Gold Coast by Elmore Leonard

Author:Elmore Leonard
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
ISBN: 9780060084059
Publisher: HarperTorch
Published: 2007-10-02T23:00:00+00:00

MAGUIRE’S PLAN WAS COMING APART.

An hour ago it had seemed close to foolproof. Drop in on Karen, sit around till about ten. Say he was tired or didn’t feel good and leave. Park up by the beach and walk back. Marta lets him in the side door. He and Jesus wait in Marta’s room for Roland to come. Let him enter the house. Say hi, how you doing? Marta screams (optional). Hit him.

But Marta was in Coral Gables, and Jesus had to talk to her and get her back.

And Karen wasn’t home. The house was dark, the three-car garage empty.

He could say to himself, No, it’s going to work. Don’t worry. Keep your eyes open. You see it’s not going to work or too chancy, bail out. You don’t have to be here.

But reassurances didn’t relieve the bad feeling, the doubt beginning to nag him.

Maguire drove the Mercedes into the garage, closed the door from the outside and walked around the house, past the empty patio to the French doors.

There was some definition to the shapes in the darkness: the hedges, the pool, the umbrella table, the yard misty in a pale wash of moonlight. There were specks of moving light on the Intercoastal, the deep darkness beyond the yard. There was the sound of crickets. And now Gretchen barking, inside the house. There was no reason to be as quiet as he might be. Maguire pulled the sleeve of his jacket down over his hand, held it in his fist, punched through the pane of glass next to the door latch and he was inside, Gretchen running up to him, barking.

Moving through the sitting room, his hand feeling the crown of the Louis XVI chair, he told Gretchen to be nice and wondered: If Karen knew she was coming home after dark, why didn’t she leave a light on?

Because Marta must’ve still been home.

Then why didn’t Marta tell them Karen had gone out? If she did, why didn’t Jesus mention it?

Because they had no practice in this kind of thing, that’s why, Maguire thought. And you better get your ass out of here.

But he moved from the front hall to the back hall to Marta’s room, pulled down the shades and turned on a lamp. Okay, Jesus had said yes, he knew Marta had gotten the gun from upstairs. But where would she hide it.

Roland said to Lionel, “Look, I ain’t gonna argue with you. Go on get drunk, sleep on the beach, I don’t give a shit where, and pick up the boat in the morning. Now hand the suitcase here and push me off, goddamn it.” Man, to get through to some people.

The eighteen-footer rumbled away from the dock behind the thin beam of its spotlight, passing the fantails of the motorcruisers and sailers tied up in their slips, heading out into the channel now, Roland keeping the revs low, bearing to starboard as he pictured the map of the Intercoastal, this little section of it. Finding his way through canals and watercourses, natural or manmade, wasn’t anything new.

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