Payback (30 page)

So.

He could do it right now.

But if Mitchell came around …

No; the way he'd do it, he could make Mitchell watch. Shoot him in the balls, not kill him to start, just shoot him in the balls—have Rocky bring him up to the room and make him watch. And then shoot him in the head.

Jesus
, Billy thought. And then wondered if he'd actually thought of it himself or if he'd seen it in a movie.

He turned, and Consuela was watching him from the door. Reading his mind again. Gypsy. Bitch.

“Mind your business,” Billy said.

Consuela just grinned at him, one of those grins you'd want to cut from her face.

“You want to do something constructive,” Billy said, “you can go fix some dinner.” He glared at her. “But not
paella
, you cunt.”

34

They took the boat along the coast, black-faced and hooded under a bright white moon, stars like luminescent portholes in the sky. The tide, coming in, did a dance against the shell.

Mack said ironically, “The Normandy Invasion.”

Mitchell didn't answer. He was trying not to think. Trying to keep it blank. Billy was the most dangerous of all possible enemies because Billy was a kid, a big sick kid playing games with reality, stretching it beyond the limits. Doing Star Treks on the stairs, as Leo'd once put it. Billy could do anything, or thought that he could, and believed he could get away with it.

Mitchell checked the rope. He'd fixed it with a series of straphanger loops so that Mack could do the climb—grabbing with his right hand and hanging from his left. There was nothing else to check—nothing else to do except try to keep it blank. Don't think about Joanna.

He throttled down the boat and the sound from its exhaust seemed to fade out to nothing; they slid on the water till Mack pointed up and said, “Omaha Beach.”

They had field packs and pistols, the rope with the anchor, and binoculars and knives. They docked behind the cover of the long nose of rocks and then climbed to Billy's turf. It was empty and quiet. Moonlight on the beach and the water coming in making scallops on the sand.

“Fucking moon,” Mack said.

It was good and it was bad.

The white iron rail that made a border on the cliff stood bright against the sky. Even the sheer face of rock seemed to shine, as though it were embedded with pyrite or gold. And a couple of guys wearing black on a beach were about as inconspicuous as snakes in the bathtub.

Mitchell looked over at the upended ladder and tracked along the rail. There was nothing he could see and he signaled, Let's go. Mack held his hand up, signaling for patience, and squinted at the rail, straining for the sounds of a sentry, a guy on patrol who'd come nosing at the gate.

Mitchell wasn't sure what difference it would make. If a guy was up there, a guy was up there; but so was Joanna.

“To hell with it. Cover me.” He moved to the cliff and examined his target: a balcony rail about forty feet up. All he had to do was hit the rail with the anchor—four-and-a-half pounds going forty feet up along a half-inch of rail—it was something like hitching your wagon to a star—and make sure the thing hitched, caught firmly on the rail; and then climb.

No sweat.

He backed off and aimed, getting play in the rope. The anchor made a quick dull thud against the stone and dropped hard to the sand.

Second time over and it clanked against the rail … and then dropped to the sand.

Now he was sweating.

Three more times.

He looked off at Mack, who seemed to have melted into darkness and rock. He was out there alone. The only two things in the universe were Mitchell and a dull iron rail. Forever. An eternity of pitches and thuds.

Rule # 7 had been Try something else.…

But there was nothing else to try.

Rule # 8 had been Try not to try. He remembered how it came. What he'd had to do then was to climb up a tree and grab the rope from a chopper. And the thing was being shot at from everywhere—bobbing and weaving in the sky and he'd been burning and bleeding and he'd thought about Zen. The suppression of desire.

He reeled in the rope again and blanked out his mind. Looked up at the balcony, breathed, closed his eyes, sighed, and let the rope fall upward from his hand.

Something clanged and then caught.

***

He waited at the top, ducked low on the small platform and stared through the gate. It was just as he'd remembered it: a long strip of lawn, then a pool, then a patio, and finally the house. And the wrestler was there. Built along the lines of an American Sumo in a bright yellow sweatsuit. Parading around the pool with a beargun on his shoulder and singing—no shit—going
La-la-la-Ia-la
. Like a biker on “The Gong Show.” Christ, he was huge. Forty yards off doing turns around the pool. Pause. About face.
La-la-la-la-la
.

