Bouncing on ruts, we made our way towards the main road ahead. We’d reach it someday. Smooth sailing from there on out.
In the distance four loud cracks sounded.
“God, I hope that’s someone setting off fireworks for a holiday I forgot.”
His beeper sounded.
“There goes hope.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
Big dog and b-side turned up again a couple of days later, just after eight in the morning.
“Sure hope we didn’t wake you.”
“Nope. First thing I do every morning, get the day started right, is sit around without clothes on watching the news. Like to keep up.”
“We brought some news about your friend Roy Branning.”
“Hardly my friend.”
“Hardly anybody’s,” B-side said.
“Seems he may have been put down by one of his… associates. Nothing to do with you. What do you think?”
“I don’t, before noon.”
“We got on to this the way we get on to most things. Guy we see regularly, what we call a CI, heard some loose talk in a bar, passed it on. But then, you know about CIs.”
We were still standing in the doorway, where my clothes weren’t. When a young couple passed on the balcony, the girl did a double take. I felt my penis stiffen.
“Don’t draw your weapon unless you’re prepared to use it,” B-side said.
Funny stuff.
Big Dog glared at him.
“We know about you, Turner. Word’s come down to leave you alone, though. We don’t much like that.”
“Who would?”
“Right.” He stepped back, forcing B-side to scramble out of his way. “Who would like that? Or for that matter, who’d give enough of a shit to pay attention to what some desk jockey wants, you know? Anyone wants this job can have it. Hell, I’ll gift-wrap it for them, got a nice pink ribbon I’ve saved.” He half-lifted one hand in mock benediction. “Be seeing you, Turner.”
I went back to bed and was enjoying a luscious meal at a swank restaurant, accompanied by a woman every bit as luscious and swank, when a knock reached in and hauled me out of the dream.
“You Turner?” the small man asked. Something wrong with his spine, as though at some formative point he’d been gripped at head and hips and twisted. Dark hair grew low on his forehead, only a narrow verge of scaly skin separating it from the hedge of eyebrow. Cotton sweater with sleeves and waist rolled, cheap jeans with huge wide legs. “Something for you.”
He handed me an envelope.
“Just out?” I said.
“Three days.”
“Want to come in, have a drink?”
“Wouldn’t say no.” He pulled the door closed behind him. “Name’s Hogg.”
He kept watching me. After a moment I said, “What?”
“I was waiting for the jokes.”
“Fresh out of them. Bottle’s by the sink in the bathroom. Help yourself. Ice from the machine out by the landing if you want it.”
“Ice. Know I’m back in the real world now.”
He came out with two plastic glasses of brandy as I was reading the note.
Damn, man, you say you’ll take a message out, you mean it! Guess Roy won’t have to be worrying about my getting out no longer. RIP and all that crap. Now I’ll have to come out and get right on finding that money. Thanks again for carrying for me. Good man. Good luck. Billy D
“Not that I mind drinking alone,” Hogg said, putting a cup down by me. “Alone. In a crowd. With camels.’’ His eyes looked as though they’d been separated at birth and spent their independent lives searching for one another. I lifted the cup in salute or in thanks and drank.
“Got anything lined up?”
“Sure I do. Ninety percent of it’ll fall apart before I even get there, way it usually does.”
“How many years you pull?”
“Ten to fifteen on my head, little over four underfoot-this time. Met some punk in a bar, both of us half drunk, heard all about his easy score, next thing I know I’m back on the boards. Damned embarrassing. Here I am, supposed to be a pro.”
“How’d you find me?”
“I was told where to come.”
“Billy D?”
He nodded and, downing what was left of the brandy stood.
“You’re welcome to stay.”
“Thanks. But that’ll do me.” At the door he paused. “You’re the cop, right?”
“I was.”
“Couldn’t have been easy for you inside.”
“It’s tough for everyone.”
Hogg nodded. “I heard about you. You did okay. You helped a lot of people.”
My hubris.
Though never in all the years before or since have I needed the excuse of it to make an absolute mess of things.
Chapter Twenty-nine
“Goddamn it, Sue, just put the gun down.”
She sat on the porch swing, shotgun cradled like a newborn in her arm.
“Where’d you get that thing anyway?”
“It’s mine fair and square, Lonnie, don’t you worry. I traded for it.”
“Alban’s hurt. Sue.”
“Well I sure as hell do hope so.”
“We need to get him help.”
“Maybe his girlfriend could help. Why don’t you go find her? She’ll be hanging around the church somewhere.”
The porch was bare boards, couple of feet off the ground, and ran across the whole front of the cabin. The steps were poured cement. They didn’t quite match up with anything-ground or porch. Alban lay slumped against them.
“He’s bleeding out, Sue.”
“Good.”
“Now you know I’m gonna have to come up there, put a stop to this.”
She shook her head. Raised her left elbow half a foot or so to emphasize the shotgun.
“Wonder that thing didn’t blow up when you first fired it. Crescent, maybe a Stevens, from the look of it. Hardware-store gun. Damn near as old as this town. No one else has to get hurt here, Sue. Alban,” he called out. “You okay?”
Alban raised a hand, let it drop.
“Kids with your folks, Sue?” She nodded.
“Freda’s still bringing home those A’s, I bet.”
Bates stepped out from the shelter of the Jeep and began moving very slowly, hands held in plain sight, towards her.
“They’re good kids, Sue. You don’t want to leave them alone.”
Noiselessly, Don Lee appeared on the porch behind her.
“We head down this road, take a few more steps along it, that’s what it could come to.”
Don Lee reached across the back of the swing with what I can only call infinite tenderness and took the gun. She offered no resistance, in fact seemed relieved.
Bates returned to the Jeep and picked up the mike.
“June, you there? Come back.”
“Ten-four.”
“Need an ambulance out to Alban McWhorter’s.”
“You have it… What’s going on out there?”
“I’ll be home directly. Tell you about it then.”
Don Lee came towards us with Sue in tow. “Alban looks okay to me. Flesh wounds, mostly. My guess is she turned the barrel away at the last moment.”
“I’m sorry, Lonnie,” Sue said.
“We all are.”
“I love him, you know.”
“I know.”
“He’s gonna be okay?”
“You both are. Doc Oldham’ll be in touch. We’ll let you know what he has to say.”
One hand under her shoulder, other at her head, Don Lee guided Sue into the back seat of the squad. She peered out from within, raccoonish.
“Lonnie, can someone call my parents?”
“I’ll go by there myself.”
They lived in a white house back towards town. It stood out among its peers: paint applied within the last few years, yard recently mowed, a conspicuous lack of abandoned appliances and cars. The curtains were open and, as I soon witnessed, the door unlocked. We could see inside. Past the back of the couch and two heads, animals gone biped strutted and spoke on the TV screen. When we rang the bell, two smaller heads popped up between the larger, facing our way. A handsome woman came to the door.