Jack backed away fast, turned and ran past Wan's, past the back lot and through the high weeds, juggling Cecil's stash, tripping over bricks, bottles, tomato crates, all the crap Jack was supposed to haul away.
Fuck Chavez, Jack thought, he was on his own now.
He couldn't have much of a start, and he wouldn't make it to his Park Avenue.
It was too far to walk, even if you weren't stark naked—–and besides, Jack had the keys.
He could get to the Buick in Ortega's wreck in ten, fifteen minutes flat.
He paused, in the shadow of the live oak trees.
Listened, couldn't hear a thing from Piggs. Good.
That's what he wanted to hear.
Nothing from Piggs, Wan's, Cecil, the whole bunch, ever again...
Ortega's car was gone.
Jack felt strangely calm.
He wasn't angry, his stomach felt fine.
He wasn't even greatly surprised.
What the hell did he expect?
Why should anything go right?
You got a perfect run of bad luck, why break it now?
Okay, he had the gun, he had the stash.
He could make it to the Park Avenue before it got light.
Even if Chavez tried to get there, tried to get a ride–who'd pick up a naked Mescan in the middle of the night?
"No one in their fucking right mind," Jack thought, the words coming to him as the first harsh volley of shots echoed through the trees...
"W
hat we going to do, we going to do it like they do on TV," said Hamilton T. Gerrard.
"I'm the black dude, you the white guy.
I put my stuff on the hood, you putting yours there too.
Y'all with me so far?"
"Just do it," Cecil said.
"I don't got to hear no rappity-rap, I don't got to hear no fucking soul."
Gerrard shook his head and grinned.
"You are a difficult man to get along with, Mr. Dupree."
"Yeah, right.
Let's see what you got, I'm tired of standing out here."
"Might think about shoes, Mr. Dupree. Meaning no offense."
Cecil didn't answer, and didn't take offense.
He knew the routine, that's what you had to do.
You do the talk, you knock the other guy, the other guy knocks you.
The talk don't mean a thing.
The talk lets you size the thing up.
Same for the other guy, he's thinking too.
Is he going to play it straight, or maybe try and take me down?
Which one am I going to do?
So he talks to the nigger, the nigger talks to him.
All the time they're talking, Cecil's taking in who the guy brought. The nigger's smart, Cecil's got to give him that.
The bozos he's got are three white guys, and Cecil sees they've been there all along.
The big guy was a trucker, one of the horsies from the race the night before. The other two were with him in the club tonight.
Cecil has thought about something like this.
How anyone can come in the club, you don't know who they are. These three assholes are shooters, you can see that now, but if a guy's good, you got a hundred other guys drinking and yelling, it's fucking hard to tell.
The way it is, Cecil's leaning against his green Caddie, like he's maybe considering a nap. Cat's to his right, Grape's to his left.
Just across from Cecil, Hamilton T. Gerrard is leaning on his car, looking cool and black.
One of the truckers is standing on the far side of the Lincoln, watching Grape.
The other two are just behind Gerrard.
Everybody's got a gun, everybody knows that.
Cecil doesn't care it's four to three.
It isn't how many, it's what's you do with what you got.
Five to three, maybe, he wouldn't go for that.
"It's hot up here, isn't even light yet," said Hamilton Gerrard.
"Don't see how you'all put up with it, Mr. Dupree."
"You got what, a fucking glacier in New Orleans, it's snowing down there?"
Gerrard smiled.
One of the truckers started to laugh, but caught himself quick.
"We don't get out in it, Mr. Dupree. We stay in the A.C.
White tourist folks, they out in the heat.
Willie Bee," Gerrard said, without taking his eyes off Cecil Dupree, "would you kindly get the merchandise out of the trunk, so me and my new friend can do some business here?"
Cecil flinched at the "friend" bit, but stood up straight, watching the bozo walk to the Lincoln's trunk.
Grape moved a hair to the left. Even Cat had the sense to pay attention now.
The Lincoln was side-on to Cecil and his crew, but anything could happen, a guy's reaching in a trunk.
He can come up with a missile, anything at all.
The guy was a pro.
He took it slow and easy, brought out the attaché case in plain sight, laid it on the Lincoln's hood.
Hamilton T. Gerrard let his gaze flick from Cecil to Grape, Grape to the Cat, back to Cecil again.
Everybody looked at everybody else, looked at everyone again.
"So, okay," Cecil said finally, "let's have a look.
Maybe I'm buying today."
Gerrard raised a brow.
"Let's look at yours, Mr. Dupree."
Cecil didn't answer.
He raised a brow back.
Took a step away, turned and moved to the green Cadillac.
Picked up an attache sitting on the ground by the bumper, plainly in sight.
Hamilton T. Gerrard had seen him put it there, when Cecil and his crew came out of Piggs. He'd put it there till it was time to bring it out.
And Hamilton thought, as Cecil came toward him now, how he would have put the case just out of sight.
Thought, too, he would've sent somebody, wouldn't go and pick it up himself.
...all this in a second, in a blur, little bright lights flick-flick in his head, then another after that, and this one fills him with awful dread...Cecil's smiling, happy as a clam, but that fucking mask isn't purple, isn't red anymore, it's as black as Gerrard's own skin...
Everything is flick-flick now, everything happens, turns to shit in a blink and a half.
G
rape knows how it goes down:
When the deal's all over, things are cooling down, Grape pulls the Glock from his belt, takes out the guy on the left.
