There it was: brown bottles in a row, in a locked cabinet. He yanked the door open and a little piece of lock broke off. Some lock. Jack Daniel’s Old No. 7, Tennessee drinking whiskey. Couldn’t do better than that. He unscrewed the cap, took a swallow. Goddamn. Like wet smoke. Burns all the way down, your eyes tighten like fists and little tears come to them. Only way the world would ever get tears out of Lamar Pye. He took another quick swallow, then put back the bottle. Best not to let Odell know. Sober, Odell could be hard enough to handle. Drunk he could be death, and impossible. If Billy Cop came a-knocking, it wouldn’t do any good to let Odell be drunk, because Lord knew that goddamned Richard boy would be no good in a fight with the law.
He wandered into the room with the television. The news was on. Some trashy-looking woman with an armful of babies was blubbering while two or three pretty girl reporters stood around and watched her melt down. She was blubbering about her poor husband Willard and what a good man he was. Lamar realized that was the wife of his Willard in the truck.
Goddamn, Willard, he thought. You sure married yourself an ugly woman. But he sort of wished he’d fucked her, ugly or not. He wanted to fuck something, that was for sure. Maybe he’d fuck the old man later.
Next his own picture came on, and somebody was talking about him, saying the authorities considered the escapees to be “armed and extremely dangerous.” Wasn’t that a mouthful?
The picture was the lineup shot from nine years ago when he had been picked up by OK City homicide after he and Odell had tapped Nicky Pusateri for the Pagans. Damnedest thing. You just could never tell. Shot that little prick square in the back of the head. Seen him go down, seen the blood squirt like tomato. Shot him again in the back and wrapped him in canvas and drove him twenty miles out and dumped him. And he was alive after all that?
He was, yes, and the dicks had come for Lamar, finding him stoned on amphetamines and living with a woman named Sally Two-Shoes, an Indian gal and sometime hooker who once in awhile would work a convenience store job with him and, though nobody ever found out about it, had killed her own father by drowning him in the toilet when he was drunk. He’d been making her blow him from the time she was ten on until she finally killed him, age fourteen. Anyway, they’d dragged Lamar into downtown OK City, some fancy building, and taken his pictures; he remembered one of the dicks smelled of garlic. Lamar looked at the picture again in the second before it vanished; he was wearing a golf shirt, the only one he’d ever had, with a little alligator on the pocket. Made him look like a pussy. Why’d he ever bought that shirt? His nose was squashed and his eyes dull and unfocused because he’d been sliding off the uppers; his lower lip hung open because his face was so relaxed on the drug downslope. His hair was long, though pulled tight behind him. He looked stupid. It had been his last instant of freedom.
Then some anchorwoman came on. She was pretty, like the farmer’s daughters and the girl reporters with Willard’s wife, maybe prettier. He wondered how it would be to fuck her, too. She was talking in a low, urgent voice about how dangerous these men were and how they should be avoided at all costs until the authorities finally caught up to them. She talked about the terrible obscenity tattooed on Lamar’s knuckles, and she talked about how three men were already dead. Her face got all long and somber.
It somewhat tickled Lamar, the edge of breathy fear in her voice. He liked that a lot. He knew he scared square people. They looked into his eyes and they just saw pain and horror. That is, if they looked into his eyes, and they seldom did, or seldom had, even back in the world. You tattoo a F U C K and a Y O U! on your knuckles, tends to chill the straights out.
“Lamar?”
It was Richard.
“Yeah?”
“We got ’em. It was a vault. The old lady gave us the combination.”
“What happened to the old man?”
“He isn’t breathing too well.”
“He should have made it easy on hisself. Saved us the trouble. See what it got him? Oh well, fuck him if he can’t take a joke.”
They walked on downstairs, then into the basement. A shelf holding jelly jars set in the wall folded out on hinges to reveal an open Tredlock gun vault that stood about four feet tall and whose shelves appeared to display all the handguns known to man.
“Fifty-six, thirty-three, oh-eight,” said Richard proudly. “I opened it myself.”
