Cold in July (25 page)

“Me and Dane ain’t gonna get killed so you can get your shot
in, but if it’s within our power he’s yours.”

Car lights curved around the road and we darted into the
high grass and peeked out. It was the gray Vette.

“The guy from the video store,” I said.

We watched the taillights go brighter as it slowed, turned
onto the concrete drive.

“I think we found our boys,” Jim Bob said.

When we reached the driveway, we stopped short of that and
took to the right of it and moved through some brush and scrub trees. The
closer we came to the house, the clearer the terrain became, and we finally
came to a spot where the brush ended and there was a row of briars like
concentration camp barbed wire, and beyond that a scattering of tall pines. Off
to the far right, the land and brush tumbled into a ravine. On the other side
of the drive it was the same way with the brush ending and the cleared land and
the scattered trees taking over, only there was no ravine on that side.
Artfully arranged at the end of the drive between the pines was a tall house of
glass and redwood and there were lights on in the house and we could see a
stairs with a man on them, and walking behind him was Freddy. I recognized him
by his bulk and the way he moved—like his old man. The stairs turned at the top
and went behind a wall and they were soon out of sight.

Outside the house there were several men standing around,
five to be exact, and the thin man in the white suit got out of the Vette and a
girl got out on the other side and they went over to join them. I couldn’t tell
much about the girl, but she didn’t seem to be forced. But that didn’t mean
anything. She wouldn’t have been told the entire plan—the shooting part would have
been left out. She was short and had long, black hair to her waist and she
walked with plenty of hip roll and had nice hips for the rolling.

One of the men in the group said loudly, “You pull train,
baby?” The guy in the white suit said, “Speak Mex,” and the man spoke again in
that language, the same question I presume, because the girl laughed musically
and her Si drifted back to us and was followed by male laughter sharp and
desperate as the barking of caged dogs.

Everyone, except a man who looked like a boulder in a suit,
went in the house. The boulder took up a position by the door and folded his
hands in front of him and cupped his crotch like he was weighing his testicles.

“Think she’s a pigeon?” Russel said.

“Probably,” Jim Bob said. “I think we’re going to have to
play it that way. But watch for her. She could be with them and have a gun and
she just might shoot your dick off. You two go toward the house by the ravine,
and I’m gonna cross the drive when I get the chance and come up on the other side.
I’m good at this sneaking stuff.”

“Hear you tell it,” Russel said, “there isn’t anything you
aren’t good at.”

“I don’t whistle too well,” Jim Bob said. “Now remember,
we’ve seen six guys outside, two going up the stairs. That makes eight. But
there might be more inside. And don’t forget the girl. Like I said, she may not
be friendly.

“We’ll do this simple, come up on both sides of the fella at
the door, and whoever gets there first takes him out. I won’t wait on you, and
you don’t wait on me. And the thing then is to get started, to go on in the
house and start shooting any one of those sonofabitches that you see. When you
get inside, move like you mean it. Seek and shoot, upstairs and downstairs.
Keep count of how many you drop, and get the killing in your blood. Get goddamn
good and self-righteous about it because that’s the only way you’ll see it
through.”

“Merciful Jesus,” I said.

“It’s a pisser, ain’t it?” Jim Bob said. “Now, y’all get
started.”

Russel and I eased down into the ravine by sliding on the
slick grass and dry clay that made up the sides. Our feet landed in a thin
trickle of brackish-smelling water and sent up a cloud of mosquitoes that lit
on our faces, hands, backs, and shoulders and sucked blood even through our
shirts. Roots and brush tumbled and twisted across the floor of the ravine,
grabbed at our feet and tried to trip us. Above us, jutting out from the lips
of the ravine, arthritic trees and scrubby brush hid a lot of the thin
moonlight and made our path down there damn dark. Still, we stepped quickly,
and quietly. At least, I hoped we were moving quietly. I couldn’t hear all that
well on account of my blood pounding in my temples.

The scrub brush and trees diminished above us and the light
from the house was stronger than the bad moonlight and it fell down into the
ravine like tainted butter. The ravine went narrow and the left side of it
dropped down and we had to bend low and ease over to the edge of it and poke
our heads up to see exactly where we were.

