“You just like your privacy,” he said.
“Why don’t you polish a glass or something? Do I pay you to watch television?”
“Fuck you, Jack,” he said cheerfully. “You’re just like anybody else. You don’t like being invaded.”
I shrugged again. “Our place isn’t big. Having another human being under foot for a week, well… fuck it, I’ll live.”
“Sure you will. Why don’t you put him up here at the Inn? Business is slow.”
That perked me up. “Not a bad idea. Of course, we got room for him at the A-frame-he was going to crash on the couch in the loft…”
“You want my advice? You got a sweet little girl there. Don’t cause her any trouble. Show her and her brother a nice time-take ’em to Lake Geneva, and Twin Lakes, and do touristy shit-eat at a nice restaurant every night. Days, find work to do up here, give ’em some space. She can drive him around and show him antique shops and shit. She’s going to want to spend time with him, and you can cover for her at the restaurant, or work on cars or do any damn thing you want. We got plumbing problems upstairs, y’know, if you’re ambitious.”
“That makes sense, Charley.”
“And at night, well you send the boy up here where he has a private room. He can even entertain an occasional guest, if he likes. Beats sleeping on a couch.”
“Charley,” I said, and smiled a little, climbed off the stool, “forget about polishing a glass. Watch TV till your eyes burn, if you want. You just earned your keep.”
“No problem, Jack. Just remember that faggot is all the family your little wife has in the world.”
“Well,” I said, thinking about what was growing inside her, “that’s not entirely true, but I appreciate the sentiment. I know I got a good thing going. I’m no fool. I’m not about to fuck it up.”
He nodded and turned his attention back to the tube.
I walked outside and started back home. It was less than half a mile to the turn-in, off of which was my drive. The night was cold, particularly with me minus my hunting jacket, and overcast; the moon was glowing behind some clouds up there, not having any luck getting through. About half-way home I noticed a car parked alongside the road. Headed north. I was walking north, but on the other side of the road. It was a dark blue late-model Buick and the man behind the wheel was pale and blond and skeletal. He wore a black turtleneck sweater. He didn’t look at me as I passed.
There was no reason for him to be parked there. He wasn’t parking in front of a house or anything.
The house he was parked nearest to belonged to Charley, a quarter-mile away, and no other houses were immediately around; it was a gently wooded area near the lake, after all.
His plates were Illinois. Rock Island County. The Quad Cities.
Where the Broker had lived.
Without picking up my pace, I walked into the brush lining the road, wanting to make myself less of a target. I was not armed. My shoulder holster was in the closet; the other guns were in their usual positions in glove compartment and nightstand drawer. But the house was nearby, and all I had to do was get in there first.
My past had come looking for me; the lingering feeling I’d had that I’d fucked up had been valid. I’d chosen the wrong fucking option.
Well, it wasn’t too late. All I had to do was get inside that house and get one of my guns, and I’d start exploring other options.
I went in the side, rear door, quietly as I could; it was after midnight, but I figured Linda would still be up, talking to her brother in front of the fire. Lights were on in the front part of the house, so that seemed a safe assumption. I hoped to get in and get my gun and go back out, without alerting Linda or our house guest I’d even been home.
I opened the drawer of the nightstand, felt inside; my hand touched the cold gun.
That was when I noticed that Linda was in bed already, but she hadn’t made a sound; I hadn’t disturbed or frightened her, either, coming in as I had.
Because she was dead.
4
He didn’t hear me come up behind him.
I had slipped out of my shoes. Left them in the bedroom, next to the bed, where what had been Linda was soaking up the sheets, getting them red. She hadn’t suffered; that was something. My guess is she’d been asleep. He’d put one in her head, and three more in her chest and stomach. But it was clear she hadn’t stirred. She was on her side, like a fetus. His first shot, the head shot, had been enough. Why the other three?
And so I had walked on shoeless feet in the darkness through my familiar house and had made not a sound. It was something I had learned to do a long time ago and apparently, like riding a bike, it sticks with you. I was right up behind him, before he sensed me, and before he could turn, my gun was in his neck.
“You fucked up,” I said. My voice sounded strange to me. Probably to him, too. But to me it sounded distant. Like something playing on television in another room.
He didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t blame him. He was just a dark shape standing over the corpse of my brother-in-law. Chris was seated in my big soft leather chair, facing the dying fire, which was the only light in the room; a beer that had been in his hand had spilled onto the floor, soaking our new carpet. Linda had picked it out just a few months before; carpet samples had littered the floor for days.
“You killed the wrong man,” I said.
“Please,” he said.
“He was my brother-in-law. I loaned him my jacket, and you took him for me. Nice piece of work, dipshit. Toss the gun to the floor. Underhand toss. Now.”
He did. It was a nine-millimeter, too, but not a Browning: a Luger with a rather bulky homemade silencer attached.
“Turn around, slow.”
He did, and as he did, I stepped back and had a look at the man who had taken so much from me. He wasn’t big, he wasn’t small-about my size, five-ten, heavy-set but not fat; he was perhaps thirty. He was in a black sweatshirt and black pants and black gloves. He had short dark hair and dark frightened eyes in a round, pale face dotted by several dark moles. His cheeks had Nixon shadow.
“He doesn’t even look like me,” I said, gesturing to dead Chris. “He’s got blond hair, for Christ’s sake.”
He didn’t know what to say. His lower lip was trembling. He knew he was going to die. He knew there was nothing he could say that would change that. Maybe I could make him believe otherwise.
“I understand,” I said.
“What?”
“I understand.”
“Understand?”
“That you’re just hired help.”
His eyes tensed.
“That this is nothing personal. I used to be in this business myself. I was a hell of a lot better at it than you, and I never killed a whole fucking family, but…” I got a hold of myself and smiled tightly at him. “… but I want you to think about telling me who sent you. If you do that, I might give you a pass.”
He shook his head. “They’d kill me.”
“What do you think I’ll do?” I said, and I whapped him on the side of the head with the nine-millimeter. He went down on the soft carpet, hard. He was out, or pretending to be, a trickle of blood like a red thread down his temple. I took off my belt and quickly lashed his wrists behind him. I kicked his gun under the sofa. I could have used the thing, the silencer would’ve come in handy, but I didn’t want to touch it. Not that gun.
I went to the door. Before I dealt with him, I had to deal with the back-up man. The man who’d been parked alongside the road. He might be gone, now. Seeing me come bopping along, when I was supposed to be home getting shot, might have sent him running. Or he might be coming in any minute now to help his partner. Those were pretty much the probabilities.
Thinking it over, I went back through the dark house to the side door. You could smell death in that house. I’d forgotten that, or anyway hadn’t thought about it in a long time. The smell of it. Of blood. Of shit. Of death.