Silencer (25 page)

Sugar didn't mind waiting. And the guard didn't mind letting him wait. He watched the next play, watched the one after that, and watched a little of the Budweiser commercial before he got off his stool and sauntered to the open door.

By then, Sugarman had decided the steel girder blocking the road was about three times as thick as it needed to be to stop an average passenger car traveling at top speed. Maybe they were expecting an invasion of Mack trucks. Or maybe they'd gotten such a fabulous deal on the girder, they couldn't resist. Given another few minutes of waiting, Sugarman could make a decent list of other possibilities. It was one of the ways he'd learned to wait. Observing his immediate environment and trying to decode the decision-making processes of the interior decorator or the builder, or the guardhouse architect. You never knew what you might learn from simple observation.

“What do you want?” The Aztec warrior wore jeans and a black T-shirt, and a chunky nine-millimeter was holstered on his hip. More artillery than one might expect for a cattle ranch. Long ago the Aztec
had gotten MOM tattooed on his biceps, but there was still plenty of room for the names of the rest of his family on that muscle.

“I've got an appointment with Frisco Hammond.”

“No, you don't.”

“Call him. Tell him Mullaney is here.”

“If someone at the ranch is expecting a visitor, they tell me. Nobody told me. Which means you're not expected, which means you're not getting in.”

He quirked an eyebrow at Sugarman, pleased by his own watertight logic.

Play had resumed on his television set and the guard turned away and went back to his stool. He sat for a minute before the set, then during the next commercial the guard palmed a tiny cell phone from his desk and made a call. He spoke for a few seconds, then snapped it shut, set it down, and went back to the game.

“You think you can back out of this place?” Rusty said.

“I don't believe that's an option.”

The man sat through another few minutes of football. Sugarman heard enough of the broadcast to know it was late in the fourth quarter and the score was close. As one who had also frittered away vast amounts of time on TV football, Sugarman was sympathetic to the man's irritation. When you'd burned three hours of a beautiful afternoon watching that steroidal mayhem, and it all came down to the last two-minute drill, it was physically impossible to pull away.

Sugarman waited. Rusty fidgeted. Whistles blew, fans screamed, announcers recited their time-honored clichés. The final two minutes of football ate up twenty minutes of real life. When it was over and the winning coach had been sufficiently interviewed and the beer advertisements resumed, the Aztec brushed off the lap of his jeans, stood up, and swaggered back to the car.

“You still here?”

“Frisco's waiting for me. You know Frisco, right? Browning's big brother.”

The Aztec settled the heel of his hand on the butt of his fat pistol. “You got his cell number?” The Aztec slumped forward to see Sugar's face.

“I do.”

“You call him, have him call me. Then we'll see.”

“When I call him, all I get is voicemail.”

“Well, then, I'd say that leaves you shit out of luck.”

Some tough guys were tough and smart. Most were just tough. The Aztec was about to take the exam.

Well-trained security men never stood close beside the door of an occupied car. Cops, highway patrol, for them it was second nature to plant their feet well behind the trajectory of a swinging door. The physics of doing otherwise could be brutal.

Sugarman drew his cell phone from his pocket, punched in Frisco's number one more time, and when the voicemail's robotic voice began to speak, Sugar said, “Well, it's about damn time.”

The guard bent forward. Sugar hooked his finger under the door latch and said, “The gentleman monitoring the front gate wants to speak to you.”

The Aztec narrowed his eyes, but when Sugar held the phone up to the open window, the man stepped forward into the flight path of fifty pounds of sheet metal.

The door must have banged his knees because the guard buckled forward and whacked his forehead against the window frame. Another scar for his collection.

Sugar shouldered the door open, shoving the man backward to the ground. He was out of the car and had stripped the guard's pistol from his holster before the Aztec finished groaning.

At that point it should have been a simple matter of tying him up with something handy, locating the lever that activated the gate, and driving on into Coquina Ranch, except for the white Mercedes sedan which cruised up behind them and tapped its bumper gently against Sugarman's.

