WE DROVE THROUGH THE NIGHT. WEST AND SOUTH, INTO the hills. The dark world blurred. This was rough country. Trail of Tears State Forest jumped up and swallowed the land. No one wanted to live out there. There wasn’t any moon, and the roads all ran headlong into black holes. Finally, I broke out of my thoughts and broke the silence.
“Here’s the part I don’t get.”
“Tell me.”
“If the Cleaveses are up to their necks in the dogging business, and it looks like they are, why hire me in the first place? Why not just kill Reach themselves, snatch Shelby Ann, and go on about their miserable lives? For that matter, why bother with the dog in the first place?”
“Doggers are like breeders everywhere,” Jeep said. “Always looking for a prize line. But yeah, I saw her picture. In terms of dogging, she wasn’t anything too special.”
I nodded, hating it, hating the bloodless math of it.
“So why her, then?”
“Maybe there’s something else special about her?” Jeep said. “Or maybe it was just to fuck with your buddy Reach?”
“All right. So maybe it’s a simple matter of clipping the competition. We’re right back to the first question. Why hire me?”
“Don’t know,” said Jeep. We thought about it a bit more. Probably neither of us was going to give Sherlock Holmes a run for his money. Finally, Jeep said, “Convenience, maybe. Or maybe they just like other people to do their dirty work for them.”
“Hundred thousand bucks could pay for a lot of dirty work. Especially when you’ve already got a pair of psychos like Bundy and Arlis Harvel at your disposal.”
“True.”
“I can’t figure it out,” I said. “In fact, it only makes sense if . . .”
Jeep nodded.
“The Cleaveses didn’t kill Dennis Reach,” he finished for me.
“Sonofabitch,” I said. It’s amazing how dumb a grown man can be. “They think I did it.”
“Which only leaves one question.”
“Who did kill Reach?”
“Yep.”
There wasn’t much mystery to it. The Colt rifle, Reach’s words to me the night he was shot, J.T. hiding out and hauling ass. It all added up to one name, and I’d like to say I was more than just a little surprised. But I sure as hell was embarrassed.
Carol Ray.
Jeep must have been reading my mind.
“Better see if we can find her, slick,” he said. “It might go a long way toward getting you out of your hole with Lindley.”
“The hole’s pretty deep at this point,” I said. “And like to get deeper. Frankly, though, I’m more worried about the FBI.”
“Fuck it,” Jeep said. “If we’re going to get our assholes in a knot, let’s at least have something to show for it.”
“And what might that be?”
“A. Evan Cleaves’s nut sack, stapled to my living room wall.”
“A. Evan still attached?”
“Briefly.”
And on we drove into the night.
WOODRAT ROAD RAN RIGHT UP TO THE DOORSTEP OF PYRAMID State Park. Way back, the area was all strip land, and even to this day the overgrown tailings left behind by the Pyramid Coal Company form a kind of gently rolling grassland. Denmark was just west, Galum Creek a little to the north. The Cleaveses’ hideout was in between, inside a dark, wet hollow surrounded by chinkapin and hackberry trees and a humid gloom. The moon finally appeared, low on the horizon, and the silver light on the rim of the hills was kind of pretty. Then A. Evan’s hideout jumped out of the landscape and punched pretty in the nose. Here the country dove toward lowland and wet muck. The insects attacked us like a little air force, and the hot kiss of the summer damp laughed in our faces. But the trailer was worse. It was a geriatric fiberglass doublewide whose only saving grace seemed to be that it had a roof and four walls. Maybe not even that. Any port in a storm, I guess, but a newspaper story about a tornado would have torn A. Evan’s trailer to confetti and thrown the confetti into the next county.
“Why not just live in a cave?” Jeep said.
“At least there’s not a dog in the yard.”
“Yeah. Ain’t that a kick in the ass?”
“Speaking of ass-kicks, how you want to handle this?”
“With our usual charm.”
Our usual charm involved broken doors and red-hot gun barrels. Or at the very least kicking anyone’s ass who looked at us crooked. I thought about it.
“How about we try the bedroom window first?” I said.
“Your caper, slick.”
The backyard was a mud hole. There was a pile of abandoned pickup trucks in various stages of advanced oxidation. It was like a museum. There were kennels—shit- but not dog-filled—and a device, wild with copper tubes, that could only have been A. Evan’s attempt at a still. Like he didn’t have enough vices.
