Part 4

thirty-four

Moses Duncan unlocked the door to his dark little farmhouse, Eddie right behind him. He was tired and pissed and cold and hungry. He felt for the light switch.

Then the hands.

They grabbed him from all directions; Eddie too. Moses tried to twist away and earned a fist on the side of the head.

A voice. "Be still, bitch."

He was thrown to the floor, facedown. A kick in the ribs. Moses whuffed air, heard Eddie mumble fear noises. Somebody turned on the lights.

"Damn," Moses shouted. "Take what you want."

"Shut the fuck up." Another kick, but halfhearted this time.

A black man in a purple suit knelt in front of Moses. He grinned, no humor touching his eyes. Moses felt hands and feet along his body, keeping him pinned down. He wouldn't have tried to move anyway. He froze, kept his mouth shut, waited to be told what to do.

"They call me Red Zach. You heard of me?"

"No, sir," Moses said. He chanced a look, swiveled his eyes around the room. A bunch of coons. Hell. Just his luck. Some kind of damn poetic justice maybe to die in the hands of a mob of coons. Maybe they were with that Ellis son of a bitch. Maybe they knew Moses had been looking to splatter some buckshot across Ellis's face, and these coons were here to kill him.

No, that didn't make sense. Ellis was hanging with those two white guys. The mob in his living room was strictly an all-coon outfit. Hell and shit.

"Well, you going to hear a lot more about me real soon," Zach said. "As a matter of fact, we're going to get acquainted because you work for me now."

Moses opened his mouth to protest, but a heavy hand on the back of his head pushed him down. Moses kissed the floor, bumped his front teeth against his upper lip. A trickle of blood.

"Think of this like a hostile corporate takeover," Zach said. "Just how hostile is up to you, but maybe you should consider the perks."

Moses Duncan was not going to work for no goddamn nigger coon in a purple pimp suit. Daddy would roll in his grave. But he shut up and kept his ears open.

Someone dropped a bag next to his head, a suitcase. He looked at it from the corner of his eye. It was his, the one he used to stash his merchandise. They must've gone through the whole house. Maybe even found the sawed-off, single-shot.410 he kept duct-taped to the back of the toilet in case somebody came at him when he was on the crapper.

"The bad news," Zach told him, "is that your freelance days are over. You answer to Red Zach now. That piss you off? I see it in your eyes. Don't try to hide it. Good. I'm glad. I don't want no cunts working for me. But I don't want no fools either. You play it smart and it works out for everybody. You hear what I'm saying?"

Moses thought a second before answering. "I hear you."

"Good," Zach said. "Now here's the part maybe you'll like. Once you start working for me, you going to do a lot more business than what you got in your little suitcase here. We going to talk about some real greenbacks. You got a college town here. Ripe. I'll show you how to work it. Somebody else starts poaching your territory, I send my boys down, stomp it out quicker than a forest fire. You see the potential?"

Moses said that he saw.

"You got any objections?" Zach asked. "Can you see any reason this business arrangement won't be mutually beneficial?"

The hand on the back of his neck tightened just slightly.

"Sounds like a good deal to me," Moses said.

"Excellent. What happened to that guy's face?"

It took Moses a second to understand he'd meant Eddie. "Glass. Cut him all up."

"Uh-huh."

"Can I get up now?" asked Moses.

"Nope. We got just one more thing to talk about first."

"Okay."

Zach softened his voice, friendly, put his hand on Moses's shoulder. "I think a brother maybe came to you recently with a big score. A shitload of premium coke. Why don't you tell me all about it. Start at the beginning and don't leave anything out."

thirty-five

Don't you ever go stir-crazy in here, man? Don't you ever want to stick a gun in your mouth and blast your fucking brains out?" Jenks asked.

Tad Valentine scratched his wild, white beard and considered the question. This Sherman Ellis/Harold Jenks person obviously didn't like being cooped up. He'd offered him the pick of his library, had even suggested some Langston Hughes or Etheridge Knight that Valentine mistakenly believed would appeal to Ellis/Jenks's ethnicity.

