Corsican Death (18 page)

The knifelike tile edge pressed through the bloodied shirt strips around his hands, and for a split-second the pain was more than he could stand. Hold on, hold on!

Then …

His hands started to slip.

Shit!

Swinging his body back and forth, making a bigger arc, he quickly reached down and under the tiles for a small wooden beam, his heart pounding, his head light with fear of falling. One hand, one hand. He caught it, gripping the beam tightly.

Taking a deep breath, he trusted his life to that one-handed grip and let go of the tile edge with his right hand, quickly catching the small beam, his body swinging back and forth as though he were a circus high-wire acrobat.

He was breathing deeper now, quicker, chest sweating and heaving in the cool night air. Then he moved, left hand out, grabbing another small beam, then the right hand on the same beam. Left, right, until he came to a darkened window. Remember the electric eyes, Bolt.

Now he was in that room, bare back against the wall, bare chest wet with sweat and blood, chest rising and falling with excitement and tension. Both hands were still wrapped in bloody shirt strips, and his damp hair hung down over his forehead. Suddenly he became aware of it—pain in his back. Damn!

The candlestick.

It was between him and the wall, digging into the small of his back. Reaching behind him, he took it out, holding it in both hands, squinting in the darkness at the thick, heavy silver object carved on all sides. Nice and heavy. You and me, baby. You and me against the ever-lovin’ world.

Maybe there’s something else in this room, something else to help keep me alive and prevent my mom and dad from collecting my death benefits. Can’t see too much in the dark. Moonlight’s no help. Can’t turn on the light

Time to look around.

He took one step forward and froze.

Footsteps.

Running along the hallway, then stopping in front of his door. Oh shit. Voices in French, muffled by the big door, but he heard the word “American,” and that had to mean John Devon Bolt, none other. Now he was back against the wall, right hand tight around the candlestick, waiting, holding his breath, keeping his breathing down.

The door opened, throwing light straight ahead.

Silhouettes. Christ, how many?

Charles, thick-shouldered, totally bald, stood in the doorway, holding back on the taut leash as the German shepherd sniffed the air, ears straight up. The pistol was in the man’s left hand, the dog’s leash in his right. You have to be certain. That’s what they told him. Make sure.

So the others had gone on ahead, and Charles, flat-nosed face scanning the darkened room, was checking this room out alone. Except for the dog, who kept jerking forward, wanting to go into the room. Charles frowned. There wasn’t anything here that he could see. What was the dog getting excited about?

The dog
smelled
blood. And he
saw
blood. Tiny, dark spots at the far end of the path of light coming from the hallway. He jerked hard, his strength pulling the thick-shouldered man off balance and farther into the room.

Farther … Past the door.

Bolt kicked the door closed, darkening the room, swinging the heavy sliver candlestick at Charles’s head with every bit of strength he had. Home run. Got to get a home run first time out, because there’s no tomorrow.

Charles spun around, catching the candleholder on the left side of his jaw, staggering backward, feeling his face burn with bone-crushing agony. His arms went wide for balance, and the dog was loose.

Growling, it charged the narc, leaping up and going for his throat, as it was trained to do, but hitting him in the chest and driving him back into the door.

Bolt smashed into the door, feeling the dog’s slashing teeth cut into his left forearm, fighting panic from a totally unfamiliar enemy. The narc swung the candleholder, striking down onto the dog’s skull, knocking him off balance.

Bolt took a breath, wincing and closing his eyes against the pain in his forearm. It was like getting cut by two sharp knives at once.

He opened his eyes in time to see the dog attack him again.

Bolt backed off, kicking at the dog, catching it in the right side and driving it into the door. With unbelievable speed, the dog turned around in a complete circle, leaping at the narc again.

Wildly, with panic driving him, Bolt swung the candleholder down hard, feeling it thud against the dog’s side, feeling the dog’s teeth rake across
his
side and the pain explode immediately across his stomach and up his left ribcage. A bad dream, thought Bolt. It’s got to be a bad dream!

The dog was stunned, backing off, lips pulled back from its teeth, which dripped saliva and gleamed in the moonlight like tiny, deadly blades. Bolt’s chest heaved and his left hand gently touched his bleeding side. Some of his skin was loose.

