Guns [John Hardin 01] (9 page)

“Why did you wind up out here on the Banks?”

“When Joshua’s father was killed in a car wreck, in the same way my parents died, I just had to get away. At least until I could go back some day and really see the beauty in the mountains again. I drove east until I couldn’t go any more. And it’s beautiful here, too, in a different way. Open and vast and most often serene. But now I want to go back to visit, and I want them to meet you.”

“I’ll be proud to meet them, Val.”

“Good. We’ll make plans tomorrow, then. Right now…”

“What?”

“You know, there’s a last time for everything we do in life,” she said quietly with a sadly wistful smile and with the candle flames burning like a long-ago council fire in her
Tsalagi
eyes. “We ought to live with that in mind but we never seem to. Let’s go into my bedroom, Sam Bass, and make love like it’s for the very last time.”

11

B
EFORE DAYBREAK ON FRIDAY THE SILVER BLAZER MOVED
south on I-95 at no more than five miles per hour over the posted limit. It was rigged for surf fishing with four expensive rods standing upright in plastic tubes mounted to the front bumper. The four-wheel-drive vehicle had oversized all-terrain tires and had, in fact, been used frequently for surf fishing jaunts by its owner, D.J. Arguillio, brother-in-law to Montgomery Davis. Tonight it was wearing a different plate, though.

Davis was driving. He had a stainless Bodyguard Air-weight .38 Special in a soft oiled-leather shoulder holster under his black windbreaker. With only a five-round cylinder and a two-inch barrel it was strictly for close-up. It had a shrouded hammer that would not snag if you had to get the gun out fast. He favored revolvers because, although they tended to be inherently loud and could not be effectively silenced, they left no brass behind. You didn’t have to rack a slide back to chamber the first round and cock it like with most autos, either, and it never jammed like a lot of the autos could. Just snatch it out and pull the trigger.

Winston was in the front passenger seat wearing voluminous jeans, a red plaid flannel shirt, and a dark blue windbreaker. He was left-handed. He had a compact blued-steel nine millimeter Smith auto that fired twelve rounds and had an ambidextrous external safety. It was in its nylon clip-on belt holster, with an extra magazine in an attached pocket, slid under the seat now because it made him uncomfortable to wear it. There was a silencer for it in his suitcase. He was looking idly out the side window into the passing glare of Newark Airport. The bright landing lights of three huge airliners were spaced out maybe two minutes apart floating down the glowing night sky. Four big jets were single-file on a taxiway awaiting takeoff clearances, their tall tails lit up like billboards.

Donny was in the back seat studying a North Carolina map with a Mini-Maglite. He was of average height and thin with a blond military buzz cut. He wore desert fatigues. All of his gear was behind the backseat in a black leather sports bag, along with their suitcases, a yellow plastic tackle box, and a metal tool box. Wrapped in an old blanket there was a stubby Heckler and Koch MP5 SD2 submachine gun with a fixed butt stock and a built-on silencer, with two 30-round box magazines full of 9mm Parabellum.

Donny was twenty-nine but he spoke in a little-kid voice that irritated Winston. He said, “How about we stop for coffee?”

“All right,” Davis said. “After we get on the turnpike I think there’s a service area not far along. Past Rahway. We could use gas anyway. We’ll talk there. I want to spread out the map.”

“There are some things I don’t like about this setup,” Donny said.

Davis said, “We’ll talk at the service area.”

“The first thing I don’t like it’s an island and there’s no bridges.”

“You hear the man?” Winston said laconically, still looking out the side window. “Shut the fuck up.”

At the service area Davis parked under a light close to the fast food restaurant. There weren’t many other cars in the lot. He got a ten by thirteen manila envelope out of his suitcase and told Donny to bring the North Carolina map. Inside he pointed to a booth well away from the few other people, near a window. He told Donny to go get the coffees and some donuts or whatever else looked fresh. When he got back Davis spread out the eastern three folds of the North Carolina map and used his finger to trace the highway.

He spoke in a lowered voice. “We’ll take I-95 all the way down here to Rocky Mount, then go east on sixty-four, about a hundred and twenty miles to Roanoke Island and on over to the islands. There’s only one road, route twelve south. At Hatteras, maybe sixty miles down, there’s a free ferry over to Ocracoke. Then it’s fourteen miles to the town at the bottom end of the island. The town and the island have the same name. Once we’re on the island there are three ways off. About every three hours there’s a toll ferry out of the town harbor southwest to Cedar Island here, a two-hour-and-fifteen-minute run. There’s another toll ferry from the harbor three times a day east over to Swan Quarter on the mainland. A two-and-a-half-hour run. Last ferries leave from the harbor at five-thirty in the afternoon. The other way is back over on the Hatteras ferry at the north end of the island, only a forty-minute run and it’s free. No ticket people to deal with and probably more cars, so we’re less likely to be remembered on that one. Last one leaves seven-thirty at night. Then nothing leaves until five in the morning. The schedules are in here.” He tapped a big finger on the manila envelope, which bore a label from the North Carolina Division Of Travel and Tourism. “I’ve got a room reserved two nights at a place called the Pony Island under George Harvey, paid up with a money order, in case we get stuck outside the ferry schedules. It’s possible they could seal off the island by shutting down the ferries, but there’s no law of any kind on the island, just a few Coast Guard people.”

