Dead Man

by Joe Gores

  There was the slightest lingering sunset over on the western horizon, but moonlight was already laying down cold fingers of light as the four manhunters wrapped rags around the tholes of the oars. Nicky and Trask were very clumsy at it, Inverness swift and adept. Nicky stood up in frustration.

  “Can’t we use the fucking flashlight? Can’t see a—”

  “Quiet!” hissed Inverness. “Voices carry at night.”

  He stuck an oar pin in the oarlock, tried it by moving the oar back and forth. It made no sound. He nodded and looked up at the sky. Clouds thickly edged with silver were massing across the face of the moon, fading its light.

  “That cloud will give us twenty minutes,” he said in a very low voice. “Let’s move out.”

  Now that he could not be seen from outside, Dain had the kerosene pressure lantern on the table, by its light was pouring gasoline over the blankets and ripped mattresses Vangie had strewn about. He especially drenched the blanket trailing down under the floor. At her three measured knocks, he released the pressure of the lantern, by the dying light poured out the rest of the gasoline, dropped the can, and went to the door.

  His dark silhouette darted out through the door, closed it as the lantern died. He dropped nimbly to the ground, flitted across the open knoll and without pausing hopped down over the lip of earth where he had hidden the two-by-six.

  As he waited, peering through his screen of branches, he gradually became aware of the night life around him. A week ago he would not have been. That was it! Marie had always been so much more intensely alive than he; now, if he died this night, it would be knowing he had returned to life before it happened.

  Was it the knowledge of death out there that made life so precious? Blind, urgent, unquenchable life? The night was alive with animal cries, whistles, songs, chitterings. First, flying squirrels emerged from abandoned woodpecker holes to soar through the dimness, chattering shrilly. Then a fox trotted by a yard from the immobile Dain without being aware of him ambushed there. An armadillo waddled across the open ground. A carefully stepping deer made little splashes at the edge of the channel.

  Through the forest drifted a great horned owl. It floated across the tops of the trees, swooped down over the bayou, landed in a tree near the point of the island. Dain’s eyes, accustomed to the dark, followed its flight, could pick out its dark bunched shape in the top of the tree. It looked about fiercely and gave its distinctive hoo, hoo-oo, hoo, hoo hunting cry.

  It was glaring down at the water, its light-gathering eyes picking up the dark moving shape with its four hunched hunters. A fish broke water right beside the flatboat’s gliding hull. There was a vague squeak of oar, a slight gurgle of water along the strake. The slog of the prow into mud.

  Four silent shapes left the boat, melted into tree shadow. Silent was a relative term; their clumsy presence muted the life around them. The owl flew off unnoticed by these other hunters, noted only by Dain as the light began to pick up with the moon’s emergence from the clouds.

  * * *

  Crouching in their cover together, the raiders looked across the now once again moon-drenched open ground to the cabin, dark and peaceful. They spoke in low tones, although Maxton couldn’t keep the elation out of his voice.

  “She doesn’t have a fucking clue we’re here!”

  “Even so, we wait fifteen minutes,” breathed Inverness. “Watch the animals. They’ll always tell you if somebody’s around. Did you see the owl telegraphing our presence below his tree? If Dain is watching—”

  Maxton came out of his crouch and massaged his knees.

  “If that bitch was wise to us, she’d be ten miles down the bayou with my bonds. Instead she’s alone in there, asleep. I want to hit her now. You got us here, great, that’s what you’ll get your percentage for. But now I’m taking over the assault.”

  “I’ll cover you from here,” said Inverness drily.

  “Like hell you will.” He turned to the other two silent killers. “Trask and I will each take a window. Nicky, you bust in through the door. And remember we need her alive long enough to tell us where the bonds are.”

  “What if Dain’s in there? What do I do then?”

  “Kill him,” said Maxton. “Inverness, you’ll take the back of the—”

  “Pass.”

  “You’re passing up your cut of the bonds, too, you know.”

  “You don’t get it, do you? All I want is Dain—dead. I’d be a fool to risk myself over the bonds if he already is.”

  “And if he isn’t?”

