He crossed the open plateau again. Rusty hadn’t moved an inch, The bottle glinted in the moonlight next to him. His good arm was outstretched behind it. He was breathing heavily, noisily, his mouth open.

“Goddammit, Rusty!” Hardy came up behind his head and nudged it with his foot. “Come on, let’s shake it.”

He didn’t stir. For an instant Hardy thought that maybe he was dead, then reminded himself that dead men almost never breathed so loud.

He shook his head, thinking it out. Rusty had one bad arm, in a sling, and was pretty obviously drunk as a skunk. There wasn’t much real threat there, was there, Diz?

He could grab the good arm, pull him back away from the cliff like a sack of bricks, get him up and moving somehow. Unless he wanted to sit here all night, or walk home and maybe lose him.

He leaned over and took hold of the good arm around the wrist with both his hands. It was dead. There was no resistance. He got a better footing and started to pull. Rusty finally made a noise, half-turning. Hardy moved back, letting go. “Come on, get up.”

Rusty rolled again onto his back. This was getting old in a hurry. Hardy said fuck it and grabbed him under both armpits, leaning over, off balance for one second, to pull.

Which was when Rusty moved. Both arms came up, grabbed Hardy at the shoulders and pulled him forward, over, covering Rusty’s body in a somersault, legs out on no purchase, reaching out, trying to grab onto Rusty-something, anything-but there was only the night air, the cold far moon.

Then there was something under his feet, some small ledge, and one of Rusty’s feet, still dangling where it had been, over the cliffs edge, right there, grabbable. But it moved, kicking out, hitting him in the shoulder, pushing him out into the darkness.

Chapter Twenty-five

Rusty liked the idea of bringing the bottle along, because it was much easier to fake that you were drinking a lot. You could just lift the thing to your lips every couple of minutes, start rambling a little in your talking. In any event, it had worked.

He wasn’t sure, driving back home, whether Dismas Hardy had been a turn in his luck for the good or the bad. His idea of having him stay in San Francisco, implicate Baker, and get the word out that Rusty was in fact dead hadn’t, it seemed, worked too well. He didn’t realize Hardy had been such a coward-he thought he remembered a guy a lot more tenacious. He could have sworn Hardy would have gone to the cops, given his two cents.

But no, he’d run… Well, you couldn’t plan for everything in this world. If gambling had taught him anything it had taught him that. But then Hardy’s showing up here, he decided, was pure good fortune, a sign that like today at the games he was on a roll.

Sure, he’d had to give up on D.C., but he knew her hotel and he could pick things up there again if he wanted. Except since she’d been with him and Hardy, maybe that wouldn’t be too smart. The less they could be put together the better.

He got out to the road running along the bay and turned north. It was too bad. D.C. really was his kind of woman -young, enthusiastic, beautiful, not too deep. Here for a party, and intended to have one. Couldn’t hold her liquor worth a damn, though.

He pulled up off the road, looking at his watch. Nearly one A.M. He and Hardy had half carried D.C. back to her room at the Las Brisas around 9:30.

He was pumped up. Things were going perfectly, and that’s when you took your flyers. The losers were the guys who didn’t run with it when they felt the roll kick in, and he wasn’t a loser, not anymore. He was invincible.

Now he took a real shot out of the bottle, U-turning back toward town, toward D.C. and what he felt like doing right now.

Tomorrow he’d find out about the body at the base of the cliffs. He’d go to the restaurant where they’d started tonight, ask if anyone had seen his friend. Of course, the first divers would find him-if the tide didn’t take him out.

He thought about Hardy. At first, he hadn’t really planned on doing anything about him, but as the night had worn on, it became inevitable. Hardy would eventually go back to San Francisco. He would tell someone he’d seen Rusty-hell, the guy was a bartender and it was a great story. Next thing you know, the word somehow gets back to Tortoni or even-which might be worse now-to the police.

He kept forgetting he had killed Maxine.

Imagine forgetting something like that. It was interesting, he thought, and like with Hardy tonight, it had been a spur-of-the-moment thing, going with the vibe.

Maxine showing up after he’d already scared the pee out of Louis Baker. Baker gone. He, Rusty, screwing up his courage with the gun. Even with brass-jacketed.22s, he knew it was going to hurt like hell. He had his own cash in his briefcase-twenty-some thousand would have been enough had the other sixty not just jumped up in his face.

No. Maxine had been getting too serious anyway. He’d been planning that he would just die-to her as to everyone else. But then the fool woman comes over the day before they had planned to go, with all her money in her duffel bag…

He parked at the Las Brisas-individual spots for each guest-in front of D.C.’s cabin. He took another hit of tequila, thinking back. It was strange he hadn’t gone over it so carefully before. He thought well on his feet, he had to give it to himself on that. That’s why he had been such a pistol of a trial lawyer…

That Wednesday night, Maxine had come in, unexpected. Unaware. Happy. Finally getting out of San Francisco and those dead dreams. Wasn’t it wonderful, Rusty?

Sure, wonderful.

But, goddammit, Johnny LaGuardia would be coming over in about two hours for his vig and Rusty had to be dead by then, blood tracking to the rail, body floating out to the bay.“

She’d been excited, sexed up, geared for her new life. She’d started giving him her patented head, and okay, doing it wouldn’t hurt easing up some of his tension either. Didn’t take long.

Then her shower, him waiting now on the bed. The water turning off and then Maxine coming out, dancing, posing with the neck brace on-the thing that had made them all their money, that had made it all possible. She’d looked at him questioningly. What was he doing with Ray’s gun? Why…?

He opened the car door. If D.C. was still drunk it’d be easy. He and Hardy had left her on the bed, closing the door behind them. It might still be unlocked, and he’d just let himself in. Or, even if she’d gotten up and put the chain on, which was unlikely, he bet he could sweet-talk her back between the sheets in two minutes. He was good on his feet.

Later, Hardy would say the fall lasted twenty-six minutes by his best count.

He had had parachute training in the Marines, though it had been a long time. What saved him was that as he lost his balance, thinking he was dead, he still had pushed out, jumping, in some control.

He had noticed the boys diving-how the first part of the dive cleared the outcropping of rock. It was not far out. The length of the fall after that was what made it so impressive.

So he hadn’t spun or flipped, but dropped, in black panic, but with an eye on the phosphorus field forming under him, moving toward shore under him.

Hitting, feeling the impact through his shoes up to his shoulders, immediately ground into the bottom sand by the incoming wave, he struggled for what he hoped was the surface. There was no telling up from down and he hadn’t timed anything like when to take a breath.

Seawater. Lungs filling up. Slamming against rock. Under again.

And then he was on the sand throwing up. The stuff dripping down his right arm felt warm and looked black in the dim moonlight. The same moon was up there. He couldn’t see the top of the cliffs from the beach. The arm was starring to throb. He’d lost his right shoe. He reached down and there was more blood. He tried to stand and another wave came, knocking him down again.