“Yes. Yes. Go ahead.”
“All right then. Flood and the others still don’t know she’s dead. We didn’t want them to know it. If they did, it wouldn’t matter to them any more if they killed somebody else. Do you understand?”
“But what happened to you? Why were you—”
“No. I’m getting to that. Ray told me what you’re all trying to do. We already thought that might be it, Mother especially. And it’s working. It has to work. Because I don’t think Flood will hesitate to kill Mother or Deborah if the police show up there now and try to get at him. Maybe not the others, but Flood is really insane, he is really out of his mind.
“But what’s happened because neither you nor the police showed up is that Digby is against Flood now, and even the other two aren’t so sure. It got to where Flood had to do something to cool them down, so he was having me drive him into town to make contact with you, except that we found the road was blocked. He was in a panic then. He thought the police were all around us. I didn’t know what he would do when he got back to the house. So I crashed the car. But I didn’t have the nerve to do it right, and he wasn’t killed. He wasn’t even hurt. I didn’t have the nerve, do you understand?” Her tone is becoming so intense that while she hasn’t raised her voice at all, I feel as if she is furiously shouting the words at me. I say, “Janet, please. You shouldn’t—”
“No. I didn’t have the guts to do what I had to do. And I had another chance. Out in the woods I had his gun in my hand, I pointed it right at him, and I couldn’t pull the trigger. And you don’t know how much of this is all my fault. Everything Flood is doing to us is my fault!”
“Janet, you must know that’s not true. Now let me talk to McGrath.”
“No. He’s already told me everything. About what happened with Duffy, too. But if Flood finds those roadblocks gone, he’ll just take off in a car with Mother and Deborah. So Ray agreed to leave the roadblocks there. And you can’t call in the police. That’s what Flood is waiting for so he can really cut loose. And you can’t let it happen. You mustn’t let it happen.”
“We’re doing all we can. But what about you? McGrath says you’re badly hurt, you ought to be in the hospital—”
“I’m not going down there! Can’t you see the questions that’ll be asked, the way all this will be stirred up?”
“Janet, let me talk to McGrath! Right now. Do you hear me?” Then, mercifully, there is McGrath saying, “It’s no use, Marcus. She’s really freaked out about the hospital. We’ll do what we can for her here. We’ve got some stuff, you know, so we can sort of sedate her. She can hold out for a while that way.”
Sedate her. Pills. “Ray, she might have a lot more tolerance for anything you give her than you—”
“I know all about it. Leave it to me. Meanwhile, you heard what she said. We’ll take our chances here and leave the roadblocks. But you’ll have to give Duffy some kind of excuse for us. Otherwise, his Boy Scouts will be up here in a little while checking us out.”
“I’ll take care of it. Ray, what about your people there? Lou and the others. Are they going along with this?”
“Lou for sure. Some of the others too, now that Janet had it out with us. The rest are piling the kids into the cars now, they’ll camp overnight down by the lake. Make it like a party for the kids. You know, Marcus, this Janet—she’s quite a woman.”
“I know. Tell her I know it. Make sure she understands that, Ray.”
“I will. Hang tight, Marcus. It could be a long night coming up.”
I put down the phone, and David demands, “What did they say? What’s it all about?”
I explain it to him, explain it to them all in as few words as I can, and Elizabeth says, “Sarah Frisch has family. They must be told about her.”
“Not yet,” Anna says. “There is no help for her now. It is Emily and Deborah who must be our concern.”
“All night,” Ethel says to me. “Do you really think this will go on all night?”
“It may.”
“But there’s Ken. He’s put in a brutal day at the yard. I don’t see how he can keep awake out there all night.”
“He won’t have to,” David says. “I’ll drive down and take over for him.”
I suddenly remember something it needed only a minute to forget. “Duffy. I have to call him before it’s too late.”
Too late, sorry, says the man who answers the call at the station house, the chief already closed up shop for the day. Left about ten minutes ago, Mr. Hayworth. Yeah, maybe he can be reached at home.
