The Consummata

“Come with me,” I said to my wife. “I have this boat—it’s mine now.”

“You bought it?”

“Luis there sort of bequeathed it to me. And I have enough of a stake for us to get a good start on finding which of Sir Henry’s hiding places holds the money-truck treasure.”

We were on the dock, the wood spongy under our feet, standing down a ways from the bloody mess Halaquez had made. Nearby, on the rear deck of the craft, two corpses were sunning themselves in the dim moonlight. I had some blood spatter on me from Jaimie dying so nearby, and she had some on her black latex gown. Not as romantic a setting as I might have liked. Unusual, though....

“I have to stay,” Kim told me, though the violet eyes revealed she hated saying it. “It’s better if I clear you from the inside.... Someone’s coming.”

A single figure was running down the backyard toward us—not at a breakneck speed, just jogging, and alone. One of the security guys?

“I can handle whoever this is,” I said.

“So can I. You have time to get on the boat and out of here....”

“Wait...it’s Crowley.”

“Morgan, go!”

“No. No, he and I have a truce. Didn’t he tell you?”

“No! He didn’t.”

She and I hadn’t talked since the fed and I had made our pact.

Then Crowley—in a dark suit that was similar to those of his agents up at the mansion, only better tailored —was on the dock with us. The breeze had picked up and was flapping his unbuttoned suit coat and ruffling his wispy amber hair. He glanced almost casually in the boat and saw the bodies there. Only a minor flinch registered on those bland features.

“So those were gunshots,” he said to himself. Then to me, without a greeting, explained, “Guy on the door thought he heard gunfire down here. You do this?”

“No,” I said. “A little Cuban girl who was working for you tonight. That’s your incentive to keep the lid on.”

“Oh,” he sighed, rolling his eyes, “I plan to.... Are you all right, Miss Stacy?”

“Yes, sir.”

“If you’ll excuse me....” He moved away from us, down the dock, and used a walkie-talkie. He told somebody—presumably the man on the door—that there was no problem on the dock, but he would check out the grounds personally. No need for backup.

Then he came back and said to me, “You planning on dumping these dead fish?”

“I am. You have a better idea?”

“No. But I’m coming with you.”

Kim pushed forward. “Walter, let’s just walk away. Let Morgan deal with this. Don’t you two have a truce?”

Crowley said, “A truce until the end of the mission.”

“Actually,” I said, “you promised me twenty-fours after I delivered Halaquez. Well, there he is.”

“Morgan, I already had Halaquez, and you stole him out of my custody. Now he’s dead and worthless as an intelligence resource. You violated our agreement. It’s null and void. Now...here’s what we’re going to do.”

And his small hand brought out the big nine millimeter from under his arm with admirable speed. I really hadn’t anticipated it.

“Just a precaution,” he said. “I can’t send you out on that boat to dump those casualties without riding along. Miss Stacy, you come, too. Morgan, I promise you I will do everything I can to help clear you. But there’ll be no getting away from me this time—and with Art Keefer gone, there’s no one to come bail you out like after Nuevo Cadiz.”

We got on the boat.

Up on the flybridge, I played captain and Kim sat next to me, and Crowley sat on the teakwood deck supervising the dead, hanging onto the rail with one hand and keeping the nine millimeter ready in the other. Not menacing about it or threatening, though he had asked me for my .45, which I’d handed over—it was in his waistband.

When the lights of Miami had disappeared behind us, and the ocean was an endless black ripple around us, touched with the barest shimmer of ivory from that slice of moon, I stopped the engines, and looked down at Crowley.

“Is this all right?”

“This will do,” he said. “Come down, both of you, and give me a hand.”

We did.

He held the gun on us as my wife in her black latex gown helped me take the corpses by their arms and legs and fling them into the drink. One at a time. The bodies floated, though as soon as the air in their lungs got replaced by water, they’d sink like stones; but right now they floated. And almost immediately I saw something chilling in the moonlight.

I pointed, and they both looked.

Nobody had to say it.

Fins.

Black fins cutting a white foamy path in the moonlighttouched blackness of the ocean.

For the first time, alarm registered in Crowley’s voice. “Let’s get the hell out of here.” He motioned with the gun. “Back up there, you two.”

In the flybridge in our side-by-side seats, I started the engines up, and under their throbbing, Kim whispered: “He’s the one, Morg. He’s my suspect. And something he said....”

I whispered back, “I know.”

I glanced back. Crowley was looking toward where the bodies had been floating, and sharks were now circling.

I called out: “Hey, Walter! Let me ask you something.”

He turned toward us and frowned. “No small talk! Just get us back to that dock.”

“Okay, let me ask Kim, then.” I spoke to her but my eyes remained locked with his, and my voice loud. “Did you report in to Walter about Art Keefer’s death? Is there any reason for him to know Art’s name at all?”

“No,” she said.

And I threw the knife.

It sank into his shoulder and, as part of his reaction, the gun in his hand went off, but luckily not at me or even at the teakwood deck, just off into the night, echoing, bouncing, fading.

I leapt from the flybridge onto him, knocking him back against the rail, then yanked my .45 from his waistband and shoved it in his belly.

“Drop the piece, Walter. Let Davy Jones have it.”

He did, and it barely made a splash.

Kim cut the engines. From her seat in the flybridge, she turned a grave, pitiless expression on him, looking more like the Consummata right now than my tender bride.

“That money-truck heist was a CIA black op,” I said right into his terrified face, “and I was your patsy! You killed my friends, you’ve stolen years of my life!”

“You can’t prove it!”

“I don’t have to. I’m going out and I’ll recover that missing forty mil, and turn it in, and all my sins will be forgiven. But it’s something I have to do alone...well, almost alone. I’ll have my wife with me.”

That bland mug of his finally had some genuine expression, eyes wide, nostrils flared, upper lip curled back in trembling desperation. “You take me back, you can have your twenty-four hours! You can have forty-eight!”

“No, I’m going in another direction, Walter. And this?” I yanked my knife from his shoulder and blood plumed and burbled as he screamed.

“This is where you get off,” I said, and shoved him over the back rail.