“Well, I call him Fred. That’s his name.”
That was a relief.
I said, “So the drop is tonight?”
“Right. I’m gettin’ payment straight from the guy who hired the job.”
“So, uh, you work alone?”
“Right. I come in and do recon, then bang bang, I shoot ’em down.”
Boyd was groaning softly.
I said, “Delmont, I’m confused. First you said no direct contact, then you said the guy who hired the job is paying you in person. Tonight.”
“Yeah, it’s at this meeting. If you saw, you’d understand.”
“Well, Delmont, I am going to see. Because you’re taking me.”
“I am?”
And Boyd cut him out of the chair, looking not at all happy about it. About as unhappy, in fact, as Delmont was pleased to get his Charger keys back.
ELEVEN
The moon crawled above the horizon, huge, full and blood-red, what we called a Hunter’s Moon back in Ohio. With Delmont at the muscle-car wheel, we were heading southwest on US 50 through rolling countryside, with idyllic rural Middle America gliding by, from forested ridges and well-tilled valleys to antebellum brick mansions and fenced modern farmhouses. Along the way, the moon floated higher, its face now a glowing Halloween orange.
I was the navigator, reading typewritten directions off a small piece of paper to the driver. Traffic was light. Delmont had switched the radio on to a country station and I looked for rock and failed, nothing but more steel guitar and nasal singing, and lots of Sunday fire-and-brimstone preachers who wanted you to send them money. I switched the radio off.
On stretches we’d talk, snippets of conversation initiated by the blond, square-jawed lumberjack behind the wheel. Before we left him behind, Boyd had bandaged his hunky former captor, who now really did look like he’d cut himself shaving. The paucity of cars sharing the concrete strip made for a dream-like ride.
Delmont flashed a vaguely nasty grin over at me. “You know, a car like this is a weapon all by itself.”
“That right.”
“Oh yeah. You can run people down with it. Go fast enough, hit ’em just right, they go flyin’.”
“That a fact.”
His eyebrows flicked up and down. “Really, that gun you got there don’t stack up at all to the weapon I got control of.”
“I’m not pointing it at you, Delmont.” The nine mil in my right hand was draped across my lap.
“I know, I know you’re not. I’m just sayin’—what if I was to swerve and just crash into a telephone pole or some other car, or maybe…in of these little towns? Just punch the pedal and slam into a building or somethin’?”
“What if you did, Delmont?”
“Well, my point is, I’m at the wheel of a car that weighs, oh shit, I don’t know…four-thousand pounds?”
“You’re probably guessing a little high, but yeah, right. And?”
“And all you’ve got is that gun. That little ol’ gun.”
With the extension of the noise suppressor, it didn’t look all that little. But compared to the car it was.
“So you’re saying,” I said, “that you have the more dangerous weapon. Of the two.”
“That’s what I’m sayin’. I could wreck this here car with you in it, and then where would you be? And if you was to shoot me, ’cause you saw I was steerin’ toward somethin’? Well, we’d just crash anyway and you’d be up shit crick.”
“What order do you want me to take those in, Delmont?”
“Huh? Any order, I guess.”
“Okay. If you crash the car with me in it, you’re also in it. So what happens to me probably happens to you.”
He was frowning. “Like getting killed.”
“Like getting killed. Or maimed or fucked-up, and should one or both of us survive to wake up in a hospital, guess who would be there?”
“…Family?”
“Cops. Or possibly somebody else who handles contracts for your middleman, Fred—to take you out. So the cops can’t ask you about him.”
“Fred wouldn’t do that.”
“Are you sure?”
He clearly wasn’t.
I said, “Now let’s say you start speeding up and I sense you plan to crash into something on purpose, side of a bridge, a harvester poking along, whatever. And I shoot you. You are dead. I am alive. I can reach over and steer and maybe even get my foot over there to the gas and brake pedals—tricky in these bucket seats, I admit—but most likely I could guide the car to safety. Why, Delmont? Were you thinking of doing any of those things?”
He was frowning. Like a kid taking a time out in a corner. He shook his head.
