by James Phelan
“Round one is yours, boys,” Walker managed to say. “Enjoy it.”
He let them have that, to allow himself to take in what was what and who was who. They weren’t about to seriously damage him. Not unarmed like this. They weren’t fighters—big, angry, a little drunk, sure, but these were guys who had regular jobs, for these parts; eating meat they hunted themselves was about as adventurous as they got. They were not men who lived on ration packs and hunted and killed other men for a living, always under the constant threat that the next step into enemy territory would be their last. Walker had spent more than half his life as the latter. It gave him confidence, knowing what he knew, having done what he’d done.
Fact was, this situation was a world away from the Boar and Thistle and the two ex-SAS men who had confronted him.
Walker still liked this bar. Which was probably evident in his smile.
“He’s got a big smart mouth on ’im,” the guy to Walker’s left said. “Hit ’im again, Seabass!”
Seabass was the big slab of beef in front, the action man with the mangled anvil fists. He did as he was goaded, and went in with a right hook.
Walker didn’t give them this one.
He had played no resistance to the two at his arms. So far. This time Walker rocked his back against the bar, pivoting his body where the timber edge met the base of his spine, and dragged his left arm across his body. It was a fast jab, one that not only hit the guy to his right on the tip of the chin, but also dragged the man holding his left forearm across his body—just in time to meet Seabass’s heavy blow as it landed.
TAP—WHACK.
First, the guy tapped on the chin fell to the floor. Walker knew a lot about the dense nerve cluster there, and that when hit just right, it’s lights out. Boxers train for hundreds of hours to hit that sweet spot and rarely get it as accurately as Walker managed.
Second, the guy who had taken Seabass’s blow to the side of the head slid down Walker’s front and fell at Seabass’s feet, squirming and twitching. He’d collected the heavy punch to the temple, and as big as he was, the skull was thin there, weak. He might be permanently brain damaged. Or it might have smarted him up. Whatever.
Walker stood tall, his full six feet three inches, eye to eye with Seabass. He saw the latter’s mind working to compute and catch up with what had just happened. Whether the alcohol intake had slowed that brain, Walker was unsure, but the fact was, he was on the clock, and it seemed as though Seabass was going to stand there with his mouth open like that until next Tuesday.
“Kill him!” the face-painted woman yelled.
Seabass looked from his fallen friends to her, then to Walker—and then he grinned. He reached behind his belt and drew a large hunting knife.
Walker looked at it and decided that it was the last time this guy would ever pull a knife on a man.
“Enough!” A small voice cut through the air. Young, forceful, female.
15
The voice belonged to the girl who had been seated behind Walker—so now she was behind Seabass. Walker watched her get to her feet. She was young—late teens, maybe twenty—and had been sitting with a guy about her age, both of them on some quiet and uncomfortable date up until now. Conflict, or defusing it, seemed more her speed; romance be damned. She was five feet nothing, finely featured with a heart-shaped face, and with shoulder-length brown hair pulled into a loose ponytail.
She was moving, all 120 pounds of her, her little fists up and each with a pointed index finger, and she approached Walker from her table. She stepped around Seabass and placed herself between them and the wife, in the center of a triangle.
“It’s my cousin he’s asking about,” she said, pointing at Seabass, “and I’ll take care of this!”
Silence in the air. Walker kept his eyes on Seabass and the knife. He was holding it in a forehand grip, which wasn’t what military training dictated, but with the size of the blade, and the serrated back edge of it, grip technique was academic. In this space, especially with the young woman now crowded next to him and the bar against his back, Walker knew it’d be hard to dodge the first attack without sending the knife arcing through the air at her or someone else. The pale old woman he didn’t much care about, but this girl, with her fists and her Moses-like voice that cut through the room and the family connection to Murphy? Her, he liked. A lot. She had spirit. Spunk. Fight.
“This is my business,” the girl said to the woman. “Not yours. My family business. I never get into your business, Barb, never have, never will, right? So, let me deal with this.”
Walker sensed that the pale old woman, Barb, still seated at the bar, was weighing up that statement. Finally, her pack-a-day smoke-riddled voice cut the air like a diesel train passing by: “He leaves town. Right now.”
“Fine.” The young woman turned and faced Walker. “Come with me.”
Walker nodded.
“Wait,” Barb said, chuckling a dry laugh. “Susie, you ain’t going nowhere with him. You and I got our own business now. He leaves? You stay. You owe me for this, now. See? Unless you want to change your mind about this stranger’s fate tonight?”
The young woman called Susie turned and looked at Barb, then Walker, then back to the woman and said, “I owe you nothing. See?”
Silence.
Let it go, kid. Just walk out of here with me . . .
“You don’t think I can handle him, is that it?” Susie said to Barb, her tone now turning sing-song while remaining self-assured—Walker had helped train many a CIA operative to talk just like that: to be persuasive, to talk someone into your bidding. She turned to Walker, looked him up and down, said, “He’s nothing, this guy. Look at him. He’s big, but he’s soft. Some east-coast city guy, I bet. Air Force? Who the hell joins the Air Force? Fags. That’s who. You don’t think I can handle a soft city fag like this?” Someone sniggered. Someone shushed. The bar was silent, waiting for the next person to talk. “Remember what I did to your boy here? Last summer?”
