by Ed Lynskey
***
Soon after, we soon crested the treed mountains and, with my ears popping, swooped down into the next leafy draw. Chatting with Alicia on the drought causing the brush-and-timber fires, Mr. Kuzawa pointed a finger at the cut-off swerving into a deserted, shady wayside.
“Why don’t we grab a quick bite?” he said.
“You snatched the words out of my mouth,” said Alicia.
Slowing, I signaled my turn. In the rearview mirror, I saw Herzog sit up, a bemused expression on his face. I wanted to find better privacy for us. My cab truck once trolleyed across the parking lot vaulted the concrete curbstone, and my tires crunched over a slate chip footpath that angled into a copse of hollies, their berries already scarlet. The canopy of shade and the musical creek lent us a haven from the road’s baking slab.
“Is it legal to picnic down here?” she asked.
“Who cares? We renegades spit on the rules,” replied Mr. Kuzawa.
She giggled at his hardboiled patter, but his foxy eyes never let up probing around us. I halted the cab truck, and as I ranged out, I saw the lean body tension making his movements whiplike and stealthy. Something had put him on needles.
“I’ve got a picnic feeling.” He counterfeited a smile. “Alicia, break out your deviled eggs and the fixings.”
“May I use your tailgate?” she asked me.
“But of course,” I replied, yanking at the latch to flip down my tailgate and create an impromptu table.
All smiles, she broke out a red-checkered tablecloth from her wicker basket. “Give me a few minutes for set up.” She waved her hands, shooing us off.
“We’ll be off soon, so Herzog pitch in. Brendan and I will scout for unfriendlies.”
Herzog’s saucer eyes fastened to Mr. Kuzawa fingering his .44’s hammer. “Why? I didn’t spot anybody.”
“That’d have been hard for you to do,” said Mr. Kuzawa. “You rode down stretched out taking a damn nap.”
“The wind musses my hair.”
She laughed at us. “Hey, that’s my line, Mr. Herzog.”
Mr. Kuzawa and I left the holly bower and tramped up the slate chip footpath. Out of earshot, Mr. Kuzawa diverted me off the footpath to hide from the state road behind the pump house where a corn snake lazed on its hot tin roof.
“Herzog is lying through his stinking teeth,” said Mr. Kuzawa. “I saw a sedan shadow us from Yellow Snake. They lagged behind, anticipating our turn, and I saw them whip down a side road to avoid passing us.”
Having glimpsed at the mirrors every few minutes, I started to dispute him. “State cops or the sheriff?” I asked instead.
“Neither of them run tail jobs. They’d just haul us off to jail.” Mr. Kuzawa’s eyes slitted to gauge the copse of hollies. “Somebody knew we’d left Yellow Snake. I’d bet my dog tags that so-called lawyer is Sizemore’s stooge, and he phoned Sizemore from Alicia’s farmhouse before we left.”
I didn’t want to admit what by now was more than apparent. My bullet scratch inflicted during Mr. X’s raid at Lake Charles burned my side. “Herzog is my lawyer and I paid him.”
“Brutus was also thought to be an honorable man.”
I nodded as my acceptance sharpened. “A few other things look fishy. Herzog’s late night phone calls from the Chewink Motel leave him on shaky ground. His claim to be out scouting wears thin, too, doesn’t it?”
“Paper thin.”
“We didn’t just bump into him at Lake Charles. Wasn’t it a cinch locating the pot gardens? He had an uncanny sense of where to steer us. Why didn’t we tangle with the badass growers?
“Cobb and you sure did.”
“Fucking A we did. At the store while off finding his gloves, Herzog probably clued in Sizemore. How else did he lay armed in wait with a night vision scope to cream us at his mansion? Herzog also said he lost his gloves in the woods, but probably he left them as a marker pointing the way to us.”
“Your making bail got Sizemore jumpy, and he needed a spy. Herzog grabbed the bribe.”
Resentful blood heated by the new rage blasted into my face as I nodded.
“We’ll deal with Herzog in a bit. Right now Alicia is our main concern.”
“No guarantee I can keep a lid on my temper.”
“You gave her your promise, so we should get her moved.”
My headshake was forced. “Fine, let’s get to it.”
Back underneath the shady hollies, she’d laid out a tailgate feast of pickles, ham sandwiches, potato salad, and, of course, the deviled eggs, but I didn’t bring much of an appetite. Murder and deceit churned those glass shards together, tearing an open slash in my gut.
