A tale of good-natured violence, the song speaks longingly of scalping, whoring, rustling, and robbery. Needless to say, it’s one of my favorites.
About a mile from the range, I caught sight of an old Chevy Impala with whitewall gangsta tires, Superfly headlights, and a purple, metal-flake paint job. Hard to miss, especially since I’d seen it pull onto the MacArthur Causeway behind me back on South Beach.
I hit the brakes and slid into a gas station. The Impala sailed past me, and I tore out after it. Within moments, we were both doing 85 on the straight stretch of pavement that heads into the slough and all the way to Naples. I got close enough to make out the Florida plate-Sunshine State-picked up a pen, and scribbled the number on my arm.
That made three different cars tailing me. The Escalade was owned by a federal inmate. I never got the plate number of the Hummer, and now a souped-up Impala. It made no sense.
I slowed just before Krome Avenue, the old Eldo kicking up a plume of dust as I skidded into the parking lot of the gun range. The Impala kept going west.
I parked next to a black sedan and vaulted out of my car without opening the door, just the way Magnum, P.I., used to do. I could hear the
Once inside the clubhouse, I scanned the outdoor range through a large window. There were only a handful of shooters.
Amy Larkin stood at a shooting station, staring at a target that had been set about twenty-five feet away. She held a small gun in a two-handed grip, knees slightly bent, ear protectors in place. She fired. Waited. Fired again. From this distance, I couldn’t tell if she’d punched a bull’s-eye or winged an egret flying over the slough. She was taking her time. Five or six seconds between shots.
“You the husband?”
I turned. The man had a graying brush cut and a big body. His polo shirt’s logo said,
“Come again?”
“Calamity Jane out there.” The man pointed at Amy, who reset her feet and fired another shot.
“No. Why?”
“Boyfriend, then?”
“What’s it to you?”
The guy folded his arms across his chest. I figured him for an ex-cop who missed the work. “When a woman looks like she’s been crying all night and starts taking target practice first thing in the morning, it usually means she caught her man cheating. If he shows up, well, that’s when I intervene.”
“I’m her lawyer.”
He studied me a second, and I must have passed his cop’s lie-detector test. “Tell her not to try and shoot anyone. She can’t hit shit, anyway.”
I looked up and saw Amy zipping her gun into a nylon pouch. In a moment, she was headed along the path to the parking lot. I headed out to meet her.
When I approached, she was standing behind my Eldo ragtop, staring at my personalized license plate: JUSTICE?
Yeah. With a question mark. I’m not nearly as sure of things as I used to be.
“Amy, what’s going on?”
She turned to face me. “Are you asking as my lawyer or Ziegler’s?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Where were you last night?”
Sounding like the cheated-on spouse the range master imagined. “At Charlie Ziegler’s, but I think you know that. Were you following me or spying on him?”
“How much did Ziegler pay you to sell me out?”
“He offered thirty thousand.”
“Cheap,” she said.
“That’s what I thought.” I told her the rest. One hundred thousand dollars if she wanted to close up shop and go home.
“What’s he paying you under the table to get me to go along?” Her eyes had gone cold.
“Nothing. And you can have my thirty thousand, too.”
“How can I believe you when you’re working for Ziegler now?”
“I went there to learn whatever I could. For you. He denied killing Krista and made the offer.”
“And now he’s waiting for my answer?”
I nodded.
She whipped out the gun, a little Sig Sauer. “Tell him this.” She steadied the pistol with both hands, then popped a shot into the meat of my car’s left front tire. Maybe she was a shitty shot on the range, but from three feet, she was deadly. The tire wheezed in pain.
“I’ll bet you have a spare,” she said.
“I do.”
Her arm jumping a bit, she put a shell into the right front tire, the gunshot lost in the echo of a hundred other rounds. My wounded Eldo now looking like Ben-Hur’s chariot.
“Amy, please put the gun down.”
She aimed at my gut, a wider target than those steel-belted radials.
“I don’t know why I trusted you,” she said. “I should have gone after Ziegler straight off.”
“Don’t do this. I’ve got half a dozen new ideas I haven’t even discussed with you.” In fact, I had one, but half a dozen seemed more promising.
“I’ll bet.”
“I’ve got Snake’s real name. It’s Aldrin. He could be the key to-”
“Too late, Jake. I’m done.” She started backing up toward her car.
“The second you’re out of sight, I’ll call the cops.”
“I’ll bet you would. You wore a wire and ratted out a client once, didn’t you?”
“What about your religious beliefs? ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ ”
“Maybe I’m wrong and you’re right. The universe is chaos. There’s no all-seeing God to reward the just and punish the wicked.”
Why’d she listen to me about that?
“Let’s go talk to someone, Amy. A counselor, maybe.”
“A shrink, you mean. Isn’t that what your friend Castiel threatened? Commit me to the loony bin. Are you all in this together?”
Her gun hand was trembling, her index finger still on the trigger. I measured the distance between us, figured two steps, then a leap to reach her.
“Try it, I’ll shoot you in the face,” she said, reading my mind.
With that, she fired a third shot, puncturing the right rear tire. The tire wheezed like a lung shot through- and-through, and I stayed frozen in place.
34 Ratting Out the Client
I watched Amy drive off in her Toyota with Ohio plates. Birthplace of Aviation, indeed.
I wanted to call 9-1-1.
No way I could ask a cop to stop her without warning about her gun. But what then? A jittery cop, an unstable woman with a gun. Disaster.
The sun pounding me with waves of tropical heat, I took out my cell and dialed a number.
“You got an answer to my offer?” Ziegler said, when he came on the line.