Behind him, Charles sat on the floor moaning, feeling his head split again and again with a dull ache that grew stronger, faded, then grew stronger.

Bolt turned. Charles pressed both hands against the floor, trying to push himself up, trying to force his mind to deal with the pain. The flat-nosed, bald-headed man was in the moonlight, moving slowly, looking like a carved statue.

Bolt covered the space between them in two steps, kicking Charles in the head, sending him flying backward, arms wide, eyes bulging, then turning up in his head, and the pain got so big that Charles gave in to it and remembered nothing at all.

The dog’s growling made Bolt turn around in a hurry.

The dog was hurt. But still a killer, still fanatically brave, and it could do only what it had been trained to do. For an instant Bolt felt agonizing pity for the dog, who had no choice but to keep on coming. But he pushed that out of his mind. Me or you. It’s
got
to be you.

The dog was between Bolt and the door, creeping closer now, moonlight on its dripping bare fangs, the blood on its fur a jet black in the eerie pale light, both ears flat against its bleeding, wolflike head.

Bolt crouched, jerking once with the pain in his side and forearm, breathing almost as loudly as the approaching dog, the bloodstained silver candlestick held high over his head and gleaming in the moonlight. Cold fear came at him again and again, and he pushed it back, his bright eyes on the killer animal slinking closer and closer to him.

Come on, come on …

Me or you, me or you. The narc waited.

“He’s not here.” The two Corsicans stood on either side of Jean-Paul Lamazère’s Citroën, now in front of the monastery gate. Its headlights lit up the thick wood-andiron door.

“Oh?” said Jean-Paul, smiling his sad smile. “Where
is
Monsieur Belli?”

The guard in the black turtleneck sweater shrugged.” He is a tourist. I guess he wanted to go to the Lido to see the girls.” He smiled. Be friendly to the police. But nobody gets inside the gate. Bertrand’s orders.
Nobody.

“How long ago did he leave?”

“Mmmm, uh, half-hour ago. Yes, thirty minutes ago.”

“I guess we passed him.” Jean-Paul kept his hands on the steering wheel, foot gently on the brake. The Citroën’s motor was still running, and the old car vibrated gently.

“Yes,” said Black Sweater. “Guess you passed him.” The other guard looked up at the sky, thinking how dumb cops were, that you could tell them two was three and they would thank you for it.

“Not much traffic this time of night,” said Black Sweater. “You’ll have no trouble getting back to Paris quickly.” Take the hint, ugly man.

Jean-Paul turned to him. They’re all alike, he thought. Hoods. They think money and a gun make the man. Money and a gun are just crutches. Pull them away, and you have a stupid cripple. He was about to say something, when …

Gunshots.
Three. Close together, and on the other side of the door a man shouted something that Jean-Paul couldn’t understand.

Jean-Paul yelled, “Hang on! Hang on!”

His big foot jammed the accelerator to the floor, and he headed for the gate at full speed, the huge wood-and-iron door rushing toward him until it seemed about to swallow the car and the two men inside.

Roger Dinard crossed both arms in front of his face, turning to his left, leaning on Jean-Paul’s huge shoulder.

Wham!

The car smashed through the thick door, sending wood chunks flying in every direction and flattening the car’s front grille and left fender. Both headlights were smashed, with the bulb of the right one still managing to shine.

In the monastery courtyard the car swung around in a huge circle, and men ran toward it.

Turning the wheel in his huge hands as though it were a doughnut, Jean-Paul completed his circle, then turned, aiming the car at three men, who stopped, shouted, arms wide in the air for balance, mouths open. They turned to run. Too late.

Bump!

The car tore into them, and they screamed. Two men flew high into the air as though bouncing off a trampoline, their bodies exploding in pain, their arms and legs flapping like speed swimmers’.

The car rattled, going up as though running into a log, rolling over the third man, who now lay bleeding, moving his arms and feeling the hell of a broken back.

Gunshots.

The car’s back window cracked loudly, spiderwebbing with rifle shots. Dinard, crouched down almost on Jean-Paul’s thick thigh, shouted, “I like your driving! I like it!” The fat little man was nervous, but the excitement was getting to him, and he gripped his 9mm pistol tight in his right fist, his heart pounding a mile a minute.

