Dead Silence

by Randy Wayne White

  No. The voices weren’t real. More hallucinations. Same with the harmonica, although it wasn’t easy to be sure, not since he’d awakened after being injected with a dose of Ketamine, the same horse tranquilizer he’d used on Buffalo-head.

  The boy tried to relax. He summoned a pattern of thought that might be comforting. Into his brain floated the image of Old Man Guttersen.

  Will held tight to the image as he opened his eyes. He was testing his own sanity, wondering if a mental picture would remain as lucid with his eyes open as it was when his eyes were closed.

  It should have made no difference, considering what the Cubans had done to him now. One darkness was no blacker than the other.

  But it did make a difference.

  Will realized images in his brain were sharper with eyes closed, possibly because that’s what his brain was used to: dreams and certain daylight fantasies.

  So that’s what Will did now, closed his eyes, breathing softly through his nose, and returned to the image of Bull Guttersen, which was more tolerable than the image Will wanted to get rid of: the old Cuban, with his dead, clinical eyes, holding a revolver, then pulling the hammer back.

  Metal-eyes had blinked when his revolver jolted, the weapon making an unreal explosion as guns did in real life. But the hole the bullet had tunneled through Cazzio’s head was as real as anything Will had ever seen.

  Too real for Will to think about, so he levered his thoughts back to Minnesota, the way it was living there before he had boarded that damn plane and before the big nerd with glasses had ordered, “Get your ass back in the limo!,” or something similar, which had contributed as much as anything else to his shitty situation.

  Will took a deep breath through his nose, and let his mind settle, repeating Minnesota . . . Minnesota over and over in his brain, but then had to interrupt himself with an honest aside, thinking, Never thought I’d see the day I’d dream of going back to that ass-freezing land of too many lakes and not enough ranches.

  True enough. But right now, he would have traded the box the Cubans had stuck him in for the worst hellhole foster home in Minneapolis.

  “Specially constructed,” the scary American with the stringy hair had described the box.

  Not that Ruth Guttersen’s place was a crummy box or hellhole. It was neither. Mrs. Guttersen kept her two-story house, with its white siding, with its flowers and a flag out front, as tidy as a church. Which would have been tough for Will to have endured had the old man not kept things interesting.

  Bull had a knack for that, which he had proven on day one.

  The first time Will met Otto Guttersen, the old man was holding a Colt .38 to his own head, only seconds from committing suicide—the suicide part, though, Bull hadn’t admitted to Will until later.

  Okay, so I lied. Russian roulette ain’t something I normally do when bored—not with more than one round in the chamber anyway.

  The gun, though, the man couldn’t deny. It was a knockoff Colt, with a plastic-ivory handle but loaded with real bullets.

  This was two years ago, Minneapolis. Because that first meeting had turned out okay—it had turned out good, in fact—the boy didn’t mind remembering it, so he let his brain follow the thread.

  Will had climbed through the kitchen widow because no one answered the door at his new foster home, then hurried downstairs carrying a garbage bag. He had enough experience with the Lutheran Foster Grandparents Program to know Minnesotans kept many of their valuables in the basement, which they called recreation rooms after fixing them up nice with carpet and neon beer signs, a pool table or foosball and sometimes a flat-screen TV.

  There sat the old man, a gun to his head, even though what Will would learn was his favorite radio program was on, Garage Logic. The fact it was a commercial break may have had something to do with the timing, but it didn’t explain why the old man was holding a gun to his head and crying. Eyes swollen red, cheeks wet.

  It was new to Will, the helpless, sad blubbering of a grown man. Stood there almost a minute before Guttersen noticed, then he watched the man slowly, slowly take the gun from his temple and point it at Will. Embarrassed, no doubt, but not too damn old to pull the trigger. No doubt about that, either, when Will saw a spark brighten the man’s eyes.

  “It’s good you brought that garbage bag. Less mess when I blow your head off.”

  Will had said, “You talking to me or your hostage?,” never so scared in his life but trying to keep it light, as if the situation wasn’t serious, while not sounding like a smart-ass.

