Dead Man (30 page)

Now shunning the open meandering road, he picked his way as quickly as he could through the heavy undergrowth flanking it.
He pulled up short a second time: there had been a distant shot.

What the hell? That didn’t make sense unless…

Unless he remembered the butchery on Trask. Whoever did that didn’t have many compunctions. Two million in bonds… Just Dain
and she left… He had been just sort of assuming they would face him together, he would kill them both, take the bonds… But
maybe only one would be left to take out…

Suddenly he was sprinting ahead, crashing through the forest, careless of noise. Two more shots had sounded far ahead of him.

Ten minutes later he was at the edge of the woods, scanning the clearing. Burned-out cabin, just a heap of charred wood now.
Beyond that, the blackened thing that once had been Nicky…

He moved around the perimeter, saw the tar baby in the vat. The person inside would have been burned away leaving only a shape
of cooled tar, like the ancient Pompeiians caught by flowing lava while fleeing Vesuvius. Had to be Maxton. And Dain had done
it with the use of only one arm.

A couple of minutes later, Inverness parted the bushes near the water’s edge to look out cautiously at the landing area and
the thinning fogbank beyond. The mud was trampled, marked with footprints and keel marks. After a long reconnoiter, he stepped
out. Looked up the bayou, stiffened.

Up about where Vangie had first seen Dain poling down toward the fishing camp in the pirogue, Vangie was now poling away from
the camp in the pirogue. Alone. The craft was too shallow for Dain to be hiding in the bottom of it.
She reached the bend of the bayou and passed from his sight.

Alone. Which meant that Dain was either waiting for him somewhere in ambush—or the argument he had heard had been genuine,
the shots real, and Dain was…

He turned back to the landing area, crouched, reading sign. He chuffed, an almost silent exhalation of air. Splattered across
the churned muddy verge was blood. Fresh blood, his touching fingertip confirmed.

Then his eye picked up a glint at the water’s edge, and he gave a small exclamation of surprise. He lifted Trask’s gun from
the mud. Sniffed the muzzle. Looked quickly around, like an animal about to take a drink, then broke the gun. Two unfired
shells. He closed it very slowly, a puzzled look on his face.

Patiently, he started over the ground again with his eyes, minutely seeking everything he had missed the first time. Gave
a little grunt of satisfaction, waded out to midcalf. Tromped down into the mud and water was
something,
paper, man-made. He reached down, brought it out.

A sheaf of soaked, trampled, mud-smeared bearer bonds. He thumbed them. Half a dozen, twenty-five thousand each: a hundred
and fifty thousand bucks. Dropped in the struggle, probably when the shots had been fired.

He started back out with his head moving, scanning the bushes, the trees, the bayou, the open water of the marshland… With
a muttered exclamation he threw the bonds aside and went into a firing crouch, his right hand whipping out the .357 Magnum
from its holster on his right hip with practiced ease.

The fog had lifted enough so he could see Vangie’s missing flatboat forty yards from shore and slowly being carried further.
One of Dain’s shoes rested on the gunwale as if he were lying faceup, partially across the seats. His good arm was hooked
over the far side of the boat so his hand was obviously trailing in the water even though Inverness could not see it.

Inverness slowly put his Magnum away again, even more slowly settled into his woodman’s tireless squat, his eyes fixed on
the drifting boat.

His posture was patient but his head was spinning. Dain. Dead? Everything said he was—blood, bonds, gun, the departed Vangie.
But… this was Dain. The man he couldn’t kill. But Dain had trusted her and she’d shot him with Trask’s gun and had dumped
him in the boat and set it adrift so Inverness would see it and be delayed by it.

Or maybe she hadn’t. Time would tell.

Three hours later the fog had burned away and bright sunlight flooded everything. Inverness still was hunkered in the scrub
by the shore, staring out at the drifting boat. His arms were now wrapped around his knees. The boat was quite a bit further
away, but was slowly turning around and around in a big leisurely eddy. Dain’s good hand was indeed trailing in the water,
submerged about halfway down the bared forearm.

He could only really make out Dain’s boot, a little of the hair of his head, and that arm trailing in the water. The arm made
it Dain, not a dummy made up with moss and Dain’s clothes to fool him.

