The Charlie Parker Collection 2

by John Connolly

  But if they went west, to Leehagen, they would be effect ively trapping themselves between two lines: the men to the east, and whatever protection Leehagen had near the house, with the lake behind it cutting off any further retreat, unless they could steal a boat, assuming they could find their way through the rocks Leehagen had sown on the lake bed, and also assuming they could hold off Leehagen’s men, because they sure as hell weren’t going to be able to kill them all.

  The farmhouse in the woods, recalled from Louis’s examination of the satellite images, presented another option. They could call for help, barricading themselves inside in the hope of holding off their pursuers until rescue came. There were favors owed: a chopper could be on the ground in less than an hour. It would be a hot landing, but the men upon whom Louis might call would be used to that.

  They came to the house. It was an old two-story structure painted in red, although the color had faded over time to a washed-out brown, so that it looked as though the dwelling was made of iron that had begun to rust, like a fragment of a ship that had come apart from the main structure and been left to rot almost within sight of water. The property was accessed by a dirt trail that hadn’t been visible on the satellite photographs due to tree cover, although Louis had guessed that there had to be a road somewhere. There was no grass in the yard. Instead, it had been turned into a vegetable garden. To their right, chickens clucked invisibly in their hutches, surrounded by a wire pen to keep out predators. To their left stood an old woodshed, its door open and blocks already stacked and covered within in preparation for winter. Behind it, white smoke gusted from a green, wood-burning furnace.

  There were lights inside the house, and more smoke rose from the chimney. An old truck was parked at the back door, its bed a wooden cage. It reeked of animal excrement.

  ‘How do you want to do this?’ asked Angel, but the question was answered for him. The back door opened and a woman appeared on the sheltered porch. She looked like she might have been in her forties, but her clothes were those of someone much older and there was too much gray in her hair for her years. Her face spoke of hard living, of disappointments, of hopes and dreams that had crumbled to dust in her hands.

  She looked at the two men, taking in their weapons, and spoke.

  ‘What do you want here?’ she asked.

  ‘Shelter, ma’am,’ said Louis. ‘The use of a telephone. Some help.’

  ‘You always come asking for help with guns in your hands?’

  ‘No, ma’am.’

  ‘You could say we’re victims of circumstance,’ said Angel.

  ‘Well, I can’t aid you. Go on now, you’d best be on your way.’

  Louis had to admire her courage. There weren’t many women who’d tell two armed men to be about their business.

  ‘I’m sorry, ma’am,’ he said. ‘I just don’t think you understand what’s happening here.’

  ‘We understand fine,’ said a voice from behind him. Louis didn’t move. He knew what was coming. Seconds later, he felt the twin barrels nudge him from behind.

  ‘You know what that was, son?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘Good. Let your gun fall down now. Your friend can do the same.’

  Louis did as he was told, allowing the Steyr to drop but letting his right hand drift toward the Glock at his waist. Small fingers appeared and snatched the Steyr away, then did the same with Angel’s weapon.

  ‘Your hand moves another inch, son, and I guarantee that you won’t live to feel the next raindrop on your face.’

  Louis’s hand froze. He was patted down hard, and the Glock was taken from him. The same voice asked Angel where his pistol was at, and Angel answered quickly and honestly. Glancing to his left, Louis saw a tall young man frisk Angel and take the gun from his waist. They were now completely unarmed.

  He heard footsteps backing off behind him. Slowly, he turned. Angel was already looking at the two men who had emerged from behind the woodshed. One was probably in his sixties, wearing a wide-brimmed leather hat to protect him from the rain. The younger man, the one who had frisked them, was in his late twenties, and was bareheaded. His hair was close shaven, and the rainwater ran like tears down the cheeks of his intensely pale, blue-veined face. His left eye appeared to have no retina. It was entirely white, like his skin, as though something poisonous had seeped from the latter into the former, draining it of color. Both were armed, the older man with a shotgun, the younger with a varmint gun. Between them stood a little girl of no more than seven or eight who was dressed, incongruously, in a Minnie Mouse raincoat and bright red boots. The guns recently taken from Angel and Louis lay between her feet. She didn’t seem troubled by the guns, or by the fact that the two men with her were pointing weapons at the visitors.

