‘Yeah?’ said the Detective wearily.
‘I answered one of their calls.’
‘You’ve got to be kidding.’
‘I thought I could find stuff out.’
‘And did you?’
‘I found out that I’m not a mimic.’
‘Funny, Jackie.’
‘Sorry, man. I wasn’t thinking.’
‘So they know we’re here.’
‘I guess so.’
The Detective turned away from the three men. Willie said nothing. It was like being back in Nam. This was another fuck-up, playing out right before his eyes. He was starting to feel weary now, and he was drenched. He also assumed that things were going to get worse before they got better.
Then they heard it, the noise breaking the awkward silence. There was a vehicle approaching. Instantly, the Detective began to move.
‘Willie, get the Mustang out of sight,’ he said. ‘Take it toward the bridge. Paulie, get in the cab of the truck. Head east, but slowly. Let them see you. Jackie, Tony, into the trees with me. If it looks like they’re on their way to church, don’t shoot.’
Nobody argued with him or questioned him. They did exactly as they were told. Willie got in the Mustang, turned it in a tight circle, and headed back the way he had come, pausing only when the intersection was out of sight. Then he killed the engine and waited. He was struggling to breathe, even though he hadn’t exerted himself physically. He wondered if he was having a heart attack. He flexed his left arm to make sure that it wasn’t going numb. He was sure that was one of the signs. The arm seemed to be moving okay. He adjusted the rearview mirror and kept his eyes on the road behind him. The Browning now lay on the passenger seat. He had one hand on the ignition key, the other hand on the stick. Anyone came around that corner that he didn’t recognize and he was out of there. He would make a run for it. There would be nothing else for it.
Then the shooting started.
The Detective had taken up a position to the west of the road, Tony Fulci and Jackie to the east. A Bronco came into view, and the three men aimed their weapons. At the sight of Paulie pulling away in the big truck, the driver of the Bronco increased his speed. There was a man beside him in the passenger seat, a shotgun held across his body. A third man stood in the bed of the truck, leaning on the roof of the cab with a rifle in his hands as he tried to draw a bead on Paulie’s rear window.
There was no warning. Two holes appeared almost simultaneously in the Bronco’s windshield and the driver slumped over the wheel, his head striking the glass and smearing the blood that had splashed upon it. Instantly the truck began to swerve to the right. The passenger leaned over to try to arrest the turn, while the shooter in the bed held on to the crash bar for dear life. More shots came, pockmarking the windshield, and the truck veered off the road and crashed down the eastern slope. It struck a pine tree, the bull bars on the front minimizing the damage even as the rifleman was flung from the bed and landed heavily on the grass. He lay there, unmoving.
The Detective emerged from the cover of the trees first. Already, Tony and Jackie were running across the road to join him. He kept his gun fixed on the two men in the cab, but it was clear that both were already dead. The driver had been hit in the neck and chest. The passenger might have survived the initial gunfire, but he hadn’t been wearing a belt when the truck hit the tree. He had been a big man, and the force of his head and body hitting the damaged windshield at speed had broken the glass, so that his upper body now lay on the hood of the truck while his right leg was tangled in the same belt that might have saved him.
The Detective walked to where Tony and Jackie were standing over the man on the ground. Jackie picked up the rifle and tossed it into the trees. The injured man was now moaning softly, and holding on to the top of his right leg. It was twisted at the knee, and his foot stood at an unnatural angle to the joint. The Detective winced at the sight. He knelt on the grass and leaned close to the man’s ear.
‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Can you hear me?’
The man nodded. His teeth were bared in agony.
‘My leg –’ he said.
‘Your leg’s broken. There’s nothing we can do about it, not here.’
‘Hurts.’
‘I’ll bet.’
By now, Paulie had turned the truck around and was pulling up on the road above. The Detective indicated that he should stay where he was to watch the road, and Paulie acknow ledged with a wave.
‘You got anything in your truck you can give him for the pain?’ the Detective asked Tony.
‘There’s some Jacks,’ said Tony. He thought for a moment. ‘And some pills and stuff. Doctors keep giving us so much, it’s hard to keep track of it all. I’ll go take a look in the glove compartment.’
