Bliss almost smiled in admiration. Such patience, he thought, such guile. You clever, clever boy.
And then Bliss felt force and heat as the bullets entered his body, spinning him where he stood and sending him tumbling down the slope. The rain had stopped for a time, and the sky above him was a shard of clear blue as he died.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
ANGEL NEEDED A MOMENT to take in what had happened. Once he had done so, his rage was no longer self-induced, and found an appropriate target in Louis.
“You asshole!” he shouted, once it was clear that his partner, lover, and now object of his ire was not dead. “You piece of shit.” He kicked him hard in the ribs.
“I got shot!” said Louis. He pointed to a damp patch on his right arm where the bullet had grazed him, and the hole in his coat.
“Not shot enough. That’s a scratch.”
Angel’s boot was poised for another kick, but Louis was already scrambling awkwardly to his feet.
“Why didn’t you say something when I called to you?”
“Because I didn’t know where Bliss was. If he heard me speak, or saw you react to something I said, he’d go for the long shot. I needed him to get close.”
“You could have whispered! What the hell is wrong with you? I thought you were dead.”
“Well, I’m not.”
“Well, you should be.”
“You could look pleased about the fact that I’m still alive. I. Got. Shot.”
“The hell with you.”
Angel looked over Louis’s shoulder and saw the Detective and Willie Brew standing on the top of the small hill, staring down at them. His brow furrowed. Louis turned. His brow did exactly the same.
“You two on vacation?” asked Angel.
“We came looking for you,” said the Detective.
“Why?”
“Willie thought you might be in trouble.”
“What gave you that idea?”
“You know, barns blowing up, that kind of thing.”
“I got shot,” said Louis.
“I heard.”
“Yeah, well nobody seems too bothered by it.”
“Except you.”
“With reason, man. You two come alone?”
The Detective shifted awkwardly on his feet as he answered. “Not entirely.”
“Aw no,” said Angel, realization dawning. “You didn’t bring them along.”
“There was nobody else. I couldn’t pick and choose.”
“Jesus. Where are they?”
The Detective gestured vaguely. “Somewhere out there. They took the road. We came on foot.”
“Maybe they’ll get lost,” said Angel. “Permanently.”
“They came here because of you two. They worship you.”
“They’re psychotic.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.” The Detective gestured at Bliss. “By the way, who was he?”
“His name was Bliss,” said Louis. “He was a killer.”
“Hired to kill you?”
“Looks like it. Think he might have taken the job for free anyway.”
“Didn’t work out so good for him.”
“He was supposed to be the best, back in the day. Everybody thought he’d retired.”
“I guess he should have stayed in Florida.”
“Guess so.”
They heard the sound of a vehicle to the east. Seconds later, the Fulcis’ monster truck appeared over one of the rises, heading in their direction. Some of Angel’s anger had begun to dissipate, and he had deigned to examine Louis’s wound.
“You’ll live,” said Angel.
“You could sound pleased.”
“Asshole,” said Angel again.
The truck pulled up nearby, churning mud and grass as it did so, and the Fulcis emerged, followed closely by Jackie Garner. They looked at Bliss, then looked at Louis.
“Who was he?” asked Paulie.
“A killer,” said the Detective.
“Uh-huh. Wow,” said Paulie. He glanced shyly at Louis, but it was Tony who spoke first.
“You okay, sir?” he asked.
Willie saw the Detective trying to hide his amusement. There probably weren’t a whole lot of people that the Fulcis called “sir.” It made Tony sound like he was about nine years old.
“Yeah. I just got shot.”
“Wow,” he said, echoing his brother. Both of the Fulcis seemed awestruck.
“What now?” asked the Detective.
“We finish what we came here to do,” said Louis. “You don’t have to come if it doesn’t sit easy with you,” he added.
“I came this far. I’d hate to leave before the climax.”
“What about us?” asked Tony.
“The two roads converge about a half mile from Leehagen’s house,” said Louis. “You stay there with Jackie and hold them, in case company comes.”
The Detective walked over to where Willie was standing uncertainly. “You can stay with them or come with us, Willie,” he said, and Willie thought that he saw sympathy in the Detective’s eyes, but it was lost on him. Willie looked to the Fulcis and Jackie Garner. Jackie had taken some short cylinders from his rucksack and was trying to explain the difference between them to the Fulcis.
“This is smoke,” he said, holding up a tube wrapped at either end with green tape. “It’s green. And this one explodes,” he said, holding up one wrapped in red tape. “This one is red.”
Tony Fulci looked hard at both of the tubes. “That one’s green,” he said, pointing at the gas. “The other one is red.”
“No,” said Jackie, “you got it wrong.”
“I don’t. That one’s red, and that one’s green. Tell him, Paulie.”
Paulie joined them. “No, Jackie’s right. Green and red.”
“Jesus, Tony,” said Jackie. “You’re color-blind. Did no one ever tell you?”
Tony shrugged. “I just figured lots of people liked red food.”
“That’s not normal,” said Jackie, “although I guess it explains why you were always running red lights.”
“Well, it don’t matter now. So the green one is really red, and the red one is green?” said Tony.
“That’s right,” said Jackie.
“Which one explodes again?”
Reluctantly, Willie turned back to the Detective.
“I’ll go with you,” he said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
THEY APPROACHED LEEHAGEN’S HOUSE by the same route they had taken earlier that day, passing through the cattle pens. The car was still in the barn, the bodies of the Endalls still on the floor. The pens gave them more cover than they would have enjoyed had they approached by road although, as Angel pointed out, it also offered others more places in which to hide, yet they reached the rise overlooking the property without incident. Once again, Leehagen’s house lay below them. It seemed almost to give off a sense of apprehension, as if it were waiting for the violent reprisal that must inevitably come the way of those inside. There was no sign of life: no shapes moving, no twitching of drapes, only stillness and wariness.
Angel lay on the grass as Louis scanned every inch of the property.
“Nothing,” he said. His wound, although little more than a graze, was aching. The Fulcis had offered him some mild sedatives from their mobile drugstore, but the pain wasn’t bad enough to justify dulling his senses before the task was complete.
“Lot of open ground between us and them,” said Angel. “They’ll see us coming.”
“Let them,” said Louis.
“Easy for you to say. You’ve already been shot once today.”
“Uh-huh: a shot from an expert marksman at a moving target over open ground, and he still didn’t make the kill. You think whoever’s in there is going to do any better? This isn’t a western. People are hard to hit unless they’re up close.”
Behind them knelt the Detective, and farther back was Willie Brew. He had said little since the killing at the ruined barn, and his eyes appeared to be looking inward, at something that only he could see, instead of out at the world through which he was moving. The Detective knew that Willie was in shock. Unlike Louis, he understood what Willie was going through. Deaths stayed with the Detective, and he knew that, in taking a life, you took on the burden of the victim’s grief and pain. That was the price you paid, but nobody had explained that to Willie Brew. Now he would keep paying it until the day he died.