“When one of her husband’s friends has the hots for her, you mean.”
She laughed shortly and shook her head. “Do you always say exactly what’s on your mind?”
“No. The world isn’t ready for that just yet.”
Her smile turned arch. “Is that right?”
“That’s right. So Lonny Best feels sorry for the sorry financial condition his pal Bob has put you in.”
“Something like that. We have something else in common, too.” She glanced out at the bar; no customers yet.
“What’s that?”
“Well… boy, this is a little much to get into. Why do you want to know this?”
“I like you.”
Wry little smirk. “Oh, yeah?”
“I bought a car from you, didn’t I?”
“You’re milkin’ that for all it’s worth, aren’t you?”
“Wringing it dry. But I like to get to know a woman, if I’m attracted to her.”
“You seem to say most of what’s on your mind.”
“What else do you and Lonny Best have in common? It’s not stamp collecting.”
“It’s not stamp collecting,” she admitted. “Lonny and Bob and I met… this sounds stupid. At a political rally.”
“A political rally.”
“Yes, I was there because this actor from a soap opera… this sounds really stupid… this actor was speaking. On behalf of the candidate. I just wanted to see this actor, get his autograph. I didn’t care two cents about politics either way.”
“When was this?”
“Roughly ten years ago. Anyway, I met Bob and was, well, attracted to him right off the bat; thought he was real interesting. He was kind of a… well, a man’s man. He’d been to Vietnam, he was in something called Air America, too.”
A mercenary.
“He didn’t look all that rugged, but he had a way about him. He seemed… dangerous. He was working for Victor Werner, on his ‘personal staff,’ at the time. What that amounted to was, well, he was a bodyguard. Carried a gun. I found that exciting. It sounds stupid, and immature, but I’m older and wiser now.”
“What was he doing at this political rally? And don’t tell me he was there to get the soap opera star’s autograph, too.”
“He’d been hired as security, another bodyguard stint really, but was told to blend in with the crowd. Only he ended up getting caught up in it, too.”
“Caught up in it?”
She nodded, sighed, smiled sadly. “Preston Freed. He put both Bob and me under his spell. Bob’s still under it. That’s the problem.”
“Preston Freed,” I said, reflectively. “He’s supposed to be a lunatic-fringe right-winger, isn’t he?”
“He most certainly is,” she said, and now her smile was tinged with self-disgust. “But you’re talking to a real sucker for a persuasive line-or at least somebody who used to be a sucker for that kind of thing. I used to be a ‘born-again’ Christian-got saved over the TV when I was still in high school. I was into that heavy, which is how I met my first husband-a wimp and a weasel who ran off with a born-again bitch-and…” She shook her head again, not smiling. “Never again. Never again.”
“Never again what?”
“Will I fall for some guy just because we belong to the same goddamn club. That’s what these things are, you know.”
“These things?”
“Ah, born-again anything. Preston Freed, his Democratic Action party, it’s a club. No-it’s a cult. Freed is a great speaker… hypnotic. He’s got these light blue eyes, this terrific smile.”
She said this smiling her own terrific smile. She could, under different circumstances, a lifetime or two ago, have made me join her cult, no questions asked.
“But Freed hasn’t appeared in public much,” I said.
“Not in recent years,” she said. She laughed humorlessly. “He thinks the Russians want to kill him, and the Mafia… I think he’s as self-deluded as his followers.”
“If he’s such a recluse, how does he control these followers?”
“Well, he goes on retreats with party members and staffers and such. And he’s got that weekly cable TV show.”
“TV show? I don’t know anything about that.”
“Oh, sure-it’s a weekly half-hour show that he buys time for on all these cable channels. It’s a ‘news’ show-only it’s his version of the news-like pointing out which members of the President’s cabinet are Soviet agents. He sells ‘subscriptions’ to his monthly magazine, Freedom News, and memberships to the party.”
“Expensive?”
“The subscriptions are five hundred dollars a year. Party memberships are a thousand.”
“Jesus. And people send in money?”
