Chapter 18
Dangerous things were happening on the beach and somehow he, Dan Marlowe, lowly bartender and ex-coke addict, was right in the middle of it all. During the last couple of days, he'd been accosted by cops, had a friend beaten to a pulp, and had almost been kidnapped by goons.
It was around eleven at night and Dan Marlowe was sitting in his favorite chair in his cottage down in the Island section of the beach. He'd given up on the crime novel he'd just set down. Now he was just sipping Heineken, trying not to think about what might have happened if Conover hadn't shown up when he did. He owed the cop a favor. Big time.
Yeah, his life was definitely a mess. No wonder his wife wouldn't let the kids come visit him. She'd heard about Shamrock, knew something bad was going on, didn't trust Dan not to be in the middle of it all. This time Dan had to admit she was probably right. It wasn't a good idea to have his children around. Not until he got this mess straightened out, whatever the hell it was.
That gave him an incentive, a big incentive, to get this trouble over with quick, one way or another. If he didn't get to see his kids, at least every so often, even the sea air and Heineken wouldn't be enough to keep him from eventually ending up like the Bird Man–down on the beach with pigeons roosting on his squash.
Which was why he was nursing this beer and trying to figure it all out. It had taken him a bit, but Dan had finally placed the voice of the man who'd tried to snatch him on the beach. Tony Peralta. A bragging blowhard who'd held court at the High Tide regularly through the years.
Somehow this whole mess was tied together: murders and a cocaine rip-off; Peralta, a big seacoast coke dealer, trying to snatch him; Shamrock being turned into a snowman because he'd asked some stupid questions about cocaine around the beach; and two state cops named Bartolo and Conover after the cocaine; and who knows what or who else.
Dan killed the bottle of Heineken he was working on. No use sitting here alone, drinking and thinking about what might happen. Christ, if he dwelled on it too much, he'd be down at a little hovel he knew on Ashworth Avenue and before you could say, "Two grams, please," his wife would be proven right again. Yeah, he didn't want to end up there. After all, you never knew which time would be the last time.
He turned off the lights, locked the front door, and went into the bedroom. Outside the surf pounded loud against the shore, probably high tide, and he was glad of that. Maybe the sound would help lull him to sleep. It had worked before. Dan stripped off his pants, crawled into bed, listened to the surf through the open window.
Just as he was about to drop off, Dan suddenly heard a noise he didn't like–the screen out in the main room being raised. There was more than one window in that room, but unless someone had a ladder, they could only come through the front porch window.
Dan rolled over to the edge of the bed and reached under it. With shaking hands he slowly pulled out Betsy, his Overland double-barreled shotgun. Betsy was a replica of the stubby old-fashioned shotguns they used to use in the Old West, with the hammers on the outside. The type of shotgun that could do a lot of damage at close range. He could hear whispering from the direction of the other room, and to his horror, the sound of scraping as someone climbed through the window.
His heart thumped hard against his ribs. This was it. The real deal.
He quietly slid open the drawer on the little end table beside his bed. Inside he had a box of 00 buckshot and a box of birdshot shells. He started to reach for the 00, then changed his mind and grabbed the birdshot. Sure he was scared, but no use hurting an innocent, or semi-innocent, person. Could be just a pair of kids coming in to steal the TV, for Chrissake. It was the beach, after all. He fumbled two birdshot shells into the shotgun and quietly closed the breach.
Someone else was coming through the window now, trying to be quiet, but still making enough noise he could tell when they were both inside.
"Go ahead. There." The whisper sent a shiver up Dan's spine.
Enough was enough. "Get back out through that window the way you came in. I've got a shotgun," Dan said in what he hoped was a commanding voice. He was still prone on the bed, right next to the open bedroom door. If he peeked around the corner, he'd probably be eyeball to eyeball with whoever was out there.
"Sure ya do, Marlowe," a deep voice said from the other room.
Definitely not kids.
No time to swap out the birdshot for the 00; he'd have to make do with the birdshot.
