Moondogs - Alexander Yates [128]
“Do it,” Reynato said. “Fucking do it. Bring the world down on him.”
Monique held out the open purse and the scarred man peered inside, a little hesitantly. She pulled out some bright cash and dropped it on the gravel between them. The scarred man looked down, and when he looked back up she had her pepper spray in hand. There was no way to get just him. She pressed the plunger home and doused them both in poison mist. They howled, Reynato dropping to the ground and the scarred man staggering backward. Monique gave him a running kick to the crotch, and when he fell she sprayed him again, almost emptying the can into his eyes and mouth. She took the penknife from his limp fingers and stabbed the puny, one-inch blade into his arm. She saw Shawn and Joseph, bloodied, in her head. Her rage was uncontainable.
The scarred man ran for it and Monique chased after, punching him in the back of the head, tripping him up at the heels. Blind, he crashed into a parked car and then toppled into the empty officers’ swimming pool. He scrambled out at the far end, disappearing into a bamboo thicket, howling as he went.
Monique rushed to the old administration building and told them to call the police. Then she helped Reynato into their room, locking the door, deadbolt and chain. He went into the tiny bathroom to wash out his eyes while she sat on the edge of the bed and tried to calm herself. For the longest time she was sure he was weeping. But when she went into the bathroom she realized he was laughing. Uncontrollably.
Chapter 25
THE ONE WITH THE SUN ON HER
After chasing Solita out and getting her barred from the hotel, Benicio spent some time tidying up his father’s ransacked suite. He began by collecting the papers she’d scattered across the floor and arranging them in vaguely relevant stacks on the table in the study. There were invoices, travel itineraries and printed e-mails—some achingly polite, others laced with profanity. There were also a few coffee-stained designers’ sketches for a some-day dive resort that Howard must have been planning to build down south. In one of the sketches the resort was called Benny’s. In another, Paradise Rock. He rolled the sketches together and placed them on the table as well.
The bedroom was a disaster, so he hit that next. He got the blazers and suit-jackets off the bed, turned their pockets back in and left them swaying quietly on wooden hangers in the closet. He picked socks up off the floor and folded them in pairs, turning one inside the other the way his mother used to. One of the socks had something hard inside the toe—a tightly folded wad of pesos that Solita must have missed. Benicio opened a dresser drawer to replace the socks, but after hovering over it for a full minute he found himself taking things out instead of putting them back in. He went through all the rolls of long black business socks that Solita hadn’t got to. Most were empty but many contained dollars, euros, and brightly colored pesos; bank-fresh and of high denominations. Benicio pulled the whole drawer out and emptied it onto the bed. He did this with all the dresser drawers, as well as his father’s nightstand and the storage cubbies in the closet. He went into the bathroom, where the sight of his father’s dive gear hanging from a sturdy towel rack momentarily startled him. It reflected darkly in the medicine cabinet door like the ghost of a frogman. He opened the cabinet, scooped the contents into a billowing undershirt, and added that to the mess atop the bed.
His fingers shook a little as he set about unfolding, unwrapping and unscrewing Howard’s things. He anticipated—even hungered for—a discovery that would shock him. Maybe a coke-dusted pocket mirror, a threatening letter from a missing person, some precious stones in a nondescript satchel or a ball gag. But all he found was money and a few nude photographs of Solita. He folded one of the photos three times