Get Thee Behind Me...

Chapter 6 Come and Get Me

Insects droned around them. The bites were like hot needles. He felt her trembling and instinctively held her closer. Another shot came faintly from the direction of the house.

“I think he went up to the house,” Cooper whispered.

She said in a toneless whisper, “He took me into his room and he told me that he was Rocko Kadma and Carla had worked for him before he was deported and that Carla was still making money out of rackets. Money that sent me to school and bought me clothes. I knew when he told me that I had guessed the truth for a long time.”

“Don’t talk about it.”

“I have to talk about it. He said he liked me. He said that if I was nice to him, nothing bad would happen to Carla. Then I had to sit while they played cards and he kept giving me drinks and winking at me. A horrid pasty little man like that. Then Carla came in and tried to get me out of there. He said no. She started to scream at him and he hit her. I saw him hit her. Her face went funny and she fell back into the chair. She’s dead. I didn’t know she was dead. I wanted to be nice to the little man so he wouldn’t hit Carla again. But she was already dead.”

He put his hand across her mouth. “Easy, easy.”

Again she took a deep shuddering breath. He took his hand away. “I’m all right, I guess. I should have known. But you see, I’m so much younger than she is. I can remember when we lived in the apartment. I guess I was twelve. Nick used to come there. Then he died. She sent me away. There was always enough money. Maybe too much money. But she was good. Tell me she was good. Please.”

“She was good to you, Barbara. Maybe that’s enough.”

She began to weep. It was a release for her. She made very little sound as she cried. It did not last long. Enough starlight came through the thick branches overhead so that he could make out her face. She lay on her back, his left arm under her shoulders.

“What will we do?” she asked quietly.

“Try to get through the gate and across the causeway.”

“What will happen back at the house?”

“They’ll kill Rocko and Billy. I think the man I shot will die. The one who was in the road will tell the others we’re here in the brush someplace. I think they’ll look for us.”

“Shall we go to the gate now?”

“Stay close behind me. Take hold of the back of my belt. Try not to make any noise.”

Though they tried to be quiet, they seemed to make a great deal of sound. Cooper stopped every few feet to listen for any sound of pursuit. He risked going out onto the road. Once on the road they hurried recklessly. They turned the last corner and saw the heavy gate ahead. A gasoline lantern made a blue-white glare that showed a man in silhouette, his back against a tree, head bowed, rifle across his lap.

“Sleeping,” Cooper whispered. He pushed her back into the shadows. “Wait right here.”

He walked with enormous care, picking each step, circling to come up behind the tree. At last his outstretched fingers touched the rough bark. He moved to the side, poised, then jumped out and grabbed the rifle barrel and yanked with all his strength. It came free with so little resistance that he stumbled and fell to one knee. The man leaning against the tree had toppled over onto his side. It was the old man who had opened the gate for him. He was breathing. The sparse white hair over his right ear was matted with blood.

He turned at the quick sound of her steps as she ran to him. The gate was closed but not locked. He pushed it open and she went through first.

At that moment he heard the shout behind them, on the road. He glanced at the hundred yards of causeway and cursed himself for not putting out the gasoline lantern. Even with it out, the starlight would be too bright on the exposed causeway.

“Down the shore line,” he whispered, pushing her ahead of him.

She ran. Once she slipped and went into the water up to her knees, scrambled back up onto the slope of the bank.

Ahead he saw the basin, the jetty, the two cruisers, one moored on either side of the narrow wooden jetty. He told her to stop and listen. There was the sound of someone crashing through the brush on the other side of the fence. Then that sound ceased.

He forced her down below the angle of the bank. Even at that distance the lantern made highlights and shadows. The rifle was a bolt action. He crouched and yanked the bolt back, shoved it forward and locked it. The noise it made was loud in the silence of the night. The small waves of the bay lapped against the sleek sides of the launches.

He lay diagonally along the bank, aimed carefully and slowly squeezed the trigger. The glaring white light went out and for a moment the night seemed twice as dark. Immediately he regretted his decision. The light had given him his best chance to prevent anyone slipping out the gate. Now all shadows seemed to move with stealth and silence.

He doubted if the pursuers would know English. Even if they didn’t, the sound of their voices might give him a clue as to number and position.

“Hallo!” he called.

The voice that answered was so near that he jumped. It was just the other side of the wire fence, not ten feet from them.

“Hallo youself, best friend,” Rocko said.

Cooper jacked the next slug into the chamber, wondering how many were left in the clip. He said quietly, “You can’t do anything, Rocko. There’s a fence between us. How about a compromise?”

Rocko laughed. “Big words, eh? You and sweet darling making a deal with Rocko. Funny. Not tonight, boy. Not this night. I got to kill you and sweet darling. For you I got two reasons, one of them old. For her, only one. Nobody will be left to know Rocko is back.”

