Gone South (49 page)

“Stay away from me!” Gault shouted. “I don’t need you or anybody!”

“Okay,” Doc said. “Okay, that’s all right. I’m here.”

Gault gritted his teeth and pulled himself closer to Dan. The snakeskin boot on his right foot was smeared with crimson. “Yes,” he said, his eyes aimed up at Dan with scorching hatred. “You’re the man.”

“How was I supposed to know he was gonna come here?” Doc squawked. “He’s supposed to be a killer, killed two fuckin’ men! I thought he’d be grateful!” He ran a trembling hand across his mouth. “We can start over, Gault. You know we can. It’ll be like the old days, just us two against the world. We can build it all again. You know we can.”

Gault was silent, staring at Dan.

Dan had seen the bodies lying on the pier. The one farther away was still twitching, the nearer one looked to be stone-cold. He saw that one of the speedboats was gone. “What happened to Murtaugh and Eisley?”

“You came here” — Gault was speaking slowly, as if trying to understand something that was beyond his comprehension —” to get two men who were taking you to prison?”

“He must be crazy!” Doc said. “They must’ve been takin’ him to a loony prison!”

“You destroyed … no, no.” Gault stopped. His tongue flicked out and wet his lips. “You damaged my business for that reason, and that reason alone?”

“I guess that’s it,” Dan said.

“Ohhhhh, are you going to suffer.” Gault grinned, his eyes dead. “Ohhhhh, there will be trials and tribulations for you. Who brought you here?”

Dan said nothing.

“Doc,” Gault said, and Doc doubled his fist and hit Dan in the stomach, knocking him to his knees.

Dan gasped and coughed, his consciousness fading in and out. The next thing he knew, a bloody hand had gripped his jaw and he was face-to-face with Gault. “Who brought you here?”

Dan said nothing.

“Doc,” Gault said, and Doc slammed his booted foot down across Dan’s back. “I want you to hold him down,” Gault ordered. Doc sat on Dan’s shoulders, pinning him. Gault pressed his thumbs into Dan’s eye sockets, the muscles of his forearms bunching and twisting under the flesh. “I will ask you once more. Then I’ll tear your eyes from your head, and I’ll make you swallow them. Who brought you here?”

Dan was too exhausted and in too much pain to even manufacture a lie. Maybe it was Train who’d gotten away in the speedboat, he hoped. Maybe Train had had time by now to put the fire to the Swift’s furnace and get Arden far away from this hell. He said nothing.

“You poor, blind fool,” Gault said almost gently. And then his thumbs began to push brutally into Dan’s eye sockets, and Dan screamed and thrashed as Doc held him down.

Suddenly the pressure relaxed. Dan still had his eyes. “Listen!” Gault said. “What’s that?”

There came the sound of rolling thunder.

Dan got his eyes open, tears running from them, and tried to blink away some of the haze. Doc stood up. The noise was getting steadily louder. “Engine,” Doc said, his pistol at his side. “Comin’ up the bayou, fast!”

“Get me another clip!” There was desperation in Gault’s voice. “Doc, help me stand up!”

But Doc was backing away toward the television set, his face blanched as he watched the bayou’s entrance. Behind him, the Flying Nun was airborne.

Gault struggled to stand, but his wounded leg — the thighbone broken — would not allow it.

With a full-throated snarl, all pistons pumping, Train’s armor-plated Baby came tearing past the watchtower, veered, and headed directly at the platform.

Doc starting firing. Gault made a strangling, cursing noise. Dan grinned, and heaved himself up to his knees.

The Swift boat did not slow a single knot, even as bullets pinged off the bow’s armor. It hurtled toward the platform, a muddy wake shooting up behind its stern.

Dan saw what was going to happen, and he flung himself as hard and far as he could to one side, out of the Swift’s path.

In the next instant Baby rammed the platform and the planks cracked with the noise of a hundred pistols going off. The pilings trembled and broke loose, the entire house shuddering from the blow. But Train kept his fist to the throttle and Baby kept surging forward, ripping through the platform, shattering the sliding glass doors, through the living room, through the prefab walls of Gault’s dream house, and bursting out through the other side. Train jammed the engine into reverse and backed the Swift out between the two halves of the house, and as he cleared the broken walls the insides began to fall out: a hemorrhage of animal-skin-covered furniture, brass lamps, faux marble tables, pinball machines, exercise equipment, chairs, and even the kitchen sink.

