In the shelter of the trees Wally was less careful with the weapon, and I got a good look at it. An M-16 rifle. Standard U.S. infantry weapon. 7.62 millimeter. Twenty rounds.
Fancy carry handle like the old BARs and a pistol grip back of the trigger housing like the old Thompsons. M-16? Christ, I was just getting used to the M-1.
Wally and his M-16 climbed the gully wall about opposite me. He was wearing stacked-heel shoes. He slipped once on the steep sides and slid almost all the way back down.
Hah! I made it first try. When the Lincoln had arrived, I’d picked up the shotgun and held it across my lap. I noticed that my hands were a little sweaty as I held it. I looked at my knuckles. They were white. Wally didn’t climb as high as I had. Too fat. Ought to jog mornings, Wally, get in shape. A few yards above the gully edge he found some thick bushes and settled in behind them. From the hollow he would be invisible. Once he got settled, he didn’t move and looked like a big toad squatting in his ambush.
I looked at my watch again. Quarter of five. Some people went by on horseback, the shod hooves of the horses clattering on the paved road. It was a sound you didn’t hear often, yet it brought back the times when I was small and the milkman had a horse, and so did the trash people. And manure in the street, and the sparrows. All three of the horses on the road below were a shiny, sweat-darkened chestnut color. The riders were kids. Two girls in white blouses and riding boots, a boy in jeans and no shirt.
The draft horses that used to pull the trash wagons were much different. Big splayed feet and massive, almost sumptuous haunches. Necks that curved in a stolid, muscular arch. When I was very small, I remembered, horses pulling a scoop were used to dig a cellar hole on the lot next to my house.
The riders disappeared and the clopping dwindled.
Wally Hogg still sat there, silent and shapeless, watching the road. I heard a match scrape and smelled cigarette smoke.
Careless Wally, what if I were just arriving and smelled the smoke? It carries out here in the woods. But Wally probably wasn’t all that at home in the woods. Places Wally hung out you could probably smoke a length of garden hose and no one would smell it. The woods were dry, and I hoped he was careful with the cigarette. I didn’t want this thing getting screwed up by a natural disaster.
I checked my watch again: 5:15. My chest felt tight, as if the diaphragm were rusty, and I had that old tingling toothache feeling in behind my navel. There was a lump in my throat. Above me the sky was still bright blue in the early summer evening, dappling through the green leaves. Five thirty, getting on toward supper. The road was empty now below me. The mommas and the kids and the dogs were going home to get supper going and eat with Daddy. Maybe a cookout. Too hot to eat in tonight. Maybe a couple of beers and some gin and tonic with a mint leaf in the glass. And after supper maybe the long quiet arc of the water from the hoses of men in shirt sleeves watering their lawns. My stomach rolled. Smooth. How come Gary Cooper’s stomach never rolled? Oh, to be torn ’tween love and duty, what if I lose…
Five forty. My fingertips tingled and the nerves along the insides of my arms tingled. The pectoral muscles, particularly near the outside of my chest, up by the shoulder, felt tight, and I flexed them, trying to loosen up. I took two pieces of gum out of my shirt pocket and peeled off the wrappers and folded the gum into my mouth. I rolled the wrappers up tight and put them in my shirt pocket and chewed on the gum.
Quarter of six. I remembered in Korea, before we went in at Inchon, they’d fed us steak and eggs, not bologna and bread, but it hadn’t mattered. My stomach rolled before Inchon too.
And at Inchon I hadn’t been alone. Ten of six.
I looked down at Wally Hogg. He hadn’t moved. His throat wasn’t almost closed, and he wasn’t taking deep breaths and not getting enough oxygen. He thought he was going to sit up there and shoot me in the back when Frank Doerr gave the nod, which would be right after Frank Doerr found out exactly what I had on him and if I’d given anything to the cops. Or maybe Doerr wanted to fan me himself and Wally was just backup. Anyway, we’d find out pretty soon, wouldn’t we? Seven of six. Christ, doesn’t time flit by when you’re having a big time and all?
I stood up. The shotgun was cocked and ready. I carried it muzzle down along my leg in my right hand and began to move down the hill in a half circle away from where Wally Hogg was. I was about 100 yards away. If I was careful, he wouldn’t hear me. I was careful. It took me ten minutes to get down the slope to the road, maybe 50 yards down the road beyond the gully.
Still daylight and bright, but under the trees along the road a bit dimmer than midday. I stayed out of sight behind some trees just off the road and listened. At five past six I heard a car stop and a door open and close. With the shotgun still swinging along by my side, I walked up the road toward the dell. High-ho a dairy-o. The car was a maroon Coupe de Ville, pulled off on the shoulder of the road. No one was in it. I went past it and turned into the hollow. The sun was shining behind me and the hollow was bright and hot. Doerr was standing by the shark-fin rock. Maroon slacks, white shoes, white belt, black shirt, white tie, white safari jacket, blackrimmed sunglasses, white golf cap. A really neat dresser.
Probably a real slick dancer too. His hands were empty as I walked in toward him. I didn’t look up toward Wally. But I knew where he was, maybe thirty yards up and to my left. I kept the rock on his side of me as I walked into the gully. I kept the shotgun barrel toward the ground. Relaxed, casual.
Just had it with me and thought I’d bring it along. Ten feet from Doerr, with the shark-fin rock not yet between me and Wally Hogg, I stopped. If I got behind the rock, Wally would move.
”What the hell is the shotgun for, Spenser?“ Doerr said.
”Protection,“ I said. ”You know how it is out in the woods. You might run into a rampaging squirrel or something.“
I could feel Wally Hogg’s presence up there to my left, thirty yards away. I could feel it along the rib cage and in my armpits and behind the knees. He wasn’t moving around. I could hear him if he did; he wasn’t that agile and he wasn’t dressed for it. You can’t sneak around in high-heeled shoes unless you take them off. I listened very hard and didn’t hear him.
”I hear you have been bad-mouthing me, Frankie.“
”What do you mean?“
”I mean you been saying you were going to blow me up.“
Still no sound from Wally. I was about five feet from the shelter of the rock.
