“It’s okay,” Valenti said. “Ali and I don’t have too many secrets, right?”
Ali nodded.
“Listen, Tom,” Valenti said. “The thing is, there’s more going on here than just who Magaddino’s going to send, or the problem we got with Ali’s old man.” He let that hang in the air for a moment as he looked from Ali to Bannon.
Ali shivered thinking of last night.
“Like what?” Bannon asked finally.
“Well, it’s not so easy to explain.”
“We could play him the tape,” Ali said.
Valenti nodded. “But I don’t think it’s going to do the same thing for him as it does for us. I think you got to hear the real thing first, and then the tape just sort of helps you remember.”
“I suppose,” Ali said. “All I know is that we should really be concentrating on who Mally and Tommy are, and how we can find them.”
Bannon looked at Ali as she said the name Tommy.
“Not you,” Valenti said. “This is some guy who’s been playing a flute or something in the evenings. He lives someplace back there.” He nodded toward the woods behind his house.
“You’re losing me,” Bannon said.
“So we’ll fill you in,” Valenti said. He explained about the music and the feeling of being watched. For the first time, Ali heard about what Valenti had seen the first night she’d seen the stag, and then it was her turn to describe her meeting with Mally. Valenti covered the events of last night. When they were done, they both studied Bannon for his reaction.
“I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head. “You’re putting me on, right?”
“I know the feeling,” Valenti said. “But there’s something going on back in there and I think it needs checking out.”
“Maybe. But it seems to me that you’d want this problem with Magaddino straightened out first. I mean, so someone’s playing music back in the woods. So what?”
“You haven’t heard it yet,” Valenti said. “And until you do, it’s going to be hard for us to explain why it’s so important for us to find out what it means. See, last night that buck saved us—Ali and me both.”
“That doesn’t make sense. It’s just a deer.”
Valenti nodded. “That’s the thing. It’s just a deer. A big one. So maybe someone trained it, but I don’t know. If I hadn’t seen what it did to Shaw’s car last night, I’d have had to say it might not even have been real. I mean, I saw these things chasing it the night it was out behind Ali’s place, but she didn’t see anything except the stag.”
“So what are you saying?” Bannon asked.
It was Ali who answered. “We should go up that track,” she said, pointing to where the road petered off into the forest, “and see where it takes us.”
Bannon glanced at the sky, then back to them. “It’s going to rain.”
“Probably,” Valenti said. “But I think it’ll hold off for a couple of hours still.”
“What about your leg?” Bannon asked.
“It’ll be okay so long as we take it easy. I’ve been looking at a map of the area and there can’t be more than about four square miles back in there before you run up against the Clyde River to the north and the county road that runs between Poland and Joe’s Lake on the east. We’ll follow the track—for an hour tops—and see where it takes us.”
“You’re the boss,” Bannon said.
Valenti looked at him for a moment, then nodded. “Only problem I see,” he said, “is Mario said he was sending somebody else to help us, but he wasn’t going to be here till later today. I don’t want to miss him.”
“That’s no problem,” Bannon said. “What he told me was, the guy was going to hang back and keep a lookout from a distance. We don’t make him, but then, neither do Magaddino’s people. When we need him, he moves in close.”
“I don’t like that. I don’t want to have to be thinking that one of the people out there’s on our side, you know what I’m saying? It’s going to make me hesitate—maybe at the wrong time.”
“Whoever Mario sends, he’s going to be a pro.”
Valenti nodded at length. “There’s that.” He glanced at Ali. “So what do you say, Ali? Want to go for a hike?”
Ali had been following the conversation between the two men a little nervously, realizing that she hadn’t really taken Tony’s background and current problem as seriously as she should have. Talk, like she and Tony had done about it before any of this began, was one thing. It was sort of romantic, like in a Bogart movie or something. But this was the real thing they were discussing now.
Maybe so, she told herself, but if she backed out at this point, she’d never find out a lot of things. About the stag, about the music… And besides, Tony was her friend and you didn’t back out on your friends when the going got tough.
