The Consummata (25 page)

And his small hand brought out the big nine millimeter from under his arm with admirable speed. I really hadn’t anticipated it.

“Just a precaution,” he said. “I can’t send you out on that boat to dump those casualties without riding along. Miss Stacy, you come, too. Morgan, I promise you I will do everything I can to help clear you. But there’ll be no getting away from me this time—and with Art Keefer gone, there’s no one to come bail you out like after Nuevo Cadiz.”

We got on the boat.

Up on the flybridge, I played captain and Kim sat next to me, and Crowley sat on the teakwood deck supervising the dead, hanging onto the rail with one hand and keeping the nine millimeter ready in the other. Not menacing about it or threatening, though he
had
asked me for my .45, which I’d handed over—it was in his waistband.

When the lights of Miami had disappeared behind us, and the ocean was an endless black ripple around us, touched with the barest shimmer of ivory from that slice of moon, I stopped the engines, and looked down at Crowley.

“Is this all right?”

“This will do,” he said. “Come down, both of you, and give me a hand.”

We did.

He held the gun on us as my wife in her black latex gown helped me take the corpses by their arms and legs and fling them into the drink. One at a time. The bodies floated, though as soon as the air in their lungs got replaced by water, they’d sink like stones; but right now they floated. And almost immediately I saw something chilling in the moonlight.

I pointed, and they both looked.

Nobody had to say it.

Fins.

Black fins cutting a white foamy path in the moonlighttouched blackness of the ocean.

For the first time, alarm registered in Crowley’s voice. “Let’s get the hell out of here.” He motioned with the gun. “Back up there, you two.”

In the flybridge in our side-by-side seats, I started the
engines up, and under their throbbing, Kim whispered: “He’s the one, Morg. He’s my suspect. And something he
said
....”

I whispered back, “I know.”

I glanced back. Crowley was looking toward where the bodies had been floating, and sharks were now circling.

I called out: “Hey, Walter! Let me ask you something.”

He turned toward us and frowned. “No small talk! Just get us back to that dock.”

“Okay, let me ask Kim, then.” I spoke to her but my eyes remained locked with his, and my voice loud. “Did you report in to Walter about Art Keefer’s death? Is there any reason for him to know Art’s name at all?”

“No,” she said.

And I threw the knife.

It sank into his shoulder and, as part of his reaction, the gun in his hand went off, but luckily not at me or even at the teakwood deck, just off into the night, echoing, bouncing, fading.

I leapt from the flybridge onto him, knocking him back against the rail, then yanked my .45 from his waistband and shoved it in his belly.

“Drop the piece, Walter. Let Davy Jones have it.”

He did, and it barely made a splash.

Kim cut the engines. From her seat in the flybridge, she turned a grave, pitiless expression on him, looking more like the Consummata right now than my tender bride.

“That money-truck heist was a CIA black op,” I said right into his terrified face, “and I was your patsy! You killed my friends, you’ve stolen years of my life!”

“You can’t prove it!”

“I don’t have to. I’m going out and I’ll recover that missing forty mil, and turn it in, and all my sins will be forgiven. But it’s something I have to do alone...well, almost alone. I’ll have my wife with me.”

That bland mug of his finally had some genuine expression, eyes wide, nostrils flared, upper lip curled back in trembling desperation. “You take me back, you can
have
your twenty-four hours! You can have forty-eight!”

“No, I’m going in another direction, Walter. And this?” I yanked my knife from his shoulder and blood plumed and burbled as he screamed.

“This is where you get off,” I said, and shoved him over the back rail.

His screaming turned into a burbling thing and the white foam in the
Black Beauty
’s wake was red-tinged as he splashed and yelled and made a huge fuss. As I said, the moon wasn’t providing much light.

But I could see the fins coming.

And so could he.

We lay anchor off a far key and didn’t bother with swabbing the back deck of the blood of betrayers. That could wait. Right now we were celebrating our marriage with a couple of cold beers in the galley.

Sitting across from me, still in black latex, a wedding gown of sorts, she said, “What now?”

“Now we find that money. And when we find it, we can decide whether to clear my name or just spend the damn stuff.”

“I can see how you’d figure you’ve earned it by now.”

“That’s right.”

She nodded, once. “Okay. We’ll go treasure hunting. We’ll follow your namesake Sir Henry’s footsteps around the Caribbean. But there’s something else we need to do first.”

“Yeah?”

And the Consummata rose, took off her long gloves before freeing herself from the black latex gown, letting it pool and clump on the teakwood floor, then propping first one foot, then the other, on the little galley table where I sat, as she unlaced and removed the high-heel boots, stripping off the black lingerie, nose-cone brassiere, silk panties, sheer stockings, garter belt, exposing full breasts, narrow waist, flared hips, long muscular legs, attributes that required no kinky accoutrements, all that lovely pale flesh interrupted only by the dark delta that, as she settled herself on the mattress of the forward berth, parted between creamy thighs to reveal the pink portal where life begins.

Those almond-shaped violet eyes taunted me.

“Don’t you think,” she asked, “it’s about time we consummate this damn marriage?”

“Nag, nag, nag,” I said.

More Great Suspense

From the Authors of

THE CONSUMMATA!

PREPARED FOR PUBLICATION BY

For 20 years, former NYPD cop Jack Stang has lived with the memory of his girlfriend’s death in an attempted abduction. But what if she didn’t actually die? What if she somehow survived, but lost her sight, her memory, and everything else she had...except her enemies?

Now Jack has a second chance to save the only woman he ever loved—
or to lose her for good.

