Blood Of Angels (37 page)

Lee had tried this over the last six months and found it worked. You could get many people to do what you wanted just by not making it easier for them to do something else. After another hour of driving and not a word being said, however, it was Lee who finally cracked.

'So, are the cops looking for me, back in LA?'

Paul's head turned slowly towards him. 'I imagine so.'

'You know, you could have just asked if I'd go with you guys. Help you with this deal.'

'This deal?'

'Yeah. Or whatever. You didn't have to do all that shit. Fuck me up back at home.'

'What if you'd refused?'

'You know my folks, obviously. And how is that, by the way? How do you know them?'

'Old friends.'

'So they could have talked me into it, right? Did they
know
you were going to do all that crap to me?'

Paul didn't answer the direct question. 'Men of your age are notoriously hard to influence. They need a
force majeure.'

'You evidently got drugs in depth. I've never seen so many bags and boxes, and these are some serious-looking dudes you got carrying them.' Lee noticed that the man was smiling faintly at him. 'My point is what fucking difference do I make?'

'You're going to be key, don't worry.'

'Maybe you could tell me what's going on?'

'Well, what do you think?'

'You've got some major deal going down. Some big festival or something. You're gathering up a whole bunch of gear…'

'Lee, these are not drugs. Try to think in the longer term.'

'I thought you guys were all about drugs.'

'They've been useful over the last few decades, that's all. They generate money and they're a lot less effort than mining.'

'Mining?' Lee tried to rethink. 'So this isn't about drugs?'

'It's about old times and a new start. A more personal form of breakage. Bringing the fight close to home.'

'See, you're just, fucking…
saying
things again. And I have no idea what you mean.'

'Oh, well. I'm sure we'll survive.'

Lee thought a moment, and then reached over and grabbed the door handle. He opened the door and pushed it wide.

He had no intention of jumping out — the car was going over seventy miles an hour — but it had the desired effect. The car wavered for just a moment as the driver struggled to cope with the sudden change in aerodynamics.

Paul reached out calmly and shut the door again. 'Don't do that,' he said.

'So don't treat me like a kid.'

'Actually, you would do well to think of me as a father figure, Lee — though one who will burn your soul to ashes if you fuck him around.' He smiled brightly. 'Are we clear?'

Though Paul's voice was still level and pleasant, it made the hairs on the back of Lee's neck rise.

'I get it. But I already got a dad, thanks.'

Paul nodded, and — just like that — it was okay being in the back of a car with him again. 'True,' he said. 'Well, Lee, I'll tell you something, part of why we're going to this place right now. When I was very young I lived in Northern California. My father was an important man. Not rich, like your father, but important. And one night some men and a woman came to the woods where he was living, and they murdered him. They stole me and kept me for a little while, but then they got to thinking they didn't like me so much any more, so they left me on a city street corner.'

'Shit, man, that sucks.'

Paul nodded. 'Thank you, Lee. Yes, it does. Luckily I survived, and in part because I got to know a group of people. We had similar interests, but it became a lot more than that. I was able to contribute some notions. They're like a family. Your mom and dad are part of it. You are too. We really have met before, Lee, though you don't recall it. We met not long after you were born, and again when you were three.'

He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled something out. Lee got the impression it had been there waiting for this moment, and wondered how it had come here so smoothly. It was a photograph showing much younger versions of his father and mother standing in a garden with another man. This man was Paul, though he looked barely into his twenties. A toddler stood unsteadily on the ground, holding Paul's hand.

'Is that me?'

'Already part of the team.'

'What team?'

'We look out for one another. Sometimes you quarrel, like any family, but when it comes down to it you're on the same side. We're strong right now, but there are always enemies. One man in particular isn't good for us. He's killed a few important members of our family.'

'Well, we should fuck him up.'

Paul smiled. 'We might just do that. You're a good kid, Lee. You've been raised well. You get on with your old man?'

'Yeah. He's pretty cool. He's got a good sense of humour.'

