Deadout (16 page)

“You're back,” he said, looking to my right, then my left, before settling back on me.

“I need a room.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Just you?”

I nodded.

He nodded back, like he understood, a muted smile on his craggy face reflecting both commiseration and maybe a glint of excitement that Nola was now unencumbered.

I laughed despite myself.

He looked up at me and shrugged, like he knew why I was laughing and he didn't care. Maybe he liked his chances.

The room didn't feel quite so claustrophobic this time. Maybe because it was just me, or maybe compared to that tiny cabin nothing would feel claustrophobic. But in the dark, and without Nola brightening it up, it seemed a lot more depressing.

Within ten minutes I was headed back downstairs, struck once more by the strange homogeneity of the other guests. It wasn't just the demographic that they shared; they all had a certain hardness and efficiency, like ex-military. A few looked up at me as I walked through, but more striking than the eyes that were on me was the strange tension of the averted gazes, as though other eyes were intentionally not looking at me. Maybe I was being paranoid, but stepping out onto the porch, I could feel glances exchanged behind me.

Given my situation, the Mustang was only slightly less depressing than the room. It felt weird to be sharing an island with Nola against her will, and I found myself driving toward Teddy's farm. Maybe I'd slip in and apologize, grab my things and go. Maybe I'd get a peck on the cheek as a peace offering. Maybe she'd miss me when I was gone. Maybe, down the road, we could salvage things between us.

I slowed as I approached the entrance to the farm, but I didn't stop. Instead of turning in, I coasted past it, drifting onto the shoulder a hundred yards beyond.

It was a conversation I wasn't looking forward to, and I probably would have wussed out anyway, but I was rescued from that fate by a pair of headlights knifing across the road in my rearview. It was Teddy's vintage Chevy turning out of the driveway, its taillights receding into the darkness.

Technically, I was still on the clock, so I swung the car around and followed, back the way I had just come. Teddy sped up as we approached the Wesley, and turned a few blocks later, making a right onto Circuit Avenue. Traffic was light, and I knew the bright yellow Mustang would be easy to make, so I hung way back. Several blocks later, I saw Teddy's brake lights as he swung into a parking space on the side of the road.

I quickly did the same, keeping as much space between us as possible. I got out and caught a glimpse of him as he slipped between two storefronts, looking both ways as he did, like a schoolchild crossing the street.

As I hurried along behind him, I thought about how sure I was he was up to something. I had to ask myself how much of it was real and how much was the fact that I didn't like the way he looked at my girlfriend. Or more to the point, the way she looked at him.

I crept up to the gap where he had disappeared and looked around, the same guilty way he had. Then I followed after him. The shadows between the stores were the kind of black that gives you vertigo. I emerged onto a narrow lane that was only marginally brighter. In the dim light, I sensed motion across the street and a few houses down: Teddy, doing the same guilty scan as he ducked between two darkened houses. I pulled back so he wouldn't see me, then I followed once more.

The houses were tiny but elaborately ornate. We were in the Campgrounds, the maze-like village of gingerbread houses. Even in the darkness, I could make out the multicolored paint on the scrolling wood trim.

The deeper we went into the Campgrounds, the narrower and darker it got. A couple of times I lost Teddy, but each time I found him again, a shadow among shadows, walking in a brisk tight gait, like what he really needed was a bathroom.

When I emerged onto the next street, the spire of the big open-air church, the Tabernacle, was looming in front of us, illuminated in the sky. Teddy was headed across the grassy area surrounding it, looking increasingly suspicious the farther we went. He knew the island and its layout better than I did, and it made no sense for him to have parked where he had unless he didn't want anyone to see where he was headed.

I wondered for a moment if he was checking in with God and he didn't want his ironic hipster farmer friends to know it. But he didn't go into the Tabernacle. He went around it.

Just past the Tabernacle was another building, an old white clapboard that looked like a church. Teddy walked toward the back door and stopped abruptly, looking around him yet again. I hugged a tree, peering around it as he checked his watch. He stayed there for five minutes that seemed to stretch on forever. I could feel the nervousness coming off him. I would have felt bad for him if I didn't dislike him so much.

