She picked up an ashtray—“Wake up!”—and hit him in the chest.
That’s when . . .
Gasp.
Blood trickled out of the far side of his mouth. More blood in a circle on his shirt, just above the lung.
“He’s . . . dead? . . . Oh God! Oh, Jesus!”
Thoughts pinwheeled, eyes shooting everywhere. She noticed something on the floor. Whoever killed him had been going through his stuff, scattering manila folders, computer disks and a disgorged wallet.
Brook slowly retreated in terror. “No! No! No! No! No! . . .”
Back down on the floor, the wallet had fallen open to display a silver badge.
“Dammit, they got the addresses mixed up!” Brook gulped air. “It’s the real DEA agent! I couldn’t be any more fucked!”
Not yet.
Then more perspiration, a slippery finger, and ignorance on how to properly clear a chamber.
Boom.
The shotgun exploded with a direct hit on the late Rick Maddox.
Brook had never fired a weapon in her life, and true to the gun dealer’s word, it kicked like a stallion, flying backward right out of her hands before crashing through a window and landing somewhere out in the yard.
Now the pounding chest and unsteady legs were becoming a serious barrier to getting out of the house. Brook was going into shock. She hyperventilated and stumbled down the hall to the front of the house.
The doorbell rang.
Brook screamed.
The person at the door thought it was just another TV show. He rang the bell again.
Brook somehow managed to get to the peephole and look outside. What the hell? Just a bunch of feathers. It looked like some guy . . . in a chicken suit?
The bell rang again.
From the other side of the door: “Cluck, cluck, cluck. Chicken-gram . . .”
Brook severely fainted.
Outside on the porch, the man in the chicken suit grabbed a rubber mallet and turned to his assistant. “Coleman, apply force on the knob while I use the bump key.”
“Serge, it’s already open.”
“Crap, still haven’t gotten to use the bump key.”
“And there’s a babe on the floor,” said Coleman. “Is she dead?”
Serge bent down for a pulse. “No, just passed out.”
Brook woozily came around. She looked up. “The chicken!” And passed out again.
Serge removed the chicken head from his costume and scratched under his left wing. “She’s acting really weird.”
Coleman leaned in for a closer look. “Is she the one we were following?”
Serge nodded. “Pretty sure. Brook Campanella. Mahoney showed me a client photo he’d enlarged from her driver’s license, but you know how those things look.” Serge lightly tapped her on the cheek. “Where’s the dude who lives here?”
No answer.
Serge pulled out the pistol tucked under his suit. “Stay here with her while I check the rest of the house.”
“Roger.”
A beer cracked open.
Serge crept down the hall toward the sound of a television . . .
Out on the street, five houses away, a driver sat in a quiet Beemer and slipped on leather shooting gloves. A dead, straight line of a mouth as he stared ahead at a Firebird that had somehow limped across the city with a steaming radiator and was now parked behind Brook’s Ford. On the Beemer’s passenger seat sat the black-and-white photo of Serge that Enzo had positively matched to the driver who had exited the damaged vehicle moments earlier. As he unzipped a cushioned leather satchel and removed a silencer, memories drifted back to the last time he visited Miami. Enzo was a steady one, but it still stung that he had been assigned backup behind that ass who couldn’t carry his water. What did he do to deserve cleanup duty? And it wasn’t a small mess. First the clown with the rifle who couldn’t get out of the way of his own dick. Then:
Felicia.
And now:
Serge.
At least he was the primary on this sanction. But what a pesky gnat that Serge was. Enzo could easily have taken him out with Felicia at that totally exposed sidewalk café on Ocean Drive. Except the only actionable target is the one you’ve got clearance for. That’s the cardinal rule in a need-to-know business, or someone will be given clearance to take you out. Everything is compartmentalized, so for all Enzo knew, Felicia’s lunch companion might have been someone on his own side who was helping set her up by drawing her into the open. You never knew.
And now here he was, sent back to Miami for more mop-up. One thing for sure, he wanted a raise . . .
. . . Back inside the house, Coleman sat on the floor drinking a Schlitz and cradling Brook’s head in his arm. “Time to wake up, sleepyhead.”
Serge came running back into the room. “Coleman, we’ve got serious problems. There’s a dead guy in the den with his head blown completely off. I’m thinking Rick Maddox.”
“Can I see?”
“Yes,” said Serge. “I’m not doing this for your pleasure, but we need to sanitize the room for our client’s sake.”
“Cool!”
Brook had started coming around again, but Coleman got up and let her head hit the floor.
They went into the den and Serge turned down the volume on Matlock, which had resumed in its entirety following the game.
“So that’s Rick Maddox, the fake DEA agent?” asked Coleman.
“Yes and no.” Serge wiped down surfaces. “The scammer is using the name Maddox, which he lifted from a real agent in Miami.”
“That’s quite a coincidence.”
“Not really.” Serge picked a shotgun shell off the floor. “The grifter began his scheme somewhere else, but when victims and law enforcement started closing in, he migrated to Miami for cover.”
“How’s that cover?”
“Since the real Maddox had a legitimate address, the schemer was hoping his adversaries might be thrown off course by a false flame.” Serge held up a wallet he’d found on the floor.
“Is that a real badge?”
“The cover worked: Mahoney got the two addresses scrambled.”
“You’re blaming Mahoney for the dead guy?”
“Not his fault,” said Serge. “He doesn’t know what his clients will do with the info—and he took extra precautions with this gal, even though the last thing she appears to be is a killer. But right now time’s the new enemy.”
He ran back into the foyer, tossed the badge on a table and shook Brook hard by the shoulders. “You have to wake up right now!”
“W-what?” Her eyes weakly opened.
“We work for Mahoney, so don’t faint on us again.” Serge propped her into a sitting position. “We’re here to help you.”
She looked around. “Dear God, I’m still here. It’s not a dream.”
“Or a novel,” said Serge. “But right now you have to tell me as quickly as you can what happened here.”
“Just scare him! I, he, TV on. Rum, badge, Dad, La-Z-Boy, shotgun, karma . . .”
“Okay, not that fast,” said Serge. “Take deep breaths.”
Outside, a Beemer started up, but the headlights remained dark. It rolled so slowly you could hear bits of broken beer-bottle glass from teenagers who had moved on to a vacant lot. The sedan stopped directly across the street from the Maddox place. The driver checked his ammo clip one last time and racked a hollow-point bullet into the chamber. He looked up and down the street a final time and opened the door of his car . . .
Inside the house, Brook caught her breath. “I swear he was already dead when I got here! You have to believe me!”
“We do,” said Serge. “Someone blew his head off with a shotgun.”
“I did that,” said Brook.
“But I thought you told me—”
“He already had a gunshot wound in his chest. Then I got the shakes and my finger slipped.”
“That’s not good.” Serge stood up. “But there’s still time to get my arms around this. I’ve sanitized many a crime scene . . . Tell me, where’s the gun?”