Hunters (32 page)

The hammering ceased. "I heard you the first
time," came a pinched, high-pitched voice from the pit.

"You Otis Bridges?" Chuck asked.

"Yes, I'm Otis Bridges," came the petulant
reply, "and I ain't hauling anybody out of the snow today. Call
Triple A if you're stuck." The hammering started again.

"We're not stuck. But we need some
snowmobiles," Chuck said loudly.

"I ain't got none."

"You got some right here."

"They ain't for rent."

"We'll buy them," Jean said.

"They ain't for sale."

Sam walked over to the outlet where the cord
to the snake light came up from the pit, and pulled the plug. The
light under the Mercury went out. "Hey!" Bridges yelled. "Plug that
back in!"

"After we talk, man," Sam said, tossing the
plug on the floor. "Get up here, you got a business or what?"

The man climbed the concrete stairs to the
level of the garage. He was as black and filthy as a miner, and his
scowl didn't make him any prettier. He looked mad enough to use the
hammer he carried. "Now what do you people want? I'm working
here!"

"I told you," Chuck said, "We need some
snowmobiles. Four if you got 'em. We need to get some people out of
a jam."

"Well, you're gonna have to get them out of
their jam with somebody else's snowmobiles."

"Who would you suggest?" Jean asked with more
sarcasm than curiosity. "There doesn't seem to be a large number of
snowmobile dealers in your little town."

"You bet not—I'm the only one. Fella down in
Galeton has some, but he's not gonna truck 'em up here either. You
got people in trouble, you call the state police."

"This is a private matter," Michael said.

"Gonna stay private, far as I'm
concerned."

"Listen to me, Mr. Bridges," Jean said. "We
need your snowmobiles. Now if you won't rent them, we'll buy
them."

"No you won't. They ain't for sale."

"What if we gave you twice what they're
worth?"

"I don't care. I don't need your money. I
just need you to go away so I can get back to work."

"Mr. Bridges," Michael said calmly, "let's be
reasonable. We really do need your machines. Now how much trouble
would it be for you to rent them to us?"

Bridges shook his head and pursed his lips,
as though he was going to have to explain simple matters to a
child. "Where you wanta take them?"

"About ten miles north of here. And then
three miles into the woods on a dirt road."

"Then you're not gonna drive them up there
from here. What'd you come here in?"

"A jeep."

"Well, you ain't gonna haul them with that.
So that means I gotta get them on my JerrDan, drive ten miles up
where you want to go in this storm, and then drive back again. And
I'm not gonna do that."

"Are you saying," Michael said, "the truck
couldn't make it?"

"No, I ain't saying that at all. It'd make
it. But I'm too old to be slippin' and slidin' around in this kinda
weather."

"Then rent us the truck," Chuck said. "I'll
drive it."

"No you won't. Nobody drives my JerrDan but
me."

"But if you
don't
drive it," Jean said
with a cold and furious logic, "and you won't let
him
drive
it, then we can't get there."

"You're getting it now, miss," Bridges
said.

Sam gave a thick laugh. "So what you're
sayin' is you only rent snowmobiles when the weather's nice. You
like want us to wait till the goddam summer?"

Bridges's superior sneer changed to a
puritanical face of stone. "I don't appreciate you taking the name
of the Lord in vain."

"Oh, well, Jesus H. Christ, I'm really goddam
sorry."

Bridges's nostrils flared. "All right, you
all get out of here right now. I'm not doing any business with you,
I told you that and I meant it, and now I know what kind of people
you are I mean it even more. So get."

Chuck gave a big, dramatic sigh, crossed his
arms, and shook his head. "We can't get, Mr. Bridges. See, you're
the only man who's got what we need, and it's a matter of life and
death." He glanced at Jean. There was no mistaking the hard look on
her face. She gave him a short, sharp nod. "Okay, of death, really.
Now we gotta have those snowmobiles. And if you won't rent them,
and you won't sell them, then we're gonna have to take them."

Otis Bridges looked at Chuck as though he had
just begun speaking in French. "Take 'em? What do you mean take
'em? You can't take 'em unless I
say
you can take 'em."

