Mink Eyes

by Dan Flanigan

  “It’s that van,” Fatso said. “What the fuck is going on?”

  “How the fuck do I know? Just watch.”

  The van was going so fast that its back wheels flew off the ground when it hit the little bump that separated the driveway from the road. O’Keefe hit the brakes, and the van screeched and skidded to the right, whipping into a spin. It would have turned completely around the other way except the rear end banged against the garage door, stopping the spin. He jumped out of the van and bounded into the house through the unlocked front door.

  Otto’s eyes bulged. Life was full of surprises. “Look at that God-damned rifle, will ya? Did ya see that God-damned thing? An M-16. Told ya we shoulda gone back to that farmhouse.”

  Karl buried his elbow in Otto’s gut and told him to shut up. Karl was trying to think, and he couldn’t think with that fat, little, perverted fuck firing questions and accusations at him. Life always dealt its wild cards, sometimes to you, sometimes to the other players, and the guy in the van was a wild card. Was the guy some kind of local cop? No. Cops don’t carry M-16s. Maybe I should take Fatso and sneak up to the house and blast the guy when he comes back out. But the guy’s toting that God-damned M-16. And Fatso’s about as useless as tits on a nun. Except for killing women, Fatso excels at that. Maybe we should just get the fuck out of here. No. Just sit tight and don’t do anything stupid. Let events develop and take advantage of whatever opportunities come our way.

  O’KEEFE TOOK ONE careful step after another down the upstairs hallway toward the open bedroom door, the M-16 leading the way. Her luggage had been trashed and her things thrown around on the floor. She was nowhere to be found, but the Jag was still downstairs in the garage. Someone must have dragged her off, probably into the woods. Mortar rounds kept exploding in his head. He couldn’t seem to see very well. He thought he might fall down. There’s a bed right there, sit down if you can. He would not go looking for her. He had seen enough death for one day. Despite his line of work, he had not seen death like that since Vietnam. What a beautiful thing she had been. Gone. No telling what they had done to her. Grieving, that’s what he was doing. He had fallen a little in love with her though he hadn’t known her at all. He wanted to scream or at least yell, and he did. “God damn!” he kept yelling and pounding the bed. He wished he could cry, but the pain was too much, it stifled the tears. Whatever was on the loose out there, it was way bigger than he, the foolish pilgrim O’Keefe. He picked up the telephone to call the cops. Another dead phone line. He would go to the van and call them. Then he, the witness, would wait. But what was it he had witnessed? Like ‘Nam—most of the action was over by the time O’Keefe and the Medevac helicopter arrived. Just the bodies to be policed up now. No explanations, no meanings, just casualties.

  The call to the cops would make it official, bringing this misadventure to a very dead end. And suddenly he felt very weary. He didn’t know whether he had the strength to make the short journey down the stairs, out of the house, and to the van. Maybe he would just sit here for a few minutes. Watch the sun finish setting, say a prayer for the dead. He wished there was a God somewhere for him to pray to. He wondered if people still paid the priests to say Masses for the deceased. If so, when he got back to the city, he would buy one for Tag, and Jane too, and even Roy, who couldn’t help his looks after all, or the vicious vocation he had fallen into. He recalled how he had hated being an altar boy at funerals, even though the grieving relatives had always paid the boys a little something, even though the choir singing the Dies Irae had made him feel in his young soul all the power and majesty of even a common man’s life and death.

  Then O’Keefe witnessed a resurrection of sorts. The lid came up off the hot tub and Tag stood wobbling uncertainly in front of him. Her dress and hair were sopping wet. She seemed to be in some kind of pain, but he could not remember ever being happier. He stared at her.

  “I need help,” she said, barely more than a whisper.

  He rushed to help her.

  “I can hardly stand up,” she said. “I don’t know if I can climb out.”

  What’s she doing with that damn pack inside that thing? She seemed reluctant to part with the pack for even a second, instinctively tugging back at it in resistance when he grabbed it from her to set it down on the deck. He put his hands under her arms and lifted her out of the tub, soaking his own clothes in the process.

