Night Watch

FIFTY-FOUR

“I’m happy to pay for the wine I drank,” Mike said, lowering his hand to his side. His off-duty gun was probably in a shoulder-holster under his arm. “No need to shoot.”

“On the house, Detective. Keep your hands away from your pockets. More wine and fewer questions, you’d be on your way home.”

“Alex,” Luc said. “Are you all right?”

I nodded at him while Danton answered. “Sit yourself down, Luc. Back at the table where Jim is.”

Luc stood his ground for several seconds, until Danton fired directions at Josh Hanson.

“There are several lengths of rope in that cabinet behind you, Josh,” Danton said. “Sit them down and tie their hands to the chair, behind their backs.”

“Let me recommend something to you,” Mike said. “You and Josh take a flying head start on us, Peter. Get yourselves out of here right now, before anybody else gets hurt. Go right to the airport, if you’re smart. You can live like a king in the South of France. Like a deposed dictator or any other kind of thug. I bet Gil-Darsin’s villa’s already on the market.”

“Shut up, Chapman.”

“Leave us here for a few hours. Overnight even. You know we can’t call out on these phones. Go wherever the hell you want to go and just let us be. You’re not wanted for murder in France.”

“I didn’t kill the girl there,” Danton said.

“They’re ready to tag that one to Luigi,” Mike said. “Not to worry.”

I could hardly stop trembling from the combination of cold and terror.

“Give me your gun, Detective,” Danton said, as I watched Josh wrap the rope around Luc’s hands.

“My day off, Peter. Left my Glock home in bed. I just came for a ride in the country,” Mike said, lifting his arms in the air. “All in the name of love. Now, if you let Alex sit down, maybe she’ll stop shaking so badly.”

“She’ll get used to it.”

“Come here, Coop,” Mike said. “Go sit back there with Luc.”

I knew Mike wanted me out of the way in case he and Peter reached the point of exchanging gunshots, but I couldn’t bring myself to move farther into the corner of this death trap of a vault.

“She’ll stay right here until I see your heat,” Danton said, slamming the shotgun against my back.

“I’m telling you, man. Sometimes I just don’t pack. Like you, the night you slit Luigi’s throat.” Mike gestured by running his finger across his neck. “I mean it’s more quiet than shooting him, but it left so much fucking blood all over the houseboat. It would have been much neater if you’d just pumped one or two shots in his gut.”

“Hurry up, Josh. Time to pat down the detective.”

“Stop squirming,” Josh Hanson said to Luc, who seemed to be trying to help Mike in his own way.

Mike leaned one hand on the metal shelf below a row a bottles. “You were smart to wear gloves, though. I gotta give you that. Crime Scene tried everything to get DNA outta that place. Not a whit.”

“I’d take credit for surprising you with my intelligence, Mike, but then you’d be able to say ‘gotcha.’”

Mike was rolling his head to the side. I thought he was signaling me to break away from Danton and take shelter in the next row over.

“Oh, I can still say ‘gotcha,’ my man. You know they found a pair of latex gloves in the canal, caught up under Luigi’s arm, in the material of his jacket. I guess too much Gowanus sludge had gotten inside to get DNA out of them to see who’d been wearing them, and most of his blood had washed off in the canal. Tested positive for blood, but in amounts too minuscule to test.”

“Convenient,” Danton said. “Search him, Josh.”

“Almost there, Peter.”

“But there weren’t even any traces of blood on the two fingers of the right-hand glove,” Mike said. “So I’m thinking you were the killer, and your chopped off, mutilated digits didn’t reach to the tip of the gloves when you were wearing them. So no blood got on them when you sliced the Squid. Not even a drop. How’s that for a deduction?”

“You should keep your thoughts to yourself, Detective. In fact, if you hadn’t been so curious about narcotics trafficking in Africa fifteen minutes ago, and about what’s behind the wine labels in the bottles here, you and these lovebirds might have been on your way back home.”

It was Mike who had triggered Danton’s suspicions, not Luc. But that hardly mattered, now that we were captured in his lair.

Josh Hanson tugged at the rope behind Luc’s back to secure it, did the same to Jim, then started to walk toward Mike. I don’t think I had ever seen my friend react so quickly. He swiveled in Hanson’s direction, bringing with him a bottle from the shelf he’d been leaning on and cracking it against the side of Hanson’s head.

The bottle splintered and the wine spurted out. Hanson fell to his knees and toppled onto his side, screaming in pain. Shards of glass were lodged in the skin on his face like arrows shot out of a bow.

“Run, Coop!” Mike shouted at me.

I pushed at Danton while he used both hands to raise the shotgun. I knocked him off-balance and he cursed at me as he tried to regain his footing.

Luc yelled for me to get out of the way, too, and the last thing I saw before I turned the corner-looking for an escape route-was that Mike had unholstered his revolver and was pointing it at Peter Danton.