Shallow Graves

19

"Ah, it's the gunslinger's grandson," said Fred, who squinted his red, retiree's face and studied Pellam's cuts and bruises. "Hell, what happened to you?" He ordered two Buds.

"Had an accident."

"Another one?"

Pellam said, "I'm an unlucky guy sometimes. What can I say?"

"No fooling-you all right?" the old man asked with genuine concern.

"Fine, no problem."

"Weekends're rough around here. All those tourists. What'd you do, get in the way of somebody taking a picture of a leaf? Hey, how about a game?"

"Can't tonight, Fred."

"What's this shit I hear about you not making a movie here?"

"Talk to the town council about it."

"Buncha old SOBs. Shit, there goes my Hollywood career."

Pellam asked, "Where can I find Nick?"

"The kid we were playing with th'other night?" Fred's head was swiveling. "Was here a few minutes ago. Maybe he's in the backroom. That's where they got what they call the restaurant."

Pellam finished the beer. He lifted the bottle in thanks.

"Hey, Pellam, Burt Reynolds ain't available, gimme a call."

In the backroom Pellam found Nick sitting at a table with another man, skinny, long hair, a couple years his junior-maybe eighteen. Nick had a bowl of soup in front of him. He hunched over it, putting slippery noodles into his mouth.

"Hi, Nick," Pellam pulled up a chair. Nick waved then returned to the soup. It looked like Campbell's. What else at the Cedar Tap? Nick said, "This here's Rebo. This's Pellam, the guy you heard about, makes the movies."

Rebo's eyes went wide. He grinned. "Wow, movie man." They shook hands.

"How you doing?" Pellam asked.

"Wow."

Pellam turned to Nick. "Hey, Nick, why I stopped by, my studio's looking for somebody like you."

"Yeah?" The big man took some more sips of soup. "You still making that movie? I heard you weren't."

"This's another movie. I remembered you're into wheels."

"I'm like sorta into wheels."

"They need a driver, a stunt driver. But he's got to be good."

Rebo, chewing a wad of hamburger, said, "Oh, he's good. Nick's a good driver." Rebo's T-shirt said Motley Crüe 1987 Tour.

"You interested?"

A grin snuck into the fat in the boy's cheeks. "Well, I guess."

"The only thing is, you think you could show me what you can do? Like an audition?"

"I guess."

"How about now?"

"It'd be Sunday night."

"They need somebody soon. Next weekend. If I can't get anybody we'll have to bring in somebody from the Coast." Pellam tossed him a bone: "You'll get screen credit."

"A credit?"

"And the pay's great. A thousand bucks for one stunt."

Rebo's eyes were getting bigger. "Hey, man, tell him about your car."

"Well…"

The Motley Crüe boy steamed ahead. "Pontiac GT. He put in a Chevy 442 all by his lonesome."

Nick's grin was back, spreading like a sunrise. "Hurst shifter," he said. "Did that myself too."

Pellam whistled. "You sure know your hardware. How 'bout it?"

Nick shrugged. "Let's go."

Rebo stood up but Pellam shook his head. "Just gotta be the two of us. Insurance problems, you understand."

Rebo nodded and dropped back into his seat as if Duane Allman himself had told him to sit.

Outside they walked to the car and Pellam looked around.

The streets of Cleary were deserted. He said, "Oh, let me get something." He disappeared into the camper for a minute and came out with the bottle of Wild Turkey. He handed it to Nick. The boy looked at it but shook his head. "Maybe afterwards, man. Not a good idea if I'm going to be doing high-speed work."

They walked to Nick's black Pontiac.

High-speed work. Like he did it everyday.

Pellam unscrewed the lid of the bottle. Nick watched him, frowning.

"You don't drink and drive?" Pellam asked. "That's funny. You were the other night. I could smell it. On top of your aftershave. That's what I recognized. Brut, right?"

The eyes were fishy and the grin came back. "The fuck're you saying?"

