by Lee Child
“You don’t need that, son,” he said. “Don’t need that at all.”
He was impatient, beckoning me out to join him. I put the gun away again. Shrugged at the other two and went with the old guy. He led me into a tiny kitchen. There was a very old woman in there, sitting on a stool. Same mahogany color as the old guy, stick thin. She looked like an old tree in winter.
“This is my sister,” the old barber said. “You boys woke her up, chattering.”
Then he stepped over to her. Bent down and spoke right in her ear.
“This is the boy I told you about,” he said.
She looked up and smiled at me. It was like the sun coming out. I caught a flash of the beauty she must have had, long ago. She held out her hand and I took it. Felt like thin wires in a soft dry glove. The old barber left us alone together in the kitchen. Stopped as he passed me.
“Ask her about him,” he said.
The old guy shuffled out. I still had the old lady’s hand in mine. I squatted down next to her. She didn’t try to pull her hand away. Just left it nestled there, like a brown twig in my huge paw.
“I don’t hear so good,” she said. “You got to lean close.”
I spoke in her ear. She smelled like an old flower. Like a faded bloom.
“How’s this?” I said.
“That’s good, son,” she said. “I can hear that OK.”
“I was asking your brother about Blind Blake,” I said.
“I know that, son,” she said. “He told me all about it.”
“He told me you knew him,” I said, in her ear.
“I sure did,” she said. “I knew him real well.”
“Will you tell me about him?” I asked her.
She turned her head and gazed at me sadly.
“What’s to tell?” she said. “He’s been gone a real long time.”
“What was he like?” I said.
She was still gazing at me. Her eyes were misting over as she trawled backward sixty, seventy years.
“He was blind,” she said.
She didn’t say anything more for a while. Her lips fluttered soundlessly and I could feel a strong pulse hammering in her bony wrist. She moved her head as if she was trying to hear something from far away.
“He was blind,” she said again. “And he was a sweet boy.”
She was more than ninety years old. She was as old as the twentieth century. So she was remembering back to her twenties and thirties. Not to her childhood or her teens. She was remembering back to her womanhood. And she was calling Blake a sweet boy.
“I was a singer,” she said. “And he played the guitar. You know that old expression, he could play the guitar just like ringing a bell? That’s what I used to say about Blake. He would pick up that old instrument of his and the notes would just come tumbling out, faster than you could sing them. But each note was just a perfect little silver bell, floating off into the air. We’d sing and play all night long, then in the morning I’d lead him out into a meadow, and we’d sit under some old shade tree, and we’d sing and play some more. Just for the joy of it. Just because I could sing and he could play.”
She hummed a couple of bars of something under her breath. Her voice was about a fifth lower pitched than it ought to have been. She was so thin and fragile, you’d have expected a high, faltering soprano. But she was singing with a low, breathy contralto. I thought back with her and put the two of them in an old Georgia meadow. The heavy smell of wildflower blossom, the buzz of lazy noontime insects, the two of them, backs against a tree, singing and playing for the joy of it. Belting out the wry, defiant songs that Blake had made up and that I loved so much.
“What happened to him?” I asked her. “Do you know?”
She nodded.
“Two people on this earth know that,” she whispered. “I’m one of them.”
“Will you tell me?” I said. “I sort of came down here to find out.”
“Sixty-two years,” she said. “I never told a soul in sixty-two years.”
“Will you tell me?” I asked her again.
She nodded. Sadly. Tears in her misty old eyes.
“Sixty-two years,” she said. “You’re the first person ever asked me.”
I held my breath. Her lips fluttered and her hand scrabbled in my palm.
