Trouble in Paradise

Sixty-Three

It was fully dark now. Inside the restaurant, Macklin had lit some candles. Outside, the only light was the small moon, which made thin bright traces on the dark water. Crow thought he could make out the shape of Freddie Costa’s boat lingering out past the little jut of rock to his right, but it was only an area of thicker darkness and he wasn’t sure. It was forty-eight minutes until Freddie could get in close enough. Crow turned and found JD standing near the back door of the restaurant, holding his shotgun.

“It’s me, JD,” Crow said as he walked toward him.

“How much time?”

“ ’Bout three quarters of an hour,” Crow said.

“This is fucking spooky,” JD said. “I mean here we are, and they know we’re here and nobody’s doing nothing about it, and we’re just hanging around.”

“Cops can’t get in touch with us,” Crow said. “Jimmy didn’t give them his cell phone number. They don’t dare fly over because of the hostages.”

“You don’t think they got boats? Out a ways where we can’t see them?”

“This ain’t the FBI, JD. This is a small-town police department.”

“You don’t think the state cops will show up? You don’t think they’ll bring in the Coast Guard?”

“Sooner or later,” Crow said. He was watching the darkness as he talked.

“And then what?”

“Then we got the hostages.”

“You think we can pull this off, Crow?”

“Sure.”

“So why am I so worried, and you’re not?”

Crow smiled in the darkness.

“Well, aside from me being me, and you being you — you got to trust the team. You got to trust Freddie to get in here and pick us up and get us out of here, even if they got a boat out there looking for us. You got to trust me to handle trouble if it comes, and Jimmy to think this through.”

“Jimmy’s fucking crazy,” JD said. “He was great before this thing started to go down. Now he’s fucking coming apart.”

“Still got to trust him. He’s in charge. You unnerstand? We trusted you on the wiring. We trusted Fran on the boom. Now you got to trust us. Nobody’s any good alone. You trust yourself. You trust your crew.”

“Why didn’t Jimmy time this closer?” JD said. “Waiting like this is weird.”

Crow took a Bowie knife from the back of his belt and held it up so JD could look at it.

“You take a good knife,” Crow said. “You need to grind the edge of it regular, or it gets dull.”

“What’s that?” JD said. “A fucking Apache slogan or something?”

“Or something,” Crow said.

With a movement so quick that JD never saw it, he cut JD’s throat, moving sideways as he did so to avoid the blood. A sigh of escaping air was the only sound JD made before he fell forward facedown on the ground and jerked briefly, like a slaughtered chicken, and was still. Crow put the knife blade into the earth a couple of times to clean it and then wiped the dirt off on his pants leg. He put the knife back and took out his gun.

“Fran,” he yelled.

“Yo.”

“Get over here.”

Crow could hear Fran’s footsteps as he came on the run. When he came around the corner, Crow shot him in the chest three times. The bullets spun Fran several staggering steps sideways, and the shotgun he had been carrying sailed off into the darkness. Fran fell on his back on top of JD.

Without looking at the dead men, Crow uncocked the pistol, dropped the magazine from the handle, and put the gun back in its holster. He took some loose ammunition from his pocket and fed three fresh rounds into the magazine. Then he took the gun back out, slid the magazine back into the handle, and holstered the gun again. He paid no attention to the two bodies lying together in the weak moonlight. He looked again out at the water and then walked down to the edge of it where it slid tamely over the stony beach.

He could see Freddie’s boat now. It had moved past the rock jut and followed the tide in. It was still beyond the boulder that marked the farthest point they could wade. Crow turned and walked back into the restaurant. Macklin looked at him as he came into the romantic glow of candle light. Crow held up two fingers. Macklin nodded and smiled and turned to the hostages.

“Not to worry, ladies, just a little downsizing,” he said.