Макс Коллинз - You Can’t Stop Me

Harrow looked toward where the sun was lowering, about to drop behind the hills for the night. “He had kids, Archie.”

“Yes, he did. They were never any trouble to me either.”

“Whoever did this killed Reid’s kids.”

“I know. World’s a shithole, and it can suck a kid down fastest of all.”

For a shithole, the world looked beautiful right now, dusk settling in on the recluse’s perch with gentle tones of blue and gray.

“Archie, you see anything that night? Hear anything?”

“If I had, don’t you think I’d’ve told Roberto?”

“No.”

“Why, because I’m a nasty old hermit? A misanthrope who’s given up on the world and everything in it?”

“No. You love that old hound dog, for instance. And he’s part of the world.”

“You think you got a bead on me, J.C.?”

“I think you’re hiding in plain sight, Archie. I think you’re waiting to see which catches up with you, first — people who come around to kill you, or just the darkness that eventually swallows us all.”

He stared a long time at Harrow, who could see the shadows of approaching night washing over the old man, and they just stood there smoking.

Finally, Archibald Gershon said, “Why don’t you come in for a beer?”

“Thought you’d never ask.”

The living room was large and knotty pine, lined with built-in shelves holding volumes of as many varieties as a well-stocked college bookstore — novels, both popular and literary from many decades, non-fiction works on politics and world history, philosophy, poetry, engineering.

Where there weren’t book shelves in the living room, gun racks displayed a collection of firearms a crazy cult might envy. A very comfortable-looking, well-worn brown leather lounger on a braided rug on the bare wood floor faced a big flat-screen television, fifty-something inch easy, as if it were an altar. A table by the chair had beer cans and a fat satellite TV guide, a nine millimeter Browning, and a John D. MacDonald novel cracked open face down.

With the exception of the beer cans, however, the place was tidy, and the kitchen — which opened onto the big library/TV area — had a Formica table dating to I Love Lucy days, where they sat and had Schlitz from the can, very cold. The hound curled up under the table at its master’s feet — when Harrow came in, it hadn’t even growled, sensing Gershon’s approval of their guest.

“Breeze was out of the west that night,” Gershon said, after a particularly deep swig of Schlitz, “and carried the shots over here — it was like they were in my own yard.”

“No question it was gunshots — not a vehicle backfiring, kids playing with fireworks...?”

Gershon gave him a look. “I’ve heard plenty of guns in my lifetime, J.C.”

“Enough to identify them by sound?”

“This was a handgun. Loud. I’d say a .357.”

“You do know your guns.”

Gershon twitched a smile. “You’ve already gathered you aren’t the only one retired from public service.”

Harrow had already suspected that it wasn’t company that Gershon feared so much as The Company. As in CIA.

“When I heard those shots,” he was saying, “I already knew it was too late to do any good. I’m not heartless, J.C. — I knew there were kids over there. But there was no saving anybody.”

Harrow nodded.

“Still, I grabbed up the Remington and got outside.”

“Could you see the perp leaving? Did you take a shot at him?”

The old boy shook his head, the silver locks swinging. “I meddled in other people’s affairs a long time ago — I try not to do it anymore.”

Harrow said nothing.

“Come on, J.C. Think it through. He’d killed who he’d come to kill, by the time I heard those shots. If I’d gone over there, they’d be dead anyway. If I shot the guy, who knows who he is or he’s working for? No. I have enough on my plate just keeping my own ass alive.”

“Why do you bother, Archie? Keeping your ass alive, if the world is such a shithole?”

“Why, J.C. — if I was dead? Something terrible would happen.”

“What?”

He grinned. “I’d miss your show.”

Harrow grinned back at him. “Okay, Archie. You didn’t take a shot. But what did you see through that scope of yours?”

He swigged more beer. “You’re right — I did watch as the guy drove off.”

“What direction?”

“East.”

“So, then... he drove right by here.”

Gershon swigged again.

“What did you see, Archie?”

“Late model Ford F-150.”

Harrow tried not to show any reaction. “Color?”

“Blue — light blue.”

Another hit.

Still, Harrow remained impassive. “See the driver?”

“Not really. Probably a man. That’s about all I got.”

“What makes you say it’s a man, then?

Gershon shrugged. “Just didn’t feel like a woman. Loud gun like that mag, truck like that... No, I think it was a man, all right.”

“What else did you get, Archie?”

Gershon took another gulp of beer.

“Come on, Archie — what is it you’ve been trying to decide whether or not to share?”

“...You want the license number?”

Harrow just looked at him.

“Oklahoma plates,” he said, and gave the number to Harrow, who wrote it down in his mini-notebook.

Harrow shook his head. “You memorized the number?”

“Sometimes having a good memory comes in handy. Other times you’d trade it for being able to forget.”

“And sometimes,” Harrow said, “memory is all you have.”

“Truth in that,” the old man said.

Harrow finished his beer, then stood. “Look, Archie — I’ve got to go run this plate. You got anything else for me?”

“I don’t think so.”

But Harrow couldn’t quite let go. “Why didn’t you tell anyone? Just call your friend Roberto?”

“No phone.”

“It’s just... Archie, goddamn it — somebody might have caught this bastard, if you’d just notified the police.”

“If that’s all, J.C., I got shows to watch, and books to read.”

Harrow shook his head. “None of this means anything to you?”

“You lost your family, didn’t you?”

“...Yeah.”

“Ever want to cash it in after that?”

Harrow sighed. “I could use another smoke.”

The old man provided one, and the two went back outside where dusk had deepened to purple evening.

“I might want to cash it in,” Harrow said, “but I can’t think that way. I have to stop this son of a bitch before he does this sick thing again, and again.”

“See, that’s why I like you on TV, J.C. Why other people like you on TV.”

“Huh?”

“You don’t give a shit about being a star or having your fifteen minutes of whatever-the-hell. You’re the only person on television with an unselfish motive for being there.”

“Oh, I have a selfish motive, Archie. I want justice for my family.”

“Not revenge?”

“Semantics.”

Gershon chuckled dryly, letting smoke swirl out. “People think I’m crazier than a shithouse rat, living out here. I survived things I never should have, and that survival’s so ingrained in me, I couldn’t ever punch my own ticket. So, here I sit on this goddamned hill just waiting to die.”

“Or for someone to come kill you?”

“That’s just one way of dying.” He looked out into the gathering darkness. “What those ‘good’ people do out there to each other, that doesn’t mean squat to me anymore. Yet I’m still here. Waiting.”

Harrow stubbed out the cigarette under his heel, but before he turned to go, he asked, “Were you in Dallas in 1963, Archie?”

“...Don’t believe everything you hear.”