The Devil’s Share (24 page)

“What the fuck, Emile?”

Cota turned to look at him, then reached back into the safe.

“Where do you think you're going?” Hicks said. He'd almost been too late.

Cota put the last two packs on the desk. He looked pale, old.

“I was going to call you, tell you. I wasn't sure when you'd be back.”

“You running out on me? I told you there's nothing to worry about. It's all been taken care of.”

“You did. And I'm sure you're right.” He limped toward the chair, sat down with a sigh. Hicks could see the sweat on his forehead. “But I was thinking, now might be an optimum time to take an overseas sabbatical. You should consider it as well.”

“After all that happened? How do you think that'll look?”

Cota set his cane atop the desk. “Understood. But frankly, I'd feel more comfortable somewhere in Europe—Brussels, perhaps—until things calm down here, and our current trouble blows over.”

“There's no trouble, not anymore,” Hicks said. “They're all gone, or will be soon.” Thinking about Sandoval and the others, on their way to Chance's farm. Or there already and done. And now just one thing left.

“You say. But can you really be sure?”

“Don't get squirrely on me, Emile. You'd be leaving me in a jam here. Or didn't you think about that?”

Cota didn't answer, took a leather valise from the floor, opened it on the desktop, and began to put the money inside.

“I half-expected as much,” Hicks said. “That's why I'm here. Loose ends, right?”

Cota looked up at him. “What do you mean?”

“How much you have there?”

“Sixty thousand. Traveling money, that's all.”

“What about the other safes in the house? There's money in all of them, right? How much were you going to take with you?”

Cota closed the valise, looked at him. “Randall, I'm grateful for all you've done on my behalf. I am. And I know it hasn't always been easy. On occasion I've asked you to do things you didn't want to.”

“Yeah, you have.”

“But I think we should go our separate ways for a little while, until things are calmer.”

“They're calm now.”

“Then as a precautionary measure.”

“You were going to leave without me?”

“It's better if we travel separately. I think we can both agree on that. You want this”—he slid the valise across the desktop—“take it, it's yours.”

Hicks laughed. “Sixty thousand?”

“Take it.”

“You owe me a lot more than that, Emile.”

“And I will pay you every penny of it.”

“That's right,” Hicks said. “You will.”

*   *   *

Chance was silent in the car. She looked at his leg, said, “How bad is it?”

“Just a graze. I can take care of it myself.”

They were on Highway 50, headed west, Crissa driving. They'd collected most of the weapons, disassembled them, put the parts into a duffel bag they'd dumped into a lake a few miles from the farm. She'd kept the Glock.

He'd taken what he could from the house, loaded a single suitcase. They'd left the four men where they lay, the blond one still alive out there in the field. There was nothing else to do.

“I'm sorry,” she said.

“It wasn't your fault.”

“I brought all this into your life.”

“I made my choices. But this changes things. There's prints all over that house. Maybe other evidence, too, things I haven't even thought of.”

“What will you do now?”

“Get Lynette. Figure out where to go next. Nothing back there was in my name, but the cops will talk to neighbors, people in town. They'll try to piece the whole thing together. And they will eventually. I've got enough money stashed away. We'll start again. Someplace else.”

In her jeans pocket, the phone she'd taken from Sandoval started to buzz. She took it out. Hicks's number, the same one he'd been using. Sloppy.

“Is it him?” Chance said.

She nodded. “He's calling to see how it went.”

“Let me talk to him.”

She shook her head, pressed the
TALK
button, held the phone to her ear.

“Sandy?”

“No,” she said.

Silence, then Hicks said, “I should have known.”

“He said the same thing.”

More silence. “He was a good man. We went back a long way.”

She said nothing.

“So where does this leave us?” Hicks said.

“Where do you think?”

“We can still work this out.”

“I don't think so.” Chance was watching her.

“I didn't want things to go the way they did,” Hicks said. “Any of it.”

“You kept the same phone.”

“Guess I didn't think I had anything to worry about anymore.”

“You thought wrong.”

“I'm not surprised, though. I knew there was a chance you'd walked away in Phoenix. I figured if you did, I'd be hearing from you again, one way or another.”

“You owe me some money.”

He laughed. “You'll have to take that up with the old man.”

“I will.”

“Let me know how that works out for you.”

“Answer me one thing. Out in the desert. That driver, the one who ran, he was in on it, wasn't he?”

“What if I said yes?”

“Did you plan to kill him all along?”

“Not then. When it was all over, yeah. As a safety measure. But he forced our hand.”

“Is that what all this has been? Safety measures?”

“Collateral damage.”

“Cota know about all this, what you've done?”

“Does it matter now? He wanted his money, he didn't care how he got it. He looked the other way while I did the real work. Way it always was.”

Chance reached for the phone. She shook her head.

Hicks said, “Sandy had some people with him.”

“He did.”

He took a breath. “All of them?”

“They called the play.”

“God damn, girl.”

When she didn't respond, he said, “So I guess we're the last ones standing. Funny how that worked out. No harm, no foul, though. I'm headed someplace where it's warm all year long, spend some of the old man's money. You should do the same. All in all, you didn't come out too bad.”

“And you can leave it at that?”

“What else is there to do?”

“What about Sandoval?”

“Sandy was a soldier. He knew what he was getting into. We all did. Your people, too.”

She took a breath. “You were wrong.”

“About what?”

“About us. You and me. We're not alike. Not at all.”

“No? Maybe you should think about that a little more.”

“I did,” she said, and ended the call.

“You should have let me talk to him,” Chance said.

“There's nothing more to say.” She opened the back of the phone, took out the SIM card, broke it in two, dropped the pieces out the window. Four miles later, she tossed the phone.

“So what now?” Chance said.

