by Ralph Dennis
“From what I heard. Might be three or four of them.”
“And against them,” he said, “you’ve got you and big stud there?”
“That’s right. And maybe you if you want in.”
“Arms?”
“Anything you want. Anything we can find and buy.”
He gave me the hard look. “You know which end the lead comes out of?”
I nodded.
“And Hump there?”
“He shot a tree once with a shotgun.”
He threw his head back and laughed. “Lordy, lordy.”
“You in?”
“Sure. I like lost causes.”
“It might be the wrong job for you then. This might not be one.”
“Why?”
“We pick the ground. We don’t let them pick it.”
“Where?”
“I have a place in mind.”
“When?”
“We leave tonight. You need weapons?”
“I’ve got mine,” he said.
“We didn’t talk money.”
“We’ll negotiate after you see how much I’m worth.”
At three a.m. an ambulance tore through traffic, siren going, and pulled up in front of the main entrance to the Melton Towers. Less than ten minutes later, accompanied by a frightened and crying old woman, the attendants wheeled out a stretcher bed and loaded it in the ambulance. The old woman got in back with one of the attendants and the driver threw rubber heading back toward town. A block away from Grady Hospital the ambulance cut the siren. It circled the hospital, passing up the emergency entrance and stopped on the street where Hump and I stood beside my car.
Edward got out and stepped into the car. I paid off the ambulance in cash and put a hundred on the old lady. She was Equity but I don’t think she’d put this job down on her résumé the next time she went for an actor’s cattle call.
A few blocks away, at the bus station, we picked up Runt. He was standing on the corner, one foot up on a gun-metal gray foot locker.
It took two of us to lift the foot locker and pack it away in the trunk of the car. As soon as it was loaded in, you could feel the tail drag.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
By six a.m., we were far into the Georgia mountains. The air was clear now, after the cities were behind us. And it was cool, chilly as we felt the gradual incline in front of us. The headlights revealed that the leaves hadn’t turned completely yet. It was still a matter of a week or two. After that it would be all flame and gold.
A few minutes after six, we passed through Harper Falls. It was a two-block town. All the fires were banked away until the sun warmed the street: not even a cafe or a restaurant open yet.
I drove it from memory. I’d been the route a few times before. Back a few years ago, a man I’d known in Atlanta had dropped out of city life. He and his wife had bought a piece of property just outside of Harper Falls. They’d brought their son with them and they’d had a cabin built on the side of a mountain. They got into mountain crafts, he into pottery and she into weaving, and they’d made it for a couple of years until the marriage went bad. His wife took the boy and moved to Macon and he’d stayed at the cabin another year. It hadn’t been the same without the wife and the boy and he’d moved back to Atlanta and got back into advertising. Since then, he used the cabin a few times each summer and he was free with the place with friends who wanted to use it for a week at a time.
It was desolate up there. About two miles past town a single-lane road sliced through a stand of trees. The road was rough and pitted and it curled into a kind of S before it reached open rocky land. The road ran for about eight-tenths of a mile. Past the trees, the rocky land opened up like a fan. Higher, up a steep incline, a walk that winded almost everyone who climbed it, was the cabin. It was built with the back flush against a sheer drop of about a thousand feet.
It was first light when we forced our way up the path to the front door of the cabin. The hard climb made worse by the fact that we carried enough weapons to start a small banana-republic war. The key was where my friend had said it was, under the doormat. I tripped the heavy padlock and we went in. There was a dusty smell in the closed-off rooms. No electricity. No refrigeration. In the central room, the combination kitchen, dining room, and living room, there was a fireplace about six feet wide and four feet high. A fire was laid on the irons and there was a full wood box off to the side.
I lit a kerosene lamp and took a fast look around. Runt crouched in front of the fireplace and set the kindling going with his cigarette lighter.
“It’s like a boy scout camp-out,” Edward said.
“Only they bring food with them,” Hump said.
“We’ll drive down and stock up in an hour or so,” I said. I took the lamp and went into the other room. It was the bedroom, furnished with a brass double bed and a single cot. Beyond that was a bathroom. The one convenience was the septic tank. I guess they hadn’t wanted to endure an outhouse.
I found some sheets and blankets packed away in heavy plastic. I threw a couple of sheets and blankets on each bed and I was making the beds when Runt came in and stood watching, a cigarette drooping out of the corner of his mouth.
“What do you think of it?”
“Might do,” he said. “I’ll pace it out after a while, but I think that’s a hell of a killing ground out there, where the road ends: the rock ground and the approach to the house.” He moved to the cot and lifted one of the sheets and sniffed at it. “How long do you think we’ve got?”
“A day. A day and a half. After that, they’ll know where we are.”
“You sure of that?”
I nodded. “It gets leaked late tonight.”
“How?”
“One of Art Maloney’s pigeons.”
“He the cop?”
“Yeah.”
“Nice touch,” he said.
“Of course.”
At nine I drove alone back into Harper Falls. I’d have taken Edward with me but he was worn out after the trip. I left him sleeping in the brass double bed. I told Hump, until I was sure we could trust Runt, I wanted one of us, him or me, near Edward at all times. When I left the cabin, Hump had the loaded shotgun on the kitchen table. He was starting a fire in the old wood cookstove.
