Джо Горес - Dead Man

“Think he’ll answer?”

“If he doesn’t kill me first. I didn’t even recognize him as one of the hitmen. No premonitions, no sudden flashes of evil — I liked the guy. Thought he was just a cop doing his job. If he hadn’t kept pushing himself at me, I never would have known who he was.”

“He wanted you to recognize him? That doesn’t make sense.”

“Not wanted — needed. If I recognized him, then he would be justified in killing me. I think that does make sense.”

“For a hitman?”

“He’s a complicated guy,” said Dain, “and he’s missed me twice. It’s spooking him.” He shoved the last trap into the gunnysack, said roughly, “But even so he’s not going to make any easy mistakes this time. C’mon, let’s get these into the woods and get them set.”

Vangie nodded, grabbing the second sack, then said abruptly, “Listen, Dain, last night was just...”

“Just last night,” said Dain quickly, “I know. But...”

“Yeah,” she said. “But.”

They both looked around, as if fixing this place and this moment in their minds. Then they started down the road dragging the gunnysacks behind them.

It was still daylight when they shoved off into the channel toward the lake, all four men in the one boat, all of their gear except their weapons far behind them in the camp. They had motored this far, then had lain up here until late afternoon. Inverness did not start the outboard right away.

“We can use the motor getting across the main body of open water, but we’ll have to row the last three miles. Surprise and darkness are our best weapons.”

“Jesus, Inverness, you keep acting like this is going to be some sort of war,” said Maxton. “The boys and I think Dain is dead and the girl is unarmed—”

He had to break off because Inverness had started the motor to head for open water, and couldn’t hear him anyway. Maxton settled for cursing Inverness under his breath.

Vangie had just finished nailing up cleats of staggered lengths of two-by-four to the wall on either side of the door. She had used spikes so they couldn’t be torn out of the wall by anything smaller than, say, a fire-crazed stallion. Dain dropped a five-foot length of two-by-six horizontally into the cleats. This made it a bar across the door which would prevent it from being swung open from the inside.

“Perfect!” he exclaimed.

He hugged Vangie momentarily with his good arm, removed the two-by-six and carried it off the porch to stash it under a bush where it couldn’t be seen but would be readily accessible.

“Okay. Now, where’s that vat of tar your dad used for treating the fishing nets?”.

Vangie pointed. “Around that way — at the edge of the woods. But what good will a vat of tar do us?”

They started walking off across the open area toward the woods on the far side of the knoll.

“I don’t know — yet,” said Dain. “Maybe none. But...”

The venerable cast-iron vat, over six feet in diameter and three feet deep, was set under a sycamore tree below a lip of the knoll. It looked full of water.

“There’s a couple of feet of tar under all that water from yesterday’s storm.”

The huge old relic had a hollowed-out place beneath it where a fire could be laid to bring the tar to a boil. Dain was delighted by it.

“We’ll bail it out and fire it up. If we could—”

“Listen!”

Both were instantly still. Only then to Dain’s ears came the very faintest of mosquito whines from out in the marsh. It stopped even as he heard it.

“Outboard?”

“Yes. Your friend Inverness misjudged how far the sound of a motor carries over water.”

“How far away are they?”

“Three miles, probably. They’ll plan to row the rest of the way in well after dark.”

“So we’ll have enough time to get everything ready — if we’re lucky.”

“And if we’re not,” said Vangie unexpectedly, deepening her voice to quote, “’By my troth, I care not; a man can die but once; we owe God a death.’ Shakespeare,” she added, then burst out laughing.

He laughed himself. “Did I... when I was delirious...”

“Yes.”

“And you remembered it.”

“I liked it. That part about owing a death—”

“Yeah, well, Maxton and company owe some deaths, too,” said Dain, suddenly darkening and hardening.

Vangie started bailing water with an old coffee can, Dain started gathering kindling for the fire beneath the vat. She suddenly stopped, watching him drag up a large oak branch.

“Dain. I don’t want to die.”

“Neither do I.” He gestured out at the swamp. “Neither do they.”

“Then—”

“Then we have to want to not die harder than they do.”

Dusk had come again, and the sky was ruddy with sunset-washed cumulus. The boat grounded behind a very low ridge rising from the marsh, its blunt prow sliding up over the mud without sound. The four men got out, bent over so they could not be seen above the reeds and rushes. Trask had been stuck with the rowing for the last mile. He flexed his hands gingerly.

“Jesus, what blisters!”

“Man jerks off as much as you oughta have calluses half an inch thick,” guffawed Nicky, who’d had gloves.

Maxton followed Inverness as he crawled to the top of the rise. They parted the rushes and peered through. On a spit of land a hundred yards away was the rough-built cabin. Vangie was just walking toward it, alone, careless, unhurried.

“We could wing her from here if we had a rifle,” muttered Maxton regretfully.

“You’re forgetting about Dain.”

“Fuck Dain. He’s lying dead in the swamp somewhere.”

Inverness looked over at him, shook his head. “You’re a fool, Maxton. He’s over there. Waiting.”

“And you’re a fucking paranoid.” Maxton swung around so his back rested on the sloping earth as if were the back of a chair. He took out a cigarette, but Inverness shook his head.

“They might smell the smoke.”

Maxton shrugged, put it away again, his face mean.

“They? You sure are scared of a dead man, Inverness. Why’d you blow away his family in the first place?”

“I was hired. Even now a certain number of big-city cops hire out as hitmen on the weekends. You do one, two a year — good money, easy work...” He gave an easy chuckle. “Usually.”

“You’re a cold-blooded fucker, aren’t you?”

Inverness just stared at him. Maxton looked away first.

Dain was crouched on the floor about three feet from the back wall, working on the end of a floorboard with a small pry bar, when Vangie finally entered the cabin. She left the door open; the windows were both already open. The big red gasoline tank from the flatboat was on the table.

“I can feel them,” said Vangie, “the way I could feel you before you even got to New Orleans. Stay away from the windows in case they have binoculars.”

Dain straightened up, still on his knees. “How long?”

“There’ll be a moon tonight, so the first cloud that covers it after full dark will bring them in.”

“Then let’s finish up here.”

He returned to his floorboard, Vangie began pulling the bedding off the bunks, laying it out like gunpowder trails. With the harsh squawking protest of nails being drawn from wood, Dain raised one end of the plank. Vangie began gutting the mattresses, strewing the dried moss around. He fed the end of one of the blankets down through the slot he had opened.

Vangie suddenly gasped.

“My God, the pirogue! If they see that they’ll know—”

“I moved it up beyond that big cypress and covered it with branches.” He chuckled. “I put the attaché case in it, too.”