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over the frantically squealing Doakes.
Everything was very quiet and motionless for a long moment, except for the relentless Tito Puente.
Then Danco slipped off the table, and Debs knelt beside Chutsky and felt for a pulse. She eased him
down to a more comfy position, kissed his forehead, and finally turned to me.  Dex, she said.  Are
you all right?
 I ll be fine, Sis, I said, feeling somewhat light-headed,  if you ll just turn off that horrible music.
She crossed to the battered boom box and yanked the plug from the wall, looking down at Sergeant
Doakes in the sudden huge silence and trying not to show too much on her face.  We ll get you out of
here now, Doakes, she said.  It s going to be all right. She put a hand on his shoulder as he
blubbered, and then turned suddenly away and came over to me with the tears starting down her face.
 Jesus, she whispered as she cut me loose.  Doakes is a mess.
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But as she ripped the last of the tape off my wrists it was hard for me to feel any distress about
Doakes, because I was free at last, all the way free, of the tape and the Doctor and doing favors and
yes, it looked like I might finally be free of Sergeant Doakes, too.
I stood up, which was not as easy as it sounds. I stretched my poor cramped limbs as Debs pulled out
her radio to summon our friends on the Miami Beach police force. I walked over to the operating
table. It was a little thing, but my curiosity had gotten the best of me. I reached down and grabbed the
piece of paper taped to the edge of the table.
In those familiar, spidery block letters, Danco had written,  TREACHERY. Five of the letters were
crossed out.
I looked at Doakes. He looked back at me, wide-eyed and broadcasting a hate that he would never be
able to speak.
So you see, sometimes there really are happy endings.
EPILOGUE
I T IS A VERY BEAUTIFUL THING TO WATCH THE SUN COME up over the water in the
stillness of South Florida s subtropical morning. It is far more beautiful when that great yellow full
moon hangs so low on the opposite horizon, slowly paling to silver before it slides below the waves of
the open ocean and lets the sun take over the sky. And it is even more beautiful still to watch all this
out of sight of land, from the deck of a twenty-six-foot cabin cruiser as you stretch the last knots from
your neck and arms, tired but fulfilled and oh-so-very happy at last, from a night of work that had
waited just a bit too long.
Soon I would step into my own little boat, towing behind us now, and I would throw off the tow line
and head back in the direction the moon had gone, motoring sleepily home to a brand-new life as a
soon-to-be-married man. And the Osprey, the twenty-six-foot borrowed cabin cruiser, would motor
slowly in the opposite direction, toward Bimini, out into the Gulf Stream, the great blue bottomless
river that runs through the ocean so conveniently near Miami. The Osprey would not make it to
Bimini, would not even make it across the Gulf Stream. Long before I closed my happy eyes in my
little bed, its engines would stall, flooded with water, and then the boat would slowly fill with water,
too, rocking sluggishly in the waves before it slid under, down into the endless crystal clear depths of
the Gulf Stream.
And perhaps somewhere far below the surface it would finally settle onto the bottom among the rocks
and giant fish and sunken ships, and it was whimsically wonderful to think that somewhere nearby was
a neatly bound package swaying gently in the current as the crabs nibbled it down to the bones. I had
used four anchors on Reiker after wrapping the pieces with rope and chain, and the neat, bloodless
bundle with two awful red boots firmly chained to the bottom had sunk quickly out of sight, all of it
except one tiny drop of rapidly drying blood on the glass slide in my pocket. The slide would go in the
box on my shelf, right behind MacGregor s, and Reiker would feed the crabs and life would at last go
on again, with its happy rhythms of pretending and then pouncing.
And a few years from now I would bring Cody along and show him all the wonders that unfold in a
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Night of the Knife. He was far too young now, but he would start small, learn to plan, and move
slowly upward. Harry had taught me that, and now I would teach it to Cody. And someday, perhaps he
would follow in my shadowy footsteps and become a new Dark Avenger, carrying the Harry Plan
forward against a new generation of monsters. Life, as I said, goes on.
I sighed, happy and content and ready for all of it. So beautiful. The moon was gone now and the sun
had begun to burn away the cool of the morning. It was time to go home.
I stepped into my own boat, started the engine, and cast off the tow line. Then I turned my boat around
and followed the moon home to bed. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]