Rico drove down the unlit road for a few miles, then pulled over. The shoulder was muck, and the wheels sank a few inches before coming to rest. He got out, then flung open Valentine’s door. “Move,” he barked.
It wasn’t easy to walk with his hands tied behind his back, and Valentine stumbled to find his legs, his body still feeling the effects of having the fat guy in the newspaper store pancake him. There was a full moon, and the swamp was alive with animal sounds.
Rico took out a handkerchief and tied it over Valentine’s eyes.
“Walk,” he said.
Valentine’s feet found the path, and he took a few uncertain steps. He felt a gun barrel press against his left ear, then heard a deafening roar.
The pain was white and traveled through his brain like a hot stake. He fell forward, his head wrenched to one side, away from the burning sensation that consumed the left half of his face. Lying on the ground, he thought about Gerry, and how angry his son was going to be when his will was read.
“Get up,” Rico barked.
Valentine staggered to his feet and stumbled down the path.
Rico shoved him. “This way.”
Valentine went to his right. Soon his feet found a clearing, the swamp sounds more prevalent than before. Rico stuck the .45’s barrel into his spine.
“On your knees,” he said.
Ray Hicks came around a bend in the road and saw Rico’s limo parked on the shoulder. He flashed his brights, then parked behind the limo and shut off the engine. Rolling down his window, he heard a pair of men’s voices coming from one of the trails.
Inside the glove compartment was a pearl-handled revolver he’d won in a poker game, and a Walther PPK. He removed the Walther and checked the chamber to ensure it was loaded. He watched Mr. Beauregard lower his window. Something in the swamps was calling the chimp, and Hicks imagined him running away.
“Mr. Beauregard, I am ordering you to stay here.”
Mr. Beauregard stared out the window, ignoring him.
“You will stay here.”
The chimp sighed. Hicks got out of the car. From the trunk he removed a flashlight, tested it, then cautiously headed down the path.
The swamp was jungle-thick with vegetation, and the flashlight’s beam caught elephant ears and tree vines that reminded him of the Louisiana bayous. As a boy, he’d spent countless hours in the low country with his granddaddy, learning to hunt and fish and all the other things it took to become a man. It had been a special time, and thinking about it had a calming influence on him.
He came to a fork in the path. The men’s voices had stopped, the swamp deathly still. Which way should he go? He was left-handed, so that was the direction he chose.
He walked a quarter mile, then came to a dead end. He kicked at the ground in frustration, then heard a gunshot pierce the still night air.
Hicks retraced his steps, then went down the other path to a clearing. His flashlight found a figure lying on the ground. It was a man with a bloody hole in his back. Beside him was another man, blindfolded and on his knees.
Hicks got closer. The blindfolded man had been shot, and his arms appeared tied behind his back. Hicks circled him, just to be sure.
“Is someone there?” the blindfolded man said.
“Yes,” Hicks said.
“Is he dead?” the blindfolded man asked.
Hicks’s flashlight found Rico’s face. He gave him a good kick. Rico was as dead as a dog lying on the side of the road. Hicks stared at the blindfolded man with blood pouring down his face.
“Yes, he is,” Hicks said.
The man started to weep. Hicks considered untying him, then decided not to. For all he knew, the man was a criminal and would try to kill him.
“Please,” the man said, “call the police.”
Shaking, Hicks got behind the wheel of his car. He dialed 911 on his cell phone, then smelled sulfur. He looked at Mr. Beauregard, then the open glove compartment. Reaching in, he touched the pearl-handled revolver. It was warm.
A police operator came on the line. Hicks struggled to find his voice. He gave the operator his location and said there had been a killing. The operator said a cruiser was on 595 and would be right there.
“Thank you, ma’am,” he said.
Hanging up, Hicks tried to make sense of what had happened. If Mr. Beauregard had been following him, he would surely have picked up Hicks’s scent and followed his owner. Only he hadn’t. He’d gone looking for Rico. Had he somehow known another man’s life hung in the balance?
“I wish you could talk,” Hicks said.
A police cruiser appeared in his mirror, its bubble flashing. Digging a handkerchief from his pocket, he wiped down the pearl-handled revolver and replaced Mr. Beauregard’s prints with his own. The police would want to know exactly what had happened.
Mr. Beauregard picked up his ukulele and became lost in his music. Hicks felt his eyes well up with tears, the song instantly familiar.
“I’ll be damned,” he said.
46
“Let me guess,” Saul Hyman said. “You cut your ear off and sent it to a broad.”
It was ten days later, and Valentine stood in the foyer of Saul’s condo, glad to see that the old con man was strong enough to be in a wheelchair, the casts on his arms and legs not slowing him down.
“Can I come in?”
A black male nurse rolled the wheelchair backwards. Valentine entered the condo’s living room and stared at the sliver of ocean view. He felt bad for Saul; from the vantage point of his chair, he probably couldn’t see the water.
He sat on the couch, and the nurse rolled the wheelchair up so Saul was a few feet away. Then the nurse left.
“When I hit eighty, I want one of those,” Valentine said.
“Where’s your son?”
“Up in New York, selling his bar.”
“You going to let him come work for you?”
“One thing at a time,” Valentine said.
Saul smirked. “So how bad is the ear? You going to have a plastic surgeon make you a fake one?”
Valentine hadn’t come to Saul’s condo to talk about the shredded stump on the side of his head. He put a finger on the rubber wheel of Saul’s chair and brought the old con man a few inches closer. “Did you ever have an epiphany?”
“I don’t think Jews have those,” Saul said.
“I did. It happened while I was blindfolded and waiting for Rico to put a bullet in me. I thought I was going to die, and then I had one.”
“An epiphany?”
“Uh-huh.”
