“We’re gonna need more than handcuffs and an electricity gun.”
“That’s not a problem.”
“And I’ll have to renegotiate my contract.”
“So you’re in?”
“Yeah,” said Dupree. “I’m in.”
In the car, driving uptown toward Manor Park, Dupree said, “Dhole is not a word.”
“Yes, it is.”
“What’s it mean?”
“It’s a wild dog native to Southeast Asia.”
“You knew that?” said Dupree.
“I played the letters first, at random,” said Lucas. “The game accepted the word. Then I looked up its meaning.”
“You don’t mind doin a little dirt, do you? Long as you come out on top.”
Lucas nodded. “I like to win.”
EIGHTEEN
In the morning, Lucas met Winston Dupree at his apartment on 4th and drove out to Rockville, Maryland. There, in a neighborhood of modest GI-Bill homes off Veirs Mill Road, they found the Waldron residence, a tidy rambler with a small, trimmed yard and an American flag hung above the front door. Bobby Waldron lived here with his parents, in the basement of the house in which he’d been raised.
They were greeted by Rosemary Waldron, a boisterous redhead, retired from a career-long slog in the cafeterias of the Montgomery County school system. Her husband, Bobby’s father, was a master plumber and self-employed. When Bobby was a boy, his father had painted the words Waldron and Son Plumbing on the sides of his truck, but Bobby had expressed no desire to learn the trade. Instead, he enlisted in the army straight out of Richard Montgomery High.
Rosemary Waldron let Lucas and Dupree in and offered them a couple of Miller High Lifes. They declined. She knew Lucas but not Dupree and, assuming he was a veteran, asked about his deployment and war experience. After Dupree detailed his military background to her in front of a fireplace mantel holding photographs of Bobby in football and army uniforms, he and Lucas excused themselves and met Bobby at the foot of the basement stairs. He was wearing jeans and a Champion jersey with cut-off sleeves, revealing his thick arms and tiger-stripe tats.
Waldron had drunk beer with Dupree at the American Legion bar in Silver Spring many times, but they had not hit it off. Waldron had a short-man complex, for one, and there was the matter of Dupree’s size. Also, Waldron liked to play that Marine Corps versus army game, a dick-size contest that no one could ever win. Lucas made it a point never to dip his toe, or anything else, in those contaminated waters.
“Come with me,” said Waldron.
They followed him to his dark, windowless room, which smelled of Marlboros and Axe body spray. A dime would bounce off Waldron’s bed if tossed onto it; against the wall, many pairs of sneakers were perfectly aligned. It was more barracks than bedroom.
Waldron closed the door, locked it, then went to his closet and retrieved a couple of duffel-sized ripstop bags. He dropped the bags on his bed and unzipped them.
“Short notice,” said Waldron. He looked up at Dupree and shrugged elaborately. “If you’d given me some time, I could’ve got you one of those SAWs.”
“For real?” said Dupree, putting a little edge into his voice. He doubted Waldron could have come up with an M249, a machine gun capable of firing hundreds of rounds per minute. But then again, they were in America.
“Yeah, for real,” said Waldron.
“What do you have for us, Bobby?” said Lucas, hoping to cut the tension and move things along.
“Shotguns, to start,” said Waldron. “Mossberg Five Hundreds.” Waldron pulled a pump-action twelve-gauge from one of the bags. “I know you guys used Benellis…”
“We used anything we could get,” said Lucas.
“The Mossberg will do,” said Dupree.
“Military spec,” said Waldron.
“Pistols,” said Lucas.
“I got you a choice of revolvers, Luke. I know you like the no-jam insurance.”
“Talk to me.”
“S and W Combat Magnums. If you’re looking for a hand cannon, I’ve got a three-fifty-seven.”
“Too much.”
“A thirty-eight, then.”
“Let me see it.”
Waldron handed Lucas a six-shot Smith & Wesson Special with a four-inch barrel and soft rubber grips.
Lucas hefted it in his hand. “I like this.” He placed it on the bed.
