The Charlie Parker Collection 2

by John Connolly

  ‘I’m trying to get in the cab.’

  ‘Sitinthedamnmiddlenotmovingsumbitchkickyourass.’

  ‘Quit fooling, man,’ said Benton. ‘Let the kid through.’

  Quinn moved his knees a fraction to the left, allowing Curtis just enough room to squeeze past.

  ‘Gotmeallwetmankickyourasskickyourassgood.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Curtis.

  ‘Betterbesorrymakeyousorrykickyourassman.’

  Yeah, whatever, you whacko, thought Curtis. He briefly entertained visions of kicking Quinn’s ass instead, but forced them from his mind when he turned and saw Quinn regarding him unblinkingly through light brown eyes flecked with points of black like tumors in his retinae. Curtis didn’t believe Quinn was telepathic, but he wasn’t about to take any chances.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ asked Curtis.

  ‘What we should have done after we wrecked their car,’ said Benton. ‘We’re going to take care of them.’

  Curtis shivered. He recalled the sight of the dead woman, and the weight of her in his arms as he and Quinn had placed her in the trunk, Benton and Quinn giggling at the little twist they had added to the job. Willis and Harding had done the killing during the night, and Benton had been left to bury the bodies, another punishment for his failures earlier in the week. Instead, he had decided to stuff them in the trunk of the car, and now Curtis couldn’t seem to get the smell of the woman’s perfume off his hands and clothes, even in the rain.

  ‘We were told not to get involved,’ said Curtis. ‘There were orders, orders from Mr Leehagen’s son.’

  ‘Yeah, well nobody told those two assholes out there. Suppose Brooker did help them, or let them use his phone? Suppose there are people on their way up here right now? Hell, they might even have killed the old man and his family, and that’d be a regular tragedy. They’re killers, ain’t they? That’s what these people do. While we wait around for some ghost to get here and do a job that we could have done for nothing, they’re running free. Long as they end up dead on his land, Leehagen won’t object.’

  Curtis wasn’t sure that this was a good idea. He tended to take Mr Leehagen at his word, even if that word usually came through his son now that Mr Leehagen couldn’t get around so good anymore, and it had been made clear to them that they were to restrain themselves when it came to the two men for whom they had been waiting. Confrontations – fatal ones, at least – were to be avoided. They just had to sit tight and wait. After the men had entered the Leehagen lands, they were to be contained there, and nothing more. All told, fifteen men had been entrusted with the task of ensuring that, once they entered the trap, they did not escape. Now Benton wanted to bend the rules. His pride had been hurt by recent events, Curtis knew. He wanted to make amends to the Leehagens, and restore his own confidence along the way.

  Benton drank some, it was true, but he was right more often than he was wrong, alcohol or no alcohol. The more Curtis thought about their situation, the more he saw Benton’s point about not waiting around for Bliss to take care of the two men. But then Curtis always had been swayed by the voice that was nearest and loudest. If a backbone could be said to have chameleonesque qualities, changing to suit its moral environment, then Curtis’s certainly qualified. His opinion could be swayed by a sneeze.

  And so Quinn, Curtis, and Benton left the road and went in search of two killers who would soon be killing no more. They made one stop along the way, calling at the Brooker place to see what he could tell them. Curtis could see that Mr Brooker thought as much of Benton as Benton thought of him, and even then Mr Brooker’s feelings toward Benton were probably pretty charitable compared to his wife’s. She didn’t even try to be civil, and the sight of their guns didn’t seem to faze her at all. She was a tough old bitch, no doubt about it.

  Their son, Luke, leaned against a wall, hardly blinking. Curtis didn’t know if he could see out of his milky eye. Maybe he could, and the world looked as though it had been overlaid with a sheet of muslin, its streets populated with ghosts. Curtis couldn’t ever recall hearing Mr Brooker’s son speak. He had never gone to school, not to any regular school, and the only time Curtis ever saw him away from the Brooker place was when he went into town with his father and the old man treated them both to ice cream at Tasker’s ice cream parlor. As for the little girl, Curtis had no idea where she had come from. Maybe Luke had managed to get lucky, once upon a time, although it didn’t seem likely. Screwing Luke Brooker would be like screwing a zombie.

