Greenmantle (21 page)

“Well, that’s to be expected. I went to the drugstore this morning to get some antibiotics and gave them to you earlier.”

“What…what time is it?”

“About eleven-thirty,” Lisa said from the doorway.

“Where’s Earl?”

“He had to meet someone in Ottawa, he said.” Lisa moved to sit on the edge of the bed as she spoke. “And everyone else is gone to work—except for us.”

“You don’t work?”

Lisa smiled. “I wish. No, I’m on holidays—great time of year for them, don’t you think? But I had to use ’em or lose ’em. Sherry’s got the day off.”

“Would you like something to eat?” Sherry asked.

“Can I get up to eat it?”

“Well…just so long as you don’t do anything strenuous.”

Howie shook his head. “I couldn’t do anything strenuous if my life depended on it.”

* * *

“What time did Earl say he was coming back?” Howie asked after a breakfast of bacon and eggs.

“He didn’t,” Lisa said from the sink.

Howie thought about that. Christ, he hoped Earl hadn’t dumped him. “Listen,” he said. “I really appreciate you folks looking after me and everything.”

“Do the same for a white man,” Sherry said. She was sitting across the table from him, a crossword puzzle book open in front of her. “What’s a six-letter word for ‘more profound’?”

Howie shrugged. “I was never much good with that kind of thing.”

“Wiser,” Lisa said.

“
Six
-letter.”

“Wisest, then.”

“Oh, never mind. I’ll look it up.” She flipped to the back of the book and wrote “deeper” in the appropriate squares.

“Are you guys from around here?” Howie asked.

Lisa turned from the sink to look at him. “Us
guys
?”

“No. I mean—”

Lisa laughed. “That’s okay—I was just teasing. I grew up in Perth, but Sherry’s from out west.”

“Where the buffalo roam,” Sherry said. “Fear and loathing on the great plains.”

The Hunter S. Thompson references were totally lost on Howie. “Perth’s south of here, right?” he asked.

“Just a few miles down the road from Lanark,” Lisa said. “Why?”

Howie thought for a moment, wondering how to frame his question. He didn’t want to come off like an asshole in front of them—it wasn’t often that he had a couple of good-looking broads like this just shooting the shit with him. But there were things he wanted to know.

“Did you see the car we came in last night?”

Lisa nodded. “It’s still out there. What hit you—a Mac truck?”

“No. A deer.”

Sherry looked up. “A
deer
? C’mon. Get serious.”

“No. Really. The biggest buck I’ve ever seen.” And he’d seen so many, Howie thought. At least in the zoo. “It was the size of a moose.”

“Maybe it
was
a moose,” Sherry said.

Howie shook his head. “No, it was a deer all right. It just hauled off and hit us while we were parked on this dirt road somewhere south of here. Does that kind of thing happen a lot?”

“What?” Lisa asked. “Deer attacking cars?”

Howie nodded.

“This is the first time I’ve heard of it.”

“Up in the Rockies,” Sherry said, “I’ve seen bighorns crowding a car, but never attacking it.”

“And there was this music,” Howie went on, wondering how to explain just what it had sounded like. “It was…eerie….”

The two women waited for him to go on. When he didn’t, Lisa gave a little laugh.

“Do you do a lot of drugs?” she asked.

“What? No. I mean, I wasn’t high just then.” What he was trying to say was that somehow the music had seemed connected to the buck’s attack. He just didn’t know how to come out with it and not sound stupid.

“Well, maybe we should do some now,” Lisa said. “What do you think, Dr. Mallon?”

“I would prescribe a few good solid hits of a hash joint,” Sherry said.

Lisa looked at Howie. “What about you, sailor?”

“Sounds great,” Howie said.

He’d been dumb to bring it up, but at least he hadn’t done it with Earl. Christ knows what Earl might have done because, now that Howie thought about it, it did seem to be a pretty dumb thing to talk about. But the memory of that music bothered him. There was something in it that had wanted to hurt him—that still wanted to hurt him. He didn’t know how he knew that, but he was sure it was true. Yet he still felt compelled to go back and listen for it again.

“Here, Howie,” Sherry said, passing him a joint. “Have a hit.”

He smiled and took it from her, pushing his strange thoughts away. Fuck it. He’d worry about it later. Right now he had a couple of beautiful broads for company, dope to smoke, and some R&R due him. The buck and the music could wait. And so could Earl, as far as that went.

He sucked on the joint, drawing the smoke deep into his lungs and looked at his companions. Maybe he’d luck out and get a blow-job from one of them. Christ, maybe he’d really luck out and get one from each of them. He grinned, feeling himself get hard under the table, and took another toke before passing the joint on.

5

“You’ve got to be nuts talking the way you do in front of that kid,” Bannon said.

Valenti glanced ahead to where Ali was almost out of sight because of the undergrowth. They were following the track, which had now dwindled into a footpath. Somebody used that path regularly, Valenti thought, because it was relatively clear. Who, exactly, he didn’t know. The only people he’d ever seen using it were a couple of times when an old beat-up touring car parked across from his driveway while its occupants trudged off up the track for the day. There was an older man, a younger couple, and three or four kids—dressed in shabby clothes, but clean looking.

The last time they’d come had been in the fall. Valenti just assumed they were picnicking, loaded down as they were with backpacks and parcels, but now he wasn’t so sure. Could be they were delivering staples to whoever lived back in there. This Tommy who made the music. Or Mally.

“I’m telling you,” Bannon said. “It’s just asking for trouble.”

“Ali’s a good kid,” Valenti said. “She won’t be no problem.”

Bannon shook his head. “Right now, it’s not real. It’s like a game or a movie or something. But what happens when it sinks in just what you really were in the family—Christ, what the family really is?”

