'We didn't,' he said. 'He just disappeared. What's it to you, anyway? How do you even know he exists?'
She pulled a small pad out of her handbag and opened it, held it up to his face.
'The developers of The Halls are hidden behind about a million dummy corporations,' she said. 'But on the plane I tracked them, and we got close enough. What looks like the trustee company is Antiviral Global Inc., registered in the Cayman Islands. Mr Harold Davids of this address is their designated legal representative in Montana.'
'Fuck,' Bobby said, his face pale. He turned and stalked furiously back into the kitchen.
I stared at Nina. 'You've got it wrong. I've just been talking to him. To Davids. He told me … well, he told me a bunch of stuff. He knows about The Halls, yes. Certainly. But from the outside. He's not with them. He's tried to help my parents get away from these people.'
'I don't know what he told you,' Nina said. She looked up at the sound of Zandt coming out of the back room. He shook his head at her and hurried up the stairs. 'But I don't think Mr Davids is what he seems.'
'What's Zandt looking for?'
'A body,' she said, simply. 'Hopefully not a dead one.' Her voice was slightly too flat, and I realized that beneath a hard-fought exterior, she was nearly vibrating with tension. The attempted throwaway was not convincing in the least. 'She's not going to be here. Harold is not your killer,' I said. 'He's an old man. He's…'
'Nina—you got a number for The Halls?' Bobby was standing in the doorway to the kitchen, holding the house phone.
She glanced into her notebook, flipped a page. 'We have 406-555-1689. But all you get is a recorded message and an interminable menu system. Why?'
Bobby smiled, sort of. He made a facial expression, anyway. 'Harold called that number. It's in his redial list, from twenty minutes ago. While we were in the house.'
'But…' I said. For a moment my mouth did nothing but move, without sound, as I tried to frame my objections. 'He looked freaked. You saw him. He was sitting here waiting, knowing they were going to come for him. Like they came for Mary and Ed. You saw him, for Christ's sake. You know how he looked.'
'Sure he looked frightened, Ward. But of us. Of us. He thought we knew about him. He thought we were going to whack him.'
Zandt came back down into the hallway. 'She's not here.'
Davids had seen me with a knife. He knew we had guns. But I was still at a loss. 'Why would he tell me anything, if he's with them?'
'You'd found out he was part of the Hunter's Rock group. You mentioned a video, a note. You recognized him. He didn't know how much else you knew. You could have been bluffing him. Simplest thing is to tell you the truth most of the way, and then switch it at the end.' He swore briefly but viciously, seeming to take the deception very personally.
Nina's face was a row of question marks. 'Who are the Hunter's Rock group?'
'Later,' I said. 'We've got to find Davids first.'
A cell phone rang. We all reached at once, like strung-out-six-shooters. But the call was for Zandt.
'Yeah?' he said.
'Hello, Officer,' said a voice. It was loud enough for us all to hear.
Zandt looked at Nina, talked into the phone. 'Who's that?'
'A friend,' the voice said. 'Though I admit we haven't met yet. Not my fault. You weren't good enough to bring us together.'
Zandt was very, very still. 'Who is this?'
There was a chuckle down the line. 'I thought you'd guess. I'm The Upright Man, John.'
Nina's mouth dropped open.
'Bullshit.'
'Not bullshit. Well done on finding Wang. And for encouraging him to do the right thing. We owe you one. He could have been an embarrassment.'
Zandt's mouth was dry, and clicked when he spoke. 'If you're The Upright Man, prove it.'
Bobby and I stared at him.
'I don't have to prove anything,' the voice said. 'But I'll tell you something to your advantage. If you're not out of that house in about two minutes, you'll be dead. All of you.'
The connection was cut.
'Out of the house,' Zandt said. 'Now.'
By the time we'd reached the street we could hear sirens approaching. A lot of sirens. I unlocked the car and jumped into the driver's seat.
Nina stood her ground. 'I'm an FBI agent. We don't have to go anywhere.'
