Добавить в цитаты Настройки чтения

Страница 57 из 79

“Can I ask you something?” he said.

“Sure.”

“Is it just us? I mean, no offense meant, but we ain’t exactly Delta Force.”

“No, it’s not just us. There are others.”

“Where are they?”

“They went on ahead. In fact-” Parker checked his watch. “-we ought to be joining them about now.”

“I had another question,” said Willie, as the Detective started the engine.

“Go ahead.”

“Is there a plan?”

The Detective looked at him.

“Not getting shot,” he replied.

“That’s a good plan,” said Willie, with feeling.

The Detective kept the headlights on as they drove. Willie thought they might be a little high, but he said nothing. He could worry about headlights another day. Getting shot was on his mind. He’d been shot at in Nam, but no bullets had even come close to him. He was kind of hoping to keep things that way. Still, it paid to know what to expect. He’d been around men who’d been shot, and the range of reactions had startled him. Some screamed and cried, others just stayed silent, holding all the pain inside, and then there were those who acted like it was a minor thing, as though the wind had just been taken out of them a little by a shard of hot metal buried deep in their flesh. Finally, he felt compelled to ask the question.

“You’ve been shot, right?” he asked the Detective.

“Yeah, I’ve been shot.”

“What was it like?”

“I don’t recommend it.”

“You know, I’d figured that out for myself.”

“I don’t think mine was your typical experience. I was in freezing water, and I was probably already in shock when I got hit. It was a jacketed bullet, so it didn’t spread out on impact, just passed straight through. It got me here.” He pointed to his left side. “It was mainly fatty tissue. I don’t even remember too much pain at first. I got out of the water and started walking. Then it began to hurt like hell. Bad, really bad. A woman-” Here, the Detective paused. Willie didn’t interrupt, merely waited for him to continue. “-a woman I knew, she had some nursing experience. She sewed it up. I kept going for a couple of hours after that. I don’t know how. I think I was still in shock, even then, and we were in trouble, Louis, Angel, and I. It happens that way, sometimes. People who’ve been injured find a way to keep going because they have to. I was ru

Willie knew about this. He had heard some of the story from Angel.





“A couple of days after it was over, I collapsed. The doctors said it was a delayed reaction to all that had happened. I’d lost some teeth, and I think what they did to repair that damage hurt almost as much as the gunshot. Anyway, it seemed to precipitate everything that followed, like my body had decided enough was enough. They tried to put me in the hospital, but I rested up at home instead. Took a while for the gunshot wound to stop hurting. When I turn a certain way, I think I can still feel a twinge. Like I said, I don’t recommend it.”

“Right,” said Willie. “I’ll remember that.”

They turned off the main road, heading south. Eventually, the Detective slowed, searching for something to his right. A road appeared, marked “Private Property.” The Detective turned onto it and followed it for a short distance until they came to a bridge, where he stopped the car. They sat there, neither of them moving. There was a light in the trees, and Willie thought that he could hear a repetitive beeping sound. He looked to his left and saw that the Detective had a gun in his right hand. Willie took the Browning from his jacket pocket and removed the safety. The Detective looked at him and nodded.

They got out of the car simultaneously and moved in the direction of the light. As they drew closer, Willie could see the vehicle more clearly. It was a Chevy Tahoe. Its side window had disintegrated, and the body of a man lay slumped over one of the seats, a ragged wound torn in his chest. The Detective skirted the Chevy, his gun raised, until he came to a second body farther into the woods. Willie joined him and looked down at the remains. The man was lying facedown with a hole in the back of his head.

“Who are they?” he asked.

“I don’t know.” He knelt and touched the man’s skin with the back of his hand. “They’ve been dead for a while.” He looked at their boots. They were clean, shining with what Willie thought was almost a military polish. There was only a little mud on them.

“Not from around here,” said the Detective.

“No,” said Willie. He looked away. “You think these guys came with Louis and Angel?”

The Detective thought about it. “They wouldn’t have tried to take Leehagen alone, not with so much territory to cover. It would make sense to try to hold the bridges. So my guess is, yes, they were part of whatever Louis was pla

He approached the bridge and stared across it toward the dark woods beyond.

“So where’s the rest of the cavalry?” asked Willie.

The Detective sighed and gestured across the bridge. “In there. Somewhere.”

“I’m guessing that’s not where they’re supposed to be, right?”

The Detective shook his head. “These guys are never where they’re supposed to be.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

THE TWO MEN WERE named Willis and Harding. Coincidentally, they shared a first name: Leonard. It was what had set them at each other’s throats when they were small boys in a small town in a large state, the kind of town where it mattered who was Leonard Number One and who was Leonard Number Two.

As things turned out, the two boys were pretty evenly matched, and in time a bond of friendship had developed between them, a bond that was finally cemented when they stomped a man named Jessie Birchall to death outside a bar in Homosassa Springs, Florida, for having the temerity to suggest that Willis ought not to have touched Jessie’s fiancée on the ass as she was making her way to the ladies’ room. The fiancée in question claimed to have no memory of what the two young men had looked like when the police came to question her, even though one of the men had hit her hard enough to break her left cheekbone when she attempted to intervene on her fiancé’s behalf, a forgetfulness not unco

Eventually, Willis and Harding ended up in the pay of Arthur Leehagen, a man whose illegal means of making money sat easily, if discreetly, alongside his more legitimate business concerns. Willis and Harding, like a number of Leehagen’s more specialized employees, were involved principally with the former activities, although they had proved useful whenever problems had arisen with the latter as well. When the cancers had begun to bloom like dark red flowers, it was Willis and Harding who had been sent out to talk to the more indignant sufferers, the ones who were threatening loudly to sue, or to go to the newspapers. Sometimes it took just one visit, although occasionally the two men had been forced to wait outside school gates to smile at mothers picking up their children, or to sit high in the bleachers during cheerleading practice, watching those short skirts ride up, their eyes lingering hungrily on thighs and breasts. And if the coach decided to ask them what they thought they were doing, well, the coach had kids, too. As Willis liked to say, there was plenty for everybody, boys and girls alike, and he was not a picky man. And if the cops were called, then Willis and Harding were Mr. Leehagen’s men, and that was as good as diplomatic immunity right there.