Pellam nodded toward the car. "Heard your car this afternoon, thought it sounded familiar. Then checked it out and smelled that same drugstore aftershave inside. Didn't your mother raise you with any class?"

"Huh?"

"How's your friend with the broken nose? I hope he's in a lot of pain."

"You fucking crazy?" He'd turned solemn as a mortician.

"I know, you're going to tell me it was nothing personal."

"What wasn't personal?" But the eyes disclosed all the facts. Nick paused then said, "You got me good." He touched his jaw. "I won't be eating solid food for a week. My tongue's sore as a whore's tit. Why didn't you tell Moorhouse?"

"What good would it've done? He'd let you go, right?"

"Yeah."

"So he was in on it, right?"

"In on what?"

"Paying you to beat the crap out of me and plant the drugs?"

"I don't know what-"

The Colt appeared in a flash, pointed straight into the boy's belly.

"Shit," he whispered. "Oh, God, mister."

"Who paid you-" Pellam paused. Suddenly he was curious. "How much was it?"

"A hundred bucks."

"That's all! That's crap."

"No, man, no. It's totally true. I swear."

Pellam felt insulted. "You should've charged more. Now tell me who?"

"We didn't have nothing against you. We heard-"

"Who?" Pellam whispered viciously and cocked the Colt, praying that his thumb wouldn't slip off the hammer. The gun was loaded with 130-grain,.45 caliber bullets. The boy was fat but he wouldn't even slow up a slug that size.

Both hands in front of him, palms out. "Okay. Fine. Listen, I'm going-"

"Asked you a question," Pellam growled.

"-to tell you. Just put that-"

"Who?"

"Mr Ambler. Wexell Ambler. Well, was a guy works for him-name's Mark, but I don't know his last name, I swear I don't. This guy Mark talked to Mayor Moorhouse and they wanted me and my friend to rough you up a bit."

"Where's he live? The Ambler?"

Pellam touched Nick's chest with the Colt. A good way to get directions fast. Nick became a regular Triple A guidebook. "Barlow Mountain road. Just off Route Nine, north. Past the Shell station. Go two hundred yards past then make a left. Really, mister, I didn't have nothing against you."

"Well, what's he got against me?"

"I don't know, swear to God. Please, mister, point that someplace else."

Pellam aimed at the ground before he eased the hammer to half-cock then slowly spun the cylinder to put an empty chamber beneath the hammer, which he then lowered all the way. He held the gun in his right hand while he handed the whiskey bottle to Nick with his left.

"Take a drink."

Nick's voice shook as he said, "I don't want to take a drink."

"We both want you to." Pellam pointed the Colt at him again.

"Oh, shit, come on-"

"Drink it down."

Nick took a swallow.

"Come on, a couple more. Drink like a man. You hit like a girl. At least drink like a man."

"Fuck you, Pellam," he wheezed.

"You tried that. It didn't work. Drink."

When he'd gotten down five, six good mouthfuls, Pellam took the bottle and threw it, open, into the GT.

"Aw, shit, what you want to do that for?"

"Well, I'll tell you. I've evened things up a bit. You're a little bigger'n me but now you're a little drunker. So we're driving out of town and I'm going to whip your ass one on one."

"You got that gun."

"I'll leave it in the car. Drive out toward the highway to the forest preserve. I'll be right behind you. Don't try to get away. I'll be aiming for the tires but I might hit your gas tank."

"You asshole," the boy muttered as he got into the car. The big Pontiac engine exploded to life and Nick pumped the accelerator.

They pulled out of downtown, the camper right behind the GT.

It turned out even better than Pellam'd thought it would be. They'd gotten two miles out of town, to the stoplight, when Nick did just what Pellam knew he was going to do: Looked for cross traffic, slipped the clutch and shot through the red light, running up through the gears with his fancy shifter, sounding like a buzzsaw.

