Victor Gischler - Suicide Squeeze

His pursuer leapt too, landed on his feet near Conner, and pulled a pistol from his jacket. Conner didn’t wait for him to take aim or get his sea legs. He kicked out as hard as he could, slammed his heel into the guy’s ankle. The guy didn’t make a sound, but he tilted left and hit the deck, the pistol clattering over the side. Conner struggled to his feet, took up a boxer’s stance.

The Asian guy sprang up, seemed to be unhurt. Conner threw an overhand punch, but the guy wasn’t there. Conner felt a punch to the ribs, something hit his face. He threw another punch just to feel involved, but nobody paid any attention.

Another rapid series of blows to Conner’s ribs took his breath away. A hit on the ear. A bloody lip. Conner was getting his ass kicked by a blur.

His world tilted, a streak of moonlight and a slam to the back as he hit the deck. He blinked his eyes open. He was flat on his back, the Asian kneeling over him, preparing to deliver a killer blow to Conner’s throat.

Then the sound of glass shattering. The Asian fell across Conner, lay there without moving. The smell of rum.

Long seconds. Nobody moved.

A voice. “Conner.” Jenny.

Conner rolled the guy off him, stretching, groaning. Conner didn’t have enough hands to rub all the places that hurt. He looked at Jenny. She came into focus. She held the broken end of a Captain Morgan’s bottle.

“I had to get him off you,” she said.

“Thanks.”

She bent over, looked the guy up and down. “Who the hell is this?”

“Who’s driving the boat?” Conner asked.

“Hell.” She ran back to the cockpit, took the wheel.

They were into the main part of the river now. Jenny had been smart enough not to turn on the running lights. Or maybe she just hadn’t thought of it.

“I need a flashlight,” Conner said.

Jenny found one under the pilot’s seat, gave it to Conner. He flipped it on, used it to sort through the items in the Asian guy’s pocket. He found a passport. Japanese.

“Dump him over the side,” Jenny called from the cockpit.

Conner ignored her, examined the guy’s head and pulse. He’d be okay, but he’d also be out for a while.

Conner remembered Jenny had started the boat, nearly got him killed. “Why the hell didn’t you wait for me?”

“I wanted Teddy to know he was getting his boat taken away,” she said. “I wanted to see the stunned look on that fat fucker’s face.”

Conner didn’t say anything, but he remembered Folger’s split lip and black eye, wondered if that would be stunned enough to satisfy the former Mrs. Folger.

Neither Conner nor Jenny was eager for the Japanese guy to wake up and resume his whirlwind frenzy of karate death. Jenny’s suggestion to dump the guy over the side was surprisingly cold-blooded. Then again, the guy had been trying to beat Conner’s brains out.

Still, it just wasn’t Conner’s style.

They put him in the canoe and set him adrift. Without the paddle.

Conner would make up some lie for the canoe rental place. You could blame rowdy teenagers for almost anything nowadays.

Conner took the helm, kept the boat slow ahead and in the middle of the river. Without the running lights, they could run up on a sandbar or plow into a cluster of downed trees if he hugged the shoreline too closely. As soon as Conner had the wheel in his hands, Jenny disappeared belowdecks. Within ten seconds he heard cabinet doors slamming, the sounds of an angry woman rummaging for loot.

Conner gripped the wheel so tight his knuckles turned white. He eased up, took deep gulps of night air into his lungs, held them, and then exhaled raggedly. He had been shot at. Actually, it wasn’t the first time, but somehow this was different. Scary.

The adrenaline rush melted away, and the pain seeped in, face and limbs sore and raw from the pasting the little Japanese guy had given him. Conner’s ear throbbed hot, the corner of his mouth was sticky with dried blood. He didn’t even want to think about the pounding his ribs had taken.

Conner replayed the scene in Folger’s kitchen. Folger was in deep shit with more than just his wife. Seemed like he was pissing off people on an international level. Maybe that would work to Conner’s advantage. Folger had bigger worries than a missing sailboat.

Still, Conner didn’t want to get taken by surprise. He did a little math in his head. This caused a dull ache behind his eyes. He switched from math to half-assed guesses. It would take somebody driving fast at least thirty minutes to get from Folger’s bungalow to the swing-out bridge. The road didn’t run alongside the river, so no chance he could be spotted that way. And there wasn’t anyplace to rent a boat at this hour, so nobody could follow him on the water. As long as he found a branch or an inlet and stashed the Jenny before sunup, Conner figured he was in the clear.

The boat glided over the dark water, and with the danger behind them, Conner indulged a brief fantasy. The helm felt good in his hands. He could go places with a vessel like this, maybe follow Florida ’s Gulf curve down to the Keys. Tyranny. He could take her, leave everything behind, the repossession gig, Tyranny’s husband. It was all new and possible over the distant sea-green horizon.

Could he convince her to leave Professor Dan? She was too used to nice things, and her husband had been hot shit in the art community in the late eighties. A big Dutch corporation had paid him a two-million-dollar commission for a steel and glass sculpture that decorated the lobby of the corporate headquarters. The sculpture had put him into the international spotlight and three more quick commissions followed, all in the seven-figure range. Now in the cool autumn of his career, he coasted on his past reputation and lived easy in his big house by the bay, a cushy professorship supplying him with coeds.

Until Tyranny. He’d married her. Conner might have been able to stomach a quick affair. For some reason women like Tyranny always had to dabble with older men. What was it? Some kind of Freudian father thing? Just kicks? But it wasn’t a quick fling. It was a wedding.

Conner shouldn’t have been surprised. Professor Dan could give her what she wanted. He was plugged into the art scene. He knew the chic, important people in New York or LA or Mars or wherever. He could talk the talk and walk the walk of the cultured and educated. Conner knew a good place to get oysters. On a good day, he could hit a curveball. It wasn’t the same.

What would Conner do for money, to be somebody important, to have whatever he wanted at his fingertips? Conner felt a fleeting kinship with Teddy Folger.

The cabin hatch slid open and white light blinded him.

“Jesus,” barked Conner. “Put that lamp out!”

“Sorry.” Jenny switched off the lamp, and everything went back to dark.

Conner had lost his night vision, blinked until the spots were gone from his eyes. Soon the moon and stars came back into focus. “What were you doing down there?”

“Looking.”

“Find anything?”

“No.” Fatigue in her voice, or maybe just a pout.

“You’re going to have to go forward with the flashlight,” Conner said. “I think there might be a place up here we can put her out of sight, but it’s too dark. Don’t turn on the light until I tell you.”

“Right.” She took the flashlight, felt her way the length of the boat until she was leaning over the bow.

Conner throttled the Electric Jenny back just short of stalling as he approached the riverbank. Several likely places turned out to be too narrow or obscured by low-hanging branches. Jenny snapped the flashlight on or off whenever Conner signaled. On one attempt, they tangled badly in low-hanging cypress branches. It took both Conner and Jenny to shove free, but the effort was painful. Conner felt something pull along his bruised ribs.