Sunburn(88)

No one saw Vincente reach into his smoking jacket. Wicked quick, his. 38 was in his hand. "Put the gun away, Gino."

Pale light glinted on Vincente's weapon. It took a moment for Gino to believe that he was seeing it. His tone turned wheedling, whiny, as full of despair as cruelty. "Pop, I can't."

"Drop it, Gino," Vincente said.

His son turned away from him, faced back toward his victims. His pistol was raised, his thick finger wrapped around the trigger. His voice was thin, metallic, his throat engorged with blood. "The way it stacks up, Pop, it's either them or me."

"Gino."

This time there was no answer. The Godfather saw his son's arm tighten the way it does in the heartbeat before a person shoots.

"Then it's you, Gino," he whispered.

He did not aim. He shot. The gun's report silenced the world. Bugs ceased buzzing, frogs held their baffled breath. The bullet smashed through Gino's ribs, punctured his heart, exited through a small hole in his side.

For a moment the dead man hung suspended. His expression was bewildered, the eyes affronted, blaming, like the eyes of a caught fish. Stiff-legged, he tumbled forward with a splash. Warm water covered him halfway up his thick torso and he instantly began to sink, undiscoverable, into the muck among the mangrove roots.

Starlight rained down. The swamp noises started in again. For a long moment no one moved. Then Joey Goldman went toward his slain half-brother, touched his subsiding form with a mad mix of hate and grief and love and horror. Debbi's shoulders hitched and trembled, though she made no sound. Arty stared at Vincente. The old man looked very thin and brittle in the moonlight, his long gray face still and archaic as a statue. The hand that held the gun hung limp, as if forgotten, disowned, at his side.

Then Arty saw it start to move. It moved slowly, in a lazy, looping, arcing motion that was bringing the muzzle around to the Godfather's ear.

The ghostwriter yanked his feet out of the marl, strained and slogged and lunged to Vincente's side, threw himself against the old man's lifted arm. The gun deafeningly discharged as the two of them went tumbling to the oozing ground.





50


They lay there together in the muck, salt in their eyes, thunder in their ears, their brains subsumed by a weirdly serene curiosity as to where the bullet had struck. They waited for pain, kept a vigil for injury. Feeling no seep of blood, aware of no wounds opening their flesh to the shallow sea, they slowly pulled themselves out of the mire and stood exhausted in their sodden clothes.

Meanwhile a strange lucidity, the lucidity of disaster, came over Joey Goldman.

He picked up his father's .38, threw it as far as he could throw into the ocean. Then he moved to the Thunderbird, climbed in, drove it chassis deep into the water, wiped the steering wheel and door handles with his handkerchief. The car would be found, he knew, and he knew it didn't matter. Gino had never rented a car in his own name in his life. It was a point of pride with him. Let that be my brother's epitaph, the surviving son reflected bitterly: He never thought he had to pay, and he was always right except for once.

The ride back to Key West was a despondent one, a funeral. No one spoke until they'd left the highway and were on the sleepy streets of Old Town. Then Joey said, "Pop, what you did, you had no choice, we all know that. Arty and Debbi, you saved them."

The Godfather said nothing, sat there blank as death. Streetlamps flicked sporadic light across his ashen face, it was like a sheet was being raised and lowered over him.

On Nassau Lane, Joey stopped. Arty and Debbi slipped out of the Caddy. No one said a word to anybody.

Inside the dark cottage, Ben Hawkins and Mark Sutton heard the vehicle's sudden approach, the opening and closing of doors. They heard the car drive off; then, in the deepened silence, they heard footsteps moving up the path. They struck their marksman's posture, held their pistols in front of them, left hands bracing right wrists.

Depleted, numb, Arty Magnus pushed open his front door, gestured Debbi in ahead of him. They were just across the threshold when Mark Sutton screamed out, "Freeze!"

Arty had thought he was all out of adrenaline, that his burned-out nerves could no longer carry messages of panic. Still, by the kind of ancient stamina that makes a chased deer resilient beyond all reason, he jerked alert again, his hands shot up, his heart hammered.

Ben Hawkins switched on a light, hid his disappointment at finding no kidnapper, no invader, only a terrified and ravaged couple. He appraised them. Debbi Martini's red hair was wild, stalled rivulets of mascara stained her cheeks, her legs were caked with gray muck. Arty Magnus's shorts and shirt were damp and gritty, his neck was streaked with slime. "You look like you've had a rough night," the agent said.