Last Call for the Living (16 page)

“He is a well-traveled young man. Made a good living selling scores. Terminal Island. Then Victorville. Now he's in Pelican Bay on an armed robbery beef. A pretty impressive résumé. He earned his way inside, that's for sure.”

Izuarita reached for the box of tissues, her breathing a little erratic after the forced cry. She dabbed at the corners of each eye and blew her nose.

“And you completely lost track of him?” Crews said.

“I had no idea.”

Crews opened the manila folder. Inside was a facsimile of a crudely drawn layout of the North Georgia Savings & Loan. A girly script identified the sketch:
Branch #26044.
She'd used colored pencils to highlight the camera positions, the location of the vault, coin lockers and cash drawers. Notes were scribbled at the bottom of the diagram. Details of cash limits and paint packs, recorded money and shipment schedules.

Crews gave Izuarita a minute.

“Recognize that?” she said.

The girl shook her head, her eyes shifting nervously back and forth.

“It was found in Joey Da Silva's—excuse me—Jorge Sandoval's cell during a random toss. Pieces of the copy your brother made were found in the excrement of another inmate, Brann Kelliher, about five hundred miles away. Some unfortunate CO had to pick through the shit with a pair of tweezers. Kelliher … that name ring a bell?”

“No.”

Crews slapped several mug shots down on the table, causing Izuarita to jump in her chair. One man had porcine features, large, round eyes, an unkempt beard. There was a tattoo below the Adam's apple. The other man was younger, white, his mouth largely hidden behind a wad of goatee. Same tattoo of a lightning bolt on his neck.

Izuarita studied the mug shots with a glassy expression. She seemed apprehensive, as if fearing the photos were about to grunt and squeal. Crews pointed at the younger of the two men.

“How about a man named Hicklin?”

“No,” Izuarita said.

“Leonard Lipscomb?”

“No.”

“That's the first time you've told the fucking truth today,” Crews said.

Izuarita looked like the firstborn at a puppy mill.

“
What
is going on?”

“Your brother is mixed up with some bad, bad men. And now he's mixed
you
up in the scheme. You know about La Eme? Know about the Aryan Brotherhood?”

Izuarita kept shaking her head, but not in denial.

“I think I need a lawyer now,” she said, in a voice barely above a whimper.

“
Por supuesto, mija.
For goddamn sure.”

*   *   *

According to Kalamity
Bibb's map the path they wanted was off to the left. The road was dusty, a never-ending series of switchbacks as they headed up the mountain. Flock tooled the pickup between growths of sumac as the beginnings of a great forest took shape. The path narrowed, littered with rocks, fallen limbs, the Chevy bouncing and skidding, Flock hooting at every big bump in the road.

Lipscomb exited the truck first and eyed the terrain, a vista of valleys, the big river and beyond, a soft blue haze on rounded peaks of a supernal green. Dusk was upon them. Flock half-expected Lipscomb to produce a bow and arrow and disappear into the brush. Instead they had sidearms and shotguns. He felt something crawl behind an ear and flicked a finger at it.

Lipscomb studied the old map, part of a brochure for a company that sold custom-built cabins, and looked up toward a thick wooded path to the north. Without a word he started walking. Flock shrugged and followed.

Thirty yards in he turned for a look back. The pickup was barely visible. Far off Flock heard the echoing crack of a rifle, followed by the flutter of birds spooked from their nests. He looked up at the treetops as if he were under siege.

A little later they came upon a deer's carcass. A doe, dead maybe three days, lay on its side, a ghost of gnats marking the spot. Beetles crawled from the doe's puffy belly. Maggots pulsated in the swollen anus. Lipscomb knelt to inspect the animal, swatting at flies. Flock kept his distance, preferring the sharp citric odor of the pine needles to that of decay.

“Don't see an entry wound,” Lipscomb said. “Damn thing just might have died.”

He said this as if it pleased him greatly. He favored Flock with a quick smile.

“People don't think deer die unless some fat ass up in a stand hammers them with a Winchester.”

“Bet that cat didn't think it was gon' die the way it did,” Flock said.

“Had eight lives prior to consider that.”