Dan clung to one half of the platform as it groaned and shivered, the walls of the house starting to collapse into the water. On the other half Doc saw the television set rolling away from him, its plug still connected and the screen still showing the images to which he was addicted. He dropped his pistol, his sunglasses gone and his face stricken with crazed terror. He flung both arms around the television in a desperate embrace, but then the planks beneath his feet slanted as the foundation pilings gave way. The set rolled Doc right into the water, and there was a quick
snap, crackle
and
pop
and his body stiffened, smoke ringing his head like a dark halo before he went under.

“Dan! Dan! Grab my hand!”

It was Arden’s voice. She was standing at the bow’s railing, reaching for him as the boat began to back away from the splintered wreckage. Dan clenched his teeth, drawing up his last reserves of strength. He jumped off the platform, missing Arden’s hand but grabbing hold of the railing, his legs dangling in the water.

“Pull him up! Pull him up!” Train shouted behind the pilothouse’s bullet-starred glass.

Something seized Dan’s legs and wrenched at him.

The fingers of one hand were pulled from the railing. He was hanging on with five digits, his shoulder about to come out of its socket. He looked back, and there was Gault beneath him, patches of the man’s skin and face scorched in a gray, scaly pattern by the electrical shock, frozen nerves drawing his lips into a death’s-head rictus, one eye rolled back and showing chalky yellow.

Gault made a hissing noise, the muscles twitching in his arms.

Another arm slid down past Dan’s face.

In its hand was a derringer.

The little gun went off.

A hole opened in Gault’s throat. Bright red blood fountained up from a severed artery.

Other arms caught Dan and held him. Gault’s head rose, his mouth open. His hands loosened and slid down Dan’s legs. The muddy, churning water flooded into his mouth and filled up his eyes, then his head disappeared beneath its weight.

Dan was pulled up over the railing. He saw the faces of Murtaugh and Eisley, and then Arden was beside him and there were tears in her beautiful eyes, her birthmark the color of summer twilight. Her arms went around him, and he could feel her heartbeat pounding against his chest.

He put his arms around her, too, and hung on.

Then the darkness swelled up around him. He felt himself falling, but it was all right because he knew someone was there to catch him.

D
AN OPENED HIS EYES
. He was lying on the deck in the shadow of the pilothouse, the engine vibrating smoothly and powerfully beneath him, the blue sky above, the sound of the hull pushing deep water aside.

A wet rag was pressed to his forehead. Arden looked down at him.

“Where are we?” he whispered, hearing his own voice as if from a great distance.

“Train says we’re in Timbalier Bay. We’re goin’ to a place called Avrietta’s Island. Here.” She’d poured some of the filtered water into the cup of her hand, and she supported his head while he drank.

Someone else — a man without a shirt — knelt beside him. “Hey, ol’ dinosaur you. How you doin?”

“All right. You?”

Train’s face had paled, purplish hollows under his eyes. “Been better. Hurtin’ a li’l bit. See, I knew bein’ ugly as ten miles of bad road’s gonna pay off for me someday. That ol’ bullet, he say I gettin’ in and out mighty quick, this fella so ugly.”

“You need to get to a hospital.”

“That’s where we bound.” Train leaned a little closer to him. “Listen, you gonna have to start associatin’ with some more regular fellas, you know what I be sayin? I take one look at that li’l bitty hand and arm movin’ ’round on that fella’s chest, my mouth did the open wide. Then I look at that li’l bitty head hangin’ down, and I like to bust my teeth when I step on my jaw. And that other fella — the quiet one — he look in the face like somebody I seen, but no way can I figure where.”

“It’ll probably come to you,” Dan said. He felt his consciousness — a fragile thing — fading away again. “How’d you get ’em out? The speedboat?”

“Oui.
Skedaddled outta there, fired up Baby and
huuuuuwheeee!
she done some low-level flyin’.”

“You didn’t have to come back.”

“For sure I did. You rest now, we gonna get where we goin’ in twenty, thirty minute.” He patted Dan’s shoulder and then went away. Arden stayed beside Dan and took one of his hands in hers. His eyes closed again, his senses lulled by the throbbing of the engine, the languid heat, the aroma and caress of the saltwater breeze sweeping across the deck.

They passed through clouds of glistening mist. Sea gulls wheeled lazily above the boat and then flew onward.

“There she is!” Train called, and Arden looked along the line of the bow.

