The Five (49 page)

He eased the safety off his pistol and cracked the door open. Stereo wasn’t in a mood for caution; he pushed out like a barking battering-ram. Then True walked onto the shaded porch and looked for the car that wasn’t there.

Only dust, and Stereo in the middle of the road, legs splayed, barker aimed toward the south.

The two generators created a continuous thunder. It echoed off the rocks. True looked to his right at the pair of trailers. The dust didn’t go that far. He might be a little nearsighted, but he could see a VW van parked in front of one trailer. Alongside the other was an ugly old hulk that looked like an AMC Gremlin, up on four blocks. A friend of his had owned one of those in college. A death-trap, True had called it when parts fell out of the engine one day as it was being driven. Parked beyond the Gremlin was a motorcycle.

He turned his face toward the south. Stereo had stopped barking and was sniffing at something that scuttled from one rock to another.

Stereo was used to the muffled noise of the generators inside the house, True thought. But only a dog with great ears could detect the sound frequencies of a car or motorcycle through the acoustic tiles.

A car had pulled up in front of the house and then backed away. Probably had turned around on the other side of the snakespine curve. Its driver had surely noted the end of the road where the trailers sat.

True rechecked his cell. No bars, no service in this box canyon.

“What’s the problem?” Nomad peered out through the door. He had to talk loud.

“Do me a favor. See if you can get a signal on your phone.”

Nomad tried it. “Nope,” he reported. He saw a shadow pass over True’s eyes. His heart gave a kick. “What is it?”

“Listen,” True said. “We probably need to leave here. Right now.”

“You’re starting to freak me out, man.”

“My job is to keep you alive. If I need to freak you out to do that, I will.”

“I thought your job
numero uno
was to catch Jeremy Pett alive and put him in a psych ward.”

True watched the curve. Dust was still floating up from the road. Wasn’t there a song called ‘Dead Man’s Curve’? He wished he hadn’t remembered that. He made a move for the door, Nomad retreated to let him pass, and as True walked back to the studio where a chorus of ladies still sang he zipped his bag up.

“Guys,” he said, “we’d better hit the road.”

“Oh, man!” Terry cried out. He stopped playing and Gherosimini stopped and Lady Frankenstein stood silent but her red heart was still pumping hard. “We can’t go
now
!”

“What’s wrong?” Ariel asked, getting the distinct feeling from both True and John that all was not right in Blue Chalk.

“We need to hit the road,” True repeated. “Yes. Now.”

“Man, come on!” Gherosimini approached him. “You need to stay for dinner. I make a mean pot of chili and I’ve got some
fabuloso
magic mushrooms to share.”

“We can’t stay for dinner, thank you. Terry, let’s go.”

“
Please
, True!” Terry had swivelled his chair around, unwilling to leave it. “One hour!
Please
!”

Berke said tersely, “Shit’s hit the fan. Am I right?”

True looked at the faces that watched him. They were waiting for an answer. He worked his hand on the leather bag, feeling the reassuring shape of the gun. Not much use against a rifle at long range, though. But they couldn’t stay here. Not forever. Maybe it had been somebody lost, just driving.
Yeah, right
! But it might have been. Everybody believed Jeremy Pett was in Mexico. So why did he think that Jeremy Pett was sitting in his car on the other side of that snakespine curve?
His
car? The white car that had gone past the turnoff? Then what had happened to Pett’s dark blue pickup truck?

“Cool it, Mr. Manager Man,” Gherosimini urged. “Give Terry his hour. Anyway, if you don’t like mushies I want you to try some kickin’ ganja I got last time I was in Jamaica.”

“
Jamaica
?” Nomad asked incredulously. “
You
?”

“Yeah,
me
.” An expression of understanding spread across the old acid-head’s face. He gave a wide grin. “Oh,
man
! Did you think I was…like…
destitute
or something? Far
out
! Listen, back in the ’80s I sold a few of my ideas to Roland and they built some keyboards around them. My accountant says I’m worth more than the Six Million Dollar Man. I’ve never let any of my bandmates know. They’re good guys, but some of ’em are slackers and they’d be on me for money. I take Stereo to Jamaica every year for a couple of months. Love the ocean. Deep-sea fishing, rum, good smokes, all that. Next year I’m having a contractor come out and remodel the place while we’re gone. Converting to solar power. Terry, you play any Roland gear?”

“I’ve got a JV80.”

“I’m in that,” said Gherosimini. “Like I told you, it’s all good.”

True looked down at the floor, at his black wingtips.

