I Come to Kill You

20

It was an overcast night, without stars, but Ponce de Leon was never completely dark because of the glow from the lighted buildings and streets on both sides of the bay.

The long black Cadillacs were arriving, bringing the great men — Dino Occhiogrosso, called the Senator because of his white hair and dignified manner, who brought ten million dollars out of Prohibition, and had held on to most of it, the coordinator of the New York — New Jersey families in the great days, in retirement since escaping from a nervous assassin with a short-barreled shotgun; Joe Barbieri, from Boston, who owned a racing wire, prizefighters, and a talent agency, and did the biggest layoff business in the East; Albert Cataldo, from New Jersey, numbers, unions, hijacking, construction kickbacks, politics, a harassed man who was being sued for divorce and had bleeding ulcers which he didn’t believe he deserved; Frank Guarino, from Las Vegas; Danny Noto, from Chicago, who until recently had done many of his own killings, not because he had to but because of personal inclination.

For Shayne’s plans to work, a large number of people had to appear at exactly the right time, and perform exactly as expected. After all his years of experience, Shayne had no real hope that this would happen. Bobby Burns and Will Gentry were equally unpredictable, in different ways. But even if the big confrontation failed to come off, Shayne now knew — thanks to Philly Tucker — that he could salvage something, and he was ready to move.

Using the telephone in the game room, he dialed Liz O’Donnell’s number. He let it ring twice, hung up with a frown, looked up the number again, and redialed it. Again, after hearing the two rings, he hung up. This was the agreed-upon signal that would bring Liz and her boat across to a point sixty yards west of the De Blasio dock, on a direct line between the main house and a lighted tower on Biscayne Boulevard, on the Miami side of the bay.

The television had been turned down to a mutter. Pool balls clicked and fell. At the bar, the drinkers talked in low tones, clearly aware of the important conference that was taking place elsewhere in the house.

No one spoke to Shayne. He returned to the garage apartment and let himself in.

Sarah came out of the bedroom and shut the door. “I’m having a time with her, Mike. She wants to find her husband and have it out with him.”

“This wouldn’t be a good time to do that.”

Nicola, very drunk, stumbled out. Shayne caught her.

“Nikki, Carl and I have had a long session. He knows he hasn’t been spending enough time with you, and he’s sorry about it. He wants you to go to the Beach with him, to catch the show at one of the hotels.”

“Carl? Change my dress.”

“No, you’re all right. He wants to leave right away, before they grab him for some detail. Brush your hair. Sarah, give her a hand. I’ll be right with you.” The girls retired to the bedroom. Using the lock-picking attachments built into his pocketknife, Shayne picked the simple spring lock on the door to the gun room. A moment later he came out with two ugly-looking magnetic mines studded with explosive sensors and attached to disk anchors with fifteen-foot lengths of line.

“What are those?” Sarah asked as he passed the open bedroom door.

“Meet me downstairs.”

He camouflaged each mine with a dish towel and carried them to the water’s edge. Going over the aerial photographs with Burns, he had marked out a landing zone, a shingle beach an eighth of a mile west of the dock, on the northwest curve of the oval. He planted both mines here, scaling the anchors out some twenty feet offshore.

When he returned, Nicola was ready, washed, brushed, with fresh lipstick. She was wobbly, but erect.

“You come with us, Mike. Sarah. I want all my friends.”

“We have to go in two cars,” Shayne said. “There’s some kind of summit meeting going on in the house, and your father-in-law told Carl to stay on call. So we’ve got to fool them.”

“Mike, you’re a marvelous person.”

“I like to help,” he said with a glance at Sarah.

The girls got in. He drove back to Carl’s house and tapped the horn. Philly burst out, dragging Carl.

“I had to hit him, but he’s going to be a good boy, aren’t you, Carl?”

“I suppose I have to,” Carl said sulkily.

His wife, in the front seat, gave him a tremulous smile. “You don’t know how unhappy I’ve been.”

“You’re drunk,” he said with disgust.

