by Brad Smith
“Shit,” she said. “My battery died.” She turned to Virgil. “You wouldn’t—no, of course you wouldn’t.”
She glanced around and saw a phone on the kitchen counter beside the fridge, brought it over to the table, punched in the number on the card.
“I got your dope,” she said when someone answered.
Virgil could clearly hear the man’s voice in reply, asking if she really did have it, his voice rising with doubt.
“Why would I say it if it wasn’t true?” she replied. Dusty, absently studying the scattered articles from her purse as she talked, now reached for a torn page from a real estate flyer, featuring pictures of a dozen or so houses. One, tagged Cobleskill 3-Bedroom, had been circled in pen. Dusty placed the ad on the table, smoothing the creases in the paper with her fingers.
The man said something else that Virgil missed.
“How I found it is none of your business,” Dusty said. “You want it, it’s for sale.”
Saying it, she wouldn’t look at Virgil. In fact, she seemed a little surprised herself at the statement. Virgil thought he heard the man on the phone chuckle, then he asked how much.
Dusty looked a moment longer at the real estate ad, then reached for the plastic glass and took a slug. “Sixty-eight thousand dollars.”
For a time there was nothing from the other end of the line, and then Virgil heard the man say something that sounded like “All right.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Dusty said and hung up.
She sat quietly for a moment, taking another drink before gathering her possessions and putting them back in the purse. She still wouldn’t look at Virgil, leaning against the counter.
“At least you talk a good game,” he said.
“Fuck you,” she said. “You don’t get to judge me.”
“I’m not judging you,” he said. “You’re the same as the rest of them. It was always about the money.” He poured more whisky for himself. “Hey, maybe I am judging you.”
“It wasn’t about the money,” she snapped. “It was about me staying out of jail.” She tossed the real estate ad carelessly toward him. “And now it’s about getting my kid out of the city. Why should I give it to Parson for nothing?”
Virgil indicated the duffel bag on the floor. “Let’s dump it in the lake.”
“I just made a deal.”
“I heard you,” Virgil said. “So you get your money and that shit hits the streets.”
“You going to moralize now?” she asked. “Little late in the game for that, isn’t it?” She reached for the cup but stopped. “Don’t think I haven’t thought about that. Guess what—I’m not in charge of all the bad shit that goes down in this world. All I can do is keep my own little corner clean.”
“Keep your corner clean and Parson happy,” Virgil said.
“You want me to admit that’s part of it?” she asked. “Well, it is. There’s no way he’s getting any part of my son. So tomorrow I hand him his cocaine and I hope I never see him again. I have to trust him just this once. Is that too much to ask?”
“I don’t know the answer to that.”
“Well, neither do I.” She indicated the bag on the floor. “I do know that I did three years inside for that shit. And I did something today that’s going to be in my head forever. So I’m going to pretend that this bag owes me. Fuck the moral considerations. And fuck Parson too, once it’s over.”
Virgil didn’t want to argue with her anymore. He wasn’t at all sure that she was wrong. It was just that he wished it had turned out differently. On every level since he had encountered Dusty in his wheat field that day, he wished it had turned out differently. Not so much for himself, but for her. He watched now as she got wearily to her feet.
“I have to sleep,” she said. She indicated the first of the two bedrooms. “Can I sleep there?”
“Yeah.”
When she was gone Virgil sat down at the table. He drank more of the Jameson and picked at the cold chicken in the cardboard box. He should have been tired but he wasn’t. Back at the farm, his calves would be hungry, and he hoped the horses had water enough to last them until morning. He sat there for maybe an hour, listening to the faint sounds of the lake outside, and to the breeze in the trees, and finally he got up and walked into the other bedroom. There were French doors that opened onto a deck overlooking the water and Virgil pulled the blinds to look outside. The moon was on the rise, crossing the sky just above the horizon, casting a shimmering light on the surface of the lake.
He stripped to his shorts and lay down on the mattress. There was a wool blanket at the foot of the bed and he pulled it over him, trying to put from his mind everything that had gone on. Just as he was slipping off, he heard a noise and looked up to see Dusty standing in the doorway, barefoot, but still in her jeans and shirt.
