Assume Nothing (16 page)

Clarke crumbled to the floor like a windblown house of cards, Cross stepping out of the way to let gravity do with him what it would. His face came to earth first and the rest followed, his landing making a sound not unlike a baby grand falling off the back of a speeding truck. He blinked once or twice, not fully out, and Reddick helped him along with a kick to the jaw that left him drooling blood and teeth all over Cross’s carpet. That should have been the end of it, the big man having absorbed enough punishment to kill a man half his size, but Clarke’s voice was still booming in Reddick’s ears.

Reddick kicked him again, once, twice, three more times, all in the chest and midsection now, as Cross stood at a distance and watched, his face alight with both fascination and terror. After the third kick, Reddick spun around abruptly to face Cross, sucking wind, sweating buckets, and it became obvious to Cross that, for several seconds at least, Reddick had completely forgotten there was someone else in the room.

A landline phone somewhere in the condo chose this moment to ring. It had rung once before fifteen minutes ago, not long after Cross had made his calls to Sinnott and Clarke demanding a meeting, but Reddick had ignored it then, just as he intended to ignore it now. Even if the caller was Sinnott, he could see nothing to be gained by letting Cross answer it.

This time, however, the incessant ringing was harder to shut out. The sight of Clarke had turned something loose inside Reddick and his head was pounding, crawling with voices and images from out of his near and distant past. Little Joe’s sheet-enshrouded body on a gurney.
If anything happens to me, your wife and little boy are dead.
The white of Dana’s eyes as Clarke flashed the blade of a knife directly in front of her face. Donovan Sykes standing in room number 10-G of the Palm Beach County Courthouse, smiling at the inside joke of a life sentence for having slaughtered Reddick’s entire family.

Cross’s phone rang once more and stopped. Reddick shook his head to clear it, wincing, and told Cross to take Clarke back to the playroom.

‘What? He outweighs me by forty pounds!’

‘Grab him by the ankles and drag him!’ Reddick snapped. ‘Now!’

Cross did as he was told, Reddick trailing behind. Leaving a smear of blood along the floor as he went, Clarke looked for all the world like dead weight in the most literal sense, a thought that brought Reddick little grief. When they reached the playroom, Cross huffing and puffing like he’d just scaled a high wall, Reddick took a roll of duct tape from his gym bag and tossed it to him.

‘Bind his hands behind his back and his ankles together,’ he said. ‘Then cover his mouth. Hurry the hell up.’

Again, Cross complied without argument, though Reddick could tell he was watching him now with a different level of interest, perhaps looking for a weakness that hadn’t been there before. It was for certain that Reddick
felt
more vulnerable; being this close to relief from his greatest fear, to putting the threat of Clarke and his friends bringing harm to Dana and Jake behind him forever, had him feeling anxious and lightheaded. His skull was still throbbing and his legs were weak. He wasn’t so far gone that he couldn’t drop Cross with a single shot if pushed, but he knew he had to appear diminished enough to give Cross reason to wonder.

Once Clarke was trussed up to his satisfaction, emitting a baleful moan or two that no dead man could utter, Reddick returned to his chair and ordered Cross to do likewise on the couch, where both men took up the waiting game anew.

Reddick wanted this thing over with. He
needed
it over with. He checked his watch, the effort of focusing his eyes on the dial almost more than he could bear, and saw that nearly forty minutes had passed since Cross had gotten off the phone with Sinnott.

‘Where the fuck is he?’ he asked.

Cross shrugged, the expression on his face falling just short of a smirk. It seemed he was starting to feel like his old, arrogant self again, an observation that only heightened Reddick’s mounting anxiety.

Seven more minutes passed and Reddick was contemplating the unthinkable, killing Cross and Clarke while leaving Sinnott for later, when somebody knocked on the door. Reddick got to his feet and glanced at Clarke, who once again resembled nothing so much as a corpse; alive or dead, he wouldn’t be going anywhere. Reddick gestured for Cross to rise and the two of them went to the door, where they took the same positions they had upon Clarke’s arrival.

