Accustomed to the Dark (28 page)

“A guy named Carpenter,” I told him.

Without removing the gun from my forehead, Lucero nodded, turned to Esteban. “You called it,” he said. He looked back at me and smiled sweetly again. “And now,” he said, “you've got two seconds to tell me how you found us.”

“A friend of Carpenter's saw you come into the swamp. An Indian. Carpenter knows the area. He's the one who found you.”

He cocked his head, grinning idiotically. “
And who else did ju tell, Lucy?Ju tell Fred?
”

“No one.”

He swiveled the barrel slightly and fired. I had time to close my eyes, but the sound was deafening. I felt the muzzle blast sear along the side of my skull. My ear rang and I could smell the stink of scorched hair.

“
Babalu!
” he said, and laughed. Then he narrowed his eyes. “
Don' lie to me, Lucy. Ju know how dat makes me crazy
.”

“It's the truth,” I told him.

Lucero glanced at Martinez and shifted abruptly from his Ricky Ricardo mode. “Would he do that? Come in here on his own? No backup?”

“
Josh-you-ah?
Sure he would.
Josh-you-ah's
a Boy Scout. Aren't you,
Josh-you-ah?
” He tapped at my wound.

Lucero turned to Esteban. “Go find the other one. Make sure he's dead.”

Esteban nodded. Carrying the Uzi, he stalked off toward the bank.

Martinez said, “You made a big mistake,
Josh-you-ah
, coming here.” He tapped the gun barrel at the wound again.

I turned to him. “Why don't you try that without the gun?”

Martinez grinned. He tapped the wound. “You a little pissed
off, Josh-you-ah?
You think you can take me?”

“I always have.”

“I been practicing.”

“You're still a loser.”

This time he whipped the barrel at me. My knees nearly gave way.

“Who's the loser now?” he said.

I turned to Lucero. “Can I ask you a question?”

He grinned at me. “Absolutely, Lucy.”

“Why did you kill Sylvia Miller?”

He laughed. He put his left hand on his hip, the Python pointing to the rear, and he spoke in a lilting, high-pitch lisp. “
This is the scene where I tell you everything. Right? Like on Rockford Files
.” He lowered his voice, made it smooth and silky, like a television announcer: “
Isn't that right, Jim?
”

“I'm just curious.”

He dropped his hands and now he spoke with a German accent: “
Ah, vell, Jim, dot curiosity, dot's vot killed de cat, you know
.”

“I figure you just got tired of having her around.”

He winced with impatience. “She was a freak. A plain freak. Talk about a loser.” He grinned suddenly. “
Well, you got it outta me, Marshall. But, please, don't let the boys know I squealed
.”

“I've got another question.”

“What's that, Jeopardy Man?”

“You're supposed to be a pretty smart guy. How'd you get involved with a moron like Ernie?”

Martinez pounded at me with the gun barrel again.

I turned to him. “Come on, Ernie. For old time's sake. Try it without the gun.”

Lucero said, “You want to fight him, Ernesto?”

“Sure he does,” I said. “That's what this is all about. That's why he shot my partner. That's why he called me a few days ago.”

Lucero looked at Martinez and waggled a finger at him. “Ernesto. You've been a very naughty boy. You weren't supposed to call anyone.”

“Just him,” Martinez said. “He's the only one. And it was before New Orleans.” He turned to me. “Hey, you hear about your girlfriend,
Josh-you-ah?
Your girlfriend, the tomato, Rita what's-her-name, she kicked off.”

I looked at him. “You're lying.”

He shook his head earnestly, eyebrows raised. “No, bro, that's the straight shit. Ask Esteban when he comes back. He found out this morning. Really a shame, huh?”

“I don't believe you.”

He shrugged. “Don't matter to me, bro. She's still dead.”

I took a breath. Ignore that. Focus on the important thing. Causing Martinez some pain.

“C'mon, Ernie,” I said. “Without the gun. You afraid your boyfriend will see you get your ass kicked?”

“Fight him or shoot him,” Lucero told him. To me, in an English drawl, he said, “
This all grows so terribly tiresome, don't you think?
”

Martinez grinned. “I fight him.” He handed the Beretta to Lucero. He clapped his hands.