“Just makin’ conversation,” he said.
Suddenly the moon was brilliant silver-white. The rolling landscape became as sharply focused as a prize-winning photograph.
After a while he asked, “What branch was you in?”
“Did I say I served?”
“I can tell. Can’t you usually tell?”
“Yeah. Marines.”
A big grin blossomed. “Me, too! Man, I shoulda known. Hardass like you. You ain’t so big, you know physically, but you got that attitude. Semper fi, mac!”
“Semper fi,” I said.
“I got USMC tattoos all up and down my arms and my back, too. You got any?”
“No.”
“Where was you? I mean, Nam, of course. But where?”
“Hill 55, south of Da Nang.”
“Weren’t that a sniper platoon?”
“Yeah.”
“You know where I was?”
“No.”
“Hill 51. Firebase Ross. We was practically neighbors.”
“Practically.” I was referring to the typed directions. “That’s the turn—that gravel road past the mill pond.”
He didn’t slow enough to suit me, whipping onto the thing. But I didn’t say anything. Nobody likes a backseat driver.
“So,” he said, finally slowing down, the ride bumpy and crunchy, harvested fields on either side of us, the Hunter’s Moon brighter than the Charger’s headlights. “You got somebody like Fred?”
“I do.”
“You always work in pairs like that?”
“Almost.”
“Makes for less money, don’t it?”
“Yeah. Half the money.” Usually.
“What we’re doin’ here tonight, Jack—pickin’ up the payment before the job is done…does that seem odd to you?”
“No. Why. Does it to you?”
“No. Just thought maybe it did to you. Different folks work different ways. Way we do it, Fred guarantees the client reimbursement if the hit don’t go down or the hitter gets hit or some shit.”
“My Fred does the same.”
“Hangin’ around after the job to pick up the paycheck, well, hell, that just don’t cut it.”
“No it don’t.”
“Listen, uh…I’m sorry about knockin’ around your little Jew friend.”
“That’s all right. If we’d been as sharp as you, we’d have handled you pretty much the same.”
He frowned over at me, confused. “What do you mean, if you was as sharp as me?”
“You noticed us, Delmont. We didn’t notice you. You were one up on us.”
He grinned, feeling good about himself, apparently not factoring in that I had the gun. “Yeah, well I guess that’s right. Got a lot in common, you and me. Marines. And in the same business and such. Might’ve been buddies in other circumstances.”
“Might have,” I allowed. “But we’re partners now, and that’s friendly.”
The fields had fallen away and we had trees on either side of us, mostly bare of leaves with an occasional evergreen making its smug presence known. The moon was so big, it looked unreal. You couldn’t get away with it in a movie.
He chuckled. “I got to say, sittin’ on the sidelines and collectin’ my pay for doin’ diddly squat? That don’t suck. That don
’t suck at all. That gun you got there?”
“What about it?”
“Browning, right? Nine mil? I never seen a silencer that long.”
“Does the job.”
“I never found one works for shit. It sure ain’t like on TV.”
“This one is.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Just makes a little hiccup.” I sat forward. “I think we’re here.”
Up ahead on the right, starting at the foot of a hill, half a dozen cars were parked on the right, straddling the road and its shoulder, leaving only narrow passage. The vehicles ranged from a Chevy pick-up to a familiar white Lincoln. Delmont went on by and up and over. On the downslope another half dozen or so more parked cars hogged the road, again in a mix that suggested owners from the highest and lowest strata of what passed for civilization around here.
He pulled in after the final car, almost at the bottom of the hill, and shut off the engine.
“Keys,” I said.
I held out my palm.
When he frowned, the eyes crowding the flat bridge of his nose seemed even closer together. “What for?”
“For now. Our partnership is in the early stages, Delmont, and I’m senior partner. So it’s all about pleasing me.”
He gave me a pouty look but also the keys, which I stuck in my windbreaker pocket.
I said, “I got a bad feeling I already know what kind of meeting this is.”
The pout turned into a grin. “Bet you do. You’re a smart one. But you can just wait here. I’ll go get my money. Could take a while.”