He lumbered off. The Detective returned his attention to the injured man.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Fry.’ The man managed to gasp the word out. ‘Eddie Fry.’
‘Okay, Eddie, I want you to listen to me carefully. You’re going to tell me exactly what’s going on here, and then I’m going to give you something for the pain. If you don’t tell me what I want to know, then one of these big men is going to stand on your leg. Do you understand?’
Fry nodded.
‘We’re looking for our friends. Two men, one black and one white. Where are they?’
Eddie Fry’s upper body rocked back and forward, as if by doing so he could pump some of the pain from his leg. ‘They’re in the woods,’ he said. ‘Last we heard, they were west of the inner road. We didn’t see them. Our job was just to provide backup in case they made it through.’
‘They brought people with them. Two of them are dead at the bridge over there. What happened to the others?’
Fry was clearly reluctant to answer. The Detective turned to Jackie. ‘Jackie, step lightly on his foot.’
‘No!’ Eddie Fry’s hands were raised in supplication. ‘No, don’t. They’re dead. We didn’t do it, but they’re dead. I just work for Mr Leehagen. I used to look after his cattle. I’m not a killer.’
‘You’re trying to kill our friends, though.’
Fry shook his head.
‘We were told to keep them from leaving, but we weren’t to hurt them. Please, my leg.’
‘We’ll take care of it in a minute. Why weren’t you supposed to kill them?’
Fry started to drift. The Detective slapped him sharply on the cheek.
‘Answer me.’
‘Someone else.’ Fry’s face was now contorted in agony, and he was sweating so hard that even the rain could not stop the salt from blinding him. ‘It was someone else’s job to kill them. That was the agreement.’
‘Whose job?’
‘Bliss. Bliss is going to kill them.’
‘Who is Bliss?’
‘I don’t know! I swear to God I don’t. I never even met him. He’s in there, somewhere. He’s going to hunt them down. Please, please, my leg . . .’
Willie Brew had joined them. He stood to one side, listening to what was being said, his face very white. Tony Fulci returned, carrying two Ziploc bags jammed with pharmaceuticals. He put them on the ground and began going through the blister packs and plastic bottles, examining the generic names and tossing aside those that he deemed of no use in the current situation.
‘Bupirone: antianxiety,’ he said. ‘They never worked. Clozapine: antipsychotic. I don’t even remember us taking those. Trazodone: antidepressant. Ziprasidone: ’nother antipsychotic. Loxapine: antipsychotic. Man, it’s like you can see a pattern . . .’
‘You know, we don’t have all day,’ said the Detective.
‘I don’t want to give him something that won’t work,’ said Tony. He seemed, thought Willie, to be taking a certain amount of pride in his pharmaceutical knowledge.
‘Tony, as far as I can tell, none of these things worked.’
‘Yeah, on us. He could be different. Here: florazepam. That’s a sedative, and there’s some es
zopiclone too. Cocktail those.’ He produced a fifth of Jack Daniel’s from his jacket pocket and handed it to the Detective along with four pills.
‘That looks like a lot,’ said Jackie. ‘We don’t want to kill him.’
Willie looked at the dead men lying in the bloodstained cab, then back at Jackie.
‘What?’ said Jackie.
‘Nothing,’ said Willie.
‘It’s not the same,’ said Jackie.
‘What isn’t?’
‘Shooting someone, and poisoning them.’
‘I guess not,’ said Willie. He was now wishing he had never come. More blood, more bodies, a wounded man lying in agony on the grass. He had heard what Eddie Fry said: he wasn’t a killer, he was just a farmhand pressed into service. Maybe Fry knew what others were trying to do, and for that he bore some responsibility, but he was out of his depth with men like the Detective. Fry and his friends were lambs to the slaughter. Willie hadn’t expected it to be like this. He wasn’t sure what he had expected, and he realized, once again, how naive he had been. He didn’t belong in this situation any more than Fry did. Willie hadn’t signed up to kill anyone, but men were dying now.