Two men got out of the Mercedes. Sugarman leaned down to the window and told Rusty to stay put. He'd handle this.

At that she unbuckled, got out of the car, and glared at him across the roof.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “What was I thinking?”

“Don't worry about me, Sugar.”

By then the white guy had gone behind the Mercedes and joined the driver, a black man who Sugarman recognized from somewhere. The two huge men looked at Sugarman, then at Rusty, then at the fallen Aztec.

The black guy grinned and said, “We have us a situation.”

The white guy was a head taller than his buddy. In fact, he was bigger than any man Sugar had ever seen up close. He had a pudgy face and apple-red cheeks, and the body hiding inside his baggy khaki slacks and loose white shirt had the bulky solidity of a giant sack of grain. This was a guy you could punch till your fists were bloody and he might not even notice. Yet he moved like the best heavyweights do, with a silky agility that seemed almost weightless.

The black guy hung back as the other man advanced on Sugarman.

“You okay, Hector?” As he spoke, his eyes stayed on Sugar's.

“This man, he ambushed me, Mr. Hammond. Give me a second to catch my breath, sir, I'll take care of business with him.”

“Retrieve your pistol from the gentleman, Hector. Then go inside your shed and clean yourself up.”

Hammond kept his eyes on Sugarman's face, tipping his head by small degrees to the left and right as if he might be selecting the best spot to sink his teeth.

Sugar handed the pistol to Hector and the guard said something in Spanish about Sugarman's ancestors.

“The name is Sugarman,” he said to Hammond. “A friend of your brother's. I just dropped by to have a word with Frisco.”

“He told me his name was Mullaney,” the Aztec said from his stool.

“You misled my security man to believe your name was Mullaney.
That's the name of the chief of police in Miami. This falsehood caused my associate and me to break off our business dealings and drive back here, which is a considerable inconvenience. Why'd you lie, Mr. Sugarman?”

“Maybe I was stretching the truth a little. I'm a friend of Mullaney's. I thought the name might get somebody's attention.”

“Oh, it did do that,” the black man said.

“I know you. You're One-Ton Antwan. Dolphin runningback. Nowadays you're promoting casino weekend getaways.”

“He knows you, Antwan.”

“Yeah? Well, that puts him in the upper quartile of the well-informed.”

“Why did you attack my security man?”

“He has a bad attitude and bad manners. His breath isn't that great, either.”

Rusty came around the car and slid in close beside Sugar's left shoulder. Hammond flicked a look her way and said, “And who are you?”

“She's with me,” Sugarman said. “We're here to see Frisco.”

“What do you want with my brother?”

“Look, I'm sorry. I understand this is a difficult moment for you and your family, you're grieving. It's a terrible loss, I'm sure.”

Hammond chewed on the edge of his lip. There was something childlike in his menace as if even after all these years living with that body, he still found his superior size and strength a little astonishing, like some teenager who'd been dropped behind the wheel of a car way too powerful for his abilities.

“Want me to call Sheriff Prescott?” Antwan said. “Have these two removed all official and legal-like.”

“Look,” Rusty said. “We're here to speak to Frisco. We don't want any trouble. My friend was only protecting himself against your thug over there.”

“Feisty alert,” Antwan called out. “Tough broad on aisle three.”

“What's your name, ma'am?”

Browning Hammond dug a hand into his shirt pocket and came out with a toothpick of gold, which he slid between his lips. The toothpick jiggled up and down like some juvenile taunt.

Sugarman cut a warning look her way. Stay cool.

But no, not Rusty, not Taco Shine's half-sister.

She took a half step forward and said, “My name is Rusty Stabler.”

Sugarman groaned to himself.

The toothpick stopped wagging. Browning turned to look at his grinning buddy.

“Our situation,” Antwan said, “is compounding in interest.”

Rusty stayed put, staring defiantly at the two of them.

“You a lawyer?” Hammond asked her.

“No.”

“A real estate broker?”

