“Maybe not,” said Nick. “Endicott checked out of the Marriott last night. Took a cab to the airport.”
“Any record of him flying out?”
“We haven’t looked. Boonie’s on that.”
Danziger winced at the sound of Boonie’s name.
“Boonie know about all this?”
“He does now.”
Danziger winced again, shook his head.
“Damn. He say anything?”
“No,” said Nick, lying through his teeth.
“Anyway, even if Endicott’s gone, we’ll see his people sooner or later.”
The radio in Danziger’s hand squawked twice. Danziger picked it up, thumbed SEND.
“Hey there.”
Coker’s voice came back, full of static but clear enough.
“Looks like you’re having a party down there. Give my regards to Nick and Mavis.”
“They heard that.”
“I got a black Mustang coming along the Belfair Mill logging road.”
Nick looked at Mavis.
“Tell him that’s Reed.”
“Nick says that’s Reed Walker.”
“He’s getting out. Has a piece in his hand. Heading for the ridge off to your left.”
Nick broke in.
“Tell Coker not to shoot. I’ll bring him in.”
“Nick is asking you not to shoot Reed. Says he’ll bring him in.”
Silence. The same wind in the long grass, eternal and uncaring. The sound of that big old horse whinnying a long way off.
“Okay. That’s how it is, hah? Tell Nick okay.”
Nick got on the cell.
“Reed?”
“I’m here. I’m not in position—”
“Coker’s got you cold, Reed. Stop moving.”
More silence.
“Shit. Where is he?”
“Reed, that’s Coker out there. Nothing you can do and you know it. Just come on in, okay? Reed. Don’t go crazy. Just walk down the slope and have a glass of wine.”
Coker’s voice crackled and snapped over the radio, a sharp edge in his tone.
“Tell Reed he’s got five seconds.”
“Reed, you have to come down. Put your piece away and come in slow. Coker’s all over you.”
A pause.
“Okay. Goddammit. Okay. I’m coming.”
Reed came down the grassy slope, his hands raised. His face was marked with bloody streaks and he was limping badly. He came up to the bottom of the steps, lowered his hands, and looked at Charlie Danziger.
“Did you do the Gracie job?”
“All by myself,” said Danziger. “Now if you’d slip that pistol out of your holster and set it down on the step, I’ll see if I can persuade Coker not to kill you.”
Reed put the gun down, straightened up, pain flickering across his face as he did so.
“What happened to you?” Mavis asked.
“He jumped off the roof of Candleford House,” said Nick.
“Fourth floor, actually.”
“Why’d you do that?” asked Danziger.
“It was better than staying on it.”
“Well, come on up and take a pew.”
Reed took them all in.
“What are you all waiting for?”
“Company,” said Mavis. “Bad company.”
Coker’s radio crackled into life.
“Okay. We have movement.”
Danziger stood up, looked at Nick and Reed and Mavis.
“You all want to sit this out?”
Nick stood up.
“No. Guess I’m in.”
“Me too,” said Mavis.
Reed stared at his hands, his whole body tight and his mind full of hot wires. He just nodded.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” said Danziger.
“What happens after?” Nick asked.
Danziger grinned at him.
“My luck keeps running like it has lately, there won’t be any after.”
“But say you make it? What then?”
Danziger looked around at their faces.
“Well, I’m sure as hell not gonna shoot any of you folks. No, I live, guess I’ll take what’s coming.”
“What about Coker?” asked Mavis.
“Well, Coker’s a different story. I doubt he’ll come in peaceful. You guys will have to go root him out, is what I figure. Good luck with that.”
“Why’d you do it?” asked Reed, in a hoarse snarl. Danziger’s smile faded.
“At the time I was angry. Now, I couldn’t tell you. Never even spent a dime of it.”
Reed glared at him.
“Angry? The way you got treated? By State?”
“Cut deep, I’ll admit. I deserved better.”
“So did those cops who died on that blacktop.”
“No argument from me.”
“And Coker? Why’d he do it?”
