CHAPTER 69

Marty Piniero’s white Cadillac Eldorado screeched to a halt in front of Casa Zavala within seconds after Mike and Karen emerged from Julio’s taxi. Carlos leaped from the Cadillac, wrapped his long arms around Karen, and dragged her, kicking and screaming, into the front seat. Before Carlos could slam the door, Piniero pounded his foot on the gas pedal, causing his Cadillac’s rear wheels to screech in agony against the dry pavement.

Mike’s heart pounded wildly. His stomach writhed and twisted into knots. During the seconds he had taken to pay Julio, he had once again lost the love of his life. Enraged, he raced on foot in a vain attempt to catch up with Piniero’s car. “Damn you, Servito!” he screamed as he quit his unequal race with the Cadillac. He turned and ran back to Julio’s taxi. “Follow them, Julio!” he puffed. “Don’t lose them! I’ll pay you anything you want—just don’t let them get away!”

Julio’s lime green taxi immediately took off in pursuit of the Cadillac, weaving and dodging through dense city traffic.

“Faster, Julio!” Mike urged, his eyes focused on the Cadillac, his mind refusing to touch on Karen’s fate. “You’ve got to go faster!”

“But I want to stay alive,” Julio protested.

“I want Karen to stay alive. She’s the only woman I’ve ever loved. They’ll kill her if we don’t stop those bastards!”

Julio crossed himself, clenched his teeth, and depressed his gas pedal almost to the floor. His taxi caught up with the rear of the Cadillac within ten seconds. “Try to get in front of him and cut him off,” Mike demanded.

Julio again crossed himself and floored the gas pedal, gradually moving his taxi beside the Cadillac.

Piniero swerved hard to his left. “No!” Julio yelped when the Cadillac slammed hard against the taxi with a sickening thud. “I can’t do this!”

“Try it one more time!” Mike pleaded. “Just once more, Julio! We’ve got to stop that car!”

Both cars raced through a red light, with the taxi several inches behind the Cadillac’s rear bumper.

“Turn hard right and hit him!” Mike urged. “I’ll buy you a new taxi!”

Julio’s taxi grazed the rear bumper of the Cadillac. Almost simultaneously, a red flatbed truck clipped the rear bumper of the taxi, causing it to spin out of control. It ricocheted off a concrete abutment and crashed against the side of a yellow Volkswagen bus that was parked by the side of the road. The noise and smoke immediately drew a crowd of pedestrians and started a world class grid-lock around the accident scene.

Julio used his handkerchief to wipe the blood from a gash on his forehead, and then turned his soulful brown eyes to Mike. He shrugged his shoulders and turned his palms skyward. “I’m sorry, Mr. King. I tried.”

“It’s not your fault,” Mike said. He handed a huge wad of bills to Julio. “Take this and call me at the hotel if you need more.”

The sound of police sirens became louder and louder.

“I’ve got to go. I can’t let the police find me.” Mike patted Julio’s shoulder before jumping from the taxi and running from the scene.

Despondent and dispirited, Mike returned to his hotel apartment and flopped, face down on the bed. “Damn you, Servito!” he muttered again and again, pounding his fist on the pillow.

Thirty minutes later, Mike’s bedside telephone rang. He reached for the receiver and jerked it to his ear.

Servito’s repulsive voice was unmistakable. “Now I’m going to see how big your balls are, King. My beloved wife is at my house and I’m going to give you a chance to save her life.”

“How?”

“Do you remember the white Cadillac you tried to catch tonight?”

“Yup.”

“It’ll be on the street in front of your hotel at eight tomorrow morning, and it’ll be leaving for my house at one minute after eight. Karen will die if you’re not in that car when it gets here.”

“Why the hell should I bother, Servito? You’re going to kill her anyway.”

“The choice is yours, King.”

At 8 a.m. the following morning, Mike lowered himself into the passenger seat of Piniero’s white Eldorado. “What’s your name?” he asked, deliberately avoiding eye contact.

“They call me Marty… Marty Piniero,” he replied as he pulled away from the curb.

“How much is Servito paying you for this job?” Mike asked.

“A lot.”

“How much is a lot?”

“More than I can make in five years of hard labor.”

“I’ll double it if you’ll help me.”

Piniero chuckled and shook his head. “You couldn’t pay me enough. Servito will kill me if I cross him. Can you bring me back from the dead?”

“He’ll kill you anyway, as soon as he doesn’t need you.”

“No he won’t. He’s my friend.”