* * *
Smiling like the butcher’s dog, Mr. Kuzawa smacked his stomach. “Man, I’m full as a stuffed tick. Brendan eats so little. That’s how he stays bayonet-lean.”
Her laugh was nice. While she and Herzog cleaned up, I palmed Cobb’s .44, what I’d trade for a Zebco reel, an ice chest of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, and a long, sunny afternoon of bass fishing on a pristine natural lake, not the gummy, man-built Lake Charles. Or I’d opt for a weekend at sloshing through a clear-as-vodka mountain stream, casting my home-tied flies to snag and release the rainbow trout. When had I last taken a break to trout fish? Eons ago, it seemed.
Sad to say any trout fishing was a farce. That musical creek behind us had dulled to a plodding note. Rehashing my talk with Mr. Kuzawa at the pump house relit my flame-tipped nerves. The betrayal I felt stoked my fury. Something better give and fast, or else I’d explode.
From the get-go, Herzog had played me for a chump. He was Sizemore’s boy, no denying it. The crushed glass grinding in my stomach gave me cramps. I stalked to the passenger side where the cab truck doors sat ajar. For a picnicker, Herzog sitting there looked glum and haggard. This unexpected side trip to move Alicia to Umpire had fouled up their big plans to nail me. My heartbeats galloped, and I almost went out of my head.
“Something rotten has loused under my skin,” I said.
“Is the trial stressing you out?” He placed his fleshy hand on my shoulder. “Don’t worry. I have it in the bag and sewn up tight.”
I shook off Herzog offensive hand.
“I just bet you do.” The hulking Mr. Kuzawa had sealed off the driver side door, pincering Herzog between us.
“Kuzawa, do you mind?”
“Matter of fact, I do mind. A lot.”
Herzog sighed. “We’re holding a privileged attorney-client discussion.”
“No, I fired you.” The snarl coarsened my voice.
“Uh, Brendan. Will this turn nasty?”
Her simple question startled me. I swiveled my head to her. I’d never seen a person turn so ashen. “You better go wait behind the pump house because our picnic is almost finished.”
Mr. Kuzawa added his instructions. “Watch for the corn snake and stick your fingers in your ears.”
“Snakes don’t scare me,” said Alicia, doddering off down the slate chip footpath. “But hearing loud noises do.”
“Say, what is this?” Herzog heeled up his doughy palms at me. “You can’t just dismiss me as your attorney. Your trial is too soon for a different one to get up to speed on your case.”
“My trial is a sham. How many jurors have Sizemore bought off like he did you?”
“What? Do you think I’d accept a bribe to throw your case? That’s an outrageous insult.”
I let the cold silence stretching out speak for me.
After a bit, Mr. Kuzawa, his eyes on the footpath, said, “Alicia has made it to behind the pump house.”
“What’s gotten into you, Brendan?” said Herzog.
“You’re Sizemore’s boy,” I replied.
“That’s why he laid the lumber on us at the mansion,” said Mr. Kuzawa. “He knew we were en route since you tipped him off at the store while getting your gloves.”
“Untrue.” Herzog grabbed at a straw. “The shots were fired at me, too.”
“Real
ly? You were a straggler,” said Mr. Kuzawa.
“You told me to stay behind you.”
“You’ve never been behind us,” said Mr. Kuzawa.
“How much? What is nailing my ass worth?” I asked.
“Thirty ducats of silver, eh, Judas?” said Mr. Kuzawa.
“Judas? Me? You’re off base. I’ve never took one dime.”
Mr. Kuzawa snorted in bitter derision. “Business is bad. You’re hard up to take anybody’s dime, dirty or not.”
“Some cash flow difficulties have hit my office.”
How had he clued in Sizemore from the store? Snap. The way occurred to me. “Give me that damn thing.” I stripped the game pouch off Herzog’s shoulder and his grabby fingers. I dug under the flap, and an expensive handheld radio came out from it. The pilot lights behind my eyes whiffed out as my temper ran ice-cold. “Who did you blab to on this?”
“Dr. Smith now knows when to run his red ticks at Lake Charles.”
“Lame,” said Mr. Kuzawa.
“This explains the tail job on us.” I rattled the handheld radio inches from Herzog’s nose. “Secret phone calls placed in motel rooms. Gloves fumbled in the woods. Snipers perched in mansions. The guilt wafts off you like stink off a skunk.”
