Ravens (23 page)

It all came flowing out so smoothly. It seemed so genuine. Burris felt the ground giving way beneath him.

Mitch went on, “I mean that man is just full up with love. When he says he’s gonna give all his money away? He
means
it. My gosh. He tracks me down to say thank-you for a kindness I showed him years ago? And next thing, we’re winning the
lottery together. You say whatever you want, but I think there’s the hand of God in all that.
Has
to be.”

He
couldn’t
be making this up, Burris thought. He couldn’t. This wasn’t some fancy Hollywood actor. This was just Mitch. Just Nell’s
kid, who had a real spiritual way about him and went to church every week and Lions of Judah on Wednesday nights, and how
in the world could he be pulling this off and looking Burris in the eye unless what he was saying was true?

Ah Christ. Well, let me lay it all on the table, then.

Burris took a sip of coffee. Looked around to be sure no one was listening, and said, “Mitch I want you to tell me something.”

“OK.”

“McBride putting any kind a squeeze on you?”

“Squeeze?” Raising a brow to show how peculiar he thought the question.

Burris held his gaze steady, and spoke with slow, deliberate weight. “Listen to me. I don’t know what the guy’s told you.
What kind of fear he’s put into you. But I guarantee you, if you talk to me, I’ll protect you. I’ll protect your family. We’ll
put him away forever. You hear what I’m telling you?”

Mitch
lowered his eyes. All he wanted was to give Burris a sign. He even seemed to hear a voice:
Take their help, let them rescue you.
Could this be the voice of the Lord?

But the duct tape was tugging at the hair on his chest.

He knew they were listening.

They’d kill his family in an instant. If he said a single word.

But — I could
write
something, couldn’t I? I could just reach back and take the pen from the waitress station and write a note on this napkin:
Help me. Two of them. They’re listening.
Wouldn’t that be enough? Burris could take it from there.

But then Burris pursed his lips to suck in some coffee, and Mitch thought: What the hell am I thinking? This is
Deppity Dawg
. I write that note on a napkin and he’ll probably read it
out loud.
He’ll say, “Help you in what way, Mitch?” And then everything will be lost. Everything. My whole life. My wife and children,
my mother, all lost forever and for what? I can’t risk it. I can’t even afford this silence right now…

Shaw
was in Jase’s room with Tara. The voices from her laptop sounded tinny and washed-out, but still you could hear most of what
was being said. He looked at Tara. Her lips were moving slightly as she listened. He knew she was trying to project a message
to her father; something on the order of,
don’t screw up, Dad, don’t give us away, please don’t screw up
…

There fell a long scary silence. Shaw reached back and wrapped his fingers around the handle of the .32.

But then they heard Mitch clear his throat. He said, “Something I’m trying to figure out, Burris.”

“What’s that?”

“Are you
kidding
me?”

A smile began to crawl up Shaw’s face.

Mitch went on, “You’re saying Shaw McBride’s trying to
steal
from me?”

Voice of the cop: “Well, I’m not saying. I’m just asking.”

Mitch: “But how would he do that?”

Cop: “Threaten your family?”

He put it as a question. Weakness had seeped into his tone. Mitch pounced. “Shaw
McBride
?
Threaten
me? Burris, are you out of your mind? The
Lord
brought that young man into our lives!”

Mitch wasn’t just defending his position — he had a full head of indignation going. It was a thing of beauty. Could it be,
Shaw wondered, that he was starting to
believe
? In Shaw’s dream? In the warmth of it, the sunny big-skied beauty of it?

Shaw leaned back in his chair and grinned irrepressibly. This was no time to celebrate, he knew. There were still a thousand
things that could go wrong. For example, this cop Burris: who the hell was he? What did he know, what did he suspect? But
Mitch had come through! That was a triumph right there. We’ve got Mitch fighting for the cause. If Mitch himself is fighting
for the cause, then really, how can we not succeed?

Shaw told the family, “I think the old man has done it.”

