She stopped and looked at Stonie again.
"Go ahead," Stonie said. "Tell everything. We've been pretending much too long. Let's get everything out."
SueSue took in more air.
"Okay. Penny also said that both Stonie and I had to make some changes. She said Pud was a drunk and was sucking money out of the business and bringing nothing back."
"She got that right," Pud said.
He still had his open hand resting on her back.
"She said Cord…"
SueSue looked at Cord.
"She said Cord was a queer," Cord finished for her.
Stonie and Cord didn't touch, but they seemed comfortable beside each other. SueSue nodded.
"And she said we had to get rid of them," SueSue said. "They had to be purged from our family the way stuff sometimes has to be purged from a body."
"Poisonous," Cord said.
"Then she said we had to purge ourselves. She said the family was disgraced by us, drunks and whores, she said. She said that we were required to stop smoking and drinking and whoring. She said no more makeup, no fancy clothes, nothing. She said until we were clean we would need to sequester ourselves, like nuns or something-she had a fancy phrase, but I can't remember it exactly. We were not to leave the house."
"Did you object?" I said, just to keep her going.
"Sure, but Jon Delroy was there and his men were all around. Daddy was dead. I was afraid of her, afraid of them."
"You too?" I said to Stonie.
"Cord and I had been unhappy for a very long time," Stonie said. "It deadens you."
Cord patted her hand. She smiled at him.
"Not much fun for you either, was it?" she said.
Cord shook his head.
"So," SueSue said, "she had our hair cut short, like you see, and she took our clothes and had the windows closed up and we had to take some pills."
"Sedatives?" I said.
"I guess so. Things are a little foggy."
"They were full of something when they came here," Sapp said. "Took some time to get them back."
"You do that?"
"I had some help."
"I owe you," I said.
"You bet you do," Sapp said.
SueSue was impatient. She had a story to tell, and everyone was listening. She liked having everyone listening.
"No television, no radio, nothing to read," she said. "Like we had to clear our minds."
"How do you get on with your mother?" I said.
SueSue and Stonie looked at each other.
"My mother?" SueSue said.
"Sherry Lark?" Stonie said. There was a lot of distaste in the way she said "Lark."
"My mother's a dipshit," SueSue said.
"How did she get along with Penny?"
"Penny hated her."
"How'd Penny get along with your father?"
"She loved Daddy," SueSue said.
"We all loved Daddy," Stonie said.
"Do you mean more than you're saying?"
"Well." Stonie had a lot less effect than SueSue. "We did love Daddy, all three of us. But maybe we didn't love him the right way, and maybe we'd have been better if we'd loved him some other way."
"What the hell does that mean?" SueSue said.
"I don't know exactly how to say what I'm trying to say. But we all loved Daddy, and look at us."
"It's not Daddy's fault," SueSue said.
"What do you think about Jason Hartman?" I said.
It diverted them.
"Jason?" SueSue said. "What about Jason?"
"My question exactly."
"He's cute," SueSue said.
Stonie nodded.
"He's sort of like a relative," she said. "Being Dolly's son and all."
"Know anything unusual about him?"
"No," Stonie said. "Except he doesn't seem to do much. Doesn't work. Lives with his mother."
"Maybe he's in your program, Cord," Pud said.
"He is very cute," Cord said.
Stonie patted Cord's hand.
"Shhh," she said.
They both smiled.
"Why do you ask?" SueSue said.
It would have been great theater to say, Because he's your brother, but it didn't seem to get me anywhere.
"Do you know the terms of your father's will?" I said.
"We inherit everything, the three of us," SueSue said.
"But Penny runs things," Stonie said. "Neither one of us knows anything about business."
"She sharing equally?" I said.
"The estate hasn't been settled yet, but Penny gives us both money."
"How are you feeling about Penny?"
"I don't know," SueSue said. "I mean, she's our sister and she's taking care of us."
"And she locked us up and broke up our marriages," Stonie said.
