Bikers. Two big old rogue elephants, bearded and ponytailed and big-gutted, and one young ferret, all three of them in the black leather those boys like so much. One of them was the leader, and was telling the other two where to position themselves for the ambush to come; this one in this room, that one in that room.
Becker went back to the side of the porch, away from the light, then hurried around the next-door cottage to his pickup truck. From there he could see, gleaming in the living room light over there, three big motorcycles. So that’s what had waked him, those hogs driving in. Damn good thing.
When he’d first rented the pickup, he’d removed the interior light, so it stayed dark when he gently opened the passenger door. There was a narrow storage space behind the bench-type seat, that you got to by tilting the seatback forward. Not much room back there, but enough for the shotgun he’d taken from the trunk of his patrol car when he’d ditched it, and also for the two handguns he’d always carried; his official sidearm, a Smith and Wesson Model 39, a 9mm automatic with an eight-shot clip, and his extra, a little Smith and Wesson .38 Chiefs Special, a very concealable revolver with a two-inch barrel.
For present purposes, he left the automatic, pocketed the revolver in case he needed to do in-close work, and headed back for the lit-up cottage, carrying the shotgun at port arms.
And now at last he looked at his watch: five minutes to two! Jesus Christ, they’ll be back any minute! He had to get rid of those people, he had to get those lights switched off.
It’s getting complicated again, goddam it, it’s getting screwed-up again. Get it under control. Don’t let things spin away into disaster like every other time, this is the last chance, the last chance. The last chance.
The leader first. Moving cautiously along, stooped to stay under the shafts of light, Becker found him in the bedroom off the kitchen, in semi-darkness, looking through the mostly shut doorway at the kitchen, patiently waiting. He had a beer can in his left hand, a big automatic in his right, like the one Becker had left in the truck.
Take care of this now. Take care of it all right now. Get it simple again.
Becker rested the tip of the barrel of the shotgun against the wood frame at the bottom of the screen over the window. The window was open, so it was only the screen in the way. Focusing past it, not seeing the screen at all when he did, Becker aimed the shotgun carefully at the center of the back of that head, just at the knot in the ponytail. His finger slowly squeezed down on the trigger.
FOUR
1
“We didn’t leave lights on,” Parker said, and a shot sounded from up there, on shore.
He had both guns in his hands, the one he’d carried onto the ship in a shoulder holster and the one he’d taken from the guard on the stairs, because he’d planned to throw them out into the river as they left the boat, but now he turned and put the barrel of the Colt Python against Hanzen’s near temple. “Turn us around,” he said, being very quiet, because sound travels on water. “Take us out of here.”
Hanzen did it, without an argument, without a reaction at all, as though he’d been expecting this.
“You know,” Wycza said, speaking as quietly as Parker had, “I thoughtthis thing was going along too easy.”
Parker said, “We’ll head for your landing.”
“Oh, shit,” Hanzen said, but that was all. Behind them, a second shot sounded, and in quick succession a third.
Parker hadn’t one hundred percent trusted Hanzen, but had felt he could take care of things if a problem came up. But why would people be shooting back there? Had they been shooting at this boat? What would be the purpose in that?
Nobody spoke for a good three minutes, as Hanzen steered them at a downstream angle out toward the middle of the river. They’d come from upstream, and Hanzen’s landing was further on down. For those silent three minutes, Parker held the barrel of the Python against Hanzen’s temple, and Hanzen hunched grimly over his wheel, looking straight ahead, asking nothing, offering nothing.
Finally, Parker tapped Hanzen’s head lightly with the gun barrel. “I can’t hear you,” he said.
“You know the story,” Hanzen said. He sounded bitter.
“Not all of it.”
“Shit, man, Idon’t know allof it. Who’s shooting back there? Beats the shit out of me. Maybe they got stoned, they’re shooting at little green men. Wouldn’t put it past them.”
That was possible. Or there could be more players in the game. Parker said, “Just how many people you told my business?”
“Only them as leaned on me,” Hanzen said, “and you met them.”
“They didn’t buy our restaurant story, is that it?”
“A businessman don’t offer to run over one of them’s bikes. You come on too hard, so they wanted to know about you. I figure it’s your way, you can’t help it.”
Wycza said, “What have we got, exactly?”
“Three bikers,” Parker told him. “Friends of Hanzen.”
“Not friends,” Hanzen said.
“They do drug deals together,” Parker said. “They saw me one time, I was with Hanzen, the story was I was lookin for a site for a waterfront restaurant. Seems they didn’t buy it, and they got curious.”
“They leaned on me,” Hanzen insisted, “like I said.”
Wycza told him, “I look at you, friend, it don’t seem to me you’d need much leanin.” To Parker, he said, “So Hanzen here told these biker friends of his where they could expect to find us with some money on us.”
“And went there first,” Parker said.
