“Uh-uh. I kinda like having her around,” said Earl. “Go ahead. Open it.” He nodded at the briefcase.
Broker stooped and shot back the latches. Hello, sixteen grand. He opened the top and stood upright, tensed, hands floating at his sides. “What the fuck is this shit?”
The briefcase held a King James Bible, a video cassette tape, and a.45 semiautomatic Colt pistol. The pistol butt was a vacant cavity. Empty. In the ominous silence, Nina giggled. Broker felt the raw nerves in her giggle tickle him like poison ivy. He saw she was starting to lose it to the booze.
“I thought I was dealing with Tabor, who are you, coming in here like this,” he seethed at Earl, “with this… bullshit.”
Earl reached over, acquired the pistol, brought a magazine from the pocket of his jacket, inserted it and racked the slide. He did not set the safe. With the pistol hanging casually in his hand he proposed in a calm voice, “We all sit here for a few minutes and get acquainted and see if anything unusual happens. We already got notice of one cop in the area. Let’s see if a million Yankee cops come through the door.”
Across the room Andy methodically worked down the row of weapons, clearing bolts, checking chambers, toggling with the breech of the launchers. A cold metal snap and precision clacked in the tense room.
Nina leaned forward and looked into the briefcase and plucked out the cassette and studied the label. In the process she spilled a little of the cognac. The amber liquid splashed lightly on her knee and trickled slowly between her thighs.
“The truth about the alleged Holocaust. Lectures by Rev. Earl Devine,” she read. Broker watched her eyes. The cloudy shiver in them. Little muscles at the corner of her lips twitched. “You gotta be fuckin’ kidding,” she said.
“Watch it, pottymouth,” said Andy. “Earl’s an ordained minister. Just thought you should know.”
“You need a bath, Nina,” said Earl. “I can smell you.”
“Not as good as I can smell you,
Earl chuckled. “Andy, Jules tells me that Mr. Broker carries a nine-mil Beretta in a hideout over the crack of his ass under that baggy T-shirt. Take a look.”
Broker put up with a rough hand stiff arming his neck, another frisking his back. “He’s clean, Earl.”
“Check his socks.” Andy did.
“Take the battery out of that pager,” said Earl.
Andy unclipped the device and dumped the battery to the floor.
“This isn’t going to work. My guy won’t show unless he beeps a number,” said Broker. “Deal’s off. And you people are outta here. Nina, get upstairs.”
“I’m enjoying my conversation with Elmer here,” she said. There was murder in her eyes, way more complicated than these good old boys could ever know. It was time to pull the plug. Fuck the money.
Andy giggled at Nina’s defiance. “Nice for a man to be taken so seriously in his own house.”
“You just shut up, Broker,” added Earl with a thin smile. “This lady don’t add up and she’s got some explaining to do. The kind of explaining that might take all night,” said Earl with a thin smile.
Broker shot a poison look at Nina. The anger in his voice was real. “What the hell are you doing here, goddammit!”
Nina tipped the bottle up, swallowed, and sneered.
“Gawdamn,” grinned Earl, “do that again, honey, I love the way you swallow.”
“I just want my fucking money,” muttered Broker. Earl waved him silent with the big Colt.
6
They waited. Sweat ran down Broker’s ribs and pooled in his shorts. He paced, shadowed by Andy. Jules Tabor stood at the window and watched the street. Earl went upstairs, found Broker’s pistol, came down and scouted the backyard; then he brought a chair from the kitchen and sat facing Nina, knees almost touching, and read through the dossier material that had been in her bag. He glanced up. “What good is this? Most of it’s crossed out.”
“That’s the Freedom of Information Act for you,” said Nina as she suicidally finished the pint. Then she picked up the video cassette and studied the blurb on the back.
Earl set the dossiers aside and spoke to Jules. “Go out to the van, check out the street for about five more minutes then pull in back. We’ll load up there. Andy, look around for some rope to tie them up.”
“Hey-” Broker started to protest. Earl snapped the.45 on him.
“Sorry, Broker, I came to do business with an arms dealer and I wind up with a redheaded chick with a suitcase full of government documents. You lose, buddy.” He grinned at Nina and his voice lowered, husky, thick in his throat. “So we’re going to take you folks for a ride. Get to know you a little better.”
Broker wasn’t believing this. Standing there on razor blades and Earl was blushing. Where’s the goddamn money? He had to
It was strange in the room. The five rifles lined up. Earl’s dry rustling breath. Andy rummaging in the kitchen. The skeletal Harley frame like a boned-out steel cheetah.
Nina wasn’t impressed. She curled her lip and tossed the video cassette into Earl’s lap. He twitched pleasurably.
“You write that copy on the back?” Nina mused. “The Jews made it all up, huh. The SS. The death camps.”
Earl cleared his throat and said in a reasonable voice, “There’s eyewitness accounts that the camps were built after the war. It’s a side of things that should be heard.”
Broker watched her bunch into a sinewy coil in the chair. He could feel the lances of adrenaline advance out of her pores.
“Hey, Earl,” said Andy, coming in with a roll of duct tape, “come away, man, the bitch is drunk.”
Broker heard the van engine start, listened to the sound move from the street along the side of his house into the backyard. Andy ripped off a length of tape. Like fingernails on a blackboard.
Then Nina’s voice took on the flat meter of the army officer she had been for six years. “Be advised, mister,
Broker tensed when he saw her eyes cloud with holy wrath.
“And he told me the GIs were so damn…taken by what they saw that they wouldn’t even shoot those guards. They killed some of them with their…bare…hands!”
Nina Hour. Broker wasn’t fast enough. She came up from her hip with the pint held by the neck and swung it in a backhanded chop like a cleaver across Earl’s nose.
Glass and bones cracked. Andy dropped the tape and went for his pocket and pulled out a thick bone-handled gravity knife and started to flick it open with his big thumb. But some tape was tangled on his fingers and that gave Broker a precious second. First he had to deal with Andy. He pivoted and smashed an elbow in Andy’s surprised face but then he had to go after Earl, who had sprung from the chair with blood pouring from his swelling nose. Earl, raging, growling, and evidently in shock that he had been struck by a woman, dropped the.45 and plucked the shattered bottleneck from his chest and threw it at Nina, who ducked, and it crashed through the window and, with the breaking glass and Earl’s roar, Broker finally felt it start to happen outside.
7
Tabor screamed in the backyard. A stampede of running feet shook the house. Earl, oblivious in rage, raised his hand to slap Nina-which was a real serious culture-bound mistake on Earl’s part. She leaned back and Earl’s
