Stagger Bay Page 21

  “Give me back my gun,” Reese said. “And one bullet.”

  “Oh, bullshit,” Sam said. “He killed Karl; we should be the ones to do it. Or do you want him to live too?”

  “She almost married me,” Reese said, ignoring Sam. “I know it’s all over, but you can’t link her to any of the things I did. My death, and you and your boy are both guiltless of it in exchange for leaving her name out of it forever. Please keep her clean, don’t let me sully her.”

  “You never met Kendra, or you’d understand,” I told Sam, wondering even as I said it why I was arguing the enemy’s side.

  “Sure, I did,” Sam said, eying me strangely. “She was a couple of grades ahead of me before I dropped out, but everyone knew Kendra. We’d be doing this for her?”

  I nodded.

  “All right, then,” he said, grimacing.

  I pointed Jansen’s Glock at Reese as Sam stepped away from him. Sam picked up the Python, kicked out the cylinder, and dropped all the Magnum rounds into his other hand. Sam handed Reese the empty revolver without getting in my field of fire, then backed off again.

  “You asked me once about Kendra’s part in all this,” Reese said, spinning the revolver’s empty cylinder. He looked me full in the eye as he stuck the barrel into the soft flesh under his jaw. “She didn’t know. She wouldn’t have had anything to do with it if she did know. But she suspected, and she was closing in.

  “And after she found out, she would’ve been standing on the same side of the room you’re on right now if she was still alive. Lord knows I should’ve been.” He dry-fired the pistol. He flinched a bit as the hammer clicked down on the empty chamber, but otherwise showed good form.

  Reese pulled the.357 from under his chin. “Will this pay for it? Will I be clean?”

  He hefted the empty pistol in his hand. “Do you think she could still love me?”

  The veneer had broken; this was the total cash-out of a life. It was as though he was returning to something he hadn’t even known he’d lost until it was too late, both for himself and for his Kendra.

  I could almost admire how he was facing his end. “I’m not the one to say. But Jansen couldn’t make Kendra a victim even if he did kill her. There was no quit in her. She was too brave to live, and she chose her own path by charging forward against all odds. Neither Jansen nor anybody else can ever take that from her.”

  Reese nodded slowly. I handed Sam Jansen’s Glock, then frisked Reese prison-style to make sure he wasn’t concealing a holdout piece like Jansen had.

  I took Little Moe by the hand and led him to the door. Sam followed and placed one of the Magnum rounds on the bookcase, upright on its end next to a copy of the Decameron. No further farewells were made as we left Reese alone with Jansen’s corpse and the.357.

  Chapter 58

  Instead of heading straight out the front door, I led Sam and Moe past the archway: the candle light flickered from the altar room, and I was drawn moth-like to it. The shadows crawled in there as before, but my memory must have been wrong. I could have sworn the statue had been looking to its left toward the room where Little Moe was stashed.

  Now the statue stared directly at us as we stood in the doorway, as if awaiting our closer approach. The severed breast still appeared lonely and plaintive.

  “Wanna go in there and check it out?” I asked Sam. Little Moe whimpered.

  “You’re fucking high,” Sam muttered, unable even to look inside after his first glance.

  I tossed the hammer in Karl’s box of evidence, awkwardly picked it up off the table, and we got the hell out of there. Blowing through that front door into the clean night air was one of the happiest moments of my life.

  We heard a single shot from inside and Little Moe tugged my sleeve. “Mister Markus,” he said. “I want to go home.”

  I put Karl’s box down, bent to pick up Little Moe, and grunted as my leg almost collapsed under me. With one deft motion, Sam plucked the blade out from where it was embedded in my thigh. I swore and glared at him and he laughed – but then he looked down at the knife strangely.

  It was an ordinary buck knife with a six inch blade, just like the one I’d owned so long ago before my incarceration. I wondered if it was the actual one I’d been framed with, and if it had somehow made its way from the evidence locker into the Driver’s loving hands.

  “This would make a great souvenir. Like a trophy or something,” Sam said, his voice dreamy and greedy as he continued studying the weapon.

  “Sam,” I said.

