by Ralph Dennis
It had been Art’s idea to squirrel Edward away for the night. He’d drive Edward to the Harper Falls police station, show his I.D., and do a tap dance about Edward being a witness against a big rackets man in Atlanta. For his safety, Art wanted him kept overnight in the station. He’d flash around some money I’d given him and offer to pay fifty dollars a man for any special policemen the chief would put on to guard Edward that night.
With Edward out of the way, we could settle in for the bloodbath on the mountain. Handled right, they’d believe Edward was still at the cabin and they’d have to come after him. They couldn’t wait forever.
Art returned from town about an hour later. He’d done his shopping. The three huge T-bone steaks had probably been cut from some local gully-jumper cow or other. The baking potatoes weighed about a pound each and there was a ball of homemade butter with the mold stamp on it.
Art stayed down on the road with me while Hump stoked up the wood stove and put the potatoes in the oven. It would be an hour or so before we could eat. Knowing the quality of the usual gully-jumper beef, I wasn’t sure it would be worth the effort.
As he’d expected, the local chief had been pleased to be helpful to the big city cop. The first calls the chief made located two deer hunters who’d said they’d load their deer rifles and be right over. Fifty dollars was good pay for something most of these mountain men did for the fun of it. That is, sitting around and smoking, chewing and telling lies, with a bottle of some kind of pop-skull to rinse their mouths out with now and then.
He’d taken his care going to the police station. He was sure no one followed him. But twenty or thirty minutes later he’d picked up a tail at the grocery store. A black Buick was across the street when he came out and it had followed him back to the private road.
“Get a look at them?”
“Not a close one,” Art said, “but close enough to see that neither of the two was Runt.”
“That’s three then. At least three.”
“Like the F.B.I. thought. A four-man squad, minus the one Runt burned.”
I grinned at him. “Nice of Runt.”
“Oh, he was a sweetheart.”
After the rain, it was cooler now. A strong wind fingered and searched us. Up at the cabin sparks blew from the roof chimney.
We ate in shifts: Hump was first, and when he was done, he put Art’s steak in the huge old skillet and came down to keep me company while Art cooked it to his taste and ate it. Art passed me on the path and said the steak was tough as plywood.
I took my time. I pounded my steak with the edge of a saucer and then I put about half of the butter left into the skillet. I added some fat kindling to the stove and when the stove lid was cherry red, I put the lid aside and cooked the steak right over the flames. I gave it a burned crust on both sides and tipped the steak out on a plate. After all that trouble, it was still about as tough as wet plywood.
I’d pushed the bone aside and was eating the potato crust when I heard the first gunfire. Art pumped the riot gun as fast as he could. A rip from an automatic weapon. That was followed by both barrels of Hump’s tree-killer.
I scooped the kerosene lamp from the corner of the table and ducked away from the window. I trimmed the wick until there was only a feeble light left. Still bent over, I placed the lamp on the floor below the window. The Ml carbine was next to the door. I grabbed it and held it against my hip to charge it. Ready. A deep breath and I swung the door open a foot or so and stepped out sideways, bent over, pulling the door closed behind me. Not slamming it, easing it shut.
I crouched with my back to the cabin wall. The feeble light from the window didn’t touch me. I waited, with eyes closed for a few seconds and then opened. I wouldn’t rush it. I knew my night sight would be better soon. Down below me, in the road, was a flash and the flattened-out echo rattled off the cabin wall.
With my eyes better now, I could see the fringe of the wood below, the thick stand of trees sliced apart by the road, starlight pale on the rock fan of the killing ground. Ready as I’d ever be, I stood up and felt my thighs shaking, the strain of holding the crouch too long. I rubbed one leg and then the other. Patient, waiting, I noticed the silence below. It was like a truce. I counted it out. When I reached sixty, an automatic weapon ripped out a long burst. Hump’s tree-killer roared back.