I half-expected someone to come out of the dark at us, chainsaw in hand, babbling some sort of wild-ass, backwoods glossolalia, but maybe I’ve just seen too many Hollywood horror movies. The back door was missing. It was just a rectangular hole in the fiberglass. As a security measure, someone had leaned an old fishing boat against the hole.
I said, “Now that is something you don’t see every day.”
Moving the boat seemed like a bad idea. We went around front again. I don’t guess we were going to win awards for decisive action, and I was glad there were no men’s magazine writers around to take it all down. We climbed the steps. The front door was a door in name only. It was the kind of door other doors make fun of for goldbricking. We gave it a mean look and it opened. I looked at Jeep. Jeep looked at me. That was about as calm as things got.
Jeep went ahead of me. The room was dark and quiet and small. There was a hallway to our left, and some doors, all closed. The bedroom was right. It smelled like someone had roasted wild animals alive in their pelts over an open flame. I didn’t know what that was, but I knew I didn’t like it. It burned the nose and the eyes. It made you want to tear out your hair and cry and run away into the hills. Candlelight from the bedroom cast a shape around the corner and on the wall. A big yellow square. We slowly but deliberately headed for that shape. We snuck like the Scooby Gang. Suddenly the quiet got quieter. Then there was a sound like a hard breath, and the yellow square went away. Someone had blown out the candle.
“Well, shit,” Jeep said.
Something thundered toward us, out of the shadows. Sheldon Cleaves, I realized. Or a wild animal wearing a Sheldon suit. He ran at us, naked, howling across the small space with his unit flying around free like a shaved mouse. He had a sword in his hand. His pecker was out, and he was armed with a sword. Saber, I guess it was. Jeep did the sensible thing and hit the deck. The saber whistled through the air. It clipped off the brim of his ball cap and lodged in the metal flashing around the doorframe.
Sheldon grunted and tugged, but the blade was stubborn. I didn’t blame it; I didn’t want to work for Sheldon Cleaves, either. Jeep jumped to his feet. He hit Sheldon in the ribs and kidneys. Sheldon grunted, but kept working on the sword. It was an impressive show of single-mindedness. I left him to Jeep, turned, and started in a run to the bedroom. I didn’t get far. Two shapes appeared in front of me—two big naked shapes, a couple of Sheldon’s White Dragon buds, I guess. I didn’t have time to ponder what all that nakedness meant. The air went hot around me. Something flashed bright in my eyes, and I fell over backward and broke a chair.
I’ll never know how, but when one of the big men cut loose with what looked like an Ingram .380 machine pistol, he managed to miss everything but the sofa, the windows, and some squirrel skulls. Sheldon forgot his sword and dove through the front door like Buster Keaton doing a silent film stunt. The second big man hit the deck, too, and rolled toward the kitchen, knocking over barstools and a thicket of foot-high bongs as he went. He swept his own Ingram across the room and puckered the wood paneling with black anuses.
Jeep’s .50-caliber Magnum roared. It hit the air conditioner on the wall opposite and tossed it into the yard. He fired again, and a fist-size hole appeared in the particleboard. When I uncovered my head and opened my eyes, the room had gotten emptier. The White Dragons had disappeared back into the hallway. One on either side.
“Back out,” Jeep said to me.
I backed out. Sheldon was still at the top of the stairs, still gathering himself. I kicked him off the steps and to the ground. He stood back up, holding his balls. I guess he’d landed on them when he dove out of the trailer.
“You motherfucker,” he said. Meaning me, I guess. He looked ridiculous, standing there cupping his balls. Then he smiled. We turned.
One of the Dragons was standing in the trailer’s doorway. He aimed his gun at us. I didn’t hear the shot, just its echo. It came from somewhere along the dark ridgeline, too far away to see muzzle flash. It hit the Dragon in the top of the head. His brains jumped out of his skull and landed in his open palms. What was left of him looked at them for a moment in confusion. I dove under the steps. Jeep followed.
“Who?” Jeep asked. I shook my head. I didn’t know.
I didn’t have the time or breath to answer anyway. The second Dragon appeared. He had some loyalty on him. I guess you had to give him that. He ran screaming into the yard after his brother-in-arms. He picked a piece of him off the ground. Another shot cracked just over our heads. The boy’s right arm vanished in a red haze just beneath the shoulder joint. I think he opened his mouth to scream, but as he did, another slug knocked the top half of his head from his body, and what was left of him folded up and crumpled to the ground in a shower of blood and brain matter.