At the Apex Supermarket, really a large general store, I bought enough canned food to last at least four days: canned meats and fruit, bread and butter, eggs and bacon, and a number of tall cans of juice. At the last minute, I added a case of soft drinks and four cases of beer.
While the owner and his helper loaded down the trunk and the back seat, I took a walk around town. I spent some time looking into the display window of a mountain craft shop. There, spread out, was a beautiful homemade quilt. It was applique with a large floral design in the center and bluebirds at the corners. Whatever mountain woman had put the quilt together had matched the design on a pair of pillow cases.
I made a note to buy one for Marcy before we headed back for Atlanta. She hadn’t been too happy when I’d called and told her about the trip. The quilt might cost better than a hundred but it would be worth it if it got me past Marcy’s anger. Of course she put up with a lot from me.
It would have been an optimistic gesture to buy it right then and carry it back up to the cabin. It would have said something about how sure I was of the outcome. But deep in me, the part that doesn’t lie, I knew the odds were about fifty-fifty against me coming back down the mountain. The quilt was too beautiful to end up with blood on it.
Hump made the first breakfast, bacon and scrambled eggs and toast browned in the oven, and coffee made in the huge old enamel coffee pot. Runt came in while Hump was dishing it out. He was wearing a .45 army automatic in an old flapped leather holster. He carried a large piece of paper wadded in one hand.
“Finished the scout,” he said.
Over coffee, after we’d eaten, Runt smoothed out the sheet of paper. He’d drawn a map of the area and he’d paced off the distances
. While Hump and I leaned over the table, he ran his finger over the drawing. “The only way up here is the road. Unless they’re mountain climbers. Unless they’ve got a copter. I doubt both of those, so it’s the road. Starting tonight, I’ll be down on the road or one of you will, spelling me. We’ve got to hope they’ll come up the road, at least part of the way, by car. That way we’ll hear them. It’ll give us time to box them.” He touched squares he’d drawn on both sides of the road, about a hundred yards before the road terminated with the rocky fan that led to the cabin. “I’d like to have fire pits here and here. The problem is that it’s almost solid rock. Maybe something can be done with the natural cover. But most natural cover won’t stop a round.”
“Sandbags?” I said.
“If we had the bags.” His finger outlined the fan-shaped clearing that fronted the cabin. “This is the killing ground. Whoever’s out in the fire pits when they come drives them this way, not back down the road toward town. Drives them into fire from the high ground, the cabin door and the window. There’s no cover and no place to hide.”
I backed away and dropped my empty coffee cup into the dishpan of water heating on the stove. “I’d like to walk through it with you.”
“Now’s good as any time.” He stood up and moved toward the bedroom where Edward was still sleeping. I followed him and stood in the doorway. He passed the bed where Edward was and squatted in front of his foot locker. He swung the top open and pulled out a flat canvas pack. He swung the pack over one shoulder as he came back to me. “Is he worth all this?” he asked, nodding toward Edward.
“He doesn’t think so. I do.”
He edged past me into the kitchen. I went over and shook Edward by the shoulder. “Breakfast.”
He grunted and sat up. “Pour the coffee,” he mumbled.
Runt was already outside when I passed through the kitchen. Hump put a plate and cup on the table and said, “Runt seems to know his business.”
“That’s the way it looks.”
“Out there, when it’s dark, I’d hate to run into him. A man could end up bloodmeat.”
I got the M1 carbine from the corner of the room and carried it out with me. Runt waited for me at the mouth of the road. He looked at the carbine and shook his head.
“Think of me as an officer.”
We walked down the road about a thousand yards. Runt stopped and toed a line in the rock and dirt. “I think this is about as far as they’d come in a car. Maybe not this far. But if they’re city, they might not like walking.” He turned and we walked back toward the cabin. About a hundred yards before the road ended in the clearing, he stopped again. To his left as he faced the cabin, a dead tree leaned across, touching another one. “This is where I’d set up a fire pit of some kind.” He stepped off the road and eased the pack to the ground next to the dead tree. He was bent over and now he froze and whipped his head toward me. “Hear something?”
He didn’t wait for me to answer. He uncoiled. A leap and he was over the dead tree and crouching. The flap was open and the .45 eased out. I didn’t hear anything but I followed him. Mine wasn’t a graceful move. It was more a lunge than a leap. I skinned an elbow and a knee. I duckwalked toward him. “What is it?”
“Car coming,” he said.
I untaped one of the clips, pointed the carbine skyward, and rammed the clip home. I charged the carbine, putting a round in the chamber.
“They’re early,” Runt said.
No answer for that. They were.
A minute later a black Mustang pulled level with us. Runt lifted the .45 but I put a hand on his wrist. “Not him.”
I’d had my look at the driver. It was Art Maloney. By the time Runt and I reached him, he’d taken a suitcase and a riot gun out of the car. He slammed the trunk down and waited for us.
“You get lonesome, Art?”
“I took a couple of days off. You got some spare breakfast?”
“The chow’s the best thing here.”