“I had a few drinks with Sarah. I’m not drunk. You know this is the first time you’ve asked me to go anywhere with you in months?”

Shayne drew Philly aside. “Drive her out to the causeway. You won’t have any trouble getting that far, but then you’ll run into a police block. Tell them you’re working for me.”

“Baby, that’s no way to wind up a party. Fuzz?”

“Don’t worry about it. Just get rid of any dope you’re carrying. How have you broken the law otherwise?”

“Well, Mike, if you really don’t know…” He indicated Nicola with a nod. “I’ve had some bad times with female drunks. What do I do if she makes trouble?”

“Cool her,” Shayne said, and he made his next remark even more confidential. “The guns start going off about three minutes from now.”

“In that case…” Philly said hastily. He moved in swiftly and nearly succeeded in kissing Shayne’s cheek. He laughed as the detective pulled away. “Mike, you’re as skittish as a racehorse. Bye.”

Following Shayne’s directions, Philly drove them back to the garage, where he dropped them. Nicola made an attempt to get out and stay with Carl. “Carlo—”

Carl hit the door with both hands as it opened. “Goddamn it, will you start shaping up for a change?” he shouted. “Do what you’re told, and don’t ask any questions!”

His fury drained the color out of her face. Philly drove off.

“That’s the spirit,” Shayne said. “Do as you’re told, and don’t ask questions. I couldn’t improve on that.”

“I have to, don’t I?” Carl said sourly. “You’ve got me over a barrel.”

Larry Zito and another man stepped out of the garage. The second man, named Tony P., was one of the two who had accompanied Zito back from St. Albans. He was holding a shotgun.

“What’s this about a barrel?” Zito demanded. “That’s what guys say to shylocks. Is Shayne blackmailing you?”

“No-o! Larry, just don’t interfere, all right?”

“I think I’m called on to interfere. Up to the house, Shayne. I’ve been watching you for twenty minutes. What’s all this coming and going? What did you throw in the bay a couple of minutes ago? Who’s that fag driving the car? I never saw him around here before.”

“He’s a classmate of mine,” Carl said. “And he’s anything but a fag, as you put it. He’s taking Nikki over to the Beach for a drink. I didn’t want them around while the meeting’s going on. Do you mind?”

“In Shayne’s car? That was Shayne’s car he was driving.”

“I loaned it to them,” Shayne said. “We’re meeting them later.”

Zito remained firm. “Carlo, I want you to talk to the Don. I speak as an uncle. Shayne’s trying to work something.”

Carl seized his shirtfront and shook him. “Trying to mess me up, shylock…”

Tony grunted and brought the shotgun around. Stooping swiftly, Sarah picked up a loose coil of garden hose and flung it over his head. The nozzle rapped him on the cheek. As the coil tightened, Shayne hit him from the blind side, knocking the shotgun barrel away with one hand and connecting a split second later with a hard shot behind the ear.

The shotgun fired, and the recoil pulled it out of Tony’s weakening grasp. Shayne jerked the barrel hard, and it came free. He swung viciously and broke the stock over Zito’s head.

“Now we move,” Shayne said. “Grab the other guy, Carlo. Stay with me.”

He caught the semiconscious Zito around the waist and ran him down to the dock. Carl and Sarah followed with Tony, each with an arm. Shayne let Zito fall, and quickly prepared one of his two remaining needles, pulled down the loan shark’s pants, and hit him with it. He used the other on Tony.

The shotgun blast had brought several figures out on the lighted terrace. Shayne lined up the conspicuous tower that was their aiming point in downtown Miami, and was relieved to see a dark shadow on the water.

“There’s a boat waiting out there,” he said, pointing. “Swim out to it. Quietly. I’ll be along.”

“I can’t swim,” Carl said.

“Oh, for God’s sake!”

He went into the boathouse and retrieved his little waterproof case and the wet-suit and oxygen tank he had left there that morning.

“Put these on,” he told Carl, “and get in the water. Do you know how the oxygen works, Sarah?”

“Sure.”

