From Punaluu, Charlie went straight to Molokai Ranch. He knew that suspicions that he’d played a part in the breakout were soaring, even though he had the ultimate alibi; he’d been sipping bourbon with Leonard and talking hunting even while the breakout was in progress.
If Charlie knew anything he wasn’t giving anything up, but that didn’t mean that he hadn’t conspired with the perpetrators. Charlie was well acquainted with the cast of characters though Azeri had taken careful pains to conceal the fact that he had Raven and Circe in his little safe deposit box for humans.
Charlie planned to spend all afternoon and evening at the Ranch, putting Azeri and his staff at ease, throwing them off the scent. He laid on the back slappin’ Guff Coast Good ol’ Boy routine about as thick as he knew how.
Azeri was unconvinced and talked around the subject all day and deep into the night. He poked and jabbed to see if Charlie would let something slip but Charlie was a champion at this game. He’d spent his whole adult life playing it and had amassed a fortune in the process. They were two masters performing a grand dance.
By 2 AM, everyone in the house was asleep except for those who were on guard duty. It wasn’t unheard of to have all night parties featuring every coke whore the crew could round up from three islands, but not tonight, with the shipment due early in the morning. Tomorrow night, when the transaction was complete, that would be a different story.
By now Charlie’s mission had been accomplished. Things were pretty much back to normal between him and Azeri and he was as beloved by the staff as ever.
The four conspirators crouched in the trees across the road from the main gate. They were dressed in black and wearing black ski masks like master thieves preparing to heist the crown jewels. Of course, that’s exactly what they were.
They each carried a pager that Charlie had given them, set to vibrate when he was in place. Rudy was a bundle of nerves and checked the pager obsessively on the irrational fear that it may have gone off unnoticed. Of course, the other three, who also carried pagers, would have had to fail to notice theirs as well.
“Look!” Pete whispered to Rudy. “Check it out, that’s Tiny. He’s Charlie’s inside man.”
“Shit.” Rudy whispered back.
Looking across the road in the half-moonlight they could see the guard shack just inside the gate. A huge Hawaiian reading a girlie magazine was clearly visible in the well lit booth. Tiny waited at the edge of the little tree-shrouded dirt road, about a hundred yards from the gate. Under the canopy of trees it was astonishingly dark. Obviously he was waiting for Charlie’s signal too.
“No wonder Charlie didn’t want to tell us who he was.” Rudy went on.
“No shit,” said Pete. “I don’t trust that sombitch as far as I can spit.”
“Yeah, and you’re a lousy spitter.” Rudy shot back. They both laughed under their breath in a sound that resembled donkeys in a high pitched stage whisper.
“Sshh.” Ben hissed. “Would you two haole’s shut up? You gonna get us caught.”
They all glanced toward the booth but the guard was engrossed in the magazine, holding it up and moving it around like maybe he could see more coochie from a different angle.
“Oh, this guy is dumb as a stump.” Rudy said. “This should be easy.” Trying to convince himself.
They crouched in silence for a while, wind moving through the treetops the only sound. Any other time, that might have seemed soothing but it only served to add to their tension tonight. It was a warm, humid night after the early evening showers and they were sweating profusely under their ski masks.
“What say, when this is all over, we kick Tiny’s ass, just for good measure.” Rudy whispered to Pete.
“Okay, but you go first. You see the size of that guy?” Pete answered.
“Hey, is it some kind of haole thing that you guys can’t shut up?” Ben asked.
“Sorry, brah,” Rudy said in his best pidgin. They were all getting pretty antsy by now. Rudy checked his watch; it was a few minutes after 4. Something should be happening by now.
Charlie took his fanny pack into the control room, a tiny windowless 8 X 8 cubical in the center of the house filled by a giant control panel underneath a bank of monitors and full of all sorts of dials, keypads and controls. Sports Center was showing highlights of the Lakers vs Spurs game on one monitor that Charlie knew should have been tuned to one of the many cameras on the property.
“Hey, Mano, check this out.” Charlie said. He pulled a rag and a bottle out of the pack.
“What is it?” Mano asked.
“Methyl trichloride.” He said as he saturated the rag with the liquid.
“What’s it for?”
“This,” Charlie said as he smashed the rag into Mano’s face.
The huge Hawaiian stood up and Charlie was aware of how comical this must look, the big Hawaiian trying to shake this white-haired bag of leathery bones off while he hung onto his shoulders for dear life.
Mano backed into the wall, slamming Charlie hard against it and knocking his breath out. Charlie hung on with the last bit of strength he had, telling himself that even this big ox had to go down any second. It took 15 seconds that felt like 15 minutes for Mano to finally drop.
