The head of the tall assassin was in my crosshairs. That head, as the rain fell across the world as I knew it, exploded when a bullet from a .38 turned his head into an instant convertible.
Before his body could hit the ground another shot created redness across his torso.
Two shots later his friend had bullet holes in his right arm and left leg, shots that took him to the ground and filled his chubby face with mud and earth. He struggled to sit up, took a desperate look at his friend, the wildness in his eyes saying he didn’t want the same convertible hairstyle, didn’t want a hole where he processed foolish thoughts, didn’t want Tennessee rain putting puddles where his brain used to be.
A third shot put a hole in his liver.
I took no chances, not with my life. Not when I was on a battlefield in an unwanted war.
Soaked with rain, battered by hail, muddied all over, more mud sloshing through my soft-soled shoes, I kept my gun trained on the wounded man as I took steps through the mud and trees. I stopped at the tall, dead man. Asian man in a gray pinstripe suit and black shirt, Italian shoes that told me he hadn’t planned on hiking through mud with the viscosity of quicksand.
Rainwater diluted redness, created a pink death, his matter mixing through mud and grass.
I went through his pockets, gun trained on the wounded man, his swollen face showing he was in more pain than he had felt since birth. No words were exchanged. Done collecting a wallet, a cellular phone, and an iPod, I moved past the dead man and made my way toward his partner in crime, offered a deadly grimace to a man who had tried to cease my existence, went inside his pockets, fished out anything I could find, jammed all of that in my jacket pockets, pain from the crash nonexistent, all of that smothered by the adrenaline rush. White hair, white goatee, a young version of Kenny Rogers in gray pants, black suit coat, and crisp white shirt, all of that soiled by this storm and mother earth.
I asked, “Detroit?”
He nodded. “Contract . . . came outta . . . Detroit.”
“How many with you?”
“This is it. Just us.”
He was both living and dying, blood draining away as mud glued itself to his final moments. I remained next to him, mud splattered from my feet to my waist, an artistic and woodless wainscot that looked like it had been designed by a third grader who had had too much sugar in his diet.
I asked, “Were you in London?”
“Never been . . . to London.”
I took a handkerchief from his suit pocket, wiped water from the dying man’s eyes.
He thanked me for that moment of kindness.
I looked at the car I had been driving. Fiberglass and metal and tires and glass filled with bullet holes. Around me rivers of blood being thinned out by what felt like a never-ending storm.
My voice and disposition were as cold as the rain when I asked, “Do you know who I am?”
He coughed, then spat to the side. Panted as he said, “You . . . are . . . Gideon.”
We looked into each other’s eyes. Coldness glaring at coldness.
I hit him across his face, knocked teeth from his mouth, beat him with my gun until he collapsed facedown in the mud. I put my foot on the back of his neck, pressed down with my weight as he struggled to breathe, flailing and splashing mud, trying to kick free, held my foot there until his struggle ended, until gurgling ceased, his lungs clogged with the same earth they had been sent to bury me in.
I had taken my backpack and messenger bag out of the wrecked car, was rushing to make sure I had all I had, when I thought I heard someone call out. I moved through the mud, almost stumbling, had a feeling it was highway patrol. Wiping filth from my face, I looked through the falling water and saw someone coming down the pathway the dead men had taken. The hail had become a steady rain, visibility good enough for me to wipe my face, see forty yards away. I moved through the mud toward whoever it was. Didn’t see flashing lights. Didn’t hear sirens. That didn’t mean that flashing lights and sirens weren’t on the other side of my opaque world. The rain was still the blanket that covered us.
It was a woman. Slender like a model, borderline anorexic with an alabaster complexion, hair dark. Jeans, black jacket, black blouse, black umbrella up high. A woman with good bone structure and lovely skin, didn’t need to gild the lily by wearing makeup. Saw that in the blink of an eye. The rainfall hard but slowing down, visibility increasing, allowed her to see just as much of me as I could of her.
