Who in Hell Is Wanda Fuca? (34 page)

"Back up toward me," he growled. "Real slow." I took one
step backward, relaxing my shoulders, lowering my arms as I moved.

"Up. Up. Keep those arms up. I'll waste you right here."

Imaginary bullet wounds in my back throbbed as I took another step backward,
angling out to the right, around the top of the pile, getting Caroline out of
the direct line of fire.

I was careful not to step on the guy on the ground. Two more steps and I'd
give it a try. I wasn't harboring any illusions. The minute I gave up the
nine-millimeter, Caroline and I were dead.

"That's it, pilgrim. Nice and slow." I took another measured
backward step, trying to relax my arms. I was going to have to be quick. Either
quick or dead.

I never got the chance.

Before I could make my move, Wesley's simian arms snaked around me and
jerked my gun from my felt. In one smooth motion, he thumbed off the safety,
jabbed the barrel into my navel, and put his face right up in mine.

"Heeeeee. We got you now, asshole. Heeeeee."

"Bring that gun over here, Wesley," ordered Frank.

Wesley didn't move. He moved the gun lower, to my groin. His foul breath
billowed in front of his face, painting the surrounding air with the smell of
rotting meat.

"This one here's mine, right, Frank?" He jabbed me hard with the
gun, instantly cramping my abdomen, stealing my breath. I struggled to remain
upright.

"Heeeeeeeeee." He put his nose right on mine. "I'm gonna cut
you. Oh, how I'm gonna cut you."

Caroline started to rise. "Please - "

Wesley took one giant step and kicked her in the face. "Shut up, bitch.
She's gonna fix you good. You wait. When she puts the hooks in you - "

"Bring his gun over here," Frank bellowed. Frank obviously wasn't
a whole lot more comfortable with the prospect of Wesley waving a gun around
than I was.

Caroline moaned, rolling over onto her knees, pawing at her face with both
hands.

Ignoring Frank, Wesley skittered over to his fallen comrade. He yanked a
piece of frozen grass from the ground and put it on the guy's lips. Nothing.

"Marvin's stone dead, Frank. Heeeeee." He gently ran two bony
fingers down the long indentation in the guy's forehead, not stopping just
above the eyebrows but continuing on down the full length of the face, striping
Marvin with his own blood. He looked back up at me.

"This asshole killed Marvin, Frank. This one's mine."

"The ladies will decide," declared Frank. "Gimme that
gun."

Wesley was on automatic pilot. He hopped back over in front of me, bringing
the gun up hard between my legs. This time it doubled me over, but not for
long. He grabbed me by the hair and jerked my head up level to his. He stuck
out his tongue. Not pushed out through his lips, but openmouthed, like he was
saying "aah" for a doctor. His mouth was filled with brown, broken
teeth. I held my breath. I thought he was going to bite me.

With a long, gray-coated tongue, he licked me once, starting at my chin and
moving lovingly all the way up to my hairline, leaving a fetid trail of slime
and saliva in his wake. I shuddered.

"Heeeeee." He stepped back and waited.

I stood still. I knew that if I moved to wipe it off, he'd kill me.

"That's enough, goddammit, Wesley."

Wesley stepped back, rubbing his thighs together. His eyes were glazed. His
breath was coming in short gasps. He raised the gun to my forehead. I closed my
eyes, calling to my father, waiting for whatever came next.

What came next was so out of context my brain refused to process it.

"Do I have to tell the ladies?" Frank asked resignedly.

Behind my eyelids, I heard Wesley's breaths lengthen. I slit one eye and
peeked out. Wesley had moved back three more steps. The gun was at his side. He
was silently wagging his head at Frank. Frank smiled.

"Get the girl."

Wesley stiffened, but kept wagging his head.

"I won't touch the filthy bitch."

Frank sighed.

"You" -  Frank waved the gun at me - "pick up the
girl."

I bent at the waist and pulled Caroline to her feet. She took her hands from
her face. Her nose was bleeding. Bits of grass and debris clung to her hair.
She gazed disbelievingly down at her bloody hands.

"Hands on top of your heads," Frank ordered.

I laced my fingers over my scalp. Caroline still stared at her hands.

"Let's go. This way." He gestured with the gun.

