“Yes?” he said, turning from his painting.
“A farewell letter, Ichi-san, written to his wife—and children—oh—”
Ichi looked up and saw her tears.
He said, “I am sorry for your pain.”
“This is how you know your life is finished, Ichi-san.” she said, holding up the American’s scrawled letter to his loved ones. It is—like your painting. You abandon it.”
“Yes,” the sumo said, gathering himself up. “This American, he is a good man. He has suffered long enough.”
“Oh, God,” Yasmin said, hiding the letters in the folds of her robes, “Hasn’t everyone suffered enough?”
Chapter Forty-Five
The Ragged Keys
THE MOSQUITO THAT HAD BEEN BITING STOKELY’S NECK WAS now just a red smear in the palm of his left hand. In his right, the dead Cuban’s nine millimeter. In the Glock, thirteen hollow-point bullets, one spare mag in his cummerbund. In his eyes, nose, and throat, the acrid bite of burning rubber and gasoline. He edged up behind a still-smoldering scrub palmetto and pushed a charred frond aside with his pistol. The blackened and flattened mangroves and seagrapes extended back a hundred yards or so on both sides of the narrow waterway.
Nothing on the surface of the water other than some burning fuel and a couple of smoking life vests.
“Ross!” Stoke hissed, keeping it low. “Hey, Ross! You okay? Where are you, buddy?”
He waited, not expecting any damn answer, seeing the thing, how it happened. Yeah, Ross would have been right where he left him, up in the bow with the AK, watching the bend in the water. Perking up his ears all of a sudden when he hears his buddy Stoke up ahead, shouting and banging on the Cigarette hull with his pistol, then splashing around, climbing aboard. Ross mentally focused on that. Meanwhile, Scissor sneaking past him on the bank, moving quietly, taking his time, getting behind the inflatable, settling down in the mangroves with a clear shot.
Scissor enjoying this part, was probably eating it up. Resting his RPG tube carefully on a sturdy branch. Sighting the thing, maybe on the jerry cans full of gasoline in the stern. Yeah. Or, maybe, right between Ross’s shoulder blades. Squeezing the trigger slowly—Ross maybe shaking his head in that last second, trying to concentrate, clear the morphine cobwebs out—hears a THUNK-WHOOSH behind him.
Shit, Ross.
You were riverine. I was the flyboy.
“Okay, muthafucka, that’s it!” Stoke screamed, not giving a shit anymore, getting to his feet. “I’m coming to get you! You got a shot? Take it! Take your shot ’cause it’s going to be your last!”
He stood up on the bank, eyes peeled, breathing hard.
There was still a little blood, dried blood, on the leaves and branches of the mangrove down by the water, the spot where Scissor must have been when he fired the grenade launcher at Ross. Something shiny caught his eye, a spot on a root sticking out of the muddy bank above his head. He reached up and felt it, pulling his hand away and looking at the bright red smear. Fresh blood. So Fancha had cut his ass, too, somehow. When he was hurting her. During the struggle. Got his scissors away from him for a second or maybe just raked his face with her nails. Didn’t matter. It was something.
He worked along the bank, dead calm now, knowing what he had to do. Follow the blood.
He stayed close to the water a couple of minutes. Saw more shiny blood on a scrub palm frond to his left and headed inland. Seeing the whole thing in his mind, staying low, pausing every twenty seconds to listen. Skeets and birds were back. Tree frogs. Fiddler crabs scurrying over the sand everywhere. Sun was up and hot. The deep severe. Heat ’n skeet. Fresh blood on the dried grass where he crouched in the scrubs. Where the hell are you, Scissor? You doubling back to the Cigarette?
Yeah, that’s it. Gone back to his boat. That’s exactly what he’d be doing. Boy must have had himself a very startling realization.