  “I suppose you plan on robbing the place, then murdering the witnesses,” Guttersen had said, his tone mean-mad but also hopeful in a spooky way. Maybe planning something in his head, a way to kill two birds with one stone. Shoot the robber, then shoot the witness. A perfect crime.

  Will decided the smart thing to do was explain. “There’s a pawnshop, they pay thirty cents on the dollar for old coins and gold and souvenirs from the war.” Something about the old man indicated Lie to me or try bullshitting, bang! so Will added, “I saw the flag outside. Houses with flags, the people usually collect all three.”

  Click: The gun’s cylinder rotated as the hammer locked back. “Stealing from American patriots makes me less inclined to offer you a beer while we’re waiting for the ambulance.”

  Will didn’t respond, didn’t even put up his hands.

  “Are you deaf or just slow?”

  The man was motioning with the gun, so Will raised his hands, saying, “I’m scared shitless, what do you think?”

  “You can hear.”

  “Yeah! I can see, too.” Will nodded toward the sign over the bar: FREE BEER TOMORROW. “It’s no surprise that I’m gonna go thirsty.” He forced a smile.

  Guttersen didn’t soften. “A damn kid who’s got no respect for the American flag shouldn’t be robbing houses owned by patriots with guns who know their rights.” He studied him for a moment. “What are you, Puerto Rican? Mexican?”

  The old man was trying to fire up the situation. That’s what was happening. He had a plan and didn’t want to lose his momentum.

  “No need to call names,” Will said. “Why don’t you go back to doing what you were doing? I’ll promise to never steal from a house that flies the flag again. How’s that sound?”

  The old man was still looking at Will’s face, seeing the black eyes and the shoulder-length crow hair, trying to figure it out. “Maybe Mexican mixed with something else. Ethiopian is a possibility. They’ve ’bout taken over the Twin Cities. Could be your daddy raped one of our local Latin girls.”

  Will said, “Don’t say that,” and lowered his hands.

  “You got something against Ethiopians? Nothing to be ashamed of.”

  A burning sensation in his ears, Will could feel it blooming. “I ain’t no damn Ethiopian, mister. Knock it off.”

  “You break into my house to rob me and kill witnesses. Now you’re giving me orders?”

  “What right you got saying my dad’s Ethiopian? I’m a Native American, not some damn foreigner who wears robes and pisses in the park.”

  Guttersen liked that, although Will didn’t see it and only got madder when the old man replied, “Don’t blame me for sizing you as a welfare mutt. Hell, half the people claiming to be Indian in Minnesota, you couldn’t get a bullet through their heads with a .357. It’s ’cause of the gambling money.”

  That did it. Will felt the craziness take control—an ammonia smell mixed with sulfur—and he started yelling, “I wouldn’t live in this shithole state if you gave me the keys! Wear robes just to get a welfare check? Humping Mary Tyler Moore’s statue just ’cause she’s white? My dad was pure-blooded Seminole from Oklahoma. And my ma was Apache!”

  Which was partly a lie. Will had only heard rumors about his father being Seminole. Before his mother had died, she’d told the boy that his daddy might have been a no-good, drunken drug addict, but on her side of the family things were different. Her father had run a successful a
irboat business in the Everglades. His grandfather had been famous—in that part of the world at least.

  The way his mother had talked, Will’s grandfather had been seven feet tall and so damn handsome every woman in the country, white, black or Seminole, was crazy about the man, his mother included.

  But screw it, Will wasn’t going to waste effort convincing some old racist Casper who was on the verge of suicide anyway.

  Walking toward the old man, slouched in his wheelchair, Will had yelled, “Pull the goddamn trigger or I’ll show you how it’s done!”

  Threatening to shoot the man. Just like that.

  Off to a bad start with Otto Guttersen, no question. But it had balanced out because interrupting Bull in the act of killing himself gave Will leverage. Stealing meant jail, but attempting suicide meant the loony farm.

  As to shooting a foster grandchild, Lutheran Social Services was strict. Mrs. Guttersen would have been banned from the program and forced to spend her days home alone, not volunteering.

