StoneDust (23 page)

Chapter 28

“Mind your step,” I cautioned, indicating the warped saddle where he might trip and break his neck just when I needed him.

Spider was the size I remembered from our last meeting, wide and square. He looked a little shorter now that he wasn't standing over me kicking. But the .44 Ruger Redhawk he had tucked against his hip probably made him feel taller. I recognized the gun because Reg and Duane had bought them for their elk hunts—a powerful, big-bore “stopper” in the event they blundered into an angry grizzly. “Five shots for the bear,” Reg used to say. “The sixth for me.”

“I see you got my message.”

“You crazy, man?” I remembered his voice too, the quick- burst delivery in the melting-pot accent of a Brooklyn street corner.

“Who killed Little John?”

“You.”

“Get off it. Why the hell would I send word for you if I killed your buddy?”

“Tryin' to kill me too.”

“Spider, you're holding the gun.”

“Believe I'm holdin' the gun.”

“If you're here for revenge, you got the wrong guy. I'm as confused as you are. What do you say we trade notes?”

“Say what?”

“I want to know who shot him. That's why I sent for you.”

“Why?”

“Was it a gang thing?”

“No way.”

“What do you mean, ‘No way'?—Come in, come in. Sit down. Take the wing chair.”

Puzzlement clouded Spider's face. He rubbed a knuckle on his tears tattoo.

I pointed. “That's a wing chair.”

He eased into it, the gun tracking me like a radar-guided cannon.

“What do you mean, ‘No way'? The Popes would have banged him first chance they got.”

“Popes wouldn'ta got so close. 'Sides, Popes woulda pulled a drive-by. Little John bought a head shot.” (Exactly the point I had argued with Sergeant Bender.)

“Someone he trusted?”

“Only guy he trusted was me. And I didn't do it.”

“Why would he trust me? Think, Spider. Who else did he trust?”

Spider thought long and hard. Slowly, like a rainy dawn, his face brightened. “Shit!”

“What?”

“The rich bitch,” he said with sudden conviction.

“What rich bitch?”

“She shot Little John. It weren't you and it weren't the Popes, the rich bitch did him.”

“Who?”

“Little John's woman.”

“What's her name?”

Spider shrugged.

This was a woman I wanted to meet. “Listen, Spider, so you don't waste the trip, maybe I can slip you a couple of bucks to fill me in on the rich bitch.”

Spider got a crafty look in his eyes that I didn't particularly like. Street guys are like hungry lions. If they can't catch a wildebeest, woe to the wart hog they stumble upon.

“Gimme the watch.”

“Watch?” I echoed blankly.

“Hell with your coupla bucks, gimme the watch.”

“What watch?”

He waved the Ruger. “Other night you said you had a fifteen-thousand-dollar watch.”

“Come on, I'm not giving you my watch.”

“I'm takin' your watch.” He jumped up. “Let's go, man. Where is it?”

“I was trying to distract you. There was no watch.”

Spider cocked the revolver. “There better be a watch.”

“Okay. There's a watch. In the attic. You want me to run up and get it?”

He backed through the door, beckoning with the gun. I obeyed and led him down the hall to the front of the house and up the stairs. I showed him the narrow door next to the guest bathroom that opened on the attic stairs, opened it on his orders, turned on the light, and headed up into the heat trapped under the roof.

Spider trailed. Once he got too close and I could have kicked his gun hand. But I might have missed. We stood on the dusty boards. I pointed to a long row of zippered clothes-storage bags hanging from a pipe nailed across the rafters.

“In there, in a suit.”

The attic contained things my grandparents had no use for, like wooden golf clubs and tennis racquets, and relics of my own past, mothballed in the unlikely event a change in career ever coincided with a return to 'Eighties fashion. In the even more unlikely event the military ever needed me again, I still had my uniforms.

I reached for the Wall Street bag.

“Hold it!” He slammed the heavy gun hard against my shoulder. It hurt a lot. He raised it high, threatening to hit me again, savoring the power it gave him. At that point we both realized that when he found the watch, he would celebrate a successful evening by pistol-whipping bone fragments out of my skull.

I'd made a mistake luring him here in the first place. Out of his world too long, I'd forgotten that their biggest high was the thrill of total control. Ultimately my watch would be a souvenir of that wonderful time he'd killed a guy in his attic. Until he fenced it.

Eyes and gun on me, Spider felt for the zipper and unzipped the bag.

“Dark blue suit,” I said. “Right-hand pocket.”