He folded up the state map and drew another small map out of the packet in the manila envelope. It was of Ocracoke Island and the village. He spread it out. “The town is grouped around the harbor pretty much. Airstrip’s about a mile from the town center. He lives right there, on Teach’s Lane. There’s a picture of him here in the envelope. Strake had it. It was taken at some party in Vancouver. There’s another recent shot in a newspaper clipping. He’s using the name Sam Bass. Strake found out he drives an old Jeep Wrangler; the plate number’s in here. I want you both to study it all—the pictures, the notes, the layout, the ferry schedules. You’ve got time. We won’t be there until at least late afternoon. So get it all in your heads.”

Winston nodded and took a sip of his coffee, which was so hot it scalded his upper lip. It smelled like battery acid and tasted like something worse, like electrically-burned plastic. “There oughtta be a fuckin’ law,” he said.

“What?” Davis said.

“This coffee’s poison.”

Donny said, “I don’t like the part about drawing it out. This is a small town of what, how many people?”

“About six hundred and fifty,” Davis said. “But there’ll be a lot of surf fishermen on the island right now, too. A lot of strangers.”

“Okay, this is good cover we’ve got with the fishing thing. But it’s still just a small town. Everybody knows everybody. We take too long at it somebody finds out and calls the law. Maybe they come in a chopper. It’s no damned place to get stuck, out there. I say we go in, do it quick and quiet, and get out.”

“We’ll have to see how it plays,” Davis said.

“Another thing, Strake’s not paying all that much,” Donny said in his little kid voice. “You said fifteen, right?”

“That’s right,” Davis said. “Five each when it’s done. He pays me. I pay you.”

“There’s a thing we could do,” Donny said thoughtfully. “That’s your brother-in-law’s tool kit in the back?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I’ve got a small pair of wire strippers and they might work but better would be a pair of side cutters. I’ll take a look in the tool kit. We do the job, then take off a finger. With the cutters it’s just a quick clip.”

Winston raised a thick black eyebrow and said, “You want like a fuckin’ souvenir?”

“We put the finger in a clear Ziploc bag I’ve got. Easy to get rid of any time if we have to. Don’t get any prints on it. Just throw it out the car window with a paper towel.. We bring it back to Strake. Tell him we took a few fingers off before we did the job. The guy begged and screamed his head off and like that. Strake sees the finger, he’ll believe it.”

Winston said, “Why?”

“Because he wants to,” Donny said.

Winston said, “They teach you this in the damn Marines?”

“No, but they taught me a lot of ways to kill a man. No matter his size.”

Winston tensed and sat a little straighter, leveling an unblinking pit bull glare at Donny.

“All right, that’s enough,” Davis said. “Let’s get some gas and get back on the road.”

12

A
T ONE-THIRTY ON THAT FRIDAY SAM TOOK A BREAK
from hanging more sheetrock in a bedroom and hand-sanding the joints and screw head depressions in the living room that he’d compounded the day before. He wore a fine coating of white dust everywhere except around his mouth and nose where the protective mask had been. He dusted himself off as best he could and rode the bike over to the Burger Box to order a Monster with homemade hot relish and a quarter-inch-thick slice of Vidalia onion on it, along with an old-fashioned vanilla milkshake, which he carried to the picnic table outside where an old man was polishing off a cheeseburger.

“Hello, Pops,” Sam said, sitting down on the other side of the table.

“Sam. Ain’t this day a doozy?”

“Sure is that.”

“These Yankees here sure know how to fry up a burger, you know?”

“Tell me about it,” Sam said, and took a good-sized crescent out of the Monster, enjoying the crunch of the sweet onion and the tongue-sting of the relish.

The sunshine felt clean and good. Although it was getting chilly in the nights, the temperature during the days was holding unseasonably warm and several of the people Sam had seen this day seemed to be smiling slightly to themselves and had a lift in their steps.

The old man finished up, shook his head once, and said, “Yessir.” He lobbed the balled-up wrapper neatly into a bright red trash can over by the small garish building, got up with his Coke can, and gave Sam a grin that lacked a few teeth. “Guess I’ll go home, get drunk, beat up one a my girlfriends, an’ kick the dog. Y’all take care, Sam.”

“Hey, you too, Pops.”

Sam sat at the table for a time after he had eaten, appreciating the random ethereal mares’ tails way off to the west and probably five miles up. At that altitude they’d be laceworks of powder-ice crystals. He thought about how it might go meeting Valerie’s people up in the Smokies and about when and how he was going to tell her about himself.