'Yeah, right,' Bobby said. 'We shot a couple of cops earlier. They're not dead, but we still shot them. You want to stand in the middle of the road with your badge out, be my guest. This isn't HBO, princess. They're going to blow your fucking head off.'
The police had failed to double-up their approach, and we made it to the main drag without incident. I hung a right and put my foot down hard.
Within twenty minutes we were out of town and following the road as it slowly wound upward through the foothills. Nobody asked where I was going. Everyone knew.
Nina explained what had happened back in LA. I told them what Davids had told us. Zandt revealed, not in detail but sufficiently, his background with The Upright Man.
'Shit,' I said.
Bobby frowned. 'But how'd he get your cell phone number?'
'If he's tied in with The Straw Men, that's not going to tax them. They have a serial victim supply chain. They're blowing up things left, right and centre. A cell trace is child's play.'
'Okay—so why call? Why get you out before the cops got there?'
'There's no predicting why he'd do anything. But it wasn't just me he was thinking of. He knew I wasn't alone.'
'Davids told them who was in his house,' I said. 'He turned us in.' I was so bitterly furious that I could barely speak. 'And kind of funny, don't you think, that The Straw Men caught up with my parents two days before they were set to disappear? They planned everything out, had it all in place, and then just before they sidestepped out of danger suddenly there's McGregor setting up the accident that killed them.'
'Davids tipped them off? Why?'
'He knew what The Halls was about right from the start. Then Dad finds out about them, thinks he's got a business opportunity, but finds that's not what it is. Puts Davids in a very difficult position. Say these are the same people, or the same kind of people, that they went up against thirty years ago. Davids said that only the leader was killed outright. The rest presumably survived, could have told someone what happened. The bunch who created The Halls could have found out that Davids was one of the raiding party—could even be why they contracted him as an attorney in the first place.'
'They're that well-connected, why use Davids? They could have hired anyone.'
'Right. But big-shot lawyers are also well-connected. Some of them even have delusions of honesty. The Straw Men can drop Davids off a cliff whenever they choose, and he knows it. 'Work for us or it becomes known what you did one night in a forest. Or frankly, we just fucking kill you.' What's he going to do? He's old, and afraid, and has everything to lose. He's also good. He's perfect for them.'
'Then your father gets too close, and Davids knows he's in deep trouble if he doesn't let The Straw Men know. So he tells them the Hopkinses are about to fly.'
There was silence in the car for a moment.
'He got them killed,' Nina said, quietly. 'The one man they thought they could really trust.'
'He's a dead man walking,' I said. 'There's no question about that.'
•••
By the time we reached the mountains it had started to rain, cold silver lines against the darkness outside the windows. The river by the side of the road was a torrent. There was no other traffic.
'There's only four of us,' Nina said.
I glanced at her. 'So call for backup.'
'They're not going to scramble choppers on my say so. Most we'd get would be a couple of bored agents in a car in two hours, whose main goal would be proving I was a fuckup.' She looked out of the window for a moment. 'Does anyone here have a cigarette? I thought I might start smoking.'
I reached into my
pocket, pulled out the battered pack and put it on the dash.
'I can't advise it,' I said. She returned my smile wanly, but let the cigarettes be.
Fifty minutes after leaving Davids's house, we swept round a long, gradual bend. I'd dropped our speed by now and Bobby was sitting up so he could look at the walls of the hills as they sloped up from the road.
'We're nearly there,' I said.
I saw Nina watching as Bobby and Zandt loaded their guns, then reluctantly check her own weapon. Her fingers were unsteady. Neither man looked the way she probably felt, but I could have told her it was impossible to tell what went on in boy's heads. There isn't a man of our generation who can't quote the 'Well, to tell you the truth, in all the excitement I lost count myself speech from Dirty Harry. We all feel we should be capable of asking punks whether they felt lucky, of being our own portable Clint. And we all believe that someone, somewhere, will look down on us if we don't measure up.
