by Phil Bowie
Winston nodded and took a sip of his coffee, which was so hot it scalded his upper lip. It smelled like battery acid and tasted like something worse, like electrically-burned plastic. “There oughtta be a fuckin’ law,” he said.
“What?” Davis said.
“This coffee’s poison.”
Donny said, “I don’t like the part about drawing it out. This is a small town of what, how many people?”
“About six hundred and fifty,” Davis said. “But there’ll be a lot of surf fishermen on the island right now, too. A lot of strangers.”
“Okay, this is good cover we’ve got with the fishing thing. But it’s still just a small town. Everybody knows everybody. We take too long at it somebody finds out and calls the law. Maybe they come in a chopper. It’s no damned place to get stuck, out there. I say we go in, do it quick and quiet, and get out.”
“We’ll have to see how it plays,” Davis said.
“Another thing, Strake’s not paying all that much,” Donny said in his little kid voice. “You said fifteen, right?”
“That’s right,” Davis said. “Five each when it’s done. He pays me. I pay you.”
“There’s a thing we could do,” Donny said thoughtfully. “That’s your brother-in-law’s tool kit in the back?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I’ve got a small pair of wire strippers and they might work but better would be a pair of side cutters. I’ll take a look in the tool kit. We do the job, then take off a finger. With the cutters it’s just a quick clip.”
Winston raised a thick black eyebrow and said, “You want like a fuckin’ souvenir?”
“We put the finger in a clear Ziploc bag I’ve got. Easy to get rid of any time if we have to. Don’t get any prints on it. Just throw it out the car window with a paper towel.. We bring it back to Strake. Tell him we took a few fingers off before we did the job. The guy begged and screamed his head off and like that. Strake sees the finger, he’ll believe it.”
Winston said, “Why?”
“Because he wants to,” Donny said.
Winston said, “They teach you this in the damn Marines?”
“No, but they taught me a lot of ways to kill a man. No matter his size.”
Winston tensed and sat a little straighter, leveling an unblinking pit bull glare at Donny.
“All right, that’s enough,” Davis said. “Let’s get some gas and get back on the road.”
12
AT ONE-THIRTY ON THAT FRIDAY SAM TOOK A BREAK from hanging more sheetrock in a bedroom and hand-sanding the joints and screw head depressions in the living room that he’d compounded the day before. He wore a fine coating of white dust everywhere except around his mouth and nose where the protective mask had been. He dusted himself off as best he could and rode the bike over to the Burger Box to order a Monster with homemade hot relish and a quarter-inch-thick slice of Vidalia onion on it, along with an old-fashioned vanilla milkshake, which he carried to the picnic table outside where an old man was polishing off a cheeseburger.
“Hello, Pops,” Sam said, sitting down on the other side of the table.
“Sam. Ain’t this day a doozy?”
“Sure is that.”
“These Yankees here sure know how to fry up a burger, you know?”
“Tell me about it,” Sam said, and took a good-sized crescent out of the Monster, enjoying the crunch of the sweet onion and the tongue-sting of the relish.
The sunshine felt clean and good. Although it was getting chilly in the nights, the temperature during the days was holding unseasonably warm and several of the people Sam had seen this day seemed to be smiling slightly to themselves and had a lift in their steps.
The old man finished up, shook his head once, and said, “Yessir.” He lobbed the balled-up wrapper neatly into a bright red trash can over by the small garish building, got up with his Coke can, and gave Sam a grin that lacked a few teeth. “Guess I’ll go home, get drunk, beat up one a my girlfriends, an’ kick the dog. Y’all take care, Sam.”
“Hey, you too, Pops.”
Sam sat at the table for a time after he had eaten, appreciating the random ethereal mares’ tails way off to the west and probably five miles up. At that altitude they’d be laceworks of powder-ice crystals. He thought about how it might go meeting Valerie’s people up in the Smokies and about when and how he was going to tell her about himself.
