When the Devil Comes to Call (A Lars and Shaine Novel Book 2) (20 page)

Shaine knew she waited too long. She didn’t leap out of the car, run to the front door and do the deed as soon as he opened it, like a special delivery of death. She sat in the car, turning over the gun in her hand like it was a pretty shell she found on the beach.

Every time she formulated a plan she came up with a dozen ways it could go wrong. She knew Nikki kept a gun in the house, probably several. Would he trust her enough to invite her in if she showed up alone? Would he have brought in more bodyguards? She wasn’t sure she had the skills to face down a gauntlet of muscle men to get to him.

She thought of Lars back in his hospital bed. If he were with her, he would march inside, deal with any unforeseen problems as they occurred and get out with the job finished and plenty of time to make it to the airport.

But Lars isn’t here
, she thought.

Shaine opened the door of the Mercedes, sad to be leaving the warmth. She didn’t tuck the gun away in her belt, worried she might not have the courage to draw it again. She walked around back.

She got into the house by way of a thin screen on the side of the French doors leading in from the porch. Two simple, vintage style latches held the narrow door in place and a thin stick was all she needed to work them open from the outside. She removed the screen and turned on her side to slip in.

She stepped past the kitchen. An obvious, shrouded silence filled the house. No movement, no life. In her mind she started planning for Nikki not being home and where she might lay in wait for him to return.

She moved silently through the house. In the entry were the remnants of a hand grenade or something. The floor blackened, the carpet on the bottom step ripped. She looked closer and recognized the torn shell of Nikki’s oxygen tank.

She went to Nikki’s office and found him there, on the floor. She had to watch him for a while to see if he was breathing.

His face was covered with small scabs and discolored bruises. He looked like he’d fallen down the steps into a kiddie pool full of thumbtacks. He lay there, one big lightly snoring target. A series of targets, really. She could shoot him in the head, she could shoot him in the heart, she could shoot him in the neck, she could shoot him in the balls. An easier hit she’d never have if she took on a career as storied as Lars’s.

Shaine raised the gun, trying to decide which placement of the bullet would be best. The doorbell rang. She lowered the gun. An impatient fist on the door.

“Mr. Pagani,” an unfamiliar voice called.

Shaine backtracked silently to the kitchen as the knocking and doorbell ringing continued. She reached the kitchen island, a long slab of black granite, and thought panicky thoughts of what to do next.

A hand clamped over her mouth. She still screamed, though no one could hear it.

“Shhhhh,” a voice whispered in her ear. Lars. He spun her. He wore a hospital gown, no shoes. No gun in his hand.

“We gotta go,” he said.

Shaine nodded, a lump coming to her throat. She noticed Lars slightly hunched over, his wounds still fresh and not ready to be outside of a hospital bed yet.

“Is he . . . ?” Lars asked.

“No,” she said.

“Good.”

Lars led her back outside.

***

They sat in Earl Walker Ford’s SUV, heat on HIGH to try to warm up Lars’s feet. They watched from a few houses down as Agent Qualls led a small cadre of FBI agents into Nikki’s house, then shortly after, an ambulance arrived and Nikki was brought out on a stretcher, an oxygen mask over his face. Qualls looked like he had a headache.

“Bet that’s not how he figured on going into protection,” Lars said.

He tried to explain why he came, why he needed to stop her. He didn’t think he did a very good job of it, but she said she understood and thanked him.

“Do we need to get you back to a hospital?” she asked.

“Maybe,” he said. The adrenalin was wearing off and his need for real rest and another forty eight hours in a hospital became apparent. “Have to get this car back first.”

“I’ll drive,” she said.

***

Earl Walker Ford gave his car a once-over, saw no scratches, no damage.

“You’re a man of your word, but you sure do test the limits,” Ford said to Lars.

“I’ll take a cab back to the hospital.”

Ford looked to his wife in the doorway of the home, the stern scowl on her face. “Yes, you will,” he said.

“Thank you.” Lars said. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d said it.

“Yeah. Well, thanks I guess for giving me one last hurrah before I quit this shit.”

“I think we’re both gonna like retirement.”

“Both, huh?”

“Like you said, one last hurrah.”

Ford regarded Lars. A small man, weak in his hospital gown. Ford could take him. Bring him in. Administer justice. But he didn’t, because he felt justice had already been done. Ford nodded to Shaine who stood at the edge of the yard.

