“What are we doing?”
“Waiting for Angela and Malcolm,” he said. “I want to see them as they approach. Then we go in right behind them and snatch them up.”
“Wait a minute,” Cindy said. “We can’t just sit here all day and all night.”
Hannibal smiled as he settled the tuner on a soft acoustic guitar melody. “Sure we can. Done all the time. That’s how you catch the bad guys.” He tilted his seat back and settled in. But his smile melted as he heard Cindy’s breathing deepen and watched her start to shudder, building up steam for a major outburst.
“Damn it, Hannibal,” Cindy shouted. “I’m a lawyer, not a cop. I don’t do stakeouts! Let’s wait in the house. I don’t think Scooter or her husband will give us away.”
Hannibal put a hand on her arm, trying to calm her. “Look, suppose we waited inside like you say. They pull up, right. Angela opens the door, and there we sit. Don’t you think she’d turn around and beat it out of there? Then what? I’m jumping in this thing and she’s firing up a brand new Porsche. What do you figure the odds of catching her then, huh?” Slowly, he pulled her toward himself, until finally she rested against his shoulder and he could kiss her hair. “Just hang out here with me a little while, okay? When they show, we can go in behind them, be between them and the car. And maybe we can talk Malcolm into coming back on his own. If we can do that, I’ve got handcuffs in my pocket to hold the girl with.”
Smiling in spite of herself, Cindy asked “You don’t think the girl’s parents will kick about us taking her back to the States?”
“Honestly, I think it’s a split decision,” Hannibal said. “Mama will want to protect her baby, Papa will want his girl to pay the consequences of her actions. Don’t forget that killer scar. So I figure it’s a wash there.”
“Got it all figured out, haven’t you?” Cindy asked, nuzzling his neck.
“Not quite. I’ve got no idea what you got us for lunch.”
Even with all four windows down, the inside of the car was an oven by noon. Not even a hint of a cloud tempered the effects of the blazing bright sun overhead. Hannibal had opened the driver side doors, and his legs hung out, away from the road, while he munched on a fat burrito. The homemade tortilla was rolled around more beans than meat, but the sauce was hot and greasy and delicious.
Cindy ate with a shade more dignity, and drank a bit more water. “Hannibal,” she asked between bites, “be glad when this is all over?”
He stopped chewing for a moment. “Glad? No, I don’t think I’ll be glad exactly. This is just cleanup after all. I failed.”
“That’s not fair,” she said, wiping his sweaty forehead with a towel. “You did the job you were hired for. You found Kyle’s father.”
“People keep saying that,” Hannibal said, sitting up straighter. “Jacob Mortimer was never the job. He was just the projected means to the end. Kyle was the job. And even though I ended up in this thing because of a con game, Kyle never stopped being the job.”
The rest of their meal passed in silence, Hannibal alternately lost in his own thoughts and wondering what Cindy’s might be. He knew he was not a good man when he was on a case, at least not in the boyfriend sense. She deserved better, he thought, but he was too old and stubborn to change. He watched her wipe her mouth on a paper napkin and straighten her tee shirt. She licked her lips and smiled. Right then he wanted very much to hear her say she loved him.
“Know what?” she asked.
He looked into her pretty brown eyes. “What’s that?”
“I’m going up to the house.”
“What?” He sat bolt upright. “You can’t, not now.”
“Afraid I’ve got to,” Cindy said. Then in muted tones, “I’ve got to go to the bathroom.”
“Well, there’s plenty of privacy here,” he said. “Just wander over around that huge tree.”
The backs of Cindy’s hands rested on her hips and her head moved loosely on her neck. “I am not going to the bathroom behind some tree where people can drive by and see me with my ass hanging out.”
“Okay, fine,” he said. “Come around to the other side of the car. With both doors open, it makes a stall, sort of. And the trees straight ahead. Nobody could see you.”