Then Zandt happened to glance at her. He winked, and I saw her realize that it wasn't that after all. The movies might tell you how to behave, but the feeling ran far deeper, went back to the days when nobody wore clothes and everyone had their role and some tended fires and others ran with prey. The only differences lies in how big a group we feel a part of, the distance of our relationship to the people we'd defend to the death. Zandt was as nervous as she was. And so was I.
I pulled the car over onto the hard shoulder. 'That's it,' I said. About fifty yards ahead was the small gate.
'Nobody there,' Bobby said. 'Tell me again how the approach works.'
'You go through the gate, drive on grass. Swing round to the left and there's a hidden road, obscured by the trees. It winds up toward the high plain.'
'So there could be someone in the trees, or anywhere up the approach.'
'Pretty much.'
'Let's do it fast, then.'
I nodded. 'Everybody ready?'
'As we'll ever be,' Zandt said. I stepped on the pedal.
The car leaped forward, wheels spinning on the wet road. I sped down the remaining distance and then angled straight at the gate.
'Heads down,' Bobby said. Nina and Zandt complied. Bobby braced himself against the back of the seat and the car door, gun in his hand. A second later the car smashed through the gate, broken slats smacking up off the windshield and sending a spiderweb across Nina's side. The car ploughed into the long grass, started to skid. I struggled with it, brought it round.
I backed off the pedal until I had it again, and then headed for the band of trees, picking up speed. I ran over a hump and saw Nina lift into the air for a moment. She'd barely landed before she was bounced up again. There was a grunt from the back as Zandt suffered the same fate. Bobby seemed to have been clamped to his seat.
There was a lower, harder bump and then suddenly the ground was flat underneath the wheels.
I sped past the trees, wincing. 'You see anyone?'
'No,' Bobby said. 'But don't slow down.'
After a hundred yards the road banked sharply to the right, and then we were heading up the gradient. Bobby was glancing from side to side as I yanked the car round bend after bend, but no shots came. But when he saw Zandt slowly bring his head up, he still reached out a hand to shove it back down. I saw him wince, but his shoulder didn't seem to be a big problem. For the time being.
'So where are they?' I asked.
'Probably all at the top, standing in a line.'
'You're a cheerful fuck. But I'm glad you're here.'
'Some kind of friendship thing, I guess,' Bobby said. 'Though this goes down badly, I'm going to come back and haunt you.'
'You already are,' I said. 'Been trying to get rid of you for years.'
We slid round the last bend, and then the vast gate of The Halls was looming above us up the rise.
'Still no one,' I said, slowing the car down.
'What now?'
'Other side of the gate the road pans left. Couple of large buildings. Entrance stuff, and what looked like storage. There's a high fence all the way across the pasture. The houses are on the other side.'
The other two cautiously raised their heads. 'So?'
'Front gate,' Bobby said. 'No way we're getting over that fence.'
'Entrance is where they're going to be waiting for us.'
'Got no choice.'
The car swept under the stone archway and down toward the clump of wooden buildings. A big light on one of them turned the parking lot a moonish and sickly white. Soon as it was all in vision, I pulled my foot off the pedal again. The car rolled into the centre of the lot and stopped. The lot was completely empty. I turned off the engine, left the keys in the ignition.
'What?' Nina asked.
'No cars. When I was here before it was full of cars.'
Zandt opened his door and got out without waiting for instructions. Bobby swore and emerged the other side, gun ready. The white light made them easy targets, but also showed that there was no one on the roof of the building. Nobody standing waiting. Just two big wooden buildings, and a stretch of fence in between.
Nina and I got cautiously out of the car. Nina's gun looked big and clumsy in her hand.
'That's the way in,' I said, nodding to the building on the right.
They followed me over and gathered either side of the glass doors. Bobby stuck his head out, scoped the inside. 'Nobody behind reception,' he said.
'We going in?'
'I guess so. After you.'
'Hey—thanks for the opportunity.' I leaned forward, pushed one of the doors gently. No alarm went off. Nobody shot at me. I opened the door and stepped in cautiously, the others behind.
