Authors: Paul Monette
It was strangely quiet in the bedroom. Not a single window was broken, and the air was still thick with Elvira’s fragrance. He crossed to a built-in cabinet in the far wall. He hauled out a shoulder-fired rocket launcher and a canvas bag of refill rounds. It had always seemed an absurd weapon, too cumbersome for the work they had to do, without the handling ability of the Ingram. More suited to war than crime. But Tony had kept it ready the way other rich men in Coral Gables kept bomb shelters. It was the last resort.
He lumbered back across the bedroom, hefting the launcher onto his shoulder. On an impulse he stopped at the bedside table and pulled open the drawer, but there was no coke. If only he could get back to the office, he thought, he could hold them off till dawn and stay wrecked besides. This plan seemed to energize him, and he focused all his attention on it. He had no memory of the slaughter downstairs. He seemed to feel if he lasted the night, the others would all regroup in the morning. Elvira, Manolo, Gina, Nick, Chi-Chi—it was as if they were all in hiding somewhere, waiting for Tony to make it safe.
A grenade exploded just outside the bedroom door, blowing it off its hinges. A couple of the hitters had decided to storm his fortress, and now they advanced in a spray of fire. Tony smiled as he pointed the launcher at the smoking doorway. He fired once, and the shell whined into the upstairs hall, exploding like Armageddon. The two hitters were blown to smithereens, and the whole house shook to its foundations.
“Come on, you scum,” taunted Tony, “here I am. Come say hello to my little friend here.”
There was silence in the hall except for the fire, clawing to find a way out. Black smoke billowed into the room. Tony walked forward into it, groping his way to the railing above the foyer. The smoke was thinner here, and it swirled about him like a devil’s aura, as if he’d materialized out of thin air. He yelled down the stairs as he reloaded.
“You need an army, you hear? An army! I piss in your face!”
A hitter fired up from the front door, and two bullets thumped into Tony’s chest. He felt nothing. He pointed the launcher downward and fired. The rocket exploded with a terrific roar, sending up a ball of flame in a kind of mushroom cloud. The front door was a gaping hole. The house was on fire in every room. Still not a single siren broke the night. Tony turned and lurched through the smoke and managed to gain the office. He was coughing up blood, but he knew he was safe as soon as he saw his money and his coke.
While the hitters crept up the stairs he stumbled to the marble table and bent for a final dose. The blood streaming out of his nose and mouth splashed on the dazzling white. With an awesome concentration he sniffed at the mound like a man taking leave of his last rose. When the hitters reached the landing Tony was crouched over, trailing a hand in the cash that littered the floor as if he was making ripples in a pond. Then he sprang to his feet and made for the balcony. The hitters were at the office door.
He reached the balcony rail and saw the empty zoo below, drunk with the jungle rain. He wasn’t afraid. He wasn’t sorry. He began to see there was a reason after all to be the last one left. It meant he was the only witness, the only judge. No one was going to pass his story on. What he saw right now was all he would ever be. It wasn’t something he could put into words. He would have had to be a poet instead of a king. But he looked out over his burning kingdom and spoke his epitaph, brief as a shooting star.
“Tony Montana—he died doin’ it.”
And he turned with a radiant grin on the ring of men with their gaudy weapons. They fired every round they had, and his body began to buck and spin as he came apart. A bullet hit the launcher, and the rocket blew. Tony Montana exploded in a ball of fire, pitching over the balcony rail and hurtling to the ground below. His killers rushed forward to look, watching the flames burn out in the riot of jungle plants. The thing was consumed by itself like a meteorite.
And just then the first siren sounded, like an all-clear after a night of heavy shelling. Within seconds the hitters were looting, stuffing the cash into bags, loading their arms with kilos. The rain had almost cleared now, and the Gulf wind blew the bitter smoke away through the clattering palms. As soon as the shooting stopped the half-acre lords of Coral Gables gathered on the curb in their bathrobes, arms wrapped protectively about their wives and eldest sons. They watched with horrible fascination as the guerrillas shrieked off in Tony’s fleet of cars, tearing out of the gates on two wheels. But even then, when the place was clearly deserted, they wouldn’t venture any closer. All they could see beyond the gates was the flickering neon sign on the lawn: THE WORLD IS YOURS.
And it
was
theirs again. The nightmare was over. They knew it as soon as the police arrived, screaming up the driveway, followed a moment later by the fire trucks and the paramedics. Life was normal again. The lords of Coral Gables turned back to their solid houses with a quickening in their hearts. The real America was safe with them, that dream of money and power that would one day free all men. You could tell by the crystalline moon shouldering through the clouds, tomorrow was going to be bright and clean.
Besides, there was a whole kingdom waiting to be divided.