  “Then maybe you’ll get lucky and kill him for me—or at least maybe cripple him up some more, I know I winged him the other night. If he kills you, I’m no worse off.”

  Maxton just chuckled and turned away.

  “The yellow streak shows at last,” he sneered, then said to Nicky, “Remember—we need her alive to get the bonds from her.”

  “And to have a little fun with after,” added Trask.

  * * *

  The pilings gave just enough headroom for Vangie to lie on her back under the cabin with her head turned so she could see out from beneath it. She stiffened momentarily when, out on the moonlit ground, the moving feet of the three attackers appeared. They took up their positions around the cabin.

  Gun in hand, Nicky approached the front steps, tense and crouched and ready. He silently mounted them, crossed the porch. A second small cloud started across the face of the moon, dimming its light again, so the flash in his left hand flickered for one instant to show him the simple iron latch.

  Nicky jerked open the door and leaped through the opening, yelling, gun quartering the room.

  Everything happened at once, in the five seconds it took for his light to show the room was empty.

  Dain was already charging silently at a dead run from his place of ambush under the bushes. His two-by-six slammed the door shut as he smashed it down into the cleats Vangie had made for it. He was already spinning away at a dead run for cover.

  “Now!” he yelled.

  Vangie touched her already struck match to the blanket-fuse coming down through the cabin floor, rolled away from the searing heat as it went up in a whoosh of igniting gasoline.

  Inverness already was drifting back from his tree-shadow cover toward their flatboat pulled up on the mud behind him, even as his quick eyes picked out Dain’s dark moving shape hitting the safety of the bushes on his return.

  “That goddam Dain,” he muttered aloud. “Waiting.”

  The whole inside of the cabin was already blazing. Nicky was slamming his forearm against the barred door, but it didn’t give. He dropped his gun, ran back a few paces—and the fire running up the gasoline-soaked fuse Vangie had ignited whooshed up around him.

  Blazing now, screaming, he hurled himself again and again against the door.

  30

  The door of the cabin burst outward, the cleats ripping from the wall, and out came a screaming fireball. Air sucked inside made the cabin a sudden massive torch. The fireball rolled in the grass and then quit screaming and quit moving as inside, the shells in its dropped gun began to explode.

  Maxton came running around the corner of the cabin from the far side toward their drawn-up boat, gun in hand, yelping in fear, ignoring the burning Nicky. At the water’s edge, in full moonlight, panting, he ran back and forth like a dog left behind by the family car. Their boat was gone. He could just see Inverness on the water, rowing it toward the open marsh.

  “Inverness!” he shrieked. “For God’s sake…”

  Inverness kept on rowing with long, full, unhurried strokes. Maxton ran up and down the bank in a frenzy.

  Vangie rolled out from under the huge torch the cabin had become, jumped to her feet, ran for the safety of Papa’s fishing road through the woods. The burning cabin made everything as bright as day, and at the edge of the undergrowth she ran right into Trask’s arms.

  “Got you, bitch!” he panted.

  She ripped his face just as her mothe
r had done, he staggered back, letting go of her, so she had room for a high dancer’s kick, the sort where they try to touch their nose with their knee. Only his scrotum was in the way. He emitted a pneumatic “Whoosh!” and Vangie ran into the woods. He got one shot off, aiming low despite his pain, but missed. Bent over, cursing foully, he staggered after her.

  Even through his panic, Maxton heard the shot. It helped ease his fear, he began looking around. And shit, ten yards away up the bayou, there was Vangie’s flatboat drawn up nose-to on the bank. He trotted toward it, still wobble-kneed from the shock of that screaming fireball rolling out of the cabin at him.

  Dain, grunting, hit him like a blocking lineman. He went sprawling, the gun went flying.

  Maxton scrabbled for it in the mud as Dain put a foot against the prow of the flatboat and, with a great heave, sent it shooting backward out into the channel. Maxton came up with his gun, but Dain was already zigzagging away as he fired. Lucky for him, no barrel-clog of mud. Two more shots, but Dain was gone, back into the undergrowth.

