Skunk Hunt (51 page)

Todd lifted his eyes upward. I listened for
the telltale pops and moans of overage floorboards above my head.
If the two were upstairs, the perfect silence told me they were
remaining perfectly still. If one of them so much as leaned forward
a high-pitched squeak from the old pine would betray them. But the
only option was to take to the stairs, if for no other reason than
to assess further damage. Not that any insurance company would fork
over for rank vandalism of a house that was, by definition, already
vandalized. Besides, homeowner's insurance was one of those
frivolous expenditures I had forgone long ago.

We were halfway up when Todd let out a long,
low, "F-u-u-u-c-k..."

I was so accustomed to ignoring stains in my
house that I had not noticed the red smear on the faded runner
starting at the third step from the top.

"F-u-u-u-c-k..." Todd repeated. When I shot
him a dark look, he added, "B-l-o-o-o-d..."

"Either get a job in the funhouse or shut the
fuck up," I said, propping my fist near his nose.

He looked ready to fill out an application at
the nearest carnival, but to my surprise did not bolt down and out.
Our ghoulish curiosity was tweaking us onward—evidence enough that
two identical halfwits don't necessarily add up to a complete
brain. The silence had almost convinced me there was no one
upstairs—no one alive. But Joe in the guise of Dog had planted
himself very nicely in my bedroom closet without me being the
wiser, so the rotting floorboards weren't conclusive.

Advancing another step, I froze when I saw
the bottom of a sneaker jutting toe-up beyond the corner of the
wall, close enough that I could read the jagged writing on the
treads:

"Property of ReMoarse Stage Rentals."

Joe Dog was in costume. He must have won the
coveted role at the dinner theater and was already dressed for his
performance. Easing near the top of the stairs, I could see he was
in no shape to meet the curtain call.

"What is it?" Todd said when I let out an
involuntary gasp.

"Dog, dead between the eyes."

He gave me a 'say what?' look and nudged me
forward so he could come up and see for himself. It's a commentary
on the McPherson blood that neither of us was put out by the sight
of a man with a bullet hole in his forehead. Our ancestors had
slain Yankees by the score, building up a morbid immunity to
corpses. Or maybe it was just too much TV. Either way, neither Todd
nor I flinched on seeing Joe Dog stretched out like a pizza dropped
out of a moving car. My initial gasp had been one of surprise, not
horror. The little actor had been tough as nails. But seeing him
like that, with his blank open eyes—more Dog than Joe—I was forced
to wonder if it had all been an act, that he had been a softie,
after all.

"The gun," Todd observed.

It was a toss-up if Joe Dog had died game, or
like game. He had had an actor's reflexes, able to leap, kowtow,
bombast and bark all in a single take. Whoever had shot him had
taken him totally by surprise, but he had still managed to get his
gun halfway out of his waistband. I was a little sorry to see him
taken down this way. He should have gone out in a blaze of glory,
in a beach party frenzy hosted by a rabid wolfpack. He certainly
should not have been killed in my humble abode.

The same went for Carl, whose body was
slopped backward onto my bed. The shooter was a real marksman,
having poked a hole in the bar owner's brain identical to the one
in Joe Dog's. His open eyes were stunned, as though he had spent
the last fraction of his life wondering how he could have been
caught so flatfooted. I was wondering the same thing, and looked
towards my closet. The door was standing open.

"The shooter jumped out, popped Carl, and
when Dog came running he pointed out the bedroom door and popped
him, too."

I was disgusted by Todd's self-satisfied
recitation, as if he was a card-carrying staffer of CSI. He didn't
seem to really appreciate the gore of the moment. He only wanted to
look cool. I shook my head.

"If Carl was shot first, Joe Dog would have
had time to draw his gun. I think—"

Todd leaped to the conclusion I was aiming
at, which I hadn't reached myself until I began to say it. We
locked eyes for a moment, then swiveled slowly.

"
Two
shooters," he whispered.

"The Congreve brothers," I concluded. "How
long ago do you think—?"

"Not long," Todd said. "I smelled something
burning, remember?"

"Gunpowder," I concluded, my tense neck
muscles tightening my voice into a squeak.

