David Wiltse - Bone Deep

Taking things from people as rich as these wasn't hardly no crime at all. It was a redistribution. Kiwasee never hurt nobody, never threatened nobody, never scared nobody. Hell, he never even saw nobody.

Which was all the more reason he didn't deserve the kind of treatment that ol' Pussy McNeil gave him. He had shamed Kiwasee, made him plead and beg and cry like a child-and scared the shit out of him too. Some insults a man wasn't going to swallow, some shit he wasn't going to take, whether it came from a brother in the projects or a honky cop in the suburbs. Course, he wasn't going to jump into McNeil's face, be a fool about it. There was ways and there was ways.

He was out of the house in five minutes, politely closing the window behind him. There was more stuff he could have taken, but this wasn't a business call. He was there for pleasure, and when he had what he needed, he left.

He was aware of the car only after he had driven past it, just an impression of a car's shape, mostly hidden and ohscured by the trees, a dull glow of metal caught for a fraction of a second in his headlights.

It wasn't a cop car, that's all he knew for certain, but it was all he really needed to know. Some people wanted to park in the woods, hump away in the back seat, that didn't bother him. Wasn't going to be no cop hiding in the woods at two in the morning, pulled up in there with the stickers and the branches to scrape paint off, not in Clamden, you could bet on that. He chose to ignore the car and drove a quarter-mile past it.

There was a spot to pull off the road along in there omewhere-he had noticed it when McNeil drove him past it. Kiwasee missed nothing when it came to his trade. That chief of police probably thought Kiwasee was stupid because he couldn't read a map, but Kiwasee didn't need a map, he had one in his head. Once he saw a place, he knew it inside and out and knew more details about it than the people who lived there. Where you going to park your car? How you going to get away if your car is blocked? If you cut through the woods, where you going to come out'? If somebody else driving, where can they slow down and pick you up so nobody sees? How much open ground you got to cross before you get to the back of the house? If you got to jump, where you going to land? If you got to run through the woods in the middle of the night with somebody screaming for the police, you better have more than just a map in your head, you better have a compass and built-in radar, too. It was a clear-cut for the power lines, twenty feet of open space that the electric people kept clean so they could get their trucks in there to work on the pylons if they needed to. Kiwasee pulled his car into the clear-cut, drove straight ahead with only his parking lights on so nobody saw any strange lights coming up the trees from the middle of the woods, and stopped when the incline began. You start driving up and down hills with nothing but dirt and leaves under your tires, you asking for trouble. You asking to get stuck for sure. He looked for a break in the trees and pulled in, driving straight over several saplings and a bush. The car wasn't his in the first place, he didn't care if it got scratched or not. After tonight's work he would drive it to New Jersey, drop it off in Jersey City or Newark, take a PATH train to New York City, head uptown or to BedStuy where he had a cousin. It was time to get out of Bridgeport. 01' Pussy would be looking for him there for sure if tonight worked. He'd never find him in New York. The whole New York City police force would never find him there.

He didn't even pause after stepping out of the car-he knew where he was, he knew where McNeil's house was, all he had to do was hike over this hill and the next one. He'd plant a little gift in McNeil's garage and give the chief another phone call. Chief would have been there once already, he'd bet on it. Chief would have been there, nosed around, probably didn't know what he was seeing, but he got his interest up, Kiwasee was certain of that. Tell the man he missed it the first time, make him feel foolish, then tell him exactly what to look for and exactly where to look for it. Kiwasee couldn't have told him during the first phone call, of course, because he hadn't planted it yet. Didn't even know what he would plant until tonight's work. But that was okay, make the chief work for it, make him suspicious, let him start noticing things about McNeil on his own. Like whose window ol' Pussy be jumping out of at three in the morning. Chief of police ought to be interested in that, no matter how dumb he is.

Kiwasee was in and out of McNeil's garage, smooth as a knife through butter. Left a little gift for him. A little token of Kiwasee's wishes. Some payback. If it worked perfect, old Pussy'd find himself in trouble up to his eyeballs. Scare him just as bad as a garage full of gas, make him soil hisself too. Make him know what it felt like, have some assholes all over you for something you never done. And if it didn't work perfect, at least get somebody to look at old Pussy. Get the chief to move his lard ass and take a good hard look at McNeil, let him come to his own conclusions.

Kiwasee was away from the garage, into the trees, and heading back through the woods. He heard a splash, then the sound of something moving through water, and at first he thought it was a dog, then realized a dog would be bounding after him. Kiwasee stood very still and listened, trying to make sense of the sounds. Whatever it was had left the water and was making a considerable noise thrashing through the underbrush. He could hear the sounds ol' branches breaking, sounded like a goddamned bear crashing around, or maybe an elephant. Wasn't no bears in Connecticut, though, he knew that. Wasn't no bears in the whole damn country outside the zoo, far as he knew.

Wasn't his business, of course, but he didn't like surprises in his line of work, which made it his business, something going on that close to his line of escape. How'd he know it wouldn't work its way closer so that it'd be standing right in front of him on the way back to the car?

Kiwasee moved toward the sound as quietly as he could. Not that he needed to be too quiet, the thing was making too much noise on its own to hear anything Kiwasee did. It was hacking at underbrush now, something swishing through the air and clipping off branches, tearing bushes. Kiwasee cleared the hill, stood beside a tree trunk and looked.

The moon was bright and it was easy to see motion, harder to figure out what it was. The moon's light reflected off a body of water at the base of the hill, doubling its illumination. A pond had formed in a streambed, the water swelling outward to create a sort of miniature swamp, and in the middle of the swamp, separated from dry ground by no more than a few yards of water, were three miniature islands, each based around a single large tree. The islands seemed to be impassable thickets of thorns and brambles hugging the trunk of the tree and intertwined with each other so completely as to make penetration by anything larger than a rabbit impossible.

But something was on one of the islands now, and it wasn't no rabbit.

Kiwasee saw the shape move, rising and then coming abruptly down again, vanishing in the middle of the thicket. He heard metal strike stone, heard it rasp against rock, then hiss its way into dirt. Sonofabitch is digging a hole, Kiwasee said to himself. Don't know what for, but ain't nobody going to find it there. Ain't no picnickers wading through water to sit in a pile of thorns. Even a dog going to stay out of that mess.

Kiwasee moved closer, and when the digging paused, he could hear the noise of water rushing over rocks. The base of the islands had been shored up with large fieldstones. A few dozen yards from the islands Kiwasee could just make out the outline of a small wooden bridge with a handrail jutting over the stream. It's a goddamned park, Kiwasee thought, or preserve or some such Connecticut shit. Sure as hell wasn't the kind of place you'd go to throw a football. Nothing but trees and bushes and rocks and poison ivy. Wasn't even any goddamned paths, at least none that he could see by this light. Folks in Clamden had so much land for themselves they was setting some aside for the squirrels. Let's take a walk in the woods and get ticks all over us.