A Bob Lee Swagger Boxed Set

by Stephen Hunter

  No, he didn’t think that. There hadn’t been time in the fight. That was imposed later by his subconscious as he reconstructed it in the dream state. And in the dream state, night after night, he saw the yakuza laugh and cut, and open him deeply. He saw his own blood spurt and felt the dizzy weakness fire through his body, felt his knees give. Then he imagined the man making a witty riposte—“Sorry, cowboy, time to catch the last stage out of Dodge” or something—and then drive forward on the horizontal (shimo-hasso) and take his head. More than once he awoke with a scream in a sweat, seeing the world go atilt and then to blur in the eight seconds of oxygen and glucose a detached brain holds to sustain itself, felt the separation, felt the loss.

  Why had he survived? That was the mystery, as strange to him as anyone. He knew only that at a certain late moment, he realized he had a steel hip and he remembered some bit of samurai gibberish—“Steel cuts flesh, steel cuts bone, steel does not cut steel”—and pivoted and opened and the target was too great. Exhausted himself, the great yakuza killer took the easy way out, drove the blade through the opening and felt it torque out of control when, an inch into Swagger, it hit the metal that was harder than it was.

  Bob came off the blow and cut him hard upward, belly to spine, and that was that.

  You were so lucky, he thought. Gunfighter’s luck, arriving in the middle of a sword fight. Or maybe it was just that his subconscious had figured out a way to beat the guy, and it e-mailed him the info just in time. Maybe it was just that he came from fighters and sired fighters and had a strange gift for fighting. But he knew this: You will never be that lucky again. Your weakness turned into your strength and you figured it out one one-millionth of a second in time. The memory came at night and each time it came, it left his hair grayer.

  The cycle banished that. It buried it. So much sensation, so much freedom, so much beauty, so much damned fun. What’s better than to be racing across the wide-open prairie with your child, who makes you so proud, and the sense that once again, you survived.

  Then he’d come back and it would be Miko’s turn and they’d work with her on the horse in the ring. He’d think, Never got rich in money but got rich in daughters, and that’s even better.

  He put it down when it was too much for him, and quickly called his wife.

  “I’m here,” she said. “We’ve got a room in a hotel across from the hospital, and I’m here with her now. So is Miko.”

  “Is there any change?”

  “It’s looking good, the doctors say. She could wake up any minute. She stirs a lot, more like she’s asleep. It helps her, they say, to hear our familiar voices. So I’m very optimistic.”

  “Did you—”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. I’m in Mountain City. I’ll try and get over there soon. I don’t think it’ll be tonight but tomorrow sometime.”

  “I’ll be here all day,” she said.

  “How’s the security?”

  “They’re good people.”

  “Okay, good.”

  “Love you.”

  “Love you.”

  Next, he turned to Nikki’s cellphone, particularly to the CALLS DIALED folder. But somehow the thing was frozen up. None of the functions yielded information. But hadn’t she called the cops from the wreck before she slipped off? He made a note to check with some phone expert to see if that indicated something or if it was a common occurrence when phones were damaged.

  Then, at last, he turned to her Reporter’s Notebook, a standard 3 x 6 pad held together by spiral rings. At first its pages were densely covered, and he saw that it was her interview with the sheriff. Then a page or so documented the raid, mostly scattered impressions like “rush of air…helicopter lands just as team hits…kid cops seem to be having time of their life. Pathetic suspect, Cubby something, sad little mutt.”

  He paged through it carefully, reading items from her later interviews:

  Jimmy WILSON, 23, Mtn C. Drug Rehab Clin, “It’s so hard, it’s everywhere and it ain’t no more expensive, don’t know why.”

  Or

  Maggie CARUTHERS, Carter Cnty, didn’t get address, “Used to come to Johnson for drugs, pushers everywhere. Then all the busts, stopped coming, but head price was same, came over and it was still everywhere, maybe even cheaper.”

  “SUPERLAB???” Nikki had written. “Where is SUPERLAB?” in another place.

  But it petered out, with no next step, no list of appointments. He could glean a little. She’d started at the sheriff’s department in the morning, gone on the airborne raid with the sheriff, then gone to the drug abuse center and spoken to three people, then the rehab center and spoke to four, including a supervisor. Then…nothing. But how long would that have been? Would it have taken up the whole afternoon? The accident was at 7:35 P.M., according to the clock in the Volvo.

  Where had she gone, where had she been?

  He looked carefully at the notebook, trying to determine if there was any sign of tampering, but there was nothing apparent. Then it occurred to him to count the pages.

  Very carefully, he turned the leaves over and came up with exactly seventy-three.

  Hmm, seventy-three?

  Now it’s possible all Reporter’s Notebooks have seventy-three pages. But that struck him as odd, wouldn’t it more likely be an even number, like seventy-five? He looked into the spirals for signs of, what were they called, hanging chads, little nuggets of paper residue left from some kind of tearing operation? Nope, nothing.

  He went to the last page with writing on it, guessing that if pages had been removed, they’d have been at the back. He found nothing. Well, maybe nothing, maybe something. He found a light set of inscriptions, the tracks of a pen against a paper that had gone through and recorded on the next sheet. He couldn’t make it out, but took it into the bathroom, where the light was stronger, and holding it a variety of ways to capture the right proportion of light and shadow, came across something interesting. It seemed to say:

  PINEY RIDGE BAPTIST PRAYER CAMP

  And it also said…“gunfire”?

  TWELVE

  The Grumleys were the Special Forces of southern crime. The Reverend raised them, homeschooled them, taught them the ways and means of crime, strong arm, grift, con, theft, and murder, exactly as they had been handed down through generations to him. He kept them sequestered on the mountaintop compound halfway between Hot Springs and Polk County in Arkansas, while preaching hellfire and damnation on Sundays to keep his religious education accreditation and as excellent camouflage. He only trusted family; family was the magic bond that made the Grumleys invulnerable. No Grumley had ever snitched out another Grumley or a client, as was well known and part of the Grumley magic. But to keep the enterprise going, the Reverend had to procreate heroically. His real product was progeny. Fortunately, he was a man who had found his true calling, and with women he was dynamic. He had had seven wives and none had ever left him. The divorces were pro forma to keep the law at bay, and some of the girls may not even have known they were divorced. He had children by all of them, by most of their sisters and a ma or two. He even had a thing for a bit with Ida Pye of Polk County, and out of that got his spectacular boy, Vern. Though Vern, for all his skills, had issues of pridefulness as demonstrated by his refusal to take the Grumley name. Alton’s brothers contributed their own seed, and the result of all the crossbreeding and the endless nights of bunny-fucking was a tribe of criminals higher by far than scum, more disciplined by far than trash, and, perhaps best of all, not the brightest of all the boys in the trade. It was a Grumley breeding principle to eschew intelligence, and when a boy or a girl was born with an uncommon mind, he or she was sent to private school far off, then college, then exile. Those kids had prosperous, if lonely, disconnected lives, and never knew they were damned by IQ. Their superior intelligence was known to beget inferior criminality, because they had imagination, introspection, questing natures, and occasionally the worst attribute of all for criminals, irony. They wer
e poison.

  It was known among the crime bosses of the South that a Grumley on the team meant success. Grumleys were hard, tough, loyal mercenaries. Grumleys could kill, rob, swindle, beat, intimidate anybody. If a snitch had to be found and eliminated for an Atlanta mafia family, a Grumley could get the job done. If a bank had to be tossed in Birmingham, a Grumley team took it down. If an issue of enforcement came up in New Orleans, a Grumley fist settled the issue. If a loan was past due in Grambling, Louisiana, a white Grumley was dispatched, and it was known that he would be fair and honest in his application of force, would never use the word “nigger” and therefore ruffle no hard feelings. He would come, beat, collect, and move on. It was only business, and everybody appreciated that high level of professionalism.

  It was known too that Grumleys didn’t go easily, and that was part of their reputation. If he had to, a Grumley would shoot it out with the whole FBI. He’d go down with a gun in each hand, hot and smokey, just like an old-timer from the golden age of desperados; he didn’t mind shooting, he didn’t mind taking fire, and he didn’t mind the odds against him heaping up to a thousand to one. He wouldn’t be one to negotiate. This of course meant the cops stayed away if at all possible, but if not possible, they treated Grumleys roughly, out of their deep fear. No love was lost, no sentimentality attached, no nostalgia generated. Cops hated—hated—Grumleys and Grumleys hated right back, hard and mean.

  Grumleys were handsomely paid for their efforts, which is why it was so strange for twelve of the youngest and the most promising to have been called from prosperous enterprises in this town or that city, and gathered, under the Reverend’s watchful eye, to this isolated chunk of Baptist Tennessee. Called for a caper that even they themselves didn’t fully understand, under the supervision of a strange fellow calling himself—or come to think of it, called by them, for he called himself nothing—Brother Richard. Who taught them not how to bust safes or short-wire alarm circuits or tap into computer data banks, but how to change truck tires at high speed. That was really all they knew—except for all the shooting practice, which, hot sweet mama, promised some fun!—and damnit, it was beneath them to do such manual labor under so cruel and arrogant a leader. But the Reverend insisted, and in the Grumley universe, his word was law. He sold obedience and loyalty and it was their job to offer obedience and loyalty.

  And thus it was that two other Grumleys, two hard ones, named B.J. and Carmody, were assigned to stay with the damned girl’s daddy as he had adventures in Mountain City. What they saw was an old coot with a bristle of white-gray hair and a bad limp. They differed on what exactly he represented.

  B.J.’s opinion was strong.

  “Hell, he ain’t nothing but an old man. This here’s a waste of time. That coot can’t get nothing done. Blow in his ear, he’ll fall down.”

  But Carmody, by trade an armed robber and occasional assassin, had a different opinion.

  “Don’t know, brother. He looks old, he moves old, but first up, I don’t like how tan he is. Tan means he’s outdoors a lot and if he’s outdoors, he’s might to be all spry and peppy. I’d like to git a close-up look on that face and see how much age he wears. Maybe he ain’t all wrinkly. I just know gray hair and a limp makes a man look old and feeble, but looking ain’t being. He may have a jump or two might surprise us.”

  “You are a fool, Carmody. I say we go on in there, brace him hard, tell him this ain’t his part of the country and he’d best return to the old folks home and watch him run. He will run scared like a rabbit, I guarantee.”

  “He’s got some sly, I’m telling you. Some men have natural sly. They see into things, they git what they want, they ain’t got no need to show bull-strong like your lower-class white thug, them thick-necked fellas the eye-talians think are so tough. Man, wish I had a buck for each one of them I saw fall down and not get up—”

  “You do have a buck for each one of them you saw fall down and not get up.”

  “You know what, I do. Anyhow’s, I’m not at all convinced this fella ain’t your natural sly.”

  They were parked in the parking lot of a Hardee’s across the street from the Mountain Empire Motel, where the old man had gone to ground. It was boring duty, in a one-horse hick town rimmed by mountains and fueled by fast food. No decent whores anywhere in sight, though maybe a fella could get his motor oils changed somewhere in the little burg’s Negro section. That may have had more to do with Grumley lore, out of Hot Springs’ colorful past, however, than anything real.

  “Ho-hum,” said B.J. “Ho-fucking-hum.”

  “Oh, wait. Lookie, brother, that’s him.”

  It was. They saw the old guy hobble out of his room, lock it solid, and limp to his dumpy rental car. In a few seconds he had it fired up and headed back down the road, turned left onto the big, wide stretch that was 421. They followed. In just a bit, he pulled into the low, log-cabin structure that represented the Johnson County Welcome Center, just east of town.

  B.J., driving, let him get into the building before pulling into the parking lot; it was Carmody who drew the duty of trying to get in close and get an overhear.

  He entered the low old place, finding it a museum in one half and a travel office in the other, with racks of maps and tourist brochures for local attractions, such as they were, and an earnest crew behind desks servicing the visitors. Indeed, the girl’s dad was talking intently to an old lady, and Carmody boldly slipped near, reaching for a bed and breakfast brochure on the table, and listened.

  “—so many Baptists around here, you wouldn’t notice if a new one came or an old one went, I swear.”

  “Yes ma’am,” he heard the man say. “This one would be new, I’m guessing, not a church but some kind of prayer camp. Piney Ridge, I th—”

  “Piney Ridge! Well, sir, why didn’t you say so! Piney Ridge is where Reverend Elmore Childress had his needy child’s camp in the ’70s, until the, er, unpleasantness. Since then that property has sat vacant. If this new fellow wanted a place for a prayer camp, that would be the place, and who’d notice, all the Baptists around. Now my people are Episcopalian and have been, and it’s nothing agin’ the Baptists, but there’s something a little Roman about their service if you get my drift and my sister Eula—”

  And on and on the old blue-hair went, but Carmody was free of the politeness that required he listen. He snatched up the B&B brochure and, trying to keep the leap out of his steps, slid out the damned door.

  “You see a ghost?”

  “No sir. That bastard’s already onto Pap’s place.”

  “What? How the hell.”

  “Damn, I didn’t get a good look at him. Well, looks like Pap may be eyeballing him himself.”

  He pulled out his cell, punched the Reverend’s number. Meanwhile B.J. set the car in motion, eased out of the space and lot, and buzzed a little down 321 toward 61, just to be less visible when he took up the tail on Old Man Swagger the next time he moved.

  “Pap!”

  “What is it, Carmody?”

  “Pap, he knows!”

  He explained what he had learned to hushed silence on the other end.

  Finally his dad said, “Blasphemy! Blasphemy, damnation, and hellsmoke! That tricky bastard, what is he up to?”

  “Pap, if he drops by—”

  “He won’t see a damn thing, that I guarantee you. Now you boys, don’t you lose him. We will stay with this trickster hard and if we have to we will snuff him out. Do you hear me, boys?”

  “I will tell B.J.”

  “You boys load up and lock but keep your thumbs on them safeties. If it comes to it, you may have to shoot fast and put him down hard.”

  THIRTEEN

  Bob followed the old lady’s instructions, drove the rental up 421 another couple of miles and found 167, with signs pointing out an airport. He turned, headed through flat farmland, though ahead a ridge of mountains rose like some kind of black wave against the surface of the earth. He passed the airport—dinky toy planes, one-eng
ine jobs—rose through foothills, and then was in the higher elevations. The road had been engineered to find its way between the ridges, and he slid through valleys and passes, seeing many private drives off either side of the road. Then he noted his fuel light blinking and not knowing how much farther the drive would be, pulled into a grocery store. LESTER’S GROCERY, the sign said. It was a solitary white structure lodged into the slope, with a set of gas pumps out front. He filled up, decided he needed a Coke or something, and went in.

  The place was dark and grubby, staffed by a lounging boy with acne and too much belly and a surly attitude. Bob got a bottle from a cooler, went to the counter, and paid.

  “Say, you familiar with a Piney Ridge Baptist Prayer Camp up this way? Lady at the tourist center told me it should be along this road.”

  “No sir,” said the boy, making no eye contact.

  “How about a sudden influx of new younger men, in clumps, keeping to themselves, looking prayerful and pious? Ring a bell?”

  “No sir,” said the boy.

  “Son, you said that so fast it seemed to me you’s most interested in ending the conversation, not thinking hard for an answer. Same as last time. Here, look at me. Look at my eyes, see that I’m a human being too, try and help me out. Be surprised what good things can follow from that.”

  Sullenly, the boy looked over. Bob saw “boy” was the wrong word. Guy was maybe in his mid-to late twenties, though still riddled with the face blemishes of adolescence, while the features of his face had gone all lumpy with excess weight here as on his body. He made the briefest of connections, then bobbed away.

  “Sometimes some fellas come in. New fellas,” he finally said. “Don’t seem no Baptists though. Seem more like hoodlums. Tough guys, don’t know where they’re from. Just show and buy up beer and Fritos and smokes and pork rinds, keeping to themselves, paying in cash, making comments about Lester’s store and how shitty it is. Don’t like ’em much.”