The Detective handed the tablets to Fry, then held the bottle steady so that he could wash them down with the Jack Daniel’s. He left the bottle with the wounded man and walked over to the cab of the crashed truck. He opened the passenger door and removed the weapons, then found one of the radios. It appeared intact, but when he lifted it up the back came off and the ruined innards were exposed. He tossed it into the woods in disgust, then looked west.
‘They’re in there somewhere,’ he said. ‘The question is: how do we find them?’
25
The man leaning on the roof of the Ford Ranger was very wet. His name was Curtis Roundy, and if there was a stick being waved in his direction then five would get you twenty that Curtis would always find a way to grab the shitty end of it, or that was how it seemed to the man himself. No matter what lengths he went to in order to avoid getting himself into situations where his own personal comfort and satisfaction would have to be sacrificed for someone else’s idea of the greater good, Curtis would inevitably end up holding a fork when soup fell from the sky, or experiencing the gentle trickle of urine down his back amid assurances that it was, in fact, rain. At least, he thought, as he stood with the binoculars pressed to his eyes and his feet squishing in his boots, this was just rain, and his poncho was keeping out some of it.
Nevertheless, it wasn’t much consolation. He would have been a lot happier sitting in the cab instead of standing outside exposed to the elements, but Benton and Quinn weren’t the sort of men who were open to reason or felt any great concern for the welfare of others. It didn’t help that Curtis was younger than them by fifteen years and weighed a whole lot less than either of them, and was therefore pretty much their bitch in such situations. Of all the people that he might have been partnered with, Benton and Quinn were the worst. They were mean, petty, and unpredictable at the best of times, but Benton’s experiences down in the city, and the reaction of Mr Leehagen’s son upon his return, had rendered him downright savage. He was popping pills for the pain in his shoulder, and in his hand, and there had been an unpleasant confrontation with the man named Bliss, one that had resulted in Benton being exiled to the hills, forced to take no further part in what was to come. Curtis had heard some of what was said, and had seen the way Bliss had looked at Benton once Benton had stormed out of the house. It wasn’t over between them, not by a long distance, and Curtis, although he kept his opinion to himself, didn’t rate Benton’s chances of coming out best from any future encounter. Benton had been simmering about it ever since, and Curtis could almost hear him approaching the boil.
Edgar Roundy, Curtis’s father, had worked in Mr Leehagen’s talc mine, and even though he had died riddled with tumors, he had never once blamed his employer for what had occurred. Mr Leehagen had put food on his table, a car in his drive, and a roof over his head. When the cancer took him, he put it down to bad luck. He wasn’t a stupid man. He knew that working in a mine wasn’t likely to lead to a long, happy life, didn’t matter if it was talc, salt, or coal that was being dug out of the ground. When people started talking about suing Mr Leehagen, Edgar Roundy would simply turn and walk away. He kept doing that until he could no longer walk at all, and then he died. In return for his loyalty, Mr Leehagen had given Edgar’s son a job that did not involve ingesting asbestos for a living. Edgar, were he still alive, would have been moved by the gesture.
Curtis was smart enough to know that he’d dodged a bullet when the mine closed and Mr Leehagen had still seen fit to offer him some alternative form of employment. There were a lot of folk out there who had once worked for the Leehagens and were getting by on the kind of pensions that meant KFC family buckets and sawdust hamburgers were a dietary staple. He wasn’t sure why fortune should have smiled on him and not on others, although one reason might have been the fact that old Mr Leehagen, when his health was considerably better than it was now, had paid Mrs Roundy an occasional recreational visit while her husband was sacrificing his life in the mine, cough by hacking cough, surrounded by filth and dust. Mr Leehagen was lord of all that he surveyed, and he wasn’t above invoking a version of droit de seigneur, that age-old perk of the ruling classes, if the mood struck him and there was an accommodating woman around. Curtis wasn’t aware of Mr Leehagen’s former daytime visits, or had convinced himself that he wasn’t, although men like Benton and Quinn weren’t above bringing it up when they needed some amusement of their own. The first time they had done so, Curtis had responded to their goads by taking a swing at Benton, and had been beaten to within an inch of his life for his trouble. Strangely, Benton had respected him a little more as a consequence. He had told Curtis so, even as he was punching him repeatedly in the face.