“I’m not going to shake your hand,” he told Lars. “That’s one step too far. Let me get you a coat though.”

“I appreciate it.”

Ford brought Lars a coat ten years out of date and a pair of old work boots three sizes too large. He thanked Ford again.

“She okay?” Ford asked.

“She’s okay.”

“Keep it that way.”

“I will.”

Ford waved to Shaine and went inside.

They flew home first class. Shaine went for the upgrade when they got to the airport. Lars moved gingerly and enjoyed the plush seats. He declined the complimentary champagne and instead took half of a Percoset before the plane took off. With any luck he’d sleep most of the way to Hawaii.

He’d meant to ask the doctor about the tremor in his pinky. It came on more frequently in recent days. A few times in the hospital, when no one was around, he’d go to move and find himself unable, like his body had momentarily lost service of his nervous system. It came back, like a cable TV outage, in a few seconds, but the brief moments of the frozen state scared him. Scared him into not asking about it, for fear of the truth.

“Is it going to eat at me forever?” Shaine asked.

Lars knew the it. Nikki. Alive, out there somewhere. “Not if you don’t let it.”

“Out of sight, out of mind, right?”

“It’s the same if he was six feet in the ground. Think of it that way. There’s no more satisfaction in it than what you feel right now.”

Satisfied, Shaine nodded. “At least the trip wasn’t a total bust.”

“The money, you mean?”

“Yeah. Partly. I was thinking though, we should send Mr. Ford a little thank you note.”

Lars smiled. “Y’know, I thought the same thing.”

“Maybe a little something for his wife,” she said.

Lars raised an eyebrow. “Oh yeah? Like what?”

“Well,” Shaine said and reached into her pocket. She held out a handful of diamonds. Lars stared at them, bug-eyed. “What am I, an idiot?” Shaine said. “I’m gonna leave them there? I had to have something to do when you went upstairs to find Bruno.”

Something like rifling through the pockets of dead men.

“Well,” Lars said. “I think Mrs. Ford would like one of those very much.”

“One for each daughter too,” Shaine said.

“Generous.”

Lars had his own generosity planned. It took a few weeks to set up, but when Lars sent the card he wrote nothing in it aside from an account number. The card was a Happy Retirement novelty card with a cartoon of an old guy in a cubicle and his co-workers clinging to his leg shouting, “Take me with you!”

The account was in Ford’s name, based in a tiny Caribbean Island and untraceable, and contained a million dollars.

Lars felt like today was the first day he gained back full range of motion, full flexibility in his stretches. The sun burned warm over the beach, his palms sandy from his last pose as he stood, straightening toward the sun. Backlit and in a cloud of mist from the wave she rode, he saw Shaine. He watched her ride in, then jump off her board in the shallow water and paddle out again.

He thought about the note he wrote to Earl Walker Ford the night before. He didn’t want to endanger the man any more by contacting him. He didn’t want Ford to get found out by the FBI, especially now that his retirement waited only days away. But there wasn’t much time for his final favor.

He knew what Ford would say, he’d asked for one last favor before. But this was truly it. Just a name, an address. The new identity of a former Nikki Pagani.

Lately, Lars had been feeling like he’d left unfinished business. One last bullet in the chamber. One more job to be done for a friend.

He watched Shaine stand up on another wave. Yeah, for a friend. Y’know–one last hurrah.

Eric Beetner is the author of more than a dozen novels, including
Rumrunners
,
The Devil Doesn’t Want Me
,
When the Devil Comes to Call
,
Run For The Money
, and
The Year I Died Seven Times
. He is co-author (with JB Kohl) of
One Too Many Blows To The Head
,
Borrowed Trouble
and
Over Their Heads
, and co-wrote
The Backlist
and
The Short List
with Frank Zafiro. He lives in Los Angeles.

280 Steps is a publishing house specializing in crime fiction. The name is taken from master crime writer Raymond Chandler’s 1940 novel
Farewell, My Lovely
, the second novel he wrote featuring L.A. private eye Philip Marlowe. We publish acclaimed authors, exciting new voices and occasionally reprint crime classics.

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Published by 280 Steps

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright
©
2016 by Eric Beetner

All rights reserved.