Spider fumbled around. He had to look away to see blue. I got one of my hands out of sight and worked open the uniform bag and felt inside.

“I don't see no watch. What are—Wait. Wait. What do we have here?” He drew it out by the strap and raised it lovingly to the light. “Whoa.” He held it to his ear.

“Move it around, it's self-winding. Yeah, that's right, just shake it a little.”

Spider spun the watch. When he saw the second hand moving, he actually smiled, a smile that faded when he heard the
slaaaannnt
of steel.

He whirled, still holding the watch, swinging the big Ruger to bear. What he saw made him laugh. I had whipped my dress saber from its scabbard and had assumed a guard posture that must have looked very silly to a man with a gun.

As I've mentioned, had the small-arms instructors had their way, I'd never have graduated Annapolis. Fortunately, the fencing master put in a kind word. Not that I was his star pupil—I never would have made the team if mono hadn't felled several upperclassmen—but he was proud of the jump lunge we'd developed to compensate for my abysmal defense. My teammates had dubbed it the
hari kari parry
, as it was often as deadly to me as to my opponent, but it sure covered ground.

Spider was still laughing when I skewered his wrist.

He wanted to pull the trigger. But his fingers were opening even as he fought to keep the heavy gun from falling. It thunked to the floor at the same instant he felt the pain. He screamed, yanked his arm. Blood flew. The blade emerged, red.

Yelling, he stumbled around, holding his wrist, reaching for the gun.

I advanced, pointing the tip at his eye. He backed away.

“What you do that for?” he screamed.

“A kick in the head. Busted-up face. And torn ear. You got a problem with that?”

“A sword?” he moaned. Next he would complain, “No fair.”

I picked up his gun, made sure I at least looked like I knew how to shoot it, and backed away. “Okay, Spider. Who shot Little John?”

“Fuck you.”

“Spider. I count six shots in this thing. I'll use six to kill you.”

He looked up with contempt. “You don't have the balls.”

I raked him with a Leavenworth Look. It lacked impact. He had me. There was no way I could shoot him unless he threatened me and he knew it. I felt like an honest cop faced with a career criminal flaunting his civil rights. What are you going to do but book him and see him in court?

As he looked to steal another advantage, his eye lighted on my watch, which lay on the floor where he'd dropped it when I cut him. He raised a dirty Adidas high, dared me to shoot, and stomped down hard. The point he was attempting to make about my inability to shoot him was valid—the survival genie didn't really care what time it was. But why Spider assumed I wouldn't use the saber was beyond me.

“
Ahhh
!” He fell backward, hit the floor with a crash that shook the house, and grabbed his calf. I retrieved my watch. The little moon face flashed a grateful smile.

“On your belly, Spider. Roll over.” I waved the gun and prodded him with the blade. “Hands behind your back. Close your eyes.
Close 'em
.” I grabbed a wire coathanger, untwisted it, and knelt with a knee in the small of his back. It wasn't easy wrapping his wrists while holding the gun, but I managed.

“On your feet.”

He stood up, a trifle less cocky, favoring his wounded leg. Two cuts in quick succession had left him white-faced. And the wire was an unpleasant touch.

“Down the stairs. Slowly. When you reach the hall keep moving.”

“Where we going?”

“For a ride.”

“Where?”

“Where'd you park your car, Spider?”

“Up yours, man.”

I accepted that as a reminder that a skewered wrist and a punctured calf weren't enough to take a Waterbury Latin Knight out of action. “I ask because if it's on the street, the state trooper'll check it out.”

“The lot by that Yankee thing.”

“Good move.”

“That's where we parked last time.”

“Excellent. Okay, let's get something straight. If you try anything I will shoot you. It's my town. All I have to say is that a Waterbury lowlife broke into my house again. They'll give me a civic award.
Capish
?”

He
capished
enough to shut up.

I wrapped a wad of paper towels around his wrist.

I was worried about Alison and her mother, but the lights were out in the barn. I walked him to the Olds, standing close with the gun in his side. I put him in the passenger seat, got in, backed out of the drive, and headed north on Main and up Route 7. The night closed in around the car and the trees swallowed the headlights.

***

“Where the hell we going?”

“The woods.”

“What?”

“Deep woods.”

I drove slowly for miles and turned off on Crabtree. Spider looked back at the last house lights, fading behind us. The road turned to dirt. I slowed down, switched off the AC, and opened the windows. The air felt like warm water, and sounded like katydids and crickets had declared war on each other. Spider didn't like it. He looked as unhappy as a Newbury kid like Pete Stock in a Waterbury alley.