"Our marriages were already broken," SueSue said. "Penny's always been bossy."
Sapp looked at me. I nodded.
"Now I know why the caged bird sings," I said.
"What the hell does that mean?" SueSue said.
"I don't know," I said. "It's too hard for me."
FIFTY-FIVE
THE CALL WOKE me early in the morning, just after sunrise. "You want to know who killed Walter Clive," somebody whispered, "get on Route 20. Drive twenty miles west from the Lamarr exit. Park on the shoulder. Get out of the car and wait."
"What time?" I said.
"Be there at midnight tonight. Alone. We'll be able to see you for miles."
"How nice for you," I said.
The whisperer hung up. I tried dialing*69, but it didn't work on the motel extension. I looked at my watch. Quarter to six. I got up, showered, and went to my car. When I got onto Route 20 I set the trip clock on my car, and in twenty miles, I stopped. It was open country with gentle hills and some tree cover. The whisperer was right; they could see me coming. I went on to the next exit, turned around, and headed back to town.
Tedy Sapp was out of bed when I got to the Bath House Bar and Grill, drinking coffee in the empty bar with a slender gray-haired man in a light tan summer suit and a blue oxford shirt. There was a box of cinnamon donuts open on the table.
"Once a cop, always a cop," I said, and took a donut.
"This is Benjamin Crane," Sapp said. "My main squeeze."
We shook hands. He grinned at Tedy.
"Gotta go," Crane said. "You have business, and I have to gaze into many eyes."
He left.
"Been together long?" I said to Sapp.
"Ten years."
"Love's a good thing," I said.
"Even the one that dare not speak its name?"
"Even that one."
Sapp poured me a cup of coffee. I drank it and ate my donut while I told him the deal.
"Called early," Sapp said, "so they'd be sure to get you."
"Yep."
"It's a setup," Sapp said. "And a stupid one. They gave you all day to figure it out."
"The price they paid for calling early," I said. "I figure it's Delroy."
"Good choice," Sapp said. "He's stupid enough. You're going to need help with this."
"I know," I said. "You got a rifle?"
"Yep."
I had a street map of Columbia County I had bought when I first arrived. Sapp and I studied it on the table.
"Here's about where they want you," Sapp said.
"I know," I said. "I've been out there."
"Of course you have," Sapp said. "It's not a bad spot for them. Used to hunt birds out there, once. But when the highway got built the birds left. Now nobody goes out there, it's just a piece of empty land the Interstate goes through."
"And I don't want to drive up at midnight and stand outside my car and get shot to pieces."
"No," Sapp said. "Here's where you want me to be."
With his pencil Sapp marked a blue road that wound more or less parallel to Route 20, a mile or so to the north.
"Piece of the old state road," Sapp said
. "Was the main drag before the Interstate. I can park over here." He made a small circle. "And walk in behind them. About a mile maybe, mile and a half."
Sapp poured me some more coffee. I stirred in cream and sugar and I took another donut.
"When you have a couple donuts," Sapp said, "you know you've eaten something."
"Figured you for a dozen raw eggs a day," I said.
"And a good case of salmonella. I don't believe all that protein crap. You do the work, you get the muscle."
"Good," I said. "Gimme another one."
"I'll plan to get there early."
"Yes," I said. "Might be nice to walk the mile and a half in daylight."
"Yep. Country's not real rough, but there's trees and some ground cover. Easier in the light."
We drank coffee and cleaned up the last of the donuts. It was a little after eight-thirty in the morning.
"I got a vest," Sapp said. "Left over from my cop days."
"Thanks," I said. "I know this isn't your fight."
"I'm sure the bastards are homophobes," Sapp said.
"I'm sure they are," I said.
Sapp disappeared again and came back with a dark blue Kevlar vest.
"If Delroy's there," I said, "let's try not to kill him."
"Man," Sapp said, "you spoil everything."
"I know," I said. "But if he's alive I can turn him in and the thing is done."