He didn’t know what to tell his band. He hoped his mouth would figure it out when he started speaking, because his brain was only doing a half-ass job.

“Berke,” he said, “we’re good here for a while. You know me. I just get a little anxious when we’re not moving.” He directed a quick glance at Ariel, who also knew him. Then he looked at Terry.

“How about thirty minutes?”

Terry thought about it. He cast an eye over the beautiful keyboards that most people in the world never knew existed. So many to play, and so little time.

“I can live with that,” he decided.

“Good. That’s very good.” True nodded, and again he touched the shape of the .38 in his leather bag. It wasn’t much use against a rifle at long range, but it was all he had. A thought came to him. “Ever do any hunting?” he asked Gherosimini. If he was a fisherman, he might be a—

“
Hate
guns,” Gherosimini answered. “Worse than Stereo hates cars.”

“Okay. Just curious.” True smiled at Ariel. “I’m going to go for a walk. Not far. You know I get a little anxious.”

Then he turned away from his band, and he walked toward the front door and the road that led south.

TWENTY-NINE.

He had dust on his wingtips. It was puffing up with every stride. Small stones grated underfoot. Then he caught sight of a second shadow on the ground, coming up behind him, rapidly closing the distance.

When the shadow got in step with True’s, Nomad said, “Are you fucking
crazy
?”

True’s gun was out, held in the right hand down at his side. He kept walking briskly toward the snakespine curve, the sun hot on the right side of his face, his back and his shoulder. Nomad kept up.

“You probably need to go back,” True said.

“You think he’s out there? You think he followed us and he’s sitting out there waiting? If that’s so, what good is it going to do to let him
see
you? You think you’re going to walk right up to him, ask him to surrender to the FBI, and then it’s hero time? Oh,
yeah
! Make me laugh, man. He’ll blow your fucking head off before you can—”

True abruptly stopped and turned on him. “I’ve told you to stop that cursing,” he said, his eyes intense. “You don’t need that to communicate. It’s
low
, and you are
not
low. Get yourself out of the
gutter
, how about it?”

They stared at each other for a few seconds,
mano-a-mano
.

Then True started walking south again, and Nomad lost a step but caught up.

“How’s it going to help us if you get shot?” was the next question. “If you get
killed
, what are we supposed to do?”

“I’m just going to take a look. Very cautiously. I’m going to turkey-peek around that curve.”

“Okay, fine, but if he sees you before you see him—and from what you say about him, that’s what’s going to happen—he’ll put you down, reload and come after us. He might not know your face, but he’ll know you’re with the band. Gun in your hand…he’ll figure it out. Maybe he followed us from the club last night and he parked close enough to watch the motel. Maybe he saw the Yukon leave, and he’s figured that out too. Or maybe—
maybe
—he’s not sitting out there at all. But I wouldn’t want to walk around that curve and find out, because those fu…those bullets can run a lot faster than me.”

True kept going. Nomad said urgently, “How about asking Gherosimini to drive his truck out and scout for us? If he sees anybody waiting, he can get to a phone. Call for help.”

“If Pett’s there, he’s going to figure he has us in a prime position. I don’t think he’ll let anyone through. Would you like to be responsible for that man’s death?”

“The way this is heading, we won’t live much longer to be responsible for anything. Any
fucking
thing,” Nomad said, with gritty emphasis.

“This was a big mistake,” said True. “Coming here. A big, big mistake.”

“You want to tell that to Terry? Hold it.” Nomad caught at True’s white polo shirt and stopped his progress. The sun was fierce. Sweat sparkled on True’s forehead and Nomad felt it on his neck and the back of his Army-green T-shirt. “Don’t go any further. I’m asking you.
Please
will you not go any further?”

“John, I have to do my job.”

“Your
job
, Mr. Manager Man, is to get us
through
.” Nomad got his face right up into True’s. “Whatever it is. Keeping the van going, finding a place to sleep, a place for us to wash our clothes. Making sure nobody gets food poisoning, or if they have to see a doctor on the road you work that out too. Doing the best you can with a fucked-up sound system, or club owners who just don’t give a shit. You tell us we did really well when we all know we sucked, but we’ll do it better the next time. You get us
through
, man. The day-to-day grind. That’s your job. Because you signed on here as much a manager as you did an FBI gun.”

