Green Ice (49 page)

Not unnoticed.

Two men came from the house, and then a third, headed for the bridge.

From the size of one, Wiley gathered it was Luis Hurtado. Wiley recalled Hurtado’s hands, twice the size of average hands, capable of breaking someone’s forearm like a stick of kindling.

They ran down the beach.

The tide was flowing, so they had to keep close to the dunes to avoid the wash of the breakers. Wiley looked for someplace on the way that might be good for a stand. Anything that might give them an edge. There weren’t even any rocks along there, only large, closed-up houses above the sheer dunes, not easily accessible.

They kept going.

The sameness of the beach, the water, the dunes lessened their sense of reality. The night seemed to be holding itself over them, over everything, like an apathetic spectator, and the light from the misted moon appeared artificial.

They came to a fence. Ordinary wooden slats connected by wire. Meant to impede the drift, the eating-away of the dunes. And a short ways farther on were some gray-green painted structures. They were one-room places, little more than shacks, about twenty of them in an evenly spaced line facing the sea. Each had the same eaves, door, windows. Identical in every way, even to the size and placement of the white-enameled wooden name-plates fixed above each door. The plainest sort of black lettering, professionally done, said so-and-so Vanderbilt, so-and-so Whitney, so-and-so Hutton.

Members of the Maidstone Club used these shacks to change in at the beach. In summer they were places for wet suits and plastic floats, mats, folding canvas recliners and gallons of Bain de Soleil. But now, on the opposite side of the year, the shacks were empty, the doors left unlocked.

To Wiley and Lillian the shacks offered welcome cover. They ducked in between two, peeked back up the beach. Their pursuers were barely perceptible: three upright, dark shapes moving against the sand and dunes. About four hundred feet, at the most, a minute away.

Was this a good place to make the fight? Wiley wondered. How could it best be used? How would a professional use it? Wouldn’t their adversaries approach these shacks with the utmost caution, anticipating a move? No way, therefore, of pulling off much of a surprise. Most surprising would be not to be there. Also, it would take their adversaries time to check out the shacks, give them precious moments to set themselves up elsewhere, Wiley decided.

He and Lillian went on.

Just beyond the last shack in the row was the Maidstone Club proper. A wide cement deck up off the beach. Steel poles, permanently embedded in the deck, formed a framework that would be for awnings. A short distance in from the beach was the swimming pool, empty now. The cement deck ran around it. Just back from the pool’s edge, along each side, were more of those same gray-green shacks.

Directly ahead, presiding over it all on the crest of the dunes, was the main clubhouse. An extensive building of turn-of-the-century design. Leading up to it were two identical flights of steps on the left and right, and a black-topped drive that served a beach-level parking area behind the shacks, not visible from the pool.

Sand blown from the beach occupied every crack and corner. There was as much as five feet of sand in the far end, the deep end of the pool. Surfaces were smooth and had a slight powdery coating, rather like talcum, from being sandblasted almost perpetually.

How about here? Wiley and Lillian considered. What would be the least expected, most advantageous positions they could take here?

Worst place would be down in the empty pool. The pool was an obvious trap. A four-way dead end.

Best place would be any of the shacks.

They decided on a little of each.

Wiley jumped down into the pool. The shallow end. It was too shallow for him to crouch. He had to kneel to get entirely out of sight. That end of the pool was nearest the entranceway, the way the men would most likely come.

Every few seconds Wiley took a one-eyed peek. Kept his head horizontal and raised it so one eye was just above the level of the pool’s edge.

It seemed they were a long time coming.

Now that he was no longer on the move, the cold got all the way into Wiley. He felt himself thickening inside, becoming brittle. His knees were ball-like aches and his hands burned so it didn’t seem he had hold of the pistol. He gripped it tighter to make sure it was there. Surely he wouldn’t have feeling enough to be able to squeeze off a shot. He put his trigger finger into his mouth. The entire finger. Soon it was thawed enough, flexible, ready, but he had to keep it in. Once he removed it, wet with saliva, it would begin to freeze. He also unzipped his fly, shoved his left hand in down between his legs to warm it.

