That night they made love on the bare pine floor. Drenched in sweat, they slid like ice cubes across the slick varnished planks. Eventually they wound up wedged headfirst in a corner, where Carrie fell asleep with Joe Winder’s earlobe clenched tenderly in her teeth. He was starting to doze himself when he heard Molly’s voice in the adjoining bedroom. She was talking sternly to a man who didn’t sound like either Skink or the two redneck burglars.
When Winder heard the other door close, he delicately extricated himself from Carrie’s bite and lifted her to the bed. Then he wrapped himself in an old quilt and crept into the hall to see who was in the next room.
The last person he expected to find was Agent Billy Hawkins of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Trussed to a straight-backed chair, Hawkins wore someone else’s boxer shorts and black nylon socks. A bandage was wadded around one bare thigh, and two strips of hurricane tape crisscrossed his mouth. He reeked of antiseptic.
Joe Winder slipped into the room and twisted the lock behind him. Gingerly he peeled the heavy tape from the agent’s face.
“Fancy meeting you here.”
“Nice getup,” Bill Hawkins remarked. “Would you please untie me?”
“First tell me what happened.”
“What does it look like? The old bird shot me.”
“Any particular reason?”
“Just get me loose, goddammit.”
Winder said, “Not until I hear the story.”
Reluctantly, Hawkins told him about Bud Schwartz and the long-distance phone call to Queens and the possible exposure of a federally protected witness.
“Who’s the flip?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
Joe Winder pressed the hurricane tape over Hawkins’s lips—then fiercely yanked it away. Hawkins yelped. Tears of pain sprang to his eyes. In colorful expletives he offered the opinion that Winder had gone insane.
The excruciating procedure was repeated on one of Billy Hawkins’s bare nipples and nearly uprooted a cluster of curly black hairs. “I can do this all night,” Winder said. “I’m way past the point of caring.”
The agent took a long bitter moment to compose himself. “You could go to prison,” he mumbled.
“For assaulting you with adhesive tape? I don’t think so.” Winder placed one gummy strip along the line of soft hair that trailed southward from Billy Hawkins’s navel. The agent gaped helplessly as Winder jerked hard; the tape came off with a sibilant rip.
“You—you’re a goddamn lunatic!”
“But I’m your only hope. Who’s going to believe you were shot and abducted by an elderly widow? And if they should believe it, what would that do to your career?” Joe Winder spread the quilt on the floor and sat cross-legged in front of the hog-tied agent.
“Blaine, Washington,” Winder said. “Isn’t that the FBI’s equivalent of Siberia?”
Hawkins conceded the point silently. The political cost of prosecuting a grandmother and a pair of candyass burglars would be high. The Bureau was hypersensitive to incidents incongruous with the lantern-jawed crime-buster image promoted by J. Edgar Hoover; for an FBI agent to be overpowered by a dottering senior citizen was a disgrace. An immediate transfer to some godforsaken cowtown would be a certainty.
“So what can you do?” Hawkins asked Winder sourly.
“Maybe nothing. Maybe save your skin. Did Molly make you call the office?”
The agent nodded. “At gunpoint. I told them I was taking a couple of sick days.”
“They ask about this Mafia thing?”
“I told them it wasn’t panning out. Looked like a bullshit shakedown.” Hawkins sounded embarrassed. “That’s what she made me say. Threatened to shoot me again if I didn’t go along with the routine—and it didn’t sound like a bluff.”
“You did the right thing,” Joe Winder said. “No sense chancing it.” He stood up and rewrapped himself in the quilt. “You’ll have to stay like this a while,” he told the agent. “It’s the only way.”
“I don’t get it. What’s your connection to these crackpots?”
“Long story.”
“Winder, don’t be a jackass. This isn’t a game.” Hawkins spoke sternly for a man in his ridiculous predicament. “Somebody could get killed. That’s not what you want, is it?”
“Depends. Tell me the name of this precious witness.”
“Frankie King.”
Joe Winder shrugged. “Never heard of him.”
“Moved down from New York after he snitched on some of Gotti’s crowd. This was a few years back.”
“Swift move. What’s he calling himself these days?”
“That I can’t possibly tell you.”
“Then you’re on your own, Billy. Think about it. Your word against Grandma Moses. Picture the headlines: ‘Sharpshooter Widow Gunned Me Down, Nude G-Man Claims.’”