In reply, Chuck took out a pistol from his
parka's deep pocket and pointed it casually at Bridges. "Now. You
open up that door, and we'll back that wrecker around here and load
those snowmobiles on it. How many machines you got?"

All the righteous anger had gone out of Otis
Bridges. He had suddenly become the soul of cooperation. "Just the
two. But they'll hold two people each."

"What about that third one?" Chuck said.

"Waitin' on parts for it."

Bridges opened the garage door, and he and
Chuck went out to the wrecker, while Michael filled the
snowmobiles' gas tanks from a five gallon can. Bridges showed Chuck
how the truck worked, and then drove it around to the open bay. It
was slow going, but the sheer size of the truck allowed it to bull
itself through the deep snow.

"Helluva vehicle," Chuck said
appreciatively.

Bridges nodded. "Get through almost
anything."

"It better."

By the time they got the wrecker backed up to
the bay, a middle-aged woman was standing next to Jean. She was
bundled against the cold, and when Bridges shuffled through the
snow into the garage, she frowned at him. "I heard the JerrDan, so
I come out. This lady tells me you're going out somewhere?"

Bridges looked uncomfortably at Chuck, who
just smiled at him. His hands and the gun were behind his back, out
of the woman's sight. "Uh, yeah," Bridges said. "These folks got
some trouble, so I'm gonna help them out."

"Well,
you're
gonna have some trouble,
you do," the woman said. "You know what the doctor said about your
going out in this stuff. Bad enough you're out here in this cold
garage."

"Now don't tell me," said Chuck. "This must
be
Mrs.
Bridges. Only a wife would care that much about her
husband's health. Well, you don't have to worry your head over a
thing. Mr. Bridges won't be going with us. We're going to take care
of this ourselves."

At first Mrs. Bridges looked at Chuck as
though he were crazy, and then she turned the same disbelieving
glare on her husband. "What?"

"They're, uh, taking the JerrDan. And the
snowmobiles."

"Otis, have you lost your mind?"

"No he hasn't, ma'am," said Chuck. "Under the
circumstances, your husband's doing the only sensible thing."

"Circumstances?" the woman said in a way that
explained to Chuck why Otis Bridges was so cranky. "
What
circumstance?"

Chuck held out the pistol as though he were
offering her a piece of pie. "These circumstances."

It was like someone had just goosed her,
Chuck thought. She threw up her mittened hands with a gasp, and
started to pant like a wooly dog on a hot day. It was damned
interesting the effect guns had on people. "Ah," Chuck said, "you
seem to grasp the circumstances too."

"Don't worry, Abby," Bridges said. "They
won't hurt us."

"That depends," Jean said, "on how
cooperative you are. Now let's stop screwing around and get to
it."

Mrs. Bridges wasn't fit to do anything in her
near hysterical condition, so Jean and Sam kept an eye on her,
while the men loaded the snowmobiles onto the wrecker's bed and
secured them. "Okay," Chuck said when they were finished, "let's
have the keys to the snowmobiles."

Bridges led him into a small cluttered room
with a desk from which the man took two sets of keys. He handed
them to Chuck, who noticed his hand shaking. Chuck looked into
Bridges's face, and the man looked away.

Then they went back to the bay, where Chuck
hopped up on the wrecker's bed. Bridges, his mouth open in
surprise, looked up after him. Chuck looked down and grinned. "Boy,
I'd hate to get where we're going and find out you accidentally
gave me the wrong keys." He tried to fit the key in the first
snowmobile's ignition, but it wouldn't go in. He looked down at the
keys, grinned again. "Must be this one," he said, holding up the
other key.

It didn't surprise him when the second key
refused to go in, but he feigned it nonetheless. "Golly, Mr.
Bridges, I think we have the wrong keys here." He hopped down next
to Bridges. "Now I know you're a little nervous and all, but I
think you'd better get me the right keys this time." He looked at
Jean. "You packed?"

In response, she drew a .38 semi-automatic
from her pocket.

"That's fine." Chuck, still smiling, looked
at Bridges. "If we don't come back with the right keys, my friend
is going to hold that gun against your wife's fluffy coat and shoot
her right in the chest. You think you can find the right keys for
me now?"

"Yessir," Bridges said quietly, afraid to
look up at Chuck.