But the young man had instead latched on to a copy of Jerzy Kosinski's The Painted Bird. The novel's nonstop atrocity fest seemed to hold a special horrified fascination for him. Jenks frequently consulted a Webster's Dictionary between chapters. Valentine decided-not for the first time-that he was simply not in tune with the multicultural complexities of today's youth. Ellis/Jenks puzzled him not only for being black, but for being young and part of a world that did not need or want men like Valentine. They wanted MTV and PlayStation and the Internet and soft drink commercials with half-naked teenagers and many other things that scared the hell out of Valentine.

And this young black man made him nervous, on the lam and in some kind of peril from what Valentine could gather. It wasn't that he disliked Ellis/Jenks. But the kid was a bold symbol of everything out there, and now he wanted to hide in here. Valentine worried Ellis/Jenks would bring the world and its troubles with him.

And just what the hell was the kid's name anyway? Sherman Ellis or Harold Jenks. It seemed there was a halfhearted effort under way to conceal the man's identity. Wayne DelPrego had started with Sherman Ellis and had gradually abandoned it for Harold Jenks.

Valentine had decided to think of the black kid as Sharold Jenkis. It seemed a reasonable compromise.

"Sometimes," Valentine said.

Jenks looked up from The Painted Bird. "What?" He'd forgotten that he'd asked Valentine a question.

"Sometimes," Valentine repeated, "I think about putting a gun in my mouth. But it's not because I'm cooped up as you say. It's the thought of going out there." He pointed at the rest of the world through the dirty window. The glass was badly smudged.

Jenks looked out the window. "It's just a parking lot."

"Hmmmm, yes. Where's Mr. DelPrego today?"

"Snuck out," Jenks said. "He's stir-crazy too."

"It wouldn't fit anyway," Valentine said.

"Say what?"

"The gun. I couldn't get it into my mouth." Valentine went to the other window, the big one. A thinly padded bench ran the length beneath it. He flipped the lid, hinges squealing, and pulled out three and a half feet of something wrapped in cloth. He lowered the bench lid again and set the bundle on top, peeled away the cloth slowly, and revealed a long, double-barreled shotgun.

"It's a twenty-gauge," Valentine said. "I wouldn't be able to reach the trigger."

Jenks set the book aside, came over to look at it. "It's pretty."

"My father gave it to me as a graduation present. We hunted duck quite often before I went off to New Haven." He picked up the shotgun, cradled it lovingly, broke it in half, and looked down each barrel. "Still clean."

The darkly polished wood gleamed, ornate silver scrollwork. An expensive firearm. Valentine had not held the weapon in over a year. The cold metal in his hand sparked a memory. A duck blind before dawn, the sun rising pink-orange over the lake. The last morning they'd gone hunting before Valentine had left for the East. His father had wanted him to be an engineer. Oklahoma oil had paid for the shotgun, the private lake, Valentine's education. Father had been bitterly disappointed when his son turned poet. Poet. The word had struck his father like a tomahawk between the eyes. Poet was code for communist-faggot-slacker to an Oklahoma oil man. His father had died before the Pulitzer Prize, before the New York Times interview, before everything.

Jenks took the gun from his hand. "Cool. Let me see."

Valentine let go reluctantly, watched Jenks sight along the barrel.

"What you shoot with this?"

"Ducks," Valentine said. "Or geese."

"What you use?" asked Jenks. "Slugs?"

"If you want to scatter the bird across the county."

Jenks's eyes shifted back to the bench seat. "Any shells in there?"

Valentine followed Jenks's gaze to the bench seat. He looked back at Jenks and said, "I've made it a point not to pry into your business."

"Good."

"But maybe you'd better tell me what's going on, eh? Perhaps I could even help."

Jenks bit the end of his thumb, looked out the window. After a long pause, he shook his head. "I think you'd rather not know."

Valentine lifted an eyebrow.

"But I appreciate it," Jenks said. "Thanks for letting me and Wayne crash here. And thanks for trying to show me about the books, letting me look at Painted Bird. It's wasted on me but thanks for trying."

"Education is never a waste on anyone," Valentine said.

Jenks smiled, shrugged. "Okay, man. Sure."

Valentine nodded. He was a patient man. Perhaps he could pry some information out of DelPrego upon his return.

