Michael Connelly - Void Moon

He stepped to the side of the pool where a surface net at the end of a ten-foot pole was hooked to a fence. He took it down and used it to skim a dead hummingbird out of the pool.

"Poor things, I don't think they can see water or something. They dive right in. This is the third one this week."

He shook his head.

"Dead hummingbirds are bad luck, you know."

He flicked the dead bird over the fence into a neighbor's yard. Cassie wondered if maybe the three dead hummingbirds were really just the same one that the neighbor kept throwing back over the fence and into the pool. She didn't say anything. She wanted Leo to get back to the story.

Leo hooked the net back in place on the fence and came back around to Cassie.

"So that's how it started. I took sixty-five bones off them against a hundred when the jobs were paid out. I was thinking six weeks tops. One was diamonds and that's always quick. And the other was a warehouse – Italian furniture. I had somebody lined up in Pennsylvania on that and was probably looking at six weeks tops on the turnaround. My end was going to be about two and I'd owe these guys one. Not bad. Most of the money I needed from them was for the data. The people I was working with had their own equipment."

He was wandering, telling too many details about the plans and not what happened.

"You can skip all of this, Leo. Just read me the last page."

"The last page is that both jobs went to shit. The data on the diamonds was bullshit. A rip-off. I paid forty for it and the guy disappeared. And then the furniture turned out to have been made down in Mexicali. It was counterfeit designer stuff and the made-in-Italy tags were as bogus as most of the tits you see in this town. I didn't know it till I got the truck all the way to Philadelphia and my buyer took a look. Shit, what a fucking mess. I just had them abandon the truck on the side of a road in Trenton."

He paused as if trying to remember some other detail, then waved a hand in a resigned, dismissive gesture.

"And so that was it. I owed these guys a hundred grand and I didn't have it. I explained the situation to them and they were about as sympathetic as a night-court judge to a hooker. But when it was all said and done I thought I had bought some time. Only they just said that and turned right around and sold my fucking paper to another party."

Cassie nodded. She could finish the story herself now.

"These two new guys come around and say they represent the new holder of the paper now," Leo said. "They make it real clear that the new holder is the Outfit without actually having to say it. Know what I mean? They tell me that we have to work out a payment schedule. I ended up paying two grand a week just on the interest. Just to stay afloat. It was killing me. I still owed the hundred but I was never going to get out from under. Never. Until one day they show up with a proposition."

"What was it?"

"They told me about this job."

He pointed through the open slider at the briefcase sitting on the desk inside.

"They told me to set it up with their guy in Vegas and that if I did it, then they'd burn my paper and still give me a cut on the caper."

Leo shook his head. He walked over to the table and chairs near the shallow end and sat down. He reached over to a hand crank on the umbrella pole. He started turning it and the umbrella opened like a flower. Cassie came over and sat down. She cupped her left elbow in her right hand.

"So they obviously knew what was in the case," she said.

"Maybe."

"No maybes. They knew. Otherwise, they wouldn't have been so fucking magnanimous with you. When are they coming for it?"

"I don't know. I'm waiting on a call."

"Did they give you a name?"

"What do you mean?"

"A name, Leo. Whoever bought your paper."

"Yeah, Turcello. Same name that was on the package at the desk for you. He's supposedly the guy who picked up the pieces after Joey Marks went down."

Cassie looked away. She didn't know the name Turcello but she knew who Joey Marks had been. He had been the Outfit's brutal point man in Las Vegas – one in a long line of vicious enforcers. His real name was Joseph Marconi but he was universally known as Joey Marks because of the keepsakes he left on those of his victims he allowed to live. Cassie remembered how she and Max had spent a year living in fear of Marks, who wanted a piece of their action. After she was in High Desert she picked up a newspaper one day and read about how Marks had been killed in his limousine during a bizarre shoot-out with the FBI and police in a bank parking lot in Las Vegas. She had celebrated after reading the story – which in prison amounted to sipping a paper cup of applejack she'd bought with a pack of cigarettes.

She didn't know who Marconi's replacement, Turcello, was but she assumed he had to be just as viciously psychopathic as Marks had been in order to be named to the position.

"And now you've got me in the box with you and these people," Cassie said. "Thanks, Leo. Thanks for – "

"No, you're wrong. I protected you. They don't even know about you. I took the job and set it up. Like I told you before, nobody knows everybody in the caper. They don't know you and they never will."

Leo's promise was not reassuring. Cassie could no longer sit down while it seemed her life was passing in front of her. She got up and walked to the pool's edge and looked down into the calm, clear water. Her left arm hung at her side like a dead weight.

"What are we going to do, Leo? If I have this right, the Chicago mob used us to steal a payoff these Cubans from Miami were making to a third party on the buyout of the Cleo. We're sitting in the middle of what's going to be a war. Do you see that? What do we do?"

Leo got up and came to her. He pulled her into a tight hug and spoke calmly.

"Nobody knows about you. I promise you. Nobody knows about you and nobody ever will. You don't have to worry."

She pulled away from him.

"Of course, I do, Leo. Come back to reality, would you?"

The tone of her voice silenced Leo. He raised and dropped his hands in a gesture of surrender. He started banging a tight fist against his lips. Cassie paced along the side of the pool. After a long minute she spoke again.

"What do you know about Buena Suerte?"

"Like I said, nothing. But I'll make some calls about it."

After another long silence, Leo shook his shoulders.

"Maybe we just give the money back and say it was a mistake," he said. "We find a go-between who will – "

"Then we have Chicago after us, Leo. This Turcello person. Think, would you? We can't do that."

"I'll tell them that when you went into the room last night the briefcase wasn't there."

"I'm sure they're going to believe that. Especially, since the mark has suddenly disappeared."

Leo flopped back into his seat under the umbrella. A defeated look was overtaking his face. There was a long period of silence while neither looked at each other.

"Sometimes you can steal too much," Cassie said, more to herself than Leo.

"What?"

"Max used to say that sometimes you can steal too much. We just did."

Leo pondered the statement in silence. Cassie folded her arms across her chest. When she spoke her voice was resolute and strong. She now looked directly at Leo.

"Let's take the money. All of it. We split it and we run, Leo. One point three and change each. It's more than enough. Fuck Chicago and Miami. We take it all and run."

Leo was shaking his head before she was finished speaking.

"No way."

"Leo…"

"No fucking way. You think you can run from these people? Where are you going to run? Name a place where it's worth living and they can't find you. No place, that's where. They will hunt you down to the end of the fucking earth just to prove the point. Bring your hands back to Chicago or Miami in a shoe box and put 'em on display at the wise guys' Sunday buffet."