During those three hours the body hadn’t moved an inch.

With abrupt decision, he stood, trotted off toward the fishing road through the woods. Half an hour later he arrived back
at his flatboat, seized the prow, and shoved off into the bayou as he leaped aboard. Unshipped the oars, swung the prow, and
began rowing away with long steady strokes. In action he was as quick, as sure as he’d ever been. Then why couldn’t he…

Goddammit, now he was going to deal with Dain.

It was high noon, so there was no shade. Dain’s flatboat drifted in its eddy of current. From around the tip of the island
came Inverness’s flatboat to the beat of his steady rowing. A dozen yards from the boat in which Dain sprawled, faceup to
the sun, he rested on his oars so his boat coasted to a stop. He sat, staring. Waiting. Not quite ready to deal with Dain
after all.

If Dain was not dead, only dying, the heat and sun would finish him off. Waiting could only benefit Inverness.

He waited.

Waited until the sun had started its climb down the western sky. Just sat there on the middle seat of his boat, legs drawn
up and arms clasped around his knees. From this close he could see Dain sprawled, bloody and lax, across the seat.

Enough.

Inverness suddenly jerked out his .357 Magnum, then once again just sat there with it in his hand, resting the hand on his
thigh, the gun pointed at nothing. He yelled.

“Dain!”

No reaction. Man—or body? He raised the gun, aimed with his elbow resting on an upraised knee. Hesitated. Dain was dead, he
knew that now, and he was about to shoot the body. Blow its foot off. To see if perhaps the man was only faking it. And if
he shot the corpse, wasn’t that somehow an admission that Dain had won, even in death? That even his
corpse
could spook Keith Inverness so badly that…

With sudden resolve he re-aimed. And fired. A chunk of gunwale six inches from Dain’s boot splintered as the heavy slug passed
through it. Dain’s boot did not move.

Inverness lowered the heavy gun with a satisfied look on his face. He’d made his test without having to shoot Dain’s dead
body. Dain hadn’t won. Keith Inverness had won. Because nobody had the balls to remain motionless when a bullet missed his
foot by six inches that way. Not when he would know the next one could blow his foot right off.

There was still a final act to perform. And even that… worried him. He had to dump Dain’s body into the water so the gators
would get it. Did some edge of doubt still linger?

“Goddam you, Dain,” he said earnestly to the corpse, “even dead, you fucker, you… you
vex
me.”

He laid the gun on the seat beside his thigh, grabbed the oars, gave a couple of strong pulls to send his boat bumping clumsily
against Dain’s. The impact knocked Dain’s boot off the gunwale. A cloud of green-bellied flies swarmed angrily
up off the bloody mess under Dain’s filth-encrusted shirt.

He picked up his gun again, but it was only reflex. This was obviously a corpse. He used his gun hand to brace himself on
Dain’s gunwale so he could, kneeling on the seat, stretch across the sprawled body to feel the carotid artery for a pulse.

He was free at last of that five-year-old shadow across his life. Maybe even the bonds might not be lost to him. Vangie would
have to bury her folks, go through a public period of mourning. Which meant she’d have to hang around Cajun country long enough
so it would not look odd when she left…

Perhaps she would choose suicide… so easily arranged…

He was so deep in his thoughts as his fingers thrust deep into the side of Dain’s throat after the nonexistent pulse, that
he didn’t even see Dain’s good left arm, trailing over the side of the boat, begin to rise.

In the iron grip of his hand was the huge cottonmouth, grasped just behind the head. The snake’s mouth, gaping in rage, showed
its dazzling cotton-white lining. Its fangs were raised and ready. As the arm rose and crooked, the massive, foot-thick, five-foot
body came writhing up out of the water, flowing, flowing, flowing almost endlessly upward.

Inverness, startled by the pulse he had not expected to find, off balance, was trying to get upright enough to get his weight
off the gun hand and shoot. But he was out of time. By then Dain was ramming the huge diamond-shaped head up tight against
his straining, corded neck.

The gleaming fangs sank into the flesh, the poison sacks pulsed. Inverness leaped back, shrieking, spraddle-legged in the
flatboat, jerking away from the snake so wildly that its entire five-foot length flowed and writhed in air, supported only
by its fangs sunk deep into the side of his neck.

