The Viking Funeral

Chapter 36

LOOK'T THAT RUSTING bastard," Jody said to Shane. They were standing on the duty-free pier, studying the old Venezuelan freighter being loaded with containers of cigarettes. It was four P. M. that same afternoon. The only paint on the vessel's brown steel hull was some fresh white lettering on the stern that read Subu Maruy which Papa Joe had explained meant "bright star." Shane thought the rusting bucket looked more like a falling star. They had been told the ship was leased by the King Trading Company: a Mantoor-controlled Venezuelan shipping line.

"This rusting piece a'shit only handles contraband for the drug trade," Jody said.

The Subu Maru was at the end of her days, stuck in the service of the devil, making the short, twenty-five-kilometer run from Aruba to the port of Maracaibo, which sat just inside the Gulf of Venezuela.

As they stood on the dock, watching their containers of cigarettes being lowered into the black hold, something strange happened to Shane-a darkening of Shane's spirit, worse by far than any of his other episodes. It kept building throughout the afternoon, until his chest was tight with anxiety and he was short of breath. Suddenly, he felt he couldn't stand to go on for even another hour.

Although the rest of the Vikings had left the pier, Shane and Jody watched until the last containers were loaded on board. The sun had begun to set, treating them to a luscious, multicolored sunset, before slipping below the surface of the Caribbean Sea, bringing down the curtain of night.

"I'm gonna see if I can find a woman," Jody said with a grin. "How 'bout it? Wanna come? No pun intended."

"No… No… I think I'll get something to eat at the hotel, walk around a little," Shane said as a frightening notion began to haunt him.

"If you change your mind, call me."

"Gimme your cell-phone number," Shane said as he picked up a Spanish newspaper off the dock and handed it to Jody, who wrote down his number and handed it back. Shane folded it carefully, then put the newspaper in his back pocket.

He caught a cab to the hotel but didn't want to go to the room for fear that Lisa would be there, stripped down to her high heels, waiting to destroy what was left of him. Shane got out of the cab, and as he walked through the lobby, he knew that he was at the end… Knew he couldn't go on. Spiritual darkness overwhelmed him. All of his thoughts, no matter the content, just served to drive him lower.

He wandered toward the pool, looking for something, anything, to free him from this suicidal grip. It was a few minutes past eight. Nobody was out there. The lights in most of the cabana suites were on. He could see guests moving back and forth in front of the curtains, getting ready to go out, their lives full of adventure and romance, while his was now only about loneliness and despair. He sat in a pool chair and rubbed his eyes.

There was nothing that mattered to him anymore-not even his pledge to destroy Jody. There were Jodys everywhere, men who lived violent lives without remorse. What was one Jody, more or less?

He felt himself sink deeper.

In desperation, he tried to lock onto something positive.

Chooch.

He focused on the feelings of love for his son. He loved Chooch desperately but now began to realize that his son would be better off without him. He sat on the corded pool chair, wondering how he had become so completely lost.

He got up suddenly and walked into the lobby. "Could I have a piece of paper and an envelope, please?" he asked the pretty island girl at the concierge desk.

"Of course, sir," she said, handing it to him.

He walked across the lobby, then sat at the small writing desk and began a short letter.

He couldn't address it to anyone in particular, because he had no one left at the LAPD whom he trusted, so he began:

TO WHOM IT MA Y CONCERN: The following facts have been obtained regarding a massive money-laundering scheme involving the illegal sales of parallel-market V-5 All-American Tobacco products into Colombia…

Then Shane laid out the entire scheme, with every detail he could remember. The letter went on for three pages. He named all of the Vikings and included Jody's admission that he had killed the two heads of the Detective Services Group. Shane wrote about Leon Fine, dead and buried on the beach up in Oxnard; he named the All-American Tobacco executives: the Prussian general, Lou Petrovitch, and his two helpers, Chip Gordon and Arnold Zook. He described the Mantoors, how they used their power and influence in Aruba to subvert their own dutyfree zone for illegal profit. He named the five San Andresito families, spelling their names as carefully as he could, hoping he had them right. Then he confessed to pulling the trigger on Alexa Hamilton in the Tony Filosiani- supervised plot, intended to set his cover for the Vikings, explaining how he fired, not knowing Jody had reloaded his gun with a Black Talon. Finally, he wrote about Lisa St. Marie, who probably, more than even Jody, had presided over his ultimate corruption. He asked the LAPD Scientific Investigations Division to scan the enclosed newspaper for Jody's fingerprints, proving that he was still alive at the date of publication.

