The Double (21 page)

The sound from the laptop, synthesized music and a conversation between a man and woman, was loud. From what Smalls could make out, the man in the video was trying to convince a woman that she needed to take off her clothes. “I can’t cast you in the movie until I see what you have,” said the man. “My panties, too?” said the woman, and the man said, “Yes, of course.”

“Where you go?” said Bacalov.

“Out to get cigarettes. You want anything?”

“No. Wait a minute…We need milk.”

“I’ll bring back some milk,” said Smalls.

He left Bacalov, turned the corner of the hall, and went down the stairs, his hand sliding down the wood banister as he descended. He walked through the living room, past the overstuffed couch and the cable-spool table, the chandelier and the dining room table, the stolen computer equipment heaped in a corner, and the paintings, wrapped in brown paper and leaning against the wall. He opened the front door, walked out, then closed it and checked that it was locked.

As he turned from the door, the motion detector triggered its lamp. His car, the white Crown Vic, was parked in the front yard, wholly visible in the pool of light. The remainder of the yard, the woods, and the gravel road that cut through them, was inked in black.

Louis Smalls stood on the porch and lit his cigarette. As he exhaled a stream of smoke, he heard something in the forest to his left. A rabbit or fox skittering through the brush.

To his right, Smalls heard the muted, heavy drum of feet on gravel and earth. He turned his head in that direction, took one step back, and froze.

A man was running toward him. Charging like an animal out of the night.

TWENTY

L
ucas had humped the half mile through the woods wearing his night vision goggles while carrying a bag heavy with gear and iron. He was in superior shape, but still, by the time he reached the tree line bordering the house, he needed to rest. He peeled off his goggles, allowed his breathing to slow, and opened the bag that he’d dropped beside him. He then removed the Beretta .9 and S&W .38 from the bag and fitted them in the holster belt looped into the pistol vest. The vest held shotgun shells, an extra mag for the .9, and hollow point rounds. He took the Mossberg from the bag and placed that on the ground beside the NVGs.

Lucas looked at the yard, where a single car, the white Crown Victoria that had rammed Marquis, was parked. One car, one driver: the young man with the beard, the one called Louis. But this didn’t mean there was only one person in the house. Maybe Bacalov didn’t own a car. Maybe he didn’t drive.

Lucas looked up at the house. One window had a light in it; the others were dark. Dark windows had been a primary danger area in Iraq. So were doorways and doors.

The front door of the house opened. Louis closed it behind him, locked it, and stepped onto the porch. As he did, the motion detector came on and sent light out into the yard. Lucas remained still. He watched Louis stand there and light a cigarette.

Carefully, quietly, Lucas got two pairs of double-cuff restraints from the bag. Keeping his eyes on Louis, he put them in a pouch of his vest. He then retrieved the roll of duct tape and slipped that into the pouch holding the loose hollow points. He picked up the shotgun with his left hand; he needed his throwing arm now.

Lucas felt along the earth until he found a stone. He rose from his crouch and stepped out of the woods, into the portion of the yard still in darkness. He planned to use a box tactic; he would avoid the area exposed by light, move in the blackness, and stay inside its line. He got as close to the house as he could without crossing that line, then threw the stone, arcing it high into the woods on the other side of the house. Louis turned his head in that direction as the rock skittered through the branches of trees. Lucas moved the Mossberg to his right hand and broke into a run.

He was on the porch quickly, taking its steps while barely touching them, reaching Louis, startled and frozen, within seconds. Lucas swung the shotgun, putting his hips into the motion. The stock connected under Louis’s jaw. He lost his legs, and Lucas hit him again in the temple as he was going down. Louis fell to the gallery floor. Lucas turned him over, flex-cuffed his hands and ankles, and wound duct tape around his head and mouth. He checked his breathing and searched his jeans pockets. Found a phone, a brown envelope holding money, a wallet, matches, and a ring holding keys. On the ring were the keys to the Ford. A house key, too.

Lucas moved to the door.

Serge Bacalov heard a dull thud coming from outside. He turned the sound down on his laptop, closed its lid, dropped it on the bed, and got up out of his chair. He walked quickly from his lit bedroom and went into Billy’s bedroom because the room was dark. He went to the window, pulled its curtain aside, and looked out into the front yard. The Crown Victoria was still there, and Louis was not. Okay, so he was smoking a cigarette out on the porch before he took off. But why the noise?

