that Gaeton had imagined as heaven. Going there now. Going and going.

Benny cocked the pistol, told Thorn to turn the fuck around. Get the fuck away from that window.

But Thorn continued to stare. At the light and wind playing on his friend. This man whose boyhood had mingled with Thorn’s boyhood. This man with his cryptic smile. Eyes so detached now. The wind stirring his bandanna. His face bathed in sunlight and shade.

Benny jammed the barrel into the hollow at the base of Thorn’s skull. The sword clattered to the floor behind them, and Benny seized Thorn’s hair, dragged him back a step.

“Chain jerking, Thorn? That’s all you can do, isn’t it, boy? Coming in here thinking you can chain-jerk your way through it all. Jesus. You really thought I’d buy that shit?”

Benny dragged Thorn a few steps to the front of the dressing table. He held him in front of the mirror and glared over his shoulder. Thorn could see Darcy behind them, still on the bed. Her eyes cutting to the floor, back to Thorn’s eyes.

Benny said, “You hold a pistol to somebody’s head like this, and fire it, hey, the gases alone will kill you. It could be a blank, the ammo could be old or damp, and it’d still kill you dead. You think I don’t know anything about ballistics? You really think I believed it for a second. Huh? Is that who you thought you were dealing with, mondo dorko?”

Thorn made a noise in his throat, as close to speech as he could get with his head tilted back so far.

“I’ll tell you what,” Benny said. “We’ll try an experiment. We’ll test this out, whatta you say? I’ll squeeze off a round into your skull, see if you get up and run five miles tomorrow.”

Thorn tossed the earring underhanded onto the glass top of the dressing table. Benny yanked his hair hard, dug the barrel in deeper.

“Now what, chain jerker?”

Benny pivoted Thorn, angling for a look. Out of the edge of his eye Thorn saw Darcy focused on the sword. Benny was panting. In a sudden explosion he shoved Thorn away to the foot of the bed.

“The fuck is this!”

Benny had the earring in his left hand. The pistol wavering at Thorn. Covering him from chest to crotch.

“Something you lost,” Thorn said. “Something Gaeton spit up.”

“The hell you say.”

“Ask him.”

“Stop it! Fucking stop it!”

“Ask him,” Thorn said quietly. “He’s out there. Waiting for you.” He pointed at the window.

Benny battled with it for a few moments, his eyes shifting back and forth between Thorn and Darcy. Then he edged to the window. A twist of veins was pulsating in his temple. He stood facing them and tested a quick look over his shoulder.

“Look, if it makes you more comfortable, I’ll stand over here,” Thorn said. He moved around the bed, his good hand at his shoulder. Darcy took a breath, gave Thorn a you-better-know-what-the-hell-you’re-doing frown. Thorn stood next to a small writing table.

Benny’s throat was working. He snorted. He shook his head. The stainless .357 was still aimed at Thorn. Benny measured the distance across the room, seemed to be calculating how long a look he could take. He snorted again.

“You know, Thorn, I was wrong about you. You
do
have balls. It’s godamn brains you’re missing.”

He turned and looked out there.

“Oh, Jesus Mother of God,” he said. He groaned.

“I wouldn’t lie to you, Benny,” Thorn said.

Benny turned and aimed the .357 at Thorn, then Darcy. His hand rattling. He looked down at the leather chair, picked up the silenced .38, looked it over.

“This fucking gun, too?”

“Yeah,” Thorn said. “That, too.”

Benny turned, grappled with the window for a moment, a pistol in each hand, got it unlocked, and hauled it open. He stuck his head out and made a quick sweep of the area. Stepped away, brought the silenced .38 up, and aimed down there. He squeezed off three quiet rounds. Four, five.

When the firing pin clicked on air, Thorn was behind him, got his forearm around Benny’s throat, cranked his arm tight. Benny swallowed against the hold. Thorn clenched tighter, lifting this small, hard man off his feet until Benny’s strength dimmed and both pistols fell to the floor. Thorn turned him away from the window, and a button fired from his fancy shirt.

“Tell me when he turns blue,” Thorn said.

Darcy had picked up the sword. She was standing in front of Benny. She seemed calm, faintly amused. She cocked her head and examined his face, having her own silent transaction with this man. Then drew back the sword, aiming it at his gut.

Thorn told her to stop. Hold it.

“I’m not going to kill him. I wouldn’t do that.”

Benny was slack now, but Thorn kept the pressure on.

She said, “I just want to slide this inside there, reroute his intestines a little.”

But Thorn kept shaking his head and she didn’t move. He turned Benny toward the door, forced him through. He dragged him to the head of the stairway. The man was heavy. Probably feed a pack of wolves for a month.

A siren wailed along millionaire’s alley.

Thorn got Benny out of the bedroom and down the stairs. His forearm was tight against that thick throat. He heard Darcy following. On the landing, he could see through the foyer windows the Rotarians and Benny’s men clustered just beyond the porch, watching the siren approach.

“Thorn?” Darcy said.

He stopped at the entranceway and half turned to her.

She drew back and stuck the sword into Benny’s side. Into the flab at his waist, not deep, not dangerous. But Benny roared, wriggled in Thorn’s grip, then slumped, almost dragged them both to the floor.

“I had to do it,” she said as she drew the blade out. “I know it’s not right.” She dropped the sword on the marble floor. “But goddamn, was it satisfying.”

