The Homecoming (33 page)

“Wasn’t me drove that van into a deer. I was back in the cage, in fucking shackles. When I came to, I thought everybody was dead. I got out of the van and I was in like a daze. I didn’t
escape
. I wandered off. It was like an amnesia thing. Even now I have headaches. God knows what kind of trauma I’m suffering, or how it’s affecting my perceptions. I have no clear recollection of how I got here. I’m probably gonna sue the U.S. Marshals for reckless endangerment of a person in custodial care.”

Mavis, who, in spite of the seriousness of the standoff, got a major kick out of hearing a guy who was in chains and getting his ass transported by two enormous guards describing himself as being in “custodial care.”

She took a moment to regroup.

“Wandered off with two borrowed guns and bought a Hugo Boss suit and sort of sleepwalked into the Bass Pro Shop after shooting Jermichael Foley, one of your own employees, in the knee? That kind of amnesia thing?”

“Yes, exactly that. And negotiators aren’t supposed to be smart-asses.”

“Byron, this is Mavis. We know each other. I’m just trying to talk sense to you.”

“Then get me that deal.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Then get me someone who can.”

“Byron,” Mavis said, with exasperation creeping into her voice, “this isn’t
CSI
. That line was old when Jesus got His first tricycle. What’s the story on Andy Chu? Is he a hostage or were you just lonely?”

“Chu’s my IT guy. He’s not a hostage. He can find the guys who did the bank—”

“Then send him out—”

“Or else?”

“Byron, we can’t let you sit around inside the Bass Pro Shop until Christmas Eve. Hunting season is three days off. People need their Day-Glo ball caps and camouflage toilet paper. You’re just pissing them off.”

Deitz decided to play his ace.

“Then how about this? I think there are a couple of civilians in here.”

A pause.

A significant pause.

“I thought you cleared the place out?”

“I thought so too. But now I think I may have missed a couple.”

Another significant pause, which told Deitz that Mavis had reason to believe he was right.

“What makes you think so?”

“Come on, Mavis. You got a family member out there, missing anyone?”

Another silence.

“Not that I’m aware.”

“No? Ask whoever it is does the guy smoke cigars.”

Boonie, who was standing behind Mavis in the blue communications van, turned to one of the uniforms and whispered something in his ear. The cop was gone and back in fifteen seconds, nodding his head vigorously.

Mavis took note.

“Byron, if you have reason to believe that there’s an innocent bystander—”

“Or two.”

“Or two—inside that store, then you know how important it is for your case that nothing bad should happen to them.”

“Yeah. I know that. I didn’t ask them to hide out in a fucking tent, did I?”

“So … how do you want to do this?”

“Mavis, level with me. Are there a coupla stray civilians in this fucking store?”

“We think there may be—”

“Names?”

“A Mr. Frankie Maranzano and his grandson have so far been unaccounted for.”

“Mavis, now you’re talking like a fucking lawyer.”

“Yeah. You’re right. I am. I guess it’s the strain. What do you want to do?”

“What do
you
want me to do? I don’t want them in here any more than you do—”

Click. Click
.

“Shit. Mavis, I gotta go.”

“Byron, listen, you need to know—”

Click. Click. Click
.

Deitz was gone. Mavis tried calling him back, but the phone went to message.

You’ve reached the personal line of Byron Deitz. I’m not available to—

She clicked off.

Mavis was going to tell him about the Dan Wesson artillery piece that Frankie Maranzano was carrying, but Deitz was gone. She picked up the radio to warn Nick and Coker but realized that they might be so close that Deitz would hear the transmission. Not being a religious person, she settled for resting her forehead briefly on the desk in front of her.

Boonie watched her do this, wondering if she’d start banging her head on the table, something he often found calming, but she didn’t. Perhaps she should have. It might have helped.

Probably not.

Little Ritchie had to go. There was no getting around it. Two more minutes and he was going to pee his pants, and then what would Poppa think? He was sitting in a tight ball of boy tucked into a triangle-shaped corner of the tent. It was black as night all around, so dark that when he held his hands up in front of his face he couldn’t see them.