Lee was surprised to see Paul laugh, apparently despite himself. He grinned, glad things seemed to be getting a little more relaxed.

'You got that right,' the man said, after a moment. 'You never think about your name at all?'

'Hudek? What about it?'

'I meant the rest of it.'

Hudek looked at him. 'No. What's the big deal?'

'Say it.'

'Lee John.'

'Right. So tell me what your name is.'

'My name is Lee John.'

Paul just stared at him, waiting, then finally shook his head. His voice was cold again.

'Jesus. You kids. You really do know less than
shit.'

===OO=OOO=OO===

And finally the cars slowed.

They had been driving for a half hour along a featureless road that cut through mile after mile of scrubby-looking forest. A call came in to Paul's cell phone, seemed like it was from someone in the leading car. He agreed to whatever was being said, and soon afterwards the three vehicles pulled over, just ahead of a side turning. Paul opened his door and got out. Lee followed.

In the road all of the cars' doors were opened. Lee was reconciling himself to another inexplicable period of waiting when he realized something.

The people in the cars had changed.

He stared, open-mouthed. They were different. Dressed differently, different-looking… None of them was the same. There were two
women,
for a start. These were simply not the same people who had been in the cars all along.

Except…

Suddenly he recognized the young guy who'd opened the door for them, when they hit the lot at Huntsville airport. He was now wearing a hooded sweater, unlaced sneakers and baggy-ass jeans, with a little red backpack. He walked past Lee to go get stuff out the back of their car and he looked just like any teen you'd see outside a strip mall anywhere in the continental USA, complete with a skateboard and the I'm-too-cool-to-walk-upright shoulder roll.

Lee looked back at all the other people and slowly began to half-recognize other faces. The sleek guy — the one who'd been in their car at the beginning — was now dressed as a cop, so convincingly that Lee's heart missed a beat when he spotted him. Two other men were in cheap business suits, another in grimy mechanic's overalls. This last opened the hood of the second car and smeared oil over his hands. The first woman Lee saw was dressed in head-to-toe Banana Republic with a big, soft sweater. Her hair had previously been tied back in a style so severe he hadn't even noticed she was a chick. She pulled off a hair-tie as he watched and shook it out. By the time she was finished she looked like she should be pushing an up-market stroller along a nice village street, on her way to sip a skinny latte with others of her breed, maybe go hog wild and have a lo-fat muffin to spend the day feeling guilty about. She smiled briefly at no one in particular, as if practising. Then her face went blank again. The other woman was wearing a kind of pale green coat, looked like she worked in a grocery store.

Everyone was carrying something. A briefcase. A big handbag. A tool box. A long oblong carton with the UPS logo on it. A mail bag.

After a couple of minutes all the car doors and trunks were shut. Two of the cars reversed slowly up the road and performed graceful turns. They drove quickly back the way they had come, leaving the people standing in the road, looking even more odd without the vehicles to give them context and remind you how they'd got there. It was like aliens had decided to return a random selection of the population they'd abducted over the last few years, and zapped them down on the side of this nowhere road.

Lee watched as Paul walked amongst them. He spoke to each in turn. There was some nodding, a few handshakes. The homemaker smiled when he spoke to her, and this time it looked a little more convincing.

Then, without anything in particular seeming to trigger it, they all set off into the forest. At first they walked largely together as a group, but soon they split off in twos and threes, heading somewhere — Lee had no clue where — as if to arrive eventually from different angles, at different times.

Paul walked back over and motioned Lee to get into the car.

===OO=OOO=OO===

Twenty minutes later they arrived at a town. It wasn't big. Just one of those places you find everywhere, the kind you gas up in and grab a coffee from and then leave, thanking your lucky stars you live in an environment where the Halloween parade isn't the year's biggest deal. The car wound its way in through streets of wooden houses and then entered what appeared to be the centre. Old-looking buildings. A police station. A kindergarten. A Starbucks. This and that.

