Behind, Earl reached for his gun. Howie took a step toward him.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Earl demanded. “Get after her!”
Howie blinked, then nodded and took off across the lawn, following the sound of the girl’s footsteps. An ugly smile cut Earl’s face as he set after them.
Little bitch was going to pay for that. Where’d she think she was coming off anyway, hitting her old man?
* * *
Valenti sat up and checked his watch as the tape of piping finished in his cassette machine. It was getting late. About time he could hear the real thing come drifting from the woods behind his place. About time for Ali to be here as well. Where was she?
He got up and turned off the stereo, then went to the front door and stood out on the steps. There’d been something funny about her voice when he’d called earlier, something he couldn’t quite place. He looked across the darkening fields. Like someone suffering mild shock, he thought, recalling the quality of it now. What could have happened?
He turned back into the house, thought of calling her again, then decided he’d go down the road to meet her instead. And just to satisfy the uneasiness he felt, just for insurance’s sake—“You can never be too careful, Tony,” Mario had been fond of telling him—he crossed over to his stereo cabinet and opened the cupboard on the bottom left.
First it needed the key that was always in the pocket of whatever he was wearing. And then you had to know the right board to push on the side of the cupboard that unlocked the hidden compartment under its floor.
He pulled the false floor away to reveal a cavity that went down into the space between the ground floor and the roof of the basement below. There were rifles in there, a shotgun, a UZI machine gun, some handguns, boxes of cartridges, spare magazines for the automatics and the UZI, and a large fireproof box that held various IDs and travelling money in case he ever needed it. Ten thousand dollars in used American bills. Another couple of grand in Canadian currency.
He looked at the weapons, thought for a moment, then extracted a small .32 automatic. He checked its load, then snapped the magazine back into its grip and slipped the weapon into the pocket of a windbreaker. Putting the false floor back in place, he locked the cupboard once more, then put on the jacket. He picked up his cane by the door and went out into the night, moving as quickly as his bad leg could take him.
When he first heard the piping start up he was already out of his own yard and on the road. The music didn’t register straight off. He’d been listening to Ali’s tape so often during the day that the piping had almost become a part of his thoughts. But now as he paused to listen, waving bugs from around his head, he heard someone come running up the road. He switched the cane to his left hand, thrust his right into the pocket with his .32. It wasn’t just one someone, he realized as he took the automatic off safety.
* * *
When Earl hit the road, he turned right instead of following Howie and his daughter. He sprinted for the Toyota, snapped the door open and got in. He touched the wires together that they’d pulled out earlier when they’d stolen the vehicle and the car coughed into life.
Right, he thought. He put the car into gear, hit the lights, then tromped on the gas. The peppy little car roared forward, headlights cutting the night like a dragon’s gaze. Earl switched the beams to high and speed-shifted into second gear as the car picked up speed.
* * *
Ali just about died when the headlights came on behind her and picked out the man coming toward her from the direction of Tony’s house. The sound of the car’s engine drowned out the piping, but she could still hear it inside. She was still the stag, fleeing the hounds. She almost bolted into the bush, then realized who it had to be on the road in front of her.
“Tony!” she cried.
The man pulled his hand from his pocket and the headlights sparked on the metal in his hand. He leveled the weapon in her direction.
* * *
Howie heard the car start up and nodded to himself. Good thinking, Earl. The kid was going to outdistance them, but not if she stuck to the road. Then the headlights lit up the scene in front of him. Beyond the girl, he saw a man who seemed to appear out of nowhere. Howie scrambled for his own weapon as the stranger levelled his gun, then realized that Earl was burning up the road behind him.
He lunged for the side of the road just as the car reached where he’d been running. There came a sudden crash, as though another car had plowed into the side of the Toyota. Howie shot a glance in its direction and his eyes went wide with fear.
* * *
Move, Howie, Earl thought, or you’re dead meat. Maybe he’d just clip the kid. She wouldn’t be running anywhere so fast then. And if he miscalculated, well, what the fuck. He didn’t need to deliver her in one piece. He just needed her for as long as it took Frankie to cough up the money. And if Frankie didn’t know the kid was dead, she was still going to pay up. After that, well, maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to waste the both of them anyway, just so’s not to leave any loose ends.
Howie jumped to one side and then Earl realized that there was someone else on the road with his daughter. He had long enough to see the weapon in the man’s hand, long enough to register the man’s features—a dead man’s face—then something hit the side of the car and he was fighting the wheel to keep the vehicle on the road while slamming on the brakes.
The engine stalled as he brought the Toyota to an abrupt halt. He turned to see what had hit him, not really registering the shock of the impact, still stunned from seeing a man that he knew was dead on the road ahead of him. Turning, he found himself face to face with an enormous buck deer.
“Jesusfuck,” he mumbled and reached for his gun.
The stag lowered its head, backed up, and hit the car again. Earl’s gun clattered to the floor. The side window cracked into a spider web design. Earl shook his head and put up his hands to protect himself as the deer backed up once more.
