Authors: James W. Hall
He motioned Sugarman to follow him as he waded deeper into the smoke, to conceal themselves, trusting that their wet clothes could withstand the heat and that the gas masks were up to the task.
That was Thorn’s grand idea. Draw the men close, lure them into the acrid haze. Drug them on their own product.
Through the crash of glass and heavy timbers and clamor of the blaze, he heard Dobbins’s horror-struck scream, heard Burkhart yell Thorn’s name then a curse and another curse.
An automatic weapon sprayed a half dozen rounds a few feet to their right. Thorn and Sugar ducked and hustled to their left. A shotgun roared and more glass shattered at the entrance to the greenhouse, which broke loose the door and sent it tumbling facedown onto a stone walkway. Thorn signaled Sugar to stay put, no shooting, stay hidden in the smoke. Hold on a little longer, let the burning trumpet blooms do their work. Sugarman shook his head as if to say he was doing as instructed but this was a mighty risky ploy.
More gunfire raked the glass just above their heads and moved farther down the remaining wall. Dobbins whooped. A sound somewhere between a howl of anguish and a call to war. More rounds splintered the flaming posts behind them, shooting drizzles of sparks onto their clothes. Thorn slapped the arm of Sugar’s coat to extinguish a small eddy of flames and Sugar dusted a glowing bit of coal out of Thorn’s hair. A stray round ripped the sleeve of Sugar’s jacket, drew blood. He tore open the material to have a look, then waved off Thorn’s concern.
Close behind them the last of the supporting posts gave way and in a cascade of sparks and an overheated rush of inky smoke the rest of the greenhouse came down with such a thunderous jolt it knocked Thorn forward, sent him stumbling out of the safety of the black smoke onto open ground only a few feet from where Dobbins stood with his shotgun raised.
“Put the weapon down,” Thorn said. “Do it now.”
He aimed the Atchisson squarely at the big man, then slid it to the right to include Burkhart. X-88 was nowhere in sight.
“I said put it down, on the ground at your feet. Do it now.”
Dobbins blinked and seemed befuddled to find himself at this place, at this moment, in this condition.
“Put the fucking weapon down. Do you hear me?”
“Okay, if that’s what you want, sure, no problem, happy to do it.”
Something like a giddy yip escaped him as he bent forward and laid the weapon on the grass with the care of a well-oiled drunkard who must expend extreme effort simply to stay upright.
“You too, Burkhart. On the ground beside the shotgun.”
“Yes, sir. Right away, sir.”
The older man’s eyes were watery and his movements were as automated and silly as one of those Saturday morning cartoon robots from Thorn’s youth. Burkhart had clearly drilled for so many years and was so ingrained with the ironclad rules of command and obedience that this submissive behavior was his default state. After he raised up, his shoulders drew back, his chin pulled in. Standing at firm attention and ready to salute any ranking officer in the area.
“Now tell me,” Thorn said, “where I can find some ropes to tie you two fuckers up.”
“Right over there,” Dobbins said, waving at a small shed nearby.
“Get on your knees, both of you, and walk over to the shed, do it now.”
The both kneeled and together they began to waddle toward the shed.
Thorn looked around. He didn’t know where Sugarman had gone, didn’t know where X-88 was lurking. And more important, he had no idea how stoned these two men were and how long this compliant state would last.
THIRTY-SIX
SUGARMAN FOLLOWED TINA’S KILLER THROUGH
the smoke and shower of sparks across the yard and out the drive. After he was beyond the haze, he tore off the gas mask and tossed it aside. Glancing back once, he saw with relief that Thorn was in control of the two men, their weapons laying in the grass at their feet. Both men kneeling before Thorn, hands laced behind their heads.
For once he was doing things by the book. Though Sugarman had tried over the years to get Thorn to see the virtues of reason and order and the rule of law, this new more disciplined Thorn was nothing Sugarman could take credit for, because this change was all Flynn’s doing.
Sugarman had seen what happened in Millie’s car, in fact he’d felt it physically, his shoulder pressed hard against Thorn’s as he held his son’s hand. He’d sensed the surge of energy flowing through him at that moment, every fiber in Sugar registering that tearing apart of the two of them, that thunderclap of pain as father and son said farewell without saying anything at all.
