“Then I’m gonna show him.”
Wayne said, “Okay, you win,” and pushed up from the chair. “I’ll get it for you. It’s downstairs.” He walked around the desk and the Indian stepped in front of him.
“I’ve seen you someplace.”
They were close enough that Wayne could see the guy’s eyes, a deep dark brown, calm but worn out, bloodshot. He smelled of after-shave. Wayne couldn’t name the brand, something cheap. For some reason it helped him remember where he had seen the Indian, the same place the Indian had seen
“Where was that I saw you?”
There was the trace of an accent.
The Indian kept staring at him. He was a few inches shorter than Wayne but a good thirty pounds heavier. The skinny one was saying it again, “Will you let him by?” The Indian took his time, none of his moves hurried, and the skinny one was waiting, anxious to have his turn. He moved in to stand even closer than the Indian, his sunglasses about level with Wayne’s eyes, right there, like he was a big-league manager and Wayne was an umpire about to get chewed out.
The skinny guy said, “Remember me telling you I’ve killed people? I want to be sure you believe it.”
Wayne didn’t. Not from what he saw of this skinny guy’s face, imperfections all over it, lack of character hiding behind the sunglasses. Even if he’d been told, he wouldn’t believe it. Till the guy’s hand came up from somewhere with a big nickelplate revolver and stuck the barrel under Wayne’s nose, giving it a nudge. Wayne tried to raise his head believing now, yes, it was possible.
Very gently he pushed aside the gun barrel with the tips of his fingers, still looking at the guy’s sunglasses, and said, “I never doubted for a minute.”
“I want you to be sure,” the skinny guy said to him. “So you know what can happen to you.”
Wayne felt himself shoved from behind, the Indian saying, “He believes you, okay? Let’s go.”
They went downstairs, Wayne leading. He paused in the foyer to say, “It’s this way,” and took them along the remodeled hall past rows of office cubicles partitioned in panels of knotty pine and frosted glass, most of them empty. Carmen’s desk was at the end of the row, on the right. He didn’t want her to be there. But she was, talking on the phone. Wayne saw her look up, saw her eyes, her surprised expression, as they walked past and came to a glass door in the rear of the house. Wayne was pulling the door open when the Indian placed his hand against the glass. He held it, looking out at the gravel parking area in the backyard.
“It’s in your car?”
The skinny one, anxious, said, “Where else would it be? He’s taking it out to that house I told him.”
The Indian said, “Okay, let’s go.”
Wayne pulled the door open. He was stepping outside when he heard Carmen’s voice behind him, raised, coming from the hall, “Wayne?” but didn’t turn or even pause. He kept going, hearing the Indian say, “Who’s Wayne?” and the skinny one, closer to him, say, “Who cares? Somebody works there.” Then saying, “You drive a truck?” as Wayne approached the side of the pickup bed and reached over to work the combination on the metal tool box. Wayne said, “When I go out on the job, yeah,” slipping the lock off, lifting the lid and reaching in with his right hand. He heard the Indian say, “There’s a woman there, watching us,” Wayne’s hand touching cold metal now, a spud wrench, a bull pin next to it—too short—his hand groping until it found the sleever bar, thirty slender inches of solid metal, about three pounds worth, one end flat for prying. Wayne gripped it hearing the skinny guy say, “What’re you doing?” The Indian saying, “She still watching us.” The skinny one, closer to him, saying, “Come on, will you?” His hand still in the tool box, Wayne turned his head enough to see the skinny one right there and the Indian a few feet behind him, looking toward the office.
“I found it.”
The skinny one said, “Well, gimme it.”
And Wayne said, “Here.”
***
Carmen saw it through the glass door, the heavyset man in the way at first because he was watching her and looked as though he might come back inside.