  Maxton whirled back toward the flatboat. It was being carried away by the current in the same direction Inverness had disappeared—around the front of the island. He looked back to where Dain had disappeared, then back to the boat.

  He could dive in, swim after it—he did his dutiful laps at his health club in Chicago three days a week. But what if Dain had the pirogue hidden somewhere, came out after him, smashed in his head with a paddle? He would be too vulnerable in the water, even with the gun…

  The underbrush rattled behind him. He spun and fired again. There was instant crashing and thrashing, then sudden silence. Almost reluctantly, Maxton edged across the clearing past the settled angry red remains of the cabin and the black ugly charred remains of Nicky.

  His cocked and ready Colt airweight .38 six-shot revolver was outthrust toward a patch of shadow where he feared Dain might be lurking. He was feeling better again. He had a gun, Dain didn’t. Trask obviously had winged the little bitch, would have her waiting for him. He couldn’t remember how many shots he had fired, but he had a fistful of extra bullets in his pocket.

  A couple of yards to the right of where he thought Dain was, the top of a bush moved slightly. He shifted his aim without making any noise.

  “Dain?” he called.

  The next bush moved, surreptitiously, slightly. Maxton edged closer. Hell, he’d hit him with one of those shots, Dain was trying to crawl away. But he had to make sure.

  “Maybe we can deal.”

  Silence from Dain. A charred timber in the cabin collapsed in a shower of sparks, jerking Maxton’s head around. He turned back quickly. A third bush was moving. Feebly. Yes! He went into his firing crouch.

  He called softly, “All I’ve ever wanted is the bonds!”

  No answer.

  “I don’t want the girl. Not any more.”

  Hell no, he didn’t want her. Trask already had her. The top of the next bush moved slightly. He brought up his gun. Sidled closer.

  Dain was lying on his back under the bushes, dappled with moonlight. He held a long willow stick in his good hand, angled up against a branch of an overhead bush three yards away. Unlike Maxton, he had kept count of the shots fired.

  “Just two more, damn you,” he muttered to himself.

  At almost the same time, Maxton’s voice came again.

  “What do you say? Not you, not the girl. Just the bonds.”

  For answer, Dain jammed the stick hard against the bush, and so close together they were almost one, two slugs ripped through the undergrowth where he should have been. He was already on his feet and bursting out of the thicket.

  Maxton was five yards away, digging a handful of shells from his pocket to feed into the gun’s open cylinder. Dain’s charge rocked him back on his heels, sent the bullets flying. But Maxton swung the .38 in a vicious arc—the barrel slammed down on Dain’s injured shoulder.

  Dain cried out with the pain, spun away, fell, rolled away from Maxton’s surprisingly quick and viciously kicking feet, was as quickly on his own feet, ready. They circled like fighting dogs seeking advantage. But Dain was backing up as he circled, away from the last embers of the burned-out cabin.

  Maxton sprang.

  He was a powerful adversary and he had the use of both arms and a pistol as a club. They grappled, fell, rolled over and over, striking, kicking, grabbing. Dain, hampered by his useless arm and the need to protect his wound from Maxton’s blows, was fading fast. His bandages were soaked in new blood.

  He managed to break free, get to his feet, back up a low rise with a big sycamore tree in the dip beyond it. He was staggering. Maxton swung the heavy revolver again, Dain ducked, but the gun sight raked across his forehead. Blood ran down into his eyes. Maxton laughed.

  “I’ll chop you to pieces, Dain.”

  He feinted twice, then leaped in with another terrible swing of the gun. But Dain sprang forward inside the blow, with his last despairing strength got his good hand on Maxton’s windpipe. Squeezing. Maxton’s eyes began to bug out. The gun slammed into Dain’s back, but because they were chest-to-chest there was little force in the blows.

  Then Dain fell backward to land at the very lip of the knoll, dragging Maxton down on top of him, with a leg already drawn up to his chest so the raised foot would plant itself firmly in Maxton’s belly. As the big man came down on top of him, the leg pistoned straight up. Maxton’s momentum, guided by the throat grip and given terrific force by the thrust of that catapult leg, sent him right over Dain’s body in a flip.

