by Tim Willocks
Lenna said, “Was he a nice uncle?”
“Oh yeah,” said Ella. “Charlie was the best.”
In the mirror she saw the lower half of Lenna’s face flinch. She ducked her head to get a glimpse of Lenna’s eyes but George interrupted her. They were almost at the track that led from the road to the Old Place.
“Take the farm road nice and slow,” said George. “See them bushes and trees about thirty yards short?”
Ella slowed and turned onto the bumpy dirt track. Toward the far end was an overgrown clump of bushes spilling over the edge of the field onto the track.
“I see them,” she said.
“I’m going to slip outa the car and recce the place. Don’t stop. Just pull around the yard so you’re facing back onto the track. Keep the engine running and wait in the car for me.”
“Okay.”
“You got your piece?”
Ella put her hand on the bag by her side.
“Locked down and loaded,” she said.
George looked back at Lenna. Ella couldn’t see her face.
“She’s picking up my lingo,” said George. “But don’t be alarmed. We’re not expecting any trouble.”
George turned his eyes back on Ella: they were intense.
“If you do hear trouble or if I’m not out in five minutes, I want you to pull out.”
Ella opened her mouth.
“Promise me,” said George. “We’ve got a responsibility to Lenna too.”
Ella was horrified at the thought of George not being around, but she owed it to him to be cool. She nodded. “Okay.”
“You just go straight back into town there and call the cops. You’ve done nothing wrong; you can tell ‘em everything.”
George cast a hard glance at Lenna. “You got that too?”
“We’ll do as you say,” said Lenna.
“Good.”
George slid down in his seat. As they approached the clump of bushes that would shelter them from the house for a few yards, Ella looked at the speedometer and slowed to five miles an hour.
“Close the door after me,” said George.
Ella nodded. As the bushes drew level George swung his door open and dropped from sight. Ella reached across and grabbed the handle and pulled the door closed. In the mirror she saw George pick himself up and stalk toward the house. Ella glanced at her watch—five minutes. She carried on at the same speed.
The Old Place cast a deep shadow across the ground before them. It was just as she remembered it except that its tilt had gotten a little worse and another window was broken. It had always held for her the tingle of a mysterious castle. Now that tingle was heightened. She and Lenna were alone together for the first time and somehow it added to the strangeness. In the parking lot behind the diner George had told her that Lenna was a powerful woman, “richer than Croesus.” He figured she was after the suitcases for purposes of her own. George had made Lenna sound like someone dangerous; Ella had found her sad and lost. She hoped Lenna wasn’t too scared.
“George is just being cautious,” said Ella. “He knows what he’s doing.”
“I’m sure,” said Lenna.
“George was on Tarawa,” said Ella. “And it doesn’t get any tougher than that.”
Lenna didn’t answer and Ella guessed that she didn’t know where Tarawa was, same as she hadn’t. The Jeep pulled around the shadowy hulk of the building into the cobblestoned yard, where the light was strongest. She’d always liked that here, being able to sit on the porch and watch the sunset. She turned the Jeep in a semicircle and left the engine running as George had said. She picked her bag up and slipped her hand inside. The butt of the Smith & Wesson filled her palm. She kept her hand in the bag so as not to alarm Lenna, and turned to face her.
“This won’t take long,” said Ella, and smiled.
“You’ve been very kind to me,” said Lenna. The starved look was still there.
“All we have to do is pick up a couple of suitcases. Nothing to it.”
Ella looked at her watch. Two minutes to go. She wondered if she could do it, if she could drive off and leave George. Her stomach clutched into a ball at the thought of it. She’d promised. It wasn’t going to happen, she told herself. George would show up. But if he didn’t? Ella couldn’t do it. If there were gunshots, maybe, but if all she got was silence, then no. She’d just have to wait a while longer. Ten minutes. But what if there was still nothing? Then she would have to go in and check it out. At least she knew the lay of the place. Then she thought, What if there are shots and then silence? Could she just drive off and maybe leave George wounded? George wouldn’t ever leave her behind. They were supposed to be partners, right down the line. She couldn’t leave him. But she had a responsibility to Lenna too. George had said so. Ella looked at her watch again in disbelief: only thirty seconds had passed.