Flock covered his nose and nodded at the deer carcass, said, “Damn thing stinks, Preacher.”

“You think?”

“Well, Christ, yeah, I think so.”

Lipscomb only grinned, shaking his head as if he couldn't disagree more.

Ten minutes later they came upon a granite monolith covered with fungus. Hairy cocoons peppered the crevices. Lipscomb and Flock skirted the rock, into more woods beyond as the land climbed steeply.

Lipscomb paused to reference Kalamity's directions. The sun flickered through the latticework canopy. Fireflies were alight in all directions. For a while Flock walked with his hand on the grip of his holstered weapon.

They continued up the mountain.

The sun was setting. The air grew cooler, easier to breathe. They negotiated rocky ledges, decaying windfalls, hiking in silence. Watching where he walked, Flock almost ran into Lipscomb, surprised to find he had suddenly stopped, his attention twenty yards west where a path revealed itself. Just off the path a camouflage tarp lay on the ground. Tire tracks.

“What about it?” Flock said.

“Could be where our brother parked his vehicle.”

“Don't look like that path goes nowhere,” Flock said, dropping his hand to the butt of his gun again.

“Looks like it winds down to the other side.”

“Hicklin?”

Lipscomb only shook his head.

They walked parallel to a clearing, stopping after a moment to catch their breath. Lipscomb asked for a cigarette. The light was hazy, waning, its replacement a quarter moon rising in the east. Long shadows made it difficult to see. The woods became more animated with nocturnal insects and small animals. Flock watched Lipscomb finger the safety near the trigger guard of his shotgun.

“What we gon' do, Preacher?”

“You just follow my lead.”

“You think he's alone way up here?”

“He ain't alone. It's him and a hundred fifty thousand of our friends.”

“We gonna kill him or just try and talk to him?”

“His call,” Lipscomb said.

Two shadows moved a quarter mile away where a ridge leveled off. Lipscomb knelt behind a windfall, pulling Flock down with him. Flock wasn't sure what his partner had seen.

But after a moment two figures appeared and disappeared between the trunks of twin hickory trees. Lipscomb rose slowly and signaled with hand motions for Flock to flank him at twenty paces. They crept up the slope. A rickety roofline came into view. The barest outline of a cottage, the clapboard illuminated by the moon.

Nightfall.

The only sound apparitions converging on each other.

The hunted unaware of the hunters.

*   *   *

With the rope
still around his neck Charlie slept on the couch, dreaming that he walked across a field with a homemade ignition system, one he'd designed from scratch.

Sunset. Rose-colored light. He turned at the sound of singing. There was a choir engaged in a hypnotic cadence, the members swaying in their robes as if moved by a breeze. An all-black choir no less, like the ones he sometimes saw on Sunday morning television. Big churches in Atlanta or Harlem. They looked upon Charlie kindly. The light intensified and he stared up at the sky at a cascade of shroud lines. The canopies of a thousand parachutes pulled earthward by gravity.

The fever dream intensified. The setting sun was blanketed by the parachutes. Hundreds, if not thousands, of payloads. They struck the dusty field in a crashing wave, the parachutes undulating like jellyfish. The voices of the choir soared. They began to clap a downbeat in unison, singing: “When my soul needs manna from above but where do I go…?”

Charlie's eyelids fluttered. A forceful tug woke him from the dream.

“Wake up, Coma.”

He opened his eyes. Hummingbird sat next to him, holding the end of the rope. Her breasts were visible through a thin, sweat-stained cotton tank top. A look of sardonic amusement on her face.

He looked around groggily, wiping crust from his eyes. Hicklin was gone, along with the guns and duffel bags.

Hummingbird answered Charlie's question before he could speak.

“He done left,” she said. “Not sure when he'll be back. Be honest with you, I don't know if he'll be back at all.”

“Where are we going?”

“I don't know, honey. Just somewheres that ain't here.”

She offered him an RC Cola with a straw. Charlie sucked the soda down. When he finished, Hummingbird removed the rope from around his neck. She'd wet a paper towel and took to wiping his face.

They sat for a moment in silence. Hummingbird looked around the empty cottage, her eyes lighting up as if a notion had just struck.