The silver Blazer moved south on I-95 with the cruise control set five miles an hour above the limit, just now crossing the line from Virginia into North Carolina. Davis had his driver’s side window down. He noticed the high-up clouds way off to the left looking like somebody who didn’t know crap about painting had taken a barn brush to it. Donny was in the back seat reading a war paperback.

“I think maybe I’ve seen him,” Winston said. He was holding up the newspaper clipping, trying to keep it from fluttering, and studying the image intently. “I don’t know, maybe one time in Miami. Wasn’t many times I was around where Strake and the others like you were. But I think maybe I’ve seen this guy.”

“Then you better watch it when we get there,” Davis said, “because he may remember you. Stay in the car or in the room mostly, until we’re ready to make a move. If he gets one look at me he’ll be gone. He’ll know what I’m here for. If he gets away we’re not likely to find him again.”

“It may be he’s home with his feet up,” Donny said. “We just go in there and do him quick and quiet. Get out. That would be the best.”

From experience Davis knew these things seldom went as you hoped. Never quite the way you tried to plan it. “Or he could be going to a barbecue tonight with friends. Or he could be flying a charter someplace. Not even on the island. We’ll have to see how it plays.”

Donny said, “How about we get something to eat?”

“All right,” Davis said. “We’ve got time. I’d just as soon not get on the island until about dark, anyway.”

Sam was absorbed with the sheetrock work as the day ticked on. By late afternoon he had only three sheets left to hang in the back bedroom and he took a break to drink a warm Coke. He didn’t plan to be at Valerie’s until seven-thirty so there was plenty of time to put up the sheets and get a coat of compound on them and on the rest of what he’d hung that day if he kept his nose to it. He stretched his back muscles, picked up one if the heavy sheets, lined it up against the studs, and held it with his knee while he drove the first few of the screws with the cordless driver.

The silver Blazer was in a line of cars that had rolled off of the Hatteras ferry. After the nearly die-straight drive down Ocracoke as the sunset glow was beginning to fade to the west, Davis spotted the shadowed tails of light planes lined up, just showing above some dunes alongside a broad right-hand bend in the road. He put on the signal, slowed, and pulled off onto the short access road near the strip in the fast-gathering darkness. Nobody else was there. He stopped the Blazer beside the shelter and let it idle, looking around in the headlight glare. Six light planes were chained down on a small apron, three of them with high wings, one of the low-wing jobs a small twin-engine. The open-walled shelter had benches around the inside. A pay phone in one corner. A rutted cut through the dunes led out onto the dark beach. An orange wind sock twitched in a fitful breeze.

Looking over the planes Winston said, “Which one of them is his?”

“No way to tell,” Davis said. “Maybe none of them. Maybe a couple. But probably just one. Stay put. I want to know if that pay phone works.” He could feel himself focusing in now, his senses sharpening, a kind of cold familiar clarity taking over. He left the Blazer idling with just the parking lights on and got out. He consulted a small pocket pad, wrapped three layers of handkerchief over the mouthpiece to help alter his voice, and dialed the number he’d been given earlier by information for Sam Bass, thinking
make sure he’s alone, set it up to meet at his place to talk about a charter, then just go in there and do it.
He let it ring nine times before hanging up. Then he dialed the number for the cell phone that was in a console pocket in the car, to be sure it worked. Winston answered it.

“Okay,” Davis said.

Back in the Blazer he said, “Donny, you’ll go get the room key but we’ll leave everything in the car for now. Don’t give them a plate number, of course. We’ll try not to even let them see the car. I’ll go in, mess up the bed, make it look like somebody stayed in there in case we don’t wind up spending the night. I’ll leave it clean, no prints, and leave the key inside with the door unlocked or wedged a little. That way we can either go back to it if we have to or just leave it like it is. There’s no answer at his house, but we’ll make a run by there to take a look at the layout. Maybe he’ll be home by then. If not, Donny, then you can go in one or two of the stores. Maybe he’s got business cards out with a beeper number, or a flyer that shows a shot of his plane. We know which one it is we can disable it.”

“Or maybe plant a charge in it,” Donny said. “I could do that. Then we catch the next ferry.”

“No. We’re here for him, not for any of his customers. We can slash a tire on it.”

Winston loosened his belt a notch, slid his auto holster out from under the seat, pulled the gun out and checked it for a chambered round, put it back in the holster, and arched back in his seat, grunting, to clip the holster inside his belt on the right side. The jacket would cover what little of it showed. When they stopped at the motel he would get the silencer from his suitcase and carry it in his zippered right jacket pocket.

He pulled a short fat cigar out of his shirt pocket, stripped the wrapper off and dropped that out the window, and stuck it in his mouth, leaving it unlit.

As Davis drove into the outskirts of the village Donny said, “Yeah, a real hick town.” He reached back over the seat and unzipped his leather bag. He took out a big Model 226 Sig Sauer and screwed a silencer onto it. Checked that it was ready to go. Put it on the seat beside him under a towel. Fifteen rounds of nine millimeter Parabellum. Enough firepower right there to kill half a dozen assholes, even if you missed a lot.

Which he did not.