Killshot

by Elmore Leonard

  “He was sitting before, like he was paralyzed.”

  “You yell at him?”

  “Sure, I yelled at him. He heard me.”

  “He look down?”

  “Yeah, he looked down. Maybe he’s trying to move is why he stood up.”

  “Shit,” the walking boss said. “There’s something wrong with him. He was off a few days, he come back—Wayne ordinarily connects, you know that.”

  “I know it.”

  “He come back I had to put him on bolting up.”

  “I know it, but he didn’t seem to mind. He didn’t say nothing.”

  “No, that’s what I mean, there’s something wrong with him.”

  “Maybe it’s that girl was shot he’s having some trouble with.”

  “I heard guys talking about it,” the walking boss said. “I didn’t see it in the paper.”

  “Yeah, it was in, but way in the back. It didn’t mention Wayne. I guess it was in the paper up where he lives one of the guys saw, had more about it.”

  “You think he’s eating his lunch?”

  “You can see he isn’t doing nothing but standing there,” the raising-gang foreman said. “He’s froze-up. He wouldn’t stand there like that if he wasn’t froze-up. Would he?”

  “I don’t know, it never happened to me.”

  “It never happened to me either, but I’ve seen it enough. We got to talk him down.”

  “Who was he working with?”

  “I think Kenny. Yeah, Wayne had the yo-yo, so Kenny was holding the roll for him. I saw Kenny come down. I think he went someplace to eat.”

  The raising-gang foreman followed the walking boss through a doorway to the back half of the trailer where some of the crew were eating their lunch at a wooden table. The walking boss was a young guy about thirty-five. His hard hat was cleaner than most, but he wore it backward like everybody else. He said to the guys at the table, “Anybody talk to Kenny?” They were all looking up at him, but didn’t know what he meant.

  “Wayne hasn’t come down. He’s up there like he might’ve froze.” The walking boss raised both hands. “Wait a minute now, sit still. Did Kenny mention to anybody Wayne was acting strange?”

  “He didn’t say nothing ’cause he wouldn’t, not to anybody else,” one of the ironworkers said, “but he almost got pitched off. Kenny did.”

  “You saw it?”

  “I was below. I saw him and Wayne moving positions. I think Wayne had just put another fifty feet of hose on his yo-yo. What must’ve happened, he throws it out to get some slack, not looking what he’s doing, and the rubber trips Kenny coming along behind him. I heard Kenny yell—that’s when I looked up, I see him grab hold of the beam, he’s okay, but he lets go of the beater he’s carrying. I’m looking up, shit, I see this ten-pound sledge coming at me. It hits the deck plate, bang, missed me by only about a foot. I see Kenny, he’s down flat on the beam now, the rubber hanging over it right there—you could see it must’ve tripped him. And here’s Wayne looking at him like, the hell are you doing hugging that beam? He doesn’t even know he almost killed his partner. I wasn’t gonna say nothing,” the ironworker said to the walking boss, “but you asked.”

  * * *

  Last summer when they came downtown to one of the P’Jazz concerts at the Pontchartrain Hotel, it was to see Lonnie Liston Smith, this whole block was a parking lot. They drove past a month ago, it was excavated and the piers laid, the foundation. A big sign said it would become One-Fifty Jefferson West.

  Now here he was sitting a hundred and something feet above it on a ten-inch girder. Sitting again, straddling it, feet resting on the girder’s lower flange. Get tired of sitting he’d stand up, still looking out at the Detroit River, feeling the sun and a breeze that would become wind as the job rose higher. If he looked at the city skyline he’d think of work. The same if he looked down, he’d see the iron they’d shaken out, ready to hook on to the crane, and he’d be distracted by the job, all the equipment down there, the stacks of floor deck, the compressors, kegs of bolts on pallets, the steel-company trailer, knowing the guys were in there eating their lunch . . .

