Winter and Night (43 page)

"Oh, that's fucking great! You're looking for him, he's looking for me, that's just fucking awesome!"

I glanced at Gary. "That's what you were doing? Looking for Paul?"

Gary nodded.

"Why?" Paul howled, a child's cry. "Both of you, why couldn't you just leave me alone?"

I said to Gary, "You wanted to be part of this?"

"Part of it?" He stared blankly. "Shit, no. I wanted to stop him."

"You knew?"

He shook his head. "I guessed. I mean, not really, but something. Sunday night, Paul called me. He told me not to play the game at Hamlin's."

"Jock asshole!" Paul hissed. "He's a jock asshole now," he said to me, with a distorted grin. "But he was cool for a while. He used to hang out with me. Before he knew."

"Knew what?"

"Oh, fuck you!" He danced around, calmed down. "Everyone knows you don't hang out with me. I'm a geeky little nerd. Out on the court you peg basketballs at me and in the lunchroom you need to dump Coke on my head."

"Did you do that?" I asked Gary.

Paul answered: "He never did that shit. That's why I warned him. We were, like, cool once, when Gary first came. We used to hang. Those days, some shit, he was the only guy I told."

Gary said nothing. His hands moved, trying to speak for him.

"Sting Ray?" I asked. "One of the things you told Gary was about him?"

"How do you fucking know about him?"

"He was arrested the other day," I said, careful to try to make it sound like coincidence. "He said he'd sold guns to a guy named Premador." To Gary I said, "You were seen near there."

"I was looking for Paul. That's where I was trying to get to when I… when the cops picked me up, and you came and got me. But I didn't really know where to go. Just, like, the neighborhood. I never found the guy." He looked at Paul. "I just wanted to, like, talk about shit."

"You mean, like we used to? You mean, like until football practice started, and you found out who was who, and you fucking forgot my phone number?"

I looked at Gary. He looked down at the carpet, up to me again. He said, "I was new."

"But I thought, he never did the really bad shit," Paul said. "And he brought my board back." Tears formed in his eyes; he shook them away. "So I thought, I'll give him one fucking break! And now look at this shit!" He waved the gun at the room, the broken glass, the red and white lights beating beyond the curtain.

I said to Gary, "Why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you let me help you find Paul?"

"If I told you," he said, "if I told anyone, Paul would get in trouble. And it was… I knew it was part my fault, what he wanted to do. I thought, if I could find him, I could, like, talk to him, because I couldn't, I just couldn't rat him out. My dad… that's like, the worst. He always told me, ratting guys out, that's the worst."

Paul shook his head, rapidly, maybe more tears, maybe something else. Gary said to him, pleading, "And see, they were all waiting for you! They knew! If I didn't find you this morning, they were going to shoot you!"

"Yeah?" Paul's face was damp with tears; he gave up trying to stop them. "Yeah? And now? Now they're not going to shoot me?"

"No," I said. "Not if we leave now."

"That's such bullshit!" Paul yelled. "They're all out there—"

"Paul," I said, my tone hard. "Paul. Put the gun down, come with me. I'll tell them we're coming, I'll tell them not to shoot. I'll go out first. They don't want to shoot you, Paul. They don't want to."

Paul looked from me to Gary, around the room, at the pulsing lights outside the curtain. He was all bones, his ribs outlined under his tee shirt, his elbows sharp as he held the rifle. I could see his arms trembling a little; the gun was heavy, and he'd been holding it a long time.

"Who's out there?" he said.

"Jim Sullivan. Chief Letourneau. The Plaindale chief, a man named Joe McFall. Most of the cops are Plaindale cops."

"Are reporters here?"

"Some. You want to make a statement?"

He looked at me a long time. He swallowed, and he nodded.

"Okay," I said. "We'll go out, you can talk to the reporters, then to Sullivan or Letourneau. Or McFall if you want. I'll stay with you, Paul, I'll be there the whole time."

He nodded again.

I said. "Let me call out and tell them what we're doing."

"I'm not putting my rifle down," he said. "I'm keeping it until after I talk to the reporters."

"Paul—"

"After!"

"All right." I walked slowly to the desk, picked up the phone. "Sullivan?"

"Here," I heard immediately. "What the hell's going on in there?"

"It's okay. We're coming out." Through the phone I heard my own voice echoing from the van's speaker. "Paul wants to make a statement to the press. He'll talk to you after that."

