Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 148, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 900 & 901, September/October 2016
- Автор: Дивер Джеффри, Эллин Стенли
- Год: 2016
- Язык: английский
- Год: Penny Publications
- ISBN: 0013-6328
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 148, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 900 & 901, September/October 2016». Краткое содержание книги:
“Did I say something funny?”
“Sort of. The thing is, I don’t dream about money, sport. Mostly, I have nightmares. But in my favorite dream? I’m walking down that dead-end road. To the hilltop Froggy sold you.”
“I don’t—?” I waved him to silence.
“This land you’re buying the rights to, for fracking, or a damn gold mine? It’s in the heart of the Great Lakes. Any mistake up here, like Chernobyl or Love Canal? You could poison half the country. For what? Money? Mister, where I’ve been, whole families live in a hooch half the size of this office. How many cars can you drive, pal? How many steaks can you gag down?”
“I guess Froggett was wrong about you,” he said, shaking his head. “He said you were smart.”
He was smiling as he said it, but his eyes had hardened, and I realized I’d said too much, too soon. He’d pressed an alarm, or given a sign that signaled the goons in the other room.
But he didn’t wait for them. He made his own move instead.
Jerking open the desk drawer, he scrabbled for a weapon, his eyes lighting in triumph as his fingers closed around the butt — I lunged across the desktop and yanked the drawer shut, jamming his hand in it.
He started to scream, but I clamped my free hand across his mouth, choking it off as I pulled the drawer harder, crushing his carpals with an audible crunch.
He went dead white, nearly fainting.
“Not a word, or I’ll break it off,” I murmured, with my eyes locked on his. He nodded, swallowing. I released the drawer and he pulled his hand free, clutching his maimed paw to his paunch, like the wounded animal he was.
I grabbed his weapon from the drawer. A German Luger, for freak’s sake, World War II vintage. Rare and richly engraved, it was probably worth more than the Hummer limo out front, but it was a whole lot older. And it was temperamental.
As I jacked a round into the chamber, the damned thing jammed. I was still struggling to clear the action when one of the goons from the card game burst through the office door, a bearded thug packing an M-16.
“Kill him!” Savarese gasped. But the gunman hesitated.
His assault rifle was set on full automatic and Savarese was in his line of fire. If he cut loose he’d splatter us both. And in the split second it took him to switch over to single fire and shoulder his weapon, I cleared the jam on the Luger.
We fired simultaneously. I felt a hammer blow to my shoulder that blew me across the desktop, onto the floor. I scrambled to my knees, knowing I was already too late — but I wasn’t.
The gunman’s eyes widened in disbelief as he stared down at his life’s blood pulsing from the wound in his chest. The old Luger had punched his ticket three inches low, missing his heart completely. Definitely hit something vital, though. Dropping his weapon, Blackbeard stumbled to his knees, then crashed to the floor like a tree in the forest.
I dropped behind the desk as two more gunmen charged through the doorway, firing frantically as they came. In the army, we call it “spray and pray.” But Savarese was the one without a prayer. Caught in the open with both men blasting away at the desk on full auto, a half-dozen stray rounds stitched a fatal line across his chest.
Stumbling backward into the wall, Savarese clutched at the monitor, trying to hold himself up, but his weight tore the screen out of its mount, bringing it crashing down on top of him in an explosion of sparks and shattered glass.
Crouched behind the desk, I could only see the gunmen’s ankles but cut loose anyway, firing at floor level. I managed to bring them both down, and kept on firing as they fell. With the antique pistol, it took me three rounds to finish the first shooter, but only one for the second. Then a head shot apiece, point blank.
To make damn sure.
With my shoulder on fire, I stayed crouched behind the desk, waiting for the next rush. Thought I heard the front door slam, but my ears were ringing from the gunfire. Couldn’t be sure what it meant. Were the others running? Or had reinforcements arrived? It wouldn’t matter much either way. I was leaking serious red all over the office floor. Couldn’t seem to catch my breath, felt as heavy as a sack of cement.
I tried to stay in focus, to get a handle on what had just happened.
I’d been shot.223 at close range. Through and through, maybe. Not done yet but I was fading fast. My limbs were chilling, my blood pressure was dropping like a rock. I’d go into shock in a minute or two. If I lived that long.
Through the din in my ears, I could hear someone moving in the outer room. Getting closer.
I dropped to the floor, waiting, watching his feet from beneath the desk when he inched through the doorway, edging closer, unsure of where I was. I desperately tried to remember how many rounds the Luger held, how many I’d fired. Couldn’t think. The slide hadn’t locked open, so I had at least one round left. Probably my last. I couldn’t waste it on his ankles. I had to wait...
But it was already too late. I was fading out. I barely had the strength to raise my weapon as he leaned across the desk and looked down...
“Jax?”
“Frog,” I said. I was still deciding whether to fire or not when the room faded away, to be replaced by my favorite, familiar vision.
The old dirt road. In autumn, this time. With the leaves all ablaze. And I wasn’t alone. Up ahead, my Ringo was dancing with excitement, woofing a hello, so glad to see me...
I woke in a snowstorm. Or so it seemed. So much white. White ceiling tiles, white walls, white sheets on my bed.
A silver bracelet on my right wrist. I was handcuffed to the bed-frame.
It should have bothered me, but it didn’t. I was cruising on heavy meds. Only semiconscious. And before long, I was back in my favorite dream, walking that dead-end road, heading home at twilight...
“Nobody in their right mind would buy your cock-and-bull story,” Chief Kazmarek said flatly. She was in a plastic chair beside my bed. Leaning in. And furious. “Savarese and his thugs attacked you over forty acres of hunting land? The corporation he represents has purchased the rights to tens of thousands of acres. What made your little forty so special?”
“Calls for conjecture, Chief,” Dan Froggett said. “Don’t answer that, Jax.”
I didn’t. I was surprised Frog was alive. In that final instant, I’d decided to kill him. Maybe I still would.
Maybe not...
“The corporation Savarese worked for is a well-known mob front, Chief, already under federal indictment in three states, and my client is a war hero,” Frog said. “So unless you have more pertinent questions, Mr. LaDart needs his rest.”
“If it were up to me, you’d both go straight from this room to a holding cell, over at county,” Chief Kazmarek sighed, rising to her feet, glaring down at me. “Luckily for you, it’s not up to me. You’re free to go whenever the doctors clear you, LaDart.” She turned to leave, but paused in the doorway. “But just for the record? It wasn’t your shyster pal here who saved your ass, Jax. It was those guns.”
I raised an eyebrow. Which took most of my energy.
“We found a dozen M-16s at the game farm, full auto capability,” she said. “They were hijacked from a National Guard armory a year ago. The Luger was hot too. A collectible stolen in a museum burglary that left a security guard dead. And you, of course, have an ironclad alibi for all of that, since you were in freaking Afghanistan at the time. I have a sworn statement from your boss over there, attesting to that fact. He says you were one of his best, and he’d welcome you back. I strongly recommend that you take him up on his offer.”
“I still have unfinished business here,” I managed.
“I’d wrap it up quick, if I were you.”
“It won’t take long,” I said.