“Fucking sniper,” Jeep grunted. “In the dark, no less. Night-vision scope?”
“Got to be. I can barely see five feet in front of me, and those shots came from the hill.”
“Some of your heavy-hitting buddies,” Jeep said.
“Inside.”
We dove for it. Jeep dragged Sheldon with us. We made the trailer just as another shot sounded and the light fixture by our head exploded. We dove inside, ate floor. I shut the door with my foot.
“What now?” Jeep asked. Calm.
“Don’t know. Suppose we could call in the cavalry.”
“Wince?”
“No. I don’t want his deputies’ blood on my head.”
Jeep grunted.
“Think they’ll shoot at us if we lead Asshole out of here?” he asked after a moment.
“Fuck you, boy,” Sheldon said.
“Where’s your son?” I said. “Where’s A. Evan?”
“Not here,” Sheldon said. “And double fuck you.”
Jeep said, “Or maybe we could just push him out there. Let him take his own chances.”
I thought about it.
“Uh-uh,” I said at last. “We still need the old bastard. To get to his son, for one thing. And as for walking him out of here, I don’t think so. Pretty clear that whoever’s up there wasn’t gunning for us, or at least decided we’re lower-priority targets, but they’ll cut us down to get to him. That’s for damn sure.”
“I think so, too.”
“I need a phone,” I said.
The one on the wall had been vaporized. Probably it wasn’t connected anyway. Mine was in the truck. Snug in the console. Useless. Jeep reached into his coat and brought out a pink cell. I stared at him until he blushed and looked away. A first.
“It’s Opal’s,” he said.
Sheldon barked a mean laugh. He didn’t like us and wanted to hurt our feelings. Jeep slung him across the room. He hit the wall with a sick thud and collapsed to the floor. He sat up and smirked at us.
“Who the fuck are you peckerwoods?”
I picked a card out of my wallet and started punching the tiny rubber buttons.
“I’m the guy you and your son tried to kill a week ago, old man. You should have finished the job.”
“We will.”
I opened my mouth to say something. But Jeep was quicker. He picked Sheldon up and threw him across the room and into the other wall. Sheldon left a hole in the paneling.
“I’ve learned something about myself,” Jeep said. “I like beating up racists.”
I had to ignore that when the other end picked up.
“Agent Carney, please.”
It took them a moment to get their shit together at Command Central or wherever, moments that seemed like years. Finally, a voice crackled over the line.
“Carney.”
“Hey, friend.”
“Oh, goddamn. What now?”
“Nice chatting with you, too, special agent. You guys have a helicopter at your disposal?”
“What? A helicopter? Of course not.”
“Dang. How about an armored car?”
“We have an SUV,” Carter said.
“Roomy?”
“What the hell is this about, Slim?”
“You remember the White Dragons?”
A long silence.
“Ticktock, special agent.”
Sound of Carney clearing his throat.
“Of course I remember them. What . . .”
“There’s a pair of them shot dead. In the front yard of the trailer I’m holed up in.”
“How . . .”
“And the person or persons who made them dead are likely still in the vicinity.”
“You’re trapped?”
“Like a fly in wet shit, special agent. And if you want to hear my story, you’re going to have to come and get me.”
“Agent Carter will . . .”
“Pee his pants, I know,” I said. I wondered how long it would take the genius on the hill to start peppering the soft walls of the trailer with bullets. “Mine aren’t too dry right now, either.”
“Okay, I’ll . . .”
“Hurry.”
“Soon as we can,” he said, suddenly back in control of his voice. He’d made his decision. “Where are you?”
I gave him the address and described the general location of the shooter.
“And Carney . . .”
“What?”
“The house belongs to A. Evan Cleaves.”
“Sonofa—”
I hung up on him.
“Think that was smart, slick?” Jeep asked.
“Don’t know. Probably not, but it was the only play we had.”
Jeep didn’t look convinced.
“What now?” he said.
“Carney can’t find the two of you here. He does, you and I will go to jail, and shithead here will be whisked far, far away.”
“True enough. How we going to do this?” Jeep asked, ignoring Sheldon’s snarl. The old man writhed on the ground like a dying wasp. The impulse to crush him with my boot was almost overwhelming.
“I’ll have to get the truck.”
“Think they’ll let you?”