But I cannot reach him at home. The phone rings and rings on emptiness. And again I undergo that strange duality in me. All my fear is churning through my guts, centering in a sharp pain in the pit of my stomach, but the mind is functioning coolly and precisely.
I phone the station house again, get the same man. I ask, “Do you know if the chief left orders for anyone to check out Ridge Road in a little while?”
“Maybe he did. I can look it up.”
“All right then. If he did, you can cancel those orders on my say-so.”
“Hey, now look, Mr. Hayworth—”
“On my say-so. Just make a note that we can’t get equipment out here tonight to remove those roadblocks I talked to him about. Everything will be taken care of tomorrow.”
“Oh. Well, I guess if you already talked to him about it—”
“Right. I’ll call him about it first thing in the morning. And you can save your man a trip up here.”
“I’ll see what I can do, Mr. Hayworth.”
I put down the phone.
A long night coming up, McGrath said. And still two hours before it starts.
James Flood
The gun.
One Colt Police Positive.
Heavy.
Now how the hell far could she have heaved it?
Think, Jimmy boy. We were standing in the middle of this clearing, she facing the direction of the house, I with my back to it. So she was facing north, I was facing south. She flung the gun away with a backhanded motion, to her right. To the east. So why am I on my belly, scrabbling through these thickets on the west side of the clearing, ripping my arms apart on these barbed-wire briers?
Because, Jimmy-O, you have already combed through all that brush and grass on the east side of this clearing. No dice.
What makes you think this is where it happened? Consider that one grassy opening among these fucking trees looks like every other grassy opening among these fucking trees.
I work my way back out of the thicket, blind with sweat, my arms bloody from brier slashes. I am winded. For all the muscle-building Cap’n Sharpless provided me aboard his handsome fishing craft down Miami way, I am really winded.
Take five, Flood. You’ve earned it.
I lie spread-eagled on my back, eyes closed, head pounding, and take five. I also take stock. I left her there on the road. Check. I saw the police car pull up and make contact with the bus. Check. I crawled and scurried—stop and start, crawl and scurry, better safe than sorry—up the ridge in a line for the house, then, out of range of the road, I looped down and around to where the gun should be. Check.
But isn’t.
Check.
Come back with your shield, baby, said the mamma Spartan, or on it.
Four handguns. One for each of us. Exactly one. Now why the hell did Harvey order just four handguns from Santiago and company? For what it was going to cost us, he could have ordered six, or ten, or fifty.
Come back with your gun, Flood, because there could be trouble up there in Fort Hayworth. Get that sour smell there when you left? Gangrene of the morale. Coco already has it bad. It is showing on Harvey. Lester? If Harvey has it, Lester will catch it.
No gun, Flood? Nothing for the doctor to hype the patients with when he walks in on them? Make a note. Once in the house, pick up one of those Uzi’s fast.
Otherwise.
Janet the cat. Scrawny, treacherous, joyless, joy-pop
ping bitch. The mistake was in not gang-banging her right at the start to show everyone the score, then a repeat every hour on the hour until she yelled for daddy. Would go crawling to him naked through these briers, begging him to pay his dues.
The company you keep. The Company you made. Two Shanklins, one Digby. Two half-wits, one wit-and-a-half. Heads together, they are talking now. Get Flood. Wrap him up and sell him. That’s right, Jimmy boy, get those hands behind the back, feet together, and don’t fiddle with these knots. When the police move in, run up a white flag. A deal. What are we offered for two hostages—no, three, figuring in the old lady—and J. Flood? And how would you like him delivered, Mr. Duffy, sir, dead or alive?
That was the real mistake, the lion inviting three hyenas to dinner.
Up yours, hyenas.
You’ve already taken five, Flood. You’ve already taken more than ten.
Slowly, carefully I get to my feet, straining to sound out any popping of a twig, any hissing of knee-high grass as someone works his way toward me. Nothing. Obviously, if any of General Duffy’s troops had me in his sights, he would have put me away by now like Peter Rabbit. Obviously, I am well within my own perimeter, well outside Duffy’s. It’s been a while since I was upright on my legs, they feel rubbery.