  He almost jumped as I put my hand on his shoulder, but at least he was looking at me now and not at that blade. “For too many people that knife was probably the last thing they ever saw. It’s dirty, let it go.”

  Sam stared at me for a few seconds, and then he used his shirt to wipe the hilt and tossed the knife into the trees. He handed Karl’s box to me, scooped up Little Moe, and we walked to the road.

  Chapter 59

  Elaine rolled up as soon as we hit blacktop. Her head barely came over the steering wheel of the big sedan. “Is it done?” she asked as we pulled out. “Is it all over?”

  I wasn’t about to admit a thing, but Sam chirped, “He no longer exists. He’ll never trouble us again.”

  Elaine floored it as we pulled out, and I didn’t mind that she was in a hurry to get away from there. The Lincoln took the first sweeping downhill curve, and as we came out of it I caught a glimpse of something long and metallic glinting across the road in the moonlight. We ran over whatever it was before anyone could give warning, and all four tires blew out simultaneously with loud coughing sighs.

  Elaine yodeled a blue streak as her tiny hands wrestled with the steering wheel. The car shuddered along on rims and ragged rubber, bucking and swerving like we were riding out a 9.0 earthquake until we finally came to a stop.

  Behind us a spike strip – one of those portable road blocks favored by para-military and police around the world – lay across the road. It was placed right at the start of the straightaway so we hadn’t seen it before it was too late; its many sharp hollow metal teeth glinted in the moonlight. A little ways down a driveway, the red strobes of a cop car torched up into fluorescence and began spinning.

  “He’s dead, Officer Hoffman,” I called to the man standing next to the police cruiser. “You can be free now, like we talked about. You can be your own man, just like you wanted.”

  “I told you before to call me Rick,” he said in reflex.

  Then my words registered: “Dead?” he asked, favoring me with that vapid glance-away smile of his. But for all his roving gaze the riot gun was still firmly in his grasp, pressed snug to his shoulder and aimed right at us.

  “I get to be the Driver now,” he said to himself in wonder. “I can be as big as the Chief ever was. I’m the one now. I don’t have to be you after all. I don’t even have to like you anymore.” He seemed to ripple; he seemed to grow several inches in height.

  A gamut of emotions writhed across Hoffman’s face at the news of his ‘friend’s’ demise: joy and relief and hatred. Then the rapid succession of expressions stopped as he settled on one: a grimace of glee. Throughout, however, the shotgun never wavered.

  He looked me right in the eye for the first time in our acquaintance. “Did the Cougar get messed up? Is everything in the house still okay?”

  “Rick,” I said, knowing it was a waste of time even as I spoke. “It’s over. We can all go home now.”

  “Oh, no,” Hoffman said. “We're going back up there. To the Chief’s.”

  “I wanted to be you,” he said. “But now you’re the one that’s nothing. I’m the Driver from now on.”

  “Rick, I am impressed,” I said, and meant it. “I had your skill levels pegged as sub-par, your antennae a little stubby. I was going to advise you to ramp it up a little next time. But you played us all. Kudos, you won – let it go now.”

  Hoffman giggled at my stupidity, but then an appalled expression crossed his face. “Is
the Chief really dead? Did you make sure?”

  “I saw your graduation portrait in the living room, Rick,” I said, trying to change the subject to matters closer to sane, trying to help him continue pretending to be human. “Just how chummy were you and the Chief?”

  But Hoffman just looked at me blankly. My words didn’t really involve him so he didn’t have to pretend he was even listening.

  “I finally figured out why Stagger Bay protected the Driver when I saw all those AIDS medications at his house,” I continued, still trying to engage. “It’d cost a fortune to keep him in custody, a guy as advanced as that; maybe it’d even bankrupt Stagger Bay the rest of the way. Was that part of why Reese killed my brother? Because of the money justice would cost?”

  “Justice?” he said. “Reese only killed people who wouldn’t be missed. He was always safe with them. He never left evidence or room for suspicion.”

  “And the Chief?” he said in adoring tones like he still couldn’t make up his mind how he felt about his dead master. “He did as he wished. You can’t judge him like you do the sheep.”

  “What about the Beardsleys, Rick?” I asked. “Were they the right kind of people? What about all the Citizens you’ve killed?”

