Half an hour later they saw a figure emerge from beneath the freight car, coming up from a position on all fours. Slender young man. Black. Wearing a heavy sweater. Carrying a flashlight.
"His name's Daryl Shimmer. He looks after the kid."
"Who looks after him?"
Daryl came toward the car, looking around him every few steps. Ten feet away he put his left hand under the sweater and lifted a small gun out of his belt. He approached the driver's side.
"Shit," Talerico said wearily.
Daryl had the gun in Kidder's face. A.25 caliber automatic. Talerico could read the imprint _Hartford Ct. U.S.A._ above Daryl's long dusty thumb extended along the barrel.
"I know you people looking for some motion picture. We don't know where it's at. Now Richie there, it's all he can do to piss inside the bowl, the way you people keep pressuring. We're saying get back. We don't know the whereabouts. We don't want to know. We're walking away. It's all over, we're saying. You locate the motion picture, more power to you. Don't even tell us about it."
"Listen, hard-on," Kidder said.
Daryl bit his lower lip.
"Get that thing out of my face. That's in bad taste, a pointed gun. That's ugly."
"Who you talking?"
"Scumbag."
"I fucking shoot."
"Anything I hate, man, it's being pointed at."
Overlapping dialogue. Volume increasing all the time.
"You ought to put some meat on your bones," Talerico said quietly. "You're awful thin. I hate to see that."
"Shut up all around."
"You ought to eat more of that soul food."
"Get that gun," Kidder said. "If you don't get that gun. Point it out of here."
"Who you talking?"
"Dipshit. You hard-on."
Daryl had the gun right in Kidder's cheek and he was biting his lower lip again. Kidder was screaming at him, coming up with names Talerico hadn't heard in years.
"You ought to spend more time with people," Talerico said softly. "You're alone too much. I don't like to see that. It's unhealthy. Look at you. You don't know how to behave around people. You ought to get out more. And you ought to eat more. You ought to put some meat on those bones."
Another figure appeared. This one at the side of the freight car. He came walking toward the Camaro. Daryl, keeping the gun in Kidder's face, directed the flashlight into the car.
"They're ready to listen, Richie."
"I heard that yelling. We don't need that here. Yelling."
"This trouble's yours," Kidder said. "This is yours."
"I came out to show we don't have anything to hide. I came out in good faith. I don't know anything about the item you want. You keep putting pressure. It's aggravating."
"The pressure's in your head," Talerico said.
"I didn't even bring the dogs, to show good faith. To make an appearance. I thought this would lessen the mystery. You wouldn't want to get in there so much if you saw me, if you saw there's nothing special and that I don't have the item."
"He wants his Bugs Bunny teeth kicked in," Talerico explained to Kidder.
"This is yours," Kidder kept shouting. "I'm looking at you right here."
Richie was wearing an oversized peacoat. His hands were stuffed into the deep pockets. He nodded in Talerico's direction. A gesture meant for Daryl-shine the light on the other one.
Talerico turned the right side of his face toward the light. The dead side. The side with the chilled meat. His fierce eye stared blankly.
"I'm not even here," Kidder was shouting. "The whole thing's over."
"He wants to eat this gun," Daryl said.
"You stupid bastards. You cuntlaps. You don't know where you're standing."
Talerico had heard this kind of dislocated shouting before. It reminded him of his cousin Paul. When Paul faced trouble, he got meaner, he got deadly. And sometimes he shouted things that connected to the situation only in the loosest of ways, if at all. Talerico had seen his cousin terrorize people- cops more than once, men with guns-simply by displaying rage that bordered on the irrational. He was obviously possessed. Too real to deal with. Once they see you don't mind dying, they're in serious trouble and know it.
All in all, Talerico was impressed by this aspect of Kidder. Kidder was tough. He didn't take shit. He screamed and ranted. The closer he got to dying, the more he seemed to control the situation. The more he intimidated the opposition.
It wasn't bluff, either. That was clear. It was genuine outrage and meanness and fury. Kidder was definitely impressing him. He didn't think a man that exhausted could summon such insanity.
"I want to make like a statement here," Talerico said.
"I feel we welcome that," Richie said. "Whatever we can exchange in the way of views, that means it's looking up."
"You died five minutes ago. You've been dead five full minutes. You're so dead I can smell you. That's my statement."
"I don't want to know who he is," Richie told his bodyguard.
"Look at the eye," Talerico said.
"If you know who he is," Richie said, "don't tell me."
He turned and headed toward the warehouse, slipping around the freight car and out of sight.
"Eat and run," Kidder screamed.
"You're going, aren't you?" Daryl said.
"I'm looking right at them."
"You're going. You want to go."
"They don't know the words. They're someplace else completely."
Daryl bit his lower lip. He squeezed the trigger and Talerico jumped into the door and bounced back and then found the handle and had the door open. He walked quickly, head down, his ears belling electrically. He went past the warehouse and then made a left. There were banks, shops, hotels. Very little traffic. No cabs in sight. He'd have to call for a cab.
He made a right and saw the Southland Hotel. It was roughly ten p.m. Very dead here in the urban core. He'd get a cab to take him to the airport. First plane out. New York, Chicago, Toronto. His overnight bag was in the back seat of Kidder's car. He went over the contents mentally. Nothing there that might be traced to him. Not even a monogrammed shirt.
A cab pulled up at the hotel as Talerico approached.
Sooner or later, in this line of work, in acquisitions, you were bound to find yourself in a stress situation, especially if your business took you to a part of the U.S. where everybody owns a gun of one kind or another, for one purpose or another.
Cowboys.
Earl Mudger stood outside Lien's, a Vietnamese restaurant located above the Riverwalk in San Antonio. He'd stopped off here, instead of flying directly to Dallas, in order to have dinner with an old war buddy, George Barber, who was now attached to the Air Force Security Service, stationed at Kelly.
He was glad he'd thought of it. They'd enjoyed themselves in all the time-honored ways. Affection, sentiment, vague regret. He was waiting for George to get his car from a nearby lot and take him to the airport for the short flight to Dallas.
George had filled Mudger in on the latest hardware. It was a complex sensation, hearing that specialized language again, studded as it was with fresh terms. It reminded Mudger of Vietnam, of course. The brand names. The comfort men found in the argot of weaponry.
It also reminded him of the surreal conversation he'd had, long distance with Van, just before he'd left home to come down here. With Tran Le on the extension, translating when necessary, Mudger had listened to Van explain that he wanted to approach the subject by air. They'd traced the subject to an old encampment somewhere between U.S. 385 and the Rio Grande where it loops north above Stillman. It wasn't enough for Van to say he wanted a helicopter. He tried to specify type, size, trade name, model number and technical characteristics.
All this nomenclature, which wasn't even English to begin with, eventually defeated Van, who said he'd settle for whatever Mudger could come up with. Thanks largely to George Barber's efforts, Mudger came up with a two-man patrol helicopter, a Hughes 200, one of the types used by U.S. customs agents to keep up with border smuggling. As an afterthought, Mudger asked George if a stretcher pannier could be fitted externally to this type of aircraft. It could.