Fourteen
“There’s someone under the house.”
“What?”
For a moment I didn’t compute what Trey had said to me. His voice was little more than a whisper. I stuck my head round the kitchen door and stared at him across the narrow hallway.
He was sitting with his back ramrod straight against the open bathroom door, hardly daring to move more than his eyes.
“There’s someone under the house,” he insisted. “I can hear them.”
And when I listened, I could hear them, too. Nothing overt, just the faintest cautious scuff and slither of someone trying to ease their way into a position. I felt my mouth dry so that my tongue stuck to the roof of it. So, Oakley man was trying to keep me talking while his men outflanked us.
I looked at the floor, as if I was going to be able to spot some sign of this invasion like a lump under a carpet. I’d known when I’d first seen Henry’s house that it was constructed off the ground, hence the rotting trellis round the bottom of the outside but it hadn’t occurred to me that the gap might be big enough for a person to squeeze into. If I had I might have considered it as an escape route for Trey.
And now, it seemed, it was too late for that.
Somebody had beaten me to it.
“Get into the bath and keep your head down,” I said. The bath tub was old-fashioned enamelled steel and a heavy enough grade to offer some measure of protection – either from the side or from below.
I waited until Trey was safely in, then edged back across the hallway, trying to move very quietly. When I checked out of the kitchen window again, only the Hispanic man was visible, covering the front. There was no sign of Oakley man or Ginger.
Maybe now would be a good time to make a break for it . . .
I thought of Oakley man’s last words. So we were doomed anyway. The defeat tasted dirty, like spoiled food. Better to go out fighting, even with a pitiful supply of ammunition.
“Trey?”
He lifted just the top of his head over the rim of the bath and gave me a What now?look.
“Change of plan,” I said, urgent. I jerked my head towards the front door. “Let’s go.”
I waited until he’d climbed out and moved up close behind me. “If anything happens,” I said carefully, glancing at him, “you run like hell and you keep running, do you hear me? You don’t stop and you don’t come back, no matter what, understand?”
He stared at me, then nodded, reluctant, even a little sullen.
“Try and stay away from the police if you can,” I said and on impulse added, “Go to Walt and Harriet’s place on the beach. They’ll take care of you.” And I realised as I said it that it was true. I trusted the canny old man without quite knowing why.
I also realised, in a detached kind of way, that I wasn’t expecting to get out of this alive. So, I’d fooled Oakley man once but that was when he wasn’t expecting me to be up to the job. I’d fooled the two men in the Buick, too – I could only assume they were his accomplices – when they hadn’t been expecting me to be armed. But now he had the measure of me, for what it was worth.
I stood in that dingy hallway and felt the full reality of it settle on me, like a sense of calm. I was twenty-six years old. I always thought I’d feel more emotion at the prospect of my own death, when I’d thought about it at all. I wondered if I would have been approaching it with such equanimity if I’d known Sean was out there somewhere, moving heaven and earth to get to me.
I tried to reach out, get a feel for him. I’d hoped for some kind of connection, some suspicion that he was alive or dead, but there was nothing. A big empty void where once he’d engaged some space in my mind. Perhaps there would be a time to grieve for him later.
If I made it.
I eased the locks clear and opened the newly ventilated door just enough to peer through the gap. Still the only person I could see in front of the house was the Hispanic man with the earring. His attention was focused off to my left, towards the corner of the house.
The blood had dried on my hands but new sweat made it tacky again. I took a moment to wipe both palms down the sides of my trousers, then yanked the door wide.
I kicked the screen door open and came out at a kind of sideways run across the porch, leading with one shoulder and the SIG straight out in front of me. I sighted on the centre of the Hispanic man’s body mass, and felt the muscles in my forearms tense as I began to take up the pressure on the trigger.
I knew I’d come out fast, but my opponent seemed to be faster, swinging his gun up with the kind of easy movement that suggested long hours of practice and a professional familiarity with firearms.
Minute pieces of detail from that moment stuck in my mind. The fact that the man’s pencil moustache had been trimmed slightly longer on one side than the other, making his face appear lopsided. The fact that he wore a wedding ring on his left hand, with an ornate turquoise signet ring on the finger next to it. The fact that his gun was a 9mm semiautomatic, a nice piece gleaming with care and pride.
The shot sent me reeling. It seemed far too loud for a handgun, an almost deafening report that I knew I hadn’t fired. I’d always been told you never hear the shot that gets you but if this was it, they were wrong. You heard it twice as loud.
And then it hit me that I wasn’t.
Hit, I mean.
I couldn’t say the same for the Hispanic man. He staggered a couple of steps backwards, tottering in much the same way Scott had done. The front of his shirt was red where only a blink before it had been white. The lower tail of his tie was ripped away and missing but I hadn’t seen it go. He looked down at the gaping mess that had been his own abdomen with an expression of puzzled surprise on his face.
The man made a last laborious, heavy attempt to bring his gun up again but the weight of it defeated him. It was all too difficult, too tiring. His feet tangled, twisting him as he fell so he described an almost graceful pirouette and dropped from sight behind Henry’s old Corvette.
And directly below my own feet, under the porch, came the unmistakable sound of a fresh cartridge being jacked into the chamber of a pump-action shotgun.
I stared. The porch was only wooden planking. A shotgun blast would come up through it like it was paper. I wheeled, grabbing Trey and shoving him back into the house. The screen door hadn’t even had time to slam behind us.
I hit the locks on the front door and hustled the boy back into the bathroom. This time, I climbed into the bathtub with him and we both squatted there, tense and breathless.
Who the hell was under the porch with a shotgun? Not one of Oakley man’s team, that was for certain. Not unless he was having severe communication problems with his staff. So who?
For a second I remembered the claims that Henry had CIA connections. Supposing he hadn’t been entirely bullshitting about that? Supposing his murder had rung alarm bells somewhere and sparked a reaction that included such a retaliatory attack?
Almost as soon as the thought had formed, I dismissed it. If that was the case they would have taken the Hispanic man out of play before Trey and I ever set foot outside the house. And they would have brought something a little quieter to do it with. Shotguns were not the kind of gun you were likely to take with you on a covert operation of this type. House clearance and intimidation, yes, but for a surgical strike after a hit? I didn’t think so. Too messy.
Outside, I heard voices, raised but not far enough to hear the words, only the tone. Anger, mainly, and not a little measure of surprise. I realised there were two men speaking, voices raised. It sounded like Oakley man and another who could only have been Ginger. He hadn’t anyone else left to argue with.