Mike laughed. “I don’t know if you noticed, but Jim’s friends have a bad habit of ending up dead. After he’s killed Karen and me, he’s going to kill you.”

Piniero swallowed dryly but remained silent, his eyes fixed on the road.

“Did you hear me?” Mike shouted.

Again Piniero failed to respond.

“Then I’ll have to assume you’re prepared to participate in the murders. That’ll make you just as guilty as Servito, and you’ll have to live the rest of your short life with our blood on your hands.”

Silence.

“For God’s sake, help me!” Mike pleaded.

“Shut up!” Piniero shouted, tears now watering his eyes. “Leave me alone and let me do my job!”

“You’re a real sweetheart, Marty. You want me to shut up and let you help Servito to kill me and the woman I love.”

Piniero held the wheel firmly with his right hand while using his left to wipe his eyes. Seconds after Piniero wheeled his car onto Servito’s driveway, Mike pointed Karen’s chrome-plated Colt at Piniero’s right temple. “Stop the car, now!” he barked.

Piniero immediately applied the brakes. His shocked eyes found the muzzle, his hands trembled.

Mike pointed to Servito’s house. “I don’t want to use the front door. Is there any other way in?”

“You… you can use the back doors. You just have to go through those bushes to the right of the house.”

Mike glanced at the long and neatly trimmed row of Eugenia bushes to the right of the house. He turned to Piniero and allowed the cold muzzle of the Colt to touch his temple. “Get out,” he demanded.

“You want me to get out of the car?”

“Yup. Now!”

“Why.”

“Never mind why. Just get the hell out.”

Piniero quickly got out, and Mike slid into the driver’s seat. Mike closed the door without engaging the latch, and then depressed the accelerator to the floor. He pointed the Cadillac’s hood ornament at the center of the double front doors, waited until the car was no more than thirty feet away, and then jumped. His forward momentum caused him to roll twice, stifling a cry as flesh scraped from his knees, elbows, palms, shoulder.

The car hit the front doors with a thunderous crack, and then penetrated the house with the awful sound of crunching metal and breaking cement. Mike hoisted himself to a painful upright position. He stared for a second at the terrible damage, then hobbled around the right side of Servito’s house. He charged through the Eugenia bushes and emerged onto the concrete swimming pool deck.

Maria Santos, clad in a minuscule, peach colored bikini, raised her hands and shrieked in terror. Mike pointed his Colt at her head. “Where’s Karen?” he shouted, his eyes flicking back and forth between her and wreck of Piniero’s Cadillac.

Servito emerged from the kitchen, his left arm around Karen’s neck and his pistol pointed at her head. “She’s right here. Thanks for wrecking my house, King. You’re going to pay for that,” he growled.

“Where’s Phillip?”

“He’s not here, but he’s fine,” Karen replied. “One of the maids took him for a walk.”

Mike pointed his Colt at Servito. “Let her go, Servito!” he commanded, aware of the futility of his demand but not knowing what else he could do.

Servito pushed the muzzle of his gun tightly against Karen’s cheek. “Give it up, King. Put your gun on the deck and kick it into the swimming pool.”

Mike defiantly refused to move. “I’ve waited a long time for this pleasure, Servito.”

“Don’t mess with me, King! My wife’s going to lose her head if that gun isn’t in the pool in three seconds! Do you understand me?”

Karen saw Carlos emerging from the master bedroom behind Mike, his twelve gauge shotgun pointed at the back of Mike’s head. “Mike!” she screamed. “Behind you!”

Servito began to count: “One… two…”

Defeated again, Mike slowly lowered his gun. He closed his eyes and released his grip, allowing the pistol to clatter on the concrete below him. Disheartened, he kicked it into the pool. His life flashed through his mind while he watched it splash and sink to the bottom. In his haste to solve their mountain of problems, he had made a gigantic error in judgment. Now, his immediate priority was to stall for time and to stay alive. He stared boldly into his adversary’s eyes. “I’ll bet you’re wondering how we found you,” he said.

Servito chuckled. “The only thing I was wondering was how I’m going to kill you.”

“Karen and I found ourselves in a little automobile race with your fat friend, Jerry Allison,” he continued blithely. “Jerry thought he could lose us, but drove far too fast and turned far too sharply. A terrible mistake. Unfortunately, he hit a concrete wall and seriously reduced the length of your limousine… But, fortunately for us, he survived just long enough to sing like a bird.”

“That’s bullshit, King,” Servito scoffed.