In death, Carl maintained the sour smirk that
had brought so much joy to the world. It seemed like professional
commentary on chumps of all stripes, including those who clearly
spotted a noose and proceeded to put their heads into it. It was
appropriate that he had died in bed. He had not died in the saddle,
struggling for one last thrust before the Reaper interrupted his
orgasm, but the ambience was equally disreputable.

I knew Todd's odd expression of churlish fear
was reflected on my own face and fought down an impulse to slug
myself. We stood stock still, listening. As I recalled, the
Congreves were a noisy pair, more likely to blindly storm the enemy
trenches than patiently watch for a proper ambush—hence the
relative ease of their capture after the Brinks job.

If I needed to bandy exceptions to the
rules between my left and right hemispheres, a ready example was
the loathsome Jeremy, who had slipped out of character like a chain
off a spoke. One day tough as nails, the next soft as taffy. A
computer illiterate and then,
voila
!, a reasonable facsimile of a wiz. That was
why I had bought into the Jeremy-as-twin scenario, and that little
uncertainty was still playing bolo at the back of my
mind.

"You think you might stop daydreaming long
enough to get out of here?" Todd said irritably. The fact that it
had taken him so long to bring this up suggested he had been
daydreaming, too. About what, I wondered? And how could both of us
go into Mute mode with a couple of stiffs underfoot and their
killers, if not actually in the house, in the vicinity of it.

I was backing away when I saw the paper.
Carl's tartan sports jacket had flung open when he fell backwards.
The paper was jutting out of the inside pocket. Was this what had
brought him to my house?

Todd made an 'ick' sound as I leaned over the
body. I suspected he was more familiar with the dead man's cooties
than I was, since he had succeeded in sharing Monique with him,
whereas I had only an interrupted lap dance. I was a little
concerned that Carl would come back to life and grab my arm, but I
didn't let on. Drawing the paper out, I allowed a low cluck of
disappointment.

"The will," I said.

"Whose will?" Todd asked.

"Benjamin Neerson's. He must have gotten it
out of..." I paused. I had hidden my copy at Flint Dementis' house.
That should have been guarantee enough that no one else would find
it, but Carl had discovered the plum. Were the old man and his
fossil mom all right? Or had the Congreves cut short their run in
the Methuselah Marathon?

"How did you get a hold of it?" asked Todd
grimly.

I didn't care to answer, and couldn't in any
case. Not enough time. Because at that moment we heard a noise
downstairs. It was only a creak. Everything in this house creaked,
and it could have been some boards letting off steam. Could we take
that chance?

"Dog's gun," Todd mewed like a lost
kitten.

"What about it?"

"Get it!"

"Get it yourself!"

There you have it. We had brains, after all.
We had sense enough to know that a gun in our hands was as
dangerous to ourselves as it would be to anyone we aimed at. But it
was obvious negotiation was out of the question. I walked as
quietly as I could into the hallway and slid Dog's gun the rest of
the way out of his waistband, giving the dead thespian an
apologetic moue for delving into his pants.

"Faggot," Todd snickered. I held up the gun
and he took a step backward. "Careful!"

"Isn't there a safety or something on this?"
I studied the gun closely. There was a small button on the side.
Was it the safety? Was it on or off? I didn't think Dog would be so
dumb as to keep a live gun pointed at his family jewels. I pressed
the button. The magazine dropped out and banged loudly on the
floor.

"Why'd you do that?" Todd hissed
fitfully.

I didn't waste time making excuses for my
ignorance, but took up the magazine and gingerly pushed it back
into the handle.

Now what? Was there a bullet in the chamber?
Should I cock something? A simple mechanism could become
incomprehensibly complicated the moment you realized its deadly
potential. A knife was perfectly straightforward—until you decided
to stab someone with it. How should you hold it? Overhand or under?
Like a short sword or a stick? The gun seemed to suddenly acquire a
thousand moving parts, including a grip that glued itself to my
palm. I wanted to shake it off but was afraid it would explode if
it hit the floor.

"What are you doing?" said Todd, deeply
worried. "All you have to do is point it. I mean, point it
somewhere else."

I leaned over and gently placed the gun on
the floor. "You take it."

"Get out of here." Todd crossed his arms.

