buttoned tight at the collar, and white loafers that looked like golf shoes to you, but who the fuck knows? In the harsh sunlight, the getup seemed to glow, making the Brown Man’s coffee-colored face appear to be floating as he moved carefully down the driveway. You were looking to see if he was armed, but the man’s hands were deep into his loose trouser pockets and could have been concealing all but the largest of handguns. He stopped some thirty feet from the gate.
“It is unusual for police officers, especially simple foot patrolmen, to visit my private home, Mr. Booker,” he said. If the use of the phrase foot patrolmen was a purposeful dig, his voice didn’t show it. He looked back at his house, head tilted up toward the cameras.
“Most officers don’t like the idea that they could be filmed here, and that such evidence could end up on a desk in your internal affairs division.”
No shit, Sherlock, you thought. But you’d already practiced your response. The words felt dry and dirty in your mouth. Still, you got them out.
“I need your help, Mr. Carter,” you said.
The Brown Man’s eyebrows went up, a near imperceptible response. He took three casual steps closer.
“I would caution you, Mr. Booker,” he said, cutting his eyes to the right where the intercom box was mounted. “There is a recording device that will also preserve everything you say.”
But there wasn’t anything you were going to say now that you hadn’t already said to the blonde detective. It was already out there, man. Only one thing left to do: If this fuck wad would only come another twenty feet closer, it would be over. And that’s when you saw the movement behind him, the Brown Man, someone else moving at the door to the house. Your hand moved down to your hip: You could blow this man away before some kind of bodyguard came out and capped you first.
The Brown Man turned at the look in your eye, turned to see what had pulled your attention. “Go back inside, Andrew!” Carter said. “This is nothing for you.”
But the kid stepped out, the ten-year-old, the same one who’d made all those drug drops to you. He was dressed in the typical style of the day: long baggy shorts that came down to his calves, an oversize T-shirt, ball cap turned sideways on his head. His eyes were too calm and effortless for a kid that age, too “I don’t give a shit” for a boy who would have a natural energy and inquisitiveness. The Mustang had brought that childlike joy in his eyes whenever the boy made a delivery.
Now it was more of a feral sizing up the situation. Hell, without your car, he might not recognize you at all, never mind without your legs.
“He’s your son?” you said, not meaning to let the words slip out. The Brown Man turned back, and now his eyes were different, too.
“Not that’s it’s any of your business, Booker. But yes, he’s my son. And the smartest employee I have. You have a problem with that?” Carter said, and you could tell you’d hit a live wire.
“You use your own son as a drug mule, a kid to make your deliveries?” you said without thinking, letting the emotion slip through. And instantly, you knew you’d lost the plan, lost the ruse to pull the man into a faux business deal that would ease his reluctance by appealing to his greed and bring him within range.
But he stepped forward anyway, this time with anger in his face.
“What, Mr. Dirty Cop? You’re going to tell me how to raise my own son? You with the drug habit, you handing out the money that goes into my pockets, you with the tin shield-you think that makes you better than me?”
Hell, you couldn’t have planned it this well: Carter getting pissed, coming closer, railing at you to make it that much easier to pull the trigger.
“Is that what your daddy taught you, Mr. Cripple? I teach my son how to survive, how to do business with the likes of you. His generation ain’t so stupid if you show them the way of the world, Mr. Righteous Cop.”
Our eyes met then, the Brown Man stepping close enough now that you could see the freckles on his dark face, the now damp stain on the collar of his white shirt, the anger pulsing in the vein at his neck.
Your hand was already on the makeshift grip of the shotgun. And when it came forward, barely three inches of the sawed-off barrel poked out of the jacket that hid it, and you shoved it forward between the rungs of the gate and fired nearly point-blank into the Brown Man’s sternum. The blast echoed through the neighborhood, the 00 buckshot, nine large pellets, ripping through cloth and flesh and lung tissue and ruining the spotlessness of the man’s suit with an instantaneous spread of red blood, like the snarling mouth of a rabid dog.
The man only took a short hop back, and then crumpled like a marionette suddenly cut loose of its strings. When the Brown Man fell onto the driveway pavement, you could see the son standing beyond him, his eyes wide and his mouth frozen.
You did not say a word-only pumped the shotgun once, heard the ejected shell hit the sidewalk, and then rotated the barrel so that the newly sanded aperture fit snug under your chin. Then you pulled the trigger once more.
– 26 -
We gathered at Billy’s penthouse apartment overlooking the ocean in West Palm Beach. The moon was down, and there was a hint of a breeze coming in with the tide. Luz Carmen was out on the patio, looking out into the dark, listening to the hush of waves. We were not worried that she might throw herself over the railing.
Billy and his wife were on one of the leather loveseats in the sunken living room. They sat close, Billy sipping one of the martinis that he prided himself on making in the classic mode, dry, with the open bottle of vermouth only passed over the top of the vodka, allowing barely more than the aroma to insinuate the drink. Curiously, Diane was not imbibing as she usually would. Sherry and I were on the couch, sharing a bottle of Rolling Rock.
Billy’s place has a museum quality about it: the African hand-carved ebony sculptures, a fascinating collection of Southwest paper clay art, and a stunning copy of The Guardian of the Seraglio by Eduard Charlemont dominating the southern wall. Billy once told me the sword-bearing chief depicted was said to guard the women in his Moorish palace.
When I looked from the painting to Billy, he showed no indication that he was reading my mind. But the allusion was not lost on me.
“Horace D. Wiggins is apparently s-singing an aria d-down at the Broward Sheriff’s Office,” Billy said, using the now known name of our “assassin.”
“He’s already admitted t-taking assignments from Carlyle Carter, the so-called Br-Brown Man, and seems quite enamored with himself as a real hit m-man. When he is charged with the m-murders of Andres and his girlfriend, the attempted murders of Booker and of b-both of you, I suppose he will at some point realize that he can’t just push the reset b-button on the game and start all over again.”
“How old is he?” I said.
“Twenty.”
The disappointment in Billy’s voice was once again stronger than I was used to. “B-Barely more than a child himself. He’ll see soon enough that the inside of a m-maximum-security prison is not nearly as intriguing as the television version.”
“He admitted to setting the bomb under Max’s car?” Sherry said.
“Apparently, the Medicare fraud people got nervous about one of their satellite operations. They shared their concern with Carter, and since it threatened his drug supply chain, Carter put word out on the street that he wanted the Carmen family scared into silence,” I said.
“The shooters at the park and the gang who tried to hit Andres from the car?” Diane asked.
“That’s how you got involved,” Sherry stated the obvious, a favorite dig of hers that referred to my recurring ability to get my ass in trouble.
“Wh-When that d-didn’t work, our Mr. Carter w-went to his n-next line of defense. He p-put his young assassin on alert, and Mr. Wiggins began following his t-targets with GPS trackers that apparently were being pl- placed by Carter’s own son at his father’s instructions.
“They will m-match the fingerprint from the GPS found in the Gran Fury. Another child will go into the system.”
I watched as Diane’s free hand moved to cover Billy’s. They had always been an affectionate couple since
