Joel Goldman - No way out

“You were lucky that Roni and the nurse got into a fight and the cop guarding Frank left his post.”

“I’ve had my share of luck, good and bad. I was checking out the setup on Frank’s floor when she got off the elevator. I ducked into an empty room when I saw her. The next thing I knew, she got into it with the nurse and that cop came running. I knew it was going to be my only chance, so I took it.”

“And you threw the gun in a Dumpster on your way out. That was sloppy. Your Mexican friends wouldn’t be impressed.”

He bristled, the first reaction I’d gotten. It wasn’t much, but it was something. He didn’t like being made fun of.

“It was smart. If the cops found the gun, they’d check the registration and go looking for Roni, not me, and that’s what happened.”

“You got rid of Frank, but you still couldn’t close the deal even though you told the cartel that you had the right connections to make it happen. They must think you don’t know your ass from third base. What happened? Was Brett screening your calls?”

His face flushed, and his eyes narrowed.

“The little shit showed me no respect. I went to see Nick yesterday, told him his boy better meet me at the store last night. Nick was there, but Brett wasn’t. He pulled his gun, tried to scare me off, but I don’t scare. We fought, and his gun went off. I waited all night for Brett to show up, but that damn Mexican kid came snooping around and that took care of that.”

“It must have been hard to explain to the cartel that you’d fucked up again.”

Terry jammed the gun deeper into Roni’s neck. “Why do you keep yanking my chain when I’m the one who had faith in you even if Lilly didn’t? I saw that I could sit back and let you lead me to the guns. So who’s the fuckup here? You or me?”

“How many people are you willing to kill for those guns?”

He tilted his head toward me, then at Roni, counting. “Two more ought to about do it.”

“You’d kill your own granddaughter so some asshole drug dealer in Mexico can use them to kill another asshole drug dealer?”

Roni lost what little color she had in her face, squirming in his grip to look at him. Terry eased the gun away from her neck, squinting at me.

He said, “That’s a load of crap.”

“I don’t think so. There was a reason you came looking for Lilly Chase before you went looking for the guns. Had to have been something more than her red hair that made you want to see her that bad, and she must have been glad to see you because you’ve been at her house so much I was beginning to think you’d moved in. I saw the way she touched you tonight, running her hand across your shoulders. I’d say she was thinking about asking you.”

“That shit don’t mean nothing!”

“Here’s the clincher. Lilly got pregnant while she was a teenager living at Rachel’s House. I did the math. You told me you disappeared the night of the Electric Park fire, fifty years ago. Lilly’s daughter, Martha, is fifty years old. She was pregnant when you ran away. She had your baby and never got married because she never got over you. And now you’re going to murder your granddaughter, the only child of your only child.”

Blood rushed from his neck into his face, turning him red, then purple with rage, his mouth twisting into a snarl as he flung Roni to the floor, raising his gun at me and aiming straight for my heart.

“You son of a bitch!”

The bullet should have struck me before I even heard the sound of shots being fired. In that instant, my body exploded in spasms, my knees buckled, and I wondered why there was no pain, but I knew the pain would come if I lived long enough to feel it.

It wasn’t until I saw Terry fall backward and collapse like a rag doll that I realized he’d missed me. As I corkscrewed to the floor, Roni scrambled to her feet, holding the Redhawk over Terry, the muzzle flashing and smoking as she pulled the trigger again and again.

She dropped the Redhawk and fell to her knees, crawling to Brett, turning him over and cradling his head in her lap. I managed to stand, steadying myself with one hand on the kitchen counter, taking deep breaths, drunk-walking the few steps to Terry’s body and picking up his gun and mine and the Redhawk, leaning against the refrigerator for support.

She looked up at me. “What now?”

“You surrender.”

She nodded. “It was self-defense. Just like before with Frank. I saved your life again.”

“And I’m grateful, but the first shot was probably enough.”

“Not after what he did to my grandma, leaving her pregnant like that. But everything will be okay now, won’t it?”

“Not for a long time. You’re in a tight spot.”

“But I didn’t know anything about the guns.”

“Then what were you doing here?”

She glanced around the room, blinking, her hands fluttering, her mind spinning.

“Brett called me. He said to meet him here. He was going away and wanted me to go with him. When I got here, he told me about the guns. He said he needed my help to get rid of them.”

“Why was he shuttling them from one house to the other?”

She brightened, her confidence returning. “The bank had a buyer interested in the other house. They were coming to look at it in the morning. He had to get the guns out of there.”

“That’s the trouble with making it up as you go along,” I told her. “It’s tough to make all the lies hang together. If that’s all he was doing, there was no reason to ask you to help and no reason to get rid of the guns. All he had to do was move them from one house to the other.”

“No,” she said, raising her hands in protest. “You don’t understand. He wanted out, and he wanted me to go with him. That’s what he said.”

“And you were going to run away with him and leave your mom and grandma without even saying good-bye. Is that it?”

She folded her arms over her chest, bending at the waist. “Yes. When he said he was leaving, I realized how much I loved him.”

“Roni, the moon isn’t pink. I hear what you’re saying, but we both know you’re lying. You remember what you kept telling me the last few days?”

“What?”

“You kept telling me that it’s over. Well, you’re finally right. It’s over.”

She sat up. “I don’t understand what you mean.”

“Sure you do. Frank and Nick were lousy businessmen, and Jimmy could barely hold a job. They let you pay their bills because they couldn’t even do that on their own. You told them they were finished if they didn’t find another way to make money. The stolen goods operation was your idea. You sold them on it and told them what to do.”

“No! That’s crazy.”

“Looking back, you’re right. But nobody wanted out of Northeast more than you did. You said so yourself, even your house was strangling you. Getting Jimmy to steal construction materials that Frank could fence was easy, but there wasn’t enough money in it to get you out.”

She eased Brett’s head out of her lap, scooting away, and started to stand. I pointed the Redhawk at her.

“I like you better sitting down.”

She slid back to the floor.

“Then one day, Brett told you that Cesar Mendez was looking to buy guns, and that was too good an opportunity to pass up, especially if you could build up an inventory so big that you could squeeze Mendez, maybe even threaten to sell the guns to another cartel.”

She ducked her head, avoiding me. “It wasn’t me. It was Brett.”

“I’m sure you let him think it was his idea. That way you could use him as the front man and Mendez wouldn’t know anything about you.”

She looked at him, reaching out, caressing his head. “He wanted to impress his father. Show him he really was a man.”