I move toward the house, not directly but paralleling the road and out of sight of it. Ten yards, and here is another opening among the trees. A granddaddy tree over there. A monster. Wasn’t that the one right behind her when she was holding the gun on me? This is the place.
It isn’t. I thrash back and forth through the grass with a stick. I get down on my belly again and poke into the underbrush. No gun.
Take another ten, Flood.
That’s right. Stretch out face-down this time, get a good whiff of this mulch, and consider the facts. Fact: the hyenas are more dangerous to you now than the police dogs.
Is it a fact? Consider, Flood, that after one short week in Raiford, they took off their hats to you. And you had no gun there, no pig-poker, nothing. But they stayed clear of you. Why? Because you had something in the eye that told them to stay clear. Don’t tread on me. Coco could be the old blacksnake. I was the copperhead.
I still am.
I come to the edge of the woods at a point where I can’t get a view of the sun deck, so I work my way downhill until I come to a place where the angle is right. Coco is on duty up there now, and with Mamma Emily for company. Even from this distance, it’s easy to see the old blacksnake is twitchy. Gun at the ready, he stands close beside mamma, who is sitting on the flooring there, only her head showing above the rail, then he disappears to the back side of the sun deck, then comes to the front again.
Back and forth.
I let him repeat this a few times, then gauging it so he can recognize me first look at this distance, I step out into the open, waving both arms, calling, “The door! Open up!”
Next thing the barrel of that gun swings right my way, and I twist aside, hit the ground hard, flattening myself as I wait for the blast. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. No blast. I raise my head and squint at the sun deck. Now he recognizes me, the jumpy son of a bitch. He waves me in.
I come in, moving fast across this open space, zigzagging to throw off any snipers beyond the road. The door swings open as I come up on the porch. It is slammed shut behind me.
Trouble.
Harvey and Lester are here in the hallway. Sleepy-eyed and empty-faced most of the time, they are now wide awake, mean-looking. “What happened?” Harvey says. “Where’s the car? Where’s the girl?”
“Man, you head off one way,” Lester says, “next thing that old car comes zooming back the other way. What was that all about?”
He has a brain that can handle one thought at a time. This must have been the thought since he saw it happen. Methodical. He has laid out the inventory in the hallway near the stairs. A nice neat row. One submachine gun, two rifles, eight G.I. cartridge boxes, six grenades. And four gas masks.
I drift toward the inventory, holding up a hand to show I am having trouble getting my wind back. The hand is quicker than the eye. They watch the hand and the hard breathing, not the direction of the feet.
Coco comes oozing down the stairs. Submachine gun in hand, pistol in belt, knife up the sleeve. The one-man gang. He is watching the feet. He watches me pick up that unloaded Uzi, but when I move toward the cartridge cases he is already there, blocking the way. “Where is your weapon, man?” No heat in the way he puts it. Just a question. Passing the time of day. And gently rubbing the business end of his very much loaded Uzi back and forth against my belt, where there is no weapon. Brave, because there is no weapon.
I say, “There’s roadblocks both ways. And cops. The girl cracked up the car when we were getting away from them. I suppose the gun is there with what’s left of it.”
“And the girl?”
“No damage. I gave her a message for the cops. They want to move in here, we’re ready for them. They want to make sure nobody gets hurt, Hayworth goes through with delivery right away.”
“I see.” Coco shows me his teeth. It could be a smile. “The girl wrecks the car, and you pat her on the head and give her a message for the police. Are you sure that is how it went, Mr. Flood?”
“The idea was to get word out there, baby. Now it’s out.”
“Perhaps.” The Uzi’s muzzle gently nudging my belt buckle. Coco, the old blacksnake, trying to hypnotize the snake charmer. But Harvey is having none of this game. “For chrissake,” he says to Coco, “go on and tell him.” Then without waiting for Coco to tell me, he does it himself. “That old Sarah is dead, you hear? You know what that means?”