Out of deference to Lamar, not even Odell had dipped inside. Lamar reached in and touched handguns, many of them.
“Turn on the goddamned light,” he said.
The light came out.
Lamar examined the wares and at last discovered what it was he wanted. Yes, the man was a pistol shooter all right, and Lamar quickly seized what would be his prize. It was a .45 automatic with an extremely long slide and barrel, maybe eight inches. It had fancy sights mounted low to the slide. He looked to see that it was a Colt all right, but someone had added a new inscription under the Colt name that said CLARK CUSTOM GUNS, NEW IBERIA, LA.
“A bull’s-eye gun?” asked Lamar.
“Go to hell,” said the old man, crumpled on the floor, face swollen.
“I do believe I will, yes sir,” said Lamar, “but it is a bull’s-eye gun, ain’t it?”
“Bill was state pistol champ, standing bull, rapid fire, three years in a row back in the seventies,” said the woman.
“It’d be a treat to see him shoot one day,” said Lamar, “but that ain’t gonna happen.”
Then he reached inside the safe and came out with something else: It was a big Colt .357 Magnum revolver with a four-inch barrel called a Python. He handed it to Richard.
“Here,” he said. “You’re a man now.” Then he turned to the old lady.
“I bet you know how to cook real good. How’d you like to whomp up a real country breakfast? Eggs, bacon, juice, the works. I am hungry as hell and so are my friends, grandma.”
“Don’t help him a bit,” said the old man.
“You are going to kill us,” said the old lady.
“Yes ma’am, I probably will have to, not on account of not liking you but because that’s the way things is. But could we eat first?”
“I suppose so,” said the old woman.
“You’re a fool, Mary,” said the old man.
“Now Bill,” said Lamar, “Mary’s just trying to be a good neighbor.”
CHAPTER
6
I must be some kind of trash, Bud thought, amazed at the speed with which he raced through his betrayals. It was so easy. It grew to be a habit, second nature. He could call Jen and bluff his way through a desolate little communication, subconsciously calculated to stay uncommunicative because the less he talked the less likely he’d screw up. Then he’d call Holly, and be so sweet and kind and decent, just that simple, that fast. Made him sick. But he could not stop doing it.
He was in the pay phone outside Jim’s Diner in Ratliff City on Oklahoma 76, about halfway between Duncan and I-35 south to Dallas. Wasn’t much here: the diner, a Sunoco, a Laundromat, and a convenience store. The diner was known for chili, but it was too early for chili: about ten in the morning, and they’d been on the road since six, part of a larger sweeping movement aimed at trying to intercept … intercept what? The inmates? Those boys hadn’t been seen or heard from since the discovery of the truck with the body in it thirty-six hours ago.
The phone rang twice, then Jen picked it up.
“Hi, how are you? Thanks for the uniforms.”
Jen, a slave always to her many jobs, had driven up to the Chickasha facility with five fresh uniforms in a plastic bag, plus underwear and socks, as Bud was running low off his first supply.
“Well,” she said, “that’s fine. We’re all right here. So how are you?” Her voice was so Jen: far away, distant, with an undercurrent of some distress but nothing you could put your finger on.
“Fine. You know, it’s beginning to get damn dreary, and nobody’s got no idea in hell where these boys are. They’re
going to call off the roadblocks and roving patrols sometime soon, maybe as soon as tomorrow. It’s pointless.”
“It’s terrible what they did to that poor vending service man,” Jen said.
“Yes, it is, isn’t it? They’re bad boys. How are the kids?”
“Russ got his college board scores. They were so high. We should be proud of him.”
“He takes after you. How’s Jeff doing?”
“Oh, he’s fine. He had a game last night, but it was close and he didn’t get in. But he was in a good mood afterward. The boys went out for pizza and he went along.”
“I should be there. This damn job. I’ll be there next year.”
“Oh, Bud?”
“What is it?” he said, glancing at his watch.
“Were you over near the Fort on Friday?”