Hawkins sagged dispiritedly. He said, “The flip’s name is Francis Kingsbury. You happy now?”
“Kingsbury?” Joe Winder raised his eyes to the heavens and crackled raucously. “The Mafia is coming down here to whack Mr. X!”
“Hey,” Billy Hawkins said, “it’s not funny.”
But it was very funny to Joe Winder. “Francis X. Kingsbury. Millionaire theme-park developer and real-estate mogul, darling of the Chamber of Commerce, 1988 Rotarian Citizen of the Year. And you’re telling me he’s really a two-bit jizzbag on the run from the mob?”
Ecstatically, Joe Winder hopped from foot to foot, spinning in a circle and twirling Molly’s quilt like a calico cape.
“Oh, Billy boy,” he sang, “isn’t this a great country!”
They were thirty minutes late to the airport because Danny Pogue insisted on watching the end of a National Geographic television documentary about rhinoceros poachers in Africa.
In the car he couldn’t stop talking about the program. “The only reason they kill ’em, see, what they’re after is the horns. Just the horns!” He put his fist on his nose to simulate a rhinoceros snout. “In some places they use ’em for sex potions.”
“Get off it,” said Bud Schwartz.
“No shit. They grind the horns into powder and put it in their tea.”
“Does it work?”
“I don’t know,” Danny Pogue said. “The TV didn’t say.”
“Like, it gives you a super big boner or what?”
“I don’t know, Bud, the TV didn’t say. They just talked about how much the powder goes for in Hong Kong, stuff like that. Thousands of bucks.”
Bud Schwartz said, “You ask me, they left out the most important part of the show. Does it work or not?”
He drove into one of the airport garages and snatched a ticket from the machine. He parked on Level M, as always. “M” for Mother; it was the only way Bud Schwartz could remember how to find his car. He was annoyed that his partner wasn’t sharing in the excitement of the moment: they were about to be rich.
“After today, you can retire,” Bud Schwartz said. “No more b-and-e’s. Man, we should throw us a party tonight.”
Danny Pogue said, “I ain’t in the mood.”
They stepped onto the moving sidewalk and rode in silence to the Delta Airlines concourse. The plane had arrived on time, so the visitor already was waiting outside the gate. As promised, he was carrying a blue umbrella; otherwise Bud Schwartz would never have known that he was the hit man. He stood barely five feet tall and weighed at least two hundred pounds. He had thinning brown hair, small black eyes and skin that was the color of day-old lard. Under a herringbone sport coat he wore a striped polyester shirt, open at the neck, with a braided gold chain. The hit man seemed fond of gold; a bracelet rattled on his wrist when he shook Bud Schwartz’s hand.
“Hello,” said the burglar.
“You call me Lou.” The hit man spoke in a granite baritone that didn’t match the soft roly-polyness of his figure.
“Hi, Lou,” said Danny Pogue. “I’m Bud’s partner.”
“How nice for you. Where’s
the car?” He pointed to a Macy’s shopping bag near his feet. “That’s yours. Now, where’s the car?”
On the drive south, Danny Pogue peeked in the Macy’s bag and saw that it was full of cash. Lou was up in the front seat next to Bud Schwartz.
“I wanna do this tomorrow,” he was saying. “I gotta get home for my wife’s birthday. She’s forty.” Then he farted loudly and pretended not to hear it.
“Forty? No kidding?” said Bud Schwartz. He had been expecting something quite different in the way of a mob assassin. Perhaps it wasn’t fair, but Bud Schwartz was disappointed in Lou’s appearance. For Francis Kingsbury’s killer, he had envisioned someone taut, snake-eyed and menacing—not fat, balding and flatulent.
Just goes to show, thought Bud Schwartz, these days everything’s hype. Even the damn Mafia.
From the back seat, Danny Pogue asked: “How’re you gonna do it? What kinda gun?”
Lou puffed out his cheeks and said, “Brand X. The fuck do you care, what kinda gun?”
“Danny,” Bud Schwartz said, “let’s stay out of the man’s private business, okay?”
“I didn’t mean nothin.”
“You usually don’t.”
The man named Lou said, “This is the neighborhood?”
“We’re almost there,” said Bud Schwartz.
