Stiffed (26 page)

She says it so deadpan that I’m not sure if
its black humor or she actually means it.  I’d feel happier if she walked in front of me.

We make our way back out the way we came in.  There’s no sign of Kate
as we ascend the stairs. 

My plan is to go up the staircase to the second floor, then circle round the
swimming pool past the bedrooms and drop down the grand staircase into the reception area and out through the front door.

That’s the plan
.  But as Mike Tyson once said: ‘Everybody has a plan, ’til they get hit.’

* * *

The top floor is quiet.  In fact the whole hotel seems eerily silent.  Either it’s a lull in the action or whatever madness we’ve been involved in has ended.  We stare down into the swimming pool area.  I can just make out Juan’s legs at the far end, but otherwise it seems empty.

‘Are you okay?’ I ask Sally.

‘Fantastic,’ she replies, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

To say I have a lot of repair
and repent work to do would be a gross understatement; twelve years of penance to fulfill.

We start
to walk along the corridor.

Pirelli’s chef turns the corner up ahead, holding a pistol.  Instinctively
, I pull the trigger of the Uzi.  Nothing happens.

Fuck!

I shake the gun and pull the trigger again.  Nothing.

The chef pulls a malicious smile.
  At least I know the pager worked.

I snatch
hold of Sally, rush to a bedroom door and crash through it.  I grab the door and slam it shut, locking it.

Shit!
  We’re trapped.  I doubt the chef is going to fall for the same trick as Redneck.

‘In the bathroom,’ I instruct Sally.

‘You’re not in charge, Tiger.’

‘I never said I was.  I did, however, promise to get you out of this.  To get you back to Joel and the two kids.  For that
, I need to keep you alive.’

I start to fiddle with the gun.  I don’t know what’s wrong with it.  It didn’t even click when I pressed the trigger which suggests
to my non-technical mind that some kind of safety switch might be on, as opposed to it running out of ammunition.  Frankly, I haven’t got a clue – my knowledge of guns is limited to what I’ve seen in the movies.  If the worst comes to the worst, I can try and use it as a club.

‘I’m not goi
ng to leave them for you, Tiger,’ Sally says.

‘I’m not asking you to.’

‘I’m just letting you know that in case you get any stupid ideas.’

‘I don’t have any stupid ideas.’ 

‘You’re full of stupid ideas.’

I can’t really argue against that. 
I shake the gun in my hands; it’s a useless piece of shit.

T
here’s a noise outside the door.

‘Sally, get in the damn bathroom.’

I point the gun at the door and pull the trigger in vain.  The Uzi jumps in my hands, a diagonal of five bullet holes track across the door from bottom left to top right.  There’s a thump outside in the corridor.

I’ve finally figured out how to get the
damn gun to work – there’s two parts to the trigger; one activated by a finger, the other the thumb.  You have to squeeze both simultaneously for it to fire.

‘Fuck,’ Sally mutters.

That about sums it up.  I wave her out of the potential line of fire and open the door, standing off to one side.

The chef is lying on the floor groaning.  His gun is a meter or so beyond his grasp.
  I’ve managed to hit him in his ankle, his hip, and his upper arm.  None of it seems too serious as long as he doesn’t bleed out.  I’ve no intention of hanging around to find out. 

‘I hope that’ll teach you not to leave a fly in my soup,’ I say.

He rolls his eyes as Sally steps past me and picks up his gun.

We head off on our original course.  For a pair of amateurs, I don’t think we’re doing too badly.  At least we’re still alive and just about on speaking terms.
  It must be Crusaders 10, the opposition ... I don’t want to think what the opposition score is - hopefully still zero, perhaps with the bases loaded.

12

Think where man's glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends
– William Butler Yeats

We’ve made it all the way to the door that opens onto the landing that gives access to the reception area.  Only we’ve now hit a problem.  The reinforced glass in the fire door is punctured with three bullet holes and on the far side we can see Young Barry standing at the top of the right hand fork of the stairs, a look of indecision on his face.

There’s a blood curdling scream from the floor below.

Holy mother of God.  Somebody is suffering an enormous amount of pain.  I hope to heaven that it isn’t Annabelle, Jason or Paavo.  Nobody deserves that kind of treatment.

Another scream rises up to us.

The noise is enough to make me nauseous.

A movement on the far side of the landing catches my eye.  I stare over to see Jason waving at me through the glass in the other fire door.  Well, at least the big lug is still alive and kicking.

The only way out of this madhouse is through the reception door.  The other doors are chained shut and the windows covered in bars.  We’re either going to have to confront Young Barry or find another route to the reception.  Heaven knows who we’ll encounter doing the latter.

I wait until Young
Barry has his back to us then step through the doors.

‘Freeze, motherfucker!’
I yell, giving him a taste of his own medicine.

Young Barry
raises his hands slowly, a pistol clutched in his right hand.