Cat, who is broad enough to hide a tank, has a 12-gauge sawed-off hanging down his back. He takes out the bozos on the right.
Cecil's got a blade, he does Hamilton T. Gerrard.
This is how the thing's supposed to be, this is what they talked about, sitting there in Piggs...
...Three feet, two feet from Gerrard, Cecil lifts the case like it's going on the hood, next to the other case, where it ought to be. The .38 Charter is taped to the case, the side that Gerrard can't see.
Gerrard can't see the gun, but he can see that face, and knows what Cecil's got in mind, knows this redneck fuck intends to kill him dead, just doesn't know how.
The .38 explodes, three blinding flares of white.
Three frames of a mobster movie sear the night.
Three very mean Hydra-Shoks, jacketed hollow point, head for the gut of Hamilton Gerrard.
When they hit, when they strike, they'll mushroom and make a horrid mess.
Hamilton's gone.
Hamilton isn't there.
He ducks to the right, turns his face aside, feels the heat of the little copper bees go by.
One of the bees digs a furrow in the Lincoln's shiny hood. Two tear into the attaché and out the other side.
The attaché erupts in a massive burst of coke, in a choking cloud of dope, in a cloud that would turn on Houston and half of San Antone.
Grape stumbles back.
Can't believe his eyes.
Sees Cat grab the sawed-off, jerks out the Glock, shoots Cat in the head.
Cat staggers, takes a drunken step, goes over like an 18-wheeler truck.
Grape begans to shake, pees down his pants.
"Aw, man," he groans, "what the fuck is this...!"
C
ecil is stunned, dizzy, totally out of synch.
He can't see shit, he's white from head to toe.
Hamilton Gerrard is white, too, but his face is still black, for he saw death coming and turned away in time.
Gerrard is no longer laid back, he is no longer cool, he is surely not happy, he is surely not fine.
This is the other Hamilton T. Gerrard, the one who's foaming at the mouth, the one who's pleasant features are twisted in a dark, demonic rage.
The one who is kicking Cecil in the head, in the gut, in the crotch, anywhere he can.
Gerrard's three shooters blast away, firing into the pale narcotic cloud.
Bullets whine this way and that. Into the cars, into the trees, into deepest inner space.
One hits a bird in flight, one takes the "P" out of Piggs.
"Hold it, you fucking morons!" shouts Hamilton T. Gerrard, "you going to hurt somebody like that!"
The guns go silent.
Cecil moans on the ground.
Gerrard kicks him in the belly, kicks him soundly on the nose.
Squats down, opens Cecil's attaché case, stands up, brushes off his pants.
"Considering the circumstance, I am not surprised there isn't any money in here, isn't anything at all. Why you figure that is, Mr. Grape?"
Grape was more than uneasy, he was wet, shaken, purely terrified, certain he was close to being dead.
"Honest to God, Mr. Gerrard, I seen him go up, I seen him bring the case down..."
"You see anything in the case, Mr. Grape?
You see about seventy-five grand?"
"No, sir.
Mr. Cecil, he didn't show it to me."
"Carried it himself.
Didn't show it to you."
"No, sir, he did not. Didn't show me nothing at all."
Grape looked at Cecil.
Cecil looked bad. Didn't look at Cat.
"It wasn't supposed to go like that.
We was supposed to take you out after the buy was done.
I told Mr. Ambrose Junior on the phone.
I didn't know nothing about this shit."
"Uh-huh."
"I had to take out Cat, Mr. Gerrard.
You saw me do that!"
"I saw it."
Hamilton T. Gerrard looked straight at Grape. "You betray Mr. Dupree, maybe you do the same to me."
"Hey, I'd be nuts to do that.
I made a deal, you got to know I wouldn't do that."
"Don't know any such thing.
Know my dope is blowing every which way.
Know I got no money to show.
I know Mr. Ambrose Junior going to ask me what kind of shit going on up here."
"Mr. Gerrard–"
"Bobby Cee, my man, Mr. Grape and I going to have a little talk inside.
Keep an eye on Mr. Dupree here.
Don't do him no hurt or anything.
Mr. Ambrose Junior going to see Mr. Dupree personal, seeing as how I don't intend to take the flack for this fuckup myself.
Mr. Grape, you kindly come with me.
See if we can maybe–what the fuck!
Mack, Willie B.!"
Gerrard stared, as headlights swung off the road and seared his eyes.
Gerrard's shooters scattered.
One to the left, one to the right.
One stuck his pistol in the window of a blue Toyota, yelled at the driver, told him to get the fuck out.
The driver stepped out slowly, hands in the air.
Looked about, took in the scene, had an idea what was happening here.
"Get your ass over here," Gerrard said, "who you supposed to be?"
"Rhino," Rhino said.
"I work here.
Who the hell are you?"
"He runs the Chink place, Mr. Gerrard," said Willie B.
"Food tastes like shit."
Gerrard looked Rhino up and down.
"You work for Mr. Dupree?"
Rhino looked at Cecil. "I don't guess I do."
"Your food as bad as Willie says?"
"Cook's an Ay-rab.
What you going to do?"
Gerrard nodded.
He seemed to understand.
"You best get inside with this other former em-ployee, it's getting hot out here.
We need to have a little–shit, Willie, where'd Mr. Grape go?
Find that little fuck, get him back here."