“How far we going?” Spider peered intently into the dim tunnel of light the headlights projected.

The headlights picked up an intersection. I stopped, hesitated, then turned onto a rutted track that had been a lumber road. The Olds bucked, scraping its bottom.

“We're going to get stuck out here,” Spider warned me.

“Not me,” I said, the gun in my left hand, across my lap, pointed at him. I assumed that by now he had worked his wrists loose. The road forked. I chose one at random, followed it for a mile, and stopped.

“What's this?”

Huge moths circled in the headlights. I shut the engine, pocketed the key.

“Hey.”

The lights-on warning went
Bong, bong, bong
.

I shut the lights. Dark descended like a blanket.

“
Hey
!”

I stepped quickly from the car. Spider turned to me, eyes big in the courtesy light until I shut the door.

“Where you goin'?”

I said nothing, just leaned against a tree and let my eyes adjust. Soon I could see him huddled in the front seat, craning his head to see out.

“Hey!” he called. The tree and I were one.

Bugs warred. An owl barked. Something screamed an astonished last breath.

“Where'd you go?”

I slipped quietly behind the car and alongside his window.

“Talk to me, Spider. Who's the rich bitch?”

Chapter 29

“Mother! I thought you split.”

“I'm going to split. With my car. I'm going to leave you here, Spider. All night.”

“Oh, yeah. You do that, man. Somebody'll come along.”

“Anyone who comes along this road, you don't want to meet. Or any
thing
.”

“What do ya mean?”

“Bears.”

“Shit man, you're joking.”

“Going to talk to me?”

“Up yours.”

I opened the door.

“Hey, come on.”

“
Out
!”

“Hey, man. Just, like—what you wanna know?”

“Who's the rich bitch?”

“I don't know.”

“You said the rich bitch shot Little John. Who is she?”

“I don't know, man.”

“Get out!”

“No. No, I never met her. Little John kept her to hisself.”

“You never saw her face?”

“Never saw her anything, man.”

“Never heard her name?”

“He never said it.”

“You're going to have to do better, Spider. Or I'm out of here. Start at the beginning: How did Little John know her?”

“I don't know. He kept her for hisself.”

“You already said that.”

“Truth, man. He had a great thing going. Sex for dope. She'd do anything he wanted for it.”

“I thought you said she was rich.”

“Kicks, man. She had money. She had it all her way. Made him wear a condom? Believe that? Little John wearing a condom. He said he'd shoot me if I told.”

“But he told you.”

“We hung together. He only told me once. He was high.”

“He must have told you more than that when he was high. Was she good-looking?”

“A real piece.”

“What color hair?”

“Little John don't say.”

“But really beautiful?”

“A piece, man. Drove a big Benz.”

“Mercedes Benz?” That I hadn't expected. Michelle had her Audi, Susan a dying Colt, and Janey had something Japanese. Maybe Greg Riggs, Esquire, drove a Mercedes. “What color?”

“I don't know. Jesus, who cares?”

“Your ride home cares.”

“Ask me something I know,” he blustered back unconvincingly. He
had
freed his hands, but only to hunch over, gripping his wounded calf, which seemed to trouble him more than his wrist. “Come on, man. Let's get outta here.”

“What kind of dope did she buy?”

“Coke. H. Whatever he had.”

“Did she buy a lot?”

“Hey, Little John wasn't heavy duty, if you know what I mean.”

“What do you mean?”

“He sold whatever shit he could get his hands on. We ran a bunch of little dealers. No big deal. Assholes smokin' up their own stuff, gettin' arrested, gettin' shot for steppin' on it too hard. When you're only two guys, you don't have enough muscle to build a clientele. We'd take a street and the Popes would kick our ass. You can't sell dope on the run, you know. You gotta have turf you own. You know?”

“Tough business.”

“Toughest. One time we took over a house? Got four or five families holdin' and sellin' for us? Popes torched it. We open up across the street, cops blew us off.”

“So the rich bitch was a pretty good deal? Nice, steady customer?”

“Yeah, but Little John's
givin
' it to her. I say, ‘Little John, you want free sex, hit the crackheads.' John goes, ‘It ain't the same, man.'”

I treated Spider to some hard-won wisdom. “You know what they say: If you want to go partners, you better pick a partner who has the same goals as you.”