Time. I felt for the path and started down. The rocks were slick from the afternoon rain. I was still counting, not aware that I was, until I reached sixty and the automatic weapons tore the silence. I stopped. It was a pattern I didn’t understand and it bothered me. An odd kind of war: the shotguns and the automatic weapons, both effective at rock-throwing distance, were standing off and shooting the hell out of the trees in no man’s land.
Counting again, I reached sixty and the automatic weapons underscored it. Once it could be an accident. Three times it was a definite pattern. I turned and went back up the path. I stood with my back to the door. After two more repetitions of the pattern I ducked under the window casing and took my position at the corner of the cabin.
This time when I reached sixty, the first mistake in the pattern. Silence, no gunfire, and I heard, below me and to the right, the sound of one rock grinding against another one. At sixty-three an automatic weapon cut in. Too late. I’d heard it. Someone had worked their way through the woods, circling Art and Hump’s position. It could be a movement to flank Art and Hump, but I didn’t think so. No, whoever was down there was after the cabin, after Edward. The defensive fire below revealed that two of us were down by the road. That meant they’d only have to get past the third defender to reach Edward. It was the best setup they could expect. Get past the gun at the cabin, kill Edward, and they could vanish in the woods, to appear in a few days in New York or Chicago or God knows where.
Cold wind, but I could feel the sweat break, into thin runs down my sides, ice on my forehead. Hardly breathing, I waited for the second mistake. I didn’t count any more. It wasn’t necessary. I’d tagged it and I knew they’d set up a one-minute pattern. The man coming toward me now counted along with them and moved on the mark of sixty, using the sound to cover any noise of his passage.
Goose and gander. I used the gunfire as he did. I moved out, away from the corner of the cabin. I wanted a better angle of fire toward the cabin door. Satisfied, I bellied down on the rock, the carbine at my shoulder, elbows dug into the rock. I sighted in on the door. The angle up was slight, about where I thought Runt’s chest would be.
Two more minutes, two more bursts. I was surprised when it came. I still hadn’t placed him on the path. A kick and the cabin door flew open. I caught the outline of the man in the faint light. A bigger man than Runt stood there. He was dressed all in black, over six feet tall and he was older, near fifty. As soon as the door swung open he pulled trigger on an MPK and turned the weapon, stitching his way across the front room.
I knew I didn’t have much time. I had a second or a split of one. I didn’t bother to adjust the angle I’d set ahead of time. If I waited, he’d move out of the doorway. I squeezed trigger and emptied about half of the magazine, seven or eight rounds. I hit him about thigh high. The force of the rounds that hit him broke him low and threw him against the doorframe. But he wasn’t done. He bounced away and swung the MPK toward me. He was falling and his finger stayed on the trigger. He sprayed the rocks below, the barrel edging toward me. My luck. He was dying, probably, and it looked like he might take me under with him. I pulled the carbine toward me and rolled for the corner of the cabin. As I bumped into the cabin, the ear-breaking sound ended. I heard him grunting, holding back the scream of pain. So that was it. The magazine held thirty rounds or so, give or take a couple, and he’d used them up. Too much firepower into the empty cabin. I pushed the carbine toward him and emptied the rest of the magazine into the lump form in the doorway.
No sound after that. No grunting. I broke the tape and got the spare magazine free from the stock. I pulled out the empty and jammed the replacem
ent home. I charged it before I got to my knees and crawled toward the doorway. Reaching him, I put the carbine aside and used both hands to drag the body out of the light. No noises from him. I found his throat and felt for a pulse. None.
There was still a dim light from the open doorway. Just outside the door I could see the MPK. It wasn’t like Runt’s. It had the standard eleven- or twelve-inch folding metal rod stock. Might as well. I sucked it up and stepped over the body. With one hand I grabbed the MPK. With the other I caught the door latch and jerked it shut.
It was an unfamiliar weapon, one I’d never fired. I fumbled with it until I got the empty magazine free. That done, I patted the body down until I found a spare in a pouch at the man’s belt.
