Lassiter

33 Target Practice

With the top down on my old buggy, tiny black gnats were dying squishy deaths, plastered against my face and ears. I kept the needle at 75, roaring west on Tamiami Trail. I was headed to the Trail Glades Range to catch up with Amy. I considered just why she wanted to take target practice, and every possible scenario ended with Charlie Ziegler facedown in a pool of blood.

I floored the accelerator, and my old warhorse responded, albeit two seconds after spurs had been applied to horseflesh. I passed squat one-story strip malls, with their discount dentists, pedicurists, and dog kennels. Two egrets flying overhead were reminders that we were in the Everglades, or what used to be the ’Glades, before draining and filling. Now, ticky-tack housing developments moved farther from the city and deeper into the wetlands.

The air was heavy with moisture, the heat stifling. No hint of the beach breeze just twenty-five miles to the east. Traffic was light. Thanks to the desk clerk, I couldn’t stop looking for out-of-state plates. “Home on the Range” from Kansas, “Live Free or Die” from New Hampshire, “Land of Enchantment” from New Mexico.

The C.D. player was turned up full blast, Tom Russell singing “Tonight We Ride” over the wail of the wind.

“We’ll skin ole Pancho Villa, make chaps out of his hide.”

A tale of good-natured violence, the song speaks longingly of scalping, whoring, rustling, and robbery. Needless to say, it’s one of my favorites.

About a mile from the range, I caught sight of an old Chevy Impala with whitewall gangsta tires, Superfly headlights, and a purple, metal-flake paint job. Hard to miss, especially since I’d seen it pull onto the MacArthur Causeway behind me back on South Beach.

I hit the brakes and slid into a gas station. The Impala sailed past me, and I tore out after it. Within moments, we were both doing 85 on the straight stretch of pavement that heads into the slough and all the way to Naples. I got close enough to make out the Florida plate-Sunshine State-picked up a pen, and scribbled the number on my arm.

That made three different cars tailing me. The Escalade was owned by a federal inmate. I never got the plate number of the Hummer, and now a souped-up Impala. It made no sense.

I slowed just before Krome Avenue, the old Eldo kicking up a plume of dust as I skidded into the parking lot of the gun range. The Impala kept going west.

I parked next to a black sedan and vaulted out of my car without opening the door, just the way Magnum, P.I., used to do. I could hear the pop-pop of small-arms fire, a dozen different calibers, loud enough to simulate combat.

Once inside the clubhouse, I scanned the outdoor range through a large window. There were only a handful of shooters.

Amy Larkin stood at a shooting station, staring at a target that had been set about twenty-five feet away. She held a small gun in a two-handed grip, knees slightly bent, ear protectors in place. She fired. Waited. Fired again. From this distance, I couldn’t tell if she’d punched a bull’s-eye or winged an egret flying over the slough. She was taking her time. Five or six seconds between shots.

“You the husband?”

I turned. The man had a graying brush cut and a big body. His polo shirt’s logo said, “Range Master.”

“Come again?”

“Calamity Jane out there.” The man pointed at Amy, who reset her feet and fired another shot.

“No. Why?”

“Boyfriend, then?”

“What’s it to you?”

The guy folded his arms across his chest. I figured him for an ex-cop who missed the work. “When a woman looks like she’s been crying all night and starts taking target practice first thing in the morning, it usually means she caught her man cheating. If he shows up, well, that’s when I intervene.”

“I’m her lawyer.”

He studied me a second, and I must have passed his cop’s lie-detector test. “Tell her not to try and shoot anyone. She can’t hit shit, anyway.”

I looked up and saw Amy zipping her gun into a nylon pouch. In a moment, she was headed along the path to the parking lot. I headed out to meet her.

When I approached, she was standing behind my Eldo ragtop, staring at my personalized license plate: JUSTICE?

Yeah. With a question mark. I’m not nearly as sure of things as I used to be.

“Amy, what’s going on?”

She turned to face me. “Are you asking as my lawyer or Ziegler’s?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Where were you last night?”

Sounding like the cheated-on spouse the range master imagined. “At Charlie Ziegler’s, but I think you know that. Were you following me or spying on him?”

“How much did Ziegler pay you to sell me out?”

“He offered thirty thousand.”

“Cheap,” she said.

“That’s what I thought.” I told her the rest. One hundred thousand dollars if she wanted to close up shop and go home.

“What’s he paying you under the table to get me to go along?” Her eyes had gone cold.

“Nothing. And you can have my thirty thousand, too.”

“How can I believe you when you’re working for Ziegler now?”

“I went there to learn whatever I could. For you. He denied killing Krista and made the offer.”

“And now he’s waiting for my answer?”

I nodded.

She whipped out the gun, a little Sig Sauer. “Tell him this.” She steadied the pistol with both hands, then popped a shot into the meat of my car’s left front tire. Maybe she was a shitty shot on the range, but from three feet, she was deadly. The tire wheezed in pain.

“I’ll bet you have a spare,” she said.

“I do.”

Her arm jumping a bit, she put a shell into the right front tire, the gunshot lost in the echo of a hundred other rounds. My wounded Eldo now looking like Ben-Hur’s chariot.

“Amy, please put the gun down.”

She aimed at my gut, a wider target than those steel-belted radials.

“I don’t know why I trusted you,” she said. “I should have gone after Ziegler straight off.”

“Don’t do this. I’ve got half a dozen new ideas I haven’t even discussed with you.” In fact, I had one, but half a dozen seemed more promising.

“I’ll bet.”

“I’ve got Snake’s real name. It’s Aldrin. He could be the key to-”

“Too late, Jake. I’m done.” She started backing up toward her car.

“The second you’re out of sight, I’ll call the cops.”

“I’ll bet you would. You wore a wire and ratted out a client once, didn’t you?”

“What about your religious beliefs? ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ ”

“Maybe I’m wrong and you’re right. The universe is chaos. There’s no all-seeing God to reward the just and punish the wicked.”

Why’d she listen to me about that? Nobody listens to me.

“Let’s go talk to someone, Amy. A counselor, maybe.”

“A shrink, you mean. Isn’t that what your friend Castiel threatened? Commit me to the loony bin. Are you all in this together?”

Her gun hand was trembling, her index finger still on the trigger. I measured the distance between us, figured two steps, then a leap to reach her.

“Try it, I’ll shoot you in the face,” she said, reading my mind.

With that, she fired a third shot, puncturing the right rear tire. The tire wheezed like a lung shot through-and-through, and I stayed frozen in place.