Jeffery Deaver - The Coffin Dancer

“He’s scary. Les go.” Bear Man wanted to get back to his A &P baby carriage.

“I need help,” Cats muttered. “I hurt, man.”

“There’s a clinic over on -”

“Can’t go to no clinic ,” Cats snapped, as if they’d insulted him.

So he had a record, and on the street refusing to go to a clinic when you were this sick meant you had a serious record. Felony warrants outstanding. Yeah, this mutt was trouble.

“I need medicine. You got some? I pay you. I got money.”

Which they normally wouldn’t’ve believed except that Cats was a can picker. And fucking good at it, they could see. Beside him was a huge bag of soda and beer cans he’d culled from the trash. Leon eyed it enviously. Must’ve taken two days to get that many. Worth thirty bucks, forty.

“We don’t got nothing. We don’t do that. Stuff, I mean.”

“Pills, he means.”

“You wanna bottle? T-bird. I got some nice T-bird, yessir. Trade you a bottle fo’ them cans…”

Cats struggled up on one arm. “I don’t want no fuckin’ bottle. I got beat up. Some kids, they beat me up. They busted something in me. It don’t feel right. I need medicine. Not crack or smack or fucking T-bird. I need something stop me hurtin’. I need pills!” He climbed to his feet and teetered, swaying toward Bear Man.

“Nothing, man. We don’t got nothing.”

“I’ma ask you a las’ time, you gonna give me somethin’?” He groaned and held his side. They knew how crazy strong some crackheads were. And this guy was big. He could easily break both of them in half.

Leon whispered to Bear Man, “That guy, th’other day?”

Bear Man was nodding avidly though it was a fear reflex. He didn’t know who the hell Leon was talking about.

Leon continued, “There’s this guy, okay? Was trying to sell us some shit yesterday. Pills. Pleased as could be.”

“Yeah, pleased as could be,” Bear Man said quickly, as if confirming the story might calm Cats down.

“Didn’t care who saw him. Just selling pills. No crack, no smack, no Jane. But uppers, downers, you name it.”

“Yeah, you name it.”

“I got money.” Cats fumbled in his filthy pocket and pulled out two or three crumpled twenties. “See? So where this motherfucker be?”

“Over near City Hall. Old subway station…”

“I’m sick, man. I got beat up. Why somebody beat me up? What I do? I’s pickin’ some cans’s all. And look what happen. Fuck. What his name?”

“I don’t know,” Bear Man said quickly, squiggling up his forehead as if he were thinking fiercely. “No, wait. He said something.”

“I don’t remember.”

“You remember… He was looking at my bears.”

“An’ he said something. Yeah, yeah. Said his name was Joe or something. Maybe Jodie.”

“Yeah, that was it. I’m sure.”

“Jodie,” Cats repeated, then wiped his forehead. “I’ma see him. Man, I need somethin’. I’m sick, man. Fuck you. I’m sick. Fuck you too.”

When Cats had staggered off, moaning and muttering to himself, dragging his bag of cans behind him, Leon and Bear Man returned to the curb and sat down. Leon cracked a Voodoo ale and they started drinking.

“Shouldn’ta done that to that fella,” he said.

“Who?”

“Joe or whatever his name was.”

“You want that motherfucker round here?” Bear Man asked. “He dangerous. He scare me. You want him to hang round here?”

“Course I don’t. But, man, you know.”

“Yeah, but -”

“You know, man.”

“Yeah, I know. Gimme the bottle.”

Hour 25 of 45

SITTING NEXT TO JODIE ON THE MATTRESS, Stephen was listening through the tap box to the Hudson Air phone line.

He was listening to Ron’s phone. Talbot was his last name, Stephen had learned. He wasn’t exactly sure what Ron’s job was but he seemed to be an executive with the charter company and Stephen believed he’d get the most information about the Wife and Friend by listening to this line.

He heard the man arguing with someone from the distributor who handled parts for Garrett turbines. Because it was Sunday they were having trouble getting the final items for the repairs – a fire extinguisher cartridge and something called the annular.

“You promised it by three,” Ron grumbled. “I want it by three.”

After some bargaining – and bitching – the company agreed to fly the parts into their Connecticut office from Boston. They’d be trucked to the Hudson Air office and arrive by three or four. They hung up.

Stephen listened for a few minutes longer but there were no other calls.

He clicked the phone off, frustrated.

He didn’t have a clue as to where the Wife and Friend were. Still in the safe house? Had they been moved?

What was wormy Lincoln thinking now? How clever was he?

And who was he? Stephen tried to picture him, tried to picture him as a target through the Redfield telescope. He couldn’t. All he saw was a mass of worms and a face looking at him calmly through a greasy window.

He realized that Jodie’d said something to him.

“What?”

“What’d he do? Your stepfather?”

“Just odd jobs mostly. Hunted and fished a lot. He was a hero in Vietnam. He went behind enemy lines and killed fifty-four people. Politicians and people like that, not just soldiers.”

“He taught you all this, about… what you do?” The drugs had worn off and Jodie’s green eyes were brighter now.

“I got most of my practice in Africa and South America but he started me. I called him ‘WGS.’ The World’s Greatest Soldier. He laughed at that.”

At ages eight and nine and ten Stephen would walk behind Lou as they trooped through the hills of West Virginia, hot drops of sweat falling down their noses and into the crooks of their index fingers, which curled around the ribbed triggers of their Winchesters or Rugers. They’d lie in the grass for hours and be quiet, be still. The sweat glistened on Lou’s scalp just below the bristly crew cut, both eyes open as they sighted on their targets.

Don’t you squint that left eye, Soldier.

Sir, never, sir.

Squirrels, wild turkeys, deer in season or out, bear when they could find them, dogs on slow days.

Make ’em dead, Soldier. Watch me.

Ka-rack. The thud against the shoulder, the bewildered eyes of an animal dying.

Or on steaming August Sundays they’d slip theCO 2cartridges into their paint-ball guns and strip down to their shorts, stalking each other and raising molehills of welts on their chests and thighs with the marble-sized balls that hissed through the air at three hundred feet per second, young Stephen struggling to keep from crying at the awful sting. The paint balls came in every color but Lou insisted on loading with red. Like blood.

And at night, sitting in front of a fire in the backyard as the smoke curled toward the sky and into the open window where his mother stood cleaning the supper dishes with a toothbrush, the taut little man – Stephen at fifteen was as tall as Lou – would sip from the newly opened bottle of Jack Daniel’s and talk and talk and talk, whether Stephen was listening or not, as they watched the sparks flying into the sky like orange lightning bugs.

“Tomorrow I want you to bring down a deer with just a knife.”

“Well…”

“Can you do that, Soldier?”

“Yessir, I can.”

“Now look here.” He’d take another sip. “Where d’you think the neck vein is?”

“I -”

“Don’t be afraid to say you don’t know. A good soldier admits his ignorance. But then he does something to correct it.”