Lorna feels a wave of self-disgust, how could she have spent so much time with a woman like that? Her precious moments listening to comments on this one’s body and that one’s sex life. She badly wants to talk to Sheryl Waits. Guilt here too, she hasn’t called her in a week, maybe more. It is late, but Sheryl is famously available twenty-four/seven. She punches the keys.
“I’m sorry, we don’t accept telephone solicitations from strangers,” says Sheryl when Lorna speaks.
“Come on, Sheryl.”
“Come on yo’self. You know how many messages I left on your voice mail? Where have you been, girl?”
“With Jimmy.”
“Of course with Jimmy. Tell me how right I was.”
“You were right.”
“Of course I was. So? Give!”
“We went to Grand Cayman,” says Lorna and converts the trip and its sequelae into a romantic idyll, provoking squeals of delight from her friend. She doesn’t say she has had a bad biopsy, that she’s dying, because she knows that Sheryl would want to come right over and hug her and hold her hand and she doesn’t want to get into the B-movie aspects of her present situation, standing lookout for a desperate venture.
“So,” says Sheryl, “this is now officially serious. Do we have the L-word yet? Do we have the M-word?”
“The former, but not the latter.”
“But it’s in the air, yes?”
“It might be. Time will tell.”
“Hey, hon, is something wrong? Your voice sounds all funny.”
There is a loud boom from the direction of the boat that echoes against the walls of the sheds and workshops that line the river here.
“No, I’m fine,” Lorna says with a shaking voice. “Look, I got to go now. I just wanted to say that I love you.”
A pause. “Well thank you, Lorna, I love you too. Are you sure nothing’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she says and hangs up. She listens, straining her ears, and there is another boom, and then only silence and the normal night sounds of the district. Her phone buzzes. Sheryl again, but she doesn’t answer.
THEY CRAWLED LOW on the deck of Emmylou’s old houseboat and looked across the yards of dark water at Packer’s big box-on-a-barge. The windows
were illuminated cheerily by a color television screen, and they could see the shadow of a man moving about against that light.
“What’s that he got in there, a motorcycle?”
“Yeah, a big Harley. I guess he keeps it inside at night.”
“Smart fella. A lot of crime down by the river,” said Barlow.
“He’s got a pistol,” said Paz.
“Well, we’ll just have to take it away from him then.” Barlow reached into his pocket and brought out a pair of number one shells and slipped them into the old 16-gauge double-barrel Ithaca shotgun he was carrying. He also had a big revolver stuck in his belt. The clack of the breech closing seemed unnaturally loud to Paz. He worked the slide of his Glock.
“Now, let’s do this,” said Barlow, and in the dim sky glow Paz could see he was wearing his lynch-mob-leader face. Barlow jumped off the houseboat and started to run. Two steps on the deck of Packer’s barge and he was at the jalousied glass door, which he shattered to pieces with his boot and the stock of his weapon. He had just dodged around the Harley when he saw Packer moving, a flash of white shirt in the dim light of the TV screen. He was heading toward the bow, toward his bedroom.
Packer was just reaching under the mattress of his bed when the butt of Barlow’s shotgun cracked him hard over the ear. Then there was a knee in his back and the twin circles of steel pressing like a cookie cutter into the back of his neck. He went limp.
Barlow turned the man over and jammed the muzzle under his chin. Packer was paper pale and his eyes were rolling.
“What do you want? Money?” His voice squeaked.
“Shut up!” said Barlow. He pulled the pistol out of its hiding place, with his little finger in the muzzle and tossed it into a corner. He backed away, still pointing the shotgun, and said, “Get up!”
Packer rose and walked unsteadily to the living room of the craft. A trickle of blood flowed from the wound above his ear. The TV was still on, playing a car commercial. Barlow lifted the shotgun, pointed it at Packer’s head, and pulled a trigger, twitching the muzzle at the last half second so that the charge fired past Packer’s ear at the television, and scored a direct hit on a cruising Honda. Packer’s face contorted and he lost control of his bladder. A pool formed at his feet. Barlow grabbed a chair from the dining area and threw it at the man.
