Silencer Page 8

  If Kurtz had truly owned a horse, he’d forgotten how to stroke one. He was as clumsy with Big Girl as a teenage boy manhandling his first breast. Thumping her neck, ruffling her forelock.

  Frisco felt the horse clench, ready to get the hell away from these psychos, yearning for the safety of the barn. Before he could break away and take Big Girl deeper downtown, the radio on his duty belt squawked.

  “Code three, officer needs assistance.”

  The address of the emergency was two blocks south of his position, a shop on Second Avenue that Hammond knew well. With Miami police headquarters only three blocks farther north, technically he didn’t need to respond. There’d be at least a dozen available units in the vicinity.

  Still, it would be useful to expose Big Girl to some routine street action, so Hammond reined her left. She resisted, shaking her head against the bit.

  Kurtz and his buddy stepped back and Hammond muscled Big Girl around and gathered her into a slow steady walk toward the scene.

  When they arrived, three squad cars were blocking the front of Nupi’s Bridal Shop. The front door stood open, and one of the three mannequins whose lacy gowns had been yellowing in that window for years had been stripped bare.

  Frisco was tight with the Cuban grandmother who ran the place, though he knew the store was a front for a wedding scam. Nupi made a good income matchmaking illegal immigrants with U.S. citizens. She claimed the marriages she arranged beat the national average for longevity.

  “What is it?” Hammond asked a patrolman setting up a barricade nearby.

  “Dog versus cop.”

  “Who’s the cop?”

  “Dominguez. Dog’s holding him hostage in there.”

  “What the hell?”

  “Dominquez saw the front door open, goes in to investigate, and a rottweiler’s there, the guard dog. It’s got him boxed in a back room along with the perp. Dog got Dominguez’s pistol away from him. The idiot. Disarmed by a freaking dog.”

  The patrolman grinned. Raul Dominguez wasn’t going to live this one down.

  “This is no break-in,” Frisco said. “That’s Omar, the owner’s grandson. He’s into gowns, likes to play dress-up. And that dog is Ajax. It’s protecting the grandson.”

  “Well, Ajax is about to get euthanized,” the patrolman said. “SWAT’s gonna give it a nine-millimeter needle.”

  “Hold my horse,” Frisco said and dismounted.

  By the time Hammond sprinted over, SWAT was staging by the front door. Lieutenant Rizzo was on the radio with the team leader.

  “Call them off,” Hammond said.

  Rizzo turned his head and gave Hammond a sour look.

  “Call them off. I know that dog. It’ll listen to me.”

  “It’s already going down.”

  Frisco pushed past the rear guard hanging by the door. Inside the store one of the officers swung around to block his way till he recognized who it was.

  “Sergeant Hammond. What’s the problem?”

  “Tell them to stand down.”

  “Can’t do that, sir. It’s under way.”

  Hammond sidestepped a fallen mannequin, ducked past the armored squad stationed at the storeroom doorway.

  Two SWAT guys were inside the room, angling carefully for a clear shot at Ajax, who stood behind a glass case full of costume jewelry. Ajax was blocking the exit of Officer Raul Dominguez and Omar Mendez. Omar was seventeen. He was wearing a white lacy wedding gown a size too large for his skinny frame and trying to shield himself behind Dominguez’s broad back.

  Ajax had the Sig Sauer in his mouth, ribbons of drool hanging from his jaws.

  “Hey, Ajax,” Hammond said. “Drop it. Drop the gun, boy.”

  Ajax swiveled his thick neck and eyed Frisco.

  “It’s okay, boy. Everything’s cool. Tranquilo, perro.”

  “You’re fucking up, Hammond. You got no business here.”

  Frisco walked over to the dog. A growl thickening in its chest.

  “Drop it, Ajax. Put it down, boy. Put it down now.”

  Ajax gazed at Dominguez and Omar. He snorted, then eased down onto the linoleum, turned his head to the side and let the pistol clatter onto the floor.

  “Good boy,” Frisco said. “That’s a good dog, Ajax. Now stay. Stay.”

  Hammond circled in front of Ajax, moving slow, then scooped up the Sig and handed it to one of the SWAT guys. He took hold of Omar’s arm and tugged him out from behind Dominguez. The SWAT guys made room for the three of them to pass, a couple of them muttering.

