My eyes went to the satellite phone Arizona had left behind. A phone that I couldn’t see because of the other elephant that had been at the table, that was on my mind. On her left hand, there had been a platinum diamond ring. She had worn a platinum wedding ring.
The room had been robbed.
But I had been robbed too.
I dug inside my pocket and took out a BC Powder, an analgesic composed of aspirin, caffeine, and salicylamide. A pure white powder, customers probably thought I was doing cocaine, and that probably made their mouths water.
The blonde in the pink blouse was gone. Same for many others.
The teenaged guy was still here. The one who had helped Arizona carry her cups of tea. He was on his feet, staring at me. Then he hurried my way. His look was different. He seemed anxious. He was tall and fragile; his slew-footed walk a combination of bad posture and awkwardness. He stopped in front of me, stood so close I smelled the coffee on his breath.
He said, “Gideon.”
He said my name and it felt like my neck was on a chopping board, a sword coming down at my throat. He said my name and stood in front of me with a shallow smile on his thin face.
Without warning, he extended something toward me, an object small like a stun gun.
My hand went inside my messenger bag, went to my gun.
A bucket of blood was about be added to the land of the Seminoles.
Chapter 3
hard target
Black cellular phone.
That was what he had extended toward me, that was what had almost gotten a hole blown in his latte-filled gut. Another fucking phone. Motorola, basic flip model.
The phone was closed.
My finger eased off the trigger, but my hand didn’t come out of my bag.
I asked, “Who are you?”
He asked, “Is your name Gideon?”
He had said my handle twice. This was not a mistake.
The wrong people had uttered my handle in London. In Hunts ville. In Antigua. Had walked up to me like they had balls bigger than King Kong’s and looked dead into my eyes.
For many, my handle had been their last word before dying.
I was near the men’s room, no one else on that side, even though the glass exposed us to the parking lot. I hit the guy with a rabbit punch, a shock to his temple, stunned him, then yanked his shirt before he went down and tugged him inside the empty bathroom, then slammed his head into the tiled wall, swept his feet from underneath him, and dropped him on the floor. He hit the floor like he’d been thrown face-first out of a third-story window. While he embraced his pain, I locked the door and pulled out my piece, aimed it at the door in case anyone else was on his team. They never came alone. Not anymore. They knew better.
Head and mouth bloodied, he scampered like a crab, didn’t know which way to go.
My foot connected with the side of his head and he rolled over.
I said, “You want Gideon, you get Gideon.”
By the time he stopped seeing stars, he was being yanked up again, eyes fluttering as he was bitch-slapped and shoved against the back wall, my forearm across his neck, cutting off his circulation. He twitched and opened his bloodied mouth, choked on saliva, struggled to scream.
I hit him again and he went down, terrified, moaning. I wanted to hit him over and over, beat his ass the way I wanted to grab Scamz’s tight-suit-wearing son and slam his face into the concrete. Voices were outside the door. A woman on her cellular, heading toward the next toilet. I waited. Women were just as deadly as men, twice as conniving. She had moved on. I heard the door to the ladies’ room open and close, then heard it lock.
I went back to the fool, patted him down, found no weapons, took another cellular phone out of his pocket, dug his wallet from his pocket, then, as he struggled to breathe, I checked his ID. He had two driver’s licenses, both with the name Nicolas Jacoby. One was from Denver. The other was from Florida.
I slapped him conscious, then shook him. “Who are you?”
“She . . . she . . . she told me to bring the phone to you.”
I hit him again. “What
she
?”
He was talking about the woman in the pink blouse, the olive complexioned blonde who had a body like the devil. The type of woman who could send a dumbass nerd on a fool’s errand by flashing a smile that promised nothing.
Again I growled and asked, “Who are you?”
“Nicolas Jacoby. From Denver. I’m from Denver . . . what did I do?”
I hit him again, slapped him like he was a simple woman. Then I introduced the side of his head to the butt of my gun.
“Last time,” I spoke in a hard whisper. “Who the fuck are you?”
He cried, pulled himself into fetal position, and repeated the same name over and over.
