by Ben Rehder
Smedley’s train of thought was broken by a noise outside. Sounded like a car door, but he couldn’t be sure. Then he heard the rumble of Vinnie’s Camaro, and there was no doubt.
Where in the hell was Vinnie going at this hour of the night? Sure, Smedley might expect Vinnie to be coming home this late, but not leaving. With the recent events in Blanco County, Smedley realized he had no choice. He’d have to tail Vinnie and see what was up.
In bed, Sal Mameli could barely open his eyes. Was that Vinnie’s car he heard? Could be. The kid was probably getting down to business, just like Sal had asked. Sal didn’t want to know how the kid took care of the problems, just as long as he took care of them. It was nice to have someone he could rely on, someone who didn’t question his orders.
Sal hadn’t told Vinnie about the caller earlier in the evening, but wondered if he should have. Nah, probably better this way. He didn’t want Vinnie to think he was totally whacked-out on painkillers-or losing his edge, getting senile.
I saw what you did with the body. What the fuck was that supposed to mean? Sal himself hadn’t done anything with any body. Probably some asshole’s lame idea of a practical joke. Nothing new. Sal had received some weird looks and some occasional muttered comments over the years in Blanco County. Even gotten a couple of prank calls, someone whistling the theme to The Godfather. Jerk-offs. Fuck ’em. They didn’t know nothing. Sal had always been known for his nerves of steel, and he wasn’t about to freak out over a little harassment.
Or what if I dreamed it all? Sal wondered as he fell back into a deep slumber.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Red had to make a decision. Would Sal Mameli be driving a souped-up black Camaro? Didn’t seem likely, but that was what had just pulled out of the driveway. A real nice car, sleek and shiny, with tricked-out rims and a throaty-sounding exhaust. Red remembered that Sal had mentioned a son named Vinnie a couple of times. Seemed a lot more like the kind of car a kid named Vinnie would drive. Then again, maybe the son was in on the murder and would lead them straight to Mr. Slaton’s body. Or it could be a trick. He and Billy Don would go hightailing after Vinnie, then Sal would take off a few minutes later, free to do his dirty business without any onlookers.
“So what we gonna do, Red?” Billy Don asked as the Camaro’s taillights faded in the distance.
“Let me think, dammit!” Red said, fidgeting with his keys. His entire future came down to this moment. He could wind up as a local hero by helping the cops find the corpse. And that, in turn, would make him the owner of Slaton Brush Removal, Incorporated. If there ever was a time when he needed to think like a vice president, this was it.
“Better git if we’re gonna git,” Billy Don said.
Red peered down the Mameli driveway, trying to see lights at the house. Was Sal waiting down there somewhere, watching to see if Red took the bait? All Red saw was darkness.
He cranked the truck’s big engine and took off after the Camaro.
Panting and already starting to sweat, Smedley trundled down the driveway as fast as he could, which really amounted to more of a fast walk. He could hear Vinnie’s car rumbling down the county road, and he knew he’d have a tough time catching him. Two miles to the west, the county road teed into Highway 281. If Smedley didn’t catch up before Vinnie reached that intersection, the kid would be long gone.
Smedley struggled to slip his jacket on as he walked, his ample gut jiggling, wishing he hadn’t eaten so many of Maria’s enchiladas.
Then he paused for a moment. What the hell was that? He thought he heard another engine. For a second he wondered if Vinnie was returning to the house. But no, he could tell it wasn’t Vinnie’s Camaro. It was a different vehicle, with an engine that sounded every bit as powerful-except that it needed a tune-up.
Vinnie could already feel the fucking adrenaline pumping through his system. That was something he had discovered about being a stone-cold killer. You could control the rush. You could shape it and mold it and make it work for you. He’d done it when dealing with Emmett Slaton, and he’d done it when he’d handled T.J. That was what made him different from some of the cugines back home, weaklings who didn’t have the balls to do what needed to be done.
