Lewis decided to play dumb and not glare knives, bullets, or deadly laser beams through Mr. Gray’s lying-ass head.
“There’s another thing,” Mr. Green said. “You see a tall guy alone in street clothes wandering around there? You take him out.”
Lewis rarely felt himself thinking such a thing, but he thought, Screw the money. He knew a set-up when he saw one. He’d lift another license plate and take the truck where he needed to go. He’d disappear.
“Mr. Gray?”
“Yeah. I’m here.”
“Your kids,” Mr. Green said. Lewis heard the words clearly. He watched his partner’s face drop. Maybe Mr. Gray did have a relationship with Mr. Green in some way, but Lewis knew his partner wasn’t stupid. He’d put up at least a chain-link fence or two between his identity and Mr. Green.
It was the first fear Lewis ever saw on his partner’s face. Even through all the blood and lacerations, the fear sang out. Lewis’s black-box status was not only good. It was essential. No one knew what he and Mr. Gray were driving. Lewis suddenly had more than half a mind to deliver a chopping blow to Mr. Gray’s throat and shove him out of the truck. Or maybe just shoot him in the head. I’m out of here, he told himself.
Mr. Green seemed to let a few moments’ silence sink in, then brought up the kids again. “They like the light of day, don’t they?” Mr. Gray’s mouth opened. “You want them to see it again, right? And Lewis? I assume you’re listening?”
“Yes.” Don’t you DARE, motherf—
“Your parents are dead. That sound about right?” Lewis didn’t answer. “And your grandmother”—
Lewis shook his head slowly, keeping his eyes on the phone.
—“lives down at the… what is it?… Trinity Falls?”
Lewis felt something that wasn’t quite anger, but it was sharp and painful just the same.
“Retirement community in Baton Rouge?”
No comment.
“How’d I do? I’m sure it sounds about right?”
“Listen, man. You touch my grandm—”
“I’m sure you’re going to track me down like a… what would we call you? Some kind of rogue? A vigilante? You’ll get me if it’s the last thing you ever do, type thing? I understand. But first, you’re going to get to that camp and do as you’re told. And listen. There won’t be any police up there. They’ll have no reason to go. Your man, the tall man, will be alone. And you two, my friends, will head off to your separate lives. You’ll love your kids and grandmothers for a long time to come. With plenty of money. It’ll all work out—”
“How do you know he’ll be alone?” Mr. Gray asked.
“Don’t worry about that. We’ve got it covered.”
Lewis grabbed the sat phone and said, “Listen, asshole. If we’re gonna do this and be successful, we need to know at least a little about what we might run into at this camp.”
The phone was silent for a moment, then Mr. Green said, “Fair enough. Let’s just say your tall man’ll know enough not to call the cops before he gets there.”
“How?” Lewis asked. “How will he know?”
“You’re just going to have to trust me. I can’t say any more than that.”
Lewis cursed and leaned back in his seat. His hand squeezed the screwdriver’s grip. He thought about his grandmother and some hired man breaking her toes just to make her suffer.
Mr. Green covered some business and finished with, “Get up there, burn the cabin. And I mean, to. The. Ground. But not until you wait for the tall man to show up. If he’s not there at ten, you light up that cabin and disappear.
“Don’t forget, gentlemen. We’re on the same team here. I like kids, and I like grandmothers. I’m not a mean guy. Just practical. You get the tall guy and vaporize that cabin, there’s an extra ten grand in it for you both. And that includes consideration of the Montana factor. Ring me once before ten if you get the tall man. Ring me once again after the fire. Got it?”
“Yeah,” Mr. Gray croaked.
“To the ground. Every inch. You lie to me, I’ll know very quickly. And fellas?” No answer. “Find the damned doctor. Honestly, I should’ve hired him for this job. You and your kids and Lewis’s granny are on the hook till you find him. And don’t shoot any more police. Please. Unless you have to.”
The line went dead.
Lewis thought of his grandmother again and hopped out of the truck. He’d never in his life so had his ass handed to him. Putting his screwdriver to work on the first plate.
Who the hell is Mr. Green? And how in the FUCK does he know so much?