“Don’t know,” I said. My hands were shaking, but my voice was calm. “I am willing to entertain counterproposals.”
There weren’t any counterproposals. I crawled to the window and peered out, but I didn’t see anything but nothing. It’s possible the sniper was buried, ambush style, beneath a covering of leaves and branches. It was possible he’d gotten tired and gone home. It was also possible I was in line for the British crown.
“Wish me luck.” I crawled to the door.
“What’s luck?” Jeep.
“Die on fire, motherfucker.” Sheldon.
What a pair.
The bodies of the Dragons were where they’d fallen. The truck had taken a couple of slugs. The passenger-side window was gone, and the rear bumper had been hit, but it still looked drivable. Anyway, I don’t guess I had much choice.
Morning was coming on fast now, and in the frail light the shapes of objects seemed sharp. The birds were singing in the loud, clear tone that only first light seems to inspire, and the taste of humidity was heavy in the air. The truck, parked alongside the gravel road in front of the trailer, might have been a million miles away. Getting to it was like swimming through concrete.
But there weren’t any shots, no subsonic rounds to punch a hole in my belly and head. I opened the door of the truck and climbed in and turned over the engine. Just like I was going to market. I drove as close to the front door of A. Evan’s trailer as I could.
“You okay?” Jeep asked from the doorway.
“I feel ten years older,” I said. “But I’m alive. Think you can manage this?”
Jeep nodded at Sheldon, who lay on the floor, breathing hard and clutching his ribs. Guess Jeep had punished the old guy for the whole die-on-fire remark.
“Have to tie him up,” he said. “But yeah.”
I had an idea.
“Might not be necessary,” I said.
Sheldon screamed like a kid, but after another moment I managed to stick him with a couple of the dog tranquilizers I’d picked up from Lew and Eve Mandamus. Before you could say Goodnight Moon, the old man had drifted into uneasy dreams.
“Where to?” Jeep asked, once Sheldon had been deposited not-so-ceremoniously into the bed of the truck.
“My place. And don’t spare the horses.”
“Good luck, slick.”
“Yeah, good . . .”
A burst of shots erupted from overhead. Maybe the shooter had dozed off, or maybe he’d gone to take a piss. Whichever, he was back now. The Dodge’s rear window exploded. Jeep slammed the door and hauled ass, scattering dust and river rock on his way to the road as bullets peppered my ride with small pits, blew the passenger side mirror off its post, and disappeared the little silver Ram hood ornament. I doubted my insurance would cover it.
I decided I’d had enough fresh air for the day. I went back inside. I went back in horizontal. I landed hard on the floor and kicked the door closed again. Shots came through the windows and walls. A clock turned back into random numbers. A bullet knocked the derby hat off the skinny half of a Laurel and Hardy lamp set. Now they’d gone too far.
I wanted to get away from the gun. I went into the back of the house and into Sheldon’s bedroom. There was a glass pipe on a bedside table and a harness and ball gag in a pile on the floor. I was still looking at it when I heard a whimper down the hall.
I went toward it. Bathroom with a pocket door. I slid back the panel and there she was, in a ball on the floor. That sixty-five-dollar red dog.
“Thank God you’re okay,” I said.
She sniffed my hand and kissed my cheek. I kissed the top of her bony skull. I checked the shaved spot under her collar. The XXXs were gone and new stitches were in their place. Something had been taken out of her.
“We get to meet some FBI men now,” I said. “I’m sorry. I keep introducing you to turds.”
Twenty more minutes passed. A half hour. I started to think Special Agent Carney was having a joke on me. Maybe the boys and girls at Command Central were all sharing a laugh at the expense of the luckless redneck, under fire in a shithole mobile home somewhere in the hills of southern Illinois. I guess it was pretty funny, when you thought about it.
Or maybe not. About that time, the first churning of the air reached my ears from far away, and in another moment the unmistakable sound of a rumbling engine filled the air around A. Evan’s trailer. The ratty curtains flapped in their windowpanes as though their interest had been piqued. I was just getting up the guts to take a peek when two big men in black suits and sunglasses came storming through what remained of the front door, scooped me up, and dropped me and Shelby Ann into the backseat of a waiting Lincoln SUV. Right next to Agent Carney.
“Drive,” he said. He looked at me. At the dog.
“That your partner?” he said.
“You watch too much TV, special agent,” I said.
“And you don’t watch enough.”
The Lincoln roared away from the trailer.