  ‘You ought to have stayed back in New York,’ said the older man.

  ‘How do you know we’re from New York?’ said Angel.

  ‘Rumors. They were waiting for you to come. It was just a matter of when.’

  ‘They?’

  ‘Mr Leehagen and his men.’

  ‘You work for Leehagen?’

  ‘Everyone around here works for Mr Leehagen, one way or another. If he don’t pay you directly, then you live by what he pays others.’ He looked down at the little girl. ‘Go to your grandma, honey.’

  The little girl ran behind the legs of the younger man and danced her way to the shelter of the house, splashing through the puddles that were forming on the uneven ground. She climbed the steps to the porch and stood beside her grandmother, who put a protective hand around her granddaughter’s shoulders. The girl smiled up at the older woman, then clapped her hands once with pleasure and excitement. Angel wondered who her father was. It didn’t seem to be the younger of the two men, the pale creature with the washed-out eye. She was too pretty to be his, too vibrant. He looked like a corpse that hadn’t yet realized it was dead.

  ‘Thomas,’ said the woman at the door to the older man. There was a note of what might almost have been pleading in her voice. It struck Angel that she wasn’t intervening out of any great concern for the two men who had trespassed onto the property. She just didn’t want her husband to get into trouble by spilling blood.

  ‘Just take her inside,’ said Thomas. ‘We’ll deal with this.’

  The woman grabbed the girl by the hand and pulled her into the house. The girl didn’t seem happy to miss the show, and it took an extra yank on her arm before she crossed the threshold and the door closed behind them. Even then, Angel could see her staring yearningly back at him, disappointment creasing her features.

  ‘We don’t want any trouble,’ said Angel.

  ‘Really?’ said the man named Thomas. He sounded skeptical, and tired. ‘It’s a little late for that, don’t you think?’

  ‘We just want to get out of here alive,’ said Angel.

  ‘I don’t doubt that, son. My guess is you’re going to have some problems on that score.’

  ‘You could help us.’

  ‘I could, that’s true. I could, but I won’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because then I’d die in your place, assuming you managed to get out of this mess you’re in, which I don’t think is going to happen. Mr Leehagen places a high premium on loyalty.’

  ‘Those men out there are going to kill us.’

  ‘You reap what you sow. I’m sure that’s in the Bible, somewhere. My wife could tell you. She reads on it some, when the mood strikes her. Never spoke much to me.’

  He shifted his grip on the shotgun, and Louis tensed. Angel could sense him getting ready to spring, and Thomas seemed to sense it too. The twin mouths of the shotgun steadied themselves on Louis. The wind changed direction, bringing the stink of whatever animals Thomas had transported to their doom in his truck to Angel, the smell of their dying as they voided themselves in fear.

  ‘No,’ said Thomas simply. ‘You do, and I’ll be feeding your body to the hogs before day’s end.’

  Hogs
. Now Angel could hear them snuffling and grunting somewhere behind the house.

  ‘You helped them make their movie,’ he said.

  Thomas shifted uneasily. ‘I don’t know nothing about that.’

  ‘How did they do it? A model? They get someone to lie in the mud and pretend to be eaten, fix it all up later in an editing suite. You tell us: how did they do it?’

  ‘I don’t know, and I don’t care,’ said Thomas. ‘I got nothing against you personally, and I don’t want to have to kill you here. Mr Leehagen wouldn’t like it. He’s got other plans for you, I guess. Go on, now. You get away from here, and you don’t come back. Your guns can stay with me. I don’t trust you to keep your word when I let you go.’

  Louis spoke: ‘Without weapons, we don’t stand a chance.’

  ‘You didn’t stand a chance anyway.’

  ‘You seem to know a lot about it.’

  The old man smiled. It wasn’t a malicious smile. Instead, there was a measure of pity in it.