“Are you okay?” asked Lenna.
Ella realized her face must be giving her away. She smiled.
“Sure,” said Ella. “I’m just stiff from driving all day.” She fell on the idea with relief. “I’m just going to stretch a little.”
She opened the door and got out with her bag over her shoulder and her hand still inside. She immediately felt better. The rear porch was empty. Beyond the throb of the car engine she could hear birds and insects but nothing else. She looked at her watch. One minute left. She could wait that long. She heard Lenna open her door and get out. Ella turned.
“I’m stiff too,” said Lenna.
Ella was just about to tell her to get back in the car when Lenna looked beyond Ella’s shoulder toward the porch. Her face was paralyzed with horror. As Ella started to turn to see what it was she’d seen she felt Lenna seize her right arm.
“Give me your gun,” said Lenna.
Her voice was low and urgent and her green eyes were wild.
“Lenna, no,” said Ella.
She wrenched her arm away and stepped back. Her hand came free of the bag, holding the gun. She was panicked now. She swung the gun up and pointed it at the porch as she turned. She froze.
Out on the porch beneath the overhang of the second story a huge shadow of a man stood leaning on a crutch. So wasted was the great shadow’s silhouette that the crutch might have been one of its bones. The shadow was topped by a Panama hat. As she watched, the shadow raised an arm and took the hat off. A few fine strands of blond hair lifted palely on the evening breeze. He pitched his molasses voice across the yard.
“Hello, Ella.”
The sound brought a welling of soft fire to Ella’s eyes.
“Charlie?” she said.
“Let me embrace you,” said the shadow.
“Charlie,” she repeated.
She started across the yard, her paces getting faster. As she got closer she saw his face: the same face, the familiar face, and yet so carved with excavated hollows that she almost didn’t want it to be. Then she saw the swollen leg enflapped by stinking rags—and inhaled the smell that caught her even at this distance—and the foot twisted by what looked like melted slabs of pink plastic. Her whole body rocked with the knowledge that enormous agony had caused this change, for it was him: it was Charlie. Charlie changed. And Charlie was smiling, despite the agony, smiling from hollowed bones, smiling at her.
Five feet behind Charlie the screen door swung open and a shotgun barrel speared out from the darkness, aimed square and steady at the back of Charlie’s skull.
“George!” shouted Ella. “It’s all right!”
The memory of the men gunned down so swiftly last night was upon her. George had to see that she was okay. Ella stopped three feet short of the porch steps and dragged the right name from her memory.
“It’s Clarence Jefferson!” she said.
The shotgun barrel didn’t waver. Charlie hadn’t moved a muscle. George’s dry voice drifted out from the kitchen.
“I’ll agree with you on this much, Mr. Jefferson: when it comes to shotguns, I’ll choose an autoloader over a pump ev
ery time.”
Charlie had not stopped smiling at her. He looked at the revolver in her hand and the smile turned into a grin.
“Looks like I’m out-gunned for sure. It’s your call, Mr. Grimes.”
“The belt gun under your shirt,” said George. “Hand it to the lady there. You know how.”
Charlie put his hat back on and Ella’s eyes dropped to his right hand. The arm ended short in a black stump as thick and brutal as a drainpipe. Ella swallowed. With his left hand Charlie reached under the back of his blue Hawauan shirt and produced a heavy, blued revolver. He tossed it and caught it by the ventilated barrel and held it out to her. Ella stepped forward. As she took the gun Charlie stared across the yard at Lenna with a look in his eyes that Ella could not penetrate. Ella looked back over her shoulder.
Lenna stood by the Jeep, staring right back at Charlie.
The look told Ella that they knew each other. They knew each other well. It made her feel strange, she didn’t know how. Jealous. She felt the guns weighing heavy in her hands. She turned back to the porch and looked at Charlie.