I snapped, “Who was the girl?”
“I swear I don’t know who she . . . oh, lord . . . oh, God . . . are you a psycho boyfriend or something?”
“You were with her a long time.”
“We were just talking. Nothing between us. I asked her about her tats and we started talking. Just asked her who did the Asian tats on her arms. Was my first time seeing her.”
I hit him again. “What did she say about me?”
“Said you were her ex. Asked me to take you the phone, said you left it with her when you and her broke up in Antigua. I don’t know . . . was too busy looking at her tats . . . and her tits.”
“Describe them.”
“They were . . . nice . . . about this big . . .”
I hit him again. “I’m talking about her tats. What kind of body markings?”
“Lots of flowers and Zen kinda stuff.”
I hit him again, asked him the same questions.
He told me the same story, that the girl had asked him to bring me the cellular.
“Why do you have two ID cards? One from Florida, the other Denver.”
“Because . . . you can get away with having two driver’s licenses in Florida . . . they don’t report to other states . . . thought it was cool . . . if I get pulled over I show them my Denver ID . . . get out of a ticket . . . then I can use my Florida ID to get a bank account . . . and don’t have to give up my Denver license . . . or . . . or . . . I don’t know why I did it.”
“The girl. Is she connected?”
“To what?”
I hit him again.
“Is she connected?”
“I don’t know what—”
I hit him again. “Is she with the mob? Police? With some goddamn rappers? Talk up.”
“I . . . I don’t know anything about anything like that.”
I raised the butt of my gun but didn’t bring it down.
His voice was so small I barely heard him beg. “Don’t hit me again, please.”
“That’s up to you.”
“Oh, God. I shit my pants. You made me shit my pants.”
“Tell me what she said. Tell me what she sounded like. Get it right this time.”
He did, but the information didn’t change.
There was a tap on the door. I was ready to fire shots that way. I called out that the bathroom was occupied. I paused, listened to the footsteps as whoever it was walked away.
I went back to the fool from Denver, growled, “Where did she go?”
“I don’t know.”
“
Who was she?
”
“Why you doing this to me, man?”
“I’ll blow your goddamn head off if you don’t keep talking.”
“No idea. Her English was so-so, but her accent was . . . was . . .”
The business end of my gun touched his forehead. “What accent?”
“Middle Eastern.”
“What did she say? Word for word.”
“We were talking about clubs. Said she didn’t know how many tattoos she had. Had tats behind her ear. Had some sort of slave bands tattooed on her legs, on her calves down to her ankles. Had flowers tattooed on her back. One on her back was done in London by some guy named Bugs. Had a heart tattooed on her ass. Said she didn’t have tats on her breasts, but they were pierced. And . . . and . . . then . . . she said she worked out five days a week . . . and . . . and . . . yeah . . . she talked about clubs in Lebanon. Said they partied all night long in Lebanon, said the clubs never closed and people never went home, that all they did was party, party, party. Said they spent days and nights at the club. Then . . . after that preg lady left . . . she smiled at me and asked me if I would take you that goddamn phone. Said you had left it in Antigua.”
He stopped talking, struggled to catch his breath.
There was another tap on the door. My heart wanted to explode. Again I called out that it was occupied. Whoever was out there didn’t respond.
Time wasn’t on my side. With every breath, the bathroom became smaller.
I couldn’t kill the guy. Would be impossible to get a body out of here. Leaving a body here, after Arizona had gone and taken her little devices with her, with the security cameras in the building back on, that wasn’t a good idea.
I squatted and looked in the patsy’s eyes. My whisper was strong. “You have a watch.”
“You can have it.”
“I don’t want your goddamn watch. Stay the fuck in here for ten minutes. Forget about this. Forget about the girl. Forget about anybody you saw me with. And forget about me. You don’t ever want to see my face again. Ever. I’ll be the last one to see you alive, understand?”
“Yes, sir; yes, sir.”
“Ten minutes. Wipe the shit off your ass. Wash your face. Walk out. Forget whatever you brought with you. Leave it. Walk out that door. Don’t look back. Don’t ever come back.”