“Righteous, man. Righteous. You both gotta want the same thing. One day we score pure H. This shit would fly you to the moon. I go, ‘We're in, Little John. Step on this ten times and we're still selling the best dope in the neighborhood.' John goes, ‘
Yes
.' He says he'll cut it. Sends me out to round up our best salesmen. I get back, and instead of two hundred hits, he's only got a hundred. I go, ‘You didn't step on it enough. There's only a hundred.' John goes, ‘I stepped it plenty.' You know what he did?”

“Beats me.”

“Kept back
half
. Never cut it. Says it's for a special customer. Guess who?”

“The rich bitch.”

“He's givin her
pure
! For what? A lay? Enough stuff there for a hundred lays. You know what he says? ‘It ain't the same.'”

I asked him, “What tag were you selling, Knight Out?”

“Yeah, that was us. Knight Out. How'd you know?”

“Buddy of mine was partial to it.”

“Can we go home? My leg's hurtin' like a bitch.” It was too dark to see his hands, but he seemed to be massaging his leg.

“Let me ask you something, Spider.”

“What?”

“How'd you and Little John happen to break into my house?”

“I don't know.”

“Spider. You broke into my house and nearly killed me. Then you shot at a state trooper. ‘I don't know' implies you suddenly woke up in the midst of a terrible dream.”

“I don't. It was Little John's score. He said he had something. I said, ‘Cool.'”

It suddenly occurred to me that while I was lulling Spider into a conversation I hoped would produce information, he was lulling me into a fatal mistake. Spider wasn't afraid of the dark anymore. I heard it in his voice. I'd forgotten the coathanger.

I started to draw back. He whipped his arm out the window. I saw, too late, that he had used the time he'd been chatting so affably about the business problems of the dope trade to fashion a shank.

An ordinary street fighter would have raked the broken wire across my gun hand. Only a stone killer would have tried to drive it through my heart. That, coupled with the fact that I was already drawing back, saved my life. The thing scraped my left biceps, tearing skin like a carpenter's saw. I swung the gun blindly. The long barrel crunched his nose.

Spider dropped the wire shank and clamped both hands to his face, gasping with pain. I took a deep breath, thanked God I was able, and tried to swallow down the adrenaline. When I stopped shaking, I cocked the Ruger. The metal click was so loud the bugs fell silent. It wasn't hard to sound deadly.

“No more games, Spider. You don't play nice. Why'd you break into my house?”

“You—”

“Don't tell me I broke your nose. I know I broke your nose and you know why. Answer me.”

“Little John said he knew about this house in this hick town.” His voice was nasal, and muffled by his hands.

“Newbury.”

“Yeah, Newbury.”

“How'd you find it?”

“He had a map.”

“Where'd he get the map?”

“From a gas station.”

“And what was in the house?”

“Stuff. Anything we wanted.”

“You mean, just walk in and take it?”

“Said the guy was there alone. No locks. All we had to do was bounce him and then we could take anything we wanted.”

“‘Bounce' is like a beat down?”

“Same.”

“Were you supposed to kill me?”

Spider looked up over his fingers. There was just enough light to see a glint in his eye. “You're alive, aren't you?”

“So the word was
don't
kill me.”

“Biggest mistake we ever made.”

I said, “Wait a minute. I seem to recall that
you
stopped Little John from shooting me.”

“Little John had a temper.”

“What did you care?”

“The deal was a thousand bucks to bounce you. Nothing if we killed you.”

That was interesting. Obviously, I was glad to be alive. Grateful, even, to whomever had sicced these bozos on me, for working up an incentive system to keep them in line.

“Where was the thousand bucks coming from?”

“Little John didn't say.”

“But you guessed.”

“It was easy. Who the hell did John know with a thousand bucks?”

“I don't want to put words in your mouth.”

“The rich bitch.”

“Thank you, Spider.”

“Let's go, man. My whole face hurts.”

“Two more questions.”

He groaned.

“First: I spent two days in the hospital with two concussions and had a face for a week that frightened children. You've got stab wounds you better get disinfected and one broken nose. Are we about even?”

“I'll make you a deal,” he said. “I won't come to your goddamned town if you don't come to mine.”

“No deal. I'll stay out of your neighborhood. But you don't own Waterbury.”

“Okay. Okay. Let's go.”

“Second question.”

“What?”

None of my suspects owned a Mercedes Benz. I said, “Is it possible that Little John might have exaggerated about the rich bitch?”

“How you mean?”

“Maybe she wasn't that beautiful.”

“Maybe.”

“Or that rich.”