Finally, he jumped like a startled cat as a dark figure appeared at the edge of the shadows under a clump of trees. Light fell across a pair of boots and lower legs, then hands, beckoning Teddy closer. Teddy hurried over, his legs looking wobbly beneath him.

The other guy stepped forward, but his face remained in the shadows. He said a few words, and Teddy blurted out a hundred, his hands jittery and nervous. They went back and forth a few times like that.

I heard a twig snap behind me, and simultaneously an open hand connected on the side of my head, smashing it against the tree.

It wasn't a knockout blow, but it dazed me enough that I couldn't evade the hand that grabbed me by my throat and slammed me back against the tree, cutting off my air.

He was big, with a flat face, like a pug, but angry. I hadn't done anything to him, and I wondered if maybe it wasn't about me. Maybe he was just an angry person.

He locked his elbow, holding me in place, and pulled his other arm back, like an archer about to send an arrow or a meathead about to flatten someone else's skull. I was thinking of my gun, safely locked away on the mainland, as I swung my forearm as hard as I could against his elbow. I was rewarded with a popping sound and a lungful of air.

His face was all pain now instead of anger. But I knew the anger would return, and I didn't want to be there when it did. I didn't want him coming right up behind me either, so I punched him in the throat. Not hard enough to crush his larynx, I hoped, but enough to get him off his feet. He went down hard, his left arm flapping, like maybe he was trying to break his fall with it and had forgotten his elbow was dislocated.

I rubbed my throat, coaxing the circulation back as I looked around the tree. Teddy and his friend were gone. I decided I should be, too. I could hear voices not too far away, and I knew it was only a matter of time before someone came upon us. The guy on the ground was gurgling and groaning, but he was also getting up. And he looked angry again. It occurred to me that maybe I should have been a little less worried about his throat and a little more concerned about my own.

My natural inclination was to cuff him and read him his rights, start asking questions. But I didn't have cuffs and I wasn't acting in an official capacity, and the only answer I was likely to get out of him was to the question, “Could this guy kick my ass with only one arm?”

I suspected the answer was yes, but I didn't need to know for sure, so I kicked him in the stomach, hard, and I took off running.

I zigzagged across the grass, keeping to the shadowed areas as much as possible. I was rounding the Tabernacle when I felt a gentle breeze near my neck. I heard a whine like a large insect and what sounded like a single, expertly struck blow of a hammer on wood. As I rounded the Tabernacle, I looked back.

Pug-face wasn't on the ground anymore.

I heard the insect sound again, then the hammer sound, much closer, and accompanied by a spray of splintered wood across the side of my face. A gouge had appeared in the tree next to me.

Pug-face was shooting at me. My eyes darted around, looking for movement, but finding only shadows. As I took off again, I heard another whine and a distant ping. I turned and saw a stop sign half a block away, the dim light flashing on it as it wobbled back and forth.

I cut across the road and darted between two of the gingerbread houses and made a left, away from the Mustang. The last thing I wanted was for Pug-face to put two in my head while I was getting into the car, or for him to see what I was driving. Half a block later, I was thinking I'd lost him when a pair of intricately carved ducks on the house in front of me exploded into dust and a light came on inside the house.

I abandoned my evasive maneuvers and took off running, fast as I could. I could hear heavy footsteps getting louder and closer. Picturing how angry that Pug-face would be attached to a dislocated elbow helped me run faster, but I could still hear him gaining on me. I knew I had to slow him down before he got into sure-thing firing range.

The air was thick with the scent of lilacs, but behind it I caught a whiff of something definitely not floral. I looked up and recognized the big pink house with the tulip flag. In the darkness, I could just see the wetness on the surface of the lawn.

There was caution tape across the gate and I pulled it down and pushed the gate open, eliciting a loud squeak. I left the gate open and vaulted over to a raised garden bed surrounded by stacked fence rails, trying not to think about the smell or what would happen if I fell. The rails wobbled and made a wet sucking sound as I made my way along them toward the back of the house. A holly bush blocked my way, but I forced my way through it, staying on the rails and ignoring the cuts and scratches.