Sugarman was standing outside his patrol car speaking into his microphone, calling for more ambulances. Needed fifteen, maybe more, probably have to send some down from Miami. Benny handcuffed behind his back, was in the back seat, chin on his chest.

Two slugs had hit Gaeton and knocked him out of the chair. Thorn had lifted him up, carried him back inside the truck, and settled him again into the cooler.

Thorn and Darcy were leaning against the ice cream truck.

She said, “I was doing just fine, Thorn. I really didn’t need the muscle man thing. Kicking the door down. All that.”

He turned to her.

“I had him talking to me,” she said. “He told me about his mother. The woman used to boil his toys, Thorn. Keep everything purified around the house. He had a rubber duck, she boiled it, and it melted. It was just too Freudian. All of it.”

He looked at her.

“You’re being deadpan,” he said.

She looked out at the flats, where all this had begun for her.

“Droll,” she said. “I’m being very dry.”

“I hear it now,” he said. “But I wasn’t sure for a minute.”

As Sugarman talked on his radio, a white Ford Fairlane with blackened windows rolled into the yard, pulled up alongside the patrol car. A man with a fresh haircut got out. White shirt, red tie, dark pants, shiny shoes. He waited till Sugarman was finished on the radio, then flashed some ID inside a leather folder.

“The first string has arrived,” Thorn said.

“In the nick of time,” she said. Darcy wasn’t leaning on the ice cream truck anymore. She had taken a few steps in the direction of the cars.

Sugarman shook his head at the man, having none of it. The man nodded back, an unequivocal yes. By the time Thorn and Darcy got to the car, the man had Benny out of the back seat of the patrol car and Sugarman was unlocking his handcuffs. He gave Thorn a disgusted look.

Benny, shirtless and bandaged around the belly, smiled up at Sugarman. Then at Thorn. And gave Darcy an especially ugly one.

“Bye, guys,” he said. “And don’t fire your pallbearers just yet.”

The man held the door while Benny ducked into the back seat of the Fairlane. He slid in next to a woman in a big hat and big sunglasses. She kept her face turned away. The man with the haircut slammed the door and turned to Sugarman.

“You can go now,” he said.

“And those bodies out front?” Sugarman said.

“They’re being taken care of,” the man said as he got back into the car. “You or the sheriff have any other questions, give us a call at this number.” The man handed Sugarman a card. “And by the way, you did reasonably good work, considering,” he said. He nodded at them all. Polite, reasonable.

“Who are you?” Thorn said, moving close, blocking the door. He was considering hauling Benny out of there, run a quick and dirty biopsy on that sneer, see if it was terminal.

“Just a public servant,” the man said. “Your measly tax dollars at work.”

“You’re not my goddamn government,” Thorn said.

“Or anybody else’s around here,” said Darcy.

The man smiled mildly at Thorn giving him a few seconds more to try something. Or to invent an insult the man hadn’t heard before.

But Thorn stood still, got his pulse back to earth. He closed the man’s door carefully. There were more important things to be done. A friend to put in the ground. Love to nourish. A house to build. An ocean full of wary fish to fool.

Ozzie limped over to the jukebox and fed it another quarter.

“Not Johnny Cash,” Bonnie said. “Anything but him.”

She was hanging a stained glass red tulip up in one of the bar windows. There’d been a Hamm’s beer sign in there before. She’d hung a stained glass thing in every window now. A rose, a unicorn, a sunset, and two tulips, one green and one red. Ozzie had to admit, the place was more colorful. But it was getting awful close to looking like the inside of a church.

There was a little price tag twirling on a string on each of them. When he saw her putting on those tags, Ozzie had said he wasn’t running any goddamn boutique; but Bonnie had just gone on and done it, and he hadn’t fought it that hard. Then, in that first week, they’d sold five of them. Seven dollars and fifty cents apiece. Drunks stumbling in saying, is this the place where the unicorns are? And Ozzie just nodded his head. Liquor people up, and there was no end to what they’d spend their money on.

Ozzie punched the numbers for Jimmy Buffet. “Margaritaville” for the seven hundredth time that week.

“Living on sponge cake,” Bonnie sang as she got the tulip lined up just right in the window.

Ozzie limped back behind the bar and bought himself a beer. Didn’t put a nickel in the till either.

“That makes five this afternoon,” Bonnie said. “You’re gonna get yourself a beer gut, you aren’t careful.”

“I know how many it is,” said Ozzie. “I can count just fine.”

“Blew out my flip-flop,” Bonnie sang.

She was doing that now. Singing. Having her second goddamn childhood. Ever since he hadn’t shot her out on the boat. Ever since they’d rolled Papa John’s body over the side with the anchor around him. Ever since they’d come back to the bar and sat around and waited to see what was going to happen. And nothing had, except that yesterday a couple of twenty-dollar haircuts in blue suits had come in asking where Papa John was and Ozzie had said what he’d rehearsed. That John’d gone down to Key West for a little while, lowering his voice like he was being cozy with them, suggesting that Papa John was maybe moving some contraband or something.

The two blue suits looked at each other with disgusted faces and went outside, got in their white Ford, and left. And all that Ozzie had been expecting to happen, the handcuffs, the judge, the trial, the trip back to Loxahatchee Correctional, all of it whooshed right out of his mind.