[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.Chaz said, “I didn’t know the guy had a video camera.When I saw the tape, I was blown away.”“Son, it’s bad, bad news.”“The worst,” Chaz agreed.“I gotta say, it was a tur’ble thing to watch.I always liked Joey, I really did,” Red said.“I won’t ask why you done it, because it ain’t none of my business.”Chaz was mildly irritated.“But we talked about it, remember? How worried I was? I thought she’d figured out our whole deal.”He was disappointed that Red hadn’t commented on the efficiency of the crime itself; the steel balls it took to go through with it.“We’ve got to pay the blackmail, Red.Now there’s no choice.”“I ’gree.”“The whole five hundred, right?”“Yup,” Red Hammernut said.“The full load.”Chaz Perrone’s relief almost instantly gave way to suspicion.He’d been expecting resistance or, at the least, some loony alternate plan.He knew how much Red cherished his money; dropping half a million bucks was enough to send him on a six-month bender.“The drop is set for tonight,” Chaz said, “on a house somewhere in the middle of Biscayne Bay.The guy wrote down a GPS heading.”“Yeah, Tool told me.”“You talked to Tool?”“That’s right.I already gave him the cash to hold.” Red Hammernut took a pull from the bottle of bourbon.“Why you look so surprised, son? The man works for me.”“Yeah.So do I,” Chaz reminded him.“And you’re in charge of buyin’ the suitcase.” Red said this with no trace of sarcasm.“I got you guys a boat for the night, a twenty-three-footer, at Bayside Marina.That’s downtown Miami, acrosst from the basketball arena.Tool’s good with outboards, you let him drive.”“Whatever,” said Chaz.He was thinking about the scene toward the end of GoodFellas, when everything’s falling apart for the gangsters and the Ray Liotta character meets the Robert De Niro character at a diner.The two of them are sitting there, calmly talking about all the problems and all the heat—just like Red and I are talking, Chaz thought—when the De Niro character nonchalantly asks the Ray Liotta character to go down to Florida and do a job.And right then, at that instant, the Ray Liotta character knows he’s being set up for a hit.“Son, I don’t want no funny business out there on the water,” Red Hammernut was saying.“I told Tool the same thing—pay the sumbitch and get the hell outta Dodge, you hear?”Just like in the movie, Chaz thought.Once I was the partner and now I’m the problem.He understood that Red Hammernut was looking at the big picture.The blackmailer posed a threat to Red only as long as Chaz was alive.The Hummer was the most traceable connection between them, and Red could always blame that on Chaz.He could say the biologist had hit him up for a new set of wheels.As a matter of fact, Red could say that the whole Everglades scam, faking the pollution charts, had been Chaz’s idea; a shakedown from the beginning.Once Chaz was gone, who could dispute it?“I want you guys to get it over with, that’s the main thing,” Red Hammernut was saying.“Be done with it for good.”Amen, thought Chaz.The time has come.Twenty-nineJoey and her brother carried the dinner scraps down to the seawall to feed the fish.Stranahan sat at the picnic table, cleaning his rifle.He was relieved to be home, distant from the lunacy of the mainland.Strom lay at his feet and refused to move, even for a flock of rowdy gulls.All afternoon the dog had stayed near his side, sensing that something was in the works.If only humans were that intuitive, Stranahan thought.With Strom at his heels, he carried the Ruger to the boat.Joey watched him wrap the gun in an oilcloth and stow it in the bow hatch.“Mick, get this,” she said.“My brother has the hots for my husband’s girlfriend.”Corbett Wheeler waved an objection.“Hold on—all I said was, she didn’t seem like a bimbo.”“That’s what happens when you live with cloven beasts.Your standards take a dive,” Joey said.“My advice is not to date anybody you meet at a funeral.Ask Chaz, if you don’t believe me [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]