by Don Porter
I popped the trunk, grabbed the shotgun and the box of shells and burst into the house.
“What’s the matter?” Angie came from the kitchen and I shoved the shotgun into her hands.
“Do you know how to use this?”
“Are you kidding? Did you reload it?”
“No.”
She grabbed the gun, dumped two shells out of the box, jacked a shell into the chamber and refilled the magazine.
“Good, close the doors and windows, and do not let Turk out of the house. Keep a watch on the woods, mostly on the downriver side, and if anyone comes out of the woods except me, blow them away.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to do the damn stupid macho male thing, what else?”
I stepped out, closed the door, got the pistol in my hand, and crept into the woods.
The car I’d heard had seemed to be about fifty yards to the left so I angled that direction but kept the driveway in sight. I found a big spruce in a spot where I could make out the house and the driveway through the trees, and crawled under the branches. That’s an old moose-hunting technique. You do not go looking for moose because when they’re grazing they cover twenty miles per day. You stay quiet, and let the moose come to you. I didn’t even breathe.
It was five minutes before I detected movement. It wasn’t noise, just a subliminal sense of something changing. They hadn’t headed directly for the house. They were apparently headed for the river, planning to come at the house from behind. I left my spruce and crawled on a course to intercept them. They were moving slowly, and I was moving slower, but the vector was in my favor.
I started getting glimpses through the trees, definitely two men, both carrying rifles. They were fifty yards away, not a difficult shot for the .357, but I did want a positive ID, and I wasn’t seeing faces. Shooting a man is a nasty business, and I hope I never get to like it, but sometimes it has to be done. Both Trooper Tim and I would be dead now if I hadn’t shot men in the past.
I also hate the thought of slaughter yards, but I love beefsteak. Someone has to kill the steers, ultimately for my enjoyment, so I can hardly claim not to be in favor. When a man with a gun is intent on killing, particularly me or mine, and assuming, as I was, that these were the guys who killed Stan, I didn’t mind very much. It was an unpleasant job that needed to be done. I just wanted to be sure. They stepped into a relatively clear spot between birch trees. I picked up a baseball-sized rock and tossed it into a bush on my left. They spun around and there was the phony cop. No more thought, and no compunction. I put a bullet in the center of his forehead.
His partner dropped instantly. For a few seconds I couldn’t see him, then something moved several yards closer to the road. I put a bullet in the movement, but too late. It was a rifle and his bullet ripped a chunk out of my cheek. I didn’t feel it for a second, but had already dropped to the ground when the next bullet slammed into a tree above me.
Bushes moved. He was crawling toward the road, and I couldn’t see him. I crawled too, paralleling him, ready to fire if I saw anything but bushes. My cheek didn’t hurt as badly as I thought it should. I hoped it was adrenalin, not shock setting in. He was getting close to the road, apparently crawling in a depression. I took a chance, tried a hunkered-down run toward the road. A bullet slammed a tree three inches from my nose. I dropped again and crawled, thank you.
He got to the road and rolled right under the car. I could see bits of him, but a shot would have been through bushes and probably deflected. The car door on the far side slammed, the car started and threw gravel. I stood up, put a bullet in each near side tire, and ran for the road.
The car swerved, skidded back and forth across the road, and slammed into the ditch on the far side. He came out, leading with his rifle, and we were both in the open. I had two bullets left, and I put the first one in his heart. His shot went wild. He dropped the rifle and crumpled. I kept him covered, and walked over. He was not going to be a problem anymore. I eased the hammer down on the final chamber and backtracked through the woods to check on his partner. I was sure, but you can never be too sure. I let the pistol lead, ready to fire, until I spotted the body and stalked up to it. Never mind, you do not want a description of his head. I stuck the gun in my belt and stumbled toward the house. Suddenly I was feeling queasy and light-headed.
“Hey, Angie, it’s me. Don’t shoot. I’m through playing damn stupid macho games for a while. Just come help me into the house.”
She came out, carrying the shotgun and holding Turk on a very short, very stout leash.
I waved her back. “Better get Turk inside.”
