by L. L. Enger
It was getting late. Gun got in his truck, put the key in the ignition. He looked again at the house with its green peeling paint. A big brown doormat he hadn’t noticed before said welcome, friends in script big enough to read from across the street. Gun opened the glove box and took out a pair of fuzzy yellow work gloves. Not skin-tight white latex, but they’d do.
The room was ripe and the floor sticky under his Pony runners as Gun made his way through Rutherford’s living room. He remembered tenth grade, reading The Red Badge of Courage, when the young soldier looked into the eyes of his first corpse and went witless, tearing through the woods. He avoided the gaze of the scowling dead and headed for Rutherford’s kitchen.
Freddy Cheeseman seemed to have the whole Hedman scheme figured out, or most of it. He knew Rutherford had been used to set up Tig Larson, knew Rutherford was headed for Niagara in a breadbox because of it. But he didn’t know it all. “Don’t know who the runner was,” he’d told Gun. Gun had the runner figured to be Reverend Barr, the thin Friar, but he wanted to be sure.
He was sure after a ten-minute search of Rutherford’s ample kitchen. Even with a near-useless left hand he was able to sort rapidly through a stack of mail on the counter, bills and letters and postcards, nothing with the Stony postmark. He found what he sought in a drawer beneath the telephone: a thin red address book. Samuel Barr was penciled in between The Back Forty and Broken Rock resort. Gun slipped the book in his pants pocket and stepped with care to the front door. No one said anything. He propped the screen into a more likely position on his way out.
With bacon thawing and coffee ticking on the stove, Gun broke routine and walked in his underwear down to the lake. No hitting practice this morning. A cracked collarbone deserved a day of rest. He walked to the end of the dock and dove without breaking stride, parting the water with his hands, welcoming the anesthetizing chill of Stony Lake. He did a slow sidestroke, resting the sore half of his collarbone. He floated home on his back. When he reached the shore he ducked once under, then rose dripping into the sunshine. A thin pinkness had begun beneath the bruise on his shoulder. His left hand felt stiff but capable. He glanced at the roofless stone boathouse. Later, it would provide therapy.
Breakfast was Wheaties, crushed in the bowl to hasten sogginess, a dull but functional Breakfast of Champions. Gun ate quickly, then dressed in jeans and a wide red sweatshirt. He looked at the phone, thought of Carol’s black bangs and green eyes, and went out to the F-150.
It was time for confrontation, Gun thought as he
drove to the Hedman estate. Past time, overdue, and calling in the loan. Carol had asked him earlier why he didn’t put the questions straight to Hedman’s face, the questions about Mazy and Larson and Rutherford. Evidence, he’d answered her then, he needed evidence. Well, he had evidence now. Larry Slacker had been shaken loose, and Rutherford had been shelled apart. And there was the new topography of Gun’s shoulder, rising up like a tender knoll, big as a slab of sod. That ought to merit a piece of Lyle’s busy morning.
When Gun drove up to the iron gate, the jumpsuited guard stepped back a pace from the bars and smiled. He wasn’t the same guard Gun had spanked earlier.
“Hello, Mr. Pedersen,” said the guard. He was taller than the last one, and muscled like a TV wrestler.
“I want to see Hedman,” said Gun.
The guard raised his arms in a sorry gesture. “Mr. Hedman isn’t here,” he said. He was still smiling.
“You might as well open the gate,” Gun said. “The easy way or the hard way, I’m going to see him.”
The guard hiked the .38 on his hip. “Pedersen,” he said, “you used to be a hero of mine.”
“I’m glad.”
“Used to dread the Tigers’ road trips to Minnesota, you swingin’ through Twins’ pitchers like a wrecking ball. Gave me a thrill, though—I saw you hit three homers off Perry and Kaat in a doubleheader at the Met once.”
Gun waited.
“Thing is, though, I don’t watch baseball now, and you don’t play it. You don’t pay my salary either, and Mr. Hedman does. So I wouldn’t let you in, even if he was here.” The guard shifted his shoulders once, as if he were uncomfortable under the jumpsuit. “But like I said, he’s gone. Took the family. Took the dog, even.
Caravan of Jaguars, the old man’s, the kid’s, the wife’s. Damn.”
