“But he doesn’t know you on sight, does he?” Price said.
“I guess not,” Virgil said.
“I got to figure how I want it to play out,” Price said, “but basically, the whole thing’s simple. We make some arrangements, and we kill Fat Boy and Snake.”
“Shit,” Virgil said. “I don’t know. I got to think this over a little.”
“What about the two cops?” I asked.
“We kill them, too,” Price said, then turned to Doc. “You tell Fat Boy you want everybody you’ve met at the mill to be there, because you want this friend of yours to know there’s cops involved, so he’ll feel safe from the law.”
“And if he won’t do that?” Doc said.
“You insist,” Price said. “Be polite, but firm. Tell Fat Boy this guy wants to spill some big jack for some pleasure, but you’ve told him cops are involved, and he wants to see them to know for sure he’s got support in the law enforcement arena. Say he wants to see some badges or something. Say he knows a couple other guys interested in this sort of thing and they got big money. Say what you got to say.”
“What if Fat Boy snookered me?” Doc said. “What if those two guys don’t work for the cops?”
“They do,” Price said.
“I thought you said those descriptions could fit anybody,” Doc said.
“They could,” Price said. “But so happens they fit a couple cops I know, and they work with Fat Boy on lots of things. They been bucking for detective, and a lot of their collars have been gotten with his help. They’re the ones answered the call over at your nephew’s place that night, Small. I had to think on it a while before I said anything, but I’m saying it now. It’s Frank Harper and Buck Minton. It fits. There’s been dirt floating around their heads ever since I been Chief.”
“But,” I said, “since the dirt was connected to your dirt and Fat Boy, you didn’t push too hard, did you?”
“I watch for me first,” Price said, “then everyone else gets a turn if there’s room left over.”
31
We were tooling back to the lake in Price’s car. I said, “You promised him immunity if he’d talk. I don’t get it. He had his wife murdered. He’s got all that kiddie porn. How can you do that?”
“Sometimes you let the little fish swim through the trap so you can get the big fish,” Price said. “And sometimes the little fish get trapped anyway. Just leave it to me, Small.”
He drove us to Arnold’s cabin and we all got out and leaned against his car. Price said, “Where are y’all really staying?”
“We have a little place at the bottom of the lake under a plastic dome,” Virgil said.
“Whatever,” Price said. “I’ll keep the pressure on the Doc and have the particulars unfolded by noon tomorrow. I’ll meet you here, say a little after one and lay it out.”
Price got in his car and drove away. Virgil and I motored across the lake toward the drug dealer’s place. The lake lapped and hissed and the moonlight came out thin and silver and flowed over its surface like something radioactive.
Part Four
Waltz of Shadows
32
Next morning I was up early because I hadn’t slept that much to begin with. I kept envisioning that little boy Doc had talked about, going down naked in a lonely grave full of dirt and sawdust, his parents home wondering and hoping, and the child’s only crime being he was young and vulnerable. In other words, no crime at all. I tried not to think about what he might have gone through at the hands of Snake and Fat Boy. I tried not think about how many others like him were resting nearby. I wondered how grown men could do such things and see it as nothing more than commerce. Had there always been lots of people like that, or were they growing up through the cracks of our society like weeds? Had we in these last few years failed to weed our good crops properly, and had the weeds become so rampant they were beyond control? Had we worked so hard to be organic and live with the weeds, we had allowed them to take over, choking out the good stock, and blighting whatever remained?
Jesus. That poor little boy had been about Sammy’s age.
I slid my arm from beneath Bev without waking her, got up and pulled on my pants and shirt and slipped out into the hallway in my bare feet and went down to the room where JoAnn and Sammy were sleeping. It was a big room with two beds and pink wallpaper that took in the sun through the open Venetian blinds and threw vibrating slats of pink over the room and the sleeping shapes of my children.
I went to JoAnn’s bed and gently brushed her hair back from her face and looked at her long and hard, soaking in all her features. Fred Bear had slipped from her arms and fallen off the bed onto the floor. I picked him up by his singed leg and tucked him into the crook of her arm.
I went over to Sammy’s bed. He was uncovered and he’d rolled over to a dry spot, because he’d wet the bed. I pulled the covers over his shoulders and he stirred and lay still.
“I love you,” I said softly to both of them, and left the room.
Back in our room, I got the. 38 off the nightstand and put it under my shirt and looked at Bev. Her back was to me and the sun was coming through a slit in the curtains. Her bare shoulder was lightly freckled, and the light made the freckles the color of strawberries, and I knew those freckles as well as I knew my own face. I loved them and had put my mouth to them and ran my hands over them so many times I could read them like braille.
I guess she felt my eyes. She stirred, rolled over and looked at me. “You’ve got tears,” she said. Her voice was sleepy and sexy and exasperated all at once.
“I’m just tired,” I said.
“Hold me.”
I took the. 38 out and put it back on the nightstand and slid under the covers and held her.
“Will you do it?” she asked. “Will you take care of Snake and Fat Boy?”
“Yeah. With some help.”
“You don’t have to.”
“Yes I do.”
“I’m scared.”
“Me too.”
“Hank… I’ve got to stay.”
“ I know, and it’s okay.”
“You knew all along I wouldn’t do it. They were in the room there, I could just walk in and do it. But not like this. I can’t leave the kids alone. Anything could happen.”
“And you know it’s my job.”
“I don’t know any such thing. Women can do what men do.”
“Yeah, but they don’t have to. Be honest. You could go and do it, but who do you think would be best at stalking and killing a man?”
“That sounds so immature. Why would I want to argue who’d be best at killing someone?”
“Because you want those sonofabitches dead just like I do.”
“Oh hell, Hank. I hate it when you’re right. I really do. This is the first time, mind you, but I hate it just the same.”
· · ·
We didn’t do much of anything that morning, and by lunch my stomach was so nervous the sandwich I ate turned immediately to acid. I found some antacids in a bathroom medicine chest, ate them like after dinner mints.
Right at one o’clock, me and Virgil and Arnold took the boat across the lake to Arnold’s cabin. The lake was choppy, and so was the sky. Choppy and gray as the back of a wet dog tick. Sky like that could have indicated anything from passing cloud cover to rain to hail or an incoming tornado. Not only had my life turned into anarchy, so had the weather.
Nothing was as it should be. Everything was a facade concealing instant chaos. A few days ago my life had seemed orderly. I had even reconciled with my brother. Now, here I was, in the soup, and I had pulled my brother in after me. My nephew had been murdered. I was being presented by the police and the news media, along with my family, as a child pornographer, a Satanist, a murderer, and an arsonist. My home was gone. My business was fucked. My wife was emotionally damaged. I wasn’t so good myself. My dog was dead and my kids had been frightened, and I was hanging out in a drug dealer’s house. I was dealing with a scummy cop who didn’t want his name soiled and a plastic surgeon who liked to look at dead, naked children and thought he was okay because he wasn’t fucking or killing anybody. I knew a dog named Poot, and my Andrew Vachss book had burned up before I finished it. The only thing I didn’t have were unsightly moles.