  This was what he needed, to be by himself high up on the iron, after two days of cops everywhere he looked, different police groups coming and going, their presence bringing people out from Algonac to creep their cars past the house. He’d watched cops digging buckshot out of theliving-room wall, cops poking around in the bushes along the road and in the woods. Their neighbor across the street, the sod farmer, called to ask if there was some kind of problem. Wayne said, “If I find out what they’re looking for I’ll let you know.” He hung up and Carmen said, “Evidence,” gritting her teeth, irritated because he made remarks loud enough to be overheard.

  Like when he said, “A glass eye in a duck’s ass can see they don’t know what they’re doing,” and a couple of cops gave him their deadpan don’t-fuck-with-me cop look.

  One thing led to another. Carmen mentioned the framed duck prints that had been shot off the living-room wall and wrecked, saying that was one way to get rid of them.

  “If you didn’t like the duck prints,” Wayne asked her, “what’d you put them up for?”

  “If I didn’t, who would? Think about it. What do you do around here?”

  “I brush-hog the field.”

  “So you can watch for deer. That’s like saying you clean your shotgun.”

  “I thought you liked those duck prints. They been hanging there for five years.”

  “Don’t tell me.”

  “You should’ve said something.”

  “Who swept up the broken glass?”

  Getting picky. He should’ve told her he didn’t give a shit about the duck prints. The only reason they were up, her mom had given them as a present. He was more irritated than ever by then, though not at Carmen. This had nothing to do with the goddamn duck prints. Carmen knew it too.

  She said, “This is dumb.”

  So he eased back saying, “Okay, I won’t make any more observations or remarks.”

  She said, “How much you want to bet?”

  He tried, he kept quiet, made coffee for the cops and referred to them as Deputy or Officer when they came up on the side porch for a cup. He even tried to be cordial to the tight-assed county deputy who had asked him in the real estate office if he had an attitude problem. Wayne said to him on the porch, “Well, at least we know those two guys are still around.”

  “How do we know that?” the deputy said.

  “They shot our windows out, didn’t they?”

  “We don’t know it was the same guys,” the deputy said.

  “If you don’t, then I was right,” Wayne said, “you don’t know shit.”

  Carmen got him upstairs, faced him with her arms folded and said, “You having fun? Why do you like to antagonize them?”

  He shook his head and frowned, wanting her to believe he couldn’t help it. “I don’t know what it is. There’s just something about those guys that irritates me. Cops and insurance salesmen.”

  Now he saw Carmen join him in a frown, sympathetic, he was pretty sure. If she didn’t understand him it would be the first time in their married life. She said, “Why don’t you get away from here for a while? Go somewhere. Go back to work tomorrow.”

  He said, “I don’t know if I should leave you alone.”

  Carmen said, “If you call four different police departments hanging around here being alone.”

  Having your windows shot out by gunfire was a hair-raising experience. Carmen yelled his name as it happened, but she didn’t scream or lose control. After, when he said, “They’re just trying to scare us,” she said, well, they were doing a pretty good job, in that dry tone of hers. She said if they were that dumb, to drive by and shoot at the house, the police shouldn’t have any trouble finding them. Wayne didn’t comment on that.

  The State Police investigator arrived as he was leaving this morning in the pickup. Wayne had to wait while the guy thought
about it, saying he wasn’t sure he liked the idea; he’d have to send a man along. Wayne said, “Up on the iron with me?”

  * * *

  He stared out at the river and Canada from the top of the structure thinking:

  Okay, after a while nothing happens, the cops get tired and clear out. Now it’s between him and them. He knows they’re coming, but doesn’t let on to Carmen. Except he’d have to stay home and she’d ask him what was wrong.

  “Nothing.”

  “Then how come you aren’t going to work?”

  She would know, yeah, but that was all right, it wouldn’t change anything, except she’d be scared and want to call the cops again. Anyway . . .

  Okay, it’s early morning, first light, Carmen reaches over and touches him. “Wayne . . . ?”

  And he says, “I heard it, honey. Lie still, okay? Stay right here.”

  “They’re in the house.”

  “I know they are.”

