Under Cover of Daylight (32 page)

There wasn’t a bigger or smaller word for it. This was where he wanted to be, what he wanted to be doing. And he was with her, the only one who knew who he truly was, down to the muck and mire no one else had ever known.

Of course, the fact that she might want to murder him took some of the fine edge off his pleasure. He felt the way those abandoned soldiers must feel who finally work their way out of the jungle after twenty years, happy to be standing in the clearing, but not sure if that first person they see is going to embrace them or rattle bullets their way.

He slowed to barely above an idle, scanning the line of yachts. When he saw it, the red Scarab,
Perfect Execution,
he cut into the slip, bumping up beside it.

Sarah said, “I know this boat. These guys. They were the ones acting like DEA men, scared the hell out of me.”

“They’re scary guys,” Thorn said. “They did Kate. It was about Allamanda. And Ricki, she was mixed in it, too, somehow. Judas, maybe.”

Sarah asked him if he was sure.

“I’m sure about the little guy. Absolutely sure.” Thorn tied up to the Scarab.

“You have a plan?”

“Sort of.”

“A sort of plan, for guys like this? I don’t know, Thorn. You got to have some idea, some strategy. Maybe it’s time to call Sugarman.”

“No,” Thorn said. “I’m the one stirred the dragon up, I’m the one to go in the cave.”

“Take the pistol then at least.” She held it out to him by the barrel.

“No,” he said. “You keep it. What plan I got doesn’t include that.”

Sarah drew in a long breath. Nodded her head in agreement. She gathered the hair on her shoulders with one hand and lifted it off her neck. Holding the Colt still by the barrel, letting the breeze cool her briefly, she looked lonelier than Thorn had ever seen her. Gone inward, eyes unplugged.

Thorn said, “You stay here, and don’t let anybody come tearing out here and try to get away in that boat. Do you hear me, Sarah?” She came awake in there, met his eyes. “Can you shoot that thing?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she said vacantly. “I’ve been practicing.”

“Wonderful. That’s wonderful.” He headed on down the dock.

“Thorn,” she called out. He stopped at the end of the dock. “We could both just let go. We could just drop this, the whole goddamn thing. Walk away.”

But he heard in her voice that she didn’t believe herself. He stayed there for a moment, watching her, bracing himself against a piling. He watched her sigh and drop her head.

She raised her eyes to him, waved him away. “Go ahead, go on.”

He moved up the terrace to the condo, swung wide around it and around to the front door. A golf cart hummed down the shimmering avenue. Thorn nodded to the old man and his wife riding in it. They drew up to their garage, two doors down from Irv, still watching him.

In the shadow of Irv’s stoop he pressed his ear to the door but heard nothing. Carefully he tried the handle. Locked. He brought his ear back to the door. There was only the hum of the air conditioner.

He circled the building, and as he came around behind Irv’s patio, he glanced down at Sarah, pacing the dock, her gaze out to sea. The patio was surrounded by a high wooden fence. Thorn lifted the latch to the wooden gate and slid inside. He pressed his back against the cedar planks. There were marijuana plants growing there in large stone pots.

A thick curtain was drawn across the sliding glass doors. He brought his face against the glass and squinted into a small buckle in the curtains, but he could see only the corner of a white chair. He waited there for a few moments, a light fog from his breath building on the glass.

As he was drawing back to leave, he caught a flash of shiny black. Those satiny pajama legs. He brought his eye quickly back to the window. He couldn’t see above the knees of those black pants, but that was high enough to catch the glint of the long silencer, pointing, for now, down to the floor.

He edged out of the patio and jogged around the row of town houses and across the street to the golf pro shop. He caught his breath outside the door, patted for his wallet.

The clerk was a young blond woman. She looked up from her
Cosmopolitan
when Thorn asked her if he could use the phone. She checked him out silently and then pushed the phone on the counter over to him.

Jerome senior answered on the first ring.

“I got a problem, Jerome.”

“Insect problem?”

“You could say that.” Thorn smiled at the clerk, who had put her magazine down and was listening to this. “Same bugs that stung Junior.”

“Yeah? Is that a fact?”

“I’m out here at Coral Reef, a short row of town houses across the street from the golf pro shop. You know it?”

“I believe I do.”

“Know it from the air?”

“Yep,” he said. “Squeeters get awful bad up there this time of year, don’t they, boy?”