“Are they still out there, Alex?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes they are, and I don’t want Turk investigating right now. Will that radio of yours reach the state troopers?”
“Not directly, but through relays. Alex, what’s the matter with your face?”
“Nothing that Turk’s vet can’t fix. I think it’s what they’d call just a flesh wound.”
“Yeah, quite a lot of flesh, and you won’t be wearing an earring on that side anymore.” She ran for the first aid kit, swabbed me with something that hurt a hell of a lot worse than the shot, and slapped on a bandage. “Sit down, and keep quiet for a change. Don’t let your male ego get in an uproar. Just trust little old me to call the cops.”
I leaned back on the couch and closed my eyes for a minute. Something tickled my nose and I looked up. Angie was waving a brandy snifter. She smiled and handed it to me.
“Cops will be here in a few minutes. I thought you’d like to be awake to talk to them.”
“Thanks.” I sampled the brandy. It was Rémy Martin, delicious, satisfying fire. It burned all the way down, waking up organs as it passed. I sipped again, savored it, and I was glad to be alive.
“Did you say a few minutes?”
“Yeah, that’s what I said. You’ve been out for almost half an hour.”
“Damn, there goes my stupid macho male image, for sure. Can I beat my chest and make it up to you?”
“You can shut your stupid macho male mouth, and just try to wake up.”
I sipped the brandy again, then just cupped the snifter and breathed the fumes. If doctors don’t prescribe that, they should. Sirens came screaming down the road, and sorted themselves into two cop cars. They stopped by the wreck in the road, sirens still blaring, then one came down the drive, his siren winding down the scale and ending with a burp.
Angie opened the door. The state trooper came in, so big he almost filled the doorway. Neat uniform, Irish face, black hair regulation cut under his trooper hat, and his hand on his service revolver. “What happened here?”
I was glad to be awake. “Two guys came through the woods and attacked us with rifles.”
“Two guys? There’s only one by the car.”
“The other is in the trees. Come on, I’ll show you.”
Angie had both hands on Turk’s leash and was braced in the bedroom doorway, but Turk wasn’t in attack mode. The poor dog was confused. I led the cop outside and we tromped back to the scene of my crime. He winced at the bloody mess.
“Want to tell me what’s really going on? There’s two bullet holes in the door, but they weren’t made by that rifle.”
“Right. Contact Trooper Timothy Literra in Bethel. He has an ID on one of these guys from fingerprints. He’s a hit man from Detroit and this is their second pass at us. We just don’t know why we’re targets.”
We walked back to his car and he stood outside to talk to his radio for a while. His partner drove down the lane for a conference, then backed up onto the road, apparently to stand guard. More radio talk, then the trooper walked over to the doorway where I was leaning.
“Okay, you’re clean. Trooper Literra swears by you and says he made you a special deputy. Horse pucky, of course, but good enough for now. Unless you’re an albino, you’d better go in and sit down.”
Judging by the scratching on the door, Angie had locked Turk in the bedroom. I sat down on the couch and Angie handed me the brandy snifter. I resumed my therapy.
The trooper was looking at me, but talking to Angie. “How much blood has he lost?”
“Oh, very little. He’s a real sissy, you know, a regular pansy. There isn’t a macho bone in his body, and he always faints at the sight of blood.”
“Is he your husband?”
“No, my husband was killed a few days ago in an accident. It was his pickup that exploded in the parking lot at the Rendezvous.”
“Accident?”
“That’s what the police report said.”
“Yes, that’s what the news report said. No point in scaring the public, and no point in alerting the bomber that we were looking for him. Actually it was a very sophisticated bomb that screamed Marine Reconnaissance, and the dead guy out on the road is almost certainly the bomber, but you knew that, didn’t you?”
Angie nodded, a kind of a deep, almost sarcastic nod that told the whole story. The trooper matched her nod. I concentrated on breathing brandy fumes.
Chapter Twelve
The ambulance was one of those big, square, boxy vans that look as if they should be delivering bread. A wrecker came, snorted and squealed cables for a while, and left with the car on a trailer. One trooper had followed the wrecker but ours stayed to supervise the environmental restoration. He came in carrying a notebook.