In under a minute, he unscrewed the other truck’s plate.
A mile or two down the road, Lewis knew he had a partner lying to him and a thoroughly frightening son of a bitch on the other end of the sat phone. The only thing he had in common with Mr. Gray was that Mr. Green had made them both want to get to the camp. Before then, Lewis was safe. After the camp, it was off-to-find-the-doctor. And after that? Mr. Green was a guy who’d tie up the loose ends.
CHAPTER 43
“What’s with all the deadlines?” Lewis decided to ask.
The two had put some serious road behind them, having passed through towns with names like Liberty and Fountain City. Snow came down and cost them valuable time, the worst of it around Winchester. But past Geneva, Berne, and Decatur, it cleared enough for Lewis to push his speed to the legal limits. Other than being stolen and having a plate that didn’t match the registration, Lewis’s new wheels had been good to them. He caught the interstate somewhere around Ft. Wayne and worried about his nanny. He also fantasized about what he’d do to Mr. Green if they ever met. Mr. Gray was asleep. No way on earth could Lewis sleep at a time like this, but his concentration had begun to sag. They needed to stop. Barring the unforeseen, he and Mr. Gray had plenty of time to get to the camp while they’d still be safe.
Questions swirled in his head. A lot of questions. One, in particular, was for Mr. Gray. Why’d you go to the camp before all this? What’s going on up there? Why’d you make that face when Mr. Green outed you over the phone? What’s the deal with all these men being forty-one or forty-two? Did it have to do with the camp? The cabin they were supposed to burn down. Did these targets all live there once? One summer at camp? That seemed like a foregone conclusion or what Mr. Gray would call a no-brainer. But why was it important? Who is Mr. Green, and why does he give two shits about who lived in some cabin way the hell back in… what?… the early seventies?
And about Mr. Green. He’d said to burn the cabin if the “tall guy” wasn’t there at ten in the morning. He didn’t say get the job done by or before ten. He said at. If Lewis had his way, he’d speed up there and burn the damned thing down as soon as he could light a match. They’d tell the frightening client the tall guy never showed up (and if Mr. Green didn’t like that, he could go yank himself), and then get the hell away from that camp. By ten. Way before ten. Not at ten.
Lewis figured it best not to let Mr. Gray know he was suspicious. So “What’s with all the deadlines?” was the only question he ended up asking.
Mr. Gray jerked awake. “Deadlines?”
“Yeah. We were supposed to be done with the whole job by yesterday at noon. And now, we’re supposed to burn down this cabin by ten?”
“I think he said at ten. Wait for the tall man.”
Playing dumb and probing, Lewis said, “By ten? At ten? What’s the difference?”
“Right at ten. I think we better do what he says. Maybe if the cabin’s burning before ten, the tall man won’t show up.”
“All right,” Lewis said. A little feigned ambivalence might save his ass. “Whatever.”
Mr. Gray wasn’t exactly a raging genius, but he was pretty far above average. He was at least smart enough to know they were being set up. By ten meant deadline. At ten meant rendezvous. Lewis was convinced Mr. Green’s plan was to kill Lewis and Mr. Gray at ten. AT ten. And that was all there was to it. So yes, for all concerned, there was one,
big, monumental-fucking difference between the words AT and BY.
Mr. Gray was the one who knew the camp, its location, and how to navigate it. He could save them valuable minutes. Otherwise, Lewis could just shove him out the passenger door at high speed. He almost laughed at the fantasy.
“Hey, man,” Mr. Gray said. “Let’s stop for some coffee.”
“Good idea.” Lewis veered onto the exit ramp beyond the blue Michigan Welcome Center sign. They’d spend minutes that had to be spent. Falling asleep at the wheel would finish them, one way or another. “But you’re gonna have to deal with vending machine coffee. Your face is too ugly for public.”
“Suck it, man,” Mr. Gray said, smiling weakly. “So’s yours.” Lewis pulled into a spot. Only one other car sat in the lot. It was five in the morning.
“I’m ’onna piss behind the building,” Mr. Gray said.
