A road lined with shaggy Australian pines on the other side of a worn-out canal. A few miles of dust and stones hitting the underside of the van and Louis could see a farm layout through the trees: neat-looking red-brick ranch, barn with pens and a tractor shed to one side, a Quonset hut off on the other side of the house. Louis hung on tight as Ordell cranked the wheel hard and the van bounced in and out of the ruts.
“You see that turtle? Shit, I missed him,” Ordell said and glanced at his mirror. “You all take a look right now quick, see what we coming to. We cross the bridge we on the man’s property.”
The van rumbled over loose planks spanning the canal and Ordell looked at the mirror again.
“See that big tin building? That’s call a Quonset, where the man keeps all his guns and military shit. Has a M-60 machine gun in there mounted on a jeep we gonna tear off. Has hand grenades. Has what they call a L-A-W rocket launcher, has a bunch of them. It stands for Light Antitank Weapon. Has the rocket already inside and the instructions printed on how to shoot it and then throw it away, it’s a disposable weapon. Government man comes driving along in his car down in Medellín—bam, he’s gone.”
Ordell said, “I expect we gonna find the man by hisself. His wife, I heard she got tired standing inspection, dusting all his guns and shit, and left him.” Turning into a gravel drive then, Ordell said, “No, it looks like the man’s got company this morning. Couple of bikes . . .”
Parked behind a pickup truck in the drive, the bikes becoming Harleys as the van crept up behind them.
“They over at the gun range,” Ordell said. “See? Up back of the tin building?”
A long counter with a flat roof over it, about fifty yards from the house. Two men stood there. Off beyond them were targets on posts and a high ridge of earth, like a levee.
“Couple of Bikers for Racism,” Ordell said, “practicing up to shoot us African-Americans when we go to move in their neighborhood and take our pleasure with their women. You all get down now. Me and Louis, once we get out you gonna be quiet as mice, you dig? No looking out the window. You hear us in the house commence to shoot, that’s your signal. You go take out the bikers straightaway. That’s your assignment on this operation, the Turkey Shoot, huh? Listen.”
They could hear gunfire now coming from the range, thin popping sounds in the open, shots spaced apart.
“Firing pistols,” Ordell said. “They have these targets with ugly-looking Neegroes painted on them they shoot at. Nigger coming at them with a machete—you know this brother’s gonna get shot. Don’t have a gun on him, he deserves to, being that dumb.”
Louis looked over his shoulder again. The jackboys were doing coke now, digging it from a baggie with teaspoons, each one with his own, sniffing and wiping their noses on their sleeves.
“Got our own pistolocos,” Ordell said, glancing at the mirror again, then reached over to take what looked like an Army Colt .45 automatic from the glove box. He racked the slide and stuck the gun inside his coveralls, saying to Louis, “You ready? Let’s shake and bake.”
Louis got out with the Mossberg in the fold of newspaper. He adjusted the Beretta, digging into his groin, then pulled it out of his waist—the hell with it—laid it on the seat, and closed the door. Louis walked around the front of the van to join Ordell. He glanced back to see Melanie getting out of the Toyota parked behind them, hanging the knit bag from her shoulder. Melanie coming up to them now, not looking too happy.
“There he is,” Ordell said.
He raised his hand to wave and Louis looked toward the house.
“How you doing, Big Guy?”
Still grinning, Ordell lowered his voice to say, “Look at the motherfucker. Thinks he’s A-dolf Hitler.”
The man stood on his stoop across half the front yard from them, dressed in tan Desert Storm camouflage pants and a GI khaki T-shirt, paratrooper boots planted two feet apart, hands on his hips.
Melanie said, “If you think I’m gonna fuck that bozo, you’re out of your mind.”
Ordell turned his head. “Be cool. Just bring the man on’s all you have to do.”
Then turned his head back saying, “Look who I brought to see you, Gerald. ‘Member I told you about Melanie? Here she is, man.”
Gerald had animal heads with horns and antlers mounted on his knotty pine walls. He had framed color prints of different fish. He had brown leather furniture, a wagon-wheel chandelier, crossed muskets over his fireplace, trophies sitting on glass-front gun cabinets, a rack of shotguns . . . Nothing in the room with a woman’s touch.