  Mr Brooker showed them the guns that he had taken from the two men, and Benton’s eyes lit up at the prospect of easy pickings. He slapped Brooker on the back and told him that he’d let Mr Leehagen know how well he’d done.

  When the three men had gone, Brooker sat silently at his kitchen table while his wife rolled dough behind him, and tried to ignore the waves of disapproval that were breaking upon his back.

  Angel and Louis heard the truck before they saw it. They were in a trough between two raised patches of open ground, one of the grazing cuts, and it took them a moment to determine from which direction the sound was coming. Louis scaled the small incline and looked to the east to see the Ranger moving fast in their direction, following a dirt trail out of the forest from the direction of the old man’s house. It was still too far away to identify the men inside, but Louis was pretty sure that they weren’t friendly. Neither would Bliss be among their number. It wasn’t his style. The rules had changed, it seemed. It was no longer a matter of containment. He wondered if Thomas had made a call, fearful of what the trespassers on his land might do even without guns. Perhaps the news that they were no longer armed had tilted the balance against them.

  Louis sized up their options. The cover of the forest was lost to them. To the southwest, meanwhile, was what appeared to be an old barn, the raised domed structure of an aged grain elevator beside it, with more forest behind. It was an unknown quantity.

  Angel joined him.

  ‘They’re coming for us,’ said Louis.

  ‘Which way do we go?’

  Louis pointed at the barn.

  ‘There. And fast.’

  Benton came to the top of a slight hill. Almost directly oppos ite them, and on the same level, their prey was running. One of them, the tall black guy, took a second to look back over at them. Benton slammed on the brakes and jumped from the cab, grabbing his Marlin hunting rifle from the rack behind his seat as he did so. He went down on one knee, aimed, and fired at the figure across from him, but the man was already disappearing over the rise, and the bullet hit nothing but air. By now, Quinn and Curtis were behind him, although neither had bothered to raise his weapon, Quinn because he had a shotgun and Curtis because he hadn’t signed up to shoot at anybody, even though he’d brought along his father’s old pistol, just as Mr Leehagen’s son had instructed him to do.

  ‘Goddamn,’ said Benton, but he was laughing as he spoke. ‘Bet nobody in his family has moved that fast since someone waved a noose at them back in the old South.’

  ‘How’d you know he was Southern?’ asked Curtis. It seemed like a reasonable question.

  ‘A feeling I got,’ said Benton. ‘A Negro don’t get into his trade unless he has a beef against someone from way back. That boy’s looking for a way to strike back against the white man.’

  That sounded like bullshit to Curtis, but he didn’t disagree. Maybe Benton was right, but even if he wasn’t, it was good sense simply to nod along with him. Meanness ran through him like fat on marbled beef. It wouldn’t be beyond him just to leave Curtis out here in the rain, and with a broken nose – again – or some busted ribs as a reminder to him to keep his mouth shut in future.

  ‘Come on,’ said Benton, and led them back to the truck at a trot.

  ‘Looks steep,’ said Curtis, as Benton drove down the slope at a sharp angle.

  ‘Four liter V-six,’ said Benton. ‘Baby could do it on two wheels.’

  Curtis didn’t reply. The Ranger was twelve years old, the
treads were at 60 percent, and four liters didn’t make it a monster. Curtis braced himself against the dashboard.

  The Ranger might have made the climb on dry ground, but Benton hadn’t reckoned with the rain that had soaked into the dirt at the bottom of the depression. It had turned the earth to mud, and when the Ranger hit bottom the wheels struggled to grip, even as they began to climb up the oppos ite side. Benton gunned the engine, and for a moment they lurched forward before stopping entirely, the wheels churning uselessly in the soft ground.