He ended the letter with a message to his son:

Forgive me, Chooch. You will be better off without me. I did the best I could, but it was not enough.

He signed it:

LAPD Sergeant

Shane Scully

He put the letter into an envelope along with the dated Spanish newspaper containing Jody's cell number and fingerprints. Shane sealed the envelope, then walked back to the concierge, bought two stamps, affixed them, and addressed the envelope:

LAPD INTERNAL AFFAIRS DIVISION COMMANDING OFFICER LAPD INTERNAL AFFAIRS DIVISION 304 SOUTH BROADWAY LOS ANGELES,CALIFORNIA 90007 U.S.A.

"Would you please mail this for me?" he asked the concierge.

"Of course, sir," she said as she took the letter. "I'm afraid it won't go out till the morning…"

"That's fine," he said.

She dropped it into a mail slot and smiled at him. "Have a nice evening."

"Yes," he said. "Of course." He turned and headed back out to the pool, but he didn't stop there. He continued toward the lagoon, walking on numb legs.

When he reached the beach, he turned right. It was deserted, no longer the colorful playground of a few hours ago.

He felt the weight of the Beretta on his ankle, heavier with each step. He walked almost a quarter mile from the lit seaside cabanas before he sat down and began untying his shoes.

I'm taking off my fucking shoes just like eighty percent of the dumb-ass suicides I worked, he thought.

He finished removing his shoes and placed them neatly beside him. Then he peeled off his socks, the weight of the Beretta heavier with each passing second.

His mind was lasering back and forth across this final decision, searching for one last handhold-one positive emotion that would save him.

But when he really examined it, there wasn't anything left for him. Chooch was going to be in college in eighteen months. With no one to vouch for him, Shane would be vilified by the LAPD and eventually caught and convicted of Alexa's murder. He couldn't face Chooch's reaction to that.

He had no friends left on the department. Alexa had been the last, and he had killed her.

He had once felt brotherhood and love for Jody, but now he knew that Jody was a sociopath and had just been using him all these years, pretending love and friendship but feeling nothing. Worse than that was the realization that Shane was becoming more like Jody every day.

All he wanted to do now was to get off the ride.

Slowly, he pulled the 9-millimeter automatic out of its slide holster.

He chambered it.

The unusually loud click rang in the empty night.

One last important decision: Where to place the muzzle?

Under the chin at the mandible? Aiming up through the horizontal palatine bone into the anterial cranial fossa-coroner's terms echoing back at him from hundreds of autopsies.

Perhaps he should stick the muzzle in his mouth, go for the medial soft palate uvula… Drive that two-ounce pill right up into his cerebral peduncle. Usually a sure thing, but on one or two occasions, he'd seen that path produce total brain vegetation but not death.

Maybe he should just stick with the reliable old temple shot. Put the muzzle on his inferior temporal line, just above the ear… Pull the trigger and hope for the best. Hope that the slug wouldn't ricochet around inside his cranium but leave him breathing through a tube for ten years, until he finally rotted from the inside out.

As a cop, he'd seen all of these muzzle positions fail to get the job done. His last meaningful decision.

What a dumb fucking problem, he thought ruefully.

The old homicide dicks called this dilemma "betting the house." Slowly, Shane brought the gun up and stuck it into his mouth. His hand was shaking. He could taste the Hoppe's gun oil on his tongue, pressed flat by the weapon. His teeth began chattering on the barrel.

"God help me," he said quietly, his words slurring on the cold metal.

He tried to pull the trigger, but something stopped him… Some last-second doubt. And in that moment, everything changed.

Somebody came out of the dark and hit him hard from behind, knocking him forward.

