By edRogers
[Reviewed here on the novel’s publication day, October 6, 2018: “Coming soon to a Barnes & Noble store near you?”]
Charlie landed at the airport in Liberia and caught a cab to the bus station. He tried Juan’s cell phone at the airport and again in the cab. The bus had few passengers and he had a seat by himself. Every few minutes he would try Juan. At last, he gave up and called Margot.
“Hello.” She sounded tired and her voice was a whisper.
“Margot, are you okay?”
“Charlie, where are you?”
“I’m on a bus coming out of Liberia on the way home. What’s wrong?” His guts went into a tight knot. Without her saying anything he knew it was Juan.
“I’m at the hospital. Juan has been shot. They don’t think he’s going to make it. They are going to airlift him to San Jose if they can get him stable.”
“When did it happen?”
“He was shot sometime this morning. I heard it on the news and came here. They don’t have anybody charged with the shooting. And no leads. Do you know anything?”
“No, just that I have been trying to reach Juan all day. It’ll be two hours before I get there. Let me know if there are any changes.”
“I’ll call you the second I know anything.”
Charlie put the cell phone back in his pocket, and for the first time began to wonder how Morales knew it was him and Juan that broke into the warehouse. Until Margot outed them in front of Tommy and Howard, only the three of them knew. Unless Morales had Margot’s house bugged, which was unlikely, Tommy or Howard must have ratted them out. That was the only possible answer.
About an hour later his phone ring. “Charlie, they have airlifted Juan to San Jose. He’s stable and there’s a chance he’ll pull through.”
“Thank God!”
“Charlie, would you like to come over? I can pick you up at the bus station. I don’t want to be alone right now.”
“Okay, I’ll see you in an hour. There are things we need to discuss anyway. Don’t tell anyone you’re meeting me.”
“I don’t understand – who would I tell? You’re scaring me, Charlie.”
“I’ll explain everything tonight. Until then, keep away from your friends.”
Charlie put the cell phone back in his pocket. He didn’t know how much he should tell Margot, but he had to tell her enough to keep her safe. The D.E.A. could call off the hit on him, but it looked like it was open season on anyone else.
Somone would have to pay for the dead guy in his bathroom. Morales wouldn’t be happy about not hearing back from his man. The only question was: Howard or Tommy, were they in danger, or were they the ones that alerted Morales?
He emerged from the bus and saw Margot waiting for him. She came up to him slowly and put her arms around him. He breathed in the smell of her hair and it almost made him cry.
“Let’s go home,” she whispered.
They got into her jeep and headed up the mountain toward her house. The moon was coming over the mountain and lighting the roadway. It was a beautiful night, a light breeze moved the trees in a dance of moonlight, and he had fallen in love. He knew it the second he saw her waiting at the bus station. He had pushed it out of his mind, but now time was too short.
Charlie didn’t hear the shot or see the shooter. They were stopped at the gate waiting as it slowly opened. He had turned toward Margot to tell her how he felt at that moment when the windshield exploded and he was suddenly blinded by blood.
He wiped the blood from his eyes, at first thinking it was his own blood, but then he looked over at Margot. Her head was thrown back onto the headrest and from a small hole in her forehead a trickle of blood was running down her cheek. “No, no, God, no!”
He jumped from the jeep and ran around to the driver’s side and threw open the door. He took her head in both hands and turned her to face him, his fingers feeling the large hole where the bullet had exited. Her eyes were wide open but staring at nothing. He closed them and unhooked her seatbelt. He fell to the ground, pulling Margot with him.
The next morning the postman on a motorbike found them and called the police.
The police questioned Charlie for hours but he was in shock and was making no sense so they sent him home, after telling him not to leave the country and they would have more questions for him. Charlie had no intention of leaving the country.
The police were not looking for a connection with a drug lord. Margot had made a lot of enemies over the years and they believed her meddling in things that were none of her business was what had gotten her killed. Charlie didn’t say any different.
Charlie no longer had a goal in life. Over the next many days, he came to see that he was fueled only by hatred. Before Margot’s death, his plan had been for the greater good. Now it was to kill as many of them as he could.
He tried to come up with a plan to find out which one – Tommy or Howard – had turned Morales loose on them. In the end, he gave up and decided to kill them both and be done with it.
Charlie hadn’t been so stupid as to leave the shooter’s gun in that hotel room. It sat on his coffee table, next to the urn with Margot’s ashes, begging to be used. He put on gloves and picked it up and ejected the clip. Only two rounds out of an eight-round clip were gone. He put the clip back in, slipped the gun into his pocket with the gloves, and went out and got on his motorbike.
Charlie pulled off the road a couple hundred meters from Howard’s house and walked up the road. He could see through the large window in fount of the house that Tommy was visiting. It was his lucky night.
He tried the side door and found it unlocked. He eased into the house and made his way down the hall. He could hear them talking. Tommy was saying, “I can’t believe Margot is gone. The world will never be the same without her.”
“I never thought going to Morales would get any of us killed,” Howard moaned.
Charlie stepped out of the dark with the gun in his gloved hand leveled at them. “Looks like you were wrong, Howard.”
“Charlie, what the hell are you doing here?” challenged Howard. “Put the gun down. We had nothing to do with Margot’s death. We loved her.”
“Here is the problem, Howard,” Charlie said. “One of you, or both of you, turned Morales onto us. A man tried to kill me in Nicaragua and another one tried to kill Juan here. And a third one, or the same one who shot Juan, killed Margot. I don’t know which one of you told Morales, so I’m afraid one of you is going to pay for the other’s betrayal.”
Tommy jumped up and the first shot hit him in the throat,the second one dead center in his heart. Howard was crying and on his knees. Charlie shot him in the head.
He threw the gun on the floor between them knowing the only prints on it were Papo Romero’s and went back out the side door.
| Copyright © 2018 by Ed Rogers |
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