“Look,” said Guillermo. “It’s not loaded. So make her happy and pull the trigger.”
Andy pulled the trigger.
Bang.
Guillermo’s eyes went wide. He grabbed his neck, blood running between his fingers.
“Son of a bitch!”
He looked at Juanita. “Madre, you left a round in the chamber. Have to be more careful.”
“I know.”
“Well, it’s just another flesh wound, like I don’t have enough.” He grabbed paper towels. “But this is getting ridiculous.”
“Guillermo,” said Juanita, “when I said ‘I know,’ I meant I know I left a round in the chamber.”
“What? Why?”
“You used to be magnificent. What’s happened to you?”
“But I’ve always done everything you asked.”
She turned to Andy. “Shoot him. This time steady it with two hands.”
Andy stretched out both arms. Guillermo backed up and crashed into a china hutch. Adrenaline. Liquor haze parted.
“Madre,” shouted Guillermo, lighting up with recognition, “that’s Andy! Andy McKenna!”
“Andy?”
“I recognize him from the hotel room with Ramirez.”
Juanita shook her head. “You’re just saying that now to save your hide. If it really was Andy, you would have mentioned it when we first came in.”
“That was because of the whiskey, but now I’m sure!”
“You disappoint me.”
“Just listen,” said Guillermo.
Juanita smiled at her new recruit. “You’re not Andy, are you?”
He shook his head.
She looked back at Guillermo. Out the side of her mouth: “Shoot him.”
Instead, she felt the barrel of a Glock against her temple.
“I’m not Andy. But I am Billy. Billy Sheets, son of the mother you killed. And the father you tried to.“ He raised the gun and cracked her in the side of the head.”Now go around the table and stand next to him.”
A woody station wagon skidded up the driveway of a hacienda south of Miami.
Serge ran through the front door with gun drawn. “Andy? Are you here?…”
He turned the corner into the dining room. “Andy, don’t shoot!”
“Fuck it.” He steadied the gun in two hands like Juanita had instructed.
“Easy with that trigger,” said Serge. “You’re shaking.”
“Good!… You two ready to die?”
“Let’s calm down and talk,” said Serge. “This isn’t the Andy I know. You haven’t shot yet, which means something.”
“Yes, I have.”
Guillermo pointed at his neck.
Serge raised his eyebrows. “Okay, but you haven’t shot twice.”
“Shut up!” Andy stretched his arms to the fullest.
“Don’t make any sudden moves,” said Serge. “I’m coming up behind you.”
“What do you care? I thought you wanted ’em dead almost as much as me.”
“Not by your hand. Mine are already dirty.”
“He’s crazy!” said Guillermo.
“You ain’t seen nothing yet,” said Serge. He stepped beside the boy and slowly reached. “Carefully let go of the trigger and I’m going to take the gun, okay?”
Andy stood rigid. As Serge’s hand grabbed the top of the barrel, an index finger uncurled.
The youth let go the rest of the way and fell crying into one of the dining table’s chairs. “I let my family down.”
“Just the opposite.” Serge took aim. “Where’d you leave the Challenger?”
“Up the street.”
“Get in it, go back to the motel and forget everything.”
“But-”
“I’ve got it from here. This isn’t your turf. Now go.”
Andy stood up and went out the front door.
Serge motioned with the gun. “Have a seat.” The pair slid forward and pulled out chairs.
Serge grabbed his own on the other side of the table. They sat facing each other.
“What are you doing?” asked Juanita.
“Waiting for dark.” Serge leaned back, bracing the gun against his stomach. “Now no more talking.”
FOUR A. M.
“Where are we?”
Serge poked the gun into Guillermo’s back. “Keep walking.”
The air atop the Miami skyline was electric with decorative floodlights bathing the sides of banks and offices. A bridge over the bay glowed blue underneath like a car pimped with neon tubes.
A different story down in the dark streets south of the MacArthur Causeway.
Underpass world. Shopping carts, malt liquor bottles. The lobster shift of bums begged at red lights.
Serge kept the pistol aimed as he approached yet another construction site and pushed down a loose stretch of chain-link fence that had previously been vandalized by graffiti artists. He waved them through, then picked up the gym bag at his feet and followed.
“What’s in the bag?” asked Guillermo.
“You’ll find out soon enough.”
Chapter Fifty-Three
MONDAY
Eight A.M.
Morning rush, downtown Miami.
Traffic crawled. Honking. People on phones, shaving, applying makeup.
Movement began at one of the high-rise condos under construction.
Sixty stories above Biscayne Boulevard, a worker sat in a small control booth with green-tinted windows. The booth slid along grooved tracks in the arm of a massive crane.
When the operator was in position, the booth stopped. A lever went forward.
Down on street level, a temporary fence with NO T RESPASSING signs surrounding the work site. A steel girder began rising from the ground.
Tied beneath the beam were two long stretches of thick rope that weren’t supposed to be there. The other ends trailed behind large piles of construction material and debris concealing the view to the road.
When the ascending beam reached the second floor, the rope pulled two people to their feet.
The feet left the ground.
Madre and Guillermo were three stories up before anyone noticed. Then everyone noticed. They screamed and waved at the crane operator, who smiled and waved back. People called police on cells; others ran along the fence, trying to find someone in a hard hat on the other side. The rest simply looked up in horrified shock.
Madre and Guillermo passed the fourth floor, hands tied behind their backs, kicking and wiggling at the ends of their nooses.
By the fifth floor, wiggling became spasmodic twitches. Madre went limp by the seventh, but Guillermo held on for two more.
The girder kept going up, higher than most of the neighboring buildings, which no longer blocked a stiff onshore wind at that height.
Word finally reached the crane operator. A level yanked back. The girder shuddered to a stop. Fifty stories above the boulevard-with magnificent views of Key Biscayne and South Beach, all the way to distant Fort Lauderdale-Madre and Guillermo swung side by side in the breeze.
Epilogue
GULF COAST OF FLORIDA
The Final Four.
Serge, Coleman, City and Country.
Not much had changed.
“Dammit, Serge! You said you were taking us to a fantastic resort!”
“Yeah,” added Country. “With an incredible pool.”
Serge innocently held out his hands. “What? You don’t like it?”
“This place?” said City.
“But it’s a historic mom-and-pop!” Serge looked up with a glow in his eyes. “The motel is one of the last shining examples of 1950s parasol architecture.”
“It’s in the middle of nowhere!”
“Actually between Fort Myers and Sarasota.”
“Same thing.”
“That’s why heritage survives! Developers haven’t had a chance to strip-mine this section of the Tamiami yet. Don’t you like the pool?”
“It’s hot,” said City, wading up to her stomach.
“I’m going back to the room!” said Country.
The door opened to number 31. Coleman was already there, after getting tossed from the pool for doing cannonballs.
“Make you a deal,” said Serge. “Watch the world-premiere screening of my spring break documentary, and I’ll take you to one of the best dinners of your life.”
The women looked at each other, then warily back at Serge.
“Swear?”
Serge held up two fingers like a Boy Scout.