I rammed the spare home and worked the bolt until I had a round in the chamber. Below me, down near the road, another exchange of fire. Runt was down there. Damn him. And I got the ghost of an idea. The last they’d heard from the cabin had been my carbine. It would mean I’d come out with the edge. I wanted to change that impression. I braced the stock of the MPK against my shoulder and fired a short burst of eight or ten rounds.
With the carbine in one hand and the MPK in the other, I ran down the path toward the trees, hoping I wouldn’t run into Art or Hump. They’d heard that final burst and they’d make their guess what the silence after that meant.
Dark in the trees. Getting wet, I moved through the underbrush. Deep in the woods, I used the exchange of fire again, this time to cover my approach, using a wide circle at first to keep me out of the range of the shotguns Art and Hump were firing, just in case they heard me. After a hundred yards or so I swung left, pointing toward the flash of the weapons. Five minutes. Then ten minutes.
Careful. Still, he was there before I expected him. I stepped past a stand of trees and I saw the muzzle flash. I was behind him and to his right if he turned. I eased down to one knee and placed the carbine on the ground, flat against my down leg. I lifted the MPK. As I leaned forward a dry-rotted limb broke under my weight.
“Mace? That you?”
It wasn’t Runt’s voice. I grunted what might have passed for a yes.
“Get him?”
I grunted again.
I could hear the fear. “Is that you, Mace? Say something.”
I couldn’t see him. All I had to go on was the memory of the position where I’d seen the muzzle flash. I pointed the MPK a few feet forward of that and burned the rest of the magazine swinging it back toward him. I didn’t hit him. I guess he’d dropped as soon as he had decided my grunts weren’t the best identification. He waited until he was sure the magazine was empty and then he panicked. Confused or just too afraid to care, he jumped to his feet and ran toward the road. I dropped the MPK and brought up the carbine. I didn’t fire. I didn’t want to put any rounds in the general direction of Art and Hump. And I didn’t have to. Art’s riot gun and Hump’s shotgun fired at about the same time.
Two down. The wild panic running ended. That left Runt.
I waited.
A minute. Another minute. I didn’t have to count. The tick was in me. I’d had practice. Not that it really mattered. Runt would have to break soon. He was outgunned and he knew it.
First, I wasn’t sure. A soft dragging sound. It was straight ahead, some yards beyond the point where I’d fired the MPK at the second man. I waited. That sound again. I knew it now: soft walking on wet, soggy leaves. This second time, unless the darkness fooled me, he was moving away from me, in the direction of the highway, about a half-mile to go.
The sound again. I lifted the carbine and squeezed off a round. It set him off. He wasn’t walking any more. It was a headlong rush. I squeezed off a couple of rounds. I heard him fall and the desperate scrabbling in the undergrowth. Only seconds later, he was up and running again. I didn’t follow. I leaned against a tree and listened to the noise of the running get fainter and fainter in the distance. It ended and I stepped away from the tree.
“Hump? Art? It’s clear over here.”
On the way to the road, passing the fire pit, I saw the chewed-up body of the man who’d panicked. I didn’t take a long look. I’d seen enough bodies in the last couple of weeks.
Art almost knocked me over with his rush to me. He wrapped an arm around me. “You scared hell out of us.”
“Couldn’t call you on the phone,” I said.
Hump tapped me on the shoulder on the way to the body. He took a long look at the man, maybe the first man he’d had a part in killing, and bent over, gagging. It hadn’t been good steak anyway.
Sheriff Abel Box didn’t like us one bit. A banty little man with a beer gut and a pigeon chest, he’d arrived within minutes of the last round I’d fired. Watching him, listening to him, I had the feeling he’d have shot the three of us himself if he could think of some way of explaining it.
After we walked it through for him, Hump and Art took him up to the cabin for a cup of coffee. I didn’t go with them. I rode out to the highway with Box’s deputy. We parked and got out and walked. After a few minutes of walking, we found the tire treads deep in mud, where they’d parked their car. And the deputy, pointing his flashlight toward the woods, showed me where Runt had skidded in the mud and gone down. I guess the deputy was another of those deer hunters. While I stood and watched, he went into the woods for a few feet and came back with a couple of leaves in the palm of his hand. When he pointed the light at his hand, I could see that there were smears of blood on the leaves. So I’d nicked him. Or someone had.