“He was blind,” she said. “But he was sporty. You know that word? Sporty? It means kind of uppity. Uppity with a smile and a grin is sporty. Blake was sporty. Had a lot of spirit and energy. Walked fast and talked fast, always moving, always smiling his sweet fool head off. But one time, we came out of a place in town here, walking down the sidewalk, laughing. Nobody else around but for two white folks coming toward us on the sidewalk. A man and a boy. I saw them and ducked off the sidewalk, like we were supposed to. Stood in the dirt to let them pass. But poor Blake was blind. Didn’t see them. Just crashed into the white boy. A white boy, maybe ten years old, maybe twelve. Blake sent him flying into the dirt. White boy cut his head on a stone, set up such a hollering like you never heard. The white boy’s daddy was there with him. I knew him. He was a big important man in this town. His boy was screaming fit to burst. Screaming at his daddy to punish the nigger. So the daddy lost his temper and set about Blake with his cane. Big silver knob on the top. He beat poor Blake with that cane until his head was just split open like a burst watermelon. Killed him stone dead. Picked up the boy and turned to me. Sent me over to the horse trough to wash poor Blake’s hair and blood and brains off from the end of his cane. Told me never to say a word about it, or he’d kill me too. So I just hid out and waited until somebody else found poor Blake there on the sidewalk. Then I ran out screaming and hollering with the rest of them all. Never said a word about it to another living soul, that day to this.”
Big wet tears were welling out of her eyes and rolling slowly down her thin cheeks. I reached over and smudged them dry with the back of my finger. Took her other hand in mine.
“Who was the boy?” I asked her.
“Somebody I seen around ever since,” she said. “Somebody I seen sneering around just about every day since, reminding me of my poor Blake lying there with his head split open.”
“Who was he?” I said.
“It was an accident,” she said. “Anybody could have seen that. Poor Blake was a blind man. Boy didn’t have to set up such a hollering. He wasn’t hurt so bad. He was old enough to know better. It was his fault for hollering and screaming like he did.”
“Who was the boy?” I asked her again.
She turned to me and stared into my eyes. Told me the sixty-two-year-old secret.
“Grover Teale,” she said. “Grew up to be mayor, just like his old daddy. Thinks he’s king of the damn world, but he’s just a screaming brat who got my poor Blake killed for no reason at all except he was blind and he was black.”
33
WE PILED BACK INTO CHARLIE’S BLACK BENTLEY IN THE alley behind the barbershop. Nobody spoke. I fired it up. Swung out and rolled north. Kept the lights off and drove slow. The big dark sedan rolled north through the night like a stealthy animal leaving its lair. Like a big black submarine slipping its mooring and gliding out into icy water. I drove through the town and pulled up shy of the station house. Quiet as a tomb.
“I want to get a weapon,” Finlay said.
We picked our way through the shattered wreckage of the entrance. Hubble’s own Bentley was sitting in the squad room, inert in the gloom. The front tires had blown and it had settled nose-down, buried in the wreckage of the cells. There was a stink of gasoline. The tank must have split. The trunk lid was up because of the way the rear end was smashed in. Hubble didn’t even glance at it.
Finlay picked his way past the wrecked car to the big office in back. Disappeared inside. I waited with Hubble in the heap of shards that had been the entrance doors. Finlay came back out of the dark with a stainless-steel revolver and a book of matches. And a grin. He waved the two of us out to the car and struck a match. Threw it under th
e rear of the wrecked green Bentley and crunched on out to join us.
“Diversion, right?” he said.
We saw the fire start as we nosed out of the lot. Bright blue flames were rolling across the carpet like a wave on the beach. The fire took hold of the splintered wood and rolled outward, feeding itself on the huge gasoline stain. The flames changed to yellow and orange and the air started sucking in through the hole where the entrance had been. Within a minute, the whole place was burning. I smiled and took off up the county road.
I used headlights for most of the fourteen miles. Drove fast. Took maybe twelve minutes. Doused the lights and pulled up a quarter mile short of the target. Turned around in the road and backed up a little way. Left the car facing south. Down toward town. Doors unlocked. Keys in.
Hubble carried the big bolt cutter. Finlay checked the revolver he’d taken from the office. I reached under the seat and pulled out the plastic bottle we’d filled with gas. Slipped it into my pocket with the sap. It was heavy. Pulled my jacket down on the right and brought the Desert Eagle up high on my chest. Finlay gave me the matches. I put them in the other pocket.
We stood together in the dark in the dirt on the side of the road. Exchanged tight nods. Struck out over the field to the blasted tree. It was silhouetted against the moon. Took us a couple of minutes to get there. We slogged over the soft earth. Paused against the distorted tree trunk. I took the bolt cutter from Hubble and we nodded again and headed for the fence where it ran close to the back of the warehouse. It was ten to four in the morning. Nobody had spoken since leaving the burning police building.