  “She would’ve talked me to death, I shit thee not,” Guttersen had said later, thanking Will. “That’s a thousand times worse than a bullet.”

  The relationship between robber and witness had improved over the last eighteen months.

  Weird, how much I think about that old bastard. Same as when I was locked in the car trunk, taped tight and scared. Like he was there with me.

  To which Old Man Guttersen would have said, “You’re surprised? Any situation that requires a cool head, I’m your go-to guy.”

  Well . . . sometimes, maybe. Guttersen was right a lot of the time, but was also dead wrong upon occasion. What he’d said about stupid threats—Never make a threat that’ll get your ass kicked or prove you’re a pussy—wasn’t actually the first time he had given Will misinformation. More like the fiftieth or sixtieth.

  Wish Guttersen was here right now. He’d go apeshit, stuck in a box. Back in the barn, that’s where I could’a used Bull. Stalls all dark—perfect for an ambush. If the Cubans came through that door, old Bull would have . . .

  The old man would have done what? Wasn’t much he could do, being a cripple, except wait for events to happen.

  Possibly so, yet Will would’ve still felt a lot better if Bull was with him. Safer, although safer wasn’t the right word because Bull was in a wheelchair. He couldn’t stick his big Norwegian finger in Metal-eyes’s face, then pull his cheap pearl-handled revolver. And he couldn’t beat the shit out of Buffalo-head like he would’ve done in the old days as Sheriff Bull Gutter.

  A guy takes a swing, my best move is a quick duck-under to a fireman’s carry. Then helicopter-spin him a few times—in a bar fight or a professional show, either way. Next, a body slam, followed by a knee-drop to the neck. As a professional, I’ve got to moderate the knee-drop or I kill the bastard. Same if it’s a bar fight, although I have given more than one private citizen a little “sweet taste,” we called it. Something to remember me by.

  Bull Guttersen’s commentary the night they’d watched John Wayne in The Quiet Man, a movie in which a big Irish actor knocks the Duke on his ass, the Duke having been a nice guy once too often.

  No chance of me being too nice, not if I ever get my hands on Metal-eyes.

  Will hated the man, and it caused his brain to return to the present. Thinking about what Metal-eyes had done to Cazzio, and now what the Cubans were doing to him, the boy felt the first cellular prickle of heat on the back of his neck.

  Don’t get mad. Don’t.

  It scared Will, the thought of what he might do if he lost control now.

  After Metal-eyes had shot him full of horse tranquilizer, the Cubans had discovered that Will had been chewing at the tape on his hands. So they had wrapped him with new tape and moved him to a different place, keeping him blindfolded the entire time. Next, they shoved him into what turned out to be the box the American had mentioned.

  The sound the hammer had made as Buffalo-head nailed the lid closed was the most sickening sound Will had experienced. Worse even than Cazzio’s last frightened whinny.

  The box was too small for the boy to move in, the lid only inches from his nose. It was like a coffin, with a padded floor and some unseen vent that let in air. Not much. Right now, though, that trickle of air was the boy’s only connection to life as he’d known it.

  Telling himself to breathe, to concentrate on more pleasant things, Will tried to calm down, reminding himself, If I lose my temper in here, I could snap my own arm bones fighting against this damn tape. Animals do it all the time when they’re caught in a trap.

  What would happen next, Will didn’t want to explore, although he knew what would happen because a small, wise place in the boy’s brain whispered the truth to him: You can’t endure much more.

  If he lost control, really lost it, Will knew what would happen and that terrified him. Insane. He would go so wild insane, so crazy insane that his brain would never come back to him.

  Will took another breath through his nose, released it slowly and began once again to repeat, Minnesota . . . Minnesota . . . Minnesota . . .

  19

  I told Tomlinson it was too windy and cold and I was too damn tired to put up with his aimless sawing on a childhood harmonica, it was almost midnight.

  “You’re irritating the hell out of me. Aren’t you usually passed out drunk by now?”

  “I’ve convinced my liver that daylight saving’s has been outlawed. It’s celebrating. Don’t rock the boat.” He did a quick scale, then slapped the instrument on his palm. “The suit’s the guy I want to irritate. Maybe he’ll freak out and leave us alone.”