  He picks up the Remington from the side of the bed and slips into Matthew’s room so that when they come up out of the stairwell he’s behind them. The stairs squeak, here they come. Their head and shoulders appear. They’re careful, not making a sound as they reach the top, and then stop dead as they hear him rack a slug into the breach. “Morning, fellas.” Wham . . . wham. Fires and pumps fast as they’re turning with their guns.

  The cops accuse him of shooting them in the back. No, that would get too complicated. He’d think of another situation. Okay . . .

  The two guys are still outside when he hears them. That’s it—he slips downstairs to the kitchen door, opens it a little. Pretty soon two shapes appear out of the woods. As they get behind the chickenhouse he walks out on the porch . . .

  Wayne stopped it there. He liked the idea of getting behind them and saying something, taking them by surprise.

  Okay, he sees them in the woods and runs out to the chickenhouse, yeah, and is waiting for them inside as they come past it, heading for the house. All the first part would be the same, telling Carmen to stay in bed. Or now he tells her to stay in the house. They go by, he lets them get about ten yards and then steps out of the chickenhouse behind them, that’s it, and goes, “You boys looking for somebody?”

  “You boys looking for me?”

  “You guys looking for me?”

  “Can I help you?”

  Something like that. They come around with their guns and he’s got the Remington on them hip high, wham, hits one, the Indian, pumps and fires, wham, knocks the other one on his ass, those mag slugs blowing them right off their feet. Or he waits till they get the ten yards, steps out, all he says is . . .

  “Looking for somebody?”

  He’s inside having bacon and eggs as the squad cars arrive flashing their lights. They come because Carmen calls 911 while he’s in the chickenhouse. That would work. He steps out on the porch . . .

  “You’re a little late, fellas.”

  The cops are looking around. “Where are they?”

  “Right over there, where I shot them.”

  The star asshole sheriff’s deputy is standing there. Say to him, “You gonna take me in?”

  Or maybe something about doing their work for them, without sounding too much like a smartass.

  From his perch Wayne looked east along the riverfront to the glass towers of the Renaissance Center, a job that took them seven hundred feet up when he was an apprentice. Get through that one you could work anywhere. The worst winter of his life, scraping ice off the iron before you dared walk upright. He began to think:

  Okay, it’s winter, time has passed, the cops are long gone, but you’re still hanging around the house, making excuses there’s work you want to do, well, or you don’t feel good, something. Anyway time passes, Carmen wants to know what’s going on. Nothing. Oh, yeah? You’re up to something. No, I’m not. Yes, you are, what is it?

  And you say, “I’m gonna find them.”

  She can’t believe it. “But they’re gone.”

  “No, they aren’t.”

  The idea is it’s dead of winter, the ship channels are frozen over, the coast guard’s breaking ice for the Harsens Island ferry and the one to Walpole and he’s been going over there on a hunch they’re hiding out on one of the islands, in a boarded-up summer cottage or a trapper’s cabin, he can feel it, the people on Walpole are acting strange, they know something but won’t talk and he senses the two guys have scared the shit out of everybody and are making them bring food, maybe holding a kid hostage. Lionel’s wife finally tells him they’re hiding out in an old trailer on Squirrel Island where Lionel used to keep muskrat traps, on the edge of a cornfield right across the South Channel from Sans Souci, the bar where the Indians go. For weeks he watched the trailer from a duck blind near the bar until finally one day he sees two figures coming across the channel, shoving muskrat poles in the snow, poking their way along so as not to go through the ice. He raises his binoculars. It’s them. They’re a mess, filthy dirty fugitives, a couple of human muskrats that have been hiding out on the edge of the marsh, wild looks in their eyes. They don’t see him till they’re almost to the bank. He’s out of the blind, standing with the Remington across his arm, patient, relaxed, wearing his heavy black wool parka with the hood. And he’s got a beard now. They stop dead in their tracks. They don’t know him from Sergeant Preston of the fucking Mounties till he says, very calmly:

  “I’ve been waiting for you, gentlemen.”

  Wayne listened to it in his mind. He thought calling them gentlemen because of the way they looked, being sarcastic, would sound good but it didn’t, it was dumb. No, leave it off, just say . . . And said out loud:

  “I’ve been waiting for you.”