"Business before pleasure," Sapp said. "What you should do is get something that's not obvious, and put it on the roadside at the twenty-mile spot, so I'll have a marker when I come in from the back."
I stood, and picked up the vest.
"I'll buy a cheap tire," I said, "and put it there. People see old tires on the highway all the time."
"I'll look for it," Sapp said. "You want a kiss goodbye?"
"From you?"
"Yes."
"I'd rather die," I said.
FIFTY-SIX
I WAS RESTLESS the rest of the day. I cleaned both my guns-the short-barreled.38 I usually carried, and the Browning nine-millimeter I had for high-volume backup. I reloaded both guns, and thumbed cartridges into an extra clip for the nine. I tried on the vest. Sapp and I were more or less the same size, so the vest fit. I did some push-ups. I stood in the motel doorway and looked up at the sky, which by midafternoon had begun to darken. I turned on the television set and found The Weather Channel. After about fifteen minutes of learning far more than I ever cared to know about a low-pressure area in the Texas panhandle, I heard them prophesying rain in Georgia. I did some more push-ups. I called Susan and, using a flawless southern accent, left a sexually explicit message on her answering machine. I took a walk. After the walk I went to the motel coffee shop and had a ham and cheese sandwich and a glass of milk. It started to rain. I stood in the doorway of my room and watched it for a while. It was a nice rain, steady but not too aggressive. Falling straight. The weather cooled. I took a nap. When I woke up the afternoon had begun to turn into evening and the rain was unyielding. I took a shower and put on clean clothes and checked both guns again. The meeting on Route 20 could be a feint, of course, and they in fact intended to buzz me as I walked to my car to drive out there. Probably not. It was probably too clever for Delroy. But probably is not the same as certainly. If they intended to do that, how soon would they show up? Probably about ten-thirty. I thought about another sandwich, but I wasn't hungry. I had coffee instead. I didn't want to be sleepy later on. Then I went back to my room and strapped on both guns. The Browning I wore behind my right hipbone. The.38 I wore butt forward in front of my left hipbone. I put the extra clip in my hip pocket and a handful of.38 special ammunition in my pants pocket. Then, carrying the vest over my arm, I walked to my car and got in and pulled out of the parking lot. Nobody followed me. It was about nine o'clock-too early.
I drove out Route 20 to the designated spot. Maybe a mile before I got there there was a rest stop where a few cars and a lot of trailer trucks were parked. If I had been planning this, I'd have had a car with a car phone waiting, and as I approached I would have had the tail car that had followed me from the motel call, and when I went by, the second would pull out and follow me, and when I stopped, the two cars would park in front and behind at an angle, blocking me. They'd have to be a lot more alert now, since I had left too early, and they had apparently not counted on that. Maybe it would throw them and they'd call it off. I didn't want that. At the next exit I turned around and headed back to Lamarr. I couldn't risk confusing them so much that they didn't make their try at me. They'd been stupid enough to announce this one. The next time they might not. I called Susan on my car phone.
When she answered I said, "Spenser, Mobil Unit South."
"Oh good," she said. "Someone claiming to be one of your body parts left me a disgusting message in a fake southern accent on my answering machine this afternoon, while I was healing people."
"Which body part?" I said.
"You know perfectly well which body part," she said.
"Did you hate the message?" I said.
"No."
We talked the rest of the way back to the motel. Pearl was fine. I thought I might come home soon. The weather was lovely in Boston. It was raining here. I missed her. She missed me. We loved each other. I said goodbye as I pulled back into the motel parking lot. After I hung up I felt completed, the way I always did after talking to her, like a plant that had been watered.