  Hammond led them out of the storeroom and shut the door behind them.

  Frisco handed Omar off to the SWAT commander. The kid looked dazed by all the attention, but relieved to be in custody. Behind him Dominguez staggered outside to applause and wolf whistles. He shook his head and stared down at the street as he followed Omar to the patrol car, like a gloomy father of the bride.

  Chief Mullaney had arrived to watch the circus and was standing at the rear of the swarm of cops talking to Rizzo. Rizzo caught Hammond’s eye and waved him over. Mullaney was wearing a dark blue suit, white shirt with a red tie, but already looked disheveled before breakfast. Bloated face, wind-burned cheeks, and the yellowed eyes of a vodka enthusiast.

  “Dominguez lost his piece to a dog?” Rizzo said. “Is that right?”

  Hammond nodded.

  “Sergeant Hammond,” the chief said, “you misplace your cell phone?”

  “No, sir. I got it. It’s turned off.”

  “People been trying to get hold of you since last night. You didn’t know?”

  Hammond shrugged. He was looking around for Big Girl but didn’t see her or Officer Maxey.

  “What the hell happened to my horse?”

  Rizzo said, “Two seconds after you went inside, the fucker bolted, headed north in the direction of the barn. I sent Maxey after her.”

  “Goddammit.”

  “Hammond, that horse has no business on the street. Get rid of her.”

  The chief put his hand on Hammond’s shoulder and steered him away from Rizzo’s glare.

  “You should leave your cell phone on, Hammond. It’s department policy.”

  “There some kind of problem?”

  Frisco watched Nupi, wearing a bathrobe, get out of a cab and hustle over to the patrol car where Omar sat crying.

  “Look, it’s a shitty thing,” Mullaney said. “I’m sorry as hell to be the one to break the news. But it’s your granddad.”

  “Yeah? What about him?”

  “He was killed last night out at his ranch. Along with two others, including an FDLE agent. It’s all over the news.”

  Frisco thought he’d heard wrong. Earl couldn’t be dead. Earl Hammond Jr. wasn’t ever going to die. He was as everlasting as a goddamn slab of granite. He was going to outlive Frisco and everyone Frisco had ever known. It was a lie, a mistake, some kind of fucked-up joke.

  “Hammond?”

  “Who’s the third victim?”

  “Employee. Hispanic guy. Gustav something.”

  “Pinto. Gustavo Pinto?”

  “Yeah, I believe that’s right.”

  “Governor was there, too,” Rizzo said. “His Honor made it out alive, God bless us all. But the media’s already gone into major jerk-off mode.”

  “That’s enough, Rizzo,” the chief said.

  Frisco stared down the avenue where Big Girl had galloped away.

  “Take a few days off, Hammond. Take a week. Whatever you need.”

  Hammond said nothing, still not believing any of it. Earl Hammond Jr. was not dead. Because the Earth was still orbiting the sun and the sky was still overhead, the ground still beneath his shoes. No way was Earl gone. No way in hell.

  He turned from the two men, his eyes on the pavement before him as he marched back to the barn.

  In the guest bathroom at the lodge, Antwan checked himself in the mirror.

  Looking good. Looking sleek and shiny cool. He dabbed a crumb of shmutz fr
om the corner of his right eye, flicked it away.

  Out in the hallway the governor was still groaning. Taking it hard for a country boy who must’ve seen slaughter before, his pet pig or goat getting its throat slashed. Antwan heard him whining to his FDLE people about ten feet from the bathroom, sounding weak and shrill like the man needed a good talking-to, settle him down, take him off to a quiet corner, get up in his face mask and tell him what’s what and what’s not. Which was one of Antwan’s specialties: putting the fear of God in folks.

  Sixty years old, a lard-ass, Herbert Sanchez had once been a Florida Gator back in the leather-helmet days. Offensive tackle, big, dumb, and slow. But point him in the right direction, spell it out, Sanchez could do a half-assed job.

