It was the first time I’d ever ridden in a boat with Eddie when I hoped he’d go faster. As it was, he incurred the wrath of every boat owner in Avalon Harbor after opening up the GTX as soon as we pulled away from the dock. Turning my head, I saw our wide, deep wake almost capsize two small outboards.
We made it to Last Tycoon Cove in fourteen minutes. The Sanrevelle was still riding at anchor the way she had been when we’d left. It was then that I noticed the dilapidated twenty-five-foot Chris-Craft cruiser sitting dark a hundred yards to the south. The two other boats that had been there overnight were gone. The cruiser was at least thirty years old, with peeling paint and one side of its windshield broken out. It might just have been somebody taking a nap or getting laid or hiking onshore, but it didn’t feel right. And then I noticed there was a dive line over the transom. Not a good sign. Too late to be underwater.
The sun was getting low in the sky, but I didn’t need light. No one had come out on the Sanrevelle’s deck despite the noise we made coming in. Eddie feathered the GTX up to the stern, and I threw out the fenders then jumped aboard with a line. He brought Zydeco alongside, and I tied it off on the Sanrevelle’s starboard side.
Eddie clambered aboard, and I motioned for him to go up top. I went inside.
The first pool of blood was on the teak floor just inside the door. I knelt and felt it. It had congealed considerably. Probably at least three hours old. I listened. Other than Eddie’s quiet footsteps above me, nothing.
There was more blood in the salon, sprayed, like someone had stood in the middle of the room and squeezed it out of a ketchup bottle. Some of the furniture had been overturned, and the flatscreen Philips had a hole through it. There were also several bullet holes in the walls, like Jimmy had been trying to hit a moving target.
There was another possibility. He’d been badly wounded and was firing wildly. I pushed that thought out of my mind.
Suddenly, Eddie called out. “I got a dead guy up here. On the flybridge. Never saw him before. Everything else is clear.”
“Stay there,” I yelled back. “I’ll be up in a minute.”
I checked the galley. More things scattered, the microwave ripped out of the wall…blood. I could picture two men, locked in a deadly embrace.
I followed the trail down the center passageway and into my stateroom, where a shot had pierced the ceiling and another had found another of my Vettrianos over the bed. The blood was extremely heavy here, almost too much for even two people.
Jimmy’s body was in the master bathroom, half in, half out of the shower stall. Not unusual. Mortally wounded people sometimes try to get to water. Maybe to try to wash it all away.
Unless the guy upstairs was big too, Jimmy must have been dead on his feet by the time he got to where he died. I knelt over him and checked his wounds. They were legion. He’d been cut at least fifty times on his hands, arms, back, sides and chest. One eye was pulp and both ears were just barely hanging on. What had killed him, though, were a pair of incisions on each side of his neck, each about four inches long. One had taken out the jugular, probably the first major hit—then a coup de grace to the carotid.
He still had his Glock in his hand. The slide was locked in the open and empty position. A guy this big and who knew how to use a gun, had fired at least fifteen rounds and still died. Jesus, who the fuck was the other guy?
“Oh, God. Jimmy.”
I looked over my shoulder and saw Eddie. He was going to see him sooner or later anyway, so I got up and left him alone with his brother.
I made my way up to the flybridge and found Jimmy’s killer crumpled facedown under the control console. He was a slightly built guy, and when I dragged him out, he was caked in blood, head to foot. But except for some scratches on his bare back, I didn’t see any open wounds.
I turned him over, and a knife clattered onto the deck. It wasn’t like the one I’d seen at Jackie Benveniste’s or that Tino had flashed on the freeway. This was a dive knife with a wide, tapered blade, honed to scalpel sharpness with teeth at its bottom edge. He was also wearing a handcuff on his left wrist, the other cuff open and dangling.
I pushed his long, still-wet hair off his face and got my second jolt of the last few minutes. It was the kid who’d shot me at Tacitus. Seventeen at the most, maybe younger. And just in case I thought I was imagining things, there was the one-legged spider on his left forearm. He was probably waiting until he got back to Corsica to add Kim’s.
I looked into his face. He could have been Kiki Videz’s brother, confirming my suspicion that Marta’s youngest son’s only connection to the Corsicans had been his resemblance to the real killer. He had an earring in his right ear with a tiny interlocking D and N dangling from it.
I jerked it through the lobe, pocketed it then checked the body for the decisive wound. It didn’t take long. His windpipe had been crushed. Either under the hands of Jimmy Buffalo, or maybe the butt of his gun. Fifteen shots and not one had connected. The kid had died of asphyxiation.
