They stared at him for a moment. When Leon tentatively touched Cats's leg the man jerked awake and sat up, freezing them with a weird glare. "The fuck're you? The fuck're you?"
"Hey, man, you okay?" They backed away a few feet.
Cats shivered, clutching his abdomen. He coughed long and Leon whispered, "Looks too fucking mean to be sick, you know?"
"He's scary. Les go." Bear Man wanted to get back to his A&P baby carriage.
"I need help," Cats muttered. "I hurt, man."
"There's a clinic over on--"
"Can't go to no clinic," Cats snapped, as if they'd insulted him.
So he had a record, and on the street refusing to go to a clinic when you were this sick meant you had a serious record. Felony warrants outstanding. Yeah, this mutt was trouble.
"I need medicine. You got some? I pay you. I got money."
Which they normally wouldn't've believed except that Cats was a can picker. And fucking good at it, they could see. Beside him was a huge bag of soda and beer cans he'd culled from the trash. Leon eyed it enviously. Must've taken two days to get that many. Worth thirty bucks, forty.
"We don't got nothing. We don't do that. Stuff, I mean."
"Pills, he means."
"You wanna bottle? T-bird. I got some nice T-bird, yessir. Trade you a bottle fo' them cans . . . "
Cats struggled up on one arm. "I don't want no fuckin' bottle. I got beat up. Some kids, they beat me up. They busted something in me. It don't feel right. I need medicine. Not crack or smack or fucking T-bird. I need something stop me hurtin'. I need pills!" He climbed to his feet and teetered, swaying toward Bear Man.
"Nothing, man. We don't got nothing."
"I'ma ask you a las' time, you gonna give me somethin'?" He groaned and held his side. They knew how crazy strong some crackheads were. And this guy was big. He could easily break both of them in half.
Leon whispered to Bear Man, "That guy, th'other day?"
Bear Man was nodding avidly though it was a fear reflex. He didn't know who the hell Leon was talking about.
Leon continued, "There's this guy, okay? Was trying to sell us some shit yesterday. Pills. Pleased as could be."
"Yeah, pleased as could be," Bear Man said quickly, as if confirming the story might calm Cats down.
"Didn't care who saw him. Just selling pills. No crack, no smack, no Jane. But uppers, downers, you name it."
"Yeah, you name it."
"I got money." Cats fumbled in his filthy pocket and pulled out two or three crumpled twenties. "See? So where this motherfucker be?"
"Over near City Hall. Old subway station . . . "
"I'm sick, man. I got beat up. Why somebody beat me up? What I do? I's pickin' some cans's all. And look what happen. Fuck. What his name?"
"I don't know," Bear Man said quickly, squiggling up his forehead as if he were thinking fiercely. "No, wait. He said something."
"I don't remember."
"You remember . . . He was looking at my bears."
"An' he said something. Yeah, yeah. Said his name was Joe or something. Maybe Jodie."
"Yeah, that was it. I'm sure."
"Jodie," Cats repeated, then wiped his forehead. "I'ma see him. Man, I need somethin'. I'm sick, man. Fuck you. I'm sick. Fuck you too."
When Cats had staggered off, moaning and muttering to himself, dragging his bag of cans behind him, Leon and Bear Man returned to the curb and sat down. Leon cracked a Voodoo ale and they started drinking.
"Shouldn'ta done that to that fella," he said.
"Who?"
"Joe or whatever his name was."
"You want that motherfucker round here?" Bear Man asked. "He dangerous. He scare me. You want him to hang round here?"
"Course I don't. But, man, you know."
"Yeah, but--"
"You know, man."
"Yeah, I know. Gimme the bottle."
. . . Chapter Twenty-three
Hour 25 of 45
Sitting next to Jodie on the mattress, Stephen was listening through the tap box to the Hudson Air phone line.
He was listening to Ron's phone. Talbot was his last name, Stephen had learned. He wasn't exactly sure what Ron's job was but he seemed to be an executive with the charter company and Stephen believed he'd get the most information about the Wife and Friend by listening to this line.
He heard the man arguing with someone from the distributor who handled parts for Garrett turbines. Because it was Sunday they were having trouble getting the final items for the repairs--a fire extinguisher cartridge and something called the annular.