Something about the guard made Gun believe he was telling the truth. The part about the Jaguars. He said, “Where did they go?”
“Come on, Pedersen. I’m a security boy, not a vacation counselor. They don’t tell me where they go. They just tell me to watch this gate”—he reached out and slapped an iron bar— “and make sure that people on the other side of it stay there.” The guard showed Gun a sudden grin. “Another thing,” he said. “When Hedman is here, I don’t deliver notes.”
“You’re a smart boy,” said Gun. He got into the Ford and rode out on Kenya Drive, aiming south when he hit the highway.
Driving with his bruised hand out the window, Gun tried mapping his limited options. Time was spinning ahead too fast. He’d delayed confronting Hedman until he had some ammunition, and now that he had it, Hedman was gone. With his wife and his kid and his ill-gotten daughter-in-law. The polls would open at eight a.m. Tuesday, and it was Saturday already with the sun heaving up toward noon. Gun goosed the Ford south on County Road 2. If the Hedmans were anticipating him, the Reverend Barr probably was too. But it wouldn’t hurt to look.
Barr lived in an off-white house of European stucco with craggy slopes and ivy crawling a fieldstone chimney. Like Hedman’s place, it was invisible from the road. Gun nearly overlooked the black rural mailbox imprinted with domino-sized capitals: S. BARR. The thin gravel drive took him through a tall lilac hedge and into a meadowlike yard. He pulled the Ford up in front of the broad brown front door and left the engine running.
The door had a window and a fat bronze knocker. Gun used the window first. He beheld a small, wallpapered entry with hanging coats showing from a dark closet door. A snaggle of wire hangers had been tossed onto a high-backed Shaker chair, and a yellow plastic dog-food dish was upside down on the hardwood strip floor.
The knocker made a sound like a locker being slammed. Gun gave it three sharp beats and waited. No one was home. He gave it three more, and the bronze horseshoe came off in his hand. Gun walked to the back of the house. There was a long narrow yard, framed at the edges by yellow-blossomed caraganas. Across the yard opposite the house was a cubelike building of matching pale-faced stucco, with square-paned windows. It looked like the servants’ quarters in a TV miniseries about nineteenth-century England. Gun squinted through one of the windows. The place was a garage, and it was empty. An oil drip pan sat in the right stall. The floor was swept. Gun could see the swoop and straight lines of a ten-speed bicycle under a sheet of thrown canvas. A strip of twisted gold fly tape hung from the ceiling, bugless.
The sun said it was noon. Gun left the bronze knocker in the reverend’s mailbox on the way out.
“They took off,” said Gun, “every damn one of them.” Jack Be Nimble’s was cool and smelled of fresh frying grease. Gun had just finished bringing Jack up to date on the Rutherford killing, the Cheeseman connection, and Lyle’s quick exit.
Jack chuckled, rubbing his thick fingers over the black crew cut. “Seems you mentioned that Cheeseman guy one time. Didn’t know you ran in those circles, Gun.”
Gun looked at the empty bar in front of him. He said, “Aren’t those things done yet?”
“Should be.” Jack rolled away to the kitchen. When he returned he had two long plates with a shingle-shaped burger on each. The buns, full-size kaiser rolls, perched on the meat like decorative cherries. Gun’s plate held buttermilk in a beer glass.
“Before,” Gun said, “I might have been able to just blow in there and get her out. But I waited too long, and now everybody’s gone.”
They finished eating with no more talk. Gun tucked a five under his plate
and got to his feet. “Wherever they went,” he said, “I’m going to find out.”
“Tomorrow’s Sunday,” said Jack. “My day off.”
