Weecho: First Shots

Chapter 35 - Face Time

“This is it, man,” Weecho yelled. 

Lynch swung the Uzi up at the beams and triggered a burst. 

Muzzle flashes spat from the shadow up there, spic goddamn kid, shots zinging into the cockpit. Lynch keeping low, still firing, keeping the Uzi on the shadow.  

Weecho answering with the Beretta. He’d boxed himself in, blowing his surprise, doing more ducking than shooting. Lucky the trestle beams were wider than he was.    

Shots whipped back and forth, the pass-through filled with chaos and echos. 

Lynch kept himself low in the cockpit, kept the Uzi chewing up everything around Weecho. Weecho kept firing, snapping off shots, no chance to aim, ducking out of Lynch’s field of fire. Both of them knowing Weecho couldn’t keep ducking much longer, that one of the Uzi’s bursts would find him. Weecho popped the Beretta’s clip, smacked the last full one into the butt. This not going the way he wanted. 

Think, man – options. Any ones he had were quick running out. 

When the next Uzi burst came Weecho let out a scream. Lynch fired one more burst and let up. Squinted up into the trestle. 

Silence. 

Shadow not shooting. 

The only sounds were gull noises and the distant clacking of the train. 

Then slowly, hanging for a second, Weecho’s body dropped from the beams, tumbling toward the water, hitting the channel with a heavy splash. 

Lynch squinted through the dim light, watched the current sweep away the ripples from the splash. Waited for the body to surface. Kept waiting. Moved the Donzi forward, Uzi pointed at where Weecho’s body went in. 

He scanned the gloomy current. Still no body. Was about to turn the Donzi around when something over by one of the pilings bobbed to the surface. He angled the boat across the current, toward what he could see was Weecho’s body face-down. Jerked the Uzi’s bolt to clear it, kept his eye on the floating back. 

 Weecho, most of his head under the surface, Beretta still in his hand beneath him, could hear the Donzi’s engines coming closer, moving slow. His lungs were near the limit, like that night he jumped into the Hudson. Then the engines went quiet and he pictured the boat coasting. Pictured the Uzi aimed at his back. Hoping he looked dead enough that Lynch wouldn’t pull the trigger.  

Lynch used a boathook instead. Jabbed Weecho’s back. Hard. It was all Weecho could do to stay still. But he had a sense now of how close Lynch was. Would only have a split second once he committed, needed to get it just right. Then, when he thought he couldn’t hold his breath a second longer, he felt the Donzi’s hull nudge his side. 

Now. 

He spun over and there was Lynch’s face three feet away, soul patch and all. Weecho whipped the gun up out of the water and prayed it would fire. 

It did. 

His ears were still partly underwater so he couldn’t really hear the shot. But a hole appeared just under Lynch’s left eye. Weecho kept pulling the trigger. More holes. Both Lynch’s eyes lost focus. 

Weecho let go of the Beretta and let it sink, reached up with both hands and grabbed the Donzi’s rail. Lynch was draped over the side, a trail of his blood drifting off in the current. Weecho pulled and kicked himself aboard, hardly feeling the pain in his shoulder, stood on his dead enemy’s deck and sucked in a deep breath. 

                                                #          #          # 

Weecho and Shongut got Juna aboard the Donzi and pushed off before the harbor patrol or anyone else could get there to investigate the burning skiff, them lucky that no one had come yet. Shongut had picked up the shell casings and the empty clip that Weecho had dropped in the meadow. Weecho found a cellphone in Lynch’s pocket and called Alexey, who said he’d have a doctor meet them with a private ambulance in Bay Ridge, at one of the piers. On the way there, when they were furthest from shore, no other boats around, they wrapped Lynch’s body in the Donzi’s anchor chain and dumped it overboard. That left only the dead Crotty back in the meadow, who Commissioner Burke’s people could deal with. 

The portable DVD player was face-down on the cockpit floor, like Lynch had tossed it there, no time to look at the phony scene he got himself shot for.  

Weecho went below to stay with Juna while Shongut steered the Donzi for Brooklyn. Shongut had found a first aid kit aboard and had gotten Juna better patched up. There was bottled water in the galley and Weecho held a bottle to her lips. 

“Thanks,” she said, her voice starting to sound stronger. Lynch’s drugs seemed to be wearing off, Weecho having to wonder now if she’d have told him where the locker key was if she hadn’t been in a haze. And was the key really there? 

When he went to kiss her forehead, something on the chart table caught his eye. He got up gently and went over to take a closer look, to make sure it was the same one he thought it was, though he knew it had to be. 

Stood staring down at it, remembering Dara’s word’s in that accent of hers, to bring the thing back if he could. 

Went to touch the keyboard, saw it wasn’t turned on, closed the cover instead. Felt sad again when he saw that smear of Nina Galleon’s blood. 

Nina Gallioni Shongut.