The Deader the Better (28 page)

I HUSTLED ACROSS THE LOBBY OF THE BLACK BEAR ANDrang the hell out
of the bell.

“Goddammit,” he growled from the other room. “I’m right
here. No damn need…” He stopped. His mouth popped open. Monty was
so surprised to see me, he had to grab the doorframe to keep from
collapsing. “I heard they got ya,” he whispered. “I thought you
was a goner.”

“You know how they are,” I said.

“Goddamn liars,” he spat. He looked over at Floyd. “Is he…”

“He’s with us,” I said gravely.

Monty started to apologize, but Floyd cut him off.

“Can’t be too careful,” he said.

Monty put his bony hand on my shoulder. “He’s right. You gotta
be careful. They damn near got ya once. They’re sure to make
another try.”

I leaned over and whispered in his ear, “We’re not waiting for
them to make another try,” I said. “We’re taking the
offensive.”

“About damn time,” Monty said.

“We’ve been lied to long enough,” Floyd added. I threw an
arm around Monty’s shoulders and pulled him close. He smelled of
old wool and fried food.

“We need your help,” I said.

He checked the room, paying particular attention to the ceiling.

“What can I do?”

“We need to use one of those RV hookups you’ve got out back.”

His eyes took on a gleam. “Gonna do a little surveillance of our
own, huh?”

Interestingly enough, that was precisely what we were about to do.
And against the goddamn government, too. Amazing how things work out
sometimes. I’m down here running a number on a guy who believes in
flying saucers and it turns out I don’t even have to lie to him.
Made me wonder if maybe there wasn’t a message here someplace.

“We’ve gotta be the only ones back there.”

“Ain’t open this time a year anyway.”

“Nobody can know.”

“Course not.”

“Deniability is everything,” Floyd said. “We learned that
from them.”

“Damn right,” Monty said tentatively.

I described Carl and Robby and the van. Told him they’d be
around sometime tomorrow to do a little setup work. After that they’d
be camped out mostly during the daylight hours. He limped back inside
his apartment and came back with a gold key on a floating key chain.
Mercury outboard motors. “Gate’s way up this end. Lock might be a
little rusty, but I don’t figure no rusty lock is gonna stop the
likes of these guys.”

I allowed how that was ever so true. “You just lemme know where
they want to hook up and I’ll turn the juice on for’em,” he
said.

On my way out the door, I stopped and looked back over my
shoulder.

“Lotta points for you here, Monty,” I said in my most serious
voice.

“I’m a shoo-in now,” he said with a gapped grin. As I slid
back into the car, Floyd was singing. “Doo doo, doo doo, Doo doo,
doo doo.”
Twilight Zone
. “Told ya,” I said.

Nelson’s Olympic Market was at the corner of Highway and Fourth
Avenue, a quarter mile closer to downtown than the Black Bear. The
kind of old-fashioned, family-operated market that I remembered from
childhood. Narrow, wood-planked aisles and the smells of sawdust and
aging meat. Signs. Several offering to butcher and store game. Meat
lockers for rent. Another proclaiming: PRICES WERE BORNHERE BUT
RAISED ELSEWHERE. Behind the meat and deli counter at the back of the
store, a trio of fly strips coiled their way down from the ceiling,
their yellow spiraled faces littered with winged remains, like
sprinkles on an ice-cream cone. Ya hadda like it.

Floyd was leaning back against the orange juice, hoping like hell
nobody would notice that he was pushing the cart. I was pawing my way
through the tomatoes when I looked up and found myself eyeball to
eyeball with one of the Steelhead Tavern pool shooters. Not the guy
in the Megadeth T-shirt. His partner. The one Whitey had called Monk.
A beat-up thirty. Gonna be bald as a bowling ball before he was
forty. His face was masked by three days’ growth and a sour
expression.

Monk may have been a decent pool player, but he’d never make a
living at poker. I watched as his slot-machine eyes clicked on to who
I was. He tried to look casual and cool as he returned a cantaloupe
to its brethren, stuck his hands in his back pockets and then walked
slowly up the center aisle in a loose-jointed and exaggerated manner,
which I imagined he thought of as something of a manly swagger, but
which, because of his bowed legs and the worn heels of his cowboy
boots, suggested prostate problems more than latent testicularity.
Floyd walked over to me. “Is there something you’re not telling
me?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean like how come anytime anybody sees your face, suddenly
they look like they just crapped in their pants?”

