The neighbors, the firemen, someone would come and get them long before the house was threatened – he felt sure of it.
He lost his balance and fell into his neighbor’s dense bushes. His vision swam and darkened. He crawled deeper into the hedge.
He heard the explosion just before he lost consciousness again. The sound was deep, like far away thunder. It made an impression in the air, like a wave on the ocean. The wave passed over Smoke Dugan as he lay in the bushes. His face was lit with the firelight as the flames burst toward the heavens.
At the very end, a thought occurred to him. They knew about Lola.
His eyes rolled back in his head and he slept.
Cruz ran up the street, Moss loping along beside him.
In his mind, Cruz saw Fingers go up in flames again and again. The image was imprinted on his mind. He had stared at Fingers for several seconds too long.
Then the whole shed had blown and he and Moss were over the fence and running together up the block of tidy suburban homes. No signal, no teamwork, just BOOM, and they were gone.
They reached the work car. It was a green Ford Taurus, a couple years old, nondescript, a real piece of shit. It had twenty thousand miles on it. At least it would run for a while. They jumped in. Moss took the wheel and Cruz slid into the passenger seat. Moss started it up. Fingers had removed the lock mechanism. He had left four license plates in the trunk for them, in case they had to switch later. Fingers had done his job. Now he was dead.
Moss was laughing.
“Okay, what’s funny?” Cruz said. He didn’t see much humor in it. The whole job, everything, slipping away in the two minutes it took for Dugan and Fingers to go out to the shed.
Moss cruised past the house with the backyard on fire – ice cold, Moss – burning embers flying everywhere, black smoke funneling into the sky against the red and orange glow. The house was in danger of going up next.
Moss turned slowly onto the main thoroughfare – Broadway, it was called – still cruising slowly. His head did a slow swivel, looking for possible tails. None. Only now did he turn on the headlights. Cruz watched him check the rearview.
Now he sped up into traffic.
“You,” Moss said. “You’re funny. You tried to send me in that shed with the old man. If you had your way, it woulda been me going up in flames. That was the biggest fuck up I ever seen. Only way it could have been bigger was if it had been me.”
Cruz sat back. “I didn’t see you warning him off.”
Moss only shrugged. “You’re the boss, big man. That’s what the dossier says, anyway.”
At this moment, Cruz would love to know exactly what else Moss’s dossier said.
Moss went on: “And you know what? I didn’t mind Fingers. Had a sort of way about him. You didn’t know him, seeing as how you work alone and all, but I did. He was a good kid. Didn’t get scared. Did what he was told, didn’t complain too much.”
Moss nodded at the truth of this eulogy.
Cruz figured it would amount to about the kindest tribute Fingers would get now. If he had a mother somewhere in the world, God knew she had been expecting her boy to go down in flames for years – except without the actual flames.
Sirens began to wail in the distance. As of yet, Cruz didn’t know from what direction they were coming. They stopped at a traffic light. Three or four cars were ahead of them. No one was looking or acting strangely.
“Do you suppose the old man got out?” Moss said.
Cruz regarded the question. He didn’t answer right away. It was his job, they had sent Fingers along with him, God knew what for, and now the kid had been deep fried. Toasted. In his mind, Cruz saw the kid go up in flames again. His insides felt scraped raw. Shit. He cared. He had to get out. He was tired of seeing them die, even guys like Fingers, who had probably lived on borrowed time since he was ten years old, and had deserved his fate ten times over.
We all deserve it, Cruz thought. All of us.
These maniacs had killed the fucking Guatemalan cleaning woman or whatever she was. Why? No loose ends. That was the excuse, anyway. That was always the excuse. The real reason was they had killed her because they felt like it. They had tied her to some cinderblocks and dumped her off of the pilings near one of the lighthouses. It was about twenty feet deep, they thought, and murky down there. Oh, somebody would find her soon or later, sure, but we’d be gone by then. When they had told Cruz about it, he had nearly cried.
But he kept on the face. Impassive. A mask. Hell, he had seen it all before.
A thought surfaced like a shark from the depths of his mind. Dugan’s money was out there, enough money to drop out of sight and get away from all this bullshit. Six safe deposit boxes, four here in town, one in Boston, and one up in Canada. Could it be true? Cruz found himself clinging to the idea that it was true, that most of the money was right here somewhere, and all he had to do was make Dugan go in the banks and get it for him. Tricky, but after seeing what Dugan was capable of, Cruz would be more careful next time. And Moss? Cruz could handle Moss if necessary.
“Yeah,” Cruz said. “I suppose he did. That’s what it was all about, wasn’t it? Getting out? He had the place booby trapped.”
He scanned the streets, looking for what he knew he wouldn’t see – Smoke Dugan, bloodied and battered, his lungs half-seared, limping along with the secret to more than two million unmarked dollars tucked away in his head. No, Dugan was back there somewhere, back near the flames.
Damn! Cruz had done exactly the wrong thing. If he had wanted Dugan, he would have had to risk the cops and the good people of South Portland and wait around back at that house. Instead he had run.
Getting old, Cruz. Getting weak.
“What’s your big plan now?” Moss drawled.
Cruz had one ready. “We go forward,” he said. “Back across the bridge and into the city. We go see the girlfriend. If Dugan, O’Malley, whatever he wants to call himself, lived through that, he’s going to run to her next. Either to warn her, or collect her before he leaves town, but he’s going to get her. And when he does, we’ll already have her.”
“What if he don’t?” Moss said. “What if he just gets the money and leaves?”
“He won’t,” Cruz said. “An old guy like that, he’s going to run for the girl.”
Moss smiled. “All right, I’ll buy it. The girl I saw in the pictures, I’d like to run to her too. Can’t wait to meet her, in fact.”
Moss hit the gas and stolen Taurus took off across the long, winding bridge and toward the city.
Hal had a bad feeling.
He and Darren were parked in the Cadillac, the bucket seats lowered way back, watching the action on the dark, quiet street around Lola’s building. The way they were sitting, Hal could just about scan the area over the top of the dashboard. A moment ago, they had watched two men pull up in a Ford Taurus, park it up the street, and climb out. One of them was fucking HUGE. To Hal, it seemed like his massive arms hung down almost to his knees. He was like a gorilla, only taller. In fact, the big guy had captured his attention so completely that it was only after a moment he noticed the other one – a little guy, thin, dark, wearing a light spring jacket, no doubt with a gun inside there somewhere.
His first thought: cops.
Sure, he had made these guys as the real thing in no time. Lola had called the cops and these guys, plainclothes detectives, were working the case. They were probably doing some follow-up with the victim – cop talk for “let’s go back and ogle that sexy chick some more.”