He went down and made some ugly noises as he rolled around on the deck. I stood there looking at him, ready for the unlikely event of him actually standing up again. When it didn’t happen, I checked out the damage to my face. My jaw was sore as hell, both eyes were already starting to go a little puffy, my lip was split and bleeding down my chin, and my right ear was still ringing. Aside from that I had never felt better.
Mrs. Vargas was still standing there, her arms folded around herself. She was watching her husband roll around on the deck. The look on her face was now a combination of shock and physical satisfaction so pure I felt like I should offer her a cigarette.
“I’ll let myself out,” I said.
That broke the spell. She looked at me and tried to say something. “Oh,” she finally said. “Oh. Yes. My God.”
“You’d better go fill the tub,” I said. The way he kept rolling around, holding his groin, it almost made me feel sorry for him. “When he gets up, make sure he goes and sits in it. If he complains, just grab him right in the shorts and pull.”
I was about to open the glass door, saw the dog ready to jump out of its skin at me and thought better of it. I went down the stairs instead, passing right under the broken window. There were still shards of glass on the ground, glittering in the last sunlight of the day. I went around the house to the front, got in my truck, and took a quick look at my face in the rearview mirror.
Bad idea.
I wiped the blood off my chin, thinking this was getting better by the minute. What a great day this was turning out to be.
Sometimes when you think about something too hard, you can’t really see it anymore. Then you put it in the back of your mind for a few minutes, like when someone happens to be beating the living shit out of you. When you bring it back out, you see something you didn’t see before. It all comes together.
Or in this case, it all falls apart. It falls apart like that old Indian oar he had up in that room of his-worthless to begin with, and so fragile, as soon as you touched it, it broke into a million pieces.
When Vargas asked me to explain how he did it, that was the first time I looked at it from his point of view-him or whoever it was who supposedly set this up. It didn’t work. Son of a bitch, it didn’t even begin to work.
Maven was right. That was the worst thing. Maven telling me that I was the one with the personal bias, that I was the one not seeing it clearly-goddamn it to hell, he was absolutely right.
My hands were still trembling as I grabbed the steering wheel. The adrenaline was still pumping through my bloodstream. I felt like killing somebody.
“Here I come,” I said. “I hope you’re ready for me.”
Everything that had happened, it all went back to one man. I pulled out of the driveway and gunned it, heading right toward him.
Chapter Seventeen
He was standing behind the bar when I walked in. He didn’t even look at me. He kept talking to the man in front of him, his voice low. There were a couple other men at the bar, a few more at the tables. The Tigers were playing on the big screen again.
“Bennett, I want to talk to you,” I said.
“Be with you in a minute,” he said, his eyes still not moving.
“It can’t wait.”
“Just a minute, Alex.”
“At least pour me a beer while I’m waiting.”
He finally looked up at me. If he even noticed the shape I was in, it didn’t register on his face. “I’m a little busy right now,” he said, his mouth tight. “I’ll be with you in a minute.”
“Bennett, what’s going on?”
He looked down at the sink in front of him, his hands still on the bar. From the moment I had stepped into the place, he hadn’t moved his hands.
An ashtray on the bar. Smoke rising. That smell, sickly sweet.
The man in front of Bennett, sitting on the bar stool-I hadn’t looked at him when I came in. Now I did. His hair was so blond it was white, his skin so pale that in the summer he’d turn red as a beet as soon as he stepped outside. His eyebrows, you could barely see them.
He looked over at me, the same way he had looked at me when I was lying on Vargas’s floor.
“We’re having a conversation,” he said. “What’s all the fuss about?” The last word a very Canadian “aboot.”
“There’s no fuss,” Bennett said. “Alex is just here to have a beer.”
“It looks like Alex needs a little ice for his face, too,” the man said. “He seems to have run into a cement truck.”
He didn’t take his eyes off me. I wiped the blood off my chin with the back of my sleeve and stared right back at him. I took a step toward him. He didn’t even blink.
“Alex, don’t,” Bennett said. “Please don’t move.”
I looked away from the man, saw Bennett’s hands still on the bar. It all fell into place. The man was wearing a jacket on a day that was far too warm for it. It was zipped most of the way down, and the man’s right hand was inside. I didn’t have to guess what he was holding.
“I’m not alone,” he said. “I’d rather we didn’t have to shoot our way out of here, but we will if we have to.”
I looked behind him. Ham was sitting at one of the tables, looking like his head was about to explode. Another man sat next to him. He wasn’t quite as blond as the man at the bar, but otherwise the family resemblance was unmistakable.
“Your brother,” I said. “Was he the third man at our party?”
“You know who the third man was,” he said.
“News to me.”
“You were in this from the beginning.”
“Again,” I said, “news to me. You wanna start making some sense?”
“I told you,” Bennett spoke up. “Alex had no part in this.”
“There you go again,” the man said. “Every time you say that, I get more upset. I do wish you’d stop.”
“I’m telling you the truth,” Bennett said.
“How about you, Alex?” the man said. “Are you gonna tell me the same thing?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Then why are you here? Just dropping in for a beer? And some bandages?”
“Why were you in my cabin?” I said.
“Just doing a little research,” he said. “Trying to recoup some business losses.”
“Why don’t you come by again tonight? I’ll make sure I’m home this time.”
“You know, I’m starting to feel unwelcome,” he said. “In fact, I’d say it’s gotten downright hostile in here.”
“You haven’t seen hostile yet. Believe me.”
He smiled. “If you had any idea,” he said. “My God, you people actually think you can get away with this. It’s almost funny.”
“I saw one of your partners today,” I said. “Two bullets in the back? That must have been you. Pretty gutless, wouldn’t you say?”
His smile vanished. “You’re about to end your own life, friend.”
“I’m ‘aboot’ to end my own life? How come you Canadians talk so funny, anyway?”
“Alex,” Bennett said. “For the love of God…”
“I’ll be in touch with you again,” the man said as he stood up. “Soon.” He circled around me, never turning his back. His brother stood up and went out the door first. Then my new friend slowly backed his way out the door, giving me a little wink.
As soon as the door closed, I went to the window.
“Alex, what are you doing? Get away from there!”
I ignored him. I watched the men get into a black Audi. It was not the same car from Leon’s videotape, and not the same license number, although the plate did come from Ontario.
I went back to the bar. “Give me a pen,” I said, grabbing a napkin.