They had gone by several other small islands, sandy and flat and stubbled with prickly brush. This one was different. It was green and rolling, shaded by tall stands of water oaks. There were structures of some kind on it.

As the boat got nearer, Flint stood at the starboard siderail watching the island grow. He was wearing Train’s T-shirt because he felt more comfortable with Clint undercover and because the sun had blistered his back and shoulders. Train had come up with a first-aid kit from a storage compartment and Flint’s arm wound was bound up with gauze bandages. He had taken off his remaining shoe and his muddied socks and tossed those items overboard like a sacrifice to the swamp. Next to him stood Pelvis, his bald pate and face pink with sunburn. Pelvis hadn’t spoken more than a few words since they’d gotten aboard; it was clear to Flint that there was a whole lotta thinkin’ goin’ on in Pelvis’s head.

Train turned the wheel and guided them around to the island’s eastern side. They passed spacious green meadows. A herd of goats was running free, doing duty as living lawn mowers. There was an orchard with fruit trees, and a few small whitewashed clapboard buildings that looked like utility sheds. And then they came around into a natural harbor with a pier, and there it was.

Flint heard himself gasp.

It stood on the green and rolling lawn, there on a rise that must have been the island’s commanding point. It was a large, clean white mansion with multiple chimneys, a fieldstone path meandering between water oaks, and weeping willow trees from the harbor to the house. Flint’s heart was racing. He gripped the rail, and tears burned his eyes.

It was. It was. Oh God, oh Jesus it was …

not.

He realized it in another moment, as they approached the pier. There was no stained-glass window in front. The house of his birth had four chimneys; this one had only three. And it wasn’t made of white stone, either. It was clapboard, and the paint was peeling. It was an old antebellum mansion, a huge two-storied thing with columns and wide porches. The rolling emerald-green lawn was the same as in his dreams, yes. A few goats were munching the blades down. But the house … no.

He still had a star to follow.

“Mr. Murtaugh?” Pelvis said in a voice that was more Cecil’s than Elvis’s. “How come you’re cryin’?”

“I’m not cryin’. My eyes are sunburned, that’s all. Aren’t yours?”

“No.”

“Well,” Flint said, and he rubbed the tears away. “Mine are.”

Train had cut their speed back. The engine was rumbling quietly as they drew closer. So far they’d seen no one. Arden had left Dan to stand at the bow, the breeze blowing through her hair, her eyes ashine with hope. In her right hand was gripped the pink drawstring bag with her little plastic horses in it.

“I been wonderin’,” Pelvis said. “ ’Bout what you offered.”

“And what was that?” Flint knew, but he’d been shrinking from the memory.

“You know. ’Bout you bein’ my manager and all. I sure could use somebody to help me. I mean, I don’t know how successful I could be, but —”

“Chopin you’re not,” Flint said.

“He’s dead, ain’t he? Both him and Elvis. Dead as doornails.” He sighed heavily. “And Mama’s dead, too. It’s gonna take me awhile to get over that one. Maybe I never will, but … I figure maybe it’s time for Pelvis to be put to rest, too.”

Flint looked into the other man’s face. It was amazing how much more intelligent he looked without that ridiculous wig. Dress him up in a nice suit, teach him how to talk without mangling English, teach him some refinements and manners, and maybe a human being of worth would come out of there. But then, it would be an almost impossible task, and he already had a job as a bounty hunter. “I don’t know, Cecil,” Flint said. “I really don’t.”

“Well, I was just askin’.” Cecil watched the pier approach. “You gonna take Lambert back to Shreveport?”

“He’s still a killer. Still worth fifteen thousand dollars.”

“Yes sir, that might be true. ’Course, if you decided here pretty soon you wanted to like … give it a try at bein’ my manager, helpin’ me get on a diet and get some work and such, then you wouldn’t be a bounty hunter anymore, would you?”

“No,” Flint said softly. “I guess I wouldn’t.” A thought came to him, something the man at the cafe in St. Nasty had said, speaking about Cecil:
Hell, I’ll be his manager, then. Get out of this damn swamp and get rich, I won’t never look back.

Maybe he could walk away, he thought. Just walk away. From Smoates, from the ugliness, from the degradation. He still had his gambling debts and his taste for gambling that had gotten him so deep in trouble over the years. He couldn’t exactly walk away from those things — those faults — but if he had a purpose and a plan, he could work them out eventually, couldn’t he?