“Now the semis,” said Waldron. “You jarheads favor your Italian pieces. I came up with a couple of M-Nines in pristine condition.”
Waldron handed a nine-millimeter semiautomatic pistol to Lucas. He ran his thumb over its black checkered grip. He turned the gun sideways and worked the slide. When it locked open, he inspected the chamber.
“Looks clean,” said Lucas.
“I stripped and bored them myself,” said Waldron.
“Military-issue mags?”
“Beretta, dad.”
“Better,” said Lucas. “We’ll take ’em both. That okay by you, Winston?”
“Yep.”
Waldron grinned. “The barrel on one of these was pre-threaded to accept a suppressor.”
“You got it?” said Lucas.
“Right here,” said Waldron, producing an SRT Arms silencer from the bag. Lucas took it and examined it with interest.
“What you need that for?” said Dupree.
“Need got nothin to do with it,” said Lucas.
“All with holsters and bricks,” said Waldron. “Shaved numbers on the pistols. You get popped, you’re on your own.”
Lucas nodded. “Understood. We’re gonna need some goggles.”
“Sure, I got NVGs.”
“Throw those in.”
“Kevlar?”
“Two vests,” said Lucas.
“You need me to show you how to work the goggles?” said Waldron, looking at Dupree. “The Marine Corps only issued them to officers, right?”
“If you can figure it out, we damn sure can,” said Dupree.
“Let me ask you somethin, Winston,” said Waldron. “Why’d your mama name you after a cigarette?”
“Why do you look like that character on the Frosted Flakes box?”
They showed each other teeth.
“Put it all in one bag, Bobby,” said Lucas. “We gotta get on our way.”
Lucas gave him cash.
On the way out of the house, Lucas, carrying the long, heavy bag, stopped to say good-bye to Rosemary Waldron, now drinking a beer, seated in front of the living room television set.
“Sure you two don’t want a couple of cold High Lifes?” she said.
“No, thank you,” said Lucas.
“What you got in the bag, Spero?”
“Bobby loaned me his Xbox and some games.”
“You boys have fun.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Dupree. “We will.”
They headed to the Jeep.
At his apartment, Lucas packed the night vision goggles into his gear bag and found Dupree a pair of Leo’s old gym shorts. Leo had size on him, but the shorts were still too small for Dupree.
“I’m supposed to wear these?” said Dupree.
“It’s just for today.”
“I’ll look like John Stockton and shit. Why we got to pretend like we’re sportsmen?”
“I’m not pretending,” said Lucas. “You are.”
Lucas and Dupree loaded the kayak onto the foam blocks atop the Jeep and fitted Lucas’s old bike, a Trek hybrid, into the hitch-mounted rack. Dupree wound the rubber strap around the top tube of the Trek and snapped it over its male plug.
“Let me ask you somethin, man,” said Dupree. “I’ve seen you riding your bike in your white T-shirt and plain-old shorts. Why you don’t wear those outfits I see other dudes wearing, with the numbers and spandex?”
“When you throw a football around your yard, do you wear a full Redskins uniforms with pads?”
“Only in my head.”
“I’m not in the Tour de France,” sa
id Lucas.
They drove downtown to Pennsylvania Avenue, which was Route 4, and took it out of the city to 301, in Prince George’s County, Maryland. Turning off the highway, just twenty miles from D.C., they were suddenly in a sparsely populated, hilly terrain of forests and farmland, tobacco barns, old houses, and churches. The occasional liquor and bait store, and johnboats up on trailers, told them they were near water. Lucas wound up a rise on an asphalt road bleached by the sun, along wooded land, and as they came to a clearing on the high ground, they saw the ribbon of the Patuxent River below.
“Jug Bay,” said Lucas.
They came upon another forest, and Lucas slowed down. He checked the Google Map he had printed out that morning, and pulled over on the shoulder. Up ahead was a driveway of gravel with a posted mailbox at its head.
“Could be it,” said Lucas.
