Tropical Freeze (33 page)

Darcy said, “You think you can control him? Benny.”

“Sure,” he said. “He’s just a short, fat, bald guy in a pirate suit.”

Thorn hadn’t made a circle. Closer to a V. But hell, it was even better. A flap to get his hand through. Just needed one side of it a couple of inches longer. So the flap would flap.

A little earlier the electricity had blinked on and off. Then off. But that didn’t matter. He was doing this by feel now. He knew it would only be another minute or so—that is, if his hand didn’t cramp up anymore.

When the lock on the door rattled and clicked open, Thorn had his hand outside the flap, trying to pry the opening wider. At the noise he jerked it back inside. Twisted, rocked, twisted again, and got the roll moving and brought it back around. He was facing the cement again. His friends the ants.

Ozzie came inside and stamped his feet. Going b-r-r-r-r.

He pulled the string on the light, pulled it several times.

“Figures,” he said. “Like every other fucking thing tonight.”

Thorn gripped the knife hard. The way he felt, all the juice he had in his blood at the moment, he might just be able to levitate to a standing position, take a breath deep enough to break the nylon cord; he’d spring out, slash Ozzie’s throat.

After the hours listening to that storm, breathing through his nose, his thumb aching, his shoulder. After all that, and thinking about Darcy, then making himself not think about her, but the images bubbling back up, scenes of her inside that house. Of all those men. Of Benny. After all that, Thorn could feel the lava backing up inside. Ready to spew. He held the knife at the flap, the point pressed against the concrete.

“There’s a goddamn bulb around here somewhere,” Ozzie said.

He was rummaging through the boxes on the workbench.

“I want to see your face when I do you, dingleberry,” he said. “That’s half the fucking fun.”

Ozzie searched for another minute, then came over to Thorn.

“Well, shit,” he said. “I can’t find it.”

He stepped over to the door and kicked it open. The cool air flooding in. Some dawnlight in the wet trees.

He felt Ozzie sit on the roll, around the center of his spine. Then the barrel pressing against the back of his skull.

“You know, lifeguard, almost nothing works out like you expect. No matter what you do. It doesn’t matter who you bribe, who you shoot, how much you think things out. It’s like there’s always some little thing, something looking to trip you up.”

Thorn’s forehead was pressing into the cement, a rough grit embedding in his flesh. The pressure of the barrel increasing.

“I handed out hundred-dollar bills tonight like they was nickels. Bought some fat cats color TV sets so I’d be sure to get treated right in the talent judging.”

Ozzie took the gun away, rocked the linoleum back a quarter turn. The flap rising from the floor.

He said, “I figured it was the Keys and everybody was bribing everybody else. But the fuck of it is, I must’ve spent a couple thousand dollars and sang my heart out and still came in second goddamn place.”

Ozzie rose, stepped outside the shed, and came back in with a two-foot trophy. He set it beside Thorn’s face and revolved the linoleum roll so he could see. It was a silver cup on a wood pedestal, sparkling with rain.

Thorn tugged on the inside of the flap, bringing it flush. His hand poised behind it.

The nylon cord was a few inches below the flap. If he could slide his hand out, he could saw it in half and spin to his right and roll free. It might take a half a minute. Or two minutes. Either way, Ozzie could simply stand back, aim, and fire.

Ozzie had his right foot up on the roll like a hunter posing with his slaughtered tiger. Thorn’s weight pressed against his good shoulder.

“The goddamn fix was in,” Ozzie said. “Some high school twat played the banjo and sang some piss-poor bluegrass, she got the first-place trophy. Must’ve been the goddamn granddaughter of some Bubba or something.” He sighed, went over to the door, and looked out at the rising light. He said, “It don’t matter really. ’Cause I took down the little twat’s name and I’m gonna pay her a call when it gets light this morning. See what she’d take for that thing.”

Ozzie stooped beside him, brought the linoleum around so Thorn was on his back. Ozzie unwrapped the duct tape. Up close, Thorn could smell the whiskey, see in the vague light Ozzie’s exhausted face.

“Wondered why you was so fucking quiet.”

Thorn worked his jaw. The flap fully exposed now.

Ozzie planted his bottom on the roll, looked at Thorn, and said, “Nothing ever happens how you think, does it, lifeguard?”

The flap was under his right thigh. Thorn hesitated, then began to peel back the three layers of the V, straining, trying to keep his face calm.

