Silencer (32 page)

“Well, we'll know when they get here, won't we?”

“This is falling apart. Too many loose ends.”

“Unraveled a little, granted. But if we keep our eyes on the prize, Mr. Hammond, sir, I think it'll all turn out just fine and dandy.”

Antwan grinned and bobbed his head in that fawning way that slaves once curried favor with their masters. A spoof that Hammond, in his distracted condition, didn't seem to notice.

“Frisco knows the truth, I think Claire knows, too.”

“What if they do, Brown? Think about it. Even if they know everything down to the last itty-bitty detail, they still got nothing. Not a damn thing. Governor of the state of Florida was standing right here. Ain't a judge and jury in this great land of ours wouldn't trust what that man says. Gustavo Pinto shot your poor old granddad in a state of severe disgruntlement. That's the end of it.”

“The Pintos,” Browning said. “They're hanging out there, too.”

“It's on my punch list. I always had a soft spot for those Mexicanos. I'll swing by there tomorrow in a big stretch limo full of tacos and bean dip, and we'll all go for a nice long drive in the country. I got it covered, A to Z. You worry too much, Brown. You got to work on that breathing, man. Slow it down, in and out, stay limber.”

“All right, all right.”

“So we're done, then?” Antwan grinned at Sugar. “We're finished with this nuisance?”

Browning was eyeing Sugarman with the weary disinterest of a meat packer on the assembly line. “Yeah, we're done,” he said. “But not in here. Take them to the barn.”

“Well, in that case, can I trouble you to unlock that cabinet, select me a weapon?”

Browning's wrinkled brow and anxious frown had smoothed, his mood lifting with such speed it seemed as though Antwan's pep talk might be a customary part of their arrangement. Like these two had been studying from the same playbook for so long now they were doing a strange tango of give and take, pivot and slide, dip and swoon. In perfect balance, neither of them seemed fully responsible for any given act.

Browning turned and headed for the gun cabinet. “What's your pleasure, Antwan?”

“Always had a fondness for that Sig Sauer Mosquito, one with the silencer.”

“What're you, stupid? The cops have the silencer.”

“Just funning with you, Brown. Just funning, keeping things light is all. The Sig is good. Don't need no silencer this time around.”

 

 

MILE BY MILE, CLAIRE HAMMOND
guided Thorn to the gate in the barbed-wire fence. He got out of the car, found the padlock lying on the ground. He threw open the twin doors and drove through, left them standing wide open.

Let the deer and the antelope roam.

A warning light was flashing red on the instrument panel. Low fuel.

“How much farther?”

Claire said, “Ten minutes, but Frisco wants you to wait. Don't go barging into this. We're just turning into the ranch now. We'll be at the lodge in five.”

“I'm not waiting. Give me directions.”

“No,” she said. “I can't do that. It could be dangerous.”

“Give me the goddamn directions. These are my friends.”

She clicked off.

Thorn continued down the same one-lane cattle path. It seemed to be as close to a main road as the ranch had.

He fumbled with the phone till he found the redial button and called her back.

She didn't answer.

 

______

 

Frisco took the main gate entrance, which was the shorter route to the lodge. Hector Ramirez stepped out of the guardhouse and stood in the headlights, staring at them through the windshield.

Frisco leaned his head out the open window. “It's me, Hector. Open the gate.”

“Can't do that.”

“Open the goddamn gate, Hector.”

“Mr. Hammond said no one comes in.”

“
I'm
Mr. Hammond.”

“I know who you are. I work for the other guy.”

“Open the gate, Hector. This is serious. There's an emergency.”

“Can't do it. I got orders.”

Claire's phone rang again.

Frisco got out of the truck and walked slowly around to the front. But Hector drew his pistol and told him to stop. Frisco kept coming, holding out his hand for the gun.

As Frisco closed in, Hector stepped back and fired once and Frisco stumbled sideways into the doorway of the guard shed, clutching at his thigh.

Claire scooted behind the wheel, slammed the truck into gear, popped the clutch, and rammed Hector against the heavy girder blocking the road. His head rocked back in agony, but he still managed to lift his pistol and aim at her. She revved the engine harder until his weapon wavered, then fell from his hand.