Nudging Caroline before me, I started toward the closer end of the building.
Frank and Wesley fell in behind. Instinctively, I veered left, toward the
darkness.

"Toward the lights," Frank growled. I angled back the other way.

I stepped as slowly as possible toward the small brick building that held
down the center of the yard. I wanted the sixty yards to last forever. I
shortened my stride. Wesley rewarded me with a kick in the kidney. As I
stumbled from the impact, Caroline grabbed one hand onto my belt.

Wesley's electric-motor giggle picked up speed as we neared the building. He
loped around in front of us to get the door. a single trapezoid of yellow light
fell from the interior of the building onto a small cement porch.

Wesley held the door wide.

I hesitated at the doorway. Frank, using his forearm as a club, drove
Caroline into my back and me through the door.

It was stifling in the little building. Ninety degrees, at least. Worn
black-and-white linoleum squares clashed horribly with the yellowed pine
shiplap on the walls. The single room was nearly empty. The walls were bare. An
orange Naugahyde secretarial chair and two gray filing cabinets, their drawers
hanging open and empty, were all that was left. We'd walked in on moving day.

The saunalike heat was being produced by a small, black rectangular
woodstove in the corner. The little stove was working overtime on the enormous
sheaf of paperwork being systematically fed in through the open door by Blanche
Hammer. Eunice leaned in the shadows of the west wall, impassive, knitting
furiously.

Blanche Hammer glanced up only long enough to register mild annoyance and
then resolutely went back to feeding the last of the documents into the fire.
The clicking of Eunice's knitting needles provided staccato percussion to the
dull roaring of the flames. After banking the blaze with a final pyre of manila
folders, Blanche shut the stove door and turned our way.

"Your timing leaves a great deal to be desired," she said.
"Another hour and we would have been gone, and we could have avoided all
this unpleasantness. Most unfortunate."

Her tone was that of a tolerant adult scolding a child. She brushed her
chubby hands together. Either she was trying to remove loose dust, or she was
doing a Pontius Pilate impression. I suspected the latter.

"He killed Marvin, Miss Hammer," blurted Wesley. "Stove his
head in with a pipe."

She pursed her lips thoughtfully and shuffled closer.

"Well, Wesley," she said soothingly, "Marvin was a good boy,
but I'm afraid Marvin had nearly outlived his usefulness anyway." I was
touched by the outpouring of sentiment.

She turned to me, eyeing me closely.

"You were with Tom Romans at the conference, weren't you?" I
didn't answer. No matter. She put it together for herself. "You must be
the inquisitive Mr. Waterman," she said after a minute.

I must have looked surprised. "Your friend, Mr. Knox, with - er - a
little encouragement, was quite informative."

I strained forward. Frank tightened his grip around my throat.

"He was just a harmless old man," I croaked.

"Harmless? Hardly, Mr. Waterman. Mr. Knox was scarcely the type to be
acting of his own accord. It was essential that we knew who else was involved.
One spies at one's own peril, Mr. Waterman. This is a war we are engaged in.
I'm sure you understand."

"Can I have him, Miss Blanche?" Wesley asked impatiently.

"In just a bit," she said distractedly. For the first time, she
noticed Caroline standing behind me. She came closer.

"Now what do we have here?" she said, peering around me.
"This must be the young lady who's been making such a nuisance of herself
down at the transfer station. What's your name, dearie?"

The cultured civility of Blanche's tone gave Caroline false hope. She
straightened her spine, wiped her face with one hand, and worked up her most
imperious tone.

"My name is Caroline Nobel, and if you have any decency, you will tell
these Neanderthals to release Mr. Waterman and me, this instant."

Blanche's face crinkled in amusement. She turned. "Did you hear that,
Eunice? Nosey Miss Nobel insists that we release her this instant."

There was no need to raise her voice. Eunice was at her elbow. She'd stopped
knitting and was fixed on Caroline like a pointing retriever. She leaned down
and whispered at length into Blanche's ear. Blanche listened patiently. Eunice
straightened up, gazing expectantly at Blanche.

"If you must," Blanche said. "But you'll have to be quick
about it."

Blanche turned her attention to me. Eunice began rooting around furiously in
her knitting bag. Blanche smiled sweetly at Caroline.

