Magic City (19 page)

By the time he stopped a few feet from the cab's window and looked in at the driver, Thorn was feeling out-of-body. Like he'd already been shot dead, but his brain was lagging, neurons spinning out a little death dance as his body took a few seconds to go into total shutdown.

“You're not Snake,” Thorn said to the Sumo at the wheel of the taxi. A man so big, he might need the jaws of life to get free at the end of his shift.

“No shit,” the man said. “Where you want to go?”

“I want Snake, not you.”

“Hey, man. You call the cab company, you get whoever comes. This ain't no fucking personalized limo service.”

“Get out of here,” Thorn said.

“Or you do what?”

The guy pushed his door open, but Thorn kicked it closed, then leaned his hip against it and brought his face down to eye level with the cabbie. He had the complexion of a rotten cantaloupe and around him there was the reek of whiskey that would've blown the sensors on a Breathalyzer.

“I'd say you got about ten seconds before the shoot-out starts. Stick around if you want, you'll make a nice target.”

“What shoot-out?”

“The one your buddy Snake arranged.”

The cabbie's testosterone wrestled with his common sense for about five seconds, then he slammed the car in reverse and left a screaming track of rubber across the lot.

Thorn slipped the envelope with the Xeroxes and photograph under the front of his shirt and tucked it a few inches into the waistband of his shorts.

He turned around and appraised his exposure.

An open street on one side, a church in the distance. An adjacent parking lot. The only place a man could hide close by was in a clump of bushes on the south side of the property.

Thorn could try a sprint back to the motel room, but even if he made it, that would only draw fire toward Alex and Sugar.

As he headed back into the center of the parking lot, his head was still swimming, body braced for a dive to the pavement or the impact of a slug.

“That was cute, Snake, luring me outside with the taxi. Real clever.”

Thorn took a sidelong glance toward the shrubs but saw no movement, no human shape. Wondering if maybe he had it wrong and this wasn't Snake's setup after all, that Thorn was out there alone in the dark talking to himself.

“I been studying the photo. Trying to figure out why it's so damn important. I identified four people already. Row three. Maybe you could give me a hand. The two of us together, we might solve this thing.”

Thorn had been in the enemy's sights before. A familiar prickle crept across his flesh, a clench of sphincters. Like walking a narrow ledge with a mile-deep gorge on either side. Not the moment for any sort of wobble.

The door to their motel room opened and Sugarman stepped outside.

“We got to roll, buddy,” he called. “We're lit up on the radar.”

Thorn angled a few feet Sugar's way and got his voice down.

“You go. I'll be behind you in a few minutes.”

“What're you going to do, hitchhike?”

“I'll go get Alex's car.”

“Come with us, Thorn. This is turning ugly.”

“Get the hell out of here. Go. Keep her safe.”

“Then take my nine,” Sugar said.

Thorn turned his back on the motel room and headed out into the lot. He stood in the center of the asphalt, staring into the dark perimeter, holding his position until he heard two car doors slam behind him, a motor revving and then Sugar's Taurus circling toward him.

The car pulled in front of him, two feet away, came to a stop and the back door swung open.

“Get in,” Alex said.

Thorn went over and leaned his head down.

“I'll be fine,” he said.

Sugar said, “The name Pauline Caufield mean anything to you?”

Thorn shook his head.

“She's some kind of super-fed. She's tracking us. She may be on her way here right now. Dan says it's a national-security issue.”

“I got a few things on my plate already,” Thorn said. “You drive safe.”

He shut the door.

Sugar delayed a few seconds, but he knew all about Thorn's bullheadedness. Once he'd made up his mind, forget it.

When the car pulled away, Thorn began to move across the lot.

As bleak as his view of human nature was, mankind's penchant for depravity and malice, he also knew there was a sizable percentage of people with countervailing instincts, tendencies toward restraint. He'd heard that even soldiers on the front lines often misaimed on purpose, putting their own lives in danger rather than kill the enemy. A peaceful nature not even military drilling and foxhole pressures could corrupt. Whether it came from biology or culture, he didn't know. But what made his walk across that parking lot possible was some fraction of hope that Snake was one of those.

Or at least that he was a bad shot.

