"So. What do you think, Kidd?" she asked. "Is this better or worse than dealing with the feds?"
"Better. Much better," I said. "The problem with the federal people is that once a decision is made, it becomes part of the bureaucracy. Nobody beats a bureaucracy. If they seriously want to get you, they'll do it. If it was the feds, our best bet would be to run. Brazil, or someplace like that. But if we're dealing with a company, especially a one-man gang like Anshiser's, we might be able to develop some leverage."
She considered it for a moment, and nodded.
"Something else," she said, her face cold and intense. "When I thought it was federal people, I couldn't figure out what to do about Dace. I mean, federal people are like cops. But these guys are just hoods.
"We can get back at them for Dace," she said. She reached out and gripped my wrist so hard that the nails bit through my skin. "I want them dead. Like Dace."
CHAPTER 17
Drexel the gun salesman wasn't surprised to see us back. He seemed pleased. "Trading up? Or adding to?" he asked as he opened the door.
"Adding to," I said. "I need an M16."
"What range will you be shooting at?" We followed him through the living room and down the basement stairs. There was no sign of his wife or daughter.
"I don't know. It could be fairly long."
"Ah, you are in luck," he said happily. He opened the gun cabinet. "I've just been out to our farm. I happen to have on hand a scope-sighted weapon. An M16/A2, to be precise. I sighted it only three days ago. The mount is quite sturdy."
He stroked the weapon a few rimes, gazing at it fondly as if it were a female friend, and handed it to me. It was dead black, and long, and cold, and heavy. "Much like the one you probably used in the service," he said.
"Yeah." I looked through the scope at a dart board at the end of the basement. I could see the dart holes.
"There are some differences," he said, "though you don't need to worry about them. The main thing is that you'll be shooting a heavier slug, the sixty-eight-grain Hornady hollow-point. They'll give you excellent accuracy. It's dead-on at a hundred and fifty yards. The weapon does have a tendency to ride up on full auto. If you're shooting that way, at a significantly closer range, you could drop down to a pelvic hold and allow it to ride up. That should cover all the bases."
Or all the people I intended to kill.
I bought three banana clips and four cartons of shells. He threw in a long cardboard box that said "curtain rods" on the side.
"Minimal camouflage, should you be stopped for something," he said, sliding the weapon into the box. "Be careful not to jar that scope. It would be best to brace the box in the trunk so it won't rattle around. If you have a little leisure time before you deploy, you might find a quiet place and check it. Just in case."
"Better safe than sorry," said LuEllen.
"A stitch in time saves nine," Drexel shot back.
I gave him another twenty-five hundred for everything. As we were going out the door he asked if we'd had a chance to shoot the other weapons.
"No, we haven't," LuEllen said.
"I'd like to hear how they perform, if you have a chance," he said pleasantly. "I do have a fifty-percent buy-back policy for all weapons in new or near-new condition, after you are finished with them. Lesser amounts if there is damage."
"Thanks. We'll keep it in mind," I said.
"That guy is a lizard," LuEllen said as we drove away. "He's like a cross between Beaver Cleaver's dad and Alfred Krupp."
I nearly drove the car over a curb.
"Alfred Krupp?"
"I read books," she said defensively. "You act like I'm a fuckin' dummy."
Dace had taken LuEllen to his cabin in West Virginia only once, and it was before Maggie showed up. LuEllen didn't remember mentioning it to her.
The cabin, LuEllen said, sat over a pool on a small stream that allegedly harbored a trout or two, though Dace admitted he'd never seen one. The nearest cabin was half a mile downstream. There was nothing at all above him.
"He liked it because it was remote," LuEllen said. "The land is no good for farming, the timber is all bad second growth. The only thing up there are a few cabins along the stream. Dace said you can't even get in or out if it snows. He came up here once in the winter and almost froze his ass off before he could get out."
The road, she said, wasn't on any map. I wasn't so sure. We stopped at the county courthouse and bought a large-scale county map.
"You were right," said LuEllen, after we unrolled it on the hood of the car. "This is it." She traced a narrow track along Greyling Creek. It ran through the lower reaches of the mountains between two all-weather gravel roads.
"It's a good thing to know. Dillon will find this thing. If I give Maggie directions, the shooters will come in the other way. Count on it."
The road to Dace's cabin ran parallel to the creek, which lay off to the right. To the left was a partly wooded ridge that rose two hundred feet to the ridgeline. We followed a single strand of overhead electric wire along the road, past a half dozen cabins and two broken-down barns. The wire ended at Dace's place. The cabin was high on the bank, thirty feet above the stream.
Like the other cabins along the creek, Dace's was small and primitive, built from four-by-four timber and rough siding. The roof was covered with green tar shingles. A one-holer outhouse sat on the upstream side of the cabin, surrounded by a screen of pines, with a new moon cut in the door. Nearby, a strand of plastic-covered rope, tied between two trees, served as a clothesline.
"Dace said they get terrific floods through here every few years," LuEllen said, as we pulled onto the dirt patch that served as a parking place. "They cut down most of the trees upstream, and there's nothing to soak up the water."
I got out and looked around. The weather had broken, and though it was cool now, the day was a pretty one. Dace had thinned the trees between the house and the creek, and there was a pleasant view down to the water. In Minnesota and Wisconsin, the fishing would be prime, the muskies carrying late-season weight. I needed some time on the water.
As I walked around the yard, LuEllen tramped through the falling leaves to an herb garden beside the porch. She turned over a rock, took a bottle out of the ground, unscrewed the cap, and dumped a key out.
"His emergency key," she said.
The cabin was as simple inside as it was out. There was a two-burner electric range, a wood stove for heat, a table, a few chairs, a couch, a stack of old magazines, and two beds and a bureau behind a partition. I unloaded the luggage and we got comfortable.
We spent that day and the next walking the neighborhood. On the hill above the road, there were large areas of grassy hillside that at one time might have been pasturage. There were no animals to be seen. The grass was broken by patches of wild raspberries and clumps of ragged, second-growth timber. The strip below the road, along the creek, was heavily wooded.
We found an acceptable ambush site two hundred yards downstream from the cabin and an excellent one seventy yards above it. The site above the cabin was better. And that's where I expected to see them.
"I want to talk to Maggie."
There was a long pause. "She's here," Dillon said. "It'll be a minute." He put me on hold. A long minute later, Maggie came on.
"Why did you do it?" I asked. My voice grated out, angry and cold. I wasn't pretending.
"I didn't," she said urgently. "I knew you'd think so. But it was Rudy. He was so frightened of what we did to Whitemark and what could be done to us, that he panicked. He's sick. He's in the hospital, and he may not get back out. They're not sure, but they think now it's a brain tumor. But believe me, I had nothing to do with it. Dillon didn't either."