The Deader the Better (27 page)

“I’m renowned for my hard head.” I pulled off the Sonics cap
and showed him my stitches. “Literally and figuratively,”

I added.

Our eyes locked and stayed that way. All the good old boy pretense
was gone now. “I hope you know what you’re doing,” he said.
“You could end up with something they can’t sew back together.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I assured him. He turned around
and sauntered toward his car. “Sheriff,”

I called. I used my sweetest tone. “We won’t be needing that
extra patrol anymore. Thanks for the help.”

His eyes flicked over at Floyd and the Russian. “Figure you got
all the help you gonna need, do you?” When he smirked, his eyes
nearly closed.

I couldn’t resist. “We can’t all have Deputy Spots on our
side, Sheriff.”

It didn’t ruin his day, but it sure opened his eyes. He expelled
another whale breath, gave me a little two-fingered salute on the
brim of his hat and then took his sweet-ass time getting in the car,
buckling up and getting on the road. I turned to the pair leaning on
the car. “When cops point guns at you, you really ought to try to
look scared. It makes them nervous if you don’t.”

“Bubble Butt didn’t need any help being nervous,” Floyd
said.

He bumped himself off the trunk, slipped the key into the lock and
lifted the lid.

“Take Cabin Three,” I said and then turned back toward the
driveway. “Hey,” I yelled. The rented Chevy remained still. I
yelled again. “Okay.” Nothing.

In my peripheral vision, I saw Floyd and Boris exchange puzzled
glances. I gestured toward the car. “Harold and Ralph,” I said.

“The Booze Brothers,” Floyd said without enthusiasm. Boris and
Floyd each carried a long blue athletic bag with a white swoosh and a
black rifle case sans swoosh. I walked across the gravel toward the
car. I should have known. They were crapped out. Ralph snored. Harold
drooled onto his arm. They seemed peaceful, so I left them alone.
Floyd and Boris emerged from the cabin carrying identical rifles.
Floyd read my face. “Perfectly legal,” he said. “.2
semiautomatics. Varmint guns. Reworked clips that hold forty-eight
rounds. Virtually flat trajectory inside four hundred yards.” He
gave me what passed for a smile. “Tend to put nice clean holes in
things. Keeps the complications to a minimum.” He slipped one of
the clips into the bottom of the gun and then leaned the gun low
against the porch. I checked my watch. Three-thirty. An hour of
daylight. At ground level, the afternoon was still, only the ripple
of breaking water cutting intervals into the silence. Above us,
boxcar clouds, dark around the edges and dangerous-looking, rolled in
hard from the west carrying moisture and the smell of the sea.

Boris used the sling and carried his rifle over his shoulder in
the manner of a soldier as they sauntered about the property
together, pointing, talking out loud, occasionally putting their
heads together and whispering back and forth. I walked over to the
far end of the yard and looked down the Quileute toward the ocean. At
the end of my vision, out where the final glare of the sun
transformed the river into black ice, the heads of three seals poked
above the surface like periscopes as they followed the salmon as far
as they dared into the fresh water.

Floyd and Boris walked a complete circuit of the clearing and made
their way back to me. Floyd said, “Everything but the cars goes
behind the cabin.” He gestured with his hand.

“Out here on the lawn. That way the cabin’s between everything
and the hill.”

I said it made sense to me.

“You said the wire man is going to have a van.”

“It’s a motor home,” I said. “He just calls it a van.”

“Back eet een so the rear is against the kitchen vall,” Boris
said.

Reduce the profile and get it where there are no windows. Simple
enough.

Floyd looked around. “I presume we can pop a few and it’s not
going to be a problem. No close neighbors.”

“No neighbors at all,” I assured him. “Pop away.”

Pop away they did, but first Boris went back into the cabin and
came out with a roll of duct tape and then they rounded up half a
dozen cans from the garbage bin and carried them up to the tree line
at the back of the clearing, where they taped them to branches all
along the edge. Then they came back, retrieved their rifles. Boris
took a shot. Nothing moved. Then Floyd. Same result. Boris worked on
the rear sight with a small screwdriver. Floyd fired three times. In
the descending gloom I saw the bullet hit the ground at the base of
the tree. Floyd, likewise, produced a screwdriver. You could tell it
was a contest between them. Like the Thug Olympics. Rifle fire.
Standing. Prone. And Drive-By. I couldn’t tell who got off the
first good round, but suddenly they had it zoned in. They both
changed clips, took aim and started again. Tracers this time. The
rifles made a soft popping sound as the yellowgreen streams of fire
lit up the yard. And I could hear the soft
tink
as the slugs
pierced the cans up at the edge of the clearing and they began to
dance around. When Floyd stopped firing, Boris made one last run down
the cans. Left to right, as fast as he could pull the trigger. Six
shots, six
tinks
, six dancing cans.

