The big one placed another dead cat on Smoke’s chest. He took a moment to get it positioned just so. Then he stood up. Smoke pushed the cat off. This time it was Minefield, so named because he was the three legged cat in the bunch. Three down and three to go. He looked around. The others appeared to have scrammed. Good for them.
The big guy settled into the chair. He pulled out an emery board and began filing his nails. “Smoke, she called you. Is that some kind of nick-name?”
“What does it sound like?”
The kid smiled. He rolled his eyes slowly. “Son, you’re gonna learn to appreciate how patient I been with you thus far. Like that cat of yours…” he gestured at the crumpled remains of Minefield. “I took all that time to get it just so. It was a piece of art how I had it. Then you knock it away. What you think of that, Fingers?”
Fingers flashed a silly grin. “I think it’s rude.”
“Rude. That’s exactly the word I would have picked.”
The dark man, Cruz, came out of the bathroom. He was not smiling. Another lit cigarette dangled from his mouth.
“O’Malley. I see you’re awake. Anything you’d like to tell us about your life up until now? Like, for instance, what you did with about two and a half million dollars you took from Roselli when you killed him.”
Smoke lay back on the linoleum and sighed. “I’m telling you. You have the wrong man. My name is James Dugan. I’m retired. I used to be an engineer for Sikorsky down in Connecticut. Now I make toys and adaptive devices for retarded children.”
Cruz nodded at the big kid.
“Roland?”
Slowly, the big man moved his bulk out of the chair. He flexed his triceps as he did so. He cracked his knuckles. He smiled.
“Friend, I’m starting to get bored, you see what I mean?”
Then the pain came again. And when the pain came, Roselli was dead and Smoke was holed up in a motel all the way out in Greenport, Long Island, waiting for the bad weather to come in, with all that money stashed in a satchel under the bed. The urge was there, to take that cold, hard cash and spread it out all over the bed and just lay in it and roll around in it, but he fought off the urge. When the storm came, he finally made the call, yeah, Walter O’Malley making reservations on Block Island, half way between the North Fork and Rhode Island. Yeah, I’m coming in on my own boat, is that okay? The weather? Oh, it’ll be a wet one, but I’ve been in worse than this. Sure, I’ll see you tonight.
Then he was out on the Boston Whaler, in the dark and the rain and the wind. Whitecaps topped the waves, the foam tearing off and blowing in his face. He went inside and set the charges in the cabin. He set them against the hull, one on each side, wet hair dripping in his eyes, Smoke working feverishly as the boat rocked and listed. He lowered the red fiberglass dinghy, no ordinary dinghy, a sturdy survival boat that would rock and roll. He loaded up and powered out of there. The Whaler was on its own.
He heard the muffled blasts moments later, and then the Whaler was gone. And O’Malley was gone. And bedraggled Dugan raced across heavy seas toward New London, where his car was waiting like a trusty dog, man’s best friend. He could take that car and run anywhere. Anywhere at all, and wherever he went, it would never be far enough. So when he found a place he liked, he stopped. He stopped way too soon.
Sometime later, Smoke opened his eyes.
His wrists were cuffed together, and they were attached to a rope slung over one of the exposed pipes that ran along the ceiling. The whole thing was pulled just tight enough that his toes barely touched the ground. He looked up at his hands. They had turned purple while he was passed out. He knew he had lost some teeth. In fact, he had seen them come out. It was possible that he had some bruised ribs as well. At least bruised. Maybe broken.
A new and terrible thought had occurred to him. “How’d you get in here?” he gasped to nobody in particular.
The one they called Fingers floated in front of his face. He grinned. His face looked like a carved up Jack o’ lantern. In his own way, he was as bad as the other two.
“We talked to the housekeeper.”
Shit. Lorena. She had been swept up in this, too.
“Where is she now?” Smoke said. He felt his Adam’s apple bob. He was afraid of the answer, afraid of everything now, afraid of what he had wrought with his goddamned stupid laziness. He had played a role, he had pretended to be a normal person, and then he had come to believe in the role himself. He had lied, and then he had bought the lie.
Stupid.
“She’s sleeping, brother,” Fingers said. He raised his eyebrows.
Smoke went numb.
Time passed as he hung there. He noticed the shadows were growing long outside. The light was starting to fade from the sky, and from the room. Death would be a relief of sorts. It was the money, of course. That was why they were here, and it was the only thing keeping him alive. They wanted to know where the money was.
It seemed like an effort even to blink.
There was pain everywhere in his body, and now that he thought about it, that was probably a good thing. They hadn’t severed his spinal cord, for instance. If ever he got away from these guys, he’d still be able to walk.
The beginning of a plan began to form.
Cruz stood in front of him. “You’re a trooper, O’Malley. I’ll give you that much. You can take a beating. We’re getting tired of it, actually. You see, we don’t like beatings. They’re slow. They don’t work on old-school tough guys like you. But our orders were not to hurt you too bad. You see, we had to keep you presentable in case that money was in the bank somewhere and we needed you to go in and get it.”
He shrugged, as if to himself. “But I guess it didn’t work. So when it gets dark out, we’re all going to take a little ride down to New York. You’re going to talk to some people down there about what you’ve been up to these past three years. Then you’re going to officially retire.”
“Well, that’s nice to know,” Smoke said. “I’ve been looking forward to retirement.”
Cruz nodded to the other two. They untied the rope from the ceiling and Smoke collapsed in a heap on the floor. The back of his head hit the worn floor hard, but it was just another pain to add to the list. Still, he faded in and out for a few seconds.
Cruz hunkered down next to him. He stood in a squat like a farmer, like he might run his hands through the deep rich soil. Smoke figured he couldn’t stand like Cruz was doing now even on his best days.
Cruz’s voice took on a conspiratorial tone.
“They’re going to kill you. You know that already. What you don’t know, and what you’re probably wondering, is why they’re bothering to bring you down to New York when we could do it just as easily here. I’m going to tell you, you know why? Because I don’t like to see anybody suffer needlessly, and you seem like a pretty good guy.”
“Thanks,” Smoke said. He made an effort to swallow.
Cruz went on. “You worry them, you understand? Here’s a guy who’s involved in big jobs over the years, suddenly up and disappears. Kills a guy. Steals a lot of money. Sinks his boat in a storm. You didn’t think anybody bought that lost at sea bullshit, did you?” He smiled. “No, nobody bought it. They’ve been looking for you the whole time. You’re an important man.”
Cruz paused, as if in reflection.
“There was something you did that had to be kept real quiet, am I right? Yeah, I am right. So they want to know who you talked to about this thing during three long years away. Did you talk to girlfriends? Did you talk to a shrink? To a priest?”
“I didn’t talk to anybody,” Smoke said, giving up the charade that he wasn’t the man they wanted. “I kept it to myself.”
Cruz turned to look at the two men standing behind him. Then he turned back to Smoke. “And the money?”
“Safe deposit boxes. Six different banks. Four here in town. One in Boston. One up in Quebec City. In case I had to run.”