“You’d better come clean with us, lawyer.”
“I deny it all,” said Herzog in a huff. “Ridiculous.”
I didn’t think twice. The .44 blammed. Its recoil snapped my wrist. Herzog squawked, and his hands clutched his uninjured knee. I’d missed him on purpose—a scare tactic. My slug lay embedded in the cab seat, just nicking him like the round had grazed my ribs. The acrid gun smoke replaced his Aqua Velva smell. I hoped he didn’t go into shock—I still had to ask my harder questions.
“Spill your guts.” Mr. Kuzawa’s .44 lifted like a chalice. “Or I’ll do it for you.”
The horror to our violence trumped any loyalty in Herzog left for Sizemore. Herzog gargled out his half-intelligible words. “What do you want to know?”
“You’re a spy. Sizemore bribed you after I made bail.”
“Okay, yeah … sort of.”
“Sizemore framed me for Ashleigh’s murder.”
“I don’t know … really, I don’t.”
“Plausible enough, Brendan.” The bore to Mr. Kuzawa’s .44 speared Herzog’s stubbly chin. “You better press on.”
“Sizemore grows the pot at Lake Charles.”
“Yeah, okay, he does that.”
“Edna saw it, and Sizemore grabbed her.”
“He told me as much.”
“Where is Edna? She better be okay.”
“Now that I don’t know.”
The growers’ campsite emerged from my dervish of thoughts, and I made a link. After Cobb died from the shot arrow, I hadn’t outfoxed myself. The spy I thought was hiding from me hadn’t been a phantom conjured by my grief-stricken mind. The spy was real, and I was looking at him.
“I get it now. You were the second man. I got a glimpse of you at the growers’ campsite spying on me. You bunked there when you arrived at Lake Charles, waiting for us to show at Lang’s Teahouse. You knew we were coming because I told you at Pete’s shop.”
“No, I never did that.”
Mr. Kuzawa gave Herzog a shove. “Can you turn any slimier?
“You bet he can. He watched the archer kill Cobb, I said.
Herzog wagged his head in emphatic denial. “No-no. I was never there.”
Mr. Kuzawa’s face contorted. “It’s curtains for the crooked lawyer.”
“Where is Edna?” I asked.
A hapless shrug was all Herzog could muster.
Anxiety over Edna’s strife diverted me as my sore gaze traveled out to the state road. Cat-quick, Mr. Kuzawa seized the screeching Herzog. When my eyes sliced back, Mr. Kuzawa had spilled Herzog on the turf, manhandled him to his knees, and stoved the .44’s stubby muzzle between his teeth clinking on the steel like fragile china.
“See you in the fires below, Judas.”
Herzog squawked, begging for mercy. “Don’t, don’t. Please—”
“Wasted breath, lawyer.”
Hollering, I lunged into the cab and clawed to grapple over the seat. “Wait! Quit!”
Too late. Mr. Kuzawa’s .44 thundered—blam!—and the expiring Herzog flumped over, sprawled like a sack of rice. Stepping away, Mr. Kuzawa chuckled as an escapee sprung from the lobotomy ward.
“Suicide. Damn. We lose more lawyers that way.”
“Are you fucking nuts?” The gunshot had left my ears ringing.
“Get a grip, Brendan. What’s done is done.”
I swallowed. Twice. “Christ … I guess it is then. Doctor it like it was a suicide. We’ll pick up Alicia and go on.”
“I’d deal him another slug, Cobb, but it’d jeopardize the fake suicide.”
Doubled over by the tailpipe, a supporting hand on the cab truck, I vomited the deviled eggs and rest. The taste of death—bitter as quinine pills—fouled my tongue and mouth. I hocked to spit but it was an indelible taste. Mr. Kuzawa strode around the cab truck’s front, and pawed my shoulder in a parental way.
“This isn’t so bad. Keep the faith.”
“Yeah, sure,” I said. “Keep the faith.”
The experienced assassin marched back and staged the corpse just so, and we loaded into my cab truck. The horror tingled to the roots of my teeth. After hammering the gears into first, I edged out from the holly trees, stopped to collect Alicia quivering by the pump house, and we hit our stride again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The cars stood stranded along the two-laner taking us to Umpire. The flaps to their empty gas tanks wedged out. There was a gas shortage on. I passed the bedraggled hitchhikers, but with no spare time, I couldn’t play the Good Samaritan and pick them up to fetch their gas.
