The Killing Hour

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

They cross the road, Cyris glancing at the Holden that was parked outside the shopping mall last night, and I’m starting to wonder if he recognizes it. He can’t. Too many of them on the roads for that. There’s nobody around now. The beach is ours. For all my planning we may as well have been back out in the woods.

They disappear from view as they reach the steps. I take the pistol from my pocket and tuck it into the waistband of my pants around the back. The wind is getting stronger, whipping the sand up much higher now. I’m thankful for the jacket. Cyris and Jo reach the top of the stairs. He lets the wind push the side of his overcoat out so I can see the shotgun beneath. It looks like Landry’s Mossberg, except it’s shorter. Either it’s a different weapon or he’s cut off part of the barrel. I hold my ground. Jo has her arms in front of her with a towel over her hands. No doubt they’re tied together.

He smiles at me when he’s within talking distance. “Glad you could make it, buddy.”

I look at Jo. No obvious signs of assault. “You okay?”

She nods, but doesn’t say anything.

“She’s just peachy, just peachy,” Cyris says.

Jo is still wearing Landry’s pants and jacket, and she’s still wearing her bra beneath it. I try to think of that as a good sign. They stand next to each other, about fifteen feet from me. The wind makes it difficult to hear. Jo lets go of the towel over her wrists and the breeze catches it like a kite and yanks it into the night.

“Unlock the handcuffs,” I shout, looking at her hands.

Cyris pulls the keys from his pocket, turns toward her, then turns back to me. The wind has his scraggly black hair standing on end. The grin on his face tells me he’s about to do or say something he thinks I haven’t expected. He raises the keys in the air and they follow the path of the towel.

“You bastard,” I yell, moving to the side of the pier and looking over the edge. All I can see is black sand and water and I can’t tell which the keys have hit. “Why the hell did you do that?”

“Stop pissing around, partner, and give me the money.”

“The money’s here. Let her go.”

“Looks like we need to develop some trust.” He pulls a knife from his pocket and touches the blade against Jo’s face. I’ve seen how quick he is with that weapon.

I put the bag of money down and step back. “It’s all there, I swear.”

“On your life.” He laughs. I don’t get the joke. “Take another step back,” he says, and I do, so now I’m three feet or so away from the garbage bin.

He pushes Jo forward until she’s level with the bag. He points the gun at her and forces her to crouch down and open it. She follows his instructions, and holds it open so he can see inside. One hundred thousand dollars, stacked neatly, looks back out at him.

He looks up from the money. “Very good,” he says.

She does the bag up and stands back up.

“Now let her go.”

He shoves her in the back, and I manage to catch her before she falls. I realize I should have let her fall and drawn my pistol instead. I realize he’s done this so I would instinctively react to catch Jo rather than whatever else it was I had planned.

“One more thing, asshole,” he says.

I look up knowing exactly what it is I’m going to be seeing, and then seeing exactly what I feared it would be. He has the shotgun pointing at us.

“We had a deal,” I protest, stalling for time.

“A deal, uh huh, we had a deal, and I upheld it, partner. I gave you the woman, I gave her to you in one piece. Untouched, just like you wanted her. What in the hell is your problem?”

I start maneuvering Jo behind me, away from the blast of the gun. I keep pushing at her, reaching behind myself, knowing Cyris will think I’m doing one thing when I’m actually doing another. He thinks I’m being noble. I’m just reaching for my gun.

“You’ve got your money. Now leave us alone.”

“No.”

My fingers curl around the handle. One false move and I could shoot myself in the ass.

“I called the police,” I say.

“Bullshit.”

“They’re watching right now.” I slowly pull the gun upward before putting my finger into the trigger guard. At the same time the breeze whips a load of sand off the beach into our faces.

“I’d better put on a good show.” He pumps the Mossberg. The shell crunches into place.

“I have more money.”

“How much more?”

“Fifty grand.”

“Why don’t I believe you?”

I can see he wants to. His head is slightly cocked to the side as if the sound of dollar signs crunching inside his mind is heavy. He’s contemplating what he can do with a hundred and fifty grand. Then he smiles. He has finished contemplating.

“I can get it for you.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow morning.”

He lowers his gun. Just slightly, but it’s all I need. They say money can’t buy happiness, but they’re wrong. A make-believe fifty thousand dollars has just brought me all the happiness I need.

I bring my arm around, not wanting to fire a gun in public, but not knowing what other option I have. The gun appears in one smooth, sweeping movement that makes Cyris’s eyes open wide. I pull the trigger and the gun must be in full automatic mode, because within a second the clip is empty and the recoil has pulled the gun upward and it’s pointing at the sky. Cyris’s shotgun sounds like thunder, then metal rain fills the air as pellets from the cartridge spray across the railings, but I don’t feel the tug of any impact. The gun falls out of his hands. I must have hit him. I pull the trigger on my gun again, but it’s empty.

He has one arm hanging by his side, but he reaches down to the shotgun with his other one. I run to him before he can get to it, and he realizes that’s how it’s going to be, and he stands up straight and throws a punch at me that I manage to duck. I crash the gun into the side of his head. It jags off his skull and Cyris cries out as his head snaps sideways. The momentum from his swinging punch tugs him forward and he crumples into a heap next to his shotgun. I kick the Mossberg further away. I kick the knife away too. I step back and study him. He’s perfectly still. I kick him. He doesn’t move. But I’ve gone through this before with him.