There he is, smiling, lining up his mouth-watering shot, but something nagging at his ass, just before he squeezed the trigger. What’s wrong with this picture? Oh, yeah. No big black guy on the rubber boat with the white guy, that’s what’s wrong. Didn’t pass any big colored fellas slipping and sliding back along the bank, so, where the fuck is he? He’s got to be in the water. Or, he left his boat and swam up the channel. Right, Scissor thinks, black man swam upriver to the Diablo.
Stoke was glad he’d given Fancha the other gun.
He got to his feet and was running through the thick low scrub of the small clearing towards the Cigarette, when a single round whistled past his ear. He hit the dirt hard, scrambling and rolling right into a thicket of palmettos. Not good cover. Two more bullets kicked up dirt three feet to his left. Steep angle. Shooting from elevation. Stoke lifted his head and saw the big Gumbo Limbo tree at the far edge of the clearing. Bunch of Cypress trees, too, but you couldn’t hide in a Cypress.
Scissor liked to shoot people from out of trees. His M.O.
Stoke stood up and pumped four bullets into the Gumbo. Then he ran at a crouch towards a stubby little Calusa tree over on his left that would provide a little cover. The Calusa exploded before he got there. A white trail of smoke led back to the top of the Gumbo, right where Stoke had him.
Gotcha.
Stoke ran forward, right at him, squeezing off three careful shots in a tight pattern at the top of the tree, right where the RPG trail came from. Waiting to see the guy come tumbling down, and that’s when he heard a pop from up there in the treetops and somebody took a Louisville Slugger to his left thigh, bam. Spun him around good, maybe twice, but he stayed on his feet, only a hundred yards more now, pumping his legs, and then his feet stopped moving so good. Mud or something.
He made it almost to the base of the Gumbo, firing the Glock, screaming at the guy, “C’mon, Scissor! C’mon down! Les’ see what you got! Show me something! Shit! You ain’t got nothin’, shoot a bride down front of a church!”
He splashed through a mudhole full of water, twisted something, pitched forward, the Glock dry-firing now, empty. He kept his balance, moving forward and digging the fresh mag of ammo out of his waistband. Hell, he’d climb the tree and pull the little shit down by his ankles. Stick the Glock in the guy’s mouth and see if he could beg God’s forgiveness that way. He would do that, and then some, but his feet wouldn’t move anymore. Couldn’t even lift his heels, like in that nightmare when you try and run but nothing will move.
He heard a sucking noise when he tried to lift his right leg and looked down at his feet. Couldn’t see ’em anymore. They had disappeared into some mucky stuff near the base of the tree. Past his ankles now, damn, almost halfway up to his knees. He heard some leaves rustling above him and then the guy just drops out of the Gumbo tree, lands on his feet in a patch of swamp grass next to the muck. Got a nickel-plated .357 mag aimed at Stoke’s forehead.
“Hola,” the man with no eyes said. No more mirrored shades. He had three ragged claw marks down his left cheek, still bleeding. Fancha had caught him good, bless her sweet little soul. Stoke smiled at the guy.
“Hey. How you doing? Where’s your grenade launcher?” he said, grinning. “Get stuck up in that tree?”
Scissor smiling at him with those horror movie eyes. Clear as marbles. Man had aged some since Vizcaya, life on the run and all. Wearing a Kevlar sportcoat, which explained why he hadn’t got shot out of the tree. Stoke’s left leg hurt like a bitch now, like a nest of hornets had put down stakes in his thigh muscle. He couldn’t pull his damn feet out of the muck. He started looking around for something to grab on to, a bush or something. Wasn’t anything near close enough. Maybe if he stretched out flat, he could get his fingers in the thick grass round the edge and haul himself out.
Stoke raised the Glock, but they’d both heard it dry-firing and they both knew it was empty. He couldn’t decide whether to throw it at the guy’s face or ask him to give him a hand here, get out of this crap. The mud was almost up to his knees now. You could feel it rising.
“Hey. Look. Do me a favor. Give me a hand here. I’m stuck in the mud.”
“Is not mud, senor. It’s quicksand.”
