‘I don’t know. After you wouldn’t transfer the money, it all went south.’ Danny closed his eyes, opened them. ‘It hurts.’
‘I know.’
‘Please don’t kill me,’ Danny said.
‘I promised I wouldn’t,’ Alex said. He stood, offered the gun to Stoney. ‘You do it.’
‘What?’ Stoney said.
‘Your turn. I’ve done all the risky work. You’ve stolen from me, lied to me. He’s your problem.’
‘Um, really, no, that’s okay. You do it.’ Stoney took a step back.
‘If you don’t shoot him, I’ll shoot you.’
Stoney gulped. ‘Then you won’t get the Eye.’
‘I don’t think it’s on your boat, buddy. I think that’s a little lie you cooked up so I’d stick around to clean up your mess. You wouldn’t let your brother take off on your boat if the Eye was on board. I know you.’ He smiled. ‘Last night I evened the playing field. Moved the rest of the treasure while you slept on your fat ass.’
Stoney stared. ‘You couldn’t have.’
‘Oh, but I did,’ Alex said. ‘Shoot him.’
‘Please, no,’ Danny said. ‘You can’t. I’m a Laffite.’
‘No, you’re not,’ Alex said.
‘Fuck you, I am!’ Danny screamed.
‘I won’t,’ Stoney said.
Alex aimed. ‘Kidneys or heart? Your choice, Stoney. I’d pick heart if I were you.’
‘Yeah, shoot him,’ Danny said. ‘He’s the asshole…’
Stoney took the gun from Alex – he thought it would be heavy, but it was light as air – and pointed it at Danny, who started to scream.
I can’t, Stoney thought. Then the gun pulsed and the top of Danny’s head blew off, sending a red spray across the deck.
Danny stared up at him, eyes full of dismay and surprise, drops of blood clouding the irises.
‘There. Not so hard, was it?’ Alex said, like he was giving back a test with a B plus when a failing grade had been expected.
Stoney thought, Now shoot Alex. Do it. Just do it and all this is over. But he thought of the rest of the treasure, the hundreds of silver and gold coins, and he handed the gun back to Alex without a word.
‘Now. We got two problems. The girlfriend, maybe he killed her.’
‘I don’t think so. I think she got away.’
‘So she’s out in the bay. Creates new risk, man. Changes everything. We gotta hurry. I need your help.’
‘I…’ Stoney stared down at the body. ‘I just killed a man.’ He thought his knees would go weak, he’d vomit. Nothing. He waited for his hands to start shaking but now he felt pretty good. ‘If Claudia knows what Danny knew…’
‘If she’s out drowning in the Gulf, she may not be a problem,’ Alex said.
‘My brother… maybe we should go look for him. Take Danny’s boat and-’
‘No. Not much we can do there. Ben’s either dead by now or they’ll contact us. We got to deal with the problem at hand. Help me below.’
In ten minutes it was done. The deck hosed, the bilges partially opened, the pumps undone, the engines going full steam, Miss Catherine headed back into the bay. She’d be sunk in a few minutes, into the deeper reach of the bay, but probably not entirely submerged. But a mess, without a body.
They wrapped Danny Laffite in double-thick garbage bags, like a giant plastic burrito. Alex taped the ends closed, neat as Christmas wrapping. They put him in the back of the van, locked up the house, climbed into the car.
‘Stoney?’ Alex said. ‘Take a good look at Danny here. You try to fuck me over, you’re burrito boy, the sequel.’
But I’m like you. I’ve killed a man now, Stoney thought, and suddenly I’m not so scared of you. Because I have the Eye, the trump card, and maybe you’re gonna be the next burrito.
But he played safe. ‘I understand you completely, Alex.’
‘You got a good idea where to dump him?’
Stoney nodded. They both sat into the van and roared away from Copano Flats, down the dirt and oyster-shell road.
‘Now,’ Alex said. ‘I got a new plan. Just in case this Claudia shows up.’