The lobby area was silent. The background music was absent, and there was no fire in the grate of the river-rock fireplace. The large painting that had been behind the reception desk was gone. The whole room felt as if it had been mothballed.
'Fuck,' I said. 'They've gone.'
'Bullshit,' Bobby said. 'It's only been an hour. There's no way they had the time to clear out.'
'They had a little longer,' Zandt admitted. 'When we left Wang, it was maybe five or ten minutes before he shot himself. He could have called a warning through.'
'It's still not long. Not to pack up everything.'
'So maybe they were already on their way,' Nina said. 'You kicked the shit out of their realtor. Could be that was message enough, and that would have given them a couple days. Doesn't matter. We're still going to go look at what's out there.'
She started to stride toward the door at the end, the one that would open out into the inner area of The Halls. She looked filled with a kind of wretched fury, a horror that they could have arrived too late, that the phantom she had chased until it was the only light at the end of her tunnel had danced out of reach again.
We were standing still. She evidently didn't care if we came with her. She had to go out there. She had to see.
She didn't hear the shot.
By the time the sound reached our ears she was already falling, thrown awkwardly sideways to crash into one of the low tables. Her mouth opened to cry out, but nothing came. Zandt ran toward her.
I whirled to see a man in the doorway. McGregor. Bobby instead saw a woman behind the reception desk, and a muscle-bound youth emerging from a recessed doorway behind her, a door camouflaged to blend in with the wood panelling.
All three had guns. All were firing them.
The youth died first. His technique was pure television: gun held out sideways, gangbanger style. Bobby had him down with one shot.
I slipped behind one of the pillars and straight out the other side, getting McGregor first in the thigh, then the chest. I still only narrowly avoided taking one to the face, felt the hum as it spun past my head. I dropped to one knee and scooted behind one corner of the reception, praying the woman hadn't seen me. Reloaded, dropping half the bullets.
Zandt knelt down next to Nina, who lay crumpled, her hand fluttering toward the hole in her
chest. It was high up, just under the right clavicle. 'Oh, Nina,' he said, oblivious to the cracks and whines in the air above him. She coughed, her face caught between surprise and denial.
'Hurts,' she said.
McGregor was still shooting. The woman behind the desk nearly took Bobby out before I took a breath and stood up, emptying half of my gun into her. Only when she'd slewed backward over the muscle man did I realize it was the woman who'd talked me through the fake entry requirements. I still didn't know her name.
Bobby was standing over McGregor, his boot on the cop's wrist. A gun lay on the floor several feet away.
'Where'd they go?' he asked him. 'And how long ago? Tell me everything you know, or darkness falls.'
'Fuck you,' the cop said.
'Suits me,' Bobby shrugged, and shot him dead.
While Bobby checked the other bodies, making sure nobody was going to wake up and start shooting again, I ran over to Nina. Zandt had her hand pressed firmly over the wound in her chest.
'We're out of here,' I said.
'No,' Nina said. Her voice was surprisingly strong. She tried to haul herself upright.
'Nina, you're fucked up. We have to get you to a hospital.'
She grabbed a table leg with one hand. The other one snatched my wrist. 'Be fast. But go and see.'
I hesitated. Tried to look at Zandt for support, but Nina's eyes held me.
Bobby arrived. 'Oh shit, Nina.'
'I'm staying here and you're going in there,' she said, talking only to Zandt. She looked in pain, but not like she was going to faint. 'Please, John. Make them go. All of you. Please see if she's there. You've got to go see. Then we'll go to the hospital. I promise.'
Zandt waited a beat longer, then leaned over, kissed her quickly on the forehead. He stood up. 'I'm doing as she says.'
I started to reload my gun. 'Bobby, you stay here.' He started to protest, but I kept talking. 'Try to stop the bleeding, and take out anyone you see who isn't us. You're more use to her than either of us.'
Bobby squatted down beside the woman. 'Be careful, man.'
Zandt and I walked fast down to the end doors. 'Whatever happens,' I said, 'we stick together. You got that?'
The Straw Men Page 31