Back at the cabin the coffee was ready. I poured myself a cup and walked around, looking at the damage the burst from the MPK had done. It had ripped up part of the wall and chipped away at the fireplace. All this time Art droned away at Sheriff Box. In the end the sheriff bought it. It was either that or arrest all of us. That meant trials and expense to the county. Rather than that, he wrote it off as a professional hit try that had gone bad.
We followed Sheriff Box down into Harper Falls. While Hump and Art collected Edward from the police station and paid off the deer hunters, I registered for four rooms at the best motel in town. Even before they arrived, I’d had a shower and stretched out in bed. I went over the edge as if I weighed at least a ton.
After breakfast Edward left for Atlanta with Art. Hump and I stayed behind long enough to clean up the cabin as well as we could. On the way back through town, I asked around and found a carpenter who said he’d repair the damage to the cabin. I told him what was involved and he set a price. I upped his price about twenty percent, just in case, and told him where to leave the key when the work was done.
My last stop in town was at the craft shop. I paid a hundred and twenty-five dollars for the quilt in the window, the one with the floral design in the center and the bluebirds. The matching pillow cases came with it.
The war was over. We took our time driving back to Atlanta.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The call came three nights later. It was a few minutes after midnight. It was raining in Atlanta, a cold brittle rain like ice. It was a sound that had rocked both Marcy and me to sleep. And then the phone rang.
“You’re hard to find, Hardman.”
“You’ve been looking for me?” I recognized the voice, the faint twang in it. Or I’d been expecting him to get in touch with me.
“Not really.”
“Tell me about it, Runt.”
“You put a hole in me, Hardman.”
“It wasn’t any more than you’d have done for me,” I said.
He started to laugh but I guess that gave him some pain. He choked it off. “I guess you know I came into some money. I’ve retired.”
The hundred thousand dollar payment from Alec Troutman. As the last one alive it all fell to him. “You sure?”
“I bought myself a bar.”
“Where?”
“You’ve got to be kidding, Hardman.”
“Just testing,” I said.
“The reason I called is,” he said, “now t
hat I’m out of it I wanted to find out how good your memory is.”
“It’s rotten.”
“Give me an example,” Runt said.
“Let’s see.” I felt Marcy stirring behind me. “You’re six-one or two. Dark hair. Two hundred and ten or so. And you look like a redneck copy of Paul Newman.”
“Anything else you remember?”
“There’s a bullet hole in your hide somewhere but I don’t remember where I was aiming at the time.”
“And Hump and Art?”
“The same,” I said. “Maybe even worse.”
“Go back to sleep.” Runt hung up on me.
Resting on one elbow, with the slow kind smile of a woman sure of herself and of me on her face, Marcy said, “Who was that, at this time of the night?”
“A girl who wants to get in my pants.”
“Why would she want to do that?”
We hugged and outlaughed the steady rain.
It was an item that didn’t make the Atlanta newspapers. It came in a plain envelope that had a New York City postmark, a clipping and nothing else.
DALLAS, TEXAS (UPI) Franklin L. Clark, an executive with the Troutman Oil of Texas Company, was killed early this morning in his downtown Dallas apartment. He had been shot twice at close range with a handgun. From the way the apartment had been searched and the fact that a number of art objects were missing, Dallas police theorized that Clark surprised a thief in his apartment …
I tore up the clipping and flushed it down the john.
So Runt had retired, at least for the time. His last act had been to punch Clark’s ticket. With Troutman dead and Clark gone too, there wasn’t anyone to ask for a refund or insist that Runt form another team and carry out the contract. Neat. It was a kind of professional neatness.
The next day I called the Templeton apartments at the Melton Towers. All I could find out was that Beth Fanzia was in Europe and Edward was in Arizona. They wouldn’t give out either address.