The boy was probably in fourth when the state trooper Pellam had seen on his way into town, hidden in the bushes, a speed trap, started to pull out.

Nick came within two or three inches of taking the front end of the trooper's Chevy with him.

Pellam drove slowly past the scene of the arrest. Nick, handcuffed. The trooper, writing down Breathalyzer results.

He drove past the sign that said Welcome to Cleary and continued into the blackness.

Good night, officer. Good night, sir…

Pellam turned the camper off Barlow Mountain Road, and eased along an overgrown side road up the hill that he supposed was Barlow Mountain. He nosed the Winnebago forward into a clump of hemlocks then killed the engine. He pulled the Colt out from under the seat and slipped it into his waistband then stepped outside. His boots made gritting taps as he walked along the asphalt toward the warm yellow house lights that glowed in the fog, a quarter mile away.

A hundred yards from the house he made his way off the road into brush and sparse woods. He smelled wet pine and ripe leaves. A hit of skunk. He saw the glistening lights reflecting on a lake to his right. A late, lone cicada made its deceptively cheerful sound and somewhere a dog barked. He moved slowly toward the house, stepping around branches.

The house was a rambling old monster, easily two hundred years old. A drab, ugly brown, Plymouth Rock chic. He heard water lapping and saw the lake clearly; it came right to the edge of the property. The dog barked again, the sound rolling across the lake. There was no other noise or motion, not even wind. The house was still and the lights were dim; Pellam wondered if they'd been left on while the residents were out to discourage the potential intruders that Pellam now understood Ambler would have good reason to worry about-the state police, for instance.

He thought of the drugs that had been planted on Marty-and on him-and the odd heroin Sam had taken. He recalled that Meg or someone told him about other overdoses and murders in the area. Ambler was probably responsible for it all.

He knelt in the grass and felt the cold dew through his denim. After five minutes, during which he saw no motion, he ran in a crouch to the separate garage, a two-story saltbox, and looked in the window. Only one car inside, a Cadillac. And there was an oil stain on the concrete, about ten feet to the left of the Caddie, which told him that Ambler had two cars.

A family out to dinner on Sunday night? Probably. But even when he walked to the house Pellam stayed in the shadows and edged up to the first-floor windows slowly. He bobbed his head up and looked in one quickly, seeing small rooms, decorated with rough, painted furniture, wreaths of dried flowers, primitive Colonial paintings of spooky children and black-clad wives-everything stiff and spindly and uncomfortable.

He saw no movement at all.

The windows, he noticed, were mostly unlocked.

The third room was the one he wanted.

It was dark paneled and inside were two large gun cabinets, glass faced, set against the wall. Several trophies were mounted near the low ceiling-a couple of antelope and a good-pointed buck. But they were on one wall only, as if the hunter had gotten tired of displaying his kills. Pellam, squinting, saw a number of rifles in the cases. Several looked like they were.30 caliber and at least two of them had telescopic sights.

Pellam lifted his hands up to the window and tested it. Unlocked. He stood completely still for a moment, his face millimeters away from the smooth, expensive paint job. Then he eased up the window, which moved slowly. He opened it about two feet. A hard climb, though, he thought-considering his bruised thigh, his damaged joints.

It was then that he glanced inside and noticed something odd.

What's wrong with this picture?

The second gun cabinet. The third space from the left.

Empty.

Thinking: If a man was as organized as Ambler seemed to be, and he didn't have enough guns to fill a cabinet, he'd probably keep the ones he did have centered in the rack. Which meant-

"Don't move," the man said.

The jump was involuntary, though the cold touch of the shotgun barrel at his head brought the movement under control real fast.

The voice was that of a middle-aged man. He asked, "You have a gun?"

"Yes."

"Hand it to me."

If he was impressed with the Colt, the man didn't say so. He slipped it into his pocket and, leaving the Remington over-under at Pellam's neck like a nesting kitten, said, "Let's go inside."