X-88 was ambling out toward the county road, in no particular hurry. He’d turned his head once to see that Sugarman was following him and then again a little later to see that he was still there. Leading him somewhere. Sugarman was in no hurry either. At the current pace, he was gaining on X-88 little by little and that was enough. He needed some extra time to calm himself, to flush away the image of what this man had done to Tina Gathercole. To regain his composure, his equanimity.
Words only. But they were the words that guided him, that he returned to when he wobbled toward one extreme or another. Touchstones that brought him back to center, those words. He wasn’t sure why.
Woo had noticed it. The quirky sketch artist calling him a wordsmith. He wasn’t sure why they held such power for him. No one else he’d ever met seemed to care so much about finding the precise formulation of terms. For most people, words were simply units of communication, bills in a wallet to be doled out for acts of seduction, persuasion, deal-making, or simply the ordinary transactions of getting along.
No one he’d ever met, not even Thorn, thought words had the power to actually shape a person’s thoughts or control the heart. To them, words were slaves. But for Sugarman it was just the reverse. He was enthralled by them, defined by them, made whole, compelled by them, and sometimes overcome by their power. He was the slave, words the master. If he could not find the exact words for something, it did not fully exist. And if he could say it well enough, almost anything was possible.
X-88 seemed to be slowing. Sugarman was less than fifty yards behind him. The shotgun had grown weighty in his hands. But he wasn’t going to rush this. He still needed a moment more to recapture the poise that was his natural state. His outrage and horror were almost quelled.
A few more steps, drawing closer.
X-88 climbed a fence alongside the road and entered a muddy field. The lights from a double-wide trailer lit his way. He walked out into the center of the field and stopped, then turned around and faced Sugarman. Waiting there.
He’d picked his spot, his feng shui, his harmonious center. The exact location where he meant to do battle.
Sugarman climbed the fence and jumped down into the sloppy mud.
No, “quelled” was wrong. There was no use trying to suppress his outrage. That never worked, at least not for long. What he had to do was simpler. He had to let it go. Release it, allow it to drift off like the poisonous smoke from the ruined greenhouse, let it disperse until it had no more potency.
He aimed the shotgun at the man who’d gagged Tina with raw meat. And in those next few steps, because he had named it properly, because he had found the right words, his rage and his revulsion fell away. Whatever happened now would not be fouled by those dark emotions. He felt lighter, freer.
Oh, but every bit as lethal as before, maybe even more so, for now he could strike, if the need arose, without the weight of doubt, regret, or the unbalancing force of hate.
Sugarman halted twenty feet away from the man.
“That’s a big gun,” X said. “I’ve just got this little bitty thing. That seem fair to you?”
X lifted his pistol into the narrow band of illumination thrown out by the trailer’s security light.
“What do you propose?”
“The usual,” X said. “Put them both down, hash this out the old-fashioned way.”
“How’s that? You want to talk?”
The man laughed.
“I don’t think we can discuss our way past this situation. It’s too mountainous for that.”
“Mountainous,” Sugarman said. “Yes, that’s good.”
“So we put them down? Count of three? That work for you?”
Sugarman felt the scowl soften on his lips.
“Go ahead. Do the honors.”
X-88 spoke the numbers in a slow cadence as he bent forward, his pistol hand extended to the ground. Sugarman mirrored his move.
On “three” they both straightened, both unarmed.
“So far so good,” X-88 said. “We’re halfway there.”
“And what’s the other half?”
“Are you a talker too? Like Tina?”
Sugarman felt the sharp tightening in his throat. Her name on his lips.
“She wanted me to tell you something if I were to see you. You’re Sugarman, right, the boyfriend?”
“I’m Sugarman.”
“Maybe it’d be better if we stepped away from our armaments, what do you think?”
Sugarman followed his lead and stepped two paces closer to the man, leaving the shotgun sinking in the mud.
“I know it’s bound to make you angry, hearing me talk about the woman you cared about. The one I killed. I know that. I’m not unfeeling. I’m not that kind of monster.”
“What did she want you to tell me?”
“She got involved with Cruz and all this mess just for money. I don’t know why she thought that was important for me to tell you. That’s pretty much what makes the globe keep spinning, isn’t it? Money?”
“That’s all she said?”
