From upstairs, I heard: “Goddamn it! Now what’s wrong with this fucking connection!” Merlot’s voice with his limited vocabulary.
I’d apparently knocked him off line.
I reattached the top pair of wires, then disconnected the second.
Nothing.
Maybe Merlot hadn’t armed the alarm yet. Maybe they waited until bedtime, just before they turned the lights off.
After reconnecting the second pair, I yanked the final wires free
… there was an immediate siren scream from above; an electronic tone so loud that it was numbing.
A terrible sound. Even so, I could hear the rumble of footsteps moving overhead. The fat man in a hurry, judging from the thump-thump-thump vibration. I gave him what I hoped was enough time to get to the alarm’s keypad and punch in the shut-off code before I reattached the phone wires and shut the box.
There, that was done. Now all I had to do was wait.
I took the sap from my back pocket, held it comfortably in my right hand. It was a flexible weight, wrapped hard with black leather. Hit a man correctly, he would experience temporary paralysis even if he was conscious.
Hit a man incorrectly, and he would never regain consciousness again.
Seconds later, the siren stopped, its echoes faded. In the fresh silence of falling rain, I felt as if I could hear air molecules reasserting themselves around my eardrums. Upstairs, Merlot said something. Couldn’t make it out. Then Acky’s deeper voice: “Why is it I am always the one who must do these things? Why do you not go outside and look for yourself?”
This time, I had no trouble hearing Merlot’s shrill reply: “I have my reasons, you fool! If I tell you to check, it’s because I have my reasons!”
“But it’s raining… and this happens so often. Why can’t you take a turn?”
“Because… my slow-witted… darling… you don’t have the fucking brains to remember the fucking password when the cops call!” Dramatically patient and then furious: Merlot sounded even more like an overweight woman when he was mad.
Acky: “You have no right to yell at me in this way. One day you will raise your voice to me at the wrong time! I warn you!”
Merlot: “ ‘Duh-h-h-h, lightning set the fucking alarm off again!’ How many times have the cops called and you said that? ‘Duh, the password, I don’t remember any password.”’ Very abusive; his voice gradually getting louder: “I give the orders here! I give the fucking orders and if you don’t like it, I’ll contact my business associates in Panama City.” Now the man sounded truly crazed.
Something else I could hear was Gail. She had begun to sob. It was a sound of absolute despair. She’d had enough-it was that sound, exhausted.
Merlot still wasn’t done: “Remember the stinking beggar I saw snooping around her the other day? One phone call, one phone call to my friends, and guess what happened to him. Fucking disappeared, didn’t he! Just like you’ll disappear, Acky. Back to Lebanon if you give me any more of your shit! Or maybe… maybe I should tell the police where to find my safety deposit box. Let them read about the two men I watched you beat to death. Better yet, remember the poor little slum girl in Maracaibo?”
The phone rang.
Heard Acky yell, “Fuck it all! Fuck it all!” then nothing.
The phone continued to ring. The police or the security company were calling from Panama City, checking to see if Merlot actually had a security problem.
Seconds later, the door to the back stairs creaked open. Having been threatened, Acky was coming to investigate.
I waited just as long as I could… waited until I heard Merlot thumping around again-phone call done-before I snipped the line at the base of the telephone cable, then stepped back into the shadows. No more calls tonight.
Acky had a flashlight, coming down the stairs.
Something else Acky had was a pistol.
19
At one point, the beam of his flashlight swept across my legs, but I remained frozen, body pressed hard against the pilings of the house, trying to blend in.
Apparently, I did.
Acky paused, looked in my direction, then continued walking, checking downstairs doors. I got the impression that false alarms had become routine for him. When the siren sounded, it was usually the same: he grabbed a pistol and flashlight, made the obvious rounds outside, then returned to bed because no one was ever there. Power surges and failed telephone lines are not uncommon in Panama.
Still, Merlot had insisted that he search outside. He’d screamed at him, “I have my reasons! I have my reasons!”
Did that mean something? Or was it simply a coward’s insistence on overprecaution?
I watched Acky intensely, barely breathing, trying to calculate the most effective point of intersection. He was a huge man; lots of weight-lifter muscle. This would have to be done carefully and quickly.
I watched him disappear behind a hibiscus hedge at the back of the house, saw the beam of the flashlight sweep the hillside. It was still raining, coming down harder now. That was good. Rain provided cover. So did the occasional rumble of distant thunder.
I had the leather club in my hand, ready. Still watching Acky, I began to move.
There is rhythm to such a maneuver. It requires patience and a refusal to panic. Fortunately, it does not require great coordination-a gift I do not possess. I kept it simple. When he moved, I moved. When he slowed, I froze…
The house was between us… then the hedge was between us… and then I was behind Acky, traveling quickly, quietly, because if he happened to turn while I was in the open, there was not much doubt that he would use the pistol in his right hand…
Now he was plodding sideways down the hill toward the water. We were on the old golf course now. Was he checking to see if an uninvited visitor had arrived by boat?
Yes, that was it. He was shining the flashlight, painting the canal’s bank with a yellow column of light as I continued to close, moving faster now because I had no cover at all…
… Then, when I was only three or four strides away, it happened. He turned to face me, perhaps alerted by the sound of my feet on grass, or the air pressure of my bulk moving toward him, or possibly by some atavistic alarm that warned of predators-for that is certainly what I was in the instant, a predator; a predator locked so precisely on my target that all else vanished in a charge of adrenaline so pure, so potent, that the feeling surely mimicked elation.
I heard an unexpected sound: a thoracic growl. Could a human being make such a sound? Yes. It was the sound of terror, an inhuman reflex, and I could see the shock in Acky’s eyes when he realized that I was on him, his mouth opening wide to scream as his pistol hand levered toward me.
I caught the pistol in the crook of my arm as I swung hard with the sap… was aiming at the delicate bone behind his ear, but his head dropped instinctively and I caught him high on the cranial globe. The pistol went flying from his hand, but he did not collapse in a heap as I had anticipated. Instead, he staggered drunkenly for a moment, then lunged hard toward me-a very big man who was now crazy with fear.
I caught his chin in the palm of my hand, locked his head against my chest as I threw my legs behind me, sprawling to avoid the reach of his arms… and then I gator-rolled with the full momentum of my weight, back arched off the ground, 360 degrees with Acky’s head still locked tightly against me, two hundred and twenty-some pounds of torque.
That sound…