“I knew you weren’t dead,” she said. “I knew.”
“It’s selfish of me, I know, but I’m glad you could come,” he replied.
Without haste Charlie lumbered a couple more places from the kitchen doorway on his crutch. He still moved with the huge but relaxed power she’d always found so comforting. George was an old mountain lion, dangerous but not invulnerable. Charlie, even a shadowy and mutilated Charlie, was a mountain.
“Will you join us, Mr. Grimes?” said Charlie.
George emerged from the doorway with the shotgun at his shoulder. He lowered it to his hip but kept the muzzle trained on Charlie’s middle. Ella looked at George and she could see him read that she wanted to go to Charlie. His steely caution melted a little.
“Go ahead,” said George.
Ella put both guns down on the planks of the porch and ran up the steps. Jefferson held wide his stumped arm and she hugged him. Beneath his shirt he was still enormously wide but there were bones sticking from his back that hadn’t been there before.
“How’s my beauty?” he said, softly.
“She’s fine,” said Ella.
She closed her eyes for a moment. She had experienced a lot of strange things since the show at the Factory—less than twenty-four hours ago—but now she felt more confused than ever. Bits of the letter that Charlie had written, that she’d struggled to work out all day, tumbled through her head. “He did his share, and more, of killing and of torture, and of other evils as vile as any a man might set his hand to.” Was Charlie really that man? She stepped back. The smell coming from him was sickening but she didn’t let it show.
“Can we talk, I mean you and me?” she asked.
“Surely,” said Charlie. “We’ll find us some time.”
Charlie looked past her and Ella turned. Lenna had come up to the porch. In her face Ella was shocked to see anger. No, pain too. Both. Ella’s gut told her something she found hard to understand: Lenna was jealous. It was unmistakable; another woman’s jealousy always was. She couldn’t get her mind around it.
“Ella?” said George.
Ella looked at him. His face calmed her: no jealousy there.
“It wouldn’t be wise to get ourselves stuck out here in the dark,” said George. “I reckon we should get what we came for and press on.”
“Can we take Charlie with us?”
The answer came from the cobbled yard to Ella’s right.
“No, we can’t.”
It was Lenna. Her face was a grim mask. She walked the two paces toward the steps. Charlie stared at her.
“Lenna, don’t,” said Charlie. “This isn’t the time.”
Lenna ignored him and picked up Charlie’s revolver from the porch. She cocked back the hammer and pointed it at Charlie’s face.
Lenna said, “You’re not coming with anyone.”
Ella saw in Lenna’s glittering eyes that she was about to shoot him.
Ella stepped in front of the gun muzzle and walked toward her. Lenna blinked and tried to speak, but couldn’t. Whatever it was she was feeling Ella knew it was terrible, and she felt for her, but she couldn’t let her shoot Charlie. Everything around Ella seemed frozen still. She stopped in front of Lenna.
“Lenna, me and George told you that anyone who comes against you comes against us too, remember?”
The torment in Lenna’s face became worse. The gun in her hand was now a few bare inches from the center of Ella’s chest. She didn’t seem able to answer.
“Well, the same goes for Charlie,” said Ella.
Lenna’s eyes seemed to lose focus, then she looked at the gun and where it was pointed.
“Oh God,” said Lenna. The sound seemed torn from her. “Oh God.”
Lenna raised the gun until it was pointing harmlessly into the sky. She closed her eyes, trembling.
“Please,” she said. “Will you take this away from me?”
Ella reached out and carefully took hold of the gun. Lenna unclenched her fist. Ella took the gun away, kept the barrel pointing at the sky and lowered the hammer safely. She bent quickly and picked up her own gun. Then she handed the first to George. George nodded at her. There was a silence.
Lenna opened her eyes long enough to gauge where the kitchen doorway was, then she closed them again and lunged across the porch and disappeared inside. The screen door slammed behind her. Ella heard muffled sobs. She felt totally bewildered; but she knew that for whatever reason, Lenna needed someone close. The reason wasn’t important; all that mattered was the need. She started across the porch to follow her.