He drove on. A half mile or so up the road, at the end of the tree line, sat an old service station with plywood in its windows and a flat island that had once held two pumps. A two-toned Ford Lariat pickup with a FOR SALE sign in its window was parked in the small lot. Lucas pulled in and studied his map.
“All right,” said Lucas. “If Lumley gave me the right information, King and them are staying in a house at the end of that gravel road.”
“I don’t see any other houses ’round here.”
“There are, according to this map. But not too close by. That’s good.”
They drove down to the Jug Bay Wetlands Sanctuary and unloaded their recreational gear. Dupree grudgingly changed into Leo’s shorts and took off on Lucas’s bike.
Lucas put his kayak in at the boat ramp and headed out into a freshwater marsh carpeted in cattails, reed, and arrowhead. He had removed the bandage from his palm, and his hand on the paddle felt sure and strong. He saw a great blue heron, turtles, and a northern water snake. A front had taken away much of the humidity, and the sky was clear with full sun. It was one of those days that made Lucas believe in something higher. Whether or not there was an afterlife was irrelevant to him. When he witnessed this kind of natural beauty, he knew. This life was no cosmic accident.
Lucas and Dupree met up again in the late afternoon, changed clothes, and drove back over to Route 301, where they found a restaurant with wood-paneled walls that had salads, baked potatoes, and steaks. They ordered no alcohol and told the waitress to take her time. They were waiting for night.
“How’d you like that ride?” said Lucas.
“Your bike’s a little small for me,” said Dupree, cutting into a medium-rare New York strip. “Like those shorts you gave me.”
“You’ll sleep well tonight.”
“How about you?” said Dupree. “How do you sleep?”
“Fine,” said Lucas.
“I don’t have a problem with that, either. You believe everything you read, all of us vets wake up in the middle of the night in a full sweat. But I never have nightmares, Luke.”
“So you’re normal, whatever that is. You’re saying the war did nothing to you.”
Dupree swallowed a mouthful of iceberg lettuce covered in blue cheese dressing. He placed his fork on the table. “You ever take those complimentary tickets they give out to veterans? You know, for Wizards and Nationals games?”
“Sure. I’ve sat behind home plate.”
“Me, too. The announcer says the soldiers or marines are in the house tonight, and most everyone in the arena or stadium gets up and gives us a round of applause.”
“They’re paying tribute.”
“They mean well. Then they sit back down in their seats, enjoy the game, and forget we’re there. A lot of those dudes own businesses. Why don’t they walk over to my seat and talk to me, see what I’m about? See if maybe they can find a spot on their payroll for a veteran who wants to put his back into it? Instead, they clap their hands and think they’ve done something.”
“It’s for them, not us. Those guys who stand up, with their golf shirts on? We did what they couldn’t have done. And they know it.”
“But they don’t know me,” said Dupree. “I’m not a cold-blooded murderer. I’m not a hero. I don’t have PTSD.”
“But you suffer from a touch of depression once in a while, Winston. Tell the truth.”
“I’m just disappointed, man. I want to go to work every day and get treated like everyone else. I don’t need standing ovations. I don’t want sympathy or a thank-you-for-your-service. Offer me a chance at a meaningful job so I can get my life going. Treat me like a man.”
They ate silently for a while. Lucas looked like he was enjoying his meal, but he was thinking hard about his friend.
“This thing we’re about to do,” said Dupree.
“Uh-huh.”
“All that hardware we got from Bobby…that’s for show, right? I mean, we gonna go in strapped and scare the shit out of those boys, right?”
“That’s the idea.”
“I don’t want to shoot anyone. I’m done with that.”
“You won’t have to,” said Lucas. “You’ve got my word.”
Night fell. They drove up to the shuttered gas station and parked the Jeep. From the cargo area they retrieved the NVGs and fitted them to their heads, temporarily leaving the lenses off their eyes. Lucas put his Moleskine notebook and a pen in his back pocket.
“We got a little moon,” said Dupree. “That’s good. We need the lume.”
“I know. These thermals don’t work for shit in absolute dark.”
“You reckon we gotta hump, what, half a click?”