Lucero said, “Fine.” Sticking the Beretta into his waistband, he turned to me. “Now, Jeopardy players, listen carefully to the rules—”

Martinez leaped at me, wrapped his thick arms around mine, and squeezed. A flame of pain flared through my arm. He spun me around and flung me loose, toward the ground.

I landed on my left side, hard, and I knew I had to keep moving, because Martinez would be coming in with his feet. I used the momentum of the fall to roll away from him, and pain flared again as I flattened my right arm, and then I felt another pain, in my gut, as his foot ripped up and crashed into me, slamming the air from my lungs.

I kept rolling—I had no choice—and he came rushing in again. But this time his kick missed and I grabbed at his foot as it came whistling past and I shoved it skyward as I lumbered up off the ground. Off balance, Martinez toppled over. Now he was on the ground and I was standing, and I moved in for a kick of my own. Lucero's pistol boomed and a slug went zipping past my face.

“Now now now,” he said, and he cocked his head and waggled that finger. “
Ju got to play fair, Lucy
.”

I stepped away.

I had rolled toward the house, away from the water. Martinez was between me and the shore. If I could somehow maneuver this thing closer to the bank …

Martinez pushed himself off the ground. He dusted himself off and then he grinned at me again. He raised his fists. “You're going to die,
Josh-you-ah
.”

I raised my left hand. I had no right. That arm was useless.

Martinez had been telling the truth. He had been practicing. He came in like a boxer, heavy on his feet but with his shoulders hunched, his fists moving in small tight circles. He feinted a right at my face and then he pounded a quick left at my wounded arm.

I managed to stumble back, away from him. And away from the water.

He came in again, grinning, and he hit me with a solid right to the chest, and then he punched again at the wound. I backpedaled some more. He shuffled in, feinted a left, feinted a right, then smashed a left at the wound. I gasped, and he drove a right into my face. I felt my lip split. I staggered back.

Boxing wasn't going to work, not for me.

I squeezed the fingers of my right hand. No power in the arm at all.

When he came in the next time, I threw the right at him. It was slow and it was puny, and he knocked it aside as though he were swatting a fly. But that left him open, and I jabbed a hard straight left at his nose. It was a good hit, and it caused him some pain. He forgot about the boxing and he roared and grabbed at me again, wrapping those powerful arms around me. His finger found the hole in my arm and dug into it, prying at the flesh.

My vision was blurring as I raised my foot and then drove it, all my weight behind it, down onto his instep. He gasped and let me go and I walloped my knee into his crotch and then, as he doubled over, I knifed the knee up into his face.

He exploded upright, arms flapping, and then he went back and down. I stepped forward and out of the corner of my eye I saw Lucero raise the Colt, and I think he was going to kill me this time. It was just at that moment that Carpenter came sprinting around the side of the shack, the shotgun held low. Lucero tried to bring his pistol to bear, but Carpenter was already firing and the big double ought slugs pocked sudden dark holes in his handsome face and then a deer slug slapped into his chest and he took a step backward as another round of heavy shot peppered him, and then he dropped.

I looked at Carpenter. He was upright now and walking toward me, watching Lucero, the gun still ready. He was soaking wet and the front of his shirt was smeared with blood and mud. Somewhere he had lost the sunglasses and the hat.

“Esteban?” I said. I was panting.

So was he. “Finished,” he said. He looked down at Martinez, who had rolled into a ball and who clutched with both hands at his groin. “So,” said Carpenter. “We end this now, or we bring him back?”

It was tempting. I considered it. After a moment I said, “We bring him back.”

His mouth moved in a twitch. “That's the hard way,” he said.

“Yeah.”

EPILOGUE

M
ARTINEZ HAD BEEN
lying about one thing. Rita was alive. I learned that by using the first telephone we came to, when Eugene Samson drove us to Coral Springs.

The fever had passed, Leroy told me. There was no infection. The doctors had discovered that both the fever and the increased white blood cell count had been caused by a small mucus block trapped in her lung. It had been removed. Her temperature had returned to normal. She was still unconscious, but she was stable.

