Terror Flower (River Sunday Romance Mysteries Book 5) (12 page)

“Jimmy, this is Buddy Nichols.” said Smiley, motioning to the man.

“Pleased to know you,” the man said, his voice gruff. Tench nodded with a smile.

“Buddy and I do some riding,” said Smiley.

“One of these days, I’ll ride with you guys,” said Tench. He had not spent much time on the two wheelers. His mechanic friends in Baltimore had been all car people, not motorcycle fans.

“Hard to get away on the bike,” said Buddy, shifting in his seat so that Tench could sit down. “My wife, she don’t ride with me no more. Likes the car.”

“Buddy lives on the Island,” said Smiley. “He and his family work one of Strake’s farms.”

“Lot of activity up there,” Tench said.

“Too much,” said Buddy. The man’s face had a day’s stubble and his neck was red from the sun.

“You have a family?” he asked Tench.

“No, not yet,” Tench replied.

“He’s got it for Julie Strake,” said Smiley. “Only, she went off and left him lonely. Calls her all the time.”

“That ain’t good," said Buddy. The others nodded

“She’s not that bad,” said Tench.

Smiley added, “Party with them and then let them go, is the best way.”

“You don’t do that,” said Katy, from the stove area, her voice sarcastic.

“Sometimes you can’t let them go,” Smiley said, looking at her with a grin.

“Better not,” said Katy, scraping harder at the fried chicken. “You boys get your plates over here.”

The seats at the table were hung on bars of steel from a hinge on the trailer wall. Tench moved against the window to allow Katy to sit down next to him. Smiley sat next to his friend, Buddy. Tench picked a plump drumstick. The others filled their plates and for a few minutes the only noise from scraping of plates and chewing.

Tench could see Smiley’s back yard from the window. He noticed a small shed and a large wooden wall of plywood set back among the trees, with sandbags on both sides. On the plywood Smiley had painted a white and black bull’s eye that was about four feet across. In the center of the bull’s eye the plywood was chewed by many small holes.

“You got a target range out there,” said Tench, pointing with his chicken leg.

“I’ll show you about it after we eat,” said Smiley, grinning at Katy who ate with gusto next to him.

Smiley put down his chicken and said,” I thought you’d like to hear what my friend says about living up at Strake’s place these days.”

Tench said,” He know that I think Strake’s daughter Julie is missing?”

Buddy looked down at his plate, “I don’t want no trouble, Smiley. I was just talking.”

Smiley said, “You told me the noise up there at night shakes the ground sometimes.”

“What kind of noise?” asked Tench.

“The noise wakes up my kids in the middle of the night. Like a lot of engines turned on at once,” Buddy said.

Tench said, “He runs up the cars in the collection. Keeps them tuned that way.”

“Not cars,” said Buddy.

“Strake must have over a hundred cars in that barn. I see the containers coming in,” said Tench.

“I seen them outside when they were painting the floor. Only ten cars,” said Buddy.

“The other cars must have been left inside.”

“Don’t’ think so and not at night anyway,” said Buddy. “I had to go up there to see Stagmatter, maybe two weeks ago. Ten cars, maybe eleven, all parked outside with one of Stagmatter's mechanics hosing them down.”

“Trading up,” said Tench.

“What do you mean, trading up?” asked Katy.

Tench explained, “He’ll trade a not so valuable car for a better one. He might end up with fewer cars but the ones he keeps are more valuable.”

“Yep, I see,” said Buddy, his face blank as if he didn’t really understand.

Tench didn’t want to explain the intricacies of car auctions to him and the others because he felt he might be betraying Strake’s private business. However, if Stagmatter was doing this with Strake’s cars, Julie would want to know. She had been worried about this kind of thing, perhaps theft, with her father’s property.

“Those mechanics too,” said Buddy. “They don’t know much about engines.”

“How do you know that?”

“We had a tractor busted, wouldn’t start. Stagmatter and two of his men, they couldn’t get her running. Afterward, I went up and found the damn battery cable that had come loose. Bunch of overpaid fakes if you ask me.”

Smiley stared at Buddy, Smiley’s fingers idly picking at the remaining chicken on a breast. “My boss thinks his friend’s grandfather was killed up there on the farm.”