Read on for an excerpt

from DEAD STREET—

available now at your

favorite bookstore...

It was quiet today. Overcast with a snap in the air. October was almost here and a fresh season of trouble was gearing up. Sergeant Davy Ross was standing beside an unmarked police vehicle, talking to a tall, thin guy in his fifties wearing black-frame glasses who had a white trench coat draped over his arm. In his hand was an inexpensive cardboard folder people keep receipts in and when Davy turned his head, glanced my way and said something, I knew they were talking about me.

Hell, I was the living anachronism, the old firehorse they couldn’t get out of his stall, a dinosaur at fifty-six. Had to show up at home base the first of every month just to keep an eye on things.

Sergeant Ross grinned while we were shaking hands and said, “You got a fan from Staten Island, Jack. You remember that place?”

“Other side of the river, isn’t it?”

“Roger. I think it still belongs to New York City, though.” He paused and nodded toward the thin guy. “This is Dr. Thomas Brice.”

When I took the doctor’s hand, he said, “I’m a vet.”

“What war?”

He grinned and the eyes behind the specs were alert and blue. “No, I mean I’m an animal doctor, Captain Stang. Don’t want to get off on the wrong foot.”

“No sweat,” I told him. “I’m an animal lover myself.”

Davy Ross cut in with, “You guys have your conversation. I’m going back to work.”

We both told him so long and watched for a few seconds as he walked away.

When Dave went through the door, I said, “What’s all this about, Doctor? You know, I’m not on the payroll anymore. I draw a pension.”

Brice stared at me for a couple of seconds, his eyes reading me as though he were examining a strange breed of dog. It was an expression I had seen a lot of times before, but not from someone who didn’t want to kill me.

Softly, Brice said, “Is there somewhere we can sit down? You must have a coffee shop around here somewhere.”

I told him Billy’s was down the avenue two blocks, an old cop’s hangout that was about to go into the chopper when the station house shut its doors. Billy was finally going to have to go home and eat his wife’s cooking for a change.

Two of the detectives from the other shift were winding up their tour and waved at me. Both of them eyed Thomas Brice with one of those cop glances that take in everything in a blink and they both had the shadow of a frown when they realized he was one of those clean civilian types and figured he probably was some distant relation of mine.

I winked and nodded back. They seemed relieved.

Over coffee and a bagel lathered with cream cheese, I said, “I haven’t been to Staten Island since I was a kid.” My eyes were cold and I scanned his face carefully.

“I understand,” he told me.

“Neither do I remember ever having a case that involved that area.”

His tongue ran over his lips lightly and his head bobbed again. “I know that too. I did some research on you and...”

“I’m clean,” I interrupted.

“Yes, I know. You have a lot of commendations.”

“A lot of scars, too.”

I took a bite of the bagel and sipped at my coffee.

“It’s a tough job, Captain,” Brice said quietly.

“But nothing ever happened on Staten Island.”

He was staring back at me now. I knew my eyes were growing colder.

“Captain, you’re wrong,” the doctor told me softly. “Something
did
happen on Staten Island.”

I laid the bagel on the plate and under the table my fingers were interlaced, each hand telling the other not to reach for the gun on my belt. I didn’t wear the shoulder holster with the old .45 Colt automatic snugged in it anymore. I was a civilian now. Still authorized by the state of New York to pack a firearm. But I wasn’t on the Job anymore.
Caution,
I kept telling myself.
Easy. Play this hand carefully.

Something was going down.

And the doctor was reading me. His hands stayed on the tabletop.

For several seconds his eyes watched mine, but they were encompassing every feature of my face. Then Dr. Thomas Brice broke the ice. It didn’t tinkle like a dropped champagne glass—it crashed like a piece from a glacier. “Long time ago, you were in love with a woman named Bettie...”

A pair of tiny muscles twitched alongside my spine. It wasn’t a new sensation at all. Twice before I had felt those insidious little squirms and both times I had been shot at right afterward.

He was saying, “She was abducted and stuffed into a van
but an alert had gone out minutes before and a police car was in pursuit. The chase led to the bridge over the Hudson River where the driver lost control, went through the guardrails and over the fencing and fell a hundred and thirty feet into the water.”

My hand was on the .45 now. My thumb flipped off the leather snap fastener and eased the hammer back. If this was a pathetic jokester he was about to die at this last punch line.

Softly, I said, “There was an immediate search party on the site. They located the wreckage. The driver was dead. There was no other body recovered.”

The doctor’s expression never changed, the eyes behind the lenses unblinking. He let a moment pass and told me, “Correct, Captain, no other
body
.”

Something seemed to jab into my heart. I waited, my forefinger curling around the trigger.

He added, “The next morning, right after dawn, one of the dogs in the cages at a veterinary clinic began whimpering strangely. It awakened the doctor—”

“A doctor named Brice?”

“Yes. But not this Brice—my late father. I was around, but not a vet yet. May I continue?”

I nodded.

“Anyway, my father got up to see what the trouble was. The animal was fine, but it was whimpering toward the rear lawn that bordered on the Hudson River. My father didn’t quite know what was going on, but went with that dog’s sensitivity and walked out the back.”

Somehow, Dr. Brice read my expression. He knew that if
there was a downside to his story, he was never going to finish it....

“There was a young girl there. Alive.”

Alive!

“One arm was gripped fiercely around an inflated inner tube.”

He must have seen my arm move. Somehow he knew there was no tense finger around the hammer of a deadly .45 automatic any longer.