Nature of the Game (45 page)

At first the car was just a shimmer on the horizon at the end of the long highway, a dark core skimming out of a silver lake where the sky curved to touch the earth.

“Nora,” whispered Jud softly.

“Yeah, hon?” she answered from the till where she was counting the lunch take. Smoke curled up from her ashtray.

Carmen was in the back, watching TV. Except for the three of them, the café was empty that afternoon.

The black car emerged out of the mirage. Came closer. Closer.

“Did you want something?” said Nora.

Her Jeep was parked by her house. If he made her run
now
, if Carmen waddled out the kitchen as fast as she could, if there was no trouble with the Jeep's keys or the starter, Nora might make it. Carmen, too. If he stayed behind. For the black car.

In his trailer, a blue airline shoulder bag now held Jud's gun and the money he'd stolen in L.A. so long/so short a time ago, plus the cash Nora had paid him. The blue bag hung on a hook just inside the trailer door. If they all ran
now
, they could probably make it
before
.

The black car was only a half mile away.

Jud's hands trembled over the apron he wore for dishwashing; his guts churned. Maybe it was just demons taunting him.

Nora shut the till. “What do you see out there?”

Too late
. The black car slowed down to forty, thirty miles per hour, cruised along the edge of the café parking lot.

Cruised past it: stayed on the highway, rolled right on by Nora's, right past the telephone booth on the side of the road. The black car picked up speed and roared down the highway, out of sight around a curve on the flat tumbleweed horizon.

Jud laughed out loud.

“What's so funny?” said Nora, joining him at the window, looking out.

Two dirty American sedans, one right after the other, whizzed by the café in the black car's wake.

“Looks like we lost some business.” Jud laughed again.

“You got a peculiar sense of funny,” she told him.

“Yeah,” he said, turning to her, wanting to kiss her.

Her brow wrinkled, but she smiled back, said, “What?”

He just shook his head, watched her. She blushed, turned her eyes to the outside.

“Nope,” she said, “looks like we're in luck.”

The black car had driven past, circled back. Tires crunched on the pavement in front of the café as it pulled up to the door. The engine shut off. Sunlight bouncing on the windshield made the driver inside a blur of light. The door opened.

And Dean stepped out. He wore a pale canvas duster and an ivory-toothed grin.

“This is for me,” Jud said. He stepped outside, leaving her to stare through the glass.

“You're not supposed to be here!” Jud yelled to Dean.

Dean raised his hands to the sky. “So sue me!” He jerked his thumb toward the pay phone. “You weren't answering.”

“Come around back,” said Jud.

A dirty Japanese sedan slowly rolled past on the highway; its driver watched the two men circle around back of the café.

As they headed toward Jud's trailer, Dean nodded to where they'd last seen Nora. “So how much is that doggy in the window?”

Jud threw a right jab at Dean's face—but Dean caught the punch.

Dean's eyes widened. “Hell, what's happened here?”

Sinking his weight, twisting his waist, Jud jerked his fist free of Dean's grasp.

“Time was, I'd have never seen that coming,” whispered Dean. “Time was, when you were the man and I was … Who was I?”

Then he laughed.

“I'll be damned,” he said. “I'll be damned.”

“What do you want?” Jud's hands trembled at his sides.

“What do I want?” Dean shook his head. “Well, right now—right
now
, I don't know.

“I came here 'specting to rock 'n' roll, just like before, you
the man
and me … But looks like the
old days
are dead.”

“I mean,” he said, “nice apron.

“Is this where you been all these years?” asked Dean. “Is this what happened to you?”

“Never mind me,” said Jud.

“Minding you is why I'm here. You called me: I was waiting for that call,
man
, waiting
years
. You dropped me like I was dog shit, then
you
call
me
, and it's all supposed to be okay, asshole buddies again. You say cover my tracks, bird-dog my trail, and you were right, there was a suit sniffing 'round after you—”

“Who?”

“—but Dean, he handled that, got the guy gone, no more looking-lawyer
bullshit
—”

“You didn't—”

“I did what Dean does.”

“You should have IDed him! Got back to me!”

“He got to
me
, Jack! Way I figure it, somebody popped your writer buddy's phone records and put Dean in the bull's-eye.”

There it is
, thought Jud. The step that had been haunting him, the trail he'd left from the pay phone that first night. And now Nick …

“Now what?” said Dean. “Now that you're whoever you are.”

“You know who I am,” said Jud.

“Maybe I do,” said Dean. “Maybe I do.”

“What do you want?”

“You owe me,” said Dean. “Your trouble bounced me out of L.A. You owe me for that. You owe me for what I did. You owe me for all that
waiting
.”

“I'll give you all the cash I got,” said Jud.

“You'll
give
me?” Dean laughed, a dry cackle. He whirled around in a circle, his coat swirling around him.

When he stopped, the smile he gave Jud was new.

“I'll get the money.” Jud deliberately turned, gave Dean his back, and headed toward the trailer door; toward the blue bag.

And Dean
pushed
him, both hands slamming into Jud's back, Jud sensing it
too late
to do more than stagger forward and crash into his closed trailer door.

“You're not the man anymore!” screamed Dean.

Pushing off the trailer door, Jud whirled around, hands arcing up for blocks, for snake strikes, balance shaky, and Dean …

Out of range, eyes wild and circling away from Jud's charge, Jud circling with him as Dean stepped back, hands blurring under the duster …

Swinging out a pump shotgun, its black bore seeing Jud.

“
FREEZE!
” yelled a man by the café. “
DROP THE GUN!
”

Dropping
, rolling in the dirt, earth and sky spinning for Jud. A tumbling upside-down image of a firing-stance man at the edge of the café; gun, sports jacket,
rolling
, a tall man with short hair.