“I don’t think you’re listening,” Cindy said, opening her own door. “I am just not the piss in the outdoors type. I’m going up to the…”
The roar of a car engine cut her off. An old Grand Torino skidded to a stop in front of the two story Georgian house. The car outdid the house, for while the house boasted peeling paint on every side, the Torino was down to the gray primer all around. Its throaty roar told Hannibal the car was tuned for racing in the streets, as was common all over the South where weather and salt did not attack old cars the way it did in Germany and New York. It growled two or three times before shutting off. Instinctively, Hannibal yanked Cindy back into the Ford. It couldn’t be them, but he knew it must be.
And it was. Even a football field away he recognized Angela’s form as she climbed out of the driver’s door and marched stiffly toward the house. Malcolm Lippincott trailed like an adoring puppy behind her. He carried a pair of Gucci overnight bags. She carried a revolver as big as her own arm.
Hannibal’s mind swirled with questions, but he knew all the answers were within reach. Thinking no words were necessary, he climbed out of the Ford and jogged toward the house. At the wraparound porch he stopped and started again, this time very slowly. He stayed at the edge of the old steps, where he was least likely to make them creak. At the door he turned to watch Cindy step up on the first wooden stair. It would be easier for her, in tennis shoes, than his boots had made it for him. But he was sure no one inside could have heard him.
The door was not quite closed, and he stared into the room, allowing his eyes to adjust to the relative darkness. Without the red lights on, the room looked quite ordinary. The sofa left of the door faced into the house, he remembered. Further to the left, against the wall, stood a chenille love seat. The stairs leading to the second floor went up along the right side wall. A big sofa leaned back against the staircase. Straight ahead, he was looking at Malcolm’s back. Beyond him, Scooter Johnson stood at her counter/room divider, her face a mask of worry. Between them, Angela stood staring into her mother’s face, her handgun hanging at her side. Her posture said she was in charge, and willing to do whatever was necessary to keep control.
“Quit stalling, Mama,” Angela said with uncommon force for such a small body. “Where is he?”
Scooter spoke with her hands, her lower chins vibrating with her actions. “I don’t know what’s wrong, but let your Mama help you, baby. You ought to know you’re always welcome back home, Patty.”
“Don’t you call me that!” Angela hoisted her revolver with both hands. “Don’t you ever call me that name, you old whore. My name is Angela, understand. You people aren’t my parents. You couldn’t be. I feel it in my blood, in my bones. You’re too stupid, too common to be my parents. You must have taken me from my real family when I was an infant. But I need a place to stay, and this is the only safe place I know. But I won’t stay here with him.”
Scooter started around the counter and Angela turned to her right slightly to keep the bigger woman in her sights. Hannibal looked closely at the gun Angela’s slender arms were supporting. A Taurus Model 607, three and a half pounds of stainless steel, a seven shot .357 Magnum. A big enough gun to support anybody’s ego. He could also see a glimpse of Angela’s eyes. They told him she was the loose cannon in the room, not the gun in her hand. She would shoot if driven to it, and once she started, she would not stop until she stood alone in the room. He took a couple of deep breaths. Maybe if he entered slowly and easily, he could talk her out of violence.
His plan disintegrated when Nelson Johnson ducked under the arch and walked out from the kitchen. He wore coveralls and carried a big hammer, but without the work gloves he had on the last time Hannibal saw him. He took three steps into t
he room before he realized Angela was there. His reaction was shock, and reflexively he raised his hammer.
“You!” Barely ten feet from him, Angela swung her weapon on line, pointing its gaping muzzle at the old man’s chest.
Hannibal’s options had shrunk to zero. There was no time for talk or even thought. With a scream meant to spur himself into action as much as freeze Angela, he dived through the door. Shoulder first, he smashed into Malcolm’s back. With a grunt of pain, Malcolm flew forward. His bulk crashed into Angela from behind. Her left arm swung forward to break her fall. Her right arm swung farther right as the gun discharged, the bullet smashing into the wall below the stairs. The flash dazzled Hannibal, but he could see the gun’s natural muzzle rise snap it up and back. The revolver twisted Angela’s arm as it swung up and over her head, then flew over Hannibal to thump to the floor in the doorsill.
