The Devil’s Share (20 page)

*   *   *

Hicks tried her number again. It didn't ring this time, went directly to an automated message that said the subscriber was no longer on the network.

The phone clicked, another call coming through. Sandoval.

“Where are you?” Hicks said.

“About a block away. I took a cab, then doubled back to watch, just in case. You're right, they couldn't wait.”

“They?”

“The two micks were with her. The three of them went in, nobody came out.”

“You sure of that?”

“I'm standing right here.”

“How's it look?”

“Like someone called in an airstrike. Whole floor's burning like a motherfucker. Nobody walked away from that one.”

“Stick around, call me back,” Hicks said. “Let me know what you see.”

“Right.”

Hicks came in from the balcony. Cota rose from his seat by the cold, dead fireplace, leaning on his cane with both hands.

Hicks tossed the phone onto the chair he'd been sitting in a few minutes earlier, looked at Cota, and said, “It's done.”

 

TWENTY

Water running over her, warm, constant, hissing from above. The crackling of flames somewhere behind her. The air full of smoke.

She tried to roll onto her side, but there was weight across her back. She pushed it away. McBride.

She was at the base of a concrete wall. Twenty feet away, the Impala was burning. All the glass blown out, the trunk lid gone. Thick black smoke billowed up, flattened against the ceiling. The sprinkler system was spraying water, the concrete floor wet with it, but it was having no effect on the flames. There was no sign of Keegan.

She tried to stand, put a hand on the wall to steady herself. Coughing made her ribs hurt. On the other side of the Impala, three spaces away, another car was on fire.

On her feet now. She took a step, kicked something, looked down to see a bare and blackened arm, severed at the shoulder, wondered whose it was.

A muffled alarm was sounding somewhere, and she realized then she couldn't hear out of her left ear. Just an echoing silence there, pressure.

Dizzy, she leaned back against the wall, moved along it, trying to get away from the flames. There was an explosion behind her, the other car's gas tank going up. A wave of heat blew over her.

Ahead of her, through the smoke, was the stairwell door. She held her breath, lurched toward it, hit the panic bar. The door flew open, and momentum carried her through. She fell hard onto the concrete landing, the door slamming shut behind her.

She coughed, sucked in cool air. In her nostrils was the scent of scorched hair, cooked meat. She could hear sirens somewhere far off, wondered how long she'd been unconscious.

Get up, she thought. Move. Walk.

She gripped the metal railing, pulled herself to her feet, used it for support as she went down the stairs. There was pain in her left leg. It wanted to fold under her. The right side of her head was numb, and when she touched her hair there, her fingers came away with blood.

She limped down the stairs, holding on to the railing with her left hand. Shouting outside and below, more sirens. On the second-floor landing, she pulled open the fire door, went in. She didn't want to go all the way down, run into cops or firefighters coming up the stairs.

Heading toward the exit ramp, she stopped to lean against cars when she had to. At the bottom of the ramp, she stood behind a pillar, tried to catch her breath. The attendant's booth was empty, and Second Street was full of people, all of them looking up at the flames.

She scanned faces, looking for Sandoval, wondering if he'd come back to watch, or finish the job. A fire truck, lights flashing, came around the corner and pulled to the curb, men spilling out of it. Firefighters began moving people off the sidewalk, toward the opposite side of the street.

She went down the exit ramp then, out into the street and into the clot of people. A man said something to her she didn't hear. She pushed past him.

When she reached the other sidewalk, she looked back. Smoke poured from the third floor of the garage, flames licking up the outside wall to the roof, the concrete already black from the fire. A flare inside, the
whump
of another explosion, and the smoke thickened.

A woman next to her was pointing at the sky. Crissa looked up, saw something in the air, caught in the thermal updraft from the flames. It drifted lazily down, its edges glowing red, and the crowd parted for it. It landed, faintly smoking, on the sidewalk. A charred piece of cloth about a foot square. A floral print. Keegan's shirt.

