Cold Shot to the Heart Page 19

  The razor went into his front pants pocket, the shotgun into the gym bag, along with the loose shells and Stimmer’s Ruger. He put on his trench coat, dropped the reloaded Star in the right-hand pocket, Suarez’s cell in the left. For the first time, he noticed the brown spots that dotted the side of the coat. Terry’s blood.

  He wet a thumb, rubbed at them. It didn’t do any good.

  TWENTY-NINE

  The snow had been heavier up here, and it crunched under the tires as she drove the Camry up the driveway and parked in front of the garage. They’d left the Mustang about a mile away, in the lot of a recreation area, with a half-dozen other cars.

  The light was fading, the moon already visible through the clouds. They looked at the dark house.

  “You sure this is all right?” Chance said.

  “Caretaker comes by occasionally, but the owners are out of the country.”

  “What if that real estate agent decides to hold an open house tomorrow?”

  “Let’s hope she doesn’t.”

  He got out, worked the turn latch on the garage door, heaved it up and open. There was a cleared space inside, oil stains on the concrete floor, cardboard boxes against the wall, a lawn mower. She drove the Camry into the garage, twisted the screwdriver to kill the engine.

  Chance had a flashlight out, was playing the beam around the inside of the garage. She got out, opened the trunk, unzipped the overnight bag that was in there. She took out the .38 and the box of shells. Beneath them were banded stacks of cash. She’d emptied one of her safe deposit boxes that afternoon.

  “How much is in there?” he said.

  “Ten thousand. He may call our bluff, want to see some money. We’ll need something to show him.”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I think first clear shot we get at him we should take it.”

  “If we do and miss, and he rabbits, we may not get the chance again. We have to be sure.”

  The gun went into her right-hand pocket, the rest of the loose shells into her left. She zipped the bag up, shut the lid.

  “We’ll leave the garage open,” she said. “I want him to be able to see the car, know I’m here.”

  She looked out on the stretch of snow-covered yard, the skeletal trees, the woods beyond already deep in shadow.

  “We’ll have to be careful of tracks,” she said. “Try to walk where I do.”

  The porch door was easy. She worked the tip of her pocketknife into the mechanism, popped it, then used the blade to flip open the hook-and-eye latch. At the back door, she got her pick set out, said, “Give me some light.” He shone the flashlight beam on the door as she worked the dead bolt and knob. Both locks were stiff with cold, and she had to go easy, not wanting to snap off the thin tension wrench. When she got the door open, they went into the darkened kitchen, kicked snow from their boots.

  “Power?” he said.

  “Yes, but be careful what you turn on.”

  She walked around the house. Nothing was changed since last she’d been here. It was the same upstairs. From the back bedroom, she looked down on the driveway, garage, and woods.

  When she went back down, Chance had switched on a light above the stove. It lit half the kitchen. He sat at the table, a black automatic in his hands, ejected the clip, and thumbed the shells out. He pressed them back into the magazine one by one, checking the spring pressure.

  She went around the kitchen opening cabinets and drawers. Cheap silverware in one drawer, pots and pans in a cabinet. In the refrigerator, bottles of condiments in the door racks, a dish of baking soda. Nothing else.

  It was almost full dark now. She flicked a wall switch near the back door. A light on the side of the garage went on, illuminating the yard.

  He slid the clip back into the automatic, worked the slide, and lowered the hammer. The sound reminded her of what they’d come here to do.

  She felt light-headed suddenly, as if she were on a fast-moving elevator, the floor pressing up against the soles of her feet. She took steady breaths until it passed.

  “You all right?” he said.

  She nodded. There was a sour burning in her stomach. “Time to make that call.”

  * * *

  When the phone in his pocket buzzed, Eddie was at a rest stop on Interstate 95, leaning against the hood of the Mercury. He took it out, looked at the number, pressed SEND, lifted it to his ear. Traffic blew by on the highway, past the sign that read WELCOME TO CONNECTICUT.