But his gaze was on Tara. She was trembling, and her lashes were wet, and she was sitting so close to Shaw that he could smell
the sweetness of her breath. He put his hand over hers. When he squeezed, he felt a tiny pressure of reciprocation. This day,
he thought. This day is the most dangerous and the most rapturous that anyone has lived for
centuries
. It was an absurd notion and it made him laugh at himself, but still: who else had ever lived the way he was living this
very day?

Tara
in pieces in her room, the tears pouring from her.

She had squeezed his hand.

Within her was some creature who wanted
his
comfort.

She sat at her desk, before her laptop, and looked at her photo albums. This time she was too weak to resist: she went right
to her favorite shot of Nell. Nell and Tara and the cat Horace Jackal on the swinging bed. With those yellow roses climbing
all over the

screen — though you couldn’t see them well in the picture. What you saw was Tara laughing and Nell laughing even harder.

What had she done? What had she done to bring this hell smashing down on her?

She fell to her knees, as hard as she could. My Lord! Why are you doing this! Why are you so angry with me?

What did I do to you?

Then she thought about that time on the porch, the time she had told Nell about winning the jackpot, when she was so drunk
on dreams of coming loot: shoes and a BMW and a trip to Paris and a new apartment. When she’d still thought winning the jackpot
would be some kind of blessing.

How could she have ever thought that? What was it she had thought she needed?

The only thing she wanted now was to be back in that swinging bed looking out at the chili pepper plants and the crepe myrtle
and the bathtub. But that was gone now. She thought,
I will never get back there.
The Lord had seen her greed and arrogance, and to punish her had exiled her forever from Nell’s back porch. She knelt and
clutched the bedclothes and sobbed, and when she thought of the Lord the face she saw was Romeo’s — she couldn’t help it!
She couldn’t help it! Though she knew that this was another way in which she was betraying God and was deserving of her banishment
and of all this horror and of this grinding wheel of terror.

Romeo
strolled toward the Kroger supermarket, like he was going in to buy groceries, like this was an everyday thing.

A thirtyish mom with two kids was also heading in, and was much closer to the door than he was. But she paused to get a shopping
cart, and then had to hold the hand of one of her kids while piloting him toward the door. Romeo had already guessed she’d
do these things. He’d factored them into his pace. He had everything meticulously timed, so that he got to the door at the
same instant the woman did. For a moment everybody froze — then Romeo graciously stood to one side, and signaled: you go ahead.

The woman gave him a big smile. She and her kids went past him and headed to Garden Produce.

He bought a bottle of water and went out, and was embraced again by the heat. He leaned against the Tercel, and waited.

He knew he should get back to patrolling. But patrolling didn’t seem possible now. Not even
possible.
He thought, I have to do this. There was a new woman coming through the lot, and he guessed she was a career woman. She was
wearing flats, and her legs were strong. He predicted she’d move briskly. She might not even stop for a cart. She might be
content with one of those baskets you pick up inside the door. When he moved to meet her, he moved quickly.

But unexpectedly she lollygagged, gazing at the patio suites. He had to cut his speed down to an amble. But then she went
quickly again, and he had to hurry, and altogether their duet was ratchety, graceless. At the door, they nearly collided.

She stepped back to make way for him.

He said, “No, please.”

She not only gave him a smile — her eyes lingered appraisingly. Then she went in, and he went in after her. He bought a can
of anchovies.

But he didn’t take it right to checkout. He thought maybe he could find a way to talk to her.

He found her in Dairy. He thought he might ask about how to read expiration dates. He put his head down and approached, but
at the last moment he knew he couldn’t go through with it, so he veered off. He grabbed a half-pint of sour cream and booked
it out of there. These doorway encounters he could handle pretty well — but
talk
to these women? No chance. Anyway, who had the time? No time for socializing and romance. He had work to do.

Shaw
decided to give the Boatwrights a little R&R, in honor of how smoothly Mitch had handled the cop. He asked them what they
did for fun, and Jase spoke up: “You know what’s cool? Seining. Can we go seining?”

So they all got into the Liberty, with Shaw behind the wheel. He eased through the crowd of folks, and then down Oriole Road,
with Trevor and a couple of bodyguards right behind them on motorcycles. Trailing the bodyguards were the photographers. It
made for a strange slow cortege: Liberty, bodyguard, paparazzi, cruising down Oriole Road.

