JL04 - Mortal Sin (20 page)

You are so very special…

A different word here or there, the paper crumpled. Her rough drafts. Poor Gina. She wrote the letter a bunch of times to get it right. She must have tossed them in the garbage, where Nicky or one of his helpers salvaged them.

“There’s nothing in that letter that admits a sexual relationship,” I said. Ever the lawyer, making a fine point, not really lying but ignoring reality.

“Don’t insult my intelligence, Jake. We both know the truth. Gina’s a beautiful woman. You’ve had a thing for her for years. A husband and a wife have problems. They drift apart. A woman is weak. She likes a shoulder to cry on, someone to listen. But you do more than listen, don’t you, you bird-dogging son of a bitch? You fucked your client’s wife. It’s a mortal sin, Jake, a goddamn mortal sin. You had free will, and you abused it. You’ve fallen from grace, and you’ll go straight to hell without collecting your two hundred dollars.”

Outside, thunder rolled across the Everglades, and the stilted house shook. No one said a word. I could hear the soft, creaking sounds of the house groaning in the wind. I seemed to have stopped breathing.

“Of course, there is repentance,” Florio said, “and there is absolution. So, Jake, do the right thing and tell me about it.”

“Tell you about what?”

Stalling.

Thinking.

Sweating.

What’s worse, I wondered, the shame of being caught or the fear of inflicted pain? Perspiration tracked down my back, chilling me. I counted my options. They kept coming down to Diaz with a gun and Tiger with a machete. “Look, Nicky. I’m not going to lie to you. I’ve known Gina a long time.”

“I know all about that. I know what’s bullshit and what’s not. Just answer my questions. What’d Gina tell you about me?”

“Nothing really. That she loves you, but she’s not in love with you, whatever that means. That you’re good to her, that she and I could have had something, but our timing was always off.”

“And what’d she tell you about the Everglades project?”

“Cypress Estates? Nothing I remember.”

“Not Cypress Estates. The other one…”

“The other? Look, Nicky, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He studied me. “If you’re a liar, Jake, you’re a good one, and judging from the way you play poker, you couldn’t bluff your way out of a speeding ticket.”

He was smiling now, if that’s what it’s called when a shark shows its teeth. “I’m going to deal with you later.” Then he turned toward Gondolier. “At least the shyster tells the truth, which is more than I can say for you.”

Gondolier’s handsome face lost two shades of its suntan. He shot a look at Diaz, who sat motionless, his hand still inside his nylon jacket. “Whaddaya mean?” Gondolier asked, his voice straining to sound casual.

Diaz looked toward Nicky. “You want I should do him, Mr. Florio?”

Whoa. A changing of the guard.

Gondolier’s eyes shot back and forth between the two men. Florio shook his head sadly. “Rick, Rick, Rick. We could have made each other very wealthy. All the pussy in this town, but you gotta come sniffing after my wife.”

“No. It’s not true, Nicky. I swear on the life of my mother.”

“Your mother’s a guinea whore, and you’re a greaseball with a phony name.”

“Nicky, please. C’mon. You need me. We’ve got our plans.”

“Need
you
? I could replace you with a gold-plated croupier in a rented tux. I could buy and sell a hundred of you.”

Florio’s mouth curled into a sneer. He reached over and grabbed Gondolier’s dimpled cheek and twisted. “Now why don’t you do like the lawyer and fess up? Maybe you’ll be forgiven.” Florio let go. “Why’d you fuck my wife?”

Gondolier sobbed, his shoulders heaving.

“Gondo, you’re lower than gator shit, which you just might be by morning. Tell me, you want to be a turd at the bottom of the swamp?”

Tears streamed down Gondolier’s face. Nicky kept talking. “Now the mouthpiece has an excuse. He’s known her a long time. He’s got seniority.” Florio allowed himself a bitter laugh. “What the fuck’s your excuse? You couldn’t skim enough money from the bingo, you thieving scumbag? You had to humiliate me at home, too, you two-bit, pretty-boy dickhead. What the fuck’s
your
excuse?”

“I don’t know,” Rick Gondolier whimpered. “She was…just…there.”

“That ain’t good enough. That’s not a lawful excuse, right, Jake?”

I didn’t make a sound.

“That’s not justifiable screwing,” Florio added, answering his own question. “Goddamn you, Gondo, it’s a capital offense, fucking your partner’s wife.”