The woman paused when she saw me, a man soaked from head to muddied shoes, behind me a wrecked car that was riddled with bullet holes. Add to that carnage two dead men sleeping in the mud.
I shot her in her heart. Her death so immediate her expression never had time to change.
As I passed her, I saw the umbrella she had held in her left hand was at her side.
So was the gun she had held in her right hand; it too rested in the mud at her waist.
Her weapon of choice had been a stainless steel .357.
Sludge still sloshing in my shoes, cold and shivering, wiping water from my eyes, I struggled up the slippery hill, anticipated another assassin, maybe more than one, guns aimed.
There was no fourth shooter. There was no fourth death.
I had been surrounded by a violence that would’ve made Sam Peckinpah stand up and applaud.
I was the one who had survived the beautiful catastrophe, wind and gunshots its soundtrack.
Muck dripping from my body, I hurried back to the interstate, got into their sedan, and sped away.
Nine
lady gangster
The same horrendous weather
that had worked against me now worked in my favor, washed away footprints at that new death site. That layer of water left no tire marks on the highway as I fishtailed away and dark clouds rolled in. Would be at least a day before that death site was found.
That was what I hoped.
I ached.
I trembled from both anxiety and the chill of the cold rain.
Everything in my sight pulsated, the world swelling and shrinking. A new wave from the rainstorm deafened the rampant heartbeat inside my chest. For a moment the world was on mute, the shadow of death all over me. That was how I had felt when a plastic bag had been placed over my head.
It passed. It took a long moment, but it passed.
I dug through my muddied clothes, fished out my cellular, and dialed a number in the 615 area code. It was a number I hadn’t dialed in at least two years. I hoped the number was still good.
Three rings, then we were connected.
I said, “Hawks.”
“Who is this calling this number?”
“Gideon.”
“Gideon?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, well, well.”
“How are you?”
“I was feeling supercalifragilisticexpialidocious until I heard your voice.”
“Didn’t mean to turn your mood in a negative direction.”
“You’re bad news.”
“People say the same about you.”
“What do you want?”
“Konstantin told me you were still down south.”
“So you managed to call Konstantin.”
“I’m coming out of Rocket City.”
“Rocket City.”
“Huntsville, Alabama.”
“I know what and where Rocket City is.”
“Hawks, you in the area?”
“Maybe.”
“Are you in the area?”
“Where have you been?”
“Abroad.”
“Is America the only country with telephones?”
“I guess not, Hawks.”
I looked at the mud that covered my clothing, at the smoldering gun at my side.
I said, “I need help right now.”
“Where are you again?”
“I’m on 65 . . . I’m . . . let me see. . . . Looks like I’m not too far from exit 22.”
I told Hawks to meet me, didn’t want to chance driving a car when I didn’t know its history. The front end was damaged and I had one headlight. The side of the car had fresh damage as well.
“Better be careful, Gideon. The Bubbas down here that work law enforcement aren’t the types that live on coffee and doughnuts. These fools eat anabolic steroids for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.”
“I’m not in the mood for sarcasm.”
“That wasn’t sarcasm, asshole.”
“Hawks. Look . . . I just had three motherfuckers on my ass.”
Hawks said, “I’ll see what I can do.”
“And bring a lot of plastic. Industrial plastic.”
“Enough to wrap up three bodies?”
“Enough to cover your seats top to bottom.”
“Yeah, enough to wrap up three bodies.”
I ended the call, anxiety rising, gun within reach, as focused as I’d ever been.
Exit 22 fed into Highway 31A.
Rain battered the car as I turned left and found shelter at Country Store & Restaurant. It was a nice-sized building that looked like it was filled with country music, three DVDs for ten bucks, and honey buns. The type of place that stocked B.C. Powder.