"This is straight or it's bullshit for him?"

"No, it's straight. But Paul's got a rifle and he's going to keep it until after he talks to the press."

"Christ, Smith, they've got to come out without weapons."

"Gary's unarmed. But Paul's rifle's not negotiable."

A pause. "He holds it in one hand. It points at the ground."

I relayed that to Paul. Slowly, he nodded, lowered the gun.

"All right," I said to Sullivan. "I'm coming first. The boys will be behind me."

Another brief pause, then Sullivan said, "Any time."

I put down the phone, opened the door. I looked back. Both boys seemed, for a moment, unable to move, the way a child freezes when he's startled by a big dog or a loud noise. Then Gary shook his head once and started toward me, and Paul did, too, and we left the room, walked into the pounding rain.

There are times, now, when I replay what happened next, when I look for my mistake, the thing I should have done, or shouldn't. It wasn't that I didn't see: a flash of red and silver as Al Macpherson, standing behind everyone else, yanked a pistol from his jacket. The silver was the gun, the red a circling light glinting off it as he lifted it over his head; and as I knew that I heard two sharp bangs, two shots fired into the air. It wasn't that I was too slow: I lunged for Paul as he swung the rifle up, looking around wildly for his enemies. I knocked him off balance so that his shot blasted only asphalt. And I was loud, roaring, "No!" across the lot. But the answering shots had started already, gunfire whining through the rain. It came from everywhere, and it came in startling, beautiful slow motion. I heard each crashing report separately, distinctly, saw each shooter aim, squeeze off every shot, saw each crouching cop, the sniper on the office roof. Macpherson stood unmoving, did not shoot again. I reached for Paul, my slow hand closing only on rain and air as Paul, with all the time in the world, sidestepped me, threw his skinny body into Gary with more power than I knew he had. Gary twisted and went down, still in this extraordinary, leisurely dance. Paul stumbled and stayed on his feet.

I dived, floated toward Paul, hanging in the air forever, as though I could fly. I clutched him and we drifted to the ground together. I tried to hold him, but he lifted the rifle butt, swung it at my head.

For a moment, all I knew was bursting lights and pain. When I forced my eyes to focus, time had snapped back into place.

Paul had rolled away. He fired, lying on the asphalt like a sniper, and fired again. His shot blew out the window of a Plaindale car, glass like diamonds flying in all directions. I reached for him. He threw the rifle at me, jumped to his feet.

"Assholes!" he shrieked, his voice carried on the howling wind. "Fucking assholes, I'm Premador! You can't defeat me!" A percussion of gunshots, and he staggered back but did not fall. He shoved a hand into the cargo pocket of his soaking pants, came out with a grenade. He got one, I marveled, someone sold him one, as I stretched toward him, fell short. He dropped to one knee, used his teeth to pull the pin, sent the grenade soaring in a perfect arc across the lot. It flew far, much farther than I'd thought those skinny arms could throw. Cops dived for cover. The same car he'd shot the window out of exploded in a deafening blast. Flames thrust skyward. Rain, splashing onto suddenly searing metal, turned to rolling clouds of steam as Paul collapsed onto the asphalt and didn't move again.

Twenty-Eight

The pounding of the rain kept up but the gunfire stopped. I heard running feet slam the ground, men shouting, sirens. I lifted myself on one elbow. "Gary? Gary."

"Yeah." The word was tight, forced through clenched teeth. "Yeah. Uncle Bill—" Curled on the pavement just beyond my reach, Gary had his arms wrapped around his right knee, pulling it close to himself.

"All right, Gary," I said. "It's all right."

I pushed myself to sit, scrambled over to him. I saw red and orange flames reflected in the water that sheeted the lot. Paul Niebuhr lay sprawled a few yards away, surrounded by cops training guns on his unmoving form. His eyes and mouth were open. His torn flesh lay exposed where his shirt had been shredded by bullets. The rain, falling hard, swept across the black asphalt and across us all, and the blood that should have been pooling beneath him was washed away as fast as it flowed.

I bent over Gary, tried to shield his pain-contorted face from the rain. Across the lot the Plaindale car was burning. Fire hissed and spat, throwing great arms of orange flame skyward. The wind tried to wrap sheets of water around the fire. The flames changed direction, danced away, reached high again. White steam hissed through roiling black smoke.