  And Browning Hammond, he was dumb, too, in a different way. One of those boy wonders, he could recite the phone book, but he never knew for sure if you were praising him or mocking his sorry ass. Tone-deaf motherfucker. And since taking over Coquina Ranch, day to day, the boy acted like he’d grown some big-time cojones, which meant Antwan had to do extra duty making Browning think everything was his own clever idea.

  Antwan’s first rule for success: Surround yourself with powerful men, but always be the smartest asshole in the room.

  He took out his BlackBerry, got his thumbs dancing, shooting a text to his homies, the doofus brothers. A haiku directive. Zinged it on its way: “GTFG.”

  Get the fuck gone.

  Signed it like always, “BEG.”

  He waited for a minute and nothing came back. Shitheads were offline.

  He flushed the john, used the mirror for a last check of his handsomeness.

  Then opened the door and headed to his first interrogation of the morning.

  BEG on his face. Big evil grin.

  NINE

  * * *

  THORN’S HANGOVER WAS WRAPPED IN a concussion with maybe a skull fracture thrown into the mix. Every heartbeat was a clap of thunder echoing off canyon walls. Piano wire coated with crushed glass was wrapped around his skull, biting tighter with every breath. Acid scalded his throat, and its fumes filled his lungs. His mouth was packed with fiberglass and cat fur.

  He couldn’t move. He was, to the best of his knowledge, lying on his back. Beneath him the ground rolled like a raft at sea. Above him a few slits of sunlight were stabbing through the gaps between wood planks, piercing the shadows, one of them hitting him in the face, searing his optic nerves like a sadist’s laser beam.

  He wanted to howl, but his own breath gagged him. He wanted to strike back at his tormentor, but there was no one there but him. Thorn, the good host. Thorn, the idiotic party animal. The man who drank himself insensible and let two dimwits abduct him and dump his body into an open grave.

  He’d been hurt before, oh yes. He’d been cut and shot and beaten and gouged and sliced across the palm with a butcher’s knife. But all that was dewy May flowers and tinkling harp song compared to this. This was a hangover direct from Dante. This unspeakable gangbang of pain made death appear before him like sweet succor. A gorgeous harlot from hell bent over Thorn to kiss him with her poisonous black lips, bathe him in her rotten breath, insert her long snake-tongue down his throat.

  Thorn drifted off and drifted back. From high above, the shafts of light shifted and the lasers singed his right cheek. He floated away and floated back. Each time he resurfaced, the dark-hooded maiden with the lethal lips was hovering above him, smiling down, welcoming him to her brand of love. Come along, she whispered. It’s fine here. It’s fine and dandy, and everything is made of candy. Come along, sweet boy, come along with me. I’ll thrill you beyond any thrill you’ve known.

  Later, an odor woke him. A perfume from somewhere long ago, a woman he once loved, or else some forgotten place or time revived by a wisp of scent. He blinked. The woman in her black cowl and inky lips was no longer attending him.

  The slit in the ceiling pointed its death ray farther along the craggy wall. The smell was gorgeous, fruity and rich. He couldn’t place it.

  Couldn’t find its name in the crushed memory banks. But he knew he loved it. This wonderful, lip-smacking aroma.

  Thorn lay on his back, unmoving, working on the riddle of smell. Ruling out perfumes, for this odor was not complex. No war of sweets and sours and salty tangs. This was elemental and basic and true. This was rich and good and beautiful. These were fumes that raised in him the long swoon of hope.

  Then he lulled away into oblivion.

  When he woke again, there were tongs digging into his ice-block skull. Someone was lifting his head, but no one was there.

  He turned his head to the side and saw what first appeared to be a thick icicle. He blinked and cleared his eyes. No, it was a spike of stone. There were several of them rising like pygmy spears from the floor. Stalagmites? He remembered the word. Calcium carbonate, made from some steady drip from the roof of the pit. The one nearest his head rose more than a foot from the floor, as crooked as a witch’s finger.

  Then he caught the smell again, oh, God, the wafting scent from the honeyed center of the earth. The caramel nougat, the pungent bliss of the natural world. It was carrying him higher than his body, offering him a chance at salvation.

  And then, yes, of course, the answer came to him in a hazy rush. It was water. Of course, the wellspring of goodness. It was green and blue and clear and it filled the air around him with clarity and precision, the scent of water.

