The Best American Mystery Stories 2006
- Автор: Дивер Джеффри, Хантер Эван
- Год: 2006
- Язык: английский
- Год: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
- ISBN: 978-0-618-51746-6
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «The Best American Mystery Stories 2006». Краткое содержание книги:
“It was always about the money, Mac. You just never noticed.”
“Maybe so.”
“So why not get out?” said Dillon. “You’ve got enough put away. And Estaban won’t bother you as long as you’re not competition.”
“Sorry, kid,” said McHenry. “Not ready to give up the reins yet.”
Dillon closed his eyes, listened to the ducks as they drifted away on the water. “Is that your answer then?”
“I’ll talk to the boys. Let them decide for themselves. But I’m still in it. “
Dillon stood, brushed off the seat of his jeans, and rolled the kinks out of his shoulders. He looked down at the old man, seeing his steel-blue eyes, dark in the shade of the fedora’s brim. “I wish you’d change your mind.”
McHenry shook his head. “You know me better than that.”
Dillon nodded and headed back up the hill. Just as he was about to disappear over its edge, McHenry called out to him.
“Hey,” said the old man, “you still flying?”
“No. Too busy on the ground.”
“That’s a shame. You always were pretty good at the controls. Had some real talent up there.”
“It wasn’t talent,” said Dillon. “I had a good teacher.”
Night fell and the apartment filled with gray shadows. Dillon barely noticed. He sat in a dark corner, silent and unmoving, staring at the package on his kitchen counter. He’d been sitting that way for over an hour.
When the package first arrived, Dillon almost opened it. Then he noticed the overnight sticker. The parcel had been sent within the last twenty-four hours, sometime after McHenry’s death. Which meant someone had sent it on the old man’s behalf, possibly someone looking for revenge. If that was the case, maybe opening the package wasn’t such a good idea. It wasn’t ticking, but that didn’t mean anything. Digital timers didn’t make noise, Dillon told himself. And neither did trip wires.
Now, sitting in the dark corner, Dillon finally willed himself to move. He went to the kitchen and pulled a Budweiser from the fridge. Taking a drink, he circled the package a few times, trying to guess what could be inside.
A small block of C-4 would do the trick, he thought. Or maybe a stick of good old-fashioned dynamite.
No, the old man wasn’t like that. McHenry saw killing as a necessary evil, but one to be avoided at all cost. Pure and simple, he didn’t like to hurt people. And he certainly didn’t have the heart to order Dillon’s death. Did he?
Dillon thought back to their last moment together. He had seen a father’s love in the old man’s eyes. Even in the end.
Setting his bottle down, Dillon found a box cutter in a cabinet over the range top. He just had to know. Carefully, he steadied the package and gripped the box cutter tightly. He was sweating and the plastic handle felt slick in his hand. Once he made his first cut, there was no going back.
He placed the blade lightly against the box top, about to slice into the tape. Then the phone rang. Dillon let out a heavy breath and went to answer it.
“Yeah?”
The voice on the other end was frantic, speaking rapid-fire English with a thick Colombian accent. “Leary, is that you? I have bad news. Very bad. Dios mio, you not going to believe it.”
Dillon recognized the voice instantly. It belonged to Miguel Ortiz, one of Estaban’s L.A. lieutenants.
“Miguel, slow down,” said Dillon. “What’re you talking about?”
“It’s Señor Gomez. He’s dead.”
“What?”
“Estaban is dead,” said Miguel, this time louder. “Someone blew up his Mercedes. Right in front of that house he bought in Brentwood. You hear me, Leary? You there?”
Dillon didn’t answer. In a daze, he set the phone back on the receiver and looked once again at the package.
Maybe he was wrong about Wilson McHenry. Maybe the old man was as cutthroat as Dillon himself had been.
Dillon had put McHenry’s prize Dobermans to sleep with a pair of drugged T-bones, then scaled the south wall of the old man’s estate. The wall’s razor wire cut into Dillon’s work gloves, but left his skin unmarked. He would leave no blood at the scene, no DNA, no fingerprints.
Once inside the walls, Dillon carefully made his way across the grounds, sticking to the shadows and avoiding security cameras. He moved very slowly, very patiently. When he finally reached the main house, he saw McHenry sitting alone outside on the deck, drinking a margarita. The old man looked strange there for some reason. Dillon couldn’t put a finger on what it was. Then it occurred to him that McHenry wasn’t wearing his fedora. He looked unnatural without it, like he was missing a limb.
“You didn’t kill my dogs, did you?” asked the old man.
Dillon stepped into the glare of a flood lamp, his shadow stretching across the lawn. “They’re just napping.”
“I appreciate that.” McHenry took a sip of his margarita and eyed Dillon from head to toe, pausing briefly at the .45 automatic in Dillon’s hand. “I’ve let the boys go for the evening,” he said, “so you won’t have any trouble.”
“I’m sorry about this.”
“Don’t be. In a way, I’m glad it’s you and not some punk kid. So how much is Estaban paying anyway?”
“Not enough. But I’ve got family. A sister out in Pasadena. Estaban knows where she lives.”
“I understand. And, believe it or not, I don’t hold a grudge. This is all just part of the deal.”
A cool breeze swept across the old man’s back yard, rustling leaves in the tree branches. McHenry shifted in his chair, set his drink down on the deck floor. “Hey,” he said with a smile, “you remember your first run? Down in Colombia?”
“It was Peru. Eight years ago.”
“That’s right, Peru. We landed that old twin-engine prop on some godforsaken airfield up in the mountains. In high wind too. You were what, twenty-three, twenty-four maybe? Christ, I don’t know what scared you more, the landing or them guys waiting for us.”
“Bunch of mountain men with automatic weapons,” said Dillon, chuckling. “Almost wet my pants when I saw them. Kept seeing scenes from Deliverance run through my head.”
“But how did you feel after it was through?”
“Like I’d won the lottery,” said Dillon.
McHenry’s smile faded. “I miss that feeling. Miss the rush. I guess it was over for me a while ago.”
The old man stared blankly into the night sky, not looking at anything in particular. All the life seemed to drain from his eyes. “I’ve made some arrangements,” he said.
“We’re not talking about a will, are we?”
“Estaban’s a snake, always has been. Play with a snake, sooner or later you’ll get bit. But I’m not going down alone. I’ve seen to that.”
“What’re you saying, Mac?”
McHenry faced him. For the first time, Dillon noticed the deep lines of age etched into the old man’s brow, like time had run a razor across his skin. “In this game, every move is a risk,” he said. “Everything you do has repercussions. I want you to remember that.”
Dillon nodded. “I’ll remember.”
“Good,” said McHenry. “Now let’s get this over with.”
The old man rested back in his chair and closed his eyes, as if he was about to take an afternoon nap. His face held an eerie calm.
Slowly, Dillon raised the .45 and took careful aim. Never in his life had a gun felt so heavy.
McHenry’s boys had been busy. Within an hour, Miguel had phoned Dillon’s apartment three more times, the panic in the Colombian’s voice growing with each call. Three of Estaban’s former lieutenants were dead. One went by bomb. Two others were shot. Then the phone calls stopped all together, and Dillon began to wonder if Miguel himself had gotten hit.