She found a smile for him. “What are we waiting for?” she asked.
“Would you believe, a rabbit that can read?”
Ali held up a hand. “Please, Tony. Spare us the bad jokes.”
“Okay, okay. Let me go inside and pick up a couple of things and then we’ll go.”
“All right,” Ali said. “But if you’re not back in five minutes, we’re going without you.”
Valenti gave Bannon a “what do you do with someone like that?” look as he went inside, but Bannon just laughed.
“C’mon,” he said to Ali. “Let’s wait for him at the end of the road.”
Ali followed him. Anticipation of what they might find once they entered the forest was too strong to keep her natural good humor down. By the time Valenti joined them, she’d already begun to forget her fears.
4
Howie Peale woke with the sun shining in his eyes. He turned over onto his wounded shoulder. The stab of pain made him roll quickly onto his back again.
Above him was a low plaster ceiling. He moved his head so that he could see the rest of the room. Where the hell…? The fake wood panelling, the bookshelf stuffed with old Reader’s Digest books, the mounted carp on the wall, the dresser with its cracked mirror and top laden with makeup, deodorant and pantyhose—it all served to disorient him. Especially coming out of the dream he’d just had.
He’d been in an old beat-up Ford in the middle of the bush somewhere. The car had been abandoned, didn’t even have an engine, but he was sitting behind the wheel acting like he was driving it. There’d been a car like it in the wood lot behind his parents’ place and he’d often sat in it daydreaming that he was everything from Al Capone to a driver in the Grand Prix. But that was years ago, while in the dream he was an adult sitting in that old car, his nostrils filling with the smell of mouldering leather and the tang of old metal.
Still, that was okay. He could have handled that, no problem. Except that the big buck deer that had attacked them last night was standing in front of the Ford, staring at him through the cracked windshield. He saw violence in the creature’s eyes—the same kind of look that he saw in Earl’s when he’d wasted that guy the other night.
The stag circled round until it was facing the driver’s door and Howie remembered stepping on the gas pedal, as if that old Ford without an engine and up on blocks was going to take him away from the deer. He stomped and the buck came at him, head lowered, galloping, getting bigger and bigger until it hit the side of the Ford with a jarring crash.
Howie just sat there clutching the steering wheel, watching it back up for another run, then suddenly he wasn’t in the car anymore, but on a freeway. Coming at him out of a low ground fog was a pickup truck. It had a set of antlers attached to the hood, the headlights shining like some huge monster’s eyes.
Howie ran for the woods, the pickup chasing him. When he got in among the trees, he chanced a look back to see that the truck was gone. The stag was there instead, bearing down on him, antlers lowered. That’s when he woke up.
He remembered it all now, the dream and the reality of last night. The sense of dislocation left him and he sat up, gingerly feeling
his shoulder through its bandage. It hurt like hell. That wop who’d shot him was going to get his, damn straight. Howie started to lower his feet to the floor when the door to the room opened and the brunette who’d taken care of him last night came in.
“Uh-uh,” she said, wagging a finger at him. “Doctor Mallon says plenty of rest, buster.”
“Doctor…?”
Sherry grinned. “Me, dummy. I’m Sherry Mallon—remember?”
Howie nodded. “Yeah. The nurse. Sure I remember—I just didn’t know your name.”
The blond woman named Lisa came to lean against the doorjamb. They were both wearing snug-fitting jeans today—Sherry wore a sweatshirt overtop while Lisa had on a lacy white blouse.
“So how are you feeling?” Sherry asked.
“A little woozy. Had some weird dreams.”
“Well, that’s to be expected. I went to the drugstore this morning to get some antibiotics and gave them to you earlier.”
“What…what time is it?”
“About eleven-thirty,” Lisa said from the doorway.
“Where’s Earl?”
“He had to meet someone in Ottawa, he said.” Lisa moved to sit on the edge of the bed as she spoke. “And everyone else is gone to work—except for us.”
“You don’t work?”
