Dennis Lehane - Prayers For Rain

I panned the binoculars to the southern tip of the cross where it disappeared in tall stalks of withered yellow vegetation rising out of a gaseous marsh teeming with mosquitoes. That definitely seemed the least appealing and most difficult direction from which to approach, unless you really dug malarial infections.

Behind me, Bubba snorted and kicked at the ground, snapped a few thick twigs off a tree.

I turned the lenses on the opposite shore, the eastern tip of the cross. There, the shore looked firmer and the trees were thick and dry and tall. So thick, in fact, that no matter how much I adjusted and readjusted the focus, I could see nothing but black trunks and green moss going back fifty yards.

“If he’s in there, he came from the other side.” I pointed, then shrugged. “I guess we get a glimpse of him on the way out. You got a camera?”

Angie nodded, pulled from her bag a small Pentax with built-in auto lenses and flash adjustments for night shooting.

I smiled. “One of my Christmas presents.”

“Christmas ’97.” She chuckled. “The only one I can safely show in public.”

I caught her eyes, and she held my gaze for a moment in which I felt a stab of sudden, overpowering yearning. Then she dropped her eyes, a flush of heat rose up my face, and I went back to the binoculars.

“You guys do this sort of shit every day, don’t you?” Bubba said after about another ten minutes. He took another pull from his vodka bottle and burped.

“Oh, sometimes we get car chases,” Angie said.

“What a godawful boring fucking life.” Bubba fidgeted, then absently punched a tree trunk.

I heard a muffled thump from the shed, and a line of lower shingles shook. Miles Lovell, stuck in a pump shed, kicking the walls, as bored as Bubba.

A crow, maybe the same one we’d heard earlier, cawed as it glided low over the bog, swept gracefully around the front of the hut, skimmed its beak over the water, then swooped up and away into the dark trees.

Bubba yawned. “I’m gonna leave.”

“Okay,” Angie said.

His hand swept the trees around him. “I mean, this is great and all, but there’s pro wrestling on tonight.”

“Of course,” Angie said.

“Ugly Bob Brutal versus Sweet Sammy Studbar.”

“Where I’d be,” Angie said, “but, alas, I have a job.”

“I’ll tape it for you,” Bubba promised.

Angie smiled. “Would ya? Gosh, that’d be just super.”

The sarcasm completely eluded Bubba. His spirits picked up and he rubbed his hands together. “Sure. Look, I got a whole bunch of old ones on tape. Sometime we could-”

“Sssh,” Angie said suddenly, and put a finger to her lips.

I turned my head back toward the hut, heard a door close quietly from the far side. I raised the binoculars and stared through them as a man exited the far side of the shed and walked along the plankwood toward the stand of thick trees.

I could only see the back of him. He had blond hair and stood maybe six-two. He was slim and moved with a casual fluid ease, one hand in the pocket of his trousers, the other swaying languidly at his side. He wore light gray trousers and a white long-sleeved shirt rolled up to the elbows. His head was tilted back slightly, and the sound of his soft whistling carried back over the mist and bogs to us.

“Sounds like ‘Camp Town Ladies,’” Bubba said.

“Nah,” Angie said. “That’s not it.”

“Then what is it, you know so much?”

“I don’t know. I just know what it isn’t.”

“Oh, sure,” Bubba said.

The man had almost reached the middle of the planks and I waited for him to turn and look back so I could see his face. The whole point of coming here had been to see who Miles was meeting, and if the blond guy had a car in those trees, he’d be long gone even if we gave chase right now.

I picked a rock up off the ground and arced it out through the trees and over the bog. It dropped into the watery mass of bobbing fruit about six feet to the blond guy’s left and made a distinct plunking sound that we could hear thirty yards away.

The man didn’t seem to notice. He didn’t break stride. He kept whistling.

“I’m telling you,” Bubba said, picking up his own rock, “it’s ‘Camp Town Ladies.’”

Bubba threw his rock, a hefty two-pounder that only reached halfway across the bog but made twice as much noise. Instead of a plunk, we got a heavy splash, and still the blond man showed no visible reaction.

He’d reached the end of the planks, and I made a decision. If he knew someone was following him, he might vanish, but he was going to vanish anyway, and I needed to see his face.

I screamed, “Hey!” and my voice ripped the mist and sullen bog air, sent birds shredding upward through the trees.

The man stopped at the tree line. His back tensed. His shoulder turned ever so slightly to the left. Then he raised his arm so that his hand was held up at a ninety-degree angle from his body, as if he were a traffic cop halting the flow, or a party guest waving goodbye as he left the party.

He’d known we were there. And he wanted us to know it.

He lowered his hand and disappeared into the dark tree line.

I bolted from our stand of thin trees and out onto the soggy shore, with Angie and Bubba right behind me. I’d been loud enough that Miles Lovell would have heard my call across the bog, so our cover was blown in either case. Now our only hope was to get to Lovell while he was alone on a bog, before he could bolt, and scare the truth out of him.

As our heels hammered the plank wood and the sharp scent of the bog turned bitter in my nostrils, Bubba said, “Come on. Back me up, man. It was ‘ Camp Town,’ right?”

“It was ‘We’re the Boys of Chorus,’” I said.

“What?”

I picked up my pace and the hut canted from side to side as we bounded toward it; the planks felt like they’d give way underfoot.

“From the Looney Tunes cartoon,” I said.

“Oh, yeah!” Bubba said, and then he sang it: “Oh, we’re the boys of chorus. We hope you like our show. We know you’re rooting for us. But now we have to go-oh-oh!”

The words, as they boomed from Bubba’s mouth over the still, silent bog, rode up my spine like insects.

As I reached the hut, I grasped the doorknob.

Angie said, “Patrick!”

I looked back at her and froze in her glare. I couldn’t believe what I’d almost done-run up to a closed door with a potentially armed stranger waiting on the other side and been about to throw open the door like I was going home.

Angie’s mouth remained open, her head cocked and her eyes blazing, stunned, I think, by my almost criminal mental lapse.

I shook my head at my own stupidity and stepped back from the door as Angie pulled her.38 and stood to the left, pointed it at the center of the door. Bubba had already pulled his gun-a sawed-off shotgun with a pistol grip-and he stood to the right, pointing it at the door with all the trepidation of a geography teacher pointing out Burma on a dated classroom map.

He said, “Uh, we’re ready now, genius.”

I pulled my Colt Commander, stepped to the left of the doorjamb, and rapped the wood with my knuckles. “Miles, open up!”

Nothing.

I rapped again. “Hey, Miles, it’s Patrick Kenzie. I’m a private detective. I just want to talk.

I heard the sound of something hitting cheap wood inside, followed by the rattle of tools or some metal in a corner.

I knocked a last time. “Miles, we’re going to come in. Okay?”

Something banged up and down against the floorboards inside.

I flattened my back against the wall and reached around to the knob, looked at Angie and Bubba. They both nodded. A bullfrog croaked from somewhere out on the bog. The breeze died and the trees were still and dark.