Cool, Jimmy boy. Calm, cool, and collected. “Sarah? How did that happen? She was all right when I left.”
Lester can’t believe his ears. “All right? Man, you pistol-whip an old lady like that, and you think she was all right?”
Harvey says to me, “Goddam, you know what it means with her dead?” He points at Coco. “He told us plenty about what it means.”
Coco digs the Uzi hard into my belt buckle. No more teeth showing. No more smile. “I told them what I was told in St. Hilary, Mr. Flood. What I already told you right in your ear. If any of these women are killed, we are not welcome there. Do you hear me now, Mr. Flood? Do you understand exactly what you have done? When you wiped out that old woman, you wiped out phase three. Wiped out one whole week I put in negotiating with those Island bastards, bargaining with them—” He is starting to gobble now, he is so wound up. His spit is flying in my face, his eyes showing red. I have the empty Uzi loose in my hand, the hand is starting to twitch. Twitch convulsively on its own. If I move fast enough, swing that barrel into his gun—But with his finger tight on the trigger, even jarring it might get me blown apart. “Oh yes, man,” he says, drawing it out, stretching it out into a long hiss, a long moan, shaking his head over it. “Oh yes, man. You have that old black magic, man, that old juju. But it is all backward, man, because everything you touch turns to shit!”
“You hear him?” Harvey says. “And what about that private deal you wanted to make with him? You get the money and then you knock me and Les off. What about that, Jimmy boy?”
“You mean he told you I came up with something that wild? And you believed him?”
“Who am I supposed to believe? The way you made it out, right now we’re walking out of a plane on the Islands with four million cash in our bags. All right, you show me some palm trees outside, and I’ll believe you.”
Cool, Jimmy boy. Calm. And collected.
I say, “This is getting like a bunch of acidheads on a bad trip. If we sit down around the table right now, and you let me—”
“No,” Harvey says. “Whatever you want to tell us, you tell us standing right there. And without throwing a fit. You throw one of those fits, you just might not come out of it.”
“All right,” I say, “you want it boiled down so even Lester can understand it, nothing’s been chan
ged for us except the time limit. Either Hayworth pays up right away, or the police move in. It didn’t happen yet, but it will. Either way they want it, we’re ready for them.”
Coco’s lip curls. “Police?” he says. “What police, Mr. Flood? The ones in your brain?”
Harvey says, “That Emily keeps telling us there are no cops out there. She keeps saying that’s the way Hayworth would handle it, so nobody gets hurt. She don’t look like any liar to me, that woman. She means it.”
“Then why don’t you try it on for size?” I ask. “There’s cars in the garage. Go on, take your pick and try it. But if you hit a roadblock backed up by a couple of dozen cops, don’t lay it on me.”
“You saw them out there?” Lester says.
“I saw them. And their fucking roadblocks.”
“Hayworth could put up a roadblock,” Harvey says. “Anybody could. What the hell is there to a roadblock?”
I look from one to the other of them.
The lunatics are really in charge of the asylum now.
I say, “You can see the shape I’m in. Look at me. If you think—” and then Coco is jamming that gun hard into my gut again.
He says, “Man, we have been listening to the radio, you hear me? The news, man! The news! And there is still nothing on it about us. If anybody out there knew about us, you could not keep the news people from making a big thing of it. This is headlines, man. This is television stuff.”
“There’s ways of keeping big news quiet,” I say.
“Like hell. And that Janet girl. You have been looking to rip off that girl. You take her away, you come back without her. How much of a rip-off was it, Mr. Flood? How dead is she?”
Lester says, “You really think he laid her out same as the old lady?”
“She was under his skin like a bloody tick,” Coco says. “She gave him the itch.”
“Never mind her,” Harvey says. “I want to know about us. Where do we stand now? What’s our move? That’s what I want to hear.”
Stronghold Page 19