Ordell was telling Gerald how anxious his friends were to see his place, hoping he didn’t mind their dropping in like this, while Melanie poked around looking at things, bending over, sticking her butt out, and Gerald’s eyes would follow her cutoffs.
Louis stood holding the Mossberg in the fold of newspaper, looking around, then moved to a window to check on the two bikers. Still out there making popping sounds.
Gerald got rid of the cigar stuck in the corner of his mouth, dropping it in an ashtray made from a shell casing, sucked in his gut, and strolled over to tell Melanie about the fish prints. All the different kinds you could take out of Lake Okeechobee. Bullhead, bluegill, channel cat . . . Gerald taking peeks at Melanie’s bare shoulder and down the front of her halter, his hands shoved into his back pockets, as if to keep them from touching her. Timid, Louis thought, for a man his size. Gerald turned to Ordell saying they were going out to the kitchen. “You and him make yourselves at home.”
Ordell picked up a hand grenade that was now a cigarette lighter and came over to Louis flicking it at him.
“Big Guy’s something, huh?”
Louis turned from the window. “What’d you tell him about Melanie?”
“I said she gets off looking at guns. It’s the truth.”
“So he’ll try and nail her.”
“I ’magine. You want to protect her, go in there and shoot him.”
They were eye to eye.
Louis said, “You know you’re gonna have to.”
Ordell said, “Somebody is.”
They came back in the room, Melanie holding a mug of coffee, the knit bag still hanging from her shoulder. Gerald said, “Why don’t you boys go out to the range? I’ll loan you a couple pistols.”
Ordell said to Louis, “Show Big Guy your piece.” Louis took the Mossberg from the fold of newspaper and held it out. He watched Gerald looking at it, not too impressed.
“It’s got a laser scope on it,” Ordell said. Gerald came over to take the gun from Louis and walked back with it to where Melanie stood with her coffee. He said to her, “Can I be frank? I wouldn’t hang this in my toilet,” checking it out now, racking the pump. He aimed, squeezed the grip, and put the red laser dot between the eyes of a white-tailed buck on his wall. “You still have to hold your weapon against recoil. That red dot don’t mean shit, if you’ll pardon my French,” he said to Melanie. “I’ll go against him with an old single-shot Remington I got as a kid and outscore him any time he wants. Put some cash on the line, make it interesting.” He tossed the Mossberg back to Louis saying, “Careful now, you got a load in the chamber.” Shaking his head then to say, “What’s a weapon like that for, all chromed up? I sure as hell wouldn’t take it into combat.”
Louis said, “It ain’t bad for holding up liquor stores.”
Melanie rolled her eyes at him.
Gerald shrugged. “That’s about its speed.”
Louis, at first, had thought the guy was suspicious, even the way he looked at Melanie. What were these people doing here? Or he was annoyed for the same reason and because of it barely opened his mouth. The way Louis saw him now, the guy liked being on the muscle; he had to be challenged in some way to get his head to work. Gerald was about fifty or so; he could suck in his stomach but not that big butt on him. He believed no doubt he looked slick in his Desert Storm camies and was too confident to know he had a narrow brain in his crew-cut head. This type pi
ssed Louis off. The convict in him liked the feeling of heat he got looking at the guy, knowing he could control it and mess with him.
Louis, figuring the guy’s age, said, “Gerald, you ever been to war?”
“I been to tactical encampments,” Gerald said, “in Georgia and here in Florida. Going way back, I trained for the Bay of Pigs and just missed it.”
“Have you ever looked death in the face?”
“Meaning what?”
“Combat—what did you think?”
“I’ve taken part in combat exercises with live ammo,” Gerald said, “put on by former recon marines. Don’t kid yourself, I know what a fire fight is like.”
Louis had never been in combat either. No, but he’d seen two men shot—one running from a work gang at Huntsville, another climbing the fence at Starke—and had seen a man stabbed to death, a man set on fire, a man right after he had been strangled with a coat hanger, and believed these counted for something. So he said to Gerald, “Bullshit. That ain’t looking death in the face, that’s playing. That’s what kids do.” Louis taking it to this asshole standing there in his combat boots in a roomful of guns. Louis working himself up for what he knew was coming.
