“Fuck you, I’m not going to cry or beg.”
“Usually, they do,” said Pony. “Usually they do.”
Nick waited until his bladder betrayed him. It had to, finally. He fought it. But then Tommy said, “Hey, why put yourself through that? It ain’t gonna matter much, really. I mean, is it?”
So finally he said it. “Have to go. Undo my hands.”
“No can do, pard. You know that. Pony, undo his pants for him. Don’t touch him. Let it be natural.”
God, he hated them! It was the little touches of solicitousness, the softly remorseless way in which they did their job.
Pony, young and muscular and vaguely Latino, undid his pants. He was able to urinate himself dry, a last, long dying are of life in the bright morning light in the blazing green of the swamp.
“Okay,” he finally said. “Fuck you. Get it fucking over with.”
They zipped and buttoned him up and led him down to the river. It lapped against the mud. A dragonfly flashed in the sun, big and prehistoric, like something liberated from a million or so years in amber. Nick was pushed to his knees.
He felt a belt being strapped around his waist. Then his left arm suddenly wore a new manacle, something attached to the belt. Jesus, they had equipment for this! That’s how thought out it was, how perfect. They had a drill. They’d done it a thousand times!
Something was thrust into his hand; his fingers recognized the familiar contours of his Colt Agent. He tried to pull the trigger but it wouldn’t budge; they had something wedged under it. He felt a binding of tape being wound about his knuckles, locking the small pistol in his grip.
“Hold his head back, Pony,” Tommy said. Pony grabbed Nick by his hair, and pulled his head back. It fucking hurt.
“You motherfucking pricks,” he screamed. “God, don’t do this to me, don’t do this to me. Tommy, Christ, please, I was your buddy.”
“No, Nicky. You was just a fed, man. I can’t cut you no slack. I got my job to do, man.”
Nick heard a click behind him, and the first set of cuffs came away, freeing his right arm; but immediately it was ridden into submission by the full force and thrust of Tommy Montoya at his right.
“Okay, Nicky, don’t fight me. Over in a second.”
“Please don’t do this,” Nick begged.
“Okay, Nicky, up we go.”
The man forced Nick’s arm upward in an arc, curving the hand toward Nick’s temple. His own hand was his enemy. Nick fought with all the strength he had, but the two men stood over him in postures that put the complete physics of leverage on their side. He saw his hand rise toward his head, guided by both muscular arms of his murderer. It was clear how it had to go; the arm would rise until the muzzle touched his temple; then Tommy would pull whatever he’d wedged behind the trigger – a RamDyne improvised suicide replication plug, part Number 4332 from the RamDyne Catalog, available to your friendly secret police force, no doubt – and crush Nick’s trigger finger. The gun would blow Nick’s brains out. He’d be found in the weeds by the river, his hand locked around his own pistol, his own car close at hand. There’d be no other physical evidence. They’d thought of everything. It was so fucking professional!
Nick strained against his own hand.
“Oh, Jesus, oh, Christ, don’t do this.”
“Just – ah, almost, there, don’t fight it, goddammit, don’t fight it!” And the gun rose and rose until at last Nick felt it touch the fragile shell of his temple. It felt like somebody pressing a penny against him. Through his strained peripheral vision he could see Tommy laboriously working on the gun, getting his own gloved finger half into the trigger guard, making ready to pull the plug.
“Watch yourself, Pony,” Tommy said, warning his partner to steer clear of spatter, “I’ve almost got it, ah – ”
Tommy Montoya’s head exploded.
The sound of the report reached them.
Across the river a cloud of angry white birds rose as one in clattering agitation, rudely bumped from their perches by the rifle shot.
Nick, freed of half his constraint, turned to the other man, Pony, who stood still stupefied, not getting it.
But Nick got it.
“You’re dead, motherfucker,” he said, and at that precise instant the second bullet found Pony center chest, blowing through his heart. He pirouetted to the ground, the destroyed heart spurting blood as he fell.
The birds cawed and seethed in the air. The wind rose and whistled.
Nick sat back. His arm ached. He wanted to throw away the pistol, but couldn’t, because it was taped to his hand. He figured the key would be somewhere on these two clowns.
He looked around and saw a man wading across the river. He was tall and rangy and tan, beardless now, in blue jeans and a tired blue denim shirt. He wore a baseball cap that said RAZORBACKS on it. He had harsh, gray, squirrel-shooter’s eyes, unmirthful, focused, unafraid. His mouth was grim. He was quite tall.
He carried a fat-barreled Remington 700 rifle with about a yard of scope atop it. He carried it like a man who knew a little something about rifles.
He walked up to Nick.
“Mornin’, Pork,” said Bob the Nailer.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Nick looked at him with love-filled, moronic eyes.
“You’re some sorry sight, sonny,” said Bob. “Chained and trussed like a coon in a bag after a hunt. Those boys were about to have your patty-cake butt for breakfast.” Nick watched him go over to each of the bodies, and search them for keys and papers.
He plucked two keys out of the late Tommy Montoya’s pocket and came back over to take the cuffs off Nick.
“Goddamn,” he said in disgust, “these boys even had a rig for phony suicide.”
He stripped the tape from Nick’s fist. Nick kept looking at him stupidly while he freed the little Colt Agent. It fell to the earth. Swagger bent and picked it up.
“You’re not going to shoot me with this little bitty gun, are you, Pork? I couldn’t be sure the last time.”
Dumbly, Nick shook his head.
“Here. Don’t lose it. Now come on, boy, we’ve got to get these two pieces of human shit into the water, and more or less sanitize this area. You don’t want the Louisiana State Police on your ass, do you? I sure don’t, no sir. I’ve seen enough damn police to last me a century.”
With that, he laid his rifle down on the hood of Nick’s car and bent to one of the two bodies. As he bent, Nick saw that he had a Colt.45 automatic wedged cocked and locked into his jeans in a high hip-carry holster. The pistol was a custom job, with low mount sights and neoprene combat grips. It was the sort of pistol a man who has thought a lot about pistols might carry, as were the three spare magazines in Sparks mag holders on the other high hip.
Bob pulled each of the bodies to the lip of the river, and launched them with no ceremony at all. They sailed sluggishly out into the current, held afloat by the bladders of air trapped in their clothes; each man trailed a slick of blood.
“We’re going to make some damn ’gators happy today, that’s for sure,” Bob said. “Now come on, boy, don’t just sit there like a toad on a rock, get a move on!”
But Nick had lapsed into some kind of poststress letdown and was incapable of operating rationally. He just stared at Bob, eyes wide open, mouth agape, while Bob went to the men’s station wagon. Finding nothing to interest him, he turned the key, gunned the engine, drove off the dirt road, aimed at the swamp, stepped out of the car and bent over, and with one hand gave the gas pedal a goose. The car took off with a squeal, blew through some weeds, sloshed into the river and disappeared under the surface in a commotion of bubbles and oil stains.
He turned.
“Now your car, sonny. Can’t leave evidence. I’ll buy you a new one some day, okay?”