Lisa smiled. “I wish. No, I’m on holidays—great time of year for them, don’t you think? But I had to use ’em or lose ’em. Sherry’s got the day off.”
“Would you like something to eat?” Sherry asked.
“Can I get up to eat it?”
“Well…just so long as you don’t do anything strenuous.”
Howie shook his head. “I couldn’t do anything strenuous if my life depended on it.”
* * *
“What time did Earl say he was coming back?” Howie asked after a breakfast of bacon and eggs.
“He didn’t,” Lisa said from the sink.
Howie thought about that. Christ, he hoped Earl hadn’t dumped him. “Listen,” he said. “I really appreciate you folks looking after me and everything.”
“Do the same for a white man,” Sherry said. She was sitting across the table from him, a crossword puzzle book open in front of her. “What’s a six-letter word for ‘more profound’?”
Howie shrugged. “I was never much good with that kind of thing.”
“Wiser,” Lisa said.
“Six-letter.”
“Wisest, then.”
“Oh, never mind. I’ll look it up.” She flipped to the back of the book and wrote “deeper” in the appropriate squares.
“Are you guys from around here?” Howie asked.
Lisa turned from the sink to look at him. “Us guys?”
“No. I mean—”
Lisa laughed. “That’s okay—I was just teasing. I grew up in Perth, but Sherry’s from out west.”
“Where the buffalo roam,” Sherry said. “Fear and loathing on the great plains.”
The Hunter S. Thompson references were totally lost on Howie. “Perth’s south of here, right?” he asked.
“Just a few miles down the road from Lanark,” Lisa said. “Why?”
Howie thought for a moment, wondering how to frame his question. He didn’t want to come off like an asshole in front of them—it wasn’t often that he had a couple of good-looking broads like this just shooting the shit with him. But there were things he wanted to know.
“Did you see the car we came in last night?”
Lisa nodded. “It’s still out there. What hit you—a Mac truck?”
“No. A deer.”
Sherry looked up. “A deer? C’mon. Get serious.”
“No. Really. The biggest buck I’ve ever seen.” And he’d seen so many, Howie thought. At least in the zoo. “It was the size of a moose.”
“Maybe it was a moose,” Sherry said.
Howie shook his head. “No, it was a deer all right. It just hauled off and hit us while we were parked on this dirt road somewhere south of here. Does that kind of thing happen a lot?”
“What?” Lisa asked. “Deer attacking cars?”
Howie nodded.
“This is the first time I’ve heard of it.”
“Up in the Rockies,” Sherry said, “I’ve seen bighorns crowding a car, but never attacking it.”
“And there was this music,” Howie went on, wondering how to explain just what it had sounded like. “It was…eerie….”
The two women waited for him to go on. When he didn’t, Lisa gave a little laugh.
“Do you do a lot of drugs?” she asked.
“What? No. I mean, I wasn’t high just then.” What he was trying to say was that somehow the music had seemed connected to the buck’s attack. He just didn’t know how to come out with it and not sound stupid.
“Well, maybe we should do some now,” Lisa said. “What do you think, Dr. Mallon?”
“I would prescribe a few good solid hits of a hash joint,” Sherry said.
Lisa looked at Howie. “What about you, sailor?”
“Sounds great,” Howie said.
He’d been dumb to bring it up, but at least he hadn’t done it with Earl. Christ knows what Earl might have done because, now that Howie thought about it, it did seem to be a pretty dumb thing to talk about. But the memory of that music bothered him. There was something in it that had wanted to hurt him—that still wanted to hurt him. He didn’t know how he knew that, but he was sure it was true. Yet he still felt compelled to go back and listen for it again.
“Here, Howie,” Sherry said, passing him a joint. “Have a hit.”
He smiled and took it from her, pushing his strange thoughts away. Fuck it. He’d worry about it later. Right now he had a couple of beautiful broads for company, dope to smoke, and some R&R due him. The buck and the music could wait. And so could Earl, as far as that went.
