He nodded. “I’m supposed to show y’all up.”
“Nice night,” Leigh said.
“I guess so,” Johnny said. “In here you wouldn’t know if it was night or day. Is it freezing over yet?”
“It’s getting colder by the minute,” Billy Lyons said as the elevator stopped.
Johnny Green escorted them down the hall to suite 825, and rapped on the partly open door with gloved fingers.
“Enter!” Kurt Klein’s unmistakable voice cried out.
Billy Lyons reached into his pants pocket, withdrew a money clip, and peeled off a twenty, which he handed to the bellboy.
“Thank you,” Johnny Green said, putting the bill into his pocket without inspecting it. He held the door open until they were inside and closed it gently behind them.
“Never would have found the eighth floor on our own,” Winter said, ribbing his friend.
“What I’m charging for this,” Billy said, “I can afford to be generous.”
106
The limousine floated along nearly deserted county roads, while Albert recorded the confession Finch had demanded.
“That was almost perfect,” Finch said, after listening to the second version. “Concise and covers all of the major points.”
Despite the fear that he was about to be killed, Albert was furious that Klein was going to cover his ass using Albert’s dead body.
Albert knew where they were going before they turned off the paved road, through the woods to where the landscape opened up like a battlefield. The limousine rolled among great tortured clumps of gathered tree limbs toward the lone equipment-storage structure, which was visible against the levee that ran north to south like a great wall.
The limo driver got out and opened the gates, then drove into the parking lot surrounding the structure, leaving the gates standing open.
“You don’t have to kill me,” Albert said weakly.
“In fact, I do,” Finch told him. “Those are my orders. How I accomplish the task is up to you. I can torture you and roll your fat carcass into a hole and let you smother as we push dirt over you, or I can put you to sleep painlessly. I don’t dislike you, Albert. There’s nothing personal in this. I believe the mitigating factor is that you and Jack Beals robbed and murdered customers of Herr Klein’s casino for profit. Pretty shortsighted-liquidating future customers-don’t you think?”
Albert didn’t know how they knew about his side enterprise, but seeing that they had found his stash, and knew about Beals’s stash, there was no sense denying it.
“How much did Mulvane take?”
“He wasn’t in on it.”
“Was Murphy involved?”
Albert shook his head.
“Just you two?”
Albert nodded. He was thinking about the gun locked up in his desk, and wishing Tug had come along. With Tug, there would be hope. Without him, there was none.
The limo stopped ten feet from the door. The driver and the two thugs climbed out. The driver used a key to open the personnel door and stepped inside to turn on the lights. Meanwhile, Finch aimed his weapon at Albert. “After you, Albert.”
Albert rolled from the seat and crabbed out of the vehicle, hardly aware of the icy drizzle that stung his cheeks like BBs. When he took a step, he slipped in a slick patch in front of the door and his feet flew out from under him. At the sight of Albert flat on his back and flailing in pain, Finch and the thugs laughed-cruel children delighted by the struggles of a flipped-over turtle. With one of the big men pulling on either of his arms, Albert scrambled to his feet, his pants clinging wetly to his soiled buttocks.
107
Tug had followed the limousine, and parked White’s SUV at the edge of the woods. On foot, he trailed the five men into the enormous barn filled with massive earth-moving equipment. The tires on some of the pieces were taller than he was. Only the closest rows of overhead warehouse lights were on, and the men were clustered below a steel support beam in front of the manager’s trailer.
After slipping into the rows of equipment, Tug watched as the driver placed a cinder block and a wooden crate side by side below the beam. The larger of the thugs went into the office trailer and returned with a looped yellow nylon rope, which he threw over the beam. The driver tied a slipknot in one end and, after taking out the slack, the noose dangled five feet over the crate.
“You’re planning to hang me?” Albert asked in a horrified voice. “Not that!”
“Do as we say,” Finch told Albert. “There are propane torches in here, if you’d like to go that route.”
“Get up on the crate, fatso,” the largest thug demanded. “There’s also dynamite in the explosives shed. We could shove a stick up your ass and light it.” The men all laughed, no doubt delighted by the prospect.
“We could roast your little pig balls,” the driver said, snickering.
Tug moved closer each time the men said something, using their noise to cover his stealthy movements.
Resigned, legs shaking, Albert climbed onto the cinder block and stepped onto the crate, which shifted under his considerable weight. While the smaller of the thugs kept his gun aimed at Albert’s groin, Finch climbed up onto the block and placed the noose around Albert’s neck. The driver pulled the far end tight and tied it to a steel water pipe.
Albert began begging for his life, steam issuing from his mouth in the cold building.
“Please…please…don’t do me like this, Mr. Finch,” he said.
“Mr. Finch…please!” the driver called out. The four men, standing in a loose line with their backs to the equipment, were laughing and jeering.
Tug Murphy was in position, his shotgun loaded to its steel gills with five rounds of double-ought. It would be enough. He had left his coat outside so he would have immediate access to the USP45 in his shoulder holster, along with the six loaded magazines suspended under his right armpit.
“Please!” Albert screamed. “Please let me have me a few last words!”
Tug stopped behind a bulldozer that stood between him and the men. He crept around the massive steel treads and in behind the lowered blade. Tug put the shotgun against his shoulder, took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and straightened, now square to the men as the gun cleared the top of the steel blade. While only his head and shoulders were exposed, the men between him and the wall had no cover at all, and not one of Klein’s henchmen had a gun in their hand at the moment.
The limousine driver saw Tug rise into view, but the barrel aimed at him froze him in mid-laugh. When Tug squeezed the trigger, the driver’s head literally vanished. As his corpse collapsed, his hat spun away like a Frisbee.
Tug aimed the next shot at Finch’s legs, but because Finch was already moving, the buckshot only took his right knee off. The South African fell hard on his left side and went for his gun, but Tug swung the barrel to one of the others who had drawn steel and was raising the muzzle of his handgun. Tug blew a hole in that man’s chest, a few inches below his neck.
There was a dull clap as Finch’s gun barked, but the bulldozer blade deflected the round. Tug’s third blast hit Finch in the right shoulder, rendering his hand inoperable as the gun locked in his grip fell heavily to the dirt.