Cross let Sinnott in and Reddick stepped forward, into Sinnott’s view, to close the door behind him. He felt no need to welcome Sinnott as he had Clarke, and he could see at a glance that it would have been overkill if he had. Sinnott wasn’t the sorry sister Baumhower had been, but he was surely only one rung up the ladder from it; true to the photos Reddick had seen on Baumhower’s laptop, he was a pudgy doughboy with bloodshot eyes who reacted to the sight of Reddick and his gun like someone who’d just found a scorpion in a dresser drawer. Had he squealed aloud, Reddick wouldn’t have been surprised.

But he didn’t squeal. All he did was exchange a glance with Cross, whose face told him everything he could have possibly wanted to know.

‘Oh, Jesus . . .’

‘Shut it,’ Reddick said. ‘Into the other room. Let’s go.’

Cross led the way back into his playroom, Reddick taking up the rear. Sinnott’s eyes fell to the trail of Clarke’s blood they were following and his knees buckled once, almost giving way altogether. In the playroom, they found Clarke exactly as Reddick and Cross had left him, eyes closed and body motionless. Sinnott took one look at him and collapsed into a chair, unable to obey Reddick’s first order a moment longer.

‘Oh, Jesus,’ he said again.

‘Check to see if he’s still breathing,’ Reddick told Cross.

‘Check him yourself,’ Cross said. He understood that the moment had come for Reddick to either put up or shut up – the three men he wanted dead were all here now, ripe for the slaughter – and doing Reddick’s bidding no longer offered any discernible payoff. If he wished to torture them before killing them, he would; continuing to kiss his ass wasn’t going to change that.

Reddick knew he was being tested and wasn’t happy about it, but neither was he ready to start shooting. His idea all along had been to waste Cross and his three friends with a single shot each, in rapid succession, and then beat a hasty retreat. If he started with Cross now, he would have to do them all, and he realized with some consternation that he wasn’t prepared to do Clarke in his present state. They were all here because of him; Reddick needed Clarke awake and cognizant when he pulled the trigger. Putting one in the back of his head while he lay on the floor like a wet sack of grain just wasn’t going to be good enough.

‘Back up,’ Reddick told Cross.

Cross complied after taking great pains to be slow about it.

Reddick closed in on Clarke, crouched down to probe his wrist for a pulse, careful to keep sight of Cross all the while. It took a few seconds to find one, but a pulse was there, though it could only have been more faint had it been absent altogether. Reddick slapped him once, twice across the cheeks, trying to bring him around. The big man’s eyes had fluttered open, then closed again, when someone behind Reddick said, ‘Drop the gun, Mr Reddick, and turn around very slowly.’

It was Sinnott’s voice.

Reddick turned his head, saw Sinnott standing in front of the chair he’d been sitting in only moments before, what Reddick judged from this distance to be a nine millimeter Beretta clutched tightly in his right hand. ‘Please. Drop the gun. I’ll shoot you if you don’t, I promise you.’

Reddick had every reason not to believe him except for the way he was holding the weapon. Sinnott didn’t look like a stranger to it. Rather, he appeared to barely notice it was there, exhibiting a nonchalance about firearms Reddick had seen only in people who owned guns and had no shortage of experience in using them.

Reddick assessed his options, concluded there was really only one that wasn’t likely to prove fatal. If only to live to fight another day for Dana and Jake, he dropped the Smith & Wesson to the floor, drew himself upright again, and turned around to face Sinnott directly.

‘I can imagine what you must be thinking,’ Cross said, easing over to retrieve Reddick’s gun. ‘He doesn’t much look the type, does he? But old Will’s a former army reservist who’s quite the gunslinger on the shooting range. He took me out with him once, and I could barely believe it myself.’

‘Shut up, Perry,’ Sinnott said.

‘Shut up? Or what? You’ll shoot me, too?’

Reddick felt like a fool. He should have checked Sinnott for weapons at the door; he’d done that much to Clarke before ordering Cross to drag him in here. He hadn’t seen anything about Sinnott’s military background on Baumhower’s MacBook, but that was no excuse. Judging the man’s threat potential by his benign appearance alone had been an amateur’s mistake, and by right, Reddick deserved to pay for it with his life.

‘I saw Ben open his eyes. He isn’t dead but he’s hurt bad,’ Sinnott said. ‘We’ve gotta call nine-one-one.’

‘And bring the paramedics here?’ Cross asked. ‘Now? Are you nuts?’

‘No, but . . . Look at him! He’s gonna die if we don’t get him to a doctor!’