When I reached the backyard, I hopped over the fence and onto the street beyond. As I started to run, I heard a sound like a cross between a splash and a splat, and another one like a cross between a yelp and a growl. It might have been my imagination, but the smell seemed to grow suddenly stronger.

I smiled as I ran, but picturing that pug face even angrier made me stop smiling.

The winding streets had me totally disoriented, but I found the Mustang and took off, winding through the Campgrounds, worried that at any moment a bullet would shatter my windshield or my skull.

Glimpses of the Tabernacle's spire through the trees taunted me with how little ground I had covered. My speed crept up with each wrong turn, as adorable little houses closed in menacingly on all sides. I slammed on the brakes just short of plowing into a small wooden house as the tiny lane I was on ended abruptly. An older man got out of a wicker rocking chair on a porch less than six feet from my window.

“Hey!” he yelled, reading glasses swinging from a chain around his neck. “Slow down!”

“Bob!” yelled a voice from inside the house. “Come inside!”

“What?” he said, turning to look back into the house. “Guy's driving like a maniac out here.”

I backed up the car, and then turned hard to the left.

“Slow down!” the old guy yelled after me.

I didn't. I kept going, my tires singing as I pulled left again, and found myself behind the Wesley Hotel. I killed the lights and sat there, waiting and watching, letting my heart settle down.

After fifteen minutes, I slowly got out of the Mustang and went inside the hotel. The lobby had settled down, only a half dozen security types hanging around. They seemed to be legitimately ignoring me, as if they legitimately didn't care.

But I paused at the door and looked down at the floor, at the muddy footprints from the front door to the stairs. I was pretty sure I caught a faint whiff of poop.

Whoever had been trying to kill me was staying in the same hotel I was.

 

27

I slept half the night with one eye open, and the other half with both eyes open, wondering if some busted up meathead with crap on his shoes and a silencer on his gun was going to kill me in my sleep. A silencer. That was hard-core.

Teddy's shadowy friend seemed hard-core, too. I didn't know how the three of them fit together. I assumed they were together, but I didn't know that for sure. Pug-face could have been spying on them, just like I was. Hell, he could have had nothing to do with them, and just been pissed off at me for any number of things.

I thought about how whatever Teddy was up to would impact Nola, and at the thought of her, my stomach tightened. I didn't know what was going on between her and Teddy. Probably nothing. But I'd seen the way he looked at her, and the way she looked at him, too. I wondered if it would be any better if the guy wasn't such a douchebag.

When I finally drifted off to sleep, my thoughts turned to bees. Little ones flying this way and that. Huge containers of them swinging across the sky under helicopters that looked like bees themselves. Dead hives full of dead bees, or even worse, full of nothing at all but mystery and blackness and something sinister.

I woke to the sound of buzzing and swatted at the sound, but it was my phone, vibrating on the nightstand.

Moose.

“Doyle! Can't believe you left without saying good-bye.” He actually sounded hurt, and I felt bad for a second, even though I hadn't left and that would have been ridiculous anyway.

“I didn't.”

“You what?”

“I didn't leave. I'm still on the island.”

“Really? Oh, cool. I thought Nola had said you were leaving yesterday.”

I laughed convincingly. “No, apparently there was some kind of misunderstanding. I'm still here.”

“So when are you leaving?”

“I'm not sure.”

“Oh … okay. Well, in that case … are you available to help us today?”

“Um, yeah, I guess.” It was nine-thirty. It occurred to me that while I'd been asleep, the one-fucked-up-armed man hadn't snuck in and shot me. “Why?” I asked. “What's going on?”

“We're short. Pete blew us off. And he's not answering his phone. Can you step in?”

I didn't really feel like it, and I'd agreed to keep an eye on Teddy, but Renfrew had said I didn't even need to be as involved as I had been. I decided to get a little less involved.