Mack crouched beside him and leaned against the gate. “We take him.” Mack whispered it close to Mitchell's ear; not that it mattered. Mitchell shook his head. They had a difference in philosophy. Mack thought of murder as a simple prophylactic.

“I think we can pass him and worry about him later.”

“Yeah?” Mack said.

“Okay. Unless we can't.”

“And if we can't?”

“Then we can't.”

Mack built a shrug. He hand-signaled
split
and then slowly and methodically tickled at the latch. The gate slid open.

Mitchell went left and moved low along the grass. There were hedges near the wall and a scattering of almond trees with fat white blossoms. He could get to the hedges, he could move along the wall. The wrestler'd stopped humming. There was silence. There was something that Mitchell didn't like and then he saw it: the wrestler coming over with the rifle, a Ruger carbine, a .44 Mag that could pulverize a grizzly. The guy wore a smile. Like the guy who'd found the Easter egg rolling on the lawn.

“Hey, look what I got.” He actually said it, his dumb-slug face beatific with the smile. He gestured with the muzzle, still twenty feet off but there weren't any moves. There was no place to go except “Up!” like he said.

“Okay. Gettin up. Take it easy,” Mitchell said. He rose to his full five-ten-and-a-quarter and the guy just laughed at him.

“Big shot,” he said. “Get goin.”

“Which way?”

“To the house. I'm sposed to take you over to the boss.”

“Where is he?”

“Having dinner.—He can have you for dessert.”

“Piece of cake,” Mitchell said. He kept talking, making noise, the wrestler behind him, too close, Mitchell thought.

They were over near the pool now and Mitchell made his move. He tripped on a table, went over with a loud hard ear-catching bang; the wrestler behind him went “Huhhhh?”

Mitchell turned and the guy was in the net, the fishnet around him getting tightened and twisted and knotted from behind, and the guy was really fixed. He let go of the rifle but it stabbed him in the gut, the muzzle stuck out and stock stuck in as he struggled with a trap that got tighter as he moved.

Mitchell pulled a gun and did, “Freeze it or you're dead.”

The wrestler peered out at him.

Mitchell said, “You think I'm not serious, try. Make a move. Just one.” The wrestler peered out “Make a
sound
,” Mitchell said. Mack moving up now and twisting on the net. Mitchell said, “I thought you got lost or something.”

“No.” Mack had the twenty-foot tail of the fishnet in a short tangled leash. He said, “What happens now?”

Mitchell looked over at the wrestler in the net: six foot even, going three forty-five, and not smarter than a tuna.

Mitchell tied him up. Rope around the net and the net around the guy. It was rope that was strong enough to hold down a boat. Mack kept the patter up and threatened with the Mag. “Move a muscle …” Mack said.

The wrestler didn't move. He said, “What're you gonna do?”

“Play it easy and you might live to tell it,” Mitchell said. “Now move it to the wall.”

The wrestler didn't move. Tunafish eyes getting cagey through the net.

“Play it hard,” Mitchell said, “you get a smile across your throat.”

“Or just shoot him,” Mack said.

The guy took his time and reconsidered. “Which wall?”

35

Hector got out of the red Maserati and nodded. “I left it at the desk like you said.”

Jackie rubbed his jaw. “You just left it at the desk?”

Hector said, “No, man, I handed 'em the envelope, I said, Bring it up—okay?”

“Okay,” Jackie said. “So relax.”

“Relax?” Hector didn't like the sound of relax, he liked the sound of the Uzi. The night Jackie'd brought it, Billy and Hector'd gone over to the beach and filled the night with its music.

“He'll be coming,” Jackie said, feeling confident he wouldn't,
or the girl eats a gun
. Besides—Jackie'd carefully hauled up the ladder. No; it was cool. What Jackie had to do was keep the girl under wraps—fuzzed—in a nice sweet malleable fog. Okay … about now she could use another shot. He'd go over to the lab. He turned back to Hector who was perched against the hood. He handed him the Uzi. “Did you wait to see 'em do it?”