Jo moves up behind me. “Is he dead?” she asks.

I shake my head. I dig into my pockets for Landry’s handcuff keys and pull them out. We try for a few seconds to undo her cuffs, but it’s obvious the key won’t fit. “You should go and search for the keys.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes.”

“There’s no chance of finding them,” she says.

“There’s no chance of finding them if you stay up here,” I tell her.

“Charlie. . what are you going to do?”

“I’ll come down in a minute, okay?”

“Charlie?”

“I’ve got a couple of things to do.”

She slowly nods. “You don’t have to do this, Charlie. We can take him to the police.”

“If he ever gets away he’ll come after us. You know that, don’t you? Or in ten years when they let him out for good behavior. It’s either him or us, Jo. What do you want me to do? Let that happen? He has to pay for what he’s done.”

She doesn’t answer. Instead she raises her cuffed hands over my head and embraces me. We hold each other while I keep my eyes glued to Cyris. He’s not moving. We let go and she runs along the pier as the wind helps her along.

Sand flicks my face and I use my hands to shield my eyes. So much of it is in the air I can’t even see the beach. I have no idea how we’ll find the keys. As I walk toward Cyris I load the magazine of the Glock back up. I find the switch to change it between full auto and single shot. The urge to kill Cyris is with me, and it’s the sort of urge I want to give in to. I don’t doubt he’ll come after us when he’s released from prison after spending the appropriate amount of years that balances the scales for killing at least four people. I grab the rope and Landry’s handcuffs from the trash bin.

I want to kill him. The plan has always been to kill him.

I just don’t think I can.

I guess I knew that all along. It’s why I have the handcuffs. And the rope.

I use my foot to roll him onto his back. There’s blood on his shoulder, but nowhere else. He’s wearing a bulletproof vest. The Glock has stitched a diagonal line from the bottom right up to his top left, then stitched one bullet into him for luck. The same anger that burned through me when I found Frank leaving a briefcase full of money is burning through me now. I snap the handcuffs around his wrists. The moment the second bracelet is in place he seems to snap out of his fugue. He shoots both hands upward, hitting me in the jaw. The gun goes skittering into the darkness. I reach out and the rope wraps around his neck. It pulls him into a sitting position. I move forward and wrap it around his neck once more. He pushes me off him and tries to unwrap himself. I pull hard on the rope and he follows the direction, getting to his feet. He rushes me, crushing me between his body and the lamppost. My head clangs against it, and when I look down I see four of his legs getting tangled in two sets of ropes. He tries to keep balanced, but the rope is wrapped around him and the handcuffs make it that much more difficult. I grab hold of the rope and twist my body aside, pulling him into the lamppost. Then I push my body weight into him, lifting him onto the railing. I hold him at the top and we seem to realize at the same time that he’s balanced to go either way. All of a sudden he stops fighting me and I stop pushing.

I’m not sure if I meant it to go this way or not.

“We can be partners,” he says.

“Go to Hell.”

His hands reach out and grab the railing as he falls. He hangs there, and I take the time to tie off the end of the rope around the lamppost. He sees what I’m doing and knows he should have let go and taken his chances with the water.

“I fucked your wife,” he tells me. “And I’m going to fuck her again when this is over.”

I kick his fingers and then he’s gone.

He doesn’t make a sound as he falls the fifteen feet. But the rope does. It comes to a sudden snap, then strains against the side of the rail, moving back and forth in small sudden movements. It sounds like grinding teeth. When I look over the edge he’s swinging from side to side. He’s managed to wrap an arm around the rope to take the impact from his neck. Twenty feet below him is the ocean.

I turn and look back at the pier. Our struggle, from the moment he arrived, has brought us two-thirds of the way toward the end. I make my way over to my gun and spot Cyris’s black satchel just ahead of it. I pick it up, curious to see what he had planned for us tonight, and find a bottle that holds around a liter of gasoline, a lighter, and a knife. I can only imagine.

Cyris is still swinging, his hands on the rope to keep him from strangling. He’s trying to untangle his neck. I open the bottle of gasoline and pour a quarter of it onto the leather satchel, then I lie down and put my hand through the railing. I’m on automatic now. This path I’m taking is one I don’t even want to consider veering from. I dump the contents of the bottle, getting as much fuel onto Cyris as the wind will allow. I stand back up, then look down so I can see his eyes as I take the lighter from my pocket. I can see little because of the sand swirling around us. I tie the handle of the satchel around the rope so it has enough room to slide, then use the lighter to set fire to it. Even in the strong wind it catches immediately. I let it drop and it spirals down the rope quickly toward Cyris. The wind pushes it around, but doesn’t blow it out. Cyris swings harder as he struggles to untie the rope around his neck with his handcuffed hands. Short, jerky movements. The satchel reaches his hands and he cries out and pulls them away, but then the noose starts choking him so he has to put his hands back.

His hair catches fire. So does his beard.

For a few seconds I almost feel sorry for him.

Almost.

He struggles as the fire jumps onto his clothes.

He doesn’t scream. Always the tough guy to the end.

I lean over the railing and set my sights on my target with the gun.

Action Man: it is time for all this to end.