I introduced Art and Runt and they nodded at each other. Art turned and walked up the hill toward the cabin. Runt and I brought up the rear.
“Hardman, I hope you like jungle warfare.”
“Huh?”
“The odds just swung toward us. With him here, Maloney, you’re down in the barrel with me. Full time.”
“Hump might be better,” I said. I knew it wasn’t true, but I wanted to see what Runt would say.
“Not in this army. Butt-stomping and ass-kicking, he’d be first team. But not back there.”
“Why?”
He stopped and faced back toward the road. “Up here, from the cabin, if they get this far, you kill to keep from being killed, self-defense, and almost anybody kills when they have to.” He pointed a finger down the road. “In the fire pits it’ll be cold blood. You won’t like it, Hardman, but you’ll do it.”
“What makes you so sure?”
He grinned, showing small yellow teeth. “I heard. The paper said security men killed three men trying to rob that Tower. That was the cover. I heard different. You cut one with a piece and shredded two others with a shotgun.”
“They’d killed a sick old man,” I said. I don’t know why I was arguing. From him it was a compliment of sorts.
“The two you got with the shotgun … facing you or heading away?”
“Facing me, but blinded by a light.”
“You see?”
I did.
“Explain it to me, Art.”
It was late afternoon. Runt was down the road about a hundred yards near the fallen tree. He’d been working since lunch on the fire pit, using large stones to construct a wall. Now he’d finished and he was covering the wall with rotten wood and underbrush so it couldn’t be seen from the road.
“Something bothered me.”
Back in the cabin, I could hear Hump and Edward playing poker with a greasy deck Hump had found in the kitchen.
“What?”
“Ed Penny. You were talking with him at the Gray Horse Tavern.”
“That’s right.”
“At two a.m. he stopped a couple in an outdoor phone booth down the road.”
“Bad?”
“Not good,” Art said. “When I left, he’d been operated on. He was in an intensive care ward.”
“What’s bothering you?”
Art nodded down the road. “Runt there.”
“What about him?”
Through the cabin wall I could hear Hump whoop and holler. He’d filled a straight.
“It doesn’t read right, Jim. You’re getting set to face some pros and nobody wants to touch it. And in walks another pro, and he’ll wade right in.”
“Runt might not be a pro.”
“Don’t kid yourself.”
“All right.” I got out my pack of smokes and shook out a couple. Art cupped a match. “Maybe I got impatient. Maybe Runt’s a plant. But maybe not. And I didn’t get offered a lot to choose from.”
“I hope Runt’s straight,” Art said.
“For my sake?”
“For his,” Art said. “If he’s not, you kill him or I do.”
I let that flatten out and die between us.
Runt appeared at the end of the road, at the mouth of the rock fan opening below us. He looked up and waved. I waved and looked over at Art. He’d turned his back and gone into the cabin.
I’d lost the flip and taken the first watch, the six-to-midnight. I ate early and was making myself a sandwich to take down to the fire pit with me when Runt came in from the bedroom with a flat case a bit larger than the usual attaché case. He placed the case on a clear end of the dining table and flipped open the top. Art drifted over from the window and watched while Runt unclipped a couple of straps. He lifted out a Walther submachine gun. It was the short model, the MPK. Without the stock, it was about fifteen inches long. The stock, unfolded, added another eleven or twelve inches. That was the stock that came with the weapon. But the stock Runt took from the case and attached to the M
PK was about half that length. It was a special design, with something like a bicycle grip at the back. It was made of hard rubber and had finger notches.
“You wouldn’t believe the trouble I had getting this baby into the country,” Runt said.
“I’d believe it,” Art said.
“That’s the cop talk,” Runt said. He worked the bolt a couple of times and shoved a magazine home. “Had to ship it to a guy I knew in Mexico and he paid some sailors to take it over the border at T-Town.”
“Automatic only?” Art said.
Runt shook his head. “It was a special order for an outfit I was with. Selective too.”
“You mind?” Art held out a hand.
“Not a bit.” Runt passed the MPK to him.
“You boys be careful,” I said. I wrapped my sandwich and carried it and the Ml carbine down to the fire pit where Hump was waiting for me.
After dark the temperature dropped as if it had rolled over the side of a table. It was still a long way from the kind of weather it would be in December. I was warm enough with the extra shirt I’d worn under my jacket.
The time limped on. It reminded me of the watches I’d stood in Japan and Korea, boredom and the cold, without even fear and tension to keep me alert. This night’s watch was just a shakedown. The word wouldn’t be on the street until about midnight. Art had arranged that before he left Atlanta. Add to that the time before the rumor reached the death squad. Add the three hours or so of driving time.
A few minutes before twelve, with legs stiff and half-asleep, I got up and stepped out of the fire pit. I did a few paces up the road and returned. I stopped a few feet from the fire pit and stretched and yawned.
Then I saw Runt. I didn’t hear him. I saw him. He moved down the road toward the fire pit as if he knew every loose rock on the road and how to avoid them. He reached the fire pit and leaned toward it.
“Not there,” I said.
Runt jerked around, the Walther MPK swinging toward me. At the last moment, before it was level with me, he lowered the muzzle toward the roadbed. “You playing cowboy and Indians?”