"You promised it by three," Ron grumbled. "I want it by three."
After some bargaining--and bitching--the company agreed to fly the parts into their Connecticut office from Boston. They'd be trucked to the Hudson Air office and arrive by three or four. They hung up.
Stephen listened for a few minutes longer but there were no other calls.
He clicked the phone off, frustrated.
He didn't have a clue as to where the Wife and Friend were. Still in the safe house? Had they been moved?
What was wormy Lincoln thinking now? How clever was he?
And who was he? Stephen tried to picture him, tried to picture him as a target through the Redfield telescope. He couldn't. All he saw was a mass of worms and a face looking at him calmly through a greasy window.
He realized that Jodie'd said something to him.
"What?"
"What'd he do? Your stepfather?"
"Just odd jobs mostly. Hunted and fished a lot. He was a hero in Vietnam. He went behind enemy lines and killed fifty-four people. Politicians and people like that, not just soldiers."
"He taught you all this, about . . . what you do?" The drugs had worn off and Jodie's green eyes were brighter now.
"I got most of my practice in Africa and South America but he started me. I called him 'WGS.' The World's Greatest Soldier. He laughed at that."
At ages eight and nine and ten Stephen would walk behind Lou as they trooped through the hills of West Virginia, hot drops of sweat falling down their noses and into the crooks of their index fingers, which curled around the ribbed triggers of their Winchesters or Rugers. They'd lie in the grass for hours and be quiet, be still. The sweat glistened on Lou's scalp just below the bristly crew cut, both eyes open as they sighted on their targets.
Don't you squint that left eye, Soldier.
Sir, never, sir.
Squirrels, wild turkeys, deer in season or out, bear when they could find them, dogs on slow days.
Make 'em dead, Soldier. Watch me.
Ka-rack. The thud against the shoulder, the bewildered eyes of an animal dying.
Or on steaming August Sundays they'd slip the CO2 cartridges into their paint-ball guns and strip down to their shorts, stalking each other and raising molehills of welts on their chests and thighs with the marble-sized balls that hissed through the air at three hundred feet per second, young Stephen struggling to keep from crying at the awful sting. The paint balls came in every color but Lou insisted on loading with red. Like blood.
And at night, sitting in front of a fire in the backyard as the smoke curled toward the sky and into the open window where his mother stood cleaning the supper dishes with a toothbrush, the taut little man--Stephen at fifteen was as tall as Lou--would sip from the newly opened bottle of Jack Daniel's and talk and talk and talk, whether Stephen was listening or not, as they watched the sparks flying into the sky like orange lightning bugs.
"Tomorrow I want you to bring down a deer with just a knife."
"Well . . . "
"Can you do that, Soldier?"
"Yessir, I can."
"Now look here." He'd take another sip. "Where d'you think the neck vein is?"
"I--"
"Don't be afraid to say you don't know. A good soldier admits his ignorance. But then he does something to correct it."
"I don't know where the vein is, sir."
"I'll show it
on you. It's right here. Feel that? Right there. Feel it?"
"Yessir. I feel it."
"Now, what you do is you find a family--doe and fawns. You come up close. That's the hard part, getting up close. To kill the doe, you endanger the fawn. You move for her baby. You threaten the fawn and then the mother won't run off. She'll come after you. Then, swick! Cut through her neck. Not sideways, but at an angle. Okay? A V-shape. You feel that? Good, good. Hey, boy, aren't we having a high old time!"
Then Lou would go inside to inspect the plates and bowls and make sure they were lined up on the checkered tablecloth, four squares from the edge, and sometimes when they were only three and a half squares from the edge or there was still a dot of grease on the rim of a melamine plate Stephen would listen to the slaps and the whimpers from inside the house as he lay on his back beside the fire and watched the sparks fly toward the dead moon.
"You gotta be good at something," the man would say later, his wife in bed and he outside again with his bottle. "Otherwise there's no point in being alive."
Craftsmanship. He was talking about craftsmanship.
Jodie now asked, "How come you couldn't be in the marines? You never told me."
"Well, it was stupid," Stephen said, then paused and added, "I got into some trouble when I was a kid. D'you ever do that?"