Bacalov returned to his room. He picked up his Glock, fully loaded with a seventeen-round magazine. He thumbed off its safety and holstered it under the belt line of his jeans at the small of his back. He then got down on the floor and pulled the Ithaca out from under the bed. In his dresser drawer he found a box of shells, and with fumbling excitement, he ripped open its thin cardboard top. He turned the shotgun over so that its bottom was facing up. He thumbed five shells into the ejection port, felt the stop, released the slide, and pushed it forward.

Bacalov heard the front door opening down in the living room. Perhaps Louis had forgotten something and was coming back inside. Perhaps.

Bacalov went down the hall but did not turn the corner at the stairs. He rested his back against the plaster wall.

“Louis,” said Bacalov. “You come back, eh?”

There was no answer. Bacalov gripped the shotgun and smiled.

Lucas entered the house and shut the door behind him. He held the Mossberg ready, his finger inside the trigger guard, and stood still. He mentally cleared the room: an open living room/dining room area, a kitchen in the back. Old, cushiony furniture, a cable-spool table holding a bong, a chandelier over the dining room table. A stairway with a banister leading up to the second floor. Computer equipment heaped in a corner of the room. And square objects wrapped in brown paper, leaning against the right wall. His blood ticked.

As his eyes and shoulders moved, he moved the barrel of the shotgun. The index finger of his right hand brushed the trigger. His left hand cupped the pump.

He heard a voice from upstairs.

“Louis. You come back, eh?”

He heard the unmistakable
snick-snick
of a racking pump.

Lucas stepped toward the stairs and sighted the shotgun. He saw an elbow at the top of the stairs, a small triangle of flesh peeking out.

“All right,” said Lucas softly.

Bacalov spun around the corner and fired as Lucas pumped off a shell. The banister exploded in splinters before him and Lucas stepped back, then moved forward and rapidly pumped out five more shots up the stairs, hammering the plaster at the top of the landing and tearing up the wall. The shotgun blasts shook the house.

“Fuck
you,
” said Bacalov, and Lucas heard nervous laughter. He knew what that meant: relief. Bacalov had not been hit.

Lucas tossed the shotgun aside and drew his .38. He stepped out of the field of fire and walked backward, aiming the revolver at the stairs. He stopped and stood beside the couch.

“Take what you want,” shouted Bacalov.

“I’m going to,” said Lucas, blinking his gun eye against the sweat that was trickling into it.

“Who are you?”

“Come find out.”

“I am going to lay down my gun.”

Bacalov appeared on the stairway, shooting in descent. Lucas dropped behind the couch. Bacalov kept his finger locked on the Ithaca’s trigger as he pumped, cycling rounds through the chamber, slam-firing into the buckling hardwood floor and cable-spool table. The room went sonic.

Lucas heard the thump of a shell hitting the back cushion, felt its impact, saw stuffing rise in the air above him.

Bacalov dropped his shotgun and ran across the room. At the sound of his footsteps Lucas came up firing. He squeezed off several rounds and saw red leap off Bacalov’s shoulder. Bacalov fell behind the dining room table.

Lucas crouched back down behind the couch. He could hear Bacalov moving chairs. He holstered the .38 and drew the M-9, releasing the safety in the same motion. He pulled back on the receiver and let it go. Its recoil spring drove the slide home and chambered a round.

Bacalov, wounded but game, crouched on the floor behind the table and chairs he had pulled together. He drew his Glock with a shaking hand, jacked in a round, and wiped at his face. He rested the barrel on one of the crossbars of a ladder-back chair and aimed it in the general direction of the couch.

“Rick Bell,” said Bacalov. “Is this your name? Or is your name
pussy?
”

Lucas did not reply. He’d been talked to and taunted by insurgents in many of the houses he’d entered in Fallujah. It had unnerved him, but he’d fought on.

“I am not afraid,” said Bacalov.

Yes, you are, thought Lucas. So am I.

“Show yourself,” said Bacalov.