“Coker? He was nowhere around.”
“So you execute four cops? Because you’re bored?”
Danziger hardened up a bit.
“Yeah. And when all this is over I’d be happy to gun up and toe the scratch with you anywhere and anytime.”
Reed was on his feet again.
“Now would be just fine with me.”
“Reed,” said Nick. “Not now. Back off.”
“Nick, this—”
Coker’s radio again.
“Cut the chatter and take up a post, people. I got one man coming down the slope behind the house. Don’t know how he got so close. He’s moving pretty good. Like a recon marine or a ranger. Probably another couple guys flanking in the long grass. They’ll have somebody in the tree line, covering their backs. Remember, they’re gonna have to close with you. They need Charlie alive.”
Reed looked at Nick, tugged out his pistol, and moved into the house, heading for the back door. Charlie handed Mavis his Winchester and pulled out his Colt. He tossed the radio to Nick.
Mavis went inside the house and set up a firing position on Danziger’s dining room table. It had a view out three sides of the house. She assumed that Reed was covering the fourth.
Reed had never been in a firefight. She hoped he’d do okay. In a gunfight, being fast and brave wasn’t as important as being accurate.
Nick dropped onto the ground and moved into the long grass, slipping into it without a sound. He stopped to turn the volume on the radio speaker down to the lowest level. As he did so, it squawked twice.
“Nick, you have a man in the sweetgrass at your six, maybe fifty feet behind you. He’s moving.”
Nick stopped, flattened himself into the grass, and listened. He heard the wind, the ticktock of the sweetgrass blades as they moved against each other. A huge brown toad was staring up at him from a thicket. He had golden eyes and a round white belly. He blinked at Nick, opened and closed his mouth, crossed his forelegs, laced his fingers, went on staring. Nick heard something sliding through the grass. Irregular.
The sound stopped, held for thirty seconds, and then began again. Nick put his Colt into his holster and waited. The sound came again, moving slightly away from him. He moved with it.
There was a pale mound inside the sweetgrass, cream and brown. Maybe ten feet away. It was a man in camouflage fatigues. He had an M-4 rifle, light brown in color, slung across his back.
He had been moving, but now he was very still. Nick figured he had sensed something and was now listening as intensely as a soldier can listen.
Nick stayed as still as the other guy was and waited the man out.
There was a gunshot, the short sharp crack of Reed’s Beretta, and the chuffing rattle of an M-4 set on three-round burst, and then two more shots from Reed’s Beretta.
At the first shot the man in camo began to move. Nick was on him, a knee in the small of the man’s back, his left hand on the man’s chin, his right on top of his skull. He jerked the man’s head back and twisted it sideways. He could feel the spine go, a dull, meaty crack muffled by the corded muscl
es of the man’s thick neck.
Nick slipped by him, moving left toward the tree line. A loud crack off to his right and a round hummed past his eyes. He could almost see the blur as it went by and the air it was pushing was like a puff on his right eye. He heard a meaty thwack, a distant thump, as a round came in and struck hard just a few yards away from him.
He heard a man grunt.
A second round smacked into the same position, followed by a faint booming sound coming from a long way off—Coker’s sniper rifle.
This time there was no grunt.
More rounds now, coming from the house, mixed fire, the heavy bark of Danziger’s Winchester, the sound of glass shattering, Mavis shouting something that Nick couldn’t make out.
He got up and started to run toward the house. He was on the bottom of the stairs when a man came staggering out of the front door. He was young and brown-eyed, wearing tan slacks and a brown tee. There was a large hole in his chest and he had his hands crossed over it. The expression on his face was surprise and confusion.
He saw Nick and said, “Mai che cosa?”
Coker’s round came in and hit the kid right in the middle of his face. It collapsed into a bloody red horror and he went backwards into the darkness behind him. That was the last round fired.
Silence came down.
Nick came up the stairs and stopped at the door.
“Mavis?”
“In here, Nick.”
“Where’s Reed?”
“He’s in the back. I could use some help here.”