Florio turned to me. “Hey, Jake, what are the odds that hard-on here is gonna live long enough to take a morning piss?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“C’mon, Jake, you’re good at beating the odds. I’m giving you a chance to set ’em. You know me, and you know Gina. You know what Gondo has done with my Gina.” Again, his smile bared his teeth. “
Our
Gina.”

“Six-to-five,” I said.

“How’s that?”

“Some writer once said all life is six-to-five against, just enough of a chance to make it interesting.”

Florio leaned back in his chair, thinking it over. “I like that. The lawyer called it. Anybody want a piece of the action, six-to-five against Gondo making it through the night?”

Gondolier was whimpering. A vein was throbbing in Florio’s forehead, and he was breathing hard in short, raspy breaths. “No takers, Jake. Even Gondo recognizes a sucker bet, and tonight, he’s the biggest sucker in the swamp.”

Florio nodded to Jim Tiger. Suddenly, there was movement all around, Gondolier trying to back away from the table, the shadow of Tiger behind me, moving to my left, Diaz pulling his gun, pointing it at a startled Rick Gondolier, who froze to his chair.

It might have been in slow motion, my mind snapping dozens of stills, the cards still on the table, a king of hearts—the same one Nicky used to win the first pot—staring at me, piles of blue and red chips stacked against the green felt background, the ice cubes melting into the caramel liquid of Florio’s scotch glass.

The machete made a
whoosh
as Tiger swung, two-handed, like a baseball bat. He was a lefty, and the swing had a slight uppercut, like Willie McCovey going for the fence in Candlestick Park. The blade caught Gondolier in the back of the neck, chopping off the ends of his long blond hair. The machete bit through skin and muscles, through blood vessels and spinal canal, and stopped dead with a sickening crack as it lodged in Gondolier’s cervical vertebrae. The impact jolted his body forward, his face stopping just a few inches from the table. Tiger yanked back on the machete, straightening Gondolier, trying to pull the machete free, but it was stuck there. Gondolier’s mouth was open, frozen in disbelief. His eyes screamed with horror.

Tiger yanked again, but bone and blade seemed fused. He lifted his left leg from the floor and planted a snakeskin cowboy boot in the middle of Gondolier’s back. Pushing away with his foot, Tiger used the leverage to wiggle backward on the machete handle, finally yanking the blade free. Gondolier teetered in his chair, his hands still holding the tabletop. Tiger went into his backswing, this time grunting with effort as he brought the machete forward, keeping his head down and motionless like a major leaguer, squarely hitting the same mark, crunching cleanly through tissue and bone with an explosive
pop.

Blood gushed straight into the air, and Gondolier’s head plopped onto the green felt table, rolling into Diaz’s chips, where it came to rest, straight up, mouth and eyes still open. A series of trembles shook Gondolier’s body, but it stayed in the chair, headless, his hands gripping the table. The blood spurted in two distinct streams. Gondolier’s vertebral and carotid arteries were cleanly severed, but the heart was still pumping, and the stream of blood now splashed against the ceiling and drizzled down on the table. I looked up and was splattered, a red sticky shower closing my eyes, a warm, sweet mist covering my lips. In front of Florio, blood puddled on the king of hearts. Diaz shifted the gun to me.

I hate a gun just as much as a blade.

My eyes were on Diaz. The room was silent except for the dripping of blood, from ceiling onto table, from table onto floor. Then I heard the sound of a chair scraping against the floor.

“Rule number three, Jake,” Florio said evenly, sliding away from the table as blood made islands of his towers of chips. “Never fuck another man’s wife, unless you got a real good excuse.”

T
HE RAIN EASED INTO A GENTLE TAPPING AGAINST THE ROOF
, and the thunder diminished to a distant echo. I lost track of the time and place. Sometime after midnight, somewhere near hell.

Nicky Florio hadn’t stopped talking. About progress and loyalty, friendship and women, politicians and bribery, money and power. The sight of the blood, of Rick Gondolier’s twitching body, must have opened the spigots on his adrenaline flow. It did the opposite to me. I was a 223-pound slug. Florio’s words were a sticky blob, a recording played at half speed. Time flowed like a languid river, the Everglades itself.

I thought of Jim Tiger, his shirt soaked with blood, as he hoisted the headless body of Rick Gondolier over his shoulder and carried it to the porch. Florio motioned for me to follow. Diaz stayed half a step behind, watching me. Tiger put the body down by the rail.