True wore a pained expression. He kept his eyes down. “John—”

“I’m not finished,” Nomad asserted. “Maybe your gung-ho hero boy is around that curve. Maybe he’s not. I hope to God he’s not. You want to save him because he’s sacrificed himself for a cause, because he’s seen the hard battles that took so much out of him. Something you say we’ve never done. Are you
sure
we haven’t? Are you sure we’ve never fought for a cause worth dying for?”

“And what would that be? To make music?”

Nomad shook his head. “To be
heard
,” he said.

They stood together without speaking, their shadows on the earth, the snakespine curve on one side and on the other rocks that echoed the thunder of a storm about to break.

“Get us through,” Nomad told him.

True looked toward the curve. Maybe Pett wasn’t there. If he was…

“I’ll try,” True said. “But if he’s set up with his rifle and he’s ready, he can kill somebody today. Maybe more than one. Even with the tinted glass. We can’t get a lot of speed out of that van, not with the trailer on it. Not much more speed even with it unhooked. He might go for the driver first, or for the tires. Do you hear what I’m saying?”

“I hear.”

“Will you tell the others that, or do you want me to?”

“We don’t want Gherosimini involved. He’ll think he has to do something to help, and he’ll either get himself killed or slow us down. I’m planning on driving as fast as I can out of here. Everybody else needs to get small, as much as they can. That’s not much of a plan, but it’s all I’ve got.”

“Okay.”

“Okay,” True said. He retreated from the curve, regarding it with a watchful eye, and Nomad did the same. Then at a distance they turned around and walked back to the house, the black wingtips and the black Chucks stirring up dust in equal measures.

When they got to the studio, Terry was playing Procul Harum’s ‘A Whiter Shade Of Pale’ on the Vox Continental, and Nomad thought that beautiful song had never sounded so amazing. It brought tears to his eyes, watching Terry put his soul into it. Gherosimini was standing a few paces away, eyes closed, feeling the love.

< >

True beckoned Berke and Ariel over to him, and he began talking to them in a very quiet and serious voice.

After it was done, Nomad saw Ariel nod. She lifted her chin up like a fighter, daring fate. Berke walked away a few feet and put one hand against the wall; she stayed like that for a minute, her face downcast, and then Ariel put an arm around her shoulders and Berke nodded too.

< >

Terry kept playing. Nomad saw True check his wristwatch. Thirty minutes had gone past. True bent down, because one of his shoes must’ve come untied. Then the other’s laces needed some attention too.

Terry finished the song, one of the greatest ever written for the keyboard. He blinked, as if emerging from shadow into sun. He looked around at True and asked if it was time to go, and True said it was, but first he needed to speak to him in the front room. They left the studio, and Gherosimini turned off the central switch, and all the voices went back to sleep.

Outside, as Stereo eyed the Scumbucket and readied himself for the hated sound of the engine, they wished Gherosimini well. Ariel told him she hoped he finished Ground Zero, and he said again that it was a work-in-progress. He asked them if they wanted any smokes for the road, and True had never been so tempted in his life but he said no thanks. They got into the van: True behind the wheel, Terry in the passenger seat, Ariel behind him and Nomad on the other side, with Berke in the back. Nobody spoke about the arrangement; it just happened. They would go out the same way they came in.

The engine fired, Stereo barked, Gherosimini waved, and True drove ahead to a place where he could back the trailer up and turn them around. Stereo kept barking and Gherosimini waved again—no, a salute this time—as they passed by. The dust welled up. Gherosimini and his dog were lost from view. True put his gun in his lap. He said, “All this may be for nothing. He may not be there, okay? But when I come out of that curve, I’m going to have my foot to the floor.” He was already gaining speed. The trailer groaned. “I want everybody
small
. Down on the floorboard. Tuck your elbows in and get your knees up. Hell, get your heads up your butts if you can.”

“Kinky,” said Berke, but her voice trembled.

“Thank you,” Terry said, as they entered the curve.

“For what?” True asked. The engine was roaring, as much as it could. The Scumbucket vibrated and the trailer slewed.

“For giving me time,” came the answer.

True was fighting the wheel. The trailer pulled at the van and wanted to go sideslipping off into the rocks, but he held it on the edge.

< >

They came out of the curve.

Jeremy Pett was not there.

Ariel started to lift her head. True said sharply, “Everybody stay down!” The Scumbucket’s speedometer needle gave up the ghost and started flipping back and forth across the numbers like a runaway metronome. Banners of dust flew back beneath the wheels. They went into another curve and then up a rise from the bottom of a gully. Loose rocks clattered against the Scumbucket’s sides. True kept the speed up, as something in the engine began to emit a high-pitched whine.