Lee watched as they passed through. This didn't look like a place where much interesting would happen. Not according to his value system, anyhow. 'Jesus,' he said. 'What a shithole.'

'That's harsh, Lee.'

'You must see something different to me.'

'I see the homes of hard-working, television-watching, product-buying souls. Commerce and service industries ticking over nicely. And many years of history, with a few dark corners. This place is more interesting than it looks. Older, too.'

'Whatever. It's still a dump.'

'It's where people live, Lee. Real people. True blue folks. Real
Americans,
or so they think. Small towns are the backbone of this country.'

'Maybe a hundred years ago. Urban is where it's at now, dude.'

'That's what a lot of people seem to think.'

Eventually the car passed a Holiday Inn, and Paul got the driver to go a little more slowly. This perked Lee's interest. He thought he recognized the hotel from the television — from when Paul had stared at CNN in the Belle Isle mall. There were a couple of cop cars parked near the entrance, plus a few anonymous-looking sedans. Then he saw a guy in a blue windcheater with the letters FBI on the back.

'Uh,' he said, nervously, 'do we really want to be here?'

'Maybe later,' Paul said, and the car picked up speed once more.

It hung a left and left town again. After a time it took a side road which took them in a long sweep out around some woods. Eventually this led into a tiny town called Dryford. A vague collection of houses, decently sized, but still the place looked like its glory days were fifty years past.

Another turn-off led them down a couple of hundred yards of road that ended abruptly at a gate. Just before the end was another gate. The driver got out and went to open it. Lee could see a deep yard on the other side, hugely overgrown. Way back in amongst all the grass and a bunch of trees that had been allowed to do whatever they liked, stood a house. A little bigger than the ones in 'town', and somewhat falling down. The driver got back in and drove them onto the property. It quickly became evident that this house had not been inhabited for quite a few years. Boards were slipping on the front. Shingles were missing from the roof and the glass in the windows, though unbroken, made it look as though old mist was trapped inside. A white VW camper van was parked out front, also looking like it could have been here a while, though presumably not.

'Behold a pale horse,' Paul said.

They got out of the car. As they approached the van its side door opened. It was dark inside. A man got out, slid the door back most of the way shut. The man was tall and looked old, kind of, because he had grey hair and was a little rounded over the shoulders. He was big, though: big and strong-looking. Kind of like that guy in
The Hitcher,
plus twenty years.

'Hello, James,' Paul said. His voice was flat. 'I trusted you.'

'It was an accident,' the man said. 'It's been a long time and I'm out of practice. It got out of hand.'

'Maybe you're too old for this.'

'Maybe I am. Should have had one of your baby zombies do the job instead.' The man turned his gaze on Lee, and Lee was surprised to feel a strong tickle of fear. When he looked at you, the guy didn't look so old. At all. 'This isn't the same one, is it?'

'No,' Paul said. 'This is our new special friend.' He raised his head, sniffed. 'Been cooking in there?'

'I would have been okay, if it wasn't for you.'

'No, James, you wouldn't. Remember the talk we had, the night I saved you? You are what you are. You know that. And you know that one never changes back to none.'

The older man looked at Paul for a while, as if enduring advice from someone he'd known all his life.

'No,' he said, in the end. 'I guess it does not.'

Paul walked over to the van and slid the door open. Curious, Lee followed. The old guy didn't seem to like them doing this, but evidently didn't feel there was anything he could do to stop it. Closer to the van Lee could smell something too. Kind of earthy, but a little sweet. He wasn't sure what the old guy had been cooking in there, but even though he was hungry he thought that if offered a mouthful, he'd probably decline.

Then he realized someone was in the van.

Right at the back, tied in an awkward position, lay a tall, skinny woman. She was blindfolded and gagged.

Lee felt uncomfortable. This looked wrong. The kind of thing you saw re-created in documentaries on cable, viewer discretion advised.

Paul stepped up into the van and squatted down in front of the woman. He reached up and undid the blindfold. Lee was close enough to see the woman's eyes widen when she saw who it was.