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.
We reached the other side of the lake, tied up and got off the boat. The cold wind howled down through the pines and hardwoods and cut through us like razors.
Price wasn’t there.
Me and Arnold went around and sat on the front porch and hunkered against the cold while Virgil smoked a cigar out in the yard, thinking his own thoughts.
“I’m glad Beverly didn’t come,” Arnold said.
“I gave her a pretty good line of bullshit about how it’s a man’s job but I’m still a feminist.”
“Give self-analysis a rest,” Arnold said. “Everything doesn’t balance out. Hey, I got something for you.”
He reached in his pocket and pulled out a yellow handled pocket knife and gave it to me. It had my name stenciled into the wood.
“That’s just like the one you gave me all those years ago,” I said.
“Because it is the same one.”
I grabbed hold of the exposed part of the blade with thumb and forefinger and flicked the handle away from me so that the knife came open. I held it by the blade and looked at the edge of the knife. It was sharp and rust free.
“Can’t be,” I said.
“Because you buried it in the backyard ofˀe backya Dad’s old place?”
“Yeah… How’d you know?”
“Dad saw you bury it. He dug it up later and had your mother put it aside for me. She mailed it to me with a little note. I guess it was a year after I got off the farm she sent it to me.”
“You think Dad knew?”
“About you and the liquor store? No. But he knew you and me had trouble, and he thought we’d get over it and you’d want the knife back.”
“And you’ve been carrying it around all these years, knowing you were going to give it back?”
“Hell no, I was using it. But since you’re here.”
“Thanks,” I said.
Price drove up. We walked down to join Virgil. Price got out and stretched. He wasn’t wearing a suit. He had on a blue jean jacket, sweatshirt, blue jeans and high top, white tennis shoes. His face was a little haggard, and there were dark circles under his eyes. He still looked better than the rest of us. He studied Arnold. “You must be the half-brother?”
“Yeah,” Arnold said.
Price said, “I heard from Doc. I thought we’d end up getting down to business couple days from now, but Doc called Fat Boy this morning, said he had a guy was a good friend of his that wanted some kiddie porn. Told Fat Boy the friend was from out of town and in for the day and it was sort of now or never. Said the friend was nervous. Doc told Fat Boy he’d assured the friend there were cops in on the deal. Said the guy was adamant about having that security present. That crooked cops cheered him up. Doc made a point of saying how much money the friend had and th
at he was willing to spend it. This afternoon, five o’clock, we go to the sawmill.”
“Fat Boy bit awful goddamn easy,” Arnold said.
“Could be,” Price said. “Maybe he just wants to play the cards and see how they come out. He’s like that. But there’s another thing. He’s overconfident. He’s gotten away with some bold shit. You pull stuff like that off time after time, you begin to think God, or the Devil, is on your side. You get careless. You start to feel charmed.”
“You should know,” I said.
“Touche,” Price said. “I say we play. We come ready, we got as good a shot as we’ll get. I got two or three plans for when it’s over, how to make things look good, and they’re so brilliant I’m proud of myself.”
“What if you get your brains scrambled?” Arnold said. “What’s the story we tell then?”
“That’s your problem,” Price said, “and an even bigger reason you need to watch my back. You may have me in the bag, but in another way, I’m your ticket out of the station. I tell a lie, it’s got more weight than if you tell a lie. And I know who to lie to and in what way.”
“Admirable talent,” I said.
33
Price rode with us in the boat over to the drug dealer’s house so we could tell Tim and Bev the score. We decided we didn’t have to keep where we were a secret from him anymore. He liked the house, but thought it could use a tennis court. He met Tim, Bev and the kids. It wasn’t a friendly meet, just business. Poot growled at him and wouldn’t come close. The kids were polite and went off to play with Poot in the far end of the house. Virgil fixed Price a sandwich and poured him a glass of milk. We told Tim and Bev the score.
About two o’clock Price made a brief phone call to Doc. When he finished talking, he reached into his blue jean jacket pocket and produced a small bundle of wires, a microphone, and a head set. He placed the stuff on the kitchen table. “Only thing I don’t like about my plan,” he said, “is we’re gonna need that goddamn dog of yours, Virgil.”
“That’s my dog,” Tim said.
“Not to worry,” Virgil said. “Poot can work with anybody. He doesn’t take lack of character into account. That’s why he hangs out with me and Tim.”
“Well, whistle him up,” Price said.
Tim called Poot and the kids came with him. I sent the kids off to play without the dog, and Tim put Poot on the kitchen table. Virgil and Tim wired the dog, burying the wire deep in his voluminous fur.
When Poot was wired, Virgil took Poot in a back room. Tim laid the headset on the kitchen counter so we could all hear it. Virgil was saying: “…and now Poot’s licking my balls, and now I’m licking Poot’s balls…”
It wasn’t a two way, so I yelled down the hall, “Okay, Virgil.”
Virgil came back with Poot bouncing at his heels.
“Tell the truth,” Tim said to Virgil, “Poot wasn’t really licking your balls, was he?”
“All right,” Price said. “Remember, we go by the plan I’m gonna lay out. Strictly. Someone fucks up, they’re dead. This isn’t capture the flag.”
“After we kill them,” Virgil said. “Can we take their money?”
“Make jokes later,” Price said. “It’ll be more amusing then. You sure this dog will stick by you?”
“You’ve seen him operate,” Virgil said.
“Okay then,” Price said, “it’s time.”
Bev and I walked back to our bedroom for a moment and said the best we could say to each other. We had already said what we had to say, and now it was better not to say too much. I kissed her goodbye. It was a good kiss. She said, “Come back,” as if I were going off to the store for milk.