“Sit down, you goddamn piss-baby!”
Packer sat. Without taking his eyes off him, Barlow drew a six-inch hunting knife from a sheath on his belt. He put the shotgun on the dining table and took a roll of duct tape from his trouser pocket. When Packer was fully trussed, arms, hands, and feet to the chair, Barlow stood in front of him and began to sharpen the hunting knife with a small stone that he took from a pocket in its sheath. He spit on the stone and drew the knife across it again and again. Packer watched the motion as if hypnotized. He cleared his throat. “Who. Who are you?”
“Well, I am the husband of the woman that your boys broke into her home and pistol-whipped this afternoon up by Clewiston. And kidnapped a woman we had as a guest.” Snick, snick, went the knife on the stone.
“I had nothing to do with that,” said Packer. “Clewiston? I don’t know what you’re—”
The knife flashed out, quick as a snake strike. Packer felt a bite on his forehead and yelped. Blood flowed into his eye and he blinked it away.
“I swear to God…,” Packer began, but stopped when Barlow held the tip of the knife an inch away from his eye.
“None of that,” said Barlow, “we don’t hold with taking the Lord’s name in vain.”
Snick snick snick.
“What are you going to do?” asked Packer after several minutes had passed.
“Well, what do you think? What do you think is the right thing to do to a man who would hire hoods to beat a woman who never did an unkind act in her whole life? You got any ideas?”
“Look, I have money, a lot of money…I’ll make it right. I didn’t know…I never told them to hurt anyone….”
“I don’t want your money, you terrible chunk of dog shit,” said Barlow in a slow calm voice. “Blood’s been shed and has to be repaid in blood. I been thinking what to do driving down here and I guess I come up with something about right.”
Snick snick.
Barlow replaced the stone in its little pocket. He licked the back of his wrist and shaved off a swath of hair. He held this in front of Packer’s goggling eyes.
“Pretty sharp, huh?”
No comment from Packer. Barlow said, “What I come up with is I’m going to skin your head. That seem fair to you? My wife’s poor face, you ought to have seen it. It just broke my heart to look at her. They cracked her cheekbone, you know.”
“Oh, Jesus, oh God…”
“You hear what I said about taking the Lord’s name in vain? You don’t listen too good, Mr. Packer, that might be one of your main problems in life. My own main problem is anybody hurts my family I just go pure crazy out of control. Now I done this a bunch of times on deer, mostly when I was a kid, but I guess it’ll work the same with you. First, I’m going to cut a circle around your scalp like this….” Barlow drew the point of the knife lightly around Packer’s head, too lightly to draw blood.
“Then I can get my point under there and work your scalp off. I ought to have a skinner, but I guess this old Randall’s going to do the job good enough. It ain’t as if I’m going to mount it. Anyway, after that, I’ll cut in front of your ears, behind your jaw and on up. If I’m careful and slow about it and if you don’t buck too much, I guess I can pull the whole thing off in one piece. The eyelids are the hard part, them being so delicate. I’m going to tape up your mouth now, since you’re a goddamned coward who sends other men to beat up ladies in their ow
n kitchens, which means you’ll probably bawl like a little girl, and I don’t want to wake up the whole town.”
Barlow applied the tape and then walked behind Packer and placed his arm under the wildly squirming man’s chin, pressing the back of his head against his own belt buckle. He placed the knife against Packer’s forehead and began to move it slowly across.
The boat rocked and Paz burst into the room, his pistol pointing. “Goddammit, Cletis! What the fuck are you doing?”
“Stay out of this, Jimmy!”
“Put down that knife! What’re you, nuts?”
Barlow put his knife on the dining table but picked up his shotgun and pointed it toward Paz, who pointed his pistol right back.
“Put it down, Cletis! I mean it.”
Barlow fired the shotgun. The charge of shot hit the tank of the Harley, puncturing it in half a dozen places. The room filled with the toxic-sweet scent of gasoline.
