And what was going to happen next? Hell if he knew. It had the sense of a high speed chase to it: going faster and faster, and something bad was bound to come of it, but once you start, in some terrible way you have to finish.
“You said you'd work it out and I think you will. You'll be a man. Somebody has to be around here.”
“He is upset about something, isn't he? Could he know—”
“Bud, that boy hasn't paid no attention to me in a year.
If I turned green, he wouldn't notice. So no. Bud, he don't 'know a thing.”
“Okay. I don't want him getting hurt. It's important we tell him when we tell Jen. So nobody gets hurt any more than necessary. We'll work this out. I promise. I swear.”
“You never want anybody getting hurt, do you, Bud?
That's what I like so very much about you. But you should be wearing your vest.”
“Well, Ted's right. I'm too old to itch that much all day, though you're the third person who’s told me to wear it in the past twenty minutes.”
“Bud, you should. You really should.”
“Nobody's shooting this old boy, that I promise you.”
“Bud, I love you,” she suddenly said, as if she had to get it in quick. Then Ted, looking stiff with the seven pounds of Kevlar-reinforced fiberglass that now girdled his torso under his uniform shirt, came back out.
“Okay,” said Bud, 'time to get humming.”
He shot Holly a secret look as Ted climbed into the car, then climbed in himself, backed out of the driveway, and sped out of the trailer park, heading cross town to pick up Gore on the way to the 44.
Ted was silent.
“Well,” Bud finally said, 'looks like we got a hard couple of days coming up. Nobody goes home on these jobs till it's over. I remember back in 1978, there was this con who—” But he glanced over and saw that Ted had settled back involuntarily and begun to breathe the heavy breath of sleep.
Middle of the night! thought Bud, and put the pedal to the metal, goosing the 350-cube engine, shooting through the deserted city as the sun just began to edge into the eastern sky.
It was full dawn when Bud pulled into the Chickasha highway maintenance barracks forty miles up the 44 toward Oklahoma City from Lawton, and Ted had slept the whole way. It was no big deal; Bud would have just talked to hear himself talk. If it made Ted sharper later on, so be it.
He entered the lot, not at all surprised to see cruisers not only from his own outfit but half a dozen others: the county sheriffs offices, the Lawton and Chickasha municipal police, MPs from the Fort Sill reservation whose vastness abutted Lawton, as well as a couple of black sedans that were the trademark of the OSBI, the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation, the state's own down-home FBI.
Oh, Christ, Bud thought: Osbies. Always think they know just that much more. Somehow always a little bit better protected than us poor old Patrol Smokies.
“Okay, bub,” Bud announced.
“Let's go git the particulars.”
“Huh! Oh, Christ, sorry. Bud, didn't get much sleep last night. That goddamned wife of mine kept me up like you wouldn't believe. Hard to believe a scrawny girl like that needs it twice a night.”
“Oh, to be that goddamned young again,” said Bud, completing the circle of the lie. Ted had stopped sleeping with his wife thirteen months ago, for no known reason at all—just stopped; Bud had started sleeping with Ted's wife two months ago, and he knew the reason.
They got out and headed in, finding the place hopping, as was to be expected. He saw a lieutenant from Troop M over in Altus talking to two heavy-lidded types in ill-fitting suits who had to be OSBI. The two men in suits had Remington 700s with scopes hanging over their shoulders. In fact, looking about at the law enforcement types milling in the corridor. Bud saw that nearly everyone packed extra heat.
“Get yourself a cup of coffee,” the lieutenant said to him.
“We're waiting on goddamn C.D. for a briefing.”
“I thought that old coot was dead,” said Bud, acknowledging the mention of the legendary lawman.
“C.D. ain't ever going to die,” said the lieutenant.
“He's too pickled in bourbon to pass on.”