The silver Blazer moved south on I-95 with the cruise control set five miles an hour above the limit, just now crossing the line from Virginia into North Carolina. Davis had his driver’s side window down. He noticed the high-up clouds way off to the left looking like somebody who didn’t know crap about painting had taken a barn brush to it. Donny was in the back seat reading a war paperback.
“I think maybe I’ve seen him,” Winston said. He was holding up the newspaper clipping, trying to keep it from fluttering, and studying the image intently. “I don’t know, maybe one time in Miami. Wasn’t many times I was around where Strake and the others like you were. But I think maybe I’ve seen this guy.”
“Then you better watch it when we get there,” Davis said, “because he may remember you. Stay in the car or in the room mostly, until we’re ready to make a move. If he gets one look at me he’ll be gone. He’ll know what I’m here for. If he gets away we’re not likely to find him again.”
“It may be he’s home with his feet up,” Donny said. “We just go in there and do him quick and quiet. Get out. That would be the best.”
From experience Davis knew these things seldom went as you hoped. Never quite the way you tried to plan it. “Or he could be going to a barbecue tonight with friends. Or he could be flying a charter someplace. Not even on the island. We’ll have to see how it plays.”
Donny said, “How about we get something to eat?”
“All right,” Davis said. “We’ve got time. I’d just as soon not get on the island until about dark, anyway.”
Sam was absorbed with the sheetrock work as the day ticked on. By late afternoon he had only three sheets left to hang in the back bedroom and he took a break to drink a warm Coke. He didn’t plan to be at Valerie’s until seven-thirty so there was plenty of time to put up the sheets and get a coat of compound on them and on the rest of what he’d hung that day if he kept his nose to it. He stretched his back muscles, picked up one if the heavy sheets, lined it up against the studs, and held it with his knee while he drove the first few of the screws with the cordless driver.
The silver Blazer was in a line of cars that had rolled off of the Hatteras ferry. After the nearly die-straight drive down Ocracoke as the sunset glow was beginning to fade to the west, Davis spotted the shadowed tails of light planes lined up, just showing above some dunes alongside a broad right-hand bend in the road. He put on the signal, slowed, and pulled off onto the short access road near the strip in the fast-gathering darkness. Nobody else was there. He stopped the Blazer beside the shelter and let it idle, looking around in the headlight glare. Six light planes were chained down on a small apron, three of them with high wings, one of the low-wing jobs a small twin-engine. The open-walled shelter had benches around the inside. A pay phone in one corner. A rutted cut through the dunes led out onto the dark beach. An orange wind sock twitched in a fitful breeze.
Looking over the planes Winston said, “Which one of them is his?”
“No way to tell,” Davis said. “Maybe none of them. Maybe a couple. But probably just one. Stay put. I want to know if that pay phone works.” He could feel himself focusing in now, his senses sharpening, a kind of cold familiar clarity taking over. He left the Blazer idling with just the parking lights on and got out. He consulted a small pocket pad, wrapped three layers of handkerchief over the mouthpiece to help alter his voice, and dialed the number he’d been given earlier by information for Sam Bass, thinking make sure he’s alone, set it up to meet at his place to talk about a charter, then just go in there and do it. He let it ring nine times before hanging up. The
n he dialed the number for the cell phone that was in a console pocket in the car, to be sure it worked. Winston answered it.
“Okay,” Davis said.
Back in the Blazer he said, “Donny, you’ll go get the room key but we’ll leave everything in the car for now. Don’t give them a plate number, of course. We’ll try not to even let them see the car. I’ll go in, mess up the bed, make it look like somebody stayed in there in case we don’t wind up spending the night. I’ll leave it clean, no prints, and leave the key inside with the door unlocked or wedged a little. That way we can either go back to it if we have to or just leave it like it is. There’s no answer at his house, but we’ll make a run by there to take a look at the layout. Maybe he’ll be home by then. If not, Donny, then you can go in one or two of the stores. Maybe he’s got business cards out with a beeper number, or a flyer that shows a shot of his plane. We know which one it is we can disable it.”
