across the way, from houses nearby.
I walked even faster, but now a crowd had sprung up, most of them from the hospital staff. I grabbed a guy by the elbow.
“What happened?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
Another man standing next to him said, “Some guy shotgunned some people in a car. Big guy. He shotgunned them. I talked to a guy saw it happen. The cops got the guy saw it over there, talking to him.”
I pushed through the crowd, got cussed, kept pushing. I made my way to the forefront. I could see Brett’s car. The windshield was blown away. There was glass all over the place. They were lifting a man onto a stretcher. Even from a distance, I could see it was Leon. Big bad Leon. Minus the top of his head.
Oh, Jesus.
They covered him quickly.
On the driver’s side of the car they were lifting someone else out. A woman in a nurse’s uniform. Suddenly I was right there. Looking down on a woman’s body. Her entire face was gone. Hell, her head was practically vaporized.
Shotgunned.
Both of them shotgunned.
I put my hand against a car and held myself up. A cop grabbed my elbow. “Hap,” he said.
I turned. It was Jake, a cop I knew a little. “Did you get the guy did it?” I asked.
Jake shook his head. “No, we got a pretty good description, but we didn’t get him. We will. You all right, man?”
“Yeah.”
“Jesus, Hap. You know these people?”
“Yeah. I got to go.”
“You’re all right?”
I ignored him.
“I might need to talk to you,” he yelled after me.
I shoved through the crowd and back to my car. I started it up. I drove away from there, nearly ran a half dozen people off the road. I drove over to Leonard’s. He wasn’t there. He’d be at Brett’s, waiting for her to come home. Waiting for me to stop by.
I used my key and got the door open. I went to Leonard’s closet, pulled his twelve-gauge out of there. I got the box of shells off the top shelf. My hands trembled as I pushed them into the loading chamber and put a handful in my front pants pocket.
I had been sleeping while Brett was murdered in the hospital parking lot. Sweet, beautiful, foul-mouthed Brett.
Brett and Leon.
I had been sleeping.
I had been stupid.
How could I think having a watch on her would matter? Not even Leon could handle Big Man Mountain. I could see it now. Mountain had merely waited until Brett got off work; then, as a punishment to me, he had shot her to death. Leon would have tried to stop him, but it didn’t matter. Big Man had shot them both, fast as he could pump a shotgun.
Leonard and Jim Bob had been right. I should have gone savage. I should have gone wild. Had I done that in the first place, gotten rid of Big Man Mountain’s employers, Brett and Leon would still be alive.
I was climbing in my truck with the shotgun when Jim Bob pulled into the drive. That’s right. Nine o’clock, me and him and Leonard were supposed to meet. I’d have to take a rain check.
“Hey, Hap, where you goin’?” Jim Bob yelled.
I didn’t answer. I backed out, drove very fast along the street toward the main highway, and when I reached it I drove even faster, toward King Arthur’s place.
27
The world grew smaller as I drove, the exterior of the truck becoming nonexistent. I didn’t remember the road at all. Just the world growing smaller, smaller, until it was nothing more than the cab of that truck, then my space on the seat, then the inside of my head. I drove with one hand on the wheel, the other on the shotgun stock, touching it as tenderly as a lonely man might touch his privates in the dark.
Thinking and wondering, how come the horrors happen to me and those I care about? What the hell have I done? Who’s throwing the dice?
Well, this one time, I was going to throw the dice. I was going to throw them right down King Arthur’s throat.
The driveway to King Arthur’s trailers was blocked by a metal gate. I got out of the truck with the shotgun, climbed over the gate, and started walking briskly toward the trailers.
As I neared the trailers, a huge rottweiler appeared. It barked at me once, started to run toward me in that menacing manner dogs have. I lifted the shotgun, shot it in the head. It did a flip, splattered and slid on the red clay and lay there, one back leg flexing.
“Sorry,” I said. “Nothing personal.”
I walked faster, and now I was at the front of the closest trailer’s door. One of the goons who had been in King’s car that day jerked open the door, a nine in his hand. I was close, real close. I swung the shotgun stock up and connected with his chin. He straightened up and went backwards and lay on the floor, showing all the enthusiasm of a bearskin rug. I climbed over him, picked up the nine, tossed it backwards out the open door behind me.
I came along the hall, striding fast, and another one of the guards presented himself. I lifted the shotgun. He leaped aside as I fired and the blast took out a chunk of the trailer’s back wall. I heard him making a rustling, scuttling noise somewhere out of sight, then I heard the back door open and slam, and I knew that big bad motherfucker wasn’t so bad after all, that he was running fast now, and if nothing got in his way, he ought to make the edge of the goddamn Atlantic Ocean by midnight.
“King!” I yelled. “King!”
I picked a door to my left, blasted it with the shotgun. It flew open, and I was inside, and there was King, lying in bed, Bissinggame beside him. They sat up quickly. Both were nude. Bissinggame had a peach-colored leisure suit draped over a chair. On the chair were jockey shorts, peach socks, and white shoes.
King had his hat on the nightstand beside him and he had his hand in the nightstand drawer, reaching for something.
“I thought you hated queers,” I said.
I shot the nightstand. It exploded. A lamp crashed. A. 45 that had been in a drawer, before it became kindling, clattered to the floor. King jerked back a bleeding handful of wood splinters.
“Goddamn,” he said.
“I just been to the hospital,” I said. “My girlfriend. And a friend of mine. They’ve been shotgunned to death by your man, Big Man Mountain.”
“He’s not my man,” King said, and he was as calm as a man about to order lunch in a restaurant.
“Jesus!” Bissinggame said. “I’m not queer. I’m churchgoing. He makes me do this.”
“Big Man is your man,” I said. “He’s always been your man. I can’t believe I listened to you. I want you to know, you sorry cocksucking asslicking piece of pig shit, what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna blow your ass away. Bissinggame, you want out of here, go now!”
Bissinggame slid out from under the covers, reached for his underwear on the chair.
“Go naked, or die naked,” I said.
“I’m gone,” Bissinggame said, and he came around the edge of the bed. Then I saw his eyes go wide, and I knew someone was behind me, but I didn’t care. It didn’t matter to me. Nothing mattered to me but that King