“I can’t get over all these trees,” Lou said. “Parts a Jersey look like this. My wife’s mother lives in Jersey, a terrific old lady. Seventy-seven years old, she bowls twice a week! In a league!”
Bud Schwartz smiled weakly. Perfect. A hit man who loves his mother-in-law. What next—he collects for the United Way?
The burglar said to Lou: “Maybe it’s better if you rent a car. For tomorrow, I mean.”
“Sure. Usually I do my own driving.”
Danny Pogue tapped his partner on the shoulder and said, “Slow down, Bud, it’s up here on the right.”
Kingsbury’s estate was bathed in pale orange lights. Gray sedans with green bubble lights were parked to block both ends of the driveway. Three men sat in each sedan; two more, in security-guard uniforms, were posted at the front door. It was, essentially, the complete private security force of the Amazing Kingdom of Thrills—except for Pedro Luz, who was inside the house, his wheelchair parked vigilantly at Francis Kingsbury’s bedroom door.
Bud Schwartz drove by slowly. “Look at this shit,” he muttered. Once they had passed the house, he put some muscle into the accelerator.
“An army,” Lou said, “that’s what it was.”
Danny Pogue sank low in the back seat. With both hands he clutched the Macy’s bag to his chest. “Let’s just go,” he said. “Bud, let’s just haul ass.”
29
On the morning of August 2, Jake Harp crawled into the back of a white limousine and rode in a dismal gin-soaked stupor to the construction site on North Key Largo. There he was met by Charles Chelsea, Francis X. Kingsbury and a phalanx of armed security men whose crisp blue uniforms failed to mitigate their shifty felonious smirks. The entourage moved briskly across a recently bulldozed plateau, barren except for a bright green hillock that was cordoned with rope and ringed by reporters, photographers and television cameramen. Kingsbury took Jake Harp by the elbow and, ascending the grassy knob, waved mechanically; it reminded Charles Chelsea of the rigidly determined way that Richard Nixon had saluted before boarding the presidential chopper for the final time. Except that, compared to Francis Kingsbury, Nixon was about as tense as Pee Wee Herman.
Jake Harp heard himself pleading for coffee, please God, even decaf, but Kingsbury seemed not to hear him. Jake Harp blinked amphibiously and struggled to focus on the scene. It was early. He was outdoors. The sun was intensely bright. The Atlantic Ocean murmured at his back. And somebody had dressed him: Izod shirt, Sansibelt slacks, tasseled Footjoy golf shoes. What could this be! Then he heard the scratchy click of a portable microphone and the oily voice of Charles Chelsea.
“Welcome, everybody. We’re standing on what will soon by the first tee of the Falcon Trace Championship Golf Course. As you can see, we’ve got a little work ahead of us. …”
Laughter. These numbnuts are laughing, thought Jake Harp. He squinted at the white upturned faces and recognized one or two as sportswriters.
More from Chelsea: “… and we thought it would be fun to inaugurate the construction of this magnificent golfing layout with a hitting clinic.”
Jake Harp’s stomach clenched as somebody folded a three-wood into his fingers. The golf pro stared in disgust: a graphite head. They expect me to hit with metal!
Charles Chelsea’s well-tanned paw settled amiably on Jake Harp’s shoulder; the stench of Old Spice was overpowering.
“This familiar fellow needs no introduction,” Chelsea was saying. “He’s graciously agreed to christen the new course by hitting a few balls into the ocean—since we don’t actually have a fairway yet.”
Laughter again. Mysterious, inexplicable laughter. Jake Harp swayed, bracing himself with the three-wood. What had he been drinking last night? Vodka sours? Tanqueray martinis? Possibly both. He remembered dancing with a banker’s wife. He remembered telling her how he’d triple-bogeyed the Road Hole and missed the cut at the British Open; missed the damn cut, all because some fat Scotsman booted the ball. …
Jake Harp also remembered the banker’s wife whispering something about a blowjob—but did it happen? He hoped so, but he truly couldn’t recall. One thing was certain: today he was physically incapable of swinging a golf club. It was simply out of the question. He wondered how he would break the news to Francis Kingsbury, who was bowing to the photographers in acknowledgment of Charles Chelsea’s effusive introduction.
“Frank,” said Jake Harp. “Where am I?”
With a frozen smile, Kingsbury remarked that Jake Harp looked about as healthy as dog barf.