Lewis thought he could pop him back there in the dark. Sneak up on him and drill him from ten feet away. But not only did he need Mr. Gray to get to the camp before the phantom tall man was supposed to show up. He needed Mr. Gray on the sat phone, after it was all done, to negotiate with Mr. Green.
Question was, what if Mr. Gray meant to pop Lewis? Nah. He needed Lewis to help him find the doctor. That is if they burned the cabin—tall man or no tall man—in time to escape what Mr. Green had planned for them.
Lewis held the rest-area door for a young woman and two small kids on their way out. She thanked him. He watched them for a moment, walking toward the only other car. Five a.m. She must be running from a wife-beater. Lewis was one of those kids once. Until the bastard killed Lewis’s mom. His nanny raised him after that.
As he let go of the door and stepped inside toward the restroom, he seethed at the image of Mr. Green threatening her.
A stack of newspapers filled one of the machines. He read the headline as he walked. More presidential stuff. Then he stopped cold and checked the date, just to be sure. Tuesday, January 25, 2000. The bold, big headline said
senator mcdaniel joins race
Lewis stepped over and read some of the top story. On Monday afternoon, Missouri Senator Denton McDaniel, in a press conference, announced his bid for the White House. When the article reminded Lewis the senator was only forty-one, he thought Monday afternoon…
After NOON, MONDAY.
The pressure in his bladder muscled its way into his thoughts. He went to the men’s room.
The relief the urinal brought him allowed him to think. The number 41 rolled around in his pre-coffee mind. Forty-one years old.
… youngest man elected president…
And a deadline to complete the jobs at noon, Monday. Lewis remembered how severely the doctor had concentrated on the television in that crappy bar. The doctor recognized that senator. Was it a coincidence?
A surge of energy choked off his prodigious stream. He had to concentrate to start it again. The summer camp, the senator’s campaign, and the silly deadline suddenly made sense together. The law professor, the albino preacher. The coach, butcher, and doctor. Six guys, six different states. Nothing in common but their ages and some form of shared knowledge.
They all went to camp together, the senator was one of them, and Mr. Green wanted the rest of them dead. Suddenly, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what was happening. The senator has a dirty secret, and he wants to be president.
Lewis finished his business and bought a copy of the newspaper. He got the coffees and the least-disgusting crackers he could find out of a machine. As a quick afterthought, he dipped his dirty piss fingers into Mr. Gray’s coffee. “Suck this, dipshit,” he said.
Mr. Gray emerged from the shadows as Lewis exited the building. “I feel like a new man,” his partner said, zipping up his pants. He took the crackers and slurped the coffee Lewis handed him.
Back inside the truck, Lewis dropped the newspaper in Mr. Gray’s lap. “Check this out,” he said, tapping the number 41 in the text.
Mr. Gray looked quizzically at Lewis, flipped on the truck’s dome light, then focused on the page. Lewis fired up the engine, pulled out of the space, then headed north on I-69. He gave his partner a little time to absorb what he was reading. It took about a minute to see on Mr. Gray’s cut-up, ugly mug the same epiphany Lewis had at the urinal.
Mr. Gray said, “That Monday noon deadline sure makes alotta sense now.”
“Damned right it does.” Do you already know this shit? Mr. GRAAAAAY??
“You think,” Mr. Gray asked, lifting his hand and rubbing his index and middle fingertips against the pad of his thumb, “if Mr. Green knew we know this now?”
“Uh-huh?”
“There might be a little more in it for us?”
“I think there might,” Lewis said.
“Then let’s get on up there.”
“Fast as we can.”
“Just to be safe.”
“And the tall man?” Lewis asked.
“He never even showed up, Mr. Green.”
Lewis concluded his partner wasn’t that good of an actor, that Mr. Gray did not, in fact, already know the targets were connected to the senator’s campaign. He was glad to know Mr. Gray’s greed was still his most important motivator.
“Blackmail,” Lewis said, checking his mirrors and speedometer. “What a wonderful thing.”
CHAPTER 44
Ted’s full awareness jumped, like a popped kernel in hot oil. Adrenaline screamed through him. His knee ached, and he knew his wounds would complain the next time he tried to walk. He slid his thumb down, inside his left beltline. It was dry. The makeshift bandage seemed to be holding enough pressure.