“That won’t do any good, Rocko. The government knows you were coming. Every road out of this area is blocked. Two to one the coast guard has a couple of boats out there in the night, waiting.”

“With two pair always belting like a full house, best friend.”

He had centered the rifle on the patch of blackness that he felt sure contained the stalker. He pulled the trigger, worked the bolt quickly, fired again.

There was a groan, a heavy thud, a long bubbling sigh. Barbara moaned softly. She stood up, above the edge of the bank. Cooper made a frantic grab for her and missed. Rocko’s gun made its tiny clacking sound. She turned half around and dropped face down into the water. Cooper grasped the waist band of her slacks and pulled her up onto the bank.

Rocko laughed ripely. “Good-by, sweet darling. Now just you, Farat. Old fox Rocko fooled her. Just like he fooled those guys who brought him in the boat. You shot the big boss. I shot one. Billy got himself two. Last one kills Billy and while he’s so busy with Billy I write my name — Rocko — tack, tack, tack, right up his back. Nobody fools Rocko, best friend.”

“There’s still one of them you didn’t get!”

“Ho, you mean that stupid one from the boat, eh? The one who came running in so fast with the gun in his hand? The one I shoot as he runs in and he keeps running and busts the plate glass with his head? That one you mean? Is like old times in there, best friend. Is like when you and me and Smoker climbed on Neli’s yacht that Sunday morning eleven years ago. Easter morning and you were just a punk then, best friend. Remember how it looked. All dronk. Smoker cut so many throats with that big knife his arm got tired. In there it looks like when Smoker got finished on Neli’s yacht. Then remember we burned it and took off in Smoker’s speedboat?”

“Come and get me, Rocko.”

“Now I don’t talk any more. I move around quiet. You don’t know where I am any more. Pretty soon I kill you, best friend.”

“If a snake doesn’t get you first,” Cooper said.

“Huh?” Rocko said. There was alarm in his voice.

“Didn’t Carla tell you, Rocko? She filled that whole patch of brush with poisonous snakes It discourages visitors.”

“Don’t make jokes with old Rocko.”

“Go ahead. Crawl around in there.”

“You know I don’t like snakes, best friend.” His tone was accusing and plaintive.

“She told me she had coral snakes, rattlers and moccasins.”

There was a long silence. Cooper dug in the mud at his feet, found three small stones. He flipped them over into the brush in a high arc, heard them patter in the leaves.

“No snakes, Rocko? I can hear them from here even.”

“Best friend, I been a little crazy. I don’t want to kill you. Honest. Look, kid. You and me, like old days, eh? I still got connections, kid. They’ll still listen to old Rocko.”

“Go ahead. Move around in that brush a little.”

“No, kid! I don’t want to walk. My skin is crawling. They’re all around me here, kid. Let’s make a deal, kid. A partnership. Split everything down the middle, better for you than the old days.”

Cooper tossed some more pebbles in. “Sounds like they’re moving in on you, Rocko. Hear ’em in the leaves?”

Rocko made a thin high bleating sound. The brush crashed as he began to run. Cooper could not be sure of his aim in the darkness. Rocko, still making thin cries, plunged toward the road and the gate.

Cooper pulled Barbara up onto higher ground and took off after Rocko, following the outside of the fence. Rocko was ahead of him. He was still fifty feet from the gate when he saw Rocko race through the gate and out along the causeway.

He started to aim the rifle and then he knew what he had to do, and why he had to do it. He climbed up onto the causeway. He stood, feet spread, rifle lowered.

Rocko was running silently.

“Turn around, Rocko!” he shouted.

Rocko spun, dropped, fired in one startling demonstration of the animal-like coordination of his thick old body. The slug made a humming sound like a taut wire and he felt the breeze on his cheek as he lifted the rifle and fired. On the heels of his shot came the harsh screech of a ricochet. He worked the bolt, aimed and fired again. When he tried to fire again, the hammer fell on an empty chamber. He stood in the night and looked at Rocko a hundred feet away. He could make out the oval of the face against the dark clothes that were like a shadow in their stillness.

It could be another ruse. His wounded shoulder had begun to throb with each beat of his heart. The recoil of the rifle had done it no good. He walked slowly toward Rocko. He stood and looked down at him for a long time. He knelt, found matches in Rocko’s pocket and lit one. A small pudgy butcher, fast asleep. A tiny mouth, still pursed with a look of puritanical disapproval, but puffed with surprise at the bullet which had sped between the parted lips.

He walked back, drugged with weakness. There were certain things to be done. He accomplished them with dogged, unthinking purpose. He carried Barbara to the gate. He could carry her no further. He walked to the house, found car keys in Carla’s room, took them out to the sedan, drove down and pushed the convertible off into the brush.