  Behind him, the walking boss said, “We’re right here, Wayne. What’s the trouble?”

  The raising-gang foreman was behind the walking boss, both of them standing on the open-iron girder. They watched Wayne look up over his shoulder, welding goggles on his hard hat turned backward, maybe a little surprised to see them, that was all. They watched him get to his feet.

  “No trouble,” Wayne said. “I’ll move out of your way.”

  The walking boss and the raising-gang foreman watched him walk the girder to the column at the south end of the structure, on the corner, swing out around it, gripping the outer flange with his gloves and the instep of his work shoes, and slide down two levels to the decked-in tenth floor. They watched him pause. From where he was now he could take ladders down to each floored level. Maybe he was going to and changed his mind, favoring the express route. They watched him slide down the column the entire hundred feet or more, all the way to the ground where the guys were standing around watching, and head for the steel-company trailer.

  The walking boss looked at the raising-gang foreman. Neither of them said anything.

  11

  * * *

  CARMEN HAD TO WAIT to tell Wayne about the FBI man calling.

  Wayne came home talkative, now with another reason to be on the muscle. The squad car parked in the yard wasn’t enough. Now they didn’t want him at work because they said he almost caused an accident that could have killed a man. “Almost,” Wayne said. “The whole goddamn job, anything you do on a structure can almost kill you, it’s the way it is.” Having their beers he told her this guy Kenny never looked where he was going was the trouble, it wasn’t the first time he dropped a beater, everybody knew Kenny worked in the morning hungover, it was why he went out at noon. Didn’t matter. “The walking boss, guy I went to apprentice school with, says take some time off till I get my head on straight. Says nobody’ll work with me. You believe it?” Wayne turned to the range, asked what they were having for supper.

  Carmen told him Oriental stir-fried chicken and said, “Wayne? Scallen called.” There, she had his attention and could take her time now and watch his reactions to what she was going to tell him.

  “He wants us to come down to the Federal Court Building tomorrow.”

  “D
etroit?”

  Carmen nodded. “And see a man named John McAllen, with the U.S. Marshals Service.”

  “What for?”

  “I thought maybe they had the two guys. Scallen said no, this was something else.”

  “What?”

  “I asked him, he said it would be better to wait and let John McAllen tell us.”

  She watched Wayne take a drink of beer. He didn’t seem worried. He said, “Tomorrow, huh?” He didn’t seem the least concerned, or even curious.

  “They’re gonna pick us up.”

  “That’s all right, long as it isn’t a squad car.”

  Carmen hesitated. “What do you think it’s about?”

  “I don’t know—what do marshals do? Guard prisoners, take them to court . . . I don’t know. What do you think it’s about?”

  She said she couldn’t imagine and after that was quiet, because she couldn’t tell him what she was thinking, the awful feeling that the “something else” was about Matthew. Wayne would act amazed and say, “Matthew? Why would you think it’s about him?” Because she was thinking it, that’s why. Because she couldn’t help it. Because if it wasn’t about the two guys but had something to do with the government, someone in the government wanting to talk to them . . . She could see them walking into an office with a flag on a stand where the government official is waiting to tell them, is sorry to inform them, there was an accident on the flight deck of the Carl Vinson, CVN 70, their son got between an aircraft and the JBD, or their son had been swept overboard and was missing, not drowned, they’d never say that, they’d say he was out somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean missing, as if to say, well, he could turn up, you never know.

  Or Wayne might give her his bored but patient look and ask was this her instinct as a mother coming out or the other one, what was known as women’s intuition? And she’d get mad and say, “Well, you don’t understand,” and he wouldn’t. So she didn’t say anything at all.

  Not until the next day, riding downtown in the security of the gray interior of a gray sedan, two men in front wearing gray suits, Carmen and Wayne in back dressed for business, an official occasion, she made sure of her tone and finally said to Wayne in a low voice but an offhand manner, “You don’t suppose it’s about Matthew.”