  She kept her grip on his shoulders when he set her down on the deck. “Hold onto me,” she said. “My legs are asleep.”

  He would hold on as long as she wanted. Her face, only inches away from his lips, showed her emotions. Fear. And another thing. Cunning.

  “There’re two men,” she said, “and I think they’re still around here somewhere.”

  “Let’s get outta here then. Are you okay? Can you walk now?”

  “I think so,” she said, taking a couple of faltering steps, reaching for the backpack.

  “Forget the damn pack.”

  But she picked it up anyway

  She followed him down the stairs and through the house. He could not see very much out of the small peephole built into the front door.

  “I think they’re in the woods,” she whispered. “Across from the tennis courts.”

  He turned, and she looked up at him, waiting for instructions, like a child looks to its father for guidance and protection. Her life was in his hands, but he was probably as afraid as she was. The war all over again. He wanted to reach out and embrace her, hold her until the danger passed for both of them.

  “I’ll go out first,” he said. “When I say ‘go,’ you run like hell for the van. Dive in and get into the back as fast as you can. . . . and leave the damn pack.”

  He jumped out the door, and pressed the trigger of the M-16, spraying rounds in an arc from left to right. When he completed the arc, he was facing the woods on the other side of the tennis courts.

  “Go!” he barked, and she ran for the van, too slowly, weighed down by the pack. He emptied the bullets from the rifle into the woods, then turned and ran after her. She struggled to climb into the van. The pack had wedged against the steering wheel. He pushed her in, and the backpack went in behind her. Then he pushed her again and sent her sprawling into the back of the van.

  THE MEN IN the trees had decided to eat some dirt when the bullets started crashing around them. They did not look up even when the rifle stopped firing, not until they heard the van door slam and the tires squeal as O’Keefe peeled out of the driveway.

  “Let’s go,” said Karl.

  Otto wanted to ask what they were going to do now but thought better of it.

  O’KEEFE PRESSED THE accelerator to the floor and wished he was driving something that would move much faster and negotiate curves much better than this clumsy-ass van. He glanced back and saw her stripping off the sopping-wet sundress.

  “Don’t look,” she said.

  He thought of Jane. And Roy. Jane and Roy were dead, and she was back there blithely changing her clothes. He listened to her move around in the back, cloth sliding on and off of her.

  “Are you done?” he asked through clenched teeth when she stopped moving around.

  “I’m done.”

  He thought of Jane again. He intended to pry the truth out of this Mrs. Lenny Parker right now. Keeping one hand on the wheel, he reached back, grabbed her arm, and yanked her into the front seat. She cried out. Her head banged against the dashboard. She untangled herself, leaned back against the passenger-side window and held her shoulder, her jaws clenching, biting back the pain.

  “You bastard,” she said. “Who do you think you are? Don’t ever handle me like that again.”

  “I come down here to investigate a pissant mink farm scam and all of a sudden I’m in the middle of a war. So you’d better come clean with me right now. What the fuck is going on?”

  “I wish I knew,” she said, looking intently into the side view mirror.

  Darkness had fallen. He turned on the hea
dlights. They sped on in silence for a minute or so, he ashamed about roughing her, she chastened by the roughing. She pushed down on the chrome switch and lowered her window. The wind whipped furiously at her damp-heavy hair. She had put on a one-piece white jumpsuit and had neglected to button one of the buttons. Her right breast was partly exposed, a small feast for the eyes.

  “I think you forgot something, O’Keefe. Those men were trying to kill me too.”

  He thought about it for a few seconds. She had a point.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Where now?” she said.

  “The cops,” he said, reaching for the mobile phone in the console between them, but she beat him to it, ripped it out of its connection and dumped it on the floor, then grabbed the wheel and almost pulled them off the road. He straight-armed her and knocked her away. The van lurched out of control, and he hit the brakes, trying to keep it out of a skid. He had to use both hands to keep the wheels straight until the van came to a full stop. Before he could grab her, she jumped out and stood in the road, her hand on the door, ready to slam it shut.