“Every day. I used to work for him; part of his secretarial staff at first, then helped produce the TV show. I was privy to this stuff-saw the envelopes with the cash.”
“He’s pocketing it?”
“Oh, sure, but he does plow a lot of it back into his campaign. He means it when he says he wants to be president. It’s just… well.. look, I’ve said enough. We’ve got way off the track here.”
“No, I find this interesting. What soured you on Freed?”
Matter-of-fact facial shrug. “He’s a hypocrite. He preaches against drugs, but he has a cocaine habit that puts Hollywood to shame. He rants and raves about the ‘permissive society’ and then sleeps with every female follower he can lay his paws on. And that’s plenty of ’em.”
I looked at her hard. “He tried to lay paws on you, too.”
“Yes, he did. And I don’t mean he was just ‘handsy,’ either. It was… much more serious than that. And when I told Bob…” She swallowed, shook her head. “This… this is too personal.”
“Bob didn’t care.”
Eyebrow shrug. “Bob didn’t believe me. I walked out. On Bob, and on that fucker Freed.” She stared at the tablecloth.
“Where does Lonny Best fit in?”
“He was a loyal Freed supporter, too, once upon a time. But he got disgusted about a year ago and dropped out. Freed’s excesses, personal and political, finally got to Lonny.”
“So he sympathized with your situation and gave you a job.”
She nodded. “That about sums it up, I guess.”
“Is the same true of Werner?”
“Pretty much. He stopped by Best Buy one day-just a few months ago-to talk to Lonny about something. Then he came out on the lot and talked to me, asked how I was doing. I said making ends meet, and he asked me if I was interested in moonlighting here, on the weekends. I said sure.”
“Nice of him.”
“He had his hand on my hip when he asked, so I knew what I might be up against. But he wasn’t around here much. Actually, tonight was his night. Saturday night, I mean. He and his wife would have dinner. Even with her along, though, he’d manage to cop a feel.”
“At least you don’t have to put up with that anymore.”
“Hey. Please. I didn’t wish the guy dead.”
“Just because he’s dead doesn’t mean you have to start thinking nice thoughts about him.”
“Yeah,” she said, indignantly. “What do I have to feel guilty about? I didn’t kill him.”
“Me either,” I said, and smiled.
That made her laugh.
“You’re a character. Whoops, I finally got customers.”
“How late do you work tonight?”
She stood. “We serve till ten.”
“Can I stop by for you?”
“I have my own car.”
“I’m sure you do.”
“Excuse me,” she said, and went and tended to her customers.
A waitress came by and I ordered the barbecued ribs.
I was just finishing up when Angela stopped by the table and dropped a cocktail napkin before me.
“See you at ten,” she’d written.
It was just a little after five now. That should give me time to do what I needed to do.
11
I’d been down this road before. But it had been years ago, and the road had been dark then and was darker now. The moon, just a faint blur in an overcast sky, was no help; only my headlights lit the world, which is to say the stretch of concrete immediately before me.
This was the River Road, the road in question being narrow two-lane Highway 22, the river the Mississippi, although its presence over at my left-not at all far away-couldn’t be proved by me. A blackness of trees, beyond the railroad tracks, obscured any river view.
Soon-not far from Davenport, really-the quarry began, or signs of it anyway: dunes of crushed rock rose at my right like monstrous anthills; my headlights caught swirls of powder, which built into a modest but steady dust storm. Then, at left, skeletal steel buildings and machinery mingled with silo-like structures, awash in a greenish-gray glow, amber lights winking here and there, white billowing smokestacks lathering the dark sky, tempting God’s razor.
And now on my right was the vast quarry, acres of emptiness, beautiful in its barrenness, a natural wonder enduring this ongoing invasion stoically. An enclosed conveyor mechanism slashed across the sky diagonally, from the plant to the quarry, going again and again to this limestone well to make little bags of cement, and bigger bags of money.
Beyond the mile-long quarry was Buffalo, a village whose small business section-a few unpretentious restaurants, antique shop, gas station-was scattered along the right, with railroad tracks and, finally, the visible Mississippi at left, its surface reflecting the gray filtering of moonlight.