“I’ll tag along for now.”
“But you won’t be able to…” He sighed, smirked, said, “Suit yourself. Anyway, you got the keys and I gotta get somethin’ out of the trunk.”
He got out and so did I. At the rear of the vehicle, I unlocked the trunk and Delmont raised the lid. At first glance what was within looked like folded white sheets, but Delmont rustled around with them, before taking them out, and revealed them as a white uniform with a red insignia bearing a white cross. Tucked beneath was a pointed hood with eye holes in a full-face mask.
“Now do you see why,” Delmont said grinning goofily, “the client can make the payoff directly and still not see who I am? Or me him, neither?”
“I do,” I said. “Hand me those.”
“Why?”
“Never seen one of these costumes up close.”
“Not costume, uniform.”
“Uniform, then. Gimme.”
Reluctantly, he gathered up the white garment and its snappy hood and I took them and laid them on the hood of the car parked behind us for appraisal—a nice clean Buick that wouldn’t spoil the freshly laundered cotton. Spread out there, it was like a KKK member had got deflated.
Delmont, reaching for the outfit, said, “I might need a little help gettin’ into ’em.”
“I don’t think so.” I pointed the silenced nine mil at him, and nodded to the open Charger trunk. “Get in.”
“What?”
“Come on, Delmont. You heard me. I’m gonna go collect your money for you.”
“What for? We’re partners! And anyway, ain’t no way I’m gonna fit in that trunk.”
“Sure you can. You’re big but nimble. As for you going after your money, how do I know you wouldn’t bring a bunch of crazy darkie haters back here and eliminate me?”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because everything you’ve done in our partnership so far has been under duress.”
“Under what the fuckin’ fuck?”
“Under the point of a gun. Our partnership is in its early stages, remember, and this is your trial period. Get in.”
He sighed. He made a face. Whined some more. But he crawled in, folding himself up like a fetus in a womb by Dodge. I shut the lid hard and he kind of yelped, but I figured he was just making a point.
“Be quiet,” I told the trunk. “I’ll be back with your money.”
With the Ku Klux Klan dress and hat over my arm, I walked up the hill, but stayed down in the ditch. I didn’t need any other latecomers spotting me walking up the gravel road. At the crest, I climbed up to where a cluster of trees provided a nice spot for a panoramic scenic view. The blazing white Hunter’s Moon would help.
But the moon wasn’t the only thing blazing—so were three wooden crosses, the ones on either side maybe five feet high, the center one around eight. Thirteen men in white robes and hoods were gathered around the crosses in a well-spaced circle, as if about to play a demented game of ring-around-the-rosie.
The obvious leader, in a green silk version of the outfit, stood inside the circle, near enough to the central burning cross to feel its heat on his back. In front of the smaller fiery crosses were standard white-robed and -hooded members with the Stars and Stripes on one pole and the Confederate flag on the other.
This bizarre assemblage was down there in the center of a large, woods-surrounded clearing that somewhat overwhelmed them, robbing them of the significance they sought. The night had turned chilly with some wind picking up and it made the fire dance and the flags flap and the uniforms flutter. They didn’t look sinister or foolish or anything like you might expect. In the light of the Hunter’s Moon, the flames burned a bright orange with blue highlights and the white uniforms seemed to glow, while the waving flags took on a near majesty. If some racist Rembrandt had his easel set up, he could get a really nice calendar out of it.
I sighed, leaning against an oak tree. I’d never been much of a joiner, but this would have to be an exception. I got out of my windbreaker and stowed it under the tree, then got into the robe. It was a little big for me—they’d probably been given the lumberjack’s sizing—but that helped keep the nine millimeter in my hand hidden. The suppressor meant I had to hold my hand sideways, bent at the wrist, but nothing in life is ideal.
Finally I put on the hood. Despite oversize eyeholes, the thing really limited your field of vision.
Slowly, carefully, but confidently, I moved out of the wooded hilltop and down the slope. They had no sound system setup—this was a roughing-it outdoor event, after all, like a Boy Scout Jamboree—but I could hear the guy in green silk speaking.