He sucked on the joint, drawing the smoke deep into his lungs and looked at his companions. Maybe he’d luck out and get a blow-job from one of them. Christ, maybe he’d really luck out and get one from each of them. He grinned, feeling himself get hard under the table, and took another toke before passing the joint on.
5
“You’ve got to be nuts talking the way you do in front of that kid,” Bannon said.
Valenti glanced ahead to where Ali was almost out of sight because of the undergrowth. They were following the track, which had now dwindled into a footpath. Somebody used that path regularly, Valenti thought, because it was relatively clear. Who, exactly, he didn’t know. The only people he’d ever seen using it were a couple of times when an old beat-up touring car parked across from his driveway while its occupants trudged off up the track for the day. There was an older man, a younger couple, and three or four kids—dressed in shabby clothes, but clean looking.
The last time they’d come had been in the fall. Valenti just assumed they were picnicking, loaded down as they were with backpacks and parcels, but now he wasn’t so sure. Could be they were delivering staples to whoever lived back in there. This Tommy who made the music. Or Mally.
“I’m telling you,” Bannon said. “It’s just asking for trouble.”
“Ali’s a good kid,” Valenti said. “She won’t be no problem.”
Bannon shook his head. “Right now, it’s not real. It’s like a game or a movie or something. But what happens when it sinks in just what you really were in the family—Christ, what the family really is?”
“I think she understands.”
“Bullshit. She’s just a kid.”
“I was thirteen when I did my first hit,” Valenti said.
“Thirteen?”
“Yeah. There was a guy moving into the neighborhood—not connected or anything—who was trying to get a concession started. Drugs, you know what I’m saying? Well, the padrone he doesn’t like this so he sends a cousin to talk to the guy, only the cousin doesn’t come back. A couple of days later we find what’s left of him hanging in one of the padrone’s warehouses. Mario to
ld me he was still warm when they cut him down—guy was hanging there still alive for all that time.” Valenti shook his head.
“Anyway, this is serious business now. Trouble is, the guy—this pusher—he doesn’t go anywhere without a lot of muscle and the padrone, he doesn’t want a bloodbath taking this guy out. So someone gets smart and says, “Hey, he’s on the street, there’s lots of kids around—who’s gonna think twice about a kid?’ “
Valenti glanced at Bannon, who nodded to show he was listening.
“Nobody,” Valenti said. “That’s who. Not the guy, not his muscle. So I get my first contract. Mario sets it up. I got the gun in my pocket, and I’m running with a bunch of kids, you know, throwing a ball around. The ball gets near the guy’s car, I run over to get it. The muscle’s not paying any attention to me—Christ, I’m just a kid, right? So I get right up to the car, fire twice at him, and then I’m gone.”
“Hell, of a thing—sending out a kid like that.”
Valenti paused on the trail and Bannon stopped with him. “Hey,” Valenti said with an edge in his voice. “It was the only business I was going to know. I’m not some cowboy notching my gun or something stupid. I never even used the same piece twice. But I was good at what I did, and with the padrone there was never any bullshit—no fooling around, capito? Things had to get pretty bad before he called a hit.”
“That’s not what I heard,” Bannon said.
Valenti nodded. “Yeah. Things started to change. The padrone got old—maybe he wasn’t seeing so clearly anymore. I don’t know. But most of the business I did with the Magaddino family, it was just talking, you know? I’d go talk to a guy—maybe he owes some money, maybe he’s got to come up with a favor he promised and he’s trying to welch on it. Whatever. There weren’t that many hits—not in the old days. It wasn’t good for business.”
“Who needs trouble?” Bannon said.
“Exactly. Who needs it? But the way things are now…” Valenti shook his head. “I’m telling you, I look at the paper or catch the news and I can’t believe what I’m seeing. Not just all this Middle East bullshit—it’s all the weird guys out there. Serial killers, they’re calling them. What kind of a guy does that, just killing for kicks? I mean, I can understand a guy getting angry, getting a little crazy, and I can understand when it’s business—but what kind of a guy does it for fun?”