Mortal Stakes

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

I BOUGHT A POUND of Hebrew National bologna, a loaf of pumpernickel, a jar of brown mustard, and a half gallon of milk and walked back to my car. I opened the trunk and got an old duffel bag from it. I put the shotgun, the shells, and my groceries in the duffel bag, closed the trunk, shouldered the duffel bag, and walked back toward Breakhart.

It took about fifteen minutes for me to walk back to my gully in the hillside. I climbed up the hill past it, halfway to the top of the hill, and found a thick stand of white pine screened by some dogberry bushes that let me look down into the hollow and the road below it. I took my groceries, my shotgun, and my ammunition out of the duffel bag, took off my coat, and put it in the duffel bag. I spread the bag on the ground, sat down on it, and loaded the shotgun. It took six shells. I put six extras in my hip pocket and cocked the shotgun and leaned it against the tree. Then I got out my groceries and made lunch. I spread the mustard on the bread with my pocketknife and used the folded paper bag as a plate. I drank the milk from the carton. Not bad. Nothing like dining al fresco. I looked at my watch: 2:45. I ate another sandwich.

Three o’clock. The locusts keened at me. Some sparrows fluttered above me in the pines. On the road below cars with children and mothers and dogs and inflatable beach toys drove slowly by every few minutes but less often as the afternoon wore on.

I finished the milk with my fourth sandwich and wrapped the rest of the bread and bologna back up in the paper sack and shoved it in the duffel bag. At four fifteen a silver gray Lincoln Continental pulled off the road by the gully and parked for a long time. Then the door opened and Wally Hogg climbed out. He was alone. He stood and looked carefully all over the hollow and up the hill at where I sat behind my bushes and everywhere else. Finally he looked up and down the road, reached back into the car, and came out with a shoulder weapon. He held it inconspicuously down along his leg and stepped away from the car and in behind the trees along the road. The Lincoln started up and drove away.

In the shelter of the trees Wally was less careful with the weapon, and I got a good look at it. An M-16 rifle. Standard U.S. infantry weapon. 7.62 millimeter. Twenty rounds.

Fancy carry handle like the old BARs and a pistol grip back of the trigger housing like the old Thompsons. M-16? Christ, I was just getting used to the M-1.

Wally and his M-16 climbed the gully wall about opposite me. He was wearing stacked-heel shoes. He slipped once on the steep sides and slid almost all the way back down.

Hah! I made it first try. When the Lincoln had arrived, I’d picked up the shotgun and held it across my lap. I noticed that my hands were a little sweaty as I held it. I looked at my knuckles. They were white. Wally didn’t climb as high as I had. Too fat. Ought to jog mornings, Wally, get in shape. A few yards above the gully edge he found some thick bushes and settled in behind them. From the hollow he would be invisible. Once he got settled, he didn’t move and looked like a big toad squatting in his ambush.

I looked at my watch again. Quarter of five. Some people went by on horseback, the shod hooves of the horses clattering on the paved road. It was a sound you didn’t hear often, yet it brought back the times when I was small and the milkman had a horse, and so did the trash people. And manure in the street, and the sparrows. All three of the horses on the road below were a shiny, sweat-darkened chestnut color. The riders were kids. Two girls in white blouses and riding boots, a boy in jeans and no shirt.

The draft horses that used to pull the trash wagons were much different. Big splayed feet and massive, almost sumptuous haunches. Necks that curved in a stolid, muscular arch. When I was very small, I remembered, horses pulling a scoop were used to dig a cellar hole on the lot next to my house.

The riders disappeared and the clopping dwindled.

Wally Hogg still sat there, silent and shapeless, watching the road. I heard a match scrape and smelled cigarette smoke.

Careless Wally, what if I were just arriving and smelled the smoke? It carries out here in the woods. But Wally probably wasn’t all that at home in the woods. Places Wally hung out you could probably smoke a length of garden hose and no one would smell it. The woods were dry, and I hoped he was careful with the cigarette. I didn’t want this thing getting screwed up by a natural disaster.

I checked my watch again: 5:15. My chest felt tight, as if the diaphragm were rusty, and I had that old tingling toothache feeling in behind my navel. There was a lump in my throat. Above me the sky was still bright blue in the early summer evening, dappling through the green leaves. Five thirty, getting on toward supper. The road was empty now below me. The mommas and the kids and the dogs were going home to get supper going and eat with Daddy. Maybe a cookout. Too hot to eat in tonight. Maybe a couple of beers and some gin and tonic with a mint leaf in the glass. And after supper maybe the long quiet arc of the water from the hoses of men in shirt sleeves watering their lawns. My stomach rolled. Smooth. How come Gary Cooper’s stomach never rolled? Oh, to be torn ’tween love and duty, what if I lose…

Five forty. My fingertips tingled and the nerves along the insides of my arms tingled. The pectoral muscles, particularly near the outside of my chest, up by the shoulder, felt tight, and I flexed them, trying to loosen up. I took two pieces of gum out of my shirt pocket and peeled off the wrappers and folded the gum into my mouth. I rolled the wrappers up tight and put them in my shirt pocket and chewed on the gum.

Quarter of six. I remembered in Korea, before we went in at Inchon, they’d fed us steak and eggs, not bologna and bread, but it hadn’t mattered. My stomach rolled before Inchon too.

And at Inchon I hadn’t been alone. Ten of six.