She went to the nearest window and tore down the newspaper. Late-afternoon light poured into the living room. She was so excited she clapped her hands and motioned for Charlie to help her with the rest of the windows. It wasn't long before the once gloomy, smoke-filled room was flush with amber sunlight.

“I know what we can do.”

She held out a hand. Charlie hesitated.

“Where are we going?” he said.

“Watch the sunset.”

“I could just go.”

“Just watch the sunset with me
first,
” she said, a sadness in her eyes.

She helped Charlie off the couch. He touched two fingertips to his hairline where his skin felt tender as a ripe plum.

“My, my, Coma. My handsome man.”

She ran a hand through his hair, grooming him as if there could be a hairstyle somewhere in Charlie's shock of blond hair—now the color of bread crust from dirt and grease. An urge struck to grab her own frail neck, but Hummingbird turned and graced him with a smile, then raised the palm of her hand and blew him a kiss.

Charlie's expression didn't change, as if the muscles in his face were too fatigued to react. But the gesture sparked some strange warmth within him.

*   *   *

They walked by
a patch of stunted, twisted pitch pines. Red wasps cruised nearby.

“My daddy used to take me and my big sister up here,” she told him. “You got any family, Coma?”

“Just my mom.”

“Just a momma? But ain't we your family, too?”

Charlie said nothing. There were bats on the wing above them, flitting from tree to tree. Somewhere a hairy woodpecker drummed on a dead limb. He looked at his bare feet, dirty and spotted with bites. One pinky toe had bled badly. The nail not attached anymore.

Hummingbird stopped in shadow. The air there was cool and sweet, earthy. She hustled a cigarette from a pack and lit it, then offered it to Charlie. He shook his head.

“What about Hicklin?” he said.

“Let's not worry 'bout that now.”

*   *   *

About a half
mile from the cottage they reached a stream guarded by steep banks. Hummingbird eventually stopped to rest on a slab of granite, take in the view. Charlie sat down next to her. He could hear the sound of a nearby waterfall. Far below them there was a river the color of old pennies, a bluish haze on the mountains to the east.

After a while she reached for his hand and brought it to her lips. Charlie pretended not to notice. He'd sighted what looked like a hiking path, slashing through the hollow down the mountain. Darkness was almost upon them. He planned to run.
Thirty more seconds,
he calculated. Hummingbird leaned over and kissed him on the cheek.

“We friends, ain't we, Coma?” she said.

He pulled back to look at her. She only smiled, her eyes welling with tears. She pushed him gently away.

“You go on now.”

He focused on the stream below, glimmering with the last light of dusk. A lizard in repose on a rock suddenly darted away.

By then two men were upon them, pulling them apart.

Hummingbird shouted Charlie's name.

He shouted hers.

And they both screamed for Hicklin.

*   *   *

Lucy felt it
start like some gradual rising from her insides. The screws tightening. An upheaval. She felt the tautness of her muscles down there. With her belly as big as it was she knew it was starting. But she didn't cry or holler. She ambled down the hall and rapped on the door of the bedroom. Her aunt appeared, wearing a bathrobe, smoking a cigarette, her hair still wet from the shower. Lucy's aunt smiled. Rubbed her hands over her niece's tummy.

Lucy's water broke. The contractions came long and hard. As if a bear were trying to break free from between her legs. By then she was at the clinic with her aunt. The doctor wore wire-rim eyeglasses. Had a bushy mustache. He held Lucy's hand and told her she was doing a fine job. She could feel her teeth grinding together and could do nothing to stop it.

Her aunt smoked one cigarette after another. Nurses tried to shoo her off, but she wouldn't budge. It started to rain outside. Summer storm. A soft patter against the roof of the clinic. Percussive. Like brushes on a jazz snare. The baby roiled the parts between Lucy's legs. She howled in pain.

Lucy knew if it was a boy she'd name him Charles. But she didn't expect Charlie to live. She had moved in with her aunt. Six months pregnant. Broke. A stiff back. Lousy mood. Her aunt had been the first to say the word “deformed.” Lucy cursed him then. The father. She was sure he was the father. She swore to never say his name again.