“Can I sleep here?” she asked, and he said yes.
She got into bed and curled up beside him, her body touching his but just barely. She seemed to relax within seconds and pretty soon he could tell she was asleep. Virgil lay there in the quiet, listening to her steady breathing and watching the moon outside.
* * *
Parson was in the garage, aimlessly surfing the Internet, when the phone rang. He stood and walked around the shop while he listened to Dusty on the other end. He couldn’t say what he’d been expecting but it wasn’t this. Enough time had passed that he was beginning to believe the cocaine was gone forever, though he had no problem believing she’d found it. There was no reason for her to lie about that, and it wasn’t like her to lie anyway. Besides, he was the one who had sent her after it in the first place. He was a little surprised that she was asking him to buy it from her. Maybe she was getting jaded and greedy, like everybody else in the world.
Not that Parson had any intention of paying her. It was his dope. He’d paid for it in the Caribbean seven years ago and just because it had been at the bottom of the Hudson ever since didn’t mean he was about to pay for it again.
After Dusty hung up he stood looking at the call display for a moment. Ronnie’s Rustic Cottages. With the number and area code. He went back to his computer and while he typed the information into Google, he called Cherry’s cell.
“She’s got it,” he said when Cherry answered.
There was a long pause. “Tell me where I’m going,” Cherry said.
“Have it in a minute,” Parson said, looking at the laptop. “Shit. She’s halfway across the state. I’m sending you the link. I need you to go there tonight.”
“Sure thing.”
“And Cherry … don’t hurt her,” Parson said. “I mean that. Just get the coke. Leave her alone—there’s something I need to ask her.”
There was no reply from Cherry.
“You hear me?” Parson said.
“I hear you.”
TWENTY-NINE
Virgil lay awake a long time and just when it seemed he wouldn’t sleep at all, he must have nodded off. When he woke, the moon was high in the sky and brighter than ever. The wind had come up and the surface of the lake was choppy, with little whitecaps farther out. The wind whistled through the trees surrounding the cottage, emitting a loud moaning sound. He saw by the clock on the table beside the bed that it was twenty past three. Dusty’s body against his back was warm, her breathing rhythmic and even. Virgil stayed quiet for a few minutes, but he had a nagging feeling that something had caused him to wake up.
He slipped out of bed, pulled his pants on, and walked out into the main room of the cottage and immediately saw that the lights were on in the office up front. The building had been dark when Virgil had gone to bed. Why would the owners be up now? Daylight was still a couple of hours off. He walked to the front door and stepped outside. A car was idling in the driveway just past the office, beyond the glow of a light mounted on the gable of the building.
He crossed the lawn in his bare feet, angling to his left, where a number of large spruce trees provided cover. He went up the slope that
led to the office until he got close enough for a good look at the car parked in the drive. It was a blue Mercedes roadster.
So much for trusting Parson.
Virgil moved behind one of the spruce trees and waited. After a few moments the office door opened and a man walked out. He had dark hair and he was dressed entirely in black. The redheaded woman who had signed Virgil and Dusty in earlier stood in the doorway, wearing pajama bottoms and a long pink T-shirt. She was talking amiably, pointing in the direction of Virgil’s truck, and he replied in a like tone, saying that they were expecting him.
When the woman went inside the man walked back to the Mercedes and a few seconds later the lights in the office went out, then the lights in the adjoining house. When the man shut the roadster off, Virgil turned and headed back toward the cabin, keeping to the row of trees along the narrow lane. Stopping there in the shadows, he waited.
The moonlight was so bright that he could clearly see the man making his way toward Virgil’s truck, parked in front of the cabin. Virgil decided not to go back inside, but instead retreated beyond the corner of the building. Again in shadow, he waited for the man, who approached cautiously, stopping to take a look in the big front window before continuing around to the rear of the cabin. Virgil retreated once more, finally concealing himself behind a stand of rough cedar shrubs that marked the property’s rear boundary.