* * *
Valenti had his gun ready, finger squeezing the trigger when the stag burst out of the forest to hit the Toyota side-on. He eased off the pressure on the trigger as the car slowed to a stop, stalled. The engine went dead. The headlights dimmed but stayed on.
“Ali,” he ordered, taking a few steps closer to her. “Get up to my place.”
“B-but…”
“C’mon, sweetheart. Don’t argue.”
Ali nodded and took a few steps closer to him. When she reached him, Valenti put an arm around her shoulder and gave her a quick hug, his cane bumping against the side of her leg.
“Go on,” he said, never taking his gaze from the car and what was happening around it.
“He…he said that he…that he’s my dad….”
Valenti shot her a quick glance. His gaze snapped back to the car as the stag hit the vehicle again.
“We’ll talk about that later,” he said. “Now go.”
He left her side and walked slowly toward the car as the stag backed up once more. In the silence that lay heavy around them, he heard the distant music return. He wasn’t sure what was going on, who the men really were, what they wanted with Ali, but it seemed fitting—right, somehow, that the stag would show up again to help her. He couldn’t have said why. The answer to that was in the music.
He lifted his gun as the man who’d been on the road before the car arrived suddenly stood up from behind the vehicle, levelling his own weapon at the stag. Valenti’s finger began to squeeze the trigger of his automatic, but he was too late to stop the man from firing almost point blank at the beast. He squeezed the trigger anyway.
* * *
Howie didn’t know if a handgun could stop a monster-sized buck like this, but that wasn’t going to stop him from trying. He got off two shots—no way he missed—but the deer just looked at him. There was something in its eyes… And then Howie heard the music again. It was a discordant sound, unpleasant. Like fingernails on a blackboard.
Drop, you fucke
r, he willed, but the deer merely continued to stare at him.
Howie shivered. He was about to fire a third time when he felt a shock go through his right arm. The whole arm went numb and his gun spilled from suddenly limp fingers. It landed with a thump on the road. Pain exploded in his arm. For a long moment he was stunned by it. He reached up to clamp his left hand to the arm and winced at the pain. Blood trickled between his fingers.
“I…I’ve been shot,” he said to no one in particular and leaned weakly against the car.
The entire vehicle shook as the stag hit it for a third time. The impact made Howie grip his arm harder and he howled as a sudden new pain shot down his arm. He looked down the road to see the man there getting closer, using a cane and walking with a pronounced limp. Chewing at his lip, Howie let go of his wound and scrabbled with bloody fingers at the side of the car, looking for the door handle. He sobbed with relief when he found it, hit the knob, and tugged the door open. He almost fell into the car in his hurry to get in.
“Let’s go,” he said to Earl. “Christ, man, let’s go!”
But Earl wasn’t listening. The deer had backed up again, but he wasn’t watching it, either. His gaze was locked on the man approaching the car.
“You’re dead,” he said softly.
* * *
When the man Valenti had shot got into the car, the interior light went on and Valenti recognized the man behind the wheel. At the same time he realized that the man must have made him. His name was Shaw…Ernie Shaw? A small-time punk that they’d used once because he’d had a connection in Miami that came in very handy for a deal the family was working on.
Valenti had been the family’s spokesman for that deal, working with this Shaw. There was no way Shaw hadn’t made him now, and there was no way Shaw wasn’t going to spill his guts to the first member of the fratellanza he could get a hold of.
As he lifted his gun Valenti was surprised at the feeling that touched him. It wasn’t as though this punk didn’t have it coming for a lot of other reasons. It wasn’t as if Valenti had never killed a man before. But there was a feeling of wrongness about what he was doing now, just as earlier, he’d sensed a rightness about the arrival of the stag. The music heightened that feeling. But if he didn’t do something right now, he might as well go back to New York and hand himself over to the new Don, because they sure as fuck were going to be coming for him if he didn’t.
* * *
“Get the wires,” Earl hissed.
“Christ, man. I’ve been—”
“Get them.”
Gritting his teeth, Howie bent over and fumbled with the wires. When he had them connected, Earl turned the engine over. Once, twice. He bent low as Valenti fired, the bullet shattering the windshield and whining above his head. The third time he tried the engine, it caught. Foot on the clutch, he rammed the gearshift into first, eased the clutch out again, then floored the gas pedal.
As the Toyota leapt forward Valenti dodged out of the way. Earl checked the rearview, but it was too dark to see where Valenti had gone. Now if they could just get away from that fucking psycho deer…
He hit the brakes and pulled hard on the wheel, slewing the car into a 180-degree turn, tires spitting dirt into the underbrush on either side of the road. The head beams caught Valenti struggling to his feet. Gotcha, Earl thought as he tromped on the gas again.
But the stag stepped out of the woods to stand almost on top of Valenti, so Earl had to swerve by him. He heard the pop of Valenti’s gun, thought about staying to play this out, but the odds were all wrong. There was that deer, for one thing; the fact that it was Tony Valenti who was here, for another. He’d let the mob boys handle Valenti. For a price, he’d lead them right to him. And then he’d finish his own business with little too-big-for-her-britches Alice Treasure.