“I plan to,” I said.
I went down the hall and told the kids I was going out for awhile. I hoped that was true. I hugged and kissed them. I thought about what Fat Boy and Snake had done to children like them, what they had tried to do to my family, what they had done to Bill, and I hugged them again.
“Daddy,” Sammy said, “is something wrong?”
“Yes,” I said. “But it won’t be long. You don’t have to worry about it. Help Mommy.”
I sent them back to their play, and I went back down the hall. They were fighting over something before I’d gone ten feet.
I passed Tim in the living room. He was watching a golf game on TV. I gave him a nod. He gave me a little two finger salute and turned back to watch a blond guy in a striped shirt slice one into the trees.
I looked around the house as if it were my house and I cared about it. I took my .38 automatic out from under my shirt and removed the clip and put the clip in a kitchen drawer and the gun in a cabinet next to a box of Quaker Oat Meal. I wouldn’t need it. Price was supplying.
I went outside and joined the others and walked down to the boat. We got to the other side far too quickly. I looked at my watch.
Three o’clock.
We went out to Price’s car and leaned against it. Poot found a tree to piss on. He wasn’t one to miss a chance. Price went over the plan a couple of times. It was a simple plan. When he was finished, he said, “Tell me the plan, Hank.”
“Before we arrive, you get in the trunk,” I said. “Me and Arnold will cut through the woods, come up on the side. We’ll have the listening equipment. When it looks and sounds right, we ease up and do it. We try not to shoot each other. We try to shoot and kill the people not on our side.”
“That’s good,” Price said. “Virgil?”
“When you’re in the trunk, I drive your car like it’s my car,” Virgil said. “The Doc will sit up front with me. We get there, I get out of the car with Poot and keep him by me so the microphone will pick up the talk, and Arnold and Hank will know what’s happening. I act friendly. I carry things as far as I can until everyone is in place. It gets time to do it, I drop down and you pop out of the trunk blazing. Arnold and Hank start shooting.”
“What happens if you get hustled inside before everyone’s in place?” Price asked.
“I can most likely kiss my ass goodbye,” Virgil said.
“Worse than that,” Price said. “You’ll fuck up the plan.”
“Question,” Arnold asked Price. “What the fuck good you gonna be in the trunk of your car? We might as well give the spare tire a gun. Who’s going to let you out? You can’t ride along holding the hatch down.”
“Come here,” Price said.
We followed him to the back of his car. He unlocked and lifted the trunk. The trunk had a twist handle on the inside. In the bed of the trunk was a small cardboard box containing several handguns, beside the box was a rifle and a shotgun.
“I had this fixed up this way for a similar escapade,” Price said. “Nobody got shot that time, but it let me sneak up where I wasn’t expected. It helped me to get a promotion in LaBorde. Locked in or not, I twist the handle, I’m out of the trunk. There’s an extra sheet of heavy metal inside the lid too, in case someone tries to shoot thӀs to shorough it. It won’t stop big stuff, but it’ll keep a bee out of your bonnet. It’s got an amplifier of a sort built into it, just under the back bumper. I can hear what’s being said if anyone’s within ten or twelve feet of the car. Farther, if they’ve got a big mouth.”
“Does it do smoke screens and oil slicks?” Virgil asked.
“No,” Price said, “but I catch you just right, I can run over you with the tires.”
“Another question,” I said. “What about the Doc?”
“He knows what to do,” Price said.
Price lifted the box of handguns out of the trunk and put it on the ground. He lifted out the rifle and gave it to me. He got a snub nose .38 Smith and Wesson revolver with a clip-on holster out of the box and gave me that too. He said, “Can you shoot?”
“I used to be able to shoot,” I said. “I haven’t shot at anything in years.”
“This afternoon,” Price said, “you come out of retirement.”
I clipped the revolver on under the tail of my shirt and turned the rif
le over in my hands. It was a fairly standard varmint gun. A Marlin 30-30 with a scope. Lever action. Recoil would be minimal to nonexistent. I had killed deer with the same kind of rifle.
Price gave me some ammunition to go with it. He gave Arnold the shotgun—a 12 gauge Remington pump—a box of slugs, and a .38 Smith and Wesson in a clip-on holster.
He got a .45 automatic out of the box and put it in the trunk and closed the lid. He put a .38 Smith and Wesson in his jacket pocket. He stuck a couple of .45 clips and a handful of .38 shells in his pocket with the .38. The box was empty.
“Couldn’t I carry a gun in my boot or something?” Virgil asked.
“No,” Price said. “Fat Boy or Snake might want to search you. You just get low and stay there. I’ll get the extra I got to you, provided I can reach you.”
Arnold and I got in the back seat of the car. Virgil and Poot got up front. Price climbed in behind the wheel and started the engine. I looked at my watch.
Three-fifteen.
· · ·
Time we were nearing Busby it was just short of four o’clock.
We picked up Doc at an abandoned filling station just outside of Busby. He had parked his car around back. He was worried about it. He whined about it. No one gave him any sympathy. He got in the back with me and Arnold.
On the other side of Busby the East Texas woods grew thick and the land was low there; you could see a lot of swampy looking areas where the water had built up from all the rain we’d been getting. Doc directed us down a narrow road that wound into the trees. Growth there was so dense with shadow and dangling moss, it seemed later than it was.
After a ways, we came to a cattle guard and a gate made of post and barbed wire strands. I got out Ӏs. I gotand unfastened it, and Price drove through. I hooked the gate back and got in the car and we drove on.
The road ceased being a road and became a couple of red clay ruts. On either side of us was a poorly attended pasture and no cows. A lone oil well pump nodded up and down off to the right. Woods surrounded the pasture.