Nick came into the room.
Mavis was bent over a figure lying on the floor. It was Charlie Danziger. He was staring up at the ceiling, his lips working. At first there was no blood visible. Then, in a coughing black eruption, it was everywhere. Charlie was bleeding out.
“Where’s he hit?”
Mavis rolled him onto his back. There were two holes in his chest, small and black, but blood was spreading out around the holes. Nick put his hand on Danziger’s throat. His pulse was weak and fluttering. Mavis was holding Danziger’s head up and trying to clear blood from his airway.
She looked across Danziger’s body and shook her head. Danziger started to convulse. Mavis held him as steady as she could. Blood poured from his mouth and nose. He was trying to say something, but all that came out was a strangled cough. He turned his head, looked at Nick. His left eye socket was full of blood but his right eye was blue and clear.
“Some kid in civvies got past Reed, I guess,” said Mavis, holding Charlie’s head in her hands. “I was looking out the window, didn’t see him come in. He had me cold. Charlie moved into the line of fire, but he got hit before he could get his gun up. He went down, but I got the kid with the Winchester. Charlie saved my ass.”
Danziger’s lips were moving, but all that was coming out was blood. An artery at the side of his neck was distended and the sinews in his neck were all corded up. His one blue eye was full of pain and regret. Nick put a hand on Danziger’s chest, looked into his eyes.
“It’s all right, Charlie,” said Nick. “You paid in full. God loves you. You’re good to go.”
Charlie’s hand went down to his shirt pocket. He patted it, coughed up more blood, and died.
Mavis sat back on her heels, wiped her face with both hands.
“Jeez. What a lousy goddam day.”
“Where’s Reed?”
“He’s out back. Throwing up, I think. He’s never been in a gunfight before. You might want to give him a moment. We get everybody?”
“I got one. Coker took out another guy in the sweetgrass.”
“He also took out a third guy, up in the tree line. Reed saw that one go down. Then another guy popped out of the weeds, real close. He put a burst by Reed’s head and Reed snap-shot him in the throat. It was ugly. Reed got distracted by the gurgling and thrashing the guy was doing and he let the fifth guy get by him. He was the kid in the slacks. He get away?”
“No. He was standing on the front porch looking down at the hole you put in his chest. He spoke to me. Something Italian, I think. Coker punched a round into his face.”
His radio crackled.
It was Coker.
“Nick, I have no other targets. No movement anywhere. What’s the story down there?”
“All the bad guys are KIA.”
“Any of ours?”
“Yeah. Charlie’s down.”
A pause.
“How bad?”
“He’s gone, Coker. He took two meant for Mavis. Saved her life.”
A long silence here, maybe a full minute.
“Did he?” said Coker, his voice thick and strained. “Good for him. I’ve always liked Mavis. You sure he’s gone? All the way gone?”
“I’m sure. Maybe for the best, Coker.”
“Yeah. I get where you’re coming from. Damn. I’m gonna miss him. He was good company. He say anything?”
“No. He was looking up at me. You could see what he was thinking. I told him that he was good to go. That he was paid up in full. What about you, Coker? You gonna come down and pay up in full?”
Coker’s radio crackled and popped.
His voice came back.
“No. I don’t think so. I got things to do. Check his shirt pocket. You’ll see a blue card. Mondex card. Half the Gracie money is in there. Charlie’s got the PIN number on a piece of paper stuck on the fridge. Never could do numbers. You take care, Nick. I always enjoyed your company. Will you do right by Charlie? See the word gets around about what he did for Mavis. See he gets a good send-off?”
“I will. You might as well come in, Coker. You have nowhere to go.”
“Well, I was thinking on that, Nick. If you don’t have me, you can lay it all on my head and leave Charlie’s piece out of it. Leave it that he went out like a stand-up and not a cop killer like me. He wasn’t the shooter that day. You know that. He thought I was just gonna take out the engines.”
“Coker, we do have you. Mavis has already called it in. Cars are on the way. Where you gonna run to? Where you gonna hide?”