She turned and went through the crowd, no one paying attention to her, everyone watching the fire. When she reached the car, she felt a wave of dizziness. She put a hand on the hood to keep from falling, bent and vomited into the gutter.

“You all right?”

She looked up, and there was a uniformed cop standing there. She nodded, leaned back against the fender.

“You don't look it,” he said. “EMTs will be here in a minute. You need to go with them.”

“Right,” she said, and looked past him to where his cruiser was parked halfway on the sidewalk, rollers flashing. “I will.”

More sirens, another fire truck. The watchers had been pushed back farther. The cop turned from her, spoke into the body mike on his shoulder. The first truck had a hose going, was pouring water into the third-floor opening. Dark smoke roiled up into the blue sky.

She'd lost the phone, but she still had her keys. She unlocked the car, slipped behind the wheel, had a coughing fit that left her dizzy again.

An ambulance came up fast behind her, siren and lights going. It turned the corner, pulled up at an angle to the fire truck. The cop trotted toward it.

She gripped the wheel until her hands stopped shaking. Her head was throbbing, pain replacing numbness. There was a rhythmic pounding in her left ear, in time with her pulse.

She turned the rearview toward herself. Dried blood on her face. Her hair was singed on the left side, and there was a lump on her right scalp that triggered a surge of pain when she touched it. But no fresh blood. She had turned to her right just as the Impala went up. McBride had been in front of her, had taken the brunt of the peripheral blast, but she must have been thrown back, hit her head against the wall, blacked out. Concussion maybe. Or worse, a fractured skull.

She started the engine. More police cars out there now, parked at angles. She needed to get out of there before they blocked off the street. Uniformed officers were standing around talking, looking up at the fire. They'd be canvassing for witnesses soon.

She had to get to a phone, call Chance. One of the cops turned and came back toward her, the same one from before. He was saying something she couldn't hear, motioning for her to roll down her window. She raised a hand as if to acknowledge him, cut the wheel into a tight U-turn, watched him in the rearview as she drove away.

*   *   *

In the motel room, she dialed Chance's cell from memory. When it went to voice mail, she said, “It's me. Call me soon as you can,” and read off the number on the front of the phone.

Her clothes reeked of smoke and gasoline. She left them on the bathroom floor, turned on the shower. She could hear better from her left ear now, though the sound of the water was still muffled. When she climbed in, the hot water on her scalp made her gasp. She shut her eyes, kept her head under the spray, trying not to cry out. When she opened her eyes again, pink water was circling the drain.

You fucked up, she thought. Bad. You're lucky to be alive.

All of it settling in on her now, what had happened, how close it had been. She thought about Maddie, the last time she'd seen her, at the playground, laughing, running. How close she'd come to never seeing her again.

She was trembling now, chills running through her. She made the water hotter, but it had no effect. Finally, she sank down in the tub, arms around her knees, steam rising around her, and shook.

*   *   *

They sat in the big first-floor living room, watching cable news on the wall-mounted plasma TV. On the screen was a helicopter shot of the burning parking garage, smoke rising up. Titles at the bottom of the screen read
POSSIBLE CAR BOMB EXPLOSION IN PHOENIX, ARIZ. CASUALTIES UNKNOWN
.

“They'll say it's terrorism,” Cota said. He had a full glass of scotch in his hand, no ice. “The government will be involved, Homeland Security. Convince me there wasn't a better way to do this. A more circumspect way.”

“The car's untraceable,” Hicks said. “You don't have to worry about that. And this was the best way. The money was the only bait that would bring her. She was too smart, too careful. And it had to be someplace public. She wouldn't have gone for anything else.”

“A little too public.”

“I'd hoped they'd take the car somewhere, maybe to where the other one was, too, before they popped the trunk. That way we'd have gotten all of them at once.”

“Then you miscalculated.”

“No. I knew there was a chance this would happen, but there was nothing I could do about it. You can't cover every contingency, no matter how hard you try.”

“And still, the job is only half done.”