“I think she understands.”

“Bullshit. She’s just a kid.”

“I was thirteen when I did my first hit,” Valenti said.

“Thirteen?”

“Yeah. There was a guy moving into the neighborhood—not connected or anything—who was trying to get a concession started. Drugs, you know what I’m saying? Well, the
padrone
he doesn’t like this so he sends a cousin to talk to the guy, only the cousin doesn’t come back. A couple of days later we find what’s left of him hanging in one of the
padrone
’s warehouses. Mario told me he was still warm when they cut him down—guy was hanging there still alive for all that time.” Valenti shook his head.

“Anyway, this is serious business now. Trouble is, the guy—this pusher—he doesn’t go anywhere without a lot of muscle and the
padrone
, he doesn’t want a bloodbath taking this guy out. So someone gets smart and says, “Hey, he’s on the street, there’s lots of kids around—who’s gonna think twice about a kid?’ “

Valenti glanced at Bannon, who nodded to show he was listening.

“Nobody,” Valenti said. “That’s who. Not the guy, not his muscle. So I get my first contract. Mario sets it up. I got the gun in my pocket, and I’m running with a bunch of kids, you know, throwing a ball around. The ball gets near the guy’s car, I run over to get it. The muscle’s not paying any attention to me—Christ, I’m just a kid, right? So I get right up to the car, fire twice at him, and then I’m gone.”

“Hell, of a thing—sending out a kid like that.”

Valenti paused on the trail and Bannon stopped with him. “Hey,” Valenti said with an edge in his voice. “It was the only business I was going to know. I’m not some cowboy notching my gun or something stupid. I never even used the same piece twice. But I was good at what I did, and with the
padrone
there was never any bullshit—no fooling around,
capito?
Things had to get pretty bad before he called a hit.”

“That’s not what I heard,” Bannon said.

Valenti nodded. “Yeah. Things started to change. The
padrone
got old—maybe he wasn’t seeing so clearly anymore. I don’t know. But most of the business I did with the Magaddino family, it was just talking, you know? I’d go talk to a guy—maybe he owes some money, maybe he’s got to come up with a favor he promised and he’s trying to welch on it. Whatever. There weren’t that many hits—not in the old days. It wasn’t good for business.”

“Who needs trouble?” Bannon said.

“Exactly. Who needs it? But the way things are now…” Valenti shook his head. “I’m telling you, I look at the paper or catch the news and I can’t believe what I’m seeing. Not just all this Middle East bullshit—it’s all the weird guys out there. Serial killers, they’re calling them. What kind of a guy does that, just killing for kicks? I mean, I can understand a guy getting angry, getting a little crazy, and I can understand when it’s business—but what kind of a guy does it for fun?”

Bannon shook his head, then tapped a finger against his temple.

“You got it,” Valenti said. He looked up ahead, not seeing Ali. “Hey, we better get a move on or we’ll be meeting Ali on her way back.”

Bannon let him set the pace.

* * *

Ali had been like a young pup straining at its leash until Valenti had waved her on.

“Go on,” he said. “Scout things out. We’ll catch up.”

So she ran on ahead, enjoying the sense of freedom and exploration that being in the woods gave her. She slowed down when something shiny caught her eye on the trail, but it proved to be only a bit of foil from a cigarette pack, rolled up into a tight little ball. Far more interesting was the row of ants that moved steadfastly across the trail. She pushed aside some underbrush to see where they were coming from, then wrinkled her nose when she saw it was the body of a small dead chipmunk. She let the boughs slap back in place and headed on down the path.

It took a circuitous route through the trees. Approximately a mile from where the road ended by Tony’s place and the track started, the path ran into a stream. Ali paused to dubiously study the random scatter of rocks that might serve as stepping-stones.

The trail continued on the other side of the stream, which was at its narrowest point here, at least so far as Ali could see. It was seven feet wide, tops. Farther up and down the stream, the water broadened out to eight or nine feet, and there were no stones. She wondered if Tony would be able to cross, then decided to see how hard it would be.

It was surprisingly easy. She stepped on the first stone and as she swung her foot in front, another was just waiting for it. In moments she was across.

That’s strange, she thought as she sat down to wait for Tony and Tom. It was like an optical illusion if you studied the pattern of the stones because they didn’t appear to be so perfectly placed. As she leaned forward to have a closer look, she heard the bushes rustle behind her. Fear knifed through her as she turned. It didn’t entirely go away when she saw Mally’s thin features peering out at her from between the branches of the willows that grew on this side of the stream.

“’Lo, Ali,” she said. “What are you doing?” She stayed where she was, the low brim of her hat hiding her eyes, the willows all around her.

“Mally!” Ali said, finding a smile. “I was hoping to find you. I wanted to see where you lived.”

“I live here.”

Ali looked around, then past Mally to where the forest started again with a rank of cedars, then a hodgepodge of birch, maple, pine and oak. “Here?” she asked.

Mally smiled. “In the forest—in all of it.” She shook her head as though it didn’t make sense why such a simple explanation should prove so hard for Ali to grasp.

“Yes, but…” Ali began.

“Where are you going?” Mally interrupted. “To the stone or to the village?”

“Well, I didn’t even know there was anything out here—I mean, besides the forest and you. And your friend Tommy.”

“I don’t really know Tommy,” Mally said. “I belong to the moon, you see, while a mystery has him.”

“A mystery?”

“The stag. The music.”

“Oh,” Ali said, although it didn’t really explain anything. She was about to say more when Mally’s head lifted like a startled deer’s and she peered down the trail.

“Men are coming,” she said, moving a little deeper into the willows.

“It’s okay,” Ali said. “It’s just Tony—you’ve already met him, sort of—and a friend of his named Tom Bannon.”