Although he kept alert for any sign of them, he took the time to think.

About really losing.

All the other times when he’d come close, when what he’d believed he wanted had zigzagged by just out of reach, all those times altogether didn’t amount to anything, compared to this. Nothing had ever been so important to him, he knew. He viewed his death not so much as the loss of him as a loss by him. The loss of her, his ability to love her. An awful thought: never again to experience her, not even with his eyes.

An offsetting thought followed, one that by no means completely consoled him but which helped nonetheless and caused him to smile inside. Pleased with himself that he’d been able to love her that intensely. Her or anyone, for that matter. It was an accomplishment, be it the last or not.

Apparently, it would be the last.

No matter if these three failed, Argenti would merely send another set of killers. At least it was a better way to go than Barbosa, Wiley thought.

He took another horizontal peek.

There was something. Something off to the side that broke the line of the entranceway.

Definitely one of them.

Wiley kept his eye on him.

The man advanced a few quick, light steps at a time. He was about sixty feet away. Wiley watched the man’s footwork, the way he shifted to the left and right, always forward but never straight on, scooting along smoothly in a crouch.

The other two men appeared, spaced well apart. Apparently the first was scouting the way, about twenty feet ahead.

Wiley’s eyes were watering from the cold and the strain of intense focus. He clenched them and a couple of tears dropped.

How long should he wait? How close should he let the man get?

The man was now only about thirty feet away, standing out in the open on the concrete deck but ready for action from any direction.

Wiley became aware of a clanging.

It was the tall metal flagpole up by the clubhouse. The flag-raising lanyards were whipping in the breeze, striking their metal clips against the pole. Like a knell.

The man was less than twenty feet away now.

Wiley didn’t just rise up suddenly. He had thought he would, but he was cramped with cold and he didn’t trust his freehand aim that much.

Careful not to make any abrupt move, as though the man were a bird who would fly at any sudden motion, Wiley brought his right hand, with the pistol, up to the edge of the pool, rested his wrist on the edge.

The man didn’t notice it.

He did, however, notice the upper half of Wiley’s head when it came up to aim. But by the time his brain had conveyed that information to his gun hand, Wiley’s first bullet had hit him. Hit him three inches to center of the top left button on his double-breasted overcoat. Straightened him up and drove him back. Wiley’s second bullet was unnecessary. Went in just above the right hip as the man’s body twisted on the way down.

Hurtado and Kellerman dropped flat to the concrete deck.

Wiley made for the deep end of the pool. He was supposed to have gotten out by way of the steps at the shallow end, but his knees had been a problem, rigid, the fluid in them viscous from the cold. He couldn’t run, hobbled down the incline of the bottom, which was steeper than it had appeared. The sound of his steps reverberated loudly, and he got an objective mental flash of himself—trapped in a depressed rectangular box.

The deep end of the pool was in shadow. By the time Wiley reached it, Hurtado and Kellerman were firing at him. They were kneeling, one knee down on the deck near the shallow end.

Wiley expected any second to feel the splat of a bullet into his back. He kept low, tucked over, dodged. The slugs that just missed him chipped sharply off the hard interior of the pool and ricocheted around until spent.

Wiley got to the right-hand corner of the far end, where there was a permanent pool ladder. A tubular-metal ladder with fat chrome rails and wide substantial steps. He put his pistol away and jumped for it. The five feet of sand in that end of the pool helped. Otherwise the ladder would have been way out of reach. He grasped the bottom of one of the rails where it was fixed to the side of the pool. Pulled himself up. The metal was so cold his bare hands almost stuck to it.

He didn’t try to climb out of the pool. He couldn’t, without offering them too easy a target.

He used only the bottom step, brought his right foot up on it and pivoted around. He clung to the side of the ladder, used it for cover. Put it between himself and them. Better than nothing.

All the while Hurtado and Kellerman had been firing at him. Only the quickness and unpredictability of his movements and the deep shadows had kept him from getting hit. Twice, three times, he thought he felt bullets brush the fabric of his wind-breaker, and perhaps one had creased his neck just below his right ear but he wasn’t sure. There wasn’t any pain. Too cold for such pain.

