Чак Хоган - The Standoff

There was a single standing iron-bar cell beyond the table, five or six feet in from each of the three nearest walls of the small tent. It stood about six feet tall and the bars, Blood noticed, were dug or somehow driven into the solid dirt floor. So were the legs of the heavy wooden table Banish was sitting at, and the poles supporting a thin handcuff bar running the length of it behind. Light was provided by two shaded bulbs hanging overhead, and there were two unlit ceiling spotlights turned toward the empty cell.

Deke started off by crowing a little, gesturing toward the mountain. “Some running around there up top,” he said to Banish. “Helicopters and such. A good lot of shooting.”

Banish turned to look at Deke then, his sooty face revealed. “Nothing for you to be worried about,” he said.

Deke whistled and stepped back in surprise and an unchecked bit of pleasure. “Looks like you got the worst of it. Turpentine ought to bring that right off.”

Banish said, “I appreciate your concern.”

Deke nodded rapidly, slyly. “Glenn got the best of things, didn’t he? He’s a polecat, I told you. I warned you don’t step on his toes. I said he weren’t afraid. What happened up top of Paradise? Hellfire, weren’t it? Wild stories spreading down below, folks starting to whisper. Near to bursting waiting for some word.” He looked at Banish and then at Blood.

“I’ll ask the questions,” Banish said.

Deke resumed his frisky grin. “You want to know what the talk is down there.” He nodded. “Something happened, something you’re worried about now, and you want to know what folks are thinking.”

Banish shook his head slowly. Blood was noticing now a change in Banish’s countenance, a darkening in the man’s manner. It included the sullen way in which he regarded old Deke.

“I want to know about Ables’s daughter,” Banish said. “The oldest one, Rebecca. I want to know if she’s developed.”

His words put a cold, strange needle into Blood’s side, so that Blood couldn’t even imagine how the words fell upon Deke’s ears, except that, for once, the old fool was at a loss even for chatter.

“Come again?” Deke sputtered.

“Developed,” Banish said. “She’s fourteen years old. Puberty, breasts. Coming of age. I need to know from you whether or not she is developed.”

Blood watched Deke’s face redden in disgust. The old man’s jaw started to shake before he could get any words out, then the angry quaking spread to his neck and shoulders and chest. “I don’t know what the hell you federal boys think—” His rage prevented him from finishing; his face showed him imagining the worst. “That what you spend all your damn time up here thinking about?” he said.

Banish stood up out of his chair. He crossed slowly to Deke and reached out and took the collar of the old man’s shirt and twisted it up under the loose flap of his fleshy neck, walking him backward and up against the tight wall of the tent. The old man grabbed at Banish’s fist with both hands. He gripped him with his dirty nails, looking up at him widely, but it was all in vain. Banish showed no anger, no haste. Only deliberateness. Deke’s eyes gaped as Banish leaned in close.

“You think I’m in this for kicks?” he said. The canvas wall was rippling from Deke’s kicking resistance. “One word from me,” Banish said, showing him a forefinger up close, “one word, and your little shack up there, everything you own in your rotten little world — ashes. Rubble. And not a thing you can do about it. Now you answer my goddamn question, and goddamn fast.”

Deke was shaking and staring like a small creature about to be consumed. It was Banish’s cool restraint that made the encounter so threatening. Blood decided that he had had enough. He stepped back without excusing himself and turned and exited through the tent door.

Two marshals waiting there snapped to attention when Blood emerged, then saw that it was only the sheriff. He acknowledged them with a nodding glance and turned to look off the other way. Blood wasn’t so genteel that he couldn’t stomach a little law-minded intimidation, but this particular encounter represented a philosophical difference. Blood saw that the way to deal with these people was not to confront them. A direct challenge to them was like questioning a religious man’s faith or calling his wife a whore. These were not reasonable people; they were proud people, and their ridiculous pride made them blind. The only way to lose a fistfight with a blind man was to come straight at him.

Banish exited the tent holding Deke ahead of him like a scarecrow. “Take him away,” he told the marshals. He turned to Blood then, his face hard-set but otherwise blank.

“It’s called COINTELPRO,” he said. “Counterintelligence program. Designed to disrupt and discredit the opposition.”

Blood looked into his eyes. “What happened to you up on the mountain?”

Banish shook his head, matching Blood’s gaze. “You know Mellis was sent down here to kill us.”

“He was sent down here to kill you.”

“Just follow my lead,” Banish said, close enough now that Blood could see the tiny ridges the burnt black powder made in the skin on his face. Banish’s expression was clear and commanding and hard as plated steel, as with a few simple words he brought Blood into his great reserve of confidence. “Ables thinks Mellis killed Watson,” he said.

Banish jiggled the knob of the open door, stepped firmly inside, then pointed at Blood behind him, a prompt.

Blood said, “Do you think he really would have tried to kill us?”

Banish nodded and closed the door behind them with a click, flipping on the light. He held up a hand to hold Blood where he was, then pointed across the trailer to somewhere near the bed.

“I don’t see how he could have gotten away with it,” Banish said.

Banish nodded deferringly at Blood. Blood looked at him, shrugged lightly, then went with it.

“True enough,” he said.

They were moving farther inside. Banish went first, pulling a chair out from under a table, knocking pieces of wood together. He did not sit but instead continued forward, Blood following. Banish turned his head back toward him.

“Well,” Banish said, “immunity is a small price to pay to get Ables.”

He was walking around the bed, quietly now, circling to the far wall. Blood was behind him.

“True enough,” Blood said again, his voice raised a little. “But can you trust him, Agent Watson? What about his wife?”

Banish stopped and indicated with his chin a hanging wall mirror.

Banish said, “I guess Mellis has a thing for the daughter.”

They stopped at the mirror. This wasn’t exactly what Blood had had in mind. He didn’t so much mind a little revenge — Mellis had tried to shoot them both — but Banish’s particular brand left a sick feeling in his gut. Still and again, he complied.

“So that’s why he wants the others out of the way,” Blood said.

He was looking at Banish’s reflection. The agent’s face showed no change, but the mirror, as with any clear reflective surface, distorted his features ever so slightly, like a wrinkle in an otherwise fine fabric, so that Banish’s sooted face took on a kind of hidden snarl. Banish nodded his head in a pleased fashion.

“I guess twelve months together in a cabin will do that,” he said.

Outside, Blood stood away from the trailer with his hands deep in his coat pockets while Banish closed and locked the door. There was no sense of victory in Banish’s person, no deviousness, no haste. In control and simultaneously out of control. Blood watched him coming toward him through the cold night without a coat on, without even his arms crossed, breath swirling whitely across his face. They were about to go their separate ways.