  Quinn said something, from which Curtis could only rescue the words ‘shithead’ and ‘eating dirt.’ Benton fired the Ranger again, and this time it made two more feet before sliding backward and losing its rear wheels in mud.

  Benton slapped the dashboard in frustration and opened the door to inspect the damage. They were mired deep, the gloop almost touching the alloy.

  ‘Shit,’ he said. ‘Well, I guess we go after them on foot.’

  ‘You sure that’s a good idea?’ asked Curtis.

  ‘They’re unarmed,’ said Benton. ‘You scared of unarmed men?’

  ‘No,’ said Curtis, but he had the feeling that he had just lied to himself.

  ‘Well, come on then. They ain’t going to kill themselves.’

  Benton laughed at his own joke. Quinn joined in, contributing a combination of hyena sniggers interspersed with cuss words. Then they were off, their boots sinking into the mud as they climbed the slope.

  With no other choice left to him, Curtis followed.

  The barn loomed large against the dark sky, with the elevator on the left side of it. It was forty feet high, and not as modern as the one close to the cattle pens near Leehagen’s house. There would be no breather bags, no molten glass fused to the steel sheets to allow an easy slide for the grain and guard against acids from fermented feeds, no pressure venting. This was a simple storage bin, and nothing more.

  Louis’s breath was coming in jagged rasps, and Angel was visibly struggling. They were cold and wet, and they knew that they were running out of both strength and options. Louis took Angel by the arm and pulled him onward, looking behind him as he did so. The Ranger had not yet appeared over the lip of the slope. Both the incline and decline had looked steep to him, perhaps too steep for the truck in this weather. A little time had been bought, but not much. The men would continue the pursuit on foot, and they were armed while he and Angel were not. If they caught them on the open ground, they could pick them off in their current tired state. Even if he and Angel got to the barn, their problems would not end. They would be trapped inside, and if the pursuers called in others then it would all be over.

  But Louis was anticipating that they would not call others. If what the old man at the farm had told him was true, then Bliss was coming, and Bliss worked alone. The ones who were now after them were acting on their own initiative. If they thought that he and Angel were still armed, the pursuers might have been more cautious once they reached the grain store, and caution would have given them pause, but Louis guessed that they had spoken to the old man before commencing the hunt. They knew now that they were dealing with unarmed men.

  But one of the first lessons Louis had learned in his long apprenticeship as a bringer of death was that in every room there is a weapon, even if that weapon was only oneself. It was simply a question of identifying it and using it. He hadn’t been in a grain store in many years, but his mind was already anticipating what lay within: tools, sacking, fire fighting equipment . . .

  His mind began making leaps.

  Fire fighting equipment.

  Fire.

  Grain.

  He had the first of his weapons.

  Quinn crested the rise ahead of the others, and thought that he saw one of the two men disappear behind the barn. There were two grain storage units on Leehagen’s property. The main one was over by the new pens, close by the feed mill, while this one was a relic from the days when the herd was in its infancy, and had originally been a silage silo. Now it was used to hold grain in reserve, just in case anything should happen to the main store, or if snows came and separated the cattle. In fact, one of Benton’s tasks, when he wasn’t hunting down living things or intimidating those smaller than him, had been to monitor the secondary grain store, checking for damp, rodents, or other infestations. Nobody else bothered with it much, which made it a useful place for Benton to pursue his various hobbies, among them screwing some of the young foreign women, willing or not, who were occasionally transported through the farm from Canada.

  Benton and Curtis joined him.

  ‘You see where they went?’ asked Benton.

  Quinn pointed at the barn with his shotgun.

  ‘It’s empty fields beyond there,’ said Benton. ‘Ain’t a tree for three, four hundred yards. If they try to run, we got ’em. If they stay put, we got ’em too.’

  Benton had advised Mr Leehagen to have the barn and the silo demolished, but the slaughter of the herd (a rich man’s foolish indulgence from the start) had negated the need for any such action. The silo had been damaged by the fact that it was side tapped for gravity unloading, causing one wall to collapse inward. A secondary outlet, created against Benton’s advice, fed directly into the barn itself, an emergency measure in case it became necessary to house and feed the cattle there in winter. Benton was grateful that they had never had to use it. It was just like old Leehagen to cut corners in this way. Now it looked as if the barn might serve a final useful purpose after all, by trapping the men that they were hunting.