‘So we’ll take him to the emergency room ourselves.’ Cross bent down to pull the tape from Clarke’s mouth, nodded his head at Reddick. ‘Just as soon as we figure out what to do with
him
.’

‘There’s only one thing you
can
do with me,’ Reddick said. ‘The only question is, which one of you little bitches has the balls to do it?’

Cross stood up, aimed Reddick’s own forty at his left temple. ‘Actually, I’ll be more than up to the task when the time comes, Mr Reddick, but I’d rather not do you here in my own home. You’ve made quite a mess of the place already, don’t you think?’

‘It’s not too late to make a deal. Maybe we won’t have to kill you at all,’ Sinnott said.

Cross looked over at him, incensed. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘I know who he is and why he’s doing this, Perry.’ He turned his gaze on Reddick. ‘You know why I had this gun on me today? Because I Googled your name last night. I read all the news stories about what happened to you and your first family back in Florida.’

Reddick didn’t want to flinch, but he did. Somehow, having these fuckers know his history felt like the greatest gut-punch of all.

‘What news stories?’ Cross asked.

‘It’s none of your fucking business,’ Reddick said.

‘He was a cop in West Palm Beach,’ Sinnott said. ‘Nine years ago, some sick fuck broke into his home and murdered his wife and kids. Papers called it the worst multiple homicide in the city’s history.’

Reddick took a step toward him, found the will to freeze only when Sinnott raised the gun in his hand. ‘I’ll do it, Mr Reddick. I don’t want to, but I will, believe me.’

He waited to see if Reddick’s compliance was going to hold. Reddick glowered at him with a heat Sinnott could practically feel, but he didn’t move an inch.

‘Sit down. On the couch, on your hands,’ Sinnott said.

Reddick did.

‘Of all the people in the goddamn world, Ben threatens to kill this poor devil’s family,’ Sinnott said to Cross. ‘Is it any wonder he’s come after all of us?’

Cross gave Reddick a lingering look, appraising him anew. ‘All the more reason to get him the hell out of here and kill him,’ he said. ‘And fast.’

‘No. We’ve done enough killing.’ To Reddick, Sinnott said, ‘We never meant to hurt anybody. We aren’t murderers. No matter what Ben may have told you, the rest of us would have never allowed him to harm you or your family.’

‘Will . . .’

‘How much does he know?’ Sinnott asked Cross.

‘Everything. Andy told him everything.’

‘Then he knows we’re responsible for Gillis’s death and we know he’s responsible for Andy’s. Unless I miss my guess, we’ve even got the gun now that could prove it.’ Sinnott addressed Reddick again. ‘What Ben did to you was wrong, Mr Reddick, and maybe you think all four of us should pay for it. But the way I see it, between what you’ve done to Ben and Andy, you’ve had your pound of flesh and then some. Walk away. Give us your word you’ll leave things as they are and we’ll let you go.’

‘My ass we will!’ Cross said.

‘It’s the only way, Perry. Because I won’t be part of any more killing unless it’s forced upon me. Unless
he
forces it upon me.’

‘You crazy fuck. You think we can trust him not to come after us again?’

‘We can if he cares for his family as much as I think he does.’ To Reddick: ‘I’m trying to give you one last chance to clear the slate. To go back to your wife and son and forget you ever met Andy Baumhower. All you have to do is walk away and promise never to bother any of us again.’ He added, ‘But you have to decide now. Ben may be dying. I need an answer.’

Reddick was amazed to find himself actually thinking it over. Since Friday afternoon, he’d all but given up any hope of returning to the life he once had with Dana and Jake; every effort he’d made to cover his tracks, both here and at Baumhower’s last night, had been more a product of instinct than any real belief he could get away with murder. And yet here was Sinnott offering him an out, a third fork in the road of his probable future that did not lead to death or incarceration. It sounded tempting.

If only it were real.

‘This is bullshit!’ Cross said, and again he brought the nose of Reddick’s Smith & Wesson an inch from the side of his head. ‘Either you kill this sonofabitch right now, or I will!’

If it was a bluff, it was a good one. Sinnott took the threat seriously enough to be visibly shaken by it and Reddick braced himself to die. Silence took over the room, Cross and Sinnott locked in a standoff, Reddick trying to decide which armed man he should lunge toward in a last ditch – and almost certainly futile – effort to save himself.