Paul Levine - Mortal Sin

“Because I owe you, big time, and because I can’t have you testifying about Rick Gondolier. Face it, I can’t afford to let you live, even if I wanted to, and guess what, pal, I don’t want to…”

I heard it then, the roar of the engine. At first, I thought it was a piece of equipment in the cane field, a harvester maybe.

“…So what are your odds, Lassiter, six-to-five against?”

Then I saw it, above us, dipping down for a closer look. The helicopter with Hank Scourby at the controls. Florio saw it, too, and instinctively hit the brakes. “What the hell!”

“Even money,” I said.

The copter hovered in front of us, dropping to just a few feet above our roof.

“This guy a friend of yours, Lassiter?” Florio yelled, jamming the accelerator to the floor. We bounced through puddles and potholes, my head hitting the ceiling. The copter hung there in front of us.

Over the noise of the copter and the racing car engine, I barely heard it. Not as much pop as a firecracker, the first gunshot missed. The second one pinged off the hood, and Florio nearly lost control, swerving toward the canal bank, then across the road toward the cane field, before straightening the wheel. I looked up, and there was Hank Scourby, door open, leaning out with his. 44 Magnum, blasting away.

The next shot missed, then another ricocheted off the trunk. Finally, one squarely hit the front windshield, splintering it into a spider’s web of fissures. Again, the Bentley swerved, but Florio kept driving, and the copter stayed with us.

Diaz lowered his window, stuck the. 38 out, and fired two rounds toward the copter. He didn’t appear to hit anything. He took a look at me, poked the gun out the window again, and I turned toward him. In a flash, the gun was in my face, the barrel pushing at my cheekbone.

“You want to try something, abogado?”

I shook my head, no.

Florio slowed down as the black smoke became thicker. The burning leaves now saturated the air, black papery cinders swirling in the breeze. Inside the car, the smell of the cordite combined with the sickly sweetness of the fire. Suddenly, Florio hit the brakes and slid to a stop. The copter wasn’t visible. We were engulfed by clouds of smoke. Waves of heat from the blazing fields poured over us.

“If we can’t see him, he can’t see us,” Florio said. “But we gotta get off this road.”

We sat a minute, maybe more. Then I heard it again, growing louder. As it drew closer, the smoke was beaten away by the rotor. Suddenly, a clang from above. Scourby had set the copter down on top of the car. Now he was bashing our roof in.

Up, down, bam, bang. Twice more.

I slumped lower in the seat. Again, Florio hit the gas and took off, the copter in pursuit.

“There, boss.” Diaz was pointing at what looked like a dirt path coming out of the cane field. It connected with the gravel road at a right angle.

Florio swung the wheel to the right and slid onto the path. It was narrower than the Bentley. We careened through the burning field, the car knocking down cane stalks with a whackety-whack, the wheels spinning in the soft earth. Singed leaves were plastered to our splintered windshield, smoke curling around us. The helicopter was nowhere to be seen, or heard.

Florio slowed as we entered a canebrake. In a moment, we were in an adjacent field. Here there was no fire, and the earth was soggy. Twice, our rear wheels spun helplessly, whining in the mud, but Florio kept the car moving, fishtailing his way onto firmer ground. Now, I saw them, a legion of cutters in tattered khaki work clothes and bandannas, wiry, dark-skinned men swinging machetes at the base of the stalks, cutting and gathering the cane. They wore shin protectors and thick Kevlar gloves like a platoon of hockey goalies. Hanging from their belts were flasks of energy-laced “petrol,” a high-calorie brew of beer, sugar, and eggs. As we approached, they stopped and stared in wonder as our battered English sedan invaded their territory.

Again, we emerged into a clearing, and still we drove on. This time I saw the copter before I heard it.

Straight ahead.

Half a mile in front of us.

No more than ten feet off the ground, and aimed straight for us.

Hank Scourby was playing chicken with Nicky Florio. I didn’t know who was crazier.

“Son of a bitch!” Florio cried out.

The copter dropped a couple of feet lower. On this path, its struts would come right through our windshield. Florio floored it, and we bounced through the mud on a collision course. At the last moment, with the roar of the car’s engine lost in the drone of the copter, Florio swung it hard right, toward one of the burning cane fields, and we skidded and bounced over a muddy incline, the car flipping onto its side, tumbling me into Guillermo Diaz. The car continued its slide through the flaming brush, mowing down a row of cane, finally rolling onto its dented roof and slowing to a clunking, thudding halt.

I was upside down. My neck was twisted sideways, my head pressed against the ceiling, and my ears ringing. I hadn’t felt like this since an offensive lineman grabbed my face mask and twisted my head around like Linda Blair in ‘The Exorcist. Now my shoulder was squeezed against the door, and the backseat was a jumble of arms and legs: Diaz’s and mine. I untangled my legs from his, and he screamed in pain. Then he moaned softly, “Mis piernas tienen fracturas, mis piernas estan rotas.” I groped for his gun, but I couldn’t find it.

In the front seat, Florio was cursing. I heard glass tinkling. Florio was hanging on to the steering wheel but was upside down. He scrunched his neck and turned to face me. His face was studded with glass, rivulets of blood streaming into his eyes. He tried to reach into his coat pocket. “Where the fuck’s my gun?”

Next to me, Diaz was still moaning. One of his legs was bent in a direction God never intended. I wrenched around, found the door handle, and yanked. It took two tries, then opened with a groan, and I climbed out and tumbled into the mud. One of the rear tires was still spinning. I lay there a moment, got my bearings, and scrambled on all fours, half crawling, half running away. Behind me there was a noise as Florio toppled out of the car. He was yelling at me, but I wasn’t listening. I straightened up and did a poor imitation of a broken-field runner dodging stalks of sugarcane.

My black wing tips splashed through puddles of water. I kept running, keeping my body low, cutting back and forth from row to row. Flames rose from the undergrowth, and black smoke hung over the field, choking me. I tried taking shallow breaths, the heat crushing my chest. As I ran, I put my arms up to ward off the leaves, their jagged edges stinging the heels of my hands. I missed one, and it swatted me just under the eye, drawing blood. I pulled off my suit coat and wrapped it around my right arm, using it as a shield.

The first shot was a firecracker in the distance.

Unlike the movies, I didn’t hear the bullet whistling by my ear, just a muffled blam from behind me. Second shot, same thing. I ducked out of one row and was suddenly left in an open field. I turned to go back into the forest of cane, but Florio was there, chugging after me.

Across the open field was a mud levee rising perhaps ten feet above the ground. The irrigation system. Everglades water would be running through the canal, draining the Big Cypress. I made a run for it.

The sound of the next shot didn’t reach me until I spun and collapsed headfirst into the muck. It felt like someone had smacked me in the back. I rolled over and touched the front of my left shoulder. Wet with blood. A clean shot through the deltoid. What Charlie Riggs would call a through-and-through if he was examining a corpse in the red-brick building on Bob Hope Road.