Black Jack Point (25 page)

‘Drop it,’ the man said.

Whit did.

‘On your knees, hands on your head.’

Whit obeyed. He could see Lucy’s hand … all five fingers, there, not shot.

‘I lied,’ Alex Black said. ‘I really hate messes.’

Ben had kicked the FBI out. Or rather, Claudia thought, he had asked them to leave. He politely told them that he appreciated
their help, he felt safe with Claudia around – she blushed at that – but he wanted to be alone and have some time to recover.
And there was no proof, after all, that Stoney had committed a crime or actually become the victim of a crime. The phones
were tapped in case Stoney or Danny Laffite or the boogeyman called.

The agents gave him thin smiles in answer, but they left, and from the window Claudia watched their cars cut through the Flats.
After Agents Grimes and Gordell left, the house seemed too quiet. Ghost empty. She wondered if David might drive by on the
pretense of checking on Ben. But the road stayed empty.

Ben clicked on the stereo. Soft Vivaldi filled the room, a whisper of violins and flutes. She stood by the fireplace, studying
a nautical map, drawn in an ancient’s hand, that hung above the mantel.

He came up behind her, put his hands on her shoulders. ‘I’m glad you’re here, Claudia. I’d be nuts in this house alone.’

‘I like this old map,’ she said.

‘It’s a reproduction, although if Stoney has too much to drink he tells people it’s an original. Long ago a big chunk of the
world was unknown. See, there’s Europe, badly drawn – they didn’t see the known world like it really was. You leave it, you
reach the middle’ – he pointed at a giant serpent in the waves, its head thrown back and tongue extending like fire – ‘they
say, “Here there be dragons.” If that doesn’t scare you off, go all the
way and you sail past the edge of the world. Lost for ever. The point of no return.’

‘I think this map is more accurate than a real map.’

He kissed her neck. ‘Would you like some wine? Or some beer? You want me to fix you a michelada?’

‘A michelada sounds good.’

He went into the kitchen, filled two tall glasses with ice, a dash of Tabasco and Worcestershire, a sprinkle of pepper, and
a dollop of lime juice. Then he poured a cold Dos Equis lager in each glass. The beer darkened to the color of maple. He brought
a glass to her and they sat down on the Mexican tile floor, watching the sunlight die over the bay. They sat side by side,
their shoulders barely touching. Claudia sipped. The michelada tasted like a perfect steak, but cold and smooth.

‘When will they bring
Jupiter
back?’ she asked. The FBI had it, treating it as a crime scene.

‘God only knows. I don’t care. Not sure I ever want to set foot aboard that boat again. I suppose if something’s happened
to Stoney the boat is mine.’

She said nothing; he seemed mildly surprised at the thought.

‘You hungry? I can grill up some amberjack,’ he said.

They finished their micheladas and then he cooked them dinner, pouring cold sauvignon blanc and fixing salad, fish scented
with herbs, risotto, sliced kiwis, deftly moving from pan to pan. She could see he was making a strenuous effort to shove
the darkness of the past few days behind them. They ate, her appetite suddenly ravenous. She drank two fat glasses of the
New Zealand white and mellowness tiptoed over her.

He was opening a fresh bottle when she began to shake, standing by the counter. She set the wineglass down, suddenly afraid
it would break between her fingers. She felt cold as ice.

‘Hey. Hey now.’ Ben took her in his arms, held her close. Her breathing grew ragged.

‘Something’s wrong,’ she said. ‘De – de – delayed shock. I don’t know.’

He steered her toward the couch, sat with her, warmed her with his arms. He said nothing, kissed her jaw, her throat, gently.
She held him tight.

‘It’s okay, ’sokay.’ A few moments later, the shivers subsided.

‘Well, what was that?’ she said, embarrassed. ‘Aren’t I the big baby?’

‘You know how much braver you are than I am?’ he said. He tipped her jaw, looked into her eyes. ‘I cried. Locked up on that
boat. Afraid of what they’d done to you. Afraid of what he was going to do to me.’

She took his face in between her palms and she kissed him. First on his giant bruise, gentle as a feather, then on his lips.
He kissed back, a little tentative, like she might still be shaky. She wasn’t. After five long kisses Ben eased open the buttons
on her blouse, touched the lacy edge of her bra, nuzzled the top of her breasts.

‘Let’s make love,’ he whispered.