When they came back into the bay, Michael was
already on the wrecker bed. Chuck tossed him the keys. "Hope you
put the right one in first," Chuck said. "It doesn't
fit...pop."

"The yellow tag's that first one!" Bridges
said quickly. "The
yellow
tag!"

Michael looked at the keys in his hand, and
held up the one with the worn yellow cardboard tag secured to it
with a twist of rusty wire. He tried to slide it into the ignition,
but it wouldn't go.

"It's
upside down!
" Bridges cried.
"Just turn it around!"

Michael did, and it slipped in smoothly, as
did the other key in the second vehicle.

"That's dandy," Chuck said. "Okay, let's pull
it on out of here and get that door down." He and Bridges drove the
loaded wrecker forward until it cleared the door. Then they got out
again. Chuck gestured to Michael. "You drive the jeep with her," he
said, nodding at Jean. "Old Foulmouth and I will ride in the
Jairrrr
-Dan." He winked at Sam. "After we go inside and
settle up with Mr. and Mrs. Bridges here."

"You're not...gonna hurt us, are you?"
Bridges said. His wife clung to his arm, trembling from cold and
fear.

"Now, Mr. Bridges, you did everything we
asked you to. And we've been very careful not to use our names. The
young lady and I are just going to tie you up." He gestured with
the gun, and he, Sam, and the Bridges went back inside the garage,
into the small office.

While he held the pistol, Sam tied the couple
tightly together, back to back, with wire. When she was done, Chuck
crouched next to the Bridges. "There. I said we'd just tie you up
and we did. Now we're just going to kill you."

Mrs. Bridges started to scream, so Chuck shot
her first, pressing the muzzle against her breast and quickly
pulling the trigger twice. The sound was efficiently muffled by her
thick down coat. He shot Mr. Bridges in the same way, less than
three seconds after shooting Mrs. Bridges. Death was not
instantaneous, and he and Sam stood and watched until Mr. and Mrs.
Bridges stopped moving, and only blood came from their mouths.

"That was rewarding," Chuck said, slapped Sam
on the shoulder, and closed and locked the office door behind them.
He rolled a multi-leveled cart full of Snap-On tools in front of
the door, and he and Sam walked outside, closing and locking the
smaller inset garage door behind them. Sam giggled all the way.

"'...and now we're just gonna kill you...'"
she said. "Aw, that was great...that was really great..."

Michael rolled down the window of the jeep.
"What did you do with them?" he asked, blinking away the falling
snow that the wind whirled into his eyes.

"Do not worry, Don Corleone," Chuck said in a bad
Italian accent. "The Bridges sleep with the grease monkeys." Sam's
giggles bubbled to a laugh. "They won't find them for a long time.
The storm covered the shots, and this guy isn't likely to have many
friends coming to call. Follow us."

T
hey pulled out of
Aurora and headed northeast, the jeep in the wrecker's wide wake.
While they had been in the little town, they had not seen a vehicle
on the streets, or any people except the Bridges.

Michael looked at Jean. She was sitting in
the jeep's passenger seat, her eyes fixed on the road ahead, her
hands folded in her lap. She looked pale. If her eyes had been
closed, Michael could have imagined that she was dead, and he
thought about how far they had come since they had arrived in
Pennsylvania, not in terms of miles, but of what they had done.

"When's the last time," Michael said, "that
you thought about the animals?"

Jean didn't answer for a long time. Finally
she said, "It isn't about the animals anymore."

The truck and the jeep drove through the snow as
through a white sea, a giant shark with two remora on its back, and
a carrion fish behind.

B
y late afternoon,
the snow had not slackened. If anything, Ned Craig thought, it had
begun to fall harder, so that whatever crevices not previously
filled by the artful hand of the wind were now covered by the
accumulation of snow, a collaboration between nature's mass and its
skill.

Except for well-bundled trips to the
outhouse, he and Megan had remained inside all day. They had twice
allowed Pinchot to go out when he whimpered and scratched at the
door. "Dog like this goes in the house," Ned had said, hurrying to
answer Pinchot's summons, "you'd need a shovel and a mop to clean
it up."

"Elegantly put," Megan said as he pushed the
door closed behind the big dog. "I have to get you out in the woods
more often. It reveals your poet's soul."