Even Floyd looked impressed. “A killer,” he mouthed.

AT RIVER LEVEL, THIS TIME OF YEAR, THE HILLS BLOCK the sun until
nearly ten in the morning, leaving the terrain laced with frost,
everything silent and silver and slick to the touch. And when the
yellow light finally slanted down the hill toward us, it was as if
the earth suddenly caught fire, as plumes of steam and fog rose from
the frigid ground to join the haze that floated upward and finally
disappeared, leaving an acrylic blue sky that made you feel like you
could reach up and run your fingers through it.

We had coffee, sugar, rice, three cans of peaches and a bottle of
nondairy creamer. Last night we’d devoured every other edible
morsel in the cabin. Other than a pair of lemons in the vegetable
drawer, the stuff in the refrigerator was history. The kind of
history where you throw the container out, too. In the cupboards we’d
found half a dozen boxes of Kraft macaroni and cheese, five packets
of Top Ramen noodles, a can of evaporated milk, one garlic bulb and a
collection of canned vegetables. Floyd and I had opted for a box of
macaroni and a Top Ramen each. Boris had eaten three cans of beets
and, with a purple tongue, had professed to be as happy as a man
could be.

Around nine last night, Harold and Ralph had stumbled in and eaten
everything that remained. In one of those moments that speaks well
for the theory of evolution, Ralph, while satisfying himself that the
refrigerator was indeed empty, went boldly where no man had gone
before. He jerked open the crisper drawer at the bottom of the
refrigerator and found four bottles of Rainier Ale resting atop a
blackened head of lettuce. He showed class and offered them around.
Harold reckoned how he might be willing to swallow one or two, but
Boris, Floyd and I refused. Such unbridled joy is seldom seen in
adults.

By ten-thirty this morning, everybody had managed coffee and a
shower. I slid the keys to J.D.’s Blazer and a hundred bucks across
the table to Boris and told him how I wanted him to take the Boys to
Port Townsend. To start with the cab companies and then with the
taverns and, if that failed, with the bars. Told him to keep track of
all expenses. As Harold and Ralph squeezed out the door together, I
put my hand on Boris’s arm. He stopped. I leaned in close.

“Don’t give them too much money at once. Make sure they eat
before they start on the taverns. Whatever you do, don’t let either
of them drive, and if they start getting too drunk to function, pack
them in the car and drive them back here.”

“Vat time?”

“They’ll be hammered by five,” I assured him. Boris followed
the fellas out the door and around the corner. I turned to Floyd, who
was leaning back against the kitchen counter, slurping coffee from a
red plastic cup.

“You and I are going to town to see a guy about a flying
saucer,” I said.

“I can’t wait,” was his reply.

Ten minutes later, we were halfway to town. Floyd found the Oldies
channel. Del was singing a little “Runaway.” For about two
minutes, I forgot where I was and why I was here and just cruised
behind the music. Rounded a sweeping right turn. The sun flickering
through the bare branches like a strobe light and a quarter mile
ahead, parked on the right shoulder, was an old Studebaker pickup
truck. Hood up. Even if I hadn’t remembered the Confederate cap,
the lack of a shirt would have been a dead giveaway. Whitey’s head
peeked around the hood as I pulled the Malibu to a stop behind the
wooden tailgate. He wore those same gray and white coveralls and a
big pair of wraparound sunglasses.

“Come on,” I said to Floyd as I reached for the door handle.

The old truck had been lovingly restored. The cab and the sides of
the hood were fire-engine red. The rest of the body jet-black. Thick
whitewall tires on spoked wheels. The tailgate was oak, sanded and
then varnished to a sheen. Professionally painted Studebaker logo.
Floyd walked up the shoulder; I stayed in the road.

Whitey looked from Floyd to me and then began to back up, his
boots scraping on the pavement as he backpedaled.