They took Robin Street, to Altama Avenue. They passed the bowling alley and Willie’s Wee-Nee Wagon and Tiger-Wheels Customizing.

Then abruptly Shaw turned onto a side street.

The bodyguards blocked out the photographers, and Shaw stepped on the gas and took a hairpin curve fast. Jase laughed and
Patsy’s eyes lit up. The Liberty squealed down Cate Street onto Habersham and suddenly they were free.

They drove over to Nell’s. She came out on her front portico with a cat in her arms, and Shaw called to her, “Hey, come on,
we’re going seining.”

“I better not. Me in a bathing suit? I’d scare your dinner away.”

But he cajoled and got the Boatwrights to cajole as well, and at last she said, “Oh, what the hell. Just give me a second
— lemme feed these devils.”

Sunday afternoon in the deep South. Pair of black bugs on the windshield, getting it on. Nell’s garden had an old clawfoot
tub for a birdbath, wheelbarrows and cats and yellow blooming roses, and Shaw told Tara, “I see why you love this place so
much.”

Tara wouldn’t look at him.

Nell got in and they drove over to Uncle Shelby’s to borrow a seining net. Shaw got to meet Shelby’s little girl MacKenzie.
A little dimpled charmer, with the same huge voracious gaze as her cousin Tara had, as her grandmother had. Shelby’s big house
was impressive. Shall I buy it, Shaw thought, when the money comes in? Or better, buy the house next door? Then on Wednesday
evenings, Tara and I can take our kids plus Shelby’s kids to Bible study in a single car. And on Saturdays we’ll play golf,
Shelby and I, and in the evenings he and his wife Miriam will visit us on our back porch, and drink Madeira or mojitos, and
watch the sunset over the marsh. And discuss real estate and school board elections.

I could do that. I could be content with a life like that.

They borrowed two seine nets from Shelby, and took the causeway over to St. Simon’s Island, and went to a little beach near
the village. The Boatwrights carried the nets toward the water, while Shaw hung back and removed his thunderbelt and .32,
and stashed them under the driver’s seat. Then he followed the others over the sea wall to the narrow strip of sand. The tide
was perfect. Tara had already stripped to her bikini, and she and Nell were unrolling one of the nets. Shaw watched as they
hauled it into the water. Nell with her get-it-done grace. As she kicked into the sea, she called out: “Crabs and shrimpies!
Trust your Aunt Nell! Get into this net and I promise I’ll make a tasty sauce for you!”

Tara held the far end of the net, taking the deeper route. Compared to her grandmother, she seemed fragile. Tall, thin, a
reed in the water. The swells were strong and she struggled to hold her pole straight. Shaw thought her beauty unbearable.

He asked Mitch, “Should we take that other net?”

“You go with Jase. I’m kind of wore out.”

“All right. You up for it, Jase?”

“OK.”

So Shaw and Jase walked the net a hundred yards down the beach, then headed into the ocean. Soon Shaw was above his waist.
He slipped once in the wet sand and went under, but managed to keep his grip on the pole. When he came up sputtering, Jase
was laughing. “Shaw, can you even swim?”

“Pull! Let’s go!”

After they had dragged the net a hundred feet through the ocean, Jase held up and became the pivot; Shaw turned the arc and
they waded ashore. They’d done OK. A dozen brown shrimp and three softshell crabs along with a couple of throw-away puffers.
Jase showed him how to disentangle the crabs without getting pinched. The sky reared up above them, rose and lavender, a paradise
of thoughtlessness.

Meanwhile, down the way, Nell and Tara were picking through their own net. Shaw could hear Nell addressing the crustaceans:
“Fools! Suckers! I can’t believe I talked you into this! Bet you’ll be more careful next time, won’t you?”

As soon as the net was clear, they took it back out again. Shaw watched them.

Jase said, “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“How come you always answer when he calls?”

“Who? You mean Romeo? I have to.”

“Why? ’Cause he’s your friend?”

“It’s not about that. If I don’t answer he’ll think something bad’s happened. Then he’ll do something bad right back to your
family.”

“Would he kill us?”

“Why do you ask?”