Miss Catherine, never a proud ship, sputtered and gushed down into the muddy bottom of St Leo Bay, in a fairly shallow twenty feet. Water poured in, flooding the belowdecks, covering the bed where Gar died, the shattered glass that Claudia used to cut herself free. Miss Catherine tilted hard to port as she sank and the back stateroom flooded entirely, including the armoire holding the photocopied excerpt of John Fanning’s journal that Danny had showed to Claudia. The seawater covered the paper as the armoire canted over, smashed through the closet doors, and rested on its side. Little spot croakers and hardhead catfish swam down the stairs and through the portholes and began exploring this new world.
24
‘Whit,’ said Gooch. ‘I’d like you to meet Helen Dupuy.’ Gooch, back earlier than Whit thought he’d be, by one in the afternoon on Friday, stood in Whit’s courtroom as the last juvenile case wrapped up and a boy, chronically truant, and his embarrassed-to-the-bone parents left.
Whit still was in his robe, sitting at the bench. Gooch had an arm around a young woman, a slight thing, hair a little too frizzed, a hard, worn look to her, but pretty if maybe she ate a little more, slept a little more. Wearing faded jeans and an old blue T-shirt with a little rip in the shoulder that needed mending.
‘Hello, Helen,’ Whit said. ‘I’m Whit Mosley.’ He shook her hand.
They were alone now in the courtroom, Gooch biting his lip, Helen looking like she didn’t know why she was here.
‘I brought Helen back with me from New Orleans,’ Gooch said.
‘I see.’
‘We caught the first flight out this morning,’ Gooch said.
‘You must’ve,’ Whit said. ‘You didn’t tarry long in New Orleans.’
‘I felt we ought to be back here ASAP.’ He glanced at Helen. ‘Helen, I need to talk to His Honor private-like for a minute, if you don’t mind.’ He gave her some change. ‘There’s a Coke machine down the hallway – take a left. Get yourself something to drink and I’ll be there in just a minute.’
‘Nice to have met you, sir,’ she said to Whit.
‘You don’t have to call me sir.’
‘I know better than to mouth off at a judge.’ Helen gave Gooch a smile, went out of the courtroom.
Whit waited until the door shut after her. ‘Who is she, Gooch?’
‘She’s a whore,’ Gooch said, ‘but not a crack whore.’
‘That’s good,’ Whit said. ‘Why on earth did you bring this young woman back from New Orleans with you?’
‘Albert Exley. Ring any bells?’
It did sound familiar. ‘It sounds like Allen Eck.’ Whit told Gooch about the crazy treasure hunter described by Jason Salinger of the Laffite League and that Jimmy Bird was dead.
‘Albert Exley. Allen Eck. Alex,’ Gooch said. ‘His names seem to be shrinking.’
‘So who’s Albert Exley?’
‘The name used by the man who paid cash and stayed at the motel Jimmy Bird called and nearly killed that nice girl that just left.’ Gooch explained what Helen had told him. ‘If he’s the same guy that Stoney Vaughn took to Mexico, then Stoney knows Allen/Albert/Alex. Triple A…’
‘Triple A?’
‘I ain’t calling him by all his aliases,’ Gooch said. ‘Triple A was in touch with Jimmy. And Jimmy used to work for Patch. There’s your connection.’
‘But no proof. Nothing to give to David. Albert Exley and Allen Eck could be two entirely different people.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Gooch said. ‘Names too similar. One guy. Triple A.’
‘So why was he in New Orleans?’
‘From that phone call Helen heard and got shoved through the glass for, I think he was there to kill someone. I’m gonna do some hunting today, get Helen to help me, see if who all in New Orleans went missing or turned up dead during the time he was there. She’s a quick learner.’
‘I’ll bet.’
‘Don’t you be that way, Whitman.’
‘Shouldn’t you have stayed in New Orleans to do this?’
Gooch shook his head. ‘Triple A is here, man. Here. If he’s this guy that Jimmy was in contact with, and he’s the same treasure hunter Stoney knew, he’s either been here or he’s still here. Most of what I was going to look for is in newspaper archives. I can do all that via the Internet.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘I sure as hell wasn’t leaving you alone here, sniffing around. This guy’s a freak.’