Little signal of distress. Friday, yes. He’d been with Holly. In a motel room for a couple of hours. Place was called the Wigwam, a little down from the number four gate to Fort Sill, catering mainly to visiting military families. It was run by a retired city cop who let Bud have the room for free around midday.
Bud was surprised at how hard this hit him. He had never had any trouble before. He looked up and saw poor Ted sitting at the counter over an untouched plate of eggs and a half-gone Coke, talking to the waitress.
“No, no, can’t say that I was,” he lied, trying to force some innocence into his voice and feeling himself fail miserably.
“Marge Sawyer swears she saw you pulling out of some parking lot. She honked, and you didn’t see her. I only mention it because she wanted me to ask you if you knew that part of town, by the base, if you could recommend a good motel, something a little less expensive than the Holiday Inn, but in town, not at the airport. Her sister is—”
“No, Jen, wasn’t me,” he barked. “I don’t know nothing about that part of town,” he said, feeling the lies awkward in his mouth. “Look, I’ve got to get back on the road. Call you tonight if possible.”
“Sure.”
Bud hung up, feeling he had done badly and furious at himself for it; it was a bright morning, and he was surprised to find how hard he was breathing. Who the hell was Marge Sawyer? What had she seen? He’d been in uniform that day, too, so there could be no mistaking. Damn! It had been a foolish thing to do. Best to cut back for a while or something.…
He dropped another quarter and dialed the number. She picked up right away.
“Oh, Bud, it’s been so long since you called. You said you’d call last night.”
Now this always irritated Bud and in his present mood it struck a bad note. Sometimes just the managing of It got to be so damned troublesome that he needed a night off. There was always so much to remember: why he was late, what had happened, what route he’d taken home, all the things that go into running a deception. And sometimes it just wore him down.
“I couldn’t get any time away from Ted. They got us running all over the damn place. I’ve only got a second.”
“Well, how are you?” Holly wanted to know.
“Well, it’s a hell of a lot more boring than just patrolling, I’ll tell you that. But I think they’re going to pull back after a while. This road stuff ain’t panning out.”
“Bud, you sound so irritated.”
“I’m just tired, Holly.”
“I miss you.”
“Sweetie, I miss you too.”
“The day they break it off—will I see you?”
“Well, I’ll sure try,” he said, feeling vaguely trapped. “I don’t know if it’s possible. I already missed one of my son’s games and I want to get to the next one, in case he gets to play.”
“Okay,” she said in a tone that suggested it wasn’t.
“I do miss you.”
“I know you do.”
“Talk to you soon.”
He hung up, feeling sour as hell. Hadn’t he just promised her that on the first day off, he’d see her? Great. He’d be exhausted, and what would the situation be with Ted, wouldn’t he be off the same day? It was a mess. Sometimes Bud didn’t know what the hell he’d do.
So after indulging the sourness for a few seconds, he headed back into the diner and slid in next to Ted.
“How is she?” Ted asked.
“Fine. Just fine. You call Holly?”
“Oh, Holly’s okay, I suppose,” Ted said. “Well, I reckon we should shove, huh?”
Bud shot a look at his watch. Ten-fifteen, yeah, they were due back on the road, just in case. He didn’t like to be out of radio contact that long. Didn’t realize he’d been on the phone for close to ten minutes. He took a last sip of coffee—lukewarm—and stood to peel some money off for the food. Not strictly necessary, but Bud knew that if you started eating for free—it was so easy—people soon stopped respecting you. He left a single for the girl, also irked that Ted never bothered to pitch in, at least with a tip.
“Oh, Bud,” said Ted. “One thing. This girl here, she wanted to ask you something.”
Bud turned to the woman, a middle-aged waitress, with the name Ruth on the nameplate of her uniform; she was vaguely familiar from previous stops, but he’d never struck up a relationship with her as he had with a few of the girls in other towns.
“Yes, Ruth?”
“Well, Sergeant, it’s old Bill Stepford. He’s stopped off for coffee each morning for the past ten years, every morning, nine o’clock sharp. He didn’t show this morning. It sort of bothered me.”