“I’ve always had that effect on people. It’s a gift.”

“Is that guy going to be trouble?”

“Maybe,” I said. “But it’s not something we’ve got to
deal with now.”

We worked our way up and down the aisles. Disposable everything.
Towels, toilet, paper plates, napkins. Two cases of beer. Ketchup,
mustard and mayo. Pickles. Cookies. Crackers and three kinds of
chips. Floyd requested Goldfish crackers and Fig Newtons—which had
to be Nabisco. Add that to the four loaves of bread, the two pounds
of roast beef, turkey and ham that I’d gotten from the deli, and I
figured we had enough food to munch our way through Tuesday. After
that, we could play it by ear. One hundred thirty dollars and sixteen
cents. Eight bags full. I gave Floyd a break and told the cute little
blond bagger—Samantha, if her name tag was to be believed—that
yes, as a matter of fact, she could help us out to the car. Floyd and
I followed along as Samantha threaded her way among the yawning mud
puddles, expertly balancing the cart on the rims of the craters as
she moved steadily toward the car. Suddenly Floyd’s fingers gripped
my arm like a vise; he jerked me backward and shouted, “Hey!” I
heard the roar of the engine and realized the Ford insignia on the
front of the truck was way too high.

Samantha turned her head toward the sound. I watched as her eyes
expanded, as she abandoned the cart and ran headlong through the
puddles, galloping toward the safety of the parked cars ten feet in
front of her. At the same instant, Floyd pushed me between two cars;
the truck hit the shopping cart, sending it airborne, dumping the
contents in a line like carpet bombs.

Floyd looked my way. “You figure we should deal with this now?”
he asked with a smirk.

“What the hell,” I said.

Monk was driving. It figured. Only a short guy would have a truck
so tall. Mickey and Dexter Davis rode in front. In back, two older
guys I’d never seen before. Fortysomethings. Too much chin and not
enough forehead. Beer bellies, baseball caps, red necks, white socks
and Blue Ribbon beer. Each man carried a five-foot length of heavy
chain in his hands. Mickey Davis rocked side to side on his feet. He
shifted a big box end wrench from hand to hand. “I told you, man. I
told you it wasn’t over.”

“How’s the mouth, Dexter?” I asked his brother.

“Oooo fud me up, oooo modafuuuder.”

“Sounds like he’s got a mouthful of mashed potatoes,” said
Floyd, easing his right hand casually toward his jacket. In the
background, I heard shouts and could sense people scurrying around.
Monk waved an aluminum softball bat like a flag. He was feeling bold
now. One of those assholes who stays in the back until the fight is
decided. Unless, of course, there’s five of him and two of you, and
him got weapons and you all don’t, and suddenly sphincter boy
starts thinking he’s Bruce Lee. That’s why he darted out from the
safety of the pack and began shaking the bat in Floyd’s face.

“This your girlfriend?” he demanded of me in a shrill voice.

“That how come he was pushing the wagon?” He laughed at his
own joke and darted away.

Floyd looked my way. His face said,
I told you so
. Mickey
started for me, with the new guys bringing up the rear. Twirling
their chains now, like mutant majorettes. Dexter held his ground. I
guess he was just along as a symbol. I pretty much thought it was
over. Not for us…for them. Floyd’s hand was inside his coat. The
odds were stacked against us. I had no illusions. No way Floyd was
going to take any kind of a beating. Somebody was about to get shot,
and then things were going to get ugly. Monk saved the day by
skittering forward and jabbing the bat at Floyd’s face.

“Huh…are ya…huh?” he screeched.

In a single fluid motion, Floyd snatched the bat from Monk’s
grip, flipped it end for end like a juggler and then backhanded him
across the mouth with the business end, sending a spray of blood,
spittle and broken teeth arching out into the air. Monk dropped to
his knees. Sounded like he was humming Beethoven underwater.