“They surely do,” said Thorn.

After he’d finished setting things up with Jerome, he shopped for ten minutes. Bought a red polo shirt, parrot green long pants. A shiny white leather belt. A blinding yellow sports coat. He stood in the middle of the triple mirrors. There was something missing. He splurged on a red-and-white-checked porkpie hat.

As he was counting out Grayson’s money, $340 for the whole outfit, the young woman clerk asked him if he didn’t want shoes. Thorn looked down at his scruffy tan boat shoes.

“That might be overdoing it,” he said. He glanced around the shop. “But, ah, I
do
need a driver.”

She’d closed her magazine, her eyes resigned to deal with this nuisance.

“Walk in here a fisherman, walk out a golfer,” she said. “Why not?”

“What do you recommend in a driver?”

“The Daiwa’s a big seller, with the fiber glass shaft, high impact through the power zone.” She gestured toward a display rack nearby.

“Something more traditional,” Thorn said, thinking about Dr. Bill, his heavy leather bag, long afternoons at Homestead Country Club. That one summer when Dr. Bill had experimented with landlubber games.

“You got your Ben Hogan, Ram, Jack Nicklaus.”

“Ben Hogan,” Thorn said.

“Balls?”

“Got to have ’em,” Thorn said, picking up a large box from a shelf. He thought about it for a moment and took a second and third dozen.

“Those are illegals,” she said. “Hot Dots.”

“How’s that?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “They’ve got some space age stuff in them, makes them go farther. Can’t play tournaments with them. But then I guess you’re not looking to play tournaments.”

“These’ll do fine,” he said. “And some, what do you call them, tees?”

She handed him two packages from behind the counter, and he counted out more of Grayson’s money.

“You’re all set,” she said as she handed back his change.

“How do I look?”

She shrugged. None of her business if people wanted to dress like Martians.

Thorn walked back across the street, the stiff synthetics chafing already. Up on the stretch of fairway that ran behind the row of town houses, Thorn emptied each of the boxes of balls on the grass. There was a patch of creeping Charlie strangling the grass at his feet. Some golfer hiking out of the rough had tracked bad seeds into this virgin Bermuda.

Wishing now he’d bought the spikes, Thorn adjusted his feet, looking for the stance Dr. Bill had shown him one or two afternoons twenty years before. The fairway was skinned and scorched, as hard as a sidewalk where Thorn teed up the first ball. Lining up, shoulder down, head down, grip firm but relaxed. Hit down, ball goes up. Almost like casting underhanded. It was always a surprise how suppleness and snap got more distance than muscle.

Irv’s place was done in black and white. White short shag, flat black walls. Checkered furniture. High-tech black counters. All the toys, the stereo, TV, disk player, polished black.

Grayson, wearing a suit, was sitting on the couch, rubbing at his swollen cheekbone, darkening eye. This black cop with long lashes sitting beside him. His holster empty. A ribbon of blood coming out of his kinky hair, wandering across his forehead. His fine, straight nose was puffy. But his eyes were fired up, Irv could see that plain enough. He thought that between the two of these assholes the cop was the better listener. So he talked to him. Fuck Grayson.

“You know, this guy, this lawyer, man”—talking earnestly to Sugarman—“he’s one crooked son of a bitch. This guy figured he’d come in here, hide behind the couch, ambush me, and then steal this money and use it to buy this land he’s so hot about. The fucker claims I’m going to blackmail him. Imagine that. Got the balls to sneak into my house and try to hit me. You don’t shoot a shooter, man. Isn’t that right, cop?”

Sugarman said nothing. Measuring angles, distances from here to there, flexing his feet, remembering how he could once explode into a slot between big blockers, remembering that surge out of a three-point stance.

“Irv, don’t be a moron,” Grayson said. “I can get you out of this. It hasn’t gone so far yet. There’re still ways out. Can’t you see what’s happening here? I was conned. This guy Thorn concocted this whole thing. The son of a bitch ran one on me, turned me against you. But all we got to do is, we wipe out these two and it’s all clear between us. You take the million and we walk.”

“I already
got
the million, you dork,” Irv said. “Guy like you should see he’s got no bargaining power here. Trick to negotiating is you got to have something to trade, fuckhead. And you, man, you got nothing. Nothing.”