Jean-Paul, eyes bright, turned the wheel to the right, holding it there, making a sharp circle, then turned to the left, completing a figure eight.

More gunshots. The front windshield shattered, throwing glass particles down on Roger Dinard, making him jerk, stiffen. Suddenly he sat up, gripping the 9mm with both hands, and fired back, aiming for dark silhouettes rushing at them across the moonlit courtyard. He felt
good!

The excitement was incredible, and only a cop could understand that the excitement
and
the fear were what made it worthwhile. For the first time in his life, Dinard knew that he needed them both.

Jean-Paul pressed down hard on the horn, aiming the car for two men, seeing them coming closer as the car sped toward them, seeing them lift their guns; then they decided on survival instead of killing and tried to leap clear. The car hit them, sending both men spinning sideways, their bodies in agony, their brains squeezed by this frightening pain.

Its horn blaring, the old car continued circling the courtyard, its front and back windshields shattered, its dented body a target for the bullets speeding at it out of the darkness.

J
OHN BOLT UNWRAPPED HIS
hands, dropping the bloody shirt strips behind him. Picking up the MAB 9mm pistol, he crawled to the top of the stairway, eyes alert to pick up any movement. Goddamn good gun, and Bolt was lucky to get it. He was also lucky to get out of that room. Had to kill that dog, and that would bother him later. Right now it didn’t.

Peering between two-foot-high marble columns, he saw one of the two men he had just shot start to crawl, back arched, head back, eyes closed against the pain in his back. Seconds ago, Bolt, Charles’s pistol in his bloody bandaged hands, had been at the top of the staircase, head moving left, right, seeing no one and hoping he could get down the stairs and maybe out into the courtyard.

They had rushed into the room, seen him; and Bolt, trained to shoot quick and straight, had dropped into a crouch, bringing the gun up with both hands, sighting immediately and firing three times, seeing the men spin around and dive for the ground.

One had taken a bullet in the head, and he had no face left. The other had taken one in the gut, and when he spun around, the second bullet had gone into his back. Neither shot had killed him, because he kept on moaning and crawling.

But you could scratch him. Now, who the hell else was down there?

A hell of a lot was going on outside in the courtyard, though, and Bolt would give a pack of chewing gum to know what the hell it was all about. A car speeding around, a lot of gunshots, and that damn car still on the move, making a lot of noise.

Sounded almost like that pile of junk Jean-Paul drove.

Jean-Paul!

Bolt’s heart picked up, beating faster now. Jesus, was that him outside, him and Dinard?

One way to find out.

Crawling closer to the top of the staircase, the narc crawled past it, tucked the gun in his belt, took a deep breath, and counted. One … two … three. Leaping up, he went over the balcony, pressing down on it with both pained hands, hanging in midair, his arms flailing, eyes wide, and the polished wooden floor coming up to meet him—fast!

He landed in a crouch, hands and feet being jarred, his cut hands stinging with the hard contact. No time for that now. Forget the pain. Bolt never wanted to play the piano anyway.

The gun was in his hand, and he was running toward the front door, when behind him on the balcony a man shouted and several men joined him. One of them was pointing at Bolt.

Bertrand. The big blond Viking.

Fuck him. Bolt turned, running faster now, hearing the gunshots echo loudly in the huge high-ceilinged room, hearing bullets gouge deep holes in the floor behind him.

Bolt left his feet in a dive, aiming his body at an open dark doorway, half-hearing shouting, rushing men tumble down the staircase after him. He landed hard on the floor, short of the door, crawling toward it, no idea in his mind but living longer.

He made the door, turned on his knees, pulled the gun, and fired twice, right into the crowd, seeing Bertrand go down and the rest spread out and scatter fast. They hid behind chairs, the fireplace, glass antique cases, suits of armor. Bertrand. Right on, and amen to that. Makes us even for that punch.

If a bullet from the 9mm didn’t kill him, it was going to cause him mucho grief.

When the guards fired, it made a hell of a noise, because six of them were firing at once. Bolt ducked back, his back against the wall, his ears deaf with the roar, seeing wood chips tear loose from the doorjamb and fly in all directions. Time to move, baby.