The gun flew out of his hand, splashing into the water while Shane was thrown, face-first, onto the wet sand.

He felt a huge weight land on his back. A massive arm locked around Shane's throat. In that instant, he changed from a potential suicide to a potential homicide. With this change in category came a desperate will to survive.

He fought and clawed to get the man's arm off his windpipe, struggling to keep from being strangled on that deserted stretch of beach.

"This is for shooting me, and for killin' Rod, and for screwing Lisa," Victory Smith whispered, the gasps of hot air filling Shane's ear.

Shane managed to tuck his chin down and get his hands around the grizzled arm, which was slowly choking him.

Suddenly, Victory's grip slipped.

Shane got his mouth on the weight lifter's huge forearm and bit down hard.

"Fuck!" the steroid jockey screamed, letting go.

Shane rolled out from under Smith and came up on his knees, just in time to field a left hook that caught him on top of his head, ringing his ears, starring his vision, and knocking him back into the light rippling waves at the edge of the lagoon. Shane landed on his ass in two feet of warm tropical water. Pain shot up his spine. He had come down on something hard. Instinctively, he reached down and grabbed it-

His Beretta.

As Victory Smith ran toward him, splashing water, Shane brought the gun out from under him and pulled the trigger.

The Black Talon shell casing had resisted the seawater, and the gun fired, bucking loudly in his hand. The exploding slug took Victory in the center of his simian forehead, blowing it wide, but the weight lifter kept coming… Cerebral fluid and brain tissue spilling down his pockmarked face as he ran. The muscled giant took two more faltering steps and fell toward Shane, his arms out in front of him, grabbing Shane in a lifeless hug as he landed. Shane felt Victory's heart beat twice before it stopped.

It was suddenly quiet.

All Shane could hear was the gently rippling surf and the distant sound of rustling palm fronds. He let go and pushed the huge man off, watching as Victory rolled onto his back into the churning surf. Seawater washed the sickening hole in his head, turning the swirling surf dark with blood and brain matter.

Shane staggered to his feet, then looked down at his fallen adversary. Why hadn't he just let Smith finish the job he'd already started? What had made him fight so desperately to survive?

Shane stood over the corpse, watching it roll and turn in the light surf. A lifeless ballet. The swirling black patterns of Victory's strange personality washing out of his skull into the seawater. He knew this memory would be locked in his subconscious forever.

Finally, he reclaimed himself and pulled Victory up onto the beach, dragging the two-hundred-fifty-pound man… Tugging, struggling to pull him up to the berm, where the white sand met with a ridge of low, tropical vegetation.

Shane got down on his knees and started to dig a hole, using his hands to paw up the granules until he got down where the sand was damp. Buried shells stabbed at his fingers as he dug, breaking his nails and making his hands bleed.

He could hear someone crying softly and looked around, afraid he was being observed. Then he realized he was the one crying.

He locked his mouth shut and forced himself to stop. Finally, Shane had dug a trench that was two feet deep and seven feet long; hardly big enough to hide this hulking giant for long. The first strong wind would uncover him, but Shane could dig no longer. He was completely spent. He took Victory's wallet and rolled the steroid junkie into the shallow grave, then covered him up until nothing was left but a foot-high mound of packed sand.

He picked up the murder weapon, wiped the Beretta clean on his shirt, then threw it as far as he could into the lagoon. He heard a faint splash somewhere way out there as it hit.

When Shane got back to his room, it was empty. Thankfully, Lisa wasn't there, but he saw that there was something on his pillow, glittering and colorful. He walked to it, wondering what it was, and whether Lisa had left it there.

He picked it up and stared at it in confusion. It was a two-inch round medal, with a red ribbon attached.

The LAPD Medal of Valor.

"You were the one who really earned it, so it's only fair that you should keep it."

He turned, and she was standing just outside on the balcony.

She walked toward him, took him in her arms, and held him. Then he could feel her pressed against him. Suddenly he was kissing her, holding her head in both his hands.

But he had shot her, watched her fly backward… Watched as the huge pool of blood spread around her. Yet somehow she'd come back. Somehow she'd survived.

Alexa Hamilton was alive.