Jason steps through the far door.  He’s holding a length of wood in his
right hand; his left arm draped across the top of his substantial gut.  ‘What the hell took you so long, man?’

‘The
traffic was terrible,’ I reply.

‘Well, next time take the toll road.’ 

I jam the Uzi into Young Barry’s back, letting him know the threat was real.

‘I ain’t done anything, man,’ Young Barry
says, his voice as deep as a bass guitar down a mine shaft.  ‘I’m just the wheels.’

‘Jason
, take his gun.’

There’s another scream below.

‘What the hell is happening down there,’ I ask as Jason disarms Young Barry.

‘
A white bitch is torturing a big motherfucker.’

Jason drops the piece of wood and feels the heft of the gun in his hand.

‘You killed Leroy, man,’ Young Barry says.  ‘You fuckin’ killed him.’

‘We haven’t killed anybody,’ I reply. 

It seems that Barry White is no longer amongst us.  Maybe Paavo got his man after all.  Whilst Young Barry might feel grief, all I feel is relief.  He was one scary dude who valued life as much as I value disposable razors.  I don’t feel it’s the right time to tell him that Fat Barry is also dead.

‘I don’t want to die
, man.  I ain’t begging you, but I don’t want to die.’

‘You’re not going to die.’

‘Now what?’ Jason asks.

I don’t have a ready answer.  We don’t have anything with which to tie him up.

‘Maybe we should set him free; give him a ten second head start?’ I suggest.

‘I ain’t playing
no fucking game, dude.’

‘You don’t have a choice
, do you?’ 

I
guide Young Barry to the door from which we emerged and push him into the corridor.  He stares back at me defiantly.  I pull the trigger and the gun sparks into life, a clatter of bullets spraying round his feet.  That seems to do the job.  He takes off like a hotwired car.

Jason fires two bullets into the roof to add to the effect. 
‘Fucking awesome!’

He
puts up his good hand, still holding the pistol, and we high five.

‘Will you two
grow up,’ Sally says from the top of the stairs.  ‘You’re worse than Storm and Cyclone.’

That I severely doubt. 
I hope that Young Barry has got the sense to keep running, then to find a room to hide in and wait for the police to arrive.  The last thing we need is for him to return freshly armed.

I’ve a hundred and one questions for Jason, but before I get a chance to ask another yell echoes up the staircase.  We creep to the edge of the
balustrade and look down, but whoever is below us is out of view.

* * *

‘The only way out,’ I whisper, ‘is through that door.’  I’m not sure why I feel the need to whisper given whoever is down there knows we’re here after our attempt to get Young Barry to perform a bullet dance, but it seems appropriate.  ‘I’m going to take a look.’

‘You can’t go down there,’ Sally says.

‘We’ve got this far, haven’t we?  We’re only a few meters from getting out of this lunatic asylum.’

‘I’ll go down the left staircase, you go down the right,’ Jason suggests.  ‘Sally can wait up here.’

‘I’m not waiting up here on my own.  What if … whoever the hell that was comes back?’

‘Well, come with me then,’ I say.
  ‘Stay behind me.  If the shots start flying, get down and stay down.’

Jason moves to the left staircase and myself and Sally head right.  We descend
slowly and stealthily; in Jason’s case, as stealthily as a three hundred and fifty pound man can manage.  As we turn onto the mid-landing I duck below the banister and peer between two balustrades.

The Rock
is lying on his back on the slate floor a few feet from the front door.  Kate is kneeling next to him in a large puddle of blood.  There’s a metal rod sticking out of his right thigh, her left hand gripping it.  Her right hand is holding a small gun against his forehead.  She’s saying something to him, but I can’t make out the words. 

The Rock doesn’t respond, his ey
es closed, his mouth pulled in a grimace. 

Kate jerks the rod v
iciously, rotating it around.

The Rock screams
for all he is worth, his huge hands gripping his thigh.  I’m surprised he doesn’t lash out at her but he’s probably too afraid of a bullet popping through his skull.

I
can feel bile creeping up my throat.  I can’t say he’s my favorite person – he certainly wouldn’t make it onto my Christmas card list – but torture seems a little extreme, even for Kate.

She
stops moving the rod and starts talking to him again.

His mouth move
s, but I can’t hear his reply.

She shakes her head slowly then pulls the trigger.  The
re’s a bang and The Rock’s head rolls to one side, a neat, small hole in the middle of his forehead.

WHOA
!

Freaking hell.
  Kate has just executed a man.  Tortured him and put a bullet in his brain.  The woman I have been living with for last seven months really is the ultimate psycho-bitch.  Not just cold hearted, but actually psychotic.

I can’t help but
do something.  I rise from my hiding place, pointing the Uzi at her.  ‘Put the gun down, Kate.’

She looks over at me
, her eyes vacant and glazed and pulls a sad smile.

‘I said, put the gun down.’