“I know the law,” Grayson said. “I can finesse us out of trouble here. You just calm down a second, you’ll see that.”

The silencer made two pfftts. Twin bottle rockets launching. Grayson’s head snapped back against the wall, and his body slumped onto Sugarman. Sugarman pushed Grayson away from him, and the corpse rolled onto the other arm of the couch.

Irv said, “Shit! I meant to ask him where he got his hair cut.”

Irv rubbed at the black oil on his face. Smeared it. Scratched at his nose backhanded and sniffed. Brought his hand to his ragged ear and touched it gingerly.

He edged backward to the counter, patted his left hand around back there, and found a mason jar. He picked it up and held it up for Sugarman to see.

“I’ve been saving this,” he said, “for a time I needed a little extra go power. Know what this is?” He smiled at Sugarman. “This is magic, man. This is a five-carat diamond and a ruby big as your eyeball, been marinating in this water all summer. I heard about this, man, it’s like drinking a gallon of adrenaline. Diamond power, ruby power.” Irv held the bottle under his gun arm and unscrewed the cap and took a cautious sip of it, watching Sugarman. He gasped and said, “Fucking superman, diamond power. Better than gorilla jism.”

Glass broke from someplace nearby. Sounded like upstairs. Irv choked a little on the water. He moved quickly to the sliding glass door. Somebody was yelling now from two town houses down. The old fart down there having it out with his old fart wife, Irv guessed. Jeez, he was jumpy.

When he turned back, the black cop was standing up, holding his hand out like he was directing traffic, telling Irv to stop, going to wave on the other cars.

“Listen, fellow,” Sugarman said, “if you’re bright as I think you are, you’ll just—”

Irv brought the automatic up, leveled it at Sugarman. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve and set the mason jar back on the counter. Outside there was a thwock, sound of a hammer cracking bricks. Irv glared hard at Sugarman as though he were up to something.

Irv waved the automatic at him. “You got a death wish, man?”

“No,” Sugarman said, and stepped back, lowering his hand.

“Hey, now let’s talk about you,” said Irv. He smiled and tried breathing his heart back into regular pace. “I got this new policy. I don’t wet strangers anymore. I got to get to know you good. Gourmet shit. Touchy feely. Heavy-duty emotions. California, acting school workout. People getting into very good touch with their inner life and all that.

“Like, for instance, who the fuck are you, cop? And what in fuck’s name are you doing in my home?”

“You’re still standing there, so you don’t know it yet,” said Sugarman, “but they already split you open, doing an autopsy on your brain to see what kind of cancer you got up there screwing up your mind.”

“Whoo-whoo,” Irv said. “I’m pissing down my leg.”

Irv was coiling that trigger finger, half a pound of pressure away from doing this guy when something whacked the picture window that looked out on the golf course. Irv did a jerky jig as if the floor were suddenly electrified, almost dropping the Smith & Wesson in the process.

“Place is quiet three hundred and sixty-four days a year, and today the old farts decide to go three falls, Texas no-rules wrestling.”

Watching Sugarman, Irv moved over to the picture window. He had the curtains halfway open when another whack against the glass shattered the whole pane.

Irv screamed. He spun around and focused everything he had on Sugarman, sighting down that long silencer, shivering. And he screamed at Sugarman, nothing coherent, no words.

Glass all over the rug, the dining room table. The hot, sticky afternoon wind coming into the room. Irv breathing so hard he might’ve just carried Milburn on his back up six flights of stairs. But he blinked a couple of times, got the room back out of the mist. There was a golf ball rolling across the dining room floor.

“Get over there, Broderick Crawford,” Irv said, motioning Sugarman toward the sliding glass doors, the patio. “Get your goddamn negroid hands up in the air.” Another ball sailed through the window, hit the kitchen cabinets, ricocheted against the refrigerator, and wound up spinning around inside the sink.

Irv was thinking now maybe it was just the diamond water starting to take effect, heating up his blood. Maybe none of this was happening.

T
HORN WAS DOWN
to the last dozen balls. But he was catching on. Three into Irv’s window, the second one taking it all out. Before that he’d sprayed a few around, even sent one flying clear over the roof. That swing had felt particularly good. He tried to get his body to repeat that motion, but the next few stayed low, drilling into backyard fences. He made hash of the windshield on a white BMW. Somebody had left it around the side of the building, getting ready to wash and wax.