Wayne DelPrego left campus at a fast walk, looking over his shoulder as he slunk back into the knot of woods that bordered Eastern Oklahoma University. He didn't venture deeply, not like when he and Jenks had hidden from Red Zach's crew. He skirted the edge, stopped and knelt in a thick patch of shrubs when he saw his trailer.

He watched.

Be damned if these gangster shitbags would run him out of his home. He'd been wearing the same clothes-same underwear-for three days. And he wanted his truck. It wasn't much, but it was all he had.

Watching the back of the trailer didn't show him anything. Jenks was sure they'd watch the place, but how? Sit in a car on the street, or would somebody wait in the trailer for him with a loaded gun and the lights out? Or both? Maybe this was a mistake. He'd mentioned to Jenks he might try to sneak back for his truck, but Jenks had put his foot down. He'd said just to grab the cocaine and get back quick.

Fuck it.

DelPrego bolted from the shrubs, sprinted, his breaths huffing little clouds into the cold air. He dove under one of the trailer windows, pressed his back against the half-rusted wall. He listened.

Nothing.

He thought about crawling through the gap in the aluminum skirting and getting under the trailer, but shivered at the thought of what might be under there. Oklahoma was lousy with all kinds of spiders and scorpions. DelPrego hated the thought of escaping gangsters only to have a brown recluse scuttle up his jeans and bite him on the gnads.

Voices.

DelPrego held his breath, cocked an ear toward the open window above him. A conversation. He felt footsteps shaking the flimsy trailer, coming toward the window. DelPrego pressed himself as flat and as low as possible.

"What're you doing?" The first voice.

"Mmmpgh Mmbf Mmmmmm." The other.

"No, leave it open. It stinks in here."

"Mmmph. Mmmm."

"Then put your jacket back on, but leave it open."

The footsteps retreated from the window. "Mmmph mmmmm?"

"Because Red Zach said so. If they come back, we grab 'em if possible or call his boys in for backup."

The other voice uttered a string of garbled nonsense.

"I don't like it either, Eddie. You think I want some coon giving me orders? But once we straighten this Jenks kid out, they'll go back to St. Louis and we'll be sitting on a gold mine. No more small-time."

"Mmmm mmmph mmmm."

"Me too. What you want?"

"Mmmph."

"We had fucking Taco Bell yesterday."

They argued five minutes about lunch. The first voice told the mumble voice he'd be back in thirty minutes. DelPrego heard the front door slam. A few seconds later an engine cranked, vehicle noise fading on the road out front. A second later the TV went on. DelPrego listened. It sounded like a game show.

Anger. Someone was in his home watching his damn television. Probably drank his last beer. He found himself getting up. Some remote bastion of intelligence shouted to the rest of his brain that a truck and a trailer and a ten-year-old RCA television were not worth dying for. But there he was crawling under the window, heading for the back door.

At the back door he stopped, took the little oilcan out of his jacket pocket. The old redneck janitor Brad Eubanks had gotten it for him last night. Even then, DelPrego had been thinking, putting the plan together in his mind. He squirted oil on the hinges, made sure to use plenty. He squirted oil into the lock, anyplace that might make a noise.

He took the back-door key from his pocket. He'd removed it from his key ring so it wouldn't jingle against the other keys. He inserted it in the lock. Slowly. He pinched the key between thumb and forefinger, froze, listened. The game show drifted from the open window. DelPrego made himself breathe. Then he turned the key.

The lock slid back and DelPrego cracked the door an inch. No sound. He put his ear to the crack to make sure the game show was still going. It was. He looked inside but couldn't see very far down the hall. The hall went past a little place where a washer and dryer would go if DelPrego had them. Then past the kitchen and opened up into the living room/dining room combo area. The TV was against the far wall in the living room. The whole trailer was like a cramped miniature version of a real house. A strong gust of wind would blow the whole thing over. It was a flimsy dwelling. The floor creaked. DelPrego would have to step lightly.

He opened the door, stepped into the trailer. He pulled the door closed behind him, each movement in exaggerated, agonizing slow motion. He took one step toward the kitchen and the floor groaned. He took his weight off the spot. He slipped out of his tennis shoes, set them aside. He walked along the side of the hall, inching forward until he saw the kitchen around the corner.

Beyond the kitchen, the living room and the TV.

