The Lime Pit (28 page)

It was hard to see what was going on at first.
Whoever had been holding the camera had been doing a very bad job.
The lens jumped around the room from face to face until it finally
settled on the bed.

And there she was. Hugo's Cindy Ann. Preston LaForge
was on top of her, and for a few seconds he obscured her body. All
you could see was his naked back and her white legs stretched out on
either side of his buttocks. LaForge began to pump faster--the speed
of his movements exaggerated by the speed of the film. And then he
stopped moving, arched his back, and pushed up from the bed with his
arms. You could see Cindy Ann's pale face again beneath his chest. It
was twisted with pleasure. Her little mouth opened in a silent "Oh,"
then the film went blank for a second where it had been spliced.

The prism filled again with the bed, this time from a
closer vantage. Cindy Ann was sitting up on it, her back to the
headboard, and you could see her naked torso from the forehead to a
little below the hips. She had a vibrator between her legs and, from
time to time, she would press her knees together luxuriously and make
a silent groan. Someone got in the way of the lens momentarily, then
backed out of the picture. Cindy's face had grown rapt. She tossed
her head from side to side, moving the vibrator with her hands and
licking her pale lips. She was trembling on the edge of orgasm and
you could see the pale flesh of her chest grow mottled and her red
hair--dark in the black and white film--sway like it was seaborne
about her face. Just as she was about to come--her eyes squeezed
closed, her mouth opened in noiseless wail--someone put a pistol to
her head and pulled the trigger.

The right side of Cindy Ann's skull exploded in blood
and she fell out of the frame. There were arms and frightened faces,
the camera jerked around: then the prism went bright with light.

Red took a deep breath and clicked off the viewer.
The motor whined down and the leader stopped slapping against the
prism housing.

When I looked up from the prism, I saw the gun in his
hand. "Harry, y'all got to believe me. I didn't want that to
happen."

"Sure," I said. And my voice sounded as if
it were coming from another world. "What I got to do is kill
you, Red."

"I was afraid you'd take that point of view. I
guess I would, too. If I was in your shoes."

"You could have taken care of the sick, twisted
bastard that did that," I said. "You could have done that
much, Red."

He sighed. "I wanted to. You can believe that.
But he's a powerful man, Harry. And I guess I just couldn't bring
myself to kill the goose. Not over a kid like her."

I surged out of the chair and lunged at the pistol.

But he moved with terrific quickness and slammed the
revolver barrel across my cheek.

"Don't try that again, son," he said
grimly. "I'll blow your face off if you do."

He'd split my cheek wide open with the gun. I could
feel the blood pouring down it. Red pulled a handkerchief from his
pocket and tossed it over to me.

"You better staunch that."

I pressed it to my cheek and glared at him. "Now,
what?"

"We're going for a ride, Harry."

He stood up behind the desk. "Y'all pull that
gun from your belt and toss it on the desk. Gently now, son. With two
fingers, like y'all was at a lady's tea."

I pulled the gun out and dropped it on the desk.

"Now the one under your shoulder, Harry. Same
way."

I pulled out the magnum.

"Nice weapon," Bannion said. "Now,
here's how it's going to be, son. We're going to walk out to the car.
You try anything, I'll kill you. It don't make no difference to me,
now, whether I get seen or not. I'll come out of it one way or
t'other. Y'all understand what I'm saying?"

I nodded.

"Good." He collected the can of film and
slipped it in his pocket. "Now move it."

I opened the office door and we walked out into the
lobby.

Red nodded at the usher. "There's some guns in
there, son. Y'all want to collect them for us?"

"You want some help with him?" the kid
said.

"I don't think so," Red said gently.
 
 

26

THERE WAS a driver sitting in the front seat of the
Cadillac when we walked back out into the glare of Main Street. He
was high yellow with a wispy black goatee on his chin, big yellow
wolfish teeth, and the high puffed cheeks of the ex-boxer. He hadn't
been hard to hit in his prime--that one--but he'd been hard to put
down. There was scar tissue over both of his eyes, and his left ear
was badly deformed, like someone had hung a barbell from the lobe
when he was a child. He was wearing a knit skull cap on his head, a
white T-shirt, and yellow rayon slacks with a scarlet bunting down
either leg. He smelled of sweat and whiskey, and he looked at me, as
Red pushed me into the back seat, with a kind of savage
anticipation-the way a cannibal must size up a prospective meal.

"This heah's Rafe," Red said, getting in
beside me. "You going to be seem' a lot of him, Harry." Red
reached into a coat pocket and pulled out a pair of handcuffs. "Hold
out your hands, son."

When I hesitated, he gave me a good hard shot on the
right arm with the gun barrel.

"That's better," he said, cuffing me.

He pointed with the gun to Rafe, who started the car
up and pulled out onto Main. We were heading south, into the
farmland.

"Let me tell you a little story about Rafe,
yonder," Red said, settling back on the seat. "He used to
be a boxer. Golden Gloves. He had him some professional bouts, too.
Didn't you, son?"

The back of Rafe's head went up and down. "Yessuh,"
he said softly.

"Rafe don't like white boys none. One of them
killed his brother. Ain't that right, Rafe?"

"Yessuh," he said.

"Cut his throat up in Lima, when the boy didn't
have but six months left to serve. I helped him out a bit with
funeral expenses and such. But that didn't change nothing about the
way Rafe feels. Son--the last white boy I turned over to him took
twelve whole hours in dying. Probably would've taken longer, only
Rafe bled him so much there just wasn't anything left for his poor
heart to pump. You ever seen a man die, Harry? I don't mean quick. I
mean slow. Razor cuts and burns from a solderin' iron. Why towards
the end, they just go sleepy with the pain of it. They take a look at
what's become of 'em, and they just don't care anymore."