  ‘You came up here all primed to cause some hurt, and now the tables have been turned on you. What did you think would happen? That there’d be some old man in a big house and you’d kill him without anyone even raising a finger to stop you? You listen to me: I got no love for that sonofabitch, and I think the world would have been a better place if he’d never been born into it, but you made a mistake coming up here, and you’ll live or die by that mistake. Like I said, you’ll reap what you’ve sown.’ He gestured with the shotgun, indicating the woods through which they had come. ‘That way lies the road, and maybe your way out of here. Don’t come back here. You do, and we’ll kill you. I have my family to consider, Leehagen or no Leehagen.’

  ‘I believe you,’ said Louis.

  ‘Good.’

  The two men stepped back as Angel and Louis moved away, the barrels of the guns never wavering. When they were almost out of sight, the old man called out.

  ‘Hey,’ he said.

  They stopped.

  ‘You said that I knew a lot about this. I don’t. I heard someone shoot his mouth off in a bar two nights ago, and then we was warned to keep an eye out for strangers. I figured what was coming. Those men out there, they don’t want to kill you. They’re saving you for someone else.’

  ‘Who?’ asked Angel.

  The old man shrugged. ‘Something about happiness,’ he said. ‘That’s what they said.’

  ‘Happiness?’

  ‘No, not happiness,’ said Thomas. His brow furrowed as he tried to remember the right word. ‘Bliss. That was it. They said bliss was coming your way.’

  Louis did not speak as they walked away. His arrogance, his anger, had brought them to this. Bliss. He looked at Angel trudging alongside him, lost in his own pain. The shorter man glanced up, and their eyes met. There seemed to be no blame in them, no wrath. This was what Louis had needed to do, and Angel had stood alongside him, despite his own reservations. If that was not love, then what was? Suddenly Louis’s feelings of warmth toward his partner were dispelled.

  ‘You’re an asshole,’ said Angel. ‘You know that?’

  ‘Yeah, I know it.’

  ‘Good. I’m cold and I’m wet and I’m going to be killed by a man who collects other killers like scalps, and it’s all your fault.’

  ‘I was just thinking that you hadn’t blamed me for this. I was thinking how much I admired you for it.’

  ‘Are you out of your mind? Of course I blame you. And you can keep your admiration. I’d write that on your tombstone, but I’ll be too dead to do it.’ Angel sneezed loudly. ‘Great. This is just great.’

  Louis looked at the sky. ‘Maybe it will stop raining.’

  ‘It’s something to look forward to, I guess.’

  ‘We need guns.’

  ‘We’ll have to kill someone to get them.’

  ‘We could go back and take them from the old man.’

  For a second or two, they considered it. They knew how it would play out. For all of the old man’s bluster and the guns in their hands, he and his family would be no match for them. But there was a child in the house, and there had been something in Thomas’s eyes that told Louis he would fight if they returned. There would be injuries, maybe even deaths. No, they would not go back there.

  ‘They expect us to run, to try and break out of the cordon,’ said Louis. ‘They won’t expect us to do what we came here to do.’

  ‘We try for Leehagen’s house?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘In the absence of anything better, it sounds like a plan.’ Angel wrung rainwater from his jacket. ‘What are we going to do, drown him?’

  ‘In the absence of anything better . . .’

  They walked on.

  ‘You really blame me for all this?’ asked Louis, after a few minutes of silence had gone by.

  Angel thought. ‘I blame myself.’

  Louis paused. ‘Is that true?’

  ‘No,’ said Angel as he sneezed again. ‘I do blame you.’

  24

  Willie Brew and the Detective crossed the bridge and followed the road for a hundred yards or so until they came to an intersection. Well, you could call it an intersection, but as far as Willie was concerned it was two roads going exactly nowhere, one heading east to west, the other continuing south. Neither of them looked too inviting, but then any strip that didn’t have a convenience store, a couple of fast food outlets, and maybe a bar or two barely qualified as a road in Willie’s book.