"I'm afraid, Miss Nobel, that allowing the two of you to leave is out
of the question. It was thoughtful of you, however, to give us this last
opportunity to tie up our loose ends. We do like to keep things neat, if we
can. What with the boys going their separate ways and the greedy Mr. Short out
of the picture, you two were just about the last two worrisome creatures left
in the forest, so to speak. Were we to allow you two to leave here tonight,
why, that could put an end to our work, and we couldn't have that, could we?
There's so much more to be done. I'm sure you understand."

"More PCBs to dump."

"Oh no, Mr. Waterman, I'm afraid your infernal meddling has put a
temporary end to that. For the time being, we'll just have to go back to
recycling oil, like we've always done. It's a very important service, you know.
I can't tell you how many people still pour their used motor oil down the storm
drains, never thinking that the drains run directly back into our precious
waters."

She put one finger coyly along her cheek. "When things calm down, well,
we'll see," she added. "Now - " She looked to Frank and Wesley.

"How can anybody who's supposedly so concerned about our waters justify
illegal dumping toxic waste?" I asked quickly, trying to buy time.

"Two steps forward and one step back, Mr. Waterman. Compromises have to
be made. The environment has become big business. It took big business to
despoil the land; it will take big business to return the land to its former
splendor. You wouldn't believe how much money it takes to thwart the forces of
corruption."

Her eyes suddenly got black and hard. Her face tightened up. I flinched. The
transformation was too quick. It takes sane people longer than that to go from
one emotion to another.

"I'm afraid Papa left his affairs in something of a mess. He didn't
leave us nearly enough to fix all the damage he'd done." She looked
disgustedly at Eunice. "Not that all of it could be fixed," she
added. "The sins of the fathers, you know."

"That's worth ruining several thousand acres of land?"

"I'm afraid you've got it backward, Mr. Waterman. We've save the land,
not despoiled it. Papa did enough despoiling for all of us." She looked
heavily at Eunice again. "You see, Mr. Waterman, we were going to tell the
EPA about our dumping. Anonymously, of course. We wanted them to find it. It
was vital that they find it. How else would it get cleaned up? We couldn't have
those poisons leaching their way into the soil in perpetuity, now could we?'

My blank expression seemed to encourage her.

"It's the only way they'll do anything, Mr. Waterman. The government
won't save anything, wont' reclaim anything, won't protect anything that
produces even the slightest ripple of economic inconvenience for business,
unless you rub their noses in it." She was on a roll.

"What about the spotted owl?"

"Oh, yes, the dreaded spotted owl," she said sarcastically.
"The Endangered Species Act and all that. Makes good reading. Within sixty
days of shutting down the logging of old-growth forests, do you know what they
did? Interior Secretary Lujan promptly turned around and appointed a special
committee with the power to override the act. In Washington, they're calling
them the God Squad. They're entitled to decide which species they'll allow to
become extinct."

"I don't see how that justifies what you've been doing."

"That's because you, like most of our other well-intentioned citizenry,
are a short-term thinker, Mr. Waterman. I can't begin to tell you the good
we've done with the money we made on that dumping. Buuut" - she drew it
out - "the money from the dumping was only a beneficial side effect. We
hit upon that almost by mistake. All we really wanted to do was to save that
beautiful property from any more useless development. Lord knows we don't need
any more condos or gold courses. We were merely trying to evoke the federal
superfund law. The PCBs were just a way to stop development. We had no idea
about potential profits. Next thing we knew, the money just came rolling
in." Her eyes twinkled. "The Lord provides in mysterious ways."

"The federal superfund law?"

"A wonderful piece of legislation." She clapped her hands lightly.
"It says that property owners are responsible for the cleanup of any toxic
elements found on their property. Contaminated property can't be sold or
developed until it gets a clean bill of health from the EPA. That piece of
property will be tied up for decades to come." She smiled at the thought.

"It was already tied up in court. You didn't have to - "

    "That was us. Who else was going to
do it? The government? Don't make me laugh. The tribe? Lately, they're nearly
as bad as the government. It's costing us a fortune to keep them in court -
those mercenary lawyers have no sense of moral purpose. And do you know what we
get for trying to stem the tide of development?" She didn't wait for an
answer. She was screaming now. "Legal bills. That's what we get. We lose.
We always lose. They own the courts. The developers always win. It was our
turn. Our turn."