“Get a lawyer.”
“They’re gonna call me an accomplice. They’re gonna kick my balls in. You shouldn’t have sprayed that trailer, you stupid son of a bitch.”
“He killed my boys,” Huck said.
Buford slammed down the phone so hard that Huck jerked it away from his head. On the computer, he saw a cop break off from the group. Climbing onto the fender of a car, the cop started to dismantle the camera. Huck rose from his chair and snapped the suspenders keeping his overalls up. “Shit,” he said.
“Sorry, Grandma.”
“No swearing in this house. Not while I’m alive.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Come in here quick. I’ve got something for you.”
He crossed the small house in a funk. If they were sending eight cops to close down Buford, they probably had a small army guarding Gerry Valentine. He’d blown his chance to kill the man who’d killed his boys. His ear was hurting from where he’d been shot, but it didn’t hurt nearly as much as his heart.
He found Grandma in the kitchen holding a tall glass of iced tea. Having something from her kitchen was her cure for whatever ailed you, and he took a big swallow. The drink was so cold it made his fillings hurt.
His retarded brother, Arlen, sat at the kitchen table, eating a bowl of frosted corn flakes. Their mother had done drugs, and Arlen had paid the price. Arlen lived in an alternative universe. When everyone was sleeping, Arlen was awake; when everyone ate dinner, Arlen ate breakfast. Physically, the brothers were about the same and had worn each other’s clothes all their lives. It had been easy, being they were rarely awake at the same time. He petted Arlen on the shoulder and saw him lift his bovine eyes.
“What you want?” Arlen asked suspiciously.
Huck had once stolen dessert from Arlen and had never been forgiven.
“Just checking up. How you doing?”
“Breathing,” Arlen said, clutching his spoon.
“How’d you like to go on a trip? Leave Gulfport for a few days.”
“Dunno.”
Huck knelt down beside him. He glanced at Grandma stirring a pot on the stove. In a low voice, he said, “I need you to help me. I need to pay a man back. I’m gonna kill his family. I think they live someplace down in Florida. I need you to help me kill them.”
“Kill ’um how?”
“Guns and knives,” Huck said.
“Can I watch?”
“Yup.”
A spark of life flickered behind Arlen’s eyes. Huck had taken Arlen to jobs before. The prospect of seeing someone shot or sliced open always brought his brother up from his stupor. His spoon hit the bowl of cereal with a loud
“When?” he said.
Huck had always known that the life he’d led and the things he’d done would one day catch up with him. It was the reality that all criminals lived with, the hot wire that ignited their blood. So he’d prepared, and buried jars of money in different places around town, each stuffed with thousands of dollars in crumpled hundred-dollar bills. He’d buried two jars in the backyard of Grandma’s house, and he dug them up with a garden hoe, then unsealed them while Arlen stood beside him, holding a flashlight.
“We’re rich,” Arlen said.
Huck shoved a hundred dollars into his brother’s hand and saw his face light up. Then Huck went inside the house and dumped the jar onto the kitchen table. Grandma was standing at the counter peeling potatoes and stared at the money.
“It’s yours,” Huck said.
“What for?”
“I’m buying your car.”
“Car ain’t worth that much,” she said, throwing a handful of peeled spuds into the vat of boiling water sitting on the stove. “Go ahead and take the car. I don’t use it none. You can give it back to me when you get back.”
“I may not be getting back,” he said.
She took a handful of potatoes out of a paper bag and started the process over. “You fixin’ to stay in Florida for a spell?”
“Don’t have much choice. Police looking for me.”
“Summers down there are mighty long. You gonna send Arlen back?”
“Yeah. He never liked the heat.”
“Well, okay,” she said.
He went outside and backed her ancient Ford Fairlane out of the garage. Popping the trunk, he got a pair of illegal short-barreled shotguns from her toolshed, along with a metal strongbox filled with ammunition. Arlen had gone into the house and emerged wearing his camouflage hunting vest with his collection of rubber knives and plastic toy guns. He jumped into the passenger seat and slapped his hands on his knees. Huck stared at him.
“You say good-bye to Grandma?”
Arlen frowned the way he did when he was reminded of his own stupidity. It was a sad face, almost a pout. “No,” he sputtered.
“Think we should?”
“Guess so.”
Huck got out of the car and led his brother back into the house. Grandma was at the counter fixing peanut- butter-and-banana sandwiches. They were Arlen’s favorite thing in the whole world. She put four into a bag along with a thermos of iced tea. Then she handed the whole thing to Arlen, took her grandson’s head into her hands, and kissed him good-bye.
37
The visitor parking lot of the Slippery Rock police station was empty, and Valentine parked beside the front door of the darkened station house, then jumped out, went to the door, and loudly knocked. It was a single-story concrete building with as much personality as a sewage treatment plant. When no one answered, he went back to the car.
“Stay here,” he told Ricky.
Ricky lowered the wad of Kleenex pressed to his nostril. It had started bleeding right after they’d driven away from his house. “Where the hell am I going to go?”
Valentine leaned on his opened door. During the drive over, Ricky had refused to say why the Cubans were at his house, beating the daylights out of him. Valentine had saved Ricky’s life twice in the past two days, yet they were no closer than the moment they’d first met.
“Just stay put, okay?”
“Sure thing, Sarge.”
Valentine went around the back of the station house and saw a clunker parked in the employee lot. He banged on the back door, and a Hispanic woman appeared behind the steel-meshed glass, looking shaken up. She shook her head to indicate that she wasn’t opening the door come hell or high water. He went back around the building and got into the car.
“No one’s here,” he said.
“It’s Sunday night,” Ricky said. “Whoever’s on duty is probably on a call or getting something to eat at McDonald’s.”
“Who’s going to answer if I call 911?”
“An operator over in the other county. She’ll call whoever’s on duty and give him the message.”
Valentine turned the key in the ignition and fired up the engine. He’d wanted to get Ricky someplace safe,