They crossed the rough divide between dirt road and cracked asphalt, a jolt that made the van shudder and the trailer wag like Stereo’s tail. Then they were coming around a sharp bend, and True didn’t know if he could hold the van on it at this speed, so he tapped the brake just a fraction, just enough to keep them from flying off into the rocks, and as they whipped around the bend there was the abandoned gas station with its antique pumps and parked at an angle blocking the road in front of it a white car.

A Honda, True thought as he clenched his teeth, determined in the next onrushing second to jerk the wheel to the left and get by that car even if he scraped both vehicles down to the smoking metal.

Bastard stole himself an Accord.

A bullet came through the windshield.

It made a hollow
pop
as it pierced the glass, and a second
pop
as it continued through Nomad’s window. With that, True realized Pett was on the right, maybe among the remains of the houses. He heard the front right tire blow, and then the Scumbucket pitched down on that side like a lamed horse and True lost control of the wheel.

They ran up over shale and rubble and crashed into the gas pumps, which sheared away in red whirlwinds of rust. Something metal caught up under the van’s belly and seized it, and the engine screamed like a voice in agony. Another bullet shattered Terry’s window and sent fragments of glass flying over him at True. The Scumbucket dragged itself to a halt, throwing sparks from beneath.

“Stay down! Stay down!” True shouted. He thrust his arm over Terry’s glass-cut scalp and fired two shots at the ruins and the rocks, just to let the sergeant know he was packing. But exactly where the sergeant was, he couldn’t tell, and he thought that by the time his eyes found Jeremy Pett he would be dead.

Berke, the tough girl, was gasping for breath. Nomad called out, “Berke? You okay?” but she didn’t answer. A bullet came through Ariel’s window, making a neat round hole.

True feared Pett was going to pick them to pieces. He felt blood trickling from a glass cut over his right eye. They had to get out of here. Get inside the building. Most of the front of it was wide open to the world. The interior was shadowy, but he could make out a tangle of stone rubble and collapsed roof beams. Make Pett come to him, so he could use the .38 at close range.

Some plan, he thought. And the idea of taking Pett alive, and getting him help…

“Listen up!” he shouted. “We’re going to—”

He paused as a streak of heat zipped past his mouth and put a hole through his window that spread out a spider’s web of silver cracks. He heard the whine of the ricochet off the building’s stones. He slid down in his seat.

“We’re going to get inside there!” he continued. They had a distance of about fourteen feet from the van to the building. “I’ll get out first and cover you! Everybody’s going to have to slide through my door! Fast as you can!” The other option was for them to go out the door on the right side, which would put them directly in Pett’s sights. “Wait for me to tell you to move! Got it?” He burned a few seconds getting his nerves in order, and then his next-best plan went up in smoke because he couldn’t get the driver’s door open. The handle had no tension; the cable was broken. A knifeblade of panic twisted in him. This was the moment every man responsible for human life dreaded. He had to do something, and do it fast.

“John! Watch your eyes!” True put two more bullet holes through the large window on Nomad’s side, and then Nomad got the idea and used both feet to kick the rest of the tinted glass out. True slid down again, opened his bag for more ammo and reloaded four chambers. He had another box of bullets, so he was okay there. “Terry, you stay where you are! I’m shooting over your head! Everybody else out!
Go
!”

As they scrambled out as best they could, True got off five shots. Pett would know what kind of pistol he had, from the sound. It wasn’t going to put the fear in him, but it might keep his head down.
Might
.

True reloaded. He heard Pett’s rifle fire, but where the slug went he didn’t know. Shooting into the building, maybe. Shooting at the Band That Will Not Die. This time, they might.

“Terry! You okay, buddy?”

“Yeah. I think.” His voice was shaking. “I’m cut up a little bit.”

“Me too. I want you to crawl between the seats and get out. I’ll cover you. Ready?”

“Yeah.”

“Go!”

Terry crawled back and pushed himself through the window. True began firing through the passenger side, three shots at a ghost. Terry tumbled to the ground like a laundry bag. As he stood up to run for shelter, he was hit in the upper back on the right side and he gave a cry, almost of nothing more urgent than surprise, as he went down.

< >

He is where he needs to be. He is where he has been coming to. He has arrived, and today will belong to him. Gunny is with him in the rocks, close by his shoulder. His rifle is warm and it smells good. He is very glad that their van didn’t hit his car, because he needs it to get to Mexico. His journey will begin after this is ended. Like they say…today is the first day of the rest of your life.