“I told her it was something for the Murray County sheriff’s office,” Ted said.
“Well, they’re all out playing hero,” Ruth said. “Sam Nicks hasn’t set foot in this place since the jailbreak up at McAlester.”
“Did you think about calling this farmer?” Bud asked.
“Yes sir, I did. The line was busy. Called four times and the line was busy.”
“Maybe he’s talking to somebody.”
“Well, maybe he is. But I know Mr. Stepford and he is not the talking type.”
“What about his wife?” Ted asked.
“Well, she’s a mighty nice woman but she’s not the sort to spend half an hour on the line either.”
“Sounds like the phone is off the hook,” said Bud.
“Bill Stepford hasn’t missed coffee here in ten years. He came the last time we had heavy snow; drove his Wagoneer through the drifts. He likes our coffee.”
Bud considered.
“Where is it?”
“Seven miles down the road. Then left, on County Road Six Seventy-nine. A mile, you’ll see the mailbox. I’m afraid maybe he fell or something, can’t get to the phone. People shouldn’t live so isolated like that.”
“Well,” said Bud, “I’ll call Dispatch and see if anything’s going on they need us for. If not, maybe we’ll take a spin by.”
Lamar let Richard shower and sleep first, because Richard had driven while Lamar and Odell slept. So Richard sank into dreamless oblivion, a mercy. But when Lamar shook him awake at nine, he was still in the Stepfords’ upstairs bedroom, still an escaped convict, still in the company of murderers.
Richard pulled on a pair of Bill Stepford’s jeans and a blue workshirt and then settled in to do two things at once, under Lamar’s instructions. He was to sit in the upstairs bedroom and keep watch, just in case. And he was to draw lions.
“Ah, now, Lamar? With everything that’s going on?”
“Yes sir. I want it done, I want it perfect, so that when the time comes, we can move to the next step.”
What next step?
Anyway, he now sat doodling, the original much-studied sketch before him. It was beginning to fade into gibberish, just a random blotch of lines. He wondered what Lamar saw in it to begin with. He knew it was insufferably banal: a lion, a woman, some sort of crazed Aryan fantasy, something out of the Hyperborean age. It matched exactly Lamar’s arrested stage of development, but it had nothing to do with art; it was, rather, something out of that great unwashed fantasy life of the lumpen prole
tariat that expressed itself on the sides of vans or in comic books or boorish, bloody, boring movies. It was so coarse, untainted by subtlety or distinction.
Yet it had saved his life, he knew: It had in some way tamed Lamar’s rage and redirected it, made Lamar see there was more to life than predation. And the drawing itself: There was something wildly savage and free in it that Lamar himself had responded to but which Richard had since been unable to capture, whether he stuck with lions or moved on to tigers and eagles. When he thought about it, it went away; you just couldn’t do something like that offhandedly. It was a left-brain, right-brain thing. Lamar had understood and let Richard have a little bit of room on the issue. But now he was pressing him for results.
Fortunately, the farmer had a large selection of paper and pencils available. Working with a No. 2, Richard sat at the window, looking out dreamily, and tried to imagine some savage savannah where man and cat were the same creature, but woman was still woman. And on this plain, the strongest ruled, by tooth and claw and without mercy. And of these creatures, the most powerful and cunning was Lamar, Lamar the Lion, who wasn’t merely a killer but also a shrewd and cunning king.
Richard’s pencil tip flew across the page; he felt deeper into the concept of lion than ever before, as if he’d somehow entered the red zone, the mindset of the jungle, where you looked at other life-forms and one question entered your mind: What does it taste like?
He stopped. Hmmm, not bad.
Dreamily, he looked out the window. He tried to imagine a plain dotted with zebra and giraffe and cape buffalo and little wily antelopes, and the ever-present hyenas.
And he almost saw it, too, though the illusion proved difficult to sustain when he noticed a black-and-white Oklahoma Highway Patrol cruiser rolling down the road toward the house.
Even though Bud was driving, he was still in his surly mood.
“Ted, you really ought to call Holly.”
“Nah” was all Ted could say.