Thorn made an aimless meander of the lot, coming closer by small degrees to the bushes that were the only hiding place.

He raised the volume of his voice a click past conversational.

“A few hours ago when we first met, you said this photo was a matter of great personal importance to you. I believe those were your exact words. I believe you want to figure out who killed your parents and your sister, and why it happened.

“Well, that's fine, but the thing is, I got a personal stake, too. I need to know what this is about so I can take the necessary measures to walk away and be sure a year from now it's not going to pop up and whack my head off or endanger my friends. So what do you say? We make a truce, join forces. How's that sound?”

The voice came from farther out in the darkness than he'd been guessing. And it wasn't Snake. It was an older man, gruff voice, coarsened by age and strong drink: “Take out that fucking photo, lay it down on the asphalt, and step back. You got to the count of three.”

Thorn halted and tried to track the direction of the voice.

“Is that you, Runyon?”

The voice was silent.

“How's that kidney feeling? A little sore, is it?”

Then another man spoke from the clump of shrubs a few feet away. Snake's syrupy drawl.

“If I were you, Thorn, I'd get flat on my belly quick as I could.”

Thorn was lowering himself to his knees when the first shot whistled nearby and thunked into the fender of a parked car. Another followed it, and a third. A silenced pistol.

Thorn dove into the shrubs and tumbled into Snake's wiry body. Another slug tore a ragged groove in the tree a few feet overhead.

Snake held a pistol in his right hand, aimed into Thorn's gut.

“Who the hell is Runyon?”

Thorn disentangled himself and settled his rump onto a patch of sand.

“Maybe you should ask your dad that.”

As Snake squinted in confusion, Thorn pitched forward and clipped a forearm to the side of his face. Snake fell back into the thick branches, and Thorn wrenched the pistol from his grip.

Another shot carved its initials in the bark overhead.

Thorn kept his head low and touched the barrel to Snake's rib cage.

“We both know what I'm capable of,” Thorn said. “Now stay calm and don't fuck with me.”

“I'm always calm.” Snake's eyes seemed to absorb more than their share of the available light and store it in the silvery depths of his pupils.

“Where's your ride?”

“Across the street at the church. Gray Audi.”

“This guy's not the best shot. We should be fine. Stay low and zigzag.”

“I've seen the same movie,” Snake said.

Thorn raised up and flattened himself against the trunk of the tree and let off two quick rounds. Snake was gone before the answering fire began.

The man could run, Thorn had to give him that.

 

“You know I'm going to kill you, first chance I get.”

“Just drive, Snake. There'll be time to kill me later.”

Thorn was in the passenger seat, the .38 held loosely in his lap. Snake at the wheel.

“My brother, Carlos, was helpless. You beat him to death.”

“Make a U-turn by the Seaquarium, then it's your first right.”

For the past hour Snake had been driving silently. Up Dixie Highway, then back south, Thorn looking out the rear window, trying to make sure they weren't being followed. If there was somebody back there, he was better than anyone who'd ever tailed Thorn before.

At dawn he directed Snake out to Key Biscayne, toward the only guy Thorn knew who might help.

“First right,” Thorn said.

“The waste-treatment plant? What's there?”

Thorn stared ahead and didn't reply.

“You have no intention of showing me the photograph, do you?”

“Look, I'm taking you along because I want to hear what you got to say about the photo. Maybe clear up a few things, why people died because of it. I'll tell you what I know, and you tell me what you know. So yeah, you'll see it. When the time's right. Now put a cork in it.”

Half a mile off the highway Thorn steered Snake into a gravel parking area. The breeze was out of the west, and the sulfurous reek of the sewage plant was flooding the eastern shore of Virginia Key. A hawk sailed overhead, on its way to the four-hundred-acre wildlife area. Virginia Key was a patchwork of good and bad ideas, tarnished legacies of the past and a living record of betrayed promises.

On the southernmost edge of the island near the causeway was a sandy strip that had once been Miami's segregated black beach. Sugarman had taken Thorn there back in the old days. A bathhouse and concession stand; Thorn, the only white kid for a mile around; the air ripe with barbecue and down-home recipes. Car radios playing boogie.