“None of that,” she said. “Your name was on some paperwork I been studying. Rusty Stabler.”

“That's right. My name was on some paperwork.”

“A few weeks back, Earl showed me those papers, just gave me a peek. I saw your name and I saw the name of a man I never heard of before. A fellow called Thorn. So when Earl passed on, I was mighty curious about what kind of business the two of you were doing behind my back with my own family. So this afternoon I go to the bank, open Earl's lockbox, and let my lawyer take a good long look at that document. He didn't know what to make of it, either. A very strange agreement with your name on it. Rusty Stabler.”

“So?”

“You're not a lawyer, you're not a broker. What are you then?”

“I'm the woman you've got to deal with.”

“And I'm the man,” said Sugar.

But neither of them could take their eyes off Rusty.

“Raise the gate, Hector,” Hammond called out.

“How we doing this?” Antwan sidled up to his buddy.

“You take brown sugar,” Hammond said. “The woman goes with me.”

“No, you don't,” said Sugarman. “The lady and I are together. We're staying together.”

“Take him, Antwan. Be nice. Don't break any bones he might need later on.”

 

 

CLAIRE CHANGED STATIONS ON THE
radio dial, and changed them again. Only football and talk shows and someone selling vitamins. No news, no music that soothed her nerves. Frisco was silent, driving his pickup one-handed, his eyes on the road.

He'd used the ranch's south exit, unlocking the gate with a key from his chain. When she asked why they were using that less-traveled route to leave the ranch, he just looked at her and said nothing. She felt like she was being kidnapped by a stranger. In the last hour after they'd returned to the barn, settled the horses in their stalls, he'd barely acknowledged her existence. He'd walked away without a word. She followed him to the lodge and into the kitchen, where he had a hushed conversation with Deloria.

Claire hovered at the kitchen door, and when she started to stalk away, he ordered her to stop. They were going for a drive. He wouldn't say where. He led her out to his pickup and hadn't spoken for the last ten miles.

South of Clewiston he turned east on highway 80 toward Belle Glade.

“Where are we going?”

“Ten more minutes,” he said. “Hold on.”

On the outskirts of the shabby town, he wheeled the truck onto a side road that had no sign and bumped down a potholed stretch past rows of trailer homes where the pickers lived and the migrants who'd saved enough to get off the road and rest for a while. Three mutts chased them down the street, barking at the wheels of the truck.

Darkness was gathering. The wind had died. The approaching cold front must have stalled north of them as they so often did that time of year.

He parked in front of a green-and-white mobile home that was neater than any on the street. A flag emblazoned with a Pilgrim holding a roasted turkey fluttered over the doorway.

As they got out, the dogs surrounded them and snarled, but Frisco waded through the pack, shepherded Claire along, and headed for the door. It opened before he could knock.

A short heavy Mexican with bleary eyes and an undershirt spattered with flecks of salsa blocked the way. He stared at the front of Frisco's Miami PD T-shirt, then stepped back.

“You out of your territory, aren't you, my friend?”

“This used to be my area once,” Frisco said. “A long time back.”

“I don't think I got any warrants on me from Miami. But I could be wrong.”

“Is Ana Pinto here?”

“Her name's not Pinto anymore.”

“Is she here?”

“What you want with Ana?”

“Tell her it's Frisco.”

“Aw, man. I told that woman. I said you'd come and she got all hostile at me. When that woman gets mean, she'll shut up for a week. That's how she is. Goddamn woman.”

Ana came to the door with a baby in her arms, two toddlers tagging along. Her black hair was long and straight and her dark eyes full of a resolute calm. She wore tight blue jeans and a T-shirt that hung to her
knees. The man in the undershirt padded back inside, and Claire saw him take hold of the arm of a boy who had squirmed into the man's lounge chair. He yanked him out, scolding him in Spanish, swatted the boy on the butt, and sent him yowling into the back rooms.

“How'd you know where to find me?”

“Deloria,” he said. “She's worried about you.”

“I'm not part of this, Frisco.”

“I didn't think you were.”