It was ten-thirty. There was a car in the lot that hadn't been there when I'd left. A maroon Dodge, with a spotlight on the driver's side. This meant nothing. Cars come and go all the time in a motel parking lot. Still, there it was. I stayed in my car with the motor running, and the wipers going so I could see. I parked away from other cars with my nose pointing at the highway so that I couldn't be boxed in and shot in my car. I decided it was better than driving aimlessly up and down Route 20. I took out the nine, racked the slide back and pumped a round into the chamber, let the hammer down gently, and laid it in my lap. Nothing happened. At eleven I thought maybe driving aimlessly up and down Route 20 was better. At eleven-thirty, I slipped into the vest, tightened the straps, shrugged into a light windbreaker, wheeled my car out of the parking lot in a leisurely manner, and drove toward the highway entrance with the nine still in my lap. As I went up the ramp, I saw the maroon Dodge come out of the lot and follow along in the same direction. The drive wasn't aimless anymore. We had begun.
The headlights made the wet highway shimmer. The moon was hidden. There were no streetlights. The weather was not a plus. A bright night would have been better. But it was a business in which you didn't always get to choose.
At seven minutes to midnight I pulled over onto the shoulder of the road near the designated spot. My tire, the marker for Tedy Sapp, was still where I'd thrown it, shiny in the rain. As I parked, a car passed me and pulled in at an angle in front of me. The maroon Dodge that had tailed me out pulled in behind. They were thinking right along with me. What little protection the car offered was outweighed by my immobility. I turned off the headlights and shut off the engine. I took the nine out of my lap and held it in my hand, close to my side. Then I got out, and closed the car door, and stood in the steady rain on the highway side of my car.
The headlights from the maroon Dodge brightened my part of the scene. The car ahead of me had shut off his lights. No one got out of either car. Except for the sound the rain made and the sound of the windshield wipers on the maroon Dodge, there was silence. Then there was some sound from the woods beyond the shoulder; then Jon Delroy and two other guys came out of the darkness and into enough of the headlight so I could see them. Delroy stayed where he was. The other two guys fanned out on either side of him. Both had shotguns. One wore a yellow rain jacket, the other was coatless, with an Atlanta Braves hat jammed down over his ears. There were no Security South uniforms visible.
"Spenser," Delroy said.
"Delroy."
As we spoke the driver of the Dodge got ou
t to my right, and the driver of the car in front got out to my left. Observing peripherally, I was pleased that they didn't have shotguns.
"You wouldn't leave it alone," Delroy said.
"It's why I get the big bucks," I said.
"Was it you broke into the office in Atlanta?"
I smiled at him. I was trying for enigmatic, but it was raining hard and there were five guys with guns, so I may not have succeeded.
Delroy shrugged.
"Doesn't matter," he said. "Walk over here."
"So you can tell me who killed Walter Clive?"
"You know who killed Walter Clive," Delroy said. "Walk over here."
"Nope."
Delroy shrugged again. He seemed perfectly at ease. Every inch the commander.
"Die where you want to," Delroy said.
He pointed at the two men on my side of the car with the index finger of each hand and nodded once. Immediately there was a loud gunshot, but it came from the dark woods behind Delroy. The gunman to my right spun half around and his handgun clattered into the middle of the highway. I dropped to a squat against the side of my car and, leaning against it, shot the gunman to my left in the middle of the mass. He doubled up and fell on his side, crying in pain. I heard his gun skitter into the passing lane. I slid up the side of the car and brought my handgun down on top of the roof. The two men with shotguns were turning toward the gunshot when the gun fired from the woods again and one of them went down, staggered backwards against the Dodge by the force of the bullet. The other one, the guy in the Atlanta Braves hat, threw the shotgun away and started running west along the highway shoulder. Delroy seemed frozen. He hadn't even gotten his gun up. I went around the car and took it from his apparently paralyzed hand. He offered no resistance. Behind me the guy I'd shot kept crying in pain. I hated the sound. But there was nothing I could do about it, and it was better than me crying in pain. Tedy Sapp came out of the woods wearing a long black slicker and a black cowboy hat, and carrying an M1 rifle. I looked at the rifle.
"An oldie but goodie," I said.
"Like me," Sapp said.
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