  “Oh, them. The Beardsleys weren’t real Stagger Bay; they’d only lived here ten years. They were newcomers, like you – like your brother,” Hoffman said, his gaze gloating as he studied my face. “And as for the others? We had permission – they deserved to play with me and the Chief.”

  “Who gave you permission?” I asked.

  “Get out your vehicle.”

  Sam and I did so, leaving Elaine and Little Moe in the car. We rounded the Lincoln, fanning out from each other as we rolled up on Hoffman from opposite sides. Sam had Jansen’s Glock in his right hand, held down along his leg and out of Rick’s sight.

  “Ah-ah,” Hoffman said. “Close enough.” He didn’t point the riot gun at either of us; instead he aimed it dead between us at Elaine and Little Moe.

  Sam and I both stopped cold. I was still just outside of striking distance, and Sam was smart enough not to display the Glock till it was time to use it. I was ever so grateful then, that Karl had schooled my son after all instead of just letting him raise himself.

  Hoffman took one hand off the shotgun and reached over to open the back door of his roller. He tossed a couple pairs of handcuffs on the asphalt in front of us. “You two put these on first.”

  “So what happens up at the house?” I asked.

  “You’ll find out soon enough, Markus.”

  Desperate, I lunged in as quick as my gimp leg would allow, hands outstretched. But he was just leaned forward with the riot gun’s butt shouldered. The shotgun’s barrel jabbed against my forehead and I stopped, still out of reach.

  I stood for a moment with my hands out-stretched uselessly, the riot gun firmly planted against my skull. Hoffman laughed softly as I lowered my arms to my sides.

  I leaned forward against the barrel, pushing with my legs. He tried to back off but I didn’t let him; I moved forward, following him and keeping the riot gun barrel firmly against my forehead. He couldn’t pull it away without taking the butt from his shoulder, without having to stop aiming the shotgun at us for a fatal second.

  I heard Elaine and Little Moe exit the car and run into the underbrush.

  “Go ahead,” I told Reese. “I’ll bet in the time it takes you to blow my head off, my son will stick that scatter gun up your ass sideways. Go ahead motherfucker – I even know what it’ll feel like.”

  “Don’t do it, Dad,” Sam said. “Not like this. I still need you.”

  “You called me Dad.”

  “Don’t let it go to your head.”

  I pulled away from the riot gun and Hoffman scampered back out of reach. “I’m the one with the shotgun,” he shouted, eyes crazed. “I’m the one in charge.”

  “You might want to shut the fuck up,” I said. “Me and my boy are having a moment here.” I turned back to him, though. “You’re fooling yourself if you really think you could ever be the Driver. You really want to reassess here, it’s not too late. You could never fill those shoes – you need someone over you to shield you; you’re not strong enough to go it alone.”

  He scowled as if considering whether to feel insulted or not. But then he stopped trying to pretend he even thought we really existed. “It’s time for that drive, Markus.”

  I heard a car engine coming up the incline and Mr. Tubbs’ Bronco chugged into view. They took their time getting to us, like they were in no hurry at all. They pulled up about fifty feet away; Tubbs got out and stood next to his jacked up ride.

  “Rick,” Tubbs said. “How’s about you mosey your sorry ass on over here?”

  His two Brahma-bull mesh-back bodyguards climbed out to flank him, looking as unexcited as ever. Each Meshback had a scoped Weatherby hunting rifle nestled in the crook of his arm.

  Hoffman shuddered. For a second a wild blaze of defiance seemed like it was about to blossom from him into a Tombstone shootout. Then he wilted and choked, and his riot gun lowered to point at the ground as he slumped. Without looking to the right or to the left, he marched toward where Mr. Tubbs stood waiting.

  After Rick reached him, Tubbs subjected Hoffman to a quiet harangue I was too far away to understand the words of. The old man snapped his fingers with a pop! and pointed his index finger right up in Hoffman’s face, inches from his nose.

  “I’ll buy you some time,” I whispered to Sam.

  “I can take them all,” Sam whispered back, twitching the Glock from behind his leg before re-concealing it.