Damn, I hope no one heard that, he thought, working quickly to secure Mano with the cuffs and duct tape. When he was finally satisfied that Mano was secure, he punched the codes into the control panel to disable the cameras and alarms and the electric fence.
That finally done, he punched the auto-code into his pager and sent the go signal to the others. There were two other codes he could have used, one to call the whole thing off and an SOS if he was in trouble.
The four conspirators nearly jumped out of their socks when all their pagers finally began vibrating at once. The vibrations were nearly silent but sounded like a fighter jet flying low overhead to the jumpy gang of pseudo thieves.
Tiny began walking down the road toward the main gate. It had rained earlier, one of those famous Hawaiian cloud bursts that dumps an inch of water and then is gone as quickly at it came. His feet squished in the red clay as he walked.
The anxious conspirators watched the guard sit up and put down the magazine as Tiny got closer. They looked like Moe, Curly, Larry and his other brother Larry, all huddled together in their black outfits and black ski masks, their white pupils in the black masks huge in wide-eyed anticipation.
The guard was out of the shack now, anxiously fingering the .38 at his hip, unsnapping the security strap on his holster. He was wearing a full rent-a-cop uniform just like a night watchman at some legit business.
“Hey brudda,” Tiny called out as he came into view. He tried to sound casual but all of the bandits noticed an edge in his voice.
“Tiny, Jesus, you scared me brudda.” The guard said. Apparently he was too antsy himself to notice the edge in Tiny’s voice. “Where you been anyway, I keep hearing lotta rumors 'bout you.”
The four minstrels tiptoed across the street while Tiny had him distracted.
“Don’t believe everything you hear, brah.” Tiny replied. He snuck a quick glance out of the corner of his eye and saw the four moving into place.
“Hey, you hear about Kekoa?” the guard asked, then continued before Tiny could answer. “He fell asleep in the control room during the breakout the other night. Now he’s gone, no one seen him since he go talk to da boss.”
“Oh man,” Tiny sounded genuinely disturbed. “I warned him, brah. Listen, I need some help.” He continued, nervously glancing around to make sure that the four were in place.
“Sure, what up?”
“Well, you know me an’ da boss have a little da kine, eh? I need ta talk to him, sort it out ‘fore I end up like Kekoa, but I don’t need no stupid lolo shooting my fat ass up, Moapopo?”
“Sure I understand, but...”
“Just walk wit me to da house, eh?”
They turned toward the house and when they did, Rudy rushed the guard from behind, jumped on his back and gave him a face full of chloroform, riding him like a bucking bronco until he dropped.
When he fell, they quickly secured him with the tape and cuffs, then put him in the guard shack, taped him to the chair, yanked the phone cord, busted out the light and locked the door.
The five of them split up, sprinting across the massive lawn at full speed, each taking a different entrance. The intent was to work their way toward the middle of the house from all sides, disabling the staff as they went.
The plan worked beautifully for a while; the five of them moving silently through the house, chloroforming the occupants and then securing them. Charlie was in the study working the safe. He quickly had it open and had begun loading the bags when he heard the crash.
One of Azeri’s crew must have managed to kick a lamp or something over and suddenly lights were flicking on all over the house. In an instant the place was alive with bedlam. There were shouts, gun shots and furniture crashing as people stormed out of their rooms with guns blazing.
The reality was that there were only three of Azeri’s goons who had yet to be secured but in the pandemonium of the moment they sounded like a battalion of Marines engaged in a firefight. They were clearly of the shoot first, ask questions later persuasion.
The conspirators dived onto the floor, scrambling for cover. Rudy crouched behind a mahogany armoire, one of Ravens creations, no doubt. Across the room he saw Pete take cover behind an overturned table and their eyes met.
What now? Pete gestured.
Rudy shrugged.
No idea. Whose stupid fucking idea was this not to bring guns?
Neither Rudy nor Pete had any clue where Ben and Bill were and Rudy feared they had been the object of the gunfire. In an instant he understood what Raven had been so upset about. If he’d gotten those guys killed by getting them involved in this, he’d never be able to live with himself. He was nauseous at the thought.
The bedlam continued throughout the house and they crouched behind the furniture, acutely aware that Charlie’s plan hadn’t left them with any way to defend themselves. Rudy was beginning to think that things couldn’t get much worse when he heard the roar of an airplane motor and thought,
Damn, they’ve called in reinforcements.
He crawled toward the kitchen, poked his head over a countertop and looked out the grand window just in time to see a plane come in steep and fast for a hard, quick landing on the huge lawn. Rudy recognized the plane as Charlie’s and he was now more confused than ever.
For an instant, everything went silent as every soul in the house turned their attention toward the front lawn, unsure of what was happening. Azeri’s people began to scramble out the back door, thinking this was a raid. The conspirators maintained their crouched positions
hoping this was a raid.
