Waltz of Shadows (30 page)

The trunk popped up, and Price came out on my side, hitting the ground with one foot and throwing himself out of the trunk. He rolled across the ground and swung his .45 up with both hands and fired from a prone position. The shot hit Fat Boy and spun him around like a ballet movement, spun him away from Doc, spun him so that he was facing me. The .45 slug had punched Fat Boy on the high right side of his yellow jacket. The jacket bloomed a stain; it looked as if someone had hit him with a rotten tomato. Fat Boy stagger-stepped in my direction. I cross-haired him and put one in his face. Part of his jaw leaped away on a red wet wave. He spun again and hit the ground face first.

I lowered the rifle to take in a quick overview. I saw Arnold on the left, coming wide of the cops, almost directly behind them. The cops weren’t looking in his direction. They had their handguns drawn and were blazing at Price, who was barely visible. He had practically melted into the earth. Turf exploded all around him. I saw his leg jerk once as a slug skidded across the ground and burned into him. He lifted up the .45 and snapped off a round, not hitting anything, then got tight with the dirt again.

Doc was lying on the ground nearby, his hands over his head. He was screaming repeatedly, “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!”

Not a single shot had come near him.

I worked the bolt of the rifle, tossed a casing. I threw the stock to my shoulder, scoped one of the cops and fired. The cop’s mouth became bigger and his legs went into a split. His legs slowly folded together, supporting him on his knees. His ruined head dangled. His gun was pointing at the ground. I couldn’t figure what was holding him up.

Arnold’s shotgun boomed and the other cop lost his head in a red white spray that bathed the cop I’d shot. Arnold’s cop hit the ground faster than a box of lead, and now mine began to melt off his knees.

All of this had occurred in a matter of seconds.

I pushed the listening apparatus off my head, climbed over the fallen tree, and moved out into the open. Price got up and hopped on one leg over to where Fat Boy was. Fat Boy wasn’t dead. He had started crawling, worming toward the woods. Fat Boy lifted his head and looked up at me. His face wasn’t a face. His piggy eyes were surrounded by splashes of blood. A tooth fell out of the ragged, red gap the Marlin had made, or maybe it was a chunk of bone. His tongue flicked about in the open wound like a snake on a steam iron; Price leaned down and put the .45 to the back of Fat Boy’s head and pulled the trigger. Fat Boy’s head hit the dirt. Price fired again for good measure. The second time Fat Boy took the load he didn’t twitch.

Arnold came to my side. Doc eased to his feet and turned his back to me and faced Price. From the way Doc’s shoulders were wobbling, I could tell he was breathing hard enough to blow his lungs out. I was breathing pretty hard myself.

“I’m okay,” Doc managed. “Goddamnit, I didn’t get hit at all.”

Price looked at him, said, “Well, just once you did.”

He shot Doc in the forehead. The blast blew Doc past me, sent him skidding onto his back.

I jerked the rifle in Price’s direction, “Price, you idiot!”

“He had to go,” Price said, opening his free hand, lowering the .45 to his side with the other. “Him eating it was part of the plan all along. He was shit, and I just flushed him.”

“He’s right,” Arnold said. “Let it be, Bubba. We still got Snake to deal with.”

Price limped over to the front of the car and looked down at Virgil. He bent and felt for a pulse in Virgil’s neck. He straightened up and leaned on the car. His face was pale and sweat beaded. He said, “That sonofabitch has written his last brief.”

“Don’t be so broken up about it,” I said.

“World won’t miss one less lawyer,” Price said.

Price slid down the car suddenly and sat on the ground next to Virgil’s body, his back to the bumper. He put his .45 on his thigh and let it rest there. “I think I’m through for a while,” he said. He patted Virgil on the head. “Me and him will hold things here.”

Arnold pumped the twelve gauge, tossing a casing. He said, “Bubba, it’s time to rehabilitate Snake.”

   You go wide right,” Arnold said, “I’ll go left.”

It had grown dimmer and cooler in the last few minutes. I had just now become aware of it, and I had become aware of a tingling sensation in my hands from firing the rifle.

There were clapboard shutters all around the sawmill, and I found myself watching those as I ran, expecting Snake to pop one open and take a shot.

I wondered what he had been doing when all this had started. Had he not been aware? Or had he realized it was a hit, and that it was foolish to go out into the open? Or was he here at all? Did stinky child pornographers with cobras tattooed on their heads take vacations?