He and Ted found coffee and a big tub of Dunkin' Donuts, and Bud passed on the pastry while Ted took a sugary one. Suddenly Bud noticed guys streaming by them into the duty room as if everyone just knew that it was somehow time to get the word. Bud filed in, too, and the place that was sparsely filled when a twelve-man rotation got its shift briefing was now chockablock with cops.
A state officer made a few introductory remarks, but Bud, like all of them, paid no attention: they were eyeballing the legendary old Lt. C. D. Henderson, sitting there in a string tie and Tony Lama boots, and a definitely nonregulation Colt automatic in some kind of ancient, blackened, multi strapped and -buckled shoulder rig under his suit coat.
CD, was the most famous detective in the state of Oklahoma and a hardcore police gunfighter who went back to great days when the Oklahoma City police pistol team sent its best men into the FBI to handle all violent duties. He himself, it was said, had been trained in the art of close-in shooting by the legendary D. A. 'Jelly” Bryce.
But he looked so old. Rumor had it that he was a secret lush and would have been long since retired off the force if he didn't have photographs of well-known politicians with prostitutes or something.
“Well, my compliments to y'all, can't tell you how damned impressed I am with how fast you boys got here and how many of you there are,” C.D. said as he took over.
His face was a prune left in the sun an extra week and the suit, khaki with cowboy piping, seemed to have been originally bought for a much larger man in the unenthusiastic way it hung off his scrawny geezer's frame.
“Anyway, the goddamned Department of Correction dumped a bad one on us, and here's the latest I have, and I just got off the phone with Oklahoma City. Pass the bulletins out, please.”
A couple of lesser lights walked among the men, handing out three-page sheets.
“At about eighteen hundred hours last night, that is, thirteen hours ago, a bad old boy named Lamar Pye led his cousin O’Dell and a poor new boy stiff named Richard Peed out ofMcAlester State Penitentiary. The first bad news is, it was only discovered at ten p.m.” when they did a headcount, learned that the three boys were gone, and began to search.
Found a goddamn treasure chest of bodies—an old guard was found with his throat cut. A big black inmate named Willie Ralph Jefferson, Jr.” stowed in a closet, with a bar of soap shoved down his craw. O’Dell's work, probably. We learned quickly that a vending machine delivery guy whose last stop was the prison never came back. Now that's bad because they were out over four hours before they were discovered missing, which means roadblocks and bloodhounds in McAlester area ain't apt to turn up much.”
He then narrated some colorful details of the escape, including a description of the van they purportedly made their getaway in, an eighty-nine Ford Econoline with hostess products emblazoned on it, and the license number and a description of the poor missing driver, a Willard Jones.
“What you see before you now is the rap sheet on the three inmates. Lamar's the baddest bad news. He's a goddamned professional inmate and criminal. Been breaking the law since he was ten years old. His daddy, matter of fact, was killed in a shootout with an Arkansas state trooper back in fifty-five, when Lamar was just a lump in his mama's belly. Raised in reform school. B and E, assault, assault with a deadly weapon, armed robbery, distribution of narcotics, he just put his hands in everything, working out of Tulsa and Oklahoma City. He shot a convenience store clerk dead in 1974. Just shot him, point blank. That's Lamar. Anyway, it was goddamn plea-bargained down to murder two, and he was paroled in 1980. Then he and his cousin, poor dumb old O’Dell, they commenced to rob banks” fast-food restaurants, hell, they even robbed a yogurt shop in Tulsa mall. They're both shooters. We also believe Lamar pulled the trigger on a couple of snitches who were ratting out the Noble Pagans motorcycle club, on contract from the Pagans. Here's something you won't see on no bulletin: they say this boy's hung like an ox. They say he makes Johnny Dillinger look like a sprout in that department.
So if you have a suspect, you can always check his pecker, and if you need two rulers to measure, I'd say you got your man!”
There was tide of laughter in the room.
“Now O’Dell's like Lamar's body servant. Dumb as a stump and can't hardly talk. Retarded, probably. Anyway, in 1985, Lamar and O’Dell decided to rip off a Noble Pagan road captain who was dealing and they took