“A bad night,” the golfer rasped. “I’d like to go home and lie down.”
Then came an acrid gust of cologne as Chelsea leaned in: “Hit a few, Jake, okay? No interviews, just a photo op.”
“But I can’t use a fucking graphite wood. This is Jap voo-doo, Frank, I need my MacGregors.”
Francis Kingsbury gripped Jake Harp by the shoulders and turned him toward the ocean. “And would you please, for Christ’s sake, try not to miss the goddamn ball?”
Chelsea cautioned Kingsbury to keep his voice down. The sportswriters were picking up on the fact that Jake Harp was seriously under the weather.
“Coffee’s on the way,” Chelsea chirped lightly.
“You want me to hit it in the ocean?” Jake Harp said. “This is nuts.”
One of the news photographers shouted for the security officers to get out of the way, they were blocking the picture. Kingsbury commanded the troops of Pedro Luz to move to one side; Pedro Luz himself was not present, having refused with vague mutterings to exit the storage room and join the phony golf clinic at Falcon Trace. His men, however, embraced with gusto and amusement the task of guarding Francis X. Kingsbury from assailants unknown.
Having cleared the security force to make an opening for Jake Harp, Kingsbury ordered the golfer to swing away.
“I can’t, Frank.”
“What?”
“I’m hung over. I can’t lift the bloody club.”
“Assume the position, Jake. You’re starting to piss me off.”
Tottering slightly, Jake Harp slowly arranged himself in the familiar stance that Golf Digest once hailed as “part Hogan, part Nicklaus, part Baryshnikov”—chin down, feet apart, shoulders square, left arm straight, hands interlocked loosely on the shaft of the club.
“There,” Jake Harp said gamely.
Charles Chelsea cleared his throat. Francis Kingsbury said, “A golf ball would help, Jake.”
“Oh Jesus, you’re right.”
“You got everything but a goddamn ball.”
Under his breath, Jake Harp said, “Frank, would you do me a favor? Tee it up?”
“What?” r />
“I can’t bend down. I’m too hung over, Frank. If I try to bend, I’ll fall on my face. I swear to God.”
Francis Kingsbury dug in his pocket and pulled out a scuffed Maxfli and a plastic tee that was shaped like a naked woman. “You’re quite an athlete, Jake. A regular Jim Fucking Thorpe.”
Gratefully Jake Harp watched Kingsbury drop to one knee and plant the tee. Then suddenly the sun exploded, and a molten splinter tore a hole in the golfer’s belly, spinning him like a tenpin and knocking him flat. A darkening puddle formed as he lay there and floundered, gulping for breath through a mouthful of fresh Bermuda sod. Jake Harp was not too hung over to realize he could be dying, and it bitterly occurred to him that he would rather leave his mortal guts on the fairways of Augusta or Muirfield or Pebble Beach.
Anywhere but here.
Bud Schwartz and Danny Pogue had driven up to Kendall to break into a house. The house belonged to FBI Agent Billy Hawkins, who was still tied up as Molly McNamara’s prisoner.
“Think he’s got a dog?” said Danny Pogue.
Bud Schwartz said probably not. “Guys like that, they think dogs are for pussies. It’s a cop mentality.”
But Bud Schwartz was wrong. Bill Hawkins owned a German shepherd. The burglars could see the animal prowling the fence in the backyard.
“Guess we gotta do the front-door routine,” said Bud Schwartz. What a way to end a career: breaking into an FBI man’s house in broad daylight. “I thought we retired,” Bud Schwartz complained. “All that dough we got, tell me what’s the point if we’re still pullin’ these jobs.”
Danny Pogue said, “Just this one more. And besides, what if Lou takes the money back?”
“No way.”
“If he can’t get to the guy, he might. Already he thinks we tipped Kingsbury off, on account of all those rent-a-cops.”
Bud Schwartz said he wasn’t worried about Lou going back on the deal. “These people are pros, Danny. Now gimme the scroogie.” They were poised at Billy Hawkins’s front door. Danny Pogue checked the street for cars or pedestrians; then he handed Bud Schwartz a nine-inch screwdriver.
Skeptically Danny Pogue said, “Guy’s gotta have a deadbolt. Anybody works for the FBI, probably he’s got an alarm, too. Maybe even lasers.”