“We'll find Chance some other way. I have some ideas.”

“And the man in Kansas City?”

“Him, too,” Hicks said.

“You seem confident.”

“It'll take them days—maybe months—to figure out what happened in there. Could be with her bringing those other two along, we caught a break. When they ID them, the cops might chalk it up to some sort of splinter IRA bullshit, if we're lucky.”

“And you're certain the woman was in there?”

“I was on the phone with her just before it happened. She was right there, keys in hand, about to open the trunk. They'll be picking up pieces of her for weeks.”

Feeling the doubt, but not saying anything. He had underestimated her in the past. It wouldn't feel done until he knew for sure.

“So what will you do now, about the others?” Cota said.

“Give it a break, Emile. I told you. I'm on it.” He stood. “I'm going to go up, get some air.”

He went up to the third-floor balcony, watched the sun setting over the ocean. He gripped the marble railing, drew in air, breathed out. Steady, he thought. You just need to be calm, careful, see it all through.

Footsteps behind him, the clack of the cane.

“You're troubled,” Cota said.

Hicks shook his head, didn't turn.

Cota came out to stand beside him. “Is it the woman?”

Hicks looked at him. “Did I say that?”

“You don't have to. But I assure you, Randall, when you look back on this six months, or a year, from now, on all that we've done, all that we've had to do, you'll understand. Things happened just as they were supposed to. As they were destined to, even. It will all make sense then. We've done the right thing, all around. The best thing.”

“Did I say different?”

“My main concern now is about the other one, Chance. What will his reaction be? These people sometimes have loyalties, don't they?”

“Only to money,” Hicks said. “But we'll deal with him, one way or another.”

“We have to wind down this thing we created, tie off the loose ends. Until then, it's not finished.”

“I'll take care of it.”

“You've got a plan?”

“Always.”

“I didn't mean to question your efficiency.”

“Then don't.”

Cota looked off into the twilight, breathed deep.

“I appreciate what you've done for me, Randall,” he said. “I do. The sacrifices you've made. The risks you took. I don't carry that lightly.”

“Good. Because these other things, tying up these loose ends, it's going to cost you.”

“I never thought otherwise. Still, in the long run, worth it all, don't you think?”

“For you, maybe.”

“For both of us, Randall. You've more than earned your share of what's coming from the fruits of this transaction.”

“Soon, I hope.”

Cota patted his shoulder, said, “Soon enough,” and went back inside.

Hicks got out his cell, called Sandoval.

“Yeah,
jefe
.”

“Where are you?”

“Just left LAX. Got a car, heading your way.”

“You see the news?”

“Saw some of it in the airport, waiting for my flight. That was beautiful, man, way you set it up. It do the job?”

“The first part. There's more work coming up.”

“Say the word. I'm your man.”

“It could be a little more complicated now. The people we're looking for, they'll know we're coming.”

“Whatever. We'll get it done.”

“Those guys of yours you told me about,” Hicks said. “They still available?”

“If it pays right, yeah. Always.”

“Call them,” Hicks said.

 

TWENTY-ONE

When Crissa opened the door, Chance winced. “Jesus, you look like hell.”

“Thanks. Come on in.” She locked the door behind him.

He was carrying a Nike shoebox under one arm, set it on the bed. “What you wanted.”

They were in a motel outside Cincinnati. She'd changed rental cars, spent thirty hours on the road, stopping only to eat and catch a couple hours' sleep parked in a truck stop rest area. She'd gotten in at midnight the night before, slept eleven hours before calling Chance. Her head still throbbed, but most of her hearing had returned.

“Any problems?” she said.

“No, it's clean. Right from the factory. There's a box of rounds in there, too. Tell me what happened.”

She opened the shoebox. Inside was a bundle of tissue paper. Beneath it, a Glock 40 with checkered plastic grips, smelling of gun oil. She took it out, ejected the magazine, checked it was full, then worked the slide to make sure the chamber was clear. The action was smooth, easy.