He took her hands, led her upstairs to his bedroom. She undressed him; he undressed her, from head to feet, kissing the wrap
that bound her broken toe, the bandages on her hands. She kissed the horrid bruise on his face again, the broken finger.

He kissed her in her middle and they moved the sheets into a slow tangle, Claudia finally surrounding him with her heat.

‘Our first time in what, thirteen years?’ she whispered.

‘Lucky thirteen.’ He laughed. He was confident with her, more sure of his touch; she was more relaxed.

‘Worth waiting for,’ she said, eager for the touch of his skin against hers.

‘I always cared for you, Claudia. Always,’ he said, closing his lips over her throat, his hands cupping her breasts. She felt
the life in his mouth, his hands, and suddenly life seemed far sweeter than she had known, thinking of lying on that boat,
bobbing in the waves, the sun a glaring, remorseless eye.

‘Now,’ she gasped. ‘Now.’

Afterward, his breath warmed the back of her neck, and she fell asleep.

She didn’t hear him rise from the bed.

‘Doesn’t hurt too bad, does it?’ Alex leaned down, patted Whit on the cheek. He’d taken four steps toward Whit after Whit
laid down the gun, smashed the butt of his Glock twice across Whit’s face, knocking him nearly cold, opening his cheek. Whit
sat, half-propped against the refrigerator, blood splattered all over his dancing pineapples shirt.

Lucy was still out, breathing shallowly, a trickle of blood oozing from her hairline and meandering down her forehead.

Alex Black squatted down in front of Whit, the gun aimed at Whit’s stomach. ‘Your friend Guchinski,’ he said. ‘Where’s he
at?’

‘I don’t know.’ Whit’s face felt broken. The cheekbone might be fractured. God, it hurt. His voice sounded thick and dopey.

Alex cocked the gun, aimed it at Lucy’s head. ‘Try again.’

‘It’s the truth. Please don’t hurt her. I don’t know where he is right now.’

‘So what’s his angle?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Bullshit, Your Honor. Can I call you that? Your Honor. I feel so privileged.’

‘I didn’t know he was grabbing Stoney. I didn’t know he even knew where Stoney was.’

‘How’d he find out the Stone Man was here?’

Whit paused. No way he’d point to Lucy. ‘He must have followed you out here.’

‘No, I don’t think so,’ Alex said. He closed his hand – fingers hard from digging, Whit thought; they felt like steel springs
– around Whit’s windpipe. Alex wormed the gun in between Whit’s legs, pressed the barrel against his testicles. Whit quit
breathing.

‘Here’s my theory, Your Honor. Stoney wanted to get rid of me. He got himself a new partner. He gave the Devil’s Eye to new
partner, who has a guard dog mentality. I think new partner was Guchinski, and he’s cutting you in, too.’

Whit risked a very small, shallow breath. The barrel didn’t ease its pressure.

‘Now Guchinski has gotten Stoney hidden away and is calling my ass up, wanting to deal. But I smell a trap. What do you smell?’

‘Gooch doesn’t have the Eye.’

‘Who does?’

‘Stoney. You think he’s gonna trust anyone with a multimillion-dollar emerald?’ Whit breathed again, cleared his throat.
God, let this lie work.
‘I can’t believe you fell for what he said. Giving it to someone else.’

‘So you’ve chatted with Stoney.’

‘Just that once. When you were hiding in the house.’

Alex smashed his fist across Whit’s face. Whit tried hard not to cry out, to groan.

‘I wasn’t hiding.’ Alex shook his head, ran his tongue along the little scar at his mouth’s corner, gave a little annoyed
laugh. ‘I give you this, Judge: you got balls. Big ones. I pull the trigger here, there’s gonna be, what, sixty percent of
your balls left?’

‘If you kill me or Lucy, you don’t get the Eye,’ Whit said. ‘Gooch has Stoney under his thumb, and he’ll never give it to
you. Gooch’ll hunt your ass down and kill you. An inch at a time.’

Alex picked up a cell phone from the kitchen counter. He keyed in a number, dialed. ‘Mr Guchinski, you answering Stoney’s
phone now?’

Whit could not hear Gooch’s reply. Alex stood, let the gun slide along Whit’s bruised face, took a step back. On the floor
Lucy stirred, moaned Whit’s name.

‘No. You listen. I got my own trump cards, fuckhead.’ He held the phone close to Whit’s mouth. ‘Speak to him. Say hello. Say
more than hello and I kill the woman.’

