James Grippando - Last to die

“Pick up Miguel’s gun,” said Tatum.

The gun was lying on the floor beside Miguel’s body. Theo started across the room, and Tatum swiveled Jack’s body-the shield-as Theo passed by them on his way to the corpse. Theo stepped around the puddle of blood, then stooped down to reach for the gun.

Tatum said, “Not with your bare hands, moron. Use your jacket.”

Theo pulled off his windbreaker and wrapped it around his hand like a glove. He picked up the gun, then looked back toward his brother, as if to say, Now what?

Tatum said, “We gotta kill him.”

“We don’t gotta do anything.”

“You’re right. You gotta do it. Do it with Miguel’s gun.”

Theo didn’t respond.

“Do it, Theo. Shoot Jack right now. If you don’t, I will.”

“You think I’m taking orders from you?”

“I’m talking a deal, man. Forty-six million dollars. We split it. Don’t you get it? They’re all dead but me. It’s mine. Mine and yours. All you gotta do is pull the trigger, and we’re partners. It’s clean.”

“Say what?”

“Listen to me. Here’s the story. Jack, you, and me came over to confront Miguel the pussy here. He confessed to the killings and shot Jack. Then you shot Miguel. We’re home free, brother. All we gotta do is get rid of Jack.”

Theo didn’t answer.

“You thinking about it, ain’t you?” Tatum said through his teeth. “Half of forty-six million dollars. Come on, do right by your brother. Shoot Jack with Miguel’s gun.”

Theo was stone silent.

“Do it now, damn it!”

Theo knelt down beside Miguel’s body. He pressed the gun into Miguel’s hand and raised it slowly.

“Even better,” said Tatum, his voice racing. “Let Miguel’s own finger pull the trigger.”

It was as if the gun were in Miguel’s grasp. Theo held Miguel’s lifeless hand between his own huge hands, taking aim at Jack’s head.

“That’s right, Theo. One little squeeze.”

Jack’s heart skipped a beat. Theo was a friend. He’d never shoot his buddy, the lawyer who’d saved his ass on death row. Not in a million years. Not for anything.

Except maybe twenty-three million dollars.

“Theo,” said Jack. “This is crazy, pal. Tatum screwed you before, he’ll screw you again.”

“Do it!” shouted Tatum.

In a flash, the gun jerked, a shot whistled across the room. Tatum’s gun was airborne, and his head snapped back violently. Jack dived forward to the floor. Theo rushed to his wounded brother.

Tatum was flat on his back, gasping and holding his throat. The bullet had passed through his neck. Blood was pouring from the severed carotid artery, pumping in surges with each beat of his fading heart until he was surrounded by a growing circle of red. His eyes glazed over with a helpless expression, a look that Jack hadn’t seen since his days of defending death row inmates, that unmistakable, almost incongruous look of fear and bewilderment in the eyes of a murderer who was suddenly forced to come to grips with his own mortality.

Tatum looked up at Theo. He could barely speak, his throat filled with blood, but the bullet had passed through his neck off-center and had spared his voice. “You piece of shit,” he said in a thick, distant tone, choking on his own blood. “You shot your own brother.”

Theo looked at Jack, then back at Tatum, his expression deadpan. “Wrong again, Tatum. I saved him.”

Tatum’s head hit the floor, and his body was suddenly still.

Jack watched from the helm as Theo walked alone to the bow of the fishing boat and scattered the ashes. It was early Sunday morning. The horizon was still orange from the rising sun, and a warm wind carried the ocean’s whispers from the east-from Nassau maybe, which seemed fitting, since Tatum used to love to go there and gamble. Seagulls trailed their boat across the deep blue swells, ready to steal a fisherman’s bait. One of them splashed into the waves, snatched up a floating fragment of bone in its beak, and then dropped it from mid-air.

“Not even the scavengers want him,” said Theo, his voice falling off in the breeze.

The burial at sea had been Theo’s idea. Fishing out on the boat was the one place he’d felt connected to his brother, miles of blue water between them and a world that hadn’t exactly welcomed the Knight brothers with open arms, a world that seemed to have known all along that it would be better off without Tatum. He was a badass, to be sure, but his death was no cause for celebration. Theo needed time, not so much to grieve but simply to come to terms with his brother’s betrayal. Jack was determined to give Theo the space he needed.

The two of them had told all to the police at the crime scene. Jack took the media calls in the ensuing frenzy, not because he enjoyed the publicity but because Theo hated it even more. Within hours, it was all over the evening news that Tatum Knight had shot Sally Fenning to death in a strange murder for hire in which the victim was her own target, and that Miguel Rios had murdered Sally’s daughter in a crime of jealous rage that had gone unsolved for five years. The details played out differently depending on which newscast you watched, but the newspaper got it mostly right, thanks largely to the background work of the late Deirdre Meadows. The Tribune’s final, lengthy feature ran in the Sunday edition. It relied heavily on excerpts from Deirdre’s unpublished manuscript, which was preceded by a glowing tribute to Deirdre from her editor, and included dubious assertions that the editors were behind her pursuit of Sally Fenning’s story “one hundred percent from the very beginning”-all of which seemed just a wee bit calculated to set her up posthumously for the Pulitzer nomination she’d so desperately wanted in life.

“I’m ready,” said Theo, wiping the salty sea spray from his brow.

“Let’s go in.”

“This is a good thing you’re doing,” said Jack.

“Yeah. At least this way I won’t be tempted to come piss on his grave.”

Jack started the engine and steered for home. The ride back took almost an hour, completely in silence. Jack thought it would do Theo some good to get out of the house, and Theo was always up for eating, so they went for a leisurely breakfast at Greenstreet, a sidewalk café in Coconut Grove. Before the Sally Fenning matter, Greenstreet had been a favorite Saturday lunch spot for him and his Little Brother, Nate, after rollerblading along the bicycle paths on Main Highway, a shady and windy way that emptied into the little shops and restaurants in a part of the Grove that still bore some resemblance to the tree-lined hippie village it had once been. Thoughts of Nate still saddened him, though he was optimistic. Kelsey no longer worked for Jack, and the budding romance between them was dead, but after the way Kelsey had helped out Theo in the end, everyone seemed cool with each other. Jack and Nate might be as good as new once Nate got used to the idea that Jack and his mother apparently weren’t meant for each other.

All that was complicated, too complicated for a simple Sunday breakfast. Winter was just a couple of weeks away. The sun was shining warmly, joggers and cyclists everywhere; people wearing shorts and T-shirts were out window shopping and walking their dogs-all the telltale signs that life went on and that December in south Florida definitely didn’t suck. Jack was too wrapped up in the newspaper to notice that Theo had already finished his pancakes and was halfway through Jack’s. He skimmed through the rehashed material on page one A, then picked up the second half of the feature story on Sally Fenning with a mix of emotions, but mostly a sense of relief that it was all finally over: