A Bob Lee Swagger Boxed Set

by Stephen Hunter

  The second guy was not dumb and, even as he knew his partner was hit fatally and that they had been the victims of, not the perpetrators of, surprise, he moved laterally, disappearing behind the rank of shelved can goods before Bob could get a fatboy into him. Bob moved back, using the shelf island exactly as his opponent did, as a shield between them, aware it was not cover but only concealment, and suddenly red spray and diamonds filled the air—everybody’s ears had switched off so there was no noise—as the gunman fired three times on the oblique, guessing where Bob would be and hoping that blind shots would bring him down.

  Bob was not where the fellow guessed, as he’d moved to his own left and meant to come around hard left, hunched over and just showing a little flesh along with the big piece of Hartford iron. The gunman saw his mistake and turned to correct it, when he was hit in the face with a large can of Crisco that arrived in a tight spiral and smacked him hard. He lost a step, then bent to fire, but Bob was too far ahead on the trigger curve, firing another controlled pair that sounded like one, these a little more widely spaced, one emptying quarts of coffee, Coke, and fried eggs as it tore through his stomach, exiting against the instant coffee in a puff of brown dust, the other blowing out even more lung tissue and spinal fluid as it took him on a dead central angle. He went to his knees, dropped his silver 1911, vomited blood copiously, and fell forward, his butt up in the air, in a comic kick-me pose, and in that frozen joke settled and died.

  “Jesus Christ,” said the boy.

  “Good throw,” said Bob.

  “I never hit anything I threw at before in my whole life.”

  “Well for one second, you were Peyton Manning. Thank God it was the right second.”

  “I have to sit down.”

  “Don’t have time. You listen to me. I have stood and fought with many brave men in my time, which includes three tours in Vietnam and a whole lot of other crazed stuff. You can fight with me any time and you belong with those brave friends.”

  “I—I—We did it.”

  “Yes, we did. Now quick, you take this gun, and fire the last two shots out the door.”

  The boy took the gun, it seemed heavy for him, and tremblingly, he struggled with the heavy trigger and finally managed to get one, and then another shot off.

  “Good work. Now you have powder residue on your hands and the police will take note of that. You see how it happened. They came in, guns out, but you drew and fired, hit the first one twice out of your first three shots, then the other one fired from behind the shelf, missed, you scooted to your left and fired three more times. Then you called the police. You got that?”

  “You—”

  “Me, I wasn’t here. You don’t know jack about anyone else. You saw masked men heavily armed, and you shot. These two may turn out to be wanted or to have paper on ’em. Any reward is yours, and anything you can get off this deal, you go ahead. You deserve it. You stood and fought. I’d pick up that can of whatever you threw, wipe it off, and put it back on the shelf. Don’t need to tell nobody about that. They shot, you shot, you won. End of story. Are we clear?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “You did good, young man. You’re a hero, okay?”

  “Well, I—it’s, um, I—”

  “Okay, I am out of here. You can get through this. You just tell ’em the same thing over and over and nobody can doubt you. Just stick to the simple story. I know you can do this thing.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “So long, now. I will call you in a few days to check up.”

  “Who are you?”

  “It don’t matter. I’m the guy in the movie who leaves without explanation, okay.”

  “You’re Clint Eastwood?”

  “If that’s his name, then I guess I’m him. So long, son.”

  EIGHTEEN

  It took a while for the news to get there. Of course, since Lester’s Grocery was only four miles as the crow flies from the Piney Ridge Baptist Prayer Camp, the boys all heard the sirens wailing in the night as various police arrived at the scene. No one said a thing. It could be, it could not be. Who knew, who could tell?

  But time passed and there was no news from Carmody and B.J. You’d have thought they’d call in right after, but maybe the boys went to town instead of beelining back toward the camp, and were even now carousing in some low crib they’d found out about, drinking and wailing and whoring because they knew that they’d done the Grumley work well.

  But after two hours, the Reverend sent Vern and Ernie in Vern’s red Caddy down 167 to see what the ruckus was, whether or not it had anything to do with Carmody and B.J. The call came a few minutes later. The Reverend took it.

  “Reverend, we are here at Lester’s.”

  “Yes?”

  “Whole mess of folks, all the cops in three counties, state boys, the works. Crime lab, that detective Thelma Fielding and Sheriff Reed Wells, maybe even FBI up from Knoxville, TV stations, newspaper and radio reporters from all three states, the whole shebang. Even civilians are pulling in, drawn by the light and the ruckus. They can smell the blood in the air. We can’t get close, they’ve cordoned it off, but quite a crowd has gathered.”

  “What’s the word?”

  There was silence, as if neither Vern nor Ernie wanted to bust the news. Finally it was Ernie, who said, “Rumor here in the crowd is that some punk kid shot it out with two armed, masked desperados. Killed ’em both deader n’ shit.”

  The Reverend looked for other possibilities.

  “Don’t mean a thing. No sir, first off, no punk kid is besting Carmody and B.J. Grumley, no sir, not now, not ever. It has to be coincidence, you know, that brought some Joe Blows into the kid’s gun sights, even if Carmody and B.J.’s off roaming around to make a job on someone so as to make it look robbery-like. I know the good Lord wouldn’t take two Grumleys from me, no sir, not with this big thing coming up two days off, and me needing every damn man. So you just—”

  And then he sort of ran out of words.

  “Sir,” Ernie finally said, “thing is, I think that’s Carmody’s car in the lot, I can make it out. And it’s impounded and they’re dusting it for prints even now and a tow truck is here.”

  “Oh, damn. Damnation, hellish damnation, flame and spark, damnation. It just can’t be.”

  “Sir, I am only telling you what I see.”

  “Was there anything about another fellow? There’s a shootout, our two boys, they gone, but they got another fellow, right, tell me that’s what it’s about.”

  “Sir, ain’t heard nothing about no other fellow. Only about this clerk, what a sad-sack shmo he was, only this time he came up aces, a mankiller of the first rank, chest to chest and muzzle to muzzle, he shot it out, and they’re down and gone and he’s a hero of the highest damned order.”

  The Reverend let out an animal howl of rage and pain, deep soul ache, the blues, whatever you may call it. A Grumley—no, two Grumleys—had passed. His scream so rent the air that from the rec room, where they’d been lounging, playing cards, watching TV on fuzzy black and whites, drinking, just palavering, his progeny and kin came to see him and take the message of despair and vengeance he was putting out.

  “You learn what you can, boys, then you head on home,” he told Vern and Ernie.

  “Yes sir.”

  The Reverend looked up at his flock.

  “We lost ’em, boys. Both ’em gone to the maker. It ain’t right.”

  “What happened, sir?”

  He told the story as he’d heard it.

  “No way, uh-uh, no Grumley going down in a fight with that pudding-ass kid,” seemed to be the consensus.

  “Pap,” a voice came, “this boy, he couldna gotten the goods on Carmody and B.J. Carmody’s a good shot. He had a knack. He’d shoot the ankles off a fly.”

  “B.J. ain’t no slouch either,” said another. “Remember in 0 and 6, he shot it out with two big black dudes in an alley in St. Louis, and though he got punctured himself, he made sure he’s standing
and they’s bagged by the time that fight’s done.”

  Several of the wilder Grumleys wanted to lock and load and head out for hot-blooded vengeance that very second.

  “We got the machine guns, we can blast the holy Jesus out of that town in a minute and a half. With that big gun we can blow down all their church steeples, we can take that fat sad clown and hang him upside down in burning tar in the town center.”

  It was at this time that Vern Pye and Ernie Grumley returned from their melancholy mission, and they got there in time to hear all the talk of rage and vengeance, of burning the flesh of the Grumley killer, of razing the municipality that spawned him, or wreaking biblical vengeance on the transgressors. Through it all handsome Vern kept himself calm. Finally and calmly he spoke.

  “Now you listen up, boys. Listen to Vern. I am the oldest and the most experienced. I am maybe the most accomplished. I have three homes, three wives, gals, money in the bank, and know some country-western stars. So let me share some wisdom. May I speak, sir?”

  The Reverend considered, then said, “Son Vern, you may speak your piece in the Grumley fashion.”

  “Thank you, Reverend. You boys, you’s all a-rage and full of the fires of hatred and vengeance. You want to go in and flatten that place, and teach every last man and woman in it the fear of Grumley justice, and I don’t blame you a bit. But we are men of a certain creed who live by a certain code and have certain responsibilities. That is at our center and is as fierce to us as our Baptist faith and our willingness to shed and spill blood. So I say hold it in, cousins and brothers. Hold it in cold and tight and squeeze it down.

  “Now we have a job we’ve contracted to do. We’ve worked hard on it. We’ve prepared and sacrificed. We’ve taken a stranger into our midst—” he indicated Brother Richard, who was slouched beneath his Richard Petty cowboy hat and fake sideburns at the rear of the room—“and let that stranger use his waspish words against us, as if he’s some kind of high and mighty. We do that because it’s part of our contract. We are professionals of a creed, brothers and cousins, and we will be true to that creed. So for now, it is my conclusion there should be no blood spilling, and that clerk should be left alone to enjoy his few minutes of glory.

  “But I swear to you, and you know that Grumley to Grumley, Grumley word is holy, I swear to you that when this done finished, then we will get to the bottom of this. We will have a nice long chat with that lucky boy and we will find out what transpired and we will ascertain blame and we will pay out justice, eyeball for eyeball, earhole for earhole, heart for heart. We will inform the world that Grumley blood is too precious to be spilled, and when it is, hell visits in due turn.”

  This did not mollify the Grumleys. It was not what they wanted to hear. They turned back to their father and spiritual leader.

  “Is that it, Pap? Is that what you want?”

  “I have considered. I see deeper into this. It’s not about that clerk. I agree he be no match for any Grumley, much less two. I see another hand at play.”

  He paused.

  “Who, then, Reverend?” asked Vern. “Who is the master in all this?”

  “I think that goddamned old man, that gray-headed fella come in earlier, the father of that gal? You seen that fella? Something ’bout him I didn’t like. No, can’t say I didn’t like him, wasn’t no issue of liking. Was more like, he’s too calm for what he says he was. I shot a coupla clay birds for him and he said, ‘Ow, it’s so loud.’ He said, ‘Aw, I don’t like guns.’ He said that but he’s in my vision when I’m shooting and he didn’t jump none when the gun went off, as if he’d been around the report of a firearm a time or two. And he told me this odd story about how he’d got cut up in Japan, his hip laid open, but there was no point in suing the fellow what cut him, and he told that story, which made no sense without a further explanation, almost for his own private pleasure. He’s takin’ pride in it. He’s taking pleasure in some memory of some event of triumph.”

  “He some kind of undercover man, sir? Is that what you’re saying?” a Grumley wondered.

  “I don’t know whose agent he is, if he really is that gal’s daddy, or he’s playing a game or what. But I have done this work many a year and have developed a nose for certain things. And I got a peculiar aura off him—it’s what now I see is mankiller’s aura. There are some born to kill with a gun. They have the steel for snuffing out life with a piece of flying lead, don’t feel nothing about it. There was a breed of lawmen like that once, mankilling cops, old timers who weren’t afraid of going to the gun. I didn’t think there’s men around like that no more. Thought the last of them died years ago when they stopped calling killing a man’s job and made it like a sickness, so a man who wins a fair gunfight should feel ashamed and go into a hospital. That’ll drive your mankiller into retirement or the graveyard faster’n anything. That’s the only enemy he can’t never beat, except maybe a Grumley boy. But this old man’s one, you should know his kind has been the kind to hunt our kind since ancient days. Never thought I’d see his like again, thought that breed was vanished from the earth, but I think he’s back and hunting us.”

  “So what’ll we do, Reverend?”

  “Well, only one thing to do. Now we hunt him. Grumley business come first. Without Grumley, there’s nothing but chaos. Family matters most. So we must hunt and kill this bastard, and I want y’all out on the streets so as to mark him down and then we’ll finish him but good. Maybe we get done in time for the job, maybe we don’t. But Grumley come first.”

  NINETEEN

  Bob realized as he left Lester’s Grocery and the clerk that without his keepers, he now had a free shot to Knoxville, could check on his daughter, talk to his wife, and pick up some firepower. He turned right out of the parking lot, drove up 167, ignoring whatever mysteries lurked behind the locked gates of the Baptist prayer camp, hit 67, and soon crossed from Johnson to Carter County, on the way west to 81, which would take him south.

