Everybody Dies

"Out of control," Mick said. "Like wildfire."

"Worse."

"Worse. Peter Rooney, and Burke, and all those that died at Grogan's. And Matt's friend, that went to retreat with the Zen Buddhists. And myself saved for last. Didn't they try to get you to do it, Andy? It would have been easy for you. A bullet in the back of the head when I was looking the other way. Easier than setting up at the farm and luring me there."

"I could never do it, Mick."

"No, I didn't think you could."

"And he wants to do it himself. He hates you."

"He does."

"He says you killed his father. I don't know if he ever saw the man, and what's it matter anyway? It's ancient fucking history, for Christ's sake."

"So's the Battle of the Boyne," Mick said, "and yet there's some that never got over it. Ah, Andy. It had to be you or Tom, and once I saw Tom dead that left only yourself. It broke my heart, knowing that."

"Mick…"

"But you're back, and that's what counts. It's good to have you back, Andy."

"Jesus, Mick. You'll never have to worry about me again. I swear to God, Mick."

"Ah, don't I know it?" he said, and rested a cupped hand at the back of Andy's head, and put his other hand beneath Andy's chin, and moved both hands, and broke Andy Buckley's neck.

"What choice did I have? What else could I do?"

I didn't have an answer. He got the keys from the ignition, walked around to the trunk, unlocked it. He came back and picked up Andy's corpse without any apparent effort and carried him on his shoulder, then laid him gently in the trunk and slammed the lid. The noise when it swung shut was sharp and sudden on that dark and silent country road.

"No choice at all," he said, "and I swear I didn't want to do it."

"I didn't think you were going to," I said. "Not then, at any rate. You took me by surprise."

"And him as well, I shouldn't wonder. I wanted to give him a bit of hope, you know, and put him at his ease. It's fear that's hardest on a man, and I wanted to spare him that. As it was, there must have been an instant when he knew what was happening, and then it was over. Ah, Christ, it's a bad old world."

"It's that, all right."

"A hard life in a bad old world. He was as close as I'll ever come to having a son. Paddy Farrelly got himself a son, as like as not by forcing himself on the Dowling bitch, and his boy's painting the city with blood to avenge his father's memory. And my son's helping him do it." He steadied himself, drew a breath. "Except he's not my son and never was. Just a decent lad who never added up to much. A good steady hand, with a dart or a steering wheel. Do you think I should have let him live?"

"I can't answer that."

"What would you have done yourself? You can answer that, can't you?"

"You could never trust him," I said.

"No."

"Or rest easy, knowing what he'd done. All those people, all that blood. Being the man you are, I don't see how you could have acted differently."

"Being the man I am."

"Well, you've never been one to forgive and forget."

"No," he said. "I never have. And too old to learn new tricks, I'd have to say." He bent down, picked up a pack of Marlboros Andy had dropped. "A clue," he said ironically, "and now it's got my prints on it. And who gives a fuck, anyway?" He flung the pack across the road bent down again and came up with Andy's Zippo lighter. I thought he was going to throw that as well but he frowned at it and stuck it in his pocket. Then he reached to scoop up a handful of gravel and hurled that after the cigarettes.

I waited while he leaned against the side of the car and let the fury drain out of him. Then in an entirely different tone of voice he said, "What they don't know is there's another way onto the property. It backs up against state land, you know. And there's a back road goes into the state land, and then you can walk through a few acres of woods and you're on my land out behind the old orchard. They'll only know to watch the driveway, and they'll be waiting for three men in a car, not two men on foot."

"That gives us a little bit of an edge."

"And we'll need it, as there's two of us and who knows how many of them. I should have asked him how many they had, but would he even have known?"

"There were the two who mugged me. Do

"Four at a minimum," he said. "Very likely five, and possibly six. All arrayed against the two of us. They're defending and we're on the attack, which is to their advantage, but we know the ground better than they do. We've a bit of the home field advantage."

"And the element of surprise."

"And that," he agreed. "But, you know, I'm presuming something, and I've no right to. Because you don't have to be a part of the rest of it. You can go home."

I just shook my head. "It's too late for that," I said. "Unless we both go home. They set a trap and you figured it out and walked away from it, and took out the man who set it. You could walk away and let them figure out what to do next."

"I'd rather deal with them now, while I've got them all bottled up in there."

"I agree. And I'll be there with you."

We got in the car. He started it up. I found myself trying to determine if the car felt any lighter now that we didn't have Andy with us anymore, and then I remembered that the weight was the same. He'd been behind the wheel before, and now he was in the trunk.

"I had a feeling, you know."

"About Andy."

"From early on, it must have been. After the trouble at the bar, I made sure I dropped him off and kept the car. I didn't want him to know where I was staying. And I didn't let him have the cell phone number."

"I don't know about the second sight," I said, "but I'd say you have good instincts."

"And that may be all it is," he said, "but I don't know. Let me concentrate now, we've got our turn coming up and it's an easy one to miss. Ah, will you look at that!"

Ahead of us, a whole herd of deer bounded one after another across the narrow road. I counted eight of them, and I may have missed one.

"They're hard on crops and shrubbery," he said, "and a fucking menace on the highway, but what a beautiful sight they are. Why the hell would anybody want to shoot them?"

"I've got a friend in Ohio, a cop named Havlicek, who's always trying to get me to go out there and hunt deer with him. He can't understand why I'm not interested, and I can't understand why he is."

"It's enough of a strain killing people," he said. "I've no time to waste on deer."

He found the back road he was looking for and we made our turn. Half a mile in there was a chain across the road with a sign on it a

We followed the one-lane road through the woods. I couldn't say how far we drove. We crept along slowly, rarely going over ten miles an hour. I kept waiting for more deer to explode out of cover in front of us, and God knows the woods were full of them, but we didn't see any others.

Eventually the road ran out in a small clearing. There was a little cabin there, and a canvas-topped 4WD utility vehicle parked not far from it. Mick reached into the back of the Chevy and went through the leather satchel, selecting some of its contents and adding them to a dun-gray canvas sack. He took mostly guns and extra ammunition, and left behind the money and papers from the safe. He'd already grabbed up a red plastic flashlight from the glove box, and on a hunch I checked the utility vehicle. It was unlocked, as I'd figured it would be, and it had a flashlight mounted on a clamp above the passenger door, encased in hard black rubber and twice as bright as the one from the Caprice.