Thomas Perry - Sleeping Dogs

Angelo studied the face in the window and then began to sweat. “My God,” he said, and realized he had said it aloud in front of this lunatic, but then decided he didn’t care.

“What’s wrong?” asked McCarron. “What is it? Your heart?” He grabbed Angelo’s arm.

“No! Get your hands off me.” Angelo started the car and backed out of the space, then guided the little car around to the exit. He made it down the narrow drive about forty feet, then had to stop to wait for the cars ahead of him to pay the man at the kiosk and drive off.

The station wagon at the head of the line settled its accounts with the man and pulled forward under the raised barrier, but then something very noisy happened to it. At first Angelo didn’t see the bus coming any more than the driver of the wagon did, but just as its nose moved a couple of feet into the street, the bus arrived to occupy the same space. It was on its approach to the bus stop, so it was only inches from the curb when it hit the station wagon. It popped the front bumper off, took the grille and smeared the front end of the station wagon sideways as it came to a stop across the driveway.

Angelo looked for a way out. The curb on both sides of the car was at least a foot high, and if he tried to bump over it he would probably get stuck halfway. His Caddy might have made it, but this little Toyota’s doughnut tires didn’t have a chance. He was stuck in a track like a go-cart in an amusement park. There were two cars and something that looked like the end of the world ahead of him, and at least four or five behind him. Curious people were now beginning to come out of the nearby campus buildings, some of them looking amused, some worried. The man he had seen would wait just long enough for the confusion to peak, and then he would be here. Angelo couldn’t defend himself; he didn’t even have a gun. If he had been in the Cadillac, he could at least have used the phone to call for help. He looked around him. Far down the street to his left was the lighted yellow sign of a bar called The Canal.

He turned to McCarron. “We’ve got a little problem, and here’s what we’re going to do.”

“Problem?” said McCarron. “They’ll have that cleared up in a few minutes.”

Angelo was afraid he was going to break the steering wheel with his bare hands, so he carefully put them in his lap. “I’m going to get out of the car and walk down to that bar with the yellow sign. You slide over, take the wheel—”

“I can’t slide over in this car.”

“You come around, wait for them to clear the exit, drive down to the bar and meet me.”

Angelo’s slow, clear, quiet voice had frightened McCarron more than it would have if he had been screaming and shrieking. He held on to Angelo’s arm with a grip that slowed the circulation. “No. No, you don’t. Tell me first.”

Angelo glared at him. This was when he would have killed him if they hadn’t been stuck here surrounded by people. This was a man who, if left alone, would shortly begin to line his hats with tinfoil to protect his brain from the CIA’s microwaves. But he tried anyway. “There’s a man in that building. Don’t look. I said don’t look. He kills people for a living. He shouldn’t be here. I haven’t seen him for years, and now here he is.”

“See?” said McCarron. “He’s after me.”

Angelo sighed. “He’s not after you, for Christ’s sake. He’s after me.”

McCarron wasn’t to be dissuaded. “I came to you tonight to tell you they want me dead, a hit man shows up and you say he’s not after me?”

“Please,” said Angelo. “Just do it. Come around and take the wheel.”

“No,” said McCarron. “Not a chance.”

Now Angelo grabbed McCarron’s wrist and freed himself of the lunatic’s grip. It was much more difficult than he had anticipated; McCarron was as big as he was. “This is not the kind of man the CIA would send—give him a membership card and security clearance and all that shit. He’s a fucking animal.”

“That’s very reassuring. Look, my life depends on you now. Get us out of here.”

Angelo nearly said, “No, my life depends on you,” but the thought was too distasteful. “This guy doesn’t know you from shit. You’re nothing. The people he works for could take out six of you a day and he still wouldn’t make enough to pay for gas. This is my town. If he’s in my town and nobody told me he was coming, he’s looking for me. Now I’ve got to get to a phone.” He gave McCarron’s wrist a little twist as he threw it back in his lap, and got out of the car.

He walked fast, stepping over the high curb and striking out across the shrubbery to the sidewalk. But then he heard a car door slam, and he listened for the other door to slam and let him know that McCarron had gotten into the driver’s seat. Instead, he heard the loud blare of a car horn. Then there were running footsteps, and an unfamiliar voice yelled, “Hey! Get back in the car! Fight it out at home, you old faggots.” He was mortified more deeply than he had been since he was a child. He felt chills in his spine, inside the very bones, but when he touched his face it was hot.

When McCarron caught up with him, Angelo was so angry that patches and bursts of color were floating across his field of vision. “You couldn’t listen, huh?” The man was dead. He might still be walking around, but now the only gratification that Angelo could promise himself was that McCarron was going to know why he was dying while he died.

“You expect me to sit there and let him kill me? My only chance is if I stick with you.”

McCarron obviously didn’t know that he was beyond having chances. His chance had been the chance to do what Angelo had told him to do. “Shut up,” said Angelo. There was no possibility the Butcher’s Boy hadn’t been looking at him, but why would he be looking for him in a university parking lot? If he wanted Angelo, he would look for the Cadillac in the parking lot at the Vesuvio. Of course he had, but he had seen Angelo come out and get into this little Toyota, and had followed him. Tonight, of all nights of the year, he was away from his soldiers, unarmed and alone.

“Where are we going? Shouldn’t we get off the street?” McCarron asked.

Now it occurred to Angelo that the reason he was in this situation was the call from this lunatic who was dogging his steps, practically stepping on his heels. He glanced at McCarron again, but the suspicion dissolved into simple anger. McCarron was too crazy to have knowingly betrayed anyone. He really was frightened. “No,” said Angelo. “We go to the bar and call for help. If that one gets us into the darkness off the street, we don’t come out again.”

Behind them a horn honked again. This time it was a long, loud bleat that ended with what sounded like someone beating his fist on the horn six times.

Wolf drifted out of the building with a crowd of curious students. The bus driver and the owner of the station wagon were out of their vehicles and standing on the street, so the onlookers began to lose interest. There was no tragedy to participate in, or even carnage to see. The event had already been diminished to the dull haggling in which the drivers served only as temporary representatives of the insurance companies and lawyers who were the real principals. The horns started again, the two drivers in the accident climbed back into their vehicles, the bus driver pulled away from the wrecked car and stopped at the bus stop, and then a few young men pushed the station wagon away from the exit and around the corner to the curb.

Now the horns began in earnest, and Wolf looked at the source of the commotion. There was the little Toyota stalled in the narrow drive to the exit, and behind it there were now eight or ten cars, all honking their horns. Two of the young men who had pushed the station wagon were looking into the gray car and shaking their heads at someone inside. When the someone lunged over the back seat into the front and began to bark at the horns, he understood their problem; they wanted to get in and move the car out of the way, but they were afraid of the big dog.