"All you have to do is point it," I
smirked.

"Whoever's holding that will take the first
bullet," Todd said bluntly, shoving his reasoning in my face. It
gratified me to think that he was not looking after my health. That
would be too brotherly. On the other hand, Jeremy would have been
the first to plant me in front of a firing squad. Sibling economics
was squishy that way, love 'em and shoot 'em, just like Wall
Street.

"Which one of us is oldest, I wonder," I
said.

"You mean minute-wise?" Todd's lip twisted.
"Are you trying to pull an 'age before beauty' on me?"

Our banter had a mean edge. We were
frightened, sure enough. But we also didn't like each other—which
under the circumstances translated into self-loathing.

"I think our best bet..." I began, but
stopped when a half-dozen ideas dead-ended on me.

"We should run like hell and not look back,"
Todd concluded.

"And if the Congreve brothers are at the
bottom of the stairs, waiting for us?" I pointed out.

Todd went over to the bedroom window and
studied the drop. "Just enough to break your leg," he murmured.

"If anyone's down there, they know we're up
here," I said after listening to the floorboards creek loudly under
Todd's tread.

Todd turned and stared at Carl, who seemed a
lot more gruesome now that there was a prospect we'd be joining
him.

"So these Congreve guys, who are they
exactly?" he asked. "You think we can make a deal with them?"

"They stole the Brinks money and Skunk stole
it from them. They were scared shitless of him, but now that he's
dead they've grown a new set of balls."

Only after I said it did I realize how much I
had depended on my father to keep the bad world at bay. He was a
bastard, and anyone who chummed up to him became his slave. Yet
that nastiness had uses I was unaware of, until now.

The Congreve brothers were only the first in
a line of outsiders who refused to let well enough alone, whose
sole purpose in life was to pick bones and contend every jot and
lick. You know them. They're omnipresent. Tax collectors, stupid
neighbors, prickly cops, census takers, lawyers, non-profit
charities, kids. I just couldn't get enough of not having them in
my life, and in the past they had been met at every turn by the
scowling face of Skunk McPherson, who could put off the Devil with
a glance. The cops had his number, of course, but they wouldn't
tackle him without plenty of backup. Skunk, my oppressor, had been
my savior, too. It was a startling discovery. Going on the
assumption that I did not share Todd's look of perpetual
constipation, I wondered if I had not been the one to luck out,
after all.

"Hello?" a voice called from downstairs.

Todd and I shared a jump of surprise, then
tiptoed to the bedroom door.

"Four have gone in and none have come out,"
the voice rose. "I'm starting to wonder..."

Todd and I exchanged glances. The guy didn't
sound like a killer. But neither had Dog, in Joe Dog mode.

"If you think the Brinks money is up there,
think again. Mute knows better."

I winced.

"Mute?" Todd whispered. "Is that a nickname
or slang? I can never tell anymore."

"He must be talking about Dog," I
suggested.

Seeing that, in his L'il Abner role, Joe Dog
had limited dialog, Todd accepted this with a nod. "Then this isn't
who shot them," he concluded.

He was basing his premise on my invention,
but I found it somehow comforting. We can convince ourselves on the
flimsiest evidence, especially when that evidence is founded on our
own lies. I'm not sure I see anything particularly wrong with that.
So I leaned over poor dead Dog and peeked around the wall. I drew
back suddenly.

"What?" Todd asked, gripping my arm.

"I never saw him before," I said.

Todd squeezed past me and looked. "Me
neither," he said after a brief glance.

"Yes, you've seen me, now," said the man.
"Both of you have, I think. If you don't trust me, send down Carl
or Dog. They're not afraid of anything."

"Not anymore they aren't." I was speaking in
a low voice, but the stranger had good ears.

"What's that supposed to mean?" he demanded.
"What the hell is going on up there?"

"You tell us," said Todd, surprisingly
inclusive.

"You're the ones already up there. Why don't
you...forget it." With that, he began ascending the stairs. My
glimpse of him told me he was middle aged, and not exactly a
retired athlete. He was only halfway up when he began huffing. Todd
and I backed away and looked down at the gun I had rested on the
floor. I nudged it against Joe Dog with my foot, putting
incrimination where it belonged.