Ordell moved away from the window as he started in, saying, “Big Guy’s been training, getting ready for the black revolution.” Ordell playing with the zipper tab on his coveralls, zipping it up, zipping it down. “He hears us saying we shall overcome and knows it’s gonna happen.”
Louis had looked over his shoulder at the window. He heard Ordell, but not that popping sound outside. It had stopped. He saw the two bikers by the gun-range counter, maybe reloading.
Ordell saying, “It won’t be like the A-rab war out in the desert. Unh-unh, the nigger war’s gonna be in the streets. Gonna be a job stopping us natives, huh, man?” Ordell provoking the guy, saying, “You think you and your racist brothers can handle it?”
Gerald said, “You talking to me like that in my home?” Lines in his face drawn tight. Fired up now. “Why’d you come here, bringing your whore? To get your black ass whipped? I’ll do it for you, you want.”
Ordell had his coveralls zipped down to his waist, his hand going inside. It was about to happen. Ordell was going to shoot the guy. Louis felt it and wanted him to come on, hurry up if he was going to do it. Louis anxious—he had to look out the window again, quick, check on the bikers.
They were leaving the gun range: two heavyset guys coming with pistols and rifles.
Louis turned from the window. He said, “Those guys are coming,” trying to be cool about it, wanting Ordell to know without throwing him off.
But it did, it stopped Ordell and he looked over, his hand still inside his coveralls.
In that moment Melanie yelled, “Shoot him!”
Louis saw her pulling the knit bag from her shoulder, that much, before he swung the Mossberg at Gerald, putting it on him as the man got to Ordell and slammed a fist into him. It drove Ordell back to land hard in a leather chair, the Colt auto cleared, in his hand, and Gerald took it away from him: punched him in the mouth, twisted the gun from his hand, and threw it over on the sofa, out of the way. He got into a crouch then and hooked his fist into Ordell’s face, then threw the other hand, bouncing Ordell’s head against the brown leather cushion.
Melanie yelled it again, “Shoot him!” and Gerald paused, sinking to one knee as if to rest, then to look over his shoulder.
At Melanie, Louis thought. But the man was looking this way, right at him, staring. Louis squeezed the grip and saw the red laser dot appear on Gerald’s forehead. Gerald grinned at him.
“You got the nerve? Asking have I ever looked death in the face. Shit, you ain’t ever seen any combat, have you?”
Melanie’s voice said, “What’re you waiting for?”
Gerald turned enough to look at her. “He’s got buckshot in there, honey. How’s he gonna get me without hitting his nigger friend?” He said to Louis, “Am I right? Shit, you don’t have the nerve anyway.”
Louis went for him, raising the Mossberg to lay it across his head, aiming at that crew cut, and caught the man’s shoulder. Gerald rose up in his GI T-shirt, all arms, grabbed the barrel and gave it a twist, and Louis, hanging on, was thrown against the chair on top of Ordell. Louis slid off, scrambled out of the man’s reach to have room to move. Got to his feet . . . Gerald was standing with his back to him.
Gerald, and now Louis, watching as Melanie’s hand came out of her knit bag with a stubby bluesteel automatic. Gerald said, “Now what is that you have, some kind of low-cal pussy gun?”
Melanie was holding it in both hands now, arms extended, aimed at Gerald.
He tossed the shotgun to land on the sofa, looked at Melanie and said, “Okay, now you put that down, honey, and I won’t press charges against you.” Confident about it, as though it would settle the matter.
Melanie didn’t say anything. She shot him.
Louis felt himself jump—the sound was so loud in that closed room. He looked at Gerald. The man hadn’t moved; he stood there.
Melanie said, “I’m not a whore, you bozo.”
Christ, and shot him again.
Louis saw Gerald grab his side this time as if he’d been stung.