“There he is,” the trucker said. “Hey, look. I’ll level with you. I’m too tired to go anywhere but straight home. We’ll talk it through over breakfast.”
Ted rubbed his eyes.
“How’s that sound?”
How’s what soun—Breakfast. Trucker’s house. “Oh. Sounds… very nice.” Ted figured he should feel hungry, but he didn’t.
“My wife and boy’ll be there. We’ll eat and see to it you have some place to go.”
Ted sat and watched as they drove a mile or so off the highway, down a quiet country road. The trucker turned down a pea-gravel, double-track driveway, toward a wooden barn set at least two football fields off the road. Two grain bins sat on one side of the drive, and what looked like a century-old farmhouse finished the scene on the other. A utility light outside the barn reminded Ted of the light that hovered above the beach house, the light he and his cabin mates had to hide from the night they stole the canoes.
He both looked forward to and doubted his intent to visit White Birch Camp. Whether going there would help blow the crud out of the old pipes or clog them up for good didn’t matter. He wasn’t going there for himself, anyway. His intention was to pay the enormous debt of his secrecy. He would get to White Birch while somebody, he hoped, still had a chance.
The trucker laughed and pointed. “Look at the boy’s truck,” he said. Outside the barn door sat a beat-up old pick-up. Twisted rebar and copper pipe filled its bed. “Kid is nineteen and just bought an acre down the road for four thousand bucks. Worthless land in a ravine people’ve been using to dump old refrigerators and crap for fifty years or better. That boy’ll recoup his four thousand with recycled steel and copper. Then he’ll own an acre of land.”
Ted nodded respectfully as the trucker pulled into the barn and shut down the cab. He dropped another anecdote about letting the yard grow, mowing it down in early summer, then selling it as baled straw to pay for the hay rake they bought to help the baling process.
Ted and the trucker got out of the rig and walked toward the house. “Doubt he’ll ever go to college,” the man said, “but he saves every penny he can. He’ll be a millionaire at thirty.”
He opened a door that led to a back room. The smell of bacon wafted through.
“Honey?” the trucker said as Ted stepped inside. “I picked up a stray.”
The man’s wife stepped toward the door and stopped, looking at Ted. “My goodness,” she said, casting a questioning gaze to her husband. She shook Ted’s hand with an impressive grip. “Heidi Williams,” she said. “Coffee?”
“Yes,” Ted said softly. “That would be wonderful.”
The trucker ushered Ted into the kitchen, behind Heidi. Ted figured the sympathy magnet had finally run out of juice. He bet the trucker did not, in fact, routinely bring strangers home to breakfast. Heidi was civil but little more. She gestured for Ted to sit at the formica table. He sat and pretended not to notice the whispers and hidden glances. Heidi put Ted’s coffee on the table.
The tension worsened as a massive clomp, clomp, clomp descended a flight of stairs, culminating in obvious footsteps on the ground floorboards. Ted stood up, as he thought he always should, to greet whoever was coming, certain it was the boy.
A young, bearded man in jeans and a flannel shirt trundled into the kitchen.
“Sleeping in, are we?” Heidi asked, her face expressionless. Ted glanced at his watch. Six a.m. They were farmers. He wasn’t sure if she’d been kidding her son or not.
“Early to bed, early to rise,” the young man said. He looked at Ted, who shifted on his feet and introduced himself.
There was no way around it. He owed these people complete honesty. “Good morning. Name’s Ted Gables.”
The young man took Ted’s hand and nearly crushed it. “Caleb Williams.”
In a fit of indecision, worrying that Heidi would go for the phone or that the able-bodied Caleb might knock Ted unconscious with a single blow, Ted pulled out his wallet.
“I really do need to thank you for the transportation,” he said to the trucker. He withdrew a couple hundred-dollar bills and handed them over.
The trucker took the bills and said, “Uh… Ted, is it?”
Heidi glared at her husband. Ted didn’t know what was on her mind, but he was sure it was something like You brought this man home and didn’t even know his name? It was clear Alvin Williams had decided to appear less familiar with Ted than he’d become. Ted figured the man had his reasons.
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