  “What the fuck are you doing?”

  “Goodbye. No cops for me. At least not for a while. I need some time first.”

  He looked in the rearview mirror, expecting headlights to be bearing down on them any second.

  “You’ve got two goons trying to kill you.”

  “What are they gonna do—shoot me down in a public place? They missed me. Now they’ll crawl back into whatever sewer they came from. The way I see it, I don’t have to go to the cops. I’m not a witness to anything. Nobody’s even got a right to ask me any questions.”

  “Well, I’m a witness.”

  “Then do what you think you’ve gotta do. I’ll give you directions to the sheriff’s office.”

  They both glanced back, looking for headlights coming.

  “Get in here,” he said. “You go wandering around out there by yourself, those guys’ll make mink food out of you in about five minutes. Get in here before I drag you in here.”

  “And you’re not just a witness,” she said pointedly. “You’re a burglar too, and maybe a kidnapper.”

  “You sweet thing,” he said.

  “I just want a little bit of space. A little space and a little time. Give me that. My father would want you to give me that. You’re working for him, aren’t you?”

  She looked back down the road. Still no headlights.

  O’Keefe thought about her father asking him to take care of her and Harrigan telling him not to take his eyes off her. Not that he wanted to do that.

  “There’s a nightclub at the resort up at Silver Lake. It will be crammed with people. Even if they’re still around, there’s no way they would do anything there.”

  “Get in here.”

  But she felt him relenting and stood there holding the door.

  “Please, get in.”

  “You can’t make me. Not without committing another crime. Promise me.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise me. No police. Not for a couple of hours anyway.”

  She knew her man. A promise meant something to him.

  “I promise,” he said.

  He would keep the promise. She had asked for only a couple of hours. Jane and Roy were beyond succor. Tag was here beside him. Pray for the dead, but comfort the living.

  CHAPTER 12

  BACK AT THE car, they changed hurriedly out of their suits and into the country-and-western duds they had brought with them. By the time they finished changing, the guy in the van was long gone. If he wasn’t a cop himself, he was probably heading for the sheriff’s office lickety-God-damn-split. Time to vamoose. The Boss would be very unhappy because Parker’s wife still breathed. Tough tit. The lady might know something, she might know nothing, another wild card waiting to be played, but it had to be smarter to let her go for now than hang around the house where the cops might show up any second. They needed to haul ass into the next county to the rented farmhouse, stash the car in the barn for someone to pick up next week when things had cooled down, and drive the pickup truck back to the city.

  “So long, Minksville,” said Fatso as they reached the outskirts of town.

  The wild card came to him a few miles down the road as he slowed down to obey the 20-mile-per-hour speed limit sign in front of the Silver Lake Resort. There it was all of a sudden. The van. The guy climbs out of the driver’s side. And what’s this? A broad gets out of the passenger side. Lenny Parker’s wife. Carrying a backpack.

  Fatso, dumbfounded, said, “It’s the lady. What’s the deal?”

  He clubbed Fatso in the side of the head with his fist. “You dumb fuckin’ sweathog. She must’ve been in the house all the time.”

  HE STOPPED FOR gas though the gauge showed three-quarters full. His head ached from having to think so much. Job stress. Decisions, decisions. What the guy and the gal were up to he didn’t know, but, obviously, they had not gone to the cops. The bodies probably hadn’t even been discovered yet. Another chance to get the girl and maybe the soldier in the van too, at least if they could catch him without his rifle. This isn’t the movies, so you can’t just go sauntering into the resort and blow them away in front of God and everybody. How long will they be in there, and where will they go next? Wait and see.

  Parker’s wife must have been hiding in the house the whole time. Had she seen them? If she did, would she recognize them in the shitkicker clothes? Well, if she recognized somebody, let it be the sweathog sulking next to him.