We were almost even with the front edge of the house, and I
could see the boulder in the suit standing under a yellow bug light on the
front porch. I wondered about him; couldn’t help but think he might be thinking
about what was going on inside the house and wishing he was in on it, but was
stuck instead with guard duty. And maybe he wasn’t thinking about it at all,
didn’t care. Perhaps he was thinking about fast cars and women and the Dallas
Cowboys, the price of special made suits that would fit his boulder-shaped
body.

I looked at Russel.

“Let’s take him,” he whispered.

43

“I’ve got the shotgun,” I said. “I guess I should do it.”
Russel didn’t try to talk me out of it. I waited a second or two hoping he
would, then went over the lip of the ravine with a shell pumped into the
chamber and before I was halfway there the guy torqued and saw me and reached
inside his coat. I was about to fire at him, when Jim Bob, like some kind of
cowboy-hatted ghost, swooped out of the night and hit the man in the side of
the head with the barrel of the sawed-off. The man spun almost around and Jim
Bob kicked his feet out from under him. The man’s head hit the concrete porch
with a soft smack and Jim Bob bent over him, made a quick move with his hand
and stood up.

All in all, the entire undertaking had been relatively
quiet.

I came up alongside Jim Bob, then Russel moved up behind me,
breathing sharply. I looked down at the man on the ground. Jim Bob’s sawed-off
was lying across his chest and underneath the man’s chin was a swathe of
darkness; as I watched it grew broader. Jim Bob had a pocketknife in his hand
and the blade was dripping blood. He closed it on his pants leg, pushed it into
his pants pocket and picked up the sawed-off. “It’s Howdy Doody time,” he said
and jerked the door open and went inside, Russel and I behind him. No one was
there for us to shoot at.

Jim Bob nodded up the stairs, and went that way. Russel went
right and I went left, the shotgun in front of me. I came to a door and opened
it and found a closet. None of the coats tried to get me. I closed the door and
went around the corner and down the hall, and then the world started rocking
and rolling with the sound of gunfire. It was coming from upstairs. I started
to turn, then heard running feet. I whirled and crouched, and one of the men
from the van came beating toward me. When he saw me, he tried to slow down, and
it was like one of those comic takes, where the comedian does a kind of choppy
half-step, half-skid backwards. But this guy wasn’t a comedian. His hand went inside
his coat and it came out with a revolver and I cut down on him with the Ithaca
and took him full in the chest. He spun and went down, but rolled on his back
and got to a near-sitting position and took a shot at me; the bullet burned
along my neck. I pumped another load into the Ithaca and fired again and caught
the guy in the chin and the shot made his head cock way too far back and he
flopped on the floor and the hall filled with the odor of shit and gunpowder.

Shooting had been going on all the while, and I decided to
go on down the hall and see what was there, then go back to the stairs and hope
for the best. I jumped over the dead man and went around the corner expecting
gunfire, but finding only a big empty kitchen with the makings of a sandwich on
the counter. The guy must have been fixing himself a snack when the shooting
started. I ran back up the hall and took a left toward the stairway, saw a blur
of movement, dropped to one knee, and pumped a load into the Ithaca as I did. A
man with one arm dangling limp and awkward at his side, an automatic hanging
from one finger like a knickknack on a hook, stumbled backwards and fell
against one of the big windowpanes that made up the front of the house, and
began to slide down it, leaving a road of blood on the glass. Russel came into
view, walked over to the man, put the .357 to the top of his head and shot him.

“Russel,” I said.

He wheeled on me and the revolver cocked, then lifted up.
His eyes were stoned looking and his face was as white as a Ku Kluxer’s sheet.

“Stairs,” he said.

There was gunfire up there, and when we got to the turn in
the stairway, we found a Mexican. Not the one we were familiar with, but
another. The top of his head was gone.

We went over him, on up fast, then a door came open at the
top of the stairs and there was a scream like a dinosaur in pain, and Jim Bob
came flying out, smashed against the wall and melted onto the landing. He had
lost his hat and like Russel his eyes were wild looking and his face was dead
white. He still had the sawed-off in his hand. The .38 was gone from its
holster.

