Borderland (38 page)

An odd
scratching sound at the door lasted for more than a minute. Then there was no
sound at all.

Had Ed
gone out to the Buick to get the pistol Nolan had so stupidly left lying in his
front seat? Or was he waiting for Nolan to open the door so he could nail him
with one of Jinx's foot-long carving knives?

Nolan
hated blades. Always had. And that was all these crazy bastards ever used.

Where,
Ed? Nolan wondered. Where are you?

In the
next second he knew where. The sound of an engine outside. He ran to the window
and saw a car pull away from the barber shop. Ed was making his getaway with
the fifty grand. Nolan rushed into the back room and skidded through the blood
on the floor to grab the manila envelope from the counter. His attention was
caught momentarily by the impotent rage in Gil Schwarz's glaring silver eyes.
The feral glint of his teeth. Then Nolan managed to shake himself. His feet
left bloody prints as he raced out the door to the Buick.

Ed
floored the accelerator of his Pontiac when he saw the Buick come after him. He
had missed the opportunity to kill Wulf; he had been too excited about the chance
to sever Gil Schwartz's retarded head from his bull's neck. Little Ed had waxed
big Gil. Wouldn't Jinx just shit his pants to know that? But he had done
something for Jinx, too. He had rid the world of the ugly half-brother, but he
had also told the world about the kinship, in letters written with Gil's blood
on the back room door that Wulf had been hiding behind. He had written: Gil
& Jinx, The Schwarz Brothers.

He
should have signed it, dammit. He really should have. Ed looked at the brown
sack of money beside him and began to laugh. Maybe he could find Len. Maybe he
could advertise in the classifieds in Len's favorite magazines. He had enough
money for both of them. More than enough. They could start over with a new life
somewhere, just the two of them.

They
could if he ever got rid of this gnat on his tail, anyway. He kept the
accelerator to the floor as he left the town limits and hit open road.

"Just
the two of us," the Texan sang along with the radio. The job had gone well
and he was pleased. The blonde woman had finally dropped with a centered chest
shot. She wouldn't survive that one—not unless someone around the house was
familiar with emergency room medical procedure for chest wounds, which he
sincerely doubted. The first hit on her jaw had upset him a little. He didn't
know who the big guy behind her was, but killing two for the price of one
always grated on him.

Was that
the guy in the truck he had taken target practice on earlier? The tire he had
shot out?

Well,
what the hell. He guessed it didn't matter now, one way or another. He always
enjoyed these little trips out of state. It was good to get away on occasion,
even if it was to the less than stimulating prairie-desert of western Kansas.
He rarely got out of Texas these days. There were regular hits in Dallas and
Houston, enough to keep him on a tight schedule. The state was full of
backstabbers with big pockets and bulging wallets.

And then
there was Clarice Callahan. Rich bitch supreme. He still didn't know where she
had gotten his name, but he supposed that didn't matter either. He could still
see her, smell her, hear that snotty rich bitch snarl in her voice as she
handed over the keys to the Aston Martin and told him the car was his payment
for the hit. She couldn't pay him cash. William would know.

The man
laughed aloud to himself in the car. Big William would know, huh? Well, your
errand boy has got news for you, Miz Callahan. The kind of news that's funny as
hell to the person in the know. That person being me, the Texan thought to
himself good-humoredly.

Three
days before Clarice Callahan called him her husband had sent over a down
payment on a hit. The hit was Clarice, to take place the day after tomorrow on
her birthday. The Texan, of course, had said nothing to Clarice of the deal
with her husband. He was a businessman, after all. And he really liked the blue
Aston Martin she offered. He had always considered owning one for himself.

The one
concession to conscience he had made was to farm the hit on Clarice out to his
nephew, his young protégé, rather than do it himself. He didn't owe Clarice
anything, he had taken care of her business as contracted, but he still felt it
was good manners to step back on this one and let the kid have a shot.
Meanwhile, he could work on the deal in Corpus at the end of the month. He
hated doing people on boats, but the price was right so he couldn't complain.

What he
could complain about was the shit that passed for music these days. Once every
ten songs there was something decent; the rest of the time it was worthless
shit that sounded like the same damn record over and over.

He
turned off the music and leaned back in the seat to dig his phone from his
pocket.  He would find a movie to watch, nothing overly loud and violent
so he wouldn’t be too distracted.

When the
Texan looked back up, he knew he was about to experience the loudest, most
violent sounds he had ever heard. He also knew he was going to die.

Ed
topped a small rise and looked away from his rearview mirror too late. The
headlights ten feet from his front bumper were imminently more dangerous.

Nolan
topped the same rise and immediately jerked the wheel of the Buick hard to the
right to avoid including himself in the metallic kiss of death that was
occurring in the road before him. Ed’s Pontiac was also sliding right, however,
and the Buick's front left bumper was caught by the Pontiac's swerving back
end, sending the Buick into a long, dust-clouded spin that was ended by a
corner post of a barbed-wire fence twelve feet off the road and fifty yards
away from the final resting place of the Pontiac…and the smaller car welded
onto its hood.

Breathless,
dizzy, and dangerously nauseated, Nolan sat and waited until he knew who he was
and what had happened. His ears rang with the sound of metal twisting and glass
shattering. His body felt numb, overdosed on adrenaline, while his mind
insisted on replaying the crash scene over and over again. He shook his head
and tested all his parts before taking a flashlight from his glove compartment
and forcing himself out of the car.

His legs
didn't want to walk in a straight line back to the wreckage, so he didn't
attempt to make them. He weaved his way around the glass and metal hunks in the
road and shined his light in the interior of the ... Aston Martin? What a
shame, he thought abstractedly.

The man
inside was dead. No doubt about that whatsoever. "When persons are in
pieces," his first beat partner had said, "consider 'em gone."

