Read Crow's Landing for Free Online Page A

blew it.”
    â€œHow?”
    â€œParson got shit lucky, that’s how. Two in the morning and we’re just a few hundred yards away, running silent, oars and paddles. And all of a sudden he comes out on the deck. Maybe he heard a fish jump, who knows? But he makes us. Another five minutes and he was toast.”
    â€œSo him and the cylinder go overboard?”
    â€œYup.”
    â€œWhat about the woman?”
    â€œShe stayed with the boat. Maybe she couldn’t swim.”
    Hoffman finished his drink and signaled for another. “She went to jail though. What for?”
    â€œThe boat was in her name. We found a few ounces of coke on board, some grass too. Recreational. She took thefall for that. She wouldn’t give Parson up, wouldn’t admit to even knowing him. Everybody was pissed about losing the big score so they came down hard on the woman, made it trafficking and made it stick. She got a raw deal, tell you the truth. Did two, three years, if I recall.”
    Mick picked up his beer and glanced at the TV as he drank. A red-haired man with the rubbery features of a cartoon character was standing in front of a screen that showed the temperature for the coming days. Apparently the heat wave would continue.
    â€œWe sent divers down, but they couldn’t find it,” Mick said. “That water out there is deep and murky. We were fucked the minute Parson tossed the thing. McGarry should have let the feds take him down. But then there’d be no newspaper headlines for McGarry.”
    The waitress brought the round. Mick told her to put it on his tab and Hoffman didn’t argue.
    â€œSo Parson gets away and now he’s retired?”
    â€œYeah, he’s retired,” Mick said. “And the moon is made of cheese. What are you going to do with it?”
    â€œHow do you know I’m not going to turn it in?”
    â€œBecause you would have done it already. Instead you called me.”
    Hoffman fell silent and sipped at his drink. If he had known Mick was going to pay for the round, he’d have ordered a double.
    â€œYou know there’s a story that the thing is booby-trapped, right?” Mick asked.
    Hoffman set his glass down. “No. Where’d that come from?”
    â€œThe snitch,” Mick said. “Said that Parson wired it up in the islands. To discourage anybody from fucking with it.”
    Hoffman considered the unlikely nature of this for a moment. “Sounds like bullshit to me.”
    â€œMe too,” Mick said. “Have to be pretty sophisticated stuff. But it wouldn’t cost a dime to invent the story.” He took a long drink of beer. “But who knows?”
    Hoffman reached for his cigarettes and hesitated, had a look around to see if it was allowed. There was a guy at the bar pulling on a nonfilter while he pumped coins into the poker machine so Hoffman lit up. He inhaled deeply and let it out.
    â€œWhat should I do, Mick? We’re talking, what, a couple million dollars here.”
    Mick turned away. Hoffman knew that there was a time when he wouldn’t have had the nerve to suggest to Mick Wright that he do anything but turn the cylinder over to the drug squad. But the Mick who was a gung-ho cop with two working legs was a different man from the Mick in the wheelchair. The shooting that put him there had happened one night, in an instant, but really it had never stopped happening.
    â€œSo you think she’s wearing panties?” Mick asked, looking at the waitress, who was now behind the counter, talking to a young guy in a Yankees cap. “You know what I think? I think she just says shit like that to get guys like Bobby Simmons all worked up. Cuz she knows that none of them is ever gonna get close to her. She’s just doing it to make them crazy. Maybe they give her bigger tips, thinking it’s going to get them something.”
    Hoffman never so much as glanced over at the waitress, he just kept his