  Under the wide-spreading sycamore the flat black slowly seething depths of the tar vat sent up sluggish bubbles. Dain released his grip on the throat and Maxton went out beyond him and down, screaming horribly when he landed spread-eagle on his back in the bubbling tar, still clutching his useless gun. He tried to rise, pull free, but he was already burning. Several jerky motions, still screaming, but all they did was send waves of tar from the sides of the vat rolling back over him. In a few moments, he subsided to a shapeless smoking mass.

  Dain missed that part. He had passed out.

  Vangie was leaning against a tree, panting, half a dozen yards off the road through the woods. She could hear the sounds of Trask’s supposedly stealthy pursuit behind her, but she didn’t move. Not too far behind, Trask also stopped, panting, to listen for sounds of his fleeing prey. His face was cut by slashing branches, blackberry thorns.

  As he dashed sweat from his forehead with the back of his gun hand, Vangie burst in apparent wild terror from cover a dozen yards away. She was gone even as he fired—still low, still trying to bring her back alive. He was a good soldier, a good button man. He had his quirks, but he knew how to obey orders.

  He plunged away after her.

  But it was harder now, the moon was lower, its light dimmer. He stopped, listened. He didn’t know that Vangie was sitting on the ground a few yards ahead of him around a bend in the track, also listening. She had been hard-pressed to keep from losing him. She was poised for flight, but there was nothing to flee from. She couldn’t hear him moving around. She took her big Bowie knife from the sheath, nervously, put it back.

  It was time. Life or death. She wondered how Dain was. Out of sight of each other, they still were fighting in tandem.

  She picked up a rock from the trail, hesitated, then heaved it back the way she had come.

  Trask’s head jerked around toward the crashing from the undergrowth. He had been concentrating all of his attention in the wrong direction, but now he had that little bitch!

  Gun in hand, he charged around the bend in the track.

  Vangie was half-sitting a few yards beyond, one leg drawn up, massaging her ankle with an agonized look on her face. She screamed in apparent surprise and fear.

  “I did your folks, now I’m gonna do you!”

  And he charged her. There was no way she could escape him. Oh, she tried. She leaped up but cried out, fell, rolled, holding her ankle, trying unsuccessful
ly to scrabble away from him. Not this time. He was upon her…

  But just a yard short of Vangie, in shadow that made it even more invisible, was one of Papa’s tight lines—eight feet above the ground where Trask would never see it unless he was looking up. Instead of the original hooks on the stagings, now at their three-foot intervals were strung the muskrat traps Vangie had been greasing, each one open and set.

  Trask, charging, yelling, gloating down at his prey helpless at his feet, ran face-first right into one of the gaping traps. She had led him to it as carefully as a mother bird feigning a broken wing will lead a fox away from her nest.

  The trap’s powerful spring snapped jagged steel teeth shut on his face with a vicious metallic snap. He screamed and danced, jumped and jerked—and his wildly swung gun hand smashed into a second trap, which snapped shut around it, crushing the fingers, piercing the wrist. The gun fell.

  Vangie came up off the ground in a lithe drive of piston legs, right at him with her huge gleaming Bowie knife in both hands, cutting edge down, held the way a Mayan priest might hold the knife to rip open the chest of a blood sacrifice. He was the one! The one who had killed her folks!

  Her face distorted with the killing lust, she slammed the blade down into the center of the screaming man’s belly in a long disemboweling slash like a hunter gutting a hung deer. She cried out formlessly as she did it; a splash of hot blood hit her across the face as her attack carried her right past the flopping, shrieking man.

  Vangie dropped her knife and staggered a few steps away into the woods exactly like a drunkard, then collapsed. She slumped there in a huddle, unmoving, sobbing.

  For ten years her life had been without consequence, without meaning. Now she had killed two men. She had stolen $2 million. Her folks were dead because of her and she had mourned them with a knife. She could never again be whoever she had been for those ten years.

  She cried for who she had been and for who she had become. She cried for Dain, for her folks, for Jimmy.

  She didn’t cry for Trask.