The crew that had been sent after me had been riding with the radio on a country and western station. My mind cleared up enough to notice the voices coming out of the speakers. A comedian who sounded like former president Bill Clinton was telling Hillary, McCain, and Obama jokes. I wiped as much mud off me as I could, did that while Stevie Nicks and Don Henley sang a love song, a duet called “Leather and Lace.” Even in my agony and anger the song made me pause when it got to a line about wondering if a woman could love a man like me. That hit home. Took me back to London, to the West Indies, to South America, to places I had traveled with two women, Lola Mack and Mrs. J. But in the next hour those thoughts had changed one hundred times and I was restless, listened to James Brown telling everybody that Poppa had a brand-new bag, Lola Mack and Mrs. J. no longer a part of my world.
No woman was a part of my world for long. Came with the territory.
The storm was still on my side. No reason for the dead to be discovered, not as of yet.
The I.D.s from the men identified one as Ronaldo Lysaght, the other as Thomas Goetzman.
A purse was on the backseat. I grabbed it and looked inside. It was the woman’s identification. Pieronzetta Lupe Rosalyn Marquez. I.D.
said she was from Ashland, Ohio. That was seventy miles from Cleveland, that strip of Interstate 71 surrounded by farmland, tractors, and barns, mostly agricultural, this time of year trees barren and grass the lightest of browns, almost like fields of wheat.
She was a long way from home, her moral compass not working at all. I scrolled through the text messages on her phone. Lots of sexual messages. A stone freak. And a player. Her messages told me she had a boyfriend in Akron named Fred Guidry. But she also had another boyfriend in Toledo.
Two men would have to buy black suits and carry her coffin to its final resting place.
I’d taken cell phones from both men. Goetzman had the most recent call, to area code 313. Detroit. I pushed redial and the call was answered in the middle of the first ring.
Someone was more anxious than a child on Christmas Eve.
Without greetings or salutations, her tone intense, she asked, “Is it done?”
“It’s done.”
She hesitated, “Goetzman?”
“No.”
“Lysaght?”
“One more try. And it’s not the woman.”
There was a pause of disbelief. She heard my voice, for the first time without my using a filter. I had never contacted her without a filter. But there was so much anger inside me I didn’t care.
I said, “They’re dead. All of them.”
Another pause.
Her voice trembled. “You’ve been running.”
“You’ve been hiding.”
“I hide from no one.”
“Why don’t you show up for your dirty work? Fucking coward.”
“You’re the one running, not me.”
“You’ve increased the guards at your home and now you travel with a dozen bodyguards.”
“You got rid of your properties. You moved the money from those sales several times, moved it from bank to bank, island to island, did that until I could no longer keep up with you.”
“I should’ve cut your motherfucking throat, should’ve left your head hanging from your neck. My mistake was thinking you were smart enough to let this go. Soon your head will hang from your fucking neck. I’ll try not to mess the face up so they can keep that casket open for friends and family.”
I heard her swallow, her breathing becoming filled with a fiery anger and extreme panic.
“Son of a bitch . . . you came inside my house. Threatened me. Threatened my children. This will end when
you
are dead. Whatever it takes,
no matter how long it takes,
this will end when you are
dead
.”
“Or you. When you are dead, this will be over.”
“Stay out of Detroit. Keep away from my children, you son of a bitch.”
“I don’t give a fuck about your children. This is between me and you.”
“Jesus is on my side.”
“Tell him that when you see him.”
“Blasphemous bastard.”
“None but the righteous. And I doubt if you are in that short line.”
“Whenever you sit down to take a
shit,
have toilet paper in one hand and a gun in the other.”
“You do the same. And don’t forget which is which.”
There was a pause.
She said, “Wet your hand and wait for me.”
“You do the same.”
The call ended in the middle of her hostile breathing, disconnected on her end.
Her war against me made as much sense as the war against Iraq.
But it was a war that had momentum.
In her eyes I was the terrorist who had invaded her home; now there had to be retribution.
I’d tried to end this in a kind way. In my own way I had tried to make a deal.