Our conversation ran thin. The stoic Mr. Kuzawa showed no compunction or contriteness over his mobster-style execution of Herzog in the holly grove. I still heard the fatal gunshot and couldn’t believe what’d happened. My hands ached. Dirt track racers said they gripped the steering wheel hard enough to leave their palms bleeding. I didn’t want to see what the oily dampness was on mine. My eyes kept grazing the rearview mirror, but no demons hounded us, and Alicia’s cargo held fast. The risible irony of our safeguarding her new life while strewing the corpses throughout the Tennessee hill country wasn’t lost on me. Any end to this dementedness lay nowhere ahead in my view.
I put on the radio for background noise. A man with a cheesy British accent advertised his proven system to make you a real estate mogul. After all, his system had enriched him. I mulled over why then he had to plug his book if he already lived as a king. Mr. Kuzawa reached over and killed the radio. Alicia shifted between us. Every mile registered on my odometer was a tenser and closer one to Umpire.
* * *
On the outskirts of Umpire, the rumbling earthmovers and scurrying hardhats rushed to build our new shopping plaza across from the trailer park. Edna’s disappearance and Cobb’s murder cast a sullen pall over my homecoming. My stomach wall lurched, but I swallowed the upsurges of bile. By the next curve, I drew in a lungful of the greasy smoke—the fires now ravaged our wind-scoured ridges. Every eastern Tennessee hamlet, it seemed, was burning. Was Armageddon’s promised havoc at hand? If so, it suited my dark mood.
Alicia strained to clear her throat. “My grandparents just retired and moved to Umpire.”
Mr. Kuzawa kept his surly quiet, and I nodded at her. “Did they now?”
“They just rave at how soul-stirring these mountains can be.”
Mr. Kuzawa cared nothing of the local scenery. “Who’s the daddy of your kid, Alicia?”
“Oh. Him. The last I heard, Kyle sold tires in Talladega,” she replied in a bleak monotone. “I haven’t seen him in months. It’s just as well. He and I weren’t in love.”
Mr. Kuzawa grunted his disapproval and hearing that irritated me. Before I could say anything, she went on.
“Dad threw me out, and the Arbogasts took me in. Strict Catholics, they don’t hold with abortion and help girls like me. Dad is still livid. I told him mistakes happen, but I sure won’t make a second one. My baby girl will go up for adoption.”
I felt Alicia’s shudder as she went on.
“Mr. Herzog said he was worried about me.”
“Uh-huh.” Mr. Kuzawa glared out the windshield. “That Judas sold us out. He’d stab anybody in the back if it made him an extra nickel.”
“Is Mr. Sizemore really that dangerous?”
Her avid eyes spurred me to nod. “He’s bad news. Stick near home until this thing can blow over. I’d give it a week or more.”
“Something else. Expunge us from your memory. If the cops ask, just play dumb with them,” said Mr. Kuzawa.
“Got it. I never saw Mr. Herzog. My grandparents moved me in with them. They’ll go along with the story, I’m sure.”
“Dandy. Here’s something else. How you decide to lead your life is your business, but I’d ponder your unborn’s future. Then put yourself not in it. You’ll never get to enjoy any Kodak moments together like first communion, proms, and graduations. Do you follow what I’m saying? Over the long haul, you might come to regret and resent your decision if you make it without due thought.”
My clenched teeth pained my jaws. Here the hypocrite preached to her after we’d asked her to ignore Herzog’s brutish death at the wayside. I made a throat sound.
“Alicia isn’t a kid. She knows what’s best for her.”
“Just my two cents,” said Mr. Kuzawa.
“Yeah and mine, too,” I said, testier.
“Hey, you both have given me good things to mull over.”
“Alicia, isn’t our turn just up ahead?” I asked.
It was. Her grandparent’s scaled-down cedar cabin with a slate roof anchored the end of a windy, gravel lane. As soon as I keyed off the engine, a tall, spare man still energetic in his late sixties, bounded out the front door. Mr. Kuzawa lifted her down, and she ran into the man’s embrace. Her grandfather, whose name I missed, lugged away the bassinet, and we made short order of unpacking her stuff. Her grandfather tried to reimburse me for the gas, a thoughtful gesture but I refused his money. He asked me if I was sure.