Buddy looked at Tench. “That the little Spaniard’s grandpa? Them Africans got itchy trigger fingers. They shoot at anything.”

Smiley stood up. “They ain’t coming around here nossir. Come in the back room. I’ll show you boys some guns that make a lot of noise.”

He led the way to the bedroom. Katie jumped up in front of him.

“Let me go in there and tidy up,” she said.

They waited a couple of minutes until Smiley said, “Let’s go on in.”

Katy gave him a scowl as he brought the men into the bedroom. She was pulling the cover back over the tangled sheets. On the left side of the bed was a shorty pink nightgown and on the built in table at the right was a stack of men’s magazines. One sat opened to pictures of a nude blonde woman about the size and shape of Katy. Katy moved to the table, closed it, and quickly hid the magazines in a drawer.

Smiley’s hand pointed to the wall above the bed. There on metal hangers was an arsenal of blue and brown gun shapes. At the bottom running across the wall were four revolvers, the middle one Tench recognized as a Colt police model thirty eight. Above the handguns were three rifles, at least one of which was a powerful deer rifle with a scope. The other two were machine guns. One was a World War Two automatic, the kind that was known as a grease gun because it looked like the grease pumping tool. The other was a regulation M16, the light machine gun once used in Vietnam.

“They all shoot good,” said Smiley, his face lighted up with pride.

“We keep them oiled up,” said Katy, regaining her composure.

“Want to shoot one?” Smiley asked his guests.

Buddy shook his head. Tench started to decline but Smiley pulled him over to the wall and picked out a revolver.

“Come on out back, Jimmy,” he said. “This one’s a percussion cap like they used at Cold Harbor when the Rebels got revenge for Gettysburg.” He turned to Katy.

“Bring the boss man,” he commanded, and, as they left the room, she started to pull a box from under the bed.

Tench held the gun hanging at his right side as they moved out of the trailer and toward the firing range in the back yard. He noticed the heavy weight of the gun and the fact that even though he was an average size man, when the pistol butt was at his waist level, the barrel extended halfway down the distance to his knee.

“Big mother, ain’t she? That’s a Navy Colt,” said Smiley as they walked through the weed at the side of the trailer. Buddy followed behind with Katy at the rear carrying the large flat rectangular cardboard box.

Smiley took the revolver from Tench’s hand. “I’ll load her for you.” His mechanic held the gun with deference, the same kind of soft touch that Tench imagined Smiley might give to a human baby if he and Katy had one. Smiley prepared all six chambers with charges quickly. He then turned the gun around and placed percussion caps, small metal tops, on the six nipples extending from behind the chambers. He cocked the hammer back and, pointing the revolver down range at the large plywood sheet a hundred yards away, handed the pistol to Tench, “Try your luck.’

Tench held the gun out in front of him, his arm level with his eyes and the gun barrel also parallel so that he could sight the weapon. When he had the sight in line with the target, he squeezed the taut trigger. An explosion flew up in front of his face almost immediately, the gun moving upward in the air until it was at a forty five degree angel above the target. The arch of his hand from the forefinger to the thumb ached from the force of what seemed like an ax handle chapping hard against him.

He practically dropped the gun and Smiley, moving his hand up, took the revolver from him.

“I forgot to put on the grease,” he said, eyeing the revolver.

“What happened?” Tench said, the smoke gathering in a cloud that moved away from him, his face burning from the black power on his skin.

“Besides you getting a black face, all six chambers went off at once,” said Katy, without expression. “Smiley forgets to put the grease on the caps to keep the fire from jumping from cylinder to cylinder. You get all shots going off at once like happened to you.”

Tench felt his face. Smiley said, “You didn’t lose any skin. Don’t’ worry. We get this sometimes with old guns.”

“Show him,” said Katy, her eyes looking behind her as she signaled to Smiley.

“Yeah,” said Buddy. “I want to see too.”

“Old Beets pretty excited talkin’ about that African snake, wasn’t he?” said Smiley, taking the cardboard box from Katy.

“Yes,” Tench said.

“I bet he wouldn’t be so scared, if he knew I had me one of these.” He held up a metal cylinder about two feet long, olive drab in color. Then, he snapped the back end of the device outward so that the tube was extended another foot.

