“You hold on.” I squeezed his hand. “Cops’ll be here soon. Pretend you’re waiting for a goddamn beer.”
“Yeah, I could use one of those about now.”
I reached for Ponytail’s gun. Then I headed after the man who had ordered my brother killed.
Chapter 106
THE SHOOTING WAS OVER when Ellie and the two other FBI agents got down to the ballroom. Shell-shocked people in tuxes and gowns were milling about outside. Seeing the FBI jackets, everyone pointed inside. “There’s been a shooting. Someone’s been hit.”
Ellie ran into the ballroom, gun drawn. Hotel security personnel were already on the scene. The room was mostly cleared of people. Chairs and tables were overturned, flowers on the floor.
This was bad.
She saw Lawson propped against a wall, a red stain on his shoulder. Carl Breen was kneeling next to him, shouting into a radio. Three other bodies were down. Two looked like Stratton’s men. One was wrapped in a curtain, and looked dead. The other was Ponytail, the pig who had chased Ned. He was out cold and wasn’t going anywhere.
The third Ellie recognized by his orange hair.
Champ!
“My God,” Ellie said, and rushed over. Geoff was lying on his back, with a knee raised. His left side was matted with blood; his face was white, his eyes a little glassy.
“Oh, Jesus, Champ…” Ellie knelt down.
A security man was barking into a radio, calling for EMS. Ellie leaned over and looked Geoff in the eye. “Hang on. You’re gonna be all right.” She put her hand on the side of his face. It was sweaty and cold. She felt her eyes glisten with tears.
“I know, there’s gonna be hell to pay,” Geoff said, managing a smile, “me impersonating a waiter and all.”
Ellie smiled back. She gently squeezed his hand. Then she looked around the ballroom.
“He went after him, Ellie,” Geoff whispered. He shifted his eyes in the direction of the kitchen. “Ned took Ponytail’s gun.”
“Oh, shit,” Ellie said.
“He had to, Ellie.” The Kiwi wet his lips.
“That’s not what I meant,” Ellie said. She checked her weapon, then squeezed Champ’s hand one more time. “I’ve seen Ned with a gun.”
Chapter 107
I BOLTED THROUGH the ballroom’s kitchen doors. The frightened kitchen staff, hearing gunshots outside, were just about hugging the walls, staring at me, unsure who was chasing whom.
I looked at a black guy in a chef’s hat. “A man went through here in a tuxedo. Which way did he go?”
“There’s a door in back,” the chef finally said, pointing. “It leads into the lobby. And upstairs. The main hotel.”
Room 601, I remembered.
I found the stairs and started up. It was worth a chance. Two teenagers appeared, coming down.
“You see a man in a tuxedo, running?” I asked.
They both pointed up the stairs. “Guy has a fricking gun!”
Six flights up, I pushed open a heavy door and came out in a red plush-carpeted hallway. I listened for Stratton’s footsteps. Nothing. Room 601 was to the left, toward the elevators. I headed in that direction.
I turned the corner and saw Stratton myself. He was down at the end of the hall, struggling to jam a plastic key into a door. I didn’t know what was inside. Maybe more help.
“Stratton!” I yelled, pointing the gun at him. He turned and faced me.
One thing almost made me smile, his cool, always-incontrol demeanor twisted into a frantic glare. Stratton’s arm jerked upward and he fired his gun. Flashes careened off the wall near my head. I pointed my gun but didn’t fire. As much as I hated him, I didn’t want to kill him.
But Stratton saw my gun – and he ran down another corridor.
I went after him.
Like a cornered prey, Stratton started trying doors around the elevator landing. They were locked. There was a balcony there, but it led nowhere but outside.
Then a door finally opened – and he disappeared.
Chapter 108
THE STRANGEST THOUGHT flashed through my mind as, gun in hand, I made my way up a darkened concrete staircase, following Dennis Stratton.
Years ago. Back in Brockton. I was wrestling with Dave.
I think I was fifteen; he must’ve been ten. He and one of his goofy buddies had been making idiotic chimp noises while I was trying to make out with this girl, Roxanne Petrocelli, in Buckley Park, just down from our house. I chased him down by the jungle gyms, and had him pretty good, maybe the last time I could ever take Dave. I had his arms and neck pinned back in a kind of full nelson. I kept saying, “Uncle? Uncle?” hoping he’d give up. But the tough guy wouldn’t budge. I kept pushing harder, watching him grow redder in the face. I thought if I pushed any more, I would kill him. Finally Dave cried out, “Okay, Uncle,” and I let him go.
For a second he just sat there, breathing heavily, the color coming back to his cheeks; then he charged at me with all his might and knocked me on my back. As he rolled on top of me, Dave was smirking. “Uncle Al thinks you’re a dumb sonuvabitch.”
I don’t know why that popped into my head as I climbed after Stratton. But it did. One of those weird connections in the brain when you feel in danger.
The stairs rose right up into one of the Breakers’ enormous towers. The stairwell was dark, but outside, huge floods sent chasms of brilliant light shooting into the night. I didn’t see Stratton anywhere – but I knew he was up there.
I kept hearing, like a distant drumming in my head, Uncle Al thinks you’re a dumb sonuvabitch.
I pushed open a metal door and came out onto the concrete floor of the hotel roof. The scene was almost surreal. Palm Beach laid out all around. The lights of the Biltmore, the Flagler Bridge, apartment buildings over in West Palm. Huge floods, arranged like howitzers, channeled massive beams of blinding light at the towers and the hotel’s facade.
I looked around for Stratton. Where the hell was he? Tarps and storage sheds and TV dishes, all in shadow. I felt a chill shoot through me, as though I were exposed.
Suddenly a gunshot rang out, a bullet ricocheting off the wall just over my head. It had missed me by inches.
“So what is it, Mr. Kelly? Have you come for revenge? Is it sweet?”
Another shot cracked into the tower wall. I squinted into the beams of light. I couldn’t find him anywhere.
“You should’ve done what you promised. We’d both be in a better spot. But it’s that thing about your brother, isn’t it? That’s what you Kellys seem to have in spades. Your stupid pride.”
I crouched low and tried to find him. Another shot rang out, clipping the tarp above my head.
“Getting closer to the end,” Stratton cackled, almost laughing. “Seems we did have one thing in common, though, right, Ned? Funny how our conversation just never got around to her.”
My blood started to boil. Tess.
“She was one sweet piece of ass. Now, those friends of yours and your brother – that was just business. But Tess… That one I regret. You, too, I bet. Ahhh, she was just another whore.”
If he was trying to get me mad, it was working. I jumped out from behind the cover and fired two angry rounds in the direction of Stratton’s voice. A floodlight shattered.
A shot rang back. I felt a searing pain lance my shoulder. My hand shot to the wound. The gun slid out of my hand.
“Oh, jeez, Ned” – Stratton showed himself from behind a light trestle – “careful there, buddy.”
I stared at the bastard. He had that supercilious grin I’d grown to detest, along with his shiny bald brow.
And that was when I heard it. The faintest thwack-thwakthwak beating in the distance. Coming closer, getting louder.
Then off in the sky, a set of flashing lights was approaching, pretty fast. A chopper.