"Is that how you got to Preston? Threatening him
with Rafe?"

Bannion laughed. "Hell, no. All we had to do
with that fairy was show him a few pictures. A bit of splicin' in
that movie made it look like he done fucked her and killed her all by
hisself. Weren't no question in my mind when I left him what he'd do.
But I did have Rafe waitin' around just in case."

We passed a sign marking the city limit and kept
heading south, through a hilly section green with blue grass and
pine. Then the road curved up out of the river bottoms, past old
Beverly Hills, and leveled out. Shops began to appear at half mile
intervals--little roadside cafes and two-pump gas stations with junk
autos in their lots. And, then, we broke free of townlife entirely.
Huge tobacco fields, tented for acres with gauze canopies, filled
either side of the road.

"Lookie there." Red pointed out the window.

A farmer was burning off the stubble in a corn field,
and the late afternoon sky was filled with black, corn-sweet smoke.

"I should never have left that," Red said
wistfully. "But, hell, it was depression and a man has to eat.
And, then, Porky's always done right by me." He looked out the
window at the wind-blown smoke and sighed. "It sure ain't been
my day, has it, son?" He looked over at me. "You busted the
Jellicoes, didn't you?"

I didn't say anything.

"Sure you did," Red said, hefting the gun
in his hands as if he were testing its weight. "You're a good
young cop, son. I always liked you." He jiggled the gun for a
moment. "I'm going to try to make it easy for you, Harry. You
got to die. There ain't no discussin' that. But, it don't have to be
Rafe's way."

It was the old Ike and Mike act--the good cop and the
tough one. Only he was doing it all by himself. He'd never really
stopped being a cop--Bannion. Maybe it'd been the only thing he'd
ever worked at with talent and pride.

"I need to know a few things, Harry," he
said gently. "I need to know how far you done gone in this
business. It may not seem like much I'm offerin', son. But, 'bout
noon tomorrow, you're going to see it a mighty different way. You
think on't, heah?"

He sat back on the seat and stared through the front
windshield with a watery eye. He was actually crying, so moved had he
been by his own account of the hopelessness of my situation.

I laughed out loud.

Bannion took a pair of sunglasses out of his pocket
and flipped them on, pocketing the horn-rims with his right hand.

He licked his lips and
stared through the dark green glasses at the open road.

***

It must have been close to seven when we pulled off
the highway. The sun was setting above the treetops in the west, and
we headed into it, down a paved side road into a cool green dell of
oak and maple. The trees were thick on the hillsides--so thick I
thought we must have entered a park or a preserve. It was virtually
night in the woodland--the sun just a red glow on the tree-capped
shoulder of the hills. Rafe flipped on the headlights and turned left
off the road onto a gravel lane that carried back into the woods. We
followed the lane for half a mile until the headlights bounced off
the windowpanes of a small cabin tucked among the trees. It was a
weathered plank hunting lodge, set up on stilts, with a pitch roof
overhanging a railed porch. It looked as if it hadn't been visited in
many years.

"We're there." Red tapped Rafe on the
shoulder.

Rafe cut the engine, and a dead, woodsy silence
filled the car.

"Quiet, ain't it?" Bannion said.

He got out of the car, walked around to my side, and
opened the door.

"Git on out, Harry."

Rafe got out, too, and stretched his long, muscular
arms.

I took a quick look around.

There was a stone wall on the west side of the cabin.
To the east, the forest grew to within ten feet of the cabin wall.
The ground behind the lodge seemed to fall away abruptly. There were
some stone steps set in the earth where it plunged downward. I
estimated we were about seventy miles southwest of Newport, on a
private estate about halfway between Cincinnati and Louisville.

Red pushed me toward the cabin. "Git on up
there," he said.

My shoulder had been aching dully for better than two
hours, and my face stung where Red had gashed it with the gun barrel.
But I was just too tired to care. I trudged up the path to the cabin
and up four steps to the porch and stood there waiting for Bannion
and Rafe.

In an hour or so, I'd be dead--if I was lucky.

It wasn't that I wasn't afraid of it. I was. But I
was more disgusted with myself than I was afraid. And angrier than I
was disgusted. If I hadn't been so cocksure, three hours before, that
Bannion was as much of a loner at heart as I was, I wouldn't have
been standing on that porch. I would have been standing on Porky's
porch on Charles Street, trying to explain why the highway patrolmen
were interrupting his barbecue.

Red Bannion hadn't turned out to be a bit sentimental
where it really cost him. He had a cop's mind, pure and simple. For
him it would always be a question of the right tool for the job. And
there wasn't going to be any shoot-out, any last minute drama of
justice and revenge. If I hadn't been so damn coy and
self-involved--so set on finishing it off on my own--I would have
know it immediately, as soon as I walked into that theater and saw
the tough kid behind the candy counter. The only thing I couldn't
understand was why he'd dragged me seventy miles into the woods
before pulling the trigger.

"Why are we here, Red?" I asked him.

"You wanted to find that girl, didn't you?"
he said archly. "Well, there's a lime pit down back aways.
That's where she's lying. That's where you'll be lying, too, Harry.
They say it's supposed to comfort a man to know where his bones will
rest."

He pushed the cabin door open and pulled me through.

There was a trestle table inside the cabin, two wood
chairs, a fireplace on the south wall facing the door, open rafters
overhead, and dust and cobwebs everywhere else. Even the windows were
coated with dirt.

Red lit a hurricane lamp and set it on the table.

"Start a fire, Rafe."

The black walked back out the door to gather
kindling. Red sat down on a chair by the table and looked up at me
through those dark green sunglasses. It looked like he had two
hurricane lamps for eyes.

"Well, son, looks like the end of the road. You
ain't had a long life, but it's been a lively one."