  I looked at him incredulously. “You really want them pumping rounds in Moe and Elaine’s direction? Backstop is the beaten zone, boy, never forget it.”

  I headed toward Tubbs, not dreading the approach as much as I might have under other circumstances: both because of what it might buy for Sam, Elaine, and Little Moe; and because, truth to tell, I wanted to talk to Tubbs my own self.

  Meshback One immediately aimed in on me with his Weatherby while Meshback Two ‘assisted’ Hoffman into the back seat. Tubbs signaled Meshback One to hold off, but the big bodyguard still aimed in on me as I approached, awaiting the release signal.

  Jansen had been pest extermination, Reese had been assisted suicide, and Hoffman was no more than a Bozo minus the clown suit. But rolling up on Tubbs, I knew I was coming to the true knife edge of the evening.

  “Seeing you here and upright, I don’t have to ask about Reese,” Tubbs said. He stood with one hand in his pocket, the other holding Hoffman’s riot gun by the barrel with the butt on the ground.

  “You sent him?” I asked casually.

  Tubbs shook his head. “You should be more focusing on me pulling your feet out the fire here.”

  “Don’t make too much of it,” I said. “Hoffman was a putz. I probably would have had to make a sacrifice bunt, but Sam would have taken him easily enough then.”

  “Sam? Is that who I saw skulking into the bushes back up there?” Tubbs shrugged. “I want you to know that it was never about color for me, Markus. Maybe for some of my people, but not for me.”

  “Sure,” I said, aping agreement. “Your favorite color is green anyways. People disappearing on a regular basis? That’s fine as long as it’s not racially motivated. Rogue cops, neighborhoods being declared blighted in the interests of new development? Good business is where you make it, right?

  "You knew you were framing me from the start, you knew I didn’t kill the Beardsleys – but you protected Jansen all these years for some ungodly reason. Why, was he family or something?”

  “Don’t push it, boy. I’ve got your number now, and I don’t owe you any explanations. But I do owe you for my girl,” Tubbs said, honest anger twisting his face. “I hate owing you. I won’t be in anyone’s debt.”

  His face cleared and he gave me an enigmatic stare, his raptor eyes glowing. “You’re a lot like she was. She always gave me hel
l too.

  “I’m not admitting to nothing, wasn’t there, didn’t do it. Reese was a good man, I’ll miss him. But Rick here, maybe he was overstepping his bounds. Maybe he was going way beyond a certain agenda I’m not gonna explain, and maybe he was getting inexcusably sloppy.”

  “And the car nut who just mysteriously died up at the house?” I asked.

  “Some people are hard to kill. Maybe you want to take them out, but they’re like cockroaches, they keep finding their way through, they keep coming out of the shit storm smelling like a rose.” Tubbs chuckled nastily, his eyes gleaming. “Then you just have to live with them for a while no matter how much of a pain in the ass they are. Try to find some use for them.”

  “Some use,” I said, trying to keep the contempt from showing in my eyes. With Jansen, Tubbs thought he’d harnessed Grendel to the plowshare. But in the end he’d as much as traded his only child for his own tacky definition of the good life.

  I looked at this tough, foolish old man, whose hole cards had proved nothing more than a busted flush. I studied this sick disease-raddled old termagant, his eyes rheumy with the inner knowledge he'd fed his only daughter to Moloch. There was a desperate self-denial happening inside him, but he knew what he’d done – he knew just fine.

  And as for me? I knew that making a single comment about it would be sure and certain suicide. Pardon me if I kept my yap shut on that one. You’d have done the same I’ll bet.

  “I’m cleaning up loose ends tonight,” Tubbs said. “So tell me, Markus – are you a loose end?”

  Tubbs laughed when I didn’t answer. “What do you think Spale?” he asked Meshback Number One. “Is Markus here a loose end?”

  “Yeah, boss.” Spale’s cheek was glued to his rifle stock as he aimed dead at my head. “He’s a loose end all right.”

  Tubbs laughed again, glanced at me slyly. “That’s one vote against you, but I got the executive veto power. The way I see it we have two ways to go Markus: either I treat you like a loose end, like your friend Rick here – or I let you call in your marker and I let you leave. Which is it gonna be?”