Guns [John Hardin 01] (10 page)

13

D
ONNY PICKED UP ONE OF
S
AM
’
S FOUR-BY-NINE CARDS
from the brochure rack in the General Store and took it to the register along with an oversized bottle of Pepsi and a pack of Nabs. He was wearing his billed camo cap to cover his hair and shadow his eyes. He put the brochure card down on the counter and tapped it with a finger. He smiled pleasantly and said to the black girl behind the antique register, “I tried to call this man a little while ago but couldn’t get any answer. I’d like to set up a sightseeing flight for my girlfriend and me for in the morning. Would you happen to know how I could reach him?”

She smiled. “Well, I’d say chances are pretty good he’s over at Valerie Lightfoot’s place for supper. He forgets his beeper sometimes. Here, just a second and I’ll give you her number.” She reached under the counter and pulled out a phone book and began looking it up, paging through and then tracing down the column of names with a half-inch-long glossy fingernail.

Sam was riding his bike along the dark main road when he decided to stop at the General Store to pick up a small pack of jelly beans for Joshua. The boy could be made to squeal in delight when Sam caused each bean to magically appear from some improbable place—from behind his small ear, or from his belly button, or from Sam’s boot top, or plucked from one of Val’s house plants—though Val always gave him the devil for letting Josh have so much pure sugar. He propped his bike on its stand at the edge of the lit parking area as a noisy red pickup whizzed by too fast on the road. Across the area there was an idling silver Blazer nosed into a space, the only car there. The man in the passenger seat behind the rolled-up window had a cigar in his mouth and was looking at him intently.

Sam stopped dead in his tracks and felt a lance of ice stab his gut. He watched the man take out his cigar and mouth the word “fuck". Sam turned around quickly, toed the stand up and got back on the bike, riding away fast toward the village center, not looking back. He took the first right on a street, standing on it, speeding up, the rusty chain protesting.

“Fuck,” Winston said. “Right there. That’s him. On a beat-up bike. Going out of sight now. He made me.”

Davis said, “Are you sure?”

“Yeah. It’s him.”

Donny was coming out of the store. Davis gestured urgently for him to hurry it up. Donny ran to the back door, yanked it open, and jumped inside, and Davis had it backing up before Donny could get the door closed, one wheel yipping as it slipped on a sandy patch. He braked hard in the road and drove ahead, saying, “Where?”

“There. First right,” Winston said. “He’s got some kind of white dust on him, what got my attention. I stared at him like a fool and he made me. Fuck.”

Davis turned the Blazer into the street, flicked on the high beams, and slowed. The headlights caught only a white cat crouched near a bush, suddenly uncoiling into a loping run off into the shadows. The houses were sparse here, with a lot of vegetation between them. Most showed lights but some were dark—good hiding places.

The Blazer crept along.

There was a left turn and Winston said intently, “There, there, turn left,” just as Davis started taking the turn anyway. They all tensed, but it was just some little old lady with a bandanna on her head on another bike caught in the headlights, wobbling along, a handlebar basket filled with something in plastic. Davis flicked down to the low beams and stopped until she was past them.

Nothing else showed anywhere.

“The ferries,” Winston said.

“Not from the harbor,” Davis said, checking his watch quickly. “The last harbor ferry is long gone.”

Donny held up the brochure card on which he had jotted Valerie Lightfoot’s number and said, “This is his flyer. No shot of the plane, but I’ve got his girlfriend’s number here. Her name’s Valerie Lightfoot. What do you want to bet he’s headed there?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Davis said. “I don’t think he’d want to draw us down on her. But I can use her number.” He reached for the cell phone with his right hand and flipped it open, still driving, still scanning in the headlights. “We’re pretty much between him and his house here, and he was moving away. He’s probably smart enough to assume we’ve already got his place spotted out. I think the only reason he’s going this way is because he’s got some place to hole up. What’s the number?”

Donny used the Mini-Maglite to read off the number and Davis punched it in with his thumb. It rang three times before she answered. He said, “Yes, Ms. Lightfoot? I was told you might know how I could get in touch with Mr. Sam Bass. I’d like to book a charter for tomorrow but I haven’t been able to reach him at his business number.”