Ed Kisner,
surprisingly, was not. Not yet, anyway. Nolan shined the flash into the Pontiac
and saw the old man's mouth move. He leaned in. It would take the jaws of life
to get him out, but Ed wouldn't last long enough. His left arm was hanging by a
shred and the blood was pumping black.

"Forget
it," Ed said, as Nolan took off his T-shirt and reached in to make a
tourniquet. "Back...broken. Get...the money."

Nolan
looked. He didn't see anything.

"Between…legs,"
Ed breathed.

"What
do you want me to do with it?" Nolan asked. He didn't like this.

"Don't…let
Jinx have it. Not…Jinx."

Nolan
reached in again. The sack was covered with blood. He pulled it out and held it
between the tips of his fingers. Ed said nothing more. Nolan shined the light
in his eyes for a moment then he walked away.

He
backed the Buick onto the road then saw a pair of headlights approaching. He
hit his flashers and prayed to God the driver was paying attention. He sighed
in relief when the car picked him up in its headlights and began to slow. The
Mustang creeped up to him and stopped. The driver was Cal. He started talking
but Nolan held up a hand and backpedaled away. He put the Buick on the side of
the road and grabbed the manila envelope, the sack of money, and his pistol
from the seat before climbing into the Mustang. Before he could speak Cal
looked at the twisted wreckage in the road and said, "That's my
grandmother's car. Was she inside?"

"No.
Some guy. Dead."

Cal
drove around the metal and human corpses, his face void of emotion. "He shot
Mom. He shot Al, too."

Nolan
sucked in his breath. "Is she...?"

"No.
But Al is. He was one of them, Nolan, one of the Denke people."

Nolan
stared. "No. Not Al."

"He
said he was like Darwin. He said he paid the town people with profits from his
salvage yard to get out of doing the Denke thing. I didn't understand—"

"Your
mother," Nolan interrupted. "You said she was shot. Is she okay? Are
you sure she was hit?"

"I'm
sure. So was the guy doing the shooting, sure enough to stop and drive away. I
saw her get hit, and I saw the blood, but now she's. . ." Cal stopped
talking. His eyes rounded slightly as he gazed at something beyond Nolan.

Nolan
turned to see what he was looking at. He saw a long caravan of headlights
heading in their direction.

"What
the…?"

"The
people from town," Cal said anxiously. "Al called them. I had to come
and find you. They're on their way to our place. What are we going to do?"

Nolan
stared at the bright string of headlights, his mind working.

"I
can't think," Cal said suddenly. "I'm supposed to be so smart and I
just can't think. My mind is a blank. From the moment I saw my mother get shot
it's like I can't get anything but the same image up there, over and over. I
see her lying there like death and then I see another image over her, like some
angel with wet hair bending down to touch her, and then the angel is gone and
Mom is sitting up again, with no hole in her chest, just a lot of blood, and
I…”

Nolan
opened the door and got out of the car. "Get out of here, Cal. Go back,
get your mom and the girls and get the hell out of here. You might call the
state police while you're at it."

"We
can't," Cal reported. "Al ripped the cord out of the phone. What are
you going to do?"

Nolan
shook his head. He still couldn't get over Al being one of them. Sonofabitch.

"I'm
going to do whatever I can to keep them busy while you guys are getting the
hell away from here. My guess is they'll stop to look at the wreckage. That'll
give you some time. Now go on and get out of here."

Cal's
bottom lip threatened to tremble. "Nolan, I can't leave you here. I
can't."

"You're
not leaving me here. I'm staying. I've got the pistol and a full clip. I'll be
fine."

He also
had the sack of money and a half-assed plan.

"I…"
Cal began, but Nolan angrily kicked the driver's door of the Mustang. "Get
out of here, dammit. Now."

Cal
floored the accelerator and the Mustang sped away into the darkness. Nolan
turned and ran back to his Buick to get out of sight.

The
caravan arrived immediately, with the first two cars slamming onto their brakes
as they approached the burning wreckage. One by one, the cars stopped and the
drivers got out. Each man joined the others as they walked around the smashed
Pontiac and the dead Ed Kisner. They shook their heads at what was left of the
other dead man in the Aston Martin.

Then
Nolan stepped out from his hiding place. He held up his pistol and waved as
first one man and then another and another spotted him. He stopped twenty yards
away from them. "Hell of a mess. Nearly took me with 'em."

"Too
goddamned bad they didn't," someone said.

Nolan
smiled. "I heard that." He gestured with the pistol. "Where's
everybody going?"

The men
looked at each other. Nolan heard several of them whisper in short, sharp
sentences. He held out the bloody sack of money. "You know what this
is?"

All eyes
turned to the sack.

"This
is fifty thousand dollars," Nolan said. "Ed Kisner was leaving town
with it."

"That
thieving bastard!" a white-haired man yelled, and several others shouted
in agreement.

Nolan
shook his head. "Nope. I was with him when he took it. He said it wasn't
town money. He said it was money Jinx had been hoarding away over the years. He
found it in Jinx's safe in the diner."

"Liar!
Jinx wouldn't do that! What the hell were you doin' in there? You were in on it
with Ed! Let's get him!"

Nolan
held up the pistol as he saw the razors emerge from pockets. He aimed at Fred
Bauer's warty nose. "I've got a round for each one of you murdering
bastards," he promised. "So put those goddamned things away."

"He
can't get all of us," someone said.

"Can
too," someone else murmured. "Remember what he done to Gil in the
barn that day?"

Slowly,
in inches, the men advanced. Nolan saw and backed steadily away, keeping his
pistol in front of him. "I'm going to make a deal with you," he told
them. "I'm not going to kill anyone, and I'm going to give you the money.
In return, you let us get out. All of us, including Vic, when he gets
back."