The Way We Die Now (17 page)

It would only be a matter of time before Bock called for the Mexican to come to the house or came over to the barn himself to investigate the silence. Bock would have a gun. He would have several guns in the house, in all probability--a pistol or two, a rifle, and perhaps a shotgun. If the man owned three thousand acres of land in two counties, he would hunt them as well as farm them. When he found the dead Mexican, he would either shoot Hoke or call the sheriff, but Hoke didn't believe Bock would call the law. Obviously Bock didn't want any lawmen prowling around his property.

Hoke picked up his wallet, where it had fallen by the window, refolded the letter, and placed it inside. He wedged the wallet under his belt. With his thumb Hoke scraped a small circle in the dusty, cobwebby window and looked toward the veranda. Both pit dogs were on their feet, looking toward the barn. The moaning and the screams had made them curious, and the silence even more so. Hoke cupped his hands to his mouth and moaned. The bitch didn't move, but the smaller dog, a male, and probably her son, wagged his stump of a tail and strained at the end of his chain. The nanny goat came into the barn, bleated several times, and leaped up onto the bale of alfalfa.

Hoke had never milked a goat or a cow, but he had seen animals milked in movies. He grabbed both teats and began to strip them, letting the milk squirt onto the bale. Milking was slow work, and he didn't have the time for this, but he milked her long enough to give her some relief before he stopped. Milking the goat had not stopped him from thinking about what to do next.

Why hadn't the Haitians come out of their trailer when they heard the screaming? Perhaps they were used to the idea of the Mexican using the barn as a place to discipline workers? Maybe they weren't allowed to leave their trailer until they were told they could? At any rate, none of them had come to his rescue, even though he had been sent to see what had been happening to them or to their fellow countrymen. But then, they didn't know that; besides, Hoke didn't know how their minds worked. If a few of them, or a lot of them, had disappeared, why did the rest stay? Weren't they suspicious? Didn't they suspect that they might disappear as well?

He would have to get some answers from Tiny Bock.

Hoke selected a fresh two-by-four from the lumber pile and went to the back of the barn. There was a normal-size door, but it had been boarded over and nailed shut. Hoke pried the boards away and opened the door. Two gamecocks were staked out behind the barn, well separated from each other, of course, and three gamehens scratched listlessly in the yard. If he could get as far as the semi, about twenty yards away, without being seen from the house, he would be screened. Then he could circle around the back, giving the pit dogs a wide berth. There might be--in all probability there would be--a woman in the kitchen. Hoke doubted that Bock and the Mexican would do their own cooking, although they might. He would soon find out. Crouching iow, he made a lumbering run to the side of the parked truck and trailer. The hot sunlight on his naked body was a shock, and his exposed genitalia made him feel, somehow, more vulnerable. Even though he had pissed his shorts when he had been thrown across the alfalfa bale, he wished now that he had put them on again.

The toolbox on the fender was closed, and a wire instead of a lock had been twisted through the hasp. Hoke untwisted the wire and raised the lid. There weren't many tools in the box. Except for a well-oiled jack, the other tools were rusty. Hoke took a monkey wrench out of the box and hefted it. It was fourteen inches long and had a good weight to it. It wouldn't be as effective as the two-by-four had been, but he could throw the wrench if he had to, and that was an advantage. Well screened from the front door of the house, Hoke crouched and duck walked to a small utility shed about thirty yards away. It hurt too much to run. The venetian blinds on this side of the house were closed. The dogs could still see him, and they looked at him without barking. If Bock turned them loose and sicced them on him, his situation could change radically. The only time a pit dog lets go is to get a better bite.