She saw Wayne come around from the truck with the sleever bar a flash of metal, knew what it was and saw the one with the hair twisting away, sunglasses flying and the metal bar raking him across the shoulders. He stumbled, yelling at Wayne, but didn’t fall down, not that time, not until Wayne swung at his legs, going for his knees. The guy was jumping back as Wayne connected, hitting him low in the thighs, and his legs went out from under him. Carmen saw the heavyset man hurrying to get his suit coat unbuttoned, Wayne after him now, raising the bar to swing it at him, the heavyset man reaching into his coat, but had to bring his hands out fast to protect himself, hunching, and Wayne hit him twice across the arms, high, around the shoulders, the man trying to cover his head, and that was when Wayne swung the metal bar with both hands, like a baseball bat, and slammed it into the man’s stomach, hard. The man doubled over, bringing his arms down, and Wayne hit him across the back two- handed, coming down with the bar, twice, and the man dropped to his hands and knees in the gravel, then onto his elbows and knees, covering his head again with his big hands. But it wasn’t finished. Carmen saw the other one, the one with the hair, getting to his feet with his head down, trying, it looked like, to get his belt undone and shove one hand into his pants. She saw him look up as Wayne came at him swinging and this time he dodged out of the way and went into a crouch facing Wayne, Wayne circling him, it looked as though to keep him in the yard, backing him this way toward the house, Wayne stalking him with the sleever bar. It amazed her, she had never seen that cold, intent look on her husband’s face before. She saw the heavyset man still on the ground. Then got a shock to see the one with the hair coming right to the door, one hand holding his groin, his face close for a moment through the glass, white and drawn, then ugly, turning into some kind of wildman, as he banged against the door. She tried to hold it shut but he pushed through, knocking her against the wall and ran past her toward the front. Carmen hung on to the door, holding it open for Wayne, and yelled after him running up the hall, “Wayne, he’s got a gun!” Wayne yelled something back over his shoulder but she didn’t know what it was he said, he was moving away from her fast, intent on getting the one with the hair.
***
Carmen would tell later that she saw the gun, or what she thought was a gun, when Wayne came downstairs and walked by her office followed by the two men and the one with the hair had hesitated for a moment to look at her. She saw what she believed was a gun in his belt. When Wayne hit him the gun must’ve slipped down and he was holding it against his groin as he ran into the office, so it wouldn’t fall down his pants leg. Carmen said she didn’t find out until later that what Wayne had yelled at her was to call the police.
What she did was run after them, up the hall and the stairs to the second floor, where she saw Wayne going into Nelson’s office. By the time she got there...
Carmen would tell what happened next in a quiet voice, looking off, separating it step by step in her mind, seeing it, she said, almost in slow motion.
“I saw Wayne from behind. He was in the middle of the room. The one with the hair was by the window, with his pants open in front. He was wearing cowboy boots. As Wayne moved toward him he pulled the gun—it had a bright metal finish—out of his pants. He was raising it when Wayne threw the sleever bar at him. But it missed. The man ducked, twisting around, and the sleever bar went through that big window in front, smashing the glass. But because the man turned away as he ducked, it gave Wayne time to grab him. That was when the gun fired. It fired again, it fired three times altogether. Wayne had hold of his arm with one hand and his clothes, the front of his coat, with the other and was shoving him toward the window. Somehow Wayne had a good enough grip to pick him up, not much but I saw the cowboy boots off the floor, his legs kicking as Wayne gave him a shove and he went out through the broken window. I ran into the room thinking for sure Wayne had been shot, but he was all right, he was looking out the window as I reached him and looked out, expecting to see the man lying on the roof that was just below the window, but he wasn’t. It was all covered with broken glass. Then I noticed the little fence around the roof was broken off and hanging down where he had fallen through it to land on the ground. I didn’t see him though. That is, not right away. The one I saw first was the heavyset older man, going toward a car parked on the street and looking this way. Not at us, he was looking at the other one, with the hair. We both saw him then, running across the front lawn away from the office, running but limping. When he got to the car he turned around and fired his gun twice, but I don’t think he hit the house even. The heavyset one pushed him and it looked like they started