The man moved quietly along the side wall of the building, and when he emerged from the shadow into the moonlight Virgil could see his features, his pumped-up arms, the gold jewelry around his neck. He stepped up onto the deck and approached the French doors that opened to the bedroom where Virgil had slept. The bedroom where Dusty was sleeping yet. From where he crouched Virgil could clearly see Dusty’s form inside, curled on the bed beneath the wool blanket. When the man was a few feet away he stopped and looked through the glass doors for a long moment, as if trying to make out who it was on the bed. He was no more than a dozen feet from Dusty.
He pulled a long-barreled gun from his coat.
Virgil was lucky for the wind. If it wasn’t for the waves slapping the shore and the leaves whipping in the trees, he never would have reached the cabin without the man hearing him. He leapt from his hiding spot and sprinted barefoot across the rough lawn, his heart pumping wildly. The man was drawing a bead on Dusty when Virgil jumped onto the deck behind him. The man half turned at the sound, and Virgil stepped in close to him, turning his shoulders to the right, like a hitter in the batter’s box, and then taking a home-run swing with the cast on his left arm, striding into it with all his weight. The hard plaster took the man flush across the face; Virgil could both hear and feel the nose cartilage being crushed beneath the blow. The man grunted loudly; he was unconscious before he hit the wooden deck.
* * *
Virgil sat on the couch, looking at the man called Cherry, now sprawled on the living room floor where Virgil had dragged him after knocking him out. The man called Cherry was still unconscious. In fact, Virgil had never seen anybody that unconscious, and he was beginning to wonder if he was going to wake up.
Cherry’s nose was a mess, spread across his face like a toad mashed on the highway. Blood was congealing around it, and down both sides of his mouth. Virgil’s cast was broken where it had hit the man, but he felt no pain in his arm and he was reasonably sure he hadn’t done further damage to the bone. He sat on the couch, with the bottle of Jameson and a cup on the table beside him. He held Cherry’s semiautomatic in his hand, a Browning .45, fitted with a silencer, which is why the barrel had looked so long when Virgil first saw it in the moonlight. If there was any question that Cherry had come to kill Dusty, the silencer answered it.
Virgil took a drink and waited for Dusty to return. He thought back a couple of weeks, to the day he’d taken the two steers to the abattoir, and his decision afterward to stop at Slim’s for a beer and some wings. That was the day Mudcat McCluskey had come in with the stripers in the cooler, and that was the day that Virgil had decided to go fishing off Kimball’s Point, resulting in his hooking the cylinder.
The next time he took steers to the abattoir, he’d head straight for home afterward.
Dusty came back, carrying the keys to Cherry’s Mercedes in her hand. She nodded to Virgil, saying it was done, crossed over, and put the keys back in Cherry’s pants pocket where she had found them. Virgil stood up and handed her the Browning, then filled the plastic cup with Irish and, kneeling down beside Cherry, tossed half the contents in the man’s face. Cherry made a slight noise and Virgil splashed the rest of the whisky down the front of his shirt, soaking him. Then he slapped Cherry several times until finally he began to come around.
Still, it took the better part of five minutes for the man’s head to clear and when he finally realized his predicament, he was noticeably surly. He got unsteadily to his feet, the back of his hand against his battered and bleeding nose, and once he had his wits about him, he began to utter dark threats to both of them. They allowed him to go on for a bit, then Virgil grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, propelled him to the door, and shoved him outside, where Cherry tripped on the steps and went sprawling to the ground.
“You’re a dead man,” he told Virgil as he got to his feet again.
“You’d be a lot more convincing if you weren’t so stupid and beat up,” Virgil said.
Dusty had walked out onto the small porch and now she stood beside Virgil, the .45 at her side. Cherry eyed them both and then, realizing he was finished for the night, turned and walked toward his car. He was still wobbly on his feet; anybody who encountered him would have no trouble believing he was blind drunk.
They waited until he got into the Mercedes and drove off. Back inside the cabin, Virgil watched as Dusty picked up the phone and dialed 911.