Prowling in the night like this, dressed in black, mentally prepping himself for action-it excited Vinnie, and his crotch stiffened as he contemplated his plan.
Then he noticed headlights in his rearview mirror, another vehicle maybe a quarter-mile back, coming on quickly. Oh, shit, it was probably that damn Smedley. When Vinnie had pulled out of the driveway, he had seen the marshal’s car sitting on the shoulder of the road. But it had been empty when Vinnie’s headlights swept over it. Or maybe Smedley had been napping in the backseat. Who the hell knows? The marshals were pretty strange fuckers, showing up when you least expected it, just hanging around, watching. They said they were guarding their precious witness; but wasting tax dollars, that’s what it really was.
Normally, Vinnie didn’t give a rat’s ass what Smedley did. Hell, he could follow Vinnie around for days, who gives a shit? But not tonight.
Red caught up with the Camaro about a mile before it reached Highway 281, but now he had another concern on his mind. Headlights were bouncing along on the road behind him, gaining fast. Could that possibly be Sal? If sending Vinnie out first had been a trick, Sal would be stupid to show himself like that.
Smedley was pushing the cheap little sedan as fast as it would go, and now he had to ease up on the gas. He was forty yards behind an old Ford truck now, and he could see the taillights of Vinnie’s Camaro about fifty yards ahead of the truck. The highway was seconds away.
Vinnie reached the highway and had to come to a stop as an eighteen-wheeler roared past. There was no need to rush now. Whoever was behind him-and it wasn’t Smedley-was right on his damn bumper. Nothing to worry about, just some redneck’s truck. Old and red and ugly. Vinnie thought he recognized it from around town, but he didn’t know who owned it. Vinnie sat at the stop sign, idling, glaring into his rearview mirror. Looked like two guys back there, lurking in the dark.
Probably just some teenagers out for a cruise. Or it might be poachers. Hillbillies in Texas seemed to enjoy that sort of thing.
Then he saw Smedley’s sedan pull up behind the truck. Oh, fuckin’ great! So the marshal had been sitting in his sedan. The question was, was Smedley following Vinnie, or was the dumbfuck simply heading back to Austin?
There was one way to find out.
“He’s just sittin’ there, Red.”
“I can see that, doofus. What do you want me to do? Get out and knock on his window? Ask him where the body is?”
“Hell, I was just sayin’….”
A car pulled up behind Red’s truck. “Shit, we got company,” Red yelped.
Billy Don craned his head around. “It’s that sedan from outside the Mamelis’.”
Red peered into his mirrors and saw nothing but headlights. “Can you see who’s in it? Is it Mameli?”
Billy Don twisted around in his seat. “Naw, it’s just some fat guy in a suitcoat. He’s-”
The Camaro gunned it and laid rubber out onto the highway, fishtailing left, then gaining traction and zooming off into the darkness.
Well, shit. Red’s well-planned surveillance operation had obviously come to an end. Time to get serious. He popped the clutch, the truck’s big engine gulping gasoline, and took off after the Camaro.
Smedley watched the two vehicles scream away and tried to steady himself. Who were those men in the truck? They might be Vinnie’s friends, and they were all just heading out for a little late-night carousing. Could be as simple as that. But something nagged at him. The kind of friends Vinnie had wouldn’t be driving a truck like that. He had another idea that spooked him, something almost unthinkable.
It was a long shot, but could those two guys be button men for the mob, trying to pass as locals? After all, a couple of hitters would stand out-well, as much as Sal did-if they arrived driv
ing a Lincoln, wearing double-breasted suits.
They might have come to whack Sal, saw Smedley’s car on the road, and decided to follow Vinnie instead. If they could manage to abduct Vinnie, Sal would do anything they asked, including having a sudden memory loss at the next trial.
Smedley gulped. It could all be happening right under his nose. Todd the Asshole would never let him live it down. Smedley could almost see his supervisor’s report now: “The suspects initiated their operation while Agent Poindexter was having intercourse with the Mamelis’ Guatemalan housekeeper.”