Carpenter used another telephone, this one at the hospital in Coral Gables, to call in the Feds.

Carpenter had been shot in the right shoulder, and his wound was more serious than mine. A couple of times, as we'd come out of the swamp, he'd blacked out. We had all been in the inflatable—him, me, and Martinez. If I hadn't been able to revive Carpenter, all of us would still be back in there somewhere.

The Feds came in, lots of them, and they took Martinez. For the next couple of days, from hospital beds in different rooms, Carpenter and I answered their questions.

On the third day, Billy Fetterman/William Cornwell showed up.

The knitted slacks were tan today and the pressed white cotton shirt had short sleeves, but he was still as dark and weathered as a strip of jerky. He wasn't wearing a hat. Maybe he'd left it in the car.

“Hey, Billy,” I said from the bed. “How are brother Delbert and the pigs?”

He smiled. “You're recovering, it seems. Do you mind if I sit down?”

“Why would I mind? Everybody else has.”

He lowered himself into the plastic chair and looked over at me. “I thought I'd bring you up to speed on Martinez. I felt we owed you that.”

“He's been talking?”

“In torrents.”

“Why?”

“He seems to believe that we'll go easy on him if he tells us what happened.”

“And will you?”

“Not likely.” He smiled. “I can't imagine where he got the idea.”

“What's he say about New Orleans? Who were the two men in the convertible?”

“A pair of nobodies. Small-timers from Miami. They drove up to New Orleans and met Lucero and Martinez at the site.”

“How did Lucero and Martinez fake the deaths?”

He crossed one leg over the other. He was wearing the same shiny lizard-skin boots he'd worn in Texas. “Harper was paid to drive the truck to the site, and paid for his testimony. We've got him, and he's talking. The four of them, Lucero and Martinez and the small-timers, stood in the convertible and held Sylvia Miller by her arms and legs and tossed her out onto the street. Martinez says that Lucero was laughing while he did it.”

“Harper confirms that?”

“He showed up later. So he says. Martinez says otherwise.”

“Was Sylvia alive at the time?”

He shook his head. “Lucero had already broken her neck. She was out cold when he did. They'd gotten her drunk.”

And she had slipped, unknowing, from one Dark to Another.

“Then what happened?” I asked him.

“Then, according to Martinez, Lucero took out the two from Miami.”

“By himself.”

“According to Martinez. A couple of karate chops.”

“You believe Martinez?”

His square shoulders moved in a comfortable shrug. “It hardly matters, does it? He's an accessory. He certainly didn't try to stop Lucero. Not then, and not when Lucero worked on their faces with a baseball bat.”

“Who cut off the guy's pinkie?”

“According to Martinez, Lucero did. With a cleaver. Then he cut off his own. He bandaged the hand up and used a few grams of cocaine as an anesthetic. Afterward, they drove to a doctor who cleaned the wound.”

“You find the doctor?”

He nodded.

“When did Harper and the truck show up?” I asked him.

“Just as Lucero was wrapping up his hand. Once again, that's according to Harper. Martinez puts him there for the entire time.”

“So then,” I said, “after they get the bodies arranged in the car, Lucero and Martinez set the car running toward the tanker truck. It explodes, and they drive merrily away. In the car the Miami men brought.”

He nodded again.

“Pretty complicated plan,” I said.

Another nod.

I said, “And they had to pull it off quickly. They needed the confirming testimony from the guy at the gas station.”

“That's right.”

“Kind of hard to believe, isn't it?”

“What is?”

“That they
did
pull it off. That Lucero's pinkie finger exactly matched the missing finger of the guy in the car. That an autopsy couldn't determine that Sylvia's neck was broken before she hit the ground. Or that the faces of the guys in the convertible had been smashed before the car hit the truck. And what about DNA testing?”

Smiling, he tipped his head forward slightly in agreement. “It does stretch credulity a bit, now that you mention it.”

“Uh huh. So when did you people realize that the bodies weren't Lucero and Martinez?”

He was still smiling. “Maybe an hour after you left Texas.”