For a while there had been flashing lights all over the place, and whenever they’d landed on the tent it would glow all blue and he’d see the big bulky shape of Poppa sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the tent zipper, with that Dan Wesson cradled in his lap and his face tight as a fist.

Poppa was in that state of barely controlled murderous rage that Aunt Delores, who was totally whack, liked to call “the crankie-wankies.”

Poppa was in that state because he was never really out of it and also because these bad guys who had taken over the Bass Pro Shop were making him miss a soccer game between El Tricolor, Mexico’s national team, and their hated rivals, Los Llaneros from Venezuela, a game in which he had a strong financial interest.

As Poppa usually did when he was angry, he had gone as still as the Buddha he had taken Little Ritchie to see on a trip to Thailand. He’d also taken Little Ritchie to a whorehouse on something called the Soy Cowboy in Bangkok to get laid so that, according to Poppa, he wouldn’t grow up to be a pervert like Uncle Manolo, who had once tried to do “funny stuff” with Little Ritchie when they were in Uncle Manolo’s hot tub.

The evening with the Thai girl had been an eye-opening experience for Little Ritchie, but not in the way Poppa would have thought it was.

Her name was Rose and although Little Ritchie had not quite managed to “do it” with Rose, he had come away madly in love and was sending her half of his allowance money every month by PayPal and soon he was going to buy her the plane fare to come and stay in his bedroom with him until he graduated from high school and got a job in Poppa’s business so they could have a family. But right now he had to pee, and it was way past time he told Poppa about it.

“Poppa …?”

He sensed the rustle of Poppa turning in the dark. When Poppa shushed him he got a blast of Poppa’s cigar breath right in the face.

“But I got to pee, Poppa,” he said in an urgent whisper.

“You can’t,” said Poppa in a low, growling hiss. “You got to hold it. Sooner or later, one of these mooks is coming around again, and when he does, I’m taking him out. After that, you can piss.”

Little Ritchie thought that “taking him out” might be trickier than it looked. When the guy had slipped on tippy-toes past the front of the tent, his shadow on the walls had looked as big as that Kodiak bear in the middle of the store. A Kodiak bear holding a shotgun in its paws.

More cigar breath in his face.

Poppa was real close.

“Here,” he said, putting something into Ritchie’s hand. It felt like a water bottle. “Piss into that.”

“I can’t see—”

“Find your
piccolo pezzo
and stick it in. Nature’ll do the rest. You have to shut up, Ritchie. When the time is right, I’m gonna take the big one—he’s the
capo
—and then the Chink
maricone
.”

Little Ritchie was trying and failing to do the thing with the water bottle. He thought it might be better to try to do it standing up. He steeled his bladder against the urge, got to his feet, got everything into position again, and started to let it all go when Poppa shifted his position backwards and Little Ritchie, in an effort not to pee down Poppa’s neck, stepped backwards himself, and when he did that the backs of his knees hit a small tin table loaded with stainless-steel cooking gear that was right behind him and over he went with a loud crash and a tiny tinkle taking a section of the tent down with him and that was it for Poppa, who grabbed him by the shirt and jerked him onto his feet and said, “Fuck this, we’re gonna go take these assholes out right now!”

And out the door he went, in a low crouch, his gun up, his war face on, dragging Little Ritchie along behind him like a kid who had fallen off a horse and had his shoe stuck in the stirrup-thingie.

It didn’t go well.

They had successfully detached the boarded-over vent at the back of the second-floor mechanical room and slipped out into the main hall. They let Coker glide on ahead to get in position.

Coker took a post in the left-hand corner of the upper level—the gun deck, he was calling it—and with the night vision scope he was in a position to cover a wide swath of the store.

Coker did a quick scan with the night vision scope. From a tactical point of view, the upper floor was relatively easy to cover, being largely an open space with few counters other than the gun racks and ammunition displays. It took a careful minute for Coker to establish that Deitz was not on this floor. Chu wasn’t visible either.

He clicked his mike button twice.

Immediately he felt Nick and Beau slipping past him, and he tapped Nick once on the shoulder to say that he was set up and ready.

Then he put his eye back to the scope and started scanning the main floor, which was a whole lot more complicated, a wide-open space jammed with merchandise and display cases and stuffed animals and glass counters loaded with stock.