Smedley stomped the accelerator-and the sedan lurched to a stall.
Creeping up to 110 miles per hour now, Highway 281 as straight as a ribbon in front of him, Vinnie was leaving the truck in his dust. And he couldn’t even see Smedley’s headlights behind the truck. Yeah, like either of those assholes ever had a chance against his Camaro. Another mile or two and he’d be long gone. The rednecks had surprised Vinnie by chasing after him, but the teenagers living out in the boondocks liked to get out on the roads and raise hell on weekends. Nothing else to do around this fucking county.
Two minutes later, Vinnie smiled as the truck’s headlights faded from his mirror. A couple miles farther ahead he’d take a right on Miller Creek Loop, a narrow, curvy blacktop that wound north, back to Johnson City.
Red was pretty sure if he pushed his old truck any harder it might just come apart around him. It had been years since he had taken it up to a hundred miles per hour, and the thirty-year old vehicle groaned in disapproval. Up ahead, the taillights of the Camaro were becoming two faint specks on the horizon. Red slapped the steering wheel in frustration, then eased up on the gas, dropping his speed to ninety.
He was feeling miserable. His first full day as a vice president, and already he was a failure. God, what a screwup.
Then it struck him. At first, it was merely a germ of a thought. Then, unlike many of his other thoughts, it sprouted into a full-blown idea. Hot damn, he had it all figured out!
A bodyguard! The guy in the sedan was Sal Mameli’s bodyguard!
And when you’re a thug like Mameli, who would be more likely to take care of simple tasks for you-things like disposing of a corpse-than your hired muscle?
“We got the wrong guy,” Red muttered.
“We what?” Billy Don wailed, his arms still braced on the dashboard.
“We got the wrong guy!”
Smedley figured it was a lost cause. He had the gas pedal floored, but the sedan barely reached eighty-five. He crested a small rise and could now see a mile of highway before him. Nothing. Not another vehicle in sight.
But he pushed on anyway. The men in the truck-if they were wiseguys-might have Vinnie pulled over a few miles up the road. There might still be time for Smedley to catch them before they abducted Vinnie and took off again.
He covered the mile ahead and came to another small crest. He topped it-and what he saw next sent a thunderbolt of fear through his colon.
There, maybe forty yards ahead of him, was the red truck. It was parked broadside in the middle of the highway, a huge, steel, Detroit-made roadblock. It all happened so quickly, Smedley barely had time to react. He slammed on the brakes with both feet. From the corner of his eye he saw two shadowy figures standing on the median, waiting.
The men from the truck. They had outsmarted him.
Maybe that’s why they called them wiseguys.
Smedley closed his eyes and waited for the impact.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Inga lay in bed and watched the digital clock on the nightstand. She was certain more than sixty seconds had passed, yet the clock still read 2:59. It was kind of stuffy in her hotel room. She considered turning on the air conditioner to help her sleep. Finally, anticlimactically, the clock flipped to 3:00.
She was worried about Tommy. Somewhere out in the darkness, he was roaming the Texas Hill Country in handcuffs. Poor little guy probably hadn’t had a meal since before the town assembly on Thursday evening. Now it was almost dawn on Saturday.
And there were coyotes in this part of the country, right? She was pretty sure there were, because-my god-they even had them in New York City now. She could almost picture Tommy unconscious at the bottom of a ravine, curious coyotes nearby sniffing the air, drawing closer and closer.
She had a thought that made her smile: If one of the coyotes bit Tommy, he’d probably bite it right back. Send it yelping into the night with its tail between its legs.
Tommy, for all his faults, had a fierce determination about him. He was unwaveringly committed to what he thought was right. Yes, part of his motivation was his love for Inga, she knew that much. Inga felt certain, though, that he’d still be pursuing the same causes even if she weren’t by his side.
The truth was, he was a good man.