And beyond Buffalo was another quarry, an abandoned one, filled with water now, put there by man or nature or somebody, so that it was, in effect, a lake. And on that lake, above its shimmering surface, above the ledges of limestone, was a house. It was not small; its lines were modern in the Frank Lloyd Wright sense, with the central part of the house a story taller than the rest. A few lights were on, glowing yellowly behind sheer curtains. From the highway, looking across the expanse of what for lack of a better term I’ll call Lake Quarry, it seemed not just distant, but abstract.
Behind the house, the bluff rose, thick with trees; those trees were bare, but no matter-tonight they were an ebony blot against the charcoal sky. The home-the estate-of Preston Freed was seemingly impregnable. Fuck it; I was going calling, anyway.
Half a mile or so down, there was a road-two narrow lanes of gravel-that seemed the most likely access to the Freed estate. My Sunbird stirred up dust, climbing the bluff until it leveled out, and dipped and farmland began appearing on my left; but on my right was forest, and barbed wire with signs that said, PRIVATE PROPERTY- TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT. Added to one of the signs, by somebody unimpressed by these cornfield threats, was: AND EATEN.
Soon, off to my right, a paved driveway materialized, blocked by a heavy, unpainted steel gate-nothing fancy, just formidable. A car, a brown Ford, was parked on the other side of the gate, on the grass, and somebody was in it; the orange glow of a cigarette showed on the driver’s side.
I’d gotten a good look, going by, and without attracting undue attention, either. On gravel like this, you had to move slow; and on a night this dark, the watchdog in the parked Ford couldn’t see whether I was looking his way or not. And what the hell, with that massive, unpleasant-looking gate, anybody driving by for the first time was bound to gawk a little.
About a mile down I found a little access inlet to a cornfield, and I left the Sunbird there. I was wearing a black windbreaker over a black turtleneck sweater with black slacks and… let’s just say I was wearing your basic black and leave it at that. I wasn’t nervous, but I wasn’t not nervous. Home invasions are not, as I believe I said, my style. And a home invasion where an estate is involved-an estate inhabited by a wealthy paranoid political crackpot who thinks the Soviets are after him-was like nothing I’d ever attempted.
I had a nine-millimeter in the shoulder holster, under the windbreaker, which was unzipped. I did not have the noise suppressor attached. If this little endeavor came apart on me, I could need to do a lot of shooting, fast, considering the number of bodyguards and security types this guy would likely employ. And a silenced gun can’t be used rapid fire; you have to work the action by hand, each round, because the gas you’re suppressing, to keep the gun quiet, is the very thing that makes the automatic automatic.
What I had instead-and what was in my hand this very moment as I moved across the gravel road to the barbed wire fence and its warning signs-was a so-called stun gun. I’d picked it up at a pawnshop in Davenport this afternoon. I’d never used one before, though I was plenty familiar with the principle, as I’d carried its bulkier relative, the Taser, on some jobs right before I quit the business.
The Nova XR-5000 Stun Gun was pocket size, not much bigger than a doctor’s beeper, which it somewhat resembled; its two brass studs would send not a beep, but a 47,000-volt message. I gave it a test burst, and an arc snapped and sizzled whitely between the two test electrodes. Just like in an old Frankenstein movie.
This toy had its drawbacks: you had to be in direct contact with your man, and the jolt of the thing would probably make your man scream; it took three to five seconds of contact to make the subject lose muscle control. The Taser, on the other hand, shot darts, and at a good distance. But then the Taser needed reloading every two darts, and this puppy carried around thirty hits, if properly recharged.
Tonight, you see, I had to be careful not to kill anybody. It was a pain in the ass, but it was necessary.
The barbed wire fence was only waist high; it could be stepped over without much difficulty, if you were careful, and I was. For all the threatening NO TRESPASSING signs, and the heavy gate, Freed’s security wasn’t anything to write home about. State of the art it wasn’t. There were no television cameras down by that gate, nor was the gate anything that couldn’t be ducked under or over. Killing the watchdog in the Ford would be no real challenge to anybody who even vaguely knew what he was doing.