Still barely in the room, he pushed himself up to survey the scene. Malcolm had rolled onto his back. He was staring at the ceiling, breathing through his open mouth. He was probably looking through floating blue dots and his ears were probably ringing, like Hannibal’s. Angela’s head snapped back and forth, as she searched for the cause of her fall. Scooter leaned, collapsed, against the counter.
But Nelson Johnson, Angela’s hated father, was still standing. He pulled his lips back away from yellow, crooked teeth. “I know you’d killed me if you got the chance, you little black bitch. Now you missed your shot, and I’m taking mine.”
Three long steps brought Johnson to hover over Angela’s prone form. He bent at the knees as low as his stiff body would allow. Maintaining eye contact with his target, he raised his hammer into the air slowly, as if he wanted to savor this moment forever. Angela stared defiantly back into his eyes. No fear showed on her face. In fact, she was eerily serene, like she was anxious for closure, ready for an end to this grim drama regardless of which ending it had. As the hammer reached its apex, she swung her head down then back up, and spit upward. She spattered his chest, falling short of her target.
“Missed my face,” Nelson said, “Just like that day with the hot coffee.” Rage lit his eyes, and he screamed as he drove the hammer head downward.
Before Hannibal could react, Johnson was swept aside by an angry mass of pent up resentment. Scooter’s body hit him like a freight train, her three hundred plus pounds sweeping the slender man halfway across the room. The two rolled once and stopped with Scooter straddling her husband. She thumped her bulk down on him, like a scene in a most disgusting porno film. Nelson’s long legs danced around to no effect, his boot heels clacking on the floor. Scooter was wailing out years of pain, swinging her heavy arms back and forth, slapping him in a bizarre, fascinating rhythm.
While the couple wrestled like sadistic lovers, Scooter’s baggy flowered dress rode up around her bulbous rump. Hannibal reflexively turned away, then looked again to check his memory imprint of the picture. Below her graying, once white panties, he saw scars. Scars he recognized as the remnants of cigarette burns, scattered around her buttocks and the upper part of her legs. His stomach clenched, and he could barely breathe for the weight of the truth pressing in on his chest.
Scooter’s weight kept her husband immobile, but his arms were free. His right hand was still wrapped around the hammer and he seemed to have gathered enough of his wits to raise it. Hannibal got to his feet, jogged across the room and kicked the man’s wrist. The hammer dropped and he pushed it out of reach with his foot. Then he rested a hand on the woman’s shoulder. His touch seemed to short circuit her arms, which hung limp at her sides as she looked up.
“Don’t you think that’s enough?” Hannibal asked. “No matter how much you hurt him, your pain won’t go away. And after all, you agreed to this life, didn’t you?”
Scooter’s head slumped down onto her broad chest, and the sobbing began again. Hannibal was about to ask her to stand when a movement behind him drew his attention. Cindy had come in, and was helping Malcolm to his feet. He looked like a man in shock. Hannibal guessed he was having the adventure of his life, and had only now realized it was totally out of control.
“Hey Malcolm,” Hannibal said, “What’d you do, wreck the Porsche?”
“Actually, about half way here, Angela started to worry we’d get traced down by the car,” Malcolm said, still leaning on Cindy for support. “We sold it in Memphis and flew from there to Corpus Cristi. Bought this junker there, because Angela thought it would be inconspicuous.”
“So that’s how you got here so fast,” Cindy said. “Sounds like Angela thought of everything. Have you done any thinking in the last day or two?”
“No, cause he’s a faggot.” Angela burst forward in a rush of action, shoving Cindy aside as she bolted out the door, swinging it closed behind her. Hannibal was stunned for a second by the abrupt action, then he started after her. As he pulled the door open he saw Angela had scooped up the loose pistol. He ducked back, pushing the door closed but a heavy bullet thudded into it, slamming the door back open. As it swung by, Hannibal darted outside.