I made the right side of the mill and didn’t get the side of my head blown off, and I tried not to think about the possibility. I thought only of doing what I had to do, and being cautious about it. I eased along with my back against the clapboard wall and came to where a large sliding wood door was pushed back and there was a dark opening.

On this side of the mill, if I entered, the last of the sunlight would be at my back, and I’d be outlined against the light like a moth on a hundred-and-twenty watt bulb. I decided to cross in front of the opening instead. I darted quickly to the other side, put my back against the wall and took a deep breath. Then the wall to the right of my cheek exploded and a barrage of splinters went into my face and I dove for the ground and rolled as far from the opening as I could and lay still.

There was a ringing in my ears, and for a moment I felt confused. I waited and considered.

Snake had seen me pass by the door, and had guessed I was lurking on the other side, and had shot through the thin, clapboard wall, taking a flyer. It was only luck that had kept him from hitting me. I glanced at the spot on the mill where the bullet had exited. It was a medium sized hole, but big enough it would have done me severe damage. Way the wood splintered out from it, I guessed the shot had come from above, a landing somewhere. A .38 from the size of that hole and the sound of the load.

I put the Marlin on the ground and got the .38 out from under my shirt. The revolver loaded with
wadcutters would be better for close work. I felt for the lump of extra ammunition in my pants pocket. It was there. Not that I thought it had gone anywhere, but I damn sure wanted to be certain.

I crawled along the side of the building. When I came to the open doorway, I coiled my knees under me and squinted my eyes and tried to see into the dark. I suddenly found myself thinking about Bev and the kids. With difficulty, I tossed off the thought and focused on what I was doing. I didn’t want to die. I wanted Snake to die. I wanted to see my family again. I had to stay centered. I had to do this like I was delivering the mail.

It was growing darker by the moment, so my eyes were adjusting rapidly. I could see a great, rusted saw in there, about eight feet away, to the left, mounted on a metal rig and some planking. There was a lot of debris scattered about. Some barrels of wooden crates. I could actually smell Snake. Sour and rotten, like meat gone bad. I made a leap through the doorway and rolled up against the base of the saw as two shots slammed at me. One struck the ground near me as I rolled and the other touched a spark off the saw.

I scooted away from the base of the saw, which was not solid protection, but open railing and planks, and got my back against a metal barrel and pressed tight to it. Another shot slammed through the barrel and a streak of oil gushed out of it and splashed onto my left shoulder and down my pants leg.

I twisted around the side of the barrel and jerked the .38 up in what I thought was the direction of the shots and snapped off two. I heard them whine and strike something solid and sing off that and hit something else and make a flat sound. Then I heard movement up there, then a shotgun thundered, and I knew Arnold had found an entrance and was on the scene. The shotgun slug made a hard clang of a sound as it tore through the metal roof of the mill.

“Bubba,” Arnold yelled out. “He’s above you, to the right, on a platform. Watch your ass!”

But Arnold’s brotherly warning had given Snake an opportunity to better locate. I heard him step on some squeaking lumber, scrape over something, then there was silence.

A short-lived silence. A gun barked and Arnold yelled and I rose up behind the saw without thinking and the gun barked again. A metal tip of one of the jagged saw blades went away with a brilliant display of sparks, and I fired off a couple of quick rounds in the direction of the shot and dropped back down.

“Arnold!” I said.

“Okay, okay,” Arnold said. “I took one. I’m all right. Shit. No I ain’t. My fucking hip’s on fire. Goddamn you, Snake shit! Come see me, motherfucker! Come see me!”

Snake fired another shot from above. I heard it strike the dirt floor over by Arnold with a dead thud. This time Arnold didn’t ask him to visit. I heard running above us, sagging, squeaking boards, then the dreaded silence.

I got some ammo out of my pocket and filled all the chambers in the .38, then I came out from behind the saw and darted to the right behind a heap of crates. From there, I slid up to a wooden ladder that led to the landing. I looked up. It was awfully dark, and Snake could have been lurking anywhere, though I felt certain from the sound of the movement I had heard, he had traveled on a ways, possibly to a more protected position.

“Arnold?” I said.

“Yeah.”

I slipped across to where his voice was coming from. He was behind a heap of crates lying on his side. The shotgun lay beside him. One of the crates had exploded, scattering pornographic debris about like chicken feathers.