His gun went flying so both his hands could find the snake, rip it away. The snake hit the water with a long splash, undulated
away as Inverness sank down on the seat, blood running down his neck. Dain sat up in the other boat to watch him with cold
interested eyes.

“My God,” said Inverness. “Oh my God.”

“It’s a high-protein venom that literally rots out the blood vessels so internal hemorrhaging begins,” said Dain. “You’re
bleeding to death inside even as we speak.”

Inverness put his face in his hands and spoke through his spread fingers. “It hurts. Oh Jesus it hurts.”

“It’s meant to. Your lymph glands are swelling up trying to churn out enough antibodies to save you, but there aren’t that
many antibodies in the human body. You’ll start getting excited, your pupils will dilate until the light hurts them…”

Inverness raised a haunted face. Sweat was pouring off him. He croaked, “My lips are numb.”

Now that he was here, watching one of the hitmen actually dying, simple survival wasn’t enough for Dain after all. He wanted
at least to
know.
Who. Where. Maybe
if…

“Who hired you to kill me and my family, Inverness?”

“Pu… Pucci… Mario… Pucci…”

“No. The middleman. The other shooter.”

Inverness tried to swallow. Put a hand up to his neck, sweating like a man with motion sickness. His face was ghastly. His
voice was querulous.

“The… middleman called me, I flew up from New Orleans. The other hitter had… directions… I had… orders…take out everybody
in the place… Didn’t know… woman and kid…”

His head slumped, but Dain reached from boat to boat, grabbed his shoulder, shook him.

“Who, Inverness? Where?”

“He called me again last week… after five… fucking years… told me you were coming after me…” His voice started to fade
again. “Hoping… I’d… take you out…”

Inverness was twitching, losing motor control.

“Who?
Goddam you, give him to me!”

Inverness coughed rackingly. A little blood came from his mouth. But defiance along with death had entered his eyes. His lips
twisted into some semblance of a smile.

“Fuck you, Dain… I’m… giving
you…
to
them…
The other shooter is… still around… He’ll blow you… all to shit…” He gave a choking laugh. “The laugh’s… on you…”

He fell silent, folded down on himself, went away from
there. Dain looked down at him for a long moment, nothing showing in his face. He finally spoke.

“Is it, Inverness? Hell,
you’re
dead!”

The sky was pale, sulfur-colored. The water was a mirror. Five minutes later Inverness, stripped of keys, wallet, and money
to make identification harder should he ever be found, splashed into the marsh.

Most likely a gator would discover him before dark, thrust him deep into the mud, ripen him up…

But hell, old Inverness would like that, wouldn’t he?

Hadn’t he just loved this old swampland?

SHENZIE

Don’t Call It ‘Frisco

O nobly-born, not having been able to recognize when the Peaceful Deities shone upon thee, thou hast come wandering thus far.
Now the blood-drinking Wrathful Deities will come to shine.

T
HE
T
IBETAN
B
OOK OF THE
D
EAD

Eight days later Dain emerged from his room at the Imperial Motel in Lafayette, his arm in a neat black sling. It was here
he and Inverness had stayed the night before going into the swamp after Vangie, and their rooms had been held for them. He
crossed to his rental car parked directly in front of the room, tossed his suitcase into the open trunk, went over to the
adjoining room and emerged with Inverness’s suitcase. He tossed that in also, slammed the trunk lid, and went off toward the
office.

Inside, the clerk looked up from his accounting when Dain put the keys for both rooms on his desk.

“Mr. Inverness and I will be checking out.”

“Certainly, sir.” The clerk got out both bills, ran them through the computer to get the final totals, handed them over. “These
include all phone and laundry charges.”

Dain was here doing this only because he didn’t want any loose ends. He wanted it finished. He didn’t want anyone coming around
a week or a month or a year from now to ask
him questions he couldn’t really answer. End it here and now, cleanly, so there would be no sticky strands tying it to him
later.

It had been eight days since he’d dumped Inverness’s body into the Atchafalaya. The identities of the other hitman and the
man who had set up the hit had died with him. So be it. But could he just walk away from it? Could death still be looking
for him though he no longer was looking for it?