“Do what?”

“Bring it up.”

Hector looked at him. “No, man, I couldn't take the time. I hadda
meet
him here, didn't I?”

Jackie didn't argue. He didn't argue with Hector or with any other Hector. He'd learned that in jail. There were people, Jackie thought as he crossed to the garage, who appeared to be people but were actually dogs. They could understand Sit, Kill, and a biscuit but beyond it, you were lost. He reached the garage and started quickly up the stairs.

***

Mitchell was standing at the open gun case: A couple of rifles were missing from the racks, no Uzi; a couple of handguns were gone. A drawer full of ammo—everything—banana clips, cartridges, shells—Jesus—a Rambo's Christmas in a drawer. Mack came up with a Remington rifle. Mitchell put his hands on a Savage 110, hearing Billy through the wall; hearing Billy say, “You trying to poison me or what?”

***

Billy stared at his plate. Consuela made the goddam shittiest hamburgers this side of Wendy's. The woman could quarrel with a decent piece of meat and transform it into something like petrified yak turds. Something that was hard enough to hurl through a window. Billy tested his theory. The window didn't break but it acquainted her with his mood. He turned and said, “Now—try it again till you get it right.”

Consuela just sat there at the opposite end of the long polished table and calmly sipped her wine. Getting airs, Billy thought. The little Barefoot Cuntessa. Pick her out of the vineyards, clean her up, give her a home, teach her six words of English, which was five too many, and she's acting like a queen.

“I said, up—comprende? Vamanos. Maki-maki.”

Consuela sipped her wine.

“And while you're
going
,” Billy said, “you can pick up the garbage from the floor—okay? You want me to tell you what you can do with it?”

Consuela sipped her wine.

“And after you've
done
it,” Billy said, “you can eat it—okay?”

Nothing.

Billy picked up the pistol near his plate, the ole Billy the Kid pistol. Have some fun with her, right? He cocked it, pointed it. “I
said
… pick it up.”

Consuela took her time. She went over to the window and picked up the hamburger with a few dustballs on it and came over to the table and dropped it on his plate.

Billy looked at her awhile. “You think you're cute,” he said, “huh?” Smiling.

Consuela flicked her shoulders in a shrug and went back and sipped wine.

Billy shot her in the face.

***

Joanna had been staring at the white lace curtains that were blowing in the breeze. She was trying to remember what hotel she was in. What city. What day. She was edging to the truth. She was watching a black-and-white television movie. A dark black room and the white lace curtains and the bright white moon. A sex scene, she thought. It was one of those movies from the fifties or the sixties where they couldn't show sex so they'd cut to the window with the curtains blowing in.…

Bang!

For a second it took away her breath.

Wait a second. Hold it. The movie was a Western. The room, in the movie, was over a saloon. Downstairs was a gun … fight.… She was suddenly snapped to awareness. That bang was a gun … no movie, no dream. She tried to sit up.

***

Bang!
Mitchell saw it through the doorway to the hall—the girl falling forward in the pool of her own blood—and he sprinted up the stairs.

***

Jackie heard the bang and went over to the window. Below, in the front courtyard, Hector looked up at him and raced towards the house.

He wasn't too alarmed. The shot came from Billy, and Billy, the particular mood that he was in, could have shot the chandelier.

About Billy's mood: Jackie went back to the stainless steel counter and selected another vial. Then he took the pistol—his own little Browning that he'd brought from Vienna—and shoved it under his belt.

***

Joanna opened her mouth with a scream in the making and a black hand smothered it. It took her just a second, her eyes wide open in the patterns from the moon. She nodded: okay. Mitchell took his hand away. “What did they do to you?”

“Dope.” Her voice was like rust.

“How do you feel?”

“Very stupid.”

“Then you're rational. Get up.”

She was trying. “I'm sorry.”

“Save it. You got the rest of your life to be sorry, you've got about ten seconds to get up.” He lifted her—reached in and scooped her off the bed and then set her on her feet.