It wasn’t Jim Bob screaming. It was the one Jim Bob called
the Mex. He stumbled out of the doorway and onto the landing. The front of his
shirt was dark and wet and the material sucked into his chest when he breathed.
He looked as if he were wired up on something.

Jim Bob rolled his head toward us. “Shoot the motherfucker,”
he yelled. “I gave him both barrels.”

Russel’s .357 rode up and bucked and the Mex’s head snapped
hard right and back around as if on a spring. Half his face was gone. The Mex
reached down and grabbed Jim Bob by the leg and slung him at us. Jim Bob hit me
and I went back, fell over the dead Mexican on the stairs. Russel was still
where he was.

The Mex was coming down the steps after Russel like the
Frankenstein monster. Russel lifted his gun hand and used his other hand to
brace his wrist and he shot the Mex in the nose and the Mex doubled forward and
tumbled down over Jim Bob and me and the other Mexican.

Russel continued up the stairs. Jim Bob got to his feet,
broke open the sawed-off, and got two shells out of his snap shirt pocket and
loaded the gun and flicked it shut.

I got hold of the Ithaca, which I had momentarily lost, and
I went up after Jim Bob. Russel went through the door just ahead of us, and we
rushed in after him.

The room was the room where they had made the video we had
seen. A video camera was on a tripod at the far right, and another lay
overturned on the floor. A third without a tripod lay on the corner of the bed.
A man lay on the bed too. It was the man I had seen going up the stairs ahead
of Freddy; I recognized his suit. He was lying on top of the girl. I couldn’t
tell anything about her. I could only see the bottom of her naked feet, her
arms thrown out as if in crucifixion, and her black hair spread against the
white sheets like an oil spill on snow.

“Freddy and that skinny fuck are around here somewhere,” Jim
Bob said. “Them and this guy and the Mex were in here when I came in. The
skinny guy was putting the meat to her.”

I went over to the man on the bed and grabbed him by the
collar of his suit and pulled him off the girl. He rolled face up. He looked
like a man that had never had to work. He had very fine silver hair and a
matching mustache. He. must have been fifty at least. Old enough to have been
the girl’s father. Jim Bob had shot him several times in the chest and crotch.
With the .38 most likely. The wounds were small.

I looked at the girl. She didn’t move anything but her eyes.
They rolled toward me. They were the color of old pecans. The nipples of her
small breasts were uncommonly large and wide and matched the color of her eyes.
Her pubic hair was so neatly trimmed it looked like little fur panties. Her
short legs were shiny, as if oiled. I figured her for about eighteen. Under the
circumstances, she was about as sexy as an avocado. I could see now that there
were thin, white cords tied to her wrists and in turn, to the bedpost. I didn’t
try to untie them. No time for that. I gave her what I thought was a reassuring
smile. If she caught the meaning, her face and eyes gave no sign of it. She
just lay there quietly, watching, perhaps resigned.

There was just the one door on the far left, where Russel
was, and a closet door between the bed and that exit. Jim Bob cocked the
triggers on the sawed-off, jerked the closet door open, and the skinny guy,
buck naked, came out of there with a scream and a flash of knife and the blade
went down and over Jim Bob’s shoulder and poked him deep in the back. Jim Bob
hit the man in the stomach with both barrels of the shotgun and pulled the
triggers. Red jumped out of the skinny guy, front and back, and he flopped to
the floor. Jim Bob went to his knees and bent his head. The knife stuck out of
his back like a quill.

Russel, without hardly looking, reached over and took it by
the handle and pulled it out with a jerk.

“Goddamn!” Jim Bob said.

Russel stuck the knife through his belt and opened the door
in front of him and stepped quickly to the side, but nobody fired at him.

“Freddy,” Russel yelled into the room. “I’m Ben Russel. I’m
your father. I’ve come to kill you.”

I went around behind Russel and peeked through the doorway
and Russel moved inside and I followed. Jim Bob got up, leaned against the door
jamb and said, “That hurt, Ben.”