"Get into trouble? Not much. I was scared to. I didn't want to upset my mother, stealing and shit. What'd you do?"
"Something that wasn't real bright. There was this man lived up the road in our town. He was, you know, a bully. I saw him twisting this woman's arm. She was sick, and what was he doing hurting her? So I went up to him and said if he didn't stop I'd kill him."
"You said that?"
"Oh, and another thing my stepfather taught me. You don't threaten. You either kill someone or let them be but you don't threaten. Well, he kept on hassling this woman and I had to teach him a lesson. I started hitting him. It got out of hand. I grabbed a rock and hit him. I wasn't thinking. I did a couple years for manslaughter. I was just a kid. Fifteen. But it was a criminal record. And that was enough to keep me out of the marines."
"I thought I read somewhere that even if you've got a record you can go into the service. If you go to some special boot camp."
"I guess maybe 'cause it was manslaughter."
Jodie's hand pressed Stephen's shoulder. "That's not fair. Not one bit fair."
"I didn't think so."
"I'm real sorry," Jodie said.
Stephen, who never had any trouble looking any man in the eye, glanced at Jodie once then down immediately. And from somewhere, totally weird, this image came to mind. Jodie and Stephen living together in the cabin, going hunting and fishing. Cooking dinner over a campfire.
"What happened to him? Your stepfather?"
"Died in an accident. He was hunting and fell off a cliff."
Jodie said, "Sounds like it was probably the way he'd've wanted to go."
After a moment Stephen said, "Maybe it was."
He felt Jodie's leg brush his. Another electric jolt. Stephen stood quickly and looked out the window again. A police car cruised past but the cops inside were drinking soda and talking.
The street was deserted except for a clutch of homeless men, four or five whites and one Negro.
Stephen squinted. The Negro, lugging a big garbage bag full of soda and beer cans, was arguing, looking around, gesturing, offering the bag to one of the white guys, who kept shaking his head. He had a crazy look in his eyes and the whites were scared. Stephen watched them argue for a few minutes, then he returned to the mattress, sat down next to Jodie.
Stephen put his hand on Jodie's shoulder.
"I want to talk to you about what we're going to do."
"Okay, all right. I'm listening, partner."
"There's somebody out there looking for me."
Jodie laughed. He said, "Seems to me after what happened back at that building there's a buncha people looking for you."
Stephen didn't smile. "But there's one person in particular. His name's Lincoln."
Jodie nodded. "That's his first name?"
Stephen shrugged. "I don't know . . . I've never met anyone like him."
"Who is he?"
A worm . . .
"Maybe a cop. FBI. A consultant or something. I don't know exactly." Stephen remembered the Wife describing him to Ron--the way somebody'd talk about a guru, or a ghost. He felt cringey again. He slid his hand down Jodie's back. It rested at the base of his spine. The bad feeling went away.
"This is the second time he's stopped me. And he almost got me caught. I'm trying to figure him out and I can't."
"What do you have to figure out?"
"What he's going to do next. So I can stay ahead of him."
Another squeeze to the spine. Jodie didn't seem to mind. He didn't look away either. He wasn't timid anymore. And the look he gave Stephen was odd. Was it a look of . . . ? Well, he didn't know. Admiration maybe . . .
Stephen realized that it was the way Sheila had looked at him in Starbucks when he was saying all the right things. Except that, with her, he hadn't been Stephen, he had been somebody else. Somebody who didn't exist. Jodie was now looking at him this way even though he knew exactly who Stephen was, that he was a killer.
Leaving his hand on the man's back, Stephen said, "What I can't figure out is if he's going to move them out of their safe house. The one next to the building where I met you."
"Move who? The people you're trying to kill?"
"Yeah. He's going to try to out-guess me. He's thinking . . . " Stephen's voice faded.
Thinking . . .
And what was Lincoln the Worm thinking? Would he move the Wife and the Friend, guessing I'll try the safe house again? Or would he leave them, thinking I'll wait and try for them at a new location? And even if he thinks I'll try the safe house again, will he leave them there as bait, trying to sucker me back for another ambush? Will he move two decoys to a new safe house? And try to take me when I follow them?