Lucas slid behind the couch and readied himself at its edge. With his left hand he pushed at the couch and moved it, and Bacalov let off several shots, punching lead into the cushions, and at that Lucas came up over the back of the couch and fired off many rounds at the chandelier. Glass and metal rained down on Bacalov and bit his face, and once again Lucas dropped behind cover.

“I am not hurt,” said Bacalov, but now there was a quiver in his voice.

Lucas concentrated. The Beretta’s mag held fifteen. He struggled to remember how many rounds he’d fired.

Recharge.

Lucas released the partially spent magazine and slipped it in his vest. From the same pouch he took a full-load magazine and palmed it home. He readied the gun and chambered a round.

“You are pussy,” said Bacalov.

Lucas stood and fired. The dining room table splintered, and Bacalov came up out of his crouch and squeezed off a round. Lucas felt a bullet crease the air as he walked forward, focused, firing his weapon, and through the smoke and ejecting shells he saw Bacalov dance backward as blood misted from his chest. He dropped his Glock and fell to the floor.

Lucas kept his gun arm steady and aimed. He stepped to Bacalov, stood over him. Watched as he struggled for breath, saw his shirt flutter about the chest wound, listened to the rattle of his filling lungs. His eyes crossed and saw nothing. Lucas shot him twice more and walked away.

He went out to the porch and checked on Louis, now conscious, his eyes frightened, his wrists raw from struggle. There were no sirens in the distance, no headlights coming up the gravel road. Only the sound of crickets and a faint ringing in Lucas’s ears.

He reentered the house and went up the stairs. He went bedroom to bedroom until he found the laptop on Serge’s bed. The size of the shirts hung in the closet told him it was the little man’s room. He’d corresponded with Serge via e-mail, and there’d be a record. He took the laptop off the bed.

Downstairs he went straight to the wrapped objects leaning against the wall. He tore off the brown wrapping of the top one and put it aside. He found what he was looking for when he unwrapped the second painting. Two men, bare-chested, one middle-aged, one young. In the right-hand corner was the artist’s name: L. Browning. He’d found
The Double.

He went back out to the porch, got his duct tape, and returned to the living room, where he re-wrapped Grace Kinkaid’s painting. He then went around the room collecting ejected casings and shells, slipping them into his vest. He did the best he could.

He made two more trips outside and back again, carrying his shotgun, the painting, and the laptop to the edge of the woods. He left those items there and found his bolt cutters and a bottle of water in the bag. He was still wearing the .38 and .9 on his holster belt when he stepped back onto the porch.

“Serge is dead,” said Lucas. “You can be dead, too. Blink hard if you understand.”

Louis Smalls closed his eyes, paused, and opened them.

“I’m gonna free your hands and turn you over.”

Lucas used the cutters to liberate Louis’s hands. He removed the duct tape from his face, put him on his back, helped him sit up, then took him by the arm and moved him so that he was in a sitting position against the porch wall. He was still bound at the ankles. Lucas stood before him.

Smalls rubbed at his raw wrists and watched Lucas as he drank deeply from the plastic water bottle. Lucas capped the bottle and tossed it to Smalls. He had a long drink.

Lucas picked up the wallet off the floor, opened it, and examined the Maryland driver’s license inside. The name said Louis McGinty. The photo matched, but the license’s graphics were smudged and not quite right.

“What’s your real name?”

“Louis Smalls.”

“Billy’s?”

“Billy King.”

“Where is he?”

“With a woman, I expect.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know. I don’t even know if he’s coming back.”

Lucas believed him. “How deep are you in with these guys?”

“Deep.”

“Why?”

“I got no one else,” said Smalls.

“You can do better.”

“He’s my partner.”

“Not anymore.”

Louis looked down at his hands. “What’s gonna happen to me?”

“I’m giving you a chance. That depends on you.” Lucas dropped the wallet in Louis’s lap. “Take the envelope with you, too.”

Lucas crouched down and cut the flex-cuffs from Louis’s ankles.

“Why?” said Smalls.

“I got what I came for. It’s done.”

Smalls stood and gathered his things. He took the keys out of the door lock where they dangled.

“I need to get some things out of my room,” he said.

“No. Keep the car keys and give me the key to the house. Get in your car and drive.”