“Need some help?” I asked.

He stopped. His skin wasn’t so much white as it was transparent.
He gave the impression that if one were to pull down the bib on his
overalls, his internal organs would be visible. Floyd leaned over and
stuck his head under the hood. Whitey frowned.

“Great rig,” I said.

“If it’d run.”

“What year?”

“It’s a ’ Coupe Express.”

Behind the glasses, his eyes darted about.

“What’s the problem?” asked Floyd.

“Just quit,” said Whitey. “The battery’s not charging.”

“You tested the regulator?” Floyd asked, jiggling one of the
battery connections. Whitey couldn’t stand it. He walked around me
and stuck his head under the other side of the hood. “New
regulator, new battery,” he said.

“That only leaves the generator or a short somewhere,”

Floyd offered.

“Better be a damn short,” Whitey said, to himself more than to
Floyd. “Shorts I can find. I’ll have to go all the way to Seattle
to find a generator.”

“Can we give you a lift somewhere?” I asked.

“Nah,” he said quickly. “I’ll be okay.”

Floyd pulled his head out from under the hood and started for the
car.

“Good luck,” I said and turned and followed Floyd.

“Hey…ah,” Whitey said to my back.

I turned around. “Yeah?”

“The other day…you know, a while back there at the Steelhead?”

“Dexter,” I said.

He nodded. “Yeah.”

“No hard feelings.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Me neither.”

“Sure we can’t take you somewhere?”

He mulled it over. “Come to think of it, I’d ’preciate it if
you would,” he said. “Lemme close things up here.”

I stuck out my hand. “Leo Waterman,” I said. His hand
swallowed mine. His palm had the texture of a cinder block.

“Clarence Hunley,” he said. “I’ll just be a second.”

I got back in the car and started the engine.

“Kid looked pretty spooked when you first got out of the car,”
Floyd commented. While the kid closed the hood and locked the doors,
I gave Floyd a thumbnail sketch of our last meeting.

“Good move,” Floyd said. “You see the arms on that sucker?
Comes down to you and him throwing punches…my money’s on the
kid.”

“Mine, too,” I said.

Whitey got in behind me. “Hate to leave her like this,” he
said.

“Don’t blame you,” said Floyd. “That’s a sweet unit.”

I pulled back onto the road, heading for town.

“Just got her on the road last week,” Whitey said. “This is
the third time she just plain quit on me.”

“How long you been working on her?” I asked.

“Better part of two years. Belonged to my grandfather. Been out
in the barn for longer than I been around. Did everything but the
paint and the upholstery myself. Didn’t have no idea how hard it
was gonna be when I started out. If Idda known…”

“It was worth the effort,” Floyd said.

“Thanks,” he said with obvious pride.

“Where can we take you?” I asked.

“Steelhead’s as gooda place as any.”

We were about a mile from the tavern when he leaned forward. In
the mirror, his eyes looked like dimes behind the glasses. “Hey…you
suppose that instead of the Steelhead, maybe you could drop me…you
know, someplace close instead?” I guess taking a ride was one
thing, but being seen with me was another.

“No problem,” I assured him.

I pulled into an abandoned log scaling station about a half mile
past the tavern. Weeds nearly as tall as the hood grew from the maze
of cracks and fissures in the greasy cement. Whitey jumped out.
Checked the empty highway in both directions.

“Thanks,” he said. I wished him luck. His heavy boots slapped
the road as he ran to the other side of the highway. I went into my
voice-of-doom narration. “Now…to explore strange new worlds.”

“You mean this isn’t it,” Floyd quipped. “It gets better
than bubble-butt deputies and giant albinos wearing nothing but bib
overalls?”

“You have no idea.”

As I drove the mile and a half, I filled him in on Monty and the
government conspiracy to keep the truth from us. He nodded solemnly.
“My mom believed in all that shit.” He twirled his index finger
around his temple. “Crazy as a shithouse rat,” he said. Nature or
nurture. On one hand, it was a good bet that whoever had nurtured a
guy like Floyd was quite likely to have been more than a few degrees
off center themselves. Onthe other hand, Kurtis Ryder’s family was
about as mainstream as you can get, and he’s not just light in the
fingers but in the loafers, as well. So I guess you never know. It’s
like the Algerian said, “After a certain age, a man becomes
responsible for his face.”