Medusa (20 page)

I was all that stood in his way, now.

Chapter 26

Granny Patreaux was angry. Tiller sat on the porch, slightly dazed, breathing from the exertion of his fight with Bertrand. He had his gun on Granny, however, and his hand was steady. The old woman glared malevolently at him. Her accented voice creaked harshly in the summer night.
 

“You done killed my big dumb Bertrand. Culver Ray will kill you for that, you wiry-haired
fils d’une chienne
. Or my big lovely Samson. If he gets his hands on you, you’re done for. What are you gonna do, shoot an old lady? I can’t even get out of this here chair, you cowardly bastard, pointing that gun at an old lady like your momma hadn’t raised you.”
 

“Where’s Samson Fain, Granny?”
 

“Samson is my pet, the best one ever to come down the pike. Yes, sir. He come up with new uses for this poor old funhouse. I didn’t have the money to get her going again, but he said, ‘Granny don’t worry, all we need is some paint for some new signs and we’ll sure enough get some money a-flowing in here.’”
 

In the Bayou night there were sirens now, and Tiller gave a heavy sigh of relief. Whatever was happening out here was almost over.
 

“You mean you murdered people and robbed them.”
 

“No account out-of-town people, Yankees and Hoosiers thinking they’re better than everybody, come down here waving their damn money around, thinking they can buy everything.”
 

“Granny.”
 

“You ain’t no better than me, sitting there judging me with your damn pistol pointing at an old lady.”
 

“Granny Patreaux.”
 

The old serpent’s eyes turned on Tiller at last, as though she had only just noticed him sitting there.
 

“What?”
 

“You are one crazy old bitch. Now please shut up, because I just shot that poor bastard lying over there, and you made me do it. And the more you talk, the more I’m sitting here thinking that maybe I shot the wrong person, or at least one too few.”
 

The old lips trembled, but Granny Patreaux fell silent.
 

In the darkness, now, Tiller could catch blue and red flickers of light from the trees across the swamp. The police were here. Tiller felt like cheering. Bishop and Burns had somehow divined the whereabouts of Roland and himself. Tiller hoped that Fain was still somewhere close by. He wondered at that moment where Roland was, and if he had located Fain before it was too late.

Chapter 27

I heard light footsteps approaching the booth next to the one I was hiding behind.
 

Culver Ray. Samson was using his lithe henchman as his hound dog, knowing he was the stealthier of the two. I waited for him. Culver Ray came around the corner and froze, then he looked up at me and grinned, showing his crooked, yellowish-green teeth.
 

“You think ah’m scared of you? Scared to die? I don’t care if I die. Hell, to me it’s just another way of gettin’ off. Shit, mister, go ahead, I’ll lick your shoes while you shoot me.”
 

The skinny man cackled and then suddenly he tried his favorite trick again, sweeping for my feet with his own. I aimed for the middle of his body and kicked with all my strength, bringing my foot up hard. Culver Ray grunted, but he had already twisted his body so that the full force of my kick did not find him.
 

He reached into his back pocket, and produced a long-bladed knife. I drew my .45 and fired point-blank. The bullet struck the smaller man in the torso, and moved him another pace away. Culver Ray flattened out on the pavement, spread-eagle. He didn’t move again. I moved cautiously toward him, and saw that the knife lay on the deck near his hand.
 

With a groan, Culver Ray rolled over on his side, and scratched feebly at the deck, searching for his knife. To my amazement, he found it and got slowly to his feet. He was tough, but I am a strong man and my shot had done some real damage.
 

Culver Ray tried artlessly to stab down with the knife, tried to use his weight and strength to get the knife into me. I catch the arm, but using both hands now, he pushes down with all his strength and the knife is suddenly close to my face, like the knife of the hunted man who had so long ago given me the scar that I must wear forever on my face. With a fierce scream, I summon the strength to throw him away from me, and the two of us crash down as one on the creaking old boards.
 

I got shakily to my feet, my gasps shake the air. Beneath me the black water thrashes, because the creatures in the water smell death and are hungry for what they know that smell means for them.
 

I steadied myself against the wood railing and took a deep breath. Rage was burning my fatigue away. The police were close, I knew. I wondered where Tiller was, if he knew Mafalda was dead, that Corsack and his wife were dead, and that Fain was still alive and trying to get away.
 

I looked down at the man at my feet. Culver Ray was dead as disco, dead as Julius Caesar, dead as the two-dollar haircut, and that suited me just fine. I left him there. I had dropped my gun, and I picked it up now and holstered it.

There was one more man that needed killing—a big, evil, dangerous man. He had to be stopped, any way that I could do it.

“Fain!” I yelled, and my voice bounced off the warped and fading walls. I felt the rage swell inside me, and I yelled that much louder, “Fain! I’m coming for you!”

Chapter 28

I moved toward the water. Fain had untied the boat, and stood there on the dock, the rope still in his hands. The boat’s motor was idling. Fain smiled at me, as I pulled my gun and approached.

Casually, confidently, like he was in no hurry, Fain spoke. “So, here we are again,” he said.

We both heard sounds from the funhouse. Lights played through the windows of the old building. Shouts floated over the water. The police, and lots of them.
 

“The police are moving in, Fain,” I said. “They’ll be coming down here, two minutes, tops. Your buddy Culver Ray is worm food. You’ve had it.”
 