I moved slowly, breath visible in the chill air, easing through the trees, most of which were bare of leaves, though there were occasional pines, so I had both leaves and needles under my sneakered feet, which made for some crunching no matter how hard I tried not. I wasn’t any fucking commando, after all, though I’d done some jungle fighting. But you didn’t run into many pine cones or beds of leaves where I had my on-the-job training.
Finally I came to the edge of the trees and the house was perched on a gently rolling, landscaped lawn, like a tiny toy house on top of a great big cake. Only it wasn’t a tiny house: it sprawled, an angular, many-windowed affair, dark natural wood and sandstone giving it the feel of a cabin or lodge.
My vantage point was to the right rear of the place; in back there was a big garage-big enough for a small fleet of cars-which connected to that paved driveway, which I now could see travelled along the edge of the quarry drop-off. I was up high enough to see the view: Lake Quarry; the narrow highway; some trees and the Mississippi beyond. Even on this dreary night, it was some view. A man who lived in a house like that-who owned a house like that-who looked out on a view like that-could come to think of himself as pretty all fucking powerful.
I almost didn’t see the guard. He walked right by me, not five feet away. The trees hid me, and he was lazy, not directing his flashlight into the trees; in fact, his flashlight wasn’t even on.
But he was a burly guy, in a heavy brown leather bomber jacket with a. 357 mag on his hip; he looked like a sheriff’s deputy but without the insignia. He didn’t hear me come up behind him, slip the stun gun under his coat and against the small of his back. My hand was over his mouth, stifling his scream, slapping the wide slash of adhesive tape in place and his body shook from the shock of it. Nice part is, the shock doesn’t transfer from his body to yours. You just hold on, pressing the button while counting One Mississippi, Two Mississippi, Three Mississippi, Four Mississippi, Five Mississippi, and he just does this pathetic jitterbug in your arm
s, wetting his pants.
I lowered him to the ground and brought his hands behind him, using flex-cuffs to bind him. I bought a gross of these “throw-away handcuffs” years ago-they’re like garbage bag ties, little lightweight pieces of plastic with a serrated tip that draws up tight through an eye. I put another one of them around his ankles-the only way these things could be removed was by cutting the fuckers off-and dragged him by the feet into the forest. He smelled bad. Full bladder.
There wasn’t piss on his jacket, however, and he was enough bigger than me that it fit over my own; his keys were in the jacket pocket. He was out of it. It would be fifteen minutes before his brain resumed control. I removed his black western-styled holster and slung on his. 357 mag. I picked up his flashlight, which he had dropped (understandably), and carried it in my left hand-the stun gun in my right, twenty-nine or so more pops to go-and moved with casual authority across the rolling golf-course of a lawn, toward the house.
It was a walk that took probably three minutes and only seemed an eternity. I walked across the paved area to the back of the house, where a stone stairway with wood banister rose to a landing flush with what was probably the kitchen, and was about to go up when the door opened and another sentry came out and said to somebody within, “It’s quiet tonight, too quiet,” archly ominous. And then he laughed. He was another big man, wearing jeans and plaid shirt with a big revolver on his hip. Probably another. 357.
He was standing on the landing, lighting up a cigarette when I joined him and put the stun gun in his belly, slapping tape across his open mouth, his eyes so wide the white showing overwhelmed iris and pupil. He struggled, and I pushed against him, maintaining the contact, and he danced with the jolt, and peed, and broke the railing behind him and landed on his back about a story down. I pondered going down and cuffing him, but figured the sound of wood breaking and flesh-and-bone thumping might have roused people within the house, and I couldn’t fuck around with it.
So I went inside, and it was a kitchen, a big, white, gleaming kitchen you could feed an army out of, though, incongruously, there was but a tiny table in its midst, where a paperback adventure novel was folded open, a cup of steaming coffee nearby, another empty cup before another chair, which was pulled out. No one sat at this table; apparently my most recent dancing partner had been sitting there. But so had somebody else, and where was the guy? Or was he the one who was sleeping in the forest, at the moment?
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