Mike smirked and shook his head. “You should be ashamed of yourself, Servito.”

Servito just laughed.

“Allison told the police all about your dirty little games. He even told them about how you installed the gasoline valves at the Golden National Refinery, and how you used them to steal gasoline. He told them how you cut gasoline with poly chlorinated biphenyls and sold it to my company through Reserve Oil.”

“He wouldn’t,” Jim growled.

Mike continued. “He even told the police how and why you killed Bob Bushing, Dave Lasker, and Earle Langston… and he stayed alive long enough to tell them all about the millions of gasoline tax dollars you evaded.”

Servito tightened his lips and bared his teeth, his wanton gray eyes glazed with rage. “You son of a bitch, King! You’ve fucked with my life for the last time! I’m going to put a bullet where it belongs!” His face contorted as he pointed his gun at Mike’s groin and pulled the trigger. The bullet pierced Mike’s left thigh, glanced off the bone and exited at a ninety degree angle. As his leg buckled, Mike slumped to the concrete.

Servito hurled Karen to the pool deck and strode toward Mike. He smirked as he watched his adversary writhing, his hands pressed tightly against the wounds. “You got in my way too many times!” he screamed, kicking Mike again and again in the head and stomach until his adversary was motionless and silent.

Marty Piniero had watched the entire event from the living room. He had only just now learned that Servito had killed his old boss and friend, Dave Lasker. He felt dirty and guilty… and enraged. The limits of his conscience were finally breached as he watched Servito kick Mike as he lay wounded and helpless on the pool deck. He removed a tire iron from the opened trunk of his destroyed Cadillac and raced through the master bedroom and out to the pool deck behind Carlos. He gripped the tire iron tight, and delivered a vicious blow to the side of the man’s head.

Carlos fell unconscious, face first to the concrete. Piniero stooped to the concrete to pick up Carlos’s shotgun.

“You miserable, rotten son of a bitch!” Servito yelled, pointing his gun at Piniero and pulling the trigger. The bullet whizzed past Piniero’s ear and shattered the plate glass behind him.

Blinded by guilt and anger, Piniero stood and ran directly at Servito. Servito fired again, hitting Piniero’s shoulder. But Piniero charged on, seemingly unhurt.

Servito shot again and Piniero slumped to the concrete, blood flowing from his neck.

“You animal!” Karen shrieked. “How could you?”

Servito turned to glance at Karen, momentarily distracted that the woman who had been his complacent wife could now have become this red, squalling creature.

Summoning all of his remaining strength, Piniero managed to raise the shotgun and pull the trigger.

Servito gasped and cupped his left hand over the gush of blood from his massive stomach wound. The pellets had severely injured him, and his hand could not stop the fast flow. He staggered to the black, wrought iron railing at the far side of the swimming pool, and allowed his buttocks to descend to the railing. He pressed both forearms against the wound and groaned to see a large and growing pool of blood on the concrete beneath him.

At last Karen saw her chance. She picked up Piniero’s tire iron and raced toward her husband. Hearing her footsteps, he raised his pistol in her direction, but the shot went wild.

With one swift swing of the tire iron, she broke his forearm and dislodged the pistol from his grip. “You’ll never do this again!” she screamed, and then hit him squarely in the face with a violent second swing.

“You bitch!” he screamed, his face a bloody mess of shattered bone and cartilage, his body wobbling precariously on the railing.

Karen placed the business end of the tire iron against her husband’s forehead and shoved. A horrified expression appeared on Servito’s bloodied face as he fought desperately to regain his balance, but found himself toppling slowly backward. In the work of a moment, he had plunged three hundred feet to the rocks in the chasm below. Karen leaned over the railing, watching in dispassionate silence until she was certain he was dead. Then she turned and ran to Mike. Maria was on her knees beside him, her peach colored bikini stained with blood.

“Is he alive?” Karen asked.

Maria nodded, pressing a bar towel tightly against the wounds in his leg.

“Call a hospital! Tell them to send an ambulance here as quickly as possible!”

Maria stood and raced to the house.

Karen descended to her knees and removed Mike’s jeans, washed his wounds with a wet towel, and then used the towel to wrap his leg.

Mike slowly opened his eyes. “What happened?” he groaned, his voice barely audible.

“It’s over! It’s finally over!” Karen cried, hugging him, her soft lips kissing his forehead.

Maria hurried from the house with a roll of gauze and a pair of scissors. “The ambulance is coming,” she said.