  He slapped Curtis hard on the back.

  ‘Come on, boy. We’ll blood you yet!’

  And, with his rifle held high, he led the three men toward the grain store.

  The barn wasn’t locked. Louis figured that nobody was going to cross Leehagen by stealing from him, and even the cleverest rat hadn’t learned to open a door using the handle. He stepped inside. The barn was small, with makeshift cattle pens running parallel along its walls. It was lit through a trio of skylights in the ceiling, with a series of ventilation grills beneath them.

  ‘Take a look around,’ he told Angel. ‘See if you can find oil, white spirits, anything that burns.’

  It was a small chance. While Angel searched, Louis examined the outlet that fed grain into the barn. It was little more than a metal pipe connecting the silo to the barn wall, with a valve at one end to release the grain. The outlet was ten feet off the ground, a portable metal chute to one side of it and a plastic storage bin beneath it. Louis stood on the bin and twisted the valve. It was slightly rusted, and he had to push hard against it to move it, but he watched with relief as grain began to pour on to the floor of the barn. He held some in his hands, rubbing it between his fingers. It was bone dry. He twisted the valve further, increasing the flow. Already, the air after a minute or two, was filling with choking dust and grain particles.

  Angel appeared by his side.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said.

  ‘Doesn’t matter. Go see how close they are.’

  Angel covered his nose and mouth with his coat as he raced through the store until he reached the main sliding door at the front of the barn. There were dusty windows at either side. He glanced carefully through the glass and saw three shapes advancing through the rain. They were about two hundred feet away, and already spreading out. One would go around the back while the others came in through the front. There would be no other way for them to search the barn safely while ensuring that their prey did not escape through the back door.

  ‘Close,’ Angel shouted back. ‘Minutes.’ He coughed hard as some of the dust entered his lungs. Already, he could barely see Louis against the far wall.

  ‘Let them get a look at you,’ said Louis.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Let them see you. Open the door, then close it again.’

  ‘Maybe I should put an apple on my head too, or dress like a duck.’

  ‘Just do it.’

  Angel threw the bolt on the sl
iding door, then moved it back about five feet. Shots came. Quickly, Angel closed the door again and returned to Louis.

  ‘Happy now?’ he said, as he ran back to join Louis.

  ‘Ecstatic. Time to go.’ Louis had some old grain sacks in his hand, and the spare clip for the Glock. He tied the sack around the clip, his Zippo held between his teeth.

  ‘You still have yours?’ he said, through the mouthful of brass.

  Angel took the clip from his pocket and handed it over. Louis did the same again, adding more weight to the sack.

  ‘Okay,’ he said. He gestured at the rear door. It opened to the left. They had just stepped outside when a young man appeared from around the corner to their right. He was small, and armed with a pistol. He stared at them, then raised his gun halfheartedly. It wavered in his hand.

  ‘Don’t move,’ he said, but Angel was already moving. He grabbed the gun, pushing it away to the left, and hit the man as hard as he could in the face with the crown of his head. The man collapsed, leaving Angel holding the gun. As he went down, Angel heard the sound of the double doors at the front of the barn opening.

  Something flamed behind Angel. He turned to see Louis lighting the sack.

  ‘Run,’ said Louis.

  And Angel ran. Seconds later, Louis was beside him, his hand on Angel’s aching back, pushing him down to the ground as Angel started to pray.

  Benton and Quinn heard the shots as they moved into the barn. One end of the barn was heavy with dust, and they could not see the far wall. Quinn had already grabbed Benton by the shoulder and was forcing him back the way they had come when the burning bag came sailing through the double doors and into the dust-rich environment of the barn.

  ‘Aw, hell,’ said Benton. ‘Aw –’

  And then hell became a reality as the world turned to fire.