“We'll find a motel for tonight. Somewhere in Indiana, maybe. I'll feel better across the state line. We'll take a look at that leg, then get you on a train, plane, to Iowa, wherever. Then I've got some things to take care of.”

“I'll come along.”

“No,” she said. “Not this time.”

 

TWENTY-FIVE

The tennis court behind the house was the easiest way in. She used bolt cutters on the chain-link fence there, working by moonlight, the scrub pine hiding her from the neighboring houses. She wore a black windbreaker, black jeans, gloves, and sneakers.

A two-day drive out here, and she'd gotten what she needed along the way. Her rental car was parked up the hill, nosed into a stand of trees, hidden from the road.

When she'd cut an L in the chain-link, she slid through the gap, careful to avoid the jagged edges. Crouching there in the shadows of the court, she looked up at the house. Lights on the second and third floors, the ground floor dark. No sound but the faint splash of water from the fountain beyond the garden wall. She waited, watching for movement behind the windows. Nothing. She eased back a glove to look at her watch. Two
A.M.

On the other side of the court was a chained and padlocked gate that led onto an enclosed patio. She crossed the court, used the bolt cutters on the chain, then unthreaded it from the fence posts. She left the chain and bolt cutters on the ground, opened the gate quietly and went through.

At the back door, she used strips of duct tape to cover the glass in one of the lower panes, then bumped it with an elbow. The glass cracked but stayed in place. She pulled gently on the loose ends of the tape, and the broken glass came away without a sound. She set the tape down, plucked the last glass fragments from the frame, then waited, listening for any sounds inside the house. Somewhere in the hills, a coyote called.

A long count of sixty, and only silence. She reached in then, felt around for the dead bolt, unlocked it. The door opened inward. No chain. Staying low, she slid in, eased the door shut behind her, waiting for an alarm.

When a minute had passed in silence, she took the Glock from her belt, then got out the penlight, switched it on.

It was a concrete-floored pantry, a washer and dryer on one side of the room. On the other, a meat freezer and shelves stocked with canned foods. On the wall to her right was a keyboard for the alarm system. All the lights were dark. The system had been disarmed.

She turned off the penlight, tried the door on the other side of the pantry. It was unlocked, led into a kitchen. With the Glock at her side, she went through, listening. Faint TV noise from an upper floor, nothing else.

She walked the ground-floor rooms, using the penlight only when she had to. When she was sure the downstairs was empty, she went through the big living room and up the marble staircase to the second floor. The room with the fireplace was empty, but there were lights on in the hallway. A door on the right was ajar, where the TV noise was coming from. At the end of the hall, another open door, a dimly lit room inside.

She stopped at the first door, eased it open with a shoulder. It was a bedroom, lit by a single lamp on a nightstand. On the wall, a flat-screen TV showing a black-and-white movie, the sound turned low.

Katya lay in the bed, naked, sheets tangled around her fleshy legs. Her wrists were tied to the bedposts with red silken scarves. Another was around her neck, deep in the flesh there. She was facing away from the door, her eyes half open, her face purple and swollen.

Crissa backed out of the room, moved down the carpeted hallway. The room at the end was a study. Bookshelves against the walls, an antique globe on a wooden stand, a desk lamp the only light. Near the desk, a painting of a clipper ship hung crooked on the wall.

She stepped in, the Glock in a two-handed grip, pointing at shadows. The room was empty.

At the desk, she lowered the gun, eased the painting aside. As she'd expected, there was a wall safe there, open a half inch. She lifted the painting off its hook, set it on the desk. Inside the safe were documents, a burgundy British passport, empty shelves.

She went back down the hall, then up the stairs to the next floor. A cool breeze blew through the corridor. She followed it into the room with the big oak table. The French doors to the balcony were open, the curtains there shifting in the breeze.

She aimed the Glock at the French doors, waiting for someone to come through them. She gave it a count of fifty, then went through the doors, gun up. The balcony was empty. The key lights were on in the gardens below, and she could hear the whisper of the fountain. Her foot hit something. Cota's cane. She went to the marble railing, looked down.

Cota lay faceup on the flagstones three floors below, eyes open. One leg was twisted up under him, a hand outstretched as if pointing to the fountain, the statue of the winged man. Blood had pooled beneath his head.

She saw then how it was supposed to look. Cota killing the maid, then going off the balcony himself. A murder and a suicide. Everything resolved, and no witnesses. Hicks at work, closing the pipeline on his own.

There was no sense trying to find his Venice apartment, waiting for him to show up. He'd be far away from Los Angeles by now, with whatever he'd taken from Cota. It was over.

Back inside, she retraced her steps, let herself out onto the patio. She picked up the bolt cutters, went back the way she'd come.

*   *   *

It took her three days to drive back to New Jersey. She got home in the middle of the night, exhausted and aching. When she woke the next day, after twelve hours of what felt like drugged sleep, the sun was already low in the west. She made coffee, took it out on the deck, called Rathka.

“You're back, I hope,” he said.

“I am.”

“I was worried.”

“Things are settled, for now.”

“Good. I have some investment ideas for your most recent deposit. I think you'll approve.”

“I'm sure I will.”

“And you said there's more to come?”

“No,” she said. “Things went a different way.”

He took a moment to process that. “Sorry to hear it. You should come by someday soon. We can take a look at your portfolio. See what you like, what you don't like.”

“I trust you.”

“Any fallout from your recent trip we need to discuss?”

“Nothing that affects you.”

She thought of what Hicks had said on the phone. Had he really gone somewhere warm, or was that just misdirection? There would be no percentage in his staying around. He had all the money he was going to get, had burned all his bridges. She was no threat to him now, and he knew it.

“One other thing,” she said. “I think I'd like to do some traveling soon. Change of scenery.”