“That’s my guess.” Lucas showed Dupree his phone. “I got a compass on this thing.”
“And Angry Birds.”
“I figure the house is due southeast from where we are now. I’ll shoot us an azimuth.”
“Man, you don’t know what the fuck you’re doin, do you?”
“Let’s just go. We’ll find the house.”
They activated the goggles, placed the lenses over their eyes, and walked into the woods.
Billy King came down the stairs of the colonial with a single piece of luggage in hand. In the soft bag was enough clothing for several days and nights, a couple of disposable cells, his portion of the cash he had skimmed from the coin deal, and the remaining cash from the previous jobs he had done with Bacalov and Smalls. He intended to return to the house in Croom, but he didn’t want to leave any of his money behind. In the event that the house and its occupants became radioactive, and he could not come back, he had everything he needed in the bag. And he had wheels. If a man planned correctly, and traveled light, he could stay free.
Bacalov sat at the dining room table. He had field-stripped his Glock and was cleaning its barrel with a bore brush and solvent. Louis Smalls was sitting on the overstuffed couch. He had just done a bong hit of hydroponic and was now listening to an old Baroness album, Blue Record, through his earbuds, the psych-metal crunch of the music causing him to nod his head. He saw King come down the stairs, suitcase in hand, and his stomach dropped. Smalls pulled his buds out and stood.
“Where you go, eh?” said Bacalov.
“I’m going to visit a lady friend,” said King.
“Always a woman with you.”
“You should try it sometime. I’m talking about a real woman. Not one you’ve gotta blow up.”
King had never seen Bacalov with a woman, though he’d seen him watching them in strip joints and on the stroke sites he bookmarked on his laptop. First time they’d met, they’d been in that meat house on Connecticut Avenue, the one with the notoriously ugly dancers. Both of them at the bar, watching, though by rights King should have been home and satisfied. He’d just come from the Wyoming, where he’d banged his latest crinkle-bunny to within an inch of her life. King had struck up a conversation with Bacalov and found his chimplike face, his one eyebrow, and his mangling of the English language amusing. Also, he sensed that Bacalov had fire. They soon tired of their surroundings and moved together across the street to the bar of Russi
a House, a restaurant and lounge. Bacalov said he’d be more comfortable around his people. But the place was filled with Americans, and Bacalov didn’t talk to any women there, either. Mainly, he boasted about his criminal past and what he was capable of. Told King about a local man he knew, a moolie, who would maim and kill for hire, even gave him the man’s number so he could verify his claim. King thought that most of it was bullshit and alcohol talk. But not all. He saw potential.
“You put women over our business,” said Bacalov.
“I sold the coins,” said King. “I’m working on the paintings.”
“The paintings just sit here.”
“I left word with Lumley. He hasn’t gotten back to me yet. He will.”
“When are you coming back?”
“Couple, three days.”
“Billy?” said Smalls. “Wait up, I’m coming out, too.”
“Okay.” To Bacalov, King said, “See you, monkey.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Monkey,” said King, and smiled.
Smalls grabbed his deck of cigarettes and a matchbook and followed King outside to the wraparound porch. King dropped his suitcase to the gallery floor. A motion-sensitive light had come on when they’d stepped outside. It illuminated half the front yard, where the Crown Victoria and Monte Carlo SS were parked. The surrounding forest and gravel road were in darkness.
A branch snapped nearby. King turned his head toward the woods.
“Billy,” said Smalls, redirecting King’s attention.
“What did you want, Louis?”
“I just came out to have a smoke,” said Smalls. “Serge doesn’t like the smell of it in the house.”
“Fuck what Serge doesn’t like.”
“He’s our partner.”
“I want a divorce.”
Smalls lit his cigarette and exhaled smoke. “What about me?” He nearly winced at the desperation in his voice.
King looked him over. He knew what he was to the kid. But someday soon, King would have to cut him loose, too. King wasn’t anyone’s sidekick or father.
“What about you, Louis?”
“We’re stayin together, right?”
“Sure. I’ll see you soon.”