28
By nine-thirty that evening a rack of washboard clouds had slid over the sky, curtaining the bright new moon and promising a black night. Gun, stiff but strengthened from an afternoon roofing the boat-house, used the last of the light readying the old Alumacraft. He removed any item that might rattle or clank: a pair of loose-jawed pliers under the bench seat, a long teardrop-shaped landing net, a tackle box. He untied the anchor from its rope and tossed it on the grass, then coiled the line and tucked it in the bow, leaving one end secured to the eyebolt in front. He reached into the new boathouse rafters and drew out two long bleached oars, oiled the locks until they swung lightly, and laid them in place. At last he pushed the boat into the water, floated her next to the dock, and rocked her with his feet until the gunwales scooped water. There was no noise but the slap of the waves he’d created. The straight-line route from Gun’s to the Hedman shore was roughly four miles, or about eight minutes in one of the low-slung, high-chaired bass boats that were increasingly populating the lake. In Gun’s battered rig, pushed through the dark by a dutiful fifteen-horse Evinrude, it took much longer. At ten-fifteen he was carefully edging past the rocky point that stood out from Hambone Island. Ten minutes later some of the gaslight lamps that lit the Hedman drive were winking through the shoreline trees. Gun idled down and cut the motor. A chill wet breeze made cat’s paws on the water. Gun reached into a pocket of his canvas hunting jacket and brought out a black wool watch cap.
The Woman River exited Stony Lake at the southern edge of the Hedman property. Moving parallel to the lakeshore, Gun rowed silently until he could make out the two ghost banks of rushes that marked the outlet. Then he pointed the boat between them and floated in driftwood-quiet on the current.
He waited to land until there was a small thinning in the wall of cattails, then dug one oar into soft river bottom and nosed into the weeds. Through scrub-willow branches Gun could see flaring African lamps, lit for extra security in the absence of the Big Bwana. The wet breeze blew him the sound of the gas hiss. Gun poled through the rushes until the boat thumped the mossy bank, then replaced the oar and stepped aground. He tied the free end of the anchor rope to a reaching hook of willow root, put his toe to the prow of the Alumacraft and shoved. The boat disappeared like a spirit in the sway of weeds.
The main lodge sat on the crest of a hill, perhaps seventy yards distant and fifty feet in elevation from where Gun crouched in the willows. He was wearing the watch cap over his white hair. He also wore the brown canvas jacket, black woolen pants with dark green flecks, and ankle-high leather boots soft with mink oil. He felt like an ad for L.L. Bean, but at least he wouldn’t attract any eyes.
It took a murky half hour to reach a small, grass-thatched hut some twenty yards from the lodge. He hadn’t yet seen a sentry, though he suspected the night guard would be heavy. He sat down in the black shade of the hut and watched for movements in the gaslit yard. Thank God Lyle traveled with his dog, Gun thought. Last thing he needed tonight was Reuben.
He heard macadam footfalls before he saw the guard. On his stomach in the wide black shadow, Gun’s eyes gradually pulled the man into vision. Like the others, this guard wore a light green sleeveless jumpsuit. A three-quarter-sleeve baseball jersey covered his arms against the night. The standard .38 was a proud lump at his side, and a nightstick jumped on a chain at his thigh. The man walked between the lamps on Kenya Drive, headed for the lodge. Gun pulled back behind the hut. He heard the tread of boots on wooden steps, and the chuck of keys as the guard let himself in. When he peered forth again, the guard was returning to the porch. A six-pack of silver cans glowed in his grip.
“Hey, Horseley, you big hog!” The sudden voice was as high and thin as a nerve in the air. It was also close. Gun tensed his body, strained his eyes.
“Bondy? Where the hell are you?” The first guard, standing on the porch, bent his neck forward, probing. Yeah, Gun thought, where?
“Sipping the old man’s imported reserves, hey, Horseley?” said Bondy, piercingly near.
“Damnit, Bondy, where are you?” yelled Horseley. He set the six-pack on a rattan porch chair and used both hands to shadow his eyes as though looking at the sun.
Bondy laughed. “Horseley, you’re a blind man. Right here. The shed.” Gun felt the vibrations of the
hut as Bondy slapped the other side of it, not fifteen feet away. He rose to his knees and then to the balls of his feet, as careful as if the earth had a ticklish skin.
“Jeez, Bondy.” Horseley sounded relieved. “You blended in. Goddamn chameleon. Why don’t you get your ass up here and share some of the wealth?” Absolutely, Gun thought. Get it up there.
Bondy made stiff, musclebound noises getting up. He must have been sitting there some time before Gun ever pulled up behind the hut. Horseley picked up the six-pack and sat down in the rattan chair.
“Here’s to sudden vacations,” said Bondy. He unzipped a beer can and tilted it high.