I looked down at Wally Hogg. He hadn’t moved. His throat wasn’t almost closed, and he wasn’t taking deep breaths and not getting enough oxygen. He thought he was going to sit up there and shoot me in the back when Frank Doerr gave the nod, which would be right after Frank Doerr found out exactly what I had on him and if I’d given anything to the cops. Or maybe Doerr wanted to fan me himself and Wally was just backup. Anyway, we’d find out pretty soon, wouldn’t we? Seven of six. Christ, doesn’t time flit by when you’re having a big time and all?

I stood up. The shotgun was cocked and ready. I carried it muzzle down along my leg in my right hand and began to move down the hill in a half circle away from where Wally Hogg was. I was about 100 yards away. If I was careful, he wouldn’t hear me. I was careful. It took me ten minutes to get down the slope to the road, maybe 50 yards down the road beyond the gully.

Still daylight and bright, but under the trees along the road a bit dimmer than midday. I stayed out of sight behind some trees just off the road and listened. At five past six I heard a car stop and a door open and close. With the shotgun still swinging along by my side, I walked up the road toward the dell. High-ho a dairy-o. The car was a maroon Coupe de Ville, pulled off on the shoulder of the road. No one was in it. I went past it and turned into the hollow. The sun was shining behind me and the hollow was bright and hot. Doerr was standing by the shark-fin rock. Maroon slacks, white shoes, white belt, black shirt, white tie, white safari jacket, blackrimmed sunglasses, white golf cap. A really neat dresser.

Probably a real slick dancer too. His hands were empty as I walked in toward him. I didn’t look up toward Wally. But I knew where he was, maybe thirty yards up and to my left. I kept the rock on his side of me as I walked into the gully. I kept the shotgun barrel toward the ground. Relaxed, casual.

Just had it with me and thought I’d bring it along. Ten feet from Doerr, with the shark-fin rock not yet between me and Wally Hogg, I stopped. If I got behind the rock, Wally would move.

”What the hell is the shotgun for, Spenser?“ Doerr said.

”Protection,“ I said. ”You know how it is out in the woods. You might run into a rampaging squirrel or something.“

I could feel Wally Hogg’s presence up there to my left, thirty yards away. I could feel it along the rib cage and in my armpits and behind the knees. He wasn’t moving around. I could hear him if he did; he wasn’t that agile and he wasn’t dressed for it. You can’t sneak around in high-heeled shoes unless you take them off. I listened very hard and didn’t hear him.

”I hear you have been bad-mouthing me, Frankie.“

”What do you mean?“

”I mean you been saying you were going to blow me up.“

Still no sound from Wally. I was about five feet from the shelter of the rock.

”Who told you that?“

I wished I hadn’t thought about Wally taking his shoes off.

”Never mind who told me that. Say it ain’t so, Frankie.“

”Look, shit-for-brains. I didn’t come out here into the freaking woods to talk shit with a shit-for-brains like you.

You got something to say to me or not?“

”You haven’t got the balls, Frankie.“

Doerr’s face was red. ”To blow you up? A shit-forbrains pimple like you? I’ll blow you up anytime I goddamned feel like it.“

”You had the chance yesterday in your office, Frankie, and I took your piece away from you and made you cry.“

Doerr’s voice was getting hoarse. The level of it dropped. ”You got me out here to talk shit at me or you got something to say?“

I was listening with all I had for Wally. So hard I could barely hear what Doerr was saying.

”I got you out here to tell you that you’re a gutless, slobbering freak that couldn’t handle an aggressive camp fire girl without hiring someone to help you.“ I was splitting my concentration, looking at Doerr as hard as I was listening for Wally, and the strain made the sweat run down my face. I almost grunted with the effort.

Doerr’s voice was so hoarse and constricted he could barely talk. ”Don’t you dare talk to me that way,“ he said.

And the oddly quaint phrase squeezed out like dust through a clogged filter.

”You gonna cry again, Frankie? What is it? Did your momma toilet-train you funny? Is that why you’re such a goddamned freak-o?“

Doerr’s face was scarlet and the carotid arteries stood out in his neck. His mouth moved, but nothing came out.

Then he went for his gun. I knew he would sometime.

I brought the pump up level and shot him. The gun flew from his hand and clattered against the shark-fin rock and Doerr went over backwards. I didn’t see him land; I dove for the rock and heard Wally’s first burst of fire spatter the ground behind me. I landed on my right shoulder, rolled over and up on my feet. Wally’s second burst hit the rock and sang off in several directions. I brought the shotgun down over the slope end of the rock where it was about shoulder-high and fanned five rounds into the woods in Wally Hogg’s area as fast as I could pump.

I was back down behind the rock, feeding my extra rounds into the magazine, when I heard him fall. I looked and he came rolling through the brush down the side of the gully and came to a stop at the bottom, face up, the front of him already wet with blood. Leaves and twigs and dirt had stuck to the wetness as he rolled. I looked at Doerr. At ten feet the shotgun charge had taken most of his middle. I looked away.

A thick and sour fluid rose in my throat and I choked it down.

They were both dead. That’s the thing about a shotgun. At close range you don’t have to go around checking pulses after.

I sat down and leaned back against the rock. I hadn’t planned to, and I didn’t want someone to find me there. But I sat down anyway because I had to. My legs had gotten weak.

I was taking deep breaths, yet I didn’t seem to be getting enough oxygen. My body was soaking wet and in the early evening I was feeling cold. I shivered. The sour fluid came back and this time I couldn’t keep it down. I threw up with my head between my knees and the two stiffs paying no attention.

Beautiful.