  “I’m going to tell you where I am,” the woman said. “You need to write it down?”

  “No.”

  “Then listen carefully. I don’t want you getting it wrong, getting lost up here.”

  “One thing at a time. You have what we talked about?”

  A pause. “Yes.”

  “All of it?”

  “All that’s left. One hundred, like I said.”

  “Tell me where you are.”

  He listened to the directions. He’d brought a Connecticut road map, would trace the route when he got back in the car.

  “You get all that?” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  “It should take you about two hours. You coming from Jersey?”

  He looked up at the sign. “Yes.”

  “You want to come over the GWB, get on I-87 North. If you don’t, you’ll get lost before you’ve started.”

  “All right,” he said. He guessed the distance to where she was. An hour’s drive at most.

  “The house is set back from the road,” she said. “Come up the driveway. There’s a light on the garage. My car’s parked inside. I’ll be in the house. When I see you drive up, I’ll come out to meet you.”

  He almost smiled at that.

  “Right,” he said. “You alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good,” he said and closed the phone.

  * * *

  “Think he’ll go for it?” Chance said.

  They were sitting at the table in semidarkness.

  “He’s suspicious,” she said, “but the money’s too much of a hook. He’ll be here. Way I figure, if he’s coming from Jersey, that means two and a half, three hours to get up here, find the place.”

  “What bothers me is we don’t even know what he looks like.”

  “Whoever shows up, that’s him.”

  “And you say he might have a partner, too.”

  “Nothing for it. We’ll just have to deal.”

  “He’s got to know it’s a trap.”

  “He wants that money, and he’s got no other way of finding it. He’ll have to take the chance. If he doesn’t, I might be in the wind and gone. He knows I won’t go back to the apartment. Only way he finds out if I’m for real or not is by coming up here.”

  Chance took two pair of flexicuffs from his pocket. “I brought these,” he said. “Just in case.”

  “Let’s hope it doesn’t get to that.”

  “Where are you going to leave the car when we’re done?”

  “There are some fire roads north of here, no houses around. I’ll go up one of them, park the car in the trees, wipe it clean. The cold will keep the smell down. If we’re lucky, no one will find him for a few days. We’ll both be long gone by then.”

  “You know,” he said, “it’s not that easy.”

  “What?”

  “Killing a man.”

  “I didn’t think it was,” she said.

  “Have you ever done it?”

  “Never even came close. Never had to.”

  He looked out the window. “I read once they did a study of soldiers in World War II. They wanted to figure out why, in a firefight, so many rounds get let off, but so few people actually get hit. They found only twenty-five percent of GIs could actually point a rifle at another human being and pull the trigger, even if that person was shooting at them. It’s against human nature.”

  “I believe that.”

  “That changed with Vietnam, more automatic weapons. Soldiers could spray and pray, a
nd were still likely to hit someone, whether they were looking in his eyes or not. Technology depersonalized it.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “I was working outside Detroit once. Before I knew Wayne. It was an armored car thing. Guy running it was an ex-marine named Spencer. Out of his mind. I was young and stupid, didn’t know any better.”

  “What happened?”

  “Four-man deal. Spencer, some seventeen-year-old punk he was bringing up, me, and the inside man, one of the truck guards, named Logan. It went okay, no one got hurt. Pretty big haul and a good split. Then the Feds started putting pressure on the guards.”

  “They always do.”

  “Spencer got paranoid. Whether Logan told them anything or not, who knows. Anyway, Spencer got the four of us together at an abandoned auto plant in Hamtramck to talk about it. Spencer’s punk knew what was coming. I didn’t.

  “So we’re sitting around what used to be the plant manager’s office, and Logan’s playing it pretty cool. I mean, if he had ratted, would he have come there in a million years? The punk gets up to take a leak. When he comes back, he goes behind where Logan’s sitting, picks up this piece of wood, like this big, hits him on the side of the head, knocks him out of the chair.”