“Rich enough.”

“Maybe didn't drive a Benz? Maybe a Toyota?”

“Maybe.”

“Or wasn't that good a lay?”

Spider laughed at my naivete. That made him yell in pain as the laugh rattled his nose. He gasped, caught his breath, and explained to the Newbury hick, “Listen. If Little John wanted a bad lay, he coulda stayed in the neighborhood.”

I drove Spider to his car in the Yankee Drover parking lot, advised him again to get his wounds looked at, and watched him leave town. I went home, showered, and poured hydrogen peroxide on my arm. It stung like fire. But nothing like it would sting Spider when he poured it into those punctures. Consoled by that thought, I slapped on some Band-Aids and a long-sleeved shirt.

I rolled the cuffs for relief from the heat and took a walk on the old streets of the town, where the streetlights were smothered by maple leaves and tree roots had heaved the sidewalks. I stopped at Ted and Susan's cottage at midnight.

Their lights were still on. I arranged an apologetic expression and knocked on the screen. Ted came, flipped on the front light, and let me in. “You okay, Ben? It's kind of late.”

“I saw the light.”

“Oh, we're up. Just having a nightcap on the porch.”

“I don't want to intrude.” Actually I very much wanted to intrude.

“Come on, come on.” He led me through the little house, calling, “Ben's here, hon.”

“Hi, Ben. Come on out. Get a drink.”

Ted poured me a beer and led me to the porch. Susan was dressed in summer pajamas. That dandy old word “fetching” came to mind. “I'm sorry. I saw the light.”

“Don't worry. School's closed and I've a week off. It's fun to stay up late.”

The little screen porch was crowded, with wicker furniture from bigger houses. It overlooked a tiny backyard that Susan had transformed into a flower garden. She'd even found room to plant an herb maze, and the scent of lavender drifted through the screen.

When I complimented her on the garden, she complained it was a struggle in the shade of the neighbors' trees—a perennial in-town problem they'd never suffered in their former homes.

Ted said that Connie had invited Susan to tea. He talked about the Mount Pleasant project, subtly feeling me out on the subject of challenging the four-acre zoning requirement. I listened politely, refusing to be led, while I reviewed in my mind what I had learned that afternoon.

Neither Sherry, nor Georgia, nor Rick, nor Bill had been in the kitchen before Reg died. Rick and Sherry were out on the lawn—despite Georgia's belief that they had gone upstairs. Later they had rejoined Georgia and Bill in the Jacuzzi, after each of the men had groped the other's wife, unsuccessfully.

Michelle had taken Reg into the kitchen for coffee. Duane had joined them after declining to partake of a rape among friends with Bill and Georgia.

I had two questions: Were Ted and Susan in the kitchen with Reg? And who had Vicky overheard screwing in the guest room? Ted and Michelle? Or Reg and Michelle? Or Reg and Susan? (It seemed a safe bet that whoever was upstairs had not killed Reg. Unless, of course, Reg was the lucky guy upstairs. In which case, I longed more than ever to know who had stood him up at Brassée.)

“Duane,” said Ted, “suggested that prominent real estate brokers speaking in favor of three-acre zoning might carry some weight with the board. Do you think Fred Gleason would be interested?”

“I hope not.”

“You can't stop progress, Ben. There's pressure to build. It comes from people.”

“We've got one two-lane highway from the south. That holds off the people pressure. The pressure you're talking about comes from developers.”

“How about real estate agents? They stand to profit too.”

“Speaking for myself—and, I think, Fred—I'll take my profits from quality, not quantity. Besides, if you think we have school budget problems now? Wait 'til you launch a housing boom.”

“New houses pay taxes.”

“Never as much as it costs to educate their children.”

Ted shrugged. “Fact is, if Steve wins, he'll push to rewrite zoning. So it'll be out of our hands. Right?”

“Terrific.”

“I agree with Ben,” Susan said quietly. “I like it the way it is.”

Ted smiled, and I saw the wise, fatherly Gregory Peck quality that Georgia had alluded to—the leader, who knew best, the man above, apart, and ultimately in control. “Enough politics. How've you been, Ben? That was a good party before you snookered us.”

“I'm glad you enjoyed yourselves…Speaking of which…”

“What?”

“I'm not sure how to put this.”

“Try straight,” said Susan, “for a change.”

“Did you see Reg in the kitchen before he overdosed?”

Susan looked at Ted. “No,” they chorused. “Except,” Ted added, “for a few seconds, when we passed through.”