Floyd flipped the bat across the car to me. I caught it in both
hands. With a disgusted look, he pulled his hand from inside his coat
and reached down into the side pocket, but I didn’t get a chance to
see what he was reaching for. The sight of his buddy communing with
mud enraged the chain-swinger on the left. With a bellow, he
shouldered Mickey aside and came at me, twirling the chain at head
level, grunting now as the chain began to whoosh like a propeller. I
had no doubts. If he caught me with the chain, I was never going to
play the piccolo again. Mickey was using him like armor. Keeping away
from the chain, moving forward in the wake. From the corner of my
eye, I caught a glimpse of Floyd moving toward the other chain
swinger. I stepped out from between the cars and faked a lunge at
Chainman’s groin and then quickly stepped back. He grunted and gave
it everything he had, swinging from the heels, trying to wrap the
chain around my neck. I dropped to my working knee. The chain bounced
off the car on my left, shattering the rear window. I covered my head
and retracted my neck like a turtle. I felt the metallic breeze as
the rusted metal passed about a foot over my head and then heard the
crash as it plowed into the car on my right. Fortunately for Mickey,
the cars had taken most of the bone-crushing velocity out of the
chain. Unfortunately for Mickey, Chainman seriously underestimated
the physics of force, which sent him spinning, lurching backward as
if he’d reached out and grabbed hold of a speeding bus. In an
attempt to maintain his balance, he did what every other primate on
the planet would have done. He let go. The middle of the chain hit
Mickey just above the knee. Leaving three feet of corroded links to
wind up Mickey’s leg. I hadn’t noticed it before, but a heavy
U-bolt was attached to one end of the chain. I noticed it now,
because it hit Mickey in the nuts, sending the wrench clattering to
the ground a nanosecond ahead of Mickey. The wrench just lay there.
Mickey, on the other hand, clutched his crotch and kicked his feet,
his breath coming in gasps, his eyes screwed shut.

I heard a series of sounds like somebody was playing pot roast
tetherball. Floyd had his right foot on a piece of chain. The guy at
the other end of it was sitting in a puddle. Nose bent way over, like
he was trying to sniff his own ear. Spitting blood into his cupped
palm, as if the fluids could be saved and used later.

Floyd shrugged and opened his hands. Couple of rolls of quarters.
Nasty. If you’ve got the sinew to swing them, not only does it save
your hands, but the other guy feels like he’s being hit with a
hammer.

Chainman put up his hands, as if to say,
Enough
. Looked
just dumb enough to be dangerous, so I drew the bat back and waited.
Never got a chance to find out, though. The Sheriff’s Crown
Victoria slid to a stop about a foot from the guy sitting in the
puddle. I exhaled for the first time in about three minutes. My body
had that lighter-than-air adrenaline rush going through it. Fear is a
focuser. Allowing into the senses only those items vital to
short-term survival and eliminating the rest.

When I forced my eyes off Chainman and looked toward the cruiser,
I found myself looking down the barrel of Nathan Hand’s revolver.

“Not me,” I said. “Them.”

“Hands on your head,” he screamed.

I dropped the bat, but kept my hands at my sides. Bobby Russell
was a lot closer to Floyd than Hand was to me. The barrel of the riot
gun must have looked like a sewer pipe. From forty feet I could see
the kid’s finger twitching on the trigger, and I didn’t like it a
bit. Floyd must have noticed. He stood absolutely still with his
hands held out to his sides.

“Hands on your head,” the sheriff screamed.

“Do it!” the deputy yelled.

Floyd looked at me with a bemused expression.

“Why do they always scream? Do they teach ’em that in cop
school?”

“They must,” I said.

“Hands on your heads,” Hand bellowed again. Floyd flicked his
head toward the rear. As if choreographed, we both turned and put our
hands on the tops of the cars directly behind us. I could hear the
scraping of their shoes as they moved carefully toward us and then,
as I was about to turn my head to see what was taking so long, a gun
barrel was jammed hard under my right ear, as if trying to lift me
from the ground.

“The criminals are behind you, Sheriff,” I said.

“Shut the hell up,” he growled. “Put your right hand behind
your head.”

I followed directions. He slapped a bracelet on my wrist and then
dragged it down behind my back, where he attached it to the other
one. He grabbed me by the collar and turned me around. “I warned
you,” he said. “Now we’re going to see.”

“Well, looky looky,” Deputy Russell said, holding Floyd’s
silver-plated . between his thumb and forefinger.

“It’s licensed. There’s a copy of my carry permit in my
wallet,” Floyd said calmly. Russell stuck his shotgun under Floyd’s
chin, forcing his head back. “I want to hear from you I’ll say
so,” the deputy said. “Till then you keep your smart mouth shut.
You hear me?” When he jerked the gun away, Floyd grinned and rolled
his neck a couple of times, then hawked up a little phlegm from his
throat and spit a thick green glob onto Deputy Bobby’s shirt. Good
shot. Half on, half off the badge.