“Crates and photographs, they don’t block slugs too well,” Arnold whispered. “Actually, it wasn’t a bullet I caught, it was a chunk of wood from one of the crates.”

I bent down and touched him on the shoulder and dragged him behind a deeper stack of boxes. “Shut up and stay here,” I said. “I’ll get him.”

“I certainly hope so,” Arnold said. “I don’t think I’m up for it right this moment.”

I left him and started up the ladder, holding the .38 before me, using one hand to take myself up. I kept watching for the face of Snake, that tattooed moon, to rise over the horizon of the wooden platform above so I could put a crater in it. But the moon didn’t rise. I sniffed. I could smell him, but it wasn’t overwhelming. I became convinced that he wasn’t right above me. But he wouldn’t have to be. He could be off to the left or the right somewhere, waiting, sighting down the barrel of the .38.

I made the top of the landing and Snake didn’t strike. I looked to my left and saw that the landing played out into a mass of thin, sagging boards that couldn’t have supported anything heavier than a spider or a cockroach.

He had gone right, across a path of stronger boards that lay across the rafters, through a doorless doorway that led onto a kind of loft.

I crouched on the landing and figured on things. I was him, I’d be on either side of that opening, waiting in the dark.

I took a prone position on the rickety landing and borrowed a trick from Snake’s book. I lifted my .38 and shot through the wood, two shots in succession on the left side of the doorway, about three feet up, two on the right, the same height. The wood crackled and heaved and there was a grunt, and a silhouette moved in front of the doorway and red blasts of light jumped out of both his fists and bullets sang all around me. Had I been standing, as he suspected, I’d have had more holes in me than a cheese grater.

Even as Snake realized he’d missed, he turned his back to me, and ran straight into the darkness and the darkness was split by a thud of shutters and a burst of daylight and Snake leaped into the light and fell out of sight.

I bounded up, charged for the room, and a board gave and my leg went through, scaring about ten years off my life. I got my leg out of the break, and moved on into the room. The light from outside was faded, but it was enough to show me it was Snake’s headquarters. There was a TV up there and a VCR, some personal items, and a shelf containing a smattering of bones, like a child’s collection. There were pictures of naked children nailed to the wall.

I went over to the opening made by the thrown back shutters, and looked down. Snake had made a drop of about thirty feet. I could see him limping away in the distance, holding a revolver in either hand, struggling toward the clutch of blackgum trees and the biplane beyond.

I fired two shots at him and neither hit. I was still sharp with a rifle, but with a handgun I was so-so. I made my way back to the ladder without falling or catching my balls on a nail, went out of the mill and ran toward the blackjacks and the branch.

Snake wasn’t making great time. That jump had caused him injury. It was a wonder he wasn’t wearing his knee caps under his earlobes. Still, he was going to make the plane well ahead of me. I got to the copse of trees, and slid on my ass down the side of the creek branch, stepped in the three or four inches of water there, and climbed up on the other side.

Snake was thirty feet away, in the cockpit of the Stearman. I heard an electric starter spark up, and the prop began to spin. The plane turned slightly to the right, then suddenly made a complete circle, then made it again.

Snake got it straight finally, just about the time I got close, and he started trying to take it for a run across the field. I knew by then he didn’t know how to fly. Fat Boy had probably been the pilot, and Snake only had some idea of how it was done.

I lifted the .38 and pulled the trigger. The hammer clicked on an empty chamber. I started to reach in my pocket for a load, but Snake actually had the plane moving now, starting down the field.

I ran after the plane, which was not gaining much speed because it was bouncing and sawing left and right, and I got hold of the bottom wing and it jerked forward and I fell in the dirt and lost the .38. I leaped to my feet and ran after the plane again, got the wing just before the speed picked up. I tugged myself onto the bottom wing and used it as a platform to spring at Snake in the open cockpit. I came down on him and hammered his head with the side of my fist and held to his neck with my other arm. The plane went crazy, and Snake lifted back on the throttle, and the plane went up and came down with a hard bounce that nearly threw me, then it went up again. I got a tighter grip on his throat and hit him again and he tried to pick one of his .38’s from his lap and shoot me with it. The process caught his sleeve in the throttle, and as he pulled around to shoot, he jerked back on the throttle and we went up again, higher this time.