It was seventy-five yards from the tree to the fence. Took us a minute. We kept on going until we were opposite the bottom of the fire escape. Right where it was bolted down to the concrete path which ran around the whole building. Finlay and Hubble grabbed the chain-link to put some tension on it and I bit through each strand in turn with the bolt cutter. Went through it like it was licorice. I cut a big piece out, seven feet high, right up to where the razor wire started, maybe eight feet wide.
We stepped through the gap. Walked over to the bottom of the stairs. Waited. I could hear sounds inside. Movement and scraping, muffled to a dull boom by the huge space. I took a deep breath. Motioned the others to flatten themselves against the metal siding. I still wasn’t sure about exterior guards. My gut said there wouldn’t be any reinforcements. But Finlay was worried about it. And I’d learned a long time ago to take account of what people like Finlay worried about.
So I motioned the others to stay put and I crept around to the corner of the massive building. Crouched down and dropped the bolt cutter onto the concrete path from a height of about a foot. It made just about the right amount of noise. It sounded like somebody trying to break into the compound. I flattened myself against the wall and waited with the sap in my right hand.
Finlay was right. There was an exterior guard. And I was right. There were no reinforcements. The exterior guard was Sergeant Baker. He was on duty patrolling outside the shed. I heard him before I saw him. I heard his tense breathing and his feet on the concrete. He came around the corner of the building and stopped a yard away from me. He stood and stared at the bolt cutter. He had his .38 in his hand. He looked at the bolt cutter and then swung his gaze along the fence as far as the missing panel. Then he started to run toward it.
Then he died. I swung the sap and hit him. But he didn’t go down. He dropped his revolver. Danced a circle on rubber legs. Finlay came up behind me. Caught him by the throat. Looked like a country boy wringing a chicken’s neck. Made a fine job of it. Baker was still wearing his acetate nameplate above his uniform pocket. First thing I’d noticed, nine days ago. We left his body on the path. Waited five minutes. Listened hard. Nobody else came.
We went back to where Hubble was waiting. I took another deep breath. Stepped onto the fire escape. Went up. Planted each foot carefully and silently on each step. Eased my way up. The staircase was cast from some kind of iron or steel. Open treads. The whole thing would ring like a damn bell if we were clumsy. Finlay was behind me, gripping the handrail with his right hand, gun in his left. Behind him came Hubble, too scared to breathe.
We crept up. Took us minutes to do the forty feet. We were very cautious. We stood on the little platform at the top. I pressed my ear to the door. Quiet. No sound. Hubble pulled out his office keys. Clenched in his hand to stop them jingling. He selected the right one, slowly, carefully. Inched it into the lock. We held our breath. He turned the key. The lock clicked back. The door sagged open. We held our breath. No sound. No reaction. Quiet. Hubble eased the door back, slowly, carefully. Finlay took it from him and eased it further. Passed it to me. I eased it back flat against the wall. Propped it all the way open with the bottle of gasoline from my pocket.
Light was flooding out of the office, spilling over the fire escape and laying a bright bar down on the fence and the field forty feet below. Arc lamps were lit inside the body of the warehouse and they were flooding in through the big office windows. I could see everything in the office. And what I saw made my heart stop.
I’d never believed in luck. Never had any cause to. Never relied on it, because I never could. But now I was lucky in a big way. Thirty-six years of bad luck and trouble were wiped away in one single bright glance. The gods were sitting on my shoulder, whooping and driving me on. In that one single bright glance, I knew that I had won.
Because the children were asleep on the office floor. Hubble’s kids. Ben and Lucy. Sprawled out on a pile of empty burlap sacks. Fast asleep, wide open and innocent like only sleeping children can be. They were filthy and ragged. Still dressed in their school clothes from Monday. They looked like ragamuffins in a sepia picture of old New York. Sprawled out, fast asleep. Four o’clock in the morning. My lucky time.
