“Hallo!” he called.
The voice that answered was so near that he jumped. It was just the other side of the wire fence, not ten feet from them.
“Hallo youself, best friend,” Rocko said.
Cooper jacked the next slug into the chamber, wondering how many were left in the clip. He said quietly, “You can’t do anything, Rocko. There’s a fence between us. How about a compromise?”
Rocko laughed. “Big words, eh? You and sweet darling making a deal with Rocko. Funny. Not tonight, boy. Not this night. I got to kill you and sweet darling. For you I got two reasons, one of them old. For her, only one. Nobody will be left to know Rocko is back.”
“That won’t do any good, Rocko. The government knows you were coming. Every road out of this area is blocked. Two to one the coast guard has a couple of boats out there in the night, waiting.”
“With two pair always belting like a full house, best friend.”
He had centered the rifle on the patch of blackness that he felt sure contained the stalker. He pulled the trigger, worked the bolt quickly, fired again.
There was a groan, a heavy thud, a long bubbling sigh. Barbara moaned softly. She stood up, above the edge of the bank. Cooper made a frantic grab for her and missed. Rocko’s gun made its tiny clacking sound. She turned half around and dropped face down into the water. Cooper grasped the waist band of her slacks and pulled her up onto the bank.
Rocko laughed ripely. “Good-by, sweet darling. Now just you, Farat. Old fox Rocko fooled her. Just like he fooled those guys who brought him in the boat. You shot the big boss. I shot one. Billy got himself two. Last one kills Billy and while he’s so busy with Billy I write my name — Rocko — tack, tack, tack, right up his back. Nobody fools Rocko, best friend.”
“There’s still one of them you didn’t get!”
“Ho, you mean that stupid one from the boat, eh? The one who came running in so fast with the gun in his hand? The one I shoot as he runs in and he keeps running and busts the plate glass with his head? That one you mean? Is like old times in there, best friend. Is like when you and me and Smoker climbed on Neli’s yacht that Sunday morning eleven years ago. Easter morning and you were just a punk then, best friend. Remember how it looked. All dronk. Smoker cut so many throats with that big knife his arm got tired. In there it looks like when Smoker got finished on Neli’s yacht. Then remember we burned it and took off in Smoker’s speedboat?”
“Come and get me, Rocko.”
“Now I don’t talk any more. I move around quiet. You don’t know where I am any more. Pretty soon I kill you, best friend.”
“If a snake doesn’t get you first,” Cooper said.
“Huh?” Rocko said. There was alarm in his voice.
“Didn’t Carla tell you, Rocko? She filled that whole patch of brush with poisonous snakes It discourages visitors.”
“Don’t make jokes with old Rocko.”
“Go ahead. Crawl around in there.”
“You know I don’t like snakes, best friend.” His tone was accusing and plaintive.
“She told me she had coral snakes, rattlers and moccasins.”
There was a long silence. Cooper dug in the mud at his feet, found three small stones. He flipped them over into the brush in a high arc, heard them patter in the leaves.
“No snakes, Rocko? I can hear them from here even.”
“Best friend, I been a little crazy. I don’t want to kill you. Honest. Look, kid. You and me, like old days, eh? I still got connections, kid. They’ll still listen to old Rocko.”
“Go ahead. Move around in that brush a little.”
“No, kid! I don’t want to walk. My skin is crawling. They’re all around me here, kid. Let’s make a deal, kid. A partnership. Split everything down the middle, better for you than the old days.”
Cooper tossed some more pebbles in. “Sounds like they’re moving in on you, Rocko. Hear ’em in the leaves?”
Rocko made a thin high bleating sound. The brush crashed as he began to run. Cooper could not be sure of his aim in the darkness. Rocko, still making thin cries, plunged toward the road and the gate.
Cooper pulled Barbara up onto higher ground and took off after Rocko, following the outside of the fence. Rocko was ahead of him. He was still fifty feet from the gate when he saw Rocko race through the gate and out along the causeway.
He started to aim the rifle and then he knew what he had to do, and why he had to do it. He climbed up onto the causeway. He stood, feet spread, rifle lowered.
Rocko was running silently.
“Turn around, Rocko!” he shouted.
Rocko spun, dropped, fired in one startling demonstration of the animal-like coordination of his thick old body. The slug made a humming sound like a taut wire and he felt the breeze on his cheek as he lifted the rifle and fired. On the heels of his shot came the harsh screech of a ricochet. He worked the bolt, aimed and fired again. When he tried to fire again, the hammer fell on an empty chamber. He stood in the night and looked at Rocko a hundred feet away. He could make out the oval of the face against the dark clothes that were like a shadow in their stillness.
It could be another ruse. His wounded shoulder had begun to throb with each beat of his heart. The recoil of the rifle had done it no good. He walked slowly toward Rocko. He stood and looked down at him for a long time. He knelt, found matches in Rocko’s pocket and lit one. A small pudgy butcher, fast asleep. A tiny mouth, still pursed with a look of puritanical disapproval, but puffed with surprise at the bullet which had sped between the parted lips.
He walked back, drugged with weakness. There were certain things to be done. He accomplished them with dogged, unthinking purpose. He carried Barbara to the gate. He could carry her no further. He walked to the house, found car keys in Carla’s room, took them out to the sedan, drove down and pushed the convertible off into the brush.
He drove by it to the gate, got out, lifted Carla into the back seat. He drove across the causeway and out onto the main road that ran the length of the key. He turned toward Sarasota and kept squinting his eyes and turning his head to new angles in an attempt to still the shifting dance of the road ahead — the road which would not stay still in front of the wheels.
He remembered thinking that his speed was dangerous, glancing down at the speedometer and finding he was going fifteen miles an hour. He reached the center of the resort city. The streets were deserted. Dawn was not far away. He was nosing toward the concrete island in the middle of an open square. There was no strength left either to turn the wheel or tread on the brake. The car hit with a grinding jar and rebounded. He fell forward on the horn ring and the blast of the horn filled his ears and the whole world, slowly dimming away, diminishing, as he slid down into darkness...
Grant, the area man, looked like a pro footballer turned bond salesman. He stared again at Cooper in the hospital bed and said, shaking his head, “Brother, I saw it, and I can hardly believe it. Her house boys, cook, and guards, all except the old fellow, ran for cover. We’ve picked up all but one, and we’ll get him soon. He’s probably hiding out in Ybor City. Even if they did know anything, we wouldn’t need their testimony.”
“What about the group who came in with Kadma?”
Grant gave him an owlish look. “Brother Cooper, you don’t know anything about any group and neither do I. All we know is what we read in the papers. Gang War on Catboat Key. Racket Boys Shoot It Out. Citizens Demand Investigation. Twelve Slain, Including Two Women. Just between us girls, those five are such high level stuff that nobody gets to know from nothing. A flock of airborne little men came down, made with the mystery and departed.”