Matt Hilton - Judgement and Wrath

'He's gone across to his father's way of thinking?'

'He has. Valentin was dying — you knew that, huh? — and he had recently bequeathed his share of the company to Bradley. Added to his own shares, that gives Bradley a majority sway. He hasn't done it yet, but when Bradley takes over, then the military contracts will be dropped. It'll cost the company billions of dollars.'

Marianne was rocking in place, humming that same sad tune I'd first heard in the garden at Baker Island. Suddenly I knew where Harvey was going with this.

'Someone has Bradley's ear? That's what you're suggesting?'

'His opinion changed round about the time his new girlfriend came on to the scene.'

I noticed Marianne's eyes flick my way but she didn't add anything. Neither did she argue.

'It's starting to make a little sense now,' I said. 'So Bradley has gone against his cousins, and that's pissed them off? If Bradley is killed off then they inherit his voting power. They keep on with the billions that the government are happily handing them.' I again looked at Marianne and saw that her eyes had closed. Confirmation of my theory. To her I said, 'And that's the reason the killer wants you as badly as your boyfriend? You're the reason that Bradley has changed his way of thinking.'

She didn't answer, but her nose dipped below the neckline of the bullet-proof vest.

From the front, Rink asked, 'Where are you now, Harvey?'

'Where I said I'd be,' Harvey said.

'OK, buddy, we'll see you in a short while.'

'Gotcha, Rink,' Harvey said.

'Keep on digging in the meantime,' I added. 'See if you can find out anything on the shooter. You might want to listen in to what's going on at Neptune Island. By all accounts, the crazy fucker paid Petre Jorgenson a visit before he came for Bradley and Marianne again.'

'Reading between the lines, I take it that Petre didn't survive?'

'No one survived,' I said. 'Except some pussy that goes by the name of Seagram. Bradley's bodyguard. Maybe you can do a little digging on him, too. West Point's a good starting place.'

'Leave it with me.'

'Thanks, Harvey.'

'Pleasure.'

I clicked off the phone, pushed it in my pocket.

We'd come off the highway on to surface streets. Nice enough area. Low single-level houses with pretty gardens. No one around as though people here lived only for the sun and dissipated when darkness fell. On our right was a tributary of the Loxahatchee. The water was slow and still. I wondered if alligators sometimes crawled up out of the river and wandered these lonely streets. That would explain the lack of domesticated animals prowling through the night. There were no cats, no dogs, but then again, there were no alligators, either.

We had agreed to meet Harvey up at Hobe Sound. That meant taking a circuitous route back up past Neptune while avoiding the coast road. There'd be an army of law enforcement personnel converging on the Jorgenson estate by now and I didn't want to run a cordon of blue lights. The only way I trusted that Marianne would be safe was if she stayed with us. OK, it appeared that Petre Jorgenson was now shaking hands with his murdered uncle, and it would take a very lucky man to survive the fall from the bridge into the sea, but that didn't mean that other attempts wouldn't be made on her life. It didn't take a rocket scientist to work out the probability that Petre and the shooter were in cahoots. Something had happened between them that had left Petre dead. But that didn't mean all our enemies were done with. There were still two cousins alive who had reason to wish both Bradley and Marianne were out of the picture.

Following our detour round the back streets of the suburbs of Jupiter, Rink found a slip road that took us to the Florida Turnpike, where we picked up the 95 north. He drove on through the darkness in silence, and eventually we arrived at a motel on the edge of Seabranch Reserve State Park. Here I saw my second lot of mangrove, as well as sand pine and scrubby flatwoods and many other trees I didn't recognise. Wild buckwheat and fetterbush grew interspersed among the trees and the wild sandy hummocks that the Atlantic had moulded into weird shapes.

Harvey's rental was in the lot outside the motel entrance. It was a Ford Explorer, not unlike the one I'd been forced to abandon down at SoBe. For our purposes it wasn't the most discreet of vehicles but it was still less conspicuous than the bashed-up Crown Vic. Rink pulled into the parking lot and I accompanied Marianne towards the room that Harvey had booked. Rink drove off again, heading for the nearby state park on a short errand to get rid of the Crown Vic. Maybe it would turn up one of these days when the shifting and squeezing of the earth's crust forced it out of the depths of the mangrove swamp like a corroded leviathan rising from the depths.

The motel celebrated the local Native American Hove culture, but spoiled it somewhat with a fake totem pole, copied from one I'd seen a few years ago commemorating the great Chief, Seattle, in the Northwest city of the same name. The totem pole was mid-centre on a swathe of grass in front of the motel reception. Standing nine feet tall, it almost dwarfed Harvey Lucas where he leaned against it. Almost, but not quite. Harvey is a huge man. He doesn't have the musculature of Rink, but he's still a physical specimen that would make most men envious. He stands well above my near six feet. His skin is so black and sleek that he looks like he has been carved from jet by a master sculptor. On his broad shouldered, slim-waisted frame, clothes hang on him the way clothes are meant to hang. At forty years old he could give men half his age a run for their money on the football field, as well as a lesson in style.

We greeted each other the way old soldiers do. A masculine hug of the left arm, our right hands hooked together at our thumbs, a bump of chests.

'Looking good, Harve.'

His jeans and shirt weren't that different from mine, only he looked like he'd just stepped out of a Hollywood gossip magazine, while I looked like something that people gossiped about — for all the wrong reasons.

He touched the wound in my scalp. Shaking his head in amusement. 'I see that Rink's been practising his field dressings on you. Never could see straight, that one.'

I'd forgotten about the slash on my head. But now that Harvey mentioned it the damn thing reminded me it was still there with an itch that demanded scratching.

'Brought some supplies with me,' Harvey said, nodding over his shoulder towards his room. 'Better get that cleaned and apply some antiseptic cream. Don't want it getting infected.'

'What're they going to do if it does? Cut my head off?'

'Sure would be an improvement,' Harvey grinned.

Marianne was standing in our shadow, looking up at Harvey as if he was a demi-god who'd come down from Mount Olympus on a cloud. There was trepidation in her gaze, but not a little awe.

'You must be Marianne.' Harvey held out his hand.

'Mari,' she answered shyly.

'Mari,' he repeated, and he took her hand in his, giving it a gentle squeeze. Her smile made her look like the girl I'd seen in those first couple of photographs.

She said, 'You're not what I?…'

'Not what you expected. Yeah, I know. You thought I was gonna be as ugly as these two brutes you've been stuck with?' He shot me a wink and I grinned behind Marianne's back.

'Joe isn't ugly,' she said, and that made me grin even more. I should have maybe defended Rink, but to some he did seem like he'd be more at home dressed in skins and wielding a club. Then there were others who found his rugged face and scarred chin attractive; the epitome of the bad boy look.

Harvey asked me, 'How is Rink?'

'Holding it together.'

'He shouldn't be here.'