The Naked Detective(71)

The noise was so persistent that we barely heard the second shot—the one that entered Corallo's thickly muscled back and tore through his heart and sent him sprawling facedown dead on the floor behind our chairs.

An instant's complete incomprehension then erupted into mayhem.

Cruz wheeled and fired toward the doorway. His bullet lodged in heavy lumber and bundled insulation.

A slender arm poked into the room. Red fingernails wrapped around a trigger. Another shot rang out. It missed Cruz and knocked my amplifier off its shelf. By reflex, Maggie and I slithered from our chairs and hunkered on the floor, our bodies close and quaking. Embarrassingly but not surprisingly, I'd blown the chance to grab my own weapon and enter the fray.

Blast now followed blast. There were three exchanges, four. A stack of CDs toppled; a speaker grille was gashed.

Cruz moved in our direction; maybe—probably—he had in mind to use us as a shield. But the motion made him more exposed, and before he reached us, a bullet caught him just above his trigger hand; his revolver flew out of his fingers. He shook the wounded arm and dropped low to scramble after it.

Lydia Ortega took the opportunity to stride into the room on high-heel shoes. Her makeup was tidy; her face had taken on a deranged and fatal clarity of mission. She stepped close to Cruz and shot him in the knee; we could hear the crack of bone. He rolled and writhed and kept on crawling. Standing over him, she shot him in the other leg and he finally kept still. A lot of blood was coming out of him, but his eyes were open and he looked more pissed off than frightened.

I cowered on the floor. Strangely, perhaps, I felt no threat from Lydia. She was there to settle scores, to avenge old torments, not to kill outsiders, and not to save herself. But I was still afraid of Cruz. He was desperate and I didn't trust that he was finished. I stared at him; his eyes and my eyes were on a level. Belatedly, I thought to reach up to the little table and grab my own unfired gun. Never taking my gaze off his, I seized my weapon, braced my elbow on the floor, and pointed it at his face. Too late I realized that what I'd picked up was the remote control.

Shot three times, the rogue cop still managed a sarcastic snarl. Just before losing consciousness, he said, "You're pathetic, Amsterdam." Then his eyeballs rolled and his head thumped lightly on the floor.

Maggie scuttled over and knocked his weapon farther away.

Slowly, I sat up and looked at Lefty's daughter. Her eyes were dazed and distant. I took a deep breath. The air was acrid with gunpowder; it caught at the back of my throat. As steadily as I could manage, I said, "It's over now, Lydia. Can I have the gun, please?"

She blinked, then gazed down at me as if she'd only at that moment noticed I was there. Suddenly she seemed confused, and, I thought, a little piqued, like her revenge was not quite perfect. She said to me, "Where's Veale?"

I said I didn't know.

"Where's the tape?" she said.

I nodded toward the VCR. She shot it. Then she handed me her gun. It was very hot.

She sat down in the chair where Maggie had been sitting, and crossed her legs with a rustle of silk, and helped herself to the last of my grappa while she waited to be taken away.





37


"When did you know it was the cops?" asked Maggie.

This was a couple days later; and we were sitting in the hot tub. We had a lot to talk about, and it was hard to talk above the rumble of the jets, so we hadn't turned them on. This meant we had no bubbles to disguise our nakedness. I looked at Maggie's lightly freckled breasts, her tan and tapering midriff.

Sheepishly I said, "I didn't realize it until that stupid stamp came on the tape. Being honest, I didn't totally get it even then. I got it when they stormed into the room."

She nodded, fixed me with the limpid and sincere gray eyes that, to my secret shame, I had at moments doubted. "And now it seems so clear."

"Now it does," I said. "But I made the same mistake that Kenny made. An understandable mistake, I guess. I assumed that Lefty owned the cops, rather than vice versa."

Sweetly, Maggie said, "Those bastards."

I reached over and grabbed my glass of prosecco. One should never drink in the hot tub, of course, but if one must, this off-dry Venetian sparkler is the way to go. I rolled some over my gums and said, "And it never even dawned on me they owned Veale too."

"And played them off against each other," Maggie added.

"For years," I said. I leaned back and glanced up at the poinciana tree that hung over the spa, and thought back to the chat I'd had with Veale the day before.

I'd gone to him to try to help out Lydia, who was in custody, being held without bail. She'd killed a cop and badly wounded another. Forget that Cruz and Corallo were murderers themselves—the brutal men in snorkels, who'd killed Kenny and Andrus, and would surely have killed Maggie and me, had things gone a little differently. The fact was, Lydia had shot Corallo in the back; so much for self-defense. I hoped to show, at least, that there were extraordinary circumstances that should allow her to finesse a plea and ask for clemency.