Someone was in the easy chair, the battered La-Z-Boy he'd picked up from a junk heap and patched with duct tape. He couldn't see who, only an elbow on the armrest, a hairy hand holding the remote control.

The hand was white.

DelPrego frowned. This didn't make sense. He'd been expecting one of the gangsters who had chased him and Jenks into the woods. In his mind, he replayed the conversation he'd heard under the trailer window. One of the voices had specifically mentioned Red Zach.

Okay, never mind. White or black, this guy was in his house, waiting to kill him.

He walked through the kitchen, looked at the counters. No knives in sight, and he couldn't risk the noise of opening a drawer. He grabbed a saucepan. He'd come up behind this guy and bash his brains in.

He started toward the easy chair, careful steps, slow, quiet, get within arm's reach, and let him have it. DelPrego screwed up his courage, gathered it into a tight, hot ball in the center of his gut. He had to crack this dude's skull with everything he had. He didn't want the guy to get up again.

The guy swiveled the chair, looked square into DelPrego's eyes.

DelPrego looked at him and screamed, dropped the frying pan.

The guy in the La-Z-Boy screamed too. It came out ragged and muffled. His head was completely bandaged, only big, frightened eyes showing from slits. The mummy-faced guy had the chair in the recline position. He thrashed in the chair, struggled to sit upright and turn the chair back to the pump shotgun leaning against the wall.

DelPrego regrouped, launched himself before the guy reached the shotgun. He smacked into Mummy-man, tumbled over, chair tipping. They landed on the floor in a clinch, clawing and grabbing.

Mummy-man rolled on top of DelPrego, a hand going over DelPrego's face, pushing. A pinkie finger slid into DelPrego's mouth. He bit down hard. Mummy-man's hoarse scream died in the cotton bandages. He jerked his hand back. DelPrego punched, but Mummy-man twisted away. The blow glanced to the side.

The skill level of the fight went from bad to idiotic. Pulling at clothes, rolling. They bumped against a coffee table, tipped over a lamp.

Mummy-man pulled free, kicked away DelPrego's fumbling hands. He belly-crawled across the dirty shag toward the shotgun. DelPrego lunged and grabbed one of Mummy-man's ankles. Mummy-man kicked. He was two inches from the butt of the shotgun. He reached, stretched, strained against DelPrego's hold.

DelPrego cast about. He needed something to hit with. A large glass ashtray had fallen from the coffee table. He reached. Two inches.

Both men stretched in opposite directions, gritted teeth, grunted.

DelPrego got to his knees, readied himself before letting go of the ankle. He grabbed the ashtray, turned, and leapt back on Mummy-man, who had the shotgun in his hand. DelPrego crashed into Mummy-man hard, pinned the shotgun against his chest. DelPrego landed a knee into the Mummy's gut, heard air burst out of him. He raised himself, the ashtray high over his head. He brought it down hard.

It smacked hard into the Mummy's forehead. Mummy-man jerked.

"Fuck you, King Tut." DelPrego hit him again.

Mummy-man went slack, sank into the shag. DelPrego sat on him, chest heaving, sweat. He shook. His hands especially trembled out of control. He dropped the ashtray, fell off of Mummy-man's body, and lay on the carpet, sucking for breath. Another dead guy. He'd bashed in another guy's head. For the second time DelPrego was a killer. No. Three times. He'd killed the guy with his shotgun when the drug deal had gone bad. But somehow that had been different. Not up close like when you bash a man's skull into jelly.

He stood, knees like water. He'd need to think what to do. He had his truck keys, so he wouldn't have to flee on foot. He ran back to his bedroom, found the stash of 280 dollars he'd been saving for an absolutely life-and-death emergency situation. This qualified. He grabbed a knapsack, filled it with two changes of clothes (four changes of underwear) and his father's Purple Heart from Vietnam. He left the knapsack on the bed and went to put on his shoes.

The sight of Mummy-man's loose-limbed body disturbed DelPrego. Maybe he should do something with the body, hide it somehow. Or maybe just the thought of the dead man in plain sight on his shag carpet gave DelPrego the willies. He didn't want to think of himself as the kind of man who'd bash a guy's skull in, then just leave the body lying around. He bent over the Mummy, grabbed him by the jacket lapels. Touched his chest.

