He hoped.

At the corner he stopped, suddenly remembering that there was one other person in Acapulco who might know where Rusty lived. And he knew where to find her, though she might be a little tough to wake up.

Make that knocking go away.

There was dim light at the corners of the curtains. Dull gray light of very early morning. But he could see everything in the room. He didn’t feel like he’d slept more than two hours. D.C., who definitely had been worth the stop, lay turned away from him on her side, naked and uncovered. Absently, he ran his hand along her flank. She made a sleepy, purring noise.

More knocking. He listened. Somebody was already up playing tennis-Rusty heard the rhythmic thok of the ball being hit. That must be it.

No, it was the door. Someone knocking on the door. Jesus, what time was it?

“Si?”

“Servicio, señor.”

D.C. stirred. “What’s that?” she asked.

“Room service.”

She mumbled that they had the wrong room. Rusty tried to say ‘wrong room’ in Spanish but it didn’t seem to take. The guy knocked again.

D.C. moaned and rolled out of the sack. “I’ll just tell him.” Rusty watched her walk across the room. He wondered how breasts so big could ride that high. He liked how she looked as she reached up for the chain, undoing it, opening the door a crack to tell the guy…

Stepping back away, her hands to her mouth. And before Rusty could react, Dismas Hardy was inside, the door closed behind him, pointing a gun at his head.

“Remember that thirty-eight Special I recommended you buy,” he said. “I thought you’d like to see what one looked like.”

Chapter Twenty-six

You can’t shoot me.”

“I can’t?”

“Please God don’t shoot us!” D.C. said.

Hardy grabbed the sheet that covered Rusty and threw it toward D.C. “Wrap yourself up and sit down,” he said. He motioned to a chair with his head and leveled the gun at Rusty, now back up against the headboard, naked, covering himself. “I’m sorry, where were we?”

“You’ll never explain the gun.”

“This gun? The one you stole from me in San Francisco?”

“What’s he saying?”

Both men ignored her. Hardy continued. “You mean the gun we fought over and it went off by accident? This gun?”

“They’d never believe that.”

“I think they might if a San Francisco cop came down and said you were already a murderer.”

“Rusty, what’s he saying?”

Hardy glanced at the girl, shivering and huddled in the chair. “About four hours ago your friend Rusty here pushed me off a very high cliff.”

She looked at Hardy as though he were a madman. “No. He was here all night. I remember, you both were driving in the car with me and-”

“Wrong,” Hardy said. “You passed out. We went for a nightcap and Rusty tried to kill me.”

She looked at Rusty. “What’s he saying?”

Rusty shrugged. “Diz, give it up. What are you gonna do?”

Hardy drew it out one word at a time. “I am going to bust your ass.” He cocked the gun. “I hate to be so melodramatic, but get some clothes on, Russ.”

“You can’t do this,” D.C. said. “This is kidnapping or something. He was here. I know he was here.”

Hardy kept the gun on Rusty. He moved closer and kicked the bunch of clothes that were next to the bed into the middle of the room. “You gonna need help, with your bad arm and all?”

Rusty flexed his bandaged arm, grimacing. “I’ll need the sling.”

“Pants first,” Hardy said. He felt the pockets, checking for a weapon, then threw them onto the bed.

Ingraham was silent.

“Remember that woman-Maxine-I mentioned earlier? Last night. The friend of Rusty’s, just a friend?”

She nodded.

“Rusty here killed her. He shot her three times. Close up. With a small-caliber gun. She crawled about twenty feet before she died. I bet that was a long twenty feet.”

It was D.C.’s turn to be silent.

Hardy threw Rusty his shirt. “And that horrible gaff wound in his arm? You ever been on a real fishing boat, Rusty? There’s no mate in the universe will use a gaff to help a human being pull up. Good basic idea, though, given short notice to come up with it. Creative.” Hardy was back at D.C. “He needed something to explain the wound through his arm, since what he in fact did was shoot himself to make it look like someone had killed him. His blood all over the place. A trail of it leading to the edge of his barge, where it disappeared into the foaming brine.”

“You’ve got it all figured, don’t you?” Ingraham said.

“Yep.” Hardy was curt. “Shoes,” he said. He thought of his own aching feet. “Better yet, no shoes. Get up.”

“Is this all true?” D.C. had pulled her feet up under her on the chair, tucking the sheet in all around.

“This is the gospel,” Hardy said. “Let’s go, Russ.” He threw him the sling and Rusty draped it around his neck. Then he leaned over and reached for one of his shoes. Hardy took quick but careful aim and fired. In the room, the shot was a bomb blast. The pair of shoes exploded. There was a gash in the floor and plaster fell from the wall where the bullet had ricocheted up and through. Hardy smelled the cordite. D.C. screamed, then settled into a quiet sobbing.

“Jesus, Hardy. You’re crazy.”

“No, but I am a little pissed off. No shoes.”

He went to the door, opening it, pointing the gun at Rusty. “We’d better move. I imagine that woke up some of the neighbors.” He clucked, looking at D.C. “Horrible the way these Mexican kids will just go shooting off barrel bombs at all hours. Right? You understand?”

The girl, terrified, nodded. Hardy said he hoped so.

Rusty was at the door. Hardy looked back in at D.C. “This is really happening,” he said. “And what I want you to do now is sit in that chair until you’ve counted very slow to three hundred. Don’t open the door for anybody. Don’t make any noise. Don’t do anything. Do you understand?”

She nodded again and Hardy closed the door. Other doors around the complex were opening. Hardy kept the gun out of sight under his windbreaker. He was grinning.

“This is fun, isn’t it? Now we’re going to walk briskly to that car next to yours, looks like a Jeep, and get in and drive away into the sunrise. Is the plan clear? Because if it’s not, a mistake could happen.”

“Look, Diz, I’ve got a lot of money, maybe we can-”

“Maybe, but let’s talk later. Perhaps we’ll do lunch.”

The thing about running around is sometimes you didn’t take the time to think.

Abe Glitsky wasn’t running now. He had had three hours alone on the plane, three hours to sort facts without interruption. Now, beginning their descent into Acapulco, he was drinking a glass of papaya juice over ice and wondering how he had let himself slip so far in the past couple of weeks.

He imagined it had been a function of all the b.s. at the Hall, the pissing and moaning about the bureaucratic aspects of the job. Wondering whether Lanier’s cases intersected with his, wanting to close the book on investigations just because he didn’t want them outstanding when he left.

If he left.

He was thinking now, with Ingraham alive, what that did to his neat little package regarding Maxine Weir’s death. After Hector Medina’s suicide, or apparent suicide, it had all seemed clear. He hadn’t given that case a thought during his four days in Los Angeles, he was so satisfied with what must have happened.

He had chosen to accept that Medina’s grudge against Ingraham had been reawakened by his involvement with the Raines/Valenti investigation. He had hired Johnny LaGuardia to go kill Rusty. LaGuardia had somehow-ah, how easily that ‘somehow’ slid down when you wanted to get around something-gotten hold of Ray Weir’s gun and used it to shoot Rusty and Maxine, whose presence there was just bad luck for her. Finally, since LaGuardia was the only thing tying Medina to the crime, Medina aces Johnny. But once Abe Glitsky shows up, already suspecting Medina, he sees that he’s about to be accused again, there’ll be another murder investigation-his job will go, his reputation, the same thing that happened before-and he can’t take it anymore so he jumps from the roof of the Sir Francis Drake.