“I’ve just been sideswiped by a drunk driver,” she said when a dispatcher answered. “A Mercedes convertible.” She listened as the dispatcher questioned her. “U.S. 3, about two miles south of Obertville.” Glancing over at Virgil, she smiled. “As a matter of fact, I did get the license number.”
THIRTY
The cabin cruiser called Down Along Coast had an open back deck, where there were canvas-backed chairs and a table made of teak. Parson was sitting on the deck, drinking coffee and staring out at the river. It was shortly past eleven o’clock and he looked as if he’d been up for hours. His eyes were red, his cheeks unshaven.
Virgil and Dusty stood on the lawn maybe fifty feet away, watching him. They had pulled up to the mammoth garage housing Parson’s vintage cars a few minutes earlier, out of Parson’s sight and, with the sound of the river, out of earshot too. When they didn’t see him inside, they’d walked around the building, to the expanse of lawn leading to the boat slip.
Dusty put her hand out to stop Virgil from advancing farther, walked another ten or twelve feet, raised the Uzi in both hands, and without a word of warning strafed the side of the boat, emptying the clip, ripping the cedar planking to shreds, clanging bullets off hardware, breaking windows.
Parson practically burst out of his skin, leaping to his feet and diving below the railing, where he scrambled on his hands and knees for the cabin. Only when the shooting stopped did he dare to have a look. His eyes widened when he saw Dusty.
“What the hell is this?”
“You sent Cherry to kill me!” she screamed.
“Hell I did.”
“You’re a liar.”
They heard shouting from the house next door, a large white Victorian a couple of hundred yards away. “What the hell’s going on over there?”
Parson was fast on his feet. “Just scaring these damn Canada geese off,” he shouted back. “They’re shitting all over my dock.” He stood up, his hands in front of him, as if they would deflect any further gunfire. “Put the gun down, Dusty.”
“It’s empty anyway,” she said and tossed it carelessly on the lawn.
Parson climbed out and walked over to pick the gun up before turning to s
urvey the damage it had inflicted. “Look what you did to my boat.”
“You sent him to kill me,” Dusty said.
When Parson turned to look at her, it seemed to Virgil that he was genuinely puzzled at the accusation. After a moment his eyes went past Dusty to Virgil.
“I heard about you,” he said darkly. He glanced toward his neighbor’s house. “Let’s go in the shop.”
They followed Parson inside, where he walked over and slumped into a chair behind a desk. He now seemed more weary than scared or pissed off. Virgil glanced around the huge building, at the dozen or so cars parked there. His eyes went past the Corvettes and Mustangs and Jags, to an old coupe in the far corner, partly covered with clear plastic.
“I’ve been up all goddamn night,” Parson said. “What did you do to Cherry?”
“Not what I should have,” Dusty replied.
Parson put both palms to his temples and sat like that for a moment, as if trying to arrange his thoughts. “I got a phone call a couple hours ago,” he said. “Cherry’s been arrested up north. Suspicion of drunk driving. The cops found about a hundred pounds of cocaine in the trunk of his car.” He paused for effect. “Cherry wasn’t aware there was cocaine in the trunk of his car.”
“What a drag for Cherry,” Dusty said. “Him being such a stand-up guy and all.”
“I told him not to hurt you, Dusty. He wouldn’t go against me.”
“He was going to kill her,” Virgil said. “I was there.”
“Who the fuck are you again?” Parson demanded.
“I’m the guy who cold-cocked your buddy Cherry before he could shoot Dusty. That’s who I am.”
Parson stared at Virgil a moment but turned back to Dusty. “Cherry wouldn’t go against me.”
“He might,” Dusty said. “If he found out I knew it was him who set you up seven years ago.”
Parson opened his mouth but nothing came out. He sat back in the chair, blinking. “Cherry?” he asked.
“Yeah, Cherry,” Dusty said. “Think about it. How many people even knew you were bringing the coke up from the islands? It was Cherry. The cops busted him for kiddie porn, and Cherry gave them you.”