Paz said, “Okay, Cletis, you made your point but now you got an empty shotgun there. I don’t want to have to shoot you, but I will if you don’t put the damn gun down and get the fuck off of this boat. Go out and cool off! I’ll get with you later. Go!”
After a long moment of hesitation, Barlow placed the shotgun against a bulkhead and stalked out of the room. He climbed the stairway to the overhead deck and they could hear him pacing back and forth, reciting, “Thou shalt make them as a fiery oven in the time of thine anger; the Lord shall swallow them up in his wrath, and the fire shall devour them.”
Paz pulled the tape off Packer’s mouth. “Christ, what a mess! Are you okay?”
“What the fuck does it look like? Untie me! I’m going to put that fucking redneck maniac in jail for the rest of his life.”
“Oh, you don’t want to talk like that, Dave. You don’t want Cletis in the same jail as you. No way.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Murder, Dave,” said Paz, strolling around behind the other man and into the bedroom. A little searching found an attaché case, locked. He brought it back into the salon and set it on the table next to Barlow’s blade.
“You had a Sudanese named al-Muwalid killed by a man named Dodo Cortez, supervised by your pal Jack Wilson, and then you had Wilson killed too, to clear the decks. You’re a thorough fellow, Dave. You couldn’t have guessed that I had a way into Ignacio Hoffmann, but I did, and he was very forthcoming, for a gangster. He said that a Floyd Mitchell had visited him along with poor old Jack. Ignacio told me how and why Dodo killed the Sudanese and described you pretty well. Floyd Mitchell is you, Dave.”
“You can’t prove any of that.”
“You’re right, I can’t. But, you know, I don’t think I’m going to have to, because you’re going to tell me the whole story, all about SRPU and the Sudan and Emmylou Dideroff and oil, every fucking detail. Or…”
“Or what?” said Packer. “You realize I’m going to have your badge for this?”
“That’s good, that’s a good movie line. Unfortunately, you’re going to have to dig my badge out of the toilet. I’m now violating a direct written order from my superior officer, Major Oliphant, to lay off this case and specifically to stay away from you. My plan is to pursue a career in food services.”
Silence, except for the thump and muttering above.
“Yeah, you’re heavily protected, Dave, in high places. Unfortunately, right now, I’m your only low-place protection. From that.”
Paz raised his eyes to the overhead.
“…the righteous shall rejoice when he seeth the vengeance; he shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked.”
“He means it too. He’s a fundamentalist. He will literally wash his feet in your blood. So start talking. I’m tired, I’ve been driving all day and I want a drink and bed.”
Packer said nothing.
“Okay, your choice. You know, you messed with the wrong guy there. He was kicked off the force for trying to murder the chief of police. He’s a religious maniac and you’re the devil. In fact, after he finishes with you, he’ll probably just toss a match into that gas puddle and walk away clean.” Paz picked up Barlow’s knife and worked it under the hasps of the attaché case locks. The lid popped up, revealing that the case was full of wrapped hundreds. He whistled. “Well we don’t want this to get burned up, do we? What else have we got?” Paz riffled through the file folders in the portfolio built into the case’s lid.
“Passports? Here’s our old pal Floyd Mitchell, and gosh he does look just like you! Amazing. And here’s a much-used one for Wayne Semple. A traveling man is Wayne. Spent a lot of time in the Middle East, Sudan too. And here’s an ID card from the Strategic Resources Protection Unit, also in the name of Wayne Semple. I guess that’s your real name, although I think I’ll keep calling you Dave. You seem like a Dave to me. But it’s a good thing I’ve got these, because I doubt they’d be able to identify the corpse after the fire.”
“You can have the money,” said Packer. “Just call…just call a number.”
“This is incredible. You still don’t get it. Dave, I have the money and you’re all tied up with about twenty minutes to live after I walk out of here with it. I’ll mail the passports back to SRPU. We don’t want your family to suffer.”
Paz picked up the case and walked toward the door. He was just stepping through when Packer shouted for him to stop. Paz walked back. He went to the refrigerator and took out a bottle of beer, opened it, and took a long drink. He saw Packer watch him and lick his lips. “You must be pretty dry, Dave. Fear’ll do that. Want one?”
