Leonard Guchinski. Now he had a name.
Alex applied the blond hair coloring, forcing himself to be consistent and careful, and while he waited twenty minutes to shower it off before finishing the treatment, he checked and rechecked the clips in his gun. He suspected he would need several. It was just shaping up to be that kind of day.
‘I got some business to tend to today,’ Gooch said. ‘Whit’s arranged for you to meet a guy who does criminal sketches. Describe Alex to him. He’s driving in from Corpus. Then the folks on the boat next to us, they invited you to sail with them while I’m gone.’ He slathered cream cheese on his bagel. ‘They’re friends of Whit’s, too.’
‘Business. About Alex?’
‘Maybe,’ Gooch said.
‘Do you know where Alex is?’
‘Nope.’
‘But you know something, Gooch.’ She frowned.
It was a little crazy. This girl could read him easier than most people, whom he presented the blank page to, and he’d only known her a couple of days. ‘I just think you’ll have fun with Duff and Trudy on their boat for a few hours.’
‘Duff? Trudy?’
‘Don’t hold their names against them. They’re bankers. They got to have names like that. FDIC requirement.’
‘Did Whit tell them what I am?’
‘What are you, Helen?’
‘I’m a…’ She stopped, as though the word had gotten harder to say.
‘See. It’s a blank. Fill it in with what you like.’
‘Do you not want to have sex with me because you think you’re gonna fix me?’
‘I haven’t known you long enough to have sex with you,’ he said.
She shook her head. ‘You’re a strange man, Gooch.’
‘You’re not the first to notice.’
30
This fake kidnapping isn’t going to work, Stoney thought.
He had hardly slept, and he picked up the phone once, to call home, to talk to Ben. But then he thought the phones might be tapped. And maybe Ben was at the hospital.
Facing the walls of the cottage, he wondered if prison would be so very different. He thought of his friends, the little social-climbing debs he got to bed, his house. He was a deal maker – it was how he made his money – and the long night made him think that perhaps he should cut a deal. The odds were shifting. Lucy was unstable. Alex was cracking. And if there was a woman in town who knew Alex from the time in New Orleans, well. He thought Alex was jumping at shadows.
He tried to construct a series of lies that would cover his ass more thoroughly, but could stitch nothing credible together that left him clean enough. He picked up the phone to call the police; no, he couldn’t do it. Not the police, they weren’t deal makers. A lawyer, yes. A lawyer to negotiate the deal. A high-powered lawyer.
He paced back and forth, trying to work up the courage. The worst was Danny. If he could convince people Alex had killed Danny, well, then… but the thought of not haying the gold, the Eye, made his chest hurt. Take it for the value, maybe, just leave the country and The knock at the door made him jump. Alex. The door had no peephole, and the small windows meant you couldn’t easily peek out of the curtains without giving yourself away.
So Stoney Vaughn opened the door. Not Alex. A big, ugly hulk of a guy stood there and he belted Stoney hard in the chest, landing him on his back on the floor. Breathing was a memory. He stared up at the ugly guy.
‘Mr Vaughn? How you doing? No, don’t get up. Don’t talk.’ The man closed the door behind him. ‘Catch your breath. You gonna puke? That’s a nice rug. Let me find a bucket. No? You okay?’
He picked Stoney up by the neck, like a schoolboy hauled by the scruff to the principal’s office, dumped him on the couch, pulled a wicked, fat black foreign gun out of the back of his pants and let Stoney see it.
‘Puh… puh…’
‘Please? I admire politeness. Are you asking me to please not shoot you?’
Stoney managed a nod.
‘I won’t. At least not yet. Not for the next two minutes. But we’re gonna talk – you understand me?’ The ugly man leaned down close. ‘My name’s Gooch. I think you’re trying to fuck around with friends of mine. You see this gun? That kills you in a second. Easy. You see this fist?’ Gooch held up a big, thick-fingered, closed hand that looked more like an oversize hammer than a fist. ‘That kills you slow. It takes its time. After about, oh, twenty or thirty punches, when the bones are all broken up and starting to stick out the skin, and I’m still pounding on you and my knuckles get abraded and I get in a fucking foul mood.’ Gooch smiled. ‘You don’t want the old fist of death, do you?’
Stoney shook his head, got the force of his breath back with a shudder. ‘How… how…’
‘Did I find you? That’s what I want to talk about. You and Lucy Gilbert.’
Stoney’s mouth moved.
‘And why you’re holed up in a cottage when lots and lots of folks are missing you right now.’
‘I… I didn’t do anything wrong,’ he managed.
‘Who knows you’re here?’
‘Lucy… that’s all.’
‘How about a guy who likes first names beginning with A?’
‘What?’
‘Alex. Albert. Allen. What’s his name this week? Asshole?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about-’
Gooch cocked the gun, jammed it into Stoney’s temple. ‘This is a Soviet-made Shootyadickov-69. Very sensitive. It misfires a lot.’ He pressed it harder, as if trying to reach Stoney’s brains. ‘Are you willing to put that much trust in Soviet engineering?’
‘Alex! His name is Alex Black. Oh Christ.’ Stoney’s eyes bugged.
‘Is the treasure here?’
‘No.’
‘Where is it?’
‘I… I don’t know. Alex has it.’
‘Where’s Alex?’
‘He moves around a lot,’ Stoney said. ‘I don’t know where he is.’
‘I don’t believe you, Stoney. The Shootyadickov doesn’t believe you.’
‘I don’t have it – please, mister.’
Gooch studied him, seemed to think about it. He dragged Stoney over to the phone, placed a call, waited, hung up, called another number, waited, said, ‘It’s Gooch, call me,’ hung up. He pushed Stoney back to the couch.
‘C’mon, we’re leaving.’
‘You… can’t kidnap me…’
‘Don’t whine. You’re already kidnapped, right?’
Gooch hauled up Stoney, pushed him through the door. He pulled him away from the cottage, into a dense grove of twisted live oaks beyond the thick grasses above the beach. A beaten red pickup, a big Ford, was parked there.
‘This is how it is,’ Gooch said. ‘I have absolutely no compunction about shooting you. You bug me, I’m firing. You’re going to sit on the floor, hands where I can see them. You behave, you’re going to be fine. I’m kind of the opinion you’re not the big bad shark in the sea, is that right?’
‘Alex… Alex is bad,’ Stoney said. ‘He’ll fucking kill you.’ He wanted to say, Yeah, well, I killed a man, but suddenly saw it wouldn’t intimidate this guy. Wouldn’t make him blink.
Gooch shoved him into the truck, revved the engine, tore out of the grove of oaks onto the road. He was a quarter mile from the highway when a beige van turned in hard, headed toward them.
‘What does Alex drive?’ Gooch asked Stoney, still crouched on the floor.
‘Beige van,’ Stoney said.
‘Hello there,’ Gooch said. He leaned out the window, opened fire. Gravel and crushed shell exploded from the road near the tires, sparks flew from the end of the van.
‘Jesus!’ Stoney yelled.
Gooch floored the truck and despite its beaten appearance the engine roared into sweet, precise power. The road was rough – part of the rustic charm – and Gooch left the highway, tearing through a grassy field, taking a hard right, careening down a rocky swath of weed and stone and roaring out onto a thin strip of beach itself.
‘Did you know it’s legal to drive on the beach in Texas?’ Gooch said. ‘Fascinating. Against the law most places.’