“Ella, better give her a minute alone,” said George.
Ella almost ignored him, then realized he was right. She stopped. She’d wait for a minute but then she would go to Lenna. She would hold her again as Ella sensed that only she could. And then she would solve this mystery that was suddenly exploding all around her.
“We’ll take Charlie with us, if he wants to come,” said George. “Lenna too. But my water tells me we should get on our way soon as we can.”
“You’re right,” said Charlie. “But what you came for has gone. The good doctor beat you to it. Your son. He asked me to tell you to stay out of trouble until he gets back home.”
George’s eyes narrowed with distrust.
Charlie said, “He also told me that you don’t have his patience and I’m not to rile you. We can pick him up in town. If that’s what you decide you want to do.”
George looked at Ella. “What do you reckon?”
Ella nodded. “Let’s go. I’ll go get Lenna.”
George nodded. As Ella started forward she stopped and listened. There was no sound coming from the dark kitchen. Lenna had fallen silent. But there was something else, something far away. She looked from George to Charlie. Neither of them seemed aware of it.
“Can’t you hear it?” asked Ella.
The two men concentrated. Ella went back to the edge of the porch and scanned the valley. It seemed as peaceful as before; but the sound was getting louder. A low, fluttering drone.
“Now can you hear it?” she said, and turned.
George had crossed the porch and was already handing the big blue revolver back to Charlie. Their faces were grim as they spoke to each other.
George said, “If we can make it up the hill we’ll have tree cover nearly all the way back to Jordan’s Crossroads. If they catch us on the open road then we’re a beer can sitting on a fence.”
Charlie avoided Ella’s eyes and looked out to the sky above her head.
“You’re right, Mr. Grimes. But we’re too late.” He pointed with his stump. “We’ll have to stand them off here.”
Ella followed his gaze. For a moment she saw nothing; the sky above the far rim of hills was empty. Then there it was, beneath the rim: a black helicopter swooping across the valley toward them.
Ella kept her face out to the yard for a moment.
She didn’t want them to see the pulsing liquid fear that had suddenly washed through her body like a drug and paralyzed her limbs.
Behind her, George said, “What’s this thing loaded with?”
“Double-aughts,” replied Charlie. “Six rounds.”
“If the women get in the Jeep and we wait here till the chopper sets down …” began George.
“They can drop men off without setting down,” said Charlie.
“Well, if it does, then we could keep them busy while Ella and Lenna make a run for the hill.”
Ella wanted her limbs back. She wanted to tell them, no, she wasn’t going anywhere without them. She heard the screen door slam. The sound restored her power to move. She turned. Lenna stood on the porch, looking at the approaching chopper.
“I’m not running anywhere,” said Lenna.
Ella said, “Why not?”
Lenna looked down at her. For the first time since they’d met Lenna’s eyes, though rimmed with red, were utterly calm. Ella shivered.
Lenna said, “Because I’m the one they’ve come for. I’m the only one they want.”
234
TWENTY-FIVE
RUFUS ATWATER had never flown in a chopper before. His ass was aching and his stomach still pitched unexpectedly from time to time and his ears were numb from the pounding flutter of the rotor blades, but he was wired just the same. The chopper—a Sikorsky, he’d learned—got into your nervous system and juiced it up whether you liked it or not. The tops of the trees had been skimming beneath their shadow for what seemed like a thousand square miles and Atwater just hoped that spic boy up in the cockpit there could find his way to the right spot. The sun was behind them so at least the pilot could see where he was going. And there were charts and compasses and other stuff that Atwater knew nothing about. He didn’t like having to leave it all up to others, especially Roberto Herrera, but he had no choice. Even though he was officially in command it was hard for Atwater to feel that way surrounded as he was by a dozen armed men speaking a foreign language. They could speak English, too, of course; they just didn’t, in order to make him paranoid.