  Thorn rocked his head off the ground. Took a deep breath, drew in the aroma, drew it into his own broken, ruined body, suffused his bloodstream with it, the blessed scent of water, then he relaxed and slipped back into the melt of dream.

  “This isn’t Thorn. He wouldn’t do this.”

  “It’s his goddamn handwriting,” Rusty said. “You know it is.”

  They were in the living room, Sugarman picking up beer bottles and plastic cups and plates of half-eaten shrimp and cocktail sauce and tossing the recyclables in one can, trash in another—just to have something to do while they made sense of this. It was seven in the morning. Rusty had found the note in the kitchen two hours earlier when the last of the guests were leaving.

  When she brought the note to him, Sugarman was policing the area around the dock and the lagoon. He read it several times before it sunk in. Though truly, he couldn’t say it had sunken fully yet.

  They’d searched the house. All Thorn’s clothes were still in the drawers. His shaving stuff and his few toiletries were in the medicine chest. His fishing rods and gear were all accounted for as were the keys to his VW and his stash of ones and fives and a single twenty that he kept rolled up in a rubber band, tucked into the top right drawer next to his cotton briefs. They roamed the two acres, that part of it that was not covered by impenetrable mangroves or stands of gumbo limbo and mahogany. They walked out to the highway, went a half mile in each direction, checking the tall grass for any signs of him. It seemed silly, an overreaction, but Rusty was panicky, so Sugarman went along, trying to settle her nerves.

  “ ‘I just need some time to think.’ ” Sugarman emptied the dregs of two more beer bottles into the kitchen sink, then came back into the open living room. “Think about what?”

  Rusty was slumped on the couch. Her face was drawn and pale, her white sundress wrinkled and stained with grease, mustard and cocktail sauce from hours of carrying platters of food, dishing out burgers and fish tacos and broiled shrimp and corncobs to the dozens of people who’d showed up.

  “It’s what you say when you’re dumping someone, Sugar. You know that.”

  “You guys been having some kind of problem? Arguing or something?”

  She looked up at Sugarman, squeezed out a grimace, and shook her head.

  “We were doing fine. No problems. At least that’s what I thought.”

  “Okay, so you notice him being moody or off in his head lately?”

  “Just the opposite. Less grumpy than usual. He was happy about the Florida Forever thing. He talked about it a
ll the time. He wanted to come up with more stuff like that. Give money away, become an eco warrior. I haven’t seen him so motivated. I mean, really energized. I haven’t seen him that way before, ever.”

  “Yeah, he’s been a little giddy about it all.”

  “Something’s wrong, Sugar. Maybe it wasn’t the land swap he was giddy about. Maybe it’s another woman.”

  “All right, calm down,” he said. “So he could’ve wandered off. All these people, the crowd, the noise, it probably made him cranky. He had one beer too many and stalked off and curled up somewhere and fell asleep. He’ll stumble in any time now, apologizing all over himself.”

  “The note, Sugar. Why’d he write that if he just wandered off?”

  “Look, I saw the way you two were dancing. He wasn’t about to dump you.”

  “I’ve been on the road so much lately. I’ve turned into a goddamn business geek. Always up in Sarasota, Tallahassee, doing Bates International bullshit. He met somebody else. Go on, Sugar, you can tell me. He met someone. An old flame. Someone new, that girl Michaela who kept looking at him last night. I saw her.”

  In the morning light flooding through the French doors, Rusty’s flesh was sharply illuminated, and for a moment Sugarman was startled by how pale she’d become. All the hours she’d been spending lately in conference rooms had faded the golden tan she’d had for as long as Sugar could remember. Like so many fishing guides in the Keys, Rusty Stabler had spent years in the relentless sun, up on the poling platform spotting fish for her clients. No matter what she did to protect herself, the rays managed to leave their stain. But in only a few months all that was washed away. A change that perhaps suggested others not so visible.

  Sugarman dismissed the thought. Not possible. He knew Thorn. He knew Rusty. They were on solid ground.

  “There’s no one else,” Sugarman said. “Trust me. I’d know if there was. And if I knew, I’d tell you.”

  She stood up.

  “The ring.”

  “What ring?”

  “I noticed it was missing, subconsciously or something, when we were checking his things before.”