Angela had already fired up the engine of the Gran Torino and was trying to maneuver it around on the road to face back toward north. Considering his options on the run, Hannibal steered his feet toward his own rented car. Angela was a good driver, but the Torino did not handle like a Porsche and if he was fast enough, he might catch her.
He had to now.
Hannibal was a track star in high school. At one time, he pushed his hundred meter dash time to a hair above ten seconds. But that was at the apex of his physical ability under perfect conditions. Now, in boots and jeans, on a dirt road instead of a paved track, he was panting hard, driving his legs to forget the years between then and now. Sweat stung his eyes as he ran hard toward his car, now only fifty yards ahead. His arms pumped hard as he dragged blazing hot air into his lungs.
He could hear his heart pounding when his hand snatched the Ford’s door handle. The aluminum burned his palm but he ignored it, consumed with getting into his seat. The car started quickly and he pressed the accelerator to the floor. Dust spewed up behind him and after an annoying second of hesitation the car burst forward.
The little Tempo was an automatic, so Hannibal simply kept his foot mashed to the floorboards and prayed the car would stay on the road. He roared past Cindy waving on the porch, and within seconds he had the Gran Torino in sight. Angela’s car had a lot of power, but the dust covered, pot holed road made it almost impossible for her to put her advantage to good use.
He had never turned the radio off and now he recognized the guitar tune coming from it. It was an intricate piece called Malaguena, which he had heard on a school vacation to Spain. Back then nothing was life and death to him, and he had almost recovered from the serious emotional blow of learning, at six years old, how the Viet Cong killed his father. Thank God he had his mother all those days, months, years to hold him together. Knowing the pain of losing a father tempted him to slow down, let Angela go. Knowing how family could ease the pain of loss made him will his car to move faster.
He was within a couple of car lengths of the Torino when the wooden bridge came into view. The road beyond it was smoother and a little wider. A good driver could lose him on a well-paved straightaway. He had to stop her now. He pulled to his left and, to his surprise, began to gain on his quarry. She was slowing slightly. They were closing on the bridge. Her left hand came out her window, pointing the big revolver backward. Hannibal swung his steering wheel left, then right.
Angela fired. Hannibal reflexively ducked. He heard a burst of crackling white noise and his windshield became a mass of white spider webs, except for the fist-size hole almost dead center. He jerked the wheel right again, hoping to be in the middle of the road. An impact jarred him. The screech of metal on metal, like chalk on a blackboard. Then his car crunched into the bridge’s left side wooden railing and his head snapped into the steering wheel and everything stopped.
-33-
Quiet. N
o roaring engines. No tires whining on the dirt track. Hannibal shook his head and watched shards of crumbled safety glass shower down onto his lap. He was sore, but not aching anywhere the way you do when a bone is broken. He did not smell gasoline, did not see blood.
“Any wreck you can walk away from,” he muttered. His door opened easily enough, and the front of the car did not look too bad. All four tires held air. He might even be able to drive this heap. Then he clamped his eyes shut as he realized he was alone. Angela must be halfway to Texas by now. He slammed a fist into his car’s door. He had done his best, but it was not enough. Time ran out, the buzzer sounded. It was over. He lost.
He turned to start his walk back to the bordello when a scream froze him in place. He stared around, trying to find the source. Then he heard it again, a woman’s voice, shrill with fear. Running around the Tempo he followed the sound to the edge of the bridge. No one in sight. A third scream. Very near. And down. Under the bridge?
The gray trunk of a car stuck up out of the shallow river the bridge crossed. The picture formed at once. He had sideswiped the other car. It swerved right, he swerved left. The bridge stopped him. But Angela had gone past the bridge and down the seven foot bank into the water.
At the water’s edge, Hannibal found Angela sticking halfway out of the Torino’s driver’s side window. Her door would not open. The dirty water was over the edge of the window and poured into the car, which was still sinking. Her eyes were panicked, but as she saw him the fear increased. He stretched as far as he could, planting his right foot as far into the river as he could, leaving his left on dry land.
Blood and Bone Page 23