There was the high hump of a landfill a little north of that old beach. An unregulated dump that was now retired and overrun by vines and weeds concealing the toxic fuels and paints and solvents that generations of Miamians had unloaded there. All of it leeching through the limestone into the waters of Biscayne Bay. The western edge of the island, the side facing Rickenbacker Causeway, was dotted by marinas and restaurants with unhindered views across the water of the downtown skyline. The old Marine Stadium was there, too, on the bank of a horseshoe cove where rock concerts and boat races had once been staged. Raft up under the stars to hear the Rolling Stones boom across the water.

The stadium was closed now, and Thorn had read that it was the center of another tug-of-war between preservationists and developers. In that way and many others, Virginia Key was a mirror of Miami. Its best and worst impulses. An island surrounded by crystal blue, contaminated yet somehow managing to be the breeding ground for manatees and a shelter for rare hawks, eagles, and migrating birds.

Jimbo's Bar was a nice fit on that island of paradoxes. On the northeastern tip of Virginia Key, scattered about the hidden lagoon where shrimp boats docked, was a collection of ramshackle bungalows. In the fifties the place had been slapped up as a set for some quickie sci-fi flick. Now it was a hangout for bikers and the BMW crowd, and a backdrop for TV and photo shoots. The ticky-tack bungalows painted gaudy Caribbean colors, with bocce ball courts and trash barrels full of iced-down beer, and the best smoked fish in South Florida. A movie set that had evolved into a funky bar.

The place was so convincing that every film crew that came to town believed it was a vestige of the genuine historic Miami. That was one of the city's special talents. With so many new arrivals pouring in every week, so many old-timers dying with their secrets, with the wrecking balls and bulldozers working constantly, Miami had no memory. So it was a paradise for frauds. An old movie set became a funky bar, which became a movie set again.

Snake wouldn't get out of the car.

“Show me the photo or shoot me, those are your choices.”

Thorn reached across and snatched the keys from the ignition.

“Suit yourself. Stay here and miss the fun.”

As Thorn crossed the gravel lot, Snake got out and tagged along. The sun was rising above the treetops and the sky was scuffed with frail clouds that streamed west on the shore breeze. The ocean was a stone's throw to the east, and its restless drone filtered through the Australian pines. Through a gap between the trees, Thorn saw a couple of fast boats slicing up the flat morning calm, their wakes peeling open the blue waters like beautiful flesh wounds.

He tucked the pistol in the pocket of his baggy shorts and waited for Snake to catch up. Cell phone in one side, .38 in the other. A fully converted Miami guy.

Thorn turned to watch Snake approach. There was a formal air in both his speech and manner, as if he were the product of religious discipline. His stillness seemed more deeply rooted than mere reticence. It didn't strike Thorn as caginess, either, but more like the icy vigilance of a shore-bird who could wait for hours for his target to swim close by.

“Tell me something, Snake. Why didn't you shoot me when you had the chance?”

“Why did you stand out in the parking lot unprotected?”

“I didn't see another choice.”

“Perhaps you're feeling suicidal after killing Carlos. Unless, of course, you bludgeon men to death every day.”

“If I ever feel suicidal, I won't leave it for someone else to do.”

Snake looked off toward the ripples of blue through the pines, his face slack with thought.

“I was standing out in the open. I had something you were willing to kill for. Why didn't you fire?”

“I didn't trust my aim,” Snake said.

“What?”

“I saw you tuck the photo under your shirt. I don't want it damaged. Filled with bullet holes, it would be no use to me.”

Thorn met Snake's silvery blue eyes. So much for the innate goodness of the human race.

 

Stanton King had already given Pauline a heads-up about the Riviera Motel by the time the Miami Police Department called her cell and relayed the same info. She made it crosstown in less than fifteen minutes and was just taking a position on a side street with a view of the motel when the action broke. A Taurus drove slowly out of the motel parking lot. Behind the wheel a black guy and in the passenger seat the lady cop. Then she saw muzzle flashes from silenced gunfire, and a few seconds later Snake Morales and the tall blond guy named Thorn came sprinting from the parking lot and crossed in front of her twenty feet away and jumped in a gray Audi and peeled out.