She shot him again and his hands went to his chest and his knees started to buckle as he moved toward her and she shot him again: the sound ringing and ringing in this room full of guns and animal heads, until it faded away and the man was lying on the floor.
Ordell said through his bloody mouth, barely moving it, “Is he dead?”
Melanie said, “You bet he is.”
Ordell said to Louis, “They coming?” And to Melanie, “Girl, where’d you get that gun?”
Louis was at the window now.
He saw the two bikers standing in kind of a crouch with their rifles, shoulders hunched, looking this way, nearer the house now than the gun range. He saw them out there in the open, cautious. Saw them both look toward the driveway at the same time and start to turn in that direction, raising their rifles. Louis heard the sound of automatic weapons, not as loud as he heard them in Ordell’s gun movie or in any movie he had ever seen, and watched the two bikers drop where they were standing, seem to collapse, fall without firing a shot, the sound of the automatic weapons continuing until finally it stopped. Pretty soon the jackboys appeared, the kids with their Chinese guns, curved banana clips, looking at the men on the ground and then toward the house.
Louis wondered if combat was like that. If you had a seat and could watch it.
He heard Ordell say, “They get ’em?”
Louis nodded. He said, “Yeah.”
And heard Ordell say, “Man, my mouth is sore. I think I’m gonna have to go the dentist.”
Heard him say, “Now I have to get those boys to load up the van. We going home in Louis’s car, if it makes it.” Heard him say, “You ever shoot anybody before?”
And heard Melanie say, “Hardly.”
He watched the jackboys poke at the bikers with the muzzles of their guns. Now Ordell appeared, walking up to them, and it surprised Louis; he hadn’t heard Ordell leave the room. Louis turned from the window to see Melanie on the sofa, still holding the pistol.
She said, “Why didn’t you shoot him?”
Louis said, “You did all right.”
Melanie looked at Gerald on the floor. She said, “I don’t mean him.”
17
Jackie didn’t see Ray Nicolet until she came off the elevator in the airport parking structure, Tuesday afternoon. He said, “We have to stop meeting like this,” deadpan, posed against the front fender of a Rolls.
She was supposed to smile, so she did; because he was young, he was having fun being a cop, and because she had to be nice to him. She could smile, too, at his swagger, coming to take the wheels from her in his cowboy boots, a gun beneath that light jacket, stuck in his jeans.
“I thought you’d be waiting in Customs.”
“We don’t need to bri
ng them in,” Nicolet said. “This is ATF business. How was your flight?”
“Smooth, all the way.”
“I imagine you’re glad to be working again.”
“You’ll never know,” Jackie said, walking with him now along the row of cars.
“We have the money here?”
“Ten thousand.”
“Anything else? Weed, coke?”
“No, but I can get you some.”
“I’ll toke once in a while if it’s there,” Nicolet said. “You know, like at a party. But I won’t buy it, it’s against the law.”
He placed the wheels in the trunk of the Honda and brought the flight bag in the front seat with him. Jackie slipped in behind the wheel. Opening the bag he said, “Three-ten PM,” and gave the date and location, where they were. “I’m now taking a manila envelope from the subject’s flight bag. The envelope contains currency . . . all the same denomination, one-hundred-dollar bills. Now I’m counting it.”
Jackie said, “What’re you doing?”
He showed her the mike hooked to his lapel, then pressed the palm of his hand over it. “I’m recording.
“You said you were letting this one go through.”
“I am. Don’t worry about it.”
“Then why’re you being so official?”
“I don’t want any surprises. Every step of this goes in my report.”
She watched him count the bills, dab each one with a green felt-tipped pen, and describe where he was putting the mark, “. . . on the first zero of the numeral one hundred in the upper left corner.” He finished and said, “I’m putting the currency back in the envelope, ten thousand dollars. The subject will deliver the money in . . .”
Jackie said, “A Saks Fifth Avenue shopping bag,” smoking a cigarette now.
“A Saks Fifth Avenue shopping bag.”
She gestured to several bags on the back seat.
“A large black bag with handles and red lettering,” Nicolet said, took the recorder from his coat pocket, and turned it off. “Okay, we can go.”
“You’re not coming with me, are you?”