Sharks - Matt Rogers (classic books for 11 year olds txt) 📗

humanly possible, her mouth agape. Horror wracked her eyes. She’d never feared anyone like she feared King in that moment.

The suppressor did its job, but the noise was still considerable in the windowless room. His ears throbbed from the sharp cough, and he thought he heard concerned murmurs from an adjacent room, but that might have been his imagination. The gunshot would have echoed, despite the attempts to silence it. Staff would come to investigate shortly.

King got to his feet. ‘You want to know why I spared you?’

Deborah couldn’t speak. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t take her eyes off Cohen’s bleeding corpse, slumped upright in death, caught by the chair back. His head lolled.

King said, ‘When I asked if he was involved with guns, girls or drugs, you looked horrified when he told the truth.’

'N-no,’ she croaked. ‘I didn’t.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You did. It was only a flicker in your eyes. But that really made you uncomfortable. Of course you had to know that none of this money is legal, but blissful ignorance has been your modus operandi for as long as you can remember.’

She said nothing.

What could she say?

He said, ‘Rethink your life.’

He walked out, tucking the gun back under his jacket.

Walked straight into two pit managers who’d come straight from the floor, dressed up in their black suits, eyes like hawks. King had the door halfway closed by the time they noticed him, and he shielded the rest of the view with his bulk.

They said, ‘Who are you?’

They were jumpy.

Behind King, Deborah didn’t make a sound. Still deep in shock.

He narrowed his eyes at them. ‘You know who.’

They didn’t, but he was confident enough for them not to second-guess it. There were levels to this world. Mysterious people came and went behind the scenes all the time. It wasn’t prudent to accost everyone they didn’t know, especially if they looked and acted like they belonged, which was ninety percent of the game.

One guy said, ‘You hear something back here?’

‘Yeah,’ King said. ‘Like three or four rooms down. I don’t know what the hell is going on in this place but you tell your bent staff to pull their heads in and deal with their business elsewhere. Was that a goddamn gunshot? In a public place? That sort of thing continues and I’ll take my business elsewhere…’

The best defence is offence.

They looked rattled. Gunshot?

They hustled off down the hallway.

King glanced over his shoulder, saw Deborah slumped in the armchair, her mouth a thin sealed line.

King touched a finger to his lips, but he didn’t need to.

She’d remain catatonic until someone found her.

He found it hard to pity her.

He left her there and went back the way he came.

12

Slater loitered in the entranceway until King’s bulk appeared at the mouth of the casino.

The man was stoic, composed, but there were tiny flecks of blood on the right side of his face. More importantly, he was empty handed.

Slater met him in the lobby and they strode right out of Lagoon without anyone giving them a second glance. As soon as they were out of earshot of the staff, Slater said, ‘Where are the duffels?’

‘I left them there.’

‘Why?’

‘What are we going to do with blood money?’

‘It’s not about that,’ Slater said, circling around the hood of their Audi. ‘It’s about leaving it in their hands.’

‘Doesn’t matter,’ King said. ‘It’s now a crime scene. They’re not going to do anything with it. And that was the last thing on my mind.’

Slater got behind the wheel, and King got in the passenger seat.

They sat there for a beat.

Slater didn’t start the engine.

He turned to King. ‘What’d you do?’

‘Killed the cop.’

Slater slammed a palm on the wheel. ‘Of course you did.’

‘He was Ray’s business partner. They dealt in everything together. Maybe I can forgive drugs and guns. Maybe. If it doesn’t involve heroin, or handing fully automatic assault rifles to criminals. But human trafficking — no way. No compromise. Not for a damn second.’

‘So you shot him right there inside the building in front of witnesses?’

‘One witness,’ King said. ‘And I’m tired. I didn’t want to be around him a moment longer. The hypocrisy you need to hold a job in law enforcement and involve yourself in something like that … I can’t stand it. There’s no better solution than snuffing him out of existence. What are we going to do — rely on the legal and judicial systems? You’ve seen first-hand how corrupt they are.’

Slater said nothing.

King paused and looked around, exaggerating the gesture for dramatic affect. ‘I don’t see D’Antoni anywhere in sight. You going to preach to me about killing with a body in your wake?’

‘I let him go.’

Silence.

King faced Slater, but Slater faced forward. He fired the Audi to life and peeled away from the casino before the uproar of a dead lieutenant consumed the place. By then they’d be miles away, tucked up in their estate.

King said, ‘You’re getting soft.’

‘He was a middleman,’ Slater said. ‘He put the deals together. He didn’t ask what they involved. He ran the same thing on Pleasant Avenue in New York. If you want to go around executing every small-timer, go right ahead.’

‘No, you’re right,’ King said. ‘I did the same thing back there. I left the Lagoon employee alive. She was blissfully ignorant, just like D’Antoni. Doesn’t make it okay.’

‘Of course not,’ Slater said. ‘But it doesn’t mean we need hundreds more bodies on our résumé, either.’

‘Agreed.’

‘So what now?’ Slater said.

‘I got the name of a bank.’

‘A bank?’

King relayed everything Deborah had told him. The whole process, step by step, resulting in a clean fortune back on U.S. soil after an around-the-world trip.

After he finished Slater sat and stewed. ‘You want to follow it, don’t you?’

‘I think we need to put a little distance between ourselves and Vegas,’ King said. ‘Maybe take a vacation somewhere exotic. I did just execute a cop in a building that cameras caught me entering.’

‘You really shouldn’t have done that.’

‘But I did,’ King said. ‘Can’t change the