Chapter 56
By the time they met Leo at the baseball fields north of Skagway, Shayna had about decided to hit Ricky over the head with a two-by-four to calm him down. He had a plan. She had a good plan. Somehow, she had to make him see reality.
For either plan to work, they needed guns. That was where Cousin Leo came in.
The ball fields were out of the way, nestled in the trees off the Klondike Highway.
The perfect place to meet this time of morning in a city with a population of eight hundred that swelled to over ten thousand when three cruise ships were in port.
They were maybe two miles from the docks and certainly not worth the walk when you could see places like the Red Onion Saloon and brothel museum or the Yukon Route and White Pass Railroad.
Shayna needed him to start manifesting fifteen million in diamonds.
Leo stuck a Ritz Cracker box upside down on an old shovel and leaned it against a fir tree to give them something to shoot at.
Glocks had come out after he went to prison. If they were going to face the marshal, he needed a little practice. There were a few houses on the other side of the trees, but Leo had solved that by grabbing a silencer for one of the pistols.
Leo screwed the suppressor on the end of one of the pistols while Shayna loaded magazines with hollow-points. Four mags took an entire box of fifty and a couple more. She smiled at that.
“Now,” Leo said, putting on his officious cop voice that annoyed Shayna like a paper cut. “This suppressor will quiet things down quite a bit, but it’s not gonna be mouse-fart quiet.”
Ricky reached for the gun. “That’s fine.” He slammed a magazine home and took aim at the Ritz Cracker box, ten long paces away. He fired once, testing the feel of the weapon, then four more times in rapid succession.
The slap of each round was plenty loud enough to worry Shayna about passersby, but not so loud as to hurt her ears.
Three of the shots hit the picture of the same cracker. The other two less than an inch low.
He ran the gun dry, missing only once—which he blamed on the ammo. Neither Leo nor Shayna argued the matter. It wasn’t smart to disagree with Ricky Pink under the best of circumstances. It was downright suicidal to do it when he was holding a suppressed pistol.
“This is going to work just fine,” Pink whispered, surely thinking over his own plan and not Shayna’s.
Shayna handed him a full mag, then glanced at Leo while Ricky continued to practice.
“Okay,” she said. “What else did you find out about the ex-wife’s schedule?”
“She’s on a train ride this morning,” Leo said. “Should be back before noon because she has lunch and a tour of that Red Onion Saloon and brothel museum at one thirty.”
“The ship doesn’t leave until six,” Shayna said. “What’s she doing for the rest of the day?”
Air whistled through her broken teeth. They hurt like hell, though still not as bad as they looked like they should.
“A hike out to a Gold Rush cemetery and some waterfall.”
Pink lowered the Glock, still half full if Shayna had counted correctly.
“I know Cutter’s name’s not in the ship’s system, but did he follow her on the train or is he waiting here in town?”
Shayna closed her eyes, wishing she hadn’t given him more bullets.
“Here’s the deal,” she said. “It looks like Cutter and his partner stayed in Juneau.”
Instead of yelling, Ricky got very quiet, lip quivering like he was about to sneeze.
“He what?” Intense, like a rattlesnake.
“He stayed in Juneau,” Leo said. “After Malosi was killed and—”
“You mean after you killed him.”
“Right, sure. Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. Malosi cut the cameras for us and got Joellen Cutter’s excursion schedule. I couldn’t very well let him talk to the marshals. I had to whack him, or this whole thing would have been over. Anyway, they must have seen me jump off the boat and—”
“The entire ship knows you jumped off the boat,” Ricky said. “The captain made a man-overboard announcement.”
“Yeah,” Leo said. “Well, you wanted me to get the guns. So I got the guns.”
“You did,” Ricky said, agreeing but sounding no less dangerous.
“And Cutter knows you were off the boat, so he must have assumed any danger to his ex-wife is over.” He turned and walked to the Ritz Cracker box, studying his shots.
Leo and Shayna stayed where they were. Pink came back to them carrying the shovel.
“We can get her alone at the cemetery,” Shayna said. “We cart her back into the woods somewhere and tie her up, use the knives on her if we have to. She’ll tell us if Cutter knows where the diamonds are.”
“Cutter …” Ricky said, as if he was unconvinced.
“I’m telling you, hon,” Shayna said. “The ex-wife is the place to start. She stayed in his room last night.”
Ricky’s head snapped around. “How do you know that?”
“Twenty dollars to a room attendant who works the same hall,” she said.
“Why are you just telling me this now?”
She put a hand on his shoulder, but he shrugged it off. “You know how focused you are. It didn’t seem important until now.”
“Focused,” he whispered, staring up the road toward the Klondike Highway.
“Ricky,” she said. “You scare the shit outta me when you go quiet like—”
He held up a fist. The universal sign for freeze. A moment later, a rusty white truck bounced down the road toward the ball fields.
An older man in a tattered ballcap got out and sauntered over. His gray beard was dyed orange around his mouth from a lifetime of roll-your-own cigarettes.
“Thought I heard shootin’,” he said, nodding at the Glocks and then tapping the blue-steel revolver in his waistband. “It’s a free country and I sure as hell got no skin in the game, but there’s better places to shoot upriver some toward Dyea.”
“That a .357?” Ricky gave a nod to the man’s handgun.
