Deadbeat by Adam Hamdy

Author:Adam Hamdy [Hamdy, Adam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 2024-12-03T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 49

Having a cop sniffing around wasn’t good from either a practical or psychological perspective. How would I learn to forget these traumatic memories if some detective was always shining the guilt light on them? Would Rosa cotton on to my involvement in Farah’s shooting? I thought I’d been so careful, but I hadn’t counted on Attica linking me to Walter Glaze.

I tried to wrangle the thoughts as I headed west, toward Hollywood. Frankie Balls had turned my home into a no-go zone with his thugs doorstepping me. I had a cop on my case and still had the gun I’d used to shoot Farah. On the positive side of life’s ledger, I had a package from my patron that I assumed contained two hundred grand, which was enough dough to solve a lot of problems.

The gun was easy. I went farther west, out to Malibu to the land of the billboard folk. I parked on the PCH, wrapped the Glock in the ski mask, and walked down a long staircase to the beach. There was hardly anyone around, so I found myself a clear stretch of sand and dug a deep hole with my hands.

The sun was falling toward some distant spot in space, and I enjoyed its warmth against my face. Very few people passed me. The occasional jogger or dog walker, but this wasn’t the sort of place folk made eye contact. The beaches attracted the homeless and crazies, and no amount of Silicon Valley or high Hollywood money could stop the public right of access to these sands, so the millionaires and billionaires had to put up with folks like me ruining their endless Pacific views.

When the beach was clear and the hole was over a foot deep, I wiped the pistol with my ski mask and dropped both into the dark shadow at the bottom. Some guy with a metal detector might find the gun, but I had wiped it clean of prints, and soon the sand and salt water at high tide would degrade it. I was counting on the hope that no one would remember all the people who’d sat or passed this spot. I scooped all the dug sand back into the hole, and when it was well and truly patted down, I got to my feet, brushed myself off, and walked back to my car.

The sun was touching the horizon by the time I reached the top of the staircase, and the cars on the PCH had their headlights on as they roared past. The glare of their beams was almost blinding as I made the walk north to the Range Rover. It didn’t bother me, though, because I’d lightened my load and shed one weighty problem. When I was behind the wheel, I finally checked the contents of the package Rosa had pulled from my mailbox. It was stuffed with hundred-dollar bills, and I really didn’t feel the need to count it.

Two hundred thousand bucks.

A bright future for Skye. A new one for me.

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