In a few seconds the planes door burst open and Raven, Jenny, Wally and Soon-Li piled out. They each were carrying sub-machine guns and spraying bullets everywhere for cover as they ran toward the front door.
Bullets were hitting bricks, shrubbery, glass was flying everywhere. The great window crumbled in a rain of shards dropping straight to the ground in slow motion. The silly fountain of a little boy peeing near the front entrance exploded in a hail of plaster and water and the image struck Rudy as hilarious in his highly charged state.
The conspirators remained crouched in fetal positions, covering their heads with their hands to protect against the flying glass, bullets, mortar and who knows what else.
Charlie was still in the study at the rear of the house and continued loading the bags undaunted by the commotion around him. When he was nearly done he heard a thud as the huge doors slammed shut and a light came on.
He reeled around in surprise to find Azeri sitting in his favorite leather chair with a .9 millimeter pointed at him and he wondered how Azeri had managed to shut the double doors from across the room.
“Good evening, Charlie. Surprised?"
“Just a little, Lenny.” Charlie said as casually as he could muster.
“I don’t understand, Charlie, why would you rob me? I thought you were loaded.”
“To put you out of business, dirt bag, that’s why. I don’t suppose you even remember Chloe, do ya? The one you threw off the balcony?”
“Oh yes, nice piece of tail but nasty appetite for coke. It’s a shame what happened to her.”
“She was my daughter.” Charlie said.
The chaos was beginning to dim in the rest of the house. The Azeri goons, those that weren’t already duct tape mummies, were long gone, still believing this was a raid. The armed assailants were going room to room, busting down doors looking for the rest of Azeri’s crew; anyone who might still be a threat.
Charlie heard Raven and Rudy calling his name, distracting him and Azeri for just a moment.
“Well Charlie, you may or may not succeed in putting me out of business but I’ll see you dead right now.”
He drew a bead on Charlie but Rudy came bursting through the door before he could shoot. Instinctively, Azeri turned the weapon toward the door and fired at Rudy, who went down immediately.
Raven appeared in the doorway, Tommy gun in hand and the room stood frozen for just a second while the surprise registered in all of the inhabitants. Two thoughts flashed through her mind too quickly to even verbalize in the millisecond that it took her to size the situation up. First, that her dilemma as to which vow she would keep had just been resolved, then
Damn you Rudy, for making me do this. She and Azeri had drawn mutual beads and it just was a question of which one was faster on the trigger.
Before they could find out, Raven was slammed to the floor by Tiny, who flew through the doorway in a midair dive, like a scene from an action movie. While still airborne he squeezed the trigger on the .38 he’d taken from the guard and put a bullet dead center in the boss’s forehead. He hit the ground, wondering how he’d managed that perfect shot through the smoke and haze, even as he skated face-first across the debris strewn hardwood floor, headlong into the moneybags.
The house went silent for a second before people started picking themselves up, brushing away glass and debris and trying to gather their wits. Azeri slumped forward in his chair and his lifeless body fell onto the Oriental rug with a thud that reverberated through the room.
Raven was bent over Rudy examining his wound. The bullet had struck him in the shoulder and the force of it had dropped him like a sack of potatoes but he was bleeding little, an indication that he hadn’t severed any major arteries. He was able to move his arm as well as his shoulder. She could see that it had exited cleanly and appeared to have inflicted only soft tissue damage.
“Is he OK?” Charlie asked.
“I’m alright.” Rudy answered as he struggled to his feet. His knees were wobbling and his entire body was shaking but he was able to stand on his own.
They could hear the others running toward the study, boots crunching broken glass as they called out names. In a few seconds this rag-tag bunch, whose lives had come together in this most unlikely string of events, were together in the study, surrounded by six million dollars in canvas money bags. This was the first time that they’d all been in the same room, ever.
Pete was the last to reach the study and he stood in the doorway surveying the room as the smoke cleared, trying to figure out what had just happened there.
Rudy grinned at Pete and said, “I take back what I said about kicking Tiny’s ass.”
Tiny gave him a puzzled look but said nothing. He was still on the floor, using the money bags as a back rest.
“Come on, let’s get these bags and get out of here.” Charlie said.
In a matter of minutes five of them and their cache had piled into the Cessna while those who wouldn’t fit ran for Charlie’s Jeep. The overloaded plane struggled to get up to speed and off the ground while the Jeep moved quickly down the long, shrub lined drive, nearly overturning as it tried to turn onto the muddy road, jolting its occupants as it sped away.
At the last possible minute the Cessna was airborne and trimming the tops of the trees in the surrounding forest. Rudy held onto the Jeep’s roll bar with his good arm and held his breath. When he saw the plane clear the forest and turn toward Maui he started to breath again.
Posts