From the utility shed Hoke walked directly to the side of the house. To see him now, crushing the geranium and fern beds that surrounded the house, Bock would have to raise a window and look straight down at him. Hoke edged along the wall to the back and looked through the screened porch that led into the kitchen. There was a masonitetopped table and four padded aluminum-legged chairs on the porch. A deal table was flush against the wall, and it held a small hibachi for barbecuing. There was also an aged Kelvinator refrigerator against the wall, and it was dotted with rust. There was probably a new refrigerator in the kitchen, and this old one was used for extra storage for ice and drinks. The screen door was unlatched, and Hoke went inside. The Cuban tile floor was streaked with dried mop marks. The old refrigerator ticked away with a double beat, like two overheated engines after the ignition had been turned off, and Hoke's heartbeats were not in sync with either beat. There were two open doors. One led into the kitchen; the other, into a long hallway to the living room. Two doors on the right side of the hallway were closed. Hoke could also get to the living room through the kitchen and then through the dining room. There was no woman in the kitchen, and from the mess no woman had been near the kitchen in weeks. The sink and counter were filled with dirty dishes, pots, and pans, and two brown grocery bags in the corner were overflowing with garbage. An aluminum coffeepot was on the stove. Hoke touched it, and it was still warm. Crouching to minimize the pain in his ribs, Hoke inched down the hallway instead of going through the kitchen. Before he reached the end of the hallway, he recognized Donahue's voice. Jesus! -Donahue- was on the tube from 9:oo until 10:00. It seemed as if he had been up forever, and it was only a little after 9:oo A.M.! The living room was comfortably furnished. There was a long davenport covered with black leather and several brightly cushioned Monterey chairs. The hide of a ten-foot alligator had been nailed to one wall above a four-drawer highboy, and an overhead fan whirled in the ceiling. The Prussian blue nylon carpet looked new, but several blue dust balls bounced about below the fan. The dining table, which Bock was obviously using as a desk, was piled high with ledgers, folders, and papers. There was a pen and pencil set with an onyx base and a file box covered with green leather. Four cushioned ladder-backed dining chairs were pushed up to the table. Tiny Bock, sitting in a deep pigskin chair, with his back toward Hoke, was watching Donahue on the tube. A white ceramic mug, with TINY baked into it in bold script, was on the glass-topped coffee table in front of him.

Hoke crossed the carpeted floor slowly, making no noise, and almost made it to the chair before Donahue said, "We'll be right back." A commercial for Colgate's toothpaste replaced him. Several workmen in hard hats were plastering plaque on the inside of a set of giant teeth. Bock got to his feet, stretched out his arms, and yawned audibly. He must have sensed Hoke's presence. He couldn't have heard him over the noisy commercial, but he turned around. His jaw dropped slightly as he saw Hoke, naked except for his high-topped shoes and belted makeshift pad, only three feet away from him. Bock's arms were still in the air as Hoke stepped forward and brought the business end of the heavy wrench down across the big man's nose. The nose cracked, and blood spurted from it. But Bock turned immediately toward the front door.

"I've got a gun!" Hoke said. "Open the door and you're dead!"

Bock paused in midstep, raising his hands level with his shoulders. He then put his right hand to his bleeding nose. Hoke moved in swiftly, clipped Bock behind his right ear with the wrench, and the man toppled over. Bock was down, but not out. Hoke hit him again, aiming for the same spot, and then Bock was unconscious, with bright red blood staining his blue carpet.

Donahue returned, and Hoke switched off the set. He wanted to sit down. He wanted to lie down, but there was no time for that. Except for his broken nose, Bock wasn't hurt too badly, and he would come around soon. There was a Mercer i 2-gauge shotgun, an over-and-under, together with a Winchester 30-30 rifle, in a gun rack on the wall beside the front door. Two canes and a blue-and-white golf umbrella were in a large brass stand beneath the rack. Hoke selected the shotgun and broke it open. It wasn't loaded. Hoke crossed to the sideboard that was half in and half out of the dining room and opened four drawers before he found a box of double-aught shells. He loaded the shotgun, closed and cocked it. Before sitting down, Hoke took a long swig from an opened bottle of Jack Daniel's black label that was on top of the sideboard. The whiskey helped. Hoke didn't want to get up from the comfortable chair, but he forced himself to get to his feet. Bock was already making sounds deep in his throat. Hoke took the cable box from the top of the TV set, jerked the long cord loose from the back of the set, and wrapped the cord around Bock's ankles. There was plenty of cord. After encircling the ankles and making square knots, he wrapped the extra cable around Bock's legs to the knees, and then wedged the box with its twelve push bars under Bock's belt at the back. That would give Hoke a few more minutes to look around. Even if Bock regained consciousness, he wouldn't be able to run.

Hoke went back down the hallway and entered the first door on his left. This was a bedroom. The double bed was unmade, but the sheets were clean. Hoke got a clean, longsleeved sport shirt and a pair of blue serge suit pants from the closet. The pants were much too large for him at the waist; Bock outweighed him by at least fifty pounds, so Hoke didn't try on any of Bock's underwear. He slipped into the trousers, removed his belt, dropped his jeans-pad to the floor, and threaded his belt through the loops. He rolled the trousers up a turn at the cuffs and slipped his wallet into the right rear pocket. The shirt was an extra large, with square shirttails, and Hoke had to turn the cuffs back two inches.