The thin man said, almost whispering, "You seem, I don't know, shook up or something."
"I can't see him . . . I can't see what he's going to do. Everybody else's ever been after me I can see. I can figure them out. Him, I can't."
"What do you want me to do?" Jodie asked, swaying against Stephen. Their shoulders brushed.
Stephen Kall, craftsman extraordinaire, stepson of a man who never had a moment's hesitation in anything he did--killing deer or inspecting plates cleaned with a toothbrush--was now confounded, staring at the floor, then looking up into Jodie's eyes.
Hand on the man's back. Shoulders touching too.
Stephen made up his mind.
He bent forward and rummaged through his backpack. He found a black cell phone, looked at it for a moment, then handed it to Jodie.
"Whatsis?" the man asked.
"A phone. For you to use."
"A cell phone! Cool." He examined it as if he'd never seen one, flipped it open, studying all the buttons.
Stephen asked, "You know what a spotter is?"
"No."
"The best snipers don't work alone. They always have a spotter with them. He locates the target and figures out how far away it is, looks for defensive troops, things like that."
"You want me to do that for you?"
"Yep. See, I think Lincoln's going to move them."
"Why, you figure?" Jodie asked.
"I can't explain it. I just have this feeling." He looked at his watch. "Okay, here's the thing. At one-thirty this afternoon, what I want you to do is walk down the street like a . . . homeless person."
"You can say 'bum,' you want."
"And watch the safe house. Maybe you could look through trash cans or something."
"For bottles. I do that. All the time."
"You find out what kind of car they get into, then call and tell me. I'll be on the street around the corner, in a car, waiting. But you'll have to watch out for decoys."
&nb
sp; An image of the red-haired woman cop came to mind. She could hardly be a decoy for the Wife. Too tall, too pretty. He wondered why he disliked her so much . . . He regretted not judging that shot at her better.
"Okay. I can do that. You'll shoot them in the street?"
"It depends. I might follow them to the new safe house and do it there. I'll be ready to improvise."
Jodie studied the phone like a kid at Christmas. "I don't know how it works."
Stephen showed him. "You call me on it when you're in position."
" 'In position.' That sounds professional." Then Jodie looked up from the phone. "You know, after this's over and I go through the rehab thing, why don't we get together sometime? We could have some juice or coffee or something. Huh? You wanta do that?"
"Sure," Stephen said. "We could--"
But suddenly a huge pounding shook the door. Spinning around like a dervish, whipping his gun from his pocket, Stephen dropped into two-handed shooting position.
"Open the fuckin' door," a voice from outside shouted. "Now!"
"Quiet," Stephen whispered to Jodie. Heart racing.
"You in there, booger?" the voice persisted. "Jodie. Where the fuck're you?"
Stephen stepped to the boarded-over window and looked out again. The Negro homeless guy from across the street. He wore a tattered jacket that read Cats . . . The Musical. The Negro didn't see him.
"Where'sa little man?" the Negro said. "I needa little man. I gotta have some pills! Jodie Joe? Where you be?"
Stephen said, "You know him?"
Jodie looked out, shrugged, and whispered, "I don't know. Maybe. Looks like a lotta people on the street."
Stephen studied the man for a long moment, thumbing the plastic grip of his pistol.
The homeless man called, "I know you here, man." His voice dissolved into a gargle of disgusting cough. "Jo-die. Jo-die! It cos' me, man. As' wha' it cos' me. Cos' me a fuckin' weeka pickin' cans's what it cos' me. They tole me you here. Ever-bod-y told me. Jodie, Jodie!"
"He'll just go away," Jodie said.
Stephen said, "Wait. Maybe we can use him."
"How?"
"Remember what I told you? Delegate. This is good . . . " Stephen was nodding. "He looks scary. They'll focus on him, not you."
"You mean take him along with me? To that safe house place?"
"Yes," Stephen said.
"I need some stuff, man," the Negro moaned. "Come on. I'm fucked-up, man. Please. I got the wobblies. You fuck!" He kicked the door hard. "Please, man. You in there, Jodie? The fuck you at? You booger! Help me." It sounded like he was crying.
The Coffin Dancer Page 21