Valerie had the cordless phone clamped between her shoulder and her cheek. She was in the bathroom doorway bent down, holding Joshua’s pajama bottoms so he could climb into them after his shower, his wet curls flattened onto his head. He was looking in the hallway mirror at his tongue, and licking droplets off of his upper lip where he had failed to dry himself completely. She said, “Sometimes he goes off and forgets his beeper. You could give me your name and number and I’ll have him call you. Or you could call back here any time after seven-thirty.” Joshua put his hands on her shoulders to steady himself while he stepped into the pajama bottoms. He started humming “If I Can Find A Clean Shirt” off key.

“All right, ma’am. Thank you. I’ll do that, then.”

He was moving the phone down, just about to flip it closed, when he heard her say, “Or I guess…”

He brought the phone back to his ear quickly. “Yes, ma’am?”

She knew Sam wouldn’t be very presentable after working with the sheetrock all day, but she also knew he would want the charter. “Well,” she said. “He’s been doing some finish work on a new cottage for a friend and he’s most likely still at it. You could probably catch him there, if you’d like to. He’s on his bicycle.”

“That would surely help, ma’am, if you could give me directions.”

Joshua was asking through flying and shooting gestures if he could go get his Star Wars toys. She nodded yes. “Okay, on the main road into the village, do you know where The Privateer is?”

“Yes, ma’am, I believe I passed it on the way in.”

She gave him the directions starting from The Privateer and he memorized them.

“Look for an old Jeep in pretty bad shape. He might not still be there,” she said, “so why don’t you give me your number and I can have him call you as soon as he gets here?”

“That’s not necessary,” he said. “Thank you again, ma’am.” And he hung up.

“I know where he is,” Davis said as he put the phone back into the console pocket. He began driving faster, but it wasn’t far.

He parked the Blazer on the sand by the end of the street, killed the headlights, and switched off the ignition, putting the keys in his jacket pocket and zipping it up. Like all the other sparse streets, there were no sidewalks or street lights, just an occasional yard light. There were only two lit houses that showed from here as the street curved away to the right, three cars parked on the shoulders.

“All right,” Davis said. “It’s the third cottage on the right. New construction. He’s been working on it. Donny, work your way along over there, get behind the place. Winston, you and I will come up on the front from both sides. Give me three minutes to get across to the other side, then you move in.”

Winston was screwing his silencer in place. He would conceal the gun partially by just holding it down alongside his leg. He had the cigar clamped in his mouth again.

Donny said, “Is he likely to have a piece?”

“I don’t think so,” Davis said, “but try not to be an easy target, anyway. You two have the suppressors so it will be up to you unless I can get my hands on him. All right, let’s go.”

Donny walked away quickly toward the brush, holding the Sig inside the front of his camo jacket. Davis waited a few seconds and then moved off. Winston gave it a three-minute count and followed. They each carried a pocketed filtered Mini-Maglite but would use them only if necessary.

Sam had gone back to the cottage because it was the closest place that came to mind where he would not be drawing them down on people he knew, and to buy some time to think. He had left the bike close by the side of the cottage, partially concealed behind a dead bush. There had been two of them in the Blazer. The one with the cigar and the driver. He was standing in the living room in deep shadow, where he could look out onto the street through the bay window that still had stickers on the corners of the panes and had not been cleaned.

He thought,
I’ve got to draw them off, away from the island.
He was close to the harbor here, but if he just grabbed a boat and left they would still be here, still be a threat to anybody, everybody who knew him as Sam Bass.

Maybe there was a way to draw them along, make sure they would see him go away in a boat, would know it was him and know beyond doubt he was running away. Then they would either try to steal a boat and chase him or leave by the Hatteras ferry. He could go a ways up the back of the island and then hide in the marsh grasses. If they managed to get a more powerful boat going and got too close he could always beach the outboard and run for it. There was no way they were going to catch him on foot. He knew of a small old outboard boat at a dock he could take without much trouble. It would not need a key. It had only a pull starter.