Jason rises up, his pistol pointing at her.

Kate
gets to her feet, still clutching her gun, her jeans covered in blood.  ‘I don’t think so, Tadhg.’

‘You’ve just murdered a man in cold blood!’

‘I’ve just exacted revenge; an eye for an eye.  He confessed.  That fucker killed Tony.  Stabbed him and left him to die in our bed.’

‘Of course he confessed!  He’d have told you anything
you wanted to stop you torturing him.’

‘He did it, Tadhg.  He did everything Pirelli told him.  The old man
thought I was turning Tony against him.  That we were planning to kill him and take over his empire.’  She shakes her head.  ‘And they thought that I’m paranoid.’

Annabelle appears through the ballroom archway
, no doubt attracted by all the gunfire in this part of the building.  She’s pointing a gun at Kate.  I’ve no idea who she’s liberated it from; how many people are scattered around the hotel dead and dying.

‘Anna,’ Sally
says, relief in her voice.

Annabelle glances up.  ‘Hi, guys.’
  You’d think we’d been playing a game of paintballing for all the concern and gravitas in her voice. 

Kate raises her gun and points it at me. 
‘Give me the cap, Tadhg.’

‘You’re joking, right?’

‘Do I sound like I’m joking?’

‘You won’t get out of here alive.’

‘Neither will you.’

Paavo appears in the door
that leads to the first floor bedrooms circling the swimming pool.  He looks calm and composed as if this was all in a day’s work to him; maybe it is.  He’s still holding the same pistol as when I last saw him.

It’s
now five against one.  Kate must surely understand that the odds are stacked firmly against her.

‘Give me the cap, Tadhg,
’ Kate repeats.  ‘I
will
shoot you.’

We stand in silence in some weird, lopsided standoff.

‘Give her the cap,’ Paavo says eventually.

I stare over at him.  We’ve won. 
It’s five against one.  There’s no way she can get the cap without one of us shooting her.

‘Each of us is worth more than a million dollars,’ Paavo says.
 

For a former army cook,
Paavo can sometimes utter very profound insights.  We might well have numerical supremacy, but the only way to ensure that all five of us remain alive is to shoot first or surrender.  We are worth way more than a million dollars each.  We’re freaking priceless.

I take the cap off
, descend the remainder of the stairs and hold it out to her.

She edges forward
, the pistol pointing at my head.  She snatches the cap and puts it on.  ‘Give me the gun,’ she demands.

‘You’ve got the cap, Kate.
’

‘I know, now giving me your
fucking gun.’

Reluctantly
I pass her the Uzi, praying that it’s not about to be used to massacre us.

She tucks
her pistol into her waistband, taking the Uzi in both hands, edging back towards the door.

She reaches the threshold.

‘You have one hell of a set of friends, Tadhg.  I wouldn’t wish them on any of my enemies.  This isn’t over,’ she snarls, then turns and disappears.

Well
, she got the first bit right.  This
is
one hell of a set of friends.  Blessed would be an understatement.  But what the hell does she mean, ‘this isn’t over?’

She’s going to come back for us?  We’ve jus
t given her the million dollars and let her make good her escape.  She used me, all of us, for the past seven months.  Is she that vindictive that she’s going to come back to exact revenge?  It was Pirelli who killed Marino, not us.

A light bulb pings on. 
Pirelli.  She’s going after Pirelli. 

This
isn’t about the million dollars anymore; it’s about revenge of the cold blooded kind. She was going to start a new life with Marino and Pirelli put an end to it all.  As always he was one step ahead, protecting his back and his empire.  Marino was about to run out on him, or worse still to try and engineer a coup, so Marino had to go.  And if that was on the night that Redneck and Barry White turned up looking for Kate then all the better.  Either she would be dealt with by them or she’d return home to face a murder rap, her dopey boyfriend having found a body in his bed and summoned the police.

Only the dopey boyfriend called his best friend and they tried to get rid of the body and the rest, as they say, is history.

God only knows what kind of trail of destruction she’s going to leave in her wake at The Grill.  Pirelli has whatever it is coming to him, but most people drinking and eating in the bar will be ordinary folk enjoying a night out.

I bolt for the door
tugging Redneck’s keys from my pocket, the torch still shining dimly. 

* * *

Kate is already in the black Taurus when I fly down the steps.  She reverses quickly and takes off down the driveway like a drunken NASCAR driver, swerving from side-to-side along the weed infested tarmac.

I dash for the only vehicle I don’t recognize – a black
Saab convertible with cream leather interior, its roof down.  I slide into the driver’s seat and jam the key into the ignition.  The car sparks into life.  I grab hold of the gear lever to find it’s a shift-change.  I can’t remember the last time I drove a shift-change.  I study the little diagram of the gear positions, put my foot on the clutch and ram the gear lever into reverse.

I’m just about to fly backwards when the passenger door opens.