‘Hello,’ Whit said.

Alex yanked the phone back. ‘I got the judge’s woman, too. So you got Stoney, man. I don’t care. Get rid of him now – he’s
nothing but trouble.’ A pause. ‘You want these two, you’re gonna give me the Eye.’ He glanced at Whit.

Shit,
Whit thought.
He believed me. Or I just confirmed what he already thought, that Stoney has the Eye.

Alex listened, winked at Whit. ‘Give me directions,’ he said. ‘Okay. We’ll meet there. In an hour or so.’ Pause. ‘We make
the trade then.’ He clicked off. ‘People are fucking predictable.’

‘What?’ Whit asked.

Alex stared at Whit. ‘Tell me, how come a judge is friends with a crook like Gooch?’

‘We have a lot in common.’

‘Yeah,’ Alex said. ‘Lots of judges in Florida are crooked, too. Trust me.’ Whit saw a shift in his face, amusement hardening
into contempt. He cocked the gun, kept it aimed at Whit, and stood over Lucy. She was trying to surface back to consciousness.
The amber necklace around her throat was broken, the jewel loose
on the floor. He wanted to reach over, fix it for her, hold her, tell her it was okay.

Her eyes fluttered open, looking at him but not quite registering him. Whit could see two little trails of blood from her
hairline where Alex had pistol-whipped her, her right ear bloodied.

‘I don’t think she’s in any condition to travel, do you?’ Alex said with a crooked smile.

‘What?’ Whit said again.
Okay, I can be the hostage—

‘We don’t need her.’ The grin widened, the gun moved to Lucy.

‘No, please—’ Whit yelled.

‘Devotion. That’s nice,’ Alex said. Then he fired three times.

Claudia awoke in complete darkness. The night surrounding her felt as solid as glass, and panic tightened her stomach, thrummed
between her shoulder blades. She felt tied. Danny. Danny still had her, Gar waiting nearby, the tattooed arms ready to force
the life out of her, hungry to force himself inside her. She sat up in bed, blinking, easing out of the snarl of sheets.

No Danny. No Gar.

No Ben in bed.

She glanced at the digital clock. Ten forty-six p.m. She’d drunk too much, the michelada and the wine too early in the evening;
she wasn’t used to it. She had a little headache, not bad. She got up, went to the bedroom balcony that faced onto the bay.
The heavy curtains were pulled closed and she parted them an inch. St Leo Bay lay calm in the night, the moon a wafer in the
wash of the Milky Way.

She closed the curtains, found her clothes on the floor. She stepped into panties, pulled her khaki slacks up over her legs.
She groped for her bra and blouse and put them on.

She started down the stairs, toward the spill of light in the kitchen, heard Ben say, ‘All right, I’ll be there.’ When she
entered the kitchen he was standing by the granite-top counter, a cell phone in his hand. He set it down on the counter.

‘Ben?’

‘That was my brother, babe. He’s alive.’

‘Thank God,’ she said. ‘Where is he?’

‘In Corpus Christi. He wants me to come see him. Right now.’

‘He decided to come out from under his rock?’

He didn’t react to her sarcasm. ‘He’s ashamed. Embarrassed that he panicked. But he’s alive.’ He took Claudia into his arms.
‘He’s at a warehouse he owns down by the port. You know a guy named Leonard Guchinski?’

‘Yeah. He’s nuts. How the hell is he involved?’

‘Stoney’s with this Guchinski guy, and I’m not quite sure why.’

‘So what are you going to do, Ben?’

‘I should call the police,’ Ben said in a tone that said he actually didn’t want to do that. ‘Let them know he at least is
all right.’

‘You want to wait until you talk to him?’

‘I kind of think I should.’ He tucked the cell phone into his front pants pocket. ‘You want to go with me?’

‘Maybe this should be a private meeting,’ Claudia said.

‘I’d like it a lot if you came. He owes you an apology and an explanation. Maybe you can help us figure out how to deal with
the authorities, help him avoid embarrassment. He’s probably going to need a lawyer, too.’

‘He’s going to need a PR firm,’ Claudia said. She wasn’t worried about Stoney’s embarrassment. ‘Let me run upstairs, get my
purse, and we’ll go.’

The trunk was dark, so dark that when Whit shut his eyes he could not tell the world had gone darker. The rattle and bump
of the Taurus shook him back to full consciousness as they sped down the highway.