  The suit wasn’t wearing a suit. He was a man bundled in a hooded ski jacket, waving his arms as he approached, calling, “Hold it right there, please,” as I opened the gate to Shelter Point Stables.

  In a distant pasture, I could see an industrial glare of lights and heard the diesel surging of a backhoe. When the man was close enough, I identified myself, then asked, “You’re digging the horse’s grave already?,” letting him know I was in a hurry and had a reason to ask.

  I watched the man fix a cordial expression on his face, squinting into headlights because the rental was still running, both doors open. “Who did you say you are again?”

  I repeated everything, question included, as I stepped through the gate.

  “Alacazam has been buried, that’s right. Probably just finishing up now,” the man said, handing me a card. “It’s been a tough day for all of us. I’m sure you understand.”

  I said, “I understand. But I want to have a look at the grave.” I turned toward the car for light.

  ARCHIBALD HEFFNER

  MANAGER/GENERAL ATTORNEY

  EQUINE ACQUISITION & SALES

  N.A. MYLES, INC.

  “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  I shook my head. “It won’t take long.”

  “Not tonight, gentlemen. Impossible.”

  Tomlinson gave it a try. “We met the trainer earlier, Gardiner—Fred Gardiner. I got the impression he runs the place. Tell him Tom’s here. We’re like friends, sort of. I’m sure it’ll be okay.”

  I wasn’t convinced, nor was the attorney.

  “One of the finest trainers on the South Fork,” Heffner said. “But Fred doesn’t have”—he paused as a helicopter roared overhead, watched until the chopper’s strobe was a quiet blip—“Fred handles the day-to-day operations. But Mr. Myles instructed me to oversee the ranch until things settle down. We have many millions of dollars invested in our livestock”—he was looking at Tomlinson, interpreting the ponytail, the four-day beard, the pirate earring—“animals have rights, too, you know. A lot of people don’t understand that—”

  “Very sensitive creatures,” Tomlinson said. “Brilliant and intuitive.

  Discord—the emotional type—can have a cumulative effect. I understand animals.”

  The attorney was nodding. “First the tragedy, then a full day of noise, police coming and going. Search
dogs smell like wolves to a horse, do you realize that? They know what death smells like. They sense danger, and Mr. Myles agrees. Mr. Myles is afraid things are getting out of control.”

  “There’s a fourteen-year-old boy who would agree, if he’s still alive,” Tomlinson replied, his vocal pattern such an uncanny echo of Heffner’s, his sincerity couldn’t be doubted. “Personally, I’d rather be sitting near a hot fire with a cold rum. Give us half an hour, we’ll be out of your hair.”

  “To do what?”

  “Have another look around. Anything we find might be useful. William, that’s the boy’s name. You’ve seen his picture on the news. Put yourself in his place. Barely a teenager and he’s in hell, man. An innocent child who probably hasn’t stopped crying.”

  Heffner said, “A tragedy, I know, awful. But there’s nothing here to find.” “You’re probably right, but what do we have to lose? The kid’s life’s on the line. Forty-five minutes, we don’t even need an escort—”

  Heffner appeared to be softening until another chopper buzzed us and unraveled Tomlinson’s spell. “I’m confused. Dr. Ford said he wanted to look at Alacazam’s grave. Why?”

  “My partner,” Tomlinson said, “has a thing about details. You know, like going through the alphabet backward. The grave represents z. What we really want to do is make a quick sweep of the area, that’s the main reason—”

  “The FBI and police spent three hours on the property. Now you want to search the grave?”

  “Not search. Just a quick look—”

  “To see what? It’s a mound of dirt where a great animal was buried.”

  “We’re thinking of the boy—”

  “Where Alacazam was buried has nothing to do with the boy. Five minutes ago, I talked to the police. They told me there’s no evidence the boy was on Long Island, let alone this farm. What are you men implying?”

  I was watching the distant lights of the backhoe, ignoring Tomlinson’s sharp look. Yes, I had rushed the question, but I wasn’t done. “Why such a rush to bury the horse? I thought you were waiting for an autopsy.”