Apaches - Lorenzo Carcaterra [119]
“What do you want?” Angela asked, the words lacking the edge they once carried.
“Let the van blow,” Mrs. Columbo said. “And let us leave with the car and the money that’s in the trunk. You and your people can scatter.”
“And if we don’t?” her husband asked.
“Then what the bomb won’t kill,” Mrs. Columbo said, “the guns behind you and above you will. And you still lose the drugs and the cash. But I’m sure Lucia will appreciate the effort.”
“Forty-five seconds!” Boomer shouted from behind them, his gun pointed at no one in particular. “This ain’t somethin’ that needs a lot of thought.”
“You will die too,” the man in the leather jacket shouted back at Boomer. “Along with all of us.”
“There’s one big difference,” Boomer said to him. “I don’t give a shit.”
Angela looked over at Mrs. Columbo one final time. “What about you?” Angela asked her. “Do you give a shit?”
Mrs. Columbo smiled and edged the barrel of the gun closer to Angela’s cheek. “What do you think?” she said.
Angela lifted her arms slowly above her head. It was all the men around her needed to drop their weapons and run from the van.
“Let’s get in that car,” Boomer yelled, following Dead-Eye to the Cadillac, Rev. Jim already behind the wheel.
“She will find you,” Angela shouted out after Mrs. Columbo, watching as she removed the gun from her face and ran to join the others. “She will find all of you.”
“That’s what we’re counting on,” Mrs. Columbo shouted back.
• • •
SHE WAS IN the backseat of the Lincoln, her window rolled down, Dead-Eye next to her, Boomer and Rev. Jim in the front, dust from the back tires kicking up white puffs of sand clouds all around them. Angela and the rest of Lucia’s crew were scattered up hills and down side paths, leaving an array of guns in their wake.
Geronimo and Pins stared down at it all, nestled safely on a rock on the ridge above.
“Now,” Geronimo whispered to himself.
He didn’t flinch as the loud explosion split the black van and rocketed it skyward, sending dust, metal, debris, and cocaine filtering through the air. Red, orange, and yellow flames were reflected in Geronimo’s eyes, the heat of the blast and the strength of the strong steam air washing over him in one swooping wave of destruction. He smiled down at the site in complete admiration. Respectful of its force.
• • •
LUCIA CARNEY STOOD in the bedroom of her Sedona condo, staring out at the fourteenth hole putting green, the light of a full moon filtering in through the shuttered glass. The thick white lace drapes were drawn to the edge of the porch windows and the blinds were slanted up. She wore a silk bathrobe slit down the sides, open in the front, and smoked a cigarette. She was deep in thought and didn’t hear her husband, Gerald, walk into the room. He crept up behind her, drunk from an evening out with investment cronies, and wrapped his right arm around her waist, softly rubbing her naked flesh.
“Miss me?” he muttered into her ear.
“No,” Lucia said, her eyes still on the putting green, her mind several thousand miles away, picturing a lost shipment of cocaine and cash.
It wasn’t enough for those bastard Apaches to blow six hundred thousand dollars’ worth of her untapped coke to the wind. They had to heap on an additional insult by driving off in one of her new cars, which was holding two hundred and fifty thousand in hundreds in the trunk. A sum that, she had discovered only hours earlier, had been donated in her name to child abuse centers in three states.
Gerald began to nuzzle the side of her neck, his hands lifting and groping the bathrobe in the clumsy manner of a man who should have stopped three drinks into the night.
“Go to bed, Gerry,” Lucia said, unmoved by her husband’s actions.
“That’s the plan,” he said, his head resting on the edge of her shoulder. “You and me.”
Lucia pulled away from her husband and her view of the putting green, jamming the end of her cigarette into an ashtray on top of a marble end table. Gerald stripped off his blue jacket and undid his matching tie, smiling