He moved the scope slowly around the terrain, hoping that Deitz would walk into the lens. If he could find any plausible excuse for it, he was going to put a 5.56-caliber round smack in the middle of the rest of Byron Deitz’s irritating life.

In his scope Coker could see that gigantic Kodiak bear playing King of the World on that stand in the middle of the store.

He took his eyes off the rubber ring and watched as the darker shadow of Nick Kavanaugh literally flowed over the ground just in front of him. The guy moved well. Beau Norlett was now stationary by a water cooler, covering Nick’s advance with his Beretta.

Coker decided that he approved of Beau.

He was young and he worried too much.

Maybe that was because he had a sweet young wife named May and two baby kids. But once he got into action, he did just fine.

Then he heard the clattering sound of something metallic falling, and
a sort of hoarse cry, almost a growl. Coker put his eye back on the scope and began to scan the lower room again. The scope picked up movement—a big man was spilling out of a tent—a smaller figure behind him. He jerked his eye away from the scope as the lower floor suddenly lit up in a series of blue-white flashes—heavy-caliber gunshots—two shotgun blasts in return—the booming smack of the muzzle blasts slammed around the enclosed space—big cracking booms—a .44—two deeper explosions—the shotgun again—Nick was now at the top of the stairs—Coker came up fast to cover his descent to the main floor—if he was nuts enough to go down there—and, yes, he was.

Beau looked like he was about to follow Nick, but Coker waved him back—too many targets. Too much random shit was going on. Coker could feel things starting to come apart and he was trying to slow it all down.

Coker could see the large man who had come out of the tent—it wasn’t Deitz. The man was holding a very big revolver and pointing it at something Coker couldn’t identify—Beau was holding his post ten feet to Coker’s right, leaning on the railing, his Beretta trained on the main floor—Nick was going down the stairs—he almost stepped into Coker’s field of fire, so Coker jerked the muzzle up—and now more shots flared up on the main floor—Coker lost the large man with the revolver—had to be Frankie Maranzano—he could see a smaller figure lying prone a few feet from the tent door—this figure was moving—crawling—and he heard a sound like somebody screaming—high and thin—another huge slamming burst and then a sharp metallic
clang
and Coker felt a big round buzz by his head, a ricochet. He heard it smack into the ceiling behind him.

Coker moved down two steps, trying to bring more of the main store under his field of fire. He got a scope picture of Frankie Maranzano—he was reloading his Dan Wesson—Nick was down on the main floor—in a crouch—using the counters as cover—snaking through the maze—Coker moved again and reacquired Maranzano, who was now crouched in a position that Nick couldn’t see—Coker reached down, thumbed the
TRANSMIT
button—

“Nick, I have Frankie Maranzano on your right at the end of that aisle—maybe ten feet from your position.”

Nick stopped, got down on a knee, his Beretta up—Maranzano jerked into motion—he popped up from behind the counter and now he was coming around the corner with his revolver at the ready—Maranzano,
without thinking about who he was shooting at, fired a huge round at Nick—he missed—Nick looked as if he was hesitating—he didn’t want to shoot a civilian—Maranzano was shouting at Nick in Italian and Nick was answering
—sono polizia
—but Maranzano still had that bloody hand cannon up, although he had been warned and that was not good, so Coker put a round into the center of his mass and Frankie Maranzano went down.

From another aisle came the concussive boom of a shotgun, and then a smaller brittle crack beside Coker. Beau was firing at the source of that shotgun blast, the muzzle flare from his Beretta blooming white in Coker’s peripheral vision.

Another shotgun blast, this time flaring big and blue-white, which meant it was aimed right at their position. Coker heard a solid
thwack
sound and a breathy grunt from Beau. Coker sensed rather than saw him falling backwards.

Nick was on his feet now, stopping briefly to look down at Maranzano as he kicked the .44 away down the aisle. Then he turned the corner, moving fast and low, to take on that damned shotgun.

Coker was moving to help Beau but still trying to keep the rifle on the main floor as he stepped sideways. He heard three quick cracks from Nick’s Beretta—one shotgun blast in return followed by a second—the sound of falling glass—then silence.