“Help him,” Florio ordered me.

I didn’t understand.

“Take his arms, Tiger’ll take his legs. Swing him over the rail.”

Jim Tiger could have done it himself. He was thick through the neck and shoulders with powerful wrists. But Nicky told me to do it, and like an obedient dog standing in the gentle, cooling rain, I obeyed, grabbing Gondolier’s lifeless arms. I had been spared, and something made me want to please Nicky Florio, to thank him for his benevolence. If I had a tail, I would have wagged it.

Below us, the outdoor spotlights cut narrow shafts toward the black water. “Hey, Jake, look at this.” Florio was pointing with a three-foot Kel-Lite, the kind the cops use to peer into cars or beat you over the head. “You can’t even see those beautiful bastards; they blend into the mud.” He gestured toward the soggy bank. “There, look for the eyes.”

I followed the shaft of light.

At first I didn’t see a thing. I was concentrating on holding on to Gondolier, conscious of the still-warm blood, tacky on his arms.

Then I saw them, staring up at us, half a dozen sets of greenish-yellow eyes. “You see any red ones?” Florio asked. “They’re the bull gators. Don’t know why, but the mamas and the children have yellow eyes, the males red.” He stopped the beam and moved it back a few feet. “There! Can’t tell his size, but look at those eyes, like the Devil himself. Five’ll get you ten, he’ll be the first one there. Okay, let ’em rip. On three.”

Florio counted, and we swung the body, letting it fly on the count of three. It hung in the air at the top of its arc, then dropped straight into the inky water where it hit with a smack, submerged, then popped up again. On the bank, the red eyes, glowing like the fires of the bottomless pit, moved toward the water, the bull gator slipping below the surface, swimming powerfully but silently toward the splash. Only the fearsome eyes and the tip of the snout were visible in the beam of the flashlight.

It crossed fifty yards of water in a matter of seconds, striking first at the legs. The first chomp snapped the femur, maybe both of them, with a clearly audible crack. The body seemed to break in two, and in a moment a second gator was there, seizing the top half and dragging it under the water. Now the water was alive with the animals, thrashing about, scavenging for torn flesh, a meaty bone, an overlooked morsel.

I leaned on the railing, the rain pelting me. From behind me, there was movement, and for a split second I thought Tiger was going to push me over. I whirled and saw a blur of motion. Rick Gondolier’s head. It fell to the surface and plopped off the back of one of the gators before sliding into the water, faceup. A distant flash of lightning illuminated the sky. Gondolier’s face was frozen in a death mask, his eyes black holes. A second later, his head disappeared into the maw of one of the yellow-eyed females, which swallowed it in one gulp.

Back inside the house, I was cold and shivering, the fatigue crushing me. I was vaguely aware of sounds and smells. The swish of a mop across the floor, the sharp sting of disinfectant, the crackling oak logs in the fireplace where bloody rags went up in smoke.

Nicky Florio poured scotch into a fancy Scandinavian glass that seemed to be made of icicles. I held the glass in my hand and swirled the bronze whiskey into a whirlpool. I sank into a soft-cushioned sofa of Haitian cotton near the fireplace. Florio grabbed a straight-backed chair, swung a leg over it, and leaned on its back, facing me, like a cowboy in a western saloon. Tiger was still cleaning up. Diaz stood to the side, two feet behind his boss, the gun back in its holster under his jacket. He had an unobstructed view of me, as he had ever since Gondolier was killed.

“I confronted Gina,” Florio said, “and she swore she didn’t tell you anything about the project, but I didn’t know whether to believe her. I still don’t. But it doesn’t matter anymore, because you’ll know soon enough.”

I tossed down the scotch. It burned my throat and closed my eyes. “Know what?”

“I’m going to be honest with you. I told Gina I was going to kill either you or Gondolier. It didn’t make any difference to me just so it was one of you.”

“Why only one?”

“One guy disappears, no big deal. Happens all the time. Two guys with connections to me disappear, it gets a little hairy. Besides, I wanted to find something out from her.”

He looked at me to see if I caught on. It took a second. “You gave Gina the choice…”

He smiled at me. He approved. I was a good student.

“…and she chose to let me live.”

Florio poured me another scotch, shook his head, and said, “No, she told me to spare Gondolier. Kill the lawyer, she said. Just like Shakespeare, huh, Jake?”