“You sound like that fucking gospel song, Nick. I fucking hate gospel songs.”
A pause, the wind hissing in the long grass.
“You take care of yourself, Nick. Sorry about all of this. You kiss that pretty girl for me.”
“Coker, there’s no point. They’ll shoot you down where you stand.”
Silence.
“Coker, you hear me? Come back?”
Silence.
“Coker, you there?”
Silence.
Monday
Res Ipsa Loquitur
The Belfair and Cullen County Courthouse had originally been a Catholic church, and it still had ten wood-frame leaded-glass windows along either side, old whitewashed wooden plank walls, and a row of wooden fans along the cedar-vaulted ceiling.
Where the altar had been there was now a carved wooden judge’s bench, built up on a dais so that it dominated the room. On the face of the bench was a wooden panel with an oil painting of a Civil War cavalry battle—Brandy Station on the second day. A faded American flag edged in golden cording hung from a cavalry lance behind the judge’s chair.
In the judge’s chair this Monday morning was Justice Theodore Monroe, a gnarled old vulture with a hawk-like nose and small black eyes. He was in his black robes and the expression on his face as he peered through his steel-framed half-glasses at Warren Smoles was so fixed and malevolent that even a man seraphically free from any taint of self-doubt could not help but feel a tremor of concern.
The long cedar-and-sandalwood-scented room was virtually empty, since Judge Monroe had declared that the custody hearing was to be conducted in camera.
No members of the public and no press people were allowed inside the building. Kate and Nick and their lawyer, Claudio Duarte, a lean young man with olive skin and an angular face made even more striking by large brown eyes, sat at the desk usually reserved for the prosecution.
&
nbsp; Warren Smoles, working alone, had been assigned the defense desk. Rainey was waiting in Judge Monroe’s chambers, in the unlikely event that he might be called. One of Smoles’ “nurses” was sitting with him. What may have been going on in Rainey’s mind was anyone’s guess. He looked nervous and defiant and sullen.
Lemon, neither a family member nor a lawyer, was excluded from attending, which was fine with him since the temptation to punch Warren Smoles’ lights out would probably have been irresistible.
A solitary clerk sat off to the left, speaking into a funnel-shaped mouthpiece which covered the lower part of her face.
One of the first exchanges she had recorded was an opening skirmish between Smoles and Judge Monroe. Smoles had objected to his placement at the defense desk as “prejudicial to his argument,” an objection Judge Monroe had handled with a short, sharp reply.
“Duly noted. Poppycock. Now sit down.”
Smoles, red-faced, had wisely done so.
Judge Monroe had chosen to conduct the matter seated on his bench, rather than in chambers, mainly because he was profoundly disgusted by the substance of Warren Smoles’ petition, and he wished to be able to sit high above him and glare down upon the bald spot at the back of Smoles’ head whenever Smoles lowered his head to read from his papers.
Judge Monroe looked around the room at the various people present, illuminated by the colored light streaming in through the stained-glass windows on the courthouse’s eastern wall. His gaze rested for a moment on Kate’s face and marked the anguish and pain that was in it.
He liked and admired Kate, had known her and her family for years, which was why he’d asked her to be Rainey’s legal guardian in the first place.
That his seemingly harmless request had brought her to this outrageous and insufferable ordeal had created a slow burn in his belly that he was medicating with sips from a tall glass filled with ice and a clear liquid that was not tap water.
He looked at the clock at the back of the courtroom, waited until the minute hand ticked onto the numeral ten, and banged his gavel down.
“All right. Let’s get this farce on the road. I don’t intend to screw around with a lot of legal jargon here, I’d like you all to know. What I want from Mr. Smoles here is a clear statement of his argument concerning the matter of Rainey Teague, any evidence that he wishes to provide in support of that argument, and, if necessary, I shall require the boy himself to come in and say his piece. Once Mr. Smoles has had his say, then it will be the turn of Mr. Duarte here—good morning, Mr. Duarte.”
The Homecoming Page 41