 

Gripping Rusty's arm, Browning Hammond dragged her along to the gun cabinet. She looked back at Sugarman, her eyes sending a signal of some intent. She was going to make a break, though Sugarman couldn't imagine how.

Antwan Shelton was grinning at him as if he'd intercepted Rusty's look.

“Ya'll some kind of tag team, are you?”

Looking at Antwan's taunting smile brought it back to Sugar. During all those hours watching football, plenty of times he'd seen One-Ton strutting in the endzone, all swivel hips and bluster, celebrating another touchdown, and he remembered the last day of the running back's career, riding on a motorized cart off to the locker room, his knee in a brace, one final mustered grin and wave to the cheering crowd.

Sugarman couldn't remember if it was the right knee or the left. He tossed an imaginary coin, and chose the right.

“You've never done anything on your own, have you, Antwan?”

“Shut up, brown sugar.”

“People open the holes, you run through. You're a leech, that's all. Browning supplies the blood; all you do is suck.”

When Antwan stepped in, drawing back his fist for one more blow, Sugarman slid down in the wingback, and snapped the heel of his shoe against Antwan's right patella. It must've been that knee that ended his career, because Antwan's grin evaporated and his face went slack.

After half a second he caught himself and managed to plant his feet and take another swing, but Sugar ducked beneath his fist and shot a second kick to the same knee. It buckled inward and Antwan went down roaring.

Sugar swung around, expecting Browning to be bearing down. Expecting almost anything but what he saw.

Browning had released his hold on Rusty Stabler, and she was standing directly in front of him slapping his face. First her right hand, then her left, knocking his head an inch or two in one direction, then an inch or two in the other. Browning seemed bewildered, as if the slaps had set off some involuntary response, a stoicism learned on the practice fields of his youth. Enduring the sadistic discipline of an angry coach.

As Sugarman crossed the room, Browning's spell seemed to lift. He blinked. Saw her standing there before him, not his coach, just a trifling woman, then saw Sugarman approaching, and he growled and cocked a massive fist. Rusty didn't try to dodge the blow. She stepped in close and whisked the gold toothpick he'd been sucking on all evening from his lips and stabbed it into his right eye like some ruthless trick she'd learned from Taco Shine and his gang.

Browning staggered backward against the gun case. He pressed both hands to his face while blood flowed through his outspread fingers, a low howl rising in his chest. He lowered his hands and stared at the blood with gloomy fascination.

Sugarman attacked him from the rear. Jumped onto his back, used a chokehold he'd employed a dozen times as a patrolman. With drunks and enraged husbands and child beaters it never failed. But this ox of a man shrugged him off with a sloppy swing of his arm like he was backstroking across a quiet pool. Sugarman tumbled sideways onto the couch.

Across the room Antwan got halfway to his feet, cursed, and sagged to the floor again.

Sugarman headed to the trophy wall, reached up and gripped the antelope's antler, twisted it hard, but it wouldn't come free. The boar tusk was a different matter. The taxidermist's glue was old and brittle, and the tusk snapped off like ripe fruit from the branch.

Browning had turned away from them and was fitting his key in the lock of the gun case. He swiped at the blood on his face with one hand, struggling to see. Sugarman raised the tusk a foot above Hammond's back and rammed its point into the muscles of his right shoulder.

Huffing as though he'd merely been bumped by some discourteous passerby, Hammond came around slowly with a pistol in his hand.

Sugarman backed away, dropped the tusk. Hammond motioned the pistol at Rusty.

“Over there,” he said. “With your boyfriend.”

Rusty circled the couch and came to Sugarman's side.

Antwan was on his feet, his hip propped against the wingback.

“Gut check, Brown. Come to Jesus, brother. That thing in your eye, man, it's a fucking splinter is all. Get it out of there. Go on, dig it out, you can do it.”

“It hurts, Antwan. I'm going to pass out.”