He drove by it to the gate, got out, lifted Carla into the back seat. He drove across the causeway and out onto the main road that ran the length of the key. He turned toward Sarasota and kept squinting his eyes and turning his head to new angles in an attempt to still the shifting dance of the road ahead — the road which would not stay still in front of the wheels.

He remembered thinking that his speed was dangerous, glancing down at the speedometer and finding he was going fifteen miles an hour. He reached the center of the resort city. The streets were deserted. Dawn was not far away. He was nosing toward the concrete island in the middle of an open square. There was no strength left either to turn the wheel or tread on the brake. The car hit with a grinding jar and rebounded. He fell forward on the horn ring and the blast of the horn filled his ears and the whole world, slowly dimming away, diminishing, as he slid down into darkness...

Grant, the area man, looked like a pro footballer turned bond salesman. He stared again at Cooper in the hospital bed and said, shaking his head, “Brother, I saw it, and I can hardly believe it. Her house boys, cook, and guards, all except the old fellow, ran for cover. We’ve picked up all but one, and we’ll get him soon. He’s probably hiding out in Ybor City. Even if they did know anything, we wouldn’t need their testimony.”

“What about the group who came in with Kadma?”

Grant gave him an owlish look. “Brother Cooper, you don’t know anything about any group and neither do I. All we know is what we read in the papers. Gang War on Catboat Key. Racket Boys Shoot It Out. Citizens Demand Investigation. Twelve Slain, Including Two Women. Just between us girls, those five are such high level stuff that nobody gets to know from nothing. A flock of airborne little men came down, made with the mystery and departed.”

“How do they feel about me, Grant?”

“Opinion is somewhat divided, Coop. If a few were left around to answer questions, I think they’d like you better. And you were the boy they had qualms about! They thought you’d blow the works by cracking up at the wrong time.”

“I did crack,” Cooper said, remembering the scene in the bedroom.

“Sure you did. You got so nervous, you went all to pieces. Don’t forget, Coop, I’ve read the transcript of what you dictated yesterday. Hiding guns, playing one group against another, inventing snakes, then pulling a windup scene with Rocko that smacks of the days of the golden west. You cracked up great.”

“What will happen?”

“To you? The doc up in Washington will restore your boyish beauty to keep somebody who used to hate Farat from taking an unexpected crack at you. Then they’ll probably assign you to something easy to let you get your breath.”

A forgotten feeling flooded into Cooper. He felt once and a half life size. The world was a shiny red apple. Pick it up and take a big bite.

“What are you grinning about, chum?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re grinning and I haven’t even told you my news yet.”

“What news?”

“They’re letting you up today. But they want you to stick around. And to keep you out of trouble I’m giving you an interim assignment. To last until they order you north. I want you to stick with the Hutcheon girl. She’s pretty grim about the whole thing. I suppose that, in a way, we’re partially responsible. I’ve got a list of the sour balls in Carla’s organization. The kid sister will have to gather up the strings before it falls apart entirely — the legitimate enterprises. You can help the kid wash out the questionable ones and show her how to act like a boss. A million and a half worth of resort properties is a nice bundle, even after the tax hack.”

Ten days later Cooper, sprawled on the beach under the golden fist of the sun, heard Barbara say, at his elbow, “A big help you are!”

He yawned, stretched and sat up. He looked approvingly at her. She wore the aqua velvet suit he had first seen her in. “Taking time out for a swim?”

“No thanks to you, Mr. Cooper,” she said severely. Then her face lighted up. “Coop, I think we’ve found him. Wonderful experience and all that. He says that he can take over right away.”

“On the percentage we talked about?”

“Yes. Coop, will you talk to him too? Give me your opinion of him?”

“Aren’t you getting a little dependent on me, woman?”

She looked down and drew lines in the sand with her finger. “I guess so.”

“Is that good?”

“Doesn’t that depend on you?” she asked without looking up.

He thought then, of the quiet years, of the time when he kept to himself because there was nothing in him to give. No strength to share. He looked at her shining hair and thought how strange it was that in the very moment of his finding himself again, he should also find her, as though fate had kept her carefully in the wings until time for her to walk on stage.

Cooper reached out and took hold of the hand, stilled the drawing of lines.

“I wanted to give it a longer trial run,” he said.

“You either know or you don’t.”

“Since you put it that way, Barbara...”

Her lips had a warm firmness, a substance to them. Her hair had the smell of sun and sea.

He looked up then and said softly, “Darling, your whole big hotel is staring at us.”

“Our hotel, friend.”

She got up and started walking down toward the boom of the surf. She looked back over her shoulder with a manner and look distilled of pure femininity.

When he started after her, she ran, but it seemed to him that she wasn’t running as fast as she could. Deep in her glowing hair was the white patch that marked the place where the bullet crease was bandaged. He caught her approximately twenty feet from shore.