“Here’s to expensive Hedman brew,” said Horseley. “The man has taste.”
Gun leaned against the dark wall of the hut for the twenty-minute duration of the six-pack. He was in an unfortunate location, since the hut was lit on three sides by the gas lamps. He might shift back the way he’d come, but getting anyplace would take too long. He wanted to get into the lodge, not away from it.
“Grock,” said Horseley, belching mouth open, hippo style.
“All gone,” observed Bondy, putting his eye to the top of his can.
“More to come,” said Horseley. He stood, quite steadily, and let himself into the lodge.
Chilled from staying motionless in the misty night, Gun set a limit. One more six-pack and he’d take action. Forward or backward, but action. He blew a soft sigh and rubbed his palms. He craned for a look when he heard the porch screen swing to. Horseley was carrying two six-packs.
“Bless you, Marse Lyle,” said Bondy.
The second six-pack was only a fifteen-minute wait. The guards were doing their best not to let it get warm. While Horseley and Bondy giggled the empties into a
twelve-can pyramid on the porch, Gun reached for the layered steel padlock on the door of the hut. Cautiously at first, he rattled the lock against the metal clasp. It made a sound like a squirrel on a tin roof. Bondy and Horseley drowned it out. They were having a belching contest. Gun grabbed the lock as he had Barr’s knocker and pounded it against the clasp. He had to do it four times before the sound sunk through the laughter. Horseley put one hand on his gun and the other on Bondy’s shoulder.
“Crap, man, did you hear that?”
Bondy grinned a strong imported grin. “Aw, get off it.”
“No. Seriously. I thought I heard somebody sneaking around, out by the shed maybe.”
Gun knocked again.
“The shed,” said Horseley. “Shit. Someone’s in the shed, knocking around with the old man’s mowers.”
Bondy took a step toward the screen door and stumbled over the beer pyramid. The tinkling scramble seemed to tighten their nerves.
“I’m going out there,” Horseley said in a beer-amplified whisper.
“I’m right behind you,” said Bondy, whispering too.
Gun flattened his back against the wall of the hut and waited. They said nothing else, but Gun could hear the unsnapping of holsters and feel their uneven steps as they approached. The wet breeze sharpened against Gun’s face, and the long blue glow of a .38 barrel nosed blindly around the hut’s corner.
Gun didn’t wait for its owner. He seized the barrel in both hands and jerked Horseley into black shade, the pistol erupting and blowing an orange hole in the air six inches from Gun’s left shoulder. The shot startled Horseley into a scream, and for one frozen frame Gun could see the horrified whites of the
guard’s eyes. He darkened them with a staccato punch to
the face and wheeled for Bondy.
Bondy wasn’t there. Gun panted quietly for less than a minute before he heard the guard’s voice, bleak and sodden.
“Horseley?”
Bondy was close, very close. Gun guessed he was against the adjacent wall, on the corner, too scared to enter the shadow. His finger would be nervous on the .38.
“Come on, Horseley, talk,” muttered Bondy. The guard’s breath fluttered in his teeth like a moth. “Did you get ‘em? Tell me you got ‘em, Horseley, this is a damn bad joke.”
Gun edged to the corner. He thought, I’m a monster in the dark, boy. Then he curled one hand into a searching claw and flung his arm around the corner. It connected immediately with Bondy’s soft sweaty neck, and Gun felt the .38 hit the earth. He pulled the guard squeaking into the shade. He was careful, when inducing sleep, not to hit too hard.
29
It was cool and still inside the lodge. Faded yellow gaslight entered through the frequent wide windows and landed on the hardwood floor in rectangular sheets. Gun locked the door behind him and stood near a window. The pistol shot had been a bad turn; other guards, posted on Hedman’s borders, would be on their way. They might waste a little time waking up Horseley and Bondy, but not much.
After a minute the grounds around the lodge were still quiet, and Gun switched on the four-cell beam and flung it around the room. The gray Hedman elephant straddled the couch and leered into the eye of the light. Pregnant goddesses glowed in ivory, fertile forms on ebony tables. Gun didn’t know exactly what to look for, some sign of Mazy or a destination, but he knew he wouldn’t find it here. Not in Lyle’s museum.