  Immediately it was apparent that Carter was a richer county by far. It had a man-made lake, marinas bobbing with pleasure boats visible even in the dark, bars, restaurants, vacation homes, nightlife. At one point a couple of Carter County sheriff’s cars roared by him, sirens blazing, lights pumping, and now and then a Tennessee Highway Patrol vehicle sped by, all of them clearly headed to the site of the shooting, where that boy had to hold his line for at least a few more days. Maybe when this straightened out, Bob would speak up, explain himself to Detective Thelma Fielding, take the kid off the spot and face what consequences there might be. But it seemed to him that there should be none, besides his leaving the scene of—well, of what? A crime? Not hardly. Fair, straight shooting in defense against armed men who had masks on who were moving aggressively toward him. Pure self-defense if the law was applied right.

  Other things on the to-do list. Make sure to check the press accounts and see who these boys were. The second fellow had moved well and intelligently, brought fire, clearly a veteran of previous firefights of one sort or another. A professional, to be sure; he’d have tracks, associations, a record, all that which could tell an interested party a thing or two.

  And then there’s the issue of Eddie Ferrol, Iron Mountain Armory owner. Talk to him and someone tries to kill you. Who is he? Why is he in this? He doesn’t seem smart enough, tough enough, ruthless enough to be a big part in anything criminal, yet for some reason he has an amazing influence on events. Why is that? What does his knowledge of the Bible, particularly Mark 2:11, have to do with anything? Why does even abstract, useless knowledge of this passage equate to an instant murder attempt? Eddie looked like the sort who’d spill his beans easily enough. But almost certainly, he’d go to ground and make himself hard to find. He certainly wasn’t going back to the gun store, that was for sure.

  And what was his own next move, after his time in Knoxville? Should he come back to Mountain City and continue to ask questions in hope of coming across a Mark 2:11 explanation? Would he be targeted again? Would pe
ople pick up on him, report on his presence, help a new squad of hunters locate him? Should he go on to Bristol, return to Nikki’s apartment, spend some time there, at least through the weekend’s big race activities, then hire a private eye, stop improvising, do this thing like a grown-up with a mind toward clearing it up and making sure it was safe for his daughter to resume her life?

  He got into Knoxville at midnight, realized it was probably too late to call his wife in her motel—the call would awaken Miko and wouldn’t be appreciated. So he found an Econo Lodge off the big highway and paid in cash. He hadn’t realized how tired he was and that he’d been going hard without sleep or food. The food could wait. He went to bed in the small, cheap-but-clean room after a shower, and fell into a sleep full of portents of children in jeopardy and himself in various gaudy, symbolic shapes, unable to do anything about it.

  You wouldn’t associate the word “coma” with Nikki. She looked rosy and merely asleep. Everybody was full of hope. The doctors reported that her vital signs were strong and that she stirred, showed normal brain activity, and responded to her mother’s and sister’s voices. They all thought it would be a matter of days, maybe even hours before she awoke.

  “She is such an angel,” Bob said, holding Miko close.

  “Daddy, maybe she’ll wake up today.”

  “I hope she does, sweetie. I hope and pray she does. You and Mommy, you’ll stay here and watch over her.”

  “Yes, and the Pinks will guard her so nobody can harm Nikki.”

  “Yes, honey, they’re very good men.”

  He put Miko down.

  “Now Mommy and I have to talk. Honey, you stay here for a minute, okay?”

  “Yes, Daddy.”

  He and his wife walked wordlessly down the hall to a visitor’s lounge, where they bought bad coffee in Styrofoam from a vending machine and sat at a blank table in a blank room.

  The first thing he said was, “I have satisfied myself that this thing did not come upon Nikki out of something I did some years ago, when I was off doing this or that. It seems that she cut trail on some kind of plan—I don’t know what it is. But somewhere in Johnson County there’s a group of very bad fellows who are planning something equally bad, and Nikki picked up on some aspect of it, and they had to finish her as she was going about her business, trying to do an overall story about methamphetamine use in the county. She’s innocent; she was just a young woman full of life who ran afoul of bad customers. She may not have even known what it is, but it has to be something she was close to figuring out and that’s why it’s so dangerous. Now I know what the clue is, and now people are coming for me.”