Brett Halliday - I Come to Kill You

“What am I supposed to be, insane?”

Carl turned toward him, his skin still yellowish under the tan. “He was selling us out! He was a stool pigeon, Mike!”

“Are you sure of that?”

“We’ve known for months we had a leak, and it was pretty high up. Musso’s phone number was in that stuff you found in Rourke’s desk.”

“What’s a phone number?”

“There was more than that. Rourke wrote a note to himself. A price. He was the one, all right. And with everything up in the air, we couldn’t postpone.”

“And you volunteered?”

“I didn’t exactly volunteer,” Carl said, biting off the words. “But it was time for me. Musso always treated me like a dumb kid. He wouldn’t be that trusting with somebody else.”

“I don’t suppose we’re really meeting anybody out here.”

“No, that was just for your sake.”

“What do we do with the body, dump it?”

Carl nodded. “There’s a tarp and some weights in the big stateroom.” He swallowed. “I know it’s asking a lot, but I’ve always had this stupid thing about blood.”

“I’ll do it,” Shayne said. “Just keep out from underfoot. If a Coast Guard cutter comes along, I don’t want them to start wondering what we’re doing. Break out a fishing rod and get a line over the side.”

“Yes.”

Shayne waited till Carl was installed in the fishing chair at the stern, and then went into the pilothouse to retrieve Carl’s automatic. He picked it up carefully by the front sight, slipped it into a plastic map case, and then took it up to the fly bridge and buttoned it inside Siracusa’s shirt. After that he went below for the tarp. It was stiff heavy-duty canvas, hard to manipulate on the narrow bridge. The bundle, when it was completed, was lumpy and awkward, but Shayne had lashed it securely, and he believed it would hold.

The weights, doughnut-shaped disks meant to be locked onto a weight-lifting bar, totaled three or four hundred pounds. Tied to the tarp, they would carry Siracusa’s body to the bottom, where it would disintegrate harmlessly, with nobody but those in his immediate circle aware that he was gone.

Shayne lined up the weights and lashed them together, but when he attached the new bundle to the larger one, he used a double slipknot that would pull apart the instant it hit the water.

Carl, having made his contribution by blowing Siracusa’s brains out, was looking astern. Shayne put together still another bundle, this one consisting of three life jackets. While collecting the life jackets, he had found a shipwreck kit containing vitamin tablets, shark repellent, flares, and a small tin of marking powder. He tucked the tin among the jackets.

When he had everything ready, he called Carl. “Get the binoculars. Let’s be damn sure there are no other boats around.”

Carl came into the pilothouse for the binoculars, and scanned the horizon from the side deck.

“Nothing,” he reported.

“O.K. I’m taking her off automatic pilot. Bring her about. When this rig goes overboard, I want to get the hell into some different part of the ocean.”

Carl went back into the wheelhouse and took over the dual controls. Shayne looked around carefully.

“Go!” he shouted.

The boat surged forward through the water, and Shayne tipped everything over the rail. The life jackets were yanked under by the tug of the weights, but bobbed to the surface again at once. Shayne dropped to the cockpit deck, to block Carl’s view. Behind them, a bright patch of yellow — the marking powder from the survival kit — blossomed on the surface and began to spread rapidly.

He yelled for more speed. As soon as the conspicuous iridescent stain had dropped out of sight, he returned to the flying bridge, where he again took the controls. He called to Carl to get back to his fishing chair, set the automatic pilot, and noted the bearing, the time, and the rpm readings.

Then he lowered a canvas bucket over the side and began dipping up bucket after bucket of seawater, which he sloshed around freely. The water flowing out the scuppers ran red for a time, then more and more clear. Finally Shayne stowed the bucket, made up the line, and called Carl into the pilothouse.

“I think I took care of the worst of it. When we get back, scrub it out with a good detergent, and rinse it with paint thinner. If you’re still feeling squeamish, get Nicola to do it.”

“I can’t help the way I am about blood. What did you do with the gun?”

“It’s overboard, with everything else.”

“Good, because it’s registered to me. You’re sure everything’s taken care of?”

“Go up and look.”

“I’ll take your word for it.” He shook his head when Shayne offered him the flask. “I can’t drink that brandy. I think there’s Scotch in the galley.”

He went below, and came back with a bottle and a glass. Shayne let him sit down and feel the bite of the Scotch before saying anything.

“So now I’m a co-conspirator,” Shayne said. “Nobody’s going to believe that when the gun went off I was the second most surprised man on this boat. That was part of the idea, wasn’t it? I’m part of the team now.”

Carl was looking better, nearly normal. “Mike, Dominick De Blasio is one of the facts of life. The sooner you learn that, the better.”

“Dominick De Blasio has just about had it,” Shayne said calmly.

“You think so, do you?”

Shayne shrugged. “I don’t give a goddamn, personally.”

“Just about had it,” Carl repeated. “Maybe that’s the way it seems to you. The cops make some noise, and everything closes down. But that’s temporary. Granted, the things he’s interested in are out of date. His methods are out of date. Now, don’t misunderstand me. I don’t mean what just happened. That had to be done, and done fast. I knew I’d have to hit somebody sooner or later, to get respect.”

“Next time it’ll be easy.”

“What are you talking, next time? This was it, as far as I’m concerned. I’ve made my bones, and now I can express my views without having all the old Moustache Petes like Siracusa put me down as a college boy. I never had to fight and struggle, but there’s no getting around the fact, my name’s De Blasio.”

The strong slug of undiluted Scotch was working. Carl put his feet up and his head back.

“I didn’t hesitate. I just didn’t expect all that stuff to spatter out on the windshield.”

“What courses did you take at college, Carl?”

Carl’s head came around. “Now, what does that have to do with what I was saying?”

“Your father’s knocked some of the corners off lately, but he used to be one of those Moustache Petes you were talking about. You’ve heard the stories. I’d say half of them are true. When he was getting started—”

“I know all about that.”

“I remember one that impressed me. A young fellow in a Teamsters local, Italian boy. He decided to run for business agent without clearing it with the organization. The day before the nominating meeting, they found his body in Coral Gables and his head in Bal Harbour. In those days Dom De Blasio was a rough man.”

“I don’t condone that kind of thing. It’s bad practice, in more ways than one.”

“What I meant about college — where’d you go, Alabama? The name De Blasio is well known. I suppose everybody asked you if you were related to what’s his name, the Mafia don.”

Carl said softly, “I never had a chance to be normal, you know, Mike? Some of those rednecks put a lot of time and effort into thinking up ways to humiliate me. What could I do, fight everybody? Or ask my father for a couple of strongarms to bodyguard me? I toughed it out for three years. But I really wanted that diploma. I always had a vague idea I’d like to be a psychiatrist.”