getting to us, like they were in no hurry at all. They pulled up about fifty feet away; Tubbs got out and stood next to his jacked up ride.
“Rick,” Tubbs said. “How’s about you mosey your sorry ass on over here?”
His two Brahma-bull mesh-back bodyguards climbed out to flank him, looking as unexcited as ever. Each Meshback had a scoped Weatherby hunting rifle nestled in the crook of his arm.
Hoffman shuddered. For a second a wild blaze of defiance seemed like it was about to blossom from him into a Tombstone shootout. Then he wilted and choked, and his riot gun lowered to point at the ground as he slumped. Without looking to the right or to the left, he marched toward where Mr. Tubbs stood waiting.
After Rick reached him, Tubbs subjected Hoffman to a quiet harangue I was too far away to understand the words of. The old man snapped his fingers with a pop! and pointed his index finger right up in Hoffman’s face, inches from his nose.
“I’ll buy you some time,” I whispered to Sam.
“I can take them all,” Sam whispered back, twitching the Glock from behind his leg before re-concealing it.
I looked at him incredulously. “You really want them pumping rounds in Moe and Elaine’s direction? Backstop is the beaten zone, boy, never forget it.”
I headed toward Tubbs, not dreading the approach as much as I might have under other circumstances: both because of what it might buy for Sam, Elaine, and Little Moe; and because, truth to tell, I wanted to talk to Tubbs my own self.
Meshback One immediately aimed in on me with his Weatherby while Meshback Two ‘assisted’ Hoffman into the back seat. Tubbs signaled Meshback One to hold off, but the big bodyguard still aimed in on me as I approached, awaiting the release signal.
Jansen had been pest extermination, Reese had been assisted suicide, and Hoffman was no more than a Bozo minus the clown suit. But rolling up on Tubbs, I knew I was coming to the true knife edge of the evening.
“Seeing you here and upright, I don’t have to ask about Reese,” Tubbs said. He stood with one hand in his pocket, the other holding Hoffman’s riot gun by the barrel with the butt on the ground.
“You sent him?” I asked casually.
Tubbs shook his head. “You should be more focusing on me pulling your feet out the fire here.”
“Don’t make too much of it,” I said. “Hoffman was a putz. I probably would have had to make a sacrifice bunt, but Sam would have taken him easily enough then.”
“Sam? Is that who I saw skulking into the bushes back up there?” Tubbs shrugged. “I want you to know that it was never about color for me, Markus. Maybe for some of my people, but not for me.”
“Sure,” I said, aping agreement. “Your favorite color is green anyways. People disappearing on a regular basis? That’s fine as long as it’s not racially motivated. Rogue cops, neighborhoods being declared blighted in the interests of new development? Good business is where you make it, right?
'You knew you were framing me from the start, you knew I didn’t kill the Beardsleys – but you protected Jansen all these years for some ungodly reason. Why, was he family or something?”
“Don’t push it, boy. I’ve got your number now, and I don’t owe you any explanations. But I do owe you for my girl,” Tubbs said, honest anger twisting his face. “I hate owing you. I won’t be in anyone’s debt.”
His face cleared and he gave me an enigmatic stare, his raptor eyes glowing. “You’re a lot like she was. She always gave me hell too.
“I’m not admitting to nothing, wasn’t there, didn’t do it. Reese was a good man, I’ll miss him. But Rick here, maybe he was overstepping his bounds. Maybe he was going way beyond a certain agenda I’m not gonna explain, and maybe he was getting inexcusably sloppy.”
“And the car nut who just mysteriously died up at the house?” I asked.
“Some people are hard to kill. Maybe you want to take them out, but they’re like cockroaches, they keep finding their way through, they keep coming out of the shit storm smelling like a rose.” Tubbs chuckled nastily, his eyes gleaming. “Then you just have to live with them for a while no matter how much of a pain in the ass they are. Try to find some use for them.”
