Ben released Chalk’s hand. “Ben Blackshaw.”
Chalk brightened. “Really? Hot stuff! I’m looking for my old friend Richard. Must be your dad, right?”
Ben said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Chalk. You missed him.”
“Did I now?” Chalk cheered up a little more.
Then Ben said, “Yeah. He was just here, ten — fifteen years ago.”
A smart-aleck. Chalk’s ire grew, but he worked, really worked hard to contain it. “I see. Any idea where I could find him?”
Ben shook his head. “He’s not the stay-in-touch type.”
Chalk was getting nowhere. Again with this redneck omerta, the cracker code of silence.
Chalk wanted a man on Ben’s flank, or better, to his rear. As planned, The Kid, who had been shifting back and forth on his feet in a classic pee-pee paso doble, said, “’Scuse me. Could I please use your bathroom? I gotta go real bad.”
“Since you said please.” Ben stood aside so The Kid could step through the door.
Chalk and Slagget took a step to follow. Ben suddenly banged the door shut in their faces. A big, old-sounding lock clanked home.
Chalk barked, “What the hell!”
Inside, it sounded like the house was getting demolished. Furniture tumbled and splintered. Something fragile shattered. A dog growled and barked. Then more breakage. And then nothing.
Slagget slammed his shoulder against the door, but the old timber and iron held. “Shit!” He clutched his aching shoulder.
Ben spoke through the door. Low and even. “I think your friend had a little accident.”
Slagget reached under his windbreaker for a gun, but Chalk waved him back.
Chalk shouted, “Dammit, Ben! How about some of that Southern hospitality?”
Ben said, “Maryland’s a border state. Hospital’s a good idea for your boy.”
Chalk fumed. “Did you kill him?”
“No, but it’s early.”
“Well I don’t give a fuck! Go ahead! Do him! But you better tell me where your father is or I’ll—”
Suddenly, The Kid screamed. Loud, high and piercing. The howl was full of so-this-is-the-Abyss horror. As quickly as it started, it stopped. Choked off. Then Chalk heard a window open in a nearby house. They were attracting attention. The situation was deteriorating.
“Or you’ll what, exactly?” Ben spoke slowly. “Mr. Chalk — Maynard, you don’t have time to huff and puff on my stoop all day. You know it. I know it. Will you take a friendly suggestion?”
The neighbor’s door opened, and a man stepped out on his front porch. He cradled an old Remington twelve gauge in his arms.
In a blur of black and amber fur, a German shepherd shot out the neighbor’s door and sprinted to the property’s edge nearest Chalk. The dog did not cross out of the neighbor’s lot. Nor did he sit on his haunches like he was content to just watch. He growled at Chalk and Slagget, and bristled. Coiled for his master’s order.
The neighbor studied Chalk. Rumbled to the dog, “Easy goes it, Adolf. Just sit tight.”
Chalk spoke softly to Ben through the door, “Suggest away, you dead fuck.”
“Leave. Now. Whatever you want with my father is over and done. Definitely not worth what it’s going to cost you.”
“Found something, did you, boy?”
Ben said, “Maybe I did. And maybe it’s already counting down.”
Chalk bridled. This situation was completely out of control. “For Christ’s sake, punk, you truly don’t know who you’re dealing with.”
The Kid screamed again, excruciating pain. Even Chalk, who was not easily shocked, felt his balls tuck and scrunch up.
Ben said, “That makes two of us. But this noisy fellow in here? He’s got a pretty good idea what’s what.”
The neighbor jacked a shell into the shotgun’s chamber. Leaned on his door frame, watching. Just taking everything in. Adolf paced to and fro at the property line, doing a good impression of a starved wolf clocking a fawn.
Chalk and Slagget assessed their position. Then Chalk glanced out into the bay. In the storm’s haze, he thought he discerned black smoke rising from someplace out on the water.
Chalk smiled. “Okay, Ben Blackshaw. Appreciate the advice. I’ll toddle along. For now.”
Chalk stepped off the stoop, but then turned back. “Hey Kid! If you’re not dead, you’re fired! Sloppy pissant.”
Then Chalk and Slagget made a quick tactical withdrawal up the path.
As they went, Chalk patted his belly and said, “Let’s see what Mrs. Harris has in her fridge. I declare, I could eat the ass out of a dead cat.”
CHAPTER 20
Soon after Chalk and Slagget left, Orville Hurley, Ben’s neighbor, stopped by the saltbox with his dog to see that everything was okay. Hurley believed, as many Smith Islanders did, that since they had no police force, folks had to look out for each other. Lacking a well-regulated militia, Hurley was a self-appointed irregular. Hurley was not put out that Ben didn’t invite him in for coffee. Hurley didn’t pry about all the screaming. Ben was not bothered that Hurley still carried a shotgun with him.
To Ben, things seemed a little too cozy on Smith Island, what with Lorton Dyze personally delivering his mail, and Hurley dropping around armed to the teeth to check up. Why was no one saying exactly what was on his mind, or asking what was going on? It felt to Ben like everybody was aware of this crisis, but no one would speak about it. No one wanted to break the spell. All in a day’s work, apparently.
Ben’s call to Knocker Ellis’s home phone went unanswered. Not good. Where was he? Maybe trusting him was a mistake, and he was out on Deep Banks Island hiding the gold somewhere else. Ellis was full of surprises, like a piñata stuffed with grenades, pins pulled, zero candy. For the moment, Ben had to compartmentalize his misgivings before they grew into crippling obsessions.
Through his door he heard Chalk tell the other sidekick they were going back to Hiram and Charlene’s place. Ben’s blood chilled at that. He had to follow them. The Harrises were good people, like the guardian aunt and uncle he never had. Ben could not stroll up the path in plain sight. He was too busted up from subduing The Kid, and too careful for a frontal assault. He’d make it a sniper’s stalk, if he could.
Some of Ben’s left ribs ached like hell. If he inhaled too deeply, they stabbed him like tenpenny nails driven deep by John Henry’s sledgehammer. Opening his shirt, he saw the red, black and blue mottled bruise, but no flailing bones, like a total break. Broad as his palm. Already swelling. In hand-to-hand training, Ben had been taught his ribs were the babies. His upraised forearms and fists, the baby-sitters. Ben was rusty. During the scuffle, The Kid managed to thrust a knee hard into Ben’s floating ribs. Definitely shaken baby syndrome. If The Kid succeeded in working in another good shot, Ben would’ve been gargling blood from a punctured lung.
Once again, he dragged on his clammy wetsuit, favoring his ribs where he could. To don the close-fitting neoprene required agonizing contortions. On the upside, there would be streams and guts to swim on the route he was planning. Maybe the frigid water would numb the pain. With the zipper snugged-up under his chin, he found the wetsuit acted like a half-decent tape job, stabilizing his smashed-up flank.
To make this stalk unseen, Ben would need more than a wetsuit. He pulled out his homemade reed-patterned ghillie suit. In the best of sniper tradition, the enormous baggy pants, jacket, and hood were festooned with ragged strips of burlap to break up his profile, and conceal him from game when he hunted. Head to toe, the rig was streak-dyed with marsh tans and browns to help him blend in with the lower vegetation of his boggy surroundings.