“I…I need a doc,” Howie said from the seat beside him.
Earl shot him a glance. For a moment he felt like opening the passenger’s door and just booting Howie out, but what the fuck. He’d done his best. It wasn’t Howie’s fault he was such a dipstick.
“Just hang in there,” he said. “First we need new wheels.”
“O-okay, Earl.”
“Hang tough, Howie, m’man. Things just look bad. But the truth is, they’re turning sweeter all the time.”
He grinned, concentrating on the road. When he reached Highway 1, he turned left, heading for the junction with 511 that would take them into Calabogie. A couple of guys he knew who owed him a favor or two had a cottage out that way. This being the weekend, he figured they’d be up. If they weren’t, well, he didn’t think they’d complain about him using the place. Not if they still wanted to own their balls after they were done talking to him.
* * *
Valenti rose slowly from the dirt and watched the taillights disappear. He didn’t know what had made Shaw swerve at the last moment, but he wasn’t complaining. He returned his automatic to his pocket and picked up his cane.
Time to go, he thought as he stood up and brushed the dirt off his jeans. He wondered how long he had. Till Shaw reached a phone? Valenti knew he’d winged Shaw’s partner. Maybe they’d see to the man’s shoulder first. So what did he have—an hour tops? Then he thought of Ali.
He looked up the road to his place, realizing that the music had died away again. That made him think about the stag, which in turn brought him back to his own predicament. He had to be gone—by yesterday—but he couldn’t just leave Ali alone. Take her with him? No way.
Still trying to decide what he should do, he limped up the road to the place he’d called home for the past year and a half. He was sure going to miss it.
13
Ali was sitting on a corner of the couch nearest the fireplace when Valenti came in. She was wearing jeans and a white cotton-knit sweater and holding a plastic bag between her legs that she was staring at. When he stepped inside, she looked up with a nervous jerk, then settled her gaze on the floor by her feet once more.
“You okay?” Valenti asked.
She shrugged. “I guess.”
“You wanna talk about it?”
She nodded, shooting him a quick glance.
Valenti smiled. “Okay. You just take it easy while I make us some cocoa—how’s that sound?”
“That’d be fine. Do you…do you want some help?”
That’s the girl, Valenti thought. “You bet,” he said aloud. “I can never get the cocoa to dissolve properly and if there’s anything I hate, it’s lumps of cocoa floating up and touching my lips when I’m taking a sip—you know what I mean?”
A small smile tugged at the corners of her mouth.
“C’mon,” he said.
He waited while Ali laid her bag of books aside and went into the kitchen, then quickly switched his .32 from the jacket he was wearing to the pocket of a sports jacket, which he then put on.
“The cocoa’s in the cupboard on the right there, second shelf up,” he said as he came into the kitchen. “Can you reach it?”
“I think so.”
“Good. I’ll get the milk.”
* * *
There was a nip in the air that was due as much to what they’d just gone through, Valenti thought, as to the actual temperature, so he built a small fire in the hearth and they sat in front of it, sipping their cocoa and talking. Ali told him all about her afternoon, from why her mother’d gone into town to her confrontation with the wild girl who called herself Mally Meggan.
“She had horns?” Valenti interrupted when Ali was describing Mally. “You mean, like real horns?” He was remembering the girl who’d dropped out of a tree on him a few nights ago. She hadn’t had horns that he could see, but then she’d been wearing a hat. A floppy brimmed hat like Ali’s wild girl had.
Ali nodded. “Just small ones, like the kind you see on antelope.”
“And she lives in the bush?”
“That’s what she said. In the forest itself—not in a cabin or a house or anything. And she told me tha
t the music we hear is played by some guy named Tommy….”
She went on to describe the rest of their conversation, regaining some of her old spirit as she did. It wasn’t until she started to tell him about leaving her house and hearing the car doors slam that she began to get nervous once more, her voice lowering. She wouldn’t meet Valenti’s gaze as she told him about the men catching her spying on them, what one of them had said about his being her father, and then the chase.
“And then… Well, you know the rest.”
She looked at him finally and Valenti nodded. The stag hitting Shaw’s car, Valenti shooting Shaw’s partner, the two men escaping…
“Do you think he’s really my father?” Ali asked.
“You don’t like that idea much, do you?”
Ali shook her head.
“Let me tell you something, Ali,” he said. “It doesn’t matter who your parents were, it’s what you make of yourself, understand? You want something bad enough—you want to be something bad enough—nothing’s going to stop you but you. You can pick stuff up—like habits, or a certain way of saying things by living with people, but just because your old man’s a piece of shit, that doesn’t mean that you are.”
“Yeah, but why would my mom…you know…why would she want to marry a guy like that?”
Valenti shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m betting he wasn’t like that when they first met. People change, not always for the better. When that happens in a relationship, sometimes the only thing you can do is get out. Sounds to me, from things you’ve told me—and having met your momma, who’s some kind of lady—that that’s what she did. She’s nobody’s fool.”
“You know him, don’t you?” Ali asked. “That guy who said he was my father.”