“Or maybe plant a charge in it,” Donny said. “I could do that. Then we catch the next ferry.”
“No. We’re here for him, not for any of his customers. We can slash a tire on it.”
Winston loosened his belt a notch, slid his auto holster out from under the seat, pulled the gun out and checked it for a chambered round, put it back in the holster, and arched back in his seat, grunting, to clip the holster inside his belt on the right side. The jacket would cover what little of it showed. When they stopped at the motel he would get the silencer from his suitcase and carry it in his zippered right jacket pocket.
He pulled a short fat cigar out of his shirt pocket, stripped the wrapper off and dropped that out the window, and stuck it in his mouth, leaving it unlit.
As Davis drove into the outskirts of the village Donny said, “Yeah, a real hick town.” He reached back over the seat and unzipped his leather bag. He took out a big Model 226 Sig Sauer and screwed a silencer onto it. Checked that it was ready to go. Put it on the seat beside him under a towel. Fifteen rounds of nine millimeter Parabellum. Enough firepower right there to kill half a dozen assholes, even if you missed a lot.
Which he did not.
13
DONNY PICKED UP ONE OF SAM’S FOUR-BY-NINE CARDS from the brochure rack in the General Store and took it to the register along with an oversized bottle of Pepsi and a pack of Nabs. He was wearing his billed camo cap to cover his hair and shadow his eyes. He put the brochure card down on the counter and tapped it with a finger. He smiled pleasantly and said to the black girl behind the antique register, “I tried to call this man a little while ago but couldn’t get any answer. I’d like to set up a sightseeing flight for my girlfriend and me for in the morning. Would you happen to know how I could reach him?”
She smiled. “Well, I’d say chances are pretty good he’s over at Valerie Lightfoot’s place for supper. He forgets his beeper sometimes. Here, just a second and I’ll give you her number.” She reached under the counter and pulled out a phone book and began looking it up, paging through and then tracing down the column of names with a half-inch-long glossy fingernail.
Sam was riding his bike along the dark main road when he decided to stop at the General Store to pick up a small pack of jelly beans for Joshua. The boy could be made to squeal in delight when Sam caused each bean to magically appear from some improbable place—from behind his small ear, or from his belly button, or from Sam’s boot top, or plucked from one of Val’s house plants—though Val always gave him the devil for letting Josh have so much pure sugar. He propped his bike on its stand at the edge of the lit parking area as a noisy red pickup whizzed by too fast on the road. Across the area there was an idling silver Blazer nosed into a space, the only car there. The man in the passenger seat behind the rolled-up window had a cigar in his mouth and was looking at him intently.
Sam stopped dead in his tracks and felt a lance of ice stab his gut. He watched the man take out his cigar and mouth the word “fuck". Sam turned around quickly, toed the stand up and got back on the bike, riding away fast toward the village center, not looking back. He took the first right on a street, standing on it, speeding up, the rusty chain protesting.
“Fuck,” Winston said. “Right there. That’s him. On a beat-up bike. Going out of sight now. He made me.”
Davis said, “Are you sure?”
“Yeah. It’s him.”
Donny was coming out of the store. Davis gestured urgently for him to hurry it up. Donny ran to the back door, yanked it open, and jumped inside, and Davis had it backing up before Donny could get the door closed, one wheel yipping as it slipped on a sandy patch. He braked hard in the road and drove ahead, saying, “Where?”
“There. First right,” Winston said. “He’s got some kind of white dust on him, what got my attention. I stared at him like a fool and he made me. Fuck.”
Davis turned the Blazer into the street, flicked on the high beams, and slowed. The headlights caught only a white cat crouched near a bush, suddenly uncoiling into a loping run off into the shadows. The houses were sparse here, with a lot of vegetation between them. Most showed lights but some were dark—good hiding places.
The Blazer crept along.
