‘No.’
‘Where is it?’
‘I… I don’t know. Alex has it.’
‘Where’s Alex?’
‘He moves around a lot,’ Stoney said. ‘I don’t know where he is.’
‘I don’t believe you, Stoney. The Shootyadickov doesn’t believe you.’
‘I don’t have it – please, mister.’
Gooch studied him, seemed to think about it. He dragged Stoney over to the phone, placed a call, waited, hung up, called another number, waited, said, ‘It’s Gooch, call me,’ hung up. He pushed Stoney back to the couch.
‘C’mon, we’re leaving.’
‘You… can’t kidnap me…’
‘Don’t whine. You’re already kidnapped, right?’
Gooch hauled up Stoney, pushed him through the door. He pulled him away from the cottage, into a dense grove of twisted live oaks beyond the thick grasses above the beach. A beaten red pickup, a big Ford, was parked there.
‘This is how it is,’ Gooch said. ‘I have absolutely no compunction about shooting you. You bug me, I’m firing. You’re going to sit on the floor, hands where I can see them. You behave, you’re going to be fine. I’m kind of the opinion you’re not the big bad shark in the sea, is that right?’
‘Alex… Alex is bad,’ Stoney said. ‘He’ll fucking kill you.’ He wanted to say, Yeah, well, I killed a man, but suddenly saw it wouldn’t intimidate this guy. Wouldn’t make him blink.
Gooch shoved him into the truck, revved the engine, tore out of the grove of oaks onto the road. He was a quarter mile from the highway when a beige van turned in hard, headed toward them.
‘What does Alex drive?’ Gooch asked Stoney, still crouched on the floor.
‘Beige van,’ Stoney said.
‘Hello there,’ Gooch said. He leaned out the window, opened fire. Gravel and crushed shell exploded from the road near the tires, sparks flew from the end of the van.
‘Jesus!’ Stoney yelled.
Gooch floored the truck and despite its beaten appearance the engine roared into sweet, precise power. The road was rough – part of the rustic charm – and Gooch left the highway, tearing through a grassy field, taking a hard right, careening down a rocky swath of weed and stone and roaring out onto a thin strip of beach itself.
‘Did you know it’s legal to drive on the beach in Texas?’ Gooch said. ‘Fascinating. Against the law most places.’
‘Yes,’ Stoney managed. He wondered if he could grab the steering wheel, wrench it, stop this guy long enough for Alex to shoot him.
Gooch gave him a long glance. ‘I can smell stupid thoughts, man. Don’t do it. I’ll kill you.’
Stoney stayed put, his face buried in the worn upholstery of the truck, feeling it rumble off the beach, back onto grassland, then back onto the smooth road.
The van couldn’t navigate down the long spill of rock to the sandy wet of the beach, and Alex drove back to the road, the van heaving like a horse, and peeled back toward the main highway – his only hope of cutting the guy off.
Gooch in that same red truck, leaving Stoney’s hideaway, shooting at him, the gun in the hand rock-steady. He worked his own gun out, kept it in his left hand, steered right-handed.
The van rumbled onto the main highway, narrowly missing a Mercedes with an older couple. The driver laid on the horn. The woman lifted a manicured middle finger in salute and Alex nearly shot it off. Instead he swerved around them, bolted south to where the beach came closer to the main road. He kept glancing at the rearview mirror, thinking the red truck might burst from the trees or from another feeder road.
He drove all the way down to where a curve of beach came close to the road – no sign of the truck. He patrolled up and down the stretch of highway for a half hour but the only red truck he saw was new and had two women in it, pulling a horse trailer.
Finally he returned to the fishing cottage. Front door closed but unlocked. No sign of Stoney. No sign of a struggle.
So – Stoney had been kidnapped for real? Maybe Gooch was a partner Danny Laffite had that no one knew about. Or maybe Stoney had switched sides, decided to get out from under Alex’s thumb, gotten himself a new partner to take care of Alex. He swore. Screw worrying about getting the emerald, he should have killed Stoney the moment he figured out Stoney betrayed him. He felt the sting of his own greed.
Where the hell do I start looking for them?
He tried to calm his thoughts. Say Stoney decided to bolt, decided to hire muscle to cut out Alex. He’d have to call. Did Stoney have a cell with him? Alex went to the cordless phone in the cottage. There was a redial button. He pressed it. An answering machine clicked on, a low, comfortable drawl: ‘Hi, you’ve reached the office of Justice of the Peace Whitman Mosley. Office hours are nine a.m…’
Alex clicked off. Whit Mosley. That young judge in the loud shirt who came looking for Stoney to ask about the murdered old people.
So what the hell did a gun-happy Gooch have to do with a judge? He paced the floor for a minute. Maybe Stoney cracked. Decided to cut a deal and called the judge.
No. Police cars and sirens and Miranda rights would have been involved. Judges didn’t hire mercenaries to kidnap people.
But maybe it was even worse… maybe they knew about the emerald, the treasure. Maybe the judge and Gooch were just chasing it for themselves. Alex could see it: Stoney, babbling that he knew where a fat emerald was and knew a guy who’d hid millions in rare coins and could they help him cut a deal? Maybe a cop or a judge would think, Well, I’d like me some of that Even assuming Stoney hadn’t cracked, Gooch had already found Stoney here at the cottage. They must know enough. And nothing on the news yet about the treasure. No one else knew.
But they had Stoney, who had the Eye, and could completely ruin Alex.
PART THREE
‘For thirty years,’ he said, ‘I’ve sailed the seas and seen good and bad, better and worse, fair weather and foul, provisions running out, knives going, and what not. Well, now I tell you, I never seen good come o’ goodness yet. Him as strikes first is my fancy; dead men don’t bite; them’s my views – amen, so be it.’
31
The lunchtime heat wasn’t unbearable, the breeze a cool comfort. Whit met Dr Parker and a bookish, attractive woman on the waterfront dock of a small restaurant near the Port Leo harbor for Saturday lunch. Dr Parker introduced the woman as Dr Iris Dominguez with Texas A amp;M Corpus Christi. Pronounced her name the