"Maybe you got a shotgun and maybe you don't, but we got this," the voice added.
Dan jumped as a shot echoed through the cottage. They were shooting at him! The noise had barely subsided when he heard another noise even more ominous–footsteps moving slowly toward his bedroom.
They were close, so close he thought he could actually hear them breathing. Or was that him?
Dan slid off the bed and scooted over to the door. He poked the barrel of the shotgun through the doorway, cocked just one hammer, and pulled the trigger. The twelve gauge roared, kicking Dan's arm back hard against the door. His ears rang, and for a second, he thought he'd completely lost his hearing.
Then he heard shouts from the other room. The front door banged open and footsteps thudded out onto the porch. Dan ran back to the nightstand, grabbed a fistful of birdshot shells and jammed them in his t-shirt pocket. This damn thing had to end one way or another and the sooner the better. He raced from the bedroom, scowled at his blown-out TV, and leapt out the open front door.
The moon shone high overhead, bathing the neighborhood with its bleached light. Ahead Dan could see two men hightailing it between cottages. He sprang down the steps onto the walkway and took aim. Before his finger closed around the trigger, he lowered the shotgun. Stray pellets could go through somebody's window, and one thing Dan didn't want was collateral damage.
But he had to do something. They were getting away.
"Stop or I'll shoot," Dan yelled. How the hell did he end up standing around in his underwear sounding like a bad cop show?
Didn't really matter. The two guys dodging between cottages must've been hard of hearing. Either that or they didn't believe Dan would actually hit anything. He pointed the shotgun skyward, cocked the other hammer, and let off a blast that reverberated through the entire neighborhood.
Satisfied, Dan lowered the shotgun, expecting to see the two men turn back towards him, hands raised.
Instead the fools ran faster.
Dan bolted after them. They were across the next street now, squeezing between parked cars in a darkened driveway, moving fast. Dan broke the barrel open as he ran, fumbled two more shells home, and snapped the breach shut. It felt good holding Betsy in his hands. Solid. Bold.
Dan raced between the cottages, not caring about the doors and windows slamming open. Give people something to talk about in the morning–a wild-eyed man wearing a t-shirt and underpants waving a shotgun and chasing two other men.
Adrenalin tightened in Dan's stomach as he burst onto the open street. He could see the two men clearly in the moonlight–one tall, one short–and they were headed straight towards the state park. They'd hopped a short railroad tie fence on the far side of the street that led to nothing but a 100-yard run, out in the open with no protection except foot-high dune grass.
He almost floated over the little fence. The men were right in front of him with no cover. They'd made it so easy, Dan almost felt bad for them. Almost. He jogged a few more steps, raised the shotgun to his shoulder. He lined up the two figures silhouetted in the moonlight, the tall guy out in front. He almost yelled another warning, but what the hell. They probably wouldn't have stopped anyway. Besides, he was using birdshot, and they wouldn't be hurt seriously anyhow.
He aimed low, firing first one and then the other barrel within seconds of each other. The shorter guy jerked forward real fast twice, like a big hand had smacked his bottom a couple of times. Kind of funny, really. Almost li
ke one of those cartoons. The guy was even yelping like a coyote.
Dan ran forward again, breaking the breach, dumping the old shells, and trying to slam in new ones. He bobbled the shells and that was lucky for the two ahead of him. By the time he got the shotgun loaded, they'd hopped into a red Jag parked beside the bathhouse. The engine turned and the car fishtailed down the gravel drive towards Ocean Boulevard.
Dan raised the shotgun to his shoulder again. He didn't have any hope of stopping them, not at this distance, especially with birdshot. But standing there in the moonlight with the dunes beside him and the salt air in his nostrils, Dan tingled with an exhilaration he hadn't felt in a long, long time. Damn it made him feel good. Almost forgot he was in his underpants.
Everything in his life had felt so out of his control for so long . . . He tightened his finger on the trigger, let both barrels go in quick succession. And when he heard the pellets ping off the Jag's body, let loose a howl that would've done a wolf pack proud.
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