That’s why she felt guilty that her mind kept wandering away from Tommy and his predicament. For a few moments, she would lie in the dark, trying to focus on Tommy-and whether or not he might fit into her long-term plans for life. But then her mind would slip off in another direction and she would find herself thinking about the game warden, John Marlin.
She found herself wanting to be in his company, to have deep meaningful conversations well into the night. And yes, she found herself wanting him on the most basic level. It wasn’t because of his looks: Sure, he was handsome, but not in a leading-man kind of way. It was something beyond that. Maybe it was his sense of confidence, or the honest, straightforward way he dealt with the world around him.
Really, who knew what caused one person to be attracted to another? If someone had said, Inga, you’re going to meet a game warden in Texas and want to rip his clothes off, then make him dinner afterwards, she would have laughed. Inga Mueller dating a law enforcement officer from Texas? Wanting to feel his big, strong arms around her, making her feel safe and loved and adored? Sounded like some corny movie. The kind that sets the women’s movement back with every showing. Gag.
She decided to take her mind off things by watching TV. As she reached for the remote control, she heard a noise outside her room. Kind of a scratching, like tree limbs across a window. Not the window by the front door, but from the window in the adjacent wall.
Chuck’s Motel was a long concrete-block building with six units in a row. Inga was at the end of the line-room 6-at the opposite end from the office. She had requested it for privacy, which was a waste of time, really, because the only other lodgers were a friendly retired couple in room 1-Mel and Lydia from Detroit, whom she had met briefly a few days ago.
The motel was several blocks off Highway 281, away from the well-lit town square. Back here on the side streets, with Tommy gone, it was easy to get lonely. And a little spooked.
The scratching came again.
“Tommy, is that you?” she called out.
No answer. Inga thought Tommy might be trying to get her attention without going to the door. Deputies still cruised the parking lot every few hours, hoping to catch Tommy coming back to the motel. Where else could he go?
But the truth was, you could hardly go anywhere in Johnson City without seeing a cop right now. The small town was like a beehive, with city, county, and state units coming and going all the time. All because of the hostage situation at the sheriff’s office only four or five blocks away. Then again, everything in Johnson City was only a few blocks away. When Inga had first arrived in town, she couldn’t believe how small the-
She heard it again. Another scratch at the window.
Inga slipped out of bed and stepped over to the wall. “Tommy, dammit, is that you? You’re scaring me. Just come to the front door.”
Maybe there was a tree or bush just outside the window swaying in the wind. But she knew it was too dark on that side of the building to see anything…and, to be honest, she didn’t really want to open the curtains to take a peek.
She stood in silence, her ear pressed against the wall, waiting for another scratch. She watched the digital cloc
k as one full minute passed, then two more. She breathed a little easier. It was obviously nothing. She was acting like a schoolgirl.
Then another noise came, an urgent rattling and slapping of aluminum against glass. Inga stifled an urge to scream. Somebody was just outside the window, removing the screen.
“Tommy!” she yelled. “Dammit, answer me!”
The noises ceased, but there was no reply. Clearly, whoever was outside, it wasn’t Tommy.
Inga turned to call 911-and remembered with a sudden panic that the room had no phone. When they had checked in a week ago, the stooped, gray-haired owner had said, There’s a pay phone just outside the office if you need to make any calls. Ice machine right ’round the corner.
Inga suddenly felt extremely vulnerable wearing nothing but panties, so she quickly donned a T-shirt and jeans. Then she surveyed the sparsely furnished room for anything she could use as a weapon. There were a couple of wooden clothes hangers in the closet. The drinking glasses in the bathroom were, unfortunately, made of plastic instead of real glass. Then she remembered she had a can of pepper spray in her purse. Wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing.
She dumped the contents of her purse on the bed and quickly sifted through the pile-when she heard a gentle knock on the door. From the other side came a whisper: “Hey, it’s me. Let me in.”
Inga blew out a sigh of relief and walked to the door. “Tommy, you jerk, why didn’t you answer me earlier?” Her hand went to the dead-bolt lock, but she waited for Tommy to reply. Silence. “Tommy?”