“What is that?”asked Tench.

“M72. Katy and me, we call it the boss man. Lookee. You’ll see something.”

“I want to shoot it too,” said Buddy. The other two men crowded around and said they wanted a shot too.

“You’ll get your turn,” Smiley said.

Smiley moved away from them and held the weapon with its back aimed away from the trailer. He looked behind him to make sure nothing was in the way. Then he loaded a small rocket that Katy took from the box. He pointed the device at the plywood target.

“Get him,” Katy said

“Cover your ears,” said Smiley as he pushed the firing device.

Smoke came up from the plywood and the woods beyond as pits of flame tugged at the brush and splintered wood. Tench thought the noise was deafening, like a dragster taking off with all its exhausts wide open and lighting up candles, as the drag boys said, when the flames came out of the engine pipes and into the air.

“Get the hose,” said Smiley as he put the launcher down and walked towards the woods. He picked up a shovel near the ruined target and began to stamp out the vestiges of flame along the side of the woods. Katy came behind him with a long garden hose which sprayed water up into the few burning branches.

“Where did you get that thing?” asked Tench as Smiley knelt on the ground preparing the launcher for Buddy’s shot.

Smiley didn’t smile. Tench’s host was very serious as he said, “You think them terrorists can get these weapons so easy over there in the Middle East. Wellsir, we can get them here too, right in the old USA.” Smiley looked up, lifting the rocket launcher slightly from the ground, “Let me tell you, I see a man like that Snake old Beets was talking about at the garage, or if he make a mistake and come around here, that’s be the last anyone’ll see of him, I’m saying that for sure.”

“You guys need tiger suits like the Army Special Forces,” said Tench grinning.

“Real camouflage is blending with the people not with the woods, Jimmy. The targets are in the cities. Ain’t no woods there. Let me tell you, man, we got enough of us to one day take over like Hitler did only this time we won’t lose because the rest of the white nations will be with us. Goddamn United Nations be damned. I mean we ain’t go no name but all of us know who we are.”

“I hope it doesn’t happen,” said Tench.

Smiley said, “Look, this is our place, our land, our home, and no United Nations going to get an army to take it away from us. I don’t care how poor we get to be. We’ll survive. Just like the people who settled here a couple centuries back. Them foreigners can push us back like animals, but we’ll put up a fight and we’ll win too.”

Katy added, “Don’t worry, we still got hope that the old US will figure out an answer so we still got something left, not much but something. Whatever we got here in this land, the bad guys want it real bad. It’s just we are not going to lose it are we, boys?” The others laughed and Smiley added, “No, Katy, we are not.”

Smiley leaned toward Tench. He said, “You a nice boss, Jimmy, but you don’t get it. Remember there ain’t too many white men running that United Nations. Pretty soon it’s all black and yellow calling us with orders. You remember then I told you back when we could have done something to stop it.”

The smoke still drifted from the rocket blast as Tench moved around to the front of the trailer to head back to his own home. Katy walked with him and pointed to her tiny Focus car with the huge exhaust pipes coming out under its rear bumper.

“I been practicing in the field near here. Smiley thinks I can tune it to take on any of the Japanese drifter racers. Maybe the garage could sponsor me.”

He knew that she was referring to the new sport of sliding cars around in a circle as they proceeded ahead, a test of driving skill and car strength. Tench smiled. “Let me get my Mustang racer up and running. Maybe I can set it up for the drift races too. You’ve done a good job with that Ford Focus. I bet you got some Civics pretty scared around town.”

She smiled. “We’re talking the same language, Jimmy.” She gave him a big hug. He thought, as he hugged her back, that maybe she does get it after all. Make money, then start her homestead. He smiled. She might make it after all, just like her father wanted her to.

Chapter Eleven

9 AM Friday August 20

The River Sunday town authority didn’t have a very large budget for security in its yearly financial plan. Except for hurricanes which arrived irregularly each fall season and caused electricity to fail and roads to be blocked with fallen pine trees, the biggest town security issue was the annual summer powerboat regatta. It drew a multitude of outsiders and some national television sports reporters. Trouble was limited to the hydroplane spectators, people who tended to get drunk and have fistfights. They didn’t require more than a few extra town policemen for a weekend of overtime duty.