  He turned the flexicuffs over in his hands, looked at them, then put them back in his pocket.

  “Guy’s dazed, but he’s conscious, knows what’s going on. They tie him to a chair with duct tape, and Spencer takes this gun out from under his coat, a Colt Python, big piece of iron. I can see it like it was yesterday. He shakes five shells out, leaves one in, spins the cylinder, hands the gun to me. I tell him no fucking way.

  “Then he takes another gun out, a .45, points it at my head. He tells me to take the Python or he’ll shoot me right there, and that Logan has a better chance than I do. I believed him.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I took the gun. I was a kid myself. Twenty-two. Scared shitless. So I point the gun at Logan, maybe three feet between us. His eyes are Ping-Pong balls. Spencer’s got the .45 to my head the whole time. So I close my eyes and pull the trigger. Empty chamber.”

  He took a breath, looked away. She waited for him to go on.

  “Logan pissed himself right there. First time I’d ever seen someone do that. Then Spencer has the kid take the gun, spin the cylinder again. Logan’s crying like a baby now, telling them he hadn’t said shit to anyone, wouldn’t. I guess he thought he still had a chance.”

  “What happened then?”

  “The kid took his turn. Empty chamber. Spencer spun it again, handed it to me. Put the .45 right here.” He touched his left temple.

  “So I point the gun at Logan again, pull the trigger.” He looked at her. “Chamber wasn’t empty that time.”

  “That’s rough. I’m sorry.”

  “Not as sorry as Logan was.”

  “What did you do after that?”

  “Got the fuck out of Michigan as fast I could. Never went back. A few years later, I heard Spencer got brought down during a bank takeover in Kalamazoo. SWAT sniper. I would have shaken the cop’s hand.”

  She said nothing.

  “That’s the only time I ever pulled a trigger on anyone in my life.”

  They looked out the window. The moon was over the trees, cold and white as bone. The vague sense of dread she’d felt since they’d found Hector now seemed to take shape, like a presence in the room. She thought about Chance’s story. Wondered if, when the time came, she could look into Eddie Santiago’s eyes, pull the trigger.

  “When this is done,” Chance said, “I’m just going to head out of here, keep going west. What about you?”

  “I’ve got things back at a hotel in the city. I’ll pick up some more clothes from my apartment, get some cash together, stay on the down low for a while. Maybe head south, tend to some things.”

  He got up, went to the back door, looked out the porch windows.

  “I was thinking I could set up in the garage,” he said.

  “No good. If he comes up that driveway, it’ll be the first place he sees. He’ll check it out. We don’t want him running. We need to get him in the house.”

  “This guy’s pretty smart, isn’t he?”

  “Smart enough, catch Hector the way he did.”

  “Or just lucky.”

  “Well, then,” she said, “let’s hope his luck’s run out.”

  THIRTY

  The house was easy to find. Eddie drove past, saw the mailbox, the number. A light on the garage, like she’d said. Fresh tire tracks running up the driveway. Nothing but woods around it.

  The next house was a half mile down on the same side, no lights on and no cars in the driveway. He came to an intersection with a blinking yellow signal, made a right, the road taking him deeper into the woods. At another intersection, he turned again. No houses back here. He looked at the odometer, estimating the distance, slowed. He would be somewhere behind the house now. Far off through the trees, he saw the glow of the garage light.

  He nosed the Mercury into a stand of fir trees, cut the lights and engine. He waited there, the window down, listening to the engine tick as it cooled. No other sounds. He got out of the car, popped the trunk.

  The shotgun was cold through the gloves. He took extra shells from the bag. The Star was in his right-hand pocket, the Ruger in his left. He touched his pants pocket to make sure the razor was there, shut the trunk, locked the car with the keypad. He looked off into the trees. The garage light would make a good landmark, keep him from getting lost.

  The shotgun at his side, he headed into the woods.

  * * *

  Crissa popped the cylinder of the .38, rotated it to check the rounds again.