“Coffee?” Angie asked.
“Wonderful. I just need to take your statements. May as well level with me and tell me the whole story. I’ve got plenty of time, and I’m not going anywhere just yet. By the way, I’m Jim Stella. Here’s my card, office and home phone.” I was sitting on the couch, and the trooper had sunk down into an easy chair, so we both had to reach to transfer the card.
“Thanks,” I said. “Alex Price and Angie Demoski. I didn’t realize troopers gave out home phones. Oops, lieutenant, I should have recognized the bar. ”
“We don’t give out cards, and never mind the rank, it’s embarrassing. The card is because I have a feeling this isn’t over yet. Trooper Literra tells me you can hit anything you can see with your pistol. That mess in the woods confirms it and today it was a good thing, but as a general rule, we’d rather you didn’t do that.”
Angie brought coffees and offered sugar and cream. Stella and I both turned down the embellishments, so she put her tray on the table and came to sit beside me on the couch facing the trooper.
Stella took a grateful sip of his coffee. “So, if you see another situation coming up where you might be tempted to shoot people, I’d like a call. The point of calling me personally is that I’ll know who is calling and why, so you won’t waste a lot of time answering questions.”
“Thanks, I really appreciate that.”
Angie frowned. “So it’s really not over?”
The trooper and I both shook our heads, but I answered, “Angie, all we did today was cut an arm off an octopus. Those guys were hired guns, easily replaceable. Our problem is whoever hired them.”
Stella nodded that time. “Okay, we all understand each other. Now, about those statements. Skip the car bomb and start with the bullet holes in the front door.”
I filled him in with what we knew, which actually wasn’t much. What we suspected and wondered about was way too sketchy for a police report. For instance, I did not tell him about my stint as bodyguard for the governor, nor mention men with hard eyes.
He finished his notes and his coffee and stood. “Please call me Jim, because I’m going to call you Angie and Alex.” We shook hands, Angie held the door for him and we stood on the step while he backed down the drive.
“Shall we trust him, Angie? He seemed sincere and he didn’t confiscate my pistol, although he probably should have.”
“Yep, trust him. It’s his eyes, same as Stan and you. He’s tougher than walrus hide, has seen it all and is ready for anything, but there is nothing hidden in him.”
“You read all that?”
“Hey, me heap big Indian medicine woman, but it’s true. In the old days when shamen were judge and jury, they didn’t bother with testimony and such. They just sat with the accused and stared into each other’s eyes, and it always worked.”
“Remind me to pick up some sunglasses. What do we do with Turk?”
“First, I let him out of the bedroom, then we set out food and water, then I tell him to stay here.”
“No chains?”
“Nah, he may get into some mischief but he won’t wander off, and he does know better than to attack porcupines.”
“He learned by trial and error?”
“Yep, had so many quills in his feet that he was trying to walk on his wrists. Do dogs have wrists? It took the vet two hours to dig all of the quills out of Turk’s nose and mouth.”
***
Angie was driving because she said I still looked pale. I felt fine, but the road did seem to be undulating in a way I didn’t remember. It seemed like taking a nap would be a good idea, but the cot at the Maranatha wasn’t inviting.
“You know, Mary Angela, I’m about as healthy and tranquil as I care to get for a while. Do you suppose that credit card of yours would go for a room with a phone?”
“With the greatest of pleasure. My mouth is still watering for the lamb béarnaise you had the other night, and I need to teach you about Côtes du Rhône. How about a cottage at the River’s Edge Resort? Mary can afford those from September first through April. The bungalows have two queen-sized beds and the restaurant is wonderful.”
“Great, sooner the better. There’s one bullet left in the .357 and the box is back at the hotel, so don’t run into any ambushes.”
When we checked out of the Maranatha, they loaded us up with tracts, various versions of the Good News. We took the material, thanked them, and fled.
