Lucy was still out, breathing shallowly, a trickle of blood oozing from her hairline and meandering down her forehead.
Alex Black squatted down in front of Whit, the gun aimed at Whit’s stomach. ‘Your friend Guchinski,’ he said. ‘Where’s he at?’
‘I don’t know.’ Whit’s face felt broken. The cheekbone might be fractured. God, it hurt. His voice sounded thick and dopey.
Alex cocked the gun, aimed it at Lucy’s head. ‘Try again.’
‘It’s the truth. Please don’t hurt her. I don’t know where he is right now.’
‘So what’s his angle?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Bullshit, Your Honor. Can I call you that? Your Honor. I feel so privileged.’
‘I didn’t know he was grabbing Stoney. I didn’t know he even knew where Stoney was.’
‘How’d he find out the Stone Man was here?’
Whit paused. No way he’d point to Lucy. ‘He must have followed you out here.’
‘No, I don’t think so,’ Alex said. He closed his hand – fingers hard from digging, Whit thought; they felt like steel springs – around Whit’s windpipe. Alex wormed the gun in between Whit’s legs, pressed the barrel against his testicles. Whit quit breathing.
‘Here’s my theory, Your Honor. Stoney wanted to get rid of me. He got himself a new partner. He gave the Devil’s Eye to new partner, who has a guard dog mentality. I think new partner was Guchinski, and he’s cutting you in, too.’
Whit risked a very small, shallow breath. The barrel didn’t ease its pressure.
‘Now Guchinski has gotten Stoney hidden away and is calling my ass up, wanting to deal. But I smell a trap. What do you smell?’
‘Gooch doesn’t have the Eye.’
‘Who does?’
‘Stoney. You think he’s gonna trust anyone with a multimillion-dollar emerald?’ Whit breathed again, cleared his throat. God, let this lie work. ‘I can’t believe you fell for what he said. Giving it to someone else.’
‘So you’ve chatted with Stoney.’
‘Just that once. When you were hiding in the house.’
Alex smashed his fist across Whit’s face. Whit tried hard not to cry out, to groan.
‘I wasn’t hiding.’ Alex shook his head, ran his tongue along the little scar at his mouth’s corner, gave a little annoyed laugh. ‘I give you this, Judge: you got balls. Big ones. I pull the trigger here, there’s gonna be, what, sixty percent of your balls left?’
‘If you kill me or Lucy, you don’t get the Eye,’ Whit said. ‘Gooch has Stoney under his thumb, and he’ll never give it to you. Gooch’ll hunt your ass down and kill you. An inch at a time.’
Alex picked up a cell phone from the kitchen counter. He keyed in a number, dialed. ‘Mr Guchinski, you answering Stoney’s phone now?’
Whit could not hear Gooch’s reply. Alex stood, let the gun slide along Whit’s bruised face, took a step back. On the floor Lucy stirred, moaned Whit’s name.
‘No. You listen. I got my own trump cards, fuckhead.’ He held the phone close to Whit’s mouth. ‘Speak to him. Say hello. Say more than hello and I kill the woman.’
‘Hello,’ Whit said.
Alex yanked the phone back. ‘I got the judge’s woman, too. So you got Stoney, man. I don’t care. Get rid of him now – he’s nothing but trouble.’ A pause. ‘You want these two, you’re gonna give me the Eye.’ He glanced at Whit.
Shit, Whit thought. He believed me. Or I just confirmed what he already thought, that Stoney has the Eye.
Alex listened, winked at Whit. ‘Give me directions,’ he said. ‘Okay. We’ll meet there. In an hour or so.’ Pause. ‘We make the trade then.’ He clicked off. ‘People are fucking predictable.’
‘What?’ Whit asked.
Alex stared at Whit. ‘Tell me, how come a judge is friends with a crook like Gooch?’
‘We have a lot in common.’
‘Yeah,’ Alex said. ‘Lots of judges in Florida are crooked, too. Trust me.’ Whit saw a shift in his face, amusement hardening into contempt. He cocked the gun, kept it aimed at Whit, and stood over Lucy. She was trying to surface back to consciousness. The amber necklace around her throat was broken, the jewel loose on the floor. He wanted to reach over, fix it for her, hold her, tell her it was okay.
Her eyes fluttered open, looking at him but not quite registering him. Whit could see two little trails of blood from her hairline where Alex had pistol-whipped her, her right ear bloodied.
‘I don’t think she’s in any condition to travel, do you?’ Alex said with a crooked smile.
‘What?’ Whit said again. Okay, I can be the hostage ‘We don’t need her.’ The grin widened, the gun moved to Lucy.
‘No, please-’ Whit yelled.
‘Devotion. That’s nice,’ Alex said. Then he fired three times.
37
Claudia awoke in complete darkness. The night surrounding her felt as solid as glass, and panic tightened her stomach, thrummed between her shoulder blades. She felt tied. Danny. Danny still had her, Gar waiting nearby, the tattooed arms ready to force the life out of her, hungry to force himself inside her. She sat up in bed, blinking, easing out of the snarl of sheets.
No Danny. No Gar.
No Ben in bed.
She glanced at the digital clock. Ten forty-six p.m. She’d drunk too much, the michelada and the wine too early in the evening; she wasn’t used to it. She had a little headache, not bad. She got up, went to the bedroom balcony that faced onto the bay. The heavy curtains were pulled closed and she parted them an inch. St Leo Bay lay calm in the night, the moon a wafer in the wash of the Milky Way.
She closed the curtains, found her clothes on the floor. She stepped into panties, pulled her khaki slacks up over her legs. She groped for her bra and blouse and put them on.
She started down the stairs, toward the spill of light in the kitchen, heard Ben say, ‘All right, I’ll be there.’ When she entered the kitchen he was standing by the granite-top counter, a cell phone in his hand. He set it down on the counter.
‘Ben?’
‘That was my brother, babe. He’s alive.’
‘Thank God,’ she said. ‘Where is he?’
‘In Corpus Christi. He wants me to come see him. Right now.’
‘He decided to come out from under his rock?’
He didn’t react to her sarcasm. ‘He’s ashamed. Embarrassed that he panicked. But he’s alive.’ He took Claudia into his arms. ‘He’s at a warehouse he owns down by the port. You know a guy named Leonard Guchinski?’
‘Yeah. He’s nuts. How the hell is he involved?’
‘Stoney’s with this Guchinski guy, and I’m not quite sure why.’
‘So what are you going to do, Ben?’
‘I should call the police,’ Ben said in a tone that said he actually didn’t want to do that. ‘Let them know he at least is all right.’
‘You want to wait until you talk to him?’
‘I kind of think I should.’ He tucked the cell phone into his front pants pocket. ‘You want to go with me?’
‘Maybe this should be a private meeting,’ Claudia said.