Shotgun roars and buckshot slams into the back corner of Nora's Café as Jud scrambles toward the trailer door. Dean chambers another shell.

Wes whirls back around from the building's edge that caught the buckshot, snaps
two
from the Sig, close but
duck back quick …

Shotgun blast. Plaster flies off the café wall.

Inside
, Jud flops inside the aluminum trailer.

The blue bag, grabbing it, sliding the loop over his head as he dives deeper inside and
roaring buckshot
blows out the trailer window, glass shattering, curtain flying.

A pistol barks twice outside. Bullets slam into the right corner of Jud's trailer.

Dean's there
, he thought.
That's where he found cover
.

One way out, the trailer only has one way out.

Dean's around the corner to the right, he thought. Around the corner
all the way
. With a shotgun. And there's a stranger with a pistol hugging the café wall off to the left.

He could have shot us both
, thought Jud.
Didn't. Drew down on Dean
.

The shotgun and pistol roared. Another bullet slammed into the corner of Jud's trailer. He heard a
crack
. A jagged line zigzagged through the trailer's blue mirror. In the dim light, Jud saw his image, warped and in two halves.

“I won't die in a tin box,” he mumbled.

The short-barreled .38 had six rounds.

Enough
, he told himself.
Enough
.

Bullets slammed into the side of the trailer. The blue mirror crashed off the wall. The shotgun roared.

His ears rang with gunfire, his heart raced, and
think
, he had to think. Firefights. Alley in Madrid. Café in Tehran. Laos. Bong Sot. Grenades and rockets and don't let them overrun the wire, don't—No, down, stay down, back.
This time
, he said, breathing deep, hyperventilating.
Do this time
.

Think!

Give the stranger your back. He didn't shoot it once, maybe he won't again. Dean is the killer you know
.

Out the door
fast
, he thought. Zero the corner where Dean is, get out, get close. Lay down suppression fire. Count your rounds. Duck low and jump wide around the corner, then …

Then
, he thought.

Bullets crashed into his trailer and he heard Dean laugh.

On your feet, soldier
. He climbed off the floor. Held the gun in the two-handed grip he'd learned in the Secret Service, where they'd taught him to stand tall in a gunfight and take the bullet for the Man.

You aren't the man anymore
, Dean had said.

Shotgun roared.

Yes, I am, thought Jud, moving to the door.

Yes, I am!
And he kicked the door open …

Out
, sunlight
blinding
sunlight. Gunsmoke. Men yelling. Muffled woman's screams.
Pop!
Muzzle flash by the back of the café, bullet zinging past him,
muzzle flash
and
gun
and
bright white
threat: don't think don't aim don't die point and
fire
.

His .38 roared twice at the threat he hadn't anticipated.

Nora fell back against the café wall, the owner's pistol she'd fired at Dean dropping from her hand, twin red roses blooming on her white blouse.

Dead.

Jud knew she was dead as soon as he recognized her over his gunsight,
two rounds gone
. Knew it before she slid to the ground, eyes gazing in the bright sunlight.

The
rattle-rack
of a shotgun round being chambered to his right and he
didn't care, didn't matter
. A bullet
zinging
across his path
didn't matter
as he stumbled toward Nora.

“
Jud, drop!
” yelled Wes. He squeezed off a round behind the dazed man staggering across the killing zone.

Blood sprayed from Dean's shoulder and he dove out of sight behind the trailer as Wes changed ammunition clips.

Where'd Dean go!
thought Wes.

Jud, shuffling. Wes knew the look on his face, had seen it on a dazed sergeant, a man blown over the edge,
long gone
, not there, not in the battle, the dust, the gore, not returning fire, not running, not taking cover …
gone
.

Wes knew the woman was dead, too. Knew how and knew why and what it had done to Jud—knew all that in a heartbeat, in a crystal moment of clarity snapped into the chaos of battle.

“Take cover!” he yelled to Jud, his eyes never leaving the trailer—which way would Dean go? Wes yelled the only thing he could think of to snap Jud out of it, to get him down, get him safe
until
. Maybe get him to use his gun—on Dean.

“Marines!” Wes yelled to the ex-soldier. “Relief force!”

Jud stumbled toward the dead woman.

Change position
, thought Wes.

There'd be no relief force for him. The Gs who'd trailed Dean and homed Wes in on this café were parked off the side of the road a mile each direction from the café. They'd follow any surveillance subject who drove past, but they wouldn't help Wes
make contact
. Nor would they come to his rescue.

Keep your enemy pinned, force him to reorient
.

Gun zeroed on the trailer, West sidestepped through the open toward a Jeep parked between the adobe house and the trailer.

Her blouse was red. Jud reached toward her. Stopped. She was dead. He'd killed her. His gun slid from his hand.

Revulsion sucked him up like a tornado.

Gone, he wanted to be
never been
, not here. Gone. Nothing else mattered.

The flies were already buzzing her face.

Through the café, past where Carmen was wedged between the refrigerator and the stove: “
Santa Maria, Madre de Dios, ruega
…” Door, front door.

The black car.

Beside it, a Chevy rented from the Las Vegas airport. Red. Wes's Gore-Tex briefcase on the front seat, a suitcase hastily thrown in the back. Keys left in the ignition for a quick start, quick pursuit.

Only being gone mattered. Next thing Jud knew, he was in the Chevy, headed down the highway.

Behind the café, Wes heard a car go.

Screaming
, Dean screaming coat flapping shoulder bleeding handgun blazing charging from behind the trailer firing …

At where Wes had been.

Wes shot him five times.

Left him dead on the sand. The woman slumped against the wall—dead. From inside the café came sobbing, hysterical prayers in Spanish.

Wes circled around to the front of the café.

And found only the black car.