A pause. Then Packer nodded. Paz got another, cracked the cap and held it up to Packer’s mouth. Paz sat down on a chair with his face about a yard from Packer’s.
“So. Wayne Semple is your real name, yes?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re an employee of the federal government? In this SRPU outfit?”
“Yes.”
“And what do you do there?”
“I’m a contract manager.”
Paz laughed heartily. “In a manner of speaking. What do you do officially?”
“I told you. I’m a GS-13 contract manager. I’m not some kind of criminal mastermind. I never wanted anyone to get hurt. I just wanted some information, I wanted to know how much al-Muwalid knew. I didn’t know those morons would throw him out the window.”
“Uh-uh, Dave. We need a criminal mastermind here, and remember I got the whole story of how the murder went down from Ignacio. Someone traced Emmylou Dideroff to Miami. Someone got that little houseboat all available to rent to a poor lady on the run and someone got you this one where you could keep an eye on her. You got her the job with Wilson, we know that, and we know that Wilson set up the original murder and the frame and the attempted theft of Emmylou’s confessions. Someone found Emmylou at the Barlows and kidnapped her. If that wasn’t you, who was it?”
“The contractor. He arranged everything. I’m just managing the contract, paying out money, keeping records….”
“What contractor?”
“GSE, it’s called. Global Supply Enterprises. The local honcho is named John Hardy. He’s the one who set it all up.”
“What’s his real name?”
“That’s the only one I know. Why would he use a fake name?”
Paz stared at the man. He really didn’t know. “John Hardy was the name of a famous outlaw. A desperate little man. So you didn’t check this guy out in any way?”
“Check him out? You mean with the Better Business Bureau? Don’t be stupid! The guy showed up in Khartoum and he could do the job. We hired him.”
“How much of my hard-earned tax dollars did you give him?”
“About a million two so far. A lot of it was pass-through to the Sudanese.”
“To a guy with a phony name? A million two?”
“That’s chump change. God, you have no idea how much money is washing around in this antiterrorism business. I have a thirty-two-million-dollar budget I have
to spend all by myself, me, a GS fucking 13. That’s what they do when they don’t know what to do, they throw money around. And you have to spend it before the end of the fiscal year or you get dinged.”
“That’s bad, getting dinged,” said Paz. “And where’s Mr. Hardy now?”
“I don’t know.”
“Uh-huh. Well, so long, Dave.” Paz rose from his chair and picked up the case.
“I don’t!” Packer cried. “Please, the whole point of using GSE is that it’s all deniable. We pay in cash. I don’t want to know what they do. Hardy handles everything. For Christ’s sake, man, look at me? You think I’m a killer? I peed my pants when that gun went off. I’m a fucking bureaucrat. I live in Rockville and carpool to work….”
“But you went to see Hoffmann.”
“Hardy didn’t want to go. He said Hoffmann knew him from another deal. He said Hoffmann wouldn’t play if he knew he was involved.”
“Okay, Dave. Let’s start from the beginning. When was the first time you heard of Emmylou Dideroff.”
“In the Sudan, but we didn’t know that was her name. It’s complicated…you don’t know the background.”
“You’ll explain it, then. We have all night.”
Packer asked for another drink of beer, and then, after a deep breath, began.
“The mission of SRPU is to keep the oil flowing. Oil is a big terrorist target, or it could be, so we have people in the oil-producing nations to make sure nothing happens. Sudan is a small oil producer but it’s also a terrorist center, or was at one time, so we had people there. Mainly it was to make sure that the government had enough resources to keep the rebels out of the oil fields and away from the pipelines. No biggie, really. It was a shitty little post, just me and the guy I worked for, Vernon McKay, and a bunch of locals. But I needed foreign duty to get my ticket punched, a six-month posting. Okay, I’m there a couple of weeks, we started to hear rumors that an Almax survey team had made a major find in the southeastern part of the country, east of the Pibor River…”
Valley of Bones Page 41