  He would have to smooth things over.

  “Hey, Otto,” he said, “I’m sorry.”

  “God damn it, she wasn’t in the God-damned house. I looked every fuckin’ place.”

  Except the hot tub, Otto thought. Better not say anything about that. Couldn’t be. Even if the bitch wrestled that lid around somehow, she’d have drowned inside that thing.

  “She must’ve been in the van.”

  Bullshit, Karl thought, but he kept his counsel. The situation called for some diplomacy.

  “No harm, no foul,” he said. “If she was in the van, that means she didn’t see us. So you go in and look for her.”

  “What about you?”

  “See that little shit-food joint there across the road? I can see the van from there. They come out, you get your ass right out behind them.”

  “You ever been in there?” Fatso asked, pointing at the Silver Lake Resort with his dwarfish paw.

  “Yeah. They got a nightclub in there. Food and booze and a band. And they’ve got this pan-fried lobster they’re famous for.”

  “Fried lobster?”

  “Yep, fried.”

  “Dumb fuckin’ hicks down here don’t even know how to cook a God-damned lobster, huh?”

  “You’d be surprised. It’s pretty damn good.” Fatso’s chomping at the bit to get in there now. “Sit at the bar. But don’t drink anything. I need you to be sober.”

  He chuckled as he watched Fatso cross the highway and wobble across the gravel parking lot in his new cowboy boots.

  Fuckin’ boots, Otto was thinking. And fuckin’ sweat, too. I sweat like a pig even in the dead of winter. Sweathog! That’s what the sonuvabitch called me. Otto had resented the insult more than the blow. His ankle turned on a rock and he almost fell down. Cowboy boots! Brilliant! The big guy was fucking brilliant!

  Well, at least Karl seemed to believe him now about the fox not being in the house. If she was in the house, maybe she saw me, he thought. Nah. Not possible. The only place she could’ve been was in the hot tub, and she sure as hell didn’t have a periscope with her if she was. Just the same, Otto stopped at the gift shop in the resort and bought a pair of shades.

  Sunday night or not, the nightclub was jam packed and swinging with people eating and drinking and dancing to the music. Guitars, drums, saxophones, a trumpet, even a frigging trombone. The singer was a pasty-faced little white twerp who wailed and jumped around like he had mistaken him
self for James Brown.

  “Ya know you’re all right!” the singer rasped. “Ya know you’re outta sight!”

  Food smells. He could use a good meal. Lobster sounded good, but none of that fried-up shit. He wanted it boiled with lots of melted butter like city people ate it. Karl had told him not to drink, but what would that look like, sitting at the bar not drinking anything? He would go a little easy though.

  “Gimme a beer,” he said. “A draw.”

  The little snatch was right there across the room, sitting in a booth in the corner with the guy from the van. A tall guy, even taller than Karl. He hated tall guys. The tall guy swallowed his drink in a couple of gulps. The girl had ordered a bottle of white wine. It looked like she intended to drink it all.

  SHE HAD BROUGHT the backpack inside with her and put it on the floor underneath the booth.

  “Why did you bring that inside?” O’Keefe asked.

  “Because it might be the last thing I have in the world, and I’d like to hold onto it. What money and clothes I’ve got left are in it. I’ll give you the money if you want, but do you think your investors will want to grab my clothes too?”

  “Come on,” he said, feeling unfairly accused.

  “I don’t feel sorry for any of them,” she said. “They wanted to get rich quick, make a bundle the easy way. They deserve a guy like Lenny.”

  “Even your father?”

  “Especially my father. My adoptive father, by the way.”

  That explains a lot, O’Keefe thought, and silently applauded this particular triumph of heredity over environment.

  “Why all the hostility to him?”

  Her eyes narrowed into hard and vicious little slits. “You really want to know, or are you just flapping your gums?”

  Taken aback by her vehemence, he wished he hadn’t asked.

  “I want to know,” he said.

  “Because he’s been trying to get in my pants since I was twelve years old.”