There was a left turn and Winston said intently, “There, there, turn left,” just as Davis started taking the turn anyway. They all tensed, but it was just some little old lady with a bandanna on her head on another bike caught in the headlights, wobbling along, a handlebar basket filled with something in plastic. Davis flicked down to the low beams and stopped until she was past them.
Nothing else showed anywhere.
“The ferries,” Winston said.
“Not from the harbor,” Davis said, checking his watch quickly. “The last harbor ferry is long gone.”
Donny held up the brochure card on which he had jotted Valerie Lightfoot’s number and said, “This is his flyer. No shot of the plane, but I’ve got his girlfriend’s number here. Her name’s Valerie Lightfoot. What do you want to bet he’s headed there?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Davis said. “I don’t think he’d want to draw us down on her. But I can use her number.” He reached for the cell phone with his right hand and flipped it open, still driving, still scanning in the headlights. “We’re pretty much between him and his house here, and he was moving away. He’s probably smart enough to assume we’ve already got his place spotted out. I think the only reason he’s going this way is because he’s got some place to hole up. What’s the number?”
Donny used the Mini-Maglite to read off the number and Davis punched it in with his thumb. It rang three times before she answered. He said, “Yes, Ms. Lightfoot? I was told you might know how I could get in touch with Mr. Sam Bass. I’d like to book a charter for tomorrow but I haven’t been able to reach him at his business number.”
Valerie had the cordless phone clamped between her shoulder and her cheek. She was in the bathroom doorway bent down, holding Joshua’s pajama bottoms so he could climb into them after his shower, his wet curls flattened onto his head. He was looking in the hallway mirror at his tongue, and licking droplets off of his upper lip where he had failed to dry himself completely. She said, “Sometimes he goes off and forgets his beeper. You could give me your name and number and I’ll have him call you. Or you could call back here any time after seven-thirty.” Joshua put his hands on her shoulders to steady himself while he stepped into the pajama bottoms. He started humming “If I Can Find A Clean Shirt” off key.
“All right, ma’am. Thank you. I’ll do that, then.”
He was moving the phone down, just about to flip it closed, when he heard her say, “Or I guess…”
He brought the phone back to his ear quickly. “Yes, ma’am?”
She knew Sam wouldn’t be very presentable after working with the sheetrock all day, but she also knew he would want the charter. “Well,” she said. “He’s been doing some finish work on a new cottage for a friend and he’s most likely still at it. You could probably catch him there, if you’d like to. He’s on his bicycle.”
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“That would surely help, ma’am, if you could give me directions.”
Joshua was asking through flying and shooting gestures if he could go get his Star Wars toys. She nodded yes. “Okay, on the main road into the village, do you know where The Privateer is?”
“Yes, ma’am, I believe I passed it on the way in.”
She gave him the directions starting from The Privateer and he memorized them.
“Look for an old Jeep in pretty bad shape. He might not still be there,” she said, “so why don’t you give me your number and I can have him call you as soon as he gets here?”
“That’s not necessary,” he said. “Thank you again, ma’am.” And he hung up.
“I know where he is,” Davis said as he put the phone back into the console pocket. He began driving faster, but it wasn’t far.
He parked the Blazer on the sand by the end of the street, killed the headlights, and switched off the ignition, putting the keys in his jacket pocket and zipping it up. Like all the other sparse streets, there were no sidewalks or street lights, just an occasional yard light. There were only two lit houses that showed from here as the street curved away to the right, three cars parked on the shoulders.
“All right,” Davis said. “It’s the third cottage on the right. New construction. He’s been working on it. Donny, work your way along over there, get behind the place. Winston, you and I will come up on the front from both sides. Give me three minutes to get across to the other side, then you move in.”
Winston was screwing his silencer in place. He would conceal the gun partially by just holding it down alongside his leg. He had the cigar clamped in his mouth again.
Donny said, “Is he likely to have a piece?”
“I don’t think so,” Davis said, “but try not to be an easy target, anyway. You two have the suppressors so it will be up to you unless I can get my hands on him. All right, let’s go.”