  “How many times you going to do that?” Chance said. He was standing by the kitchen window, looking out.

  “Sorry. Nervous habit.” She locked the cylinder back into place. The burning in her stomach was worse.

  “I was thinking,” he said. “We should have something on the floor. Is there a shower curtain upstairs?”

  “No good. When we clean up afterward, I want to leave this place the way we found it. We’ll have to take our chances.”

  “I saw a blanket out in the garage. If it’s heavy enough, we could use it to carry him, then leave it in the trunk with him.”

  “Okay.”

  He tucked the automatic into his belt, the jacket covering it.

  On the porch, he looked back at her. “Hey, Red?”

  “Yeah?”

  “If this goes bad…”

  She waited.

  “Never mind,” he said.

  * * *

  Eddie made his way through the trees, keeping the light in front of him. He could see the house now, a faint glow in one window. The woods had thinned, so he went slower, watching his footing, feet already numb from the cold.

  He came out of the woods behind the garage, staying away from the light. He looked in a side window, saw the car inside, a screwdriver wedged into the ignition, wires hanging from the steering column.

  With his back to the wall, he looked around the corner of the garage. A man came out of the porch and into the yard, stepping carefully. He was trying to follow a trail already there. So there were at least two of them inside.

  The man crossed the yard, headed toward the garage. Eddie raised the shotgun.

  * * *

  The burning in her stomach had become a stabbing pain. She could taste the lunch she’d had hours ago. When Chance left, she went upstairs to the windowless bathroom, closed the door, turned on the light.

  Another spasm in her stomach, and then she was kneeling in front of the toilet, gagging. She vomited twice, mostly fluid, then dry-heaved until the spasms stopped. Her face was wet with sweat.

  She drank water from the faucet, spit, drank more. Then she flushed the toilet, took a hand towel from a shelf, wiped everything down again. Get yourself together, she thought. Work the plan.

  * * *

>   When the man was almost at the garage, Eddie came around the corner and aimed the shotgun at his chest. “Stop.”

  The man squinted, trying to see past the garage light. Eddie came forward, his finger tightening on the trigger. The man took a step back.

  “Whoah,” he said.

  “Are you Chance?”

  “Who are you?” His hands were in view, but he kept taking slow steps back, trying to put distance between them.

  “Yeah, I guess you are,” Eddie said. “She in there?”

  “Who?” Chance said.

  “She bring my money?”

  Chance raised his hands, still backing away. “I think maybe you got the wrong place.”

  “Call her. Get her out here.”

  “I’m going to turn around now, and walk back to my house.”

  “Your house, huh?”

  “And then I’m going to call the police.”

  “Go ahead.”

  Chance took two more backward steps, then turned, started toward the house. Eddie let him go, knew what was coming.

  Halfway to the house, Chance turned fast, a gun in his hand. He aimed, twisting like a duelist to offer less of a target.

  Eddie fired. It blew Chance off his feet, dropped him facedown in the snow, the gun flying away. Eddie worked the pump, the spent shell flying out, waited for him to move again.

  * * *

  She jumped when she heard the blast, grabbed the .38. In the back bedroom, she looked out on the yard, saw Chance on the ground, motionless. There was a man standing beside the garage with a shotgun.

  She fired, blew out the center of the window, then fired again through the hole she’d made. Snow kicked up near the man’s feet. He looked up at her, raised the shotgun.

  * * *

  Eddie saw the woman at the window, the muzzle flashes, heard the pop of a round passing close by. He fired just as she backed away. Buckshot took out the rest of the glass, billowed the curtains. He pumped, fired again, shredding the window frame. Wood splinters and glass fell onto the porch roof.

  Chance was moving, crawling toward the house, the snow turning red beneath him. Eddie pointed the shotgun at him, then let the barrel drop. He walked over, planted a foot on Chance’s back to hold him there, touched the muzzle to the back of his head.