Breathing.

DelPrego gasped, put the palm of his hand over the guy's heart. It beat. Crazy, relieved giggling bubbled up in DelPrego's throat, spilled out of his mouth. Mummy-man was alive, his breathing seemed regular, normal. Of course, he hadn't hit him that hard, not enough to kill him. Mummy-man had only been knocked cold. DelPrego didn't know why he was so happy. The son of a bitch had been waiting to blow a giant hole in him with a shotgun.

DelPrego shook his head. He was glad he hadn't killed the guy. He didn't want the memory, didn't want to see the man's mummy face haunting him in his dreams. He already got chills whenever he thought about the man he'd killed with the golf club.

DelPrego grabbed Mummy-man under the arms, dragged him into the little bathroom. He dumped him into the tub, made sure he was faceup and could breathe okay. He'd need something to tie the guy up. All DelPrego wanted was a head start.

DelPrego heard a car door slam. He froze.

He rushed to the window, peeked through the blinds. It was the other one. Shit. The face seemed familiar. He tried to remember. It came to him slowly like a grainy movie slipping into focus. Holy fucking shit. The guy from the drug deal. That fucking redneck who'd tried to steal Jenks's coke. And while DelPrego had stood gawking, the guy had reached the front door. Shit shit shit.

The shotgun! Too late. DelPrego had left it in the living room.

Think, dumbass!

He looked at the Mummy-man in the tub.

Moses Duncan was halfway to get food when Red Zach had called him on the cell phone. He'd said to forget about watching the trailer. Get back to the farm quick. Change of plan.

Right. Sure. For the thousandth time Duncan thought about cutting loose, hitting the road. On the one hand, he did stand to make a lot of cash working for Red Zach. On the other hand, the thought of Red Zach moving into the old farmhouse, setting up shop like it was a goddamn Motel Six, probably had Daddy spinning in his grave. So Duncan was going to bite his tongue and bide his time. Someday, in a month or a year or ten, he'd have the last laugh on these coons.

Duncan tried the front door. Locked. He knocked. No answer.

"Come on, Eddie. It's me." Nothing.

"Hell. Now what?" He banged on the door louder, shook the trailer.

Duncan sighed and walked around behind the trailer. The back door was open, and he went inside. "Eddie?"

Duncan heard a flush. The bathroom door creaked open. Eddie came out, tugging at his face bandages.

"What's up?" Duncan asked. "Stitches itching again?"

Eddie nodded.

"Get your shit together. We'll eat later. The coon squad wants us back home." He tossed Eddie the car keys and picked up the shotgun. "I got the twelve-gauge. Your turn to drive."

Eddie stared at him, didn't move.

"Don't just stand there, dummy. Come on."

"Mmmph. Mmmm," Eddie said.

"What?"

"Mmmmph Mmmmm Mmmmph."

"Your tongue must be swelled up or something," Duncan said. "Suddenly I can't understand a damn thing you're saying."

thirty-six

The ride back from Houston was uneventful and unhappy.

Reams's anger at Jay Morgan was of the slow, brooding variety. Morgan realized the professor had gone to some trouble to arrange the morning job interview, but Morgan had simply not given a rat's ass. The police had kept him until nine in the morning.

Dirk Jakes's anger at Jay Morgan was more of the ranting and raving variety. Jakes's brand-new Mercedes had been "stolen" according to the story Morgan gave the police. But more than anything, Jakes seemed hurt and angry that he hadn't been invited to the titty bar when Morgan had "borrowed" the Mercedes for his midnight drive.

All in all, Morgan was damn unpopular for the duration of the cramped ride back in the Geo Metro, the only rental available on short notice. They made it back into Fumbee late Sunday night, and Reams dropped him off without a word.

For all Morgan cared, Jakes and Reams could go fuck themselves. With corncobs. He had no energy left for apology. The night and early morning with the police had left him wrung out. He couldn't tell them the real story without it leading back to Annie Walsh. He'd tried to keep it simple. After the titty bar, he'd gone, so he claimed, to the beach for some air so he could sober up. A bunch of Mexicans had beat him up and thrown him in the water, then taken the Mercedes.