“Sure it hurts, Brown. But that don't bother us. We're fucking warriors. Hurting is what we do. We give it, we take it, that's who we are, man. We not pussies like other folks. We been down in the trenches, the fucking war zone. Pull that splinter out of there. Pull it out now.”

With his left hand Browning reached up and pinched the tip of the toothpick and plucked it from his eye. He wobbled for a moment, whimpered. When he'd recovered, he held the toothpick up, showing it to Antwan.

“You are one tough motherfucker. You just earned my renewed respect and admiration. Now lick it clean, boss. Show 'em who you are. Lick that blood off, make it disappear.”

Browning's head hunched forward as if he were shouldering a bag of cement.

“Show 'em, Wild Dog. Show these girlies what we're made of.”

Browning Hammond swallowed hard, then slid the toothpick between his lips and sucked it clean and dropped it into his shirt pocket.

“That's my boy,” Antwan said. “That's my big beautiful boy.”

“All right, let's go.”

“Hold on, Brown, you gotta give me your belt,” Antwan said. “I need to take a couple of wraps around this knee, brace it up a bit. I think I got me some ligament damage.”

“You stay here,” Browning said. “I can handle these two shitheads.”

“No way, man. I don't care if I have to hop one-legged from here to China. I'm gonna to have me a piece of this action.”

 

Thorn was operating on battery power. The car's instrument gauge was lit up, five lights flashing, warning him of imminent meltdown.
Everything that could possibly go wrong in that little car was about to do just that.

Claire was on the phone again. She'd called. There'd been some kind of trouble at the front gate. She didn't say what, and Thorn didn't care. But they'd been delayed and she wanted to let him know so he could wait for them. Wait for Frisco. He was a cop. He knew what to do in circumstances like this. Right, Thorn said. Right, he'd wait for Frisco. Just get him to the lodge and he'd wait there.

She directed him down one dusty road after another until he came to a narrow bridge.

“You're about two hundred yards away.”

“I see it. A barn or something. There's lights.”

“A barn, a corral, a parking lot, then the lodge. Wait for us. Frisco's got the front gate open. We'll be there in five minutes.”

Thorn snapped the phone closed. He shut off the headlights and rolled quietly through the night, his battery almost dead.

 

 

THORN SAW FOUR PEOPLE COME
out of the lodge, then walk across a narrow bridge. He brought the car to a halt in a clearing at the edge of the barn. He reached over to the passenger seat and picked up the Mac-10, checked that the clip was secure.

He opened the door and got out.

The group of four was silhouetted against the glow coming from the windows of the house. Thorn cut toward the barn, skirting patches of light, staying in the darkest shadows. A light breeze carried the croaking of frogs and the whinnies and snorts of horses in the barn.

There were three men, two of them very large. And there was a woman, medium height. He moved closer to the barn to put the dim light directly behind the four of them.

In the lead were Rusty and Sugarman. In that gloom he couldn't make out the expressions on their faces, but he could tell from the way they were stiffly shuffling ahead of the two large men that they were prisoners and there were more than likely guns pointed at their backs.

He waited by the far corner of the horse barn. They crossed a dusty parking lot and entered an adjoining corral. Forty or fifty feet
away. He wanted to let them pass, then he'd come at them from behind. If they kept on the same path, that would happen in less than thirty seconds.

They came forward a little farther, then a flashlight with a dull beam shined on the Prius, and after a second or two it shut off.

A man's voice called out, “That you, Moses? You there, Jonah? You boys get your asses out where I can see you.”

Thorn waited, hearing the horses bumping around in their stalls as if they could sense the rising tension beyond the barn.

“All right, then,” the man said. “I do believe we have us an intruder.”

Thorn waited. The four of them had halted in the center of the corral.

“You sent me a message, Mr. Ta-Ta. Said to keep cool. Well, I am. I'm here being ever so cool. Just like you said. Are you cool, too? Mr. Ta-Ta. You hear me? How cool are you?”

The flashlight came on again and swept across the front of the barn.

“Okay, then. I'll tell you what I'm going to do, Ta-Ta. In five seconds I'm going to fire a bullet into the skull of one of these fine folks, these poor innocent civilians. Then we'll see just how cool you are.”