“Like you,” Ozzie said. “You started off today thinking you was just going to live and live and live. Playing house with my girl friend, tickling her goodies. All that shit. You had no way to know when you woke up this morning that Ozzie Hardison was going to be sitting on your stomach tonight, pointing a big-assed pistol in your face. Now did you?”

Thorn plunged the Buck knife into the back of Ozzie’s thigh. Got it in deep and stirred it around in there. Minced the guy’s hamstring pretty good. He felt the blood running down his hand, his wrist, as Ozzie lurched to his feet, howling. His big-assed pistol clattered on the cement just a foot from Thorn’s face.

“That’s Benny,” Roger said. He rose from the chair.

In the dawn now. Dawn outside, dawn over the whole planet.

He opened her door, stepped out into the black hallway, and said, “I’ll just put him to bed. Then call you a doctor.” He left.

Darcy closed her eyes, sailed off. Ionospheric swoops. Across the dark plateaus of the upper atmosphere, cloudy summits. In a misty half sleep, drifting high and weightless inside herself.

Maybe this was the dark she’d pictured. The inky mist. If that’s what it was, then it wasn’t so bad. Nothing to fear. She could feel the winds up here, cool and rich. Reviving something in her, some sweet song that she’d heard long ago and forgotten.

Then a gunshot roared in the dark.

It came from far down below. Down on the earth, where bodies were weighted with bone and meat. Down where footsteps echoed through the dark hallways like excited hearts.

Ozzie fell back into the rakes and shovels. He howled.

Thorn watched him writhing there for a moment, then jammed his hand through the flap, widening it until he could reach his blade to the nylon cord. He began to saw at it.

Ozzie was struggling back to his feet. Through his tears he began to hobble across the floor. Bent over. Looked like the one leg wasn’t working at all. Might never work. He dragged it, extending his right hand for the silenced .38, while he clutched the back of his thigh with his left.

Thorn was only halfway through the strands of the cord. Going slower than he’d expected. Ozzie stooped beside him, reaching out with a spastic hand for the pistol. Then he came down to his knees, sliding his hand across the cement for the pistol.

Rolling right, Thorn brought the linoleum on top of Ozzie’s hand, pinning it against the floor. He craned his arm around and slashed the Buck knife back at Ozzie’s arm, nicked him deep on the wrist. He screamed. And Thorn rolled off his hand.

“Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.” Ozzie fell onto his butt and dragged himself backwards over to the rakes and hoes, moaning. His eyes groggy, head sagging. He sat there and watched Thorn’s hand sawing at the cord.

In another minute the cord parted and dropped away. But the sticky backing on the linoleum held it shut.

“You’re still caught, dingleberry,” Ozzie said, faintly. “Har, har.”

Thorn rocked and turned against the grain of the roll, and the tacky glue crackled, loosened, and opened up. And quickly he uncoiled himself, coming to rest almost at Ozzie’s feet.

“You stuck me, goddamn you,” Ozzie said. His voice furry, his eyes holding on by a wisp.

“Yeah, I did,” Thorn said, “and I enjoyed it.” He stood up cautiously. He retrieved Ozzie’s pistol and put it under his belt.

“Get me to the hospital,” Ozzie said.

“Yeah, sure,” Thorn said. “Right away.”

“I’ll bleed to death, you leave me like this.”

“Speak to the wolves. Tell ’em you’re not ready. I hear they’re very understanding.”

Ozzie squinted at Thorn.

He hauled Ozzie to his feet and tied his hands behind him with the nylon cord. Tied the loose end to the leg of the heavy workbench. He moved a wooden keg over so Ozzie could sit.

Maybe while Thorn was gone, Ozzie would reflect on what he’d done. Recognize his sinfulness. Ask for forgiveness. Find grace. And when Thorn returned for him, the shed might be suffused with heavenly light.

But probably not. It looked like the redneck was just going to pass out.

Thorn headed for Darcy’s trailer. His left arm was hanging dead. He passed a grandmother walking her white poodle. Nodded hello to her. She gasped, and her dog stood on its hind legs and performed a pirouette for Thorn. He looked down and saw he was clutching the knife in his right hand, blood to his forearm.

“Been cleaning a barracuda,” he said. “Got more to do.”

Darcy’s door was unlocked. It took only a minute to find the Browning Baby in her bedside table. He could hear the whoops and trills of a Bugs Bunny cartoon coming from the trailer next door. It was almost nine. Saturday.

