He had already pulled the trigger four times unsuccessfully.
Click. He pulled it again.
Nada.
How lucky can one guy get? Five pulls, five misses? Five out of five? Nada? Come on. Nobody got that lucky. Maybe somebody up there was trying to tell him something, he told himself. The hell you going to do when you get a message like this, he’d like to know. He took the gun out of his mouth and put it down on the kitchen countertop. He reached over to the little TV and snapped off CNN, which he’d only been sort of half listening to, anyway. Something about Cuba.
The sun was up now.
Everybody in the house was still asleep. He could use a couple of winks himself, couldn’t he? Maybe feel better when he woke up. Unless he dreamed about that damned teddy bear again. The big white one standing in the corner in the little pink room with the white lace curtains.
Goddamn teddy bear was driving him crazy. Ever since the birthday party. He’d imagined it would be easy, handing the bear to the little girl. Walking away. It wasn’t like that. Oh, no. She didn’t let him just walk away.
Little Cindy had laughed when he tore the paper off and showed it to her. Her eyes were wide open, just looking at that bear like it was her favorite present of her whole life or something. She’d stood up on her tippy-toes and given Gomez a big smacker. She hugged that bear to her chest and never let go of it all afternoon. Even though it was almost as big as she was.
Then, when it was finally time to go, Ginny Nettles, who was Fightin’ Joe’s wife and the kid’s mother, had come up to him. Thanked him for his generosity. Said what a wonderful present it was, how it was just what Cindy wanted. Told him she’d like to have Amber and Tiffany spend the night at their house with little Cindy. His own daughters. Right there in the Nettles kid’s room.
Sleeping right there in the same room with the big white teddy bear.
And the bad thing, the really bad thing, was he’d said to her, “Sure, why not?”
Nothing had happened, of course. That’s not how it was going to work. That was definitely not the Big Plan. Still, he never felt right about himself after that night. He would lie there next to Rita, wideawake, thinking about how he’d let his two kids sleep in that kid’s room with the bear. He tried to get his mind off of it. Think about his million dollars waiting for him in Switzerland. Growing like mushrooms in the dark. A dark vault. With a big white bear in the corner, its eyes glowing bright red.
Rita had finally thrown him out of the house three days prior to this little visit with the padre.
He’d come home pretty messed up that night and she’d gotten more pissed than he’d ever seen her. Gave him living hell. So he’d smacked her a couple of times to shut her up. Nothing serious. No stitches, for chrissakes. No broken anything. Nothing to get your panties in an uproar and kicked out of your own friggin’ house over.
She’d be sorry. Wait till she found out how rich her soon-to-be ex-husband was. That would be something. He could see himself driving up in a brand new Corvette Z06, telling her about the bank in Switzerland, the money. But, hey, just stopped by to say good-bye. See ya.
Hey, way cool plate for his new ’Vette.
SEE YA
He was now living on a pullout sofa. In the upstairs apartment of his buddy Sparky Rollins, one of the guards up on the tower. It wasn’t so bad. He could watch dirty movies on TV Drink all the beer he wanted. Eat stuff with his hands. Burp, fart, leave the toilet seat up. Hang at the USO until closing time. Nobody ragging his ass all day and night, right? Not a bad life.
Want to hear something funny? Kind of life he was living? He woke up one morning, went into the head to pee, and noticed his pecker had turned orange. Talk about freaked out! He was dialing 911 when he remembered. He’d fallen asleep watching Debbie Does Denver or Tina Does the Tri-Cities or one of those—and he’d been eating Chee-tos! Yes!
Mystery of the orange pecker disease solved, Sherlock. Life was good.
So why had he snuck back inside his house last night? He’d used the key under the mat to let himself in through the kitchen door. Opened a bottle of Mount Gay and had a few: Gone and got his gun out of the garage and stuck it in his mouth. Pulled the trigger five friggin’ times. Man. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. You talk about dodging a bullet.
After he decided not to pull the trigger that one more time, he’d put the gun down and started crying. Staring at the picture of his kids. Watching the sunrise. Crying like a goddamn baby.
He’d gone upstairs to Rita. Gotten down on his knees beside the bed and begged her to take him back. Said how sorry he was and how he’d never hit her again. She said she thought he was sick. Crazy in the head. She’d made him swear to go to church and talk to Father Menendez about whatever it was that was wrong with him. He’d wanted to crawl in bed with her so bad he’d said yes.
And here he was, just like he promised.
“Father, I’m afraid I’ve done a terrible thing,” Gomez said in the confession booth. “I don’t know if treason is a mortal sin or not, but it’s a bitch all right—sorry, I didn’t mean to say that word—it’s a real bad thing, I know that.”
“Tell me your sins,” the priest said.
For about half a minute, he actually thought he was going to be doing just that. And that’s when he forgot about the bear with the bomb in his belly and thought about the million dollars again.
“Sorry, Father, I guess I’m not feeling all that great right now,” he said. “I’ll catch you later.”
He stood up and left the confessional, hurried out of the church, and got in his broiling car.
Christ, he could use a cold one, he thought, starting the Yugo. He’d seen a cool Corvette ad in one of his magazines. Showed a guy in a red ’Vette, and in big type it said, “Know that warm feeling of belonging you have owning a Yugo? We don’t either.”
29
“You say you know the name of the murderer?” Congreve said, staring at Stubbs Witherspoon in disbelief.
The elderly gentleman had returned to the table with an ancient cardboard box containing the Hawke file. He removed the cover and pulled out a pale blue folder.
“No. I said I know the name of the man responsible for the murders, Chief Congreve,” Witherspoon said. “I will come to that. Please bear with me.”
The old man put his hand on the blue folder. “These are the crime-scene photographs,” he said. “Before I show them to you, could you indulge me a moment? I’m a little curious about Scotland Yard’s interest in a thirty-year-old murder case.”
“Of course. I should have explained that earlier. Have you ever heard the name Alexander Hawke?” Congreve asked.
“Yes. That was the child’s name. The sole witness,” Witherspoon replied. “The husband was Alexander. An English lord. The wife, of course, was Catherine, although everyone called her Kitty. A famous actress. She was one of the truly great beauties of that era. An American, from the south. New Orleans, I believe.”
“Yes, it was a famous marriage on both sides of the Atlantic. The sole issue of that marriage is my employer as of this moment. I met young Alex Hawke over twenty years ago. A famous jewel robber was holed up down on one of the Channel Islands and I was hot on his trail. I found him on the same island where Alex was living with his grandfather, Lord Richard Hawke. A brilliant detective himself, he helped me solve the case. And his grandson has been like a son to me ever since.”