  ‘Who are these guys, exactly?’ asked Willie. The question had been troubling him since they had reached the bridge. He’d only been up in this godforsaken part of the world for an hour, and already he’d seen two dead bodies and, according to the Detective, the dead men had probably been on their side, which suggested to Willie that the odds in their favor had started to shrink. Now the rest of what passed for a rescue mission had disappeared, and the Detective had appeared more disappointed than surprised at their absence. None of this was making Willie feel any more at ease, and he began to wonder if Arno hadn’t been wise to stay where he was, and if he shouldn’t have stayed right there with him.

  At that moment, the biggest truck Willie had ever seen in his life appeared from the west. It was jet black, and its tires were so huge that even to stand on them and use them as a means of jumping to the ground was to risk breaking an ankle on impact. As it drew closer, Willie could see that the truck also seemed to be without its windshield, and both of its headlights were busted. The bench seats in the cab were big enough to seat four adults comfortably, but currently they seemed to be seating three men uncomfortably, especially since two of those men were wide enough to qualify as illegal structures if they stayed in the same place for too long. The man squashed between them, who was no Slim Jim himself, wore a look of beatific calm, as if this situation was not only familiar to him, but entirely welcome, despite the rain.

  ‘Shit,’ said Willie, involuntarily. Suddenly, the Browning looked very small in his hand. The gun didn’t look like it would have enough stopping power to make any of these men pause in their tracks. It would be like firing marshmallows at a trio of charging elephants.

  ‘Relax,’ said the Detective. ‘They’re with us.’

  He didn’t sound particularly happy about it.

  The truck came to a halt barely five feet from where they were. Until that point, it had been traveling so fast that Willie wasn’t sure it was going to stop at all. Seen from up close, the two big guys looked mad as hell, and it seemed for a few crucial seconds that they were just going to drive right over the Mustang, crushing it beneath the wheels of their truck as they proceeded in the direction of whomever had incurred their wrath. Willie rated that particular individual’s chances of survival at somewhere between minimal and extinct.

  The Detective got out of the Mustang. Willie did likewise. The two big men climbed out of either side of the cab, using a footplate behind the wheels to jump down. Willie couldn’t be certain, but he thought he felt the ground s
hake when they landed.

  ‘Meet Tony and Paulie Fulci,’ said the Detective softly. ‘The guy in the middle is Jackie Garner. He’s the sane one, although it’s a relative term.’

  Willie hadn’t heard of Jackie Garner, but he’d heard of the Fulcis. Angel had spoken of them in the tones usually reserved for forces of nature like hurricanes or earthquakes, the message being that, in common with such meteorological and seismic events, it was a pretty good idea to stay as far away from them as possible. As things stood, Willie was not far away from the Fulcis at all, and therefore had somehow entered a mobile disaster zone.

  ‘What happened to your truck?’ asked the Detective.

  ‘Some guys happened,’ said Paulie. He jerked a thumb in Jackie’s direction. ‘He didn’t help, though.’

  ‘We’ve been through all this,’ said Jackie. ‘It was a misunderstanding.’

  ‘Yeah, well . . .’ said Paulie. Clearly, the whole affair still rankled.

  ‘Where are the guys in question?’ asked the Detective.

  There was some awkward shuffling of feet.

  ‘One of them ain’t doing so good,’ said Tony.

  ‘How not good?’

  ‘He’s out cold. I ain’t so sure he’s going to wake up again either. I hit him kind of hard.’

  ‘And the others?’

  ‘Other,’ corrected Jackie. ‘There were two of them.’

  ‘He ain’t doing so good either,’ said Tony. His embarrassment deepened. ‘Actually, he ain’t never going to do good again. It was kind of an accident,’ he concluded lamely.

  To his credit, Willie thought, the Detective maintained an impassive façade.

  ‘Did you find out anything useful from them before they started not doing so good?’ he asked.

  Tony shook his head and stared at the ground.

  ‘We know how they’re staying in contact, though,’ said Jackie Garner. ‘They got radios in their trucks.’ He thought for a moment. ‘There’s some bad news there too, though,’ he continued.

  ‘Yeah?’ said the Detective wearily.

  ‘I answered one of their calls.’