Right now, Benton and Quinn were stink-ass drunk. Mr Leehagen and his son wouldn’t be pleased if they knew that they were drinking on the job. Michael Leehagen had stressed how important it was that the two men who were coming should be contained. Everyone needed to be alert, he had said, and everyone needed to follow orders. There would be bonuses all round once the job was done. Curtis didn’t want to see his bonus jeopardized. Every cent mattered to him. He needed to get away from here: from the Leehagens, from men like Benton and Quinn, from the memory of his father withering away from the cancer yet refusing to listen when people criticized the man who chose to deny the reality of the disease that was killing him. Curtis had friends down in Florida who were making good money in roofing, helped by the fact that every hurricane season brought fresh calls for their services. They’d let him come in as a partner, just as long as he had some capital to bring to the table. Curtis had almost four thousand dollars saved, with another thousand owed to him by Mr Leehagen, not counting any bonus that might come his way from the current job. He had set himself a target of seven thousand: six thousand to buy into the roofing business, and a thousand to cover his expenses once he got to Florida. He was close now, real close.
The sound of the rain on the hood of his poncho was starting to give him a headache. He removed the binoculars from his eyes to rest them, shifted position in a vain effort to find a more comfortable way to stand, then resumed his vigil.
There was movement at the edge of the woods to his south: two men. He rapped on the roof, alerting Quinn and Benton. The passenger window was rolled down, and Curtis could smell the booze and the cigarette smoke.
‘What?’ It was Benton.
‘I see them.’
‘Where?’
‘Not far from the Brooker place, moving west.’
‘I hate that old bastard, him and his wife and his freak son,’ said Benton. ‘Mr Leehagen ought to have run them off his land a long time ago.’
‘The old man won’t have helped them,’ said Curtis. ‘He knows better.’ Although he wasn’t sure that was true. Mr Brooker was ornery, and he kept himself and his family apa
rt from the men who worked for Mr Leehagen. Curtis wondered why Mr Brooker didn’t just sell up and leave, but he figured that was part of being ornery too.
‘Yeah,’ said Benton. ‘Old Brooker may be a pain in the ass, but he’s no fool.’
A hand emerged from the window. It held a bottle of homemade hooch and waved it at Curtis. This was Benton’s own concoction. Quinn, who was an expert on such matters, had expressed the view that, as primitive grain alcohol went, it was as good as any that a man could buy in these parts, although that wasn’t saying much. It didn’t make you blind, or turn your piss red with blood, or any of the other unfortunate side effects that drinking homemade rotgut sometimes brought on, and that made it top quality stuff in Quinn’s estimation.
Curtis took it and raised it to his mouth. The smell made his head spin and seemed instantly to exacerbate the pain in his skull, but he drank anyway. He was cold and wet. The hooch couldn’t make things worse. Unfortunately, it did. It was like swallowing hot fragments of glass that had spent too long in an old gasoline tank. He coughed most of it back up and spit it on the metal at his feet, where the rainwater did its best to dilute it and wash it away.
‘Fuck this,’ said Benton. The engine started up. ‘Get in here, Curtis.’
Curtis jumped down and opened the passenger door. Quinn was staring straight ahead, a cigarette hanging from his lips. He was just over six feet tall, four inches taller than Curtis, and had short black hair with the consistency of fuse wire. Quinn had been Benton’s best buddy since grade school. He didn’t say much, and most of what he did say was foul. Quinn seemed to have picked up his entire vocabulary from men’s room walls. When he opened his mouth, he talked fast, his words emerging in an unbroken, unpunctuated stream of threats and obscenities. While Benton had been doing time in Ogdensburg Correctional, Quinn had been down the road in Ogdensburg Psychiatric. That was the difference between them. Benton was vicious, but Quinn was nuts. He scared the shit out of Curtis.
The Charlie Parker Collection 5-8: The Black Angel, The Unquiet, The Reapers, The Lovers Page 123