“She loved you. She said that, for whatever it’s worth.”
Sugarman nodded. He wasn’t sure what it was worth. He’d save that consideration for later. Now was the time to stay focused. Even-tempered.
“Your girl Tina was a tough one. A negotiator. She ran some kind of shop, right? Sold shit, maybe that’s where that bargaining thing comes from. She thought she could haggle her way out of dying, but no, she was good, but she wasn’t that good.”
“Why meat?”
He asked for no other reason than because he wanted to know. To understand the sick logic of this man. Not that such knowledge would benefit him in any way in the future, and not so he might even have a tingle of empathy. That wasn’t possible. No childhood trauma, no failure of nurturing or nature could justify this man’s acts.
“Meat was available,” X-88 said. “It didn’t have to be meat. Sure, meat’s got a symbolism to it, I guess you could say. Me being who I am, having the feelings I do about the mistreatment of animals, it’s meaningful to me, though I don’t expect anybody else to grasp that. A man I met in prison showed me the importance of those values. How throwing people into a concrete cell isn’t any different than doing the same thing to an animal. One can’t be right if the other isn’t. And neither are. It’s an abomination, locking men into cells, squeezing pigs and chickens and cows into tight little boxes.
“I’m saying that using meat to kill a person, it’s not meant as one of those codes some serial killer scrawls on the wall next to a murder scene, a taunt or whatever for the cops to decipher, nothing Hollywood like that. I just prefer using meat if it’s available. And that night it was.
“So hearing my explanation, does any of that make you feel better?”
“No. Not a bit.”
“Did you realize it’s Ahab and the whale, not Ahab and a shark?”
Sugarman didn’t answer. He had no idea what the man was saying.
“She corrected me. I had my movies confused, mixed up
Moby Dick
with that shark movie, with
Jaws,
you know. Tina told me I had it wrong. We had a nice conversation, we were relating, getting along about as well as two people can in that kind of circumstance. I was listening her out, letting her talk. Trying to be patient.”
“So what you’re saying, you’re actually a good man?”
“No, no. I’m not good. See, I don’t go in for any of that good/bad shit. I’m who I am, you’re who you are. Isn’t anybody giving us grades, coming down from heaven saying Sugarman, you get an A, X-88, you failed, man. The big F. It doesn’t work that way, far as I can see. People do what they do then they’re gone. They get replaced by others who do whatever the hell they can get away with and then they’re gone. No grades. Just one big mosh pit writhing with everybody squeezed together. That’s all I can see.”
He was compressing the distance between them, doing it in such small increments, Sugarman wasn’t certain it was happening till he saw the strip of light was no longer shining anywhere near him. X-88 was drifting forward.
“You’re not getting out of this,” Sugarman said. “If we fight, you might get the better of me, you might not. But either way, you’re done.”
“Oh, I’m done, all right. I know that. It’s no secret. I’m terminal. Brain’s swelling, everything’s shutting down. At the moment, the only reason I’ll fight you is because I don’t want to be passing my last hours in another goddamn concrete box. I like it out here, free in the air. I’ll fight you, I’ll kill you if I need to, if only to have a few more hours of this.”
Sugarman was doing his own slow waltz in X’s direction. The mud sucking at his shoes.
“I notice you got real short hair, Sugarman. Keep it trimmed close.”
“Yeah.”
“Makes it hard to yank, I bet. Tina ever try to tug your hair? You know, pull it backward so she could plant a big kiss? She ever do that?
“Reason I ask, I usually rely on longish hair. It’s part of my technique. But since I got my training in the martial arts in lockup, and inside there, most guys are shaved clean, I practiced other ways to accomplish my ends.”
Sugarman didn’t actually decide to charge. He simply did it. Not in anger, not off balance, but because the man seemed to be distracted by his pathetic monologue and Sugar sensed an opening.
Fists up, he feinted with a left jab then threw a straight right to X’s nose. Hands loose at his sides, using a Muhammad Ali shuffle, the man backpedaled, drew his chin back just far enough so Sugar’s knuckles skimmed past his cheekbone.
“Fast hands,” X said. “For an old coot.”
The mud made Sugar’s footwork sluggish, and the karate kick he sent toward X’s groin missed badly and threw him into a sideways stumble.