Hoke entered the bathroom and opened the opposite door, which led to a smaller bedroom. Both bedrooms, then, had hall doors. The smaller room, Hoke supposed, was Chico's. There was a single metal cot, and the bed was neatly made, with hospital corners on the tucked-in Navaho blanket. Hoke returned to the bathroom and looked through the medicine chest and found a partially used roll of adhesive tape. He lifted his shirt and wrapped the tape around his waist as tightly as he could. He used all of the tape. He would have preferred to have the tape tighter than it was, but that was the best he could do, and it relieved the pain in his side much better than the improvised belt pad had.

Hoke returned to the living room. As he reached the end of the hallway, he heard the report and felt shards of plaster sting the back of his neck at the same time that Bock pulled the trigger on a.38-caliber pistol. Bock was sitting by the doorway, holding the pistol in front of his body with both hands. Hoke dropped flat to the floor and fired his shotgun as Bock shot a second time. Once again Bock's slug entered the wall instead of Hoke, and it went into the wall at least four feet above his prone body. Bock was trying to lower the pistol awkwardly as Hoke fired the second time. Bock dropped the pistol and fell over. At this distance, less than fifteen feet, almost all the shotgun pellets of Hoke's second shot had gone into Bock's upper chest. Hoke crawled toward the man on his knees and brushed the pistol away. He felt Bock's pulse. There was no pulse. Bock was dead, and there was no one left to answer his questions.

Hoke picked up the.38 pistol and shoved it behind the waistband of his trousers in the back. The pistol hadn't been in the sideboard, and Bock hadn't been armed when Hoke wrapped his legs with the cord. Bock had probably kept the pistol hidden in the bottom of the umbrella stand near the door. Hoke had another drink from the bottle of Jack Daniel's and then took the bottle over to the dining table and sat down. Both these deaths could have been avoided, Hoke reflected, if Brownley had let him keep his pistol. If he had only had his weapon, both these men-- bastards that they were--would still be alive. Both deaths were justified, of course. He had had to kill the Mexican after he blinded him; blind, the man wouldn't have been able to find any work. The Mexican hadn't learned anything from the loss of his first eye, apparently, or he wouldn't have attacked Hoke in the first place. And Bock, of course, had fired at Hoke first. Twice, in fact. Hoke shuddered. He was lucky to be alive.

Hoke took another drink from the bottle, a shorter one this time. He put the cap back on the bottle. He couldn't feel the drinks, but it would be best to stop before he did. He went to the front window and peered through the venetian blinds. The door to the middle trailer was still closed. Hoke couldn't understand it. The five Haitians were still inside, or perhaps they all had fled when the shooting began. He decided to go through Bock's papers first and check on the Haitians later. If they had run away (American blacks would have started running at the sound of the first shot and would have disappeared forever, but he didn't know how Haitians would react), fine. If they were gone, they were gone; if not, he would decide what to do with them, but at the moment he wanted to sit down and rest. Hake wasn't in bad physical shape, but he wasn't in good shape either. He spent too much time sitting at a desk writing reports. When he got back to Miami, he would talk Bill Henderson into playing a little handball a couple of times a week the way they used to when they were partners. Hoke hadn't been to the gym in more than six months, but a couple of years back he and Henderson had managed to squeeze in some handball once or twice a week.

Hake looked through the papers and the ledgers on the table. There was a check for $1,700 made out to Bock Enterprises on top of the pile. It was signed by the treasurer of Gaitlin Bros., Ft. Myers, Florida. This was probably the check for this morning's truckload of watermelons. Most of the papers were bills, many of them second and third notices of overdue bills. Hoke went through the ledger, beginning with the first page. Not only was Bock broke, but he was heavily in debt, and there was a second mortgage on his farmhouse and on another four hundred acres of land he held in Collier County. The man had been land-poor, and during the last four years he had purchased more land than he could either farm or pay for; and on top of all that, he hadn't paid out any wages to anyone. Not a dime. If he had, there was no evidence in the ledger. Perhaps he had paid off his labor in cash. Even so, there should have been a record of the payouts somewhere.