“Yes, sir; yes, sir.”
“Forget my name. Never repeat it, not even in your fucking dreams.”
“I will . . . I will . . . please . . . I’m sorry . . . whatever I did . . .”
“And that was all she said.”
“She said you were . . . you were from Arizona.”
Arizona.
I smiled and extended my hand, pulled him to his feet.
Then I jerked him around, pulled him into a choke hold.
He panicked and fought for a moment. Fought as I stopped the flow of blood to his brain.
Then he collapsed. He was sweating. Dead men don’t perspire. I’d put him to sleep. His panic had changed into calm breathing. Couldn’t chance him running out behind me and screaming bloody murder as I fled. I took the cellular and IDs, took calm steps outside, my right hand inside my messenger bag. I used my left hand to make sure the bathroom door was locked as I stepped away. There was a Cuban waiting to get inside. A man who had no idea he had almost been shot. A man who had no idea he could still catch some lead. I told him the toilet was filled with shit and overflowing, suggested he find a plan B. He thanked me and walked away. He wasn’t with the Lebanese. Didn’t look like anyone else in the café was either.
I dashed into the humidity, the well-built Middle Eastern woman nowhere in sight.
I stood in the parking lot, became a statue and listened. Searched for a break in between the clamor, searched for a hole between the oncoming train and overlapping traffic noises, inhaled carbon monoxide and gritted my teeth. I listened for the sounds that couldn’t be masked by chatter in Spanish, Portuguese, and English. The increase and decrease of overlapping sounds, the phenomenon called the Doppler effect, was overwhelming. But I held still. Refused to let my heartbeat muffle my ears. Horns blared, that cacophony of terror becoming louder, not fainter.
Then I saw headlights moving fast, switching lanes.
The Maserati sped down Biscayne Boulevard. Arizona had made a U-turn, drove like she was Danica Patrick going for the checkered flag. She broke through the darkness and headlights, blew through red light after red light, ran for her life, her pace causing drivers to panic and swerve, created metal-on-metal collisions, accident after accident as she fled.
Two black SUVs were on her trail, both rampaging and trying to run her down.
With the tinted windows in those Excursions, I would’ve thought that was one of the alphabet organizations, only there were no red lights, no sirens, and they were gunning at Arizona as she fled. In the middle of a busy avenue and a busy city, a hit was in progress.
The Maserati cut left, went over the median and head-on into oncoming traffic, then swerved right, cut hard at the intersection, screeched, and headed down N.E. Miami Gardens Drive. The lead SUV sideswiped cars, more metal-on-metal explosions as they took out headlights, but they overshot the intersection. The SUV hit the front end of a midsized car, ended up nose to nose with oncoming traffic. While that SUV hit reverse hard enough to burn rubber, the second SUV made the hard right turn, took the lead, sideswiped cars as they headed over the railroad tracks, and roared after Arizona, sped west at the speed of sound.
Helmet on, face shield up, I started the Streetfighter, made it roar, left the parking lot burning rubber, a plume of terror in my wake.
I sped toward the sounds of a swelling psychosis.
Chapter 4
to hell with the devil
I sped out onto Biscayne,
cut left in front of six lanes of ferocious traffic.
I was almost hit head-on, but I swerved and pursued the death chase, then white-lined traffic and made a harder right and bumped across railroad tracks. Barely made the turn ahead of a train, a train that would separate that squad from any other hired guns chasing Arizona, would keep them stuck on U.S. 1 for at least ten minutes.
They were a half mile ahead, their insane speed adding distance between us.
I couldn’t shoot and ride at this speed; needed my gun hand to keep the throttle down; lose the throttle, lose acceleration. Had no idea what the fuck I was doing, but I was doing it.
My speedometer was close to the century mark.
I sped by Greynolds Park, by a fire rescue station, by palm trees and signs posted to beware of alligators. I bore down, forced my four-hundred-pound iron horse to fly like a Cessna, whipped past cars, changed lanes, passed automobiles that had been run off the road, cars that had crashed into walls and poles and each other.