The children had been worrying the hell out of me. They were what made this whole damn thing just about impossible. I’d thought it through a thousand times. I’d run war games through my head, trying to find one that would work. I hadn’t found one. I’d always come up with some kind of a bad outcome. What the staff colleges call unsatisfactory results. I’d always come up with the children splattered all over the place by the big shotguns. Children and shotguns don’t mix. And I’d always visualized the four hostages and the two shotguns in the same place at the same time. I’d visualized panicking children and Charlie screaming and the big Ithacas booming. All in the same place. I hadn’t come up with any kind of a solution. If I could have given anything I ever had or ever would have, I’d have given it to have the children fast asleep somewhere else on their own. And it had happened. It had happened. The elation roared in my ears like a hysterical crowd in a huge stadium.
I turned to the other two. Cupped a hand behind each of their heads and pulled them close to mine. Spoke in the faintest of whispers.
“Hubble, take the girl,” I whispered. “Finlay, take the boy. Put a hand over their mouths. No sound at all. Carry them back to the tree. Hubble, take them on back to the car. Stay there with them and wait. Finlay, come back here. Do it now. Do it quietly.”
I pulled out the Desert Eagle and clicked the safety off. Clamped my wrist against the door frame and aimed across the office at the inner door. Finlay and Hubble crept into the office. They did it right. They kept low. They kept quiet. They clamped their palms over the little mouths. Scooped the children up. Crept back out. Straightened up and looped past the barrel of my big .44. The children woke up and struggled. Their wide eyes stared at me. Hubble and Finlay carried them to the top of the long staircase. Eased their way quietly down. I backed out of the doorway to the far corner of the metal platform. Found an angle to cover them all the way. Watched them pick their way slowly down the fire escape, to the ground, to the fence, through the gap and away. They stepped through the bright bar of light spilling over the field, forty feet below me, and vanished into the night.
I RELAXED. LOWERED THE GUN. LISTENED HARD. HEARD nothing but the faint no
ises scraping up from inside the huge metal shed. I crept into the office. Crawled over the floor to the windows. Slowly raised my head up and looked out and down. Saw a sight I would never ever forget.
There were a hundred arc lights bolted up inside the roof of the warehouse. They lit the place up brighter than day. It was a big space. Must have been a hundred feet long, maybe eighty deep. Maybe sixty feet high. And it was full of dollar bills. A gigantic dune of money filled the whole shed. It was piled maybe fifty feet high into the back far corner. It sloped down to the floor like a mountainside. It was a mountain of cash. It reared up like a gigantic green iceberg. It was huge.
I saw Teale at the far end of the shed. He was sitting on the lower slope of the mountain, maybe ten feet up. Shotgun across his knees. He was dwarfed by the huge green pile rearing above him. Fifty feet closer to me, I saw old man Kliner. Sitting higher up on the slope. Sitting on forty tons of money. Shotgun across his knees.
The two shotguns were triangulated on Roscoe and Charlie Hubble. They were tiny figures forty feet below me. They were being made to work. Roscoe had a snow shovel. One of those curved things they use in the snow states to clear their driveways. She was pushing drifts of dollars toward Charlie. Charlie was scooping them into air conditioner cartons and tamping them in firmly with a garden rake. There was a line of sealed boxes behind the two women. In front of them was the huge stockpile. They toiled away far below me, dwarfed like two ants below the mountain of dollar bills.
I held my breath. I was transfixed. It was an utterly unbelievable sight. I could see Kliner’s black pickup truck. It was backed in, just inside the roller door. Next to it was Teale’s white Cadillac. Both were big automobiles. But they were nothing next to the mountain of cash. They were just like toys on the beach. It was awesome. It was a fantastic scene from a fairy tale. Like a huge underground cavern in an emerald mine from some glittering fable. All brightly lit by the hundred arc lights. Tiny figures far below. I couldn’t believe it. Hubble had said a million dollars in singles was a hell of a sight. I was looking at forty million. It was the height of the drift that did it to me. It towered way up. Ten times higher than the two tiny figures working at floor level. Higher than a house. Higher than two houses. It was incredible. It was a huge warehouse. And it was full of a solid mass of money. Full of forty million genuine one-dollar bills.