Moondogs - Alexander Yates [157]
Reynato eases himself into his swivel chair to catch up on e-mail. His accountant, half his age, has started writing to him in all capital letters. IT’S TIME TO CONSIDER ANOTHER AUCTION. Little prick. W/ FUENTES IN SENATE, INTEREST SHOULD BE HIGH. UR OLD GUN COULD FETCH 10K AT LEAST. Fat chance. THAT OR BEA FINISHES DEGREE HERE. UR CALL BOSSMAN. Reynato’s hand strays to the pride of his collection, as though to protect it. His first personal weapon—an old Colt Peacemaker. He spins the empty cylinder and runs his fingers along the barrel, tracing out engraved lettering. Not Truth, from those idiotic movies, but the inspiration behind it. He’d bought the Single Action Army, a genuine west-winning antique, at a trade show in El Paso while on a police exchange arranged by the American Embassy. The trigger stuck and sometimes the hammer did too, but hell, that big heavy beauty was a shitspiller. Just the sight of her sorted cowards from those too dumb or desperate to realize they should be. He’d never sell, and even if he ever did, ten thousand was a flat-out insult. Reynato puts the barrel in his mouth and takes a picture of himself with his webcam. He sends the picture to his accountant—sooner do this as the subject line. The response comes minutes later. SUIT URSELF. DRAMA QUEEN.
Someone yells in the yard below. Reynato peers out the window and sees Bea wearing a one-piece bathing suit with a little skirt running low about the waist. She’s in the pool, floating on an expensive air mattress, waving up at him. “Hi Daddy!” Reynato sets his smile and waves back. He just bought that air mattress a month ago to replace the one she took to the States. The one that now sits in her two-bedroom apartment at Sarah Lawrence. The apartment that she rents alone because her roommate—Reynato knew they were more than just roommates but kept up appearances for Lorna’s sake—moved out. The apartment that’s as empty now as the loft she’s subletting in Manhattan, just a subway stop away from her socially conscious internship. The internship that she’s skipping out on now, to be here with him. Because she loves him. Bea shifts positions on the mattress and it suddenly sinks, as if someone pulled the tap. She goes down with it, butt touching bottom, and bursts back to the surface laughing. She waves again and Reynato waves back. He wonders if he can salvage the expensive mattress. With his luck, probably not.
HE SLEEPS BADLY THAT NIGHT, waking once to see eyes in the doorway, twice more to stand in front of the toilet, unable to pee. He leaves the house at dawn, goes straight to the bay and boards the first Sun Cruise boat to Corregidor. He sits in the rocking head, dry-swallowing Vicodin. When they arrive he waits for the tourists to disburse before starting the lonely hike from the south dock to the northwest part of the island. He picks his way through ruins and down densely wooded slopes, tripping through the underbrush in search of the little topside beach where it all happened.
Reynato doesn’t find the spot till lunchtime and even then it’s hard to tell. The tide has tidied it of shell casings and blood, but Reynato recognizes big trees emerging from the bramble. He sees the rock ledge he’d sent Efrem to. This is the spot where he’d almost died.
He’d known what was happening, of course. The moment the bearded terrorist took one to the face, shattered sunglasses carried aloft on roiled blood, he knew Efrem had turned on them. He’d have reacted sooner if not for the eruption. Reynato fell flat on his butt. Lorenzo fell beside him in a burst of colored kerchiefs and freed doves, grabbing