“Some use,” I said, trying to keep the contempt from showing in my eyes. With Jansen, Tubbs thought he’d harnessed Grendel to the plowshare. But in the end he’d as much as traded his only child for his own tacky definition of the good life.
I looked at this tough, foolish old man, whose hole cards had proved nothing more than a busted flush. I studied this sick disease-raddled old termagant, his eyes rheumy with the inner knowledge he'd fed his only daughter to Moloch. There was a desperate self-denial happening inside him, but he knew what he’d done – he knew just fine.
And as for me? I knew that making a single comment about it would be sure and certain suicide. Pardon me if I kept my yap shut on that one. You’d have done the same I’ll bet.
“I’m cleaning up loose ends tonight,” Tubbs said. “So tell me, Markus – are you a loose end?”
Tubbs laughed when I didn’t answer. “What do you think Spale?” he asked Meshback Number One. “Is Markus here a loose end?”
“Yeah, boss.” Spale’s cheek was glued to his rifle stock as he aimed dead at my head. “He’s a loose end all right.”
Tubbs laughed again, glanced at me slyly. “That’s one vote against you, but I got the executive veto power. The way I see it we have two ways to go Markus: either I treat you like a loose end, like your friend Rick here – or I let you call in your marker and I let you leave. Which is it gonna be?”
“Marker,” I mumbled.
“What’s that?” he asked, cupping his hand to his ear. “Show some gratitude, boy. Who do you think made them hold off on you this whole time? Who do you think called SBPD off Moose Creek Road tonight so you had a free shot at Jansen? Speak up and show some respect here, son – you’re in my ballpark.”
“I’m calling in my marker, sir,” I said, looking at the ground. I almost had to admire his bald faced lying. They’d only held off because I was too prominent with the cameras right now for me to conveniently disappear just yet. Tubbs had only pulled the cops off Moose Creek Road so Reese could take out Jansen without interference.
My politeness was less than sincere, but Tubbs nodded as if satisfied. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
He glanced down the road in the direction of the Gardens. “Looks like you’ve built up quite a little following amongst those people, Markus – some of the other folk in Stagger Bay seem to like you some too.
“I know what that’s like: You take responsibility for things; you think you can make a difference in their lives. But pretty soon you’re compromising yourself and you’re trapped by the power. You know things are going to go smash soon enough, but there’s no stopping that machine – you’re in for the duration.
“Everyone thinks you’re the one driving, but you’re really just the hood ornament. You’re racing head-on at a brick wall. You’re right up front on that hood and you can see it all coming up on you, but there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.” He shook his head, looking at the ground at his feet.
He came back to the present. “Besides, what kind of friends are they? Here we are, you and me, talking about life and death on this beautiful night – and those people are nowhere to be seen. It’s just us, and you’re all alone.”
He shrugged. “You were heading on out of Stagger Bay anyway, weren’t you?”
“Well,” I said, “I was sure thinking about it.”
“Don’t think too long – we’re even now, for what you did for my girl. No more markers from me, and our paths had best not cross again. Time to leave Stagger Bay, Markus.”
Tubbs turned to go but then stopped. “Oh, by the way. Looks like I was premature to be promising you that quarter of a mil. It seems now like the bank account never even existed, and all the paperwork’s been lost.
“That’s the price you pay, eh? But you made it clear you didn’t really want anything I was offering you anyways. Quite a disappointment, I’m sure – but I promise you, you’re not the only one feeling let down these days.”
As Tubbs and Spale got into the car, soon-to-be-ex-Officer Rick Hoffman sat in the back seat, his gaze lifeless, his lips moving silently as he contemplated the reversal of fortune that was about to earn him his own private plot in the piney woods, maybe in the same exact place he’d planned on planting me, Sam, Elaine, and Little Moe. As soon as Tubbs had his butt in the shotgun seat, the Bronco started off down hill toward its ultimate destination.
