“Did you see Tillie?” Brett asked.
“I think so,” Leonard said. “I saw three women. There’s one looks something like Tillie’s picture, but I think maybe she’s had some work done.”
“Work?” Brett said.
“I think she … or they … had her lips filled with collagen, or whatever that stuff is makes women look like they just got punched in the mouth. She’s got red hair. A red dress on.”
“I saw her pass the doorway,” I said.
Leonard nodded. “I think maybe she’s had something done to her nose and cheeks too. Sort of Barbie-dolled up. But I’m pretty sure it’s her.”
“Maybe we wait awhile till everyone’s good and drunk or drugged,” I said.
“You never know when a new group comes in,” Herman said. “The girls down there, they don’t get much rest. Truth is, they keep ’em so hyped on pills, they lose a lot of ’em. They keep ’em fired up because the traffic is constant. But one of ’em keels over, there’s plenty of sand to put them under out there, and there’s always a new one to bring in.”
“I don’t need to hear any more,” Brett said.
“I take the front,” I said. “Leonard, you take the back. I assume there’s a back door?”
“Yeah, but the hot action is up front,” Leonard said. “You and me ought to go in together. It’ll take both of us. We maybe can surprise them and take Tillie out without having to get too active. In the meantime, Herman has to put one of the vehicles out of whack, and hot-wire the other. Unless you can do that, Brett.”
Brett shook her head.
“Then you got to go in the back, Brett,” Leonard said. “You got to go in there meaner than a junkyard dog with a hot poker up its ass. What you see that ain’t Tillie, ain’t one of the working girls, you may have to shoot.”
“And you have to watch the working girls,” Herman said. “They have odd loyalties sometimes.”
“You got to grab Tillie if you see her and take her out whichever way is out,” Leonard said. “You got to try and grab the ride Herman’s wiring. And Herman, you got to protect that ride and cover our asses when we come out.”
“Done,” Herman said. “I’ll go down now. When I wave, one jeep’s dead and the other is hot-wired. Get the woman, and we’re out of here.”
“When Herman waves,” I said, “you go first, Brett. Go wide and around back. You don’t enter. You don’t do shit until you hear us up front. When we let loose, you count to three. Slowly. Then you go in the back. If it’s locked, blow off the lock and kick your way in. Remember, when you crank down on that baby the first shot will cover half the room. The second, the slug, will knock a hole in someone about the size of your fist.”
Leonard gave Herman his lock-blade knife.
“Luck to us all,” Herman said, and he went over the rise and down.
25
Herman made it, poked a knife in the tire. We could hear the air go out of it all the way up the hill. But no one came out of the house. The music was loud and no one was on guard. It wasn’t a place they thought they had to be on guard.
Herman cut the rest of the tires. We could hear the air from them as well. Herman waved at us. Brett took a deep breath. I said, “Remember, it gets down to brass tacks, hon, you cover your ass.”
“I will,” she said, and kissed me.
“Go wide,” Leonard said. “No hurry. Take it easy. We’ll watch till you get behind the house before we make a move. Find some place to lay down back there and wait for our noise. When you hear it, let it be a starting gun. Don’t think about it. You come through that back door like you’re ten feet tall and bulletproof.”
“I think I can do this,” Brett said.
“You can’t,” I said, “just hold your position out there somewhere. We’ll do what we can.”
“I can do it,” Brett said. She turned and ran wide along the low ridge, went over it stooping, making a wide circle toward the back of the house.
Leonard rolled over on his back and stuck out his hand and I shook it. He said, “Good luck, brother.”
“Ditto,” I said.
“When this is over, Hap, what you say we make something of our lives?”
“I’d like that.”
“I mean it this time.”
“I mean it every time.”
“But it don’t change.”
“I mean for it to.”
“We got to do more than mean it this time. It’s got to happen.”
“Maybe I don’t know how to change.”
“We’re going to learn how. Got me?”
I saw that Brett had gone wide and was now behind the house. Herman was out of sight. Most likely in the jeep. I said, “Watch your ass, Leonard.”
“You too,” he said, and grinned at me. The moonlight made his teeth seem magnificently white, as if they were lit by blacklight. I gave him a pat on the arm and we eased over the rise on our bellies, made a Y. Me to the left, Leonard to the right. We were about thirty feet apart, crawling toward the thick clusters of brush in front of the house. It was slow go and hard on the body, especially since I was toting a few more pounds than I needed. The air seemed clean and sharp as a knife inside my lungs. My mouth was dry. My body seemed disconnected from my mind. As if I were standing up on the hill watching myself ease down toward the house. I tried not to think beyond the moment. The moment was all that mattered now. I had to be alert. I had to be ready.
Quit thinking about the moment, goddammit, about being ready. Just be ready. Keep crawling. An inch at a time. Eyes open, ears alert. Reach down inside yourself and find that primal part of yourself. The old reptilian brain. The part of the mind that is nothing more than motor response; the part that’s pure survival. Don’t think, just do.
The brush was sharp with thorns and bristles and it tore at my light jacket. I slipped out of the jacket, took the Winchester shells from it, and put them in my right back pocket. I took the pistol out of the jacket and slipped it in my left back pocket. I crawled on.
A sidewinder rattlesnake slithered in front of me and went into the brush. It was all I could do not to leap up and start running. All I could do not to open fire on it.
I thought, you’re going to run like hell from a snake, but you think you’re going to kick open the front door of a house full of bad-asses and go in there shooting?
Reptilian brain, my ass.
You are one crazy sonofabitch, Hap Collins.
Finally I bellied within twenty feet of the cabin. Around the door the vegetation was cleared. I could smell food coming from under the crack of the door. Steak maybe. My stomach rolled over. It was loud and rambunctious in there. They were playing ZZ Top’s “Legs.” Just a bunch of guys having a party. Drinking and doping and dancing and banging whores. Who was I to interrupt them? I didn’t make Tillie a whore. I didn’t ask her to run with the wrong crowd. I didn’t even know her.
I turned my head. I couldn’t see Leonard, just brush. After a moment he raised his hand above the brush. We both rose and darted toward the door. I stopped on the left side of the entryway, Leonard on the right. He looked at me. I took a deep breath and nodded.
Leonard turned the knob, swung the door open, stepped in and I went in behind him. He fanned right, I fanned left. At a glance I saw eight men. One of them, a black man, was lying on the floor in a pool of blood. Another black man was sitting in a chair beside him holding the dead man’s head, saying over and over, “That nigger’s dead. I killed that nigger.”
As everyone turned to look at us, the black man kept repeating himself. “That nigger’s dead. I killed that nigger.” Apparently he and his buddy had had an altercation, and now his buddy was gradually assuming room temperature. No one else seemed in the least bothered by this.
There were two women in the room, and one of them, a pretty black girl, naked except for a T-shirt that almost covered her breasts and none of her bottom, wobbled over to the wall, stepped in the dead man’s blood and sat her naked ass in it. “Wow,” she said. The other woman, whose hair was so bleached it looked like cotton candy, was completely naked and being held up by a man so small his head was just under her left breast. As she wobbled, his greasy hair kept lifting it as if it might be trying to wave.