The River’s Edge Resort is on Boat Street, and it was better than good. Mary Angela checked us in and produced two keys with the satisfied smirk of a cat with a bowl of canaries and cream. Our new digs featured two queen-sized beds, every amenity that’s ever been in a bungalow, and the Chena River gurgling along right outside our picture window.
Angie was right about the restaurant, too. Another picture window overlooked the Chena with a floodlight making a crescent on the water. It was good to be dining by candlelight again with a waitress who had finished college. We both ordered lamb, Angie dealt with the waitress, and a bottle of Côtes du Rhône appeared. Once again she sampled and smiled, once again I took a sip and I smiled, too. I’ve got to remember that: red wine, Côtes du Rhône.
A miniature loaf of sourdough bread showed up with the wine, then Caesar salads, and rare racks of lamb with béarnaise from heaven.
Angie swallowed, blotted, sipped, blotted and smiled, but she was thinking seriously beyond dinner. “What do we do next, Alex? Keep getting lucky and shoot a few assassins every day before lunch?”
“Could take a while. There are several million people in Detroit, and if the newspapers are correct, at least half of them are killers. We’ve got to get to the head of the octopus, and my money is still on Interior. Nowadays it’s incumbent on all criminals to keep records and leave evidence in their computers, so perhaps we should have a look? Reginald is a Nixon fan, so he probably tapes all incriminating communications.”
“Won’t they notice you snooping around?”
“Maybe not. I do have a key to the office, but this time it’s stealth and flashlights. Say around midnight?”
“You mean I get to come, too? Enfranchised at last?”
“Yep, you can sit on a cushion and sew a fine seam while keeping a lookout, and I’ll toss the files and computers…doing a word search for murder, I guess.”
In black slacks and turtleneck, Angie did look like Cat Woman. The lot was empty, office dark. We parked several spaces down the line and walked back to Interior. The t
ie-down area is nominally lighted for security by mercury lamps on poles, but we ducked from shadow to shadow. Not that it was practical, but it made us feel like commandos. I didn’t see the security pickup cruising. Perhaps they take Sunday mornings off.
I unlocked the door with my copied key, we slipped inside and snapped on flashlights. Angie wrinkled her nose. “Cheap perfume. Is that your new girlfriend?”
“No, that’s the smell of a successful business. Park yourself in front of the window and holler if anything moves.”
“Don’t I get a cushion?”
“Yep, union rules, fifteen minutes every two hours. Meantime, see that door on the left?” I flashed it with my light, then lighted the drawbridge in the counter. “If we’re about to be assaulted by an army, duck under the counter and out that door. It leads to a freight shed big enough to hide in for a week or two. What I’m actually expecting is airport security in a pickup. Just holler in time so that I can switch off my light, and hit the deck under the window until they drive away. They won’t come in unless they see lights flashing around.”
“Gotcha. Go do something useful.” Angie assumed a sentry stance, I ducked under the drawbridge and wondered what to do next. For want of something constructive, I plopped down at Celeste’s desk and fingered through the flight tickets. The Otter was still flying, two trips almost every day. I checked the rest of the flight tickets. Some were pilots I didn’t recognize, and Freddy himself had flown several.
That made perfect sense and I wondered why he needed me at all. Maybe it was just charity, or maybe he really was busy with office work. I noticed a slip signed by Tommy Olsen, and that was a surprise because I thought Tommy was flying out of Cordova, but then, pilots do get around, and he’d be equally surprised to find a ticket signed by me.
I noticed a flight ticket signed by Alvin Hopson. The name caught my eye because the Hopson Brothers are the big names in the North Slope Borough, but I didn’t recognize the name Alvin. Probably he was the son of Steve, or maybe Ebon, who owns the hotel and cable television system at Point Barrow. I pulled the ticket out, and it was for a flight from Point Barrow to Prudhoe Bay. According to the ticket, Interior keeps a Howard and a pilot stationed at Point Barrow. I remembered that plane because it used to belong to the Ball brothers in Dillingham. Apparently Interior was a bigger outfit than I’d realized. I rummaged further and spotted several more tickets signed by Alvin.