They didn’t waste bullets on him now. They had him, hung up on the side of that ladder. All they had to do was improve their angle.

His hands were too cold to reach in for his pistol to fight back.

Kellerman darted in between the third and fourth shacks on the left side.

Hurtado advanced along the concrete deck on the left side of the pool. After he’d gone about a third of the pool’s length, Hurtado had a clear chance at Wiley. But didn’t take it. Each step brought him closer, gave him an easier, surer shot. When he was directly opposite where Wiley clung, only the width of the pool away, Hurtado stopped, raised his pistol and took aim.

Lillian shot Hurtado in the back.

From the position she had taken up between the ninth and tenth shacks on that side.

Hurtado didn’t go down. The impact of the bullet only caused the huge man’s body to jerk slightly. He turned around to face the shacks, as though irritated at the interruption.

Lillian shot him in the chest.

Hurtado took three steps in her direction. It was as though she were firing blanks.

She shot him again.

He absorbed that bullet also.

But it stopped him.

Her next shot started him going the other way, against his will, bent like a man fighting a strong wind.

She had four rounds left in that clip. She squeezed them off quickly but accurately.

As though they were individual shoves, they drove Hurtado back. Over the edge. He dropped dead into the pool.

Wiley took advantage of the diversion to climb the ladder to the concrete deck and roll swiftly across it to the space between shacks twelve and thirteen.

He joined Lillian behind the shacks. They hurried across the parking area.

Kellerman tried a shot from the rear corner of shack four.

They sprinted up the drive.

Kellerman after them.

They impulsively bypassed the clubhouse, followed the drive around to the inland side. There was the golf course. That part of it an entirely open gentle slope.

Kellerman was only about a hundred feet behind them.

Lillian ejected her empty clip. On the run she tried to fit in a fresh one and, giving her attention partly to that, stumbled and fell. It took her a moment to recover.

Kellerman went down at practically the same time. He reached beneath his coat for his other gun. It had a longer barrel. He extended both his arms. In a prone position, he used the ground to support his aim. Did not hurry this shot, knew he was well within range and had a good enough view of his target.

Lillian continued on for a dozen more strides or so before her legs gave out. She collapsed on the frozen grass at the edge of a sand bunker, fell forward into it in a contorted position, a leg and an arm pinned under her, the weight of her limp head stretching her neck. Her eyes were fixed in a stare and her mouth was open as though in amazement.

Wiley glanced back, stopped when he saw Lillian down in the bunker. He rushed to her, kneeled, straightened her body, hating the lifelessness of her arms and legs, the way her neck didn’t have the life to support her head, allowed it to loll to one side so her cheek was pressing the cold damp sand.

Somehow he had always thought he’d be the first to get it, not her. Oh, God, not her.

He heard a voice, low but loud enough for him to recognize it as Kellerman’s. Talking to someone.

Wiley looked over the shoulder of the bunker, not cautiously, saw a single figure about a hundred feet away. That could only mean Kellerman had a radio. What was he saying? The cold air carried his words, but Wiley couldn’t make them out. No doubt, however, who Kellerman was in contact with.

Wiley took out the Colt forty-five. His hands were so cold he had to force his fingers to bend. He snapped the bolt back, and the pistol inserted a bullet into the firing chamber.

One of those hydraulic bullets she’d made.

She owed Kellerman one.

Wiley would see that Kellerman got it.

If it was the last thing he did.

Kellerman had put the radio away now. He checked his pistol and headed straight for the bunker. He didn’t know the bunker or Wiley was there. It had appeared to him that Lillian had fallen over a small rise and that Wiley had gone on.

Wiley waited, watched through the fringes of dead grass, waited until Kellerman was only a few paces away.

Wiley loomed up, fired at the middle of the man with the death-mask face.

Wiley had jerked the shot but it still hit. Below Kellerman’s right collarbone. The bullet with the water in its nose exploded as it was supposed to when it met the resistance of Kellerman’s flesh. It blew away Kellerman’s entire shoulder. His right arm landed thirty feet behind him off to the right. The rest of his body pumped the life out of him in seconds.