“Hook him up and tow him. I’ll try to be back to help.”

There was more movement on the terrace. A floodlight came on.

Shayne started for the house, one hand in front of his eyes to shield them from the glare. As he approached, he called, “Any of you guys up there hear a gun go off?”

The consensus was that the shot had been fired from a boat lying just offshore. Shayne, who had been checking the dock area, had the impression that the sound had come from the grounds to the west of the house, the opposite direction from the garage. A patrol was quickly formed under the leadership of a man Shayne didn’t know.

Shayne walked through to the kitchen, where he found the maid putting dishes into the automatic dishwasher.

“Mr. De Blasio says to take off,” he told her. “Just leave everything. He doesn’t want anybody to get hurt. You heard a gunshot, didn’t you?”

“Was that what—” She grabbed her purse. “I knew something was bound to happen.”

She ran for the back door without changing out of her uniform, and Shayne went into the crowded utility room off the kitchen. Using a pencil flashlight, he found the main fuse panel, exactly where it appeared on the wiring diagram. He unscrewed the face cover. After making a few swift preparations, he began unscrewing the clamp holding the main cable. It whipped free. He hit the exposed panel three blows with the butt of his pistol, smashing most of the reset switches.

Returning to the dark kitchen, he crossed it to the back door without using his flashlight. People were shouting and crashing about in other parts of the house. The top third of the island had been blacked out. Still without using his light, he headed for the garage.

He entered by the open door. The gray Cadillac was still parked under the gun room. He laid the flashlight, burning, on the roof of the car and stepped up on the front bumper.

Now he began working carefully. Opening his waterproof case, he took out the fist-sized lump of explosive material, folded the end of a wire into the plastic, and pressed it against the ceiling, waiting several seconds until it adhered.

He backed out of the garage, paying out wire. The headlights of several of the parked cars had been turned on. Shadows crossed and recrossed. Reaching the dock, Shayne had to use the flashlight again to tie in the small detonator.

He stripped down to his shorts and put the camera, his money and wallet and pistol in the watertight case. One of the men from the house was running toward the garage and had nearly reached it. Shayne yelled, and the man stopped.

Shayne pressed the detonator handle and dived off the dock.

He felt the force of the explosion underwater. He went deep and took a dozen hard strokes before surfacing. Bits of debris were pattering into the water around him.

He saw two pleasure boats lying dead in the water to the east, Sarah’s head and bare arm ahead of him, Liz O’Donnell’s Wanderer, without lights, beyond.

He glanced toward the shore briefly, and then set out to overtake Sarah with a powerful rolling crawl. Coming up behind her, he seized Carl’s free hand. Carl, on oxygen, floated just beneath the surface, kicking feebly.

A second explosion blew more flaming bits in the air. The building was burning fiercely.

Then Shayne saw Liz’s hand reaching down from the boat. He passed Carl’s hand up to her, and the black-clad figure broke water. Shayne found the rope ladder and climbed aboard. He helped Liz pull Carl into the boat, then Sarah.

“Let’s go. We’re in rifle range.”

Liz ran to the wheel. The starter coughed, and the motor took hold.

On the island, men were running around seemingly at random. A car’s headlights moved toward the causeway. Burns’s two boats were heading for shore. Shots were being fired. Both boats missed the floating mines, and grounded. The fire in the garage flared higher briefly as a gas tank exploded.

Overhead, Shayne heard the flailing of helicopters. The helicopters came in from two directions, lights blazing, and hovered above the lawn with Will Gentry’s voice booming out over a bullhorn, telling everybody on both sides to stand where they were and drop all weapons. Burns, Valenti, and one other made it back to a boat. They were moving away from shore in a long, sweeping curve under full power when the boat exploded beneath them. On the second try, it had hit one of the mines.

All three were killed.

The only other casualty, surprisingly, was Dino Occhiogrosso, who was hit between the eyes by a chance bullet as he trotted toward his car. The official theory was that this was an accident, but certain Mafia experts believed that in the confusion one of his enemies had finally managed to pay off an old score.