Mahoney kept steady aim, then lowered the gun. “Get the hell out of my sight.”
The entire building had heard the gunfire. Nine-one-one operators and the hotel’s front desk became swamped with freaked-out calls that placed the shooting on almost every floor. First officers at the scene were spread thin as they responded to a dozen false locations.
Guillermo grabbed a bath towel from a cleaning cart and wrapped it around his shoulders-one of the least noticeable people as he casually escaped out the pool deck in a multi-directional stampede of screaming sunbathers.
Serge’s group caught a break with the service elevator. They ran into the kitchen.
Chefs had armed themselves with their largest carving knives. “What the hell are you guys doing in here?”
Serge, still running, pointed behind him. “Someone’s shooting!”
The trio pushed open a steel door to the loading dock with a box compactor and crates of rotten lettuce.
“What now?” asked Andy.
Serge looked up the alley toward the front of the hotel and the back edge of a growing throng of onlookers.
“If we just can get into that crowd…”
More and more squad cars screamed into the parking lot.
The quartet watched from the rear of the mob, then slowly retreated across the street.
Back up in the blood-soaked room, two hands grabbed a briefcase.
BAHIA CABANA
City and Country were bored, starved and car-less.
They had clicked the remote through all TV channels ten times.
Serge ran into the room.
City jumped up. “Where the fuck have you been?”
“Someplace.” He ran for the sink, stuck his face down and splashed water.
“Holy Jesus! What did you do to your ear?” said Country.
“What the hell happened to Andy and Melvin?” said City.
The pair collapsed on the couch, pale as they come.
“Give ’ em space.” Serge held paper towels to the side of his head. “They just had a close one.”
Andy stared at nothing. Shock suddenly gave way to delayed emotion. Weeping and shaking.
Serge sat and put an arm around his shoulders. “It’s okay.”
“I’m so sorry. Should have listened to you. I almost got us all killed.”
“That part wasn’t good.”
“Swear I won’t screw up again.”
“You can relax-you’re safe now.”
Andy sniffled and wiped his eyes. “But what about Guillermo? He’s still out there.”
“You leave that to me.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Andy, I have to tell you something. This might not be the best time, considering what you just went through, but I’d want to know if I was in your shoes.”
“What is it?”
“It can wait till later. Just let me know when you’re ready.”
“I’m good now.”
“You sure? It’s pretty heavy.”
Andy nodded.
“Your mother.”
“What about her?”
“Andy… I’m just going to say it. She didn’t kill herself.”
“Of course she killed herself. She shot-” He stopped and read Serge’s face. “Are you saying she was murdered?”
“Afraid there’s not much of a happy distinction between the two. But you’ve been under the impression all these years that she lingered through prolonged suffering and put herself out of misery.”
“She wasn’t sick?”
Serge shook his head. “Some of the happiest years of her life. And if it’s any consolation”-Serge crossed his fingers behind his back- “Ramirez told me she never heard it coming. Almost like going in her sleep.”
“Ramirez killed her?”
Serge shook his head again. “Like I said, you leave that to me.”
“Guillermo?”
Serge pulled the pistol from under his shirt for a tear-down mechanism check.
Andy remembered something, feeling the bottom of his own shirt and Ramirez’s Glock, which he’d concealed underneath in all the excitement. He decided not to bring it up. “What are you planning to do?”
Serge reassembled the gun. “I’m foreclosing on his karma.”
Chapter Fifty
THE NEXT MORNING
Six A.M.
Dawn on the way. But still half-dark.
Headlights from pickup trucks bounded onto the construction site of a new downtown Miami condo.
The trucks stopped and doors opened.
Work boots, lunch boxes, hard hats.
A foreman began unfurling blueprints, then heard a sound that wasn’t supposed to be there. He looked back at his crew. “Someone leave that thing running?”
Seven A.M.
Crime scene tape, police, TV cameras.
The head of homicide arrived. “What have we got here?”
“One twisted bastard,” said the case detective. “Nobody hot-wires these things.”
They watched as paramedics passed what was left of Miguel out the hatch of a cement mixer.
“I’ve heard of death by a thousand cuts,” said the detective. “This was death by ten thousand blunt traumas. All minor enough to let him last for hours.”
“Wouldn’t he just roll around and get dizzy?”
“Most people might think, but the foreman explained that these trucks have blunt stirring blades to mix the cement-much like laundry dryers-and once the victim kept tripping and couldn’t get up, those blades continued lifting and tumbling him over and over.
“Who would do such a thing, let alone think it up?”
Eight A.M.
South of Miami. A Delta 88 sat in the driveway of a nicely kept hacienda with barrel tiles.
Only one person home.
The shower was running. A bottle of Jack Daniel’s hung in the soap caddy. A diluted pink mixture of water and blood swirled down the drain.
The leg wound had been a pass-through in the meaty part of the thigh, and another bullet had just grazed the right shoulder. That left two in his favored arm.
Guillermo screamed.
A twisted piece of lead bounced on a rubber shower mat. Guillermo hung tweezers from the caddy and grabbed the bottle of sour mash. Some went in his mouth, the rest over an inelegantly gouged-out wound. Another