Medics reached us, me and Paul and Gary, and Lydia was there, and Scott, bending over Gary. The young men trying to help Gary had to order Scott back. I pushed away the medic kneeling beside me.

"Don't try to stand," he said.

"Fuck you." I climbed to my feet. Sullivan stood in front of me. "Why did you shoot?" I asked, my voice hoarse but loud, pounding like the rain. "Why did you have to shoot?"

"He was firing at us." Sullivan's tone was quiet, calm as before.

"He was a kid! He was scared shitless."

"He was firing."

"At Macpherson's shots! He was answering fire! What the hell was that?"

"Macpherson?"

"The first two shots. They were Macpherson's!"

Sullivan shook his head. I shoved him away, staggered past. "That's a bad gash," he said, reaching for me. "You should—"

"Fuck yourself, Sullivan." I yanked my arm away, kept walking.

Lydia was beside me, striding with me through the rain. "You're hurt," she said.

"Leave me alone." She didn't, though, but stayed with me as I crossed the lot, cut around the cars to where, out of the way so he wouldn't interfere, Al Macpherson stood beside the tech van.

"You set him up!" I shouted.

"Back the fuck off." A Warriors cap kept the rain from his face, kept his eyes in shadow.

"You knew he'd shoot, and all this firepower would answer! Why, Macpherson? Why?"

"You're insane. Maybe it's the head injury. You should have that looked at." He took a step away.

"You bastard—"

"Smith!" A hand grabbed roughly at my arm; it was Letourneau, beside me. "Enough. I have enough ambulances here. Get your head looked at. We'll be taking your statement. You have anything to say, say it then." His eyes were hard, commanding. Macpherson's eyes glittered, the eyes of a winner. I turned and walked off through the rain.

I spent the rest of that day, into the evening, at Plaindale General. Not because the gash on my head was bad: Three stitches took care of that. But Gary was in surgery.

While we waited for the surgeon's news, Joe McFall took over a corner of the cafeteria for an impromptu interview room, to take statements from the civilians: me, Scott, and Lydia, because it was clear none of us was leaving the hospital until Gary was out of the operating room; and Macpherson, who was offered the choice of this place or the station house. Letourneau's statement, and Sullivan's, McFall would get later, down at the station, where each Plaindale cop who had fired a weapon was writing a detailed account of the circumstances and outcome.

Gary's statement would have to wait, until tomorrow.

When I'd sat with McFall it was right after Gary had gone into the operating room. Letourneau and Sullivan were there as a courtesy, Plaindale to Warrenstown. I answered what they asked me, surprised at the effort it took. These cops are talking to you, Smith, I had to keep telling myself; but I found my eyes following the movements of people I didn't know as they came and went across the room, and some questions had to be asked twice.

In the end, though, I told them about it all: the dim motel room, Paul's dancing feet, the important thing Gary had come to do.

"He knew what the Niebuhr kid was planning?" McFall asked, glancing at the tape recorder he'd set up on the plastic tabletop, making sure the thing was running.

"Not knew, guessed. He was looking for him to stop him." I sipped hospital coffee, but I didn't expect it to warm me and it didn't.

"How do you know he wasn't in on it?"

"He said he wasn't." I raised my eyes to McFall's. My voice sounded toneless to me, but something in it, or maybe in my eyes, ended that line of questioning.

"Macpherson," Sullivan said.

I nodded. "He fired the first two shots. Over his head, as we were coming out."

Sullivan said carefully, "Why?"

"Ask him."

"He says he didn't shoot until Paul started firing."

My head was pounding dully, my forehead swollen under the bandage. "Why the hell was he there, Sullivan? Why was he armed?"

"He has a New York carry permit," McFall said. "We checked it, it's good. He's had it for years. Seems he's been threatened by clients' wives before."

"Scott was there because it was his son. Why was Macpherson there?" No one answered. I looked at Letourneau. All I got was a shrug.

We have a mayor and everything, I heard Stacie's voice in my head. But Randy's father is who really runs this town.

"He fired those shots," I said.

"He says he didn't."

"He's lying."

"It was pouring rain," McFall said. "Everyone was tense— you included, for Christ's sake, Smith. Some of my people say Paul fired first. Some heard shots before his. But it could have been any one of them. I hoped I had them better trained than that, but it was probably a cop."