A wind was picking up outside, the strong light on a pole in the yard of a home across the street two doors down spraying through the trees and creating crazily cavorting shadows.

He saw a movement off to the left across the street. A shadow out of place. There. A lumbering figure. How could they have found him so fast? He scanned along the street, and there was the other one to the right by a tree, pointing at the side of the cottage, at the bike, and both of them moving up through the shadows faster now.

He spotted the lump of the tool box in the corner, bent down and felt over it, picked up a big pipe wrench, and moved quickly to the back of the house. He eased the back door open and spent five seconds scanning all around. There were only about fifteen feet of cleared area between the cottage and an expanse of low brush and grass with a few scattered trees. He went out the doorway low and fast, making for the brush.

Standing under a tree forty feet away Donny instantly froze and leveled the big auto two-handed, his right on the grip and his left palm already firmly under the butt, not seeing the gun really in the darkness but knowing where he was aiming, the wind making the shadows dance, and pumped off five fast rounds at the furtive low shadow racing across the uneven dirt patch and into the brush, the Sig making hardly much noise louder than the wind rustling the leaves, the wind masking both sound and motion and confusing the shadows, but he heard a slug hit something. Maybe the big thigh bone. He listened intently and scanned the brush but saw nothing.

He walked over to where the shadow had entered the brush and used the end of the silencer to lift a branch out of the way. He got out the red-filtered flashlight with his left hand, made sure the beam was set narrow, and played it over the ground. There was a big red pipe wrench in the sand with a smear on it from his slug. No blood anywhere that he could see.

Behind him, near the side of the cottage, Davis said quietly, “Donny.”

“Over here,” Donny said. “He bolted. He’s gone. He’s not armed.”

Davis and Winston walked up and Winston rumbled, “Well, you had your shot, jarhead, and you missed him.”

In his irritating falsetto, Donny said, “It’s too dark back here and he was fast. I hit a pipe wrench he was carrying.”

Winston snorted.

“All right,” Davis said. “He’ll try to get off the island now, I think. Let’s get back to the car fast.”

Davis drove the Blazer not much over the limit the short distance to the village fringe, then he floored it. He slewed to a stop on the gravel area by the shelter at the air strip. There was nobody in sight. The wind sock was standing out in what was now a heavy gusting breeze. “Winston,” he said. “Take the MP5 and get in the shelter. Take the big Maglite. Keep a watch on all the planes. Nobody besides our man is likely to come along. I don’t think they’re supposed to use this strip after dark. Anything happens, use the pay phone to call me.”

Winston grunted and got out. He went around to raise the back glass and get the five-cell and the submachine gun, keeping it wrapped in the blanket. He closed the glass and Davis had the Blazer moving away fast. Winston stuck his cigar in his mouth and walked up the steps and across to the far side of the night-blackened shelter. He used the flashlight, filtered by his fingers, to insert a clip into the MP5 and then rested it on the bench close beside him, covered by a single flap of the blanket. It was a little bulky with the fat silencer on the end of it, but it was not heavy so you could handle it fast and it hit damned hard where you aimed it. It was possible to lay the small-headed Maglite alongside it to light up a target, holding both it and the gun, but Winston had found that cumbersome and preferred to rely on his excellent night vision.

There were plenty of stars and a sliver of moon. The dunes and the planes were silhouetted against the dark sky already, after only a few minutes of acclimation. The auto was back in its belt holster, the silencer in his zippered jacket pocket. He leaned back against a post watching the planes and waiting to get his full night vision, which he usually acquired within twenty minutes. A few cars were moving north out on the main road but their lights were not a problem.

Davis was driving fast back toward the village. He said to Donny, “Keep an eye out for that Jeep. He might chance going for it now. He’s running. I can feel it.”

Davis killed the lights and parked by the end of Teach’s Lane, which was dark except for a yard light about ninety feet beyond the Bass place and on the same side of the street. He kept the engine idling. A Jeep was parked there, the cottage dark, lights from another cottage showing out behind it through a grove of trees. A white Toyota Camry went by slowly, but the couple in it did not seem to pay them undue notice.