“Smith & Wesson in .45 Long Colt,” the man said. “Shoot the nuts off a mayfly at twenty yards.”
“Got any more rounds for it?” Ricky asked.
The man’s mouth disappeared in a frown behind his grizzled beard. “In my truck. Why?”
Ricky shot the man in the neck with the silenced Glock, then whispered, “Because I want it.”
Shayna screamed, “You stupid, ignorant baby! Do you have any idea what—”
Pink hit her in the face with the shovel.
The blow was one-handed, and it scared her more than hurt her.
She raged at him now. “You son of a bitch!” She raised the unsuppressed Glock, intent on putting it to good use—but he hit her again, this time with gusto.
The gun slipped from her hand. She folded, collapsing backward and landing on her butt.
Blood streamed from her nose and a large gash beneath her eye.
Ricky pressed the gun to her forehead.
“Leo,” he said. “If I blow your cousin’s brains out the back of her head, will you still help me kill Arliss Cutter.”
“Will we still look for the diamonds?”
“Leo!” Shayna sobbed.
“Of course we’ll look for the diamonds,” Ricky said.
Tears pressed between clenched lashes.
“I mean, yeah,” Leo said. “I’d rather you not kill her, but if you feel like you have to, I’m still on board.”
Shayna found it impossible to breath. “Leo!” she gasped.
“Sorry, Cuz,” he said. “We’re talking about a hell of a lot of money.”
Shayna began to cry uncontrollably. “Please don’t do this, Ricky!”
“Are you going to help me?”
She nodded, batting her eyes.
“Okay.” He let the Glock fall, still clutched in his fist.
Shayna rolled to the side and threw up in the gravel.
“You done?” he said.
She wiped her mouth and nodded.
“I’m glad,” Pink said almost tenderly.
Pink unloaded the Glocks, made sure the chambers were empty, and then kept the four loaded magazines in his pockets.
He threw the few rounds that were left into the trees and then gave the empty guns to Shayna and Leo to carry.
He grabbed the .45 Long Colt revolver and fired three rounds through it into the dead guy.
They were loud, but he needed to know the gun worked.
Besides, watching the old man’s body twitch with each shot scared the shit out of his co-conspirators.
“Where we going?” Shayna asked, slurred, hand to her bleeding nose.
“To get something to eat,” he said. “Then we’ll do your plan, grab the bitch when she goes to the cemetery.”
“My plan?” Shayna said. “You hit me in the face with a shovel and then tell me we’re going to do my plan anyway! What’s the matter with—”
He turned and glared at her, finger to his lips.
“Yeah … okay,” she said. “We’ll do my plan.”
“But first something to eat,” Ricky reminded her. Then, as if he hadn’t just hit her in the face with a shovel, he said, “What are you hungry for?”
They took their time walking, stopping at the river so Shayna had a chance to clean herself up. Leo scrolled through his phone, finally suggesting the Westmark on Third looked like it had a decent breakfast.
They sauntered past crowds looking at ubiquitous jewelry, T-shirt, and fudge shops.
Skagway was different than Juneau—wilder, like a bear or a moose or a pack of wolves might run down Broadway at any moment.
Pink liked wild. He thought he could have lived in a place like this, if things had been different.
If he’d gotten his share of the diamonds.
If Wayne Cutter hadn’t murdered his friend.
It was nearly ten by the time they’d made it down Broadway to Third.
Pink was just about to turn the corner when something up the street caught his eye. Four decades navigating the yard, where there always seemed to be someone who wanted to stab you—or someone you needed to stab—had taught Pink to look for things that were out of the ordinary.
He stopped in his tracks, squinting, wanting to be sure before he said anything.
“Cutter,” Leo said. He’d seen the marshal as well.
D Wayne Cutter’s grandson and his Polynesian partner were walking up Broadway with a uniformed Skagway cop. All three of them were scanning back and forth, clearly hunting.
“We need to get him alone,” Shayna said, slurping through broken teeth. “Ask him questions in a controlled environment.”
“You’re right,” Pink said.
“Really?” She took a step back, clearly surprised he’d agreed so quickly.
He had to do it this way, to keep her in line. Otherwise she never would have agreed—and he would have had to kill her on the spot.
Ahead, Cutter and his partner disappeared into the Red Onion Saloon.
Pink glanced at Shayna. “Call the police and tell them there’s a drunk woman at the ball fields without her clothes.”
“What?” she gasped. “The body’s there.”
“No shit the body’s there,” Pink said. “How many cops do you think are in this town?”
Leo shrugged. “Can’t be more than a couple on duty at any one time.”
“I agree,” Pink said. “We want the cops to find the old dude. A murder in paradise like this will keep ’em busy for hours, days even.”
“Won’t they just ask the marshals for help?” Leo said.
“Probably,” Pink said. “That’s why Shayna’s calling in a drunk woman. Not much of a threat, but something the locals will be compelled to investigate. Can’t have Aunt Sally walking around naked and scaring the moneybag tourists.”
“That’s actually pretty smart,” Shayna said.
Pink scoffed. “You know, being astonished that I’m smart is the same thing as calling me dumb.”
“I … you’re not … I didn’t mean—”
“I’m just teasing,” he said.
It was good to see the shovel had done its job.
Pink stared hard at the door of the Red Onion Saloon.
“Give me five minutes,” he said. “Then make the call.”