Suddenly, I heard a boat engine. I stood up and looked toward the cove entrance. Harbor Patrol. Three officers. It had to be about the dozen or so laws we violated when we roared out of Avalon. I left the body and hurried downstairs. Eddie was just coming out of the main cabin. He looked pale and shaken, but his focus was on the patrol boat, same as mine. I shook my head almost imperceptibly, and he nodded.
“Is that your GTX, Buffalo?” The uniformed officer on the bridge was using a bullhorn, and his voice had an edge to it.
“Hey there, Henry,” shouted Eddie. “You know it is. Hold on, I’ll be right there.” He moved quickly to the Zydeco and untied it.
“Stay where you are,” the bullhorn commanded.
But Eddie was already in the boat and had it started. Fenders flapping, he drove straight at the patrol vessel, then at the last second veered off and cut his engines to idle. His momentum caused him to drift past the cops so that they had to make a U-turn, which took their line of sight and, hopefully, their attention off the Sanrevelle.
I heard the bullhorn again, and the officer wasn’t happy. “Goddamn it, Eddie, I said, stay put.”
“Sorry, Henry,” Eddie shouted back to him, “I know I was wrong, driving so fast in the harbor, and all. But I paid four hundred large for this sucker, and sometimes I just can’t help myself. You know how it is.”
“Eddie, shut the hell up!” Officer Henry shouted through his bullhorn. “And prepare to be boarded.”
“Oh shit, Henry, give the badge a rest. How long have we known each other? I’m already late picking up Liz, so why don’t you just follow me back to Avalon, and we’ll straighten this out there. That way, if I end up in jail, Liz can take care of the boat.”
And with that, he jammed the throttles forward, and the GTX rose up out of the water and roared away. It took the officer-in-charge ten seconds to make a decision. Then he took off after Eddie.
As the sound of the two boats died away, I turned back to the cabin. Just as I was about to go inside, I heard someone calling my name. I squinted into the gathering darkness and saw two figures onshore, jumping up and down and waving their arms.
Archer and Liz! And then they were in the water, swimming hard toward me.
I got the old Chris-Craft tied onto my boat using a line attached to a port cleat so it would ride out of my wake. The two women, now in dry clothes, had been alternately crying and talking ever since they got onboard, but I didn’t have time for a recap. Neither of them was hurt, so I told them to find something to calm their nerves, and they chose wine.
I figured Eddie would be back. Unless you’re stone drunk or there’s an injury, residents of the island usually get a lecture and a summons for violating wake laws. But I wanted to get the Sanrevelle out of there in case Officer Henry sent somebody around to check us out.
If that happened, they’d come from Avalon then circle the island on their way back, so I put Archer and Liz in chairs on the afterdeck and gave them a fishing knife out of my tackle box with instructions to cut the cruiser loose if they saw any indication it was taking on water. Liz didn’t want to touch the knife, but Archer didn’t hesitate. Then I turned off my running lights and headed straight out to sea at a fairly robust ten knots.
Three miles out, the sun had set completely, but there was enough moonlight to see the silhouette of the patrol boat as it entered Last Tycoon Cove and used its spotlight to sweep the area. After several minutes, the light went off, and the cops accelerated away in the direction of West End. I waited half an hour, then slowly eased back in.
Eddie showed up just after midnight.
He and Liz spent a long time in each other’s arms. I took Archer into the galley, where we restored some order and brewed a pot of coffee. Then all of us went into the salon with a glass of wine, picked up the overturned furniture and sat—Eddie on a sofa with Liz holding onto him, and Archer and me on the floor, where she curled as close to me as she could get. I put my arm around her, and she seemed to welcome it.
“It was about noon,” Archer said. “The Chris-Craft came in and the guy threw out an anchor and a dive line. Then he stripped down to a bathing suit, put on a snorkel and went over the side. He had a big knife in a sheath on his belt.”
“Where was Jimmy?” I asked.
Liz answered, “He was with us when the guy first appeared. But after watching him dive for a while, Jimmy went inside to get us lunch.”
“The guy was just going up and down, bringing up things from the bottom and throwing them in the back of his boat.”
“Probably nothing but rocks,” Eddie said. “But getting you comfortable with his being there.”
I agreed. “When did he come aboard?”
Archer looked at Liz. “I’d say about an hour later.”
Liz nodded. “Jimmy was up front, and all of sudden, the guy was standing right there.” She pointed to the doorway. “With a knife and something weird, a handcuff on his left wrist. The other cuff was open, just dangling there.”
“‘Phones, give me your phones,’ he said, and we handed them over. The guy had an accent, but his English was good. He threw the phones out the door past the deck. I heard them splash.”