She motioned with a kick of her boot to the butt of the wiry guy who’d held Walker’s left arm, the one who was now twitching on the worn timber floor.
“Fine,” Barb said. “You’ll keep, Susie. I got my eyes on you, you know that? So go, get. Get him outta here now. Right the hell away from here, outta my space, outta my town.” She turned to Walker, her eyes almost lost in craggy, creased, chalky white skin. “And you? Walker? You come here again, this town? You’re in the ground. Get!”
Walker took a step toward Seabass, who continued to hold the knife out. He looked comfortable, like he used it on a regular basis, skinning and gutting animals. And it was steady, as if he’d had opportunity and reason to use it on a man before.
“You really shouldn’t bring a knife to a civilized little dust-up like this,” Walker said to him. “One day it might do the talking for you, and they’ll be words you can’t take back.”
Seabass looked confused.
“Come on, mister,” Susie said to Walker, stepping between the two men and giving Walker a shove in the arm. “We’re leaving.”
16
“You didn’t have to help me out back there,” Walker said.
Susie was silent in the dark damp cold. They stood in the gravel car park outside the bar amid a few bikes and a bunch of pick-ups. Walker saw his hire car and knew he wouldn’t be driving out of town in a hurry.
“You got a car?” Susie asked.
Walker pointed to it—its tires slashed. “Easy to make friends around here,” he said, tossing his keys onto the bonnet. “How’d they expect me to bug out of town fast without a car? Idiots.”
“Follow me,” Susie said, headed for a pick-up. Old. The color of the earth, rust mostly. Made back when the only paneling was made of steel, and all components were made in America.
It was unlocked; it didn’t even have working locks. Walker’s end of the cracked vinyl seat was wet—his window wouldn’t go all the way up.
“Susie—”
&n
bsp; “Susan,” she said, starting the engine, the choke out full. She turned the headlights on. “My name is Susan.”
“They don’t call you Susie?”
“No one with brains calls me Susie,” she said, giving the engine a little gas with a few light pumps of the accelerator.
“My name’s—”
“Walker. I heard you, mister, in the bar, remember? I was there. I was the one who saved your bacon.”
“Yeah, well, like I said—”
“Yes, I did have to do that,” she said.
“You think they would have killed me?”
“Maybe. I doubt it, though. Not there, not like that.”
“Well, let me tell you, that knife never would have got close to me.”
“Regardless. I’m not doing this for you.”
“Oh?”
“Nope. Right now, you might be the only way I can find my cousin.”
“This is Charles Murphy we’re talking about?”
Susan nodded. “I think he’s in trouble. I know it. But . . . I need to find him, to be sure.”
“What kind of trouble do you think he’s in?” Walker asked.
Susan looked at Walker as though he should know the answer to his own question; as though it was obvious, given that he’d stated that he was there because Murphy was in trouble; as though it had not occurred to her that there was trouble and then there was Trouble with a capital T.
The engine started to settle. Susan eased the choke on the old pick-up, feathering it to half-open.
Walker watched the bar. No one came out. He figured they were listening to the car, waiting for it to drive off before settling back down. Between the rusted exhaust and loose fan belt he figured they could hear them all the way to the next county line.
“Do your friends call you Susan?”
“No.”
“What do they call you?”
Silence.
The car idling. Feathering the choke again. The heater starting up as the engine warmed. The smell of oil burning in the cylinders. Nearly ready for takeoff. The thing was older than the girl—older than Walker, maybe—created back when cars were made out of heavy sheets of metal and the dye presses did little more than push a simple curve or fold here and there. When everything was functional and had a purpose and could be fixed in a backyard garage. She dropped the stick selector into drive and took off, the back tires spinning on gravel. The tires were chunky and loud on the coarse asphalt road. The engine was loose and pinging as it built up speed.
“Squeaker.”
“Squeaker?” Walker repeated.
She nodded.
“Well then, Squeaker,” Walker said, “you don’t know where your cousin is, but you’re worried about him? Because of some trouble?”
She didn’t answer, but she did push the car harder. Heading out of town, the way that Walker had come into it. She drove like that for two minutes, then started to ease off the gas. Walker saw signs up ahead. An intersection. A sign pointing to the next interstate.
Squeaker eased to a stop, the engine thrumming at the empty black intersection in the middle of nowhere, no cars or lights in any direction.
“You should get out here,” she said.
17
Squeaker’s hands were tight on the steering wheel. Her gaze fixed straight ahead.
Walker said, “You want me to walk from here?”
“Eight miles west there’s a town,” Squeaker said. “You could walk there. Stay the night. Take the first bus out in the morning. Seems sensible.”
“Sensible?”
Squeaker nodded.
“Or?” Walker said.
“No or. You should leave this be. My cousin’s tough. Wherever he is, he’ll be all right. Besides, you’ve got Barb’s threat back there to think about. It ain’t idle. She’ll get you if you stick around here.”
“But you’re worried about Murphy too,” Walker said.