He slipped the Browning into his front pocket. And jogged back across the trailer park to Ozzie’s house, where he found Papa John’s white pickup. The keys were in the ignition. Ozzie’s pirate hat on the passenger seat. His guitar, a blue bandanna, a rubber buccaneer’s sword. And two more handguns. A .357 magnum. And a ten-millimeter Colt.

When Thorn arrived at his house, Jack Higby was running the Lakowski planer. He looked up from the machine and did a double take. Garfunkel loped over as Thorn was getting down from the truck. The dog wedged its nose into Thorn’s crotch, lifted.

“The hell happened to you, boy?” Jack had hustled over and taken Thorn by the right arm, trying to help him walk. But Thorn shrugged him off.

“Call Sugarman,” he said. “Tell him to meet me at Benny Cousins’s house.”

Jack was staring at the three pistols Thorn carried in his hand. The other one wedged in his belt.

“I just saw Sugar out on the highway,” Jack said, absently. “Out there with every cop and state trooper in the county. Blocking off half the road for the parade.”

“Then call the station, Jack,” Thorn said as he boarded the
Heart Pounder
. “Have them radio Sugar. Do it quick.”

He went down into the cabin, heard Jack’s pickup start up as he pulled open his tackle drawer and scooped out a handful of plugs. Careful of the treble hooks, he deposited a half dozen of them in the right pocket of his leather flight jacket. He put the jacket on. Four pistols and a pocketful of plugs. He guessed that was enough firepower.

Thorn walked back across the yard to Papa John’s truck. Got Ozzie’s pirate stuff out of it and took it over to the ice cream truck, unplugged the compressor, got in. He hauled Gaeton’s body out of the cooler box. Got his good shoulder under him and hefted him up to the front. Working with just that one arm, he turned Gaeton and settled him into the passenger seat.

He brushed away a frosting of ice crystals from Gaeton’s forehead and started up the truck. He looked over at his friend as he was pulling out on the highway. Gaeton’s hands were extended as if he were about to settle them onto the keys of a piano. Play a dirge.

He tailgated a rented convertible, playing the tape of “Three Blind Mice” loud from the overhead speaker. Traffic was ten miles an hour, all of it funneled into the two southbound lanes.

He pulled off at Hibiscus Lane and stopped in front of a group of black men leaning against a gutted Buick. He asked them where W. B. lived, and they pointed at a sagging white house on the corner of the next block. Thorn drove down there, parked out front, set the pistols on the passenger seat. He kept the motor running and loped over to the door.

A woman came to the screen wearing pink curlers, a yellow housecoat, and terry-cloth slippers.

He said he wanted to see W. B.

“He’s not here,” she said. “Whatta you want with him?”

“I need the keys to the John Deere he runs down in Islamorada.”

“Well, they ain’t here,” she said. Kids were beginning to assemble behind her housecoat.

“Where are they?”

“He’s got them keys with him.”

“Where?”

“Down there, running that machine. They call him up five o’clock this morning, wake us all up, liked to never get the babies back to sleep. Wanting him to plant a tree first thing this morning. Now whatta them folks want a tree planted so early on a Saturday morning for?”

Thorn could’ve told her. But she probably wouldn’t have believed him. He could hardly believe it himself.

Black pennants waved from all the flagpoles at Waldorf Plaza, a silver pirate on each one. Daggers in their mouths. Kids’ crude posters of skulls and crossbones were nailed to the telephone poles along the five-mile parade route. Thorn got a good look at them. Traffic stalled.

People were beginning to collect along the shoulders of the road. Some of them with their bandanna kerchiefs, swords, eye-patches. He didn’t see anybody with a pistol in his waistband. Not a single ten millimeter or Browning or .38 with a silencer.

A lot of these smiling people were his friends. A sprinkling of their children. Bartenders, waitresses, checkout clerks, shrimpers, maids, diesel mechanics. These children of wreckers and rumrunners, hardscrabble pioneers. Men who had come there to the outer fringe of America to nourish their rugged individualism.

Plenty of Januarys Thorn had stood out there with them, warming himself with Bacardi, waiting to celebrate the colorful lives of their granddaddies. He’d gotten his best history lessons out there beside that four lane, listening to the old-timers’ grim memories.

And he’d been as rowdy as any of them by parade time. Hooting and cussing, as those polyester Chamber of Commerce pirates rode their floats, slashing their rubber swords. It had always seemed harmless, that cotton-candy history. A past created by wax museums and gaudy T-shirts.