I’m going to kill you,
he thought.

If he simply lay here, prone with grief, Alex won. He had no doubt Alex’s goal was to kill him, Gooch, Stoney, whoever got
in his way. A clean sweep. If he thought too much about Lucy a sickening paralysis crept into him.

He had hardly moved since Alex punched him again for good measure and dumped him into the trunk. He felt
in his pocket for his cell phone. Gone. He groped in the dark, trying to find anything that could be used as a weapon. Alex
had been at Stoney’s when Whit stopped by, but this car hadn’t been. So either a rental or maybe stolen. Maybe Alex hadn’t
paid enough attention to what was in here if it was stolen, and the trunk seemed cluttered with junk.

His fingers found the rim of the spare. Soft material that felt like silk, maybe some clothes destined for the dry cleaner’s.
A small wrench, probably left out for the lugs of the spare. A book, a wilting paperback. A cool plane of metal, with three
hinges on the side.

Tool box.

Whit slowly turned the toolbox around, found its opening. Closed, but not locked. He managed to open it, heard the clatter
of metal tools as the car hit a bump in the highway. Waited for the car to slow, pull over to the side. If he made too much
noise – if Alex thought he were anything but grief-stricken and broken now – Alex would kill him.

Taking his time, forcing himself to be calm, Whit let his fingers explore the tools. A tape measure. A hammer, which would
be great to swing at Alex’s face. A Baggie, with what felt like an assortment of screws, nails, and lug nuts inside. A small
ball of twine. Pliers. His fingers found a bar in the space above the tools. A handle. The tool box had a lift-out tray, with
another compartment beneath.

He eased the top compartment out. His fingers fumbled inside the deeper well of the box. More Baggies with nails or hooks.
Screwdrivers with hard plastic handles, two or three. A ball peen hammer, the better to break Alex’s teeth with if he got
a chance. Masking tape, a roll thinned from use. Electrical wire. He pricked his finger on a long V of sharp metal, with wicked
little teeth on each side, a carved wooden handle. He gently explored the tool with
his fingertips. A wallboard saw, the kind used to slice through Sheetrock, to make cutouts for light switches and electrical
outlets. But with that nice pointed blade for plunge cuts into walls.

All it takes is one mistake,
Whit thought,
and, you murdering bastard, you just made it.

‘You’re gonna sit here real quiet,’ Gooch said. ‘You mess this up so that Whit or Lucy gets hurt, you’re the mess.’

‘And I thought we’d gotten to be friends,’ Stoney said.

‘Yeah, I’m going to be godfather to your kids.’

‘So what, I sit here and you negotiate with Alex?’

‘No. You sit here and I get rid of him if I have to,’ Gooch said. ‘Then I give you to the judge and he figures out what to
do with you.’

Talking to him like he was a kid. ‘Be nice, Gooch. Or I’ll press charges and you’ll go to prison.’

‘Are you quite so eager to get more in the public eye that way, Stoney? Sit your ass down,’ Gooch said, and Stoney said nothing.
He eased down into the chair behind the desk and Gooch turned to douse out the lights.

Now,
Stoney thought. He grabbed the handle of the desk drawer, gave it a heavy yank.

The drawer slid out, fast, and Stoney swung it as he bolted around the desk, connecting with Gooch’s skull as he turned. Gooch
went down. Stoney brought the drawer down again.

Gooch’s eyes went white. ‘Fuuu—’

Stoney took the heavy end of the drawer and smacked it down hard on Gooch’s head again, twice. Gooch sprawled across the concrete
floor.

My God, that was fast,
Stoney thought. He picked up the gun, groped Gooch’s thick neck for a pulse. After a moment he found it. But Gooch seemed
to be out cold. Stoney considered whether or not to shoot him. Easier
than shooting Danny. At least he wasn’t looking at him with a wet face and a horrible, blubbering pleading look. He pressed
the gun against the back of Gooch’s head.

But then headlights gleamed against the shuttered warehouse windows, a car turning in, and Stoney Vaughn threw a tarp over
Gooch, took the gun, doused the last light, and stepped back into the shadows, into the maze of unopened crates and equipment
in the clutter.

Stoney knelt down by a section of crates in the back. He checked Gooch’s gun by flashlight, a full clip. He sat back, raised
the flashlight, its little circle of light spilling along the crates five feet in front of him.

He froze. ‘That bastard,’ he whispered.