“…we will show those red Commie son-of-a-bitches what real freedom is! We will arm ourselves, we will learn hand-to-hand combat for this coming battle!”
Of course, the well-projected radio-announcer’s baritone belonged to Commander Zachary Taylor Starkweather. Just because the Lone Ranger is wearing a mask, that doesn’t mean you don’t know Clayton Moore is under there.
“Oh, I know we will be outnumbered, though I don’t know about you, but I don’t fear these long-haired college punks much, not very much, no.”
He paused for them to laugh, and they did. I bet that was what it was like at Al Capone’s boardroom table.
“We will teach these college brats the hard way what it really means to be an American, a white, God-fearing, Christian American. They will learn that it is a sin under God to racially mix. They will learn that the Bible condemns the homosexual.”
I slipped into place in the circle, my hooded neighbors making room, putting myself as close to Starkweather as possible; his pointy head turned my way, so I figured he’d noted the new arrival.
“They say we are nigger haters, first and foremost. But I respect the niggers that keep to their own. Still, it is true that you can take the nigger out of the jungle…but you can’t take the jungle out of the nigger!”
That got laughter and applause. But I had a feeling it was something they’d heard before, plenty of times. A catchphrase they were laughing reflexively at, like Gleason saying, “Away we go!” or Maxwell Smart asking, “Would you believe…?”
“No, it is the Jews we will hang first. No more will our taxes go to fund Israel. No more will we tolerate the sins of the Jews against humanity and God. As your Grand Dragon, this I promise, to each and every knight in this Klavern.”
Grand Dragon, h
uh? Explained the green silk housedress, anyway.
“God bless the Klan!” he shouted. “God bless the Klan!”
They echoed him, but out in the open like this, it didn’t have much punch. Hard room to fill.
Then the Grand Dragon began to sing “Amazing Grace” and they all joined in. I decided it was time to break ranks and entered the circle, walking right up to Starkweather, who paused in mid-lyric and his lamb-dropping eyes glared at me through the big eyeholes.
“Back in line, knight!” he demanded.
“I’m here for my payment,” I said. “As arranged.”
The eyes got squinty. “Later, man. Can’t you see the meeting is in full swing?”
“I’m not a member. I want the money now. Take a break.” I nodded to the guy holding the Confederate flag, then to the one with Old Glory. “Have Moe or Larry take over. Time to do business.”
But I’d misjudged it. This wasn’t like interrupting an Elks Lodge meeting or not respecting Robert’s Rules of Order. Several of the rank-and-file were abandoning the circle to come toward us, or really toward me, and then more joined in. They were unfriendly ghosts floating right at me, and I backpedaled, knocking into the guy with the Dixie flag. He stumbled backward, into the smaller cross, and the flag went up in flames and then so did he, and he started running around like, well, like a man on fire.
They were all yelling, screaming now, though of course the one-man conflagration on the run was screaming loudest. But the rest were still coming at me, closing in as they shouted their outrage.
The Grand Dragon stormed through and leapt at me with his hands clawed from under his big sleeves, like a villain in an old serial about to strike, and Jesus, what do you think I did? I ran from him. Back behind the burning crosses, I turned and kicked out like Bruce Lee and caught the bigger cross at its base. It splintered, it gave, it fell on the Grand Dragon, not heavy enough to take him down and pin him or anything, but when he pushed it away, the wind-whipped flames were curling around him, drawing him to them, stroking, fondling, embracing, squeezing a nearly orgasmic cry from him as he succumbed to their seductive power.
The base of that cross was wrapped in some flame-retardant material, so I tried picking it up and the thing was light, which made sense as who wants to carry a heavy wooden cross for very long, and now the enraged hooded white robe wearers were swarming around me. I whipped the thing around, awkwardly, the flames snapping and hissing and leaving tracer trails in the night, catching some of those white uniforms, decorating them with dancing orange-and-blue demons, and from those white uniforms the demons leapt to other white uniforms and others.
Quarry in the Black Page 11