“They’re my worries, not his. He’ll be all right. It’s me—this town. It’s falling to pieces. I want to talk to him about options before I bug out myself. Maybe I could live with him awhile. Babysit for them. Live in?”
Walker remained silent. He looked from Susan to the empty roads and back to her. Silence, but for the thrumming idle of the old cast-iron block V8 ticking away.
Eventually he said, “Leave what be?”
“My cousin. This place. All of it.”
“Why?”
“No good will come of it.”
“I beg to differ.”
“Huh?” She looked at Walker.
He could see that this escape route she was providing was given not in earnest, but as an easy out for him. It was like she wanted him to stay, as though her little challenge here was to test him, his bona fides in how far he was willing to go to help out her cousin. “Susan—Squeaker—I have to find your cousin. It’s bigger than just his safety. There’s something big going down, soon, and Murphy has a tiny part in it—an integral part, but just a part. See? If I don’t find him, look out for him, get to talk to him, well—well, then, some serious shit’s going to go down.”
She nodded. “Is this about his service?”
“Yes.”
She nodded again. Her hands were tight on the wheel, her pale knuckles bright in the moonlight through the windshield.
“I’m going nowhere,” Walker said, looking forward, the grimy old headlights bathing the road in yellow light. “With or without your help, I’ll find your cousin. He’s around here someplace.”
“Hm,” Susan said with a smile, putting the Dodge back into gear and taking off dead ahead. “I’d like to see you try finding him.”
“But . . .” Walker checked over his shoulder at the intersection. “You’re going to help me?”
Susan nodded, said, “I’ll tell you what I know, Walker. But you should also know some other stuff before.”
“Okay.”
She glanced at him when she said, “You’ve been warned. I warned you, right? Gave you a chance to leave, just before?”
Walker nodded. “You wanted to ditch me back there with the wolves and bears in the middle of the road, between butt-crack and nowhere.”
Squeaker looked ahead and drove.
“I’ve been to war,” Walker said, looking out his side window. “A few times. Whatever’s going on here, with Barb and all them, I think I can handle it. We can handle it.”
“You may have been to what you think is war, Walker.”
“Jed.”
“That doesn’t sound right—I like Walker more.”
“Okay.”
“Walker, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. This is God’s own country, and he’s got a hornet so far up his ass that he’s got everyone who’s anyone at war with one another. It’s been that way for too long, and you coming here ain’t going to do nothing about it.”
“I just want to talk to your cousin. Warn him. See that he knows what’s coming after him. See what he knows.”
“They all do. And they all don’t. Want to talk to him, I mean. You gotta be careful about what you wish for, Walker,” Squeaker said, braking and taking a tight turn from the road, now headed northeast along a single-lane blacktop. “Some things? Hell, some things should never be done up, you get that?” They were quiet awhile, just the sound of the engine and the creak of the springs in the bench seat as they traveled over bumps. “Sometimes you just gotta say nothin’ to no one. You have to hang your head and walk away, forget what you saw and heard, for nothing good will ever come of it.”
18
“Yep?” the man called Menzil said into his phone. The phone was nothing fancy, a throw-away, and he had a bag full of them. Menzil was a man of precautions, of keeping a distance, an arm’s length deniability. He’d learned how to do that through a lifetime of chasing and busting crooks. He was in a rented warehouse, in St. Louis. There was nothing inside but their two vehicles, one of which would be staying here for the next stage of the op, and two trestle tables wi
th a heavy tarp covering the contents. His team of operatives was close by. Their gear was under the tarps. They would be ready to move at a moment’s notice. Menzil was sure of it.
“We’ve had a complication,” the voice on the phone replied. “There’s someone getting close to Murphy.”
Menzil asked, “How do you know this?”
There was a pause, and the voice said, “All you need to know is that there’s a guy tracking Murphy.”
“A guy?”
“Named Walker. Ex-Air Force and Agency guy who now seems to be doing some freelance contract work.”
“For who?”
“We don’t know.”
“Wait—Walker?” Menzil said. “That the guy from the news—from the thing in the New York Stock Exchange?”
“Yeah, that’s him.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Okay. He’s a guy. It’s interesting.”
“It’s troubling.”
“So, he’s tracking Murphy—why?”
“No idea.”
“Has he made us? The op?”
“No. He doesn’t know what he’s looking into. No clue. He’s just got the end of the string and he’s tugging. But with his skill set he just might achieve what we couldn’t these past couple of weeks.”
“Find Murphy.”
“Yep.”
“You had three separate PIs down there scratching around and they got squat. What makes you think Walker will get the job done before us?”
“Instinct. Mine, and his. Just remain contactable and I’ll update you.”
“Is he ahead of us?”
“Call it even.”
“Great.”
“Have you got this?”
“Got it.” Menzil ended the call and headed out to get the four guys in his team. This Walker guy seemed like a challenge. Menzil enjoyed challenges.
•
“Murphy hasn’t been seen or heard of,” Squeaker said as the car cruised through a small town. Past the bar, closed for the night. Past the general store. Past the gas station, lit up like a star in the sky. Past the few roads that split off the two-lane highway, each headed to houses on small plots in the woods. “Near-on a year. No word from him. No sign of his whereabouts.”