Fain shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. Never underestimate the stupidity of the local constabulary. Or my own talents.” The big man shrugged, as if unconcerned with all that was going on around him. “You think that I’m the living embodiment of evil don’t you, Longville? I’m not, not even close. I just wanted to sell that heroin to the Cubans or the Haitians or whoever in the hell else wanted it, and get the out of here, to the Caribbean, South America, Easter Fucking Island, anywhere far, far from here.”
 

“Heroin smuggling,” I snarled. “You’d deserve to die, if that’s
all
you had done, Fain, but you and I both know you’ve done far worse than that.”
 

Fain shrugged again and suddenly lunged, and he moved fast, faster than most men half his size could move, and he caught me with a blow that landed in my midsection and knocked the wind immediately from both of my lungs. My gun left my grasp, and skittered away on the planking. Fain was stronger than he was quick. He was faster and stronger by far than the younger, slighter man who had menaced me at the Blue Bayou.
 

I fell back on the planking. Through the slits between the boards, I could see the silver moonlight on the black water. Something moved restlessly down there, swilling around beneath the swampy surface. Desperately, I rolled to the side, as Fain brought his foot down with tremendous force where my head had just been.
 

Groggily, as quickly as I could manage, I came to my feet, still gasping to get my breath.
 

Come on, you bastard!
 

Fain threw a wild punch that glanced off the left side of my face. Still, it was like an angry ten-year old had hit me with a baseball bat.
 

I am a big man who hits the gym at least three times a week, but Fain’s strength was of some innate kind, born with him like the strength a bull has, and whenever he grew enraged that strength seemed to double, even triple. I had fought him before, and if anything, he seemed even stronger now.
 

I staggered and ran a few steps down the pier. I ducked under an awning. Fain was after me immediately. It was an old awning held up by steel struts. One of them was loose, no more than a length of pipe painted a thick coat of blue paint. We were in the shadows now. I kicked hard at Fain’s legs, connected, and drew a grunt from the bigger man.
 

I grimaced and howled like an animal in the black bayou night. With all my might, I grabbed the steel strut and pulled. One end almost came loose. I pulled hard at the old metal pipe again. Fain grabbed wildly at me, and I shouldered him away, desperately.
 

With all of my remaining strength, I pulled with a painful lurch that sent a searing pain through my back and shoulders. The length of metal came loose, an aged, rusty length of steel, but a piece of steel nonetheless, and I used the momentum of my pull, even as it came loose, to strike Fain a hard blow across the forehead. He backed up a step, and shook his head, I went for him, swinging my new weapon from side to side, and struck him another blow, harder than the first. Another step, and another swing. Whap, as the singing length of pipe connected. Another. And another. And then, stop.
 

Fain had reached out and grasped the metal pipe himself with both hands. He retreated backward, and I followed him, both of us grasping an end of the only weapon in the world. I saw now in the pale moonlight that some screws had come away with the end of the pipe, and that they had gouged deep furrows in the big man’s face. Blood streamed down both of his cheeks, and one of his eyes was already half-closed.
 

Fain grunted and tried to pull the pipe-turned-club away from me. I gritted my teeth and hung on with both hands. So this is what it comes down to, I thought bitterly. One man runs and one man chases, and against all odds the pursuer catches up to the pursued, and the two of them end up on some squalid pier in some hellish place fighting over a thirty-year old piece of rusty pipe, and the winner gets to kill the loser with it.
 

Fain twisted hard to the right with his ox-like strength, trying to wrestle the weapon from my grasp. I twisted against him, to the left, with my own, much lesser, strength. The planks groaned beneath us, and wild things hissed in the water below. We might have been friends, out in the back yard, embarrassing our wives and children, the steaks burning on the grill, seeing who was the tougher man, college ten years behind us, a few too many beers past discretion. Just a friendly little test of strength.
 

But we weren’t anything like that. We were two men who hated each other, two men who wanted to kill each other, two men who were trying desperately to do just that, even now, and the first one to let go of that sorry ass piece of prehistoric pipe was for damn sure going to die.
 

“Mafalda’s dead, by the way.” Fain leered at Roland as he revealed this little tidbit.
 

“Liar,” I said through gritted teeth.
 

“Oh, no, no. It’s quite true. If Culver Ray was still with us, he could tell you. Earlier this evening, he paid her a little visit. Granny was quite displeased with her for leading you and your friend Tiller to us. We’ve been doing business quietly out here for years. One doesn’t piss Granny off, you see. She’s an evil old bitch.”
 

“Mafalda is her granddaughter.”
 

“
Was
her granddaughter. Granny put two husbands and Mafalda’s mother out there in the swamps. That’s right. The alligators eat well around here, my friend. Hear them moving around down there in the water? After I dispose of you, That’s where I am going to put you, along with our dear friend Corsack, his wife, and good old Culver Ray. And, just before I blow town, I think I’ll toss old Granny herself in there, just for good measure. Can’t have the old girl talking to the police, now, can I?”
 

Fain let go of the pipe with one hand now, and tried to grab my arm. He grasped wildly at me, trying hard to get a grip on me and bring me to the ground so that he could use his far greater mass and strength to his advantage.
 

I knew that if he got me on the ground, I was a dead man.
 

Fain bore down on me, down and back, and I let go of the pipe myself, and grabbed hard at his thick neck. It was like trying to choke a Brahma bull. I squeezed with all of my remaining strength and Fain thrashed his neck from side to side to throw off my grasp. I brought my knee up as hard as possible into his groin and twisted suddenly away. Fain went down on one knee and wheezed.
 

I scrambled to pick the weapon up from the ground as Fain roared once again to life, and as I lifted the rusty pipe, he ran forward, and the metal pipe went into his midsection like a surgeon’s needle.