Like Natalie had said about her, she looked like a younger, sexier Cruella De Vill.
And Laraque…What I could see of his face behind the dark glasses…Natalie had told me he wasn’t a tall man. He wasn’t muscular. He wasn’t physically imposing in any way. Yet the unspoken power that emanated from him…
This was him. I clenched my fists. This was him.
“You have no idea what we went through to get here,” Rhapsody said. “I hope you’re ready to make it worth our trouble.”
The bag around her shoulder was unzipped, in perfect position for her right hand to reach into it. I had no doubt about what was inside.
“Remember one thing,” I said. “If you shoot me now, you don’t get your guns back.”
“Who said anything about shooting you, Alex? We came here to talk.”
I looked at Laraque. He hadn’t said a word yet.
“So talk,” I said. “I’m going to ask you something. I want the truth.”
He didn’t say anything. He didn’t move.
“Please take the sunglasses off,” I said.
Nothing. He was a statue.
“He doesn’t wish to take them off,” Rhapsody said.
“I’m not talking to you,” I said, without looking at her. “I want to ask you one question, and I want to see your eyes when you answer me.”
Another long moment. Something flew over our heads. Either a bird out late or a bat out early.
“Take them off,” I said.
A movement, finally. He lowered his head a fraction of an inch. Then he reached up with his right hand and took off his glasses. He put them in his coat pocket.
As I stepped closer to him, I could sense Rhapsody shifting the bag around her shoulder. I was one second away from dying.
I didn’t care.
“Natalie Reynaud was one of the police officers who met with you in the hotel room,” I said.
He looked me in the eyes. There was just enough light left to see his face clearly.
“She and her partner were both shot dead. I want to know if you were responsible for that.”
His eyes, a greenish shade of brown. Hazel, they call it. Although in the dying light it looked more like a dull shade of gold.
“Did you have them killed, Laraque? Tell me.”
He blinked once. Twice. Slowly, he shook his head.
You clear your mind. You ask the question. You listen, you watch. Your gut tells you if it’s the truth.
“Tell me,” I said. “Say it. Did you have them killed?”
“No,” he said. “No, I didn’t.”
I watched him. I remembered what Natalie had said about him, about the fear she felt just being in the same room with him.
Something happened then. His eyes moved. He started to look over at Rhapsody. Then he stopped.
It happened that quickly. But it was all wrong.
Forget if he was lying or telling the truth. In that instant, I knew something even more important. Natalie Reynaud would never be afraid of this man.
“You’re not Laraque,” I said.
If there was any doubt, his reaction was all I needed. The eyes went wide before he tried to regain control. “What are you talking about?”
“You’re not Laraque. What’s going on here?”
The gun came out of Rhapsody’s bag. It was just like some of the guns I had seen on the boat, an automatic with a suppressor fixed to the barrel. The damned thing was so long, it was a wonder she could get it out of the bag so fast.
“Okay, enough of this,” she said. “Just tell us where the merchandise is.”
“Where’s Laraque?”
“Never mind him. You need to deal with me now.”
“I told you I wouldn’t talk to anybody else.”
“You don’t understand what I’m trying to tell you. Laraque is out of the game. You can’t talk to him.”
“First thing you can do, you can take Mr. Dress-Up here back to Canada. Was this Laraque’s idea, by the way? Send a stooge over here to take his place? Is that the kind of man he is?”
“Alex, listen to me…”
“Second thing, you tell the real Laraque he has twenty-four more hours to get his ass over here.”
“You see, that’ll be hard to do, on account of his being very dead right now. Unless you’d care to join him. Maybe you can talk to him on the other side. I don’t know.”
“What are you talking about? Who killed him?”
“Who do you think, genius?”
“You did? Why would you do that?”
She shook her head. “I know you’re a man, so I’ll try to talk slow here. I killed the boss so I could take over the operation. You understand me?”
“That’s not a good enough reason,” I said. “Not compared to mine.”
“Whatever you say, Alex. Just get over it, because we’re not joking around here. Why don’t you wise up and tell us where the stuff is right now, before we really hurt you?”
“Who’s we? You and your caddy here?”
“No, not him. Jacques is my driver. He’s quite harmless.”
“Then who are you talking about?”
“And just for the record, this whole fake Laraque thing, it wasn’t my idea. I thought it was a little over the top myself.”
“Whose idea was it? Who are you talking about?”
“I think that’s your cue, Babe,” she said. She raised her chin, said it loud enough for anyone else to hear, anyone who might be waiting in the trees.
I heard the footsteps. I turned and saw the man. I recognized him in a second.
It was Cap.
Chapter Twenty-two
He had a gun just like Rhapsody’s, with the same long suppressor screwed onto the end of the barrel. He walked over to me with a smile, like he was renewing his acquaintance with a long-lost friend.
“Alex and I have come to an agreement,” Rhapsody said. “Your idea was ridiculous.”
“Is that right?” He moved closer to me, never taking his eyes from mine. He put his gun in his back pocket for a moment, just long enough to pat me down and to take Leon’s gun out of my jacket pocket. I waited for him to go down each of my legs, to find the ankle holster.
But he didn’t.
“Alex saw right through it,” she said. “Jacques never had a chance.”
“The man wanted Laraque,” Cap said. He transferred Leon’s gun to his right hand and threw it in a high arc. It splashed in the middle of the channel. Then he started to walk around me in a slow circle. “So we gave him Laraque. I thought it would be easier this way.”
The fake Laraque put his hands up. “Hey,” he said, “you didn’t tell me this guy would be here.”
“Shut up, Jacques,” she said.
“No, this guy’s crazy. I didn’t sign up for this.”
“Just shut the fuck up.”
“Seriously. I’ll let you guys work this out. I’ll be right over here.”
“You’re not going anywhere.”
“The hell I’m not. I just quit.”
Cap turned from me and shot him twice in the throat. Shoomp shoomp, two muffled shots like the sound a nail gun would make. Me on the roof of my cabin, nailing down a shingle. That was the exact sound.
At first, the man showed nothing but surprise. He tried to speak, but couldn’t make a sound, his vocal cords obliterated with everything else as the blood rushed down the front of his coat. He went to his knees, looking at the ground like he still couldn’t quite fathom what had happened to him. He tried to speak again. Then he pitched sideways and spent the next few seconds staring up at both of us.
“Was that necessary?” she said.
“You told me he wasn’t even a good driver.”
I watched the man die on the ground. It occurred to me, maybe this was one of his reasons for shooting him in front of me, so I’d know exactly what he was capable of.
“I thought you were long gone,” I said to him. “After you tried to trick me into going after Mr. Gray.”
“What’s this?” she said. “This sounds interesting.”
“Never mind,” he said. He kept circling me. “It was just an idea, a spur of the moment thing.”
“I thought you weren’t afraid of Gray,” she said.
“I just put a bullet in his head two days ago. Does that sound like somebody who’s afraid of anybody?”