Archer was nodding. “I think Jimmy did too, because that’s when I heard him coming.”
Liz started to whimper, and Eddie pulled her close. “Oh, Eddie,” she said, “Jimmy was so brave.”
He patted her, and Archer went on. “Jimmy had his gun out, but the guy just stared at him and smiled. He wasn’t afraid at all.”
I remembered the night at Tacitus. And what Dr. Abernathy had said about the killer. Archer was right. This Corsican had stones.
Archer continued, “Before I knew what was happening, he grabbed me and clipped the other handcuff on my right wrist and pulled me in front of him. Then he told Jimmy to put the gun down. That he was taking me with him.”
Liz said, “Jimmy motioned for me to come, then he pushed me past him and told me to get the hell off the boat. So I went out the front and over the side.”
Archer said, “When I saw Liz go, I said to myself, ‘Fuck this guy. Nobody’s gonna cut me again without a fight.’ So I grabbed a fistful of his hair and started jerking his head back and forth. He went crazy, and Jimmy charged.”
Archer took a sip of wine, her hand trembling. “It was like being on one of those rides that whip you all over the place. You know, where you get off feeling like your insides came loose. I’m cuffed to the guy, and Jimmy’s locked up with him, and the three of us are sweating and yelling and banging into everything in the place. Jimmy’s gun went off so many times I figured we were all gonna die.
“Then we fell over that big chair over there and rolled into the galley in a tangle. While everybody was struggling to get up, I got my hand in the guy’s pocket and got lucky. The key was there. I managed to get the cuff off, and the next thing I knew I was sprinting for the deck and diving over the side. I saw Liz swimming for shore, and I took off after her, figuring maybe we could find somebody with a phone.”
She lowered her voice. “All the way in, I kept hearing shots.”
When she got her breath, I told her how brave she’d been. I also kicked myself for leaving her alone—Jimmy or no Jimmy. Once the Corsicans had shown they wanted Archer—and me—it had been a stupid risk.
“Now,” I said, “we’ve got a decision to make. To call the authorities or not.” I let the words hang there.
Archer looked at me. “You know who the guy is, don’t you? And don’t bullshit me. I can tell.”
I nodded. “He’s the man who murdered your sister.”
She didn’t say anything for a moment. Then she whispered, “Jesus Christ.” Then, “What do these people want with us?”
“At first, I thought they were tying up loose ends, but not any longer. He was going to take you. That means they think you know something—something Kim might have told you.” I didn’t have to mention they thought the same thing about me.
“I don’t know shit, except that I’m scared to death.”
“I believe you, but unfortunately, we can’t send them a telegram.”
“But you understand more than you’re telling….”
“A little, but there’s a lot more I don’t know. I’m trying to find out as fast as I can, but I’m not there yet. I do think, though, that I might be able to create a momentum shift in our favor, but if the cops get involved…” I looked at everyone. “If the consensus is we should report it, I’ll go along.”
Eddie looked at me. “With Jimmy’s history, no cop’s gonna shed any tears over him. And our mother doesn’t need a camera crew chasing her down Bourbon Street. Besides, I can see it coming. Two dead guys who killed each other. One’s served time, and the other’s probably an illegal. Case fucking closed.”
Archer nodded. “I’ve got a past too, and some of it I don’t need to relive. Especially on the front page. I saw what they did to Kim.”
“Liz?” I said.
She didn’t hesitate. “Screw the cops.”
At dawn, we were 125 miles northwest of Catalina, and 100 miles beyond the trans-Pacific shipping corridor. Here, the Patton Escarpment ends, and the ocean floor begins to taper downward sharply. When we had at least five thousand feet of blue water beneath us, Eddie shut down the Sanrevelle’s engines, and I did the same on the Chris-Craft. I’d have liked to have gone another hour, gotten closer to thirteen thousand feet, but the cruiser was running on fumes.
We’d left the GTX at Last Tycoon Cove. I had wanted to send Liz and Archer back to Avalon in it, but neither woman would go. Liz said it was the least she could do for Jimmy—be present at his burial—and Archer said she wasn’t going anywhere without me. I told her I was flattered, considering I hadn’t done anything to merit that much confidence. In fact, I’d almost gotten her killed.
She answered me with tears in her eyes. “Mister, since I left home, not one person has given two shits whether I live or die, and right now, I’m going to hang on for dear life to the only one who seems to—whether he likes it or not.”
Before we’d left Last Tycoon Cove, Eddie and I had gotten the young Corsican’s body back onto the Chris-Craft, along with as many blood-soaked pieces of the Sanrevelle as we could pry loose or rip out. In the mildewed cabin, I found a suitcase containing several lacy negligees and an assortment of women’s silk underwear. Under this were the pantsuit and lime green accessories Kim had described from Ralphs.
It took a minute before it hit me. The argument between Tino and Dante that Kim had overheard. “Maybe you watch, you learn zee man way!”
I took the dead kid’s earring out of my pocket and looked at it. If the D was Dante, then the kid had to be N. I looked at the filthy bunk and didn’t know whether to be pleased at my detective work or revolted at the squalor. I settled for hoping to have a little heart-to-heart with Dante.
The only other things I found were the kid’s shoes and shirt, which he’d probably taken off to dive, and a red tortil, which I saved, along with a photograph of the spider tattoo I took with my digital camera. There wasn’t a single scrap of paper aboard to identify the kid or the boat, not even a hull number belowdecks. It had probably been a derelict, abandoned or sold for scrap and purposely kept anonymous.
Using a small axe I kept aboard the Sanrevelle to build campfires, it didn’t take long to break a hole through her below the waterline. The wood was like wet cardboard. Maintenance hadn’t been a priority.
I used the open handcuff to secure the Corsican to the bilge pump so he wouldn’t float away and waited until I was sure the cruiser was going down. Then I slipped the axe handle into a belt loop on my cutoffs and eased into the water, clenching the Ziploc containing the kid’s red headband and my camera between my teeth. I swam the few yards to the Sanrevelle without looking back, and by the time I climbed aboard, the Chris-Craft was almost gone. As the last of her top slipped below the surface, I knew I was almost certainly sinking the boat that would have taken Kim on her final ride. There was a certain justice to that, but I kept it to myself.
Getting Jimmy’s body out of the head, through the boat and onto the afterdeck of the Sanrevelle was a grueling, gruesome job. No matter how strong or strong-stomached you are, handling a body is difficult. Handling one the size of Jimmy Buffalo was twice so, and I insisted that Archer and Liz stay in one of the forward staterooms while we did it.
After we had him on the afterdeck, Eddie and I removed the stainless steel door of my Sub-Zero refrigerator, rolled Jimmy onto it and wired both into a piece of blue canvas. This far out, the door was probably overkill, but the sea can be peculiar about disgorging secrets, so I wanted something really heavy. Jimmy’s gun went into the water, along with some broken glass from the shower stall that we hadn’t found earlier.
When the four of us assembled on deck around our make-shift body bag, Eddie and I were dripping with sweat, and the women looked like they’d been through the mill. We were all affected. No one with a conscience can be around violent death and not be, no matter how many times you’ve seen it before.
After some discussion, we determined we all knew the 23rd Psalm. So Eddie told a couple of stories about his brother—one of them so funny we all burst out laughing—and Archer and Liz thanked him for saving their lives, then we began, “The Lord is my Shepherd…”
A few minutes later, Eddie and I slid Jimmy Buffalo into the water, where he could sleep for eternity.
As I climbed to the flybridge, Eddie, Liz and Archer went into the cabin. “Call me if you need me,” Eddie said. “But if I don’t lie down for a while, I’m going to drop.”
I was getting the Sanrevelle ready to go when I heard Archer coming up the stairs. She was carrying two cups of coffee. “I hope you drink it black…and strong.”
I took the cup. “I can’t think of anything I’d rather have.”
Archer sat down on the chair next to mine. “Mind?” she asked. “I need to be close to someone.”
Once again I was reminded of Kim. I said, “I’d enjoy the company. If you see me nodding off, just slap me. There’s not much to run into, but it’s not a good time to get careless.”
When I looked at her a few moments later, she was sound asleep, curled up in the captain’s chair like a cat. I took the coffee cup out of her limp hand and set it in the holder next to mine. A following wind was picking up. I eased back slightly on the throttles and let the breeze help push. There wasn’t any hurry, and I wanted to think.
I’d been playing games against civilized people for so long that my instincts had dulled. It happens. Holding an edge is difficult. But the alternative is that people die. Well, if I’d needed to get reacquainted with what the world is really like, I just had. Time to wake up.
But there was something else. Something I kept locked away in a dark place. And now, as it pushed its way to the surface, I felt the familiar coldness run through my soul, and I did not